Henry Grow was the seventh and youngest child of Henry Grow and Mary Riter Grow. In his early adulthood, Grow was apprenticed as a carpenter and joiner for the Norristown and Germantown railroads later supervising the construction of railroad bridges. He was baptized into the LDS Church in May of 1842 and traveled to Nauvoo, Illinois the following year. Worked on the Nauvoo Temple until its completion in 1846. Crossed the plains in 1851 with the James Cummings Company arriving in Salt Lake on his 34th birthday. Settled north of present-day Ogden, Utah. but was called to Salt Lake City by Brigham Young in 1852 to oversee construction projects. In 1853 he helped build the first suspension bridge in Utah, over the Weber River. He was also involved in construction of the original Sugarhouse sugar beet sugar mill under the direction of Bishop Fred Kesler. From 1854 to 1861 he built or rebuilt at least five sawmills, mostly in Big Cottonwood Canyon. He also worked on a cotton mill and built more bridges, over the Provo and Jordan Rivers. The Jordan River Bridge, finished in 1861, employed the patented Remington bridge lattice similar to other bridges he helped construct in Pennsylvania. In the early 1860s Brigham Young tapped Grow for what became Grow's largest and most famous construction, the dome of the Mormon Tabernacle. Young had become infatuated with the idea of constructing the Tabernacle in an elongated dome shape. When asked how large a roof he could construct using a Remington bridge-style lattice, Grow replied that it could be "100 feet wide and as long as is wanted." In fact, Grow engineered the tabernacle roof to be 150 feet across and 250 feet long. From 1876 to 1877 Grow served a mission for the LDS Church in Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania where he was able to visit old relatives. Upon his return to Salt Lake, he was assigned to tear down the so-called "old Tabernacle" that stood on Temple Square and help construct the Salt Lake Assembly Hall under Obed Taylor. A polygamist he had seven wives of which four bore him children. Seven from Mary Moyer, eight from Nancy Ann Elliott, one from Ann Midgley, and fourteen from Julia Veach. A total of 30 children.