Nathan Bankhead: An Enslaved Black Latter-day Saint Pioneer of the Heber C. Kimball Company (1848)

Nathan Bankhead (born c. 1828 in Alabama) was an enslaved African-American Latter-day Saint who gathered to the Salt Lake Valley in 1848, traveling in the Heber C. Kimball Company (June 7–September 24, 1848) with the John Henderson Bankhead family. Born into slavery in the South, Brother Bankhead made the westward trek across the plains and, after his freedom came, remained a faithful Latter-day Saint in Utah. His life is a faith-promoting witness of the Black Saints who, though enslaved, embraced the restored gospel and helped establish Zion in the valleys of the mountains. He is remembered in the Church History Biographical Database and among the African-American settlers memorialized at Wellsville, Utah.