Parley P. Pratt
Pratt, ca. 1845
edit data
Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
February 21, 1835 (1835-02-21) – May 13, 1857 (1857-05-13)
Called by	Three Witnesses
End reason	Death
LDS Church Apostle
February 21, 1835 (1835-02-21) – May 13, 1857 (1857-05-13)
Called by	Three Witnesses
Reason	Initial organization of Quorum of the Twelve
End reason	Death
Reorganization at end of term	George Q. Cannon ordained
Personal details
Born	Parley Parker Pratt (1807-04-12)April 12, 1807 Burlington, New York, United States
Died	May 13, 1857(1857-05-13) (aged 50) Alma, Arkansas, United States

Parley Parker Pratt, Sr. (April 12, 1807 – May 13, 1857) was an early leader of the Latter Day Saint movement whose writings became a significant early nineteenth-century exposition of the Latter Day Saint faith. Named a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in 1835, Pratt was part of the Quorum's successful British mission of 1839 to 1841. Pratt has been called "the Apostle Paul of Mormonism" for his promotion of distinctive Mormon doctrines. Pratt practiced polygamy, and was murdered in 1857 by the estranged husband of his twelfth wife. He explored, surveyed, and built and maintained the first road for public transportation in Parley's Canyon in Salt Lake City, Utah, which is named in his honor.

Biography[link]

Youth[link]

Pratt was born in Burlington, New York, the son of Jared Pratt (Canaan, New York, 25 November 1769 – Detroit, Michigan, 5 November 1839) and wife (m. 7 July 1799) Charity Dickinson (Bolton, New York, 24 February 1776 – St. Joseph, Missouri, 20 May 1849), a descendant of Anne Hutchinson.^[1] 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 "Disciples of Christ", through the preaching of Sidney Rigdon. Pratt soon decided to take up the Disciples ministry as a profession, and sold his property.

LDS Church service[link]

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 September 1, 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 September 19, 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 Canada, the Eastern United States, the Southern United States, England, the Pacific islands, and to South America. He moved to Valparaíso, 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. 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 Church hymnal. Givens & Grow note that Pratt may have “propounded his highly unorthodox notions to Smith, who later embraced them and confirmed them,” rather than the other way around.^[2]

After the death of Joseph Smith, Pratt and his family were among the Latter Day Saints who emigrated to Utah Territory and continued on as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) under the direction of 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 1850s, working with George D. Watt, he helped develop the Deseret alphabet. In 1854, Pratt went to California to preside over the Pacific Mission of the LDS Church headquartered in San Francisco.

Death and legacy[link]

While returning from a horseback missionary trip to the southern United States in 1857, Pratt was being tracked by Hector McLean. McLean was the legal husband of one of Pratt's plural wives, Eleanor McLean. Pratt had met Eleanor McLean in San Francisco, California, where Pratt was presiding over a church mission. In San Francisco, Eleanor had joined the LDS Church and had also had her oldest sons baptized. Hector rejected Mormonism and opposed his wife's membership in the church. The dispute over the church led to the collapse of the marriage.^[3] Fearing that Eleanor would abscond to Utah Territory with their children, Hector sent his sons and his daughter to New Orleans to live with their grandparents.^[4] Eleanor followed the children to New Orleans, where she lived with them for three months at her parents' house. Eventually, she and the children left for Utah Territory; she arrived in Salt Lake City on September 11, 1855.^[4] Eleanor McLean was employed in Pratt's home as a schoolteacher, and on November 14, 1855, she and Pratt underwent a "celestial marriage" sealing ceremony in the Endowment House.^[4] She was the twelfth woman to be sealed to Pratt. Though for religious reasons Eleanor considered herself "unmarried", she was not legally divorced from Hector at the time of her "celestial marriage" to Pratt.^[5][6][7]

Upon learning of his wife's actions, Hector McLean pressed criminal charges, accusing Pratt of assisting in the kidnapping of his children.^[8] Pratt managed to evade him and the legal charges, but was finally arrested in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) in May 1857.^[9] Pratt and Eleanor were charged with theft of the clothing of McLean's children.^[10] (The laws of that time did not recognize the kidnapping of children by a parent as a crime.) Tried before Judge John B. Ogden, Pratt was acquitted of the charges because of a lack of evidence.^[10] However, shortly after being secretly released, on May 13, 1857, Pratt was shot and stabbed by Hector McLean on a farm northeast of Van Buren, Arkansas.^[10] As a result of the attack, Pratt died two and a half hours later from loss of blood.^[10] As he was bleeding to death, a farmer asked what he had done to provoke the attack. Pratt responded, "He accused me of taking his wife and children. I did not do it. They were oppressed, and I did for them what I would do for the oppressed any where."^[10] Pratt was buried near Alma, Arkansas, despite his personal desire to be buried in Utah.

