3

EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF FUNDAMENTALIST MORMONISM

Three developments in the early 1920s gave rise to the importance for the Woolleys to share their “good news” that a path had been prepared by President Taylor for those willing to believe, take the risks and make the inevitable sacrifices to continue plural marriage. First, seventh LDS Church president Heber J. Grant took action in 1921 to stop new plural marriages by excommunicating several church patriarchs who had performed such marriages during Smith’s administration. Suddenly, this made the mission and appointments given in 1886 more urgent to John and Lorin Woolley, who were the last living of those appointed. Second, as a result of that urgency, in 1921, Lorin Woolley penned his second account of the 1886 event, this one meant for sharing with church members who were open to learning about it. Third, beginning in 1921, rags-toriches Utah inventor Nathaniel Baldwin provided a virtual stage for Lorin Woolley and Daniel Bateman to tell about the 1886 events to a receptive audience that quickly embraced their message of a priesthood-sanctioned way to continue plural marriage despite any or all objections by church or country. Bateman confirmed and supported what the Woolleys claimed, losing his church membership in consequence. Bateman became pivotal in his role of supporting the Woolleys, testifying about what he witnessed and corroborating their statements

Lorin Woolley’s explanations to small but accepting audiences were remarkable for those who believed. However, his account stunned most LDS Church members who heard of or read it. Most could not consider the Woolleys, who held no high positions in church leadership, could be privileged with such experiences as claimed, nor could they believe they would receive apostolic authority or callings outside of the traditions they had known. Although there had been a few examples of men beyond the traditional Quorum of the Twelve Apostles to receive an apostleship by Brigham Young, including some of his own sons and Joseph F. Smith, the nephew of the Joseph Smith, they saw no precedent for allowing an apostolic calling outside the presiding quorums of the church. Thus, Lorin’s account was generally mocked and disbelieved. Both church leaders and members tended to view it as spurious and untrue.

John W. Woolley farm in Centerville, Utah, a favored “safe house” during the 1880s raid period and where President John Taylor received the 1886 revelation. Donna K. Mackert Collection.

John W. Woolley (1831–1928);

Lorin C. Woolley (1856–1934). Both, authors’ collection.

Lorin Woolley was excommunicated in January 1924 for “conduct violative of the order and discipline of the church.” Interestingly enough, involvement in polygamy was not the cause of his excommunication. Instead, he was called to a church court for “pernicious falsehoods,” including assertions attributed to Lorin but reported by others that President Grant and Apostle James E. Talmage had taken plural wives in the “recent past.” Talmage, who wrote about Woolley’s excommunication, believed Lorin had also told a lie about being a government officer.⁶⁷

While it is documented that Lorin told certain people about being involved in some way with the government, the charges that led to his excommunication did not affect those who believed him, his father and Dan Bateman. For these believers, like earlier generations who had heard and believed the message of Joseph Smith, it simply became a matter of faith to believe.

NATHANIEL BALDWIN

Inventor and philanthropist Nathaniel Baldwin played a pivotal role in enabling a growing awareness of the 1886 events among potential believers from about 1921 to 1925, when a nucleus of such families formed through association and employment at Baldwin’s radio factory in East Mill Creek, Utah. If the early days of what became known in the 1940s as Fundamentalist Mormonism can be compared to the spread of a wildfire, then the initial sparks that truly caught flame began at Baldwin’s factory.⁶⁸ Without Baldwin’s patronage, the community might have developed differently. The descendants of that nucleus remain at the core of most Fundamentalist Mormon communities today.

Nathaniel Baldwin and his first wife, Elizabeth Butler, who married in 1899. Authors’ collection.

