Willard G. Smith

Willard Gilbert Smith (1827–1903) was a member of the Utah Territorial legislature.
Smith was born to Warren Smith and his wife Amanda Barnes in Amherst, Ohio. His parents joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1831. They moved to Kirtland, Ohio and then in 1838 went to Missouri where they settled at Haun's Mill, Missouri. Smith was shot at during the Haun's Mill Massacre; he was not injured but his father and a brother were killed while another brother, Alma Smith, was injured but survived. Smith's account is one of the major first hand accounts of the event.
Smith moved with his mother and surviving siblings to Quincy, Illinois where his mother married again, to another man named Warren Smith. Willard assisted in building the Nauvoo Temple and then served in the Mormon Battalion. He then was involved in gold mining in California and settled on a farm in Oregon. His brother Alma, while returning from a mission in Hawaii, came to Oregon and convinced...