Some historians view Pratt's death as simply the act of a jealous husband who was deeply angered by a man that had "run off" with his wife.^[11] A 2008 Provo Daily Herald newspaper article characterized McLean as a man that had "hunted down" Pratt in retribution for "ruining his marriage".^[12] A 2008 Deseret News article described McLean as a man that had "pursued Pratt across Missouri, Oklahoma and Arkansas, angry that his estranged wife, Eleanor, had become Pratt's 12th wife."^[13] But many Mormons viewed Pratt's death as a martyrdom, a view first expressed in Pratt's dying words.^[14] (But according to LDS church records, his dying words were not recorded until 38 years after his death.)^[15] In the present day, Pratt's defenders still characterize the circumstances of Pratt's death as religious martyrdom. For example, a 2007 article in the Deseret Morning News stated that "Pratt was killed near Van Buren, Ark., in May 1857, by a small Arkansas band antagonistic toward his teachings".^[16] Historian Will Bagley reports that McLean and two friends tracked Pratt after he was secretly released by Van Buren's magistrate.^[17] Brigham Young compared Pratt's death with those of Joseph and Hyrum Smith,^[18] and many Mormons blamed the death on the state of Arkansas, or its people.^[19]

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.^[20] The violent death of Pratt may also have played a part in events leading up to the Mountain Meadows massacre a few months later.^[21] This massacre resulted in the deaths of 120 people from the Baker–Fancher party travelling to Southern California along the Mormon Road (a portion of the Old Spanish Trail). After the massacre, some Mormons circulated rumors throughout the southern Utah Territory that one or more members of the party had murdered Pratt,^[22] poisoned creek water which subsequently sickened Paiute children,^[23] and allowed their cattle to graze on private property.^[24]

In 2008, Pratt's family received permission from an Arkansas judge to rebury his remains in the Salt Lake City Cemetery,^[25] but no human remains were found.^[26] No further search efforts for Pratt's burial site have been planned.^[27]

Family[link]

Pratt practiced plural marriage and had twelve wives, thirty children, and 266 grandchildren. In 2011, Pratt's living descendants were estimated at between thirty and fifty thousand.^[28] His first wife, Thankful Halsey Pratt, died following childbirth in March 1837. Pratt married his second wife, a widow, Mary Ann Frost Sterns, within two months of his first wife's death, perhaps causing Joseph Smith to condemn "marrying in five or six weeks, or even in two or three months, after the death of their companion."^[29] Pratt persuaded Mary Ann to share his bed during his imprisonment in a Richmond, Missouri, jail; but after Pratt began practicing polygamy they became estranged, and Mary Ann finally divorced him in 1853.^[30] According to authors Terryl L. Givens and Matthew J. Grow, Pratt was often “dour and humorless,” with an “antisocial bent," and he could be remarkably insensitive in his relationships with his wives.^[31]

One of Pratt's great-great-grandsons is Mitt Romney, former Massachusetts governor and candidate for the 2008 and 2012 Republican presidential nomination.^[32] One of his great-great-great-grandsons is Jon Huntsman, former Utah governor and Ambassador to China, and a candidate for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.^[33] Pratt's grandson, William King Driggs, was the father of the King Sisters.

Memorials[link]

Pratt explored, surveyed, and built the first public road in Parley's Canyon, Salt Lake City, which is named in his honor. Parley P. Pratt's escape from the Columbia Jail on July 4, 1839, has been commemorated in Columbia, Missouri,^[34] with a "freedom run"^[35] each Independence day since the 1970s. There is a 4 mile run and a 1 mile fun run/walk. At the 2010 fun run/walk, children chased someone playing the part of Parley.^[36]

Publications[link]

• 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[link]

• LDS fiction
• Pratt family
• The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Arkansas
• The Morning Breaks, the Shadows Flee

Notes[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Parley P. Pratt

• History of Parley P. Pratt from gordonbanks.com
• Parley P. Pratt Grave Site from angells.com
• Documents about Parley P. Pratt at pratt-family.org
• Official website of the Parley P. Pratt Memorial Freedom Run/Walk

Joseph Smith
Born	(1805-12-23)December 23, 1805
Birth place	Sharon, Vermont, United States
Died	June 27, 1844(1844-06-27) (aged 38)
Death place	Carthage, Illinois, United States
Founder: Latter Day Saint movement
Church Est.	April 6, 1830
Successor	disputed

Joseph Smith, Jr. (December 23, 1805 – June 27, 1844) was an American religious leader and founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, which gave rise to Mormonism. At age twenty-four Smith published the Book of Mormon, and in the next fourteen years he gathered thousands of followers, built cities and temples, and created a religious culture that survived his death.

