Emily Dow Partridge Young, daughter of Edward Partridge and Lydia Clisbee Partridge, was born in Painesville, Ohio, February 28, 1824. Her parents joined the Church when she was about seven years old, and moved to Independence, Jackson County, Missouri. Emily was baptized when about eight years old and, with the Saints, passed through all the persecutions and mobbings in Jackson, Clay and Caldwell counties, Missouri. In 1839, she moved with the rest of her father’s family to Illinois.

She lived in Quincy, Pittsfield, and other places; then moved to Commerce, Hancock County, there they found temporary shelter in a tent. They suffered much through sickness and privation, and the father died May 27, 1840. While in the depths of poverty the Prophet Joseph Smith and his wife, Emma, offered Emily and her sister Eliza a home with them, and treated them with great kindness.

After having resided with them about a year, the principle of plural marriage was made known to them, and Emily and Eliza were married to Joseph Smith in the year 1843, Elder Heber C. Kimball officiating in performing the ceremony.

After the Prophet’s death, Emily was married to Brigham Young, September 1844. In 1846, when she was 22 years old she, with the rest of the Saints, left Nauvoo. After crossing the Mississippi river she was again a wanderer without a home or shelter, and on one occasion she sat for several hours on a log with a young babe, three months old, exposed to the pitiless blast of a blinding snow storm, cold and hungry, but the Lord tempered the elements and preserved her life and that of her little one. She lived one winter at Mt. Pisgah, Iowa and another at Winter Quarters, Nebraska, leaving for the Valley of the Great Salt Lake in the spring of 1848. She always bore a strong testimony to the truth of the Gospel. In later years Emily did a great deal of Temple work.

She was slim in person, but tall, and of a rather dark complexion. She was the mother of seven children. She died in December, 1899 and was buried in Salt Lake City, Utah. Her last home, given to her by President Young, was a two-story house on Third East Street.

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