After getting married and graduating from Stanford University, Nathaniel Baldwin began his career in 1901, teaching physics as an assistant professor at church-owned Brigham Young Academy (BYA), which was later renamed Brigham Young University, under Professor Josiah Hickman, who soon became an intimate friend. They shared the belief taught by Joseph Smith that “the doctrine of plural and celestial marriage is the most holy and important doctrine ever revealed to man on the earth and that without obedience to that principle, no man can ever attain to the fulness of exaltation in celestial glory.”⁶⁹

Through Hickman, Baldwin became aware of the dual stance of President Joseph F. Smith to publicly deny but privately encourage plural marriage. Hickman confided that he had been called to a private meeting where President Joseph F. Smith “emphasized the great importance of this principle [of plural marriage] and gave encouragement to this select group [to live plural marriage], and gave them to understand that if they were willing to face the danger attendant upon this step, they had his benediction.”⁷⁰ In 1905, the university fired Baldwin, partly “because he would not accept the manifesto regarding plural marriage [as being of divine origin].”⁷¹

Baldwin’s search for employment took him into the Utah mountains to record scientific data at a power plant. For nearly a decade, his mountain jobs allowed him time alone in nature, where he simultaneously experimented with sound. His work resulted in the development of a highly effective loudspeaker and other related inventions, including telephone receivers and radio headsets (headphones) that revolutionized the radio industry. In 1914, on the verge of entering World War I, the U.S. Navy tested Baldwin’s radio headsets, then began ordering more. Baldwin soon moved production from his wife’s kitchen and built his first factory, a small log cabin, in East Millcreek, a suburb of Salt Lake City. This began his rapid rise to financial success.

When Baldwin first started production in East Millcreek, he began actively attending the LDS Church again. Being in a new place with a bishop “who was somewhat steeped in old fashioned Mormonism,” Baldwin felt he had a degree of freedom to teach “Mormonism as it was given through the Prophet Joseph Smith and in the Scriptures.” Baldwin considered the gospel his most important business and began publishing pamphlets expounding scripture, prophecy and doctrine. Baldwin’s bishopric advised that he might believe as he pleased but that he “should not talk so loud.” Baldwin made no promises except “to learn and do the will of the Lord.” However, certain doctrinal issues, especially his public expressions in support of plural marriage, kept him at odds with church authorities.⁷² Word quietly spread of Baldwin’s penchant for hiring members from plural families, although such employees were always a minority of his workers.

In August 1921, Baldwin met Lorin C. Woolley. Three weeks later, Baldwin and several friends visited John and Lorin Woolley in Centerville, where they “heard many remarkable testimonies particularly regarding the teaching and practice of polygamy by…church leaders.” He had earlier, in 1915, obtained a copy of the 1886 revelation and quoted from it in a pamphlet he published in 1917. When he learned the Woolleys’ story, he immediately accepted it. For the next four years, Baldwin clearly sought the Woolleys’ friendship and counsel in both religion and business, and he traveled numerous times to their Centerville homes for that purpose.

In November 1921, Baldwin was excommunicated for insubordination. In retrospect, he wrote:

I feel to say with sincerity that if I were wrong in my beliefs about old fashioned Mormonism, and particularly about the doctrine of the plurality of wives, and anybody could show me my error and prove it to me by the Scriptures.…I would never cease to sing his praises.…Then I could easily repent and be in harmony with my people. Of course I would lose few friends, but how many more I would gain, and prominent ones too!⁷³

Only weeks later, in January 1922, demand for his radio products suddenly skyrocketed. Baldwin moved his production into his newly built eighteen-thousand-square-foot brick factory and hired more employees. During this phenomenal burst in business growth, Baldwin took a significant step in his personal life. In March 1922, at age forty-three, he married a plural wife, thirty-year-old Josephine “Josie” Sandberg Steed, a widow.⁷⁴

Nathaniel Baldwin in 1922, at apex of his business success and the year he married his plural wife Josie. Authors’ collection.

Josephine “Josie” Sandberg Steed (1892–1953), a widow of polygamist Thomas J. Steed. She married Nathaniel Baldwin as a plural wife in 1922. FamilySearch.org Family Tree.

Baldwin Radio factory built in 1922. Authors’ collection.

