1812–1897

Esaias Edwards was born on 10 April 1812 in Pike County, Missouri to Andrew and Anna (Buckalew) Edwards. In 1839 he joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints after his wife of eight years, Elizabeth (Campbell) Edwards, was miraculously healed. Esaias and Elizabeth left Missouri the following year to join the Latter-day Saints at Nauvoo, Illinois.

Elizabeth died five years later in 1845, leaving behind six children. Esaias remarried shortly after. He and his new wife, Sarah Gibbs, had a son in 1846, but the child died nine months later. Sarah died in 1847. Belinda Miles, Esaias’ third wife, accompanied him on the journey to Salt Lake City in 1848 in the Willard Richards Company. The couple had eleven children during their forty-two-year marriage.

Esaias farmed, operated a mill, and maintained an orchard during his life in Utah. Two years after arriving at Salt Lake City he moved to TooeleValley and then to CacheCounty. The gristmill he built in Tooele, locally known as the Edwards mill, continued to operate for another eight decades after Esaias’ departure. In 1873, one year before Esaias permanently settled in the St. George area, he married Ann Nuttall as a plural wife. Esaias died on 10 June 1897 in St. George at the age of eighty-five. He had fathered eighteen children and adopted one son.

Bibliography

History of TooeleCounty.Salt Lake City: TooeleCounty Daughters of Utah Pioneers, 1961.