The Replacements:
John E. Page, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, George A. Smith,
Willard Richards, Lyman Wight, Amasa Lyman
JOHN E. PAGE
(February 25, 1799 - October 14, 1867)
Apostle - 1838
Excommunicated - 1846
Page was baptized in 1833 and was a successful missionary. He was the Matthias of this dispensation, the first replacement Apostle in 1838. He and three others were actually named in the D&C 118 revelation; he and Taylor were ordained first, and the other two (Wilford Woodruff and Willard Richards) were ordained later. When Page was called to join Orson Hyde in a mission to Jerusalem, he backed out. He became more disaffected with the church and when Smith died, he tried to claim that he should be the next leader. That went nowhere, but he was able to stay in the Quorum even while deciding that James J. Strang should be the next leader. Brigham Young finally excommunicated in 1846, but soon afterwards, Page would say he felt Smith and Strang were fallen prophets. He eventually joined the Church of Christ Temple Lot group.
(November 1, 1808 - July 25, 1887)
Apostle - 1838
President of Q12 - 1875
Prophet/President - 1880
Taylor thus far is the only Apostle in the LDS Church to have been born outside of the United States and gone on to become prophet. Born in England, he studied to become a Methodist preacher while in his teens, and he and other family members felt impressed to preach the gospel in the New World. His parents and siblings migrated to Canada in 1830, and he joined them in 1832.
He and his wife Leonora met the missionary Parley P. Pratt in 1836. Leonora joined the church first, and John later followed. They moved to Missouri, and Taylor and Page were made Apostles the same day in 1838 (Page would therefore have seniority due to age).
Taylor and fellow Apostle Willard Richards were with Joseph & Hyrum Smith in Carthage Jail on June 27, 1844, when the mob stormed the prison and killed the brothers. Taylor was shot four times but managed to survive.
He became a US citizen in 1849, and he served five terms as Speaker of the House for the Utah territorial legislature.
Taylor was third in seniority when Brigham ruled that seniority reset if an Apostle were removed from the Quorum and then re-added. This instantly made Taylor the president of the Q12. When Brigham Young died in 1877, Taylor led the church as President of the Quorum of the Twelve until he reorganized the First Presidency in 1880.
The Edmonds Act passed in 1882, making polygamy illegal. Taylor had seven wives, and spent years in exile. He died from heart failure at age 78.
(March 1, 1807 - September 2, 1898)
Apostle - 1839
President of Q12 - 1880
Prophet/President - 1889
Woodruff was baptized in 1833 and immediately became a solid missionary for the young church. he would travel with Joseph & Hyrum Smith, and later did missions throughout Kentucky, Tennessee, Connecticut and Maine.
Upon Smiths' death, he sided with Brigham Young and the Quorum of the Twelve. He was one of the earliest to record that when Young and Sidney Rigdon were giving their case to the congregation on who should lead the church, Young had the look and voice of Joseph Smith.
Woodruff had nine wives, though two left him after a month and two more divorced him. Two more died before the 1890 Manifesto which ended polygamy in the LDS Church, and after 1890 he only lived with his wife Emma while supporting the other two in separate homes. The Manifesto was a political necessity, as the US government was pssing more and more laws against polygamy and trying to confiscate all church property.
GEORGE A. SMITH
(June 26, 1817 - September 1, 1875)
Apostle - 1839
First Counselor - 1868
George was first cousin to Joseph & Hyrum Smith, though he'd never met Joseph until he was baptized. George was the son of John Smith, who'd later be a counselor in Joseph's First Presidency. George was only 21 when Joseph ordained him to be an Apostle.
George and Wilford Woodruff were ordained the same day after Thomas B. March and Orson Hyde had been removed from the Quorum of the Twelve.
Smith was one of the more bombastic Apostles in the 1850's and gave fiery sermons in southern Utah in 1857 which may have been used by the local leadership to help justify the Mountain Meadows Massacre.
Smith was made First Counselor in Brigham's First Presidency after Heber C. Kimball died. Smith himself died at the relatively young age of 58. His grandson George Albert Smith would later become the President of the Church in 1945.
WILLARD RICHARDS
(June 24, 1804 - March 11, 1854)
Apostle - 1840
Second Counselor - 1847
Willard Richards was a cousin to Brigham Young, and he first read the Book of Mormon in 1836. As soon as he was baptized he went on a mission to the Eastern United States and then to England. He was ordained an Apostle in 1840, but there'd been a revelation over a year previous that he should become one. Richards served as a secretary for Joseph Smith, and he was in Carthage Jail with John Taylor the night Joseph & Hyrum were killed. Richards escaped unharmed. He helped get Taylor out to receive medical attention.
He was Second Counselor when Brigham Young reorganized the First President in 1847, and he kept that position until his premature death at age 49 from dropsy.
LYMAN WIGHT
(May 9, 1796 - March 31, 1858)
Apostle - 1841
Excommunicated - 1848
Wight was active throughout the Joseph Smith section of LDS Church history. He was baptized by Oliver Cowdery in 1830. He did a mission in Missouri and later helped the Saints migrate there. It was in his home in 1838 that Smith received the revelation about Adam-ondi-Ahman. Wight was one of the men held prisoner for months with Smith in Liberty Jail.
In 1844, Smith had commissioned Wight to find a place in Texas that could be a possible safe settlement for the Saints. After Smith's death, Wight and his followers established themselves, and he refused repeated requests by Brigham Young to join them in Utah. Young finally excommunicated him. Wight sided with William Smith for a few months before that fell apart, and later he said he felt the mantle of prophet should fall to one of Joseph Smith's sons. Shortly after he died, his followers sided with Joseph Smith III in the newly-formed RLDS church.
AMASA LYMAN
(March 30, 1813 - February 4, 1877)
Apostle - 1842
Counselor - 1842
Excommunicated - 1867
Lyman joined the church in 1832 after meeting Orson Pratt and Lyman E. Johnson, and he became one of the church's best preachers. He spent about half of the next decade on missions.
Smith made him an Apostle in 1842, but he was removed from the Quorum after Orson Pratt was rebaptized and readmitted. Smith then made him a Counselor in the First Presidency, and all indications were he intended to remove Sidney Rigdon and replace him with Lyman. But at the next General Conference, the congregation refused to approve Rigdon being removed.
Smith taught him polygamy in 1844, and he took on extra wives. After Smith's death, he took on a couple of Smith's widows. During the succession crisis, he and John Smith, the other surviving member of the First Presidency, sided with Young's claim over Rigdon's, and reaffirmed Joseph had intended the authority to reside with the Quorum of the Twelve. Lyman was readded to the Quorum after the excommunication of William Smith.
Lyman was one of the more reluctant Apostles to acquiesce when Brigham Young wanted to reorganize the First Presidency. (The biggest opponent was Orson Pratt, but after all agreed, the First Presidency was re-formed.)
Lyman was a colonizer in the west and helped found San Bernadino, CA. He became increasingly uncomfortable with the paranoia of the 1850's, and he was among the first to criticize the fiery rhetoric that helped lead to the Mountain Meadows Massacre. He also wasn't happy with Brigham's increasing control of so many political and economic avenues in Utah. He got in trouble for a 1862 speech he gave in Scotland where he'd argued against the necessity of the Atonement, and it was used as evidence in his ultimate excommunication in 1867. Afterwards, Lyman became more open in his criticism of Young and aided William Godbe in the Godbeite movement to separate church and state in Utah.
Lyman's son Francis later became an Apostle, and in 1909, Amasa Lyman was posthumously restored to the Apostleship.
(I'm still in the middle of reading his biography by E. Leo Lyman).
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