Bernard Snow

By trade Bernard Snow was a millwright and rancher, but he was also noted for the poems, hymns, and patriotic speeches he wrote. He wrote the words for “God Bless Our Prophet Dear” (#24), which is included in the 1985 Hymns of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Snow graduated from Cambridge University. He was also an accomplished actor and helped establish several theater companies in Utah. He also performed in numerous plays as the lead actor.

He was a business partner of Thomas Bullock, with whom Snow had served a mission to England. He served in the territorial legislature in the 1860s.

Snow was born on January 22, 1822, in Pomfret, Vermont. His first wife was his cousin Louisa Melvina King. They had four children but lost three of them within a year of each one’s birth. Their son Sidney died at age eight after having traveled with the pioneers to Utah Territory when he was six. Louisa died on July 7, 1850, on the trek west, and is buried on the Great Plains near the Mormon Trail. In 1849, soon after his baptism, Snow had sailed around Cape Horn to join the California gold rush. In 1851, he traveled east to Salt Lake City, Utah, only to find that Louisa had died coming westward from their Massachusetts home to meet him. 

Snow practiced plural marriage beginning with his second wife, Alice Smith. In total he married eight women and most of them lived with him for a time on his farm and ranch in Sanpete County. He eventually owned five homes in Utah and one in Weiser, Idaho. He was visiting his fifth wife in Weiser when he fell ill and died on February 22, 1893.