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Elder Sidney Rigdon's ‘Hiram Period’
(Adapted from LDS Instructional Media, copyright © 2008 Intellectual Reserve, Inc.)
Feature Article | Early Historical Sources | Ryder Family and Campbellites at Hiram | Maps
Shaw 1952 | Thornton (1954) | Deseret News (1956) | J. B. Holm (1957) | Smith (1960)
Smith (1966) | Parkin (1966) | McKiernan (1971) | K. Perkins (1979) | Rollmann (1981)
M. V. Backman (1983) | S. E. Black (1988) | Van Wagoner (1989) | S. E. Black (1990)
Newell & Avery (1984/94) | Yorgason (1994) | Van Wagoner (1994) | T. Compton (1997)
W. D. Morain (1998) | L. A. Knowles (2000) | M. Staker (2002) | R. McClellan (2003)
S. Kenney (2005) | R. L. Bushman (2005) | DiPaolo (2007) | R. Walsh / M. Staker (2008)
Broadhurst (2010) | C. Rappleye (2010) | Mark L. Staker (2010) | Transcriber's Comments
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Willis Thornton
"Gentile and Saint at Kirtland" in Ohio State Arch. & Hist. Quarterly 63:1 Columbus: O.S.A.&H.S., Jan. 1954 Introduction Rigdon at Hiram Transcriber's Comments Copyright © 1954 by Ohio Historical Society All rights reserved; only limited, "fair use" excerpts are presented here. full text |
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[ 8 ]
Kirtland, or Kirtland's Mills (the official post-office designation), was a small town in the rolling hills of northeastern Ohio which had a population of 1,018 in 1830. [1] As a center for farmers to drive into and trade, get their grain milled or sold, and the like, it was comparable to the nearby towns of Painesville, Hiram, and Warren. The people of the community were nearly all farmers or closely tied to the soil. The area had been settled by westward movement along the lake shore or on the newly opened Erie Canal, by people from Connecticut, then later from all New England, New York, and Pennsylvania. Northeast Ohioans were not only like those people, they were those people in most cases, for not enough time had passed to permit the rearing of a native generation. Most of the people were pure Yankee. The era of "The Awakening" was in full cry, and the camp meeting, the "protracted meeting," the gospel crusades, the fiery preaching of the "Burnt-Over Area" of Pennsylvania, were all reflected in northeastern Ohio. The excesses, in fact, were even greater. Nowhere, even in the "Burnt-Over Area," had they __________ 1 Warren Jenkins, Ohio Gazetteer and Travelers' Guide (Columbus, 1837), 248. Gentile and Saint at Kirtland 9 proclaimed a Joseph Dylks as actually God, but Salesville, Ohio, achieved this extravagant frenzy. [2] The Free-Will Baptists, the Church of God (Winebrennerian), and the Disciples, or Campbellites, vied with the Millerites in vibrant and clamorous expectation of events which would momentarily establish the visible Kingdom of God in their midst. Cases of "the jerks" were not unusual at revivals, nor "speaking in tongues," and the earlier Methodist and Campbellite preaching was often accompanied by what would today seem scenes of the wildest emotionalism, not to say hysteria. It was so in and around Kirtland, a Disciple stronghold. Though well settled and under cultivation, the neighborhood offered almost nothing of a cultural or entertainment value. Activities centering around the churches were to the community what lyceums, libraries, theaters, movies, radio, and television were to be later on. An occasional traveling show, lecturer, or medicine faker, was about all that relieved what must have been almost intolerable boredom. The only generally circulated book was the Bible; the only outlet for forensic and extrovert tendencies was personal revelation or testimony at camp meetings. Every man was his own interpreter of the Bible, the result of which was a constant division and sub-division of sects in a maze of doctrinal differences of detail which are almost unintelligible to the American of one hundred years later. The ground at Kirtland, therefore, was thoroughly prepared for planting of the Mormon seed. It was no accident that led to the choosing of Kirtland as a "stake of Zion," and whether Prophet Smith did or did not receive a divine revelation directing him thither, it was certainly a move dictated by practical wisdom. When the Mormons arrived in numbers, there was at the outset nothing especially alien or strange about them or their ways; nothing about their doctrines more outre to outsiders than about those of numerous other sects; nothing in their practices more outrageous to outsiders than they had already seen and tolerated. After all, the Harmonists of Pennsylvania were communist and celibate; the Shakers were __________ 2 R. H. Taneyhill, The Leatherwood God (Cincinnati, 1870). 10 Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly (pages 10-15 not transcribed, due to copyright restrictions) 16 Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly them. Notwithstanding their belief, one of the Mormons had been seized with the disease, and it is feared that this would be the means of scattering the infection through the country. [11]Whether similar resistance to public health measures was met at Kirtland, can not be learned, but it is evident that publication of such stories must have led to a general belief that such would be the case in an emergency. Thus another point of friction appears -- the eternal conflict between the believers in standard medical practice and the believers in faith healing. In this case as in others, the Mormons persisted in putting themselves before the community as a people specially set aside and favored by God -- a proclamation that has always and everywhere irritated those presumbably less favored. In the spring of 1831 the inflow of people either from the New York state headwaters or from other sections in which missionaries had made converts and then directed them to Kirtland, was beginning to look like a flood. A. G. Riddle says: One almost wondered if the whole world were centering at Kirtland. They came, men, women, and children, in every conceivable manner, some with horses, oxen, and vehicles rough and rude, while others had walked all or part of the distance. The future "City of the Saints" appeared like one beseiged. Every available house, shop, hut, or barn was filled to its utmost capacity. Even boxes were roughly extemporized and used for shelter until something more permanent could be secured. [12]Some were people of high purpose and character. But others were less admirable. A short time later Smith had to order his apostles to stop sending people to Kirtland, as they were unable properly to accommodate the flood of converts. The system ordained of God at the moment was that all converts made over all their property to the church, that is, to Smith, and then all were to receive back a "social stake" of land and housing with a guarantee of communal support. It would be strange if this did not appeal more to those without property than to those more heavily endowed, __________ 11 Cleveland Herald, May 25, 1833. 12 Williams Brothers, pub., History of Geauga and Lake Counties (Philadelphia, 1878), 248. Gentile and Saint at Kirtland 17 and if among those who had nothing to put into the common pot at the outset there were not some with an eye to the endowment they had been promised. On Sunday the roads leading to Kirtland were crowded with farm wagons bringing whole families to see and hear the new prophet. To those already inclined to the more emotional and spectacular phases of the religious life, it seemed to offer a new experience. To the skeptical, it was certainly the best show in northern Ohio, and Smith himself was apparently not unconscious of theatrical values. He bought from a traveling showman, Michael H. Chandler, four Egyptian mummies and several papyri, and began to translate the latter as the works of Abraham and Joseph. [13] The mummies were almost certainly exhibited to visitors at Kirtland, [14] and it is definitely known that they were so exhibited later at Nauvoo, at twenty-five cents admission charge. [15] The Mormon Church is notable today for its missionary zeal, and it was even more so in its early days. Practically every convert was immediately sent out to bring more people into the fold, and this aggressive, this militant evangelism immediately aroused opposition of the clergy and devout laymen of existing and rival denominations. In Kirtland itself, what with Rigdon's wholesale conversion of his whole congregation and the constant arrival of converts at the "place of gathering" from New York and other communities where the hard work of the missionaries bore fruit, there was more trouble within the church than there was from the Gentiles. But when the church reached out into other small communities trouble began. Smith opened a small general store in Hiram [sic - Kirtland?], and set about planting a "stake of Zion" there. The conversion of the Rev. Ezra Booth, a Methodist, and Symonds Ryder, a Disciple elder, seemed to offer as good a chance as that of Rigdon had presented at Kirtland. But both these men, after investigating the Mormon organization from within, apostatized and became bitter opponents. The progress made at Hiram was suddenly halted when on the night of March 25, 1832, __________ 13 M. R. Werner, Brigham Young (New York, 1925), 77-79. 14 Linn, Story of the Mormons, 141. Linn says that for fifty cents people were later taken up into the attic of the Mormon temple and shown the mummies. 15 Josiah Quincy, Figures of the Past from the Leaves of Old Journals (Boston, 1883), 387. 18 Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly both Smith and Rigdon were dragged from their beds by a lynch mob, and coated with tar and feathers. The exact makeup of such a lynch mob is always difficult to ascertain. Ryder said it was made up of "citizens from Shalersville, Garrettsville, and Hiram," and blamed the bitter feeling on the fact that certain converts had learned "the horrid fact that a plot was laid to take their property from them and place it under the control of Smith the prophet." [16] It seems hard to credit in full Ryder's alleged horror at the communistic phase of the Kirtland "gathering-place," but it seems to be grounded in a feeling that converts were not told the full implications of this phase until it was too late. Smith later said that Ryder himself was of the mob. Smith was, fortunately, neither injured nor intimidated sufficiently to prevent his preaching the next day, but it is clear that thus early the Mormon movement had roused violent enough opposition, centered in rival denominations, to provoke mob violence. Though this was six years before the Mormons left Kirtland, and was the only instance in which violence was offered them there, it shows that from the very first, friction of the most bitter kind had been engendered. Another tiny spot of light is shed on the antipathies leading to this disgraceful affair by a letter to the editor of the Geauga Gazette, Painesville, printed in the issue of April 17, 1832. The writer skeletonized the facts of the incident, and then commented: Now, Mr. Editor, I call this a base transaction, an unlawful act, a work of darkness, a diabolical trick. But bad as it is, it proves one important truth which every wise man knew before, that is, that Satan hath more power than the pretended prophets of Mormon. It is said that they (Smith & Rigdon) had declared, in anticipation of such an event, that it could not be done -- that God would not suffer it; that those who should attempt it, would be miraculously smitten on the spot, and many such like things, which the event proves to be false.The letter is unsigned. But it might well be from one of the mob itself, by its smack of village atheist bravado. Still, it does contain __________ 16 Letter from Ryder to A. S. Hayden, February 1, 1868, in Hayden, Early History of the Disciples, 220-221. Gentile and Saint at Kirtland 19 one more suggestion of an irritating attitude on the part of Smith and Rigdon. Despite the constant sending of key men to Independence, Missouri, to set up the true Zion (which was established almost contemporaneously with, and not much later than the Kirtland "stake"), the Kirtland settlement continued to grow and prosper. By 1837 it was a community of 3,000 people, tripled in population in six years, and boasted 300 homes... (remainder of text not transcribed, due to copyright restrictions) |
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Agnes M. Smith
"Mormonism on the Western Reserve 1830-1840" unpublished paper, 1960 Title page Ch. 5 excerpt Transcriber's Comments Paper not copyrighted, but author reserves all rights; only limited, "fair use" excerpts are presented here. |
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MORMONISM ON THE WESTERN RESERVE 1930-1840 Seminar Paper, History 561; Western Reserve University; January, 1960 Agnes M. Smith |
Only limited "fair use" excerpts are presented here.
