James Holiday Durney 1831-1873

James Holiday Durney

James Holiday Durney was born 7 July 1831 in Montrose, Forfarshire, Scotland, a maritime community, to cooper and miner James Durno and his wife Margaret Duncan.

Family lore tells us that James took up the profession of last-making at a young age.

Missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints came into the Montrose area. James was baptized on 24 November 1850 by Joseph Booth.

Following a strong desire to join with the Saints in America, James was able to travel to Liverpool and with 345 other British Saints board the ship Elvira Owen which was bound for and landed in New Orleans on 15 February 1853. Joseph W. Young was the presiding Church leader for the group on ship.

James joined an unidentified group of Saints and crossed the plains in the summer of 1853. He settled in the Grantsville, Tooele, Utah area.  It very likely James was called with several others  to settle there. 

In 1852 the few Saints living in Grantsville were fearful of attacks by the Goshute Indians. They wrote to Brigham Young asking for advice. They requested that a dozen or more families be sent to reinforce their settlement to help guarantee their security. 

In the October General Conference of 1853, 159 members of the Church were asked to settle and live in the Grantsville area. These pioneers acted on the advice of President Brigham Young and built a fort of their settlement. 


The fort was comprised of 4 mud or rock walls which were 3 feet thick, 12 feet tall, 30 rods long. The walls were aligned north to south with a gate in each wall and chinks placed in them for shooting muzzle-loading rifles. The settlers built sections in proportion to the amount of space each occupied. Log cabins were built near the walls and the center of the fort was saved for public buildings including an adobe meeting hall. In the year 1855 there were 251 members of the Church in the area.

James purchased land and raised sheep in Grantsville. It is very likely that he helped in the building of the fort being a strong young man just 22 years old. He was described as about 5’ 8’ tall with black hair.


When the 37^th Quorum of the Seventy was organized in Salt Lake City  on 12 January 1854, James was a member listed as a member of that quorum.

After settling the Grantsville area for about a year and a half, James married an English immigrant named Sarah Ellison Sutton on 23 April 1855 in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City. Sarah also immigrated on the ship Elvira Owen. We must assume a friendship and probable romance began aboard ship.

The Grantsville settlers experienced much hardship while living there. The summers were hot and the winters were cold and snowy. They had plagues of grasshoppers, drought and starvation in the years 1854 to 1860.

In September of 1860 James became a member of the Grantsville Agricultural and Manufacturing Society and participated in their exhibitions.

Deseret News, 31 October 1860

It appears Durneys were hardy and very devoted to their new religion—accepting calls to serve in any way they could. At this time in LDS history, men from all Mormon communities were asked to gather their teams and provisions and help with the Mormon migration of immigrants crossing the great plains of the United States. James took a team of his own and made several trips back east.

On 19 October 1861, James married in polygamy Jane Grant Gordon. She and her family had arrived just the month previous from Montrose, Scotland—the same area in which James had lived. Family lore states that James knew Jane in Scotland. If this was the case, he probably knew her and her family. One would not suspect a romantic relationship between the two in Scotland as Jane would only have been 12 when James emigrated. But the marriage must have been arranged perhaps through correspondence before the Gordons left Scotland.

By the spring of 1864 James was anxious to leave Grantsville. He purchased property in Richmond, Cache, Utah and moved his second wife, Jane there first. He divided his property equally—half for each wife. 

During the summer of 1864, James went back to Grantsville to move Sarah and their children. By 1870, the two Durney families lived in different parts of Richmond.

The Durneys were active church members while living in Richmond. James served as a ward clerk under Bishop Marriner W. Merrill who later became the first president of the Logan Temple and and a member of the 12 apostles.

June 15, 1833 is James' christening date

On 29 December 1873, at the young age of 42, James died leaving his two wives and young children. Reportedly, James had suffered with an enlarged prostate for about five years and had suffered greatly. He is said to have lived and died a true Latter-day Saint.

Each wife had some land and belongings with which to continue. James’ second wife, Jane, married Edmund Buckley again in polygamy and moved to Franklin, Franklin, Idaho. She died in 1908 and is buried in Franklin.

Sarah continued living in Richmond until her death and burial in 1901.

Sarah and James had the following children together:


Alice Ann, 1857
James Holiday, Jr., 1859
John Sutton, 1861
Mary, 1864
Joanna, 1867

Jane and James had the following children together:

Martha Gordon, 1862

Peter Sutton, 1863

Joseph Gordon, 1866

Hyrum Gordon, 1870

Isabell Gordon, 1872