Information about Parley P. Pratt

Parley Parker Pratt (12 April 1807–13 May 1857) was a leader in the Latter Day Saint movement and an original member of Quorum of the Twelve Apostles from 1835 until his murder in 1857. He served in the Quorum with his younger brother, Orson Pratt. He was a productive missionary, poet, religious writer and longtime editor of the religious publication The Latter-day Saints' Millennial Star. Scenic Parley's Canyon in Salt Lake City, earlier known as Big Canyon, was renamed in his honor.

Pratt's great great grandson is Mitt Romney, former Massachusetts governor and current candidate for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination.^[1]

Biography

Youth

Parley Pratt was born in Burlington, New York, the son of Jared and Charity Dickenson Pratt. He married Thankful Halsey in Canaan, New York on 9 September 1827. The young couple settled near Cleveland, Ohio on a plot of "wilderness" where Parley had constructed a crude home. In Ohio, Pratt became a member of the Reformed Baptist Society, also called Campbellites, through the preaching of Sidney Rigdon. Pratt soon decided to take up the Campbellite ministry as a profession, and sold his property.

Church service

While traveling to visit family in western New York, Pratt had the opportunity to read a copy of the Book of Mormon owned by a Baptist deacon. Convinced of its authenticity, he traveled to Palmyra, New York and spoke to Hyrum Smith at the Smith home. He was baptized in Seneca Lake by Oliver Cowdery on or about 1 September 1830, formally joining The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons). He was also ordained to the office of an Elder in the church. Continuing on to his family's home, he introduced his younger brother, Orson Pratt, to Mormonism and baptized him on 19 September 1830.

Pratt then returned to Fayette, New York in October 1830, where he met Joseph Smith and was asked to join a missionary group assigned to preach to the Native American (Lamanite) tribes on the Missouri frontier. During the trip west, he and his companions stopped to visit Sidney Rigdon, and were instrumental in converting Rigdon and approximately 130 members of his congregation within two to three weeks.

Pratt was later assigned additional missions to the Eastern United States, the Southern United States, England, the Pacific Islands, and to South America. He moved to Valparaiso, Chile to begin the missionary work there. They left after not much success and the death of his child Omner in 1852. In addition to his brother, Orson Pratt and Sidney Rigdon, he was instrumental in introducing the Mormon faith to a number of future LDS leaders, including Frederick G. Williams, John Taylor and his wife Leonora, Isaac Morley and Joseph Fielding and his sisters, Mary and Mercy Fielding.

In addition to serving as an active missionary, Pratt entered the leadership of the early Latter Day Saint movement acting as an original member of The Quorum of Twelve Apostles under Joseph Smith. While on a mission to the British Isles in 1839, Pratt was editor of a newly created periodical, The Latter-day Saints' Millennial Star. While presiding over the church's branches and interests in New England and the mid-Atlantic states, Pratt published a periodical entitled The Prophet from his headquarters in New York City. He was also a noted religious writer and poet. He produced an autobiography, as well as some poems which have become staple LDS hymns, some of which are included in the current LDS Hymnal.

After the death of Joseph Smith, Pratt and his family were among the church members who emigrated to Utah under the direction of President Brigham Young. Pratt was involved in establishing the refugee settlements and fields at both Garden Grove and Mt. Pisgah, Iowa and personally led a pioneer company along the Mormon Trail to the Salt Lake Valley. Sometime in the mid 1850's, working with George D. Watt, he helped develop the Deseret alphabet.

Death

On a preaching mission in the southern United States in 1857, Pratt was being tracked by Hector McLean, who was upset with Pratt for marrying his legal wife Eleanor McLean. Pratt had met Eleanor a few years earlier in San Francisco, California, and she later left Hector and moved to Utah where she married Pratt.^[2] Though for religious reasons she considered herself "unmarried", Eleanor was not legally divorced from Hector at the time of her Celestial marriage to Pratt.^[3]

McLean pressed criminal charges, accusing Pratt of coming between him and the woman. Pratt managed to evade him and the legal charges, but was finally arrested in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). He was tried before Judge John B Ogden, but was only charged with stealing children's clothes. He had helped his wife Eleanor retrieve her children who had been taken from her by McLean. Judge Ogden acquitted Pratt of the charges against him and released him. However, shortly afterward, on 13 May 1857, he was killed by Hector McLean on a farm northeast of Van Buren, Arkansas. Pratt was buried near Alma, Arkansas.

