Crawford County Circuit Court Judge Gary Cottrell during an April 2 hearing allowed the family to exhume Pratt's remains. The family obtained a disinternment permit from the Arkansas Department of Health.

Pratt's remains would have been the oldest exhumed in Arkansas since the state started keeping records of exhumation requests in 1999, said Grace Carson-Eubanks, the Health Department's assistant state vital records registrar.

Karl Anderson, 70, made his first trip to Arkansas to see the digging. He's studying his church's history and teaching it to other members of his congregation in Cleveland, Ohio. He'll share his snapshots with his students.

"The image I had was that the people here in Arkansas were negative and didn't want him here," Anderson said. "What I learned was there were people here who were good to Parley and folks who treated him well. They saw that he got a good burial."

Margaret Sevy, Grow's sister, said early Tuesday she thought Pratt should return to Utah in the same way her brother did years ago. Her brother, David William Grow, 20, was one of three LDS Church Mormon church missionaries murdered in 1974 near Harrisburg, Pa. He is buried in Utah.

"He came home, just like Parley should," Sevy said. "That's why it's tender to me."