Charles Dutton Miller, July 1839

While saints were being driven out of Missouri in 1839, missionaries were busy preaching the gospel in England.  It was during this time that Charles Dutton Miller Joined the church.

Charles Dutton Miller was born in Manchester England in August, 1816. He was the youngest of seven children, and his father died when he was two years old. His widowed mother was very poor, but managed their scant money with frugality. His mother was good at herbal remedies, and once treated princess Victoria of England. After that she received patronage as a healer from many grand families of England. 

Charles only attended a few years of school, and then became an errand boy for a hat maker.  Later he became apprenticed to a clog maker, and later went into business for himself. He also became a methodist minister.  He married Jane Marshall and together they had four children. 

In 1837 missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints came to England.  Because of persecution of church members, John didn’t join the church until 1939. He was baptized by Joseph Fielding and William Clayton in July just before he turned 23.  After he joined the church, business at his shop dropped off so much and he was forced to close.  He became an itinerant missionary for the church, traveling and preaching without purse or scrip. He was ordained a high priest by Brigham Young in 1840 and was made president of the Manchester Conference with 1200 members.  He later became the president of the Bradford Conference, which was even larger.  They often hosted missionaries in their home. 

In 1848 he was feeling desires to unite with the saints in America, but at the time they had just been driven out of Nauvoo. He was told to stay in England and strengthen the church there. Finally in 1849 he and his growing family boarded a ship for America. Eight weeks later they arrived in New Orleans. They moved on to St Louis, where they stopped so that he could work and earn enough money for the trek west.  In 1851 the saints in that area received a letter from the First Presidency urging them to gather to Utah. Some sources say that his wife, Jane refused to go to Salt Lake, but others say she died in St. Louis, along with one of their children.  Either way, Charles and one of his sons started off for Utah alone. They joined a wagon train in 1852, and arrived in Utah that fall.

Once in Utah,  Charles met and married Alice Ashton, a widow with three children. They moved  to Lehi, and then settled in Provo. He lived there until his death from pneumonia in 1878.