Installed last April, a new historic marker honoring the long-disappeared LDS community of Morley's Settlement, 25 miles south of Nauvoo, has already attracted some 1,000 visitors to see it. The dedication ceremony of the marker on Aug. 2 drew 200 more.
For years, descendants of the 70-100 LDS families who once lived at Morley's Settlement have come to see the site but have not known exactly where it was. The new marker pinpoints the location, not only of Morley's Settlement (also called "Yelrome" in Church history - Morley spelled backwards and with an e on the end) but also of its tiny business district called "Morley Town."Morley's Settlement existed only between 1839 and 1845. It spread out over 1.5 miles. The community was named for Isaac Morley, its founder. The settlement included Morley's barrel shop that sold barrels in Quincy, Frederick Cox's chair-making shop, four stores, a Church meetinghouse and at least one school, taught by Morley's daughter, Cordelia. Joseph Smith often preached at Morley's Settlement. Poet Eliza R. Snow lived there one winter.
The Morleys and the other settlers were part of the large Latter-day Saint evacuation from Missouri during the winter of 1838-39. In September 1845, when Mormons and non-Mormons clashed in Hancock County, the latter burned down scores (some reports say 125) of Morley's Settlement houses and outbuildings. Suddenly homeless, the Mormons fled to Nauvoo for safety.
Two months later, on Nov. 15, Edmund Durfee, a 57-year-old grandfather originally from Rhode Island, along with other LDS men returned from Nauvoo to the settlement to harvest the last crops still in the fields. They lodged with Solomon Hancock in his unburned home. Near midnight, nightriders set fire to hay in the Hancock's barnyard. When the awakened men rushed outside to fight the fire, attackers hiding in the darkness shot and killed Durfee.
Morley's Settlement, reduced to ashes, disappeared. In the 1850s new settlers, mostly from Germany, moved into the area, and the tiny town of Tioga now stands where some of Morley's Settlement once sprawled.
Descendants of Edmund Durfee in Utah paid for, designed and erected the historic marker, which honors both Morley's Settlement and Edmund Durfee. More than 100 of them, arriving in two tour buses and by cars, attended the dedication.
The short dedicatory ceremony included comments by Richard Miner, president of the Albert Miner Family Organization; Richard Morley, representing the Isaac Morley family; history professor William G. Hartley of BYU, who researched the history of Morley's Settlement, pinpointed the exact locations, designed the marker and its text and presented the group with a newly published history of Morley's Settlement; and Joe Conover, editor of the Quincy Whig-Herald and a non-LDS descendant of Philip Carter, one of the Carter family members who did not go west with the Mormons. Edmund Durfee, descendant of Kay Durfee, dedicated the marker.
