BY DARYL JAMES
FROM 'JAMES/HATCH ONE MINUTE HISTORIES' (1994)
Lorenzo Hill Hatch was born Jan. 4, 1826, in Lincoln, Vermont. At 14 he heard missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and accepted their message.
He shared it with his mother, Aldura Sumner, and they both were baptized in February 1840. His father joined the Church that fall and quickly sold the farm to move his family to Nauvoo. However, before the family could move, Lorenzo's mother died and his eldest brother, John, became sick with dropsy of the bowels.
"Sometime in the month of August 25 or 26, we took leave of our friends and country, leaving John very sick," said Lorenzo. "This was the greatest trial I ever had in my life up to this date."
John died Sept. 7, 1842, six weeks before the family arrived in Nauvoo. Lorenzo's father bought a farm six miles from Nauvoo and also a lot near the Temple for a house. Lorenzo's father built the house in February 1843, but died from the bilious fever a few months later on June 25, 1843.
Lorenzo was 18 at this time and lived with his older brother, Jeremiah. However, on April 14, 1844, Joseph Young ordained Lorenzo a Seventy and sent him on a mission to Vermont with Thomas E. Fuller. This mission was to advocate Joseph Smith as President of the United States; however, the mission ended shortly with the Prophet's martyrdom on June 27, 1844.
"It was a very sorrowful time when these people, the Prophet and Patriarch, were taken away from the Church," said Lorenzo. "I went to work immediately to obtain means to get back to my home in Nauvoo."
After returning to Nauvoo, he and Jeremiah made preparations to go with the Saints to Utah. He left with the early company of emigrants and built bridges, made roads and did other pioneer work.
On Feb. 3, 1846, he married Hannah Fuller, a woman he had met while in New York on his first mission. Hannah died in Nebraska on Aug. 10, 1847. After delaying in Missouri, Lorenzo finally arrived in Utah on Sept. 15, 1850.

(Why did Hannah marry Lieut Samuel L. Gully in Nebraska? Would that make Lorenzo a Widower if his wife remarried before she died? Noted by Corn Chips)

As a widower, Lorenzo married Sylvia Eastman in Salt Lake in 1851. Three years later he married Catherine Karren in Lehi, Utah. Finally, he married Alice Hanson on Jan. 2, 1860. Among the four wives, Lorenzo had 24 children. He lived with Sylvia, Catherine and Alice in one house in Lehi until the Church called him to serve as Bishop in Franklin, Idaho.
He lived in Franklin until 1876, when the Church asked him to visit the Saints in Arizona with Daniel H. Wells and others. "When our boat was crossing the Big Colorado it was sunk," said Lorenzo. "Brother Lorenzo Roundy was drowned, and I was taken off the top of the carriage that was going down the rapids."
Lorenzo preached to the Indians in New Mexico and finally settled his families in Woodruff, Arizona. He died at 84 in Logan, Utah, on April 20, 1910.

Earliest known photograph of Lorenzo, at about age 31, taken while on his mission to England in 1856-58.