Doctrine and Covenants Historical Resources: Zebedee Coltrin, Doctrine and Covenants Historical Resources (2025)
Zebedee Coltrin, Doctrine and Covenants Historical Resources (2025)
Zebedee Coltrin
(1804–87)
Zebedee Coltrin, ca. 1865, photograph of charcoal portrait, Church History Library, PH 1700 3734.
Zebedee Coltrin was born in Ovid, New York, in 1804. He married Julia Ann Jennings in October 1828. In January 1831 he was baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and ordained an elder. In June 1831, he was called by revelation to serve a mission with Levi Hancock (Doctrine and Covenants 52:29). During 1831 and 1832, he served proselytizing missions in Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio. The following year, he participated in the foundational meetings of the School of the Prophets in Kirtland, Ohio. During one of these early meetings, he and others saw Jesus Christ and angels; Coltrin also later recalled that they saw Heavenly Father. After serving missions to the eastern United States and Canada, Coltrin marched from Ohio to Missouri as part of the Camp of Israel in 1834. Back in Kirtland, he was appointed president of the First Quorum of the Seventy in February 1835 but was reassigned to the high priests quorum in April 1837. In February 1843, two years after his first wife died, Coltrin married Mary Mott. By the following June he was living in Nauvoo, Illinois. In 1847 he migrated to the Salt Lake Valley in Utah Territory with the Saints.
References in the Doctrine and Covenants