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[ 56 ]
The Mormon experiment on the Western Reserve draw to an ignominious close in 1838 with the disappearance of the prophet from this area. The financial collapse was the final blow to a system which already suffered from attack on all sides for its unorthodox religious convictions. While Joseph could fool some of the people all of the time there were not many that he could fool for long, and there was a vast majority that had nothing but contempt for him and his "Mormonite" ideas. Kennedy summarizes the situation in this way: "The feeling of the outer world was such that continuance in Kirtland would have been impossible. Thousands held the worthless promises to pay, and the feeling everywhere was that of anger, distrust and hatred. It was, indeed, time that the Prophet was going since prestige, business success, and the last remnant of public confidence had already gone." 1 Within the church itself the hitter disappointment in a leader who had brought failure and disgrace on them came out in a rebellious scene within the Temple. It was described by L. E. Miller, an aged resident of Painesville in 1888 as he recounted his memory of the final public appearance of Smith and Rigdon in the Temple the Sunday before they left Ohio: __________ 1. Kennedy, op. cit., p. 164. [ 57 ] Rigdon had been sick, and was aided to his seat by the steadying arms of friends. A long and stormy debate ensued. Pleas an denunciations issued by Rigdon and Smith in the effort to bring the flock into the line of their thinking did not have their customary effect partly because some of the ever-loyal members had left for the West and a larger proportion of those who remained were hostile and in revolt against Smith's authority. His efforts to excommunicate revolting members were not upheld by the votes of the church membership as had been the case in the past. One man was even so bold as to call the Prophet a liar "and fire from heaven did not consume him, nor the earth open to receive him." 1 Facing this tempest together Joseph and Sidney Rigdon saw the end of their dream of a Stake of Zion in Kirtland manifested unmistakably. It seems entirely proper that Joseph's mainstay and faithful companion throughout the period of the Kirtland phase of Mormonism should accompany him in his exit as he had escorted him in his entrance into Kirtland. The part played by Sidney Rigdon in the development of Mormonism seems to have received the wrong emphasis by most historians. He has been charged with complicity in the origination of the Book of Mormon which thesis based on mere conjecture has always been dubious and is not currently accepted by the outstanding writers in the field. His attempt to assume the leadership of the church at the death of Joseph Smith has been universally recounted and his rejection and consequent apostasy noted in the attitude of retributive justice. But his part in helping Joseph strengthen Mormonism by calling for the consecration of properties to the church should receive the greater emphasis. The facts of Sidney Rigdon's life are available in a manuscript The Life of Sidney Rigdon by his son John W. Rigdon who is not [sic] a Mormon, and they are set forth in Joseph Smith's History of the Church. __________ 1. Kennedy, op. cit., p. 167. 2. Brodie, op. cit., pp. 419-33; Joseph [sic] H. Fairchild, "Solomon Spaulding and the Book of Mormon," Western Reserve Historical Society Tract No. 77, March 23, 1886, pp. 197-98; Ray B. West, Jr., Kingdom of the Saints (New York: The Viking Press, 1957) , p. 23. [ 58 ] but here the main influence exerted by Rigdon on Mormonism is obscured. In this case it would seem that Joseph's desire to eradicate the experiment in the direction of communal living from the history of Mormon life is the reason. Sidney Rigdon was almost solely responsible for the incorporation of that principle into Mormon practice. He had evolved the theory himself and had broken with Alexander Campbell, the leader of the Baptist Association in which they were both working, over the idea of instituting a communal life in the church. Turning to Mormonism after leaving the Campbellite Baptists, he found Joseph more amenable to the idea. Re absorbed Rigdon's communal "family" group at Kirtland 1 and their property -- and tried the scheme of getting others to consecrate on a similar basis. It was of limited effect and was eventually abandoned. Perhaps one of his reasons for wishing to erase the entire episode from the recorded history of Mormonism lay in the feeling that it was not his idea in the first place. There is certainly much truth in the assertion that "It would not be too much to say that Rigdon was the intellect of Mormonism in its cradle days, even as Smith was its bodily force." 2 His power and __________ 1. The origin of the "Family" is explained in a discussion of the Disciple church at Mentor: "The membership were much pleased with Rigdon, and he was employed as their regular pastor, beginning in the fall of 1826. He gradually brought nearly the entire church over to Campbellism. In connection with the charge at Mentor, Rigdon sometimes preached at Kirtland. Measuring his ground carefully he occasionally branched off on common stock. The idea was met with coldness at Mentor, but at Kirtland it soon kindled to a blaze. Isaac Morley being the first converted.... Morley was enthusiastic, and threw open his doors in welcome to all who chose to enter and make his their common home. A large number of ignorant and profligate people, together with other more intelligent but equally fanatical at once assembled there. Within a short time the "family" numbered one hundred members." History of Kirtland Twp. in History of Geauga and Lake Counties (Philadelphia: Williams Bros., 1878), p. 247. 2. Kennedy, op. cit., pp. 60-61. [ 59 ] influence were equaled by few on the Western Reserve in those days. The education be had acquired by reading and constant moving about among men was of a character that made him valuable ally to the new religion, and because of his great success among the Campbellite Baptist churches of the Mahoning Baptist Association he secured for Mormonism a welcome in Ohio that few other men could have commanded. His power as a preacher is attested by A. S. Hayden in his excellent Early History of the Disciples in the Western Reserve, 1 by Campbell, and by many others. But a certain peculiarity of his genius made him much more suited to the religion of Joseph Smith than to the more intellectual approach of the church established by Alexander Campbell. His brother Dr. L. Rigdon acknowledged Sidney's "wild and visionary views" and excused them on the basis of an early accident. His account reads as follows: His mental powers did net seem to be impaired but the equilibrium of his intellectual exertions seems thereby have been sadly affected. He still manifested great mental activity and power, but was to an equal degree inclined to run into wild and visionary views on almost every question; hence he was subject for any new movement in the religious world. 2 On the basis of seven years of close association with Sidney in religious affairs Alexander Campbell analyzed his attitudes as follows: His instability I was induced to ascribe to a peculiar mental and corporeal malady, to which he has been subject for some years. Fits of melancholy succeeded by fits of enthusiasm accompanied by some kind of nervous spasms and swoonings which he has, {since leaving the Campbellite Baptists for the Mormons} interpreted into the agency of the Holy Spirit, or the recovery of spiritual gifts, produced a versatility in his genius and deportment which has been increasing for some time. {Smith promised the Holy Spirit in its special gifts to all who have faith in his mission}__________ 1. Amos Sutton Hayden, Early History of the Disciples in the Western Reserve, (Cincinnati: Chase and Hall, 1876), pp. 191-192. 2. Dr. L. Rigdon in "Baptist Witness;" March 1, 1875 cited in Kennedy, op. cit., p. 63. [ 60 ] ... {Sidney} yielded to the suggestion to pray. Whereupon one of his fits of swooning and sighing came upon him, he saw an angel and was converted. Because Rigdon left the Campbellite Baptist faith for the Mormon persuasion and took some of his earlier converts with him, the Campbellites (now coming to be called Disciples) were at the forefront in their attempts to meet him with a discussion of theological matters. In bringing forth a review of the Book of Mormon which demolished it in the eyes of the intellectuals on the Western Reserve, Alexander Campbell led that phase of the attack on Joseph Smith's new religion. The analysis of the Book of Mormon which first appeared in his Millennial Harbinger in February was reprinted in the Painesville Telegraph March 8 and March 15, 1831. The examination of the "internal evidence" in the second issue is a damaging attack. Campbell, an expert student of the Bible, himself, compares the Book of Mormon with the Bible in statements of Jewish history. Since the Mormons accept the Bible as a part of their holy scripture, that seems fair. He points out numerous fallacies which show Smith's ignorance of "New Testament matters and things." His summary statement is as follows: This prophet Smith, through his stone spectacles, wrote on the plates of Nephi, in his Book of Mormon, every error and almost every truth discussed in New York for the last ten years. He decides all the great controversies -- infant baptism, ordination, the trinity... resurrection, eternal punishment, who may baptize, and even the question of free-masonry, republican government, and the rights of man.... He prophesied of all these topics, and of the apostacy, and infallibly decided, by his authority, every question. How easy to prophecy of the past or of the present time. But he is__________ 1. Alexander Campbell, Millennial Harbinger (Bethany {West} Virginia, 1831), Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 100-101. [ 61 ] better skilled in the controversies in New York than in the geography or history of Judea. He makes John baptise in the village of Bethabara, (p. 22) and says Jesus was born in Jerusalem, (p. 240). Great must be the faith of the Mormonites in this new Bible! The mariners' compass was only known in Europe about 300 years ago; but Nephi knew all about steam boats and the compass 2,400 years ago.... The book professes to be written at intervals and by different persons during the long period of 1200 years. And yet for uniformity of style, there never was a book more evidently written by one set of fingers... And as Joseph Smith is a very ignorant man and is called the author on the title page, 1 I cannot doubt for a single moment that he is the sole author and proprietor of it. As a specimen of his style the reader will take the following samples -- Page 4th. on his own preface -- "The plates of which hath been spoken." ...In the certificate signed by Cowdery and his two witnesses, he has the same idiom, "which came from the tower of which hath been spoken;" Campbell continues with a column of "smithisms" and says: These are but as one drop out of a bucket compared with the amount... in this book. It is patched up and cemented with "And it came to pass" -- "I sayeth unto you" -- "Ye saith unto him" -- and all the King James' haths, didsts and doths; in the lowest imitations of the common version; and is, without exaggeration, the meanest book in the English language. But it is a translation made through stone spectacles, in a dark room, and in the hat of the prophet Smith, from the reformed Egyptian!!! It has not one good sentence in it, save the profanation of those sentences quoted from the oracles of the Living God. Campbell did not stop with that Review in his effort to save the people of the Reserve from the error of espousing Mormonism. A notice appeared in the issues of the Telegraph of May 24 and 31 and June 7 as follows: "We are requested to mention that Mr. Alexander Campbell, of Virginia, will preach in Kirtland on the 14th of June -- in Chagrin on the 15th, in Chardon on the 16th, in Painesville on the 17th, and in Mentor on the 18th and 19th -- Commencing each day at 10 o'clock a. m." [ 62 ] Other Disciple ministers of lesser note also took up the cause. The Mormon Elders Journal of October, 1837 has a letter from William Hayden to Stephen Burnet which shows his eagerness to discuss theological issues and the Mormons' reluctance to meet him in debate. If there was any instance of Mormon discussion of this type, which was common between the other religious bodies, none has come to light. Hayden wrote: I have been wishing for some time past, to have an opportunity for a fair investigation of these {religious} matters with some competent person... I hoped a few weeks ago, I should have the privilege as a Mr. Olney, formerly of Shalersville, invited me to visit Kirtland, and finally promised me two men to discuss with me in public, the subject of miracles, etc. But whether J. Smith forbade the measure, or whether he could obtain no persons to meet me, or whether he forgot his promise, I know not, but at all events the time has passed by a number of weeks since I was to have heard from him. The Disciple church at Hiram, Ohio was one of the groups hardest hit by the Mormon cause and some members of that church assisted by men from surrounding communities resisted Joseph's inroads into their domain with the characteristic frontier answer of a tar and feather party. The Hiram episode is noteworthy in many respects. It began with a seemingly miraculous and unquestionably established miracle of healing and it ended in the only actual violence done the Mormons while they were on the Reserve. And involved was the rumor of one of Joseph Smith's eyebrow-lifting escapades with the fairer sex, Although it occurred early in the Mormon sojourn in Ohio and was not connected with their departure from the Reserve, it was an early expression of an attitude which eventually became a more universal feeling of antagonism toward Smith and his philosophy. The story is best told by B. A. Hinsdale, President of Hiram College in his funeral sermon for Symonds Ryder: [ 63 ] Joseph Smith was a man of remarkable power -- over others. Added to the stupendous claim of supernatural power, conferred by the direct gift of God, he exercised an almost magnetic power -- an irresistible fascination -- over those with whom he came in contact. Ezra Booth, of Mantua, a Methodist preacher of much more than ordinary culture, and with strong natural abilities, in company with his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, and some other citizens of this place, visited Smith at his home in Kirtland, in 1831. Mrs. Johnson had been afflicted for some time with a lame arm, and was not at the time of the visit able to lift her hand to her head. The party visited Smith partly out of curiosity, and partly to see for themselves what there might be in the new doctrine. During the interview, the conversation turned on the subject of supernatural gifts, such as were conferred in the days of the apostles. Some one said, "Here is Mrs. Johnson with a lame arm; has God given any power to men now on the earth to cure her?" A few moments later, when the conversation had turned in another direction, Smith rose, and walking across the room, taking Mrs. Johnson by the hand, said in the most solemn and impressive manner: "Woman, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I command thee to be whole," and immediately left the room. Ezra Booth soon became a convert and an Elder of the Mormon Church. The Johnsons invited Joseph to come to Hiram and stay at their home which he did and he preached in the south school house of Hiram township about a mile from the Johnson residence. Sidney Rigdon came with him as they were working together on an inspired translation of the Bible which Sidney wrote down as Joseph dictated. Thirteen of the revelations in the book of Doctrine and Covenants are dated at Hiram. A neighbor, Symonds Ryder, who had been a leader in the Disciple church there became a convert to Mormonism -- but only briefly. He wrote concerning this episode: During the next spring and summer several converts were made, and their success seemed to indicate an immediate__________ 1. The entire funeral sermon is cited in Hayden, op cit, p. 250. [ 64 ] triumph in Hiram. But when they went to Missouri to lay the foundation of the splendid city of Zion, and also of the temple, they left their papers behind. This gave their new converts an opportunity to become acquainted with the internal arrangement of their church, which revealed to them the horrid fact that a plot was laid to take their property from them and place it under the control of Joseph Smith the prophet. This was too much for the Hiramites... But some who had been the dupes of this deception, determined not to let it pass with impunity; and, accordingly, a company was formed of citizens from Shalersville, Garrettsville, and Hiram, in March, 1832, and proceeded to headquarters in the darkness of night, and took Smith and Rigdon from their beds, and tarred and feathered them both, and let them go. This had the desired effect, which was to get rid of them. They soon left for Kirtland. 1 It is believed, and would seem to be borne out by Joseph Smith's account of the affair, that Eli Johnson was responsible for the tar bucket. Brodie says that his suspicion of Joe's intimacy with his sister Nancy Marinda was at least one cause of his antagonism. 2 The elder Johnson stayed with the, church, however, sold their Hiram farm, moved to Kirtland and later went to Missouri [sic]. At about this same time Ezra Booth became disillusioned, left the church, and wrote a series nine letters to the Ohio Star at Ravenna (also reproduced in the Painesville Telegraph) exposing Mormonism and causing widespread indignation against Joseph. To Booth, as to the Hiram Disciples and many others, Joseph Smith, the man did not bear out his assumptions and their faith in Joseph Smith, the prophet. The high indignation felt by the people when they became acquainted with the real Joseph is well explained by Linn in the following passage: When a man of his character and previous history assumes the right to baptize and administer the sacrament, he is certain to arouse the animosity, not only of orthodox church members, but of members of the community who are lax in their__________ 1. This letter to A. S. Hayden cited in his Early History, p. 221. 2. Brodie, op. cit., p. 119. [ 65 ] church duties.... The Anti-Mormon feeling was intensified and broadened by the aggressiveness with which the Mormons sought for converts in the orthodox flocks. 1 Given the situation thus pictured of Mormonism on the Western Reserve 1830-1840, what accounts for the eventual success of the faith? Growing out of the Book of Mormon and Joseph's efforts are three church bodies -- The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormon) with headquarters at Salt Lake City; The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints centering in Independence, Missouri; and the considerably smaller Church of Christ. The faith established by by Joseph Smith was based on the fascination with the marvelous. There is a certain class of mind that is inclined to accept rather than doubt and to be intrigued rather than repelled by pretentions that will carry one farther than what is actually known to man. It was such a deep-rooted propensity that prepared men to receive such people as Ann Lee, Jemima Wilkinson, Joseph Smith, and a host of others in the early nineteenth century. It also explains the popularity of Katherine Kuhlman today among a certain class of people. The fact that Joseph accepted the Bible as a basis of faith and practice saved him from immediate rejection, and the fact that the Book of Mormon is not widely or critically read makes it much more capable of acceptance. It has been the custom of Mormon missionaries to emphasize those factors which their belief has in common with others rather than the differences. And the fact of persecution can hardly be too greatly emphasized as a contributing factor to success. The martyr has three strikes in his favor; and especially in America, where we cherish the notion that religious beliefs are to be tolerated so long as they do not interfere __________ 1. Linn, op. cit. p. 135. [ 66 ] with the enforcement of our laws (and sometimes even when they do), the one who is persecuted for religious belief draws supporters on that basis alone. The Mormons succeeded in promoting the dubious idea that the attacks against them were of the nature of religious persecution. A closer look at the facts in the case leads one to quite another conclusion, but it is not the habit of most men to take a close look at the facts in many cases.Perhaps the most valuable accomplishment of Joseph Smith on the Western Reserve -- from the point of view of the survival of his faith -- was the addition of Brigham Young to his following. What Joseph lacked in astuteness and organizational ability, Br1gham had in adequate measure; and when it was desperately needed he was available. But that is another story. -- (remainder of text not transcribed) |
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Milton V. Backman, Jr.
