Oliver Hervy Pliny Cowdery (3 October 1806 – 3 March 1850) was the primary participant with Joseph Smith, Jr. in the formative period of the Latter Day Saint movement from 1829 through 1836. He was one of the Three Witnesses of the Book of Mormon's Golden Plates. After the organization of the Church of Christ — as the early Latter Day Saint church was known — he became the Second Elder and an apostle of the church.

Oliver Cowdery was born October 31806 in Wells, Vermont. His family were members of the Congregational Church of Poultney, Vermont, where the Rev. Ethan Smith was pastor. At the time, Smith was writing View of the Hebrews (1823), a book speculating that Native Americans were of Hebrew origin.

An acquaintance of Joseph Smith's father, Joseph Smith, Sr., Cowdery met Joseph Smith on April 5, 1829, (one year and a day before the official founding of the church) after the Smith family told him that the younger Smith had received Golden Plates containing ancient Native American writings. Like Smith, who was a distant relative, Cowdery was also a treasure hunter who had used a divining rod in his youth. Cowdery also told Smith that he had seen the Golden Plates in a vision before the two ever met.

From April 7 to June 1829, Cowdery acted as Smith's scribe for the translation of the plates into what would later become the Book of Mormon. Cowdery also attempted to translate part of the Book of Mormon, but was unsuccessful. During the translation of the Golden Plates, Cowdery and Smith claimed they were present together on May 15, 1829 when he and Smith had received the Aaronic Priesthood from John the Baptist, after which they had baptized each other in the Susquehanna River. Cowdery also said that he and Smith had later gone into the forest and prayed "until a glorious light encircled us, and as we arose on account of the light, three persons stood before us dressed in white, their faces beaming with glory." One of the three announced that he was the Apostle Peter and named the others as the Apostles James and John.

Later that year, Cowdery reported experiencing a vision along with Smith and David Whitmer in which an angel showed him the Golden Plates. Martin Harris said he saw a similar vision later that day, and Cowdery, Whitmer and Harris signed a statement to that effect. They became known as the Three Witnesses, and their testimony has been published with nearly every edition of the Book of Mormon. Also in 1829, Cowdery received a revelation entitled "Articles of the Church of Christ", which directed the formation of the Church of Christ.

When the Church was organized on April 6, 1830, Joseph Smith, Jr. was named "First Elder" and Cowdery "Second Elder." Cowdery was technically second in authority to Smith in the church from its organization through 1838, though in practice Sidney Rigdon, Smith's "spokesman" and counselor in the First Presidency, began to supplant Cowdery as early as 1831. Cowdery held the position of Assistant President of the Church from 1834 until his excommunication in 1838.

On December 18, 1832, Cowdery married Elizabeth Ann Whitmer, the daughter of Peter Whitmer, Sr. and sister of David, John, Jacob and Peter Whitmer, Jr.. They had five children, only one of whom lived to maturity. Cowdery helped Smith revise and publish a series of Smith's revelations first called the Book of Commandments and later, when revised and expanded, the Doctrine and Covenants, to which Cowdery had significant objections. Cowdery was also the editor on the editorial board of several early church publications including: The Evening and Morning Star, the Messenger and Advocate, and The Northern Times.

When the Church created a bank known as the Kirtland Safety Society in 1837, Cowdery obtained the money-printing plates. He later was sent to Monroe, Michigan where he became President of the Bank of Monroe, which the Church had purchased. By 1837, both banks failed. Later that year, Oliver moved to the newly founded Latter Day Saint settlement in Far West, Missouri and suffered ill health through the winter of 1837-38.

In 1834 and 1835, with the help of Smith, Cowdery published a history of the church as a series of articles in the church's Messenger and Advocate. This history is not always congruent with the later official history of the church. For instance, Cowdery does not mention the First Vision. Instead, he associates Smith's first spiritual manifestation with a visitation of the angel Moroni, who Cowdery said had appeared to Smith in September 1823. Cowdery places the religious revival that encouraged Smith to question which church to join in 1823, not 1820, and corrected himself after first claiming that it had occurred in 1821, when Smith was 15. In the correction, Cowdery stated that the revival had occurred after Smith's brother Alvin had died in 1823.

