•
I?
BANCROFT LffiRARf
y "
ISTORY °r (JTAR
IN
By ORSON F. WHITNEY.
Volume IV. — Biographical.
.l
History is philosophy teaching by examples. — Herodotus.
SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH:
GEORGE Q. CANNON & SONS CO., PUBLISHERS.
OCTOBER, 1904.
COPYRIGHT APPLIED FOR
PREFACE.
' T the expiration of fourteen years since the inception of the enterprise known as WHITNEY'S HISTORY or UTAH, the fourth and final volume now appears. The inner history of this period would tell for author and publishers a tale of protracted toil, with many interruptions and suspensions, and a final triumph over obstacles and discouragements innumerable. But nothing more is desired by them in a prefatory way than is contained in the following announcement of the pending issuance of the book, taken from the "Deseret News'1 of February 6, 1904. Said that paper:
"This volume is in the nature of a gift to paid-up subscribers for the original set of three volumes, heretofore issued by the present proprietors and publishers, the George Q. Cannon & Sons Company of this city.
''The announcement of the completion of the great work, begun by Bishop 0. F. Whitney, as author, nearly fourteen years ago, will be received with great satisfaction by his many friends, the subscribers and the public generally.
"It was in the Spring of 1890 that the Bishop was engaged to write this History by a company organized for the purpose of publishing it, and which employed him at a stated monthly salary for the literary part of the work. The undertaking was gigantic. To carry it to success required years of hard labor on the part of the author, as well as the business heads of the concern; fighting against adverse conditions which were at times almost overwhelming; so that it may be imagined with what a sense of relief the Bishop lays aside his pen, and the publishers and proprietors also end their labors.
"Since the inception of the enterprise by Dr. John 0. Williams of Colorado, the original owner and manager, the business has changed hands. It was purchased by the present proprietors at a time when the whole project was imperiled, and their purchase was virtually a rescue of the enterprise. They are now about to make good their pledge to the public by the issuance of this gift volume, even though it entails upon them a heavy financial sacrifice.
"The fourth is exclusively a biographical volume, the general narrative embodied in the complete work having ended with the third. These biographies, between three hun- dred and four hundred in number, life sketches of prominent citizens of all creeds and classes, constitute the largest and most valuable collection of the kind ever published in this region. They are arranged in such a manner as to afford, so far as possible, a con- tinuation of the historical narrative previously published, and which ended with the year the writing of the history began — 1890. By a convenient division into groups, such as pioneers, congressmen, journalists, lawyers, mining men, farmers, artisans, etc., the general history, along certain lines, is virtually brought up to date.
"The major portion of this volume was written several years ago, and was ready for the printer, but financial disappointments, encountered by the management, prevented
PREFACE.
the publication, and Bishop Whitney, in the interval caused by the unavoidable delay, has re-written the whole book and brought it down to the present, thus making it a more valuable work than it would otherwise have been.
"The proprietors as well as the author are to be congratulated upon the successful completion of their great and commendable enterprise."
In conclusion the author desires to express his appreciation of the pleasant relations that have always existed between him and the publishers, and to give a word of due praise to Mr. Brigham T. Cannon, the present manager, through whose energetic labors, loyally backed by his company, the publication has been brought to a successful issue. Nothing further need be said, except that the author and the publishers are perfectly satisfied with the reception accorded their work. Wherever the History has gone — and it will be found in the leading libraries of the land — it has called forth the highest com- mendation and approval.
"My task is done — my song hath ceased — my theme Has died into an echo; it is fit The spell should break of this protracted dream. The torch shall be extinguished which hath lit My midnight lamp — and what is writ, is writ — Would it were worthier!"
ORSON FERGUSON WHITNEY. Salt Lake City, October, 1904.
BIOGRAPHIES.
PIONEER LEADERS AND THEIR ASSOCIATES.
NAME PAGE
Brigham Ynung 11
Heber Chase Kimball 16
Willard Richards 21
Orson Pratt 25
Wilt'ord Woodruff 30
George Albert Smith 35
Amasa Mason Lyman 39
Ezra Taft Benson 42
Erastus Snow 44
John Brown 48
John Pack 50
NAME PAGE
Lorenzo Dow Young 53
Millen Atwood 55
Jacob Weiler 57
William Clayton 58
Aaron Freeman Farr 59
Truman Osborn Angell 60
Horace Kimball Whitney 61
George Woodward 62
The Three Pioneer Women ">
Harriet Page Wheeler Young c fiQ
Clara Decker Young
Ellen Sanders Kimball
FIRST IMMIGRANTS.
Parley Parker Pratt '.... 73
John Taylor 80
Charles Coulson Rich 85
Daniel Spencer 87
Edward Hunter 91
Jedediah Morgan Grant 94
Abraham Owen Smoot 98
Perrigrine Sessions 102
Joseph Home : 103
John Neff 105
Lorin Farr 106
Jacob Houtz 108
Elijah F. Sheets 109
John Nebeker Ill
Charles Crismon 112
Joseph Corrodon Kingsbury 114
Edward Stevenson 115
William C. Staines 116
Nathan Tanner Porter 119
Simpson Montgomery Molen 121
David and Susan Fairbanks 124
John Wesley Turner 125
Andrew Love 127
The Woodburys 128
Orson B. and Susaiin S. Adams 130
Horace Drake 131
John Gabbott 131
William Harker 132
LEADING COLONIZERS.
Orson Hyde ^. 137
Peter Maughan 140
Anson Call..... 142
William Wallace Clufi 145
William Budge 149
Francis Asbury Hammond 151
William Miller 153
Thomas Edwin Ricks 156
Joseph Parry 157
William Nicol Fife 162
BIOGRAPHIES.
NAME PAGE
Abram Hatch 165
Edwin D. Woolley, Jr 168
NAME PAGE
George Washington Briinhall 169
John Crook 170
EARLY MILITARY MEN.
Daniel Hanmer Wells 175
James Ferguson 180
Robert Taylor Burton 184
James Brown 187
Warren Stone Snow 188
John Riggs Murdock 189
William Holmes Walker 192
John I). T. McAllister 197
Theodore McKean 199
Hiram Bradley Clawson 201
William L. N. Allen.. 203
Myron Tanner 206
Washington Franklin Anderson 207
Marcus LaFayette Shepherd 208
Dimick Baker Huntington 209
Ira Nathaniel Hinckley 211
Thomas Barthelemy Cardon 212
Zacheus Cheney 213
Luther Terry Tuttle 215
Robert Pixton 216
Henry Phinehas Richards 217
Daniel Henrie 218
MEN OF AFFAIRS.
Lorenzo Snow 223
Joseph Fielding Smith 227
Newel Kimball Whitney 233
William Bowker Preston 237
John Rex Winder 240
William Jennings 242
Horace Sunderlin Eldredge 246
Feramorz Little 250
Henry Dinwoodey 252
Nicholas Groesbeck 256
Thomas George Webber 258
Francis Marion Lyman 260
Moses Thatcher 264
Francis Armstrong 269
David Harold Peery 270
George Teasdale 272
Amos Milton Musser 274
Alonzo Hazelton Raleigh 277
Leonard Wilford Hardy 279
Francis Billiard Dyer .' 281
Edwin Dilworth Woolley 282
Andrew Cunningham 285
Lester James Herrick 286
Oliver Goddard Snow 288
Charles Woodmansee 292
Sidney Stevens 294
Samuel Stephen Jones 296
John William Guthrie 298
William Driver 300
Samuel Pierce Hoy t.... 303
Edwin Stratford 304
Fred Simon 305
George Dixon Snell 307
Bernard Herman Schettler 308
August Wilhelm Carlson 310
George Montgomery Scott 311
EDITORS AND EDUCATORS.
Franklin Dewey Richards 315
Anthon Henrik Lund. 319
Orson Spencer 320
Samuel Whitney Richards 323
Julian Moses 325
Mary Jane Dilworth Hammond.. 326
Karl Gottfried Maeser 327
John Rocky Park 329
Charles William Penrose 333
John Nicholson 336
Charles Carroll Goodwin 341
Byron Groo 342
Joseph Bull 344
Jesse Williams Fox 347
David John 348
Charles John Thomas ' 349
George Careless 9 351
John Silvanus Davis 352
BIOGRAPHIES.
SAME
; -;.
Thomas Colt Griggs 3o3
Joseph Marion Tanner .'>o4
Joseph Thomas King»bnr\ 355
James Edward Talmage 357
Joshua Hughes Paul 360
• •• - • •
• .-. II
Beojamin Clnff, Jr 362
William Jasper Kerr 364
Evan Stephens 365
John Jasper McCJeJian 367
John David Peters... 368
FARMERS AND STOCKRAISERS.
Angus Munn Cannon 373
Canute Peterson
John and Amy Bigler 378
Joseph Smith Tanner 379
Elmer Taylor 380
John Stoker 382
Jacob Peart 383
Edward Phillips
William D. Roberta 386
John Ford 388
David Henry Caldwell
George Patten 390
Charles L. Anderson 392
Charles Crane -'(93
John and Mary Spiers 396
Cnristopher Jones Arthur 398
John Ellison 398
George Spilsbury 399
John Sivel Smith 400
John Daniel Holladay 401
John Thornier 402
Robert McQuarrie 402
Francis Webster 403
John Alexander Egbert 404
Eli«s Asper 404
George Perry 405
William Ward le Taylor 406
William Huff Carson 407
Anthony Wayne Bessey 408
John Enniss 409
Joseph Henry Joseph 410
Ralph H. Hunt 410
James Godfrey 411
Barnard Hartley Greenwood 413
John Morrill 414
Thomas Steed 415
John Cole 416
Elias Crane 417
Peter Grtenhalgh 418
Christian Anderson 420
Willson Gates Nowers 421
Alexander Robertson 4±i
Albert Baley Griffin
William Whitehead Taylor 424
Thomas Spackman 42G
Xewton Tuttle 427
James Erwen Bromley 428
John Croft 429
Cyrus Sanford 430
John Tickers 431
William Spicer 431
James Armstrong 432
Robert Aldous 433
Thomas Henry Wilson 433
Thomas Wheeler 434
William Bartlett 435
Rnfus Albern Allen 436
William Hyrum Griffin 437
James Fisher 438
Thomas F. H. Morton 438
Orin Alonzo Perry 439
Joseph P. Newman 440
TRADES AND PROFESSIONS.
Joseph Young 443
Levi Richards 445
Joseph Edward Taylor 448
Christian Daniel Fjeldsted 450
JohnMoburn Kay 452
John Needham 453
Harvey Harris Cluff 455
James Moyle 457
Peter Gillespie 459
Edward Llojd Parry 459
BIOGRAPHIES.
NAME
PAGE
NAME
PAGE
John Druee 401
Thomas Fenton 462
John Paternoster Squires 403
Daniel and Agnes Stuart '.. 466
William and Agnes Douglass 468
Andrew Watson 469
George Stringfellow 470
William Jefferies 471
David Jenkins 472
John Hughes 473
Thomas Wilkins Jones 474
Alexander, Margaret and FannySteele 475
Thomas Cooper 476
AbelParker 477
John P. Wood 477
John Whitmer Hoover .( 478
Isaac K. Wright ' 478
Joseph William Taylor 479
Neils Morten Peterson. 480
Joseph Marriott 4SO
George Curtis 482
Amos D. Holdaway 482
George M. Kerr 483
MANUFACTURERS AND MINING MEN.
Elias Morris 487
Enoch Bartlett Tripp 488
Philip Pugsley 492
James F. Woodman 493
William Wallace Chisholm 494
Allen G. Campbell 495
John Beck 496
Christian August Madsen 498
David Elias Browning 499
David Keith 500
Henry Wallace 502
Alfred Solomon 503
Alfred William McCune 505
John J. Daly 509
John Judge 510
Jesse Knight 51 L
Theodore Bruback 515
Nephi Willard Clayton 516
Charles Edwin Loose 518
Nephi Packard 518
Thomas Robiuson Cutler 51!)
Richard D. Millett 520
John LawBlythe 523
George Richards Jones 524
John X. Smith 5'.'.")
Thomas Howard .. 526
LAWYERS AND LEGISLATORS.
Jabez Gridli-y Sutherland 529
Franklin Snyder Richards 532
Orlando Wood worth Powers 537
William Howard Dickson 541
Charles Stetson Variau 542
Francis Almond Brown 543
Hugh Sidley Gowans 546
Nathaniel Henry Felt...!.. 548
Lewis Warren Shurtliff 550
Edwin Gordon Woolley 552
Adam Spiers ,555
Charles Comstock Richards 557
Richard Whitehead Young 560
James Henry Moyle 5(14
Clesson Selwyne Kiuney 565
S. A. Kenner 507
William Critchlow ,. 568
WOMEN OF NOTE.
Eliza Roxy Snow Smith 573
Zina Huntington Young 576
Bathsheba Bigler Smith 578
Jane Snyder Richards 580
Mary Isabella Home 5S4
Emmeline B. Woodward Wells 586
Ruth Mosher Pack 599
Charilla Abbott Browning 591
Emily Hill Woodmansee 593
Hannah Cornaby 595
Louisa Lula Greene Richards 598
Romania Bunnell Pratt 600
BIOGRAPHIES.
NAME
PAGE
NAME
PAGE
Ellen Brooke Ferguson C02
Emily S. Richards 604
Elizabeth Ann Claridge MeCune 606
Inez Knight Allen 610
Lucy Jane Krimhall Knight 613
OTHER NOTABLES.
Heber Manning Wells 61!)
Charles Washington Bennett .. 620
Alexander Cruickshank Pyper 621
Edwai'd Lennox Sloan 622
William Sylvester McCornick 624
Matthew Henry Walker 626
Bolivar Roberts 628
Friedrich Johann Kiesel 62!)
Thomas Corwin Iliff 633
Nathan Tanner 635
Henry Eliot Gibson 638
John Scowcroft 631)
Alexander Hamilton Tarbet 640
Samuel Newhouse (i42
Frank Knox 643
Perry S. Heath 644
Arthur Benjamin Lewis 645
Henry Gordon Williams 646
Jeremiah Langford 648
Frank A. Grant 649
Ezra Thompson 651
William Hatfield 652
Henry L. A. Culmer 652
George Dunford Alder 654
L. M. Olson... ,. 655
UTAH IN CONGRESS.
George Quayle Cannon ('>.">!)
John Milton Bernhisel 663
William Henry Hooper 666
John Fitch Kinney 668
John T. Caine 671
Joseph LaFayette Rawlins 678
Frank Jenne Cannon 682
Clarence E. Allen 687
Brigham Henry Roberts 688
George Sutherland 694
Thomas Kearns 695
Reed Smoot... .. 698
HISTORIAN AND HISTORY. The Author and his Work, by John Nicholson 703
ILLUSTRATIONS.
NAME PAGE
Scenes on the San Pedro, Los Angeles,
and Salt Lake Railroad Frontispiece
Millen Atwood 54
Joseph Corrodon Kingsbury 72
Edward Stevenson 114
Mr. and Mrs. Thomas H. Woodbury. 129
Mr. and Mrs. Orson B. 'Adams 131
Horace Drake 133
William Harker 135
Francis Asbury Hammond 136
William D. Hendricks 141
William Holmes Walker 174
Warren Stone Snow 189
Luther Terry Tuttle 214
Daniel Henrie 219
Sidney Stevens 222
C. C. Skorup 269
H. W. Maw 277
William Newton 299
James Smith 305
James Edward Talmage 314
Charles John Thomas 348
John Silvanus Davis 353
Angus Munn Cannon 372
Daniel Wood 375
Jacob and Amy Bigler 379
Elmer Taylor 381
Jacob Peart 382
Edward Phillips 384
William D.Roberts 387
George Patten 391
Christopher Jones Arthur 393
John SivelSmith 397
John Daniel Holladay 399
John Thornley 401
Francis Webster 402
John Alexander Egbert 405
Elias Asper.... 406
George Perry 407
William Wardle Taylor... 409
NAME PAGE
William Huff Carson 411
Barnard Hartley Greenwood 412
John Morrill 415
Thomas Steed 417
John Cole 419
Peter Greenhalgh 421
Christian Anderson 421
Albert Baley Griffin 422
William Whitehead Taylor ' 425
Thomas Spackman 425
James Erwen Bromley 427
John Croft 428
John Vickers 429
James Armstrong 431
Robert Aldous 432
Thomas Henry Wilson 433
Thomas Wheeler 435
Rufus Albern Allen 435
William Hyrum Griffin 436
James Fisher 437
Orin Alonzo Perry 438
Joseph P. Newman 441
Christian Daniel Fjeldsted 442
Isaac Hunter 447
Edward Lloyd Parry 458
Andrew Watsou 468
David Jenkins 471
Thomas Wilkins Jones 473
Alexander, Margaret and Fanny Steel. 475
Thomas Cooper 476
Abel Parker 477
John P. Wood 478
Joseph William Taylor 479
Joseph Marriott 481
George Curtis 483
George M. Kerr 485
Mr. and Mrs. David Keith 486
John Beck 497
Christian August Madsen 499
Alfred William McCune... . 504
ILLUSTRATIONS.
NAME PAGE
John Judge 511
Theodore Bruback 514
Charles Edwin Loose 517
Nephi Packard 519
Richard D. Millet 521
William Jex 525
Charles Washington Bennett 528
James Henry Moyle 565
Clesson Selwyne Kinney 567
William Critchlow 569
Priscilla Paul Jennings 572
Ruth Mosher Pack 591
Emily Hill Woodmansee 595
Hannah Cornaby 597
Elizabeth Claridge McCune 607
Inez Knight Allen 611
Lucy Jane Brimhall Knight 612
William Sylvester McCornick 618
Matthew Henry Walker 627
Bolivar Roberts 628
Friedrich Johann Kiesel.... .. 629
NAME PAGE
Nathan Tanner 631
Henry Eliot Gibson 633
John Scowcroft 635
Business house of John Scowcroft &
Sons Company 637
Alexander Hamilton Tarbet 039
Samuel Newhouse 641
Frank Knox 643
Perry S. Heath 644
Arthur Benjamin Lewis 645
Mines of the Utah Fuel Company 647
Jeremiah Langford 649
Ezra Thompson 650
William Hatfleld 653
George Dunford Alder 655
L. M. Olson 657
JohnT. Caine 658
William H. King. 665
George Sutherland 693
Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Kearns 694
Reed Smoot... ,. 699
z
0
a
o
tt.
s -
PIONEER LEADERS
AND THEIR ASSOCIATES.
BRIGHAM YOUNG.
^lETUALLY the history of Brigham Youngihas been told in the preceding volumes; his great life forming the back-bone of the general narrative therein contained. The founder of Utah, he "was for a period of thirty years the most conspicuous and most consequential personage within her borders and throughout the vast region lying between the Missouri river and the Pacific coast. Preeminently America's pioneer and colonizer, a statesman, a financier, an organizer of industry and a born leader of men, he was undoubtedly one of the greatest that any age or country has produced.
Brigham Young was a native American, a descendant of the pilgrims and patriots, and first saw light in the little town of Whitingham, Windham county, Vermont, June 1st, 1801. His grandfather, Joseph Young, was a surgeon in the Anglo-American army during the French and Indian war, and his father, John Young, a Revolutionary soldier, serving under the immediate command of Washington. His mother's maiden name was Nabbie Howe. He was one of ten children, and the youngest but one of five brothers, named in their order as follows: John, Joseph, Phineas, Brigham and Lorenzo. His sisters were Nancy, Fanny, Rhoda, Susan and Nabbie. The first four married and became respectively Mrs. Kent, Mrs. Murray, Mrs. John P. Greene, and Mrs. James Little. Nabbie died in her girlhood. In religion, the family were Methodists. Brigham's early avocations were those of carpenter and joiner, painter and glazier.
At Aurelius, Cayuga county, New York, on the 8th of October, 1824, he married Miriam Works, who bore to him two children, both daughters, who became Mrs. Eliza- beth Ellsworth and Mrs. Vilate Decker. He lived at Aurelius for about twelve years, and then moved to Mendon, Monroe county, New York, where his father dwelt.
It was at this time that he first saw the Book of Mormon, a copy of which had been left at the house of his brother Phineas, in the neighboring town of Victor, by Samuel H. Smith, a brother to Joseph Smith, the Prophet. Deeply impressed with the prin- ciples of Mormonism, he, in company with Phineas and his friend Heber C. Kimball, visited a branch of the Church at Columbia, Bradford county, Pennsylvania, from which* State had previously come several Mormon Elders, preaching the doctrines of their faith in and around Mendon. Subsequently proceeding to Canada, where his brother Joseph was laboring in the Methodist ministry, Brigham presented to him the claims of Mor- monism. He then returned with him to Mendon, where they both joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Brigham Young was baptized on the 14th of April, 1832, by Elder Eleazer Miller, who confirmed him at the water's edge and ordained him an Elder the same evening. About three weeks later his wife Miriam was baptized. She died in the following Sep- tember, and he, with his two little daughters, then made his home at Heber C. Kim- ball's.
His first meeting with the founder of Mormonism was in the fall of the same year, when he visited Kirtland, Ohio, the headquarters of the Latter-day Saints. Joseph Smith, it is said, prophesied on that occasion that Brigham Young would yet preside over the Church. A year later he removed to Kirtland, where, in February, 1834, he married Mary Ann Angell, who became the mother of six children, three of whom survive.
Brigham Young was chosen one of the Twelve Apostles — the council or quorum second in authority in the Mormon Church — February 14, 1835, and forthwith he entered upon his eventful and wonderfully successful career. With his quorum he traversed the Eastern States and Canada, making proselytes to the faith and gathering funds for the completion of the Kirtland Temple and the purchase of lands in Missouri, where Mormon colonies from Ohio and the East were settling. When disaffection arose and persecution threatened the existence of the Church and the lives of its leaders, he stood staunchly by the Prophet, defending him at his own imminent peril. Finally the opposition became so fierce, that he as well as the Prophet was compelled to flee from Kirtland.
12 HISTORY OF UTAH.
He next appears at Far West, Missouri, the new gathering place of the Safnts, where, after the apostasy of Thomas B. Marsh and the death of David W. Patten, (his seniors among the Apostles,) he succeeded to the Presidency of the Twelve. This was in the very midst of the mob troubles that culminated in the expulsion of the Mormon community from that State. In the absence of the First Presidency, composed of the Prophet, his brother Hyrum Smith, and Sidney Bigdon, who had been thrown into prison, President Young, though not then in Missouri, directed the winter exodus of his people, and the homeless and plundered refugees — twelve to fifteen thousand in number — fleeing through frost and snow by the light of their burning dwellings, were safely landed upon the hospitable shores of Illinois.
