John Milton Bernhisel

John Milton Bernhisel (born John Martin Bernheisel; June 23, 1799 – September 28, 1881) was an American physician, politician, and early member of the Latter Day Saint movement. A close friend and companion to both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, he became a prominent civic and religious figure in the Utah Territory and was the original delegate of that territory in the United States House of Representatives. He also served as a member of the Council of Fifty of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), reflecting his trusted status within the church’s leadership.

Bernhisel was born on June 23, 1799, at Sandy Hill, Tyrone Township, near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. His birth name was John Martin Bernheisel, a form he later altered to John Milton Bernhisel as an adult. Little is recorded about his early childhood, but he came of age in the post-Revolutionary era in Pennsylvania, a region marked by rapid growth and expanding educational opportunities. Drawn to the medical profession, he pursued formal training at a time when professional medical education in the United States was still developing.

In 1827, Bernhisel earned a degree in medicine from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, one of the leading medical institutions in the young republic. Following his graduation, he moved to New York City, where he established a medical practice. His years in New York exposed him to urban professional life and brought him into contact with a wide range of religious and social movements, setting the stage for his eventual association with the Latter Day Saint movement.

Bernhisel became affiliated with the Latter Day Saint movement in the early 1840s and, in 1843, moved to Nauvoo, Illinois, the headquarters of the church under Joseph Smith. In Nauvoo he served as Joseph Smith’s personal physician and resided in Smith’s home, providing intimate medical and personal care to the prophet and his family. He delivered some of Emma Smith’s children and became a trusted member of the inner circle. In June 1844, when Joseph and Hyrum Smith were taken to Carthage Jail, Bernhisel accompanied them and spent time with the brothers in confinement. He was not, however, present at the jail at the moment of Joseph Smith’s death at the hands of a mob later that month.

After the death of Joseph Smith and the ensuing leadership crisis, Bernhisel cast his lot with Brigham Young and the majority of the Latter-day Saints who followed Young westward. He joined the Mormon migration to the Great Basin and, in 1848, settled in Salt Lake City in what would soon become the Utah Territory. There he continued to practice medicine, serving the needs of the growing Latter-day Saint community. His medical training and his close association with church leaders made him an important figure in both the civic and ecclesiastical life of the settlement.

Bernhisel’s political career emerged from his role as a trusted representative of the Latter-day Saints. As the Mormon settlers organized the provisional State of Deseret and sought recognition and protection from the federal government, Brigham Young selected Bernhisel to represent their interests before Congress. A member of the Whig Party, he was elected as the original delegate of the Utah Territory to the United States House of Representatives. He was chosen to the Thirty-second and to the three succeeding Congresses, serving from March 4, 1851, to March 3, 1859. During these five terms in office, he participated in the legislative process at a time of mounting national tension over slavery, sectionalism, and the status of western territories, representing the interests of his Utah constituents and the Latter-day Saint community.

As a territorial delegate, Bernhisel did not have a full vote on the House floor, but he played a significant role in advocating for Utah’s needs, including territorial organization, infrastructure, and protection of the settlers’ religious and civil rights. Contemporary Washington journalist Benjamin Perley Poore described him as “a small, dapper gentleman, who in deportment and tone of voice resembled Robert J. Walker,” noting that Bernhisel rarely participated in formal debate and that “his forte was evidently taciturnity.” In private conversation, however, Poore found him fluent and agreeable, defending what he termed “the peculiar domestic institutions of his people,” a reference to the Latter-day Saints’ practice of plural marriage. After returning briefly to his medical practice in Utah, Bernhisel again sought and won election as territorial delegate, serving in the Thirty-seventh Congress from March 4, 1861, to March 3, 1863, thus resuming his role in Washington during the opening years of the Civil War.

In addition to his congressional service, Bernhisel held other important positions in the developing Utah community. He served as a regent of the University of Utah, contributing to the establishment of higher education in the territory. Within the LDS Church, his membership in the Council of Fifty reflected his involvement in broader questions of governance, colonization, and the relationship between church and state. His dual identity as physician and politician allowed him to move between civic and ecclesiastical spheres with relative ease, and he remained a respected intermediary between Utah and the federal government.

Bernhisel’s personal life reflected both the norms of his time and the distinctive practices of early Latter-day Saints. He remained a bachelor until age forty-six, when, in March 1845, he married Julia Ann Haight, the widow of William Van Orden and the mother of five children. The couple had one child together, a son also named John Milton Bernhisel, born in 1846. Like many early members of the LDS Church, he later entered into plural marriage. Over time he was married to seven women, but by 1850 all of them except Elizabeth Barker had left the family for various reasons, leaving Barker as his principal surviving plural wife.

John Milton Bernhisel spent his later years in Salt Lake City, where he continued to be regarded as a pioneer physician, an early political representative of Utah, and a veteran leader in the Latter-day Saint community. He died at his home in Salt Lake City on September 28, 1881. Bernhisel was interred at the Salt Lake City Cemetery, where his grave marks the resting place of a man who bridged the worlds of medicine, religion, and politics during a formative period in both Utah and United States history.