Henry Harriman was the son of Enoch Harriman and
Sarah Fowler, and was born June 9, 1804, at Rowley (now Georgetown), Essex
county, Mass. He was baptized by Orson Hyde in
the early part of 1832.
Elder Harriman married Clarissa Boynton Later he
practiced practiced plural marriage, He had nine children on record.
In 1834 he removed to Kirtland, Ohio, and that same
year he accompanied the Prophet Joseph Smith and about two hundred other men
to Missouri in Zion's Camp. He returned to Kirtland in the fall of 1834,
and in 1835 he was ordained a Seventy under the hands of Joseph
Smith and Sidney Rigdon.
On Feb. 6, 1838, he was ordained and set apart as
one of the First Seven Presidents of Seventies, to fill a vacancy caused
by the removal of John Gaylord. This high and
responsible position he occupied until the time of his death—a period of
more than fifty-three years, and after the death of Levi
W. Hancock in 1882 until his own demise he was the Seventh (senior)
president of all the Seventies. By comparison it will be seen that Elder
Harriman occupied the same position in the Church longer than any other
man among the general authorities since the organization of the Church.
In 1838 he acted as one of the leaders of the
Kirtland Camp, which traveled about a thousand miles from Ohio to Adam-Ondi-Ahman, in Daviess county, Mo. At the latter place Elder Harriman spent a few months,
and was then forced to leave his possessions in Daviess county and remove
to Far West, where he remained until early in the spring of 1839, when
he, together with the rest of the Saints, was expelled from Missouri under
the exterminating order of Gov. Lilburn W. Boggs.
After this he took an active part in the upbuilding
of Nauvoo, until he again was made an exile in 1846, and came west during
the general exodus of the Saints, after receiving his endowments in the
Nauvoo Temple.
He finally arrived in Great Salt Lake valley in 1848,
crossing the plains in Heber C. Kimball's company.
In the spring of 1849, he became one of the four brethren who first settled
Fort Harriman, in Salt Lake county. The new settlement was named in honor
of Elder Harriman, who was also the first presiding Elder there.
In the spring of 1857 he was called on a mission
to Great Britain. In crossing the plains from Salt Lake City to the Missouri
river he acted as president of the only company of missionaries, who ever
crossed the plains with handcarts. Though fifty-two years of age, he pulled
his handcart as faithfully and ably as his younger missionary companions.
Together with nineteen other Elders from the Valley he arrived in Liverpool,
England, Aug. 4, 1857; but they all returned in 1858 owing to the so-called
Utah war, which gave occasion for nearly all the American Elders abroad
to be called home.
Elder Harriman embarked from Liverpool in the ship
"Underwriter" Jan. 21, 1858, to return home. About four years later, he
was called on the Dixie mission, where he remained about twenty-five years,
and finally removed to Huntington, Emery county, in December, 1887, where
he resided until the time of his death, which occurred May 17, 1891. During
the last few years of his life his health was poor.
Henry Harriman was one of the Elders who were present
at Adam-Ondi-Ahman, in 1838, when the Prophet Joseph declared that the
remnants of an altar found on the top of the hill, near Grand river, were
what was left of the identical altar upon which Father Adam offered sacrifice.
