In 1851 John Taylor, who afterward succeeded Brigham Young as president of the Mormon church, was carrying on missionary work in England, and in September of that year he met Elias Morris, whom he engaged to go to Utah to establish a plant for the manufacture of beet sugar. Machinery for the purpose was purchased in France and sent to Liverpool, from where it was shipped to New Orleans in charge of Morris in March, 1852. From New Orleans it was taken up the Mississippi river to St. Louis, thence to Kanesville, Ohio, where it was loaded on wagons for transportation across the plains. The journey from the river was begun on July 4th, with oxen as the motive power. It proved long and arduous, but the members of the party reached Green river, Wyoming, four months later, having suffered much from hunger and cold. There they were met by a detachment sent out from Salt Lake city by Brigham Young and they finally arrived at their destination about the middle of November. The original intention was to start operations at Provo, and the sugar machinery was taken there, but the company that John Taylor had organized was dissolved and the machinery turned over to the church, under whose direction it was installed in an adobe building still standing in Salt Lake city. Once more lack of knowledge resulted in failure. Instead of sugar, the Mormons only succeeded in making a massecuite that was utterly inedible.[29] In 1856, a coppersmith named Bepler erected a small beet-sugar factory at Ocean View, near San Francisco, California, but the enterprise was unsuccessful.[30] The next noteworthy attempt was made at Chatsworth, Illinois, in 1863 by the brothers Gennert, who came from Braunschweig, Germany, and who were familiar with the methods of beet-sugar making. They formed the Germania Beet Sugar company, planted a thousand acres of land in beets and sent to Europe for machinery, but their highest extraction of sugar from the beet-roots was only 5.5 per cent. Weather conditions were unfavorable and the soil they selected was not suited to beet culture, so six years of effort ended in failure and the loss of more than a quarter of a million dollars. The plant was removed to Freeport, Illinois, where the final result was disaster. Otto and Bonesteel, two Germans, established a factory at Fond-du-lac, Wisconsin, in 1866,[31] and during the two following years they achieved some measure of success. Subsequently, they moved to Alvarado, California, where they began operations in 1870. They managed to keep their factory running for a few years, but finally gave up the struggle in 1876.