Stephen Selwyn Harding, 1808-1891, was born in Palmyra, New York, on 24 February 1808, the eldest son of David and Abigail (Hill) Harding. He emigrated with his family to Ripley County, Indiana, in 1820. He had only nine month's formal school training and began teaching school in Ripley County at the age of sixteen. He studied law in the office of William R. Morris, Brookville, Indiana, and was licensed to practice law on 17 March 1828. Harding had a law office in Richmond, Indiana, for six months. He went to New Orleans in the fall of 1828 and came into direct contact with slavery for the first time; he later became an abolitionist. Harding returned home in the spring of 1829 and spent the summer of 1829 in Palmyra, New York, where he met Joseph Smith. He opened a law office in Versailles, Indiana, in December 1829. He married Avoline Sprout of Chautauqua County, New York, on 31 October 1830. Harding was nominated twice for lieutenant governor of Indiana on the Liberty party ticket; he was appointed governor of the Utah Territory on 31 March 1862. He started overland from Fort Leavenworth to assume duties in May 1862 and arrived Salt Lake City on 7 July 1862. In the fall of 1863, he resigned his governorship and returned to Washington, D.C. He was appointed U.S. consul in Chile, but the health of his wife and other domestic difficulties prevented him from going so far from home. He was chief justice of Colorado Territory from 1864 to May 1865. He practiced law in Indiana from May 1865 until 1881. Harding died on 12 February 1891.

For biographical material on Harding see Etta Martha (Reeves) French's "Stephen S. Harding: A Hoosier Abolitionist," M.A. thesis, University of Arkansas, 1930, published in a somewhat condensed form in the Indiana Magazine of History, XXVII: pp. 207-229, September 1931; and Etta Martha (Reeves) French's "A Letter from Stephen S. Harding to William H. Seward: forward," Indiana Magazine of History, XXVI, pp. 157-159, June 1930.