PRATT-BENTLEY HOME
St. George, Utah
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LOCATION
76 West Tabernacle
St. George, UT 84770-3420
37°6'31"N 113°35'1"W
Now part of the Green Gate Village.
HISTORY
Orson Pratt, usually referred to as the true intellectual of the early apostles of the L.D.S. Church,
was sent to St. George to share the responsibilities of the Cotton Mission.
Orson Pratt Jr. was named postmaster even before the vanguard of the pioneers left Salt Lake City.
In 1962, the Pratt family built the large (for the times) house directly north of the public square
where later the St. George Tabernacle and Woodward School would find a home.
It was the first permanent home built in St. George.
The building had two stories and was constructed with a black lava rock foundation.
The walls were 18 inches thick and made of locally produced adobes with the sand and gravel laboriously mixed by hand,
poured into molds, and then dried in the hot Dixie sun.
As with most buildings of the time they were used in double thicknesses throughout the structure.
The Pratt family lived on the second story.
The ground floor was fitted out to be both a small dry goods store and St. George's first post office.
Local rumor, never completely verified, insists that Pratt and Apostle Erastus Snow
did not agree on many issues and Pratt asked permission to leave the Cotton Mission.
Whether this was true or not, he was called to a mission to Austria in 1864.
Before he left, he traded homes with Richard Bentley in Salt Lake City.
The Bentley family continued to operate the small store out of the room on the west end of the first floor.
But they also converted the main portion of the downstairs into living quarters.
Bentley's wife, Elizabeth, was in the forefront of the ladies called to develop the silk industry in Utah's Dixie
and one large room upstairs was devoted to this ill-starred adventure.
Elizabeth hatched silk worm eggs and fed the worms local mulberry leaves gathered by her grandchildren.
After Richard Bentley's death the building passed into the hands of his son,
prominent local businessman, William Oscar Bentley,
whose family lived there until the early 1920s when he built a more modern home just around the corner.
When the family moved out, the house was divided into apartments
and suffered several unsightly "modern" changes and additions.
By 1981, the building was is a state of complete decay and marked for demolition by the
city.
In 1981, the place was purchased by Dr. Mark and Barbara Greene.
This home was made a centerpiece of the
Green Gate Village
bed-and-breakfast complex.
The walls and the woodwork are the original and the prize-winning restoration
has remained true to the period and the memories of the older people.
Put on the National Register of Historic Places (#1983003199) on August 11, 1983.
BIOGRAPHY
Orson Pratt was one of the most remarkable men in LDS Church history.
He joined the church in Kirkland, Ohio in 1830 at the age of 19
and was immediately called by Joseph Smith to serve the first of several missions.
He was the first Elder's Quorum president in the Church
and subsequently an original member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
wherein he served for the balance of his lifetime.
Orson experienced first hand the hardships, persecution and many forced relocations of the saints.
After an arduous trek across the great plains and Rocky Mountains in the summer of 1847,
Orson and Erastus Snow were the first two men to view and enter the Great Salt Lake Valley
in advance of Brigham Young's wagon party.
Because of Orson's mathematical expertise he helped lay out the plat maps for that and other Utah cities to follow.
In addition, he was an author, editor, publisher, scientist and an educator.
He crossed the continent many times on horseback, wagon, and rail,
and crossed the Atlantic Ocean sixteen times on three-masted sailing ships,
taking the gospel message to the British Isles.
In 1861 Orson Pratt and Erastus Snow were called by Brigham Young
to lead a group of 309 families to relocate to Southern Utah
and establish the city of St. George.
Their mission was to grow cotton, raise sheep and even silk worms
in order to supply the dozens of new Utah cities to the north
with much needed raw materials for fabrics.
In 1864, Pratt was called by Brigham Young on yet another proselytizing mission.
This time to Austria, where they were denied permission to preach by the government,
and thence again to England where he managed the perpetual immigration fund.
Richard & Elizabeth Bentley came to St. George in 1964
after trading their house in Salt Lake for Orson Pratt's home in St. George.
They had six children:
Emma Demeba (married Edwin Delworth Woolley Jr.)
Mary Lavinia (married Edwin Gordon Woolley)
William Oscar (married Mary Ann Mansfield)
Annie Elizabeth (married Nelson Terry)
Franklin Richards (married Marion Carter)
Joseph Charles (married Margaret Ivins, Gladys Woodmanfee, and Maude Taylor)
After the death of Elizabeth, Richard married Hannah Cox Welch.
He died in 1906.
PHOTOS
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Other WCHS photos:
WCHS-00547 Jon Bowcutt sketch of the Orson Pratt/Bentley Home
REFERENCES
Historical Buildings of Washington County (Volume 1), pp. 16-17.
Landmark and Historic Sites: City of St. George, pp. 44-1 through 44-2.
Green Gate Village Brochure and Self-Guided Tour
Green Gate Village Information Page on the Orson Pratt House
Book: "Autobiography of William Oscar Bentley, Jr."
by William Oscar Bentley (1884-)
Privately published 1961, 82 pp.
Book: "Treasured histories of the William Oscar Bentley family"
by LeRoi Bentley
Salt Lake City, UT: Publisher's Press, 1984. 416 pp.
About William Oscar Bentley (1884-) and his family.