Lorin C. Woolley

Lorin Calvin Woolley (October 23, 1856 – September 19, 1934) was a Mormon fundamentalist leader and a proponent of plural marriage.

Early life

Woolley was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. He was the son of John Wickersham Woolley and Julia Searles Ensign. The family moved to Centerville in 1863, where he was ordained an elder in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by John Lyon on his sixteenth birthday. [Church Membership records of the South Davis Stake. See Polygamy Story: Fiction and Fact, Salt Lake City, Utah: Publishers Press, 1979, p. 145, (footnote 31)] In 1883, he married his first wife, Sarah Ann Roberts, in the Endowment House on Temple Square. They would have nine children together. [ [http://www.mormonfundamentalism.com/NEWFILES/LorinCWoolleyBio.htm#_ftn7 http://www.mormonfundamentalism.com/NEWFILES/LorinCWoolleyBio.htm#_ftn7] ]

Woolley served as a missionary for the LDS Church in the Indian Territory Mission from October 1887 to October 1889. [Missionary Book B, p. 97, no. 236, CHD. See Polygamy Story: Fiction and Fact, p. 145, footnote 32.] He was later called to the Seventieth Quorum of Seventy (a local calling, based in Centerville), and shortly thereafter served a four-month mission to Indian Territory, starting in December 1896.

Plural marriage

Between October 1886 and February 1887 Woolley became a mail carrier for the LDS Church leaders who were hiding from state authorities during the crack-down against Mormon polygamy. In 1912, he gave the first written account of the background to the 1886 Revelation, which included a September 1886 visitation of Joseph Smith to LDS Church president John Taylor at Woolley's father's home, and of a subsequent meeting in which Taylor stated that plural marriage must and would continue. After Taylor's death, the church officially abandoned polygamy in 1890.

Woolley was excommunicated from the LDS Church in January 1924 for publicizing that LDS Church leaders had taken plural wives after the 1890 Manifesto. [James E. Talmage Journals, 15 January 1924]

Most Mormon fundamentalists believe that upon his father's death in December 1928, Lorin Woolley succeeded him as President of the Priesthood. The following spring, Woolley ordained a new quorum of seven apostles (known as the Council of Friends), including J. Leslie Broadbent, John Yeates Barlow and Joseph White Musser, to ensure the perpetuation of plural marriage.

Woolley married at least four plural wives, three of whom were his first cousins: Sarah Viola and Alice May Woolley by 1915, and Goulda Kmetzsch in 1932.

Prior to his death, Woolley appointed J. Leslie Broadbent as his "first elder" and successor. [Norman C. Pierce, 3 1/2 Years, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1963, pp. 77-78]

ee also

*List of Mormon fundamentalist leaders

References