Titus Billings

Titus Billings was a member of the Presiding Bishopric of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He served as the second counselor to Bishop Edward Partridge from 1837 to 1840 when he was released at the time of Partridge’s death.

Billings was born on March 25, 1793, in Greenfield, Massachusetts. He learned the trade of a carpenter. He was also a stonemason and musician. He was a member of Sidney Rigdon’s Campbellite congregation before he was baptized in Kirtland, Ohio, in November 1839. He was ordained an elder on March 10, 1832, by Thomas B. Marsh. He participated in the skirmish at Crooked River in 1838 during the Missouri War. He labored on the Kirtland Temple as a stonemason and carpenter. Later he helped build the Nauvoo Temple. He was ordained a high priest by Edward Partridge and Isaac Morley. He served a mission to New England in 1842.

Billings married Diantha Morley, sister of Isaac Morley, in 1817. They were sealed in the Nauvoo Temple on January 30, 1846. He was a captain of fifty in Heber C. Kimball’s company that crossed the plains and gathered in the Salt Lake Valley. He settled in the Bountiful, Utah, area. Later, in 1849, he helped settle the Sanpete Valley and was one of the first settlers of Manti. He later moved to Provo, Utah, in 1864, where he died in 1866.

He was called to practice plural marriage and he married previously divorced Mary Ann Tuttle in January 1854. She bore him four children. She divorced him and moved to Bicknell, Utah, where she remarried. Later she was resealed to Billings and changed her name back to Billings.

Billings and his wife Diantha had nine children. While in Sanpete County, they bought a native American girl, as sometimes happened when the pioneers saw the cruel treatment of women and children taken as prisoners and slaves when one tribe was victorious over another tribe. They named the girl Rose, and raised her as a daughter.