Joseph Barlow Forbes

Joseph Barlow Forbes (January 29, 1840 – May 5, 1927) was an American educator. He started the first free public school system in Utah, and organized one of the first public high schools. His parents encouraged him to become a doctor and educated him to that purpose, but his goals were for the sea. In his early twenties he sailed to Calcutta on the family-owned Pocahontas. After arriving in Calcutta, he became first mate on a different ship going to Southern Europe.

Upon his return to Boston he found the nation in the midst of a Civil War. He enlisted in Company H, Second Maine Volunteers on April 26, 1861, for six months. As a lieutenant, he fought in Bull Run, the Peninsular Campaign, Antietam, and Chancellorsville. He was a second lieutenant when his service ended on June 9, 1863.

The following year he sailed to California, where he accepted a commission as "assistant adjutant-general, with the rank of major" under John Bidwell. He and a fellow officer left the Army in 1865 to return to the Eastern United States by land, with a side trip through Salt Lake City, where he met Brigham Young.

In literature Forbes' grandson Paul Dayton Bailey wrote extensively about his grandfather in Grandpa Was a Polygamist (1960), which was later reprinted as Polygamy Was Better Than Monotony (1973).