By June that year, 150 employees worked in three shifts producing 150 radio headsets a day.⁷⁵ But with orders rushing in ten times that number, production could not meet demand.⁷⁶ The year 1922 proved to be the apex of Baldwin’s career. With his name printed on every unit sold, he became known around the world.

When several other manufacturers came with offers to buy him out or seeking contracts to produce his products, he consulted Lorin C. Woolley, who recommended not selling but “letting a home company have the [production] work on royalty.”⁷⁷ Baldwin liked the idea and simultaneously decided to incorporate his factory as Nathaniel Baldwin Inc., with Lorin Woolley as one of seven original incorporators.⁷⁸ Importantly, he also organized Omega Investment Company, an entity designed to receive profits generated from Baldwin’s several businesses and spend them for religious and philanthropic purposes—publishing books, buying land, assisting people in need and so forth. Omega’s board of directors consisted of Baldwin, his first wife and his son, plus nine trusted friends—including six men connected with continuing polygamy: Matthias F. Cowley, John T. Clark, Clyde Nielsen, Daniel R. Bateman, Margarito Bautista and Israel Barlow Jr. ⁷⁹ Within a few months, Lorin C. Woolley was added to the board.

Across the street from his factory, Baldwin built a new office building for Omega that doubled as a meeting place for small religious gatherings. Frequently, some of his employees gathered in the Omega offices for informal after-work gospel discussions. One, Moroni Jessop, recalled:

A few selected men would be called into a private office, the door would be shut, and we would hold meetings with uncle Lorin [Woolley] and Dan Bateman. Part of the time Baldwin would be there too.…Such meetings would happen, once, twice and sometimes three times a week.⁸⁰

Baldwin sponsored a biweekly Wednesday scripture study class at the Omega headquarters. Eighty-year-old Israel Barlow, a church patriarch who had been excommunicated for performing plural marriages, led the lessons. Baldwin occasionally used his factory lunchroom for private, after-hours meetings for his special friends. In these ways, Baldwin provided a ready audience to hear Lorin Woolley and Daniel Bateman speak. John Woolley, by then in his nineties, verified their words when asked and, through most of the 1920s, performed several plural marriages at his home in Centerville for those involved.

Baldwin Radio factory in 2017 as renovated rental spaces for art studios, businesses and a restaurant. Author’s collection.

To increase production, Baldwin granted a manufacturing license to a group of seven Utah businessmen, including David A. Smith, a son of the late Joseph F. Smith, who was by then a member of the Presiding Bishopric of the LDS Church.⁸¹ Baldwin counted on the royalties from this contract to increase production and build other businesses. Unfortunately, the contract failed, and Baldwin never received the promised royalties. Without these funds and with his expenses for expanding, Baldwin’s cash flow dramatically suffered.

Ernest R. Woolley, a cousin of Lorin’s, promised to help. Baldwin’s dealings with Ernest at first inspired hope but ended in frustration and panic when it became obvious Ernest could not obtain the needed financing. By autumn 1925, Baldwin was unable to pay employee wages or suppliers. After employees filed complaints, Baldwin’s company was court-ordered into receivership. The receivers immediately fired any employees or company directors with new polygamy connections. By early 1926, Baldwin had become convinced that Ernest, along with Lorin and others, had tried to steal his company, and he made a startling decision to cooperate with the receivership. Further, with the legal support of Matthias F. Cowley, he filed a lawsuit against Ernest, Lorin and others. The parting was rancorous, as Baldwin no longer trusted Lorin.⁸² In the end, the court ruled in favor of Baldwin.

In 1927, Baldwin received his company back in good shape, but his fortune did not last. New partners, unaffiliated with the Woolleys or former religious friends, got him into legal trouble. He got full blame as president of the company and was sentenced to five years in a federal prison; he served only two, released early for good behavior. Meanwhile, Baldwin lost his company and everything he owned, never again to succeed in business. He died years later, a pauper living in a son’s home, still bitter against Lorin Woolley. Ironically, his youngest daughter converted with her husband to the Woolley tradition, and from her, a large posterity continues among today’s Fundamentalists.