His next notable achievement was in connection with the spread of Mormonism in foreign lands. As early as July, 1838, he and his fallow Apostles had been directed by the Prophet to take a mission to Europe, and "the word of the Lord" was pledged that they should depart on a certain day from the Temple lot in Far West. This was before the mob troubles arose, before the Mormons had been driven, and before there was any prospect that they would be. But all was now changed, the expulsion was an accom- plished fact, and it was almost as much as a Mormon's life was worth to be seen in Missouri. The day set for the departure of the Apostles from Far West (April 26, 1839) was approaching, but they were far away, and apostates and mobocrats were boasting that the revelation pertaining to that departure would fail. Before daybreak, however, on the morning of the day appointed, Brigham Young and others of the Twelve rode into the town, held a meeting on the Temple lot, and started thence upon their mission, their enemies meanwhile wrapped in slumber, oblivious of what was taking place. Delayed by the founding of their new city, Nauvoo, in Hancock county, Illinois, and by an epidemic of fever and ague that swept over that newly settled section, they did not cross the Atlantic until about a year later, and even then this indomitable man and his no less indomitable associates arose from sick beds, leaving their families ailing and almost destitute, to begin their journey.
Landing at Liverpool penniless and among strangers, April 6, 1840 — Mormonism's tenth anniversary — they remained in Great Britain a little over a year, during which time they baptized between seven and eight thousand souls and raised up branches of the Church in almost every noted city and town throughout the United Kingdom. They established the periodical known as "The Millennial Star," published five thousand copies of the Book of Mormon, three thousand hymn books and fifty thousand tracts, emigrated a thousand souls to Nauvoo, and founded a permanent shipping agency for the use of future emigration. The British Mission had previously been opened, but its foundations were now laid broad and deep. The first foreign mission of the Mormon Church, it still remains the most important proselyting field for the energetic Elders of this organization.
Brigham Young, soon after his return from abroad, was taught by the Prophet the principle of celestial or plural marriage, which he practiced as did others while at Nauvoo. He married among other women, several of the Prophet's widows. It was not until after the settlement of Utah, however, that "polygamy'' was proclaimed.
Brigham Young was in the Eastern States, when Joseph and Hyrum Smith were murdereU in Carthage jail, June 27, 1844. The business which had taken him and most of the Apostles from home was an electioneering mission in the interests of the Prophet, who was a candidate for the Presidency of the United States. As soon as they heard the awful tidings of the assassination, they hurried back to Nauvoo.
Their return was timely. The Saints, grief-stricken at the loss of their leaders, needed the presence of the Apostles, but not merely as a means of consolation. Factions were forming and a schism threatened the Church. Sidney Rigdon, who had been the Prophet's first counselor in the First Presidency, was urging with all his eloquence — for he was an eloquent and a learned man — his claim to the leadership, contending that he was Joseph's rightful successor; notwithstanding that for some time he had absented himself from Nauvoo and the society of the Saints, manifesting a disposition to shirk the trials patiently borne by his much suffering associates. Brigham Young, with little learning and less eloquence, but speaking straight to the point, maintained the right of the Twelve Apostles to lead the Church in the absence of the First Presidency, basing his claim upon the teachings of the martyred Seer, who had declared: "Where lam not, there is no First Presidency over the Twelve." He had also repeatedly affirmed that he had rolled the burden of "the kingdom" from his own shoulders upon those of the Twelve.
The great majority of the people sustained PresidentiYoung, and followed him in the
HISTORY OF UTAH. 13
exodus from Illinois, leaving Elder Rigdon and other claimants at the head of various small factions which have made no special mark in history- Brigham, by virtue of his position in the Quorum of the Twelve, was now virtually President of the Church, though he did not take that title until nearly two years later, when the First Presidency was again organized. The exodus began in February 1846.
Expelled from Nauvoo across the frozen Mississippi, armed mobs behind them, and a savage wilderness before, the homeless pilgrims, with their ox-teams and heavily loaded wagons, halted in their westward flight upon the Missouri river, where, in the summer of the same year they filled a government requisition for five hundred men to serve the United States in its war against Mexico. Thus originated the famous Mormon Bat- talion, whose story is told m another place.
President Young and his associates, after raising the Battalion and witnessing its departure for the West, set about preparing for the journey of the Pioneers to the Rocky Mountains. This company, including himself, numbered one hundred and forty-three men, three women and two children, meagerly supplied with wagons, provisions, fire- arms, plows, seed-grain and the usual camp equipment. Leaving the main body of their people upon the Missouri, with instructions to follow later, the Pioneers started from Winter Quarters (now Florence, Nebraska), early in April, 1847. Traversing the track- less plains and snow-capped mountains, they penetrated to the very heart of the "Great American Desert," where they founded Salt Lake City, the parent of hundreds of cities, towns and villages that have since sprung into existence as Brigham Young's and Mormonism's gift to civilization. The date of their arrival in Salt Lake Valley was July 24th, a day thenceforth "set among the high tides of the calendar."
Flinging to the breeze the stars and stripes, these Mormon colonizers took possession of the country, which then belonged to Mexico, as in the name of the United States, and after the treaty of Q-uadalupe Hidalgo, by which, in February, 1848, the land was ceded to this nation, they organized, pending the action of Congress upon their petition for a State government, the Provisional State of Deseret, of which Brigham Young was electee! Governor, March 12, 1849. They thoroughly explored the surrounding region, placated or subdued the savage tribes (President Young's policy was to feed the Indians rather than fight them) battled with crickets, grasshoppers and drouth, instituted irrigation, redeemed arid lands, built cities, established newspapers, founded schools and factories, and made the whole land hum with the whirring wheels of industry. They were emphatically what they styled themselves, "the busy bees of the hive of Deseret."
There was but one branch of industry that they did not encourage. It was mining. In the midst of one of the richest metal-bearing regions in the world, their leader dis- countenanced mining, advising his people to devote themselves primarily to agriculture. "We cannot eat gold and silver," said Brigham Young, "We need bread and clothing first. Neither do we want to bring in here a roving, reckless frontier population to drive us again from our hard-earned homes. Let mining go for the present, until we are strong enough to take care of ourselves, and meantime let us devote our energies to farming, stock-raising, manufacturing, etc., those health-giving pursuits that lie at the basis of every State's prosperity." Such, if not his precise language, was the sub- stance of his teachings upon this point. It was the premature opening of the mines, not mining itself, that he opposed.
Congress denied Deseret's prayer for Statehood, but on the 9th of September, 1850, organized the Territory of Utah, of which Brigham Young became Governor, by appoint- ment of President Millard Fillmore, after whom the grateful Mormons named the County of Millard and City of Fillmore, originally the capital of the Territory. Governor Young served two terms, and was succeeded in 1858 by Governor Alfred Gumming, a native of Georgia, Utah's first non-Mormon Executive.
Just prior to Governor Cumming's installation occurred the exciting but bloodless conflict known as "The Echo Canyon War," but officially styled "The Utah Expedition.'1 It was the heroic crisis of Brigham Young's life, when, on the 15th of September, 1857, he, as Governor of Utah, proclaimed the Territory under martial law, and forbade the United States army then on our borders (ordered here by President Buchanan to sup- press an imaginary Mormon uprising) to cross the confines of the commonwealth. His purpose was not to defy the national authorities, but to hold in check Johnston's troops (thus preventing a possible repetition of the anti-Mormon atrocities of Missouri and Illinois) until the Government — which had been misled by false reports — could investi- gate the situation and become convinced of its error. Governor Young, backed by the Utah militia, fully accomplished his design and the affair was amicably settled.
Though no longer Governor of Utah, Brigham Young remained President of the
14 HISTORY OF UTAH.
Mormon Church, and as such was the real power in the land. Under his wise and vigor- ous administration the country was built up rapidly. The settlements founded by him and his people on the shores of the Great Salt Lake formed a nucleus for western civiliza- tion, greatly facilitating the colonization of the vast arid plateau known as the Great Basin. Idaho, Montana, the Dakotas, Colorado, Wyoming, Nevada (once a part of Utah) , Arizona and New Mexico, owe much in this connection to Utah and her founders.
It was presumed by many that the opening of the great conflict between the Northern and the Southern States, would find Brigham Young and his people arrayed on the side of secession and in arms against the Federal government. What was the surprise, there- fore, when, on the 18th of October, 1861, at the very threshold of the strife, with the tide of victory running in favor of .the Confederacy, there flashed eastward over the wires of the Overland Telegraph line, just completed to Salt Lake City, the following message signed by Brigham Young: "Utah has not seceded, but is firm for the Constitution and laws of our once happy country." At this time also the Mormon leader offered to the head of the nation the services of a picked body of men to protect the mail route on the plains, an offer graciously accepted by President Lincoln. Early in 1862, Utah applied for admission into the Union.
The prevailing prejudice, however, was too dense.to be at once dispelled. Hence, notwithstanding these evidences of loyalty, springing not from policy but from true patri- otism, a body of Government troops — the California and Nevada volunteers, commanded by Colonel Patrick E. Connor — were ordered to Utah and assigned the task of "watching Brigham Young and the Mormons," during this period of national peril. The insult im- plied by the presence of the troops — who founded Fort Douglas on the bench east of Salt Lake City — was keenly felt, and considerable friction arose, though no actual collision occurred between the soldiers and the civilians in general. Gradually the acerbities wore away and friendly feelings took their place. In after years, when President Young was summoned to be tried before Chief Justice McKean, who should offer to become one of his bondsmen but General Patrick Edward Connor, ex-commandant at the Fort, who was then engaged extensively in mining, of which industry he was Utah's pioneer.
It was twenty-two years after the settlement of Salt Lake Valley when the shriek of the locomotive broke the stillness of the mountain solitudes, and the peaceful settlements of the Saints were thrown open to the encroachments of modern civilization. A new era then dawned upon Deseret. Her days of isolation were ended. Population increased, commerce expanded and a thousand and one improvements were planned and exploited. Telegraphs and railroads threw a net-work of steel and electricity over a region formerly traversed by the slow-going ox-team and lumbering stage coach. The mines, previously opened, were developed, property of all kinds increased in value, and industry on every hand felt the thrill of an electric reawakening. Tourists from East and West began flocking to the Mormon country, to see for themselves the "peculiar people" and their institutions, trusting no more to the wild tales told by sensational tradueers.
In the midst of it all, Brigham Young remained the master mind and leading spirit of the time. He had predicted the transcontinental railroad and marked out its path while crossing the plains and mountains in 1847, and now, when it was extending across Utah, he became a contractor, helping to build the Union Pacific grade through Echo and Weber canyons. Two and a half years earlier he had established the Deseret Telegraph line, a local enterprise constructed entirely by Mormon capital and labor under his direc- tion. In the early "seventies" he with others built the Utah Central and Utah Southern railroads, the pioneer lines of the Territory, and of the first-named road he was, for many years the President.
But while in sympathy with such enterprises and anxious to forward them, he was not to be caught napping by the changes that he knew would follow. Just before the coming of the railroad he organized Zion's Co-operative Mercantile Institution, a mam- moth concern designed to consolidate the commercial interests of his people. In this and in other ways he successfully met the vigorous and in many respects unfriendly competi- tion that surged in from outside sources.
With the increase of the Gentile population came the formation of rival political par- ties, the first that Utah had known. Non-Mormon churches and newspapers also multi- plied, reHgious and political agitators made the air sulphurous with their imprecations against the dominant power," and Congress at regular intervals was asked to extermi- nate the remaining "twin relic of barbarism." Still, Mormonism, personified in Brigham Young, continued to hold its own.
Under the anti-polygamy statute enacted by Congress in July, 1862, but one attempt was made to prosecute the Mormon leader. This was in March, 1863, when a plot
HISTORY OF UTAH. 15
was said to be forming to arrest him by military force and run him off to the States for trial. He forestalled the success of the scheme — if such a scheme existed — by surrender- ing to the United States Marshal and going before Chief Justice Kinney in chambers, where he was examined and held to bail, but subsequently discharged, there not being sufficient evidence to justify an indictment. The charge in this case was that of marrying a plural wife, the only act made punishable by the law of 1862, which was silent as to the main- tenance of polygamous relations. Thenceforth that law remained a dead letter, no at- tempt being made to enforce it, the Mormons regarding it as unconstitutional, as it trenched upon a principle of their religion, and many non-Mormons, including noted editors, jurists and statesmen, sharing the same view. In 1874 a test-case was instituted, under President Young's sanction, to secure a decision from the Supreme Court of the United States, but that decision, sustaining the law's constitutionality, was not rendered until eighteen months after his death.
But while measurably safe from prosecution under the anti-polygamy act, the Mormon leader and his compeers were not free from judicial harassments. In the fall of 1871 President Young and others were prosecuted before Chief Justice McKean under a local law enacted by the Mormons themselves against the social evil, adultery and other sexual sins, and never intended to apply to polygamy or association with plural wives, which was the head and front of their offending. These prosecutions, with others, were stopped by the Englebrecht decision of April, 1872, in which the court of last resort held that the grand jury which had found the indictments was illegal.
A few years later Judge McKean had the Mormon leader again in the toils. Under his fostering care had arisen the case of Ann Eliza Young vs. Brigham Young, in which the plaintiff, one of the defendant's plural wives, sued him for divorce and alimony. The Judge in his zeal went so far as to give Ann Eliza the status of a legal wife, deciding against all law and logic that the defendant should pay her alimony pendente lite, to the amount of nearly ten thousand dollars. Failing to promptly comply with this demand — which set the whole country in a roar — the venerable founder of Utah was imprisoned by order of court in the Utah penitentiary. Sentence was passed upon him March 11, 1875 — the term of imprisonment being twenty-four hours — and just one week later the storm of censure resulting from this act culminated in McKean's removal from office.
In the autumn of the same year President Grant visited Utah, the first Executive of the Nation to set foot within the Territory. The most interesting incident of his visit was a cordial interview between him and President Young, who with a party welcomed the Chief Magistrate at Ogden and rode in the same train with him and his suite to Salt Lake City. This was the first and only time that Brigham Young met a President of the United States.
The closing labors of President Young's life, following a vigorous and partly suc- cessful effort to re-establish the "United Order," (a communal system introduced by the Prophet Joseph Smith) comprised the dedication in January and April, 1877, of the St. George Temple — the first Temple erected by the Saints since leaving Nauvoo; also a reor- ganization of the Stakes of Zion, beginning with St. George Stake on April 7th, and ending with Box Elder Stake on August 19th of that year. To effect the latter organiza- tion, he made his final trip beyond the limits of Salt Lake City.
President Young died at his residence, the historic Lion House, August 29, 1877. He left an estate valued at two and a half million dollars, most of which was divided among the members of his family. These were numerous, but their number, for sensa- tional effect, has been grossly exaggerated. His children at his death numbered about forty. Six of his widows survive. The majority of his families dwelt in the Lion and Bee-hive houses, where each wife with her children had separate apartments, and where, contrary to facetious report, all dwelt together in amity. The Gardo House, a handsome and stately modern mansion, surnamed by non-Mormons the "Amelia Palace," and pointed out to tourists as the "home of the favorite wife," was in reality the President's official residence, erected mainly for the entertainment of distinguished visitors.
The best known of President Young's sons are Brigham Young, President of the Twelve Apostles; Hon. Joseph A. Young, deceased; John W. Young, once a member of the First Presidency, [now a noted business man, and Colonel Willard Young, of the United States Army, who commanded a regiment of Volunteer Engineers during the war with Spain. Among the President's grand-sons is Major Richard W. Young (like his Uncle Willard a graduate of West Point) who recently won laurels in the Philippines. He commanded the Utah Light Artillery at the capture of Manila, and was subsequently one of the judges of the supreme court at that place. Another grandson, Brigham S. Young, is a member of the Salt Lake City Board of Education; another is John Willard
16 HISTORY OF UTAH.
Clawson, the painter; and still another, George W. Thatcher, Jr., musician. Elder Sey- mour B Young, of the First Council of Seventy; Judge LeGrande Young; Brigham Bicknell Young, vocalist; Dr. Harry A. Young, killed in the Philippines, and Private Joseph Young, who died in the same cause, are among the President's nephews. Cor- poral John Young, slain in battle near Manila, was his grand-nephew. Two of Presi- dent Young's daughters have been mentioned. In addition might be named, Mrs. Luna Thatcher, Mrs. Emily Clawson, Mrs. Caroline Cannon, Mrs. Zina Card, Mrs. Maria Dougall, Mrs. Phebe Beatie, Mrs. Dora Hagan, Mrs. Eva Davis, Mrs. Nettie Easton, Mrs. Louisa Ferguson, Mrs. Susa Gates, Mrs. Mira Eossiter, Mrs. Clarissa Spencer, Mrs. Miriam Hardy, Mrs. Josephine Young, Mrs. Fannie Clayton and others. The most noted grand-daughter is Emma Lucy Gates, the singer.
Brigham Young, like Joseph Smith, was a warm friend of education. Among the monuments left to perpetuate his memory are two noble institutions of learning, namely, the Brigham Young Academy and the Brigham Young College, the former atProvo, fifty miles south, and the latter at Logan, one hundred miles north of Utah's capital. He also projected the Young University at Salt Lake City, but died before perfecting his plans concerning it. Believing that man, in order to be fully educated, must be developed mentally, physically, morally and spiritually, he provided that religion and manual train- ing should be included in the curricula of the institutions he founded. In the trust deed endowing the Brigham Young College with ten thousand acres of land (worth now about $200,000) it was prescribed that no text book should be used which misrepresented or spoke lightly of the divine mission of our Savior or of the Prophet Joseph Smith." The founding of these institutions was not the sum of President Young's labors in the cause of education. The entire school system of the State, crowned with the University of Utah, is largely the result of his zealous efforts in this direction.
Among the President's many talents was a genius for architecture, some of the evi- dences of which are the St. George, Logan, Manti and Salt Lake Temples, and the Salt Lake Tabernacle. As early as 1862 he built the Salt Lake Theatre, at the time of its erection the finest temple of the drama between St. Louis and San Francisco. The Brigham Young Memorial Building, one of a group of structures belonging to the Latter- day Saints University, founded by the Church at Salt Lake City, was erected with means raised from the sale of lands whereon he proposed placing the Young Univer- sity; said lands being donated by his surviving heirs for that purpose.
A mere sketch, this, of the life and character of Utah's illustrious founder. You who would peruse him more fully, pore over the annals of Mormonism during its first half century; you who would witness his works, look around you — they are manifest on every hand. He was not only a Moses, who led his people into a wilderness, but a Joshua who established them in a promised land and divided to them their inheritances. He was the beating heart, the thinking brain, the directing hand in all the wondrous work of Utah's development, and to a great extent the development of the surrounding States and Territories, transformed by the touch of industry from a desert of sage-brush and sand, into an Eden of fertility, a veritable "Garden of the Lord,'' redolent of fruits and blos- soming with flowers. Brigham Young needs no monument of marble or bronze. His record is imperishably written upon the minds and hearts of many tens of thousands to whom he was a benefactor and friend. His name and fame are forever enshrined in the temple of history, in the Pantheon of memory, in the Westminister Abbey of the soul.
HEBER CHASE K1MBALL.
(J>OR more than two decades after the settlement of Salt Lake Valley, the right-hand TV- man of Brigbam Young— one with him in all things pertaining to the upbuilding of this intermountain empire — was his life-long friend and associate, Heber C. Kim- ball; rightly numbered among the greatest and foremost of Utah's founders. One of the original Twelve Apostles of the Latter-day Church, and the father of its first and still most important foreign mission, he was a prominent actor as long as he lived in most of the leading events of its strange and stirring history. A tried and trusted friend of the Prophet Joseph Smith, he was equally true and steadfast to his successor, whose first counselor he was, in the Presidency of the Church, from the pioneer year 1847 up to the day of his death in 1868.
HISTORY OF UTAH. 17
Respecting the personality of this remarkable man, the writer of this memoir has said elsewhere: "Tall and powerful of frame, with piercing black eyes that seemed to read one through, and before whose searching gaze the guilty could not choose but quail, he moved with a stateliness and majesty all his own, as far removed from haughtiness and vain pride, as he from the sphere of the upstart who mistakes scorn for dignity and an overbearing manner as an evidence of gentle blood. Heber C- Kimball was a humble man, and in his humility, no less than his kingly stature, consisted his dignity, and no small share of his greatness. It was his intelligence, earnestness, sim- plicity, sublime faith and unwavering integrity to principle that made him great, not the apparel he wore, nor the mortal clay in which his spirit was clothed, Nevertheless, na- ture had given him a noble presence in the flesh, worthy the god-like stature of his
"He was a singular compound, in his nature, of courage and timidity, of weakness and strength; uniting a penchant for mirth with a proneness to melancholy, and blending the lion-like qualities of a leader among men, with the bashfulness and lamb-like simplicity of a child. He was not a coward ; a braver man probably never lived than ^ Heber C. Kimball. His courage, however, was not of that questionable kind which "knows no fear;" rather was it of that superior order, that Christ-like bravery, which feels danger and yet dares to face it. He had all the sensitiveness of the poet — for he was both a poet and a prophet from his mother's womb — and inherited by birthright the power to feel pleasure or suffer pain in all its exquisiteness and intensity."
In speaking of Heber C. Kimball as a poet, it is not meant that he was a writer of rhymes; he probably never made a verse in all his life; but he possessed a poetic soul, was a thinker of great thoughts, saw into the heart of things, and recognized the poetic symbolism everywhere pervading the universe. His sermons and sayings abound in similes, metaphors and comparisons, which came from him as naturally as sparks from a flaming forge. That he was a prophet, thousands who knew him still testify. Mormon history is interspersed with allusions to his prophetic gift and with incidents and illustra- tions of its exercise. It is conceded that with the single exception of Joseph Smith, the founder of the faith, no Latter-day Saint has ever possessed this power to a greater de- gree than Heber C. Kimball.
He was an original, even an eccentric character, but withal magnetic and wonderfully interesting. He could be as stern as fate, as severe as justice, and his tongue was as a whip to evil-doers; yet he had a large and benevolent heart, was a natural philanthropist, a friend to the poor, the oppressed and the unfortunate. While like the roused ocean in his righteous wrath, he was ever a peace-loving man, wielding a marvelous influence over the passions and feelings of his fellows. Because of this gift, the Prophet Joseph sur- named him "the peace-maker." Of great force and energy, of mighty faith and invinc- ible will, in the presence of rightful authority — which he always recognized — he was as obedient and submissive as a child.
