The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Arkansas

As of January 1, 2014, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints reported 29,898, members, six stakes, 67 congregations, (41 wards and 26 branches), and two missions in Arkansas.

Elders Wilford Woodruff and Henry Brown arrived as missionaries in Bentonville on January 28, 1835. They held their first meeting four days later and preached to an attentive congregation. Later they were confronted by an apostate member, Alexander Akeman. Akeman was a man who earlier endured severe persecution in Missouri, but later turned bitterly against the Church. However, this man died suddenly and Elder Woodruff preached his funeral sermon. This event, along with Woodruff's teachings led to the baptism of a Mr. and Mrs. Jonathan Hubbel, the first converts in Arkansas, on 22 February 1835.

In 1838, Elder Abraham O. Smoot was called to a five-month mission to Arkansas where he preached frequently with varied results.

The year 1857 marked a tragic era in Church history in Arkansas. Elder Parley P. Pratt was murdered in on May 13, 1857 near Alma, Arkansas.He had just been acquitted by a court in Van Buren of charges pressed by Hector H. McLean, the former husband of Pratt's wife Eleanor. At the trial she testified that her former husband frequently physically abused her. Disappointed with the verdict, the McLean followed and assassinated the apostle. (On April 2, 2008, Crawford County Circuit Judge Gary Cottrell gave the Pratt family permission to move Parley Pratt's remains to Utah.)

Negative feelings, and later the U.S. Civil War, kept the Church from the area for the next two decades.

After the War, the church again sent missionaries to Arkansas in 1876. In 1877, Elders Henry G. Boyle and J.D.H. McAllister visited a member in Des Arc. By 1877, 27 families totaling 125 converts emigrated west. Through the 1880s, converts continued to join the main body of the saints in Utah.

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