M - Morrison's Meat Pies

Morrison’s Meat Pies were an institution in Salt Lake City for 133 years.

By the time the business closed, it was no longer in the hands of the family who started it all, but people still reminisce about those pies today.

Thomas Henry Morrison was born in Wellington, New Zealand in 1847, six years after his mother had arrived from England with her parents and siblings and shortly after his parents married. His father was a sea captain and mariner. There were eight children, not all who survived infancy, over the next 10 years before his father Daniel sadly died from injuries sustained when his ship was wrecked. Betsy remarried quickly, as you would expect a young widow with at least six children under 11 to do. Thomas had about 10 half siblings from his mother’s second marriage.

At some time around 1870, the family moved south to Hokitika and later to Kaikoura where other members of Betsy’s family had moved earlier. Whether the older children moved with them at the time is unclear. Thomas would have been in his early twenties. His sisters Elizabeth and Mary had married in 1869 (in Wellington) and 1870 (in Kaikoura).

By the late 1870’s Thomas was living in Christchurch. Around this time he joined the Mormon Church. Since the mid 1870’s missionaries from Utah had travelled to New Zealand and other countries around the world to share their story and grow the numbers of their congregation. He also met his first wife Emily and they reputedly married in 1878. No marriage record can be found in New Zealand though, and their two daughters were registered in 1879 and 1880 with Emily’s surname. Perhaps they delayed their marriage because there was no-one from the church available to officiate. There is a possible listing for him on the electoral rolls in 1880/1881 as a fish hawker in Montreal Street.

In March 1882 the small family boarded the City of Sydney bound for San Francisco with a number of other “converts” to make a new life in Utah. Another group had left the year before on the Hawea. Their arrival in Salt Lake City would have been tinged with mixed emotions. Their 19 month old second daughter died just three weeks after they arrived in San Francisco, their marriage was sealed six weeks later and two weeks afterward they welcomed their third child, another daughter.  

Thomas had brought with him a recipe for a “Scottish” meat pie. He and his wife founded a business in 1883, making the pies themselves in their home kitchen. Thomas then took the pies in a cart, heated by coal, and sold them to the citizens of Salt Lake City near Temple Square. He may have been the first food cart operator in Main Street. This business set up when Utah was still a Territory, not yet a State, survived for 133 years. It was the fifth oldest food company in the USA, older than Campbells Soup, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Coca-Cola and Heinz Ketchup.

In 1884, Thomas married a second time, which at that time was an accepted practice in the church. His two families lived amicably in separate but adjoining houses. Thomas sold his business to his sons – was that where the trouble began ? At one point the business was known as Dan Morrison’s Meat Pies. Dan was a son from the second marriage, perhaps there was some rivalry between the brothers.

Family squabbles, changes in ownership and economic downturns all took their toll. By the time it closed in 2016 it was not owned by any of the Morrison family. It was reported in 2012 that the new factory in West Jordan was producing 5,000 pies a day, but not much later expansion plans were derailed by finances and the business closed forever.

Thomas died in 1910. His second wife Susanna, died in California in 1921 where three of her children had settled. Emily, his first wife died in Salt Lake City in 1944. Some of their descendants can be found amongst our DNA match lists still living in Salt Lake City and the surrounding area.