page_title: Abraham O. Smoot
section_title: Marriages and family
hierarchical_section_title: Abraham O. Smoot / Marriages and family
caption_attribution_description: English: Abraham O. Smoot, ca. 1880
context_page_description: Abraham Owen Smoot was an American pioneer, businessman, religious leader, and politician. He spent his early life as a missionary in Kentucky, Tennessee, South Carolina, and England. Like other early leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Smoot practiced plural marriage, eventually marrying six women and having 27 children. After migrating west to Utah, he was elected as the second mayor of Salt Lake City. He was then assigned by Brigham Young to move to Provo, where he served as stake president and mayor from 1868 to 1881. Smoot was the first president of the board of trustees of Brigham Young Academy - which later developed into Brigham Young University - and was an early financial supporter of the institution. The Smoot Administration Building at BYU is named after him.
context_section_description: In early 1838, while serving as a missionary in Missouri and Arkansas, Smoot began writing letters to a widow named Margaret Thompson McMeans Adkinson. She was six years older than Smoot. He married her on November 11, 1838 in Far West, Missouri while a prisoner of war. Adkinson had one son from her first marriage named William, whom Smoot adopted. Smoot described his new wife as "zealous and devoted to her religion and ready to sacrifice or endure anything to further its interests." The two were forced out of Missouri and fled to Iowa. Smoot was the only man in the company and the driver of the wagon. Adkinson then accompanied Smoot on the way to his mission in South Carolina; the couple stopped in Tennessee and, after visiting with her family, Adkinson returned north to Nauvoo. She later traveled with him to Alabama for his mission there.
  On January 9, 1846, Smoot began practicing plural marriage. He was sealed to his second wife, Sarah Gibbens, then to his third, Emily Hill, with the approval of Adkinson. She gave her "fullest and freest consent" for Smoot to enter into polygamy. Hill was a widow with two children from her previous marriage, William and Artimisia. She was 39 years old, and Gibbens was 45. On November 23, 1847, once the family had crossed the plains and settled in the Salt Lake Valley, Hill gave birth to Smoot's first biological child, Albert. She eventually had three more children: Margaret, Emily, and Zina Beal. In 1850, the family relocated to Big Cottonwood Canyon. Gibbens did not emigrate to Utah and requested a divorce from Smoot in 1852.
  In 1855, Smoot married Diana Tanner Eldredge. The following year, he married Anne Kirstine Morrison, an immigrant from Brekka, Norway. Eldredge gave birth to thirteen children and Morrison to seven. He later married Hannah Caroline Rogers in 1886 in Logan, Utah. He reportedly went to prison for a time because of his plural marriages.
  Smoot had a total of twenty-seven children, three of whom he adopted. They include Reed Smoot, born in Salt Lake City, who became a politician and US Senator; Brigham Smoot; and Ida Smoot Dusenberry. Another of his daughters, Zina Beal Smoot, was married to apostle Orson F. Whitney.
caption: Abraham O. Smoot, ca.1880
exif: {}