Oliver and Lorenzo Snow 1836

 Lorenzo Snow and his father, Oliver Snow, were not the first on this line of genealogy to join the church. As I have recorded, Lorenzo Snow's mother joined the church after hearing Joseph Smith preach in 1831, and his sister, Eliza, joined in 1935. I am focusing on Lorenzo Snow here for two reasons.  The most obvious is that he later became the president of the church in 1898. The second is that he joined the church because of the preaching of a man mentioned in this week's reading for Come Follow Me, David W. Patten (Section 114). The rest of this article is a summary of the life sketch about Lorenzo Snow found here in The Life and Ministry of Lorenzo Snow.

In 1835 Lorenzo was riding his horse in his home town of Mantua, Ohio, when he happened upon David W. Patten who was a newly ordained apostle and was on his way to Kirkland after serving a mission.  The two men rode together for about 30 miles.  Lorenzo later wrote, “Our conversation fell upon religion and philosophy, and being young and having enjoyed some scholastic advantages, I was at first disposed to treat his opinions lightly, especially so as they were not always clothed in grammatical language; but as he proceeded in his earnest and humble way to open up before my mind the plan of salvation, I seemed unable to resist the knowledge that he was a man of God and that his testimony was true.”

Lorenzo had been studying religion at Oberlin College, but after meeting Patten, and hearing his sister Eliza's experiences in Kirtland, he decided to leave Oberlin and join his family in Kirtland.  There he studied Hebrew along with some of the church leaders, and eventually was baptized in June 1836.  Soon after his baptism he received a strong witness of the truth of the Gospel and prepared to serve a mission. He served two missions back to back that spanned 1837-1840. By then the saints and his family had moved to Nauvoo, Illinois. He joined his family there  but soon after was called to serve a mission in England. During his mission he delivered copies of the Book of Mormon to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. 

There are a lot of other good stories about Lorenzo Snow.  He helped on Joseph Smith's campaign to become President. In 1845 Joseph Smith taught him the principle of plural marriage, and in response he married two women Charlotte Squires and Mary Goddard. He crossed the plains when the saints moved to Utah and in 1849 became a member of the Quorum of the Twelve. That same year he left for his mission in Italy. The work there went slowly until he came across the Waldenses in the Piedmont region of Italy, some of whom are our ancestors. He lead a group of Italian converts to Utah.

in 1853 Brigham Young called Lorenzo snow to lead a group of families to settle the northern Utah county of Box Elder. There he helped establish Brigham City.  He lived there when not on assignment from the prophet, until Wilford Woodruff's death in 1898.  On hearing of the prophet's passing, he took a train to Salt Lake City and went to the temple to pray. While there, the Lord appeared to him and told him to reorganize the 1st presidency immediately. He was sustained as prophet on October 10, 1898.  He was already elderly when he was sustained, and he only served for three years, but during that time he received important revelations, including one about using the principle of tithing to help the church get out of debt. Lorenzo Snow died in 1901 of pneumonia and was barried in Brigham City.