Nathaniel Baldwin’s impact cannot be underestimated for helping spread early Fundamentalist beliefs via his radio factory where, for only a few years, a small core of believers in continued plural marriage grew, developed and flourished. The results of this short watershed period in the early 1920s practically guaranteed the movement would last.

PROMINENT FAMILIES

Several pro-polygamy families known for their stalwart Mormon pioneer ancestry coalesced around the Baldwin factory and the Woolleys in the early 1920s. These converts forged bonds and made permanent ties through shared religious convictions and new marriages between families. The LDS Church excommunicated such believers when their involvement with new plural marriages was discovered. Most of the family surnames of that era are still prominent among Fundamentalists today. Families who became believers in the 1920s include the surnames of Alder, Anderson, Bateman, Bautista, Bistline, Broadbent, Cox, Hull, Jenson, Johnson, Kelsch, Kilgrow, Kingston, Kimball, LeBaron, Nielsen, Olson, Spencer and Thompson. Five specific families—Barlow, Jessop, Musser, Steed and Allred—discussed next became especially prominent in the early movement.

Barlow

Israel Barlow Jr. and some members of his family, including John Y. Barlow, Edmund F. Barlow and Ianthius W. Barlow, became early believers in the Woolleys’ accounts. The Barlows hailed from an eminent early Latter-day Saint family. Israel Barlow Jr., like his father before him, was actively involved in both church and community in West Bountiful, where the family had lived since 1848, except for a few years spent running a church ranch on Antelope Island in the middle of the Great Salt Lake.⁸³

The Barlows operated a sugar mill and made molasses, and Israel Jr. served as the Davis County assessor. Annie Yeates Barlow, wife of Israel Jr., served as president of the West Bountiful Relief Society, the local women’s organization of the church, for over thirty years. Israel Jr., a church patriarch, was nearly seventy years old in 1910 when the Salt Lake Tribune listed him among “Some New Polygamists” and was subsequently tried before the Davis Stake High Council and excommunicated, “for marrying illegally and in violation of the rules and regulations of the Church…for lying and for treating the council with contempt in neither appearing in person nor responding in any way to the summons of the council served upon him to appear…and answer the charges made against him.”⁸⁴

Some of Israel Jr.’s sons and grandsons worked for Baldwin in the early 1920s. In his eighties, Israel Jr. led scripture study at Baldwin’s Omega building until his death in November 1923. The Barlows, who intermarried with the Jessop and Kelsch families in particular, claim a collective posterity among Fundamentalist groups and independents numbering in the thousands.

Jessop

The Joseph Smith Jessop family of Millville in Utah’s northern Cache Valley made a significant impact on the spread of Fundamentalist Mormonism. The Jessops were well respected and a part of the cultural fabric of Millville. When the town was incorporated in 1902, Joseph Smith Jessop became one of the four town trustees, serving a few more times over the following decades. Joseph, his son Joseph Lyman and his brother Moroni “Rone” played in the Millville Brass Band and joined a traveling dramatic company that performed in towns in northern Utah and southern Idaho.⁸⁵ Lyman served a term as the town marshal in 1920.

Joseph S. Jessop, his brother Rone and his sister Frances became actively involved with the polygamy movement after working at the Baldwin radio factory and meeting the Woolleys, although Frances’s husband, Martin Olson, never married a plural wife. Within a short time, these Jessop siblings and their families went from being pillars of the Millville community to being outcasts. A daughter of Joseph S. Jessop, Fawnetta “Fawn,” later remembered, “We were blacklisted” after the family heard and accepted the news of the Woolleys’ message, which had been brought by relatives Israel Barlow Jr. and John Y. Barlow.⁸⁶

Joseph Smith Jessop home in Millville, Utah. Steven L. Mayfield Collection.

