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

As of year-end 2015, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints reported 21,630 members and 44 congregations (wards and branches) in Mississippi.

Missionaries John D. Hunter and Benjamin L. Clapp arrived in Tishomingo County in 1839. On December 26, 1839, Hunter reported they baptized six people. Seven more were baptized in 1840 by Norvel M. Head. Five more people were baptized on December 1, 1841, by elders Daniel Tyler and R. D. Sheldon.

Escaping persecution, a group of 80–90 members in 40 wagons arrived in Nauvoo from Mississippi in April 1842. A small branch was organized in Monroe County in 1842, where others were converted. Other branches were created in Mississippi as membership increased.

On April 8, 1846, a company of settlers left Monroe County expecting to join the main body of Latter-day Saints in Winter Quarters that was then planning to travel to the Rocky Mountains. This group was led by John Brown, who had been a leading missionary in Alabama and Mississippi. They instead became the first group of Mormons to cross the plains, wintering with fur trappers in Pueblo, Colorado that same year. These were the first to establish a religious colony in the west since the Spanish priests of 1769. Later, they founded a second colony at Cottonwood and Holladay in the Salt Lake Valley (once called the Mississippi Ward). They also helped found San Bernardino and were involved in other colonies along the Little Colorado in Arizona. Alice Rowan, one of the children of these first pioneers who taught at Riverside California, was among the first African American women to teach at a public school in the U.S.

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