Stillman's third wife, Abigail Thorn, whom he married at the Endowment House at Salt Lake City in 1849 and by whom he would have 8 additional children, was the abandoned plural spouse of Major Samuel Russell who had, only a year earlier, deserted Abigail and their own newborn infant in preference for the gold fields of California. Stillman had been a member of the same (combined Smoot-Wallace-Russell) 'Camp of Israel' company as the Russells in the trek to Utah (arriving September 25, 1847), and he had since established himself in farming to the west of the city, where he'd witnessed the saving of his locust-infested crops in 1848 by the miraculous arrival of seagulls.