In 1843 he wrote to the editor to recount an experience with a ball of fire in the sky;
http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/MStar/id/20932

I really enjoyed his letter of 1850 exhorting 20,000 English (not sure if he meant “English” or “British”) Saints to save three pence a week each, in order to raise £7,500 to send several shiploads of Pioneers across the Atlantic.(that would have been an astonishing amount of money in those days).

http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/MStar/id/1897

Couldn’t access the half yearly 1850 report of the London Conference (of which he was then President, as Ardis stated) online, but looks like it took place in Whitechapel, a ward which has relatively recently been re-established and is now huge.

A letter of 1852, written from Kanesville, after leaving the Valley and en route to Italy is here:

http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/MStar/id/37715

And lastly, an 1853 account of his time in Italy (the next item on the page is a fascinating (altho’ abruptly ended) account of the missionary work in ‘East India’ in the same year..that’s why I stopped, you can lose hours in the old Stars!)

http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/MStar/id/7059

I have Phil as Philip Newell Margetts in my family records. He was married to my great-aunt, Elizabeth Bateman. My Mom loved to talk about him. He was a great comic actor, much loved, who performed in the earliest theatrical productions in the Salt Lake Valley through the prime years of the old Salt Lake Theater.

The Margetts brothers also owned a brewery in Salt Lake during the 1850s until Phil decided it was unseemly, at least for him.

This line was very impactful:

Sir, you have been preaching for some time, and all that you have said may be truth, but I think if you were to preach the gospel, instead of railing against others, it would be much better for them and for you.

Thanks for sharing this.

(New Family Search doesn’t provide details of place for live ordinances, Anne.)

I don’t know offhand where Margetts was baptized, but will try to find out. And Gary, I’ve only ever heard the name with a hard “g” but don’t have any information about a 19th century pronunciation.

Indian troubles were generally limited to running off cattle, or demanding food, so far as I know. But we do know of two separate attacks that carried off two women who were not returned (I wrote about one named Grundvig — I’m not where I can easily make a link at the moment). Almon Babbitt was killed in almost the same spot as Margetts, and the same year, but Babbitt was crossing from east to west. And there was some considerable difficulty 1865-67. An east-bound Mormon missionary/freighting company in 1865 lost at least one man to an Indian arrow. Those are the ones I’m familiar with; there could easily have been others, but not a very great number, I think.

I think that I had always assumed that the “g” is hard–and I may be remembering, however faintly, others pronouncing it that way. But I may have just made all that up.