Joseph White Musser

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Joseph White Musser (1872 1954) was a Mormon fundamentalist leader.

Musser was born the 8th of March 1872 in Salt Lake City, Utah to Amos Milton Musser (assistant LDS Church historian) and the former Mary E. White. He is known for his Mormon Fundamentalist books, pamphlets and magazine, as well as being considered a prophet amongst many Fundamentalists.

[edit] LDS Church Service

On the 29th of June 1892 he was called to the 16th Quorum of the Seventy, and two years later in April 1895 served a mission in Alabama, having been set apart by Brigham Young, Jr., Heber J. Grant, and John W. Taylor.

In late 1899 he received his Second Anointing at the unusually young age of twenty-seven, under the direction of Lorenzo Snow.

In November 1901 he was made president of the 105th Quorum of Seventy, and would later also serve as a High Councillor in the Uintah, Wasatch and Granite stakes (being set apart by president Joseph F. Smith), as well as in 1906 as the Duchesne branch President.

[edit] Wives and Post-Manifesto Plural Marriage

He married his first wife, Rose S. Borquist in the Logan temple in June of 1892, and his second wife, Mary C. Hill, in March 1902. But upon marrying his third wife, Ellis R. Shipp Jr. in July 1907 he caught the attention of the Salt Lake Tribune who announced the marriage on their front page. His support of continued plural marriages led him to be called by the Quorum of Twelve in July 1909, but did not lead to any disciplinary action against him, but instead he was appointed Mission President to India.

In 1915, Musser claims, he was first given authority to perform plural marriages by one of the Apostles, and it was undoubtedly his performing such marriages that led to his excommunication on March 1921.

In May 1922 he married again, this time to Lucy O. Kmetsch, and on the 14th of May 1929 was ordained an Apostle in the Apostolic United Brethren by Lorin Calvin Woolley.

In the 1930s and 40s Musser was responsible for editing the Mormon Fundamentalist publication, Truth magazine, and his promotion of that principle led to his incarceration between May and December of 1945.

[edit] Controversy

A concessionary document he and some of his fellow polygamist inmates signed (which they were told was limited to the period of their parole) during their time in prison led to some dissention between those who would sign and those who would not.

In late December 1949, with the death of John Yates Barlow, Musser became the leader of the Mormon fundamentalists. However, upon his call of Rulon Clark Allred in May 1951 as an Apostle, some other members of the presiding Priesthood Council felt they were being bypassed, and also took issue at Musser's condemnation of the practices of underage and arranged marriages that were going on in the Short Creek community. This split deepened in July 1951 with the call of Mexican apostle, Margarito Bautista, and in January 1952 Musser created a new Priesthood Council including Owen A. Allred, and others, including the Apostles he had already called.

Upon his death in March 1954, the Fundamentalists in Short Creek refused to accept the leadership of his appointed successor, Rulon Allred, and instead LeRoy Johnson became their assumed leader, whilst the Fundamentalists in Mexico and the Salt Lake City region remained faithful to Allred. Some of those who supported neither group became Independent Mormon fundamentalists.