B. H. Roberts - Church Service

Church Service

After graduation (and the birth of his first child) Roberts was ordained a Seventy in his local church branch and taught school to support his family. The LDS Church sent him on a mission to Iowa and Nebraska, "but because the cold weather was hard on his health, he was transferred to Tennessee in December of 1880." There he rose to prominence as the president of the Tennessee Conference of the Southern States Mission.

On August 10, 1884, a mob in the small community of Cane Creek murdered two LDS missionaries and two members of the Mormon congregation. (One of the latter had killed a member of the mob before he was in turn slain.) At some personal risk, Roberts disguised himself as a tramp and recovered the bodies of the two missionaries for their families in Utah Territory.

During a brief return to Utah, he took a second wife, Celia Dibble, by whom he had eight children. In December 1886, while serving as associate editor of the Salt Lake Herald, Roberts was arrested on the charge of unlawful cohabitation. He posted bond to appear in court the next day and that night left on a mission to England.

In England, Roberts served as assistant editor of the LDS Church publication the Millennial Star and completed his first book, the much reprinted, The Gospel: An Exposition of Its First Principles (1888). Later that year he was ordained to the First Council of Seventy.

Returning to Salt Lake City in 1888, as full-time editor of The Contributor, he was chosen as one of the seven presidents of the First Council of the Seventy, the third highest governing body in the LDS Church. "Tiring of evading federal authorities," Roberts surrendered in April 1889 and pled guilty to the charge of unlawful cohabitation. He was imprisoned in the Utah Territorial Prison for five months. Following his release he moved his families to Colorado and married a third wife, Dr. Margaret Curtis Shipp (his third marriage was childless), either shortly before or shortly after Wilford Woodruff, president of the LDS Church, issued the 1890 Manifesto that abolished plural marriage. (Robert's third wife was seven years his senior and had obtained a degree in obstetrics. Roberts seemed to prefer Margaret's company, "and this created some trouble" with his other families—although Roberts continued to have children by his other wives.) Roberts resigned as an editor of the Salt Lake Herald in 1896 giving his reason that the position that the paper had taken on the recent ‘Manifesto’ was apt to place him in a false light.