Top Five: First LDS Converts

Here are the five earliest of my ancestor families to join the LDS church. It's worth noting that through the Buchanan, Hatch, and Curtis lines, my grandchildren are tenth generation Mormons.

5. Aldura Sumner Hatch, February 1840. Taught and baptized in Lincoln, Vermont by Elders Sisson Chase and Peltiah Brown. "The ice was a foot deep; and before they could be baptized, a hole had to be cut through the ice." A son and a couple of other relatives were baptized the same day; her husband Hezekiah, parents-in-law, and most of her children were baptized by the end of the year. In April of 1842, just before the family was to leave for Nauvoo, Aldura caught 'the black tongue' and died. The heartbroken family buried their wife and mother, then began the journey west to Illinois.

4. Richard Steele, January 1840. Taught and baptized by Henry Glover in Burslem (now Stoke on Trent), England just before his 22nd birthday. Unemployed after completing his apprenticeship in pottery-making, he took to Mormonism quickly. After baptism he hung out with the missionaries and was called on a mission later that year. Emigrated to Nauvoo in 1842, helped settle American Fork, Utah.

3. Samuel Miles, March 1834. Baptized by Orson Pratt in Freedom, New York. Was a brother-in-law to Warren Cowdery and lived next to him, so heard about the church early on--proof sheets as the Book of Mormon was being printed, perhaps a visit with Oliver Cowdery, meetings with friends all crescendoed into many baptisms when Pratt visited the community. Lived in Missouri and Nauvoo, died in St. Louis in 1847. His son Samuel was in the Mormon Battalion, and his wife Prudence and most of his children settled in Utah and Idaho.

2. Emeline Buchanan, February 1834. Living with her parents in central Illinois (Tazewell County), she joined the church at age 14. Her parents John and Nancy joined a year later. Years later, she remembered lying under a hickory tree and looking across the Mississippi River and watching parts of Nauvoo burn. Settled in Springville, Utah.

1. Enos Curtis, 1831. Learned about the church from his son in law, Elial Strong, and was baptized in Tioga County, Pennsylvania. In 1832, went with the group of missionaries from the Columbia Township branch up to Mendon NY and helped teach Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball. Settled in Springville, Utah and became a patriarch. His son Simmons married Emeline Buchanan (see #2).