Where was Parley P. Pratt in 1826?

[_Roger]

Almabound:

He returns to an account:

Alma 43:2 Now we shall say no more concerning their preaching, except that they preached the word, and the truth, according to the spirit of prophecy and revelation; and they preached after the holy order of God by which they were called.

3 And now I return to an account of the wars between the Nephites and the Lamanites, in the *eighteenth year of the reign of the judges.

I think this marks a transition from oral dictation to working from a source.

While speculative, this is what I call good speculative. There is an obvious abrupt shift there. Is that the only example you know of Alma b or are there others clues like this?

[_Roger]

UD:

In your opinion, is there any connection between Cowdery & Pratt's familiarity with "tin" and the Book of Mormon's metal plates?

[_Uncle Dale]

UD:

In your opinion, is there any connection between Cowdery & Pratt's familiarity with "tin" and the
Book of Mormon's metal plates?

My guess is that the metal plates of the Book of Mormon narrative were Spalding's creation. He obviously
understood the problems associated with trying to preserve parchment "scriptures" for hundreds
of years -- so I think he opted for metal media in his "Manuscript Found" story.

It was probably merely a fortunate accident that Oliver Cowdery was a part-time metalsmith.
Although B. H. Roberts calls him a "blacksmith," I think that is an over-generalization. Oliver
"tinkered" with printing items such as engraved plates, etc. According to the special high council
at Far West in the Spring of 1838, Oliver also had some experience in fabricating coin dies for
counterfeiting purposes.

All of which talent evidently served him well, at the forge of the Sherman Carriage Shop in Palmyra.

Parley P. Pratt I think was less of a metalsmith -- He probably served a season or two as a
tinwares peddler, along the southern shores of the Great Lakes. As such, he may have done a
bit of impromptu tin-repairing, here and there -- but I do not think he was a professional tinker.

Remember that Joseph Smith, Sr. had a cooper's shop at Manchester -- so he was something of
a smith himself. At least enough so to make and install metal bands on whiskey barrels, etc.

It would be a great discovery, if in the "employment" section of a mid-1800s census report we
saw that one of Parley's cousins was a tinwares tradesman. That sort of relationship might
help explain how Parley temporarily assumed the role of a pedestrian peddler, hawking tinware,
while some other person transported the goods, worked up custom orders, made major repairs, etc.

I need to find out more about Samuel Pratt of Geauga Co., Ohio. A good place to start looking would
be in the annual 1820s "tax duplicates" for Geauga Co. -- on file in microfilm format in the basement
of the Chardon Public Library. However, another set of the films is available at the Family History Library
in Salt Lake City --- if you happen to know anybody in that neck of the woods, to conduct research.

My guess is that we'll find that Samuel paid his taxes in Hambden up through the year 1825 and
then was absent from Ohio for 1826-1831, returning to the farm outside Chardon at about the
same time his nephew was becoming famous as a Mormon elder.

So much to do -- so little time!

UD

[_AlmaBound]

While speculative, this is what I call good speculative. There is an obvious abrupt shift there. Is that the only example you know of Alma b or are there others clues like this?

There are many other clues like this. Many parts of Mosiah, Alma, and Helaman, and Mormon are filled with these types of parallels and shifts in narration between oral dictation and recitation from a source.

This is one of my favorites, and the most well done in the book, in my opinion:

Mosiah 13:11 And now I read unto you the remainder of the commandments of God, for I perceive that they are not written in your hearts; I perceive that ye have studied and taught iniquity the most part of your lives.

12 And now, ye remember that I said unto you: Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of things which are in heaven above, or which are in the earth beneath, or which are in the water under the earth.

The change is pretty smooth here.

It's not something that I think will ever catch on, though. It's the "one-for-one" Dale mentions that is problematic.

I mean, if the characters reflect real people, then what are the implications of the story of Seantum?

[_Uncle Dale]

...
what are the implications of the story of Seantum?

Dunno -- what are the implications of Sidney Rigdon and Parley P. Pratt probably journeying eastward
in 1826-27 and locating there a small group of restorationist Christians similar to themselves -- with a
prophet at their head? What Book of Mormon narratives tell of such journeys, discoveries and eventual uniting of
two similar groups of people, by having one group migrate to the land of the other (Kirtland)???

