The Rices were visited by missionaries of the newly organized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the family became members in about 1840. The spirit of gathering urged them to join the driven Saints in Nauvoo, Illinois. Records show the extensive property and livestock holdings of Ira Rice and his sons in and near Nauvoo, as well as farmland property in Pontoosuc Township. Had the Rices renounced their religion and remained in Illinois, they could well have become wealthy people. We are told that their comfortable home near the Temple was burned by the mobs. It is thought that Ira and his family were among the many who left Nauvoo in February of 1846 and crossed the Mississippi into a snow covered wilderness.

While at Mt. Pisgah, Ira and his son, William Kelsey, returned to Nauvoo to obtain grain and other supplies from their farms. They were successful in obtaining as much as could be loaded in their caravan of wagons.

Early in the Spring of 1847, Ira was preparing to leave Council Bluffs with the first company of emigrants. Once more President Young felt that it would be wise for Ira to return to Nauvoo for more grain and supplies. Ira owned good teams and wagons and was able to freight supplies and assist many families to get to Winter Quarters, including the Orson Pratt and Lorenzo Snow families. For this reason, the trek further West, for the Rices, was delayed until a later company left. One written sketch asserts that they were assigned to Captain Hunter's 100, C.C. Rich's 50, and Shurtliff's 10 that left Winter Quarters June 21, 1847. In the same sketch we are told that Ira Rice, his two sons, Asaph and William Kelsey and William Kelsey's wife, Lucy, and their baby daughter, Ellen, arrived in the Salt Lake Valley, September 28, 1847, and spent the Winter in the Old Fort.

In those early companies, it was not unusual for the men to precede their families to Zion to prepare for them. This was the case with Ira. He sent word back for his family to come to the Valley in the Spring of 1848. Ira and Asaph had built a log cabin in what is now known as Farmington, Davis County, Utah, hoping that Sarah Ann and the rest of the family would soon be united with Ira. When the expected company arrived, it was found that his son Leonard Gurley, but 18 years of age, had brought his three brothers, Oscar North, age 13; Adelbert, age 9; Hyrum Smith, age 4; and two sisters, Adeline, age 11 and Caroline, about age 7. Data is indefinite regarding the death of Ira's wife, Sarah Ann. She had given birth to twelve children under most difficult conditions. The sacrifices occasioned by the cruel treatment of the mobs and the exposures that were endured by the pioneers had undermined the health of many. This we know: Sarah Ann died, but the where and the when has not been established to date.

When Ira's son, Leonard Gurley, returned to Iowa in 1851, he wrote to his wife, Elizabeth Elmira, saying that he had seen his older sisters, Harriet and Henriette, but that his younger brother Ephraim, who would have been 5 or 6 years of age, had drowned. This grieved Leonard much, for he had been most anxious that all of his mother's family be reunited in Utah. He made no mention of his mother in his letter, so we have to assume that she had died earlier.

Ira did not remain long in Farmington. When a settlement was opened up in North Ogden, he is given credit for building the first log cabin there. An excerpt in the North Ogden Centennial, reads, "On March 4, 1853 ... Thomas Dunn, who had been President of the temporary Ward (Branch), set up the previous December, became Bishop, with Ira Rice and Edwin Austin his Counselors." It was here in North Ogden that Ira married his third wife, Elizabeth Ann Morris Butler, November 20, 1856. Ann was a handcart pioneer of 1856, whose husband had died in South Wales. She and her two fatherless children had found the stability of home and family once again.