The Kimballs have long supposed themselves to be of Scotch descent, springing from the ancient clan of Campbell — a supposition entertained by the illustrious head of the family during the whole of his life. Recent genealogical research, however, has proved them to be of English origin, their earliest American ancestor being Richard Kemball, a Puritan, who emigrated from Ipswich, Suffolk, England, in April, 1634, amidst the revolutionary agitation resulting in the execution of King Charles the First and the elevation of Crom- well to the Protectorate. Richard Kemball (whose family name was afterwards rendered Kimball) settled at Watertown, Massachusetts, from which place his descendants spread out over New England and the West.
Heber C. Kimball's birthplace was Sheldon, Franklin County, Vermont; the date of his birth, June 14, 1801. He was the fourth child and second son in a family of seven. His father, Solomon Farnham Kimball, was born in Massachusetts, and his mother, whose maiden name was Anna Spaulding, was a native of Plainfield, New Hampshire. Heber derived his middle name from a Judge Chase, by whom his father was reared from a boy. In February, 1811, the Kimballs moved from Vermont and settled at West Bloomfleld, Ontario County, New York, where Heber, at the age of fourteen, having quit school, was put to*work in his father's blacksmith shop. At nineteen, his father having met with business reverses and lost his property, he was thrown entirely upon his own resources. Owingto his peculiar sensitiveness and extreme diffidence, he suffered much in his lonely hours and friendless situation. He relates that he often went two or three days without food, "being bashful and not daring to ask for it." His brother Charles, hearing of his condition, sent for him and offered to teach him the potter's trade; an offer that was gladly accepted. His masterful treatment in after years of his favorite text,
18 HISTORY OF UTAH.
"The clay in the hands of the potter," doubtless owed something to his early intimacy with that trade, as well as to the lightning-like intuition with which he recognized a striking simile and aptly and forcibly applied it. Though unlettered and untaught, he could roll out graceful and beautiful phrases, and his thoughts and sentiments, if crudely expressed, were frequently brilliant and profound. While living with his brother, the latter removed to Mendon, Monroe County in the same State, and there Heber finished learning his trade and began working for wages. Six months later he purchased his brother's business, and set up in the same line for himself, in which he prospered for up- wards of ten years.
Meanwhile the sun of love dawned on his horizon. In one of his rides he chanced to pass, one warm summer day, through the little town of Victor, in the neighboring county of Ontario. Being thirsty, he drew rein near a house where an old gentleman was at work in the yard, whom he asked for a drink of water. As the one addressed went to the well for a fresh bucketful of the cooling liquid, he called to his daughter Vilate to bring from the house a glass, which he filled and sent by her to the young stranger. Heber was greatly struck with the beauty and refined modesty of the young girl, whose name he understood to be "Milatey," and who was the flower and pet of her father's family. Lingering as long as propriety would permit, or the glass of water would hold out, he murmured his thanks and rode reluctantly away. It was not long before he again had "business" in Victor, and again became thirsty (?) just opposite the house where the young lady lived. Seeing the same old gentleman in the yard, he again hailed him and asked for a drink of water. This time the owner of the premises offered to wait upon him in person, but Heber would not have it so, and with the blunt candor for which he was noted, nearly took the old gentleman's breath by saying, "I would rather "Milatey" would bring it to me." "Latey," as she was called in the household, accordingly appeared, did the honors as before, and returned blushing to meet the merriment and good-natured badinage of her sister and brolhers. She, however, was quite as favorably impressed with the handsome young stranger as he with her. More visits followed, acquaintance ripened into love, and on November 7, 1822, they were married.
Vilate Murray, for that was her name, was the youngest child of Roswell and Susan- nah Murray, and was a native of Florida, Montgomery, County, New York, born Junel. 1806. The Murrays were of Scotch descent. As a race they were gentle, kind-hearted, intelligent and refined. Through many of them ran a vein of poetry. Vilate herself wrote tender and beautiful verses. She was an ideal wife for a man like Heber C. Kim- ball, by whom she was ever cherished as the treasure that she was.
Some time in the fall or winter of 1831 five Elders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints came from Pennsylvania to Victor, five miles from Mendon, and tarried at the house of Phineas H. Young. These Elders were Eleazer Miller, Elial Strong, Alpheus Gifford, Enos Curtis and Daniel Bowen. Heber and Vilate Kimball were then members of the Baptist Church. Having duly investigated the new religion, they embraced it, Heber being baptized April 15, 1832, by Elder Alpheus Gifford, and Vilate about two weeks later, by Elder Joseph Young. Brigham Young, Heber's intimate friend, had been baptized on the 14th of April by Eleazer Miller. A branch was raised up at Mendon, numbering over thirty souls. Heber, having been ordained an Elder by Joseph Young, labored with him and his brother Brigham in the ministry.
In the fall of 1832, the three friends visited Kirtland, Ohio, and there on the 8th of November met for the first time the Prophet Joseph Smith. A year later Elder Kimball, haying sold his possessions and settled his affairs, moved with his family to Kirtland, arriving there about the first of November. Four children had been born to him up to this time, the eldest and youngest of whom were dead. The survivors were William Henry and Helen Mar. Heber was the only one of his father's household to embrace Mormonism. He was accompanied to Ohio by Brigham Young and his two little daugh- ters, who were motherless. In Kirtland, as in Mendon, the families of Brigham and Heber were as one.
Both these men were enrolled in the little band of heroes, about two hundred strong, who in May, 1834, under the leadership of the Prophet, set out for Jackson County, Missouri, to reinstate the Saints in that section upon the lands from which they had been driven. The story of "Zion's Camp" need not be told here. Suffice it that from the survivors of that historic organization the Twelve Apostles of the Church were chosen at Kirtland, February 14, 1835. Heber C. Kimball was one of them. He accompanied his quorum on their first mission, preaching and baptizing through the Eastern States and Canada, counseling the Saints to gather westward and collecting means for the comple- tion of the Kirtland Temple and for other purposes.
HISTORY OF UTAH. 19
In June, 1837, he was placed at the head of a mission to England — the first foreign mission of the Church — and accompanied by Orson Hyde, Willard Richards, Joseph Field- ing, John Goodson, Isaac Russell and John Snyder, sailed from New York, July 1st, land- ing at Liverpool on the 20th — a month after Queen Victoria was enthroned. Three days later, at Preston, Apostle Kimball preached the first Mormon discourse ever heard in alien lands. The first foreign baptisms in the Church took place in the river Ribble at Preston, on the 30th day of the same month. These baptisms, nine in number, were performed by him. The first person baptized was George D. Watt, afterwards a promi- nent Elder in the Church. Having thus gained a foot-hold, the missionaries separated, Elders Richards and Goodson going to the city of Bedford, Isaac Russell and John Snyder to Alston in Cumberland, while Apostles Kimball and Hyde, with Joseph Field- ing, remained in and around Preston. Under their united labors the work spread rapidly. In eight months they converted and baptized about two thousand souls, most of them gathered into the fold through the powerful preaching and zealous exertions of the unlettered but magnetic Apostle, Heber C. Kimball. On April 20, 1838, he with Apostle Hyde and Elder Russell embarked at Liverpool for home, leaving Joseph Fielding and Willard Richards, with William Clayton, (a new convert) to preside over the mission thus founded.
Our Apostle rejoined the main body of his people at Far West, Caldwell County. Missouri, on July 25th of the same year. He passed with them through the fiery ordeal of the ensuing autumn and winter, maintaining his integrity without flinching, while a number of the most prominent Elders weakened and fell away. One of these, William E. McLellin, who had been an Apostle, came to gloat over his former brethren in chains, surrounded by the mob forces, and practically under sentence of death, on the public square at Far West. The apostate inquired for Heber C. Kimball, and having found him, sneeringly asked if he was now satisfied with the "fallen prophet," meaning Joseph Smith. The undaunted Apostle replied, "Yes, I am more satisfied with him a hundred fold than I ever was before, for I see you in the very position he said you would be in, if you did not forsake your lying, fornication, adultery and abominations — a Judas to betray your brethren."
Having regained his liberty, Apostle Kimball visited the Prophet and others in prison, and assisted President Young to superintend the winter exodus of the Saints from Mis- souri. He was one of the party who on April 26, 1839, went back to Far West to fulfil the prediction made concerning them and their start from that place upon the second Apostolic mission to Europe.
It was September, however, when they left Nauvoo, Illinois, where the main body of the Saints were settling. Heber and his friend Brigham were so sick they could hardly travel, and their families, left behind, were ailing and almost destitute. But nobler women never lived than Vilate Murray Kimball and Mary Ann Angell Young. Heroically rising to the occasion — not for the first, nor for the last time — they urged their husbands to leave them , in order to honor the call made upon them and faithfully fulfil their mission.
The Apostles sailed from New York on the 9th of March and landed at Liverpool on the 6th of April, 1840. After ordaining Willard Richards to the Apostleship, they spread out over Great Britain, preaching, baptizing, building up branches and organizing con- ferences. Their success was marvelous. The great London Conference was founded by Heber C. Kimball, Wilford Woodruff and George A. Smith.
Heber returned to Nauvoo July 1st, 1841. About this time he accepted and obeyed the principle of plural marriage, taught to him by the Prophet Joseph, who also prac- ticed it. His eldest daughter, Helen Mar Kimball, was sealed to the Prophet in that order. He took an active part in all leading events affecting the Church, performed various missions in the Eastern States, and was there with, most of the Apostles when Joseph and Hyrum Smith were murdered in Carthage jail.
In the trying scenes that ensued, beginning with Sidney Rigdon's attempt to seize the leadership of the Church, and eventuating in the Mormon exodus from Illinois, Heber C. Kimball stood stalwartly by Brigham Young, sustaining him as the Prophet's rightful successor, and assisting him heart and hand in all the arduous labors that followed. He left Nauvoo and joined the camp of the migrating Saints on Sugar Creek, Iowa, Febru- ary 17, 1846. He helped President Young in the summer of that year to recruit the Mormon Battalion on the Missouri River, and accompanied him the next spring across the plains and over the Rocky Mountains as one of the Utah Pioneers. One of his wives, Ellen Sanders Kimball, came with him; the other two women in the company be- ing the wives, respectively, of Brigham Young and his brother, Lorenzo D. Young.
At a Conference held at Winter Quarters, .December 27, 1847, after the return of
20 HISTORY OF UTAH.
many of the Pioneers for their families, the First Presidency of the Church— vacant since the death of the Prophet— was again organized, and Heber C. Kimball became first counselor to President Brigham Young; Willard Richards being the second counselor. Early in May, 1848 the First Presidency organized the main body of the Saints on the Elk Horn, preparatory to leading them to Salt Lake valley. They arrived here in September. When the Provisional Government of Deseret was organized, Heber C. Kimball was elected Chief Justice, and was also Lieutenant-Governor of the State. At the October Conference of that year he introduced the subject of the Perpetual Emigrating Fund Company, which was forthwith organized. At the legislative session in March, 1851- the State of Deseret still existing — he was president of the council branch of the assem- bly, and in September of the same year was president of the council in the first legisla- tive assembly of the Territory of Utah. At the laying of the corner stones of the Salt Lake Temple, April 6, 1853, he assisted President Young to lay the south-east corner stone, and offered thereon the prayer of consecration.
Mention has been made of President Kimball's prophetic gift. His most famous prophecy is recorded in another volume of this history. (It may here be con- densed. The incident happened soon after his second arrival in "The Valley,'' and dur- ing a season of famine, when the half-starved, half-clad settlers, isolated from the civil- ized world, "a thousand miles from anywhere," were living on rations, eked out with wild roots dug from the earth or obtained from the Indians, scarcely knowing where to look for the next crust of bread or for rags to hide their nakedness. Under these circumstances Heber C. Kimball, in a public meeting, declared to his astonished hearers that within _a very short time "States goods" would be sold in Salt Lake City cheaper than in St. Louis or New York. "I don't believe a word of it," said Charles C. Rich, voicing no doubt the opinion of nine-tenths of the congregation. "Well, I don't believe it either," said the Prophet Heber, with a characteristic smile, after he had sat down; "I am afraid I have missed it this time.''
But the fulfilment came. Not many months after the delivery of the prophecy, the gold hunters began passing through Salt Lake valley on their way to California; an event entirely unanticipated by the Mormon settlers. fn order to lighten their loads and expedite progress to the gold fields, they sold at enormous sacrifice the valuable merchandise with which they had stored their wagons to cross the plains. Their choice, blooded, but now jaded stock they eagerly exchanged for the fresh mules and horses of the Pioneers, and bartered off dry goods, groceries, provisions, clothing, tools, etc., for the most primitive outfits, with barely enough provisions to enable them to reach their journey"s end. Thus was the prophecy fulfilled. Scores of such incidents might be recounted, and many are recounted in the author's published life of Heber C. Kimball.
In the famine of 1856, this great and good man, as provident as he was prophetic, played a part like unto that of Joseph of old, feeding from his own bins and store-houses — filled by his foresight in anticipation of the straitness of the times — the nungry multitude. His own family — a numerous flock — were put upon short rations to enable him to administer more effectually to the wants of others. Many are the acts of benev- olence related of President Kimball and his family, especially his noble and unselfish partner, Vilate, during this season of distress. They kept an open house, feeding many poor people at their table daily, besides making presents innumerable of bread, flour and other necessaries that were literally worth their weight in gold.
The fall and winter of the same year witnessed the strenuous and successful exertions of the First Presidency to rescue the survivors of the belated handcart companies, caught in the early snows along the Platte and Sweetwater. President Kimball sent two of his sons, William H. and David P. with the relief corps that went out to meet the immigrants, taking with them wagon loads of bedding and provisions for the sufferers. President Young and others did likewise. This prompt action on the part of the Church authori- ties saved hundreds of souls from sharing the fate of their unfortunate companions who had perished.
Preaching, colonizing, traveling through the settlements, encouraging the Saints in their toils and sacrifices, sitting in council with the Church leaders, ministering in sacred places, and in various other ways playing the part of a public benefactor — so wore away the remaining earthly years of President Kimball. His name was a household word wherever his people dwelt, and "Brother Heber'' was everywhere honored and beloved. Even the Gentiles esteemed him, admiring his high courage and outspoken candor.
President Kimball was the father of a numerous posterity, mostly sons. The more notable of these are General William H. Kimball, his deceased brothers, David P. and
HISTORY OF UTAH. 21
Heber P.; his living brothers, Charles S. and Solomon F.; Jonathan G., one of the First Seven Presidents of Seventies; Joseph, ex-Bishop of Meadowville; Newel W., Bishop's counselor at Logan; Andrew, President of St. Joseph Stake; and Elias S., ex- President of the Southern States Mission. The best known of his daughters up to the time of her death, was Helen Mar Kimball Whitney; the most prominent one at present is Mrs. Alice Kimball Smith.
President Kimball died at his home in Salt Lake City, June 22, 1868; his death being superinduced by a severe fall sustained several weeks previously. The accident occurred at Provo, to which place — where lived his wife Lucy and her family — he had driven from Salt Lake alone, arriving in the night. Near his residence Hhe wheels of his buggy went suddenly into a ditch throwing him over the forward wheels violently upon the ground, where he lay for some time stunned and helpless, before being discovered and assisted into the house. This mishap, though he partly recovered from its effects, was the forerunner of his fatal illness. He had predicted his own death at the funeral of his wife Vilate, eight months before, saying sadly as he followed the remains of his be- loved partner to the tomb, "I shall not be long after her.7'
His death was mourned by the whole Church and by many outside its pale, all realiz- ing that "a prince and a great man had fallen in Israel." President Young said at his funeral, "He was a man of as much integrity, I presume, as any man who ever lived on the earth. I have been personally acquainted with him forty-three years, and I can testi- fy that he has been a man of truth, a man of benevolence, a man that was to be trusted. * * * We can say of him all that can be said of any good man."
WILLARD RICHARDS.
PON the roll of honored names whose records as Pioneers and State-builders make up the early history of our commonwealth, few shine as luminously as that of Willard Richards, physician, theologian, historian, journalist and statesman. A member of the historic band led by Brigham Young from the Missouri River to Salt Lake Valley in 1847, from that time until the day of his death he was intimately associated with the great man in the arduous and stupendous labor of establishing the feet of his people in their new-found home in the wilderness; in carving out of the desert and the rock the State whose sovereign star is forty-fifth on the flag of the Union.
Dr. Richards was Secretary of the Provisional Government of Deseret, and after the organization of the Territory of Utah, for several years did most of the business of the Territorial Secretary; at the same time presiding over the Council branch of the Legisla- tive Assembly. He was the first editor and proprietor of the Deseret News, and at the time of his death, Postmaster of Salt Lake City. During the last six years of his life he was one of the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, hold- ing simultaneously the office of Church Historian.
Willard Richards was not only a Pioneer of Utah ; he was also the pioneer in Mor- monism of a numerous and distinguished family, numbering among its members some of the foremost citizens of the State. An Apostle of the Church from April, 1840, he shared with John Taylor, also an Apostle, the tragic honor of being a fellow prisoner with Joseph and Hyrum Smith when they fell pierced with the bullets of assassins in Carthage jail. On that occasion, when the bodies of the two martyrs, with that of Apostle Taylor, were riddled with balls, one of the missiles grazed Willard's neck, carrying away the tip of his left ear; otherwise he was unhurt, though right in the midst of the massacre. He was a close friend and confidante of the Prophet, and acted in the capacity of his private secre- tary up to the very moment of the martyrdom.
Willard Richards was born at Hopkinton, Middlesex county, Massachusetts, June 24, 1804. He was the youngest of eleven children, whose parents were Joseph and Rhoda Howe Richards. His elder brothers, Phineas and Levi, who followed him into the Church, and also came to Utah, were both able and worthy men, but Willard was the master mind of the family. His father was a Revolutionary soldier, and in time of peace a fairly well-to-do New England farmer. He and his wife belonged to the Congrega-
22 HISTORY OF UTAH.
tional church in Hopkinton, but their children were reared mostly under Presbyterian influences. When Willard was about nine years old the family removed to Richmond, in Berkshire county, where his previous training in the common schools was supplemented with courses of instruction in the high school at that place.
At the early age of sixteen he taught school at Chatham, Columbia county, New York, and subsequently had charge of schools at Lanesborough, Massachusetts, and other places. He had an active and penetrating mind, and was given to scientific investigation. _ In his leisure hours he studied medicine, electricity and other kindred subjects, delivering lec- tures thereon. In 1834 he entered the Thompsonian Infirmary at Boston, and practiced under Dr. Samuel Thompson, founder of the Botanic or Thompsonian school of medicine. Next year he practiced his profession at Holliston, Massachusetts, where he resided at the home of Albert P. Bockwood.
It was here that Mormonism found him. Though susceptible to religious influences from childhood, he had paid but little attention to churches and creeds, and had supposed at one time that his indifference to such things was due to a reprobate condition of mind. In his despair he feared that he had committed the unpardonable sin. A great light burst upon him, he says, when in the summer of 1835 he read the Book of Mormon, a copy of which had been left by his cousin, Brigham Young, with another cousin, Lucius Parker, at Southborough. Up to this time Willard had never seen a Latter-day Saint, and his knowledge of them amounted to nothing more than that "a boy named Joe Smith, somewhere out West, had found a gold Bible." Opening the book at random, he had read less than half a page of its contents, when he declared, "God or the devil had a hand in that book, for man never wrote it." He read it twice through in about ten days, and was so impressed that he immediately resolved to visit the headquarters of the Church, seven hundred miles distant, and give Mormonism a thorough investigation. The execution of his purpose was delayed by an attack of palsy until October of the year following, when he arrived at Kirtland, Ohio, in company with his brother, Dr. Levi Richards, who attended him as physician. They were cordially received and entertained by their cousin Brigham, who was one of the Twelve Apostles.
Willard was baptized at sunset on the last day of December, 1836, Brigham Young officiating in the ceremony, which was also witnessed by Heber C. Kimball and others who had spent the afternoon cutting the ice in order to prepare for the baptism. Soon afterward he was ordained an Elder. Having formed a partnership with Brigham Young, he accompanied him on a special business trip to the East, from which he returned just in time to start with Heber C. Kimball, Orson Hyde, Joseph Fielding and others on a mission to England, June 13, 1837. Abroad, his early field of labor was the Bedford district. When Apostles Kimball and Hyde returned to America, in April, 1838, they left Joseph Fielding, Willard Richards and William Clayton in charge of the British Mis- sion.
While in England Willard met and married Miss Jennetta Richards, daughter of the Rev. John Richards, Independent Minister, at Walker Fold, Chaidgley, Lancashire. The young lady had been converted to Mormonism by Heber C. Kimball, who, after baptizing her, met his friend, who had not yet seen her, and said, "Willard, I baptized your wife today." Some time later, Willard, having formed Jennetta's acquaintance, remarked to her, "Richards is a good name; I never want to change it, do you, Jennetta!" "No, I do not," she replied, "and I think I never will." A few months later — September 24, 1838 — they were married. Their first child, a son named Heber John, died suddenly soon after his birth. Another son was born to them October 11, 1840, and him they also named Heber John. He is today Dr. Heber John Richards, of Salt Lake City.
At Preston, April 14, 1840, Willard Richards was ordained an Apostle by President Brigham Young, assisted by .others of the Twelve, then upon their first mission as a quo- rum in foreign lands. He had been called to the Apostleship by revelation, July 8, 1838. Willard assisted his brother Apostles in their great work of broadening and strengthening the foundations of the British Mission. For a while he edited the Millennial Star, then published at Manchester, during the temporary absence of Parley P. Pratt, who had re- turned to America for his family.
Returning across the Atlantic in May, 1841, Apostle Richards visited his old home in Massachusetts, and leaving his family in care of his sisters there (his parents had both died while he was in England) he proceeded on to Nauvoo, Illinois. He located tempo- rarily at Warsaw, where he sold lands for the Church, received immigrants, and counseled the Saints who had settled in that part ; at the same time attending to his other duties as a general officer of the Church. In October he was elected a member of the city council of Nauvoo, and on the llth of December removed to that place. It had previously been
HISTORY OF UTAH. 23
voted by the Apostles in council that he should take charge of the publication of the limes and Seasons. Two days after his arrival at Nauvoo he was appointed by the Prophet his private secretary; he also became his general clerk, the recorder for the Temple, and for the city council, and clerk of the municipal court. "He is a great prop to me in my labors," wrote the Prophet to Willard's wife, while she was still in Massachusetts. He kept Joseph's private journal, and made an entry therein only a few minutes before the tragedy that terminated the earthly life of his beloved leader.
