David W. Patten - Missions and Church Service

Missions and Church Service

David W. Patten served several short missions for the church, and was one fo the first missionaries to visit the Southern United States. Two days after his baptism, David was ordained an elder by Elisha H. Groves and soon after sent on a mission to the Territory of Michigan. On this trip he was accompanied by another recent convert, Joseph Wood. Together, the two traveled for 23 days without much food or money, instead relying on nearby families for sustenance and a place to sleep throughout the entire mission. This assignment lasted "a short season," during which time David baptized his wife. Healing was a distinguished feature of Patten's missionary labors. Abraham O. Smoot said that "he never knew an instance in which David's petition for the sick was not answered."

He was ordained a high priest by Hyrum Smith on September 2, 1832.

In the end of 1832, several missionaries were sent to states on the East Coast in response to a revelation received by Joseph Smith, Jr. in September of the same year. Among these missionaries was David W. Patten. Over the next few months, David traveled with other missionaries like John Murdock, William Smith, Zebedee Coltrin, John F. Boynton, Hyrum Smith, or Reynolds Cahoon. David W. Patten began preaching in Ohio and made their way to Pennsylvania, and then to New York and back to Kirtland, Ohio, the center of the church at the time. He returned home on February 15, 1833, and within a month was called on his third mission, this time to preach near Theresa, New York, where his mother and some of his siblings lived. Patten left for New York on March 25, 1833, accompanied by Reynolds Cahoon. During their journey, the two visited congregations of church members along the way and advised them to move to Kirtland. During one of these visits, a heckler interrupted a meeting in Avon, New York, ridiculing the elders and refusing to be quiet. Patten told him to be quiet or he would "put him out", to which the heckler responded, "You can't do it." Patten answered "In the name of the Lord, I will" and picked the man up with both hands, took him to the back door, and threw him ten feet into a wood pile. This story became a popular tale for early members of the church.

By May 1833, Patten and his companion had arrived at Theresa. They stayed their first night there at the house of David's brother, Archibald Patten. After remaining in Theresa and preaching for a few weeks, on May 20, 1833, David's mother was baptized by Brigham Young, as were two of his brothers, Ira and Archibald, and two sisters, Polly and Betsy. After a while, David traveled south to Henderson, New York, where he preached and converted eighty people. After that, Patten returned to Kirtland, Ohio. In the time following his mission, he worked on constructing the Kirtland Temple and moved his family down from Michigan to Ohio.

In his lifetime, Patten served twelve short missions for the Church in the Eastern United States from 1832 to 1833 and in Tennessee with Warren Parrish in 1834. During this time, he was persecuted by mobs while establishing numerous branches of the church. A common trait of his preaching involved healing people who were ill. David W. Patten described one account:

"Jesus called upon me to lay hands on Coltrain who accidentally burned his hand and he received no harm. Brother William Smith had a pain in his eye and I laid my hand on him in the name of Jesus Christ and the pain left him."

Nancy Alexander Tracy, an early member of the church who converted at age sixteen, wrote of David W. Patten:

"...I could at a glance see the noble spirit he possessed beaming in his countenance, and when he began to speak it was with such force and power. Before he was half through I could have borne my testimony of the truth of the gospel and doctrine he was preaching.