• FamilySearch shows his surname as "Sparks," but the inscription on his gravestone and that of his wife in California show their surname as "Sparkes."  George was re-baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Great Salt Lake Valley on 8 August 1847 and his son George Franklin Sparks was born at Cottonwood, Utah on 12 September 1848.  George Sr. received a Patriarchal Blessing from John Smith on 17 August 1849 (both his re-baptism and his blessing records spell his surname "Sparks.")  At the time of the 1850 federal census he and his family were living at Diamond Springs, California (he is listed as Geo. W. Sparks.)  He was baptized a member of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on 27 July 1864.  He is buried at Anaheim, California.

Mississippi Company (1846)

• Age at Departure: 26
• Head of Household

Sources

• 1850 California Census, Eldorado County.
• Find a Grave (Website)
• Norma Baldwin Ricketts, The Mormon Battalion: U.S. Army of the West, 1846-1848 (Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 1996), 342.
• Pioneer emigration list 1847-1848, 194, in Docket book 1844 Feb.-1845 May.
• Utah, FamilySearch, Early Church Information File, 1830-1900