- Elder for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (member of Zion's Camp and the First Quorum of the Seventy). See http://www.josephsmithpapers.org/person/william-dickinson-pratt and http://www.gapages.com/prattwd1.htm .
William Dickinson Pratt was born September 3, 1802 in Worcester, New York to Jared and Charity Pratt, the second oldest of their five sons.
The Pratt family was poor, moving from settlement to settlement in New York as farmers and day laborers. William and his brothers had limited opportunities for education and worked hard from a young age.
In 1823, William, his father Jared, and his brother Parley bought some forested land near Ostego, New York. In spite their efforts to improve and farm the land, they could not raise enough money to make the payments, and lost everything after three years.
Following this failure, William went on his own to New York City in search of work; his family heard nothing from him for several years and feared him dead when a William Pratt was reported drowned in the Hudson River. William had not drowned but spent about five years working and moving from place to place before settling in Ohio not far from his brother Parley in 1830.
In 1831, William followed the lead of his brothers and was baptized into the recently founded Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He moved to the church’s headquarters in Kirtland where he was ordained an Elder by Sidney Rigdon in 1833 and was intensively involved in church activities, including carrying dispatches for Joseph Smith and participating in the 1834 Camp of Israel expedition to Missouri (“Zion’s Camp”). William was ordained a seventy and appointed member of First Quorum of the Seventy in 1835.
On December 1, 1836, William married Hannah Ward in Kirtland, Ohio. Their daughter Sarah Jane was born in 1838 in Kirtland but passed away before her first birthday. Around this time William and Hannah joined other church member in moving to Far West, Missouri, where they experienced significant hardship before being forced from the state in the winter of 1838-1839. Following their expulsion from Missouri, William and Hannah settled first in Bryant, Illinois and then in Nauvoo. Shortly after their arrival in Nauvoo, Hannah became sick and died two weeks later on September 20th, 1840.
On March 1st, 1841, William married Wealthy Eddy Shumway, a recent widow with two children. William and Wealthy had 3 children while living in Nauvoo; Martha Marinda, William Jared, and Stephen. Of these, only William Jared lived to adulthood. In 1844, William was in New York serving a mission when he learned of the deaths of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. On his return he was ordained a high priest and served several more missions to New York in 1844 and 1845. In 1846, William and his family suffered in the increasingly hostile situation in Nauvoo, eventually fleeing across the river.
In 1848, for reasons that are not entirely clear, William and Wealthy separated and divorced. In 1850, William was living with Losana Bentley, her daughter Virginia Newman, and their daughter Mirza Liona Pratt in Pottawattamie county, Iowa. In 1851, William left Iowa with his brother Orson and Orson’s family for the journey west, arriving in Salt Lake City on October 4th. William remarried and practiced polygamy while living in Utah, marrying at least three wives including: Jane Hawley, 24 August 1857; Catherine Frederickson, 24 October 1863; Azubah Cox, 17 July 1867.
William died in Salt Lake City on 15 September 1870 at the age of 68 and was buried in the Salt Lake City Cemetery.
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