Lorenzo Dow Babcock: Converted Under Heber C. Kimball's Preaching, Then Marched in the Mormon Battalion (1818–1893)

Lorenzo Dow Babcock was born July 26, 1818, in Hamilton, Madison County, New York. He was named after the famous Methodist circuit preacher Lorenzo Dow — a name that suggests his family's religious sensibility before conversion to the restored gospel.

He joined the Church and gathered with the Saints, eventually making his way to Nauvoo. When the Mormon Battalion was organized in July 1846, Babcock enlisted in Company B and marched the full route to California under Lt. Col. Philip St. George Cooke.

Babcock was one of the fortunate soldiers who completed the full march rather than being placed on the Sick Detachments at Santa Fe. He arrived in San Diego in late January 1847 and was mustered out in July.

After his discharge, Babcock worked his way back to Utah and settled in the Salt Lake Valley. He later moved to Cache Valley, where he established himself as a farmer and Church member in good standing. He attended his meetings, paid his tithes, raised his children in the faith, and bore witness in fast and testimony meetings to the hand of God in his life — particularly in the Battalion march, where he had watched men administer to the sick and seen them healed.

Lorenzo Dow Babcock died April 16, 1893, in Cache County, Utah. He had lived three-quarters of a century in a faith he had embraced as a young man in New York — the same faith that had carried him through the desert of the American Southwest on foot.