I was very surprised to learn from Venita's website of John Lambert's conversion to the LDS before he emigrated to the USA in 1840
http://homepage.mac.com/venitar/Genealo ... mbert.htmlI had no idea that the Mormon missions started so early, nor that the British Mission started in Lancashire. Nor that there's a Temple in Preston!
I found the following (and much more) at
http://www.lightplanet.com/mormons/dail ... sh_eom.htmBetween 1837 and 1841 there were two apostolic missions to the British Isles. In 1837-1838 Heber C. Kimball and Orson Hyde established the first mission, concentrating in the area of Preston and the Ribble Valley. The Church was barely seven years old when Elders Kimball and Hyde departed for England in July 1837. The Prophet Joseph Smith had directed men to go on missions from the beginning......
In April 1836, Parley P. Pratt, an apostle, was sent to Toronto with a prophetic promise that the fruits of missionary work there would lead to the introduction of the gospel into England........ Elder Pratt helped to convert, among others, John Taylor, Isaac Russell, and Joseph Fielding, all of whom had family contacts in Britain and several of whom accompanied Elders Kimball and Hyde when the Prophet assigned them to go to the British Isles on the first mission.
Elders Kimball and Hyde were in England from July 1837 to April 1838. Landing at Liverpool, they traveled north to Preston, where relatives of the Canadian converts provided various assistance, including a place to preach. Finding ready acceptance of their message, they baptized more than 140 people by October 1837. They moved up the Ribble Valley, finding other audiences, particularly among the textile workers throughout Lancanshire. By the time they returned home in April 1838, Church membership had grown to about 1,500 people in Britain, in spite of growing opposition, particularly from local clergy.
.....the expanding British Mission......saw an additional 4,000 converts join the Church by 1841......(and) had ......other related consequences: (1) the establishment of a successful emigration program that saw the first converts gathered to Nauvoo, with at least 50,000 members emigrating from the British Isles to America;..... (2) the use of Britain as a base for further LDS missionary activity into continental Europe and other countries, such as South Africa, India, and Australia.
From
https://www.lds.org.uk/media_news.php :
Between 1837 and the turn of the century, as many as 100,000 converts emigrated to join the main body of the Church in the United States. In fact, by 1870 nearly half of the population of Utah were British immigrants.
In the late 1950s, a temple was dedicated in London. In June 1998, another temple was opened in Preston, the site of the first preaching more than 150 years ago. Preston is the home of the oldest continuous branch (a small congregation) of the Church anywhere in the world, dating back to 1837.
I wonder where exactly John Lambert heard the word. Is there any LDS connection in Briercliffe?
Charon