When the Prophet, in the absence of most of the Apostles, felt the toils gathering round him, and knew that his only safety lay in flight from the murderous mobs that were thirsting for his blood, Willard Richards was one of those, who on the night of June 22nd, 1844, crossed the Mississippi with him in a skiff, and started for the Rocky Moun- tains. When, yielding to the importunities of faint-hearted friends, Joseph returned and surrendered himself into the power of the wretches who had planned his destruction, Willard still clung to him, and was imprisoned with him, his brother Hyrum and John Taylor in Carthage jail.
Just before the murder of the two brothers (their jailor having suggested, in view of certain rumors, that they would be safer in the cell of the prison than in the apartment they then occupied) the Prophet said to Dr. Richards, "If we go into the cell, will you go in with us?" The Doctor answered, "Brother Joseph, you did not ask me to cross the river with you — you did not ask me to come to Carthage — you did not ask me to come to jail with you — and do you think I will forsake you now? But I will tell you what I will do; if you are condemned to be hung for treason, I will be hung in your stead, and you shall go free." Joseph said, "You cannot." The Doctor replied, "I will."
His subsequent experience in the prison, when it was assaulted by the band of black- ened assassins who imbrued their hands in the blood of the Prophet and the Patriarch, is graphically told in his own thrilling narrative, originally published in the Times and Seasons, and entitled
"TWO MINUTES IN JAIL.
"Possibly the following events occupied near three minutes, but I think only about two, and have penned them for the gratification of many friends.
CARTHAGE, June 27, 1844.
"A shower of musket balls were thrown up the stairway against the door of the prison in the second story, followed by many rapid footsteps.
"While Generals Joseph and Hyrum Smith, Mr. Taylor and myself, who were in the front chamber, closed the door of our room against the entry at the head of the stairs, and placed ourselves against it, there being no lock on the door, and no catch that was useable.
"The door is a common panel, and as soon as we heard the feet at the stairs head, a ball was sent through the door, which passed between us, and showed that our enemies were desperadoes, and we must change our position.
"General Joseph Smith, Mr. Taytor and myself sprang back to the front part of the room, and General Hyrum Smith retreated two-thirds across the chamber in front of and facing the door.
A ball was sent through the door which hit Hyrum on the side of the nose, when he fell backwards, extended at length, without moving his feet.
"From the holes in his vest (the day was warm, and no one had their coats on but myself,) pantaloons, drawers and shirt, it appears evident that a ball must have been thrown from without, through the window, which entered his back on the right side, and passing through lodged against his watch, which was in his right vest pocket, completely pulverizing the crystal and face, tearing off the hands and mashing the whole body of the watch. At the same time the ball from the door entered his nose.
"As he struck the floor he exclaimed emphatically, 'I'm a dead man.' Joseph looked towards him and responded, 'Oh dear! Brother Hyrum,' and opening the door two or three inches with his left hand, discharged one barrel of a six shooter (pistol) at random in the entry, from whence a ball grazed Hyrum's breast, and entering his throat passed into his head, while other muskets were aimed at him and some balls hit him.
"Joseph continued snapping his revolver round the casing of the door into the space as before, three barrels of which missed fire, while Mr. Taylor with a walking stick stood by his side and knocked down the bayonets and muskets which were constantly discharg- ing through the doorway, while I stood by him, ready to lend any assistance, with an- other stick, but could not come within striking distance without going directly before the muzzles of the guns.
24 HISTORY OF UTAH.
"When the revolver failed, we had no more firearms, and expected an immediate rush of the mob, and the doorway full of muskets, half way in the room, and no hope but instant death from within.
"Mr. Taylor rushed into the window, which is some fifteen or twenty feet from the ground. When his body was nearly on a balance, a ball from the door within entered his leg, and a ball from without struck his watch, a patent lever, in his vest pocket near the left breast, and smashed it into 'pie,' leaving the hands standing at 5 o'clock, 16 min- utes, and 26 seconds, the force of which ball threw him back on the floor, and he rolled under the bed which stood by his side, where he lay motionless, the mob from the door continuing to fire upon him, cutting away a piece of flesh from his left hip as large as a man's hand, and were hindered only by my knocking down their muzzles with a stick; while they continued to reach their guns into the room, probably left-handed, and aimed their discharge so far round as almost to reach us in the corner of the room to where we retreated and dodged, and then I recommenced the attack with my stick.
"Joseph attempted, as the last resort, to leap the same window from whence Mr. Taylor fell, when two balls pierced him from the door, and one entered the right breast from without, and he fell outward, exclaiming, '0 Lord my God!' As his feet went out of the window my head went in, the balls whistling all around. He fell on his left side a dead man.
"At this instant the cry was raised, 'He's leaped the window!' and the mob on the stairs and in the entry ran out.
"I withdrew from the window, thinking it of no use to leap out on a hundred bayo- nets, then around General Smith's body.
"Not satisfied with this I again reached my head out of the window, and watched some seconds to see if there were any signs of life, regardless of my own, determined to see the end of him I loved. Being fully satisfied that he was dead, with a hundred men near the body and more coming round the corner of the jail, and expecting a return to our room, I rushed towards the prison door, at the head of the stairs, and through the entry from whence the firing had proceeded, to learn if the doors into the prison were open.
"When near the entry, Mr. Taylor cried out, 'Take me.' I pressed my way until I found all doors unbarred, returning instantly, caught Mr. Taylor under my arm, and rushed by the stairs into the dungeon, or inner prison, stretched him on the floor and cov- ered him with a bed in such a manner as not likely to be perceived, expecting an imme- diate return of the mob.
"I said to Mr. Taylor, 'This is a hard case to lay you on the floor, but if your wounds are not fatal, I want you to live to tell the story.' I expected to be shot the next mo- ment, and stood before the door awaiting the onset."
The expected almost happened. While Willard was caring for his wounded friend in the inner part of the prison, a portion of the mob again rushed up stairs to finish the fiendish work already more than half completed. Finding only the dead body of Hyrum Smith in the front apartment, and supposing the other prisoners to have escaped, they were again descending the stairs when a loud cry was heard, "The Mormons are coming!'' Thinking the inhabitants of Nauvoo were upon them, to avenge the murder of the Prophet, the whole band of assassins broke and fled, seeking refuge in the neighboring forest. Their groundless fear was shared by the people of Carthage in general, who fled pell mell, terrified by the thought of a wrathful visitation from the betrayed and stricken community.
Dr. Richards' marvelous escape from death in the midst of the fiery shower to which his three friends succumbed, fulfilled a prediction made to him by the Prophet over a year previously, when he told him that the time would come when the balls would fly round him like hail, and he would see his friends fall upon the right and upon the left, but there should not be a hole in his garment. As during that terrible ordeal he was the personification of calm courage and collected heroism, so in the events immediately fol- lowing he manifested the highest wisdom and discretion. Writing from Carthage to Nau- voo, he advised the people to be patient, to trust in God, and not seek to avenge themselves upon their enemies. He and the Prophet's brother, Samuel H. Smith, with the wounded John Taylor, then superintended the removal of the bodies of the martyrs to Nauvoo for burial.
In all subsequent movements of the Church Willard Richards was a recognized power. He assisted in the inauguration and conduct of the exodus from Illinois, helped to raise the Mormon Battalion on the Missouri River, and was one of the first enrolled among the Pioneers who accompanied Brigham Young to the Rocky Mountains.
HISTORY OF UTAH. 25
After the return of the Apostles to Winter Quarters, when the First Presidency was again organized (December 27, 1847), Willard Richards was chosen second counselor to President Brigham Young. In the following summer, when the main body of the migrating Saints crossed the plains, President Richards led one of the three grand divis- ions into which the numerous companies were organized.
At the election held for officers of the Provisional Government of Deseret, March 12, 1849, Willard Richards was chosen Secretary of State, and served as such until the organization by Congress of the Territory of Utah and the arrival of the Territorial Secretary, B. D. Harris, of Vermont, who did not reach Salt Lake City until late in July, 1851. After the summary departure of Mr. Harris, in September of that year, Dr. Rich- ards again took up the burden of the Secretary's business — if, indeed, he had laid it down— and continued to carry it for another year or more, when Secretary Benjamin G. Ferris appeared upon the scene. Again, after that official's premature departure, Dr. Richards was Secretary ad interim.
June 15, 1850, witnessed the publication of the first number of the Deseret News, of which Willard Richards was editor and proprietor. The News was then a small quarto, issued weekly, but what it lacked in size it made up in vigor, thanks to the pungent pen of the ready writer occupying the editorial sanctum. He continued to edit the News as long as he lived. His incumbency of the position of postmaster covered about the same period. He had the confidence of the Postmaster General, who respected his judgment touching postal arrangements throughout the mountain territories.
September 22, 1851, the first Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Utah convened at Salt Lake City. Willard Richards was a member of the Council. In 1852 he presided over that body, and succeeded himself at the two following sessions of the Legislature, which then met annually. The last time that he left his house — a retired little cottage now on Richards Street, and then -only a few rods from the Council House, where the Legislature convened — it was to discharge his duty as President of the Council on the final day of the session ending January 20, 1854. In his effort to walk these few rods from his residence he said to a bystander, "I will go and perform this last duty, if like John Quincy Adams I die in the attempt." He was suffering from dropsy. He died on the llth of March following.
Dr. Richards magnified to the last, along with his other duties, his office as one of the First Presidency of the Church, enjoying to the full the love and confidence of Presi- dents Young and Kimball, his associates. The latter once said of' him, referring to his humility and deferential regard for his seniors, "He would never so much as go through a doorway ahead of me." President Richards, in other words, was a gentleman. His death, in the prime of life, was regarded, in view of his many gifts and general useful- ness, as a public calamity.
His immediate descendants — the issue of several marriages — are his sons Heber J., Willard B., Joseph S., Calvin W. and Stephen L. ; and his daughters, Rhoda Ann Jenetta (Mrs. Frank Knowlton) deceased; Sarah Ellen (wife of President Joseph F. Smith); Paulina (Mrs. A. F. Doremus) ; Alice Ann (widow of the famous Lot Smith) ; Asenatb. (widow of Judge Joel Grover) ; Mrs. Phebe Peart and Mrs. Mary Ann VanFleet. Three of his sons embraced their father's early profession — medicine; and two of them are still active practitioners at SP' 'Lake City.
ORSON PRATT.
famous Apostle and Pioneer, one of the most prominent figures in the founding \/ of Utah, was born at Hartford, Washington county, New York, September 19, ^ 1811. His parents were Jared and Charity Dickinson Pratt, and his father's ances- tor, Lieutenant William Pratt, with his elder brother John, was among the first settlers of Hartford, Connecticut. These brothers were sons of the Rev. William Pratt of Stevenidge, Hertfordshire, England. Orson Pratt was next to the youngest of six children, the fourth child in the family being his brother, Parley P. Pratt, destined like
26 HISTOEY OF UTAH.
himself to become a noted preacher and writer, and among those first upon the ground as colonizers and settlers of the Rocky Mountain region. The younger brother is here given precedence, for the reason that he was one of the Pioneers proper, and the first of that historic band to set foot upon the site of Salt Lake City, the earliest white settle- ment in these parts.
The parents of Orson Pratt were poor, and he also was fated to plod through life in comparative poverty, so far as this world's wealth was concerned; but he was rich in powers of mind and accumulations of knowledge, treasures beyond compute. Orson Pratt was an intellectual millionaire.
His father began life as a weaver, but subsequently became a tiller of the soil. He taught his children to be moral and honest, and to believe in the Bible, but he had no faith in creeds and churches. When Orson was three or four years old the family moved from his birthplace to New Lebanon, Columbia county, in the same State, where he was sent to school several months in each year until the spring of 1822, when he began hiring out as a farm boy. At intervals he picked up a knowledge of arithmetic, book-keeping, geography, grammar and surveying. Though a frequent reader of the scriptures, it was not until the autumn of 1829 that he began to pray fervently and "seek after the Lord." This continued for about a year, when two Elders of the Latter-day Church came into his neighborhood and held several meetings which he attended. One of these Elders was his brother Parley, a recent convert to the Mormon faith, by whom Orson was bap- tized on the nineteentli anniversary of his birth.
October of that year found him at the birthplace of the Church — Fayette, Seneca County, New York — upon a visit to the Prophet Joseph Smith, by whom he was con- firmed and ordained an Elder on the first day of November. His first mission, taken soon afterward, was to Colesville, in Broome county. Early in 1831 he followed the Prophet to Kirtland, Ohio, and after preaching for several months in that region, set out for Jackson county, Missouri, with his brother Parley, in compliance with a revelation directing many of the Elders to travel two by two to that land, preaching by the way. The Pratt brothers held fifty meetings en route and baptized eleven souls.
At Kirtland, January 25, 1832, Orson Pratt was appointed to preside over the Elders of the Church, and was set apart to that Presidency under the hands of Sidney Rigdon. At the conference where this appointment was made the Prophet voiced a revelation in the presence of the whole assembly, assigning many of the Elders to missions. Orson Pratt and Lyman E. Johnson were sent to the Eastern States. Prior to starting, the former, on February 2nd, was ordained a High Priest by Sidney Rigdon, under the direc- tion of the Prophet. During his mission he baptized and confirmed his eldest brother, Anson Pratt, at Hurlgate, Long Island, and after visiting his parents at Canaan, Colum- bia county. New York, proceeded northward with Elder Johnson. At Bath, New Hamp- shire, they baptized, among fourteen others, Amasa M. Lyman. In Vermont they bap- tized Winslow Farr, William Snow, Zerubbabel Snow and others, and on a subsequent mission to that State Orson Pratt brought Gardner Snow, Willard Snow and Jacob Gates into the Church. In the intervals of several other missions to the East, he attended the School of the Prophets, worked upon the Temple and in the Church printing office at Kirtland, and boarded for a season in the Prophet's family.
In February, 1834, Orson Pratt and Orson Hyde were directed to travel together and assist in "gathering up the strength of the Lord's house,'' preparatory to "the redemp- tion of Zion." Many other Elders participated in this labor, which resulted in the organization of " Zion's Camp.'' In the journey to Missouri Orson Pratt had charge of a number of the wagons. He was one of those attacked with cholera, but his great faith and iron will saved him while others perished. As one of the standing High Council in Zion, he with Bishop Edward Partridge visited the scattered Saints in Clay County, set- ting in order the various branches.
The early part of the year 1835 found him on his way back to Kirtland, under leave of absence, and accompanied part way by his brother, William D. Pratt. While on his first visit to Missouri he had suffered from fever and ague, which now returned, brought on by over-exertion in traveling. "Sometimes," says he, ''I lay down upon the wet prairies, many miles from any house, being unable to travel." In the streets of Colum- bus, Ohio, a man passed to whom he felt impelled to speak; he proved to be a Latter- day Saint, the only one in that city. At the home of this brother the worn traveler tar- ried certain days, and there read in a late number of the "Messenger and Advocate," published at Kirtland, that he had been chosen one of the Twelve Apostles, and was re- quested to be at headquarters on the 26th of April. A two-days journey by stage enabled him to arrive there on the day appointed.
HISTORY OF UTAH. 27
He was ordained an Apostle under the hands of David Whitmer and Oliver Cowdery, two of the three witnesses to the Book of Mormon, and on the same day was blessed by Joseph Smith, Sr., the Prophet's father, who was the Patriarch of the Church. He accompanied his fellow Apostles on their first mission, through the Middle and Eastern States, and in October, 1835, raised up a small branch in Beaver county, Pennsylvania, ordaining Dr. Sampson Avard an Elder to take charge of it.
The 4th of July, 1836, was Orson Pratt's wedding day. He chose as his wife Miss Sarah M. Bates, sister to Ormus E. Bates, of Henderson, New York. Apostle Luke John- son performed the ceremony, which took place while they were on a mission in that State.
At the time of the exodus of the Saints from Ohio, Apostle Pratt was presiding over a large branch of the Church in New York City. Summoned to Missouri, he started with his family for Far West, but was detained by the ice at St. Louis, where he arrived about the middle of November, 1838. He rejoined his driven people at Quincy, Illinois, the next spring. His brother Parley was at that time a prisoner in the hands of the Missourians, but made his escape in July following, through the instrumentality of his brother Orson and other friends. The latter was one of those who risked their lives by returning to Far West to fulfil prophecy, on the historic date, April 26, 1839.
The ensuing autumn found our Apostle again in New York City, where he embarked with others of the Twelve in the spring of 1840, for England. April of that year saw him in Edinburgh, Scotland, where he preached for about nine months and raised up a branch of over two hundred Latter-day Saints. While upon this mission he published his noted pamphlet, "Remarkable Visions," which was re-published in New York.
His time from the spring of 1841 to the summer of 1844 was spent at Nauvoo — where \ he had charge of a mathematical school and was a member of the City Council — and upon various missions in the East. As a city councilor he helped to draw up a memorial to Congress, which he afterwards presented at the seat of government. There he tarried for ten weeks, preaching, baptizing, and in his leisure moments calculating eclipses and preparing his first almanac for publication in 1845. It was entitled "The Prophetic Almanac," and was calculated from the latitude and meridian of Nauvoo and other American towns. "From 1836 to 1844," says the Apostle, "I occupied much of my leisure time in study, and made myself thoroughly acquainted with algebra, geometry, trigonometry, conic sections, differential and integral calculus, astronomy and most of the physical sciences. These studies I pursued without the assistance of a teacher." He was still in the east when he heard of the murder of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, and soon afterwards he returned to Nauvoo. The following year he presided over the branches in the Eastern and Middle States, but returned home in November to prepare for his departure to the West.
He left Nauvoo February 14, 1846, accompanied by his family — four wives and three small children, the youngest a babe three weeks old. Financially exhausted by his fre- quent missions and the great amount of gratuitous service he had rendered, he had to be assisted to an outfit with which to begin the long journey lying before him. April 24th found him at Garden Grove, where the question of sending a band of pioneers, men without families, across the Rocky Mountains, with seed-grain, farming utensils, pro- visions, etc., to prepare for those who would follow, was considered in a council of the Apostles and laid before the people. At the next halting place, Mount Pisgah, it was decided by President Young and the Apostles that during the absence of the pioneers the main body of the people should tarry on the Pottawattomie lands at and around Council Bluffs, if the Indian owners would consent. While Orson Pratt was following in the wake of President Young to the Missouri River, one of his wives, Louisa Chandler Pratt, died of typhus fever on the 12th of June, between Mount Pisgah and Council Bluffs.
In the spring of 1847 he accompanied the President and his pioneer associates on that historic journey which, beginning in April at the Missouri River, and ending in July upon the shores of the Great Salt Lake, led to the founding of Utah and the settlement and development of this intermountain country. Orson Pratt was in charge of the van- guard sent by President Young, who was ill with mountain fever, from Echo Canyon across the Wasatch range into Salt Lake Valley. He and Erastus Snow were the first of the Pioneers to enter the Valley, and the former, as related elsewhere, was the first among them to plant foot upon the site of Salt Lake City. This was on the 21st of July, three days before the arrival of President Young. That he was alone at this time was due to the fact that his comrade had returned toward the mountains to look for his lost coat. The original survey of Salt Lake City was begun by Orson Pratt, with Henry G. Sher- wood, on the 2nd of August, and on the 26th of that month, he started, with others of the pioneers, on the return journey to Winter Quarters.
28 HISTORY OF UTAH.
At a conference held there on April 6, 1848, Apostle Pratt was appointed to ^succeed Elder Orson Spencer as President of the European Mission and as editor of the 'Millen- nial Star," and in compliance with that call he with his wife Sarah and thefr children left Winter Quarters about the middle of May and arrived at Liverpool on the 26th of July. The British Mission contained at that time about forty thousand Latter-day Saints. The Apostle's reputation as a preacher and a writer had preceded him, and the sun of his fame rose well-nigh to its zenith during this period. For three years he labored incess- antly as President, preacher, editor and author. Every noted town in Great Britain heard the sound of his voice — deep, sonorous, powerful — proclaiming with fervid and fearless eloquence the principles he had been sent forth to promulge. While editing the "Star" he wrote, published and distributed many pamphlets on various subjects pertaining to the doctrine and history of the Church. With means obtained from the sale of his works he supplied the urgent needs of a portion of his family left on the Iowa frontier. In May, 1850, he paid them a visit, and while there received word from President Young that he was honorably released from his mission and at liberty to return home. Going back to England he remained until the spring of 1851, and then started for Utah, arriving here on the 7th of October.
The following winter he sat as a member of the Council in the first legislative assem- bly of the Territory of Utah, and was in the legislature during every subsequent session when at home. For several sessions, including the one next preceding his demise, he was speaker of the House. The winter and spring of 1851-2 was occupied in the delivery of a series of twelve lectures on astronomy, which awakened general interest. He was also connected with the University of Deseret as one of its corps of instructors. He was such an ardent lover of knowledge, and so anxious to disseminate it, that he offered at one time to teach the youth of the community free, if they would but give their time to study.
In August, 1852, he was appointed to preside over the Latter-day Saints in all the States of the Union and in the British Provinces of North America. Establishing his headquarters at Washington, D. C., he there began the publication of "The Seer," in the columns of which periodical appeared the Prophet Joseph's Revelation and Prophecy on War and the Revelation on Celestial marriage, then for the first time given to the world. In 1853, while still editing "The Seer," he made a flying trip to Liverpool, and from April, 1856, to January, 1858, was absent from home on another presiding mission in Great Britain. He returned by way of California, while Johnston's army was in winter quar- ters east of the Wasatch Mountains. For about two years from 1862 he presided at St. George, in Southern Utah.
In April, 1864, Apostle Pratt was set apart for a mission to Austria, and was accom- panied to Vienna by Elder William W. Riter. Finding the laws of that country too stringent to allow them to obtain a footing for missionary work, they returned to England, where in May, 1866, the Apostle published an edition of his mathematical work, "Pratt's Cubic and Biquadratic Equations." Three years later, in New York City, he transcribed and published the Book of Mormon in the phonetic characters called the Deseret Alphabet.
The month of August, 1870, was made memorable by the great public discussion between Orson Pratt the Mormon Apostle, and Dr. John P. Newman, the Methodist Chaplain of the United States Senate, upon the subject "Does the Bible sanction poly- gamy?" This famous debate took place in the Tabernacle at Salt Lake City, in the presence of ten thousand people, and lasted three days. During its progress the Apostle amazed and bewildered his learned opponent, not only by his thorough familiarity with the scriptures, but by his incisive logic, his clear-cut mathematical demonstrations, his profound knowledge of the original Hebrew and the writings of the most eminent com- mentators on the Bible.
