Patrick Calhoun (P. C.) Haynie, joined the LDS Church in Georgia after listening to Elder John Morgan. He was baptized 10 February 1877. Other members of his family were also baptized into the LDS Church. Elder Morgan converted about 60 souls in the northern Georgia and western Alabama area. Opposition grew towards these new converts to Mormonism and they desired to move west and be among the Saints.

Elder Morgan wrote a letter to Brigham Young asking his advice as to were this group of new converts should settle. President Young wrote back and advice him to extend Zion beyond Utah and look for possibilities in west Texas or New Mexico.

This small group travel by train from Scottsboro, Alabama to Pueblo, Colorado in the fall of 1877. They remained in Pueblo that winter, pooled their money and lived the in a United Order. The Colorado Governor, A. Cameron Hunt suggested they settle the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado, just north of New Mexico. The group followed Governor's suggestion and the moved south to the San Luis Valley in late May of 1878.

P. C. married a young girl, Henrietta Cecelia Gage Bagwell, from Alabama who was among those who travel west, by Elder Morgan while in Pueblo 25 March 1878. P. C. and Henrietta remained in Manassa, Colorado for six years. P. C. desired a warmer climate and moved his small family to Pima, Arizona in the fall of 1884. A year later he and Henrietta traveled to St George, Utah to be sealed in the Temple. While there Elder Wilford Woodruff told them to go home and put their house in order and to embrace the scared law of plural marriage. Within a year they asked fifteen and half year old Mary Elma Wilson to the second wife.

P. C. and Ella traveled to St. George, Utah and was married and sealed in the St. George Temple 6 April 1887. Upon their return to Pima, he moved the family to Mexico as to provide protection against the Federal Marshall and the Laws of the United States Government against plural marriage.