A Rigdonite is a member of the Latter Day Saint movement who accepts Sidney Rigdon as the successor in the church presidency to the movement's founder, Joseph Smith Jr. The early history of the Rigdonite movement is shared with the history of the Latter Day Saint movement, but as of the 1844 succession crisis becomes distinct. Sidney Rigdon and other church leaders, including Brigham Young and James J. Strang, presented themselves as leaders of the movement and established rival church organizations. Rigdon's group was initially headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was known at one point as the Church of Jesus Christ of the Children of Zion, and its adherents are referred to as Rigdonites, or sometimes "Pennsylvania Latter Day Saints" or "Pennsylvania Mormons." The only surviving organization that traces its succession back to Rigdon's organizations is The Church of Jesus Christ, founded by a group of Rigdon's followers led by William Bickerton.
History
Background
On June 1, 1841, Sidney Rigdon had been ordained by Joseph Smith as a "Prophet, Seer and Revelator"—which was one of the same ecclesiastical titles held by Smith. The Church of Jesus Christ maintains that as First Counselor to Smith, Rigdon should naturally have been the leader of the church after Smith's death. With this understanding, The Church of Jesus Christ disagrees that the Quorum of Twelve had the right to lead the church. The Church of Jesus Christ argues that Rigdon should have been allowed to be what he claimed to be—a "guardian" over the church until proper proceedings could decide the next president—and that proceedings which resulted in Brigham Young leading the church constituted a procedural violation.
After the death of Joseph Smith in 1844, Sidney Rigdon, who had been the first counselor in the First Presidency, claimed to have received a vision sustaining him as the leader of the Church. The subsequent succession crisis caused a large amount of confusion about who should succeed the slain prophet. Rigdon claimed the right to lead the church as the senior surviving member of the church's highest ruling body, the First Presidency. Up until Smith's death, the First Presidency had made nearly all the major decisions and led the Church of Christ both naturally and spiritually. The Quorum of Twelve Apostles, led by Brigham Young, also claimed the right to lead the church. The Quorum of the Twelve's claim was derived from a revelation of Joseph Smith allowing them to stand equal to the First Presidency in attending to natural matters of the church.
On December 27, 1847, when Young organized a new First Presidency, the Quorum of the Twelve only had seven of the original twelve members present to represent a council to decide the Presidency. William Smith, John E. Page, and Lyman Wight had previously denounced the proceedings and were not present (Young had called replacement apostles, but Rigdon saw these callings as invalid). John Taylor and Parley P. Pratt were in the Salt Lake Valley and could not have known of the proceedings. This left just seven present, a majority of one meaning Young would have to vote for himself in order to gain a majority quorum vote in favor of his leadership. Young chose two of the other apostles, Heber C. Kimball and Willard Richards, as his counselors in the First Presidency. This left only four members of the Quorum of the Twelve, as recognized by Sidney, present to vote in favor of creation of the new First Presidency: Orson Hyde, Wilford Woodruff, George A. Smith, and Orson Pratt. The Church of Jesus Christ views this action as a violation of church law compromising the authority of Sidney Rigdon without a majority quorum vote. The LDS Church does not agree with this view of the proceedings, as they recognize newly ordained apostles under Joseph Smith as authorized to offer a sustaining vote.
Rigdon's Pittsburgh church
Undaunted, Rigdon relocated to Pittsburgh and established a rival organization of the church. Ebenezer Robinson, founding publisher of the Times and Seasons, became publisher of a new church periodical, the Latter Day Saints' Messenger and Advocate, (later the Messenger and Advocate of the Church of Christ.) The Rigdonite paper sought to expose and condemn the practice of plural marriage. Church elder Benjamin Winchester commented that Young and the Quorum of the Twelve had: "Excited a certain portion of the Church to reject Elder Rigdon (which is a most horrid outrage upon the laws of the same) from a fear that he would bring them to...justice for teaching and practicing the doctrine of polygamy."