Biography

David Leggroan was one of the many children of early western settlers who lost their lives at a young age. In David’s case he passed away when he was sixteen years old.[1] His parents, Edward “Ned” and Susan Leggroan, were born into slavery in the deep South but migrated from Mississippi to Utah Territory following the Civil War. In 1873, Ned and Susan converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City and then raised a large family in their new faith. David was the third youngest of his parent’s thirteen children and grew up in Utah and Idaho among Black Latter-day Saint pioneers.[2]

Born on 24 July 1885 in Butler, a small community southeast of Salt Lake City (present-day Cottonwood Heights), little is known of David’s childhood and adolescence. On 3 September 1885, when David was less than two months old, Susan and Ned brought him before their Latter-day Saint congregation where David received a name and a blessing. James C. Hamilton, the longtime bishop of the Latter-day Saint ward in Mill Creek, blessed David that day.[3] It was an indication of his family’s ongoing devotion to their chosen faith and of their intent to raise David as a Latter-day Saint.

David no doubt spent his early years helping at age-appropriate tasks around the home and on the family farm in Mill Creek. “The Hill” as the Mill Creek area was known, was an important community of Black Mormon settlers that included David’s mother and father as well as his aunt and uncle, Amanda and Samuel Chambers. Although David’s family never lived in Mill Creek directly, David’s father, Ned, had been one of the first to purchase land in the area and had paved the way for formerly enslaved people to develop farms, own land, and raise their families there.[4] David thus spent the first five years of his life among Utah’s Black pioneer men and women. 

When David was just five years old, his family moved from Utah to Idaho. They first settled in Milo, a rural farming community in Bonneville County, in the southeastern part of the state. It was there that David would likely follow the pattern of his older siblings and be baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, sometime after he turned eight. Unfortunately, surviving records from the Milo Ward are spotty and no baptismal date survives. David is included alongside other family members in Latter-day Saint records and his death is recorded in the Milo Ward membership book. He was likely baptized as early as 1893, after his eighth birthday, as is Latter-day Saint custom and was typical for other Leggroan children. His older siblings all received the ritual, as did his two younger sisters, Ida Bell and Mary Susan, both of whom were born and baptized while the family lived in the Milo Ward. It is likely that David was also baptized there even though a baptismal record does not survive.[5]

David would live to see his final two siblings born at Milo and no doubt helped his father and mother to establish a farm there.[6] It was also at Milo that David died of an unknown cause. The clerk who recorded David’s death in the Milo Ward membership book failed to specify a date or to list a cause. The clerk did note that David died in April 1902 and then wrote that he “died Wednesday” with no further elaboration. April 1902 had five Wednesdays, but another ward member died after David on Wednesday, April 23, which the clerk did record. David’s death was thus likely on the second, ninth, or sixteenth of April 1902. He was buried in an unmarked grave.[7]

David’s parents, Ned and Susan, were eventually laid to rest near him and all three graves now share a common headstone. David’s birthdate on that headstone, however, is in error. It indicates that David was “born 1884,” a date which his blessing in the Mill Creek Ward contradicts. The entry for that blessing was created less than two months following David’s birth and is therefore a reliable source for his date of birth. His date of death in April 1902, however, remains unknown.[8]

By Wesley Acastre

[1] Idaho, Milo Cemetery Records, David Leggroan, April 1902; Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Milo Ward, CR 375 8, box 4224, folder 1, image 41, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[2] Tonya S. Reiter, “Edward ‘Ned’ Leggroan,” Century of Black Mormons; Tonya S. Reiter, “Susan Gray Reed Leggroan,” Century of Black Mormons.

[3] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Mill Creek Stake, Microfilm 26,147, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah; “Former Bishop of Mill Creek Dead,” Deseret News (Salt Lake City, Utah) 29 November 1920, 20.

[4] Tonya Reiter, “Life on the Hill: The Black Farming Families of Mill Creek,” Journal of Mormon History 44, no. 4 (October 2018): 68-89. 

[5] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Mill Creek Stake, Microfilm 26,147, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah; Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Milo Ward, CR 375 8, box 4224, folder 1, image 14 and 41, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[6] Tonya S. Reiter, “Edward “Ned” Leggroan,” Century of Black Mormons.

[7] Idaho, Milo Cemetery Records, David Leggroan, April 1902; Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Milo Ward, CR 375 8, box 4224, folder 1, image 41, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[8] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Mill Creek Stake, Microfilm 26,147, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah; Idaho, Milo Cemetery Records, David Leggroan, April 1902; Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Milo Ward, CR 375 8, box 4224, folder 1, image 41, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

Documents

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