In 1874 he became the Church Historian, a position held by him during the remainder of his days. In 1877 he went to England, to transcribe and publish an edition of the Book of Mormon in the Pitman phonetic characters, but was almost immediately re-called to Utah by the death of President Brigham Young, in August of that year. In the fall of 1878, accompanied by Apostle Joseph F. Smith, he visited Nauvoo, Kirtland, the Hill Cumorah and other places of historic interest, and at Richmond, Ray County, Missouri, had a pleasant interview with David Whitmer, the survivor of the famous Three Witnesses.
In December of the same year the venerable Apostle started upon his last foreign mission — his fifteenth voyage across the ocean; this time to stereotype and publish at Liverpool the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants, as arranged by him in paragraphs, with foot notes and references. He also published while there his astronomi-
HISTORY OF UTAH. 29
cal work "Key to the Universe." Prior to this time he had achieved wide fame in the field of higher mathematics. As early as November, 1850, he had discovered a law governing planetary rotation, and subsequently had made other scientific discoveries. Professor Proctor, the astronomer, while lecturing at Salt Lake City early in the "eight- ies," referred admiringly, almost reverently, to Professor Pratt, and gave it as his opinion that there were but four real mathematicians in the world, and Orson Pratt was one of them. While in London upon his last mission he made a discovery regarding the chronological symbolism of the Great Pyramid, concerning which he had just been reading. This discovery, he claimed, conclusively demonstrated that the date of the organization of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was symbolized in the grand gallery's chronological floor line.
Though now an old man, with hair and beard as white as snow, he was still ph3'sic- ally and mentally strong and enduring; and while fulfilling this mission worked for weeks at a stretch, not less than eighteen hours out of the twenty-four. At home again in September, 1879, he showed in the enfeebled state of his health that the heavy toil had told severely upon him. From that time he was a sufferer from diabetes, which finally terminated his life.
This patriarchal Apostle was the father of forty-five children, and, at the time of his death, sixteen sons and as many daughters were living. Among the sons are Professor Orson Pratt, musician; Arthur Pratt, ex-chief of police; Laron Pratt, printer; Lorus Pratt, artist; Milando Pratt, a High Councilor of the Salt Lake Stake of Zion; Ray R. Pratt and Royal G. Pratt, both of whom enlisted among the Utah Volunteers during the war with Spain. Among the daughters are Mrs. Willard Weihe, of the Church Histo- rian's Office, Mrs. Joseph Kimball, Mrs. J. U. Eldredge, Mrs. James Douglass, Mrs. John Silver, Mrs. Willard Snow, Mrs. Anthony Ivins, Mrs. Alvin Beesley, Mrs. James S. Morgan, and the late Mrs. F. M. Bishop. Two of the Apostle's grand-daughters, Mrs. Viola Pratt Gillette and Miss Ruth Eldredge, are known in the professional world; the former as a singer, the latter as an elocutionist.
Orson Pratt was not only a preacher, eloquent and powerful, a theologian learned and profound, a linguist to whom the dead languages were an open book, a writer lucid and logical, and a scientist of eminent attainments; he was also a philosopher, a fact as clearly evinced in his every day association with his fellows, as in his thoughtful literary productions. An anecdote or two will suffice to illustrate. One of the evidences of the humble circumstances in which he lived *as a weather-beaten but respectable straw hat, which he wore both summer and winter. One of his daughters — Mrs. Kimball — asked him one day, "Father, why do you wear a straw hat in winter?" "To keep my head warm, my child," he answered. "But is a straw hat warm in winter?" she per- sisted. "Warmer than no hat at all, my daughter,'' was the reply, worthy of a Diogenes. Another incident also portrays the philosophical side of his nature and emphasizes his powers of concentration and self-mastery; all the more strikingly when it is known that Orson Pratt was naturally as high-spirited as he was determined. He was preaching in the open air at Liverpool, when an arrogant, noisy fellow, emerging from the crowd, planted himself squarely in front and began denouncing him. Without deigning to notice the interruption, the speaker raised his powerful voice and completely drowned that of the disturber. The latter then shouted in stentorian tones, but the Apostle, increasing his own lung power, again rendered him inaudible. This was kept up until the fellow ceased from sheer exhaustion, and retired amid the laughter of the bystanders. The speaker then lowered his voice to its normal pitch and calmly continued his discourse to the end.
Orson Pratt, the meek and faithful Apostle — "the Saint Paul of Mormondom,'' as Tullidge aptly styled him ; a man of whom President Wilford Woodruff said at his funeral, that he had traveled more miles, preached more sermons, studied and written more upon the Gospel and upon science than any other man in the Church, — died at his home in Salt Lake City, October 3rd, 1881. Upon his death bed, just before breathing his last, he dictated to President Joseph F. Smith, who took down the words as he uttered them, the following epitaph, to be placed upon his tombstone: "My body sleeps for a moment, but my testimony lives and shall endure forever."
WILFORD WOODRUFF.
the faithful — Wilford the beloved. In those two phrases are summed up tae character, the career, and a portion of the reward of that great and good man, President Woodruff, one of the pioneer builders of the commonwealth, which he saw grow from an infantile colony into a Territory, and finally into a sovereign State. On almost the identical spot where he and his confreres, in July, 1847, broke the virgin soil and put in the first seed planted in Salt Lake valley, he, in July, 1897, unveiled the monument erected by a grateful people to the memory of Brigham Young and the Pioneers. That was his life's crowning act in a temporal way, as the dedication of the Salt Lake Temple, a little over four years previous, was its crowning act in a spiritual way. Thenceforth the tired body, worn out by the ceaseless activity of the spirit, seemed but awaiting the inevitable dissolution that would prepare the mortal frame for the peaceful rest of the tomb and open to the immortal intelligence the portals of paradise.
Wilford Woodruff was a native of Farmington (now Avon), Hartford county, Con- necticut, and was born March 1st, 1807. He was the son of Aphek Woodruff and his wife, Beulah Thompson. He came of a hardy, long-lived race — his great-grandfather, Josiah Woodruff, attaining to the age of nearly a hundred years; and he inherited from his ancestors the activity, endurance and industrious nature for which he was noted. Almost from infancy, it seemed as if two opposing powers were at work, one to destroy, the other to preserve him. This conviction was borne in upon his mind by a remarkable succession of accidents, from which he recovered or was rescued, as he believed, by an interposing Providence. He frequently remarked during his life, that every bone in his body had been broken, excepting his neck and spine.
A miller by vocation, at twenty years of age, after having assisted his father in the Farmington mills, he took the management of a flouring mill belonging to his aunt, Helen Wheeler. He afterwards had the charge of flouring mills at South Canton and New Hartford, Connecticut. In the spring of 1832 he went with his brother Azmon to Richland, Oswego county, New York, where he purchased a farm and sawmill and set up in business for himself.
It was while living at Richland, in the year 1833, that he was converted to Mormon- ism, which he first heard preached by Zera Pulsipher and Elijah Cheney, two Elders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Though naturally religious, he was far from sanctimonious, and up to this time had held aloof from all churches, his course de- termined by a belief that none of the modern religious societies had divine authority, and that the true church of Christ would yet be re-established upon the earth. He derived some of his views from Robert Mason, otherwise known as "The Old Prophet Mason," who lived at Simsbury, Connecticut. He was therefore prepared for the message proclaimed by Joseph Smith and his followers. He and his brother Azmon both believed, enter- tained the Elders, and offered themselves for baptism, Wilford being baptized and con- firmed by Zera Pulsipher December 31st, 1833. Two days later he was ordained to the office of a Teacher- Early in February, 1834, he was visited by Elder Parley P. Pratt, under whose advice and instructions he began at once to make preparations for joining the body of the Church at Kirtland, Ohio. Having settled up his business, he started with a wagon and horses, and arrived there on the 25th of April. A week later he became a member of Zion's Camp, and in May set out for Missouri. AtLyman Wight's house, in Clay county, Missouri, on the 5th of November, he was ordained a Priest by Elder Simeon Carter, and soon afterward was sent upon a mission to the Southern States.
Passing through Jackson county, the hotbed of anti'Mormonism. from which section the Latter-day Saints had recently been driven, he and his companion, Elder Harry Brown, after suffering much from hunger and fatigue, were entertained by a man named Conner, who gave them breakfast, but cursed them while they were eating it, because they were Mormons. At Pettyjohn creek, in Arkansas, they called upon Alexander Akeman, who had belonged to the Church in Jackson county, but had turned against it, and was now very bitter in his opposition. Wilford Woodruff bore his testimony to the
HISTORY OF UTAH. 31
apostate, who followed him from the house in a great rage, but just before reaching the object of his wrath fell dead at his feet, as if struck by lightning. Meetings and baptisms followed, after which the two missionaries proceeded southward, rowing down the Ar- kansas river in a cottonwood canoe of their own manufacture. From Little Rock they waded through mud and water on toward Memphis, Tennessee, during which journey Elder Brown, annoyed by the slow progress they were making, departed, leaving his companion, who was suffering from rheumatism, sitting on a log in the mud and water, unable to walk, without food, and far from any house. Kneeling down in the wet, the young Priest prayed to God, asking Him to heal him. He was instantly relieved of pain, and continued on his way, preaching wherever he could find hearers.
In Benton county, Tennessee, early in April, 1835, he joined Elder Warren Parrish and labored with him for over three months, during which time they converted and baptized over forty persons. Elder Parrish, called to Kirtland, ordained Wilford Woodruff an Elder (June 28), and the latter, after being left alone, prosecuted his labors in Kentucky and Tennessee, baptizing over thirty more. Among his associates was Abraham Owen Smoot, whom Elder Parrish had baptized, and whom Elder Woodruff now ordained an Elder. In April, 1836, the latter labored in Tennessee, under the direction of Apostle David W. Patten, who, on May 31st, ordained him to the office of a Seventy. Some months later Elders Woodruff and Smoot were released to go to Kirtland, where they arrived on the 25th of November, the former having previously organized the first com- pany of Saints that emigrated from the Southern States. It numbered twenty-two souls.
Up to this time Wilford Woodruff was a single man, but now he decided to marry. The lady who became his wife was Phebe W. Carter, to whom he was united April 13th, 1837, President Frederick G. Williams performing the ceremony at the home of the Prophet Joseph Smith in Kirtland. The Prophet himself was to have officiated, but was prevented by a mob. Those were perilous times for the Church, some of whose leading men had apostatized and others were preparing to fall away. Wilford Woodruff was among those who stood staunchly by the Prophet, defending him against the attacks of his enemies. By Joseph's advice he attended the Temple school and studied English and Latin for a season, but missionary work was more to his liking, and he was soon on his way to a new field of labor.
It was on the last day of May, in the year 1837, that he started upon a mission to Fox Islands, off the coast of Maine. He was now one of the First Quorum of Seventy. After attending a conference in Canada, and ordaining Elders, Priests, Teachers and Deacons, he proceeded to Farmington, Connecticut, where he baptized his uncle, Ozem Woodruff, and others of his kindred. He visited his wife's relatives at Scarborough, Maine, and then went on to his destination. He was accompanied to Fox Islands by Elder Jonathan H. Hale. The day they landed, — Sunday, August 20th — Wilford Woodruff preached the first Mormon sermon ever delivered there, in the only church on North Island. They preached often and baptized many. In the summer of 1838 Elder Woodruff baptized his father, his stepmother, his sister Eunice and other relatives in Connecticut, and after organizing a branch there, went back to Fox Islands, where, on August 9th he learned of his appointment to fill a vacancy in the quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
In the ensuing fall, at the head of a company of Saints, including his wife and infant child, he started through rain, mud, frost and snow for Missouri, but on the way learned of the exodus of the Church from that state, and so tarried through the winter in Illinois. At Quincy he met Apostles Brigham Young and John Taylor, whom he afterwards accom- panied, with others, to Far West, Missouri. There, on the 26th of April, 1839, he was ordained an Apostle by President Brigham Young, the ordination taking place on the Temple lot, during the meeting held on that memorable morning by those apostolic ful- fillers of prophecy. George A. Smith was ordained an Apostle at the same meeting. Returning to Quincy, Wilford Woodruff again met President Joseph Smith, who had just escaped from captivity in Missouri.
He was with the Prophet in the founding of Nauvoo, and assisted him in the midst of a fearful epidemic of fever and ague that swept over that section, during which Joseph healed many that were lying at the ooint of death. Not having time to visit and bless two sick children three miles away, the Prophet gave Elder Woodruff a red silk handker- chief and told him to go and lay hands on the children and wipe their faces with the handkerchief and they should be healed. The Apostle did as he was told, and the little ones recovered. The date of this incident was July 22nd, 1839.
Sick himself with chills and fever, his family also sick, and with only four days' pro- visions on hand, Apostle Woodruff, on the 8th day of the ensuing August, started upon
32 HISTORY OF UTAH.
his first mission to England. Sailing from New York in company with John Taylor and Theodore Turley, he landed at Liverpool January 11,1840. He spent forty days in the Staffordshire potteries, preaching'and baptizing, and then proceeded south into Hereford- shire, where he found a society called "United Brethren," numbering some six hundred and fifty souls. In eight days he baptized one hundred and sixty of them, including their presiding elder, Thomas Kington, and forty-seven other preachers. He also baptized three clerks of the Church of England, who had been sent by their ministers to watch and report his movements. A constable who came to arrest him was also gathered into the fold. After meeting President Young and others of his quorum at Liverpool, where they landed on the 6th of April, and attending a council and conference at Preston, where Wiilard Richards was ordained an Apostle and the missionary work of the Twelve out- lined, he returned to Herefordshire. There and in Worcestershire and Gloucestershire he spent seven months. During that time he and his brethren baptized over eighteen hundred souls, including two hundred preachers of different denominations. In August he went to London and assisted Heber C. Kimball and George A. Smith to establish Mor- monism in that great city. In April, 1841, he sailed with President Young and his party for America, landing at New York about the last of May. Journeying westward, he was wrecked on Lake Michigan, but escaped and reached Nauvoo on the 6th of October.
He was now placed in charge of the business department of the Church printing office, and also became a member of the city council. He filled a mission to the East, in company with Brigham Young and George A. Smith, to collect funds for the Nauvoo Temple and the Nauvoo House; and later went forth with other Elders to electioneer for the Prophet in the Presidential campaign of 1844. He little dreamed upon leaving Nauvoo, May 9th, that he had looked his last, that day, upon the living features of his revered and beloved leader. He was at Portland, Maine, about to step on board a steamer bound for Fox Islands, when he saw an account of the murder of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. He forthwith returned to Boston and accompanied President Young and others of the Twelve to Nauvoo.
At a council held there soon after their arrival, Wilford Woodruff was appointed to preside over the British mission, and pursuant to that call landed at Liverpool January 3rd, 1845. April 13th, 1846, found him back at Nauvoo, where the exodus of the Saints was in progress. President Young and most of the Apostles having already departed for the west. As soon as possible he followed with another company, stopping at Mount Pisgah, one hundred and seventy-two miles from Nauvoo, where, on the 26th of June, he met Captain James Allen, of the United States army, who had come to present the Gov- ernment's requisition for the Mormon Battalion. The Apostle at once sent a courier to the Church leaders at Council Bluffs (whither Captain Allen immediately repaired), and then, under adT:te from President Young, he proceeded to enroll volunteers at Mount Pisgah. The f< ilowing winter he spent on the Missouri River, where occurred one of his terrible accid«r'-s, in whi-:h he was crushed by a falling tree. He was healed by the prayer of faith vui tht administration of the Elders, including President Young.
The next spring found him on his way across the plains as a member of the Pioneer Company , He was captain of the first ten wagons in that famous organization. He arrives ;n Salt Lake valley on the 24th of July, bringing with him in his carriage Presi- dent i'.ang, who was sicn. with mountain fever. Pioneer Woodruff's first act after his anival here was emineiidy characteristic of him. It was to plant the seed potatoes he had brought with him from the frontier. Having assisted to explore the Valley, lay out Salt Lake City, and erect the Old Fort, he returned with President Young and others to the Missouri River, where he had left his family. He was there when the First Presi- dency was reorganized, but in the spring of 1848 went on a mission to the Eastern States, from which he returned to Salt Lake City in 1850.
December of that year found him a member of the Council or Senate of the General Assembly of Deseret, and September following a member of the House in the first Legis- lative Assembly of the Territory of Utah. He subsequently sat in the Council for a period of twenty years. He traveled much with President Young, exploring and helping to col- onize various parts of Utah and establish new settlements.
Wilford Woodruff was a natural agriculturist. Most aptly could he have been styled the Cincinnatus of Utah. Without worldly ambition, and utterly devoid of show and ostentation, he shunned prominence rather than courted it, and esteemed place and power, so far as this world's honors went, as mere baubles, not worth the seeking. He delighted in tilling the soil and causing it to yield in abundance and variety. It was his pride and pleasure to find upon his trees or vines an abnormally large peach, apple, strawberry, or potato, to take its circumference and diameter, and exhibit the same-
HISTORY OF UTAH. 33
admiringly to his neighbors. He was the first president of the Utah Horticultural Society, organized at Salt Lake City in September, 1855, and for a long period was presi- dent of the Deseret Agricultural and Manufacturing Society. He resided for many years in what is now the Valley House, which he owned; but he also had a fine farm in the southern suburbs of the town, the place known as "Woodruff Villa." He loved outdoor life, was exceedingly active and busy, and when not in his office or away from home, was sure to be found bustling about his farm, hoeing corn, harvesting grain, building, or en- gaging in like pursuits.
For one who made no pretensions to education, oratory or literary ability, Wilford Woodruff was remarkable for his extensive fund of general knowledge, his ready and rapid utterance, and his graphic powers of description. He perused with avidity the public prints, which, with the Church works, constituted the greater part of his reading; and had a retentive memory and quick recollection of personal experiences and historical happenings, especially those affecting his people and religion. He kept a daily journal from the time he entered the ministry up to within two days of his death, and recorded therein with untiring industry every important event in Mormon history. His well known zeal and diligence in this direction doubtless suggested him in due time as a most proper person for Church Historian, to which office he succeeded at the death of Apostle Orson Pratt, in 1881, having previously held the position of his assistant. He continued to be Church Historian until he succeeded to the Presidency of the Church.
When the St. George Temple was dedicated, in 1877, Apostle Woodruff was placed in charge as its president, and during the next two years he performed an immense amount of labor in that sacred edifice. More than forty-one thousand vicarious baptisms took place there during his term of presidency, and of these, three thousand one hundred and eighty-eight were performed by himself, his family and friends for their dead ancestors. President Woodruff testified that while in the Temple he received visitations three nights in succession from prominent Americans of the Colonial period, including the signers of the Declaration of Independence, who from the spirit world solicited his services in their behalf. He responded cheerfully, and had the necessary work done for them.
In October, 1880, he was sustained as President of the Twelve Apostles, succeeding President John Taylor in that position. During the anti-polygamy crusade following the enactment of the Edmunds law, March, 1882, he spent much of his time in Arizona and Southern Utah, but was at Salt Lake City in February, 1886, when the Gardo House, the President's Office and the Historian's Office were raided by the United States marshal and his deputies, in quest of Presidents Taylor, Cannon and Smith. President Woodruff was in the Historian's Office at the time, with Apostles Erastus Snow and Franklin D. Richards. Calmly walking into the street, he passed by the officers into the crowd, appa- rently unrecognized
At the death of President Taylor, in July, 1887, he succeeded virtually to the leader- ship of the Church, which then rested upon the Apostolic Council over which he presided. On April 9, 1889, the Council of the First Presidency was reorganized and Wilford Wood- ruff was sustained as President of the Church, with George Q. Cannon and Joseph F. Smith as his counselors. He succeeded President Taylor as Trustee-in-trust for the Church, also as president of Z. C. M. I. and of Zion's Savings Bank.
On September, 24, 1890, President Woodruff issued the famous "Manifesto," discon- tinuing the practice of plural marriage; a declaration accepted and sutained by the Church at the following October Conference. The people were told by their leader that the Lord accepted their sacrifices in behalf of the principle, and desired them now to sub- mit to the law of the land. They obeyed.
An era of good feeling ensued. Mormons and Gentiles affiliated socially and politically, and were friendly as never before. Local politic-al lines, upon which a long and bitter fight had been waged, were obliterated; the People's party and subsequently the Liberal party disbanded, and the citizens generally, regardless of past prejudices and affiliations, divided on national party lines, mostly as Democrats and Republicans. The crusade— a six years' reign of terror — came to an end. Presidents Harrison and Cleveland, in successive proclamations, pardoned all polygamists, and the Mormon Church property, forfeited and escheated to the government under the provisions of the Edmunds-Tucker law of March, 1887, was restored by act of Congress to its rightful owner. Utah, a Territory since September 9, 1850, on January 4, 1896, was admitted into the Union as a State.
In the midst of these changes — predicted in a general way by President Woodruff at the dedication of the Salt Lake Temple, April, 1893 — the venerable leader in the fall of that year visited the World's Fair at Chicago, accompanying the Tabernacle Choir, which
34 HISTORY OF UTAH.
there competed with the trained choristers of Wales and other countries, and in the great vocal contest bore off second prize. President Woodruff and party, including his wife, Emma Smith Woodruff, and other members of his family, Presidents George Q. Cannon and Joseph F. Smith, with members of their families, were everywhere greeted cordially and received with honor. Especially was this the case at Independence, Jack- son county, Missouri, from which part, just sixty years before, the Latter-day Saints had been ruthlessly expelled by mob violence. By the civic authorities of Independence and by the Elders of the so-called Reorganized Church there residing, the Utah visitors were warmly welcomed and treated with the utmost courtesy.
