Edward Partridge

Edward Partridge Sr. (August 27, 1793 – May 27, 1840) was one of the earliest converts to the Latter Day Saint movement and served as its first Bishop of the Church.

Biography

Edward Partridge was the grandson of Massachusetts Congressman Oliver Partridge, Esq., and a member of a family noted for commercial, social, political, and military leadership in Western Massachusetts.

Partridge owned a hat-making factory and retail store in Painesville, Ohio. He was sent to New York in 1830 by a group of Painesville citizens to investigate the Latter Day Saint movement. He was baptized a member of the Church of Christ, later renamed The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, in or near Seneca Lake, New York, on December 11, 1830, and upon his return to Painesville discovered that his wife had also become a convert.

Church service

Two months later in Kirtland, Ohio, Partridge became the first to hold the prominent position of bishop. In this position he helped lead the Mormon settlement in Jackson County, Missouri, and managed land distribution under the law of consecration. He was tarred and feathered by an anti-Mormon mob in July 1833, then forced to move to Clay County, Missouri, followed by Caldwell County in 1836. During 1835, he served a mission in Illinois, Iowa, Ohio, and Indiana, then entered into another mission in New York and New England. Following the 1838 Mormon War, Patridge was jailed in Richmond, Missouri; in 1839, he was expelled from the state.

Partridge expended much of his wealth in support of the movement before he died in late May 1840 at Nauvoo, Illinois. Joseph Smith suggested that Partridge's death could be attributed to the stress and persecution which he and other Mormon settlers in western Missouri were subjected to in the 1830s. After Partridge died, his widow Lydia married William Huntington, father of Zina D. H. Young.

Ancestors and descendants

Patridge's ancestors include the early American poets Rev. Edward Taylor and Anne Bradstreet. His forebears also include a number of notable Anglo-American religious leaders including the Rev. John Cotton, Dean of Emmanuel College, Cambridge who was the spiritual leader of the New England colonies; Rev. Solomon Stoddard, one of the most influential colonial ministers and the grandfather of the famous Rev. Jonathan Edwards and ancestor of United States Vice President Aaron Burr.

Partridge's ancestors also include a number of significant early political leaders in Colonial American and early U.S. history, including Connecticut Governor Thomas Welles, Massachusetts Governor John Haynes, Connecticut Governor George Wyllys, Massachusetts Governor Thomas Dudley, and Massachusetts Governor Simon Bradstreet. His daughter Emily Partridge was a plural wife of the future first Territorial Governor of Utah, Brigham Young. His daughter Eliza Maria Partridge married Utah Territorial Legislator Amasa M. Lyman, delegate to the California Constitutional Convention and leader of the first organized Anglo-American colony in Southern California. His son Edward Partridge Jr. was a member of the Utah Territorial Legislature and a delegate to the Utah Constitutional Convention.

External resources

• Media related to Edward Partridge at Wikimedia Commons
• Grampa Bill's G.A. Pages, archived from the original on 2011-06-05