35 Facts About Zebedee Coltrin

Zebedee Coltrin was a Mormon pioneer and a general authority in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1835 to 1837.

Zebedee Coltrin served in later years as a patriarch in the church, from 1873 until his death.

Zebedee Coltrin had belonged to the Methodist faith before his conversion to Mormonism and had qualified to be a Methodist minister.

On January 9,1831, Zebedee Coltrin was baptized into the Church of Christ by Solomon Hancock at Strongsville, Ohio, and confirmed January 19 by Lyman Wight, who was a recent convert.

Zebedee Coltrin was ordained an elder of the church on January 21,1831, by church historian John Whitmer.

Only weeks later, Coltrin was assigned to go to Missouri as a church missionary with Levi W Hancock.

On July 17,1832, Zebedee Coltrin was ordained a high priest by Hyrum Smith and future presiding bishopric and Council of Fifty member Reynolds Cahoon at Kirtland, Ohio, and in 1834 he served another mission, this time to Upper Canada.

From January to April 1833, Zebedee Coltrin participated with a few select Latter Day Saint leaders in the School of the Prophets at Kirtland.

The Camp was divided into twelve companies, and Zebedee Coltrin was appointed cook for Smith's company.

An indicator of the trust Smith had for Coltrin is found in Smith's remark that he would "not eat or drink anything but what Zebedee prepared" for him.

The next day, Zebedee Coltrin was appointed and ordained as one of the first Seven Presidents of the Seventy by Presiding Patriarch of the church Joseph Smith Sr.

Later, Zebedee Coltrin stated that in 1834, Joseph Smith had told Zebedee Coltrin that "the Spirit of the Lord saith the Negro had no right nor cannot hold the Priesthood," and that Abel should be dropped from the Seventies because of his lineage.

Zebedee Coltrin was a charter member of, and owned stock in, the Kirtland Safety Society.

Zebedee Coltrin moved to Commerce, Illinois, in 1839, but soon returned to Kirtland, Ohio.

Zebedee Coltrin was appointed second counselor to Almon W Babbitt in the Kirtland Stake on May 22,1841.

Zebedee Coltrin was received into the Nauvoo high priests' quorum on June 4,1843.

Zebedee Coltrin was among the volunteers who, in late June 1843, rescued Joseph Smith from imprisonment in Missouri.

Zebedee Coltrin's continued loyalty brought him appointment to travel east to Michigan to electioneer in Smith's 1844 bid for the Presidency of the United States.

Zebedee Coltrin was a Mormon pioneer and traveled to the Salt Lake Valley in 1847.

Zebedee Coltrin left Nauvoo sometime after March 1846, and by December of that year he was living at Winter Quarters, Nebraska, where, along with his brother Graham, he served as part of Hosea Stout's 30-man police force.

Zebedee Coltrin was part of Brigham Young's vanguard company of 1847 that first entered the Salt Lake Valley.

For four additional years, Zebedee Coltrin served in Iowa and Wisconsin as both a missionary and organizer for the Saints' trek West.

In 1852, responding to a call by Brigham Young, Zebedee Coltrin sold his home and two city lots to settle in Spanish Fork, in Utah Territory's fertile Utah Valley.

Years later, during the Black Hawk War, Zebedee Coltrin nearly lost his life when an Indian shot a hole through the rim of his hat.

Zebedee Coltrin helped survey and lay out the town of Spanish Fork and contributed much to its building and municipal improvements over the years.

Zebedee Coltrin served for a time as a city councilman for Spanish Fork.

Zebedee Coltrin promised that "if we attend to our duties and the ordinances of God there is thrown around us by the Holy Priesthood a hedge like that around Job which the devil cannot break through".

Zebedee Coltrin's first marriage to Julia Ann Jennings was a happy one, but she died at Kirtland in October 1841 at the age of 29.

On May 31,1873, in a meeting presided over by Brigham Young, apostle John Taylor ordained Zebedee Coltrin to be a church patriarch, a position he held for fourteen years until his death in Spanish Fork at the age of 82.

Zebedee Coltrin was the only surviving member of the original School of the Prophets at Kirtland.

Zebedee Coltrin then washed Taylor's feet, who then proceeded to wash the feet of his counselors in the First Presidency and of all the Twelve Apostles.

Shortly after Melvin Ballard's call to the apostleship, while at a post-conference banquet, apostle George Albert Smith entertained Ballard at his home and commented on the startling coincidence that when he, too, was 13 years old, Zebedee Coltrin had likewise declared in his patriarchal blessing that George Albert Smith would serve as an apostle.

On May 18,1884, Zebedee Coltrin gave the benediction at the Logan Temple's concluding dedicatory services.

Zebedee Coltrin had been Spanish Fork's traditional orator for Mormon pioneer exodus; he had frequently ridden in military escorts in Days of '47 parades.

Zebedee Coltrin was buried at Spanish Fork City Cemetery, in Utah County.