The Heavens Resound SLC: Deseret Books, 1983 Title page Ch. 6 excerpt Transcriber's Comments Contents Copyright © 1983 by Deseret Book Company All rights reserved; only limited, "fair use" excerpts are presented here. |
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The HEAVENS RESOUND A History of the Latter-day Saints in Ohio 1830-1838 Milton V. Backman, Jr. Deseret Book Company Salt Lake City, Utah |
Because of copyright law restrictions,
only limited "fair use" excerpts are presented here.
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[ 82 ]
Revelations and Confrontations __________________________ For six and a half months -- between mid-September 1831 and the end of March 1832 -- Hiram, Portage County, Ohio, approximately thirty miles south of Kirtland, served as a temporary headquarters of the Church. During this period, Joseph Smith and his family lived in the large frame home of John Johnson, an early convert who was one of the prosperous farmers of that community. Many Latter-day Saints traveled there to meet him, to seek his counsel, and to attend meetings held in the Johnson home. There the Prophet worked on a translation of the Bible and received some of his most profound visions and revelations. However, he also encountered serious opposition, as apostates joined forces with other settlers in an attempt to interrupt the growth of the Church in Portage County. The organized resistance led to the mobbing of Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon, and they fled from Hiram. Upon their return to Geauga County, many of the central developments in the history of the Church again focused on Kirtland. Although the Prophet's stay in Hiram was brief, this six-month period was one of the significant eras in the early history of the restored Church. Joseph Smith had become acquainted with John and Elsa Johnson early in 1831 when they had gone to Kirtland to investigate reports circulating in their community concerning a restoration REVELATIONS AND CONFRONTATIONS 83 of the everlasting gospel. [1] Others from that region, including Ezra Booth, a Methodist minister from Mantua, accompanied the Johnson to Kirtland. Prior to this trip, Elsa Johnson had been afflicted with what was believed to be chronic rheumatism. For several years she had been unable to lift her hand to her head, a handicap that interfered with many of her activities. As the party from Portage County discussed the restoration with Joseph Smith in the Newel K. Whitney home, including the manifestations of supernatural gifts during the apostolic era, one of the inquirers said, "Here is Mrs. Johnson with a lame arm. Has God given any power to man now on the earth to cure her?" Before the question was answered, the conversation shifted to another theme. Then Joseph Smith rose, walked across the room, grasped the hand of Elsa Johnson, and, in a "solemn and impressive manner," said, "Woman, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ I command thee to be whole." Immediately thereafter, he went from the room, leaving the group stunned. Then, according to several contemporary accounts, Elsa Johnson lifted her arm in the air. When she returned home the next day, she was able to wash her clothes without difficulty or pain. [2] Joseph Smith's "Translation" of the Bible On September 12, 1831, shortly after returning from his first trip to Missouri, Joseph Smith moved with his family from Kirtland to Hiram, establishing his new residence in the John Johnson home. There he concentrated on making corrections in the King James Version of the Bible. Sidney Rigdon, who served at this time as his principal scribe, also moved to Hiram and probably lived in a log cabin located near the Johnson home. [3] Producing a new version of the Bible was not a unique idea among religious leaders and scholars of early America. Between 1777 and 1833, more than five hundred separate editions of the Bible or the New Testament were published in the United States. Many of these were revisions of the King James Version, containing "modernizations' of the language, paraphrases, and alternate readings based on comparisons with Greek and Hebrew manuscripts." While many of the translators attempted to "clarify obsolete __________ 1 Although the wife of John Johnson is referred to in some contemporary records as Elsa or Elsey, she was also called Alice in a family Bible. A tombstone located in the cemetery next to the Kirtland Temple includes the following inscription: "In Manory of Mary E., daughter of John and Alice Johnson, who died March 30, 1833, in the fifteenth year of her age." Geauga Deed Records, Book 18, pp. 478-79; Book 24, p. 100; Book 25, pp. 15, 409, 440. For additional information on the John Johnson family, see Keith Perkins, "A House Divided: The John Johnson Family," Ensign 9 (February 1979): 54-59. 2 Hayden, Early History of the Disciples, p. 250. The account of the healing of Elsa Johnson was included in a funeral sermon delivered by B. A. Hinsdale on August 3, 1870, entitled "Life and Character of Symonds Ryder." See also Luke Johnson, "History of Luke Johnson," Deseret News, May 19, 1858, p. 53; "Philo Dibble's Narrative," in Early Scenes in Church History, p. 79; and HC 1:215n-16n. 3 HC 1:215; Hartwell Ryder, "A Short History of the Foundation of the Mormon Church," typescript, Hiram College, p. 3. 84 THE HEAVENS RESOUND (pages 84-92 not transcribed, due to copyright restrictions) REVELATIONS AND CONFRONTATIONS 93 Although the destruction of the printing establishment in Missouri interrupted the publication of the Book of Commandments, copies of the galley sheets that had been preserved were later cut, bound, and distributed. When Joseph Smith secured and read a copy, he noted a few printing errors. By that time, he had also received many new revelations. Therefore, instead of recommending to the Church that the Book of Commandments be reprinted, he began in 1834 to prepare a more complete collection of the revelations; this book was printed in 1835 under the title Doctrine and Covenants. [48] Apostasy and Mobocracy Despite a temporary tranquillity that prevailed while Joseph Smith was studying, praying, and recording revelations, intense opposition to the Church erupted in Ohio. Criticizing the beliefs of the Latter-day Saints regarding visions, revelations, and other manifestations of God's power, critics denounced the zeal of the converts, exposed the failures of members, and complained that the Church created divisions in families. Not understanding the law of consecration and stewardship, some believed that Joseph Smith was attempting to establish a communistic society in Portage County. They argued that if the Church continued to grow there, some of the settlers might be deceived into surrendering all their property to the leaders of this new religious movement. [49] Some of the most vocal opponents of the restoration were early converts who, after leaving the Church, persuaded others to oppose Mormonism. Two of these early dissidents were Ezra Booth and Symonds Ryder. Booth joined the Church in May 1831 and subsequently served a short-term mission in Portage County; while preaching in Hiram, he convinced Ryder that he should investigate the new religion. Impressed by Booth's testimony, Ryder traveled to Kirtland, where he heard a convert predict a destructive earthquake in China. Six weeks later, after reading about a calamity in China, he decided that a miraculous prophecy had been fulfilled, and so he joined the Church. [50] Shortly after Ezra Booth and Symonds Ryder united with the Latter-day Saints, Joseph Smith received a revelation that referred __________ 48 HC 2:165, 243-5 1; Kirtland Council Minute Book, p. 76. Howard, Restoration Scriptures, p. 200; Evening and Morning Star (Kirtland reprint), 1 (June 1833): 16. 49 Charles H. Ryder, "History of Hiram," 1864, typescript, Hiram College, Hiram, Ohio. 50 Hayden, Early History of the Disciples, p. 251. In addition to Ezra Booth and Symonds Ryder, Joseph Smith noted that Eli Johnson, Edward Johnson, and John Johnson, Jr., apostatized during that early period in the history of the Church. HC 1:260. 94 THE HEAVENS RESOUND to both of these men. Booth was commanded in June 1831 to travel to Missouri with Isaac Morley and twenty-six other missionaries, [51] and Ryder was informed that because of the transgression of Heman Basset, he was to receive the blessing previously bestowed upon Basset. [52] On June 6, 1831, Ryder was ordained a elder by Joseph Smith. After reading the revelation that pertained to him and receiving the commission as an elder in the Church, he was perplexed: his name had been spelled "Rider" it stead of "Ryder." Apparently unaware that Joseph Smith often dictated revelations to scribes or recorded in his own language and spelling information he received from God, Ryder was bewildered. How could his own name be misspelled in a communication that was dictated by the Holy Spirit? [53] When Booth returned from his mission in Missouri, he discussed with Ryder his own disenchantment with Mormonism. About the time that Joseph Smith moved to Hiram, the two dissidents decided to leave the Church. In an attempt to persuade others that Mormonism was false, Ezra Booth wrote a series of anti-Mormon articles for the Ohio Star in Ravenna; these were reprinted in other Ohio papers and reproduced in E. D. Howe's Mormonism Unvailed. In these articles, the first produced by an apostate, Ezra Booth vividly described his "justification" for leaving the Church. [54] His complaints stemmed initially from what he regarded as a false prophecy by Joseph Smith. Prior to his leaving for Missouri he stated, the Prophet claimed to have learned through a vision that Oliver Cowdery had established a large church in Missouri. Upon arriving in that western wilderness, Booth counted on three or four converts, all females. He further insisted that Edward Partridge was also concerned because of the size of the congregation in Missouri. When the bishop complained, the Prophet supposedly reprimanded him and said, "I see it, and it will be so." [55] From that time on, Booth said, he examined other events in the history of the Church that seemed to indicate inconsistencies. He argued, for example, that while Church leaders instructed others not to contract debts, they themselves attempted to purchase land on credit. Another of his arguments was that it seemed inconsistent __________ 51 D&C 52:23. 52 D&C 52:37. 53 Far West Record, p. 4; HC 1:260-61; Hayden, Early History of the Disciples, p. 252. Although Ryder's name was spelled "Simonds Rider" in the Far West Record, his name was spelled "Symonds Rider" in minutes of the church in which he served as pastor. In other records, including a newspaper article he wrote, his name was spelled "Symonds Ryder." Ohio Star, December 29, 1831, p. 3. Hartwell Ryder, "Short History of the Mormon Church," p. 4. 54 Hayden, Early History of the Disciples, p. 252. 55 Ohio Star, November 10, 1831, p. 3; November 24, 1831, p. 1. Joseph Smith learned through revelation that one of Booth's problems was that he lost the Spirit of the Lord because he did not keep the commandments of God. D&C 64:15-16. REVELATIONS AND CONFRONTATIONS 95 consistent for the Lord to instruct members to travel home from Missouri by water and then at Mclllwaine's Bend inform them that they should proceed by land. [56] Joseph Smith insisted that Booth had misinterpreted his teachings and church procedures. The Prophet was not disturbed when he received revelations that changed man's course of action. On a number of occasions, as in the case of Heman Basset, the blessings bestowed on one member were given to another because of transgression. When Ezra Thayer failed to accept a call to serve as a missionary in Missouri, the Prophet received a revelation commissioning Thomas B. Marsh to fulfill this responsibility. This latter alteration of an original commandment of the Lord was followed by an important revelatory statement: "Wherefore I, the Lord, command and revoke, as it seemeth me good; and all this to be answered upon the heads of the rebellious." [57] Ezra Booth complained not only because of what he regarded as inconsistencies in the revelations and in the instructions and actions of Church leaders, but also because of the authoritarian nature of the Church polity, especially Joseph Smith's insistence that he had the sole right to receive revelation for the entire Church. Booth objected to the principle that members should pattern their conduct after the revelations that one man received. Such a tendency, he maintained, would eventually lead men into "a state of servitude," a "despotism" that would result in "unqualified vassalage." [58] A third source of discontent stemmed from what Booth regarded as imperfections in the conduct of the latter-day prophet. He maintained that there were occasions when Joseph Smith behaved inappropriately, such as when he joked with others. This spirit of levity, Booth contended, indicated a lack of "sobriety, prudence, and stability" -- qualities that should always characterize the action of God's anointed prophets. [59] Finally, Booth was disturbed because of conflicts that divided members of the Church. During his journey to Missouri, he claimed, he had witnessed among the elders fear, selfishness, and discontent. [60] Whereas Ezra Booth claimed that inconsistencies, authoritarianism, __________ 56 Ohio Star, November 24, 1831, p. 1. 57 HC 1:241; D&C 56:4. 58 Ohio Star, November 10, 1831, p. 3; November 17, 1831, p. 3. 59 Ibid., November 24, 1831, p. 1. 60 Ibid. 96 THE HEAVENS RESOUND and the imperfections of the Prophet and other members precipitated his defection from the Church, Joseph Smith concluded that these were merely excuses that masked the real reasons for his apostasy. According to the Prophet, Booth failed to realize that "faith, humility, patience, and tribulation" precede the blessings of God and that "God brings low before He exalts." Quoting a statement from the Gospel of John (John 6:26), the Prophet remarked that men should not seek the Lord because they saw miracles, but because they partook of the gospel and were filled. Miracles were not to become the foundation for faith; rather, they were to confirm that faith that had been built upon the word of God. It was Booth's "own evil heart," Joseph concluded, that led to his apostasy; and his attempt to "overthrow the work of the Lord" exposed his "weakness, wickedness and folly" to all the world. [61] Ezra Booth's letters indicate that his enthusiasm for the gospel dissipated as he experienced the rigors and disappointments of missionary work. As a settled Methodist preacher, he had not encountered such challenges. Not accustomed to walking long distances, he admitted that he hesitated to accept the call to travel to the promised land but went because he thought it was the will of God. After returning to Ohio, he complained that while a few leaders of the Church traveled by stage and river vessels, he had to accompany those who walked "with packs on their backs" and "subsisted by begging" until they arrived in Missouri. His problems were compounded because, as he admitted, he did not feel the Spirit of the Lord and failed to receive the gifts of the spirit that he anticipated would be manifest during his mission. [62] In an attempt to answer the charges leveled against the Church by Ezra Booth, Church leaders called a number of missionaries to preach in Ohio and explain to others the position of the Church on various misunderstood principles. Joseph Smith, Sidney Rigdon, Reynolds Cahoon, David Whitmer, and Thomas B. Marsh were among those who campaigned against the issues introduced by this critic. [63] Sidney Rigdon challenged Ezra Booth to meet him in a debate to be held in Ravenna on Sunday, December 25, 1831. When Booth failed to appear, Elder Rigdon __________ 61 HC 1:216-17; Hyrum M. Smith and Janne M. Sjodahl, Doctrine and Covenants Commentary, p. 165. 