The
Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt — Revised and Enhanced Edition
Conclusion to the Introduction
By Scot Facer Proctor
and Maurine Jensen Proctor
Why
this Edition?
We live in an age of visual
stimulation. Books compete with videos, CDs, television, and the
internet. Yet books are the staple of the ages. Books capture
the feelings and experiences of generations dead and gone. Books
are the intimate companion of the learning and the learned. Books
were Parley’s best friends.
This book contains photographs capturing the life and times of
Parley P. Pratt. Many of his journeys took him to obscure locations
in the wilds of early America. In this volume, a new generation
of Saints can see the places Parley knew, and they can rekindle
their love for the miracles and stories of the Restoration. They
can see the farm and land where Parley was born.
They can join him on the Erie Canal as the Spirit moves him to
get off the boat. They can go to England and see the gospel expand
in a new nation. They can traverse the plains and mountains of
the West to come to a new place of gathering. And they can see
the place where this dedicated apostle was tried, hunted down,
murdered, and buried.
This work captures the intimate feelings of Parley’s life
taken from personal correspondence to his loved ones and his brethren
in the leadership of the Church. Many of the endnotes illuminating
the chapters come from unpublished materials and personal communications.
These endnotes clearly reveal Parley’s absolute devotion
and loyalty to the Lord and to his chosen servants. They show
Parley’s acute pain, suffering, and struggles.
On one
voyage across the Atlantic, leaving his family behind again, he
lamented in a letter to one of his wives: “I am Alone! —
Alone! — Alone! O Horrible! — Yes — Alone —
the punishment — the Hell I always dread — and the
one to which I am often doomed. How oft has it been my lot to
spend wearisome days, weeks and even months, confined to the society
of those whose spirits, ways, manners, tastes, pursuits, hopes
and jesting are so different from mine, that not a single chord,
or nerve beats in unison. This is hell to me.”i
The endnotes also reveal Parley’s exultant joy in his family
and his desires that each member receive an abundance of blessings
and happiness in their lives. In a letter from San Francisco written
June 26, 1852, to his wife Hannahette, he wrote:
I
want to see you all very much. I remember your kindness to me
and feel to love and bless you. Be faithful and diligent, and
take good care of the children, and learn them to read and spell,
and write and work; and I will bless you... The days are fleeting,
the months are passing, the years will roll around, and lo, I
shall be in your midst again to bless and comfort you. ii
Challenges
Our lives as writers and photographers appear to be glamorous
at times, chasing storms and racing against the fleeting light,
trying to capture scenes of the past on cellulose and silver.
Our biggest challenges usually are natural ones: weather and time.
The weather, no matter what it is, usually plays to our advantage;
at least we strive to make it so. Time is often a different story.
In May 1997 while on our first shoot for this work, we raced from
Washington, D.C., to Philadelphia, trying to arrive with plenty
of afternoon light to shoot a picture of the interior of the church
where the Prophet preached on January 14, 1840. Parley recorded
the power of that event:
Joseph arose like a lion about to roar; and being full of the
Holy Ghost, spoke in great power, bearing testimony of the visions
he had seen, the ministering of angels which he had enjoyed; and
how he had found the plates of the Book of Mormon, and translated
them by the gift and power of God... The entire congregation were
astounded; electrified, as it were, and overwhelmed with the sense
of the truth and power by which he spoke, and the wonders which
he related. iii
We found the church, which had become a
Jewish synagogue, behind a black iron fence on 412 Lombard Street
in downtown Philadelphia. The fence made the exterior difficult
to shoot, but we hoped to photograph the interior. Since it was
Friday afternoon near the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath, we
hoped it would open at any moment. We went to the large doors.
They were locked solid. We tried the adjoining doors that opened
to offices connected to the church. They too were tightly closed.
We looked up and down the street, trying to find a clue to getting
in. We found another synagogue about two blocks away. On its doors
were two or three phone numbers. We tried them all until we reached
a rabbi. He knew nothing of the congregation down the street.
We finally located an obscure sign on the first church, found
a phone number, and went to a nearby video store to call. The
rabbi was home but lived about an hour away. He said that by the
time he arrived we would not be allowed to shoot because the Jewish
Sabbath would have begun.
We asked, “Is
there anybody else with a key?” We begged and pleaded. He
kindly said that if we could arrange to come back in three or
four days, he would try to help us. Unfortunately, we didn’t
have three or four days; we only had about half an hour before
we would lose the light and have to be on our way to the next
location. It had taken us three hours of precious time to find
out that we were truly up against locked doors in every way.
Quite dejected, we walked from the video store toward our parked
car. This had never happened to us before. We had been all over
the world shooting pictures of sacred or significant places, and
the way had always been opened for us.
As we walked
past the old church, Scot paraphrased the Reverend Mother in The
Sound of Music, saying, “In all of our past shoots,
whenever a door has been closed, the Lord has always opened a
window.” He glanced up at the large stained-glass windows
as we were nearly to the car. There, high above the sidewalk,
a small chunk of glass had fallen out of an enormous window. It
was just the size of the circumference of a camera lens.
Looking both ways, we climbed over the iron fence. With Maurine
pushing from behind, Scot stepped to a tiny ledge, stood on his
tiptoes, and looked inside the church. He had a perfect view of
the front of the sanctuary, including some of the first few rows
of pews — the very place Joseph had preached from the pulpit.
Scot carefully
balanced himself, with constant support from behind, and jostled
the camera in place. Not being able to see through the lens and
hold himself safely at the same time, he estimated the exposure,
hoping his camera’s autofocus was centered on the right
object. He triggered the drive and shot about sixteen exposures.
By then, Scot
was beginning to lose his balance, and Maurine’s muscles
were shaking from bracing him up. We hopped down, hoping we were
done. Two weeks later our pictures arrived. All of the shots were
unusable except one — the one published in this book. The
Reverend Mother was right.
The photographs in this edition were, for the most part, taken
of places as they appear today. However, we tried to recreate
scenes as they were in Parley’s day by avoiding people,
power lines, jet streams, and cars.
We have also included maps to give the reader a sense of Parley’s
many journeys, wanderings, missions, and travels for the work
of the Lord. Parley was intrepid in every season and in every
clime. He probably traveled as far and wide as any of the early
missionaries of the Church.
It was an awesome experience to handle some of the original documents
of the Restoration found in LDS Church Archives. One of the most
powerful experiences we had was finding a series of letters Parley
had written while he lay in chains during the dead of winter in
a dreadful dungeon in Richmond, Missouri. In our white-gloved
hands we held the very letters Parley had held in that dimly lit
hellhole as he expressed in quill and ink the deepest feelings
of his heart to his persecuted and suffering family, who had fled
to Illinois. We felt the power of the Spirit during those brief
moments, and we felt humble and grateful that Parley persevered
through that terrible ordeal.
Scot Facer Proctor
Maurine Jensen Proctor
Editors
Salt Lake City, Utah
Manuscript completed February 22, 2000
Notes
i.
See page 437.
ii. Parley P. Pratt to Hannahette Snively Pratt,
June 26, 1852, Mary Jean Freebairn Collection.
iii. See
page 362
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