Joseph Leslie Broadbent

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Joseph Leslie Broadbent (3 June 1891–16 March 1935) was a religious leader in the early stages of the Mormon fundamentalist movement.

Broadbent was born to Joseph Samuel Broadbent, who served as mayor of Lehi, Utah 1922-28, and Amanda Hermandine Twede. In 1910 he left his studies at Brigham Young University to serve a mission in England. In June, 1915 he married Rula Louise Kelsch, and through his association with her family came to know John Wickersham Woolley. Among his other wives were Fawnetta Jessop who married him in October, 1925, and Irene Locket and Anna Kmetzsch who were married to him by 1933 (exact dates unknown).

In 1927 Broadbent published a pamphlet Celsetial Marriage advocating the practice of polygamy. This was one of the first Mormon fundamentalist tracts, and was a factor in his subsequent excommunication by the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in July, 1929. Broadbent was ordained an apostle in the Mormon fundamentalist movement called the Apostolic United Brethren by Lorin Calvin Woolley on 6 March 1929, and on the 15th of May was made second elder by Woolley.

Upon the death of Lorin Woolley in 1934, Broadbent succeeded him as priesthood president. For most fundamentalists the succession was uneventful, and Broadbent travelled widely in support of the fundamentalist movement. In February, 1935 he and a number of other fundamentalist leaders visited Millville, Utah for a meeting with co-religionists. The next month Broadbent died from pneumonia.

After Broadbent's death there was a succession dispute between Charles Elden Kingston and John Yeates Barlow. The dispute was resolved in favor of Barlow, and Kingston's followers eventually established the so-called Kingston clan, remaining separate from other Mormon fundamentalist groups.

According to his friend Louis Kelsch, on the day of his death Broadbent said that he had not experienced any personal vision of heavenly messengers. However, Broadbent also commented: "If they come to get me, I can tell them that I am still in the work," as he pointed to religious books he planned to mail.