Poor Stephen. He must have been a saint. The oldest son, twenty years older than JSW, Stephen was now forty-nine years old and his strapping, good looking brother was twenty-nine. The things they must have had to keep from Amy! Certainly Benjamin Franklin Wing, the youngest child in the family knew everything about Signa Lunden Wing and Sarah Adelia Wright Strang Wing. How much did he tell the family? I have a sense that Stephen knew everything but that Amy Pettis Wing, their mother did not. She was getting older, her health might have beem compromised by the news that her son, Joseph Smith Wing was a bigamist and had a family in Jackson County, Illinois.

Stephen Wing was a family man. He married one woman and he stayed with that woman, Olive Rice, who gave him three beautiful children; Theodore, Rosalinda and Sarah Elizabeth Wing. Stephen could no more have married another woman behind Olive's back then he could fly! In fact, I don't imagine the idea ever even crossed his mind. Stephen was a man who believed in honesty and that is why he testified for his sister-in-law, Rebecca Davis Wing at her divorce hearing from his brother, JSW.

There is no question that he did not approve of his brother's idea of running around all over hells half acre, gathering wives and abandoning them and the children he made with them. In fact, Stephen and Olive would have liked to have had more children but it just wasn't meant to be...but his brother could make and leave children like a bandit in the night. It just wasn't right.

Stephen Wing had worked hard all of his life, he stayed in Ohio on the farm that his father had developed and they were doing just fine. Of course, it was a tragedy that his father had died there in Ohio when his father and mother had come to visit the old homestead and Stephen's family. Stephen was thirty-four years old when his father died and he had to handle everything. There was no way they could even consider sending his father's body back to Illinois. Joseph Wing would have to be buried in Ohio. That was a considerable pain for Amy, Stephen's mother. The man that she had been married to for forty years and who shared nine children with her would not be next to her when she died. It was a hard pill to swallow but it was just the way it had to be.

Because he was the oldest son, it was Stephen's duty to sell the family homestead in Ohio and move his family to Pike County, Illinois. It was even harder to inform his wife, Olive, that that is what they had to do. His mother could not do it alone. Not now. He didn't even really know his younger brothers. They had moved from Ohio with Joseph and Amy so long ago. However, Amy was getting older and word was coming from Pike county that Joseph Smith & Benjamin Franklin Wing were running wild. They needed a firm hand and if anyone had a firm hand, it was Stephen. In 1845, the Stephen Wing family journeyed down the Ohio and up the Mississippi Rivers to Pike County, Wisconsin.

They stayed for a time at Newburg, Pike County, Illinois with Amy and the boys and Stephen did bring some order to the chaos that had reined supreme for a time. By 1857 Stephen purchased land in Clayton Township, now Clayton, Adams County, Illinois. Together, Stephen and his son, Theodore, who was partially crippled, built the Wingdale home at Clayton. Later on, Stephen bought and added eighty acres to the Wingdale farm for $3500.00. According to Alice Wing Jackson, the bricks used in the Wingdale Farm were made and baked out of the farm land and that the home was trimmed with "gingerbread" trim.

When JSW came suddenly back into the lives of his family he must have been taken aback by how much Adelia and Byron had grown. Adelia would now be nine years old and Byron would be six. He hadn't seen them in five and a half years. I wonder how they introduced them to him? How did they accept the pretty wife that JSW had abandoned yet another family for? Were they enamored of their new brother and sister? Because by now both JSW and Sarah were telling everyone, even the boy himself, the he was the son of Joseph Smith Wing.

So, now lets tally the sheet...JSW is twenty-nine years old. He has had four wives, five children (I am not counting James Phineas Strang Wing) and one divorce. He has gone from working as a Cooper to becoming a doctor of medicine and a businessman. He has traveled and lived in many places in and around the Great Lakes. Soon he will announce his intentions of becoming a Mormon and moving to Utah which probably caused great commotion within the family.

JSW also got busy on another front. On April 6, 1859 he wrote out a note for his mother to present to the folks at the Pike County Courthouse in Pittsfield, Illinois. In that letter, he writes that his mother can no longer care for his daughter, Adelia and that she wishes to relinquish custody to her father, Joseph Smith Wing. He signed it Amy Wing and took it to the courthouse himself.

