Young, Brigham (1801-1877)

US Mormon religious leader, born in Vermont. He joined the Mormon Church, or Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in 1832, and three years later was appointed an apostle. After a successful recruiting mission in Liverpool, England, he returned to the USA and, as successor of Joseph Smith (who had been murdered), led the Mormon migration to the Great Salt Lake in Utah in 1846, founded Salt Lake City, and headed the colony until his death.

Young was preaching in the eastern USA in 1844 when the Mormon prophet and leader Joseph Smith was murdered in Nauvoo, Illinois, at that time the headquarters of the church. Young returned to Illinois, assumed leadership of most of Smith's distraught followers, and led them away from persecution to a new home near the Great Salt Lake in Utah, establishing a theocratic colony there under his strict and efficient administration. He was appointed governor of Utah territory 1850 and defied federal pressure to repudiate the Mormon practice of polygamy. Young himself had 27 wives and fathered 56 children.