(Parley Pratt was born in Burlington, New York, the son of...)
Parley Pratt was born in Burlington, New York, the son of Jared Pratt and wife, a descendant of Anne Hutchinson. 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.
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 Latter Day Saint church (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.
This biography was written by Parley and published posthumously.
Parley Parker Pratt was an apostle of the Latter-day Saints.
Background
He was born on April 12, 1807 in Burlington, New York, United States, the son of Jared Pratt and Charity Dickinson (or Dickison) and a descendant of William Pratt who was one of the first settlers of Hartford, Connecticut.
He spent his boyhood on his father's and neighboring farms and as a youth went with an elder brother to buy some uncultivated land in western New York. When their failure to meet the payments lost them the property, Parley moved farther west and settled in Ohio.
Education
There is no information about his education.
Career
About 1829 he joined the religious group headed by Sidney Rigdon. Occasionally he expounded the Scriptures himself and in time he became convinced that his mission in life was to devote himself to religious teaching. Settling his affairs in Ohio, he went to New York in August 1830 and was shortly won over to the fledgling Mormon Church.
He was baptized in Seneca Lake, was ordained an elder, and joined the main body of Mormons. After his first mission, which took him as far as Independence, Missouri, he returned to Kirtland, Ohio, and on June 6, 1831, at the general conference of the church, was ordained a high priest. On February 21, 1835, after further evidences of his faith, he was ordained one of the twelve apostles. In 1836 he was preaching in Canada; the next year he was in New York City.
In 1838 he settled in Caldwell County, Missouri. For his part in the hostilities between the Mormons and Missourians he was committed to jail on charges of murder. He escaped from prison some eight months later (July 4, 1839) and made his way to Quincy, where his wife had found refuge. In August he was again on the road, and in Washington memorialized Congress for a redress of Mormon grievances in Missouri.
The next year he was in England. He began the publication of the Latter-Day Saints' Millennial Star at Manchester and helped compile a hymnbook which contained "near fifty" of his original hymns and songs. He returned to tour, preach, and write, but in 1846 he was again in England. That excursion ended, he accompanied the Mormon migration to Great Salt Lake in the spring of 1847.
In the far-western community of the Mormons he helped to frame the constitution of the State of Deseret and at times engaged in legislative service. His most spectacular but least fruitful mission was that which took him to Chile, South America, in the winter of 1851-52. During his lifetime he published a few miscellaneous works and contributed articles to Mormon periodicals.
His last days were dramatic. While Pratt was serving a mission in the eastern states, his wife Eleanor went to New Orleans to get her children. Eleanor then took the children from her parents and headed to Texas. This was at the same time that Pratt was serving as a missionary in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Because Eleanor took the children, Hector (her estranged husband) blamed Pratt. Hector pressed criminal charges, accusing Pratt of assisting in the kidnapping of his children. Pratt managed to evade him and the legal charges, but was finally arrested in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) in May 1857. Tried before Judge John B. Ogden, Pratt was acquitted because of a lack of evidence and Ogden's own feelings after interviewing Eleanor. Shortly after being secretly released, on May 13, 1857, Pratt was shot and stabbed by Hector in Arkansas. He died two and a half hours later from loss of blood.
Pratt emerges from his autobiography as a pious and self-sacrificing servant of Truth, suffering hardships in the name of the Saints, preaching to large and enthusiastic audiences, and performing miraculous cures by the laying on of hands. He appears less heroic in non-Mormon accounts, in which he is portrayed as attempting to give one of his wives to an Indian chief in exchange for ten horses, and as sacrificing his obligations to his family or creditors for his religion.
Connections
In September of 1827 he was married to Thankful Halsey of Canaan, whom he took to his Ohio farm. After the death of his first wife he married to Mary Ann (Frost) Stearns, who later divorced him. In the fall of 1853, Pratt had seven living wives. Pratt fathered thirty children.