Parley Pratt and his great, great grandson
See the resemblance? Maybe in the nose and lips? The man on the left is Parley Pratt, Mitt Romney’s great, great grandfather. Pratt was no run of the mill Mormon. He was one of the original “twelve apostles” who helped found the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Pratt was imprisoned in 1838 with Mormonism’s founder, Joseph Smith, and driven out of Missouri by mobs of angry Protestants. Pratt had twelve wives and was later murdered by the estranged former husband of one of them.6 His relatives fled to Mexico to avoid prosecution for polygamy. Yet in 2012, the Republican Party—which had earlier led the drive to ban Mormonism—chose as its nominee Parley Pratt’s great-great-grandson.