“On a dusty afternoon, Nov. 9, 1878, the wagon caravan of emigrants from Heber, Parley’s Park and communities west emerged from Dodds’ Twist and rolled along toward the gap that beckoned them a mile or so north of today’s “U” mountain. The land of their new home — their hoped-for place in Ashley’s Fork — quickly erupted into view,” writes author LaMond Tullis, beginning the story of the Henry family in the Uintah Basin.

To hear more of the story about the Henrys, who were among many early settlers of the Basin, the author will be speaking at Bitter Creek Books in Vernal on Friday from 4-6 p.m. The store has a new location at 87 West Main.

Tullis’ book, “Eight Generations of Henrys and the Settlement of Utah’s Uintah Basin,” published by Piñon Hills Publishing, twill be available for purchase.

Not every member of the Henry family was pleased with the decision to move to the remote high country of the Uintah Basin.

Take the following passage: “Mary Brown Henry was breathtakingly disappointed: When we came around that mountain pass and looked into this valley of sagebrush and rabbitbrush, Oh, how I cried. Mary, pregnant with her first child, felt glad to know we were doing what (church leaders) asked us to do but I never cried so hard in my life as I did then.”

Tullis is a native of the Uintah Basin, having grown up in the Brush Creek and Glines Ward area. Known to his friends as Floyd, he attended Central and Maeser elementary schools and Uintah High School.

He writes of the eight generations of families “surnamed Henry who pushed in from Northern Ireland’s Celtic regions to Rhode Island and then moved on to New York, Michigan, Illinois and Utah Territory before flowing into the Uintah Basin to let their hopes and ambitions unfold in a new land.”

Tullis lives on his ranch in central Utah where he writes books and tends his fields and livestock. He is professor emeritus of political science at Brigham Young University, having received a Ph.D. from Harvard University. He has been a visiting professor at the London School of Economics, the University of Sussex (England) and Princeton University. He invites e-mail: tullisl@cut.net.

—mbernard@vernal.com