Edwin Quayle "Ted" Cannon Jr. (May 6, 1918 – April 6, 2005) was a Utah politician and businessman and was a prominent leader and missionary in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). Cannon was among the first missionaries of the LDS Church to preach to black people in West Africa (specifically in Nigeria and Ghana) and was part of the first group of missionaries sent to establish official congregations of the church in West Africa.
Early life, mission, and family
Cannon was born in Salt Lake City, Utah to Edwin Q. Cannon, Sr. and Luella Wareing. He was born at his parents' home because of the 1918 influenza pandemic. Cannon's paternal grandfather was George Q. Cannon, who had served in the LDS Church's First Presidency for several decades before his death in 1901. Cannon was raised in Salt Lake City.
In 1937, Cannon went on a mission for the LDS Church to Nazi Germany. He was president of a branch of the church in Berlin in 1939 when the LDS Church evacuated its missionaries from Europe at the beginning of World War II. Cannon finished his mission in eastern Canada and returned to Utah in 1940.
From 1964 to 1971, Cannon was a bishop in Salt Lake City. From 1971 to 1974, he was the president of the Switzerland Mission. By the end of his service the mission had been renamed the Switzerland Zurich Mission. It only covered German-speaking Switzerland, French -speaking Switzerland being in a mission based in France. Daniel C. Peterson was among the missionaries who served under Cannon.
In 1978, the LDS Church announced a revelation ending the previous restrictions on black people receiving the priesthood or participating in templeordinances. Three weeks after the announcement, Cannon traveled to Africa on behalf of the church with Merrill J. Bateman to assess the prospects for missionary work and growth in West Africa. They visited Nigeria and Ghana on the trip. (At the time, Cannon was a counselor to James E. Faust in the church's International Mission, which had jurisdiction over all areas of the world not otherwise part of a mission.) After Bateman and Cannon reported the results of their trip, Cannon and his wife were called and set apart as the church's first missionaries to West Africa. They—along with Rendell and Rachel Mabey—preached in Nigeria and Ghana, baptized hundreds of converts, and established 35 branches and 5 districts of the church. The first convert baptized in Nigeria was Anthony Obinna.
In the late 1980s, Cannon and his wife were the directors of the church's visitors' center in Nauvoo, Illinois. For three months in 1989, Cannon was the interim president of the church's (Germany) Hamburg Mission, while the regular mission president was working on getting church missionaries admitted to East Germany.