The year 1897 was a notable one in the life of President Woodruff and in the history of the commonwealth of which he was one of the principal founders. It was Utah's year of jubilee. On March 1st, the President attained his ninetieth anniversary, an event celebrated at the great Tabernacle in the presence of an immense gathering of friends, including the Governor of the State, members of the Legislature and other public officials, Mormons and non-Mormons. At the close of the proceedings, which were also in honor of Mrs. Emma Woodruff, who was fifty-nine years old that day, a reception was held, the entire assemblage passing by and shaking hands with the venerable leader and his wife. On July 20th, at the opening of the Utah Pioneer Jubilee, the President, though in feeble health, officiated in the ceremony of unveiling the statue of President Brigham Young surmounting the monument erected in his honor and that of the Pioneers. In the afternoon he attended the reception at the Tabernacle, where he was presented with a gold badge designed for the oldest Pioneer present. July 22nd, the third day of the fes- tival, he was crowned with flowers at the Tabernacle by the children who had marched in that day's procession; the floral wreath being presented and placed upon the brow of the aged Pioneer by little Ida Taylor Whittaker, a grand-daughter of President John Taylor. July 24th, the closing day of the celebration, President Woodruff, in his carriage, headed the great Pioneer pageant, and was greeted with enthusiasm by the multitude.
A year later to the day he made a speech at the dedication of the Old Fort Square as a public park of Salt Lake City; and within the next three weeks set out upon a visit to San Francisco — the visit from which he was destined not to return alive. For several years he had taken frequent trips to California, where he obtained relief from his besetting ail- ment, insomnia. During one of these trips, in 1896, while fishing at Catalina Islands, the aged sportsman, assisted by his wife, had hauled out a yellow tail weighing thirty pounds. He was as proud of his catch as if it had been a five-pound strawberry, picked from his patch at Woodruff Villa. His love for rod and gun was almost equal to his fondness for hoe and sickle. An event of his last visit to the coast was his attendance, by invitation, in company with President George Q. Cannon, at a banquet given on the evening of Au- gust 27, 1898, by the Bohemian Club of San Francisco, in honor of an octogenarian, who addressed the assemblage. The company, surprised and delighted at the vigor manifested by their aged friend, were simply astounded when President Woodruff, then in his ninety-second year, promptly responded to a call for an impromptu speech, with even more vigor and vivacity.
The next day was the Sabbath: and the President addressed the Latter-day Saints of the San Francisco branch at their regular meeting in that city. This was his last public appearance. On Tuesday he was taken ill, and though everything possible was done for him that skill and kindness could devise, he gradually sank into the sleep of death, passing peacefully away at twenty minutes to seven o'clock on the morning of the 2nd of September. He died at the home of Colonel Isaac Trumbo, where he and his party had been most kindly entertained. Accompanied by his wife Emma and other friends, the remains of the deceased leader were brought home for burial. The funeral services were held in the Tabernacle on the 8th of September.
President Woodruff during his life was married five times, and was the father of thirty-one children, one of whom, his son Abraham Owen Woodruff, is now one of the Twelve Apostles. The eldest son bears his father's full name. These two, with his sons James, Asahel, David and Newton, are probably the male descendants best known in the community. Among the President's daughters are Mrs. Phebe Snow, Mrs. Beulah Beatie, Mrs. Belle Moses, Mrs. Clara Beebe, Mrs. Blanche Daynes, Mrs. Alice McEwan and Miss Mary Woodruff.
Wilford Woodruff was beloved by his people for his great integrity, and was univers- ally esteemed for his honest and guileless nature. He had no enemies, and in his case — though such examples are rare — this fact constituted a credit shadowed by no element of reproach. His crowning characteristic, next to fidelity and devotion to principle, was his simple, childlike humility. He was "an Israelite indeed,1' in whom there was "no guile.''
GEORGE ALBERT SMITH.
'HEE were giants in the earth in those days." Scarcely more apt were these words i the days described in Genesis than to the days of George A. Smith and his fel- iw founders of Utah. Seldom have so many great spirits been grouped in any one t riod as were gathered around the Prophet Joseph Smith and President Brigham Younir..ssisting the former in the establishment of a new religion, and the latter in the buildin jip of a new commonwealth. Among these none loomed grander, in mature and later yirs, and none were humbler and more unassuming, than the beloved and revered . . " whose name, thus affectionately abridged, remains a synonym for all that is upritrhtuoble and good in the lexicon of the Latter-day Saints. A big-hearted, broad- miii'i' philanthropist, a giant in intellect and almost a giant in physique, he was for many nrs the historian and general recorder of his Church, holding simultaneously the Apo.-iuuip, and during the last seven years of his life he was one of the council of the Firv ! 'sideney.
ire A. Smith was born at Potsdam, St. Lawrence county, New York, June 26, 1817. ither, John Smith, and his mother, Clarissa Lyman Smith, were both natives
of NI-..I lamphshire. His first American ancestor came from England early in the seven- teen ti 'iitury. John Smith was uncle to the Prophet Joseph and the Patriarch Hyrum SmitL. onsequently George A. was first cousin to those worthies. He bore the same rela- tion tv udge Elias Smith, was second cousin to President Joseph F. Smith, and father to John imry Smith, the Apostle. Among the best known of his descendants are his dautf> '.s Mrs. Clarence Merrill and Mrs. William N. Williams, his grandson, George A. Smith, ad his granddaughter, Mrs. Alice Merrill Home, all residents of Salt Lake City.
arly life, checkered more or less with perils and mishaps through which he passed withou any permanent evil -results, was spent under the immediate watchcare of his parent They were members of the Congregational church, and he himself was strictly trainee tiierein until he was fifteen years of age; but he was an independent thinker and soon bike away from the churches and creeds of his time. His father being an invalid, the sun-.-as under the necessity of laboring constantly to supply the needs of the home. His orortunities for education were therefore limited, but he valued knowledge and made <fry effort in his power to obtain it. He early showed signs of a superior intellect, and hisnemory, as he grew older, became phenomenal. Though genial and humorous in di.-Tsition, he was old-fashioned in his ways, caring little or nothing for the company of chilron of his own age, so far as their fun and frivolity were concerned, and preferring and siting the society of older people. He was a great favorite with his grandfather, Asaei .Tiith, a veteran of the Revolution and the war of 1812, and would climb upon the old ma's knees and listen spell-bound to his thrilling narrations of his experience while fightiirior liberty and independence.
e year 1828 came to this branch of the Smith family the news of the discovery by the- kinsman Joseph Smith, at Manchester, Ontario county, of the famous golden plate< -om which he translated the Book of Mormon. A copy of this book was brotipi to them two years later by Joseph Smith, Sr., and his son, Don Carlos, a younj." brother of the Prophet. George A. read the book very carefully, and after thorouQ inquiry and investigation, accepted it as an inspired record. A wealthy and inflti<"!al Presbyterian in his neighborhood offered to send him to college as a prepar- ation :•• the Christian ministry if he would promise not to become a Mormon, but he decline- the offer, and on the 10th of September, 1832, joined the Church of Jesus Christ of L." day Saints. He was baptized by Elder Joseph H. Wakefield, and confirmed by Elder -lomon Humphrey.
1833. he removed with his parents to Kirtland, Ohio, and during the sum- mer n! iat year quarried and hauled rock for the building of the Kirtland Temple. The 5th of lay, 1834, found him on his way to Missouri as a member of Zion's Camp. He walked lie entire distance to Clay county — where most of the Saints expelled from Jack- son >• ity had gathered — in forty- five days; a distance of a thousand miles; his outfit consist^ of a musket, a blanket and a knapsack. During the last three weeks of the journ- he was the Prophet's personal attendant or "armor bearer.'' ' Sleeping in the
36 HISTORY OF UTAH.
same tent with Joseph and Hyrum, and present at most of the councils held, he acquired much information that afterwards proved invaluable to him, regarding the Prophets manner and method of governing men and settling difficulties. He returned to Kirtland early in August of the same year. When the time came to ordain the Twelve Apostles and the first Seventies of the "Church, he was ordained a Seventy under the hands of Joseph Smith, Sr., Joseph Smith, Jr., and Sidney Rigdon, the last named being mouth. The date of his ordination was March 1, 1835. He was set apart as a member of the first quorum of Seventy.
Between May, 1835, and April, 1838, he fulfilled three missions, the first in company with Elder Lyman Smith in Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York; the second in Ohio, and the third in southeastern Ohio and northwestern Virginia. In the intervals he attended school at Kirtland. While upon the third mission he taught grammar classes, thereby earning means to purchase clothing. This mission was a very arduous one. He met with much opposition, held public debates with ministers of various denominations, and suffered for six weeks with inflammatory rheumatism, caused by exposure and privation while traveling through all kinds of weather and experiencing all sorts of treatment in a wild and sparsely inhabited region. While thus occupied he met the lady who was des- tined to become his wife — Miss Bathsheba W. Bigler, of Harrison county, West Virginia.
The summer of 1838 found him located at Adam-Ondi-Ahman, Daviess county, Missouri, where on the 28th of June he was ordained a High Priest and set apart as a member of the High Council of that Stake. In the fall of the year, with his cousin, Don Carlos Smith, he went upon a mission through Kentucky and Tennessee. During his absence the Prophet and many of his brethren were made prisoners and various atrocities were perpetrated by the Missourians upon the Mormon settlers. George A. and Don Carlos, while on their way home, were pursued by a mob and came nigh perishing in a storm on the prairie.
On April 26, 1839, George A. Smith was ordained an Apostle, to fill a vacancy in the quorum, caused by the apostasy of Thomas B. Marsh. His ordination took place on the Temple corner-stone at Far West, then all but deserted by Latter-day Saints, who had been driven from Missouri into Illinois. He was ordained under the hands of Brigham Young and several other Apostles, Heber C. Kimball being mouth. He soon set out with a majority of his quorum upon their mission to Great Britain, and though suffering much sickness, steadily held on his way, preaching through Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsyl- vania, New York, Massachusetts' and Connecticut.
April 6, 1840, was the date of his landing in England. He labored in the counties of Lancaster, Chester, Stafford, Warwick, Worcester, Hereford, Gloucester, Essex and Middlesex; and with Heber C. Kimball and Wilford Woodruff built up a branch of the Church in London. It required a strong effort to introduce Mormonism in the Metropolis, and much street preaching had to be done. Apostle Smith there injured his left lung, which troubled him during the remainder of his life and finally caused his death.
AtNauvoo, to which place he returned early in July, 1841, he married, on the 25th of that month, Miss Bathsheba W. Bigler, who as Mrs. Bathsheba W. Smith has long held a prominent place among the women of Utah. In February, 1842, he was elected a city councilor, and a year later an alderman of Nauvoo. He was successively a chap- lain and Quarter-master General of the Legion, also a trustee of the Nauvoo House Association. In 1842, 1843 and 1844 he did considerable ministerial work in Illinois and in states farther east. He was in Michigan when his kinsmen, Joseph and Hyrum Smith, were murdered in Carthage jail.
When the time came to evacuate Nauvoo, George A. Smith was one of the first of the Mormon leaders to set out for the West. An anecdote aptly illustrating his character finds its place at this point. At a council where the subject of the exodus was being considered, a great many discouraging views were expressed, when George A., after listening intently to the pessimistic sentiments, and it coming his turn to speak, arose and said: ''Well, brethren, if there's no God in Israel, we're a sucked in set of fellows; I'm going to cross the river. " A general laugh followed, hope was kindled in every heart and the spirit of gloom that had rested upon the assembly was at once dispelled. Short speeches and shorter prayers were characteristic of George A. Smith, and his utter- ances were always pithy and to the point. •
He accompanied the vanguard of the migrating Church across Iowa to the Missouri river, where, after many hardships and delays, caused by wet weather and bad roads, they arrived about the first of July, 1846. He had five men to assist him in building bridgrs, constructing ferry boats and driving and caring for teams, but when the Mormon Bat- talion was called for, these men all enlisted, leaving him with the teams on his hands. At
HISTORY OF UTAH. 37
Winter Quarters he constructed by his own labor five cabins of logs and earth for the use of his family. At the expiration of six months they were compelled by government officers to remove to the east side of the river. There he built four cabins, which were occupied by his family until June, 1849. While on the west side, one of his wives, Nancy Clement Smith, and four of his children died from scurvy, superinduced by a lack of vegetable diet. As a cure for this disease, which was prevalent, he urged upon the peo- ple the cultivation of the potato, visiting their camps for that purpose. This caused him to be called "the potato Saint."
During the pioneer journey of 1847 he walked a distance of seventeen hundred miles, and was for six weeks without bread; but was better off than most of the company, for he had about twenty-five pounds of flour locked up in his trunk, unknown to any one. This he issued by cupfulls to the sick, some of whom attributed to it the preservation of their lives. He entered "the Valley" on the 22nd of July, two days before the arrival of President Young, and states in his journal that he planted the first potato put in the soil of Salt Lake valley. A cabin built by him as a portion of the Old Fort was occupied by his aged sire, "Father John Smith," who was in the immigration immediately following the Pioneers and became president of the first Stake of Zion organized in the Rocky mountains.
Having returned with President Young to the Missouri river, our Apostle had charge, after the departure of the First Presidency in 1848, of the emigration at Kanes- ville, or Council Bluffs, and in the last of the westbound companies of 1849, he set out with his family for Salt Lake valley. His heavily loaded teams encountered severe storms, the cattle were stampeded, and at South Pass seventy of his animals were frozen. He arrived at his journey's end on the 27th of October.
Hon. George A. Smith was a member of the Senate of the Provisional State of Deseret, and reported the first bill printed for the consideration of the General Assembly. It was a bill for the organization of the Judiciary. He also reported a bill relating to the con- struction of a national railroad across the continent. The Assembly having provided for the organization of Iron county, of which he was appointed "Chief Justice," with "power to proceed," he raised a company of one hundred and eighteen volunteers, and in December, 1850, accompanied by about thirty families, started southward to plant a colony in the vicinity of the Little Salt Lake. The expedition after crossing five ranges of mountains, located on Centre Creek, where they unfurled the stars and stripes and organized the county of Iron. During that winter he taught school, having thirty-five pupils, to whom he lectured on English grammar around the evening camp fire.
At the first Territorial election in August, 1851, he was elected to the Council of the Legislature. In the following October he was commissioned Postmaster of Centre Creek, by Postmaster- General Hall. In November he was commissioned by Governor Young as Colonel of Cavalry in the Iron military district. He was afterwards placed in charge of the militia throughout Southern Utah, and instructed to take measures for the defense and safety of the inhabitants against Chief Walker and his blood-thirsty bands, who had begun to rob and kill the settlers. In 1852 he was appointed to preside over Church affairs in Utah County and to exercise a general supervision over all the colonies in the southern part of the Territory.
Possessed of a legal and statesmanlike mind, he early turned to the study of law and constitutional principles. In October, 1851, while yet a tyro in the profession, he defended in the district court at Salt Lake City, Howard Egan, one of his fellow Pion- eers, who was on trial for slaying James Monroe, the seducer of his wife. Parts of the notable speech delivered by him on that occasion, and which brought a verdict of acquittal from the jury, may be found in the twenty-third chapter of our first volume. It should be stated that George A. Smith practised law for the pure love of justice and the legal science. His services were given free, not only to the defendant Egan, but to all his other clients as well. He was admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court of Utah and received his certificate as an attorney and counselor at law and solicitor in chancery, February 2nd, 1855.
At the General Conference of the Church in 1854, he was elected Historian and General Recorder, and immediately went to work compiling the documentary history of Joseph Smith. Assisted by four clerks, he compiled and recorded the Prophet's history from February 20, 1843, to the date of his death, June 27, 1844, and also supplied from mem- ory and other sources blanks in the record compiled by President Willard Richards, his predecessor, who had written on the margin "To be supplied by George A. Smith."
He was a member of the Constitutional Convention of March, 1856, and was elected by that body one of two delegates to proceed to Washington and present the proposed
38 HISTORY OF UTAH.
State Constitution and its accompanying Memorial to Congress. The other delegate was John Taylor, who was editing "The Mormon" in New York City. This political mission , was given to Apostle Smith as a respite from his too close application to the Historian's office. The only response vouchsafed to Utah's appeal for statehood was the stopping of the mails and the setting of an army in motion for the invasion of the Territory. Our Apostle was absent in the East for about eleven months, during which time, besides attending to his duties as a delegate, he preached in nine States of the Union. He returned in time to take part in the general preparations for defense made by the people of Utah at the approach of Johnston's army.
In the fall of 1860 he suffered a terrible shock in the tidings brought to him of the murder of his eldest son, George A. Smith, Jr., who was killed by Navajo Indians, about thirty-five miles north of the Moquis villages in New Mexico, now Arizona. It was many months before he fully recovered from the effect produced upon him by this lamentable tragedy. In 1866, owing to the incursions of Indians upon the southeastern settlements, he organized the militia of the Iron military district into a brigade of three regiments, embraced in the counties of Iron, Washington, Kane and Beaver, and established posts to prevent the inroads of Ute and Navajo Indians. He was then an aid-de-camp of Lieutenant-General Wells. He received a commission as Brigadier-General from Governor Charles Durkee on April llth of the same year.
For many years George A. Smith had charge of the extension of settlements in Southern Utah, embracing the cotton districts in Washington and Kane counties. He was known as the father of the Southern Utah settlements, the chief of which, St. George, was named after him. He was elected every two years to the Council of the Legislative Assembly, and up to 1864 served as a member of every session except one. From 1864 to 1870 he was President ot the Council.
At the October Conference in 1868 came his elevation to the First Presidency, to fill the vacancy caused by the death of President Heber C. Kimball, first counselor to Presi- dent Brigham Young. The selection of George A. Smith for this important position gave universal satisfaction.
In October, 1872, President Smith set out upon a special mission to Palestine, to bless the land that it might be redeemed from sterility, and to dedicate it for the speedy restoration of the tribes of Israel. The members of the party were George A. Smith, Lorenzo Snow, Paul A. Schettler, Feramorz Little, George Dunford, Thomas W. Jennings, Eliza R. Snow and Clara S. Little. From Genoa, George Dunford returned and Albert Carrington took his place, completing the tour. After leaving England they passed through Holland, Belgium, France and Italy, thence sailing to Egypt and Palestine. An interest- ing incident of the journey was a call upon President Thiers of the French Republic. President Smith much enjoyed the tour, especially of the Holy Land. Having accom- plished his mission, he returned by way of Constantinople and Athens to Trieste, and visited the principal cities of Austria and Germany. May 18th, 1873, found him and his party in London, and on the 28th of that month they sailed for home, arriving at Salt Lake City on the 18th of June.
During President Smith's absence, he had been appointed Trustee-in-trust for the Church, which office he held until his death. After his return from abroad he spent con- siderable time in his name-sake city, St. George, encouraging the building of the Temple at that place. A zealous advocate of the United Order, which President Young sought to establish, he preached much upon that theme in various parts of the Territory.
While returning from St. George to Salt Lake in February, 1875, either while journeying or soon after his arrival here, he was attacked with a severe cold, which set- tled upon his lungs, depriving him of the use of his voice. This affliction, combined with a very peculiar manifestation of insomnia, which prevented him from sleeping except in an upright posture, and then only at short intervals, finally caused his death, September 1st, 1875.
President George A. Smith possessed great qualities of mind and heart. Humble as a child, he was every inch a man; prudent and wise, yet fearless as a lion. He was a counselor par excellence, respectful to authority, but no cringing sycophant. When asked for his opinion he gave it candidly, whether or not it agreed with opinions already expressed. If his counsel was rejected — a very rare occurrence — he was not offended, and if opposite advice prevailed, he stood one with his brethren in carrying out the policy agreed upon. A great economist, he dressed plainly, lived within his means and zealously advocated home manufactures. Public-spirited and generous, his acts of bene- volence and charity were many, but entirely without ostentation. He was a man of few words, but his speeches abounded in apt anecdotes and illustrations. He was noted for
HISTORY OF UTAH. 39
his good judgment, his capacious and retentive memory, and his sound, common sense. President Young said at his funeral that he had known him for forty-two years, had traveled and labored with him in the ministry during much of that time, and believed him to be as faithful a boy and man as ever lived. He added these telling words: "I never knew of his neglecting or over-doing a duty. He was a man of sterling integrity, a cabinet of history, and always true to his friends."
AMASA MASON LYMAN.
'HE name of this noted man — Apostle and Pioneer — is inseparably interwoven with
| the early history of Utah and other parts of the West. An industrious colonizer, an eloquent orator, and a leader of more than ordinary ability, he was with the Mormon Church and people from the days of Kirtland until long after the settle- ment of Salt Lake Valley. He performed many missions, and passed through some thrilling experiences during the anti-Mormon troubles in Missouri. Loved and trusted by the Prophet Joseph Smith, whose affection he warmly returned, and whose confi- dence he merited, he was likewise a staunch and able supporter of President Brigham Young in all the toils and trials of the exodus from Illinois and the exploration and col- onization of the western wilderness. At the time of his death he was still a resident of Utah, though no longer a member of the Mormon community.
Amasa M. Lyman was the third son of Boswell Lyman and his wife Martha Mason, and was born in Lyman township, Grafton county, New Hampshire, March 30, 1813. He was less than two years old when.his father, in order to mend his fortune, started for the West. He never returned, and is supposed to have died near New Orleans, six years after his departure from home. Amasa's eldest brother, Mason, was indentured to a New Hampshire farmer. His elder brother Elijah died in infancy. Himself, his younger brother Elias and his sister Ruth remained with their mother until she re-married, when Amasa was placed in charge of his grandfather, Perez Mason, with whom he lived until he was eleven years of age. At that time the old gentleman went to reside with his eldest son, Perley Mason, and his grandson, accompanying him, remained at his uncle's home during the next seven years.
Amasa was about eighteen when his mind became thoughtful upon the subject of re- ligion, and he remained in that condition, though not uniting himself with any church, until the spring of 1832, when he heard the Gospel preached by Lyman E. Johnson and Orson Pratt. This was his first acquaintance with Mormonism. He was baptized by Elder Johnson on April 27th of that year and confirmed by Elder Pratt the day follow- ing. Soon after, on account of the ill-feeling that arose in his uncle's household over his conversion to the unpopular faith, he resolved to leave and go to the Weet.
Accordingly, on the 7th of May, 1832, he bade adieu to the family and started upon a journey of seven hundred miles. He had but a few dollars in cash, and after this means was exhausted, mostly in traveling by stage and canal, he walked some distance to Palmyra, Wayne county, New York, where he found employment with Mr. Thomas Lacky. This was the man who bought the farm of Martin Harris when he sold it to raise money with which to publish the Book of Mormon. After working for Mr. Lacky about two weeks and receiving four and a half dollars in wages, Amasa continued his journey by way of Buffalo, Lake Erie and Cleveland, to Hiram, Portage county, Ohio, where he arrived on the 5th of June. There he was kindly received and entertained by Father John Johnson, whose son Lyman had baptized him.
