Reddick Newton Allred: A Life of Faith and Obedience — Mormon Battalion Veteran Whose Writings Span a Century of LDS History (1822–1905)

Reddick Newton Allred (1822–1905) was born in Bedford, Tennessee, baptized into the Church at age 11 in 1833, and grew up during the Church's formative and turbulent decades. He was in Nauvoo during the martyrdom of Joseph Smith and the expulsion of the Saints, then enlisted in the Mormon Battalion in 1846 as a private. He married Lucy Hoyt in Nauvoo before the march.

Allred served the full march from Council Bluffs to San Diego and subsequently made his way to the Salt Lake Valley, where he spent the remaining decades of his life as a Utah pioneer.

What sets Allred apart as a historical witness is the breadth of his written record. He left an autobiography typescript and at least one handwritten reminiscence, both covering his life from childhood through his pioneer years. These writings, compiled and published in book form as 'The Writings of Reddick Newton Allred: A Life of Faith and Obedience,' span more than 70 years of LDS history — from the early Kirtland period through to the post-Manifesto era of the 1890s.

Allred was a twin — his brother Reddin also served in the Battalion — and their parallel lives are one of the unusual stories embedded in the Battalion's roster. Two twin brothers, both baptized as boys in Tennessee in 1833, both serving side by side on a 2,000-mile military march forty years later.

For Latter-day Saints, Allred's life is a testimony of consecrated faith stretched across a full human lifespan: baptized as a child, marching as a young man, witnessing and writing into old age.