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Organizational Origins of the Church of Jesus Christ
6 April 1830

Larry C. Porter

Many of the first settlers of what became known as Fayette township, Seneca County, New York, were Pennsylvania Germans. Numbers of these people began locating in that quarter as early as 1789. The town of Fayette derives its name from the Revolutionary War hero, General Gilbert Morier de La Fayette. When first organized as a town, 14 March 1800, from the northern part of Romulus, it was known as Washington, Cayuga County, New York. On 12 February 1803, the town of Junius was divided from Washington. Seneca County was taken from Cayuga in 1804, and Washington was continued within its borders. By an act of 6 April 1808, the name of the town of Washington was changed to Fayette, probably to avoid duplication of the name "Washington" which was already being utilized as the title of a town in Dutchess County, New York.

Among the German immigrants making their residences in the township were members of the Peter Whitmer, Sr., family. The man we refer to as Peter Whitmer, Sr., was actually Peter Whitmer, III. Peter's father, Peter Whitmer II, had been born at Harzheim, Rhineland, Prussia, in 1737, and died in Pennsylvania during 1793. Peter Whitmer, III (our Peter), was born on 14 April 1773, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and moved his household to the newly named township of Fayette from Hamburg, Pennsylvania, about 1809. Other than the birth of three children to he and Mary Musselman Whitmer, the circumstances of the Peter Whitmer, Sr., family from 1809 until 1819 are largely a matter of conjecture. How long they had been working the land where the present farm is now located isn't known, however, a series of four warranty deeds dating from 14 April 1819 to 7 March 1827, conveys the one hundred acres comprising that property to Peter Whitmer, Sr. The family lived in a log house on their homestead which was located three miles south and one mile west of the village of Waterloo (the village being first identified by that name in 1816). On 6 April 1830, the "Church of Christ" was organized in that Whitmer farm home.

Reflecting on this singular event, Orson Pratt eulogized the log house from which the foundations of Mormonism sprang: "That house will, no doubt, be celebrated for ages to come as the one chosen by the Lord in which to make known the first elements of the organization of His Kingdom in the latter days." In recognition of those "first elements of organization" it would be useful to say something of the physical features of the original log house where this highly significant event took place.

In October 1830, just following his baptism on 19 September 1830, Orson Pratt journeyed from his home in Cannan, New York, to Fayette where he met the Prophet Joseph Smith at the Whitmer farm. Of this experience Orson affirmed: