Cowley submitted his resignation from the Quorum of the Twelve, at the request of church president Joseph F. Smith, on October 28, 1905,[5] because his presence in the hierarchy undermined the church's position in the Reed Smoot hearings. Cowley was notorious for having performed marriages that contravened the church's 1890 Manifesto, which prohibited the contracting of new plural marriages. Apostle John W. Taylor also resigned at that time for the same reason. With the death of apostle Marriner W. Merrill in early February of the next year, there were three vacancies in the Quorum of the Twelve. At the April 1906 general conference, the resignations of Cowley and Taylor were presented to and accepted by the general church membership.[5] As a result, three new apostles were called to replace them and Merrill: George F. Richards, Orson F. Whitney, and David O. McKay.
After the Quorum
Reports of Cowley's continuing involvement in new plural marriages led to his priesthood being suspended by the church on May 11, 1911. This rare and virtually unique disciplinary procedure was used for Cowley because the members of the Quorum of the Twelve disagreed about whether to leave him undisciplined, to disfellowship him, or to excommunicate him.
After his priesthood was suspended, Cowley's name continued to be linked with plural marriage over the next several years. As late as the early 1920s, Cowley was meeting with excommunicated polygamists as the early Mormon fundamentalists began to coalesce at the Baldwin Radio Plant in Salt Lake City. In the mid-1920s, Cowley broke all ties with the polygamous dissenters. His priesthood standing in the LDS Church was restored on April 3, 1936, which was nearly 25 years after it had been suspended.
The town of Cowley, Wyoming, is named after Cowley. He was the father of LDS Church apostle Matthew Cowley by his wife, Abbie Hyde. His son, Samuel P. Cowley, by his wife, Luella Parkinson, was an FBI agent best known for his death at the hands of Lester "Baby Face Nelson" Gillis in 1934.
^Abraham O. Woodruff and Cowley were ordained at the same time to fill two vacancies in the Quorum of the Twelve.
^Cowley resigned from the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles on October 28, 1905; however, he remained an ordained apostle of the church until his priesthood was suspended in 1911.
^Since Cowley had been removed from the Quorum of the Twelve in 1905, the suspension of his priesthood occasioned no vacancy in the Quorum of the Twelve.
^ abThomas G. Alexander, Mormonism in Transition: A History of the Latter-day Saints, 1890–1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986) pp. 65–66.
