Facts and Statistics

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New Jersey

35,453

Total Church Membership

1-in-

6

Stakes

62

Congregations

41 Wards
21 Branches

20

FamilySearch Centers

20

1

Missions

History

Orson Pratt and Lyman E. Johnson, missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, preached in New Jersey in 1832. In 1838, missionary Benjamin Winchester arrived in the Pine Barrens region and local congregations began to form. In 1840 a local Latter-day Saint, Alfred Wilson, informed church leaders that there were about 100 members in the village of Cream Ridge. That same year, Joseph Smith visited a number of the congregations in the state. By 1848, there were 21 congregations in New Jersey, most of them in Monmouth and Burlington counties.

The communities of Toms River and Hornerstown had a number of Latter-day Saints from prominent local families around this time. This group from Toms River included members who became influential Latter-day Saints. In the Ivins family, Anthony W. Ivins became a member of the Church’s Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in Nauvoo, and Rachel Ivins Grant was a local leader of the women’s Relief Society from 1868 to 1903 and the mother of Church President Heber J. Grant. In 1850, Toms River members had built a meetinghouse. In the 1850s, many converts to the Church in New Jersey joined the Latter-day Saints’ westward trek. Around the turn of the 20th century, Latter-day Saint congregations in New Jersey began growing again.

In 1960, the Morristown New Jersey Stake was created. The sesquicentennial of the Church in New Jersey was celebrated in 1988, with several local and state dignitaries participating. In 2011, around 850 Latter-day Saints worked to help communities in New Jersey clean up in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene. Currently the state is home to over 34,000 Church members.