on the state of Arkansas, or its people. Due to Pratt's personal popularity and his position in the Quorum of the Twelve, his murder was a significant blow to the Latter-day Saint community in the Rocky Mountains. Pratt's violent death may also have played a part in events leading up to the Mountain Meadows massacre a few months later. After the massacre, some Mormons circulated rumors that one or more members of the party had murdered Pratt, poisoned creek water that subsequently sickened Paiute children, and allowed their cattle to graze on private property. Pratt was one of the better known Mormons among other Americans; for instance, in his 1864-published visit to the Mormons, Fitz-Hugh Ludlow, in The Atlantic made a joke about "Mrs. Deacon Pratt" and referred to "Parley's Cañon (named after the celebrated Elder, Parley Pratt)." In 2008, Pratt's family received permission from an Arkansas judge to rebury his remains in the Salt Lake City Cemetery, but no human remains were found at what was believed his gravesite. No further search efforts for Pratt's burial site have been planned. Family Pratt practiced plural marriage and had 12 wives, 30 children, and 266 grandchildren. In 2011, Pratt's living descendants were estimated to number 30,000 to 50,000. His first wife, Thankful Halsey Pratt, died following childbirth in March 1837. (Thankful was a widow ten years older than Pratt when she married him.) Pratt did, however, marry women averaging ten years younger than himself, the greatest age difference occurring with his marriage to his Ann Agatha Walker who was 18 to his 40 years. On May 14, 1837, Pratt married his second wife, Mary Ann Frost Stearns (1808–1891), a widow with a daughter. The marriage was performed by Frederick G. Williams. Mary Ann was a native of Bethel, Maine (part of Massachusetts until 1820) whose first relative to join the church was Patty Bartlett Sessions, later a prominent midwife in Utah. Mary Ann was baptized by David W. Patten. She had come to Kirtland as a widow in 1836. Joseph Smith later condemned Latter-Day Saints for "marrying in five or six weeks, or even in two or three months, after the death of their companion." Pratt may have married Mary Ann so quickly to get back his infant son, although he remained in the care of Mary Ann Young for nearly a year after Pratt remarried. Mary Ann and Pratt at