to thirteen children and Mauritsen to seven. He later married Hannah Caroline Rogers in 1886 in Logan, Utah. He reportedly went to prison for a time because of his plural marriages. In addition to having six wives, Smoot was sealed to some of the deceased ancestors of his wife, including Margaret Adkinson, who had died unmarried. Smoot had twenty-four biological children by three of his wives: Hill, Eldredge, and Mauritsen. These include Reed Smoot, politician and US Senator; Brigham Smoot, missionary in Samoa; and Ida Smoot Dusenberry, member of the Relief Society General Board. Another of his daughters, Zina Beal Smoot, was married to apostle Orson F. Whitney. He also adopted eleven children over the course of his life, many of whom were the children of his wives by their previous husbands. One of these, William Cockhorn Adkinson, becameat a young agea member of the Quorum of the Seventy formed in Nauvoo. Adkinson, as well as "several of [Caroline Rogers'] children by Aaron Daniels" were sealed to Smoot in the temple. As a father, Smoot was strict in teaching his children Christian values; he wanted them to grow up to be stout believers. Their memories of him denote a stern but loving father. As was common at the time, the extended Smoot family lost multiple members to disease. When, his young grandchildren passed away, Smoot comforted the parentshis childrenthrough letters and visits. He provided his advice whenever it was asked for. Migration west Sickness prevented Smoot from leaving Nauvoo, Illinois with the first group of Mormon pioneers. He and "a large company of his southern friends" began the trek west in May 1846. Two of his wives, Adkinson and Hill, traveled with him, but Sarah Gibbens did not. By July, the group arrived in Council Bluffs, Iowa, where Smoot was called as a bishop. He was ordained to that office in January 1847 when the company reached Winter Quarters, Nebraska, and joined the other pioneers. There, Smoot was named the leader of the fourth hundred, a group of a hundred families and 120 wagons. He offered "both temporal and spiritual guidance" to his group of 317 people as they made the journey west together. Smoot's company arrived in Utah in September 1847. They were the second group of pioneers to arrive in the Salt Lake Valley. Involvement with abolitionism and slavery Smoot's southern ancestors were slaveholders, and he later became