Zerah Pulsipher, a member of the First Seven Presidents of the Seventy who is mentioned in Section 124 of the Doctrine and Covenants, is best remembered as the man who baptized Wilford Woodruff and helped guide early Latter-day Saint communities through some of their most challenging migrations. From organizing the Kirtland Camp to supporting the spiritual and practical needs of ordinary Saints, Pulsipher’s life reflects both devotion and complexity, including a later disciplinary trial over plural-sealing practices. In this interview, Chad L. Nielsen explores Pulsipher’s leadership, faith, and enduring influence, drawing on historical records and personal insights to bring his story vividly to life.
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Table of Contents
- Visions and Demons
- Kirtland and Missouri
- Nauvoo and the Succession Crisis
- Utah War
- Polygamy and Church Discipline
- Zerah Pulsipher’s Legacy
Visions, Demons, and Baptizing Wilford Woodruff
— Zerah Pulsipher’s visionary conversion and “enchanted worldview” during the Second Great Awakening led to his pivotal 1833 mission, where he famously taught and baptized future Church President Wilford Woodruff.
What role did Zerah Pulsipher play in early church history?
Zerah Pulsipher (1789-1872) was an early convert to the Church of Christ, baptized by Jared Carter on January 11, 1832. A visionary man who was deeply impressed by the Book of Mormon, he was baptized, ordained an elder, and became the leader of the newly-founded Latter-day Saint congregation in Onondaga County, New York.
Within two years of his conversion, Zerah would serve a brief mission during which he met, taught, and baptized Wilford Woodruff.
Zerah was ordained as one of the First Seven Presidents of the Seventy on March 6, 1838 (equivalent to the Presidency of the Seventy today). In that capacity, he helped lead the Kirtland Camp, a large exodus of poor Latter-day Saints, from Kirtland, Ohio, to Missouri in 1838.
He also served in other leadership capacities, including as a Salt Lake City city councilor for several years. He was present for many of the major events of Church history in Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, and Utah, something that W. Paul Reeve highlighted by calling Pulsipher “the ultimate Forrest Gump of Mormonism.”
How did the “enchanted worldview” and the religious fervor of the Second Great Awakening affect Zerah’s conversion?
Like many early converts to the Latter-day Saint movement, Zerah Pulsipher was a product of the New England frontier—a place and time steeped in the religious excitement of the Second Great Awakening.
Before his baptism, Pulsipher was a Free Will Baptist who leaned toward universalism and Arminianism, but he maintained an “enchanted worldview.” This belief held that the veil between heaven and earth was thin and that God, angels, and demons actively intervened in daily life. He was searching for a return to the primitive Christianity of the New Testament.
In the summer of 1830, a visit from Solomon Chamberlain sparked a change that would shape the rest of Pulsipher’s life. Hearing Chamberlain publicly mention that a “golden Bible” had been found in Manchester, New York, Pulsipher later recalled that the news “thrild through my sistem Like a shock of Electricity.” Once a copy of the Book of Mormon arrived in town, Pulsipher borrowed it, reading it through several times. He and his neighbors would regularly sit and talk about it, concluding that it was a sign of God preparing the way for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
When missionary Jared Carter arrived in late 1831, Pulsipher took the opportunity to question him closely. The missionary’s responses impressed Pulsipher. Carter’s affirmation that he had received a witness from God that the Book of Mormon and the Latter-day Saint movement were from Him led Pulsipher to seek the same witness, which culminated in an intense spiritual experience where he claimed to see a vision of a barn full of angels. This led to his baptism by Carter on January 11, 1832.
Was Zerah Pulsipher visited by the angel Moroni?
We don’t have any record of Zerah being visited by the angel Moroni. H. Donl Peterson and Glen L. Rudd suggested that Moroni was an angel that Zerah saw in his barn, but that should be seen as speculation, as it’s not attributable to Pulsipher or his contemporaries.
How did Zerah’s 1833 missionary journey to upstate New York lead to the baptism of future Church President Wilford Woodruff?
Within two years of his own conversion, Zerah Pulsipher became a tireless missionary for his new faith. In late 1833, he felt like the Holy Spirit instructed him to leave his farm and go north on a missionary expedition. As his son, Charles, later wrote,
While working in the field, the Spirit moved upon him to start out and go north and preach the gospel. He stopped and thought on it and finally concluded to work on until night, and then he would think more about it, but the Spirit soon told him to go north on a mission. So, he quit work and went home, told Mother to get his clothes ready, for he was going on a mission in the morning.