It was at Father Johnson's house that the Prophet Joseph Smith and Elder Sidney Rigdon were staying when they were brutally mobbed on the night of March 25th of that year. The Prophet was now absent on a visit to Missouri, but he returned to reside at Johnson's about the 1st of July, and it was there and then that young Lyman first met him. The latter, having entered the employ of Father Johnson, continued working for him until some time in August, when the Prophet said to him, "Brother Amasa, the Lord requires your labors in the vineyard." He at once replied, "I will go," though up to that time he had had no experience as a preacher. He was ordained an Elder under the hands of the Prophet and Elder Frederick G. Williams on the 23rd of August, and next
40 HISTORY OF UTAH.
day he and Zerubbabel Snow (ordained an Elder at the same time) started upon their first mission. They labored in Southern Ohio and in Cabell county, Virginia, until spring, baptizing about forty souls.
From Kirtland, Ohio, March 21st, 1833, Elder Lyman started upon his second mis- sion, having as his companion Elder William F. Gaboon. He traveled in the State of New York for about eight months, and saw one hundred souls added to the Church. He then set out for Kirtland, but on the way met Elders Lyman E Johnson, Orson Pratt and John Murdock in Erie county, Pennsylvania, where a conference was held and Elder Lyman ordained a High Priest under the hands of Lyman E. Johnson and Orson Pratt. He next proceeded to Livingston county. New York, where he labored until early in 1834, when, in company with Alva L. Tippetts, he visited his native State, but was soon recalled to Kirtland and enrolled as a member of Zion's Camp. The two sons of Father John Tanner, of Warren county, New York, — John J. and Nathan — accompan- ied him to Ohio. There he turned over to the Prophet money and teams contributed by Father Tanner and others for the expedition to Missouri. His connection with Zion's Camp extended until the disbandinent in Clay county, Missouri, where he assisted in tak- ing a census of the Latter-day Saints in that section. He then returned to Kirtland, ar- riving there May 26, 1835, having, on the way, in company with Elder Heman T. Hyde, preached, baptized, and raised up a branch in Madison county, Illinois.
During the three weeks that he remained at the Church headquarters, Elder Lyman married his first wife, Louisa Maria Tanner, daughter of Father John Tanner, previously mentioned; the same who was afterwards cruelly maltreated by the mob in Missouri. The marriage was solemnized by Elder Seymour Brunson. Five days later the young husband was again in the mission field, mostly in the State of New York, where he la- bored with success. He was now a member of the first quorum of Seventy, having been ordained about the time of his marriage, by Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery and Sidney Rigdon. The following winter he spent at Kirtland, attending the Temple school, and in the spring again labored in New York State, where he performed the ceremony of mar- riage uniting his brother-in-law and fellow missionary^ Nathan Tanner, to Miss Rachel Smith. Now came a short mission to Erie county, Pennsylvania, and then his removal to Missouri.
Amasa M. Lyman set out for the new gathering place at Far West in the autumn of 1837. He and his family were accompanied by Nathan Tanner and household, and Mr. Jared Randall, who had been engaged to provide the means of transportation. Arriving in Caldwell county, Missouri, Mr. Lyman left his family there while he sought and found employment at Fort Leavenworth, where he worked through the winter. In the spring he did a job of work on the courthouse in Chariton county, and then rejoined his family. When the difficulties arose that eventuated in the expulsion of his people from Missouri, he took the field and was in the very thick of the trouble. Early in October, 1838, he was deputed by the authorities at Far West to find a way to the beleagured Saints at Dewitt, Carroll county, who were surrounded by mobs in such a way as to preclude any approach to them by ordinary routes, in consequence of which little or nothing could be learned of them. Selecting James Dunn as his companion, and disguising himself in such a manner as to completely conceal his identity, he went forth upon his dangerous errand. The two reached Dewitt in safety, but found the place almost deserted, the inhabitants having fled to Far West. They took dinner with some of the mobbers and departed, but on the way home were intercepted by armed and mounted Missourians and made prisoners. Their captors required them to take charge of a cannon they were transporting to Daviess county for service against the Mormons, and on this cannon they were permitted to ride. At the end of four days they were liberated, but were compelled to take the back track, not being allowed to rejoin their friends, then only seven miles away. By a circuitous route they finally reached Far West.
Mr. Lyman was now given charge of a squad of ten men, whose duty it was to spy out the enemy and discover their designs. He was near Crooked river, engaged in this service, when the battle at that place was fought. He was one of the defenders of Far West, and after the betrayal of the Prophet and his brethren by Colonel Hinckle, and the surrender of the city, he was also singled out as a prisoner and condemned with others to be shot next morning, the execution of which murderous sentence was defeated by General Doniphan. Mr. Lyman was allowed five minutes to bid adieu to his weeping wife and prattling babe and was then conducted with his fellow prisoners to Jackson county, and subsequently confined in chains at Richmond, in Ray county. On November 24th he was discharged and made his way back to Far West.
The Sabbath after his release he met Colonel Hinckle, the traitor, who proposed to
HISTORY OF UTAH. 41
him, now that the Prophet was in trouble, from which he stated he would not escape, that they join and go to the South and build up a church for themselves. Lyman spurned the base proposition. About this time he was elected a justice of the peace, and did much clerical work for his brethren when they were compelled by the mob to convey their lands, purchased from the government, to pay the expenses of the war waged against them. Though suffering much from sickness at this time, he was closely watched by the mob commander, Captain Bogart, and his emissaries. In March, 1839, he rejoined his family at Quincy, Illinois, they having preceded him out of Missouri.
During the spring he was engaged with others in earnest but futile attempts to res- cue Parley P. Pratt and his fellow prisoners from captivity. The following winter he resided with his friend Justus Morse in McDonough county, Illinois, where his eldest son, Francis M. Lyman, the present Apostle, was born, January 12, 1840. Early in the spring of that year he built a cabin on what was known as the ''Half-breed Tract" in Lee county, Iowa, and having housed his family therein, went to work boating wood on the Mississippi.
A year later he moved to Nauvoo, and shortly afterward went upon a mission of several months into Northern Illinois, in company with Charles Shumway. A mission to Indiana, with Peter Haws, to secure means for the building of the Nauvoo Temple and the Nauvoo House, was followed by a similar errand to Tennessee in the summer of 1842, when he had as his companions Horace K. Whitney, Adam Lightner and subse: quently Lyman Wight.
Amasa M. Lyman was ordained an Apostle, August 20, 1842, and on the 10th of September he started, in company with George A. Smith, on a mission into Southern Illinois. He was afterwards joined by Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball. The fol- lowing winter, under the direction of the Prophet, he moved to Henderson county, where he superintended the survey of a new townsite and began to build, remaining there until the summer of 1843. When the Prophet was kidnapped by the Missourians Apostle Lyman participated in the movement that resulted in his rescue. Another mission fol- lowed, this time to Indiana, where he labored until the spring of 1844, and then repaired to Nauvoo.
At the April Conference of the Church he was commissioned to labor with Elder G. J. Adams in the cities of Cincinnati and Boston. Parting (for the last time) with the Prophet, who warmly grasped his hand, exhorted him to practice the principles he had taught him, and gave him a fervent "God bless you," he went forth upon his mission. He was at Cincinnati in July, when he received the news of the double murder in Carth- age Jail.
The Twelve Apostles having been acknowledged as the presiding council of the Church, in lieu of the First Presidency, dissolved, Apostle Lyman, as one of that coun- cil, continued to play an active part in public affairs. He was in the exodus of 1846. and was one of the Pioneers who accompanied President Young to the Rocky Mountains in 1847. At Fort Laramie, early in June, he with Thomas Woolsey, John H. Tippetts and Roswell Stevens, was sent horse-back to Pueblo, to lead thence to Salt Lake valley a company of Latter-day Saints en route from the State of Mississippi. Owing to this duty, which was promptly performed, he did not reach the valley until three days after the main body of the Pioneers. He helped to explore the region, to lay off the city, and otherwise participated in the initial labors of the original settlers. He returned with President Young and others to the Missouri River the same season. The next year he, with his family, came to Salt Lake valley, in charge of a subdivision of the general emi- gration led by President Young in person.
Not long after his second arrival here Apostle Lyman was appointed upon a mission to California, from which he returned in September, 1850. Six months later he and Apostle Charles C. Rich headed the famous San Bernardino colony, so named from a ranch purchased by them in Southern California, upon which in the following autumn they settled. The purpose was to found an outfitting post, similar to Kanesville on the Missouri, in order to facilitate Mormon emigration from the West. The settlement of San Bernardino was continued until the year 1858, when, owing to the trouble between Utah and the General Government, it was deemed best to break it up and have the col onists return fo their former homes. This wa« done.
During the years 1860, 1861 and 1862 Apostle Lyman was presiding with Apostle Rich over the European Mission. Returning thence he spent the remainder of his days in Utah, his home being at Fillmore in Millard County. He was the husband of eight wives, and the father of thirty-seven children — twenty-two sons and fifteen daughters. His eventual separation from the Church— an event deeply deplored by the whole Mor-
42 HISTORY OF UTAH.
mon community — was due to his persistent preaching of a doctrine condemned by the general authorities; a doctrine involving a virtual repudiation of the atonement of the Savior. He was excommunicated May 12, 1870, and died at his home in Fillmore, Feb- ruary 4, 1877.
EZRA TAFT BENSON.
'N Apostle from the summer of 1846, one of the Pioneers of 1847, and otherwise a man of mark in the Mormon community, the subject of this sketch will be best remembered for the part played by him in the settlement and development of Cache valley. Two names are pre-eminently connected with its colonization. They are Ezra T. Benson and Peter Maughan; the latter the pioneer, and the former the high- est presiding authority for nearly a decade in that always promising and now prosperous section. Needless to say that he was a man of force and energy; such qualities were indispensable in the founders of Utah. A fearless and able expounder of his faith, an earnest and industrious worker in whatever he undertook, he enjoyed the confidence of his associates, and exercised a potent influence over the people in their temporal as well as their spiritual affairs.
The first son of John and Chloe Benson, he was born February 22, 1811, at Men- don, Worcester county, Massachusetts. His father was a farmer, noted for his industry, and Ezra, until sixteen years of age, remained at home, working upon the farm. He then went to live with his sister and her husband, who kept a hotel in the town of Ux- bridge. He remained with them three years, when the sudden death of his grandfather Benson, also a farmer, who fell dead while at work in the field, brought about another change in his life. At the request of his -vidowed grandmother, he became the manager of her farm.
When twenty years of age Ezra T. Benson married Pamelia Andrus, daughter of Jonathan H. and Lucina Andrus, of Northbridge, in his native county. The next year he quit farming and went to hotels-keeping, buying out his brother-in-law and running that business for about two years. He made considerable money, with which he hired a cotton mill, and with his wife's brother began the manufacture of cotton in the town of Holland, Massachusetts. Through a combination of causes it proved an unprofitable venture, and retiring from it, Mr. Benson took a hotel in the same town, and again made money. He was also appointed postmaster. Though prosperous, he was not content, having a great desire to go to the West.
This desire was partly put into effect in the spring of 1837, when he and his family started westward. At Philadelphia, however, a gentleman whose acquaintance he there formed, persuaded him to go to the town of Salem, promising to assist him in setting up in business at that place. He remained at Salem for about a year, at the expiration of which time, though his neighbors offered to render him any aid he might need in a business way, he again yearned for the West and finally started in that direction.
At St. Louis he procured a small stock of goods and proceeded up tlie Illinois river, not knowing where he should land. Meeting upon the boat a man who proved to be his father's cousin, and who was living at Griggsville, Illinois, Mr. Benson concluded to stop there, and did so, but not for long. He moved to Lexington in the same State, and then to the mouth of the Little Blue, where he and one Isaac Hill laid out and named the town of Pike. Here Mr. Benson.built a dwelling house and a warehouse and prepared to stay, but the place was sickly, and he soon longed to be elsewhere.
Early in 1839 he was induced to go to the city of Quincy in quest of a home, and there he met with the Latter-day Saints, who had just been driven by mob violence out of Missouri. He heard of them as a very peculiar people, but in listening to the preach- ing of their Elders, and in conversing with them, he found them very agreeable. During the following winter he boarded with a family of Latter-day Saints and formed a high opinion of them.
In the spring of 1840 he took up his residence at Quincy, securing two acres of land in the town and building a house thereon. He still associated with the Saints, with whom he strongly sympathized on account of their persecutions, and held conversations with
HISTORY OF UTAH. 43
them concerning their doctrines. He first saw the Prophet Joseph Smith at a debate in Quincy between some of the Mormon Elders and a Dr. Nelson, who was much opposed to them. This debate convinced him that the Latter-day Saints believed and practiced the truths of the Bible. Though pleased with their victory over Dr. Nelson, Mr. Benson at that time had no idea that he himself would become a Mormon. Their principles, however, were the chief topic of conversation with himself, his family and the neighbors, and he and his wife attended their meetings. She was first to avow a belief in the doc- trines. When the word went out that the Bensons were believers in Mormonism, a strong effort was made by their non-Mormon friends to get them to join some other church. Abont this time Apostles Orson Hyde and John E. Page visited Quincy, having started on their mission to the Holy Land. Their preaching resolved Mr. and Mrs. Ben- son upon joining the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and they were accord- ingly baptized by the president of the Quincy branch, July 19, 1840. They recognized in this event the explanation of the strong desire that had possessed them to come West, and the feeling of discontent they had experienced in their previous places of residence.
While attending the fall conference of 1840 at Nauvoo, Ezra T. Benson was or- dained an Elder, and after his return to Quincy he was visited by President Hyrum Smith, who ordained him a High Priest and appointed him second counselor to the presi- dent of the stake which he there organized. April, 1841, found him a resident of Nau- voo, where he bought a lot. fenced and improved it, and built a log house for his family. From June, 1842, until the fall of 1843 he was upon a mission in the Eastern States, and in May, 1844, again started East in company with Elder John Pack. They were recalled to Nauvoo by the tidings of the martyrdom.
The autumn of 1844 foun<? him acting as a member of the High Council at Nauvoo, and in December of that year he was again sent East upon a mission. He presided over the Boston Conference until the beginning of May, 1845, when he was counseled to gather up all the members of the Church who could go, and move them lo Nauvoo. In the ensuing summer and fall he worked on the Nauvoo Temple, frequently standing guard all night to keep off the mob then threatening.
In the exodus of 1846 he and his family left in the first company that started for the West. At Mount Pisgah he was appointed a counselor to Father William Huntington, who presided there. While at that place he received a letter from President Brigham Young on the Missouri, informing him of his appointment as an Apostle, to take the place made vacant by the excommunication of John E. Page. He now moved on to the main camp at Council Bluffs, where he was ordained to the Apostleship and received into the Quorum of the Twelve, July 16, 1846. Shortly afterwards he was sent East upon a mis- sion, from which he returned on the 27th of November.
The next spring found him enrolled as a member of President Young's band of Pioneers and on his way to the Rocky mountains. After their arrival in Salt Lake valley he was sent back to meet the oncoming emigration of that season and inform them that a place of settlement had been found. Having discharged this duty, he returned to the valley, and then accompanied President Young back to Winter Quarters. About the close of the year 1847 he started upon another mission to the East, and upon his return at the expiration of several months was appointed to preside over the Saints in Potta- wattamie county, Iowa, in which charge he was associated with Apostles Orson Hyde and George A. Smith.
In the year 1849, in company with Apostle Smith, he moved with his family to Salt Lake valley. He was dangerously sick while on the way, and was not expected to live, but the camp fasted and prayed for him, and he recovered and reached his destination. In 1851 he was commissioned to proceed to the frontier, gather up the Saints in Potta- wattamie county, and bring them to Utah. From this mission he returned in August, 1852. He remained at home until 1856, when he was appointed upon a mission to Europe, where in conjunction with Apostle Orson Pratt, he presided over the British mis- sion until the fall of 1857, when he was released to return home.
The year 1860 witnessed his removal to Cache valley, where he had been appointed to preside, virtually as president of the Stake; Peter Maughan being also in authority as presiding Bishop of those northern settlements. President Benson made his home at Logan, and continued to reside there until the day of his death.
In the year 1864 he, with Apostle Lorenzo Snow, Elders Joseph F. Smith, William W. Ouff and Alma L. Smith, were sent upon a special mission to the Sandwich Islands, to set in order the affairs of the Church in that land, which had been much disturbed by the nefarious operations of the imposter, Walter M. Gibson, who had palmed himself upon the •credulous native Saints as a sort of kingly and priestly ruler, to whom they must pay
44 HISTORY OF UTAH.
abject homage. Apostle Benson and his companions faithfully executed their errand, though in attempting to land upon one of the islands, he and Apostle Snow, by the acci- dental capsizing of their boat, came very near being drowned. This mission, from which he returned the same year, was his last absence from Utah.
He continued, however, to be prominent in public affairs at home. He had taken active part in organizing the Provisional Government of Deseret, and after the Territory of Utah was created he was a member of the House branch of the Legislature for several sessions. During the last ten years of his life he was continuously a member of the Council.
When the railroad came, he with Lorin Farr and Chauncey W. West, of Ogden, took a large grading contract on the Central Pacific and built many miles of that road. President Benson's mind was much preyed upon during this period through the inability of himself and his partners to secure a settlement with the railroad company, and it is supposed that these troubles superinduced his death, which was sudden, like that of his grandfather, many years before. It was Friday, September 3, 1869, and he had just arrived at Ogden, from his home in the north, and was in the act of caring for a sick horse, when he fell dead, stricken with apoplexy. The funeral and burial took place at Logan on the following Sabbath.
Like most of the Mormon leaders of his time, Ezra T. Benson was the husband and father of several families. Among his living sons are Messrs. Don and Frank Benson, the former for several terms City Marshal of Logan. The Apostle was the father also of Mrs. Belle Goodwin, of Logan; Mrs. Dr. Norcross, formerly of that place; and the late Mrs. Boliver Roberts, of Salt Lake City.
ERASTUS SNOW.
[E Pioneer who shared with Orson Pratt the distinction of being the first among their famous band to enter Salt Lake valley was a prominent Elder and soon be- came an Apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Of all the distinguished characters surrounding Brigham Young at that or at any subse- quent period of his life, perhaps no other resembled him in so many respects as did this man, whose record as a colonizer and a statesman is second only to that of the pioneer chieftain himself. He was to Southern Utah and farther south what President Young was to the whole inter-mountain region — its leading explorer and principal founder of settlements. Abroad he was the father of the Scandinavian Mission, than which few fields have been more prolific of converts to the Mormon faith or have done more to people and build up the Rocky Mountain country. At home he was no less a father, a friend, a wise counselor to the people, and an ever watchful guardian over their interests.
Erastus Snow was a native of St. Johnsbury, Caledonia county, Vermont; born November 9, 1818. He was a descendant of Richard Snow, who settled in Massachusetts in 1635, and a son of Levi and Lucina Streeter Snow, whose seven sons and four daugh- ters were named as follows: Levi Mason, Lucina, William, Zerubbabel, Willard, Mary M., Shipley W., Erastus, Charles V., Lydia M., and Melissa D.; all born in St. Johns- bury. The father made no profession of Christianity, but the mother was a member of the Wesleyan Methodist church. Erastus received a common school education. At the age of nine his mind was exercised over religion to some extent, and he experienced joy and satisfaction as the result; but later he "became entangled in the vanities of the world."
He was but a lad of fourteen, when, in the spring of 1832, Elders Orson Pratt and Luke S. Johnson came to St. Johnsbury preaching the religion of the Latter-day Saints. He believed the message, and two of his elder brothers, William and Zerubbabel, who were of age, accepted it and were baptized. Subsequently all the family were converted; Erastus being baptized by his brother William at Charleston, Vermont, on the 3rd day of February, 1833. The next year, on the 28th of June, he was ordained a Teacher by Elder John F. Boynton, and on the 13th of November, a Priest, under the hands of his brother, William Snow. Up to this time he had labored upon his father's farm, but he now felt an irresistible desire to preach the Gospel. On the 22nd of November he
HISTOEY OF UTAH. 45
started upon his first mission, visiting the surrounding settlements, in company with his cousin, James Snow. On the 16th of August, 1835, he was ordained an Elder by Luke S. Johnson, then one of the Twelve Apostles.
December of that year found him a resident of Kirtland, Ohio, where he first met the Prophet Joseph Smith, and lived for several weeks in his family. During the winter he attended the Elders' School established by the Prophet, and the following spring, having been ordained into the second quorum of Seventy, he started upon a mission to the State of Pennsylvania. In his absence of eight months he baptized eight persons. The year 1837 and the first half of the year 1838 were also spent upon missions, in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and other States. He baptized a goodly number, and returned to Kirtland to find that most of the Saints were moving or preparing to move to Missouri.
With that State as his destination, he himself left Kirtland on the 25th of June, 1838, arriving at Far West on the 18th of July, and there rejoining his parents, who had come directly from Vermont. In the troubles that ensued Erastus Snow shouldered a musket and helped to defend his people against mob violence. He was at Far West when the town surrendered to the State forces, and was present at the court of inquiry when the case of the Mormon leaders was considered at Richmond, prior to their im- prisonment in Liberty jail. During the following winter he taught school at Far West, where, on December 13, 1838, he married Miss Artimesia Beman, sister of Elder Alvah Beman, whose acquaintance he had formed at Kirtland.
In February, 1839, he and others were sent as messengers to the Prophet and his fellow prisoners in Liberty jail. The visitors were permitted to enter the cell. When supper was served, the captives, aided by their friends, attempted to escape, but the at- tempt failed, and all were locked in together. In the trial that followed, Erastus Snow, at the advice of the Prophet, pleaded his own case and was discharged from custody, the rest being held to bail. He had a legal mind, like his brother Zerubbabel — noted in Utah history as Judge Snow — and this may or may not have been the first opportunity for its exercise. After his release he went to Jefferson City and tried to get the case of his im- prisoned brethren before the judges of the Supreme Court. This effort was fruitless, but after, through the influence of the Secretary of State, he secured for them a change of venue, on the strength of which the prisoners were started for Boone county, when they succeeded in making their escape.
October, 1839, found him at Montrose, Iowa, across the Mississippi from Nauvoo, acting as a member of the High Council at that place. Experiences of sickness and extreme poverty followed ; and then a mission to the States of Virginia, New York, Ehode Island, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, from which he returned to Nauvoo Oc- tober 21, 1840.
