My father constantly told all of us the story when we were growing up. He first heard the tale from his mother, in the 1940’s. Our grandmother, who was born in the early 1900’s, heard the story directly from her grandfather, William Neeley, himself, before he died in 1913. Our grandmother told us she heard her grandfather, William Neeley recount the story multiple times, and it obviously made a huge impression on her.
William Neeley’s experience with the gold was apparently a life-changing event for him, and he was ever willing to recount the tale for his family, neighbors, friends, and anyone else who would listen.
Below: William Neeley, the man, the legend.
Whatever the case in terms of preservation of the story, it has lived on to the present day through our grandmother and through my father. My father used to repeat the story to us almost ad infinitum. I think he may have once even told the story in Sacrament Meeting. I know I heard him tell the story at least once in his Priesthood Quorum, and certainly each of my friends growing up heard the story from him.
In 1999, my older sister, met Tim, one of William Neeley’s descendants while employed with a local company. Like us, Tim is also a descendant of William Neeley, but through Neeley’s second and plural wife. Apparently, William Neeley’s gold story was just as famous in Tim’s family line as it was in ours. But, in Tim’s family line, the story was much better documented. Whereas the tale in our family was passed down to us orally from grandmother and father, Tim’s family had possession of a remarkable document, an affidavit or sworn statement, from a gentleman named George W. Parsons. Tim gave our family a copy of this affidavit, and the account therein was incredibly similar to the oral version of the story told by my father and grandmother.
George W. Parsons was not a member of the Church when he’d left Iowa and headed west toward California. He stopped for a season in 1864 in the tiny and recently settled town of Brigham City, Utah Territory to find work to finance the rest of his journey to California. And, in Brigham City, Parsons met William Neeley. In fact, they worked together for a time extracting salt from the brackish water of the Bear River as it spans out into a great, marshy delta near the shores of the Great Salt Lake.
While they worked together in their salt enterprise, William Neeley, slowly and by his kind example, taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ to Parsons. Within a couple of years, George Parsons had joined the Church, gave up his plans to go on to California, and for the rest of his days he counted William Neeley as a friend, teacher, and brother.
Before he died (and I don’t know the year of his death), Brother Parsons wrote an affidavit about his association with William Neeley, and his understanding of William Neeley’s experience with the gold, as he had heard it. The affidavit was executed in Brigham City, Utah on February 20, 1916, three years after William Neeley has passed on. At that time, Brother Parsons was 75 years old.
The purpose of the affidavit from Brother Parsons is set forth in the second to last paragraph of its text. Namely, he wanted to record the story as he understood it because apparently the tale had become quite well-known and people asked him about it frequently. I also wonder if perhaps the story had been told and re-told so often that it was morphing into its own urban legend, and Brother Parsons felt he needed to set the record straight.
As a lawyer, I’m accustomed to seeing affidavits on an almost daily basis for use in various contexts. Affidavits aren’t great evidence. They’re essentially treated as subjective testimonial evidence. But they are certainly better than nothing and they can be very helpful in certain cases. That Brother Parsons’ affidavit so closely mirrors what my father told us, and what our grandmother apparently heard from William Neeley, himself, gives us long pause to think.
Well, as usual, I digress. Let’s look at the actual portion of Brother Parsons’ affidavit that deals with the story of the gold:
About the year 1868, as near as I can recollect, I became acquainted with a remarkable experience had by Brother William Neeley, and as I have been frequently asked about it, and some from long distance, I feel it should be written and preserved, as showing the wonderful purposes of the Lord and the truth of a prediction spoken by President Brigham Young.
About this time, the said William Neeley had a home in Brigham and used to reside there, with his wives, Helen and Christina. He had also taken up a piece of land, by a squatters right, intending to make a homestead of it, in the little valley or Mantua, as it is now called. I believe this was one of the first places taken up on the west bench of Mantua, near the road leading to “Devils Gate.” He did not live on his Mantua ranch permanently, but used to cultivate it with a yoke of cattle; and he would travel and go to and from it by foot over the mountains from Brigham to Mantua, passing from the foothills east of Brigham then up the ridge of the mountain by the Dunn Canyon, then east to his land which was situated at the mount or near the mount of a gulch on the west bench of Mantua. This land is the same land now owned and farmed by Mr. Heber Walker of Mantua, and the spring of water he used are still called “the Neeley Springs.”
About this time in 1868, William Neeley told me personally a remarkable experience had in the mountains. He said he was coming from his ranch in Mantua to Brigham over the mountains on foot and that on the mountain between Brigham and his ranch, being tired, he stopped and sat down for a while to rest, and looking closely at the place where he was sitting, to his great surprise and astonishment, he saw right there a wonderful ledge of gold. As he related this to me afterwards, he said, “Lo, and Behold! Right by me I saw the most wonderful sight that the eyes of any man could behold, either in reality or in vision, for there in plain sight, in a direction from north westerly to south easterly in the mountain, right by me, was a ledge of gold most beautiful to behold.”
It was about three feet in height or thickness and of solid gold and a most wonderful sight to gaze upon. He told me he broke off several pieces from the ledge. Some were too heavy to bring home and too large, and so he left them by the ledge; but one piece he selected and brought home with him and showed it to several, and among others he showed me. The piece he showed me was in length and breadth about the size of the fingers of a man’s hand, when the hand is extended, from a line about through the center of the palm of the hand to the end of fingers and it was nearly, but not quite, about three fingers in thickness. It was very heavy and was of beautiful rich, solid gold; for I saw it and handled it for myself and he told me he had broken it from the ledge he described to me. This piece of gold was shown to several of the brethren at the time, as I was informed, including Apostle Lorenzo Snow and old Bishop Nichols, and the thing was well known among the older brethren in Brigham at that time.
