Philip Beesom Lewis

Born in Marblehead, Massachusetts; married Maria Theresa Bonney in 1837; baptized with his wife in November 1842; moved to Nauvoo, Illinois; contributed funds to send Addison Pratt, Benjamin Grouard, and others on missions to South Pacific in 1843; became widower in Garden Grove, Iowa, in 1846; married Jane Amanda Stevens Bullock while living at Winter Quarters, Nebraska, in 1848; immigrated to Salt Lake Valley that same year; helped settle Parowan in 1850; called on a mission to Society Islands; while in California, Parley P. Pratt appointed him president of Hawaiian mission instead; sailed for Hawai‘i in August 1851 in company with his wife, Francis, Mary Jane Hammond, and John Woodbury; labored primarily on O‘ahu; assumed responsibility for tin shop that Edward Dennis sold to the mission in January 1854; remained in Hawai‘i when his wife left for California because of poor health in November 1854; his wife died in 1855 prior to his release; returned to Utah in 1856; married Mary Scott, settled in Nineteenth Ward, and worked as tinsmith; helped establish southern Utah settlement of St. George in 1862 as part of Cotton Mission; moved to Kanab, Utah, after 1870, where he died. (See Jenson, BE, 3:672–73; MMH, biographical sketches; Barney, Stevens Genealogy, 237–39; Ellsworth, Journals of Addison Pratt, 593; Lyman, Payne, and Ellsworth, No Place to Call Home, 360, 362; Church Historian’s Office, “History of the Church,” Oct. 19, 1862; “Local and Other Matters,” Deseret News, Dec. 5, 1877; Lewis journal; Lewis autobiography, in Seventies Quorum Records, Twelfth Quorum; GQC journal, frequent references, Aug. 1851–July 1854.)