Biography by Andrew Jenson

Spencer, Daniel, president of the Salt Lake Stake of Zion from 1849 to 1868, was the son of Daniel Spencer and Chloe Wilson, and was born July 20, 1794, at West Stockbridge, Berkshire county, Mass. The American branch of the Spencers came from a good English stock and was identified with the Puritan emigration to America at an early period. Tracing the immediate line of the Spencers, who have made a distinguished mark in the Church and among the representative men of Utah, we find them in character noted for their love of independence and justice. The father of the subject of this memoir took up arms at the commencement of the Revolutionary war for the inalienable rights of man and the independence of the American nation. He volunteered at the age of sixteen and remained through the entire struggle; he was in General Washington's bodyguard and witnessed the surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown. Daniel, before he reached the age of twenty-one, bought his time out from his father, and made a manly and true American push into the great world to establish his character and social position in life. At that period a new commercial intercourse was opening between New England and the Southern States. The sagacious and enterprising youth, even then weighed in the balances of his mind the commercial situations of his country, and started into the Southern States. There he opened the way for five of his brothers, in the State of Georgia and also in North and South Carolina. For himself he established a mercantile house at Savannah, which he followed for thirteen years. Daniel not only opened the way in the Southern States for five of his brothers, but with them gave to his brothers Orson a collegiate training, bearing chiefly the expenses of that classical education for which

Orson became so celebrated in the Church as a theologian and a highly accomplished author. Orson was lame and his elder brother educated him for the pulpit instead of the counting house, and while his brothers were pursuing the calling of merchants in the South, he was rising to the sphere of an influential Clergyman in the Baptist church in Massachusetts. At the close of his commercial career in the South, Daniel Spencer returned to his native place, West Stockbridge. Mass., being then about thirty-five years of age. After his return he married Sophronia, daughter of General Grove Pomeroy. The family of his bride was of the old Puritan stock, high in social rank and [p.287] respected by all for their moral worth and representative character. On his return to his native place, he became connected with a mercantile house in partnership with the Messrs. Boyingtons, celebrated marble dealers. So much trusted by the firm was he that the whole supervision of the firm fell upon his shoulders. Among his townsmen he was universally respected, and he enjoyed the unbounded confidence of the people in all the region around. Until 1840 no Elder of the Mormon Church had preached in his native town. The late John Van Cott, however, belonged to the same region, and already his relatives, the Pratt's, had been laboring to impress Mr. Van Colt with the "Mormon" faith. But Daniel Spencer, up to this date, had no relationship whatever with the people with whom himself and his brother Orson afterwards became so prominently identified. At this time Daniel Spencer belonged to no sect of religionists, but sustained in the community the name of a man marked for character and moral worth. It was, however, his custom to give free quarters to preachers of all denominations. The "Mormon" Elder came; and his coming created an epoch in Daniel Spencer's life. Through his influence the Presbyterian meeting house was obtained for the "Mormon" Elder to preach the gospel, and the meeting was attended by the elite of the town. At the close of the service the Elder asked the assembly if there was any one present who would give him "a night's lodging and a meal of victuals in the name of Jesus." For several minutes a dead silence reigned in the congregation. None present seemed desirous to peril their character or taint their respectability by taking home a "Mormon" Elder. At length Daniel Spencer, in the old Puritan spirit and the proud independence so characteristic of the true American gentleman, rose up, stepped into the aisle, and broke the silence: "I will entertain you, sir, for humanity's sake." Daniel took the poor Elder, not to his public hotel, as was his wont with the preachers generally who needed hospitality, but he took him to his own house, a fine family mansion, and the next morning he clothed him from head to foot with a good suit of broad cloth from the shelves of his store. The Elder continued to preach the new and strange gospel, and brought upon himself much persecution. This produced upon the mind of Daniel Spencer an extraordinary effect. Seeing the bitter malevolence from the preachers and the best of the professing Christians, and being naturally a philosopher and a judge, he resolved to investigate the cause of this enmity and unchristian like manifestation. The result came. It was as strongly marked as his conduct during the investigation. For two weeks he closed his establishment, refused to do business with any one, and shut himself up to study; and there alone with his God he weighed in the balances of his clear head and conscientious heart the divine message and found it not wanting. One day, when his son was with him in his study, he suddenly burst into a flood of tears, and exclaimed: "My God, the thing is true, and as an honest man I must embrace it; but it will cost me all I have got on earth." He had weighed the consequences, but his conscientious mind compelled him to assume the responsibility and take up the cross. He saw that he must, in the eyes of friends and townsmen, fall from the social pinnacle on which he then stood to that of a despised people. At midday, about three months after the poor "Mormon" Elder came into the town of West Stockbridge, Daniel Spencer having issued a public notice to his townsmen that he should be baptized at noon on a certain day, took him by the arm and, not ashamed, walked through the town taking the route of the main street to the waters of baptism, followed by hundreds of his townsmen to the river's bank. The profoundest respect and quiet were manifested by the vast concourse of witnesses, but also the profoundest astonishment. It was nothing wonderful that a despised "Mormon" Elder should believe in Joseph Smith, but it was a matter of astonishment that a man of Daniel Spencer's social standing and character should receive the mission of the Prophet and divinity of the Book of Mormon. The conversion and conduct of Daniel Spencer carried a deep and weighty conviction among many good families in the region around, which, in a few months, resulted in the establishment of a flourishing branch of the Church. This branch which he was