George Washington Taggart

George Washington Taggart was born on November 6, 1816 in Sharon, New Hampshire to Susannah Law and Washington Taggart.

George had blue eyes, dark hair, and stood about five feet eight or nine inches tall. George worked at carpentry (planning and milling), sawing timber, repairing wagons and carding and spinning wool. George was a talented musician capable of making violins, guitars, fifes and other instruments. He wrote at least one ballad.

He married Harriet Atkins Bruce on May 7, 1843. One month after they were married, George and Harriet, along with his parents and brother Oliver, moved to Nauvoo, Illinois. On January 28, 1844, George and Harriet became the parents of a baby daughter they named Eliza Ann. The following year his dear wife, Harriet, died after a six month illness, leaving him and her baby daughter, Eliza Ann. It was a very sad time for him. In a period of two years, four members of George's family died: his brother, father, wife, and mother.

George Washington Taggart would work building the Nauvoo Temple. He would put his baby girl Eliza Ann Taggart in the wheelbarrow and push her to work.

George met and married Fannie Parks on July 1845 in Nauvoo, Illinois. Fanny was a wonderful mother to Eliza. George and Fanny had three more children: Harriet Maria Taggart, George Henry Taggart and Charles Wallace Taggart.

At the age of twenty-nine, George Washington Taggart enlisted in the Company B of the Mormon Battalion, one of five hundred men who set out between July 16-22, 1846 to commence an unparalleled march of two thousand miles on foot through the barren deserts and across the mountains of the southwest to California. George enlisted as a musician playing a fife that he made himself. The Battalion suffered from lack of water until their tonques would swell. George would walk the mules so they might live, until his feet would bleed. Of the original five hundred men only 335 reached California.

When George returned Eliza Ann was four years old and no longer remembered her father. He found his wife and child at Winter Quarters.

They traveled for Salt Lake City on July 1852 and arrived there on October 17, 1852. They eventually settled in Richville, Utah. He worked as a carpenter, joiner, and millwright assisting in building a number of grist mills, including the Chase Mill in Liberty Park (Salt Lake City)and mills in Bountiful, Farmington, and Brigham City. He also worked on the Salt Lake City Temple.

His son, James said, "George Washington Taggart did a mill for Brigham Young according to specification, and did it twice from two different plans, it proved unsatisfactory, whereupon he was told by Brigham Young: 'George, tear it up and do it to suit yourself.' He did and to the satisfaction of all concerned.

While George was working on a grist mill in Brigham City for Lorenzo Snow, he became acquainted with Clarissa Marina Rogers, now twenty. At the age of forty, George entered into plural marriage with Clarissa in December of 1856.

Together they had twelve children including two sets of twins: Clarissa Marina Taggart, Susannah Taggart, Sarah Jane Taggart, Noah Albert Taggart, Julia Marie Taggart, Marcus Taggart, Franklin Taggart, Francis Taggart, James Taggart, Alice Janette Taggart, Henry Milton Taggart, and Frederick Taggart (born when George was sixty).

George died on June 3, 1893, at the age of seventy-six, having lived his life acting "through a pure desire for the welfare of God's Kingdom. His funeral was held in Richville. Eighty-four teams followed the hearse to the cemetery. Fanny, who died May 6, 1891, and Clarissa, who died April 19, 1901, are buried beside him in the South Morgan Cemetery, Morgan, Utah.