Council of Friends (Woolley)
The Council of Friends was one of the original expressions of Mormon fundamentalism, having its origins in the teachings of Lorin C. Woolley, a courier and bodyguard for polygamous leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who was excommunicated in 1924.
Lorin C. Woolley in 1882
Schoolhouse of the Community and site of the 1953 Short Creek Raid.
Lorin Calvin Woolley was an American proponent of plural marriage and one of the founders of the Mormon fundamentalist movement. As a young man in Utah Territory, Woolley served as a courier and bodyguard for polygamous leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in hiding during the federal crusade against polygamy. His career as a religious leader in his own right commenced in the early twentieth century, when he began claiming to have been set apart to keep plural marriage alive by church president John Taylor in connection with the 1886 Revelation. Woolley's distinctive teachings on authority, morality, and doctrine are thought to provide the theological foundation for nearly ninety percent of Mormon fundamentalist groups.
Woolley in 1882