Background
He was born on November 9, 1820 in Clackmannanshire, Scotland, United Kingdom, the son of Mary (Hunter) and John Sharp, the first Mormon convert in Scotland. At the age of eight he was sent to work in the coal pits.
He was born on November 9, 1820 in Clackmannanshire, Scotland, United Kingdom, the son of Mary (Hunter) and John Sharp, the first Mormon convert in Scotland. At the age of eight he was sent to work in the coal pits.
He received little or no formal education.
In 1847 he joined the Mormon Church and the next year left for America, although he did not finally reach Salt Lake City until August 1850. He secured work in the church quarries nearby, was shortly made superintendent, and managed the difficult task of quarrying great blocks of granite to construct the foundation of the Mormon Temple.
On October 7, 1856, Brigham Young ordained him bishop of the Twentieth Ward in Salt Lake City, a position he held for nearly thirty years.
He was major and later colonel in the Nauvoo Legion, the Mormon militia. When federal troops under Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston threatened the Mormon settlements, he managed the removal of church property from Salt Lake City to points of safety. He held various local political offices and became intimately associated with many Mormon commercial enterprises: banking, manufacturing, merchandising, and telegraph service.
In 1867, when Brigham Young took a contract to construct ninety miles of roadbed for the Union Pacific Railroad from Echo Canyon to Ogden, Sharp was one of the principal sub-contractors. Later with Young he undertook other contracts for both the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific. Out of the financial settlement between the Union Pacific and Brigham Young, in which Sharp played an important role, the Utah contractors obtained a large amount of rolling stock and other railroad materials with which they developed the Utah Central Railroad, organized in 1869 to connect Salt Lake City with the transcontinental lines at Ogden. Sharp was at first assistant superintendent, later superintendent, and in 1873 president.
In January 1871, when the Utah Southern Railway was incorporated, he was chosen vice-president. He later became one of the directors of the Union Pacific. He was among the many Mormons brought to trial under the Edmunds Act forbidding polygamy, and when he was arraigned, September 18, 1885, he was one of the first to plead guilty to "unlawful cohabitation, " for which he was fined three hundred dollars and costs.
He possessed great tact in dealing with non-Mormons in business relations and thus admirably helped to bridge the gap of prejudice that had developed between the Mormons and the "gentile world" outside.
He died in 1891.
John Sharp was the first bishop of the Salt Lake Twentieth Ward for nearly thirty years. Sharp was the LDS Church's representative in negotiations regarding the construction of the First Transcontinental Railroad through Utah Territory. Under his direction the heavy stone abutments and the tunnels in Weber Canyon were constructed. He sponsored the formation of a local "institute" of young people which later gave birth to the Mutual Improvement Association, one of the most important organizations fostering social and religious solidarity among the Mormons.
Although an ardent Mormon he was never a fanatic.
Tall and impressive, with great physical endurance, he was a hard-headed man of affairs.
Quotes from others about the person
One official Mormon biographer puts it, "He had a very common-sense type of mind, was, in fact, a 'man of the world, ' notwithstanding he was a Bishop" (Jenson, Biographical Encyclopedia).
He had three wives. His first, Jean Patterson, he married in 1839; later in Utah he married two polygamous wives, Anne Wright Gibson and Sophie Smith. He was survived by five sons and eight daughters.
