William Ajax: Welsh Convert, Ten-Year Missionary, and the 'Big Store in the Wilderness' (1832–1899)

William Ajax was born on March 13, 1832, in South Wales, one of three children born to unwed parents and raised by William and Frances Maxwell. He joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at the age of twenty-one and then served for almost ten years as a Latter-day Saint missionary, laboring in several missions across Wales. In 1859 he was called to edit Udgorn Seion (the 'Trumpet of Zion'), the Church's Welsh-language publication. He married Emma Hughes in England in 1861; after a miscarriage and persistent health troubles, they immigrated to Utah in 1862 with the Ansel P. Harmon Company, eventually raising nine children. When his Salt Lake City store failed, William moved his young family to Rush Valley, west of Salt Lake City, where he built an extraordinary general store—measuring 100 by 80 feet and located entirely underground—that became known as the 'Big Store in the Wilderness.' So renowned was the store that the nearby settlement, officially named Centre, came to be known simply as 'Ajax.'