Jesse Gause: Joseph Smith's Little-Known Counselor
D. Michael Quinn
BYU Studies, Fall 1983

	For more than twenty years, Jesse Gause was a Quaker in good
standing, but his movement from place to place indicates a great
restlessness.  ...  It is unclear whether he was pressured into military
service during the War of 1812 despite his Quaker pacifism or whether
he was reasserting the military tradition of his father.  ..
	Jesse Gause remarried almost immediately after his wife's death,
and these abrupt changes in his marital situation seemed to precipitate a
religious crisis in his life.  ...  Exactly seven months after his resignation
from the Quakers, Jesse Gause and his children were listed as members
of the Hancock "Family" of the United Society of Believers in Christ's
Second Appearing (the "Shakers").  ...
	...  It is not known when or how Mormon missionaries contacted
Jesse Gause, but less than five months after he came to Ohio as a
Shaker, he was converted to the Church and was soon chosen as a
counselor to Joseph Smith.
	...  Both men were simply called "counselors" to the Church
president, but President Gause may have had the precedence of being
first counselor: Joseph Smith listed him first when recording the
organization of the First Presidency, and Jesse Gause was also nearly
ten years older than Sidney Rigdon at a time in the Church when
seniority was determined on the basis of age.  On 10 August 1832, one
of Gause's Shaker associates wrote that Jesse Gause "is yet a
Mormon--and is second to the Prophet or Seer--Joseph Smith."
	An obvious question about Gause's appointment is why Joseph
Smith chose as counselor a man who had been a member of the Church
only a few months, maybe even weeks, when the Prophet could have
advanced to that position other men who had been associated with the
Church from its beginning.  ....  Jesse Gause had three years' experience
with the communitarian Shaker families in Massachusetts and Ohio, and
another twenty-three years' experience with the close-knit Quakers.  ...
	...  President Gause actively functioned as a counselor in the First
Presidency during the spring and summer of 1832.  ...  But after the
summer of 1832, something changed in Gause's relationship to
Mormonism, and he "denied the faith."
	As with his conversion from Quakerism to Shakerism, his
desertion of the Mormon church may have centered in his personal
family circumstances.  During his missionary journey of August, Jesse
Gause visited his second wife ... and tried to persuade her to leave the
celibate Shakers and join his conversion to the restored gospel.  His wife
refused ...
	In view of what is known about Jesse Gause's troubled family
relations in the summer of 1832, his disaffection from Mormonism may
have resulted from hi learning about polygamous theory and practice that
were emerging at that time.
	...  "Bro. Jesse" was excommunicated on 3 December 1832, and
Frederick G. Williams was appointed as counselor in place of Gause in a
revelation of 5 January 1833, which was never published in the Doctrine
and Covenants.
	...  Apparently, Jesse Gause continued to be a restless
geographic wanderer and religious seeker until his death at age
fifty-two.
	...  When the revelation appointing Jesse Gause to the presidency
was published for the first time, his name was simply removed and that
of Frederick G. Williams was substituted in its place.