SAMUEL GEORGE SPENCER

SAMUEL GEORGE SPENCER, of Salt Lake City, is a member of a family of Utah pioneers and in his individual career has shown the value of his inheritance, has been successful in business and has with remarkable courage and faith carried forward the work of his church both in Utah and in distant states.

He was born at Salt Lake City, February 14, 1864, son of Daniel and Mary Jane (Cutcliffe) Spencer. He first attended school at Salt Lake City, but when he was nine years of age the family moved to the country. Later he returned and spent six years in Miss Cook's Academy, where he acquired a good academic education. Soon after leaving school he married and engaged in farming, acquiring about 200 acres at Pleasant Green. In addition to agriculture he utilized a large acreage he owned of grazing land for his sheep and also conducted a dairy farm.

In the summer of 1903 he sold his holdings at Pleasant Green and bought property in Salt Lake City. For some time he had been a foreman in the Salt Lake knitting works, and later he established the Ensign Knitting Company and was manager of the business until it was sold to the Lloyd Knitting Company. He then bought a grocery business, and has always had some interests in that line. However, his biggest success has been in contracting for concessions at Saltair, Lagoon, the State Fair and other places, paying as high as eight thousand dollars per week rent at the State Fair and $7,500 per season for part of the concessions at Lagoon. His main business now is manufacturing popcorn confections. This is the largest industry of its kind west of Chicago.

In the business field, Mr. Spencer is easily identified by the title of "The Popcorn Man" or "Popcorn Ball King" titles used by thousands in speaking of him or his business. Mr. Spencer's home is at 230 Canyon Road.

He first married, December 21, 18 82, Miss Emma Gedge, daughter of William and Rachel (Bush) Gedge. She was born August 30, 1864 and died at St. George, Utah, December 11, 1906.

On October 14, 1885 Mr. Spencer married Maria Baker, daughter of Albert M. and Jane (Coon) Baker. She was born May 8, 1867, and died July 4, 1921.

On August 3, 1903, Mr. Spencer married Elizabeth Ann Cable who died October 6, 1931. In 1925 some misunderstandings and disagreements had developed between Mr. Spencer and his wife Elizabeth Ann (Cable) Spencer which they then thought could not be endured. Consequently, and by mutual agreement, a divorce was granted by the judge of the court.

On March 24, 1926, in the Salt Lake Temple, Mr. Spencer married Charlotte Willmann, who was born in Germany, January 22, 1894. She was converted and baptized in the Mormon Church at Leipzig, October 25, 1914.

Mr. Spencer is the father Of twenty-one children, fourteen of whom lived to adulthood, and he has thirty-two living grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Mr. Spencer was a high priest living in the Eighteenth Ward of the Ensign Stake. He has written a number of church pamphlets, one of them being a tract about Joseph Smith, the Prophet.

At all times Mr. Spencer has been a man without fear, and nowhere did he demonstrate that trait more fully than when on a mission for his church in Georgia. He came out of a house near Augusta to face a mob of Ku Kluxers, who expressed their determination to tar and feather him and throw him into the Savannah River. He quietly talked with them for some minutes, and persuaded them to leave. A reporter from an Augusta paperwho came with the mob hoping to report a story, offered him a pair of pistols to defend himself from the cowardly assailants. Mr. Spencer replied that he had as his better weapons "God and all the Hosts of Heaven on my side," and waiving the pistols aside he went on quietly with his discourse until the mob one by one left. The following day the entire front page of the Augusta Evening News was given over to the account of how Elder Spencer had "converted the entire band of Ku Klux, according to the gospel of Saint Brigham." Many other trying circumstances of bitter mobbings came into the experience of Elder Spencer while preaching the Gospel on this mission, but he passed through all unscathed and thus in a remarkable manner fulfilled the predictions made by Heber J. Grant, then a member of the Twelve Apostles, that he would fulfill his mission and return home without "ever being harmed." Elder Spencer made numerous friends not only on this mission but also on later missions that he filled in the northern states. There he presided over the entire mission of thirteen and one- half states until honorably released. He still corresponds with some of his early converts in Illinois and Indiana. His escape from all bodily harm bore out not only the

prophecy of President Grant, but also the words of a blessing pronounced upon his head at the age of nineteen by Patriarch William J. Smith, who promised: "thou shalt become a mighty minister of Jesus" and "not a hair of thy head shall fall by the hand of an enemy." These were wonderful predictions to make at that time while elders were being mobbed and murdered in the United States. Mr. Spencer was first ordained an elder, then a seventy, and was made president of the Fourteenth Quorum of the Seventies. In Sunday School work he had been a teacher in the theological department and had also served as a president of the Young Men's Mutual Improvement Association for a number of years. He was affiliated with the Republican party since its organization in this state, and held the office of justice of the peace. He was consistently an upright, conscientious and zealous worker for the interests of both the church and the state, and a liberal supporter of all movements tending toward the public welfare. (Modified from the article "UTAH - The Storied Domain", The American Historical Society, Inc., 1932, Vol. 2, pp. 460-462. )