Jesse Gause

Jesse Gause
First Counselor in First Presidency
March 8, 1832 – December 3, 1832
End reason	Excommunicated
Personal details
Born	1785 East Marlborough, Pennsylvania, United States
Died	c. 1836 (aged 50–51) unknown
Spouse(s)	Martha Johnson Minerva
Children	At least 4
Parents	William Gause Mary Beverly

Jesse Gause (1785 – c. 1836) was an early leader in the Latter Day Saint movement and served in the First Presidency as a counselor to President of the Church Joseph Smith. For decades Gause was generally unknown to LDS historians, and so could be considered Mormonism's lost counselor of the First Presidency. It was only in the 1980s that research identified his rightful place among early Church leaders.

The son of William Gause and Mary Beverly, Gause was born in 1785 in East Marlborough, Chester County, Pennsylvania. Gause followed the faith of his parents and in 1806, apparently still single at twenty-one, he requested and was received into the Society of Friends, becoming a Quaker.

Although a Quaker in good standing, Gause's Quaker pacificism did not prevent him from joining the Delaware militia in 1814 during the War of 1812. Upon leaving the military in 1815 he moved to Wilmington, Delaware, where he married Martha Johnson. In 1822 the family finally settled in Chester County where he became a teacher in a Quaker school. Martha died in 1828 after the birth of their fourth child.

In the same year of Martha's death, Gause quickly remarried a woman named Minerva, and they settled in Hancock, Massachusetts. Shortly after the birth of a daughter, Gause resigned from the Quakers on January 30, 1829, and joined the Shakers. Gause's new wife followed him, apparently accepting the Shaker practice of sexual abstinence even for married couples. In 1831, Gause, his wife, and infant daughter moved to the Shaker community near North Union, Ohio, leaving Martha's four children in the care of his sister, who was also a Shaker.

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