Addison Pratt

Addison Pratt (1802-02-21 – 1872-10-14) was an early Latter-day Saint convert and missionary. Pratt preached in French Polynesia from 1844 to 1848 and from 1850 to 1852, and is recognized by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as the first Mormon missionary to preach in a language other than English. [Deseret News, "1993–1994 Church Almanac" (Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret News) p. 271.] [ [http://www.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=052fbebe4538f010VgnVCM100000176f620aRCRD&vgnextchannel=614511154963d010VgnVCM1000004e94610aRCRD LDS Newsroom: Country Profiles: French Polynesia (Tahiti)] .]

Life

Pratt was born in Winchester, New Hampshire. Raised a farmer, he was employed as a whaler in New England for more than a decade. He married Louisa Barnes, born in Warwick, Massachusetts, early feminist, an early contributor to the Women's Exponent and author of her own famous memoirs [http://www.amazon.com/dp/0874212529] and sister to Caroline Barnes Crosby, another influential early frontier woman writer [http://www.amazon.com/dp/087421601X] and feminist.

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 then in Nauvoo, Illinois. Years later, the Pratts persuaded the Crosbys to join them in missionary work in the Pacific Islands.

While working aboard a whaling ship, Pratt 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 the Hawaiian language. Years later, in October 1843, Pratt recommended to Joseph Smith, Jr. missionary work among the Polynesians, whom he expected to be receptive. Smith sent Pratt and three others as the first foreign language speaking missionaries, to create a mission in the Pacific Islands; one of the men died en route. Pratt disembarked at Tubuai in the Society Islands on 1844-04-30 and began teaching in the local dialect of the Tahitian. He noted the similarity of Tahitian to the Hawaiian language. He later preached in Tahiti and other nearby islands and atolls. Pratt returned to the United States in 1848 to assist his family's emigration to San Bernardino, California. 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 returned were held under house arrest, until eventually returning to California. Pratt declined Mormon leaders and his wife Eliza's entreaty to follow the practice of plural marriage. As a result, Pratt and his wife were separated and estranged for much of his later life. Pratt died in Anaheim, California and is buried there.

Pratt was present at 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 Bernadino, and then northward to Sacramento. The trail they carved would be followed by many settlers and 49ers. For much of its distance, that route is now tracked by I-15.

Hunt and Pratt group are 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 and Hunt's leadership and sought to cross the Sierras farther North, the infamous Death Valley party. One of Hunt's sons married one of Pratt's daughters.

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. Other members who had originally split with the Death Valley party later rejoined the party after they were discovered nearly starved to death by one of Hunt's scouts, having also rejected the leadership of the Death Valley party.

Pratt's journals are an important source for historians, vividly illustrating the life of a whaler and seamen 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 Bernadino County, California.

Legacy

Pratt has a number of noteworthy descendants:

*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

ee also

*Udall family
*History of Tahiti
*California Gold Rush
*Sutter's Mill
*Donner Party
*Whaling

Notes

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). [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst;jsessionid=HmpFKpVJff9ZCNyLKvn428KxVDYwdn8mzJDVXk0LdmsdKGdVGgjZ!1937741497?a=o&d=3615272# "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"] (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press)