travel with his son, Reed Smoot, to the Hawaiian Islands. This was partly a mission for the church and partly a trip designed to improve Smoot's health. While in Hawaii, he met with King Kalakaua and taught him about the faith. Reed, in letters to his mother, wrote that his father exercised and toured the islands every day, despite being there for purpose of gaining some rest. Marriages and family In early 1838, while serving as a missionary in Missouri and Arkansas, Smoot began writing letters to a widow named Margaret Thompson McMeans Adkinson. She was six years older than Smoot. He married her on November 11, 1838 in Far West, Missouri while a prisoner of war. Once construction of the Nauvoo Temple was completed, the couple was sealed and "receive[d] their blessings". Adkinson had one son from her first marriage named William, whom Smoot adopted. Smoot described his new wife as "zealous and devoted to her religion and ready to sacrifice or endure anything to further its interests." The two were forced out of Missouri and fled to Iowa. Smoot was the only man in the company and the driver of the wagon. Adkinson then accompanied Smoot on the way to his mission in South Carolina; the couple stopped in Tennessee and, after visiting with her family, Adkinson returned north to Nauvoo. She later traveled with him to Alabama for his mission there. On January 9, 1846, Smoot began practicing plural marriage. He was sealed to his second wife, Sarah Gibbens, then to his third, Emily Hill, with the approval of Adkinson. She gave her "fullest and freest consent" for Smoot to enter into polygamy; she saw it as "a pure, chaste principle revealed to the Saints through the Prophet Joseph Smith." Hill was a widow with two children from her previous marriage, William and Artimisia. She was 39 years old, and Gibbens was 45. On November 23, 1847, once the family had crossed the plains and settled in the Salt Lake Valley, Hill gave birth to Smoot's first biological child, Albert. She eventually had three more children: Margaret, Emily, and Zina Beal. In 1850, the family relocated to Big Cottonwood Canyon. Gibbens did not emigrate to Utah and requested a divorce from Smoot in 1852. In 1855, Smoot married Diana Tanner Eldredge. The following year, he married Anne Kirstine Mauritsen, an immigrant from Brekka, Norway. Eldredge gave birth