William Neeley afterwards told me that he took the specimen of gold he got from the ledge down to Salt Lake City, Utah and took it to the shop of a jeweler and watch maker by the name of George Bywater, who was then in business in the City. He was the cousin of Mr. James Bywater of the Third Ward of Brigham City, who held the office of County Recorder of Box Elder County for some years. He requested the jeweler to examine and test the specimen of mineral, which he did, and pronounced it after test and examination to be genuine gold of great richness; in fact, he pronounced it, according to Mr. Neeley’s testimony, as pure and rich gold as had yet been found.
After this, William Neeley took the specimen to the office of President Brigham Young and showed it to the President and asked his advice as to whether he should open up the mineral and mine it, or not. He told him where he had found it, and also about the size of the ledge and its appearance, and President Young told him that he had no doubt at all that he had found and discovered and been permitted to gaze upon the gold ledge, but said President Young, “That gold ledge was placed in the mountains by the ancient prophets of God, for sacred purposes and sealed up; it is to be used for the beautifying and paving of the “New Jerusalem” and it will be a long time yet before the Lord will permit that gold to be opened up and mined.” And he told Brother Neeley that he would not be permitted to open it up, and further, that he might go back to the mountains but he would not and could not find the ledge again; that he was not the man to open it, and that the time had not yet come, and that the Lord would not permit any man to open it before the set and proper time. And President Young told him further that if the people of the United States had the least inkling or idea of the rich gold ledges in that mountain, they would all swarm here to Utah, and people would starve for want of food, and further that they would be crowded out of the country by the great hordes of people who would come here.
This was the account of his visit to President Young that Brother Neeley told me, and as he was a very truthful, honest man, and had a character for the highest integrity and honor, I had not the slightest doubt but that his account of his experience was entirely correct, for he always maintained the same testimony about his experience to the day of his death, which occurred, I believed, at Warm Springs in Idaho, in the year 1913, in the month of January. His body now lies by the side of his faithful wife, Helen C. Neeley, in the city cemetery at Brigham, and his grave is marked by a granite headstone inscribed with his name.
Sometime after William Neeley’s visit to President Young, I believe it was in the summer of the year 1868, Brother Neeley requested me to go with him up into the mountain between his ranch and Brigham City, and he promised he would show me the ledge where he had got the specimen of gold. He did not doubt but what he could find it easily, because he had traveled over the hills between his residence and ranch so often that it seemed to him he would not have the slightest difficulty in finding the ledge again, especially as he had left some pieces of gold which he had broken off by the ledge. I agreed to go with him, so we traveled together on foot from Brigham City. We went up the mountain ridge south of the opening of the Box Elder Canyon and traveled east on the mountain until we came onto a flat; I believe it is in the vicinity of the mining camp and claims now owned and worked by the “Majestic Gold Mining Co.”, from what I have heard since as to the location of this camp. Well, we got to the flat and soon after, Brother Neeley began to search for his ledge of gold. He would point out to me a ledge and say, “Why, that is the ledge,” but upon examination, we would find simply a barren ledge of rock. Then he would call my attention to another ledge and say, “Why, that must be the one”, and we would examine that with the same results, and so he would go from one ledge to another, and I could easily see that he appeared to be perfectly bewildered and puzzled, and he apparently lost all sense and notion of location, and appeared dazed and bewildered. This occurred so often, and I could see that it was impossible for him to locate the ledge, just as President Young had predicted, and so I said to him, “Brother William, we might just as well go home, for we will not be able to discover or locate the place,” and this puzzled him, for he thought and said he felt he could have easily found it at any time he wanted; but yet after careful search, it was impossible to discover the place or the ledge; and to the time of his death, which occurred at Warm Creek, Idaho, in the year 1913 in January, William Neeley, to my knowledge, was never able to go back to that ledge again and find it. And so it proved the words of President Young to be true, when he said, “Brother Neeley, you cannot go back to that place again, and find that gold.”
I have always believed for myself, and it is my present belief, that until the proper time comes, until the set time of the Lord, that no one will be permitted to discover and mine the gold ledge in the east mountains, for I believed the words spoken by President Young and have full faith that there is a proper time for all the purposes of the Father to come to pass; and that when the time comes, and the proper time, I believe these treasures of gold will be brought forth for the purposes stated by President Young to William Neeley.
I made this statement of this remarkable experience of Brother Neeley, for the purposes of preserving an account of this strange and wonderful experience, of which I am the only living witness now remaining as to the actual search with Brother Neeley in the mountains for the gold ledge, and his failure to find it, and also the the handling of the specimen of gold which he told me he got from that ledge.
William Neeley has passed away, and I am now in my seventy-sixth year, and therefore, to preserve the account of this matter, I herewith affix my hand on this 20th day of February A.D. 1916, at my home at Third West and Seventh North in Brigham City, Utah.
/s/ George W. Parsons
Whether William Neeley actually found a "ledge" of gold or not, I think it is an interesting account. William Neeley seems like he must have been a very interesting man. I wish I could’ve known him in this life.