Background
Andrus was born in Wilmington, New York to Ruluf Andress and Azuba Smith.
Andrus was born in Wilmington, New York to Ruluf Andress and Azuba Smith.
He helped build the Kirtland, Nauvoo, Salt Lake, and Saint George Temples. He served as a missionary in England in the early 1840s. In 1854, Andrus recommended that a new outfitting site for emigrants going to Utah be situated four miles west of the soon-to-be-town Atchison, Kansas.
Cholera at previous outfitting sites necessitated this new location.
Atchison needed laborers to build and the emigrants needed work to earn money to outfit themselves for the overland trip to Utah, so this was a good place for an outfitting site. Milo Andrus oversaw the site in 1855.
One hundred-sixty acres were obtained and a sod fence was built around lieutenant Thirty to forty acres were planted so that the incoming emigrants would have food.
That year 2,041 people and 337 wagons left for Utah with Andrus leading one of the wagon trains.
While in Saint Louis, he preached many sermons. Among those who joined the church due to his preaching was Heinrich Eyring, who would later become a long-serving president of the Indian Territory Mission in Oklahoma, and who was the grandfather of the chemist Henry Eyring. Andrus was a major in the Nauvoo Legion during the Utah War and was a chaplain of the Utah State Legislature.
He built many roads in Utah and Southern Idaho.
He was one of the members of Zion"s Camp. He was a Bishop in Nauvoo, a Stake President in Saint Louis, a member of the Quorum of the Seventy, and was serving as a Patriarch at his death.