“Where are you going?”
“I don’t know—only I am to go north.”
“How long will you be gone?”
“I don’t know that.”
He got Brother [Elijah] Cheney, who had been ordained a teacher, to go with him.
Pulsipher, Charles, 1830 – 1915. Charles Pulsipher Reminiscences, MS 6919, Church History Library of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, UT. Spelling and punctuation modernized for readability.
The two men went to Richland, Oswego County, New York, where they encountered a young farmer named Wilford Woodruff.
Much like Pulsipher, Woodruff had been seeking a faith that matched the biblical Christianity of the New Testament. He had been dissatisfied with the existing denominations and was actively looking for a church that exhibited the spiritual gifts and prophetic authority of ancient times.
Woodruff requested baptism, and Pulsipher performed the ordinance shortly thereafter.
When Woodruff attended the meeting where Pulsipher was preaching, he later recorded that he felt the Spirit of God bear undeniable witness to the truth of the message. Convinced that he had finally found the restored gospel, Woodruff requested baptism, and Pulsipher performed the ordinance shortly thereafter.
Wilford Woodruff later became an apostle and the fourth president of the Church.
How did early church leaders like Zerah deal with episodes they perceived as demonic possession, like the case of Joseph Hunting?
Because early Saints believed so deeply in a literal spiritual realm, they occasionally encountered what they understood to be demonic possession.
In the case of Joseph Hunting, the man exhibited severe physical convulsions and distress that defied medical explanation at the time. Pulsipher helped to care for the man, and eventually joined with a group of elders in Kirtland to utilize priesthood blessings and faith to cast out the evil spirit (or “rebuke the Destroyer,” as Pulsipher usually put it). The accounts indicate that the dispossession ritual helped for a time, though the symptoms later returned.
They validated the power of the priesthood to early Latter-day Saints.
Pulsipher and his sons recorded several experiences with what they believed were demonic possessions throughout Pulsipher’s lifetime, including during the Kirtland Camp and their time in Hebron in southern Utah.
These episodes were important community events; they validated the power of the priesthood to the early Latter-day Saints and proved to them that they were engaged in a literal, cosmic battle between good and evil.
The Kirtland Camp and the Mormon-Missouri War
— Zerah Pulsipher navigated the daunting logistical challenges of leading the Kirtland Camp migration into the violent 1838 Mormon-Missouri War, an experience that fueled his lifelong distrust of the United States government.
What can we learn about early logistical challenges in the church from Zerah’s leadership during the Kirtland Camp?
Following his ordination as a First President of the Seventy on March 6, 1838, Zerah Pulsipher was immediately thrust into one of the most daunting logistical challenges of early Latter-day Saint history: the Kirtland Camp. This endeavor involved the mass migration of over 500 impoverished Latter-day Saints from Kirtland, Ohio, to Far West, Missouri, in 1838.
Senior leadership (including Joseph Smith) had already fled Ohio due to mob violence, and the Kirtland Safety Society had collapsed. The burden of organizing the exodus was daunting, and it did not materialize until the First Seven Presidents of the Seventy made plans to move members of the Seventies’ quorums to Missouri. Soon, other impoverished Latter-day Saints begged to join them. Pulsipher and his peers had to function as an emergency administrative body.
It was a logistical nightmare. The camp faced a severe lack of funds, outbreaks of disease, treacherous roads, and internal dissent among the exhausted travelers.
Pulsipher helped to manage this through preaching, encouraging them to follow a constitution of camp rules and general principles espoused by the Church. He could be both inspiring and harsh in his remarks, and occasionally took a leading role in disciplinary trials along the way.
His leadership during this grueling journey underscores that building Zion wasn’t just about receiving heavenly revelations; it was about the gritty, exhausting, and often thankless administrative work required to physically move and sustain hundreds of desperate people across the American frontier.
How did the violence of the 1838 Mormon-Missouri War shape Zerah Pulsipher’s worldview and fuel his lasting distrust of the United States government?
The trauma cemented a deep and lasting persecution narrative in Pulsipher’s mind. He arrived with the Kirtland Camp in Missouri just as the 1838 Mormon-Missouri War was exploding. They stepped directly into a war zone, culminating in Governor Lilburn Boggs’s infamous “Extermination Order.” Pulsipher witnessed his people being driven from their homes at gunpoint during the freezing winter.