Matt Grow and Teryl Givens are supposedly working right now on the definitive P.P.Pratt biography.

I can't wait to see what they say about Pratt's first meeting with Elder Sidney Rigdon.......

A Re-write of my earlier posting of interesting PPP facts --

1826: Parley was in Wayne Co, NY, with his uncles Ira and Allen Pratt

1831: Allen Pratt moved to Bedford, a suburb of Cleveland (very near Kirtland)
Before that time there were Comstocks (Parley's relatives) in Bedford

1815: Allen and Ira's brother: Samuel Pratt, moved to Hambden twp., Geauga Co. OH
(also very near Kirtland)

1815-1818: Samuel Pratt's children born at Hambden (near Kirtland)

1822-1826: Samuel Pratt's children born at Canaan, Columbia Co., NY

1830: Census shows Samuel living in Hambden (near Kirtland) again --

Ergo: In 1826 or shortly thereafter, Samuel moved back to Geauga Co., OH

In 1826 Parley P. Pratt moved to northern Ohio -- possibly to Geauga, though
he says west of Cuyhoga, in Lorain

Parley may have had relatives living in Geauga Co., about the time Rigdon was there.

In 1885 A. B. Deming interviewed Caroline Rockwell Smith (1812-1887), the sister of
early Mormon Orin Porter Rockwell, at her residence in Hambden, Geauga Co., Ohio
http://www.sidneyrigdon.com/dbroadhu/CA ... #040088-1c

Caroline moved there from Manchester, NY in the late 1820s or early 1830s.
She married Horton Smith, a farmer living in Hambden, in 1834.

The 1874 land ownership map of Hambden township shows Horton Smith's
residence of 159 acres (along with 15.5 acres under Caroline Smith's name)
located in the center 1/3 of section 27.

On Nov. 1, 1817, Parley's uncle, Samuel Pratt, purchased 22 acres in lot 27 from Gaius Pease
On Mar. 21, 1818, the same Samuel Pratt purchased 10 more acres in lot 27 from David Sweetland

Samuel died at Hambden in 1854 -- Caroline Rockwell Smith died there in 1887.
During the years between 1834 and 1854, Mr. Pratt and Mr./Mrs. Smith were neighbors.

Odd that Parley makes no mention of this in his 1874 Autobiography, eh?

More on the presence of Samuel Pratt (Parley Pratt's uncle)
in northern Geauga Co., Ohio, at the time Rigdon was living there (1826 onward):

Samuel arrived at Chardon in 1816 and remained in that place until his death in 1854. Parley obviously knew him,
as did Rigdon (who organized a Campbellite congregation practically in Samuel's back yard, at Hambden, in 1829.

In 1831 the Porter Rockwell family moved from New York to Kirtland, and in 1834 Caroline Rockwell moved
to Hambden, to the very same lot where Samuel Pratt had his farm (just east of Chardon). I find that too much
of a coincidence to ignore.

Just before he took his first (or first acknowledged) trip from New York to Ohio, in 1826, Parley P. Pratt
had been staying with his uncle Allen Pratt in Galen, NY, immediately adjacent to where the Cowdery family
was then living (in Lyons). One of Parley's cousins in the Allen Pratt family married a daughter of Samuel Pratt.
in Ohio, in the early 1830s. Allen Pratt moved his family to Ohio and lived not far from Samuel Pratt. The
two families were obviously on good terms.

Why does Parley omit reference to his uncle Samuel, in relating his own 1826 journey to northern Ohio?
In writing his Autobiography, did Parley wish to cover up the fact that he had close relatives living in
the same county as Sidney Rigdon (12 mile north of Rigdon) four years before the Book of Mormon came out?

Did Parley actually live on the Samuel Pratt farm in Hambden, or at the Samuel Pratt residence in Chardon,
when he came to Ohio in 1826 (the same year Rigdon came back to Ohio to live)? Was Parley only 12 miles
from Sidney Rigdon's cabin for most of the year 1826?

I'd like to do a bit more research on Samuel Pratt -- read the records of his real estate tax payments in
Chardon and Hambden in the 1820s, etc. etc. However, the microfilms of those records are at the Family
History Library in Salt Lake City, and I know nobody there who could spend an hour or two printing
them out for me.

Does anybody reading this know how I can hire a "by-the-hour" researcher there?

Dale