Newel K. Whitney

Newel Kimball Whitney ( born February 5, 1795 in Marlboro, Vermont, † September 23, 1850 in Salt Lake City, Utah) was a businessman and Presiding Bishop of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints.

Newel K. Whitney was the second child and first son of nine children of Samuel Whitney and his wife Susanna née Kimball. When he left his home unclear. In 1814 he as sutlers or traders in the village of Plattsburg, New York was, and took (according to his brother Samuel F. Whitney ) at the Battle of Champlain in part.

Around 1817 he moved to Pain, Ohio, where he met a merchant named Algernon Sidney Gilbert. This recognized his business skills, took him affectionately on his shop and gave him knowledge of accounting. Some years later, the speech from the thriving commercial enterprise Gilbert & Whitney in a few kilometers from Painsville remote Kirtland. On October 20, 1822 married Elizabeth Ann Whitney Smith. He further increased his wealth.

First, not particularly religious, the couple joined the Campelliten whose preacher was in Kirtland, Sidney Rigdon. As an elder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints preach the restored gospel in Kirtland, both closed, with most of the Campelliten, this church. Newel K. Whitney was baptized a few days after his wife on November 30, 1830.

When Joseph Smith came to Kirtland in February 1831, he lived first few weeks in the house of Whitney and there wrote some of the revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants are today. On December 4, 1831 Newel K. Whitney was called as the second bishop of the Church for Kirtland, by revelation. In this capacity, he had a lot to do with the material basis of the Church, the center of which was initially his shop and his warehouse. When in 1837 averted the collapse of the Kirtland Safety Society and other controversial things many followers of Joseph Smith and followed him partially hostile, Whitney remained loyal to the Prophet.

On 5 October 1839 the expulsion of the Saints from Missouri Whitney was appointed bishop of the Middle Municipality of Nauvoo. He held until he was appointed on October 7, 1844 to the First Bishop of the Church this office. In this capacity, he was responsible for many matters of emigration, which were particularly acute after the premature expulsion from Nauvoo in February 1846. Therefore, he remained thereafter until 1848 in Winter Quarters, where he was confirmed as Presiding Bishop. In 1848 he led an engineer platoon to Salt Lake City, where he arrived on October 8.

On September 23, 1850 Newel K. Whitney died in His home in Salt Lake City with pleurisy. According to the commandment of the time he had lived in polygamy and had 14 children.