Biography brigham young
•
Brigham Young
•
Newell G. Bringhurst
Utah History Encyclopedia, 1994
Brigham Young was born in 1801 born in Whittingham, Vermont. He was the ninth of eleven children, growing up in an unsettled frontier environment characterized by frequent family moves to various communities throughout upstate New York. Despite the influences of a strict, moralistic family and being exposed to the religious fervor that characterized the “burned-over-district” of upstate New York, he was slow to associate with a particular religious denomination until he formally joined the Methodist Church in 1824. His formal education was minimal and he was apprenticed to be a carpenter, painter, and glazier–trades which he used to support himself. In 1824 he met and married his first wife, Miriam Works, by whom he had two daughters.
By 1830 he was living in Mendon, New York where he first came in contact with the teachings of the newly-formed Mormon Church. However, he did not submit to baptism until 14 April 1832 and only then when other members of his immediate family joined. He found Mormonism appealing in its emphasis on Christian primitivism, its millennialistic orientation, authoritarianism, certain Puritan-like beliefs, and the fact that it offered him an avenue to achieve status and recogn
•
Early Years and Rise in the Church
Born into poverty in Vermont in 1801, Young later moved with his family to western New York, where he worked as a carpenter and craftsman. In 1832, he was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the religion founded by Joseph Smith in 1830 based on the Book of Mormon, a scripture that Smith claimed to have translated from gold plates given to him by an angel named Moroni.
In 1833, after the death of his first wife, Young and his two daughters joined Smith and other Mormons in Kirtland, Ohio. A devoted missionary and supporter of Smith, Young was ordained as one of the original members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, a church governing body, in 1835; he became its president four years later. Though he initially resisted adapting the church’s controversial custom of plural marriage, Young later embraced it as his duty, and would eventually have 55 wives and 56 (or 57) children.
Journey West to the Great Salt Lake
An armed mob assassinated Smith in 1844, and Young and the other apostles took charge of leading the Mormon church. Seeking a place where they could avoid the persecution that had driven them from Ohio and Missouri, Young and the other apostles planned a westward exodus of thousands of Mormons from th