Josiah Butterfield

Who was Josiah Butterfield?

Josiah Butterfield was an early Mormon leader and member of the Presidency of the Seventy of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Butterfield was born in Dunstable, Massachusetts, and married Polly Moulton on October 30, 1819. The couple spent the 1820s in Maine, where John F. Boynton and a missionary companion baptized him in 1833. Butterfield relocated to Kirtland, Ohio, in 1834, where he worked on the Kirtland Temple. There he also became a charter member of the Kirtland Safety Society. He was set apart as one of the seven presidents of Seventy on April 6, 1837. He functioned simultaneously as a member of the Kirtland High Council.

After Polly died on October 28, 1840, Butterfield married Margaret Lawrence, a mother of two daughters. Shortly after this marriage, a conflict arose between Butterfield and Joseph Smith, Jr. over the Lawrence estate, from which Butterfield was set to benefit. Smith represented the two daughters' position. Smith wrote on March 28, 1843, that Butterfield "came to my house and insulted me so outrageously that I kicked him out of the house, across the yard, and into the street." Butterfield became disaffected and was excommunicated on October 7, 1844. Jedediah M. Grant took his place in the Presidency.