I had decided that Warren Dusenberry and David Stuart were the missionaries that had taught and baptized James Hooper. This is not entirely true, for the following reasons:
- When Brigham Young first wrote about James Hooper, neither Dusenberry nor Stuart had begun their missions in the area. There must have been other missionaries who initiated contact, perhaps John Brown himself.
- While Stuart corresponded with James for a while and is probably the one who baptized him, Dusenberry apparently did not know of James until they visited him, 2 months after his baptism.
Other people who were nearby and may have participated in James' conversion:
Willam H. Miles
Jesse W. Crosby
Lorenzo D. Rudd
Unfortunately, I have been unable to find any records from these men during their missions. Records may surface with time.
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ReplyDeleteJames Hooper is my great-great grandfather through his daughter Sarah Jane Hooper who married Evander Lappen White. Their youngest son, Abraham Earl White (1892-1980) is my grandfather. I found a Bible with James Hooper's signature in his possession. In his family history, he wrote:
ReplyDeleteSarah Jane Hooper’s father was the only one baptized in the Church upon the arrival of the family to Utah. He was baptized in St. Louis. He was a Baptist minister before joining the Mormon Church. He preached in Indiana, Illinois and Kentucky. Judge Duesenberry of Provo and David M. Stewart of Ogden were the missionaries who converted him to Mormonism. The missionaries were in St. Louis so he went there to be baptized. The rest of the family was baptized in American Fork Canyon, under the supervision of the Pleasant Grove ward in 1870. Benjamin Driggs and Louis Harvey baptized and confirmed them the same day. (James Hayes Hooper has record of the baptisms.)
The Hooper family came to Utah the first year the railroad came to Utah. This was in the fall of 1869. They went to St. Louis where they embarked on a boat up the Missouri River to Omaha, Nebraska. On arriving at Omaha the passenger train had left and there would not be another one for a week so they took a freight train. They got off the train at Uintah when was the end of the railroad then. They finished their journey to Salt Lake City by ox team. There they stayed at the tithing corral. From Salt Lake City they went by ox team to Pleasant Grove. The ox teams had come to the tithing yard with tithing from Pleasant Grove.
The first home they lived in, in Pleasant Grove, belonged to Sam Parks. It was across the street from the central school house. There they stayed a few weeks, when they moved up American Fork Canyon. Here James Hooper built and operated a shingle mill. Here Sarah Jane Hooper lived until she was married to Evander Lappin White. He had been employed by James Hooper to chop timber for the shingle mill."