Early Latter-day Saint ancestors: converts, pioneers, and the westward migration
The first generations of Latter-day Saints moved through Kirtland, Missouri, Nauvoo, and the overland companies to the Mountain West. Those connected chapters produced an unusually detailed trail of membership, land, emigration, and pioneer records.
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The short version
- The period
- From the church's founding in 1830 through the final organized wagon companies in 1868.
- Where they gathered
- Kirtland in Ohio, western Missouri, Nauvoo in Illinois, and then settlements throughout the Mountain West.
- The pioneer records
- Named overland companies kept rosters, making many pioneers traceable to a specific crossing and year.
- Converts from abroad
- Missionary work brought British and Scandinavian converts who crossed an ocean before joining the westward migration.
One connected migration with an unusually rich record
The first Latter-day Saint generations gathered, were displaced, gathered again, and eventually traveled west—Kirtland, Missouri, Nauvoo, the plains, and the Mountain West. These are stages in the same family story, not separate kinds of ancestry. A person recorded as an early convert may later appear on an overland-company roster and in the records of a Utah settlement.
Each move generated evidence. Membership and land records document the early settlements; emigration records follow converts from their home countries; named pioneer companies kept rosters and reported arrivals. Once a family is anchored to one place and date, the sequence often makes it possible to trace them through the rest of the migration.
The handcart companies are one especially well-known part of that record. Ten companies crossed between 1856 and 1860. The Willie and Martin companies left late in 1856, were caught by early snow, and suffered heavy losses before rescue parties reached them. Identifying a family's company connects a name in the tree to the documented circumstances of the journey.
Early Latter-day Saints in the catalog
Founding figures, converts, missionaries, handcart travelers, overland pioneers, and settlers—all part of the same connected history.
Amanda Barnes Smith
1809 – 1886Hawn's Mill 1838Converted in Ohio in 1831, she gathered to Kirtland and then Missouri, where her husband and a son were killed in the Hawn's Mill attack of October 1838; she later lived in Nauvoo and crossed the plains in 1850.
Check if Amanda Barnes Smith is your ancestorAmasa Lyman
1813 – 18771847 vanguard companyNew Hampshire-born apostle who traveled in the 1847 vanguard company until he was sent from Fort Laramie to the Mormon Battalion detachments at Pueblo; later led the settlers who founded San Bernardino.
Check if Amasa Lyman is your ancestorAnn Jewell Rowley
1807 – 1888Willie company 1856Widowed convert from Worcestershire who crossed with the Willie handcart company in 1856 at age forty-eight, traveling with eight of her family; her account of the two sea biscuits is still retold.
Check if Ann Jewell Rowley is your ancestorArchibald Gardner
1814 – 1902Scottish-born millwright who crossed in 1847 with the Edward Hunter/Joseph Horne company and went on to build some three dozen mills and miles of canals across Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming.
Check if Archibald Gardner is your ancestorAurelia Spencer Rogers
1834 – 1922Connecticut-born daughter of Orson Spencer who crossed at thirteen with the 1848 Brigham Young company and in 1878 organized the first Primary for children, at Farmington, Utah.
Check if Aurelia Spencer Rogers is your ancestorBathsheba W. Smith
1822 – 1910Founding member of the Nauvoo Relief Society who crossed in 1849 with the George A. Smith/Dan Jones company and later served as the Relief Society's fourth general president, from 1901 to 1910.
Check if Bathsheba W. Smith is your ancestorBenjamin F. Johnson
1818 – 1905Council of Fifty 1844Converted as a boy in the early 1830s, he lived at Kirtland, Adam-ondi-Ahman, and Nauvoo, acted as a business agent for Joseph Smith at Ramus, Illinois, and joined the Council of Fifty in 1844.
Check if Benjamin F. Johnson is your ancestorBrigham Young
1801 – 18771847 vanguard companyLed the vanguard company that reached the Salt Lake Valley in July 1847, directed the settlement of the Great Basin, and served as President of the Church from 1847 until his death in 1877.
