Major B. H. Roberts

Major B. H. Roberts Member of the Governor's staff of Utah, and President of the State Board of Equal- ization, was appointed by Governor Simon Bamberger, July 17, Chaplain of the First Utah Light Field Artillery, with the rank of Captain. Major Roberts served in the recruiting campaign for the National Guard as a member of the Governor's staff, and was given the honorary title of Major. Major Brigham H. Roberts was born in England, March 13, 1857, and is the fourth child and second son of Benjamin and Ann Everington Roberts. His father was a blacksmith, and his grandfather was an independent ironmonger, in comfortable circumstances. His mother's parents were tillers of the soil. She was a strong woman, intelligent, with a desire for the beautiful, the noble, and the refined. It is said of her: "She mastered by her own efforts the arts of reading and writing, and exhibited at various times in the course of her life those qualities of courage, independence and determination so conspicuously manifest in the character of her dijtinguished son." Both of his parents joined the Church. The mother first, in the early 50's, against the will of the father, but in the course of time the father also became a mem- ber of the Church. However, he gradually drifted away, and a permanent separation took place between him and his wife some timj before the latter came to Utah, which was in 1862. Under the advice of the presidency at Liverpool, she took two of her youngest children with her to Utah, leaving the older daughter, Mary, and B. H. in England. Mary was sent to live with a distant relative, while B. H. was domiciled with a famil) of Latter-day Saints with whom he lived and wandered from place to place during the next four years, experiencing the sad sensations of poverty, squalor and utter homelessncss. By means of the Perpetual Emigration Fund, both the sister, Mary, and B. H. Roberts were enabled to emigrate in the spring of 1866. They sailed on the John Bright, in April, and landed in New York in June. Proceeding with the rest of the company, some 700 Latter-day Saints, under Elders C. E. Gillett, to Wyoming, in Nebraska, they here outfitted for the plains. After many adventures they finally landed at Salt Lake City on the 15th of September, 1866. Here the mother met her children and took them to her humble log cabin in Bountiful, Davis county, and it was in this settlement that the son spent the remainder of his early boyhood. He went to school one winter and learned to read. With his step-father, he went to the Ophir and Jacob City mining districts, at the age of fourteen, and passed the greater part of three years working prospects on the crest of the hills above the present camp of Mercur. Returning home, he apprenticed himself for three years to James Baird, a Centerville blacksmith, choosing that vocation because it had been his father's trade in England. He was then seventeen, and at the age of twenty had served his apprenticeship. During the time of his apprenticeship he attended school three months each year according to agreement. At the age of eighteen he was seized with a passion for reading, and forsook his frivolous companionship and plunged into history, biography, and literature. He then drifted into religious readings, joined a theo- logical class taught by Nathan T. Porter, Centerville, comprising about twenty young people of both sexes. It was in this class that he received his first oppor- tunity to speak before the public, and it was really the beginning of his ministry. He married Sarah Louisa Smith, daughter of President William R. Smith of Davis stake, in September, 1877, the ceremony being performed by President. John Taylor at Salt Lake City. In 1877-8 he completed a two-years' course prescribed for normal students in the University of Deseret, graduating at the head of his class, and delivering the commencement day valedictory. He was ordained a seventy by Elder Nathan T. Porter, and became connected with the Nineteenth quorum, in 1877, having been baptized in 1867 by Elder Seth Dustin of Bountiful. In 1880, he went upon his^first mission, to Sioux City, Iowa, being later trans- ferred to the Southern States mission, under Elder John Morgan, until June, 1882. Then followed constant missionary work at home and abroad, and his labors, re- ligious, civil and literary, and his powers as a writer and orator are well known and of more than ordinary interest to the people of the West. His miscellaneous writings in the Salt Lake Herald, The Millennial Star, The Contributor, The Improvement Era, and other publications are voluminous, touching sharply upon every phase of doctrine, and upon the current questions of the lime. He has written many books, among them: A History of the Mormon Church, 6 volumes, 3,000 pages; New ff it- nesses for God, 3 volumes; Life of John Taylor; Outlines of Ecclesiastical History; Defense of the Faith and the Saints; Joseph Smith, the Prophet-Teacher, and others. Li Whitney's History of Utah, it is well said of Major Roberts: "A man of cour- age, full of energy and vitality, he has risen b she r force of innate ability, coupled with hard and honest toil, from the humblest walks of life to positions of honor and eminence."

IMPROVEMENT ERA

MAJOR B. H. ROBERTS Chaplain of the National Guard of Utah