Life of David W. Patten, the First Apostolic MartyrWilson, Lycurgus A. (Lycurgus Arnold)
History
Life of David W. Patten, the First Apostolic Martyr
Wilson, Lycurgus A. (Lycurgus Arnold)
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints -- Apostles -- Biography; Patten, David W., 1799-1838
How fearfully this prophecy was fulfilled in the capture of Paris in
1862 by General Morgan, during his famous raid through Kentucky and
Tennessee!
Early in September, the seven branches of the Church in Kentucky and
Tennessee, representing one hundred and thirty-three members, assembled
in conference on Damon's Creek, Calloway County, Kentucky, Thomas B.
Marsh, as President of the Twelve Apostles, presiding. On the third
day of the conference, David preached on repentance and baptism, and
at the close of the meeting, five persons came forward and asked to be
baptized.
Directly after conference, David with his wife took leave of the Saints
and his fellow laborers, and returned in safety with Thomas B. Marsh
and companion, Elisha H. Groves, to Missouri.
In leaving the field of his labors of the past six months, in company
with Elisha H. Groves, who had first conferred upon him authority
to enter the missionary field, it was but natural that David should
retrospectively contemplate the work to which his life had been so
wholly given over since that lonely ride through the woods from
Michigan to Indiana. His first disappointing missionary labors among
his friends and acquaintances in Michigan, when he expected all of them
to rejoice with him in the great light newly burst upon the world;
the first visit to the Prophet Joseph, followed by the two successive
missions in the East; his winter's journey with William D. Pratt; his
labors in Missouri and in the South; his ordination to the Apostleship
with the wonderful feast of blessings and endowments that followed;
the return to the South, just terminated all these reflections crowded
upon him with all their accompanying memories of toil and privation,
with all the accompanying memories of the powers and blessings the Lord
had bestowed upon him; and there was no room in his soul for anything
but gratitude. Not only so, but there was a more settled resolution
to persevere to the end; and it was probably on this journey back to
Missouri that in David's mind the nature of that end was predetermined.
Upon his return to Missouri, after an absence of two years, David found
not a few marks of progress in the condition of the Saints. A new town
had been laid out called Far West, into which the people were gathering
from every quarter. Efforts were being made to purchase all the land in
the newly created County of Caldwell, and it was to gather means for
this purpose that President Thomas B. Marsh had made his recent visit
into Kentucky.
Locating on a single lot in the northwest part of town given him by the
Saints, David soon had a plain log house erected, and from that time
he devoted himself entirely to the welfare of the Church. His zeal in
spreading the truth abroad, was not surpassed by that manifested in its
defense at home.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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