Memorial Day is a good time think about what we remember. A while back, the following sentences in Larry Mc Murtry, "Oh What a Slaughter," caught my eye, "The Fancher Party was already on the road when Parley Pratt was killed--by an outraged husband whose wife the prophet coveted for his own purposes. This woman, Eleanor McComb McLean Pratt, though in appearance an unlikely Helen of Troy, was soon recovered sufficiently from her grief to proclaim the evil of gentiles and appeal for vengeance." Mc Murtry says that this appeal for vengeance was one of several "stresses" within the Mormon communities in the late summer of 1857 that contributed to the Mountain Meadows massacre. Since I grew up near a place named Pratt's Bottom, and Pratt is not a name you run across regularly, I wondered if there might be a connection between the Pratts whose bottom the land in Kent once was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratt's_Bottom and these American Pratts. The latter are descended from a Lt. William Pratt, who landed in Connecticut in the 1630's. This website seems strangely uninterested in what came before in some other land: http://jared.pratt-family.org/general_histories/general_descendancy_search.html They do, however, have a very different version of the marriage of Eleanor to Hector McLean. http://jared.pratt-family.org/parley_histories/parley-death-stephen-pratt.html In this account of the events leading up to and including the murder there's a weird typo, "At about half past noon a lady came to the hotel in Van Buren where Eleanor was staying and told her that Parley had been shot. A later report said he was wounded but not dead. Then McLean appeared on the scene. He and few friends were drinking at the bar of the hotel when Mr. Smith, the landlord, approached them and asked McLean what he had done. Hector raped, 'Well, I have done a good work.'" "Raped" for "replied"? Wikipedia says Pratt had twelve wives. It also says that the Canyon named after him in Utah is not called "Pratt's Canyon," it's "Parley's Canyon." My favorite part of the Wikipedia article is a legal issue, what to charge someone with when you can't charge them with kidnapping children: "Upon learning of his wife's actions, Hector McLean pressed criminal charges, accusing Pratt of assisting in the kidnapping of his children.[9] Pratt managed to evade him and the legal charges, but was finally arrested in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) in May 1857.[10] He and Eleanor were charged only with theft of the clothing of McLean's children.[11] (The laws of that time did not recognize the kidnapping of children by a parent as a crime.) Tried before Judge John B. Ogden, Pratt was acquitted of the charges because of a lack of evidence.[11]" And the reference attached to that footnote about "lack of evidence"? A book about the Mountain Meadows massacre. Looking for reviews of the recent movie that had that event in its story, I found this site: http://mountainmeadowsmassacre.com/September_Dawn.html Scan down and you'll find, "What do the critics say about September Dawn"? Ty Burr and Roget Ebert didn't like it. Mitt Romney said he's not going to view the film. Actor Jon Voight has said that September Dawn was not intended to critcize the Mormon Church or Mitt Romney: "This is a true part of our American history - very well documented as well - but we're not pointing a finger at the (Mormon) church today. "Nor does it have anything to do with Mitt Romney's campaign. (He is) one of the people in the political sphere today who really understands what we're facing with religious fanatics in the Islamic world." Mitt Romney is a great, great grandson of Parley Pratt. http://www.unionleader.com/article/20110526/NEWS0605/110529919/0/FRONTPAGE Carry on. David Ritchie, Portland, Oregon