Mitt's LDS roots run deep

Soon, Hannah arrived. Then, more than a year after Romney arrived in Mexico, Catharine joined them. A festive reunion followed, with Miles, his three wives, and their children. "21 of us all together had a splendid dinner," Catharine wrote her parents.

The town, meanwhile, began to take shape, due in significant part to Gaskell Romney. At 15, he helped build the canal that irrigated the fields, and helped build a family farm known as Cliff Ranch, in the mountains overlooking Colonia Juarez.

Then the family's world came crashing down once again. Back in Utah, some of the same LDS leaders who had urged Romney to create a refuge for polygamy now turned against the practice.

In September 1890, church President Wilford Woodruff issued what was called the Manifesto: "I now publicly declare that my advice to the Latter-day Saints is to refrain from contracting any marriage forbidden by the law of the land."

The careful wording of the Manifesto might have given some solace to the Romneys. They may have believed that Woodruff was referring to the law in the United States, not Mexico. They continued their practice of plural marriage but even more isolated than before. Indian attacks and crop failures were common.

Miles moved to a nearby town called Colonia Dublan and, in 1897, seven years after the Manifesto, married for a fifth time, to a wealthy widow named Emily Henrietta Eyring Snow, the only wife with whom he did not have children.

Gaskell, meanwhile, married Anna Amelia Pratt, who would become Mitt Romney's grandmother. Anna descended from one of the most important families in the LDS faith. Her grandfather, Parley Pratt, had 12 wives and was chosen by Joseph Smith as one of the 12 apostles.

Gaskell and Anna broke with their family traditions and did not engage in plural marriage.

After 12 years of marriage, the couple had a boy whom they named George W. Romney, the fourth of their seven children.

Revolution and return

The family lived happily in Mexico, where Gaskell and his family operated a prosperous ranch. But in 1912, after a revolution that ousted dictator Porfirio Diaz, rebel factions began mounting attacks throughout the countryside. Gaskell and other Mormons stockpiled guns. In July, the Romneys learned that hundreds of revolutionaries were nearby.