Zera Pulsipher

Zera Pulsipher (sometimes spelled Zerah) served as one of the Seven Presidents of Seventy from 1838 to 1862, which was also designated as the First Council of the Seventy at that time. (See Doctrine and Covenants 124:138.) Later it would be called the Presidency of the Seventy.[1] While serving as one of the Seven Presidents of the Seventy, he helped form Kirtland Camp and led the camp of Saints to Missouri. He and his family settled temporarily in Adam-ondi-Ahman in Missouri, then fled to Nauvoo, Illinois. He was endowed on December 12, 1845.

After a stay in Winter Quarters, he journeyed to the Salt Lake Valley, arriving in September 1847.[2] Susan Easton Black wrote that

At the October 1856 general conference, Heber C. Kimball called Zera “‘to awake to my duty.’ … I soon saw that Brother Kimball was right and that I was holding a high and responsible station in the church as asleep with many others.” Rather than be angry by what Heber had said, Zera became more diligent in fulfilling his assignment. “I was frequently out four or five evenings a week besides day meetings,” he wrote. But in 1862 Zera overstepped his authority and “transcended the bounds of the Priesthood in the ordinance of sealing, for which he was cited to appear before the First Presidency of the Church.” He was released as a General Authority.[3]

Pulsipher was born on June 24, 1789, to John and Elizabeth Pulsipher. He was converted and baptized in January 1832. He was also ordained an elder. He served a mission to the Eastern States and Canada and baptized Wilford Woodruff. He also served a mission to Upper Canada in 1837. He married Polly Randall in November 1810, and she bore him one child before she died. He later married Mary Ann Brown and had eleven children.

He practiced plural marriage and married Prudence McNamara and later Martha Hughes, with whom he had five more children. He was ordained a patriarch and lived in southern Utah in Santa Clara and Hebron. He died on January 1, 1872.