Franklin Dewey Richards
April 2, 1821 – December 9, 1899
“Except for a six-and-one-half-year gap, men of the Richards family have served as General Authorities continuously from 1840 to the present.” – D. Michael Quinn, Ensign 1980
Mr. Quinn’s great insight is a shining example of what the Richards
family means to Mormonism, and vice versa. Their identity as a family on a whole, and individually, has been so immersed and wrapped up in Mormonism, it’d be no stretch of the imagination to state they’d be lost without each other. They were, and still are, the ‘who’s who’ of Mormonism.
From the inception of Mormonism itself there’s been controversy. Joe Smith’s unconventional lifestyle was laden with numerous events the majority of people either never thought of before, or outright shunned.
period is provided by a letter from Wilford Woodruff to George A. Smith in April 1857: We 
have had a great reformation this winter; some of the fruits are: all have confessed their sins either great or small, restored their stolen property; all have been baptized from the presidency down; all are trying to pay their tithing and nearly all are trying to get wives, until there is hardly a girl 14 years old in Utah, but what is married, or just going to be. President Young has hardly time to eat, drink or sleep, in consequence of marrying the people and attending the endowments.” – Eugene E. Campbell and Bruce L. Campbell
phrase, it’d be inbreeding. As I stated in this report ‘I’ve researched more than thirty families in our series, and have come across my fair share of shallow gene pools in my day. While it can be cumbersome to follow, the trails that are intertwined eventually become more clearly defined so one can make sense of it all.
ons, pp. 243-244
