- William Jared Pratt was born 22 June 1844 in Nauvoo, Illinois to William Dickinson Pratt and Wealthy Eddy. His family included an older half brother and half sister, Ammi Warren and Mary, from his mother’s previous marriage and an older sister Martha, who passed away when William was just 3 years old. William also had two younger siblings, Stephen and Mirza, who both died as infants.
The Nauvoo of William’s childhood was primarily a community of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, of which William and his family were a part. It was a time of intense activity and growth but also increasing opposition and threats from surrounding communities. The tension of the situation increased to the point that, in about 1851, the Pratt family fled the city to Iowa, in preparation for a longer journey to Utah where the majority of church members were relocating.
Somewhere around this period, William’s parents grew estranged and divorced. In the separation, William stayed with his mother Wealthy and his half siblings.
On 15 June 1852, when William was 7 years old, he and his family departed with the Henry Bryant Manning Jolley Company bound for Salt Lake City. They experienced all the hardships of crossing the plains and mountains by ox drawn wagon but arrived safely in Salt Lake City on 9 September 1852. The family settled to the south in Payson, Utah.
In 1854, William’s mother married William Cornwall Patten, a widower with large family of his own. Wealthy and William Patten had one daughter together, Sarah Wealthy Patten, born in 1857.
In 1860, William moved with his family north to the Cache Valley, an area that would later become southern Idaho, settling in Franklin. Here, William met Alice Fleet Smart, the daughter of English immigrants and Mormon converts who had also answered the call of Brigham Young to settle in the area. Alice and William married on 1 December 1863 in Preston, Idaho.
William and Alice lived the rest of their lives in southern Idaho, where they had ten children - William, Ann, Thomas, Parley, Alice, Jared, Wealthy, Lucy Katie, and Leonidas - eight of whom lived to adulthood.
On 10 April 1873, with Alice’s consent, William married Charlotte Parkinson as his second wife. They had three children together; Florence, William and Clarissa.
In 1883, William moved with his families to Wilford, Idaho, where they lived until 1904, when they moved again to Albion, Idaho, where William lived the remainder of his life.
In all his life, William was a frontiersman, helping building communities from the ground up all while supporting his large family. He was active participant in his church throughout his life and served as the bishop of the church congregation in Clifton for seven years.
William passed away 16 June 1909 in Salt Lake City, where he had gone for treatment. He was buried in Albion, Idaho.
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