Peter Arthur Ranck

Peter Ranck Jr. was born in Earl, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania on June 20th, 1815.

He grew up and married Ann Lemon on August 18th, 1840. In July 1846, Peter and his wife “Ann, with their children left their home in Pennsylvania and went to Nauvoo Illinois where he took an active part in the last battle which was fought between the mobcrats and the Mormons.

He was ordained a Seventy in the Church in 1847 and in the same year he filled a mission in Missouri. While in Nauvoo, two of their children died. Catharine on July 17th and William on the next day in the year of 1846. The times were so hard that it was necessary that Peter make the two little coffins for them. They were buried in Nauvoo in a city lot belonging to Brother Martin Peck.

In the autumn of 1846 he and his family were driven from Nauvoo with the rest of the Saints and went to Winter Quarters, now know as Omaha, Nebraska. They lived in a log room that Curtis Bolton had built in the summer of 1843. Later, Peter Ranck and Henry Bailey built a double log house in Winter Quarters and the Ranck family lived in one room and the Bailey family in the other. A short time later, Peter went to Pottawattamie County, Iowa and built another log room and moved his family there. Here he was made presiding bishop over the branch of the Church for the years 1848 and 1849.

In the spring of 1852 Peter with his wife and family of five children crossed the plains by ox team in Isaac Stewarts Company, which arrived in Salt Lake City September 20th, 1852. He located in East Mill Creek, now a part of Salt Lake and spent the first winter in a log cabin. Shortly after he built a log room on the same ground, which belonged to John Neff. In the spring of 1855 he moved this room onto forty acres of land that he owned on the bench and in 1861 he built an adobe three-room house onto the log room.

By occupation he was a carpenter and a farmer. He owned a shingle mill in Mill Creek Canyon and supplied the neighboring towns with shingles. In the early days when coffins were hard to obtain, he made them for his neighbors and friends. Being a carpenter he built many houses and barns for the early settlers.

In 1860 he was called back to Pennsylvania to his mother’s deathbed. After her death, the family property was divided and with his share he purchased dry goods and groceries, which he brought back to Salt Lake in 1861. He brought a company of saints with him.

In November of the year 1861 Peter and Ann were sealed in the Old Endowment House. Peter revisited his native state in 1888 to get the family genealogy and in spite of the fact that his people were bitter towards the Church; he secured about five hundred names.

After returning from Pennsylvania he was ordained a high priest by Joseph E. Taylor on December 26th, 1891.

Peter and Ann had 11 children, seven daughters and four sons. They were sealed to their parents in the Logan Temple in October 1886. Nine children survived Peter at the time of his death on November 18, 1895. Ann lived a grand and useful life. She assisted in the birth of over 500 babies. Ann preceded her husband in death by 11 years.

• Credit Richard Hixson, Ancestry