Smith was born in Sharon, Vermont; but by 1817, Smith's family had moved to western New York, an area repeatedly swept by religious revivals during the Second Great Awakening. Smith family members held divergent views about organized religion, but they believed in visions and prophecies and engaged in folk religious practices typical of the era. According to Smith, beginning in the early 1820s he had visions, in one of which an angel directed him to a buried book of golden plates inscribed with a Christian history of ancient American civilizations. In 1830, he published what he said was an English translation of these plates as the Book of Mormon, and organized the Church of Christ as a restoration of the early Christian church. Church members were later called Latter Day Saints, Saints, or Mormons.

In 1831, Smith and his followers moved west to Kirtland, Ohio and also established an outpost in Independence, Missouri, where Smith planned to build a city called Zion. In 1837 a bank established by Smith and other church leaders collapsed causing widespread defections. The following year Smith joined his followers in northern Missouri, who had been expelled from Independence by Missourians alarmed at the rapid growth of Mormon communities. The following year conflicts again erupted between Mormons and earlier settlers of Missouri. The Mormons were expelled from the state, and Smith was imprisoned for several months. In 1839, Smith rejoined his followers to settle at Nauvoo, Illinois, where he served as both a spiritual and political leader. In 1844, disaffected Mormons published an exposé criticizing Smith's theocratic aspirations and his practice of polygamy. Three days later the Nauvoo City Council ordered the paper's destruction, precipitating a call to arms of non-Mormons who feared Smith's growing power. During the ensuing turmoil, Smith was imprisoned and killed in Carthage, Illinois.

During his lifetime Smith produced numerous revelations that are regarded as scripture by his followers. His teachings include unique views about the nature of God, cosmology, family structures, political organization, and religious collectivism. His followers regard him as a prophet of at least the stature of Moses and Elijah. Smith's legacy includes a number of religious denominations, including the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which claims a growing membership of more than 14 million worldwide.

Life[link]

Early years (1805–27)[link]

Joseph Smith, Jr. was born on December 23, 1805, in Sharon, Vermont to Lucy Mack Smith and her husband Joseph, a merchant and farmer.^[1] After suffering a crippling bone infection when he was seven, the younger Smith hobbled around on crutches for three years.^[2] In 1816–17, after an ill-fated business venture^[3] and three years of crop failures,^[4] the Smith family moved to the western New York village of Palmyra^[5] and eventually took a mortgage on a 100-acre (40 ha) farm in nearby Manchester town.^[6]

During the Second Great Awakening, the region was a hotbed of religious enthusiasm.^[7] Between 1817 and 1825 there were several camp meetings and revivals in the Palmyra area.^[8] Although the Smith family was caught up in this excitement,^[9] they disagreed about religion.^[10] Joseph Smith became interested in religion at about the age of twelve,^[11] and he participated in church classes,^[12] read the Bible, and reportedly showed an interest in Methodism.^[13] With his family, he also took part in religious folk magic,^[14] a common practice at the time.^[15] Like many people of that era,^[16] both his parents and his maternal grandfather had visions or dreams that they believed communicated messages from God.^[17]

In 1832, Smith wrote that as a youth in about 1820,^[18] while in the "attitude of calling upon the Lord,"^[19] he had a vision in which God told him that his sins were forgiven and that the world had "turned aside from the gospel."^[20] Although this experience was unknown to most early believers,^[21] a later account of the event became known as Smith's First Vision, and its importance to the Mormon faith began to be emphasized during the last two decades of the 19th century.^[22]

A depiction of Joseph Smith's description of receiving the golden plates from the angel Moroni at the Hill Cumorah.

The Smith family supplemented its meager farm income by treasure-digging. Joseph claimed an ability to use seer stones for locating lost items and buried treasure.^[23] To do so, Smith would put a stone in a white stovepipe hat and would then see the required information in reflections given off by the stone.^[24]

In 1823, while praying for forgiveness from his sins,^[25] Smith said he was visited at night by an angel named Moroni, who revealed the location of a buried book of golden plates as well as other artifacts, including a breastplate and a set of silver spectacles with lenses composed of seer stones, which had been hidden in a hill near his home.^[26] Smith said he attempted to remove the plates the next morning but was unsuccessful because the angel prevented him.^[27]

