Orson Pratt descendants honor his heritage

As a boy growing up in the LDS Church, Brent Beesley had a particular fascination for his great-grandfather, Elder Orson Pratt.

"He was kind of a young man's apostle," reflected Beesley, who was reared with accounts of his ancestor as a scientist with fluency in Greek and Hebrew, an eager and robust trail scout who led the advance party of 1847 Mormon pioneers, and the first Latter-day Saint to enter the Salt Lake Valley.

Elder Pratt's 200th birthday is on Sept. 19 of this year, and Beesley will join many of his fellow Pratt descendants for an observance Sept. 10 at This Is the Place Heritage Park in Salt Lake City, the 2011 reunion of the Jared and Charity Pratt Family Association.

Jared and Charity are the parents of Orson and his illustrious brother and fellow apostle, Parley P. Pratt, who introduced Orson to Mormonism just a few weeks after Parley himself had joined the church.

"I like the idea of Orson as this kind of renaissance man, because he's literally a self-taught mathematician and self-taught astronomer," reflected Matthew J. Grow, director of publications at the Church History Department and a direct descendant of Parley. He and Beesley, chairman and CEO of Heritage Bank in St. George, are helping to organize the reunion.

Born in Hartford, Conn., Orson was baptized on his 19th birthday in 1830 by his elder brother Parley, who also introduced John Taylor and other future Mormon leaders to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That was the year the church was organized by Joseph Smith, who ordained Orson an elder and immediately sent him to Colesville, N.Y., on his first mission.

At age 23, Orson served in the Zion's Camp march, an unsuccessful attempt to regain lands and property lost in the persecutions at Independence, Mo. Like other veterans of that formative experience, Orson became a leader in the church. He was called to be a member of the original Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in April 1835 at age 24.

"Between 1839 and 1841, Orson served a mission in the British Isles and wrote a missionary tract which contained the earliest known public printing of Joseph Smith's First Vision and also materials very similar to what is known today as the Articles of Faith," Beesley said. "Later, he was the mission president for the British Mission and then the European Mission. He crossed the Atlantic a total of 16 times in service of the church."