Marriott Family Reunion 2024

The Marriott family has a rich tradition of researching their family history with the assistance of family historians and professional genealogists alike. From the founding of the John Marriott Historical Society to the publication of Hermoine Jex’s “Red Books,” Marriott descendants have collected and organized an impressive array of family history materials that trace their family name through time and place.

The earliest records report three Marriott brothers—Rudolph, William, and Augustine—coming to England in 1066 alongside William the Conqueror and receiving land in recognition of their service. A nineteenth-century newspaper identifies Yorkshire, Leicestershire, and Kent as the counties where the brothers were given land but original documentation is scarce until 1540 when Robert Marriott leased the manor house in Ashton, Northamptonshire. Ten generations of Marriotts lived and worked in Ashton and Roade, Northamptonshire where many of them are buried in St. Michael’s Church and where their wills and records can still be found.

On March 6, 1816, John Marriott, who would later emigrate to Utah, was born in Roade, Northamptonshire. His family moved to Bedfordshire some time before 1822; John Marriott grew up in Honeydon, Bedfordshire with his parents, John and Frances Marriott, and two sisters, Mary Ann and Elizabeth. In 1840, a former neighbor, Joseph Fielding, returned from abroad as a missionary to Bedfordshire for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. John Marriott was baptized into the Church six months later on May 7, 1841. A little less than a year later, John Marriott was married to Susannah Fowkes by Lorenzo Snow, who would later become president of the Church.

John, Susannah, and John’s sister Elizabeth emigrated to America in early 1843 to join the Church community in Nauvoo, Illinois. John Marriott worked to build the temple in Nauvoo and he and Susannah received their endowments on February 2, 1846. Family records do not record when John and Susannah left Nauvoo but they lived in Kanesville, Iowa for at least a year and reached Utah by 1851. John Marriott, Sr. and his daughter Caroline, had set out to America in 1849 but died after landing in St. Louis. John and Susannah were later joined by John’s surviving sister, Mary Ann and her husband William Stewart in 1850, shortly before their move to Utah. The families reached Utah on September 15, 1851 where they first settled in Kaysville. On February 4, 1855 John moved his family to their final home in Utah, in what became the Marriott Settlement.