George A. Smith & Bathsheba Wilson Bigler

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Our Stone, Ogden

and Related Families

Husband: George A. Smith (1)

Born:
Married: 1841 in Nauvoo, Hancock Co., Illinois (5)
Died: 1875 (2)
Father:
Mother:
Spouses:

Wife: Bathsheba Wilson Bigler

Born: 03 MAY 1822 in Salt Lake City, Salt Lake Co., Utah (3)
Died: 20 SEP 1910 in Salt Lake City, Salt Lake Co., Utah (4)
Father: Mark Bigler
Mother: Susanna Ogden
Spouses:

Additional Information

Bathsheba Wilson Bigler:

Notes:
Bathsheba Wilson Smith: Fourth president of of the Relief Societies in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was born May 3, 1822, in Shinneston, Harrison Co., West Virginia, daughter of Mark Bigler and Susanna Ogden. Her father was from Pennsylvania and her mother from Maryland. The school facilities in her vicinity were limited. The county of Harrison was hilly and the roads of primitive character; the mode of travel was chiefly on horseback riding, in which few could excel her.

In her girlhood she was religeously inclined, loved virtue, honesty, truthfulness and integrity; attended secret prayers, studied to be cheerful, industrious and happy, and was always opposed to rudeness.

During her fifteenth year some Latter-day Saints visited the neighborhood; she heard them preach and believed what they taught. She knew by the spirit of the Lord, in answer to her prayer, that Joseph Smith was a prophet of the Lord, and that the Book of Mormon was a divine record. August 21, 1837, she was baptized; and most of her father's family joined the Church about the same time. They soon felt a desire to gather with the rest of the Saints in Missouri; her sister, Nancy, and family sold their property, intending to go in the fall, and Bathsheba was very anxious to go with them. Her father, not having yet sold out his property, she was told she could not go. This caused her to retire very early, feeling very sorrowful. While weeping, a voice said to her "Weep not, you will go this fall". She was comforted and perfectly satisfied, ant the next morning testified to what the voice had said to her. Soon after her father sold his home, and they all went to Missouri, to her great joy, but, on their arrival their they found the State preparing to war against the Saints. A few nights before they reached the Far West, they camped with a company of Eastern Saints, but separated on account of each company choosing different ferries. The company that Sister Bathsheba and her family were members of arrived safely at their destination, but the others were overtaken by an armed mob at Haun's Mill; seventeen were killed, others were wounded and others maimed for life.

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From Trails to Utah and the Pacific: Diaries and Letters, 1846-1869 at the Library of Congress
Smith, Bathsheba W. Bigler, 1822-1910. Biographical note

Stimpson, Joni Poppitz, 1979-

SUMMARY
Born on 3 May 1822 in Shinnston, West Virginia, Bathsheba W. Bigler was raised "in a genteel, upper South culture" (Ludlow, 1320). Her parents, Mark and Susannah (Ogden) Bigler, raised nine children on their 300-acre plantation. After joining The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1837, fifteen-year-old Bathsheba and her family moved to Missouri. Soon after their arrival, the Biglers were driven out of Missouri by anti-Mormon mobs. By the spring of 1840 the family had fled to Nauvoo, Illinois, where Bathsheba married George A. Smith in 1841. George was a cousin to the prophet Joseph Smith and the youngest member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Bathsheba supported the Church's doctrine of plural marriage and welcomed George's plural wives into the family. George served three missions for the Church while Bathsheba remained in Nauvoo with their two children. The family immigrated to the Salt Lake Valley in 1849 in the George A. Smith Company. As at Nauvoo, George was often called away on Church business. Bathsheba accompanied him on several of these trips during the early 1870s before his death in 1875. Bathsheba helped secure women's suffrage in the Territory of Utah, sat on the Deseret Hospital Board of Directors, and was matron of the Salt Lake Temple. One of the twenty founding members of the Relief Society at Nauvoo, Bathsheba was called in 1901 as the fourth General Relief Society President, which position she held until her death on 20 September 1910. During her nine years as president, Bathsheba oversaw publication of the first Relief Society handbook and helped gather funding for the Women's Building in Salt Lake City.

Footnotes

Trails to Utah and the Pacific: Diaries and Letters, 1846-1869 [45].
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.

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