Public Workers: Hamilton Gray Park

PUBLIC WORKERS. HAMILTON GRAY PARK. Among the public workers who stand prominent in the history of the business and commercial development of our state, is the name of Hamilton Gray Park, who came to Utah in 1854, and two years thereafter entered the service of President Brigham Young as his business manager, which position he retained from that time until May, 1869. In all these years he was closely connected with the leading business enterprises that were inaugurated and carried on by that great pioneer, in developing the resources of the new commonwealth. Among these may be mentioned the opening up of canyons, north, east and west of Salt Lake City, and the estab- lishment of flouring and saw mills, one of the earliest necessities of the state. Another important enterprise was the contract for the first overland telegraph line, spanning the continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific, in which, under President Young, he took a leading part in the division built in the Rocky mountain region. Hamilton G. Park was born Nov. 25, 1826, in Scotland, he received the Gospel, and was later baptized at Kilbirnie, Ayrshire, Scotland, in Nov., 1840. He is the son of Samuel Park and Isabella Gray. Soon after his baptism, he was ordained to the office of a teacher, and some three months thereafter to that of a priest, and in due time to that of an elder, taking a leading part in Church affairs in his native land. He was appointed to preside over the Kilbirnie branch of the Church, which position he retained until Sept. 4, 1854, when, together with a company of saints, he sailed from Liverpool in the ship North Atlantic. Owing to the illness of the president, who had been appointed to take charge of the

452 IMPR0VEMEN1 ERA. company of saints that emigrated with him, he became the presi- dent in charge during the voyage. In the spring of 1869, he was called on a mission to Great Britain, arriving in Liverpool on the 9th of June, that year, and laboring as a traveling elder in Scotland for a few months. He was subsequently appointed to preside over the Glasgow confer- ence, which at that time included the whole of Scotland. After finishing his mission, he sailed from Liverpool on the 12th of July, 1871, in charge of a large company of saints, arriving in Salt Lake City on the 4th of August. Soon after his return, he was appointed to act as second counselor to Bishop Edwin D. Woolley, in the Thirteenth Ward, which position he filled until 1876, when he resigned to fill a sec- ond mission to Great Britain. On this mission, he arrived at Liver- pool on the 12th of November, 1875, succeeding Elder David Mc- Kenzie in the presidency of the Scotch Mission, returning from Liverpool on Sept. 19, 1877, again in charge of another company of saints. Prior to his departure for his second mission, he acted as business manager, at the request of President Young, for the President's son, Jos. Young, in which position he took a leading part again in works that tended to the development of farming, coal-mining, and railroading. Since his return from England, in 1877, he has been in the employ of Z. C. M. I., in which position he is entrusted with some of the most responsible duties that arise in that great house. In addition to his labors in that institution, he has been an active worker in the ward Young Men's Mutual Improvement Associations, and Sunday Schools. For eight years, he acted as a home mission- ary in the Salt Lake Stake, in which stake he was laboring, by appointment of the late President Joseph Young, as the president of the mass quorum of seventies. In the Thirteenth Ward, where his residence was located for many years, he acted as the clerk from 1882 to 1891, at which latter date, upon the death of Bishop Millen Attwood, he was ordained a high priest, by President Joseph F. Smith, and set apart as first counselor to Bishop Nelson A. Empey, in which position he labored until 1900, when he was called to the position of second counselor in the presidency of the high priests'