62 Ohio Star, November 10, 1831, p. 3. 63 HC 1:241; Parkin, "Conflict at Kirtland," p. 117; Messenger and Advocate 1 (January 1835): 62. REVELATIONS AND CONFRONTATIONS 97 preached to those who gathered, assailing what he sometimes referred to as the "bundle of falsehoods." Although this public encounter did not materialize, the two continued to publicize their positions in newspaper articles and polemic sermons. [64] Meanwhile, from early December until the second week of January 1832, Joseph Smith himself preached in Shalersville, Ravenna, and other communities of northeastern Ohio. Summarizing the purpose of this mission, he wrote that while he was "setting forth the truth," he sought to allay "the excited feelings which were growing out of the scandalous letters then being published in the Ohio Star." He concluded that "prejudice, blindness and darkness filled the minds of many and caused them to persecute the true Church, and reject the true light." [65] The apostasy of Ezra Booth and Symonds Ryder helped arouse organized opposition against the Saints in Hiram. The prejudices, the misunderstandings, and the fears that were fanned concerning the possible creation of an autocratic and communistic society in that section of Ohio combined to create an ugly force. When emotions had reached a high pitch, some settlers planned a violent attack on leaders of the Church. By removing the heart of the organization, they probably thought that they could crush the expansion of Mormonism in Portage County. [66] On March 24, 1832, an angry crowd of about fifty men attacked Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon. [67] Describing the turbulence of that black night, the Prophet recalled that the mob broke first into the residence of Elder Rigdon, carried him from his home, and dragged him by his heels so that his head was pulled along the rough, frozen ground. Then they covered his body with tar. One man seized a feather pillow from the Rigdon home, and the crowd tore the pillow, removed the feathers, and sprinkled them over the Church leader's tarred body. [68] The Prophet also described his own ordeal: "As I was forced out,... I made a desperate struggle... to extricate myself, but only cleared one leg," and kicked one of the men. After this man fell on the door step, the angry crowd swore that "they would kill me if I did not" remain still. [69] Joseph was then carried into the stark darkness of a lonely __________ 64 Ohio Star, December 15, 1831, p. 3; December 29, 1831, p. 3. 65 HC 1:241. 66 Charles H. Ryder, "History of Hiram," p. 16; George A. Smith in JD 2:5. 67 Luke Johnson estimated that the mob consisted of about forty or fifty men, while Hartwell Ryder estimated that the band consisted of about sixty men who divided into two groups, one attacking Joseph Smith and the other Sidney Rigdon. Meanwhile, Charles Ryder wrote that the men who tarred and feathered Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon lived in Shalersville, Garrettsville, and Hiram. Luke Johnson, "History of Luke Johnson," Millennial Star 26 (1864): 834; Hartwell Ryder, "History of the Mormon Church," p. 4; Charles Ryder, "History of Hiram," p. 16. 68 Joseph Smith's recording of the mobbing in Hiram appears in Book A-1, pp. 205-9, Church Archives, and was initially printed in "History of Joseph Smith," Times and Seasons 5 (August 1844): 611-12. See also HC 1:265. 69 HC 1:261. 98 THE HEAVENS RESOUND 
Mobbing of Joseph Smith, 1832 (painting by C. C. A. Christensen) larger image meadow, where he was beaten by the aroused men. As he was being carried around the corner of the Johnson home, he recounted, the man whom he had kicked caught up with the group and thrust his blood-covered hand into Joseph's face and swore, "I'll fix ye." While being carried into the field, the Prophet was choked until he became unconscious. When he awoke, he saw the tarred and bloody body of Sidney Rigdon stretched on the ground and assumed that Elder Rigdon was dead. The Prophet pleaded for mercy, after which one man cursed and said, "Call on yer God for help, we'll show ye no mercy." [70] Joseph was then carried another thirty rods or so from the Johnson home, where someone cried, "Simonds, Simonds," calling, as Joseph Smith assumed, Symonds Ryder. The Prophet said that the man replied, "Don't allow him to touch the ground, lest he should escape." [71] __________ 70 HC 1:261-62. Luke Johnson identified Warren Waste as the man Joseph Smith kicked as he left the home. Waste, Johnson added, was one of the strongest individuals living in the Western Reserve and boasted that he alone could take the Prophet out of the house. But after struggling with the Prophet and being knocked off the steps, he cried, "Do not let him touch the ground, or he will run over the whole of us." He is reported to have said afterwards that Joseph Smith was "the most powerful man" he had ever held in his life. Luke Johnson, "History," Millennial Star 26 (1864): 835. 71 HC 1:262. This is not a direct quotation from the Prophet's history. Hartwell Ryder later wrote that while his father, Symonds Ryder, had been accused of being one of the leaders of the mob who tarred and feathered Josehp Smith, he did not believe the accusation was correct, for he remembered that his father had been sick that night. He believed that his father remained home throughout the night, not leaving until late the next morning. Hartwell Ryder, "History of the Mormon Church," p. 4. REVELATIONS AND CONFRONTATIONS 99 Meanwhile, some members of the mob held a council. Joseph Smith thought they were trying to decide whether or not to kill him. The group decided against such action, but determined to beat him instead. They tore off all of his clothes, leaving only a shirt collar around his neck. One man fell on him like a "mad cat" and, while scratching his body with sharp nails, muttered, "That's the way the Holy Ghost falls on folks!" The mob also attempted to force into his mouth a vial of what the Prophet thought was poison, but he broke the vial with his teeth, and it fell to the ground, leaving him with a chipped tooth. [72] After being scratched and beaten, Joseph Smith was covered with a coat of tar and feathers. Some of the men tried to close his lips with the tar, and others sought to force the tar-paddle into his mouth. [73] Eventually the mob disappeared, leaving Joseph Smith in the meadow. When he attempted to rise, he fell, but after removing some of the tar from his lips, he breathed more easily. After a while he saw two lights in the distance. He arose and made his way toward one of the lights, which was coming from the Johnson home. At the door, his wife saw his body darkened with tar, which she thought was blood, and, thinking that he had been severely crushed, she fainted. A blanket was thrown around the Prophet, and a number of friends who had gathered in the Johnson home spent the night removing the tar and washing his body. [74] During this mobbing, two of the Saints, thinking they had encountered the enemy, fought with each other. One of them, John Poorman, ran into a cornfield to investigate a noise. At the same time, John Johnson, who had earlier been locked into his home by the mob, managed to free himself. Carrying a heavy club, he ran into the same cornfield, and when the two men met, they each supposed the other to be the foe. Poorman struck Johnson on the shoulder; then, frightened because he thought he had killed someone, he fled to the Johnson home. "Father Johnson," as he was called, recovered and struggled back to his home. Later the two men reported the incident and learned of their mistake. [75] The next day was a Sunday, and the Latter-day Saints gathered to worship at the usual hour. During the night Joseph __________ 72 HC 1:262-63. Luke Johnson reported that after Joseph Smith was taken from his father's home, the mob stretched him on a board and "tantalized him in a most insulting and brutal manner." He further stated that the mob planned to emasculate him, and Dr. Dennison was to perform the operation; but when the doctor saw the Prophet stretched on the plank, he changed his mind and refused to perform the operation. Johnson then substantiated Joseph Smith's account that after the Prophet was beaten and scratched, the mobsters attempted to "pour some vial of some obnoxious drug into his mouth," which broke one of his front teeth. Luke Johnson, "History," p. 835. 73 HC 1:263. 74 HC 1:264; Luke Johnson, "History," p. 835; autobiography of Lucy Walker Kimball, March 25, 1832. 75 HC 1:263-64; Luke Johnson, "History," p. 835. 100 THE HEAVENS RESOUND Smith had been cleansed, and he was prepared to preach. "With my flesh all scarified and defaced," he wrote, he preached to the congregation as usual and noted that some of the men who had participated in the mobbing of the previous night were in attendance. During the afternoon he baptized three converts. [76] Although Joseph Smith recovered quickly from this ordeal, others were not so fortunate. For several days Sidney Rigdon was delirious, but he eventually recovered. During the mobbing, one of the Smith twins, Joseph Smith Murdock, contracted a severe cold, and on March 29, 1832, he died. He was the first person to die as a consequence of persecution aimed at Latter-day Saints. [77] Because of continued threats on their lives, Joseph Smith, Sidney Rigdon, and their families left Hiram in the spring of 1832. On March 31, Sidney returned to Kirtland, and on April 1, Joseph left for a mission to Missouri. Since another mob had been organized in Kirtland and "the spirit of mobocracy was very prevalent through that whole region of country," the Prophet avoided returning to Kirtland prior to this mission. He instructed his wife, for her safety, to leave Hiram, return to the Whitney home, and await his return. [78] Following his departure from Hiram, Joseph was not reunited with his family until June 1832. __________ 76 HC 1:264; "Katherine Hulet Winget," in Kate B. Carter, comp., Our Pioneer Heritage 13:489; autobiography of Lucy Walker Kimball, March 25, 1832. In addition to the references cited above, a few other contemporary accounts refer to this mobbing. See Geauga Gazette, April 17, 1832, p. 1: Ohio Argus and Franklin Gazette (Lebanon, Ohio), June 8, 1832, p. 1; Amasa Lyman, "History," Deseret News, September 8, 1858, p. 2; Portage County Democrat (Ravenna, Ohio), February 15, 1860, p. 1. The Geauga Gazette stated: "On Saturday night, March 24, a number of persons, some say 25 or 30, disguised with coloured faces, entered the rooms in Hiram, where the two Mormonite leaders, Smith and Rigdon, were sleeping, and took them together with the pillows on which they slept, carried them a short distance and after besmearing their bodies with tar, applied the contents of the pillows to the same." 77 HC 1:265. 78 HC 1:265-66. Since there was another visitor in the Whitney home when Emma Smith arrived in Kirtland during Joseph's second trip to Missouri, Emma stayed at the homes of Reynolds Cahoon, Joseph Smith, Sr., and Frederick G. Williams. Book A-1, p. 209, Church Archives; "History of Joseph Smith," Times and Seasons 5 (September 2, 1844): 624. (remainder of text not transcribed, due to copyright) Notes: (forthcoming) |
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Susan E. Black
in: The Prophet Joseph SLC: Deseret Books, 1988 Ch. 9 excerpt Transcriber's Comments Contents Copyright © 1988 by Deseret Books All rights reserved; only limited, "fair use" excerpts are presented here. |
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Twenty-five-year-old Joseph Smith was well accustomed to verbal threats and abuse. He wrote, "They were persecuting me, reviling me, and speaking all manner of evil against me falsely." (Joseph Smith -- History 1:25.) But it was not until 1832, in Hiram, Ohio, that the abuse escalated from verbal to physical brutality. Hiram mobs introduced to Joseph a new depth of hostile fury, anger, and rage. Joseph's hope of Hiram's becoming a continuing refuge for pondering the scriptures and translating the Bible ended abruptly when a violent mob sought to do him bodily harm or even take his life on 24 March 1832. It is ironic that this barbaric scene occurred in an avowed Christian farming community. [1] Yet one night the inhabitants of this town formed a vicious mob bent on savagery. This seeming contradiction between upright and vicious prevailed in the town because Hiram shared with other societies the English tradition of "appropriate" mob rule. Although not legal, the practice of tarring and feathering was considered a right and even a responsibility of Hiram's citizens under "specified" mob circumstances. Southern abolitionists, wife beaters, harsh government __________ 1. Hiram was the third township settled in Portage County. It included the highest elevation in the Western Reserve, thirteen hundred feet above sea level. The town was once composed of the territory known as Mantua, Shalersville, Freedom, Windham, and Nelson. The first settlers of Hiram moved from Pennsylvania in 1799. They had a reputation of being "poor but law abiding." They had been attracted to Hiram by land prices from seventy-two cents to three dollars an acre and rumors of fertile soil. Their success on this highest plateau in the Western Reserve attracted stable families, who expanded farm living to include publishing newspapers and building schools and churches. Portage Heritage, ed. James B. Holm (Portage, Ohio: The Portage County Historical Society, 1957), pp. 372-80; see also History of Portage County, Ohio: Warner, Beers, and Co., 1885), pp. 466-75. 