In the latter half of 1923, a series of events solidified the Joseph S. Jessop family’s commitment to the belief that plural marriage was as necessary and valid as it had ever been. On September 1, Lyman noted that family members were fasting and praying for his sister Martha “Mattie” Jessop, who wanted “to know the Lord’s will concerning her…marrying in plural marriage.” Mattie soon after became a plural wife of John Y. Barlow. When news of her marriage leaked to members of the community, she was excommunicated, which “made a great big splash” in the town. Her brother Richard recounted being subsequently questioned by church authorities and then refused entrance into the LDS Logan Temple.⁸⁷ About the same time, when another sister, Genevieve Jessop Anderson, died from a prolonged illness, the Jessop family asked Lorin C. Woolley to speak at her funeral in the Millville church house. He shocked and angered some in attendance by testifying of the reality of the resurrection but more specifically by stating, “I know there is a resurrection for I have seen and shook hands with resurrected men who have died since I was a grown man.” Fawn Jessop Broadbent remembered, “The people didn’t receive it at all,” and some of her unbelieving family members referred to Woolley as “a little black devil.”⁸⁸ In 1930, Joseph S. and his wife Martha’s youngest son, John Millward Jessop, died. They again asked Lorin Woolley to speak at the funeral, this time held in the family’s backyard because they were not allowed to have it in the Millville church.

Joseph Smith Jessop family in 1923. Authors’ collection.

Before this last funeral, Joseph S. had married Gertrude Annie Marriott as a plural wife, which added to the family’s estrangement in the small community. At the time of the 1930 census, a Millville census taker wrote “illegal wife” above Annie’s name when enumerating the Jessop household, obviously reflecting his own attitude toward plural marriage and the family.⁸⁹

Some Millville relatives of the Jessops, the Jensons and Olsons, also became converts. In the 1930s, the Jenson family hosted in their home at various times Lorin C. Woolley and Joseph White Musser, another early Fundamentalist leader. The Jensons had been respected church and community leaders but experienced ostracism after accepting the Woolleys’ message in the early 1920s. All three families eventually left Millville, some settling in the Salt Lake Valley and others farther south.

The Jessop name remains prominent among Fundamentalists. Family historians report that Joseph Smith Jessop’s posterity numbers over ten thousand because nearly all his children became involved in plural marriages and had large families.

Musser

Some have called Joseph White Musser the “father of the Mormon Fundamentalist movement” because of his prolific writings that articulate doctrine and the Fundamentalist position in relation to the LDS Church. Like the Barlow and Jessop families, he too came from early Mormon stalwarts. Joseph’s father, Amos Milton Musser, became an assistant church historian and a special bishop of the church. Joseph’s mother, Mary Elizabeth White, was the second of four wives. Musser served two LDS missions, was involved in local church leadership and married two church-sanctioned post-Manifesto plural wives.⁹⁰ One among many trusted brethren during Joseph F. Smith’s administration, he received delegated authority in 1915 to perform post–Second Manifesto plural marriages.

Joseph W. Musser, age sixty. Authors’ collection.

Musser was excommunicated in 1921 for pursuing additional plural marriages. He first met Lorin C. Woolley in 1922 after he and his wife Ellis were invited to an evening fireside at the Baldwin radio factory. Afterward, he brought Lorin home to stay the night, and they talked until late. Joseph noted in his journal, “The testimony of Lorin C. Woolley always rings true” and that he “love[d] to hear” him “talk and rehearse the things that happened while he was guarding the brethren.”⁹¹ He too believed that plural marriage should not, indeed could not, be given up for acceptance by the rest of society, and he became a firm believer in the Woolleys’ message. Nevertheless, even after he published numerous books and pamphlets expounding priesthood doctrines and criticizing the LDS Church for apostasy in its rejection of earlier tenets, he believed it was still God’s church and foresaw its ultimate victory: “I have faith in the ultimate success of the Mormon Church. It alone of all institutions in the world, is built on principles of truth, justice and mercy.…And tho [sic] the Church has changed many of its tenets in order to comply with the convenience of men, it will not fall.”⁹²

Musser’s children grew up actively engaged with the LDS Church. After Lorin Woolley called him as a member of the Priesthood Council, only his son Guy believed and joined him. Through Guy, some of Musser’s descendants are still involved as Fundamentalists.