Check if Brigham Young is your ancestorCharles C. Rich
1809 – 1883Kentucky-born apostle who captained his own company into the valley in October 1847 and later led the settlement of San Bernardino, California, and of the Bear Lake valley in Idaho and Utah.
Check if Charles C. Rich is your ancestorDan Jones
1810 – 1862Carthage 1844A Welsh steamboat captain baptized at Nauvoo in 1843, he was in Carthage Jail with Joseph Smith on the nights before the June 1844 killings and afterward presided over the mission in Wales.
Check if Dan Jones is your ancestorDavid Whitmer
1805 – 1888Three WitnessesOne of the Three Witnesses to the Book of Mormon, baptized in 1829, he presided over the church in Missouri from 1834 until his excommunication in 1838 and lived in Richmond, Missouri, thereafter.
Check if David Whitmer is your ancestorEdward Hunter
1793 – 1883Pennsylvania farmer who captained a hundred wagons west in 1847, traveling as the Hunter/Horne and Hunter/Foutz companies, and served as the Church's third Presiding Bishop from 1851 until 1883.
Check if Edward Hunter is your ancestorEdward Martin
1818 – 1882British mission 1837Baptized in England in October 1837, the first year of the British mission, he had reached America by 1846, served as a sergeant in the Mormon Battalion, and captained the 1856 handcart company named for him.
Check if Edward Martin is your ancestorElijah Abel
d. 1884Black elder and seventy, ordained in Ohio in 1836, who crossed with the Appleton M. Harmon company in 1853; born in Maryland about 1810, he served missions until weeks before his death.
Check if Elijah Abel is your ancestorEliza R. Snow
1804 – 1887No descendantsPoet and first secretary of the Nauvoo Relief Society, who crossed in 1847 with the Jedediah M. Grant company, carried the society's minute book west, and wrote the hymn "O My Father." She had no children.
Check the wider family lineEllis Reynolds Shipp
1847 – 1939Born in Iowa in 1847 and brought to Utah as a child in 1852, she graduated from the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1878 and went on to train hundreds of Utah women as midwives.
Check if Ellis Reynolds Shipp is your ancestorEmma Hale Smith
1804 – 1879Relief Society 1842Baptized in New York in 1830, she lived in Kirtland, Far West, and Nauvoo, presided over the Female Relief Society from 1842, and stayed in Nauvoo when the main body of the church went west.
Check if Emma Hale Smith is your ancestorEmmeline B. Wells
1828 – 1921Massachusetts-born diarist who crossed with the Heber C. Kimball company in 1848, edited the Woman's Exponent for thirty-seven years, and led the Relief Society from 1910 until 1921.
Check if Emmeline B. Wells is your ancestorEphraim Hanks
1826 – 18961856 rescuerOhio-born Mormon Battalion veteran and mail carrier who rode out in the 1856 rescue and reached the Martin company on November 10 with pack animals loaded with frozen buffalo meat.
Check if Ephraim Hanks is your ancestorErastus Snow
1818 – 18881847 vanguard companyVermont-born member of the 1847 vanguard company who, riding with Orson Pratt, was among the first to enter the Salt Lake Valley on July 21, and later directed the settlement of St. George.
Check if Erastus Snow is your ancestorFranklin D. Richards
1821 – 1899Apostle and European Mission president who organized the 1856 handcart emigration from Liverpool and, reaching Salt Lake City that October, carried the word that set the rescue in motion.
Check if Franklin D. Richards is your ancestorGeorge A. Smith
1817 – 18751847 vanguard companyNew York-born apostle in the 1847 vanguard company who later led the settlers who founded Parowan and much of southern Utah; the city of St. George is named for him.
Check if George A. Smith is your ancestorGeorge Q. Cannon
1827 – 1901Liverpool-born convert who reached the valley in October 1847, later translated the Book of Mormon into Hawaiian with Jonatana Napela, and served as Utah's delegate to Congress.
Check if George Q. Cannon is your ancestorGreen Flake
1828 – 19031847 vanguard companyBorn enslaved in North Carolina and brought west by the Flake family, he entered the Salt Lake Valley at nineteen as one of the few Black members of the 1847 vanguard company.
