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Show AI.MA I.AMJNI SMI'IH -- rompiled by Winifred S. Cannon Alma I.anoni Smith, a prominent missionary and a survivor of the Haun's Mill nassacre, was the son of Warren and Arranda Barnes Smi. th. He was born Deceni::>er 16, 1831, in Amhearst, Loraine County, Chio. Alma was born into a horne of harrrony and love where there was devotion and understanding of the parents toward each other and love, respect and obedience of the children toward their parents. The family knew affluence and canfort but also suffered from poverty during the first twenty years of Alma's life. He attended school whenever it was possible but when it was not, he received his schooling at horre, as his nnther was a capable teacher. From Ohio, the family nnved to Missouri. They stopped in Caldwell County near Haun's Mill. It was here that the Saints were nassacred by a frenzied nnb. Warren Smith, Alma's father, and his brother Sardius, were brutally murdered, along with the other men who .had gone to the blacksmith shop for prayers. As the rrob advanced, Alma and his brothers crawled under the bellows in the blacksmith's shop but were disrovered and fired upon, Sardius was killed, Willard nade his escape and Grandfather had his hip shot away and was left for dead. Through the faith and prayers of his nother he was miraculously healed • • • • 'Ihe Saints rroved from Missouri to Illinois where for a tirre they found peace. Alma was baptised at NaUVCX), Illinois, July 1841, in the Mississippi River. With the exodus of the Saints from Illinois, the trek across the plains was started in the year 1846. Grandfather drove one of the family teams and after much hardship and great privations and suffering the little band of saints arrived in the great Salt Lake Valley in the year 1850. Upon arrival into the valley, Alma found employrrent and for several years was the nain support of his rrother and his younger brothers and sisters. His step-father, to whom his nother was narried while in Illinois, left Salt Lake City for California to find work soon after arriving in the valley. His older brother Willard, who had been a rrernber of the M:>rrron Battalion, was also away from home. Grandfather was successful in supplying the needs of his nother and the children. He acquired sorre land in the valley. He was nost active in all his church affiliations. Alma narried Telitha Cumi Free M:lrch 6, 1855r and from this union there were nine children born, none of them now living. At the April Conference following his narriage, he was called on his first mission to the Sandwich Islands. Here he labored with success for two and a half years. In that short tirre he acquired the Kanaka language alrrost to perfection. He presided over the Lanai ronference and was in demand constantly as an interpreter of the Kanaka tongue. While serving on his first mission to the Islands, Grandfather fell and received a rompound fracture of his arm and was so seriously disabied that for niany rronths he rould not perform many of the duties required of him. . • • |
