Hugh Findlay - Emigration and Settling Utah

Emigration and Settling Utah

Findlay completed his mission and departed Bombay on March 15, 1855. He and a few fellow Mormons emigrated by way of Hong Kong (where they baptized one convert) to the United States, arriving later that year. He married 23-year-old Catherine Ann Partington on March 25, 1856, in the Endowment House. Brigham Young performed the ceremony.

The couple helped settle Riverdale, Utah, where Hugh made a living by manufacturing and selling matches. They eventually had nine children together.

In 1857 Findlay began practicing plural marriage when he married 16-year-old Mary Ellen Smith, with whom he eventually had seven children. In 1858, he became Riverdale's first school teacher, and in 1860 he joined a bishopric in Riverdale as a counselor. He was also at one time the president of the "17th Ward Silk Producing Society".

In June 1862, Hugh Findlay's 19-year-old brother-in-law, Jared Smith, was killed in the Morrisite War. Smith had been engaged to Ane Marie Dorthea Nelson, a 19-year-old Danish immigrant. The next month, Findlay married Ane Marie. They had three children together and raised them as if they were Jared's.

By 1864, Findlay was in Salt Lake City manufacturing and selling matches at a store on Main Street. An 1865 Deseret News advertisement noted he sold other products as well, including stereoscopic boxes.

Allan emigrated to the U.S. via Liverpool, England, sailing on the Ship Thornton to New York City. On the second day at sea, 26-year-old Allan married Jessie Ireland, a 28-year-old whom the ship's manifest identified as a spinster, although they had been dating for about ten years. They rendezvoused in New York with Allan and Hugh's mother (Mary McPherson Findlay), then headed west. Although they crossed the plains with the ill-fated Willie Handcart Company, all three survived and made it to Salt Lake City.