Polly Chubbuck Pulsipher: Witness of the Transfiguration of Brigham Young

 

My family has a long history of faithful service in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This service dates back to the earliest moments of the Church, with two notable figures — Elias Pulsipher and his wife Polly Chubbuck, my fourth-great grandparents — moving from Kirtland to Missouri to Nauvoo with the prophet Joseph Smith. While Elias would die in Winter Quarters, Nebraska, his family travelled west with Brigham Young and the Twelve Apostles.

As such, I’d like to discuss Polly Chubbuck and a significant event she and her family experienced on 8 August 1844.

After the death of the Prophet Joseph Smith, various leaders (and others) vied for leadership of the Church. The two most prominent figures were Brigham Young, President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and Sidney Rigdon, who had served as the First Counselor in Joseph Smith’s First Presidency. This culminated in a meeting at the Nauvoo bowery where Brigham Young and Sidney Rigdon each offered a sermon and left it to the common voice of the Church to decide who they would follow.[1]

As Brigham Young spoke, what has been described as a “collective spiritual witness” occurred for the people. As has been described by many individuals throughout their lives, Brigham Young appeared to take on the form and sound of Joseph Smith, leading the entire congregation to recognize the Lord’s choice of Brigham Young as the next prophet.[2] While it is not my intent to describe the event in full, this miraculous outpouring of the spirit is arguably one of the most important events in the history of the Church — although Brigham Young and the Apostles had previously received the keys of the Priesthood necessary for leading the Church,[3] it was important that the proper form of apostolic succession be witnessed by the Church as a whole.

Polly Chubbuck and her family were witnesses to this event and bore testimony of it to their children and their children’s children. My second-great grandmother wrote the following in her biography of her mother, Mary Burrell Pulsipher:

Her [Mary’s] mother [Polly Chubbuck] attended the meetings in the Bowery on the memorable occasion when the mantle of the Prophet Joseph fell upon Brigham Young and had a strong testimony to the truthfulness of the gospel and taught her children the same. They were baptized when eight years old.[4]

A similar account has been told by Almeda Rawlings Nielsen, a great granddaughter of Polly:

Polly Chubbuck Pulsipher, my great grandmother, joined the [LDS] church shortly after it was organized. She and her family of nine children and her husband witnessed the transfiguration of Brigham Young into the look and voice of Joseph Smith, after the Prophet Joseph was killed. All who witnessed this experience knew Brigham Young was chosen by the Lord to be their prophet leader.[5]

Unfortunately, Polly and her children did not keep any detailed journals during this time and so only later witnesses can be cited, having heard the oral testimonies. However, even many of the firsthand witnesses of this event reported it later in their lives, and various reasons have been cited for the much later retellings of this event. Oral retellings among descendants were also common and one of the ways that this event has been preserved among Latter-day Saints.[6] As such, I wanted to make these testimonies of this significant event more widely accessible.

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[1] This event is discussed in Saints: The Standard of Truth, vol. 1 of 4 (Salt Lake City, UT: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2018), 562–566.

[2] This event is discussed, as well as at least 82 of its witnesses have been compiled in Lynne W. Jorgensen, “The Mantle of the Prophet Joseph Passes to Brother Brigham: A Collective Spiritual Witness,” BYU Studies Quarterly 36 no. 4 (1996–1997): 125–204.

[3] See, for example, Appendix 3: Orson Hyde, Statement about Quorum of the Twelve, circa Late March 1845, p. 1, The Joseph Smith Papers; George D. Watt, Discourse Shorthand Notes, Oct. 6, 1866, George D. Watt, Papers, as transcribed by LaJean Purcell Carruth, copy at Church History Library; Parley P. Pratt to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Jan. 1, 1845, in The Prophet, 4 January 1845, 33. This event has also been discussed at length in Alexander L. Baugh and Richard Neitzel Holzapfel, “‘I Roll the Burthen and Responsibility of Leading This Church off from My Shoulders on to Yours’: The 1844/1845 Declaration of the Quorum of the Twelve regarding Apostolic Succession,” BYU Studies 49, no. 3 (2010): 5–19. Sidney Rigdon had neither been ordained an Apostle nor received these keys from Joseph Smith; furthermore, at the time of Joseph’s death, Sidney and Joseph were not on speaking terms.

[4] Mary Ann Burrell Rohwer, “Mary Pulsipher,” taken from a notebook kept as a journal. No date available. Mary Ann Burrell Rohwer (my great-great grandmother) lived from 1876 to 1954; her mother Mary Pulsipher Burrell lived from 1833–1878 and would have likely been with her mother (Polly Chubbuck) at this time.

[5] Almeda Rawlings Nielsen, handwritten manuscript, no date, transcribed and edited by Andrea Nielsen Edwards, 27 February 2019.

[6] See generally Jorgensen, “The Mantle of the Prophet Joseph.”