Udall family
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| Place of origin | United States |
|---|---|
| Members |
Stewart Udall Mo Udall Tom Udall Mark Udall Mike Lee Gordon Smith |
| Connected families | Hunt, Stewart, Lee, Kimball |
The Udall family is a U.S. political family rooted in the American West. Its role in politics spans over 100 years and four generations. Udall politicians have been elected from four different states: Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Oregon. If viewed as a combined entity, the Udall-Hunt-Lee family has been elected from six states: Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Oregon, and Utah.
Three Udall family cousins were nominated by the two major American political parties for the United States Senate elections of 2008, of which the two Democrats were elected and seated in 2009.
David King Udall can be considered the family's founder. He was born in St. Louis, Missouri, to David Udall and Eliza King, recent Mormon converts from England. They immigrated to the United States in 1851. The family travelled across the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains by ox cart and settled in Nephi, Utah. The elder David later became a Mormon bishop.
In this environment, the younger David grew up to be a fervent Mormon as well. He married Eliza Stewart and they settled in Kanab, Utah. Shortly after their marriage, David left to serve as a missionary in England for two years. In 1880, he was called by his church to move with his family to St. Johns, Apache County, Arizona, in order to become the local bishop and facilitate further Mormon migration into that community. This made David unpopular with established residents of St. Johns, who didn't want the Mormons there, but it did make him instantly prominent in the community.
David took a second wife, Ida Hunt, in 1882. She was a granddaughter of Jefferson Hunt. David was prosecuted for, but not convicted of, bigamy in 1884. In 1885, he was indicted for perjury stemming from a sworn statement he made backing a land claim for Miles Romney (grandfather of George W. Romney). His bail was posted by Baron Goldwater (father of Barry Goldwater). The trial and its aftermath received heavy regional press coverage. David was convicted and sentenced to three years imprisonment at a federal penitentiary in Detroit, Michigan. Later, both the prosecutor and presiding judge at the trial wrote letters to President Grover Cleveland supporting a pardon, stating they believed that David had misunderstood the law and that he lacked any criminal intent. President Cleveland issued a pardon after David served just three months of his sentence.
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