Richard McAllister...

Richard McAllister

1824-

4th Great Grandfather

The Richard McAllister House in Hanover Pennsylvania
Methodist Minister Preaches Mormon Doctrine
Richard McAllister Richard McAllister was a devote man, a religious man. He was a Methodist by organized religion, but held many of his own religious views, which would eventually put him in opposition with the doctrine of the Methodist Church. The following story was told by his son, William James Frazier McAllister.

Father was a Methodist Episcopal and a follower of John Wesley.  He took an active part as a local preacher, class leader and Sunday School Superintendent but Father did not believe in all their tenets.

One subject where he differed was the Godhead. Father preached that the God he believed in was a personal God, a man with body, parts, and passions, which is rank heresy to the Methodist Episcopal Church. He also preached it would be an unjust God that would condemn little children to hell without baptism.

He did not believe in the damnation of children, so they hauled father up before the Deacons and Counsel, and tried him for heresy. They took his offices from him and made him a lay member.

For some time he was out of any church, then the Methodist Protestants got after father and he joined their church, with all the offices, the same as the other.

About that time Apostle Orson Pratt, Uncle John Daniel Thompson McAllister, Dan Greene, and two other elders called at our house from Utah. Father had preached those two heresies in the Methodist Protestant Church just before the elders arrived.

 On the night of father’s trial, Uncle John dressed himself in his Highland Cloak and Scotch Cap and went with father as his advocate, and had a chance of preaching a great Mormon sermon on those two subjects.

Father didn't know he was preaching the Restored Gospel, but the elders soon converted him. He was working at that time politically for the customs office and held a high military office in the Philadelphia Grays, but he threw them up and accepted the Gospel. On New Year's Day 1861, my father and family, father's mother, Aunt Mary Cullin, and myself, were baptized in the bath house on 12th and Walnut Street, Philadelphia.

Linage.... Sandra Christensen, Albert Christensen, Ellen McAllister, Richard McAllister, Richard McAllister, William McAllister, Richard McAllister