Joseph W. Musser (left) with Indian Territory missionary companions Elias Kimball (seated) and W.W. Chipman in April 1897. Authors’ collection.

Joseph W. Musser with two of his plural wives, a daughter and four grandchildren. Authors’ collection.

Steed

Descendants of the Steed family of Davis County, Utah, have played a major role in the world of Fundamentalist Mormons. In 1851, Thomas Steed and a cousin settled in Farmington with their families. Thomas married a total of four wives and farmed their homestead on Steed Creek at the mouth of Steed Canyon in the south part of Farmington. He owned a gristmill that burned down while he was away on one of his several missions for the LDS Church. He later helped build the historic Farmington Rock Chapel and served on the Davis Stake High Council at the same time as John W. Woolley.⁹³

Thomas’s son Walter William Steed grew up in Farmington, where he became prominent in the community and church. He farmed and raised stock, became a director for both the Davis Weber County Canal company and Davis County Bank and helped found Clearfield State Bank. He also served as a school trustee and a Davis County commissioner. Walter actively served in the church, filling several positions. Like his father, he was a member of the Davis Stake High Council.⁹⁴

In 1897, Walter married Alice Belle Clark as a sanctioned post-Manifesto plural wife. She was the daughter of Ezra T. Clark, who had served on the high council with Thomas Steed and John W. Woolley and was the fatherin-law of John’s daughter Emma. After this marriage, Walter moved both wives to Syracuse, where he farmed and became involved in a local co-op that was known as Steed’s Post Office.⁹⁵

Thomas J. Steed (1852–1921).

Walter W. Steed (1858–1940). Both, FamilySearch.org Family Tree.

According to a family biographer who opposed polygamy, Walter began associating with John W. Taylor, Matthias Cowley, “and other prominent Mormons who challenged the LDS Church manifesto abandoning polygamy,” and “defiantly” married his third wife, Lillie Sandberg, in 1918. Within a few years, “Walter was ‘outed’ by a neighbor, excommunicated from the LDS Church, and forced to ‘go underground’ to avoid prosecution by the law.” His life as a Fundamentalist took a toll on the Steed family, and according to the same biographer, “Walter spent little time with his first two wives after marrying Lillie.”⁹⁶

Walter’s plural wife Lillie was a younger sister of Ellen Sandberg Taylor and an older sister of Josephine Sandberg Steed Baldwin. Ellen had been a plural wife of John W. Taylor. Josephine first married as a plural wife to Walter Steed’s older brother, Thomas J. Steed. After Thomas’s death, she again married plurally, this time to Nathaniel Baldwin, as mentioned.

Walter’s Fundamentalist posterity, numbering many thousands, has been mostly involved in the southern Utah/northern Arizona communities of Hildale and Colorado City.

Allred

Byron Harvey Allred Jr., a prominent Mormon in Idaho, became involved with continued plural marriage in the late 1920s, after the Baldwin radio era. A post-Manifesto polygamist, Harvey had known both John W. Taylor and Matthias F. Cowley due to his 1903 sanctioned plural marriage in Mexico. He had been sent by President Joseph F. Smith to Cowley, who recommended moving to the Mormon colonies in Mexico so he could live “the fulness of the gospel.” After marrying a plural wife and living five years in Mexico, he returned to the United States and moved both his families to Idaho, where his first wife soon died in childbirth.

Later, Harvey was elected as an Idaho state legislator and also served one session as Idaho’s Speaker of the House in 1917. Harvey first learned of continued plural marriage in 1925. In 1927, he became reacquainted with Lorin Woolley and remembered Lorin’s testimony during his mission to Indian Territory that he had seen the Prophet Joseph Smith since his death.⁹⁷ After learning Lorin’s full account, he believed. He soon began a manuscript chiding Mormons and their leaders for their abandonment of certain doctrines, especially plural marriage. He included an account of the 1886 events. He published his book, A Leaf in Review, in 1933.