During the next four years, Smith made annual visits to the hill, but each time returned without the plates.^[28] Meanwhile, Smith continued traveling to western New York and Pennsylvania as a treasure seeker and a farmhand.^[29] In 1826, he was brought before a court in Chenango County, New York, for "glass-looking," or pretending to find lost treasure.^[30][31]

While boarding at the Hale house in Harmony, Pennsylvania, Smith met Emma Hale and began courting her.^[32] When Smith asked for Emma's hand, her father, Isaac Hale, objected because Smith was "a stranger" and had no means of supporting his daughter other than money digging.^[33] On January 18, 1827, Smith and Emma "eloped to marry" and the couple began boarding with Smith's parents in Manchester.^[34]

On September 22, 1827, Smith made his last annual visit to the hill, taking Emma with him.^[35] This time, he said, he retrieved the plates and placed them in a locked chest.^[36] He said the angel commanded him not to show the plates to anyone else but to publish their translation, reputed to be the religious record of indigenous Americans.^[37] Joseph later told Emma's parents that his treasure-seeking days were behind him.^[38] Although Smith had left his treasure hunting company, his former associates believed he had double-crossed them by taking for himself what they considered joint property.^[39] They ransacked places where a competing treasure-seer said the plates were hidden,^[40] the occurrence of which caused Smith to claim he could not accomplish the translation in Palmyra.^[41]

Founding a church (1827–30)[link]

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In October 1827, Smith and his pregnant^[42] wife moved from Palmyra to Harmony (now Oakland), Pennsylvania,^[43] aided by money from a comparatively prosperous neighbor Martin Harris.^[44] Living near his in-laws,^[45] Smith transcribed some of the characters (what he called "reformed Egyptian") engraved on the plates and then dictated a translation to his wife.^[46]

In February 1828, Martin Harris arrived to assist with the translation.^[47] Harris took a sample of the characters to a few prominent scholars,^[48] including Charles Anthon, who Harris said initially authenticated the characters and their translation, then recanted upon hearing that Smith had received the plates from an angel.^[49] Anthon later denied this claim^[50] but Harris returned to Harmony in April 1828 motivated to act as Smith's scribe.^[51]

Translation continued until mid-June 1828, until Harris began having doubts about the existence of the golden plates.^[52] Harris importuned Smith to let him take the existing 116 pages of manuscript to Palmyra to show a few family members.^[53] Harris then lost the manuscript—of which there was no copy—at about the same time as Smith's wife Emma gave birth to a stillborn son.^[54] Smith said the angel had taken away the plates and he had lost his ability to translate^[55] until September 22, 1828, when Smith claimed that the plates were restored.^[56]

Smith did not earnestly resume the translation again until April 1829, when he met Oliver Cowdery, who became Smith's scribe.^[57] They worked full time on the translation between April and early June 1829,^[58] and then moved to Fayette, New York where they continued to work at the home of Cowdery's friend Peter Whitmer. When the translation spoke of an institutional church and a requirement for baptism, Smith and Cowdery baptized each other,^[59] with written documents five years later stating that John the Baptist had appeared and ordained them to a priesthood.^[60] Translation was completed around July 1, 1829.^[61] Knowing that potential converts to the planned church might find Smith's story of the plates incredible,^[62] Smith asked a group of 11 witnesses, including Martin Harris and male members of the Whitmer and Smith families, to sign a statement testifying that they had seen the golden plates, and in the case of the latter eight witnesses, had actually hefted the plates.^[63] According to Smith, the angel Moroni took back the plates after Smith was finished using them.^[64]

Cover page of the Book of Mormon, original 1830 edition

The translation, known as the Book of Mormon, was published in Palmyra on March 26, 1830, by printer E. B. Grandin.^[65] Martin Harris financed the publication by mortgaging his farm.^[66] Soon thereafter on April 6, 1830, Smith and his followers formally organized the Church of Christ,^[67] and small branches were established in Palmyra, Fayette, and Colesville, New York.^[68] The Book of Mormon brought Smith regional notoriety,^[69] but also strong opposition by those who remembered Smith's money-digging and his 1826 trial near Colesville.^[70] After Cowdery baptized several new members (including Emma Smith), the Mormons began receiving threats of mob violence.^[71] Before Smith could confirm the new members, he was arrested and brought to trial as a disorderly person.^[72] Though Smith was acquitted, he and Cowdery had to flee Colesville to escape a gathering mob. Probably referring to this period of flight, Smith told years later of hearing the voices of Peter, James, and John who he said gave Smith and Cowdery an apostolic authority.^[73]

