J. Leslie Broadbent

Who was J. Leslie Broadbent?

Joseph Leslie Broadbent was a religious leader in the early stages of the Mormon fundamentalist movement.

Broadbent was born to Amanda Hermandine Twede and Joseph Samuel Broadbent, who served as mayor of Lehi, Utah from 1922 to 1928.

In 1910, Broadbent left his studies at Brigham Young University to serve a mission in England for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In June 1915 he married Rula Louise Kelsch, and through his association with her family came to know John Wickersham Woolley. Among his other wives were Fawnetta Jessop, who married him in October 1925, and Irene Locket and Anna Kmetzsch, who had married him by 1933.

In 1927, Broadbent published a pamphlet Celestial Marriage advocating the practice of plural marriage. This was one of the first Mormon fundamentalist tracts and was a factor in his subsequent excommunication by the LDS Church in July 1929. Broadbent was ordained an apostle in the Mormon fundamentalist movement called the Council of Friends by Lorin Calvin Woolley on 6 March 1929, and on the May 15 was given the title of "second elder" by Woolley.

Upon Woolley's death in 1934, Broadbent succeeded him as priesthood president. Among Mormon fundamentalists, the succession was largely uncontroversial, and Broadbent traveled widely in support of the fundamentalist movement. In February 1935 he and a number of other fundamentalist leaders visited Millville, Utah for a meeting with co-religionists. The next month Broadbent died from pneumonia.