B. Harvey Allred (1870–1937). Authors’ collection.

B. Harvey Allred home (1917–19) at 1504 Warm Springs Avenue in Boise, Idaho, 2018. Author’s collection.

Morris Q. Kunz with three of his wives and eight children, circa 1935. Morris’s first two wives, Rhea and Olive, were daughters of B. Harvey Allred. Ellen Halliday was his third wife. Donna K. Mackert Collection.

Harvey married his last plural wife in 1935. Charged with “teaching and/or encouraging the practice of so-called polygamous or plural marriage contrary to the adopted rule and the express instructions of the Church,” he was excommunicated in January 1936. He died a year later, on January 18, 1937.⁹⁸

Harvey’s niece Sylvia Allred was probably the first Allred to marry plurally. In June 1928, John W. Woolley performed her marriage to her husband, Isaac Carling Spencer, who had earlier come from southern Utah to work at the Baldwin radio factory. Several of Sylvia’s and Harvey’s children also became involved, and three of Harvey’s sons, Rulon, Marvin and Owen, later emerged as leaders. Among contemporary Fundamentalists, Allreds number in the thousands and Spencers in the hundreds. Many of them married Kunzes, Barlows, Jessops and other early Fundamentalists.

THE WOOLLEYS IN THE LATE 1920S

After Nathaniel Baldwin’s break from Lorin Woolley, Lorin hired Baldwin’s former employees Moroni Jessop and Jessop’s nephew Lyman to work on the Woolley farms in Centerville. These two men worked seasonally for Lorin and John for the next few years. Lyman made a special effort to bring his older children, one or two at a time, to meet John Woolley, whom they affectionately called “Grandpa.” John took the opportunity to have them sit in a specific rocking chair and tell them that was where the Savior sat on a September night in 1886 talking with President Taylor. That chair, still owned by a Fundamentalist family, continues to provide a tangible link to accounts retold of the 1886 events in the Woolley home. At least two plural wives, Sylvia Allred and Mary Viola Anderson, who were married to their respective husbands by John Woolley just before his death, each told of how he invited them to sit in that chair and explained why it was important.⁹⁹ Mary recalled her marriage on November 11, 1928, weeks before John Woolley died:

When we [my second husband and I] went there it was afternoon, and I had taken time off work long enough to get the sealing done.…On that day he invited us to come into the front room and invited me to sit down in the rocking chair. He said, “You see this rocking chair you are sitting in.” I said, “Yes.” He said, “The Saviour has sat in that chair.” So I felt honored and privileged to sit in the same chair. We got married in the same room that the Saviour and the Prophet Joseph Smith were in at the time of the 8-hour meeting [in 1886]. There was a good spirit there. You couldn’t help but feel it. It seemed like the atmosphere, and the influence, was still there after all those years.¹⁰⁰

John W. Woolley Circleville home, circa 1960s. Donna K. Mackert Collection.

Some who kept diaries, including Lyman Jessop and Joseph Musser, recorded things John and Lorin Woolley told them. Musser recorded many of Lorin’s sayings, dreams, predictions and spiritual experiences. In July 1926, Lorin C. Woolley prophesied of “perilous times to come in which… those who would live the law [of plural marriage] would be at the point of annihilation because the persecution would be so great.”¹⁰¹ With such apocalyptic expectations in mind, Woolley sent Lyman Jessop and two of his brothers, Richard and Vergel, to northern Arizona to meet with polygamists Carling Spencer, Jerry Johnson and Elmer Johnson at Lee’s Ferry, Arizona, and with Isaac Carling in Short Creek, Arizona. Their purpose, in anticipation of persecution, was to see if either place might work for a potential “gathering place for the saints.”¹⁰²

THE 1928 VISITATION AND THE COUNCIL OF FRIENDS

On December 4, 1928, nine days before John Woolley’s death, John and Lorin sought God for specific direction because they were the last of the men called in 1886. Lorin told a few how he and his father received the direction they needed. He said they were visited by six beings from heaven in answer to prayer.¹⁰³ He said they were instructed to call others to the same calling they had been given—in other words, call men to the apostleship of Christ with the same appointment to keep plural marriage alive.

