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My deepest thanks to Suzi Rogers and Jenny White, both great-great granddaughters of Joseph Smith Wing and Signa Lunden Anderson. They wrote to me very recently that they had found my website and were surprised to find out about our great-great grandfather's numerous marriages. They also sent me the picture above and much information...with more to come.

I placed a yellow dot on Milan's pant leg to identify him. The little girl in the photo is Milan's granddaughter, Lois Wing Smith. When they wanted to tease her, her dad would tell her that since they knew the truth about their heritage, they were going to change their name to Wing...that used to cause her to panic because then she would be Lois Wing Wing.

Milan Wing Smith was born on February 10, 1858 to Signa Anderson and Joseph Smith Wing. Joseph Smith Wing married Signa Anderson under the name of Joseph Wing Smith. Milan was the youngest son of this union, his brother, Omer Smith, was born October 26, 1856. It appears that Joseph Smith Wing kept this part of his life a secret from the family in Utah until Milan made a trip out there to find and claim his rightful parentage and he was greeted with warmth and acceptance from all of his half brothers and sisters.

Signa was properly known as Signa Lunden Anderson, she supposedly later changed her name to Sarah to sound more American. A Norwegian, she was born on May 17, 1834 at Fonsdal, Norway. She arrived with her family in Muskego, Racine Co., Wisconsin at the age of eight years old. She lived there for eleven years.

While married to Signa, Joseph Smith Wing took up with Sarah Adelia Wright Strang, the widow of James Jesse Strang. It is highly probably that he introduced himself to the young widow as a single man. When Signa's brothers found out about his "marriage," to Sarah, they ran him out of town...or at least that is the way the story goes. Omer and Milan remained with their mother in Wisconsin.

If we trace his bigamous, womanizing footsteps...we can trace Joseph Smith Wing from Illinois to Chickasaw County, Iowa where he married the hapless Elizabeth Gerrard/Gerrad on September 5, 1853. The only problem with his marriage to Elizabeth was that he was already married...to my great-great grandmother, Rebecca Pierce Davis.

There is every reason to believe that poor Elizabeth had no idea that she was marrying a married man...in fact, if family legend is reliable, her brothers ran him out of town when they discovered his duplicity.

In an amazing admission, Joseph Smith Wing (who had yet to refer to himself as a doctor) reveals his bigamous marriage to his wife, Rebecca Pierce Davis Wing, in a letter that he writes to her from somewhere in Wisconsin, date unknown but probably in the early months of 1854.;

"I married a girl the fifth of September and lived with her some three months when we disagreed and parted. I shall never see her again."

I can only imagine the outrage that my great-great grandmother must have felt when she read those words.
While her husband was living in matrimony with another woman, Rebecca was busy tending to his two small children, Adelia and Byron. In fact, Byron would not even be a year old when his father married Elizabeth.

Be that as it may, two more letters were sent to Rebecca. My intuition is that while he might have expected Rebecca to be mad, he wasn't prepared for the scope of her anger. His other two letters strike me as unsympathic and vengeful.

At this point we lose track of Joseph Smith Wing. Rebecca began divorce proceedings in the summer of 1854, her divorce being granted in September of that year.

When we finally rediscover Joseph Smith Wing, he has changed his name to Joseph Wing Smith and married, date unknown at this time...and he has a son, Omer Smith, born October 26, 1856. A second son, Milan Wing Smith was born on February 10, 1858. It was also in 1858 that Benjamin Wing and his partner, Joseph Wing Smith, built a 3 story building on Lots 34, 35, 36 & 37 in the Black River Falls, Wisconsin Business District.

What is interesting is that Joseph Smith Wing (alias Joseph Wing Smith) had everything going for him; two young sons, his own Lumber and Mercantile business, why would he screw it up by getting involved with yet another woman? But, that is exactly what he did. In fact, his youngest son, Milan was born in February of 1858 and his daughter, Elizabeth Jane Wing, by Sarah Adelia Wright Strang was born November 27, 1858.

What a guy....let's see, if Milan was born in February and if we assume that Elizabeth was full term...Milan was about a month old when his father and Sarah Wright Strang copulated and conceived their baby daughter.

Apparently Joseph Smith Wing was maintaining two households. Certainly Signa Anderson was unaware of Sarah Wright Strang, and very probably, Sarah was unaware of Signa. Somehow, someway, the truth came to light, according to the Smith family in Wisconsin, once again the male members came to the rescue and ran Joseph Smith Wing, "Joseph Wing Smith," out of town.

We do not know the time elements of all of these events. We do know that on Wednesday, April 6th, 1859, Joseph Smith Wing appeared before the court of Pike County with a document that was supposedly written by his mother, Amy Wing.

And it is only as I write this paragraph that it occured to me that Amy Wing did not write that document. In fact, that is where the kidnapping story comes from I am sure. My gut feeling is that Amy was unaware of what Joseph Smith Wing was up to on that Wednesday. The story is persistent that Joseph Smith Wing just took his daughter and hit the road and now I believe that is exactly what happened. Byron, his son, was in the custody of Joseph's brother, Stephen Wing, he knew he could never get by with stealing Byron. But, his mother was 71 years old...Joseph Smith Wing was not her youngest son, but right next to it. She would forgive him anything, his brother Stephen would not.

In an unrelated event...or was it unrelated? On Sunday, March 18, 1860 a fire swept through the building that belonged to Benjamin Wing and his partner "Joseph Wing Smith," destroying everything. Could this have been about the same time that Signa's brothers discovered that Joseph Wing Smith was really Joseph Smith Wing and that he was living with Sarah Adelia Wright Strang, the father of her young daughter? Could Rebecca Pierce Davis Wing been hot on the trail of her ex-husband who took her daughter through a surreptitious and deceptive legal maneuver?

In other words, was the fire an accident? Did Joseph Smith Wing set the fire? Could Signa Anderson's brothers have set the fire? Could some of the Davis brothers tried to track Joseph Smith Wing down because he had "kidnapped" Adelia Wing and somehow set the fire? Or, did Elizabeth Gerrard's male family members track Joseph Smith Wing down to Black River Falls, Wisconsin? It just seems like the fire was an unlikely occurance in the midst of everything else.

We will certainly never know for sure what happened. We do know that by now...in fact, when he wrote the letter for the court at Pike County, Illinois, Joseph Smith Wing, was calling himself a doctor. We also know that he packed up Sarah Adelia Wright Strang, her son, James, by James Jesse Strang, their young daughter, Elizabeth, and his daughter by Rebecca Pierce Davis, Adelia Wing, and they hit the trail for Utah in 1862. It was at Sweet Water,American Plains, Wyoming that Sarah Adelia Wright Strang gave birth to her second daughter, Mary Arminta Wing, on May 26, 1862.

In his wake, Joseph Smith Wing, alias Joseph Wing Smith, left behind some broken hearts...and shattered dreams, if not lives. The cooper, turned business owner, turned doctor, began his life anew in Utah, a born again Mormon, a practicing polygamist, his past a distant life that could have belonged to someone else.

The Smith's in Wisconsin say that Joseph Smith Wing went back to Black River Falls, Wisconsin, when Milan was 10 years old. The story goes that he asked Milan if he knew who he was and Milan answered, "Yes, you are my father."

The Smith family tells me that they have a picture somewhere of Milan Wing Smith and his half-brother, Byron Wing, my great grandfather. The picture was taken when Eldon J. Smith, Milan's son, drove Milan to Illinois to meet Byron Wing. That is a picture I would love to see.