Miles and four other Mormon leaders signed a letter stating that "the Anti-polygamy bill ... is unconstitutional and is an act of special legislation and ostracism, never before heard of in a republican government and its parallel hardly to be found in the most absolute despotisms, disfranchising and discriminating, as it does, 200,000 free and loyal citizens, because of a particular tenet in their religious faith."

Miles and the others said the legislation violated the Declaration of Independence's guarantee that all men had the rights of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" and the Constitution's guarantee of freedom of religion.

The lobbying paid off and the bill died in the Senate, but other antipolygamy laws remained on the books.

For a brief time, with Caroline having left, Miles and Hannah were once again in a single-wife marriage. It was then, in 1871, that Hannah gave birth to Gaskell, the grandfather of Mitt Romney.

Two years after Gaskell's birth, however, Miles met the fair-skinned Catharine Cottam, who had flowing hair, a serene smile, and was described by her brother as the "prettiest girl in St. George." Miles married Catharine in Salt Lake City on Sept. 15, 1873.

Hannah, seven months pregnant, did not attend the wedding. Instead, she prepared a room for Catharine, whom she called "a girl of good principles and a good Latter-day Saint."

"I cannot explain how I suffered in my feelings while I was doing all this hard work, but I felt that I would do my duty if my heart did ache," Hannah wrote.

Two months after Miles and Catharine were married, the child of Miles and Hannah died during delivery. Hannah blamed herself.

"I felt I had caused it by doing so much hard work," Hannah wrote.

Nearly four years later, Miles married again, taking as his wife Annie M. Woodbury, a schoolteacher.

Miles's life in St. George with Hannah, Catharine and Annie briefly settled into a comfortable, devout routine. But church leaders in Salt Lake City intervened, devising a plan to plant Mormon communities in an arc throughout the West. Miles was told by church leaders to uproot his family and help settle the town of St. Johns, Ariz.

The journey of almost 500 miles was harrowing, requiring the wagon trains to skirt the northern rim of the Grand Canyon.

"Here you can see the river hundreds of feet below you winding its way between perpendicular banks of solid rock without a tree to be seen and devoid of vegetation," Catharine wrote her parents, as quoted in a volume compiled by her great-granddaughter, titled, "Letters of Catharine Cottam Romney, Plural Wife."