Amy Writes the Pike County Courthouse

What about his son, Byron? It is tempting to consider that he found it very easy to leave his sons but his daughters were a different matter. It could also have been that there was no way he would be able to get Rebecca to agree to forfeit the indenture agreement she had made with his brother Stephen in regard to Byron. Perhaps Stephen even intervened and refused to relinquish the Indenture. Stephen maybe couldn't do much about Adelia but he may have fought hard to keep Byron. He probably thought JSW was a foolish young man who had already made a mess of too many lives. In fact, of all the sons that JSW would eventually have, he never named a son "Stephen". He named one Charles, he named one Benjamin but he never honored his two older brothers by naming a son for them.

In the meantime, what about Sarah and Signa? One of them was his wife and the other thought she was. Sarah must have been reeling by now. The old family story goes that Sarah was appalled to find out the JSW had been married before and had two children. I wonder what she would have thought if she knew that whenever he left for Wisconsin he was living with yet another wife and two other children? There is every reason to believe that is exactly how he played it for as long as he could. On March 18, 1860, the three story building owned by him and his brother in Black River Falls, Wisconsin burns to the ground. Another dream gone asunder.

JSW's son, Milan Wing Smith wrote in his autobiography that when the business in Black River Falls burned to the ground that the family moved to his father's farm in Trempealeau where they lived for a time. The Smith family speculates that JSW may have been run out of Wisconsin because the truth came out about his double life. I am not sure if that is what happened or not. I tend to think that it was simply time for JSW to move on. He knew Signa well enough to know that she would never accept the Mormon way of life and the polygamy that he planned to practice. The Mormon life was something that Sarah already knew. Even though she claimed that she did not ever want to be in a polygamous marriage again I am sure he felt like he had her right where he wanted her and she would accept his decision one way or another. Perhaps the kindest thing he ever did for Signa was to leave her sons with her. I suppose he could have taken them although by all accounts, Omer had never been well and he knew he could not submit him to the long trip to Utah that was becoming more and more real by the day.

On June 24, 1860, Samuel Joseph Wing, the nephew of Joseph Smith Wing, married Elizabeth Wright at Alma, Jackson County, Wisconsin.

Signa Lunden Wing made out a petition to the court in December of 1860 to be appointed guardian of her two minor sons, Omer Wing Smith, four years old and Milan Wing Smith, three years old.

Signa (Sarah) Smith Petitions the Court for Guardianship of her Two Minor Sons

Although she claimed that JSW had not been around since March of 1859, I kind of doubt that. Why would she wait almost a year and a half to petition the court for guardianship? She probably had to tell the court that he had not been around for legal reasons. There may have been some kind of time element involved that he had to be considered gone for good. The petition seems a little "desperate" which makes one think that JSW might have threatened to take his boys. Signa...who is referred to as Sarah Smith in the petition wants Guardianship and she wants it yesterday!

It most assuredly was the last time that Signa Lunden Smith would ever trust another man. Did it wrench his heart in half to hurt yet another woman and leave two darling boys behind? We will never know if he felt any remorse as he said goodbye to his beautiful family. Inevitably, someone was going to get hurt. It turned out that the first among the injured were Signa Smith and her two precious sons, Omer & Milan.

From that time on Signa Lunden Smith hid from the light. She felt shunned by having married someone who appeared to be a Mormon, seemingly casting away her Lutheran upbringing. In all reality, Signa was the most innocent of all of the wives. The most innocent and therefore the most easily broken. She imagined disgrace, she blamed herself, she never remarried and on her death certificate it is clearly stated that she was the widow of Joseph Smith. At this writing there is no evidence of a divorce between Signa Lunden Smith and Joseph Wing Smith.

I must say that of any of the wives (including my own great-great grandmother) that I honor and feel heartfelt sympathy for Signa Lunden Smith. The difference between the two mothers (Rebecca Pierce Davis & Signa Lunden Smith) is like hundreds of light years. Whereas Rebecca gave up both of her children, you can tell that Signa would die before she ever gave her children away. She went on to raise both of her sons. Omer was never healthy for reasons that are not known to us at this writing. He was an invalid and died when he was forty-five years old.

Milan went on to raise a wonderful family. He went in search of his father as he got older. He was an educated man who worked hard all of his life. He saved his money and he made a good life for himself and his family. The family in Wisconsin never changed their last name to Wing. But, they are Wings...and maybe the best of all of us.

CHAPTER ONE - CHAPTER TWO - CHAPTER THREE - CHAPTER FOUR