Joseph Stacy Murdock was an early Mormon pioneer and colonizer of the West. He was a contemporary of Joseph Smith the founder of the Mormon Church (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) and served the prophet as a body guard. He had a long and eventful life and lived on the ragged edge of the Mormon frontier. Joseph Murdock and his family originated from Hamilton, New York and while living there joined the Mormon church and shortly thereafter moved with the body of the Church to Nauvoo, Illinois. At Nauvoo, he suffered scorn and abuse along with the Prophet and the other saints. After the Church was expelled from Nauvoo, he lived through the hard times at Winter Quarters and came west to Utah with the second pioneer band in 1847. In Utah Territory, he became a strong arm for Brigham Young and helped pioneer Davis County, White's Fort and American Fork. He served a special mission to bring mail from the Green River in Wyoming to Salt Lake City. Later, he settled the Carson Valley in Nevada, but had to abandon everything to return to Salt Lake City to fight in the Utah War. Afterwards, under the direction of Brigham Young, he was called to preside as the first Mormon bishop in the Heber Valley of Utah. During Utah's Black Hawk Indian War he served as a peacemaker by making a treaty with a band of the Ute Indians. He then was sent to colonize the Muddy River territory of Nevada - a terrible experience in which he and his family suffered greatly. During his days as a new member, Joseph Smith once stated that Joseph Murdock would one day have a large posterity - something he could not understand since he and his first wife were childless. But later he lived the Mormon practice of "plural marriage," and eventually have five wives - one of which was a full-blooded Shoshone Indian – and many children. Today, his posterity is in the many tens of thousands; scattered across the Intermountain West and throughout the United States. The life of Joseph Murdock was one of adventure. The times in which he lived spanned an era from the first western settlements in the Great Basin area of the American west to the dawn of the twentieth century, from Indian villages to modern cities, from ox teams to gas powered automobiles. (adapted from "Advancing the Mormon Frontier: The Life and Times of Joseph Stacy Murdock," by George Thompson)