Pioneers: Day Two

Joseph Smith Black was the son of Jane Johnston and William Young Black. He was baptized in Nauvoo when he was 8 years old by George Q. Adams, who added the Smith to his name when he was in the water. While living in Nauvoo, he went to Warsaw to go and help another family move. While he was there he remembers boys and old men hooting and yelling at him and some of them threatening to kill him because he was a Mormon.

He arrived in Salt Lake City when he was 14 years old. Later on in his life, he moved to Deseret where he became a bishop of that ward. In his obituary, the following was said about him;

"During the dam-building age to Deseret's checkered history the people were very, very poor. Bishop Black ran a large mercantile business and varied his dam building enterprise with the equally disastrous task of attempting to feed the poorer ones of his spiritual flock, and it can be truthfully said of him that no needy person ever applied to Bishop Black for aid or credit at his store and was refused. His big generous hand was ever extended to those less fortunate than himself. His confidence in the honesty of his fellowmen was unbounded. If one of his clerks in the store robbed him he forgave him and continued to treat him as a brother and a friend.

Joseph S. Black was a pioneer in all that the word, in it best sense, conveys. His career is ended, and whatever the future holds for those who have done their duty in this life, as God gave them ability and strength to do it, he will receive its fullness."