When Oliver Cowdery and other church members attempted to exercise independent authority^[74]—as when Book of Mormon witness Hiram Page used his seer stone to locate the American New Jerusalem prophesied by the Book of Mormon^[75]—Smith responded by establishing himself as the sole prophet.^[76] Smith disputed Page's location for the New Jerusalem,^[77] but dispatched Cowdery to lead a mission to Missouri to find its true location^[78] and to proselytize the Native Americans.^[79] Smith also dictated a lost "Book of Enoch," telling how the biblical Enoch had established a city of Zion of such civic goodness that God had taken it to heaven.^[80]

On their way to Missouri, Cowdery's party passed through the Kirtland, Ohio area and converted Sidney Rigdon and over a hundred members of his Disciples of Christ congregation,^[81] more than doubling the size of the church.^[82] Rigdon visited New York and quickly became second in command of the church,^[83] to the discomfort of Smith's earlier followers.^[84] In the face of acute and growing opposition in New York, Smith announced that Kirtland was the "eastern boundary" of the New Jerusalem,^[85] and that the Saints must gather there.^[86]

Life in Ohio (1831–38)[link]

After moving to Kirtland, Ohio in January 1831, Smith mitigated the new converts' exuberant exhibition of spiritual gifts, bringing the Ohio congregation within his own religious authority.^[87] Prior to conversion, the congregation had been practicing a form of Christian communism, and Smith adopted a communal system within his own church, calling it the United Order of Enoch.^[88] At Rigdon's suggestion,^[89] Smith promised the church's elders that in Kirtland they would receive an endowment of heavenly power,^[90] and in the church's June 1831 general conference,^[91] he introduced the greater authority of a High ("Melchizedek") Priesthood to the church hierarchy.^[92]

A mob tarred and feathered Joseph Smith in 1832.

The church grew as new converts poured into Kirtland.^[93] By the summer of 1835, there were fifteen hundred to two thousand Mormons in the vicinity of Kirtland,^[94] many expecting Smith to lead them shortly to the Millennial kingdom.^[95] Though Oliver Cowdery's mission to the Indians was a failure (halted by a Federal agent to the Indian tribes),^{[96] [97]} he sent word he had found the site for the New Jerusalem in Jackson County, Missouri.^[98] After he visited there in July 1831, Smith agreed and pronounced the county's rugged outpost^[99] Independence to be the "center place" of Zion.^[100] Rigdon, however, disapproved of the location, and for most of the 1830s, the church was divided between Ohio and Missouri.^[101] Smith continued to live in Ohio but visited Missouri again in early 1832 in order to prevent a rebellion of prominent Saints, including Cowdery, who believed Zion was being neglected.^[102] Smith's trip was hastened^[103] by a mob of residents led by former Saints who were incensed over the United Order and Smith's political power.^[104] The mob beat Smith and Rigdon unconscious and tarred and feathered them.^[105]

The old Jackson Countians resented the Mormon newcomers for various political and religious reasons.^[106] Mob attacks began in July 1833,^[107] but Smith advised the Mormons to patiently bear them^[108] until a fourth attack, which would permit vengeance to be taken.^[109] Nevertheless, once they began to defend themselves,^[110] the Mormons were brutally expelled from the county.^[111] Under authority of revelations directing Smith to lead the church like a modern Moses to redeem Zion by power^[112] and avenge God's enemies,^[113] he led to Missouri a paramilitary expedition, later called Zion's Camp.^[114] When the camp found itself without support from the governor of Missouri, suffering from cholera, and outnumbered,^[115] Smith provided a revelation explaining that the church was unworthy to redeem Zion, in part because of the failure of the United Order,^[116] and disbanded the expedition.^[117] Redemption of Zion would have to wait until after the elders of the church could receive another endowment of heavenly power,^[118] this time in the Kirtland Temple^[119] then under construction.^[120]

Smith dedicated the Kirtland (Ohio) Temple in 1836.

Zion's Camp failed to improve the situation in Jackson County, and was viewed as a failure,^[121] but it also led to a transformation in Mormon leadership and culture,^[122] and many future church leaders would come from the group.^[123] Just before Zion's Camp left Kirtland, Smith disbanded the United Order^[124] and changed the name of the church to "Church of Latter Day Saints."^[125] After the Camp returned, Smith drew heavily from its participants to establish five governing bodies in the church, all of equal authority to check one another.^[126] The Saints built the Kirtland Temple at great cost,^[127] and at the temple's dedication in March 1836, they participated in the prophesied endowment, a scene of visions, angelic visitations, prophesying, speaking and singing in tongues, and other spiritual experiences.^[128] The period from 1834–1837 was one of relative peace for Joseph Smith.^[129]