ENOCH BARTLETT TRIPP
29 May 1823 – 25 Jan 1909

Enoch is my third great grandfather on my mother’s father’s side. He was born in Bethel, Maine and traces his ancestry on his mother’s side to Josiah Bartlett, a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

Enoch was a businessman, a boot maker, a shop owner and a school teacher. He came to Nauvoo, Illinois as the Mormons were being driven out, originally intending to profiteer from their evacuation. While in Nauvoo, he stayed with his aunt, Patty Bartlett Sessions and his cousin, David Sessions. After meeting with Heber C. Kimball and Willard Richards, he quickly converted to Mormonism. In Nauvoo, he married Roxanna Billings Tripp in one of the last endowement ceremonies performed in the Nauvoo Temple.

Enoch was asked to stay in Nauvoo since he was unknown and could help settle Mormon church affairs. He was close to Lucy Mack Smith and Emma Smith and taught some of Emma and Joseph Smith Jr’s children: Joseph III, Frederick, Alexander, and an adopted daughter named Julia.

With his first wife and children, he finally departed for the Utah Valley after being prompted by a voice one day, which told him “Get ye up into the valley of the mountains”. His family traveled to Utah without incident, arriving on July 27, 1853.

Enoch was a consummate diarist and wrote over 1,700 pages of journal entries detailing his activities from 1845 through 1908, the year before he died. His original journals are now part of the special collections at the Harold B. Lee library at the Brigham Young University.

Enoch was one of the last people to speak with Lucy Mack Smith, the mother of the first Mormon prophet, before she died; a meeting which he detailed in his journal in November 1855. He had stopped by Nauvoo to see her on his way back from serving a mission in Maine:

“I called upon the Prophet’s Mother and found her in a lonely room in the eastern part of the house in her bed and very feeble. Upon approaching her bedside and informing her who I was, she arose in her bed and placing her arms around my neck kissed me exclaiming, ‘I can now die in peace since I have beheld your face from the valleys of the mountains.'”