162 Susan Easton Black agents, scandalously immoral persons, and a prophet were its victims. [2] The instigators of this cruelty had once been followers of Joseph. These erstwhile followers had accepted Church membership, been blessed with fellowship, received callings from God, and witnessed miracles. Yet they rejected their blessings, denounced Joseph as a deceiver, and chose to destroy him. They themselves became the deceived, for they lost their heritage with the Saints of God; Joseph became the blessed, because he endured, with undiminished love and trust in God, the persecution of tar and feathers. Let us analyze the setting, the people, and the events that led to the brutal attack on the young prophet. Entree to Hiram Events leading to Joseph Smith's brief yet highly significant experience in Hiram, Ohio, began in the nearby community of Kirtland. In 1831, the people of Kirtland experienced an unusual eruption of excitement over spiritual manifestations. (D&C 50:2.) This excitement was heightened by the arrival of Joseph Smith, who professed to be a prophet of God. Many church-going citizens of Kirtland and the neighboring vicinity, most out of curiosity and a few out of a sincere desire to know if Joseph had a prophetic calling, visited him. Among those who came were fifty-three-year-old John Johnson [3] and his wife, Elsa, from Hiram, and Ezra Booth, [4] a Methodist minister from nearby Mantua. During their visit with Joseph, a miracle occurred. As they conversed on the godly gifts that had been conferred during Christ's ministry, one of the visitors exclaimed, "Here is Mrs. Johnson with a lame arm; has God given any power to man on earth to cure her?" Joseph, taking Elsa's hand, proclaimed, "Woman, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ I command thee to be whole." [5] Immediately Elsa raised her arm, even though she had been afflicted by chronic rheumatism in her shoulder. By accounts of both believers and nonbelievers, she was thereafter __________ 2. Pouring molton tar over the body and covering it with feathers was an official punishment in England as early as the twelfth century. This practice continued in the United States until the late nineteenth century, even though it was never legal. H. E. Barnes, "The Story of Punishment," Dictionary of American History (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1976), 6:461-62. 3. John Johnson, the son of Israel Johnson and Abigail Higgins, was born 11 April 1778 in Chesterfield, Cheshire, New Hampshire. He married Elsa Jacobs on 22 June 1800 in Chesterfield, Cheshire, New Hampshire. Susan Easton Black, Membership of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1830-1848 (Salt Lake City, Utah: Corporation of the President, 1988), 25:580-83. 4. Ezra Booth was born in 1792 in Connecticut. He married Dorcas Taylor on 10 March 1819 in Nelsonville, Athens, Ohio. Ibid., 6:168-69. 5. Joseph Smith, History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 7 vols., 2d ed. rev., ed. B. H. Roberts (Salt Lake City, Utah: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1932-51), 1:215-16. Hiram, Ohio: Tribulation 163 able to do even heavy scrubbing without difficulty or pain. [6] A later critic discounted the possibility of a divine miracle: "The company were awe-stricken at the infinite presumption of the man, and the calm assurance with which he spoke. The sudden mental and moral shock -- I know not how better to explain the well attested fact -- electrified the rheumatic arm." [7] Despite this skeptical view of the event, the result was an impressive healing followed by the baptism of John Johnson and his wife and the Methodist minister in the spring of 1831. After baptism, John and Elsa returned to their farmhouse in Hiram. Ezra Booth accompanied them; he had been called to serve a mission there. Ezra's brief mission included a visit to Hiram's Campbellite minister, Symonds Ryder. [8] At this visit, Booth requested an opportunity to speak to Ryder's congregation. This request was granted. Booth's remarks concerning Joseph so impressed Ryder that he sought audience with the Prophet in Kirtland. Little is known of the particulars of Ryder's visit to Joseph in Kirtland, except that Ryder read a newspaper describing great destruction caused by an earthquake in Peking, China. When he read the account, he recalled having heard a young Mormon girl predicting the event. A skeptical account continues: "This appeal to the superstitious part of his nature was the final weight in the balance and he threw the whole power of his influence upon the side of Mormonism." [9] He accepted baptism in early June 1831, was ordained an elder on 6 June by Joseph Smith, Sr., and on 8 June was called to the ministry. (See D&C 52:37.) [10] When he received communication of his ministerial call signed by the Prophet Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon, "both in the letter he received and in the official commission to preach, however, his name was spelled R-i-d-e-r, instead of R-y-d-e-r... he thought if the 'Spirit' through which he had been called to preach could err in the matter of spelling his name, it might have erred in calling him to the ministry __________ 6. Ibid. (Smith, History of The Church 1:215-16). 7. Ibid.; A. S. Hayden, "Life and Character of Symonds Ryder," Early History of the Disciples in the Western Reserve, Ohio (Cincinnati: Chase and Hall Publishers, 1876), pp. 250-51. 8. Symonds Ryder was born on 20 November 1792 in Hartford, Washington, Vermont. He married Mahitable Loomis in November 1818. Black, Membership of the Church, 38:70-71. 9. J. H. Kennedy, Early Days of Mormonism (Scribner's and Sons, 1888), as cited in Smith, History of the Church, 1:158. 10. In Doctrine and Covenants 52:37, Simonds is directed to receive that which Heman Bassett had lost. Heman was a participant in the abnormal spiritual activities in 1831 and was one of the earliest converts to withdraw in Ohio. Painesville Telegraph, vol. 2, no. 50 (24 May 1831), stated that he "declared it all a miserable hoax." Max H. Parkin, Conflict at Kirtland: A Study of the Nature and Causes of External and Internal Conflict of the Mormons in Ohio between 1830 and 1838 (Salt Lake City, Utah: Max Parkin, 1966), p. 91. 164 Susan Easton Black as well; or, in other words, he was led to doubt if he were called at all by the Spirit of God, because of the error in spelling his name!" [11] Another historian indicated that Ryder's later apostasy was influenced by more than the misspelling of his name. He concluded that the reason was that Joseph "advocated communism of goods." [12] Ryder confirmed this conclusion by writing of his misunderstanding of the law of consecration and stewardship: "When they went to Missouri to lay the foundation of the splendid city of Zion, and also of the temple, they left their papers behind. This gave their new converts an opportunity to become acquainted with the internal arrangement of their church, which revealed to them the horrid fact that a plot was laid to take their property from them and place it under the control of Joseph Smith the prophet." [13] Whatever his reasons, he not only left the Church but carried an intense determination to eradicate from all residents in Hiram what he saw as the seducing error of Mormonism. As Ryder shifted the whole power of his influence, first toward and then against the Mormons, his mentor, Booth, was following the same course. At the June conference that yielded the orthographic turning point for Symonds Ryder, his gospel teacher, Ezra Booth, became a high priest. He immediately began serving as a missionary with Isaac Morley, traveling through Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois to Missouri. (See D&C 52:23.) His mission was a disappointment to him and became the impetus for his determination to immediately leave the Church and denounce Joseph. In a series of nine letters that appeared in the Ohio Star, he elaborated on experienced deception and the "Mormon menace."[14] This action led to his censure at a conference held on 6 September 1831. In the minutes of the conference, Oliver Cowdery recorded, "Upon testimony satisfactory to this conference, it was voted that Ezra Booth be silenced from preaching as an Elder in this Church." [15] Obviously this silencing did not deter him and in fact may have encouraged __________ 11. Another historian claimed that when Joseph Smith "misspelled" Ryder's first name Si-m-o-n instead of Symonds, Ryder lost faith in him, feeling that if the Lord really did speak to Smith, he would spell his name "correctly." Holm, Portage Heritage, p. 171; see also Smith, History of the Church, 1:261. 12. This historian explains his conclusion by stating, "After a time something leaked out in regard to the Saints having an eye on their neighbor's property, that it was their design to get into their possession all the lands of those whom they converted." Holm, Portage Heritage, p. 171; see also History of Portage County, Ohio, p. 474. 13. Symonds Ryder to A. S. Hayden, 1 Feb. 1868, as cited in Parkin, Conflict at Kirtland, p. 254. 14. The letters have also been published in E. D. Howe, Mormonism Unvailed (Painesville, Ohio: E. D. Howe, 1834), pp. 175-221. 15. Smith, History of the Church, 1:217. Hiram, Ohio: Tribulation 165 him to preach and write further against Joseph Smith and Mormonism. In late summer of 1831, Booth united with Ryder in planting the seeds of hatred toward Joseph and Mormonism in Hiram. This action annulled their previous effective missionary influence, noted by a community historian, AS Hayden: "Perhaps in no other place, except Kirtland, did the 'Latter-day Saints' gain a more permanent footing than in Hiram." [16] The seeds of hatred found fertile soil, since most "Hiramites left the Mormonites faster than they had ever joined them." [17] Even as Booth and Ryder were trying to rid Hiram of the "Mormon menace," John Johnson was extending a cordial invitation to Joseph and his family to be his guests there. John had been a resident of Hiram since 1818. By September 1831, he could be referred to as a prosperous resident, owning a new farmhouse located on his 304-acre estate. [18] Joseph and Sidney Rigdon viewed Johnson's invitation as the answer to the Lord's directive to "seek them a home, as they are taught through prayer by the Spirit." (D&C 63:65.) Thus, Joseph accepted his hospitality. He wrote, "On the 12th of September, I removed with my family to the township of Hiram, and commenced living with John Johnson." [19] Joseph's family then consisted of his wife, Emma, and the six-month-old twins of John Murdock, whom Joseph and Emma were rearing as their own. [20] When Joseph removed to Hiram, so did several faithful followers, including Sidney Rigdon. Sidney had been aware of the efforts of Booth and Ryder to ignite hatred in the community. He challenged Ryder in the Ohio Star to a debate on the authenticity of the Book of Mormon. Ryder published his refusal to meet Sidney in a public forum, citing as his excuse Rigdon's "irascible temper, loquacious extravagance, impaired state of mind, and want of due respect to his superiors." [21] Sidney responded to this indictment by claiming that Ryder "presented himself before the public as an accuser; he has been called upon before the same public, to support his accusations; and __________ 16. Hayden, Early History of the Disciples, p. 220; see also Parkin, Conflict at Kirtland, p. 248. 17. Symonds Ryder to A. S. Hayden, as cited in Parkin, Conflict at Kirtland, p. 254. 18. John Johnson first purchased 100 acres of land in Hiram, Ohio, on 19 March 1818, from Amos Spicer and A. Norton. On 4 April 1820, he purchased 60 acres from John Whipple. On 14 March 1823, he purchased 100 acres from Mary Hutchinson, et al. On 20 December 1827, he purchased 54 acres from Clarissa Eggleston. When Joseph Smith arrived in Hiram, John owned 304 acres. Salt Lake Genealogical Library, Film 899057, "Locality of Record, Recorders Office, Portage County Courthouse, State of Ohio, Index to Deeds, 1795-1917." --- The Johnson farmhouse was purchased by the Church in 1956. It was dedicated by Elder James A. Cullimore, Assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Church News, 17 May 1969, p. 3. 19. Smith, History of the Church, 1:215. 20. Emma Smith had given birth to twins, Louisa and Thaddeus, on 30 April 1831. These twins lived for approximately three hours. On the same day, John Murdock's wife gave birth to twins, named Joseph Smith Murdock and Julia Murdock. John's wife died in childbirth. John gave his motherless twins to Joseph and Emma "in the fond hope that they would fill the void in [Emma's life] occasioned by the loss of her own." Smith, History of the Church, 1:260. 21. Ohio Star, vol. 2, no. 52 (29 Dec. 1831), n. p., as cited in Parkin, Conflict at Kirtland, p. 118. 166 Susan Easton Black does he come forward and do it? nay, but seeks to hide himself behind a battery of reproach, and abuse, and low insinuations." [22] This name-calling and haranguing furthered sparked the smoldering fuels of mobocracy, but in the interim it did not prevent Joseph's stay in the Johnson farmhouse from being productive. The seven months in the home proved vital to the spiritual growth and definition of the Church. Joseph received at the home sixteen of the most important revelations on the development of the Church. [23] Among these revelations was section 76 on the three degrees of glory. Other significant events included a decision to compile and publish the Book of Commandments, five Church conferences, and the translation of portions of the Bible. These months of uninterrupted spiritual outpourings came to an abrupt end on the night of 24 March, when violence displaced peace and crushed the sense of haven for Joseph, Sidney, and their families. Although Mormon and anti-Mormon sources disagree on the details, all agree that the local citizens tarred and feathered Joseph and Sidney. The local history praises "the good people of Hiram and some others," saying that they "went to the house of Smith and Rigdon, took them out, stripped them to the buff, and treated them to a coat of tar and feathers and a rail ride, which induced them to leave." [24] The Night of 24 March 1832 On 24 March 1832, Joseph and Emma were taking turns caring for the eleven-month-old twins, who were seriously ill with measles. As the evening began, Emma nursed the children while Joseph rested. His rest was violently interrupted when a dozen men with blackened faces burst into the room. Emma's screams of "Murder!" were too late. The men grabbed Joseph with vengeance. An example of their fury was provided by Carnot Mason, who jerked a handful of hair, including a patch of scalp, from Joseph's head, during the ruckus in the room. The men had their "hands ... in my hair, [25] and some __________ 22. Ohio Star, vol. 3, no. 2 (12 Jan. 1832), n. p., as cited in Parkin, Conflict at Kirtland, p. 119. 23. See Doctrine and Covenants 1; 65; 67; 68; 69; 71; 73; 74; 76; 77; 78; 79; 80; 81; 99; 133. 24. History of Portage County, Ohio, p. 474. 25. Carnot Mason is reported to be the man who dragged Joseph by the hair. Later, Joseph showed Levi Hancock a patch of his hair that had been pulled out by the roots, leaving his scalp bare. Levi Hancock, Levi Hancock Journal, p. 73; a copy is located at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah; see also Luke Johnson, "History of Luke Johnson," Millennial Star, vol. 26, no. 53 (31 Dec. 1864): 834-35. Hiram, Ohio: Tribulation 167 had hold of my shirt, drawers and limbs." [26] Joseph struggled to free himself. In this attempt, he cleared one leg, "with which I made a pass at one [Warren Waste who] fell on the door steps." [27] The mob threatened him with death if he continued his resistance. They swore "by G___, they would kill me if I did not be still, which quieted me." [28] The threat was punctuated by further threats by Waste, who returned to the fray with a bloody hand, which he thrust in Joseph's face, muttering with a hoarse laugh, "Ge, gee, G___ d___ ye, I'll fix ye." [29] True to his threat, he seized Joseph by his throat and choked him until he lost consciousness. In this state, Joseph was carried by the mobbers some thirty yards from the farmhouse.As consciousness returned, he saw men "disguised with colored faces and stimulated by whiskey" coming from every direction. Symonds Ryder later described them more favorably as "a company formed of citizens from Shalersville, Garrettsville, and Hiram." [30] These men were known to be Campbellites, Methodists, and Baptists. More ominous to Joseph than the growing mob was his recognition of the bloodied body of Sidney Rigdon lying on the frozen ground. Sidney had been attacked, tarred and feathered, and mercilessly dragged toward the farmhouse. His head was repeatedly lacerated as it struck icy protrusions. He became unconscious from loss of blood. At the sight of Sidney, Joseph fully understood his own peril. He pled with his captors, "You will have mercy and spare my life, I hope," to which they replied with harsh profanities, "Call on yer God for help, we'll show ye no mercy." [31] The mob proceeded thirty rods past Sidney Rigdon to the meadow. There they held ccouncil. Joseph assumed the topic in question was whether to kill him or not. Joseph reported their decision was "not to kill me, but to beat and scratch me well, tear off my shirt and drawers, and leave me naked." [32] It appears this decision was not accepted by all. __________ 26. Smith, History of the Church, 1:261. 