1806–1879

Born on 14 December 1806 at St. Johnsbury, Vermont to Levi and Lucina (Streeter) Snow, William Snow joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at the age of twenty-five. Four months later he married Hannah Miles, also a native of Vermont. The couple moved in 1835 to Kirtland, Ohio, and then to Far West, Missouri, and Nauvoo, Illinois. The mother of five children, Hannah died in 1841 at Nauvoo.

William married Lydia Adams (or Leavitt) the following year. She died in 1847 after giving birth to two children. Two years before Lydia’s death, William married Sally Adams as a plural wife. They had seven children. William and Sally immigrated to Salt Lake City in 1850, with William as captain of the company. After his arrival in Utah, William married three more plural wives: Jane Maria Shearer, Ann Rogers, and Roxana Leavitt. They bore five, eight, and two children, respectively.

William attended the first territorial legislature at Fillmore, Utah in 1855–56, and helped compile the first laws of Utah. He lived at Salt Lake City, and then Lehi, with his families until his call in 1866 to the Dixie mission. William served as a probate judge for many years in Washington County. He also farmed and raised stock.

William served as a bishop and Patriarch of the Pine Valley Ward until his death on 19 May 1879 at the age of seventy-two. When he died, “it was considered that he had done as much as any other one man to build up and develop the Dixie country” (Alter, 464).

Bibliography

Alter, J. Cecil. Utah: The Storied Domain. Vol. 3. Chicago: The American Historical Society, 1932.  

Esshom, Frank. Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah. Salt Lake City: Western Epics, 1966.

Jenson, Andrew. Latter-day Saint Biographical Encyclopedia.Vol. 3. Salt Lake City: Andrew Jenson History Company, 1920.

Peterson, Wanda Snow. William Snow, First Bishop of Pine Valley. Provo, UT: Community Press, 1992.