[2] The Massachusetts native was born only two years before the birth of the prophet Joseph Smith, Jr., with whom he shared a common ancestry (in separatist minister John Lathrop, 1584–1653) and whose fledgling American religion he would one day embrace.

In the Puritan spirit of Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, Ezra refused to comply with the orders of the community elders, and he was forced to leave town, moving with his family to Hubbardston.

[4] It was this spirit that later would move him, in the autumn of 1843, to commit his growing family to making an arduous trek across five states to a burgeoning new city on the Mississippi – Nauvoo, Illinois – where they might join with the relentlessly driven body of Latter-day Saints there assembling.

[1] Marrying again for the first time in 1834, to one Maria Louisa Davis, Stillman settled again at Hubbardston, but moved his family in 1837 to New Salem, Massachusetts, purchasing there three tracts of land over the next five years.

[6] Most significantly, it was at New Salem in 1841 that Stillman and his family welcomed into their home traveling Mormon missionaries and were converted, through their efforts, to the new faith that Smith had founded a decade earlier.

Able to sell his land in order to join the Missouri-driven Latter-day Saints at Nauvoo, Illinois, Stillman and his family, having embraced 'the New Covenant,' made their trek in the fall of 1843.In the would-be refuge of the 'City Beautiful' Stillman built a two-story red brick home (in the front part of which he established a store) a few blocks southwest of the Nauvoo Temple on Munson Street (block 106) – equidistant at points east and north from the banks of the mighty Mississippi, which forms the city's southern and western borders.

Stillman's family (including Maria, who was pregnant with twins), together with the other Mormon exiles, were left to stumble on to Winter Quarters across the frozen flats of Iowa.

[12][13] Throughout that bitterly cold, disease-infested season (as they lived in tents on the Nebraska bank of the Missouri River) – with hardships to come thereafter, in the John Taylor-led 1847 trek across the Great Plains to Utah's Salt Lake basin – Stillman lost to sickness and to death his beloved wife and little-kingdom of 8 children.

'[21] All of the marked Pond siblings perished over an 8-month period in the unforgiving elements of their harsh environs, including, finally, on May 17, 1847, a grief-stricken Maria herself (who, though weakened by malaria, was ultimately overcome by 'consumption' or tuberculosis).

[23] But 'the fire of the New Covenant' burned brightly in Stillman's soul, and it was that which, after leaving the Missouri River encampment on June 17, gave him the strength to press on to the mountains of the West, where he knew he would find the Zion that God had prepared for His saints.

[5] For her part, Abigail – born into a respected family[25] at Lair, Cayuga, New York, on April 2, 1821 – had experienced a powerful conversion to the Mormon faith as a young woman.

Yet was Stillman's fidelity and obedience rewarded by church leaders, and on February 16, 1853 he was ordained Senior President of the 35th Quorum of Seventy – a calling and capacity he faithfully fulfilled for the remainder of his days.

[5] Notwithstanding those hard-life years in Richmond, Stillman received for his comfort (on June 25, 1865) a second patriarchal blessing under the hand of Patriarch Charles W. Hyde – just weeks after the assassination of President Lincoln (Stillman's eldest daughter by Abigail, Mary Anner Pond, only 4 weeks before Lincoln's death, had married John Buxton, an English immigrant who became a successful businessman in Teton Valley, Idaho; they raised 12 children).

[4] By all of these wives Stillman would become grand-patriarch to a sea of descendants scattered throughout the intermountain West (and beyond) bearing such names as Buxton, Bowen, Merrill, Whittle, Kingsbury, Lewis, Lear, Egbert, Read, Pope, Telford, Yeats, Van Noy, Rose, and Russell.

From a foundation of noble progenitors, Stillman left his multitudinous posterity with a mighty 'fire of faith' legacy – one of sacrifice, endurance, and forging ahead (despite overwhelming heartache and loss) to realize, at last, through unflinching tenacity, persistent labor and love, a useful, abundant, and well-lived life.