27. Waste reportedly regarded himself as the "strongest man in the Western Reserve, and had boasted that he could take the Prophet out of the house alone." Waste later observed, however, "the Prophet was the most powerful man he ever had hold of in his life." Luke Johnson, "History of Luke Johnson," p. 835. 28. Smith, History of the Church, 1:261. 29. Ibid., p. 262. 30. Symonds Ryder to A. S. Hayden, 1 Feb. 1868, as cited in Parkin, Conflict at Kirtland, p. 254. 31. Smith, History of the Church, 1:262. 32. Ibid. 168 Susan Easton Black A mobber named Dr. Dennison tried to force a vial of poi sonous nitric acid into Joseph's mouth. He then proposed to emasculate Joseph. In this attempt Joseph's clothes were torn off. His naked body was then attacked by the finger-nails of an unknown mobber, who "like a mad cat, (fell on Joseph) and muttered G__ d__ ye, that's the way the Holy Ghost falls on folks!" [33] Dennison, however, seeing Joseph's body stretched on a plank, weakened in his resolve and refused to operate. The refusal seemed to spur on the shouts and assaults by other mobbers, "Simmonds, Simmonds, where's the tar bucket? I don't know, answered one, where 'tis. Eli's left it," [34] When the tar was fetched the mob tried to force the tar paddle into Joseph's mouth. Joseph twisted his head so they could not. An angry mobber cried, "G___ d___ ye, hold up yer head and let us giv ye some tar." [35] They forced tar into his mouth, which all but smothered him. They covered his scratched and beaten body with the loathsome substance. Joseph lost consciousness again. As the final touch to this barbarity, in mockery they feathered a prophet of God. As quickly as they had entered the quietude of Joseph's world, the mob fled to the old brickyard of Hiram to wash themselves and bury their filthy clothes, hoping that their participation in the deed would be hidden. Joseph was left alone. When he regained consciousness, he struggled to rid the tar from his mouth in order to breathe more freely. He attempted to rise but failed, due to his weakened condition. In a second effort to rise, he saw two lights in the distance. "I made my way towards one of them, and found it was Father Johnson's." [36] When Joseph neared the farmhouse, he called from the shadows to Emma. With her emotions highly stressed, Emma saw Joseph covered with what she assumed was blood, rather than tar. She concluded that he was "all crushed to pieces." [37] She fainted. It was not until further pleas by Joseph to neighbors now ministering to Emma that a blanket was extended to him. Wrapping it around himself, he staggered into the farmhouse. __________ 33. Ibid. (Smith, History of the Church, p. 263). 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid. Hiram, Ohio: Tribulation 169 Throughout the night his friends scraped, washed, and attempted to lubricate the tar from his wounded body. The After-effects of the Mobbing The local press publicly decried the vicious attack as "a base transaction, an unlawful act, a work of darkness, a diabolical trick." [38] Nevertheless, even the press hinted at the widespread sympathy by the condoning comment, "but bad as it is, it proves... that Satan hath more power than pretended prophets of Mormonism." [39] It is obvious from the attitude of the local press and the local sympathy for "appropriate" mob rule that Joseph was not safe in Hiram. Still, he remained at the Johnson farm for about a week. His activities during that week tell much about his character. On the following morning, 25 March, Joseph appeared in a public church service "all scarified and defaced." In this setting were some of Joseph's avowed enemies who had participated in the mob. His response to them illustrates his greatness. He wrote, "I preached to the congregation as usual." [40] In other words, despite the vicious attack of the previous night and the reality of continuing death threats, Joseph fulfilled his responsibilities as directed by the Lord. In the afternoon Joseph baptized three people. On Monday morning, 26 March, Joseph went to the log cabin across the street from the farmhouse to comfort his friend and brother in the gospel, Sidney. He reported, "I found him crazy." [41] The abusive mobbing of Sidney had rendered him seriously ill. He was suffering from a concussion and delirium. Instead of an exchange of consoling words to each other, Joseph listened to Sidney's delirious harangue, punctuated by abusive language: he wanted a razor to use as a weapon to kill Joseph. Yet never once did Joseph reprimand his friend. On Thursday of that week, 29 March, Joseph buried his eleven-month-old son, Joseph Murdock Smith. The mobocrats at the farmhouse had caused doors to gape open and the seriously ill babies to be exposed to the __________ 38. Warren News-Letter and Trumbull County Republican, vol. 4, no. 8 (10 Apr. 1832), n. p., as cited in Parkin, Conflict at Kirtland, p. 252. 39. Ibid. 40. Smith, History of the Church, 1:264. 41. Ibid., p. 265. 170 Susan Easton Black cold. Young baby Joseph, the first martyr of mobocracy in this dispensation, developed a severe cold, which, added to his measles, caused his death. The sorrowing father left Hiram on 1 April, leaving Emma and the other baby, Julia, behind. His destination was Missouri. As he traveled toward Missouri, he was threatened by mobbers, who pursued him from Hiram to Cincinnati. Seeing that the mob was not yet satiated, he now feared for the immediate safety of Emma and his child. He instructed Emma by letter that she quickly move back to Kirtland to stay with Newel K. Whitney's family. A prophet and his family were not safe in Hiram. But were the mobbers who had attacked him? Did they need to hide from the law or prosecution because of their villainous deed? Symonds Ryder, the apostate leader of the mob, was safe in Hiram. McClentic, who had his hands in Joseph's hair; Streeter, son of a Campbellite minister; Felatiah Allen, Esq., who supplied the mob a barrel of whiskey -- all were safe in Hiram. Even Mason, Fullars, Cleveland, and Dr. Dennison found in Hiram a haven of peace. None of these known mobbers or the estimated fifty unknown mobbers experienced any repercussions from their attempt on Joseph's life. An example of the fellowship they enjoyed in Hiram was the eulogy preached by B. A. Hinsdale in the Hiram Church for Symonds Ryder: "God grant that we may do our work as well as he did his; then we may go to our graves in equal peace." [42] After the event, if anyone inquired of the whereabouts of any of the mobbers of 24 March, an appropriate alibi was ready. These alibis were even passed to the next generation. For example, according to Ryder's son, Hartwell, Ryder was not involved in the tarring and feathering of Joseph Smith. Nor did he preach on the following Sunday in the south schoolhouse on Ryder Road and glory that he had been an instrument of the Lord in driving the Mormons out of Hiram. Instead, Hartwell wrote, Ryder was "ill in bed at the time." [43] __________ 42. Doris Messenger Ryder, "A History of Symonds Ryder," The Report [Ohio Genealogical Society], vol. 9, no. 2 (Apr. 1969), pp. 1-2. 43. Ibid. Hiram, Ohio: Tribulation 171 Conclusion Hiram, Ohio, was Joseph's introductory experience to physical brutality. This brief introduction to fury was a prologue to what was to continue throughout his life. It culminated on 27 June 1844 in Carthage, Illinois. Despite his efforts to "preach to the congregation as usual," "appropriate" mob rule seemed to have triumphed momentarily. The martyr's crown was forged in Hiram on 24 March 1832, but thanks to the council's decision not to kill him and Dr. Dennison's quivering personal refusal, Joseph lived. For twelve years the forged crown waited to be worn, despite the plots of a host of false brethren, lies, reviling, and continual persecution. Joseph escaped death from 1832 to 1844 only because his work was not complete. Hiram was a preparatory ground for Joseph. In this community he saw former friends plotting his destruction, faithful friends murmuring, and the effects of unleashed vengeance. Yet in Hiram, he learned of the glories of heaven that await those who endure the suffering and vicissitudes when one "could not deny, neither dared I do it; at least I knew that by so doing I would offend God, and come under condemnation." (Joseph Smith -- History 1:25.) Joseph knew of the truth he professed, that like Paul of old, "though they should persecute [me] unto death, yet [I] knew, and would know to [my] latest breath." (Joseph Smith -- History 2:24.) His testimony was tested by severe physical suffering in Hiram. Joseph left the community that had turned on him. The reputedly upright citizens viewed Joseph as a deceiver. They embraced Symonds Ryder and Ezra Booth while mocking a prophet of God. They reviled the Lord's anointed, leaving him "scarified and defaced." Yet Joseph did not abandon his divine calling: "Behold, thou art Joseph, and thou wast chosen to do the work of the Lord.... and thou art still chosen." (D&C 3:9-10.) (remainder of text not transcribed, due to copyright restrictions) Note 1: In the on-line entry for "Symonds Ryder - D&C 52:37," in her 1997 Who's Who in the Doctrine and Covenants, Susan Easton Black provides the following additional information: "Birth: 20 November 1792, Hartford, Windsor County, Vermont. Son of Joshua and Marilla Ryder. -- Death: 1 August 1870, Hiram, Portage County, Ohio. -- Symonds Ryder's father was a man of considerable influence and property for several years. However, when his fortunes were reversed, young Symonds obtained work with Elijah Mason in Hartford, Vermont. After accruing $133 during his six years of employment Symonds left Vermont, bound for the wilderness of Ohio. He arrived on horseback in January 1814 in Hiram, Ohio. He purchased 115 acres, which left him, as Charles H. Ryder wrote, "rather short of funds so he boarded with Orrin Pitkin and gave him two days work out of a week for his board and worked the other four days on his own land." Symonds returned to Vermont and in the spring of 1816 brought his father's family to Hiram. The family prospered in Ohio and increased the size of their farm to over four hundred acres. -- Symonds's name appears prominently on Hiram historical records. He was elected to the board of trustees of the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute and was the fourth corporal in the militia company in Garrettsville, a small community near Hiram. For several years he was the treasurer of Hiram College and for fifty-one years was an overseer or elder of the Nelson-Hiram branch of the Campbellites." Note 2: In the same entry, Dr. Black adds these comments: "Whatever his reasons, Symonds not only left the Church but carried an intense determination to eradicate Mormonism. In late summer of 1831 he united with his mentor Ezra Booth in planting the seeds of hatred toward Joseph and Mormonism in Hiram. -- Even as Symonds and Ezra were trying to rid Hiram of Mormonism, John Johnson was extending hospitality to the Prophet, Sidney Rigdon, and others. Soon after his arrival at the Johnson farm, Rigdon challenged Symonds in the Ohio Star to a debate on the authenticity of the Book of Mormon. Symonds published his refusal, citing as his excuse Rigdon's 'irascible temper, loquacious extravagance, impaired state of mind, and want of due respect to his superiors.' -- Sidney reacted to this indictment by claiming that Symonds "presented himself before the public as an accuser; he has been called upon before the same public, to support his accusations; and does he come forward and do it? nay, but seeks to hide himself behind a battery of reproach, and abuse, and low insinuations. He could blow like a porpoise when there was no person to oppose him.'" Note 3: Dr. Black ends Ryder's biographical sketch with the following: "According to Symonds's son, Hartwell, his father was not involved in the tarring and feathering, nor did he preach on the following Sunday in the south schoolhouse on Ryder road and glory in the belief that he had been an instrument of the Lord in driving the Mormons out of Hiram. Instead, Hartwell wrote, his father was 'ill in bed at the time' [As cited in Doris Messenger Ryder, 'A History of Simonds Ryder,' Ohio Genealogical Society Report 9 (April 1969), pp. 1-2]." |
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Richard S. Van Wagoner Mormon Polygamy SLC: Signature Books, 1989 (2nd) Title page Introduction excerpt Ch. 1 excerpt Tarred & feathered Transcriber's Comments Contents © 1986, 1989 by Richard S. Van Wagoner All rights reserved; only limited, "fair use" excerpts are presented here. |
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MORMON POLYGAMY: A HISTORY BY RICHARD S. VAN WAGONER SIGNATURE BOOKS SALT LAKE CITY 1989 |