For the rest of his life, Zerah viewed state and federal governments not as protectors of First Amendment liberties, but as corrupt, hostile entities complicit in the murder and disenfranchisement of the Saints. The assassination of Joseph and Hyrum Smith in 1844 served to aggravate these feelings further.
This worldview heavily influenced how he and other pioneer leaders would later interact with the United States government after settling in the Great Basin.
The Succession Crisis: Why Zerah Pulsipher Backed Brigham Young
— During the 1844 succession crisis, Pulsipher helped legitimize Brigham Young’s leadership by rallying the Seventies and was later sealed to Wilford Woodruff through the theological practice known as the “law of adoption.”
Following the assassination of Joseph Smith, how did Brigham Young and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles consolidate their authority over figures like Sidney Rigdon during the 1844 succession crisis?
When Joseph Smith was murdered in Carthage Jail in 1844, the Church faced an unprecedented crisis of authority. Without a clear, universally accepted plan for succession, several figures stepped forward to claim leadership. Sidney Rigdon, who had served as a counselor in the First Presidency, claimed the right to be the “guardian” of the Church. Conversely, Brigham Young argued that the keys of the kingdom rested collectively with the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and that if the Latter-day Saints wanted to receive the temple ordinances, they needed to follow him.
As one of the First Seven Presidents of the Seventy, Zerah Pulsipher held some influence among the rank-and-file members. The Seventies were subordinate to the Quorum of the Twelve in their specific ministry, and Pulsipher and his fellow Seventies ultimately aligned themselves with the Quorum of the Twelve. Their support helped in legitimizing Brigham Young’s leadership and neutralizing competing claims. By rallying the lower and middle tiers of church leadership behind the Apostles, men like Pulsipher helped ensure that the majority of the Latter-day Saints followed Brigham Young west, preserving the institutional structure of the Church.
How did Zerah’s relationship with Wilford Woodruff change in Winter Quarters?
Due to poor health during his stay in Winter Quarters, Zerah Pulsipher and his family were delayed, waiting until 1848 to travel to Salt Lake City. During that time, Wilford Woodruff became Zerah’s “adoptive father” through a theological practice introduced in the Nauvoo Temple known as the law of adoption. During this period, Latter-day Saints believed that to secure eternal membership in the kingdom of God, men needed to be sealed into an unbroken chain of Melchizedek Priesthood authority.
This unique sealing practice stemmed from the belief that an apostasy had broken the ancient priesthood lineage. Because Joseph Smith had received the priesthood directly from heavenly messengers, he bridged that historical gap. Therefore, men were sealed as sons to high-ranking Church leaders, who were in turn sealed to Joseph Smith, integrating them into his priesthood lineage.
After the Saints abandoned Nauvoo, formal adoption sealings paused, but the concept provided the organizational framework for the western exodus. Apostles gathered their “adopted families” and organized them into functional wagon companies of 50s and 100s. In January 1847, Woodruff formally organized his family company, having the men raise their hands to covenant to keep God’s commandments and sustain his leadership. Zerah Pulsipher was among the men present at this meeting who bound themselves to this covenant.
Colonizing the Great Basin and the Utah War
— The Pulsipher family participated in the colonization of southern Utah and employed strategic guerrilla tactics to harass the U.S. Army and stall their advance during the 1857 Utah War.
When the Latter-day Saints colonized the Great Basin, how did their efforts to build Zion conflict with the Native American tribes—particularly the Paiutes and Utes—already living on the land?
Utah was not an empty wilderness awaiting Latter-day Saint plows; it was the ancestral home of the Numic peoples (the Utes, Paiutes, Goshutes, and Shoshones) and the Navajos. As Brigham Young dispatched men like Pulsipher to colonize regions like southern Utah (the “Dixie” mission), their settlement fundamentally disrupted Native ecosystems and food sources.
While the Saints initially attempted to form alliances and trade with Native tribes, guided by Book of Mormon theology that viewed Indigenous peoples as a chosen lineage, the practical realities of colonization told a different story. The rapid influx of settlers disrupted access to scarce water, hunting grounds, and arable land.
This aggressive expansion inevitably led to conflict, displacement, and the spread of devastating diseases among the Indigenous populations. The colonization effort, while framed as building Zion, required the systematic dispossession of the Native Americans who were already trying to survive in the harsh and unforgiving landscapes of the Intermountain West.
