This biographical sketch adapted from the LDS
Biographical Encyclopedia, compiled and edited by Andrew Jenson, Volume
1, page 242 and from other sources.
=======================================
Titus Billings , second counselor to Bishop Edward
Partridge from 1837 to 1840, was born March 25, 1793, at Greenfield, Franklin
county, Massachusetts [the son of Ebeneezer Billings and Esther Joyce]
Titus learned the trade of a carpenter. On February 16, 1817 he married
Diantha Morley, the sister of Isaac Morley. He later practice plural marriage
and fathered a total of nineteen children of record.
He was the second person baptized in Kirtland, Ohio,
in November, 1830 by missionaries to the Lamanites. He was ordained a Deacon
by October 1831. On March 10, 1832 he was ordained an Elder by Thomas
B. Marsh. He was appointed by revelation to move to Missouri and in
the spring of 1832 he left Kirtland, and moved to Jackson county, Missouri,
where he passed through the terrible persecutions of 1833. On the night
"the stars fell" (Nov. 13, 1833), he was engaged in helping the Saints to
move, and the following day he moved his family across the Missouri river
to Clay county.
He was ordained a High Priest and counselor to Bishop
Edward Partridge Aug. 1, 1837, under the hands of Edward
Partridge and Isaac Morley, his brother-in-law.
He participated in the Battle of Crooked River and
afterwards laid down his arms in Far West after taking an active part in
its defense. In company with other brethren, whose lives were sought by
the mobbers, he left Far West in the night to escape mob violence. In traveling
northward through the wilderness, he was three days without food but finally
reached Quincy, Ill.
Bishop Billings was released at the death of
Bishop Partridge on May 27, 1840.
Subsequently he located at Lima, Adams county, Ill.,
and at the time of the "house burnings" in 1845 removed to Nauvoo. While
in Nauvoo he received his Endowment in the Nauvoo Temple on December 13,1845
and was sealed to Diantha Morley January 30, 1846.
In common with the Saints generally he was forced
into exile, and after passing through untold sufferings on the journey,
he reached Great Salt Lake valley in 1848, crossing the plains as captain
of the first fifty in Heber C. Kimball's company.
In the fall of 1849, together with others, he was called by the presidency
of the Church to settle Sanpete Valley; in compliance with which he became
one of the first settlers of Manti.
Subsequently he located in Provo, Utah county, where
he resided until his death, which occurred at that place Feb. 6, 1866.