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Into this light came Joseph Smith, the twenty-four-year-old New York farmer who founded a religion based on his translation of a set of gold plates delivered by an angel. The Book of Mormon, a record of God's dealings with the pre-Columbian ancestors of the American Indian, not only explained the Hebrew origins of the Indian but established America as a chosen land destined to receive the fullness of the everlasting gospel. Written in King James English, Smith's translation sounded biblical, but its location and conceptual framework were American. The Book of Mormon gave America a sacred past and a millennial future. It became the keystone of a new American religion. God could not have chosen a better place, a better time, or a better people than early nineteenth-century Americans for the "restoration of all things." After a decade of religious revivalism, the blossoming economy of the 1830s had ripened millennial expectations. Word of angelic visitations was greeted enthusiastically. The heavens were being rolled back. Old men were dreaming dreams and young men prophesying. Women were speaking in tongues and children conversing with angels. New faiths mushroomed. Western New York, where Joseph Smith grew up, was so frequently swept by the fires of religious enthusiasm that it came to be known as the "burned-over district." It was in this milieu that Smith organized the Church of Christ on 6 April 1830, later renamed the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Like other dynamic movements of the day, the foundling church was influenced not only by restoration Protestant sectarianism but by flourishing contemporary social experiments. Smith's ability to blend current ideas with his own visionary experiences is evident in the growth of his communal [ 2 ] vision. His earliest exposure to utopian thought and practices may have stemmed from a religious sect called the Believers in Christ's Second Appearing. Popularly known as Shakers, the group established a community a few miles from Smith's birthplace in Vermont (Arrington, Fox, and May 1976, 20). Mother Ann Lee's celibate society was one of the first communitarian organizations of this kind in the United States. Joseph Smith was probably also familiar with the Harmonists, who claimed that George Rapp, a Lutheran minister and social reformer, was responding to a vision from the angel Gabriel when in 1804 he brought his followers from Germany to Harmony, Pennsylvania, twenty-five miles north of Pittsburg. The Harmonists, who migrated to Indiana to found New Harmony in 1815 before returning to Ambridge, Pennsylvania, in 1825, experimented, like the Shakers, with shared property and celibacy. [1] Robert Owen, a wealthy Scottish reformer and industrialist, may have also indirectly shaped Joseph Smith's utopian ideas through one of his most influential American followers. Arriving in the United States in the mid-1820s, Owen promised a "new Eden in the far west" and began establishing communities based on common ownership and equality of work and profit. After purchasing New Harmony from the Harmonists in 1825, he established several other communitarian societies in Ohio, at Kendal and Yellow Springs. Sidney Rigdon, a prominent Protestant minister in the Western Reserve area of Ohio and a follower of Alexander Campbell's Disciples of Christ, attended a debate between Owen and Campbell in 1829. Taken with Owen's system of "family commonwealths," he tried to implement such a communal order within the Disciples of Christ (Ericksen 1922, 17). Campbell's objections caused Rigdon to leave the Disciples and, with other dissenters, to set up "common-stock" societies at Mentor and Kirtland, Ohio. By the fall of 1830 Rigdon and more than one hundred members of "the family," as they were known, had converted to Mormonism, which, by then, numbered nearly one thousand. After arriving in Ohio from New York in February 1831, Joseph Smith convinced Rigdon's communal group to abandon the common-stock principle in favor of the "more perfect law of the Lord." On 9 February 1831 Smith announced God's "Law of Consecration and Stewardship." Members were advised that "all things belong to the Lord" and were directed to deed all personal property to the bishop of the church. The bishop then returned a "stewardship" to each head of a household, who was expected to turn over any accrued surplus to the church. Known as the "Order of Enoch," "the Lord's Law," and the "United Order," the Mormon principle of stewardship was intended as a pattern of social and economic reorganization for all mankind. The dream was to unify "a people fragmented by their individualistic search for economic well-being." The Saints, as a group, divested of personal selfishness and greed, were to be prepared by this communal discipline to __________ 1 Rapp's Harmony is not the community where Joseph Smith lived intermittently from 1825 to 1827. Smith's Harmony, now Oakland, was located three hundred miles to the east in the northeastern section of the state. [ 3 ] usher in the millennial reign of Jesus Christ (Arrington, Fox, and May 1976, 2-3). Smith's ideas derived much from the New Testament Christian Primitivism of the day. But the deeper roots of his theology lay in his interpretation of the Old Testament. His concept of the Kingdom of God paralleled Israelite theocracy. The idea of a temple, as well as accompanying ordinances of washings, anointings, and covenants, was central to Hebrew worship. Smith's theology of marriage and family too may have drawn on ancient Israelite traditions. Like the biblical patriarchs of old, Mormon males empowered with priesthood were entitled to receive divine guidance in family matters. Women, on the other hand, were denied both priesthood and hierarchic position. This Old Testament focus evidently also drew Smith to the idea of biblical polygamy as part of the "restitution of all things." According to a close friend, Joseph B. Noble, Smith became convinced of the theological necessity of polygamy "while he was engaged in the work of translation of the Scriptures" ("Plural Marriage," 454), evidently a reference to Smith's and Rigdon's early 1830 revision of the Bible published later as The Inspired Version. Though polygamy is strongly denounced in several Book of Mormon passages (Jac. 1:15; 2:23-27; 3:5; Mos. 11:2-4, 14; Eth. 10:5), a reading of the Old Testament provides ample evidence that it was acceptable in ancient Israel. Abraham was not the only husband of multiple wives. Jacob had two wives and two concubines (Gen. 29-30); Elkanah had two wives (1 Sam. 1:2); Rehoboam had eighteen wives and sixty concubines (2 Chron. 11:21); Abijah married fourteen women (2 Chron. 13:21); David had a large harem (1 Chron. 14:3); and Solomon managed seven hundred wives and more than three hundred concubines (1 Kings 11:3). It is difficult to determine exactly when Joseph Smith first felt compelled to practice polygamy. W. W. Phelps recollected three decades after the fact in an 1861 letter to Brigham Young that on 17 July 1831, when he and five others had gathered in Jackson County, Missouri, Smith stated: "It is my will, that in time, ye should take unto you wives of the Lamanites and Nephites [Indians], that their posterity may become white, delightsome and just." Phelps added in a postscript that "about three years after this was given, I asked brother Joseph, privately, how 'we,' that were mentioned in the revelation could take wives of the 'natives' as we were all married men?" He claimed that Smith replied, "In the same manner that Abraham took Hagar and Keturah; and Jacob took Rachel, Bilhah and Zilpha, by Revelation." [2] In 1869 Mormon apostle Orson Pratt added another perspective, remembering that in early 1832 "Joseph told individuals, then in the Church, that he had inquired of the Lord concerning the principle of plurality of wives, and he received for answer that the principle of taking more wives than one is a true principle, but the time had not yet come for it to be practiced" __________ 2 Though the Phelps letter has been widely touted as the earliest source documenting the advocacy of Mormon polygamy, it is not without its problems. For example, Phelps himself, in a 16 September 1835 letter to his wife, Sally, demonstrated no knowledge of church-sanctioned polygamy: "I have no right to any other woman in this world nor in the world to come according to the law of the celestial kingdom." Other contemporary evidence suggests, however, that Smith's revelation was not intended to foreshadow polygamy but rather to remove obstacles to missionary work which Indian agents in Kansas-Missouri had created. Ezra Booth, a prominent ex-Protestant minister turned Mormon apostate, was also in Missouri in 1831 and published an account of the revelation in the 8 December 1831 Ohio Star. According to Booth, "it has been made known by revelation," that it would be "pleasing to the Lord if the elders formed a matrimonial alliance with the natives," whereby Mormons might "gain a residence" in Indian territory, despite the opposition of government agents. (See also Whittaker 1985, 35.) Oliver Cowdery and Parley P. Pratt had led a team of missionaries to Kansas-Missouri in the spring of 1831. Though the group had high hopes of success among the Indian tribes in the area, Cowdery wrote that the Indian agent was a "difficult man and we think some what strenuous respecting our having liberty to visit our brethren the Lamanites" (Messenger and Advocate, Oct. 1835). Pratt added that the men "were soon ordered out of the Indian country as disturbers of the peace" (Pratt 1874, 57). Phelps could also have mistaken the "we" in his recollection. Smith may have intended miscegenation as a general Mormon rule rather than a specific directive to the seven men on the trip. Though intermarriage between Mormon males and Indian women became an accepted Mormon custom, none of the seven men married an Indian woman. Mormons of Brigham Young's day, however, commonly taught that the Indians would become a "white and delightsome people" through intermarriage. As early as 1852 William Hall noted that Young taught "the curse of their color shall be removed" through intermarriage (p. 59). And Elder James S. Brown, an 1853 missionary to the Shoshone, recalled instructions from church leaders "to identify our interests with theirs, even to marrying among them, if we would be permitted to take young daughters of the chief and leading men.… It was thought that by forming that kind of an alliance we could have more power to do them good and keep the peace among the adjacent tribes" (Brown 1900, 320). The concept of Indians becoming a "white and delightsome people" is based on such Book of Mormon passages as 2 Nephi 30:6: "The scales of darkness shall begin to fall from their eyes; and many generations shall not pass away among them, save they shall be a white and delightsome people." Though the printer's copy and the 1830 and 1837 editions of the Book of Mormon all read "white and delightsome," Mormon church leaders in 1981 changed the verse to read "pure and delightsome," paralleling the 1840 edition. [ 4 ] (JD 13 [7 Oct. 1869]: 192). [3] Polygamy would not be a public practice of Mormonism until 1852, eight years after Smith's death. Smith never publicly advocated polygamy. New Testament monogamy, the official church position throughout his lifetime, was clearly outlined in Smith's 1831 revelations: "Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart, and shall cleave unto her and none else" (D&C 42:22); "It is lawful that [a man] should have one wife, and they twain shall be one flesh" (49:16). But from the early days of the church rumors hinted that Smith maintained a private position different from his public posture. His abrupt 1830 departure with his wife, Emma, from Harmony, Pennsylvania, may have been precipitated in part by Levi and Hiel Lewis's accusations that Smith had acted improperly towards a local girl. Five years later Levi Lewis, Emma's cousin, repeated stories that Smith attempted to "seduce Eliza Winters &c.," and that both Smith and his friend Martin Harris had claimed "adultery was no crime" (Susquehanna Register, 1 May 1834, reprinted in Howe 1834, 268; see also Newell and Avery 1984, 64). Similar allegations in Hiram, Ohio, reportedly caused problems for Smith in 1832. One account related that on 24 March a mob of men pulled Smith from his bed, beat him, and then covered him with a coat of tar and feathers. Eli Johnson, who allegedly participated in the attack "because he suspected Joseph of being intimate with his sister, Nancy Marinda Johnson,... was screaming for Joseph's castration" (Brodie 1975, 119). [4] Rumors about Smith multiplied. Benjamin F. Winchester, Smith's close friend and leader of Philadelphia Mormons in the early 1840s, later recalled Kirtland accusations of scandal and "licentious conduct" hurled against Smith, "this more especially among the women. Joseph's name was connected with scandalous relations with two or three families" (Winchester 1889). [5] One of the women whose name was linked to Smith in Kirtland was Vienna Jacques. A second-hand story remembered many years after the event by a "Mrs. Alexander" contended that Polly Beswick, a colorful two-hundred-pound Smith domestic, told her friends that "Jo Smith said he had a revelation to lie with Vienna Jacques, who lived in his family" and that Emma Smith told her "Joseph would get up in the night and go to Vienna's bed." Furthermore, she added, "Emma would get out of humor, fret and scold and flounce in the harness," then Smith would "shut himself up in a room and pray for a revalation... state it to her, and bring her around all right." [6] During an 1873 interview Martin Harris, Book of Mormon benefactor and close friend of Smith, recalled another such incident from the early Kirtland period. "In or about the year 1833," Harris remembered, Joseph Smith's "servant girl" claimed that the prophet had made "improper proposals to her, which created quite a talk amongst the people." When Smith came __________ 3 Pratt made essentially the same comments before an 1878 audience of RLDS Mormons in Plano, Illinois. He recalled that his 1832 missionary companion, Lyman Johnson, told him that "Joseph had made known to him as early as 1831, that plural marriage was a correct principle. Joseph declared to Lyman that God had revealed it to him, but that the time had not come to teach or practice it in the Church, but that the time would come" (MS 40 [16 Dec. 1878]: 788). 4 That an incident between Smith and Nancy Johnson precipitated the mobbing is unlikely. Sidney Rigdon was attacked just as viciously by the group as was Smith. And the leader of the mob, Simonds Ryder, later said that the attack occurred because members of the mob had found some documents that led them to believe "the horrid fact that a plot was laid to take their property from them and place it under the control of Smith" (Hill 1977, 146). Besides, John Johnson had no son Eli. His only sons were John, Jr., Luke, Olmstead, and Lyman (Newell and Avery 1984, 41). Nancy Johnson, who married Orson Hyde in 1834, became one of Smith's plural wives in February 1842 while Hyde was on a mission to Palestine (Quinn, "Prayer Circles," 88). Mrs. Hyde evidently first became linked with Smith's secretary, Apostle Willard Richards, whose wife was in Massachusetts. Ebenezer Robinson, who lost his job as editor of the Times and Seasons because of his wife Angeline's support of Emma Smith's anti-polygamy stance, noted in The Return 2 (Oct. 1890): 346-47 that in late January 1842, after his family vacated the printing office, "Willard Richards nailed down the windows, and fired off his revolver in the street after dark, and commenced living with Mrs. Nancy Marinda Hyde." John C. Bennett made the same accusations in his book (1842, 241-43). Sidney Rigdan's Latter Day Saint's Messenger and Advocate in a 15 March 1845 letter "TO THE SISTERS OF THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER DAY SAINTS" commented: "If R[ichards] should take a notion to H[yde]'s wife in his absence, all that is necessary to be done is to be sealed. No harm done, no adultery committed; only taking a little advantage of rights of priesthood. And after R[ichards] has gone the round of dissipation with H[yde]'s wife, she is afterwards turned over to S[mith] and thus the poor silly woman becomes the actual dupe to two designing men, under the sanctimonious garb of rights of the royal priesthood. H[yde] by and by finds out the trick which was played off upon him in his absence, by his two faithless friends. His dignity becomes offended, (and well it might) refuses to live with his wife, but to be even with his companions in iniquity, takes to himself three more wives." Orson and Nancy Hyde continued to live together for a short time after arriving in the Salt Lake Valley. But their relationship was unsteady, ending in divorce in 1870 (Quinn, "Prayer Circles," 98). Ann Eliza Young commented in her 1876 book that when Hyde returned from his mission "it was hinted to him that Smith had had his first wife sealed to himself in his absence, as a wife for eternity." She added that years later Brigham Young "informed his apostle that [Nancy] was his wife only for time, but Joseph's for eternity" (1876, 324-26). 