# Stephen Post

stephen post (January 3, 1810 – December 18, 1879) was an early member of the Latter Day Saint movement who became President of Sidney Rigdon's Rigdonite church (formerly the Church of Jesus Christ of the Children of Zion) after Rigdon's death in 1876.Post converted to Joseph Smith's Church of the Latter Day Saints in Pennsylvania in 1835, and obtained his license to preach in Kirtland, Ohio, in 1836, becoming a member of the Second Quorum of the Seventy. By July 1837, he estimated that he had "traveled 544 miles and preached forty-three sermons." After Smith's martyrdom in 1844 precipitated a succession crisis in the church, Post initially demurred from affiliating with any of the resulting sects, instead continuing to preach as an independent believer. In 1850, he briefly joined James Strang's Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, within which his younger brother Warren became an apostle, but he soon became disenchanted with Strang's practice of plural marriage and left the church.In January 1856, Post wrote to Sidney Rigdon, Smith's former counselor, about the disordered state of Mormonism.