At Eighty-One, Ezekiel Gleason Accepts the Gospel from His Pioneer Son (1857)

In 1857, John Streator Gleason left Utah on another mission to the eastern United States. Ten years earlier he had traveled west with Brigham Young’s original pioneer company. This time he went east with a group of missionaries who pulled their supplies in handcarts, then continued his missionary work in his home state of New York.

The mission brought a personal opportunity to teach the gospel within his own family. In Monroe, New York, John taught his father, Ezekiel Gleason. At eighty-one years old, Ezekiel accepted the gospel and was baptized by his son. The family history by Frederick W. Graham places this conversion during John’s 1857–1858 mission; the chronological account on John’s memorial gives the baptism date as November 17, 1857.

John continued visiting and ministering among relatives in New York, Ontario, Ohio, and Michigan before returning to Utah in 1858. His father’s baptism stands as a specific conversion account from that missionary journey, not simply a record of John’s membership in the pioneer company.

The surviving summaries establish the teaching and baptism but do not preserve Ezekiel’s own explanation of his conversion. No dream, vision, miraculous healing, or first-person testimony is claimed for this event.

Fuller account of this event (the complete account as preserved in John Streator Gleason, Handcart Missionary, 1857-1858, FamilySearch Memories):

Arrived at Monroe Oct the 9th. Found my friends in good health. My old father was 81 years old. The day of my arrival there I taught him the ways of the lord and baptised him on the 17th of the same month. My brother and family calculate to cross the plains with me next spring.