During the next three years he labored as a missionary in the Eastern States, his wife and child being with him. They resided at Salem, Massachusetts. He had brought his family back to Nauvoo and was on another mission and at a conference in Salem, when he learned of the murder of the Prophet and the Patriarch. He immediately returned home, and was at the memorable meeting on August 8, 1844, when the Twelve Apostles, with President Brigham Young at their head, were acknowledged by the body of the Church as the highest existing authority therein. A mission to Wisconsin and Northern Illinois was then undertaken, but an accident to his horse compelled him to return, and he was thus enabled to be present at the trial of the murderers of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, at Carthage, Illinois, in May, 1845. He rightly regarded it as a mere mockery of justice. His next public service was a mission, about February 1, 1846, to the city of Quincy, to lay in supplies for the pioneer company, which it was proposed, even at that early date, to send across the great plains to explore the Rocky Mountains.
In the exodus that followed, Erastus Snow and his family left Nauvoo, crossing the Mississippi river in a boat, which capsized in mid-stream, part of his goods being thus destroyed and his eldest child, a daughter five years old, nearly drowned. He left most of his property, valued at about two thousand dollars, to be disposed of by a committee appointed for that purpose in behalf of the exiles. He journeyed westward in President Brigham Young's company, Captain A. P. Rockwood having immediate command of the subdivision in which he traveled. From Garden Grove he returned to Nauvoo for addi- tional supplies, and rejoined his family and the main camp of the Saints at Cutler's Park on the Missouri river.
Having been selected as one of the Pioneers, on April 6, 1847, he blessed and bade good-bye to his wives and children, and a few days later began the immortal journey to the Rocky Mountains. Erastus Snow was one of the company who fell sick with
46 HISTORY OF UTAH.
mountain fever, which attacked the camp in the vicinity of South Pass. He soon recov- ered, and it so chanced that while President Young and others were still suffering from that malady, he was dispatched as a messenger from the main camp to Orson Pratt's vanguard, which was looking out a road over the mountains into Salt Lake valley. He overtook the vanguard in Emigration canyon, and on the morning of July 21st he, with Orson Pratt, entered and partly explored the valley. In the subsequent work of explo- ration, and in laying out the pioneer city, he took a prominent part, and returned as one of President Young's party to the Missouri river, arriving there on the 31st of October. He was six weeks without tasting bread, buffalo meat forming the staple of subsistence during that period. He found his family well, though one child, a son, had died during his absence ; making two that had perished in the wilderness.
At the special conference held in December of that year on the Missouri river, Erastus Snow was called to accompany Ezra T. Benson to the Eastern States, to solicit from the Saints residing there, and from all who wished to contribute, means to enable the poor at Winter Quarters to emigrate to Salt Lake valley. They visited Boston, New York and other eastern cities, and returned in April, 1848, to Winter Quarters. Having assisted in organizing the emigration on the Elk Horn, Erastus Snow with his family left that point on the 5th of June, traveling in President Young's company, and arriving in Salt Lake valley on the 20th of September.
His first appointment after his arrival here was as second counselor to Elder Charles C. Rich, who had succeeded Father John Smith (the Patriarch of the Church) as Pres- ident of the Salt Lake Stake of Zion. Next came his call to the Apostleship, February 12, 1849, when he was ordained as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve under the hands of Presidents Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball and Willard Richards; Apostles Parley P. Pratt and John Taylor assisting in the ordination. He was active in the organization of the Provisional Government of Deseret, and was a member of the first legislative council. In the militia organization of that period he officiated as a chaplain. When not occupied with public duties, he was engaged in building houses, improving his farm, and otherwise providing for his family.
At the General Conference of the Church in October, 1849, the Apostle was called upon his first foreign mission; it was to the kingdom of Denmark. Taking leave of his family and his widowed mother, he set out on the 19th of October, in company with thirty-four other missionaries bound for various nations. The main incident of the journey across the plains was an attack made upon the little party by about two hundred Indians, Cheyennes, during a noon-day halt on the Platte river, forty miles above Fort Laramie. The Indians, who were mounted, charged furiously upon the camp, but the missionaries, who were on the alert, staunchly stood their ground and defeated the pur- pose of the maurauders, which was evidently to frighten the campers, plunder their wagons and run off their stock.
Sailing from Boston on the 3rd day of April, Apostle Snow arrived at Liverpool on the 16th of that month, and after visiting the Saints in England, Scotland and Wales, and receiving contributions in aid of his mission, be set sail for Copenhagen in company with Elders George P. Dykes and John E. Forsgren. Elder P. O. Hansen, a native of Copenhagen, had preceded the party from England. About two months later, on the 12th day of August, 1850, Apostle Snow baptized fifteen persons in the river Oresund, near the Danish capital. He and his assistants continued to labor energetically, and during the next eighteen months nearly six hundred members were added to the Church in Denmark; also a few in Norway and Sweden. Thus was founded the Scandinavian Mission. Its founder returned to Utah in the summer of 1852.
In October of the ensuing year Apostle Snow was called, with Apostle George A. Smith, to take fifty families and strenghten the settlements in Iron county. He per- formed this duty, and was sent the next year to take charge of the Church at St. Louis and in the Western States. He organized on November 4, 1854, a Stake of Zion in St. Louis, and began the same month the publication of the St. Louis "Luminary." He also superintended the Chrch emigration. He returned from this mission in September, 1855. In 1856 and again in 1860 he filled brief missions to the States. The latter was taken in company with Apostle Orson Pratt; Governor Alfred Gumming and his wife being their fellow travelers across the plains.
The year 1861 witnessed a renewal of our Apostle's labors in Southern Utah — virtu- ally the beginning of his long and useful career as a colonizer in that and adjacent parts. Again he accompanied George A. Smith and a special expedition. They went this time with a view to locating and founding settlements on the Rio Virgen and Santa Clara rivers, and incidentally to raise cotton in that region, to offset the prevailing scarcity of
HISTORY OF UTAH. 47
the article occasioned by the outbreak of the Civil War. They camped on the 3rd day of December near the site of the present city of St. George, so named in honor of the leader, George A. Smith. Other settlements were located the same year.
Erastus Snow settled at St. George, and for many years devoted a great deal of his time to the building up of that place and the surrounding country, over which as an Apostle he presided. He served for a long period as a member of the city council of St. George, and represented the Southern counties — Washington, Kane, Iron and San Juan — in the Council branch of the Legislative Assembly. He was a legislator almost contin- uously from the time of his settling in the South until he was disfranchised under the anti-polygamy provisions of the Edmunds Law.
He passed through all the hardships and privations incident to the settlement of Southern Utah and Southeastern Nevada, thoroughly exploring those parts, locating set- tlements in the most desirable places, and giving directions to the settlers for their de- fense and the protection of the general public against Indian depredations. Especially was this the case in the early "sixties," when the Navajoes frequently crossed the Colo- rado river, driving off stock and murdering defenseless citizens in the weaker settle- ments and on the public highways. He was Brigadier-General, and as such commander of the Iron military district, and was chief counselor and adviser to the people through- out the southern country.
In the years 1873, 1875 and 1880 Apostle Snow performed short missions to the East. During the first of these he crossed the Atlantic, re-visiting Scandinavia. In 1878 he served as a member of Zion's Board of Trade, and the same year visited and set in order the branches of the Church in Arizona and New Mexico. In November, 1882, he was appointed by the First Presidency, with authority to call to his aid others, to go to Arizona and to the States of Chihuahua and Sonora in Old Mexico, with a view to lo- cating and purchasing lands near the borders of the two nations, as a gathering place for Latter-day Saints. While he was upon this mission in Southern Arizona, his first wife, Artimesia Beman Snow, died in St. George, December 20, 1882.
In January, 1885, Apostle Snow accompanied President John Taylor and party on their trip to Arizona and Mexico, and in 1880 he went with Apostle Moses Thatcher and others to the City of Mexico, where they purchased large tracts of land in Northern Chi- huahua, where the settlements of Diaz, Juarez, and Pachecho were afterwards founded, chiefly by Latter-day Saints fleeing from the rigors of "the crusade." He left Juarez in the latter part of July, 1887, having been summoned to Salt Lake City by the tidings of the approaching death of President Taylor, who was sick in exile.
After the death of that leader — the Twelve having assumed the Presidency of the Church — Apostle Snow returned to St. George, where he spent most of the following winter. In the spring he came back to Salt Lake City, where he continued to reside and to discharge the duties of his Apostleship until he fell sick with his final illness, which terminated his life May 27, 1888.
Apostle Snow was the husband of four wives, and the father of thirty-five children, twenty of whom, twelve sons and eight daughters, are living. Of the former, the best known are Mahonri M., Willard, Frank R., Moroni, George A. and Edward H., the last named the President of St. George Stake. Mahonri is a member of the High Council of that Stake, and Moroni a Bishop in Provo. The other sons named are business men of more or less prominence. Erastus B. Snow, deceased, was one of the Stake Presidency at St. George. Apostle Snow's eldest daughter is Mrs. Sarah L. Thurston, of Santa Ana, Cal- ifornia; others of the daughters are Mrs. Artimesia Seegmiller, Mrs. Elizabeth Ivins, Mrs. Susie Young, Mrs. Josephine Tanner, Mrs. Georgie Thatcher and Mrs. Martha Keat.
During the anti-polygamy crusade, when the Mormon leaders were much sought for by the minions of the law, Apostle Snow escaped arrest, though frequently in close prox- imity to the raiding deputies. Notably was this the case in February, 1886. On the 8th- of that month he was in the Church Historian's Office while that and the adjacent build- ings were being searched by the United States Marshal and his men, and five days later was OB the same train with President George Q. Cannon en route to Mexico, when the latter was arrested at Humboldt Wells, Nevada. He spent much of the time of his exile in visiting and counseling the people of the Southern settlements, both in public and private, the former when he could do so with safety, the latter in season and out of season, as his sense of duty impelled.
Erastus Snow was a man of great practical wisdom, and withal an eloquent speaker; fiery in his youth, deliberate in his age, and noted always for the soundness of his views and the logic of his utterances. He was eccentric to a degree, but his eccentricities were
48 HISTORY OF UTAH.
only character marks that endeared him to his friends and associates. A mental por- trait of the man, sitting in his buggy in the midst of a stream, reading a newspaper, while waiting for his balky horse to get ready to go on, is but one of many such pictures called up by the mention of his name. He was as patient and stoical in trouble, as in action he was fearless and wise. Wherever there are Latter-day Saints, at home or abroad, few names and memories are more affectionately cherished than those of the Apostle and Pioneer, Erastus Snow.
JOHN BROWN.
"IrOHN BROWN and Orson Pratt were the first of the Pioneer company to gaze upon
y the Talley of the Great Salt Lake. The former was a native of Sumner county,
@l Tennessee, where he was born October 23, 1820. His father, John Brown, was
a native of North Carolina, and his mother, Martha Chapman, was from Virginia. They were in humble circumstances, but by frugal living maintained themselves in com- fort, and reared a family of fourteen chidren, John being the twelfth.
In 1829 the family moved to Perry county, Illinois, where the father died three years later. At the age of seventeen John was left alone with his mother, five of the other children being dead and the rest married and settled. In the spring of 1837, for better educational advantages, he was sent back to Tennessee to attend school and live with his uncle, John Chapman. While there he was converted to the Baptist faith. He aftarwards converted his mother and other members of the family, who previously were Presbyterians. His vacation was spent at home, but he returned to school the next year — 1839 — his mother accompanying him.
Upon their return to Illinois in the fall, they first heard of Mormonism, "some strange men" having been preaching the new religion in their neighborhood. The Elders had baptized a few persons and caused considerable excitement, which gradually abated upon their going away. Young Brown, though much imprsssed by what he heard con- cerning them and their doctrines, remained a zealous member of the Baptist Church and was urged by the clergy to increase his educational qualifications with a view to entering the ministry. He had some desire for an education, but the other proposition did not harmonize with his feelings.
In the spring of 1841 he took a school in order to raise means to enable him to com- plete his education. One of the patrons of the school, a cousin of his who had become a Latter-day Saint, took great pains to bring the Mormon publications to John's notice, but in vain. Equally unavailing were the further efforts of his Baptist friends to induce him to become a minister of that persuasion.
Finally Elder George P. Dykes came from Nauvoo, stayed at the cousin's home, and obtained permission to preach in John's school house, which was surrounded by a field where the farmers were harvesting. The Elder addressed the farm workers during the noon recess on three successive days, and Mr. Brown, though shunning him as much as possible, became a little acquainted and rather reluctantly conversed with him. The re- sult was his conversion to Mormonism, which was a great shock to his mother and other relatives, who told him they would rather have buried him. He was baptized on a Friday morning, before breakfast. The news of his conversion spread throughout the district, for he had been a very popular young man : and one night his school house was burned down by incendiaries.
After consulting with the trustees, and collecting what money he could, he started for Nauvoo, taking steamboat at St. Louis, and arriving at his destination a few days be- fore the October conference of 1841. He knew but one man there — the Elder who had baptized him, but soon became acquainted with the Prophet Joseph Smith, his brother Hyrum and other Mormon leaders, who treated him with great kindness. Firmer than before in his faith, he paid a visit, in March, 1842, to his mother and friends, who ex- pressed great surprise that he was not "cured of Mormonism." He preached to some, and it was 'said of him, "He is calculated to do more harm than any other Mormon in this region.''
HISTORY OF UTAH. 49
At the April conference of 1843 he was called on a mission to the Southern States, and in company with another Elder traversed without purse or scrip parts of Kentucky, Alabama and Mississippi. He met with much success, baptizing in a few months over one hundred persons. While upon this mission, in Monroe county, Mississippi, May 21, 1844, he married. He was prosecuting his labors in the South when the news came of the murder of Joseph and Hyrum Smith.
In response to a call for men to work upon the temple at Nauvoo, he returned to that place with five others in the year 1845. He was enrolled in an organization called "The Whittling and Whistling Club/' which took the place of police, after the Illinois legisla- ture repealed the Nauvoo charter. Says he, "We worked on the temple during the day and whittled and whistled through the streets at night, keeping everything in order, and guarding the city against mobs. There was no need of a curfew bell in those times ; none were seen upon the streets, except those on duty.'' In about two months he returned to Mississippi for his wife; and at Nauvoo built a house; but soon after its completion came the exodus of 1846.
Having some property in Mississippi, the Browns returned to that state, with orders to join the Nauvoo companies on the Platte river. Mr. Brown's brother-in-law, William Crosby, was with him. He disposed of some property in Illinois and sent the means to Nauvoo, to assist the poor families that were about to leave. He then started on a direct route to Independence, Missouri, where he was joined by his cousin Robert Crow and others; in all, twenty families with twenty-five wagons. They took the Oregon trail, without pilot or guard, and struck the Platte at Grand Island. They could hear nothing of the Nauvoo companies, and at Fort Laramie decided to winter at Pueblo, being piloted thither by a mountaineer named John Reshaw, a Frenchman with an Indian wife. Thanks to this man's tact and acquaintance with the Indian tribes, no trouble with the redskins occurred, though one notable incident took place.
An Indian youth fancied a young married woman in the company and insisted that she should become his wife. He offered her husband five horses in exchange for her, and was quite insulted when the oiler — a great one in the eyes of him who made it — was declined. Trouble threatened. He said he would treat her well; he was not poor; he had several horses and plenty of tobacco. Other Indians began to take an interest in the trade, and Reshaw, acting as interpreter, saw that the matter would have to be disposed of. Being well acquainted with the language, manners and customs of the savages, he began to talk to them, telling them the Americans were like the Indians — they did not like to sell their squaws to strangers; that he was among the Indians five years before they would sell him a squaw. This explanation, with a few presents, passed the matter off satisfactorily.
At one point in the journey the Cheyenne Indians swarmed around the little com- pany in thousands, demanding tribute of them for passing through their country. Under Reshaw's instructions they prepared a meal for the savages, explained their inability to pay tribute owing to the fewness of their numbers, and were permitted to move on un- molested.
Crossing to the right bank of the South Platte, the party went up to Cherry Creek, where the city of Denver now stands, and then traveled across the country to Pueblo, where "there was one log house and some lodges occupied by mountaineers, with Mexi- can wives." There they received their first tidings of those who had left Nauvoo. They were at Council Bluffs, where five hundred of them had volunteered in the United States service for the Mexican war, and were then on the march to Santa Fe.
"Our next business," says Mr. Brown, "was to prepare our company for winter. A plat of ground was selected on the river bottom, and two rows of log houses, built of cottonwood timber, and facing each other in parallel lines, were constructed. The ends of the street thus formed were left open, but could be barricaded in case of emergency. In a short time every family had a house to live in. We organized them into a branch of the Church, with a presiding Elder and counselors, and gave them instructions regarding their duties as Saints. We told them to remain there till they had word from headquar- ters. The detached members of the Mormon Battalion, left at Santa Fe as not being able to cross the deserts to California, had to draw their supplies from the government depot at Bent's Fort on the Arkansas river, about fifty miles below where we had located our little company. When they heard of us they came and joined us."
Seven of the Brown party, including himself, now returned to Mississippi for their families. They traveled part way with a government ox-train bound for Fort Leaven- worth, and met en route Colonel Sterling Price with a regiment on the way to New Mexico; also the main body of the Mormon Battalion. They reached Mississippi in No-
50 HISTORY OF UTAH.
vember. Three weeks later messengers from Council Bluffs brought word that they should leave their families at home another year, and furnish some able bodied men with proper outfits to accompany the Apostles as pioneers to the Rocky Mountains.
On January 10, 1847, John Brown started for Council Bluffs, a distance of a thou- sand miles. He was accompanied by another white man and four colored servants. The change of climate proved too severe for the latter, two of whom perished on the way. At Winter Quarters he was chosen captain of the thirteenth ten of the pioneer company, and was appointed one of a hunting party to kill game as it might be needed. His colored servants 'were also taken along.
On the way to the mountains the Pioneers picked up the Mississippi company left at Pueblo, and led them to Salt Lake Valley, which was first sighted by John Brown and Orson Pratt from the crest of Big Mountain on the 19th of July. The former arrived with President Young on the 24th. On August 21st, he with two others made the ascent of Twin Peaks, taking the altitude ; Albert Carrington being the engineer. The meas- urement was 11, 2 19 feet above the sea level. Five days later he started back to the States, accompanying President Young and traveling in the same wagon with George A. Smith. Leaving his fellow pioneers at Winter Quarters, he proceeded on to Mississippi, arriving there in December. The next year he emigrated with his family to Utah, trav- eling from Council Bluffs in Amasa Lyman's company, and arriving in Salt Lake Valley on the 16th of October.
"I settled," says he, "between the Cottonwoods. ten miles south of the city. Late in the year, near Christmas, a troop of men were sent into Utah valley to chastise a little thieving band of Indians. I was in this expedition. We met the savages and had a skirmish with them on a little creek afterwards called Battle Creek. We killed four and took the rest prisoners."
In November, 1849, John Brown, as captain of fifty, accompanied Parley P. Pratt's exploring expedition into Southern Utah. About the same time he became a director of the Perpetual Emigrating Fund Company, and in the fall of 1850 went back to the fron- tier as its agent, carrying five thousand dollars in gold for the purchase of oxen and sup- plies for the emigration. He conducted a large train to Utah the next season. On No- vember 15, 1851, he was elected to fill a vacancy in the first Territorial legislature. In 1852 he went upon a mission to New Orleans, and returning the following year conducted a company of English emigrants to Salt Lake valley.
In 1855 he removed to Lehi, and while there represented Utah county in the legisla- ture. In the spring of 1857 he accompanied President Young to Fort Lemhi on Salmon river, and in the fall of that year took part in the "Echo Canyon war." In 1861-2 he fulfilled a mission to England, and soon after his return was made president of the 68th quorum of Seventy.
In February, 1863, he became bishop of Pleasant Grove, succeeding Henson Walker in that position. He remained bishop for twenty-nine years, and was then released at his own request, on account of failing health. In the interim he performed a two years' mission to the Southern States.
John Brown was in every sense a representative man. The public offices held by him were numerous. He was Colonel in the Utah militia and an aid-de-camp on the Lieutenant-general's staff as early as April, 1852 ; was mayor of Pleasant Grove for twenty consecutive years; selectman and member of the county court for two years, and a mem- ber of the legislature in 1874 and again in 1876. His life was one of energy, industry and fidelity to every trust. He died November 4, 1896, at his home in Pleasant Grove.
JOHN PACK.
TOHN PACK, a prominent member of the Pioneer company, was born of American parents in St. Johns, New Brunswick. Lower Canada, May 20, 1809. His father was George Pack and his mother, before marriage, Philotte Greene, second cousin to General Nathaniel Greene of Revolutionary fame. They were farmers, fairly well- -do, and their children numbered twelve, five sons and seven daughters.
When John was about eight years old the family moved to Rutland. Jefferson county.
HISTORY OF UTAH. 51
New York. There he worked on his father's farm, clearing off timber and doing general farm labor until he was twenty-one. At intervals he attended school and received the rudimental education common at that time. His natural inclination was towards farming and stock raising, and he succeeded to that degree that he finally purchased from his parents the old homestead, managed the farm at a profit, and provided for his father and mother in their declining years.
His early manhood was passed at Watertown, near Rutland, where on the 10th of Octo- ber,1832, he married Julia Ives of that place. On the 8th of March, 1836, he and his wife were baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Father and mother Pack had previously been baptized. John sent them to Kirtland, Ohio, in 1836, and the next year, as soon as he had sold his property, followed them, his wife and her mother, Lucy Paine Ives, accompanying him.
He purchased a farm near the Kirtland Temple aud partly built a saw-mill, which he sold at a great sacrifice when he moved, in the year 1838, to Missouri. His parents, as well as his immmediate family, settled with him on a farm in Caldwell county, eighteen miles from the city of Par West.
They were barely established in their new home when the mob troubles began. One day Mr. Pack, having received word from his sister Phoebe, residing at Huntsville, some distance away, that her husband was dead and she and her children sick, started with his wife for that place for the purpose of bringing the afflicted family to his own home. When near the crossing of_ Grand river, a mob of twenty-five men on horseback came from a side road, formed a line in front of and behind them, and demanded to know if 'they were Mormons. They answered in the affirmative, and were then told that they were prisoners. They were taken by their captors several miles out of their road to a camp in the timber, where were five hundred armed men, under the command of Sashiel Woods, a Presbyterian minister. His men yelled like demons when their comrades rode into camp with the two prisoners. Woods ordered Mr. Pack to go with him and others through an opening in the bushes, at the same time telling Mrs. Pack that she could go to a grog shop near by. She, however, was about to follow her husband, saying she was willing to die with him, when he requested her to remain with the horse and wagon, assuring her that he