Mormons viewed Pratt's death as a martyrdom, a view first expressed in Pratt's own dying words.^[4] Brigham Young compared his death with those of Joseph and Hyrum Smith,^[5], and many Mormons blamed the death on the state of Arkansas, or its people.^[6] Due to his personal popularity and his position in the Council of the Twelve, Pratt's murder in Arkansas was a significant blow to the Latter-day Saint community in the Rocky Mountains, when they began hearing about it in June 1857.^[7] The violent death may also have played a part in events leading up to the Mountain Meadows massacre five months later.^[8] This massacre resulted in the deaths of the majority of the Baker-Fancher Party travelling to Southern California along the Mormon Road (a portion of the Old Spanish Trail). After the massacre, some Mormons claimed that rumors had circulated throughout the southern Utah Territory that one or more members of the party had murdered Pratt,^[9] poisoned creek water which subsequently sickened Paiute children,^[10] and allowed their cattle to graze on private property.^[11]

Publications

• A Voice of Warning (1837)
• The Millennium and Other Poems (1840)
• Late Persecutions of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: With a Sketch of Their Rise, Progress and Doctrine (1840)
• Key to the Science of Theology (1855)
• The Autobiography of Parley Parker Pratt (1874, posthumous)

See also

• LDS fiction
• Pratt-Romney family
• Parley's Canyon

References

• Allen, James B. and Leonard, Glen M. The Story of the Latter-day Saints. Deseret Book Co., Salt Lake City, UT, 1976. ISBN 0-87747-594-6.
• Ludlow, Daniel H., A Companion to Your Study of the Doctrine and Covenants, Deseret Book Co., Salt Lake City, UT, 1978. ISBN 1-57345-224-6.
• Ludlow, Daniel H., Editor. Church History, Selections From the Encyclopedia of Mormonism. Deseret Book Co., Salt Lake City, UT, 1992. ISBN 0-87579-924-8.
• The Essential Parley P. Pratt; Signature Books; ISBN 0-941214-84-2
• Arave, Lynn. "Tidbits of history — Unusual highlights of Salt Lake County", Deseret Morning News, January 5, 2006, pp. S1-S2. Retrieved on 2007-01-05.
• id="CITEREF1857">"Tragical", Daily Missouri Republican, May 25 1857, <[1].
  • id="CITEREFWard1857">Ward, C.G. (May 26 1857), "The Mormon Tragedy in Arkansas: Interesting Details of the Circumstances of Elder Pratt's Death", Daily Missouri Republican, <[2].
    • id="CITEREFPratt1975">Pratt, Steven (1975), "Eleanor McLean and the Murder of Parley P. Pratt", BYU Studies 15 (2): 225–56, <[3].

      Notes

      1. ^ Associated Press, Romney Family Tree Has Polygamy Branch
      2. ^ .
      3. ^ Millennial Star 19:432. New York World, 23 November 1869, p.2). .
      4. ^ ("I am dying a martyr to the faith").
      5. ^ "Reminiscences of Mrs. A. Agatha Pratt, January 07, F564, #16, LDS Church Archives (stating that Young said, "Nothing has happened so hard to reconcile my mind to since the death of Joseph.").
      6. ^ ; ("It was in accordance with Mormon policy to hold every Arkansan accountable for Pratt's death, just as every Missourian was hated because of the expulsion of the church from that state.").
      7. ^ Church leaders learned about the death on June 23, 1857 (Wilford Woodruff Journal). The murder was first reported in the Deseret News on July 1, 1857.
      8. ^ Bagley, Will (2002). Blood of the prophets, Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 0-8061-3426-7. 
      9. ^ Bagley, p.98 (identification by the widow Pratt)
      10. ^ Bagley, pp.105-110
      11. ^ Bagley, p.102
      

      External links

      • Documents about Parley P. Pratt
      • History of Parley P. Pratt
      • Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt : PDF scans of autobiography
      • Eleanor McLean and the murder of Parley Pratt
      • Selected Descendants of Parley P. Pratt
      • Pratt Family Association
      • Parley P. Pratt Grave Site
      • Religion and Reaction:The Life, Times, and Legacy of Parley Parker Pratt Bicentennial Perspectives Conference
      • The Angel of the Prairies; a Dream of the Future by Parley Parker Pratt at The Digital Christian Library.

      Preceded by William E. M'Lellin	Quorum of the Twelve Apostles February 21, 1835–May 13, 1857	Succeeded by Luke S. Johnson

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