By early 1838 conflicts had arisen between Smith and Cowdery. * Leadership. Cowdery competed with Smith for leadership of the new church and "disagreed with the Prophet's economic and political program and sought a personal financial independence [from the] Zion society that Joseph Smith envisioned." * Church and state. In March 1838, Smith and Rigdon moved to Far West, which had been under the presidency of Cowdery's brothers-in-law, David and John Whitmer. There they took charge of the Missouri church and initiated a number of policies that Cowdery and the Whitmers believed violated separation of church and state. * Personal Behavior. In January 1838, Cowdery wrote his brother Warren that he and Joseph Smith had "had some conversation in which in every instance I did not fail to affirm that which I had said was strictly true. A dirty, nasty, filthy affair of his and Fanny Alger's was talked over in which I strictly declared that I had never deserted from the truth in the matter, and as I supposed was admitted by himself." Alger, a teenage maid living with the Smiths, may have been Joseph Smith's first plural wife, a practice that Cowdery opposed.

On April 12, 1838, a church court excommunicated Cowdery after he failed to appear at a hearing on his membership and sent a letter resigning from the Church instead. The Whitmers, William Wines Phelps and Book of Mormon witness Hiram Page were also excommunicated from the church at the same time..

Cowdery and the Whitmers became known as "the dissenters," but they continued to live in and around Far West, where they owned a great deal of property. On June 17, 1838, President Sidney Rigdon announced to a large Mormon congregation that the dissenters were "as salt that had lost its savor" and that it was the duty of the faithful to cast the dissenters out "to be trodden beneath the feet of men." Cowdery and the Whitmers took this Salt Sermon, and its implicit endorsement of the "Danites, a secret vigilante group, as a threat against their lives and fled the county. Reports of their treatment circulated in nearby non-Mormon communities and increased the tension that led to the Mormon War.

From 1838 to 1848, Cowdery put the Latter Day Saint church behind him. There is a possibility that he may have even briefly denied his testimony regarding the Golden Plates.Cowdery studied law and practiced at Tiffin, Ohio, where he became a civic and political leader. He edited the local Democratic newspaper until it was learned that he was one of the Book of Mormon witnesses. He did not recant his testimony, but he was still able to become assistant editor. In 1846, Cowdery was nominated as his district's Democratic party candidate for the state senate, but when his Mormon background was discovered, he was defeated.

After Joseph Smith was assassinated, Cowdery's brother Lyman recognized James J. Strang as Smith's successor to the church presidency, and in 1847, Oliver moved to Elkhorn, Wisconsin near Strang's headquarters in Voree and entered law practice with his brother. He became co-editor of the Walworth County Democrat and in 1848 he ran for state assemblyman. However, his Mormon ties were once again discovered and he was defeated.

In 1848, Cowdery traveled to meet with followers of Brigham Young and the Quorum of the Twelve who were encamped at Winter Quarters, Nebraska and asked to be reunited with the Church. On November 12, 1848, Cowdery was rebaptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by Orson Hyde of the Quorum of the Twelve in Indian Creek at Kanesville, Iowa. Cowdery never again held high office in the church. Cowdery developed a respiratory illness, and on March 3, 1850 he died in David Whitmer's home in Richmond, Missouri.

* Assistant President of the Church

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# Legg, Phillip R., Oliver Cowdery: The Elusive Second Elder of the Restoration, Herald House: Independence, Missouri, 1989. # Mehling, Mary, Cowdrey-Cowdery-Cowdray Genealogy p. 181, Frank Allaben: 1911. # # Welch, John W. and Morris, Larry E., eds., Oliver Cowdery: Scribe, Elder, Witness (Provo, UT: The Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, 2006); ISBN 0842526617.

* Oliver Cowdery biography reprinted from the Encyclopedia of Mormonism * A believer's perspective on Cowdery's life. * The Return of Oliver Cowdery - FARMS Papers * Find-A-Grave profile for Oliver Cowdery * Oliver Cowdery Home Page * Oliver Cowdery's Genealogy