Jeduthun Averett: From the Mormon Battalion to a Life of Service — Lives to Age 85 in Springville, Utah (1816–1902)

Jeduthun Averett was born June 12, 1816, in Chesterfield County, South Carolina — the second of approximately 14 children in a family that moved to Alabama not long after his birth. His older brother Elisha had already joined the Church, and Jeduthun followed.

Jeduthun enlisted in the Mormon Battalion in 1846 alongside his brother Elisha, both serving in Company A. Together they completed the 2,000-mile march from Council Bluffs, Iowa, to San Diego, California.

After his discharge in July 1847, Jeduthun made his way to the Salt Lake Valley. He settled in Springville, Utah, where he married Holly Jane Tingle and later Jane Singleton, Mary Taylor, and Nancy McFarlane.

The Averett brothers — Jeduthun and Elisha — were among the steady, unnamed pillars of the settlement era: soldiers who marched, then builders who stayed. Jeduthun worked, raised a family, attended his meetings, and bore witness to the faith that had brought him from South Carolina to a desert valley.

Jeduthun Averett died January 7, 1902, in Springville, Utah, at the age of 85. He outlived his battalion discharge by 55 years. He had seen Nauvoo built and destroyed, had marched to California and back, had watched the Salt Lake Temple rise over the four decades of his Utah life. He died in the same faith he had received as a young man in the South.