LDS Prophets Trivia
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108 free LDS Prophets trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This LDS prophets trivia quiz covers all 18 presidents of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, from Joseph Smith's founding of the church in 1830 to Dallin H. Oaks becoming president in October 2025. Expect questions on Brigham Young's trek west, John Taylor's night in Carthage Jail, Wilford Woodruff's 1890 Manifesto, Lorenzo Snow's tithing sermons, Heber J. Grant's welfare program, Spencer W. Kimball's 1978 revelation, Gordon B. Hinckley's temple-building era, Thomas S. Monson's widows, and Russell M. Nelson's surgical career. The questions run from easy (which prophet was a heart surgeon?) to genuinely hard (which chief justice did Dallin H. Oaks clerk for?), so it works for family home evening, seminary and institute classes, youth activities, or a friendly contest with the ward. Nothing here requires more than a working knowledge of church history, but the hard questions will separate the casual reader from the person who has actually read the presidents' biographies. Every answer was checked against the biography of each president and the church's own succession rules, and every question carries a citation you can open, so you can settle arguments as well as start them.
30 of 108 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Joseph Smith said his First Vision came in a grove near which New York village?
Palmyra
Palmyra drew the Smiths around 1816; they were still clearing their forested farm just south of the village in 1820, and its surviving woods are now called the Sacred Grove.
Q 02In which state was church founder Joseph Smith born?
Vermont
Vermont was his birthplace in 1805; hunger after the frost-ruined 'year without a summer' of 1816 drove the family to western New York.
Q 03Joseph Smith was jailed in 1844 after ordering the destruction of what?
A printing press
A printing press, a dissident newspaper's, was wrecked on his order as mayor after its only issue attacked him; he gave himself up over the press and was then charged with treason.
Q 04Which political office was Joseph Smith campaigning for at the time of his death?
President of the United States
President of the United States was his goal in 1844: he proposed freeing the slaves with money from federal land sales, shrinking Congress and overhauling the prisons.
Q 05After Joseph Smith's death, which former counselor in the First Presidency offered himself as the church's 'guardian'?
Sidney Rigdon
Sidney Rigdon hurried back from Pittsburgh to press his claim, but that August the Saints voted to follow Brigham Young and the Quorum of the Twelve instead.
Q 06Which phrase, credited to Brigham Young on first seeing the Salt Lake Valley, now names a Utah state park?
This Is the Place
This Is the Place Heritage Park sits at the mouth of Emigration Canyon, where Young first saw the valley. The line was first credited to him 33 years later, when Wilford Woodruff recalled it as "This is the right place, drive on."
Q 07Utah marks Brigham Young's entry into the Salt Lake Valley on July 24 as what holiday?
Pioneer Day
Pioneer Day marks July 24, 1847, when Young, sick with mountain fever, reached the valley; his advance company had arrived two days earlier and was already irrigating land for crops.
Q 08About how many women were sealed to Brigham Young as wives?
55
55 women were sealed to him by one historian's count and 56 by another, and not all were marriages in the usual sense: only 16 of the women bore his 57 children.
Q 09Besides leading the church, which public office did Brigham Young hold from 1851 to 1858?
Governor of the Utah Territory
President Millard Fillmore named him Governor of the Utah Territory in 1850; he gave way to Alfred Cumming in 1858 as the Utah War ended, accepting President Buchanan's pardon.
Q 10Before becoming a full-time church leader in 1835, Brigham Young earned his living in which trades?
Painter and carpenter
Painter and carpenter were trades he learned as an apprentice in Auburn, New York, after his mother died when he was 14; a house he helped build there later became the home of William Seward, Lincoln's secretary of state.
Q 11Which future church president was severely wounded in the Carthage Jail attack that killed Joseph Smith?
John Taylor
John Taylor was shot several times and survived; Willard Richards, also in the room, escaped almost unharmed, and Taylor became the third president in 1880.
Q 12The third church president, the first born outside the United States, was born in which country?
England
England was home until he was 23: a Methodist lay preacher there at 17, he felt a sudden conviction that he must go to America to preach.
Q 13Which hymn was sung twice in Carthage Jail shortly before the Smiths were killed?
A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief
Q 21The sixth president was born in Far West, a church settlement in which state?
Missouri
He was born in November 1838, weeks after Missouri's governor issued the extermination order against the Latter-day Saints.
