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Cannon Angus M.

As Salt Lake Stake president for 28 years, Angus Munn Cannon had a profound impact on the Church, the community, and his family. The second son and fourth child of George Cannon and Ann Quayle, he was born in Liverpool, England, 17 May 1834. Elder John Taylor, who had married Leonora, Angus's aunt, converted the family and baptized them on 11 February 1840. The family sailed from Liverpool in September 1842. After six weeks his mother died and was buried at sea. When his father also died in 1844, Angus lived with his sister, Mary Alice, and her husband, Charles Lambert, after arriving in Nauvoo. As one of the last to leave Nauvoo, Angus experienced the miracle of the quail. At Winter Quarters he helped build a house to provide shelter for the family. They arrived in Salt Lake City in early 1849.

At first Angus worked as a farmer and woodcutter but later supported his family through ranching and mining. In 1854 Angus received a mission call to serve in the eastern United States. As a consequence of the Utah War, he was called home in 1858. Later that summer he married two sisters he had met in Delaware, Ann Amanda and Sarah Maria Mousley. He was called to the "Cotton Mission" and thereby helped settle St. George. He returned to Salt Lake in 1867 because of ill health. Ten years later he was called as president of the Salt Lake Stake, which then included Salt Lake, Tooele, Davis, Morgan, Summit, and Wasatch Counties. His presidency established many significant precedents for Church policy. Angus married four more wives in the 1870s and 1880s: Clarissa Cordelia Moses Mason, Martha Hughes, Maria Bennion, and Johanna Danielsen. As a polygamist he was convicted of unlawful cohabitation and served six months in the penitentiary.

In 1904 Angus was released as stake president and called as patriarch. He died 7 June 1915 in Salt Lake City, and his funeral services were held in the Assembly Hall on Temple Square, a building he had helped to erect.

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