Background
Cowles was born on May 3, 1792, in Brookfield, Vermont, to Timothy and Abigail (Woodworth) Cowles.
Cowles was born on May 3, 1792, in Brookfield, Vermont, to Timothy and Abigail (Woodworth) Cowles.
Despite minimal education, Cowles became a schoolteacher as a young man and a Methodist Episcopal preacher at age twenty-one. In the latter capacity, he held the first formal religious services in Bolivar, New York, in a barn in 1820. Cowles married Phebe Wilbur on January 14, 1813, and by her had eight children, five of whom survived to adulthood.
Phebe died on May 1, 1826, whereafter Cowles remarried to Irena Hix Elliott on October 21, 1827.
Cowles and Irena had six children. Around 1828, Cowles contracted a disease affecting the bones of his feet, which he suffered from throughout his life.
In February 1841, he was elected "supervisor of streets" in Nauvoo. A month later, on March 30, he was appointed counselor to Nauvoo stake president William Marks.
On June 1, 1843, Cowles"s daughter Elvira married Joseph Smith as a plural wife.
Six month earlier, on December 1, 1842, Elvira had married Johnathan Holmes. On September 12, 1843, Cowles resigned his seat in the high council. Afterwards, Cowles "was far more outspoken and energetic in his opposition to polygamy than almost any other man in Nauvoo." Afterwards, he "was looked upon as a seceder."
Also cut off were Robert Doctorate. Foster and Howard Smith.
On May 18, Cowles was excommunicated for apostasy, along with James Blakesley, Francis M. Higbee of the Nauvoo Legion, and Charles Ivins.
On May 29, the high council published document purporting to show Higbee"s brother Chauncey L. Higbee had also committed misdeeds. In 1844, Cowles swore an affidavit accusing the church of teaching the doctrine of plural marriage.
This statement was published along with others, in the first and only issue of the Nauvoo Expositor. After the publication, Joseph Smith ordered the press destroyed, ultimately resulting in his arrest and death.
After Smith"s death, Cowles accepted the succession claims of James Strang.
In 1847, Cowles was appointed by Strang to be the presiding high priest in Kirtland, Ohio. Cowles died in Hamilton Township, Decatur County, Iowa, on January 15, 1872, aged seventy-nine. "But Hark and Hear the Joyful Sound" (1841)
"O God, Thou Great, Thou Good, Thou Wise" (1841).
He was baptized a member of the church in 1832 in New York and was made an Elder on September 28, 1836, in Kirtland, Ohio. Cowles became a member of the Nauvoo high council on February 6, 1841.