Check if Green Flake is your ancestorHeber C. Kimball
1801 – 18681847 vanguard companyVermont-born apostle who opened the Church's first British mission at Preston in 1837, traveled in the 1847 vanguard company, and served as Brigham Young's first counselor until his death.
Check if Heber C. Kimball is your ancestorHosea Stout
1810 – 1889NauvooBaptized in Caldwell County, Missouri, in August 1838, weeks before the expulsion, he settled at Nauvoo, clerked for the high council, served on the city police, and kept a diary of the exodus.
Check if Hosea Stout is your ancestorJacob Hamblin
1819 – 1886Ohio-born settler who reached Utah about 1850 and was called in 1854 to southern Utah, where he spent three decades as a negotiator and interpreter among the Southern Paiute and other tribes.
Check if Jacob Hamblin is your ancestorJane Manning James
1822 – 1908Free Black woman from Connecticut who walked much of the way to Nauvoo in 1843, worked in Joseph Smith's household there, and reached the Salt Lake Valley in September 1847.
Check if Jane Manning James is your ancestorJohn Rowe Moyle
1808 – 1889Ellsworth company 1856Cornish stonemason who walked west in 1856 with the Ellsworth company, the first of the ten handcart companies, and carved the words "Holiness to the Lord" on the Salt Lake Temple.
Check if John Rowe Moyle is your ancestor
Showing the 29 best-known of 159 in this category. A tree search checks your lines against all 159.
How to trace an early Latter-day Saint line
This period rewards knowing the sequence of places, because the records follow the migrations.
- 1
Anchor the family to a place and date
Kirtland, Missouri, Nauvoo, the westward crossing, and early western settlements happened in a known sequence. Establishing where your family appears narrows the record set enormously.
- 2
Use membership and land records together
Early membership records establish affiliation; land and property records at each settlement establish residence and family structure. The two together are far stronger than either alone.
- 3
Identify the overland company
If the family traveled west before the railroad, look for a named company and year. Rosters and contemporary accounts can turn a vague pioneer tradition into a specific documented journey.
- 4
Follow converts back across the ocean
Many pioneers were British or Scandinavian converts. Shipping and emigration records can connect the American migration to a home parish and an earlier generation abroad.
Rememberkin does the mechanical part of this automatically — every line, every generation, checked at once. Run the search free.
If an early Saint turns up
A proven line deserves better than a screenshot
When Rememberkin finds an early convert or pioneer in your tree, it can print the whole line—every generation between you and them, with names, dates, and portraits.
- Every generation between you and them, documented
- The relationship named plainly — 4th-great-grandmother, not a guess
- Printed as a wall chart or bound into your family book
Questions people ask
How do I trace early Latter-day Saint ancestors?
Work back to whichever ancestor first appears in Kirtland, Missouri, Nauvoo, an overland company, or an early western settlement. Then combine membership and land records with emigration and pioneer rosters. Because the community moved through a known sequence of places, one firm location and date often opens the rest of the trail.
What records exist from Nauvoo?
Membership records, land and property records, and a substantial body of contemporary accounts. Nauvoo was a substantial city in the early 1840s, and its administrative records document families in real detail. Some material was lost when the city was abandoned from 1846.
How do I find an ancestor's pioneer company?
Start with an ancestor living in the Mountain West during the mid-to-late nineteenth century and compare their arrival with overland-company rosters. The organized companies recorded travelers and arrivals, so a genuine pioneer connection can often be tied to a company and year.
What were the handcart companies?
Ten organized companies crossed the plains between 1856 and 1860 with travelers pulling their belongings in handcarts. Most completed the journey without the disaster associated with the Willie and Martin companies, which were trapped by early winter weather in 1856.
Do I need to be a church member to access these records?
No. FamilySearch is free and open to everyone regardless of faith, and this material is part of the general record. Anyone researching a family that passed through Kirtland, Missouri, or Nauvoo can use it.
Other ancestors worth checking for
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