Stillman Pond was the descendant of hardy colonial New England progenitors of the Puritan persuasion, many of whom served as ministers and selectmen of various townships.Helene Holt (1987). EXILED: The Story of John Lathrop, 1584–1653, Appendices A-E, Paramount Books, New York; and Truman G. Madsen (1989), Joseph Smith the Prophet, pp. 107–108, and (2004) Presidents of the Church, Deseret Book, Salt Lake City – Predominantly via matriarchal lines, Stillman Pond was a sixth-generation direct descendant of the Reverend John Lathrop (1584–1653) – the stoic 17th-century separatist minister from England (and a contemporary of Shakespeare) who for his determined faith endured inhumane persecution and imprisonment by Archbishop William Laud of London, but who fled to America to achieve religious freedom for his family and followers. Lathrop fathered a most distinguished and impressive American progeny – that is to say, he stands preeminent among the ancestors of the Prophet Joseph Smith himself (Lathrop is Smith's fifth great-grandfather), Hyrum Smith (and Hyrum's own LDS Prophet-progeny of Joseph F. and Joseph Fielding Smith); several U.S. Presidents, including U.S. Grant, FDR, and the Bushes; LDS Church leaders Wilford Woodruff, Frederick G. Williams, Oliver Cowdery, Orson and Parley P. Pratt, W. W. Phelps, Orson F. Whitney, Zina Huntington Young (Smith), George Albert Smith, Harold B. Lee, Spencer W. Kimball, Ezra Taft Benson, Gordon B. Hinckley, N. Eldon Tanner, M. Russell Ballard, and Marion G. Romney; high-profile citizens, including the Utah Romney and Huntsman families (including Governors George and Mitt Romney and Governor Jon Huntsman, Jr.), Governor Sarah Palin, Stephen R. Covey, Hyrum Smith (Franklin Quest/Franklin Covey founder), and a great swath of other American historical, cultural, and literary figures, such as poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, romantic novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, chief justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, banker J. P. Morgan and investor Henry Sturgis Morgan, educator Benjamin Spock, inventor Eli Whitney, actors Clint Eastwood and John Lithgow, and fiction writer Orson Scott Card. John Lathrop's story is that of a highly principled religious reformer and tireless community and nation builder, whose many descendants have strongly influenced the development of American government, law, medicine, science, industry, culture, and religion. 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.
