Hugh Findlay and Catherine Ann Taylor Partington

Hugh Findlay

Hugh Findlay (pictured above) is my great-great-great-great grandfather, born in Scotland in 1822. He was baptized in Scotland in 1844. He was married in 1844, but his wife died a few years later after the birth of their second child.

His first mission took nine years. He started in England and Scotland, and from there went to India where he was the first missionary for the Church. He also served in China before finishing his mission, and then went California and from here crossed the desert into Milford and then to Salt Lake City. He married Catherine Ann Partington in Salt Lake in 1856. They had nine children.

In 1878 he was called to fill a mission to open the mission on the Shetland Islands. While here, he was called to preside over the Scotch mission. He had no money to pay his steamboat passage to Scotland, but he showed unwaivering faith. He packed his suitcase, ready to obey, and walked to the wharf where he was to sail. As he passed the post office he asked for his mainland received a letter from a strange lady who wrote him of her interest in articles he had written for the Millenial Start and enclosed for him a five pound note.

In the Fall of 1869, Brigham Young called Hugh Findlay to help settle the Bear Lake country, where he helped settle Fish Haven, Idaho along with Henry Howell.

Catherine Ann Taylor Partington

The story of Catherine is told through her parents (my great-great-great-great-great grandparents), Ralph Partington and Ann Taylor. Ralph Partington was born in 1806 in England, and Ann Taylor was born in 1810 in England. Ann was among the first English women to join the Church when she was baptized in the River Ribble in 1837. Ralph and Ann immigrated to Nauvoo with their four children aboard the ship Swanton in 1843. When they landed, they both came down with malaria, which kept them from supporting their family for a time.

They were forced by mobs to leave Nauvoo in 1846, and they ended up in Iowa with no provisions to cross the plains. They moved to St. Louis where Ralph worked as a carpenter until they had enough money to leave for Utah. The family traveled as part of the Mclawson Company and arrived in Utah in 1853, when their daughter Catherine was 20 years old. It was in Salt Lake that their daughter Catherine married Hugh Findlay.

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