Jesse Nathaniel Smith was born December 2, 1834 in Stockholm, New York, the son of Silas and Mary Aikens Smith and a first cousin to the Prophet Joseph Smith. He crossed the great plains to the Salt Lake Valley in 1847 with the Mormon pioneers and in 1851 was called to help colonize Parowan, where he acted as a scout and surveyor for church colony sites in southern Utah. Before reaching age twenty-six, he served Parowan as city clerk, city councilman, mayor, and city magistrate, served Iron County as District Attorney, held the rank of captain in the militia, and became a member of the Utah Territorial Legislature and of the Parowan Stake Presidency. Called on a mission to Denmark in 1860, he twice presided over the Scandinavian Mission. As a colonizer of Arizona in 1878, he acted as an LDS agent in purchasing and securing the townsites, land, and water rights of Snowflake, Taylor, and Woodruff from the Aztec Land and Cattle Company. In Snowflake he was a farmer, stockman, organizer of a cooperative mercantile and bank, a probate judge, and a member of the Arizona Territorial Legislature. Widely traveled and self-educated, he amassed a large library, became conversant in five languages, served as the first president of the Eastern Arizona Stake from 1879 to 1887 and as the first president of the Snowflake Stake from 1887 until his death on June 5, 1906, and was called by church leaders to be a patriarch and to practice the principle of plural marriage. His five wives bore him forty-four children.