How did Bountiful city receive its name?

According to Tom Tolman, Bountiful historian and city councilman, the town was originally named Sessions Settlement.

He said the city's Web site, www.bountifulutah.gov, includes an accurate look at the city's history, as written by another historian, Charles R. Mabey.

"On the 27th day of September, 1847, Perrigrine Sessions, with his family, moved about nine miles north of the newly established Mormon settlement of Salt Lake City and camped," Mabey wrote on the Bountiful city Web site.

"He had traveled beyond the Hot Springs to find feed for his flocks and herds. Here he constructed a dugout with skins for a roof and wintered, he and his family being the sole occupants of the place until the spring of 1848. This dugout was located at approximately 250 North and 280 West. He was thus the founder of Utah's second settlement and the first white man to make a home in what we now know as Davis County. "

Other families arrived by the next spring and summer in Bountiful.

"The place was first known as Sessions' Settlement, but with the ecclesiastical designation of North Canyon Ward, both titles being employed rather indiscriminately until 1855, when it was officially named Bountiful. A more fitting appellation could not have been chosen for what was even then called the garden spot of Utah," Mabey wrote.

Tolman said the official naming of Bountiful was a suggestion by Brigham Young.

"On Tuesday afternoon, Feb. 27, 1855, Brigham Young, along with Apostles George A. Smith and Ezra T. Benson, was visiting the North Kanyon (sic) Ward in Sessions Settlement," Tolman wrote in an e-mail to the Deseret Morning News.

"The people were crowded into this small little building, with others outside looking through the windows. Brigham Young walked out to view the fine crop of wheat waving in the breeze and asked, 'Brother Sessions, have you decided yet on what you are going to call your little settlement?' 'No' was the answer. Brigham Young again stated, 'This view reminds me of 1st Nephi, chapter 17 where Lehi took his family into the land of Bountiful '

(1 Nephi 17:5, "And we did come to the land which we called Bountiful, because of its much fruit and also wild honey;")

"After some discussion, it was then officially accepted by those present that the name of the settlement be changed to "Bountiful."

• Regarding some claims that Bountiful's first name was Call's Settlement," Tolman reports that Anson Call didn't even arrive in the Salt Lake Valley until September of 1848. He came to Session's Settlement a few days after his arrival in 1848 and only stayed until Brigham Young called him on a "settlement mission" in 1850 after which he helped to set up many of Utah's early colonies, and the came back to live and build his home in Bountiful.

"Call's Settlement" is also not mentioned in Les Foy's book, "The City Bountiful," 1975. It is not mentioned either in "East of Antelope Island" or in "A History of Davis County," by Glen Leonard.

So, that early title appears incorrect.

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E-mail: lynn@desnews.com