the chief instrument in rounding, and over which he presided, contributed its full quota of respectable (p.288] citizens to Nauvoo and Utah. John Van Cott, the man so long identified in the history of the Scandinavian mission, and a representative man, also came from that region. About the period of Daniel Spencer's connection with the "Mormon" Church, the partners in the firm to which he belonged, took the benefit of the bankrupt law, which resulted in his financial depression. He then gave himself much to the ministry, and soon afterward brought into the Church his brother Orson. He continued for two years laboring in the ministry in that region, and then (in 184 1) he removed to Nauvoo. He had scarcely arrived in the city of the Saints, when he was appointed on a mission to Canada. On his return, he was elected a member of the Nauvoo city council; but soon afterwards was sent on a mission to the Indian nation. From the hardships of that mission he never recovered to the day of his death. The next year, he was sent on a mission to Massachusetts. He returned and was elected mayor of Nauvoo. At the time a number of men were selected by Joseph Smith to explore the Rocky Mountains, with the view of the Saints locating there, Daniel Spencer was called as one of them, bat the exploring expedition was interrupted by the martyrdom of the Prophet. At the time of the great exodus from Nauvoo, in 1846, Daniel Spencer started among the first of the exiles to the Rocky Mountains. He was a captain of fifty. But the leading companies finding that the journey could not be accomplished that year, and the news of the extermination of the remnant from Nauvoo reaching the President, Brigham Young departed from his first intentions and the Saints went into Winter Quarters. When the city was organized-then known as Winter Quarters, but now as the city of Florence-Daniel Spencer was chosen to act as a Bishop of one of the Wards. He spent a large amount of his means in his benevolent administration to the suffering and dying of the sorely tried and afflicted "Camp of Israel. " It was at the period when the dreadful plague struck the camps of the Saints just following their flight from Nauvoo. In the spring of 1847, when the Pioneers, under Pres. Young, took the lead of the main body of the Church, Daniel was appointed president of two companies of rifles to follow in the Pioneer van. There was considerable emulation between most of the captains of the companies, that year, to see who should reach the terminus of the journey first. A distinguished captain one-day passing Daniel's company, which was encamped for the day recruiting the strength of both man and beast, with good-natured sarcasm asked Brother Spencer if he had any message for the Pioneers. He answered significantly, "Tell them I am coming, if you see them first." Then turning to the camp he said, "Sisters, take plenty of time to wash, bake, rest, and go picking berries, and we will get to the terminus first and come back and help Brother Parley in, for we shall have it to do." This turned out to be the case; and Daniel Spencer's company was the first of the Winter Quarters' emigration that followed the Pioneers into the Great Basin. To help the organization of the Pioneer company, he had, at Winter Quarters, outfitted three men (Francis Boggs, Elijah Newman, and Levi N. Kendall) with provisions, clothing, seed grain, farming implements, team and wagon, and the first winter after the arrival he fed twenty-six souls. In the organization of the High Council of the Salt Lake Stake, in 1847, he was appointed a member; and in 1849 was elected its president, which position he filled up to the time of his death. He was a member of the legislature for years, and for some time sat in the Senate of the provisional government of the State of Deseret, and acted in connection with those who framed its constitution. He was appointed on a mission to England in 1852; there he filled the place of first counselor to Franklin D. Richards. He arrived in England just at the important period of the publication of the revelation on polygamy, and by his wisdom very much sustained the Church. Having honorably fulfilled his mission to Europe he returned to his native land in 1856. At the organization of the Salt Lake Stake, he was, under the First Presidency and Twelve, made the spiritual head of the entire colony; and under his administration Salt Lake City grew up several years before its incorporation under the civic government. At that time the president of the Stake occupied something like the position of the mayor of the inchoate city, and [p.289] chief justice of the Church. Nearly all cases were tried under him, in the court of the High Council, he sitting with his counselors as presiding judge; and not only did this court adjudicate all the differences arising between members of the Church, but the Gentile emigrants to California, on their arrival in Salt Lake City, brought their difficulties before this court for equitable settlement. It is to be observed that, in 1849, there was no courts of any kind to which the "gold-finders" could bring their difficulties after they left the Missouri River until they reached Salt Lake City, where a court of justice of the "Mormon" Church existed, over which Daniel Spencer presided. Strange as it may seem in history, many of the Gentile emigrants brought their cases for adjudication before this court, some of them involving tens of thousands of dollars; and with such equity did Daniel Spencer administer justice that the California emigrants very generally conceded that they obtained more equitable settlements than they would have done by litigation in the courts. In their "letters home," published in American and English papers, may be found often acknowledgments of this kind from the gold seekers of 1849-50. Two other instances, of a later date, may be told in closing this sketch. One of the most influential of the Bishops of the Southern settlements got many thousand dollars into the debt of Joseph Nounnan, a Salt Lake banker; and such was Mr. Nounnan's confidence in the ecclesiastical court, over which Daniel Spencer presided, that he brought suit against the Bishop in that court in preference to going to law. The trial occupied one hour and a half, when decision was rendered that the Bishop should pay the full amount within twenty-eight days, or be suspended from his Bishopric. At the close the banker tendered his thanks to the court and offered a liberal pecuniary present to the members, which was declined, for suits in this court were without costs. Another case, involving some $4,500, occurred between Mr. Ellis, a Salt Lake City merchant, and an influential "Mormon." Ellis took his case to the same court and recovered his entire claim. Daniel Spencer died in Salt Lake City Dec. 8, 1868, aged 74 years. He was a remarkable man and very exemplary in his life. (See also Tullidge's History of Salt Lake City, Bio. 166.)