Moroni Jessop, who worked on the Woolley farms, related, “Lorin told me all about it. John W. told me a little about it.” He later reported what he had learned from them about the 1928 visitation:

In the year 1928, Grandpa Woolley died.…A message then came that grandpa Woolley was wanted on the other side, too, to give a report of what was wanted. Some nine days previous to the death of grandpa, a meeting was held in his home at Centerville. In that meeting he was given just nine days to live and make preparations before he was to pass over.… That special priesthood meeting was held on the 4th of December.…There were just eight men at that priesthood meeting. Six of them were from the other side, two from this side. John W. Woolley and his son Lorin were the only two from this side. The other six were resurrected beings. They were: Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith, the prophet, his father Joseph Smith senior, Hyrum Smith, John Taylor and Joseph F. Smith.…Lorin told me the Savior produced the bread and wine at that supper right before us. He said, “Lordie, what wonderful wine that was!”¹⁰⁴

John W. Woolley died on December 13, 1928. His granddaughter Olive remembered his funeral, held at the Centerville church house, was “very big.”¹⁰⁵ David A. Smith, son of the late president Joseph F. Smith (whose company had failed its contract with Nathaniel Baldwin), spoke at the funeral, remarking, “How my father loved that man [John Woolley].”¹⁰⁶

After his father’s death, Lorin Woolley acted according to the divine instructions he said he and his father had received. Over the next two and a half years, he called six men to the apostleship of Christ to again fill a council of seven. This council became known as the “Council of Seven” or “Council of Friends,” or more commonly the “Priesthood Council.” Woolley gave to these men the responsibility for the continuation of plural marriage after his death.¹⁰⁷ Lorin explained this council was not a church quorum or in lieu of the presiding LDS Church leadership quorum, but it was a priesthood quorum acting outside and apart from the church to accomplish a certain “Priesthood Work.” From Lorin’s words, the various groups of believers came to call their purpose by the term “the Work,” or “the Priesthood Work.”

The six men called by Lorin Woolley to serve in this council were Joseph Leslie Broadbent, John Yeates Barlow, Joseph White Musser, Charles Frederick Zitting, LeGrand Woolley and Louis Alma Kelsch. Woolley ordained these men the same way he said he had been ordained by John Taylor—bestowing upon them “every key, power, and authority” that he himself held and giving them a specific charge to ordain others as necessary to ensure that no year passed without children born from polygamous unions. These men were told by Woolley their mission was to testify of truth and perpetuate every gospel law and ordinance restored and established by Joseph Smith that the LDS Church could not or would not preserve.

Clockwise from top left: Lorin C. Woolley (1856–1934). Authors’ collection; J. Leslie Broadbent (1891–1935). Authors’ collection; John Y. Barlow (1874–1949). FamilySearch.org Family Tree; Joseph W. Musser (1872–1954). Authors’ collection; Charles F. Zitting (1894–1954). FamilySearch.org Family Tree; Louis A. Kelsch (1895–1974). FamilySearch.org Family Tree. Photo of LeGrand Woolley (1887–1932) unavailable.

One of the first orders of business conducted by the Priesthood Council in 1929 was to compile and publish a full account of Lorin Woolley’s statement about the 1886 events. With it, the council included a short affidavit by Daniel Bateman supporting Lorin’s account. Publications containing Lorin Woolley’s statement continued to vex the LDS Church as the church committed to monogamy, expanded its worldwide missionary program and distanced itself from its polygamous past. President Grant repeatedly repudiated continued plural marriage, denied the existence of the 1886 revelation and denounced Lorin Woolley and others by name in church meetings. This led to a turbulent time in the 1930s for both the Church of Jesus Christ and Fundamentalists.