Addison Pratt
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Addison Pratt | |
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Born | |
Died | October 10, 1872 | (aged 70)
Spouse | Louisa Barnes Pratt |
Addison Pratt (February 21, 1802 – October 10, 1872) was an early
Life
Pratt was born in
After being taught by Caroline Barnes Crosby and Jonathan Crosby, early Mormon converts, the Pratts converted to Mormonism and joined the Latter Day Saints in Indiana, Missouri, and later moved to Nauvoo, Illinois. Years later, the Pratts persuaded the Crosbys to join them in missionary work in the Pacific Islands.
Polynesia
While working aboard a whaling ship as a young man, Pratt had jumped ship in Hawaii and spent several months living near the village of Honolulu; he was one of the first men of European descent to live in the Hawaiian islands. During that time, he learned to speak the Hawaiian language. Years later, in October 1843, Pratt recommended to
Pioneer
Pratt returned to the United States in 1847. In December 1847 he was made president of the newly formed San Francisco
Pratt and his family returned to Tubuai in 1850. In May 1852, the French government restricted the preaching of Mormonism in the islands, and Pratt and his family were held under house arrest until they eventually were able to return to California. Pratt declined invitations from church leaders and entreaties of his wife Louisa to follow the practice of
Pratt was present at the discovery of gold in California, working on Sutter's Mill at the time of discovery. He worked in the gold fields in 1848, waiting for winter to pass so that he could be re-united with his family in Salt Lake City. Pratt's journal chronicles this time period, including his interactions with Samuel Brannan and members of the Donner Party. After the Donner Party tragedy the year before, Pratt elected to pursue an alternate route over the Sierras when traveling eastward to Salt Lake City.
After spending the winter of 1849 in Salt Lake City with his wife and daughters and teaching a class in Tahitian to prospective missionaries, Pratt and Jefferson Hunt blazed a route from Salt Lake City southward through present-day Las Vegas and San Bernardino, and then northward to Sacramento. The trail they carved would be followed by many settlers and Forty-niners. For much of its distance, that route is now followed by I-15.
The Hunt and Pratt group is notable for being the first to discover gold and silver in Southern Nevada, recommending to Brigham Young the colonization of Southern Nevada, including Las Vegas specifically, and most famously for a group of malcontents that split with Pratt's and Hunt's leadership. They sought to cross the Sierras farther north and became known as the infamous Death Valley '49ers party. That group of prospectors became impatient with the slow progress of Mormon leadership and elected to abandon the larger group. Those staying with Hunt made the journey without serious incident. Later, some members of the Death Valley party rejected their new leaders and rejoined the Hunt party after one of Hunt's scouts discovered them nearly starved to death.
Legacy
Pratt's journals are an important source for historians, vividly illustrating the life of a whaler and seaman in the 19th century, being one of only a few primary sources on the discovery of Gold and the Donner Party, and are otherwise important as a resource for California history, Polynesian history and Mormon history.
Lois Barnes Pratt, Addison Pratt's daughter, married John Hunt, son of Jefferson Hunt. The two settled Navajo County, Arizona Territory. Through Ida Frances (their daughter), Pratt's posterity include Smiths (by Asahel Henry Smith, son of Jesse N. Smith), Udalls (by David King Udall), Kartchners and other early Arizona clans. Through daughters Ellen Saphronia Pratt McGary and Frances Stevens Pratt Dyer, Pratt's descendants figure prominently in the history and settling of Orange County and San Bernardino County, California.
Descendants
Pratt has a number of noteworthy descendants:
- General Crook
- Ida Hunt Udall, granddaughter, homesteader and diarist in eastern Arizona
- John Hunt Udall, great-grandson, Mayor of Phoenix, Arizona
- Jesse Addison Udall, great-grandson, Chief Justice of the Arizona Supreme Court
- Don Taylor Udall, great-grandson, Arizona State Legislator
- Nick Udall, 2nd great-grandson, Mayor of Phoenix, Arizona
- Gordon Harold Smith, 3rd great-grandson, U.S. Senator from Oregon
- other members of the Udall family
See also
- California Gold Rush
- Donner Party
- History of Tahiti
- Sutter's Mill
- The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Hawaii
- Udall family
- Whaling
Notes
- ^ Deseret News, 1993–1994 Church Almanac (Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret News) p. 271.
- ^ LDS Newsroom: Country Profiles: French Polynesia (Tahiti).
- ^ Richard O. Cowan and William E. Homer, California Saints: A 150-year Legacy in the Golden State (Provo: Religious Studies Center, 1996) p. 103-104, 113
- ^ Michael Thomas Barry, Final Resting Places: Orange County's Dead & Famous (Schiffer Publishing, 2010) p. 23-25
References
- S. George Ellsworth (ed.) (1990). The Journals of Addison Pratt: Being a Narrative of Yankee Whaling in the Eighteen Twenties, A Mormon Missionary to the Society Islands, and of Early California and Utah in the Eighteen Forties and Fifties (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press)
- Ann W. Hafen and Leroy R. Hafen (eds.) (1998). Journals of Forty-Niners: Salt Lake to Los Angeles with Diaries and Contemporary Records of Sheldon Young, James S. Brown, Jacob Y. Stover, Charles C. Rich, Addison Pratt, Howard Egan, Henry W. Bigler, and Others Archived 2011-06-05 at the Wayback Machine (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press)
External links
- Norma Elliott collection of Addison Pratt materials, MSS 8660 at L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University
- Norma Elliott collection on John Hunt and Lois Barnes Pratt Hunt, MSS 8706, Addison Pratt's daughter, at L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University