5 When Winchester was excommunicated after Smith's death for "disobeying counsel," he alleged that the real reason for church action was because he was a "deadly enemy of the spiritual wife system and for this opposition he had received all manner of abuse from all who believe in that hellish system" (Grant to Young, 7 Sept. 1844). 6 Vienna Jacques was eighteen years older than Joseph Smith. She lived to be more than ninety, and was sealed to Smith by proxy on 28 March 1858 (Jessee 1984, 293-94). [ 5 ] to him for advice, Harris, supposing that there was nothing to the story, told him to "take no notice of the girl, that she was full of the devil, and wanted to destroy the prophet of god." But according to Harris, Smith "acknowledged that there was more truth than poetry in what the girl said." Harris then said he would have nothing to do with the matter; Smith could get out of the trouble "the best way he knew how" (Metcalf n.d., 72). William E. McLellin, a Mormon apostle who was excommunicated in 1838, further detailed this situation with the unnamed "servant girl" in an 1872 letter to the Smith's eldest son, Joseph III: "I visited your Mother and family in 1847, and held a lengthy conversation with her, retired in the Mansion house in Nauvoo. I did not ask her to tell, but I told her some stories I had heard. And she told me whether I was properly informed. Dr. F[rederick] G. Williams practiced with me in Clay Co. Mo. during the latter part of 1838. And he told me that at your birth [6 November 1832] your father committed an act with a Miss Hill -- a hired girl. Emma saw him, and spoke to him. He desisted, but Mrs. Smith refused to be satisfied. He called in Dr. Williams, O. Cowdery, and S. Rigdon to reconcile Emma. But she told them just as the circumstances took place. He found he was caught. He confessed humbly, and begged forgiveness. Emma and all forgave him. She told me this story was true!!" Accounts such as these have led some historians to conclude that Joseph Smith was licentious. But others have countered that these stories merely indicate his involvement in a heaven-sanctioned system of polygamy, influenced by Old Testament models (Bachman 1975; Hill 1968; Foster 1981). If Smith did take a plural wife in Kirtland during the early 1830s under such a system, the woman was likely Fanny Alger. McLellin's 1872 letter described Alger's relationship with Smith. "Again I told [your mother]," the former apostle wrote, that "I heard that one night she missed Joseph and Fanny Alger. She went to the barn and saw him and Fanny in the barn together alone. She looked through a crack and saw the transaction!!! She told me this story too was verily true." McLellin also detailed the Alger incident to a newspaper reporter for the 6 October 1875 Salt Lake Tribune. The reporter stated that McLellin informed him of the exact place "where the first well authenticated case of polygamy took place." According to the article, the marriage occurred "in a barn on the hay mow, and was witnessed by Mrs. Smith through a crack in the door!" [7] Fanny Ward Alger, one of ten children born to Mormons Samuel Alger and Clarissa Hancock, was nineteen years old when she became a maidservant in the Smith home in 1835. Benjamin F. Johnson, a long-time friend of Smith, described Fanny as "a varry nice & Comly young woman... it was whispered eaven then that Joseph Loved her." Warren Parrish, Smith's personal secretary, told Johnson that he and Oliver Cowdery both knew that __________ 7 Newell and Avery have surmised that McLellin in his "old age" perhaps confused Fanny Alger with the Fanny Hill of John Cleland's 1749 novel and "came up with the hired girl, Miss Hill" (1984, 66). But McLellin's wording implies two separate situations. After telling young Joseph the Miss Hill story he then wrote, "Again I told [your mother].... She told me this story too was verily true" (italics mine). Also Martin Harris's account of the servant girl noted "In or about the year 1833," while McLellin's account says at the time of Joseph III's birth -- 6 November 1832. Alger did not live in Smith's home until 1835. [ 6 ] "Joseph had Fanny Alger as a wife for They were Spied upon & found together" (Zimmerman 1976, 38). Rumors of Smith's relationship with Alger, whispered about Kirtland during the summer of 1835, may have been the catalyst for the church's announcement of its official position on marriage as well as motivation for Smith's frequent addresses on marital relationships that fall. While Smith was in Michigan his secretary, W. W. Phelps, presented to the church's 17 August 1835 General Assembly a "Chapter of Rules for Marriage among the Saints." This declaration stipulated in part: "Inasmuch as this church of Christ has been reproached with the crime of fornication, and polygamy; we declare that we believe, that one man should have one wife; and one woman, but one husband, except in the case of death, when either is at liberty to marry again." The assembled Saints voted to accept the statement as part of "the faith and principle of this society as a body" by canonizing it in the official Doctrine and Covenants of the church. [8] This important document, probably introduced by Phelps at Joseph Smith's own request, [9] includes a marriage ceremony and what may be the first scriptural reference to the concept of eternal marriage. Evidently alluding to this, Phelps wrote to his wife Sally on 9 September 1835: "I have it in my heart to give you a little instruction, so that you may know your place, and stand in it, believed, admired, and rewarded, in time and in eternity." One week later he noted that "Br[other] Joseph has preached some of the greatest sermons on the duty of wives to their husbands and the role of all Women, I ever heard." Phelps then expounded on his newly gained understanding of eternal marriage, "Sally... you closed your 4th letter to me... after the manner of the Gentiles: says Sally 'I remain your till death.'" But, Phelps explained, "you will be mine, in this world and in the world to come... you may as well use the word 'forever,' as 'till death.'" Phelps's letters make clear that "eternal marriage" was distinct from polygamy, at least in his mind: "I have no right to any other woman in this world nor in the world to come according to the law of the celestial Kingdom." Despite these 1835 indications of an understanding of the principle of eternal marriage, which would subsequently become synonymous with plural marriage, a distinctly polygamous marriage ceremony was apparently not performed until Joseph Smith was "sealed" to plural wife Louisa Beaman on 5 or 6 April 1841. [10] Smith evidently viewed all marriages prior to this time, including his own to Emma, as valid for "time" only. As late as 1840 he occasionally signed letters to Emma with the benediction "your husband till death." [11] It was not until a 28 May 1843 meeting of the Endowment Council [12] in Nauvoo, Illinois, that the Joseph and Emma Smith were finally sealed for time and eternity in the "new and everlasting covenant of marriage" (Ehat 1982, 2). __________ 8 Mormons have not given the 1835 marriage statement the attention deserved by its pivotal historical significance. The neglect is understandable: the section is no longer in Mormon scripture. When the church officially announced its polygamy in 1852, the 1835 statement seemed obsolete. It was removed in 1876, replaced with a revelation on "celestial marriage" (D&C 132) which had been revealed to Smith on 12 July 1843 but not accepted by the Saints until 1852. An additional reason the 1835 marriage statement receives little attention despite its status as the present law of the church is that Smith was not present during the 17 August general assembly which voted on the measure. He had planned a brief missionary venture to Michigan to coincide with the 17 August meeting. Cowdery remained behind not only to conduct the conference but to be with his wife, Elizabeth, who gave birth to a daughter, Maria, on 21 August. Rumors circulated years later that Cowdery authored the marriage statement against Joseph Smith's wishes (see Brigham Young, in Joseph F. Smith Journal, 9 Oct. 1869). If true, Smith would have had ample opportunity to modify or delete the statement before publication. A "Notes To The Reader" addendum in the 1835 edition, detailed changes in the statement after it had been canonized but prior to publication. No changes were made to the section detailing the opposition to fornication and polygamy. Moreover Smith later authorized the second printing of the edition after proofreading the text. Statements that Smith and other church leaders subsequently made, as well as the fact that Smith performed marriages using the ceremony canonized in the 1835 declaration, argue for his approval of the statement. In 1842 Smith declared the 1835 marriage statement the only "rule of marriage... practiced in this Church" (TS 3 [1 Oct. 1842]: 939). President Wilford Woodruff added in court testimony in 1893 that before the revelation on plural marriage was given in 1843, "there could not have been any rule of marriage or any order of marriage in existence at that time except that prescribed by the Book of Doctrine and Covenants" (Complainants, 304). Woodruff further testified at the same hearing that this was "all the law on the question" of marriage that was given "to the body of the people" (p. 309). Lorenzo Snow, president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, added that the section on marriage was the "doctrine and law of the church upon marriage at that time [early Nauvoo]" (p. 317). In addition, the ceremony outlined in the marriage statement was evidently used by Smith in performing marriages -- even plural marriages. Mercy Fielding testified in 1893 that on 4 June 1837 Smith married her to Robert Blashel Thompson using the "ceremony prescribed by the Church and set forth in the Book of Doctrine and Covenants." She added that the ceremony was also used when she became the plural wife of Hyrum Smith in 1843 (Complainants, 344-45). 9 An examination of the W. W. Phelps papers at LDS Archives reveals that Phelps was Smith's ghostwriter on several occasions. In 1844, for example, after Phelps had written Smith's U.S. presidential platform position entitled "Views of the Powers and Policy of the General Government," Smith directed Phelps to read the paper at many private and public settings (HC 6:210, 214, 221). 10 Louisa Beaman (also spelled Beeman or Beman), daughter of Alva and Betsy Beaman, was born in Livonia, New York, 7 February 1815. She was sealed to Smith for eternity and to Brigham Young for time on 14 January 1846. She died in Salt Lake City four years later on 15 May 1850. 11 Joseph Smith to Emma Smith, 20 Jan. 1840 (Jessee 1984, 454). See also Joseph Smith to Emma Smith, 9 Nov. 1839 (Smith and Smith 1952, 2:376-77). Jessee (1984, 448-49) cites the latter letter but explains that the closing benediction and Smith's signature have been cut away. Interestingly, in a 16 August 1842 letter to Emma, Smith closes "your affectionate husband until death, through all eternity for evermore" (Jessee 1984, 527). This letter precedes by more than nine months the Smith's eternal sealing on 28 May 1843. 12 This secret organization was also called the "Endowment Quorum," the "Holy Order," the "Quorum of the Anointed," "Joseph Smith's Prayer Circle," or simply the "Quorum." Its primary function was to introduce a select group of men and women to instructions that would help them obtain full salvation with God. A secondary function was to "test" initiates' ability to keep a secret prior to their introduction to plural marriage. The introduction of Masonry to Mormonism in 1842 also apparently served this purpose· See Quinn, "Prayer Circles." [ 7 ] But as early as 1835 Smith wanted Mormon couples married by Mormon elders rather than by civil authorities or leaders of other religions. Ohio law refused to recognize Mormon elders as ministers. In a bold display of civil disobedience on 14 November 1835, Smith married Lydia Goldthwait Bailey to Newel Knight. Initially Seymour Brunson, who held a valid minister's license, was to perform the marriage. But as Hyrum Smith began the introductory comments, Joseph Smith stepped forward, stopped his brother, and declared his intent to officiate. The bride later recalled his saying, "Our Elders have been wronged and prosecuted for marrying without a license. The Lord God of Israel has given me authority to unite the people in the holy bonds of matrimony. And from this time forth I shall use that privilege and marry whomsoever I see fit" (Homespun 1893, 31). Smith's performance of this marriage was one of his earliest efforts to apply heavenly guidelines on earth despite legal technicalities. Not only was Smith not a lawfully recognized minister, but Lydia Bailey, whose non-Mormon husband had deserted her, was never formally divorced. Obviously, Smith saw marriage not as a secular contract but as a sacramental covenant to be sealed by priesthood rather than by civil authority. He commented at the conclusion of the Knight ceremony "that marriage was an institution of heaven, instituted in the garden of Eden; that it was necessary it should be solemnized by the authority of the everlasting Priesthood" (HC 2:320). During the next few weeks Smith officiated at numerous other weddings. At the January 1836 wedding of Mormon apostle John F. Boynton and Susan Lowell, he read aloud a license granting any "Minister of the gospel the privilege of solemnizing the rights of matrimony." He then alluded to an "ancient order of marriage" and pronounced upon the bride and groom "the blessings of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob." The next day he signed a certificate of marriage for William F. Calhoon and Nancy M. Gibbs affirming that the ceremony had been performed "agreeable to the rules and regulations of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on Matrimony" (ibid., 377). Smith's plans for Mormon utopia in Ohio and Missouri failed. A national recession devastated his economic plans in Kirtland. And non-Mormons in both places became increasingly nervous about the growing political clout of Mormons. Ohio and Missouri natives were suspicious of the close-knit Mormon lifestyle so contrary to mainstream American life. Disaffected Mormons vied with non-Mormons in hurling accusations against the church. Speculations that the Saints were practicing polygamy compounded such problems. Within such an environment of suspicion, detractors suspected that the Mormon "Law of Consecration" included a "community of wives." If churchmen could share their property, why not their wives, too? Similar communitarian groups advocating a "community of wives" and other marital variations may have become confused with Smith's followers in the public [ 8 ] mind. Parallels were compelling. In the early 1