J. Leslie Broadbent

Joseph Leslie Broadbent (3 June 1891–16 March 1935) was a religious leader in the early stages of the Mormon fundamentalist movement.

Broadbent was born to Amanda Hermandine Twede and Joseph Samuel Broadbent, who served as mayor of Lehi, Utah from 1922 to 1928.

In 1910, Broadbent left his studies at Brigham Young University to serve a mission in England for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In June 1915 he married Rula Louise Kelsch, and through his association with her family came to know John Wickersham Woolley. Among his other wives were Fawnetta Jessop, who married him in October 1925, and Irene Locket and Anna Kmetzsch, who had married him by 1933.

In 1927, Broadbent published a pamphlet "Celestial Marriage" advocating the practice of plural marriage. This was one of the first Mormon fundamentalist tracts and was a factor in his subsequent excommunication by the LDS Church in July 1929. Broadbent was ordained an apostle in the Mormon fundamentalist movement called the Apostolic United Brethren by Lorin Calvin Woolley on 6 March, 1929, and on the May 15 was given the title of "second elder" by Woolley.

Upon Woolley's death in 1934, Broadbent succeeded him as priesthood president. Among Mormon fundamentalists, the succession was largely uncontroversial, and Broadbent traveled widely in support of the fundamentalist movement. In February 1935 he and a number of other fundamentalist leaders visited Millville, Utah for a meeting with co-religionists. The next month Broadbent died from pneumonia.

After Broadbent's death there was a succession dispute between Charles Elden Kingston and John Yeates Barlow. The dispute was resolved in favor of Barlow, and Kingston's followers eventually established the Latter Day Church of Christ, a separate Mormon fundamentalist organization.

According to his friend Louis Kelsch, on the day of his death Broadbent said that he had not experienced any personal vision of heavenly messengers. However, Broadbent also commented, "If they come to get me, I can tell them that I am still in the work," as he pointed to religious books he planned to mail.

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External links

* [http://www.mormonfundamentalism.com/ChartLinks/JLeslieBroadbent.htm Mormonfundamentalism.com biography of Joseph Leslie Broadbent]