Pioneer: 2011 Vol.58 No.3

As a forty-four-year-old confirmed bachelor
in Nauvoo, Bernhisel had been urged by Joseph
Smith to get married. He did so in 1845, to a
widow with six children, by whom he had one
son. He then entered plural marriage, marrying
six additional wives. Only his last wife, Elizabeth
Barker, bore him other children—she had six. For
one reason or another, by 1851 all his wives had
left him except Elizabeth.
Bernhisel served as a member of the first
Board of Regents of the University of Deseret (now
University of Utah), was elected vice-president of
ZCMI (1868–1873), and attended the Salt Lake
School of the Prophets and the meetings of the
Council of the Fifty until 1880. On 28 September
1881, he died in Salt Lake City.
Excerpts from Lynn M. Hilton and Hope A. Hilton,
”John Milton Bernhisel,” Utah History Encyclopedia,
University of Utah, www.media.utah.edu/UHE/b/
BERNHISEL,JOHN.html.
constructed between July, 1861, and March, 1862,
on the northwest corner of State and First South
streets. Begun by Brigham Young and carried out
as a community project, this majestic theatre (to
speak of it as merely a building does not convey
its character) for two generations was one of
the great American theatrical landmarks, and its
razing in 1928 was one of the bitterest pills Salt
Lakers were ever asked to swallow in the name of
progress, made the more bitter by the fact that for
some years afterward a gasoline station did business
on the site.
A modest building, housing the Mountain
States Telephone & Telegraph Company, now
stands there, with only a mournful plaque on its
wall to summon up past glories.
In the first year of the Salt Lake
Theatre, Colonel Patrick Edward Connor, commanding
a regiment of California–Nevada volunteers,
established on the bench east of the city a
Temple Block
Pioneer 2011 volume 58 number ■ ■
3 23 www ■
sonsofutahpioneers
■
org