How did the 1857 Utah War escalate tensions between the Nauvoo Legion and the federal government, and what guerrilla tactics did the Pulsipher family use to stall the U.S. Army?
In 1857, President James Buchanan sent the U.S. Army to Utah to enforce federal authority, put down an alleged rebellion, and replace Brigham Young as the territorial governor. Having already been driven from Missouri and Illinois, the Saints viewed the approaching federal troops not as peacekeepers but as an invading mob intent on their destruction.
In response, the Nauvoo Legion—the Utah Territory Militia—deployed a scorched-earth guerrilla strategy. Outgunned and outmanned, they knew they could not win a pitched battle against the U.S. military. Instead, militiamen, including Charles Pulsipher, harassed the federal troops from the shadows.
They burned supply wagons, destroyed acres of prairie grass to starve the army’s livestock, and stole cattle. These delaying tactics were shocking to Americans, but they helped slow the U.S. Army, leading them to winter at Fort Bridger in brutal, freezing conditions. This stalled the incursion long enough to buy the crucial time needed to negotiate a peaceful diplomatic resolution to the conflict.
The Mormon Reformation and Church Discipline
— After entering plural marriage during the intense fervor of the Mormon Reformation, Pulsipher faced a high-profile 1862 disciplinary trial and was released from leadership for performing sealings without the explicit authorization of Brigham Young and his bishop.
How did the intense rhetoric of the Mormon Reformation in the 1850s influence Zerah Pulsipher’s family life and his participation in plural marriage?
Zerah Pulsipher and his wife, Mary, were initially reluctant to practice plural marriage. When rumors of the practice began circulating after Joseph Smith’s death, Pulsipher later recalled, “When I first heard of the Plurality I thot it could not be Possible that it was right.” However, visionary experiences helped the family reconcile with the doctrine, including his daughter Mariah recording that she “saw in a vision the beauty and glory of plurality of wives.” It remains unclear to what extent Mary Pulsipher fully reconciled herself to the idea, as the records she left behind do not mention her husband’s other wives.
The Mormon Reformation of 1856-1857 was a period of intense religious revivalism in the Utah territory designed to root out complacency and reignite spiritual fervor. One of the primary subjects leaders pushed for greater conformity on was plural marriage. The pressure became overwhelming, with Wilford Woodruff noting at the time that “Nearly all are trying to get wives, until there is hardly a girl 14 years old in Utah but what is married or just going to be.”
Pulsipher took this call to repentance seriously. While he had married an older widower as his second living wife, Prudence McNanamy, in 1854, it was only under the intense pressure of this Reformation that the sixty-eight-year-old Pulsipher married a younger wife and had children with her: thirteen-year-old Martha Hughes. For Pulsipher, participating in plural marriage wasn’t just a cultural norm or social experiment; it was an act of religious obedience required by his leaders to secure his family’s exaltation.
What led to Zerah Pulsipher’s 1862 disciplinary trial under Brigham Young?
In 1862, Pulsipher performed plural marriage sealings for a man named William Bailey without the explicit authorization of Brigham Young and the bishop, sealing him to Hannah Hughes and Harriet Porter. According to Pulsipher’s son-in-law, Bailey had falsely claimed that President Young had approved it and directed him to Pulsipher to perform the ceremony. Pulsipher took the claim at face value—an action his son-in-law called an “over sight” on Zerah’s part.
When Joseph Smith was expanding the practice of plural marriage in Nauvoo, he put in place a “rule of one” to centralize the regulation of the practice: “there is never but one on the earth at a time on whom this power and the keys of this priesthood are conferred” (D&C 132:7). After the succession crisis, Brigham Young worked to rigorously consolidating all sealing keys under his own authority, first as President of the Quorum of the Twelve and later as the Church President.
During the Mormon Reformation, however, the process of approving plural marriages became too much for one man to handle. As a result, Brigham Young began to rely more heavily on the local leaders (bishops, branch presidents, and stake presidents) to filter and approve plural marriages before he gave the final stamp of approval. The core problem in this scenario was that Frederick Kesler—the bishop over the ward where Bailey and Pulsipher lived—had not approved Bailey’s plural marriages. Kesler complained to President Young and, as a result, Pulsipher was subjected to a disciplinary council at the Seventies Hall, where he was released from his calling as one of the First Seven Presidents of the Seventy. He was required to be rebaptized as a sign of repentance and was offered the opportunity to be ordained a High Priest.
