The Journals of Addison Pratt: Being a Narrative of Yankee Whaling in the Eighteen Twenties, a Mormon Mission to the Society Islands, and of Early California and Utah in the Eighteen Forties and Fifties

Addison Pratt (1802-1872) was born at Winchester, Cheshire County, New Hampshire, the son of Henry and Rebekah Jewell Pratt. He married Louisa Barnes in 1831 at Durham, Ontario. They settled at Ripley, New York and had four daughters. Addison and Louisa joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1838. They migrated west and settled at Nauvoo, Illinois, in 1841. He was called on a mission to the Society Island by Joseph Smith in 1843. Addison Pratt began his journals at New Bedford, Massachusetts in October 1843, while he was otaining passage to the South Seas. While in political confinement on Tahiti in 1850, he wrote his memoirs, recounting his youth and whaling to 1829. The journals close at the end of his second mission to French Polynesia in May 1852. He died at Anaheim, California.