The Bennion Family: A Legacy of Faith from Wales to Zion (1847-present)

The Bennion family is one of the great faithful lineages of the Latter-day Saints. From the Welsh convert John Bennion and his brother Samuel, who joined the Church in Liverpool and arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in September 1847, the family has, over five generations, given to the Church bishops and stake presidents, the educators Milton and Lowell L. Bennion (the latter the founder of the first Institute of Religion), the mission president and Seventy Samuel O. Bennion, the Apostle Adam S. Bennion, and the Pearl hero Captain Mervyn S. Bennion, who received the Congressional Medal of Honor. Their women, too—Esther Ann Birch, Cora Lindsay, Amelia Eliza Slade (fed by a stranger's charity on the 1864 trail), Lucile Cannon, and the painter Lee Udall Bennion—have carried forward a heritage of faith, sacred art, and consecrated motherhood. The Bennion family as a whole is a faith-promoting witness that the Lord honors the covenant of the faithful across the generations, turning the sacrifice of one Welsh convert in 1847 into a lineage that has blessed the whole Church.