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Show Joseph 327 Smith Tanner In 1871 Joseph was ordained a high priest and set apart as Payson by Brigham Young. He was to hold this office for bishop twenty years, and as the brethren saw how well he managed his as signment in Payson he was asked to preside over Santaquin, Spring Lake, Salem, and Benjamin as well. "I resigned on account of poor health and was released from the Bishopric December 22, 1891." By this date he was approaching the age of sixty; the author wonders how long he would have been kept on had his health held." Many men with plural families found added burdens because of the problems of presiding over more than one family. It is doubtful that any achieved better discipline and more harmony among his wives and numerous children than Joseph Smith Tanner. His oldest child, Mary Elizabeth, born in 1860, was older by forty-five years than his youngest, Sterling Elmer, born in 1905. Joseph of Smith Tanner was twenty-seven when his first child was born, and seventy-two when the last one arrived. He had lots of experience with children at all stages of his life. He Church," was able to and he had rejoice that his children 'thus far are all in the a good conscience because he had "discharged duty resting on him preparing them to .meet the filled missions. towards my older children as the trials of life; four of my a father in sons having "15 But there were shadows in his life as a family man too: "His first wife, Elizabeth Clark Haws, died in 1882, at the age of 39." Ten of her thirteen children also died before their father. The other families fared better, but at his funeral in 1910 his obituary included the information that fifteen of his thirty-one children had preceded him in death. speaking of these misfortunes, he said sadly, "One of the most features of my life occurred at the death of my wife on April 2, trying children also passed away within this same year, one and three 1882, and two girls.'?" boy In He died at the ing a stroke. He family was home in Payson January 28, 1910, follow Payson cemetery. buried in the In 1942 when the John Tanner Family book was published, children Joseph's descendants numbered 263, the largest family of the of children older Lydia of Elizabeth Beswick, but well behind the estimated total of descendants for Joseph is Stewart. The present a thousand. |