Pulsipher accepted the discipline humbly, but it stung. A few months later, he left Salt Lake City to join his sons in an obscure ranching community on Shoal Creek in southern Utah, where he lived out the remainder of his days.
The Legacy of Zerah Pulsipher
— Zerah Pulsipher’s biography highlights the essential role of “middle managers” in building the Latter-day Saint kingdom, ending with his humble acceptance of discipline and his final years in the ghost town of Hebron, Utah.
Looking at his life as an “indispensable middle manager,” what does Zerah Pulsipher’s biography teach us about the everyday realities of building the Latter-day Saint kingdom in the American West?
Pulsipher’s life reminds us that the Latter-day Saint kingdom was not built solely by visionary prophets; it was built by exhausted, faithful “middle managers” who dug the ditches, drove the wagons, preached in the rain, and enforced the policies. Pulsipher bore the brunt of the logistical failures in Kirtland, the violence in Missouri, and the grueling colonization of southern Utah. His biography strips away some of the romantic mythology of the pioneer era, revealing the immense personal sacrifice, the internal administrative conflicts, and the unyielding faith required to survive as a Latter-day Saint.
Where is he buried?
Zerah Pulisipher is buried in Hebron, Utah. After the 1862 trial, Zerah moved to southern Utah with his wives to live with his children. His sons were among the initial settlers called to settle St. George. Shortly afterwards, they established a small settlement along Shoal Creek in the mountains north of St. George to raise cattle for the folks in town. The community was later named Hebron, and Zerah lived there until he passed away on January 1, 1872, at age 82.
His gravesite is in Hebron, though the settlement is a ghost town today—most of the remaining settlers moved to Enterprise, Utah, in the early twentieth century after an earthquake damaged Hebron.
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About the Scholar
Chad Nielsen is an independent historian and author specializing in the lived religion and administrative history of early Latter-day Saint converts. His research focuses on 19th-century developmental theology and the logistical evolution of the Church. Nielsen is the author of A Barn Full of Angels: The Spiritual World and Pioneer Journey of Zerah Pulsipher, a definitive biography that reconstructs the visionary experiences and organizational contributions of this foundational figure. A four-time recipient of the Arrington Writing Award, his scholarship has appeared in peer-reviewed venues including the Journal of Mormon History, Element: A Journal of Mormon Philosophy and Theology, and Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. His extensive work with primary source documents and historical context offers readers an authoritative look into the nuanced life and complex administrative legacy of Zerah Pulsipher.
Further Reading
Explore more From the Desk articles about the life and times of Zerah Pulsipher:
- Who Was Wilford Woodruff?
- What Is Latter-day Saint Polygamy?
- What Can We Learn From Wilford Woodruff’s Mission Years?
- Who Was William Marks?
- Why Did Wilford Woodruff Use Symbols in His Journal?
Zerah Pulsipher: Church History Sources
Read what top scholars and publishers say about one of the First Seven Presidents of Seventy from Latter-day Saint history:
- A Barn Full of Angels: The Spiritual World and Pioneer Journey of Zerah Pulsipher (Greg Kofford Books)
- Zerah Pulsipher and the Regulation of Plural Marriage (Journal of Mormon History)
- An Instrument in the Lord’s Hands (Wilford Woodruff Papers)
- Seeking Revelation and Sharing Truth: Zerah’s ‘Call to the North’ (Meridian Magazine)
- Life and Documents (Pulsipher Papers)
Post originally published on September 1, 2024. It was most recently updated on May 7, 2026 to provide an improved experience for readers.
4 replies on “Who Was Zerah Pulsipher?”
Thank you so much for this history of my Grandfather Pulsipher’s conversion story and his testimony! It was well written and researched.
Thanks! He’s an ancestor of mine as well.
Wonderfully interesting. I look forward to reading the biography, where possibly you take up the parallels between the lives of Zerah Pulsipher and Shadrach Roundy, whose families moved more or less together to Spafford, were baptized about the same time, went through the highs and lows of the Mormon higera, were each middle-level leaders, and ended up in Utah. Both founded large families and both had links to southern Utah. The name of Roundy’s paternal grandmother is uncertain and I suspect there might be a kinship between the Pulsipher and Roundy families.
I don’t know that I made a point to mention the Roundy family throughout, but I am familiar with them from the research. That’s interesting that they might be related!