Q 22Which initiative, launched in 1936, is counted among Heber J. Grant's greatest legacies as president?
The church welfare program
The church welfare program, launched in 1936 during the Depression, was meant, in Grant's words, to do away with idleness and the dole and restore industry, thrift and self-respect.
Q 23In 1901, Heber J. Grant was sent to open the church's mission in which country?
Japan
A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief, set to words by James Montgomery, was sung twice by a fellow prisoner that afternoon; the mob stormed the jail minutes later.
Q 14Wilford Woodruff's 1890 Manifesto officially ended the church's support of which practice?
Plural marriage
Plural marriage was given up three years after the Edmunds-Tucker Act dissolved the church as a legal body and let the federal government seize its property, with many leading polygamists already in prison.
Q 15Which pastime did Wilford Woodruff discover in Britain in 1845 and praise in his diary?
Fly fishing
Fly fishing was shown to him on the River Ribble by a 70-year-old local angler; his diary called it the greatest art in fishing, and at 85 he was still catching trout in Utah's mountains.
Q 16The Genealogical Society of Utah, founded under Wilford Woodruff in 1894, is known today by what name?
FamilySearch
FamilySearch grew from the society founded months after Woodruff told members to stop being sealed to church leaders and to trace their own ancestors instead, which sent them hunting for family records.
Q 17Which president is credited with the couplet "As man now is, God once was: As God now is, man may be"?
Lorenzo Snow
Lorenzo Snow said the couplet came to him by revelation in 1840 and that for years he confided it to almost no one but his sister Eliza; his teachings were the church's course of study in 2013.
Q 18Which principle became a hallmark of LDS membership under the fifth church president (1898-1901)?
Tithing
Tithing was reemphasized after the president's 1899 visit to drought-stricken St. George; he preached it for the rest of his tenure as one-tenth of income, easing the church's debts.
Q 19The sixth church president (1901-1918) was the son of which of Joseph Smith's brothers?
Hyrum
Hyrum Smith, the founder's elder brother, fathered the sixth president; the boy's mother, Mary Fielding, was a British convert, and he was orphaned at 13, the last president to have personally known Joseph Smith.
Q 20Which president's vision of the dead became Doctrine and Covenants 138?
Joseph F. Smith
Joseph F. Smith received it in October 1918, weeks before he died; it was 58 years before it entered the scriptures, first in the Pearl of Great Price in 1976 and then in the Doctrine and Covenants.
Japan yielded so little that when Grant was called home in 1903 the church president told him he had not accomplished anything there, then sent him on to lead the British mission instead.
Q 24Under Heber J. Grant, keeping which practice became a temple recommend requirement in 1921?
The Word of Wisdom
The Word of Wisdom dates from 1833, yet for two generations leaders tolerated members who drank coffee and tea or chewed tobacco; in 1921 Grant made abstaining a condition of entering the temple.
Q 25George Albert Smith arranged church relief shipments to Europe with which US president?
Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman asked in 1945 how long the supplies would take to gather and was told they were ready, already stockpiled by church members, quilts included. Smith died in 1951 on his 81st birthday.
Q 26George Albert Smith helped bring the church into which youth organization?
Boy Scouts of America
The Boy Scouts of America took in the church's own scouting program in 1913, a tie that lasted until 2019; Smith later received the BSA's Silver Buffalo, one of its highest awards.
Q 27The ninth president, who served from 1951 to 1970, issued which famous slogan in 1959?
Every member a missionary
Every member a missionary was his April 1959 charge to the whole church, a phrase he had first used in the 1920s while presiding over its European missions.
Q 28Which president is credited with the saying "No other success can compensate for failure in the home"?
David O. McKay
David O. McKay was quoting J. E. McCulloch's 1924 book Home: The Savior of Civilization when he gave the line in general conference in 1935; it became a touchstone of church teaching on family life.
Q 29Which relative was church president when Joseph Fielding Smith joined the Twelve in 1910?
His father
His father, Joseph F. Smith, was church president from 1901 to 1918 and called him to the Twelve in 1910; he later spent decades as Church Historian.
Q 30As an apostle, Harold B. Lee chaired which 1960s overhaul of the church's programs and lesson manuals?
Correlation
Correlation in Lee's hands grew from a charge to his committee to align the lessons each organization wrote for itself; it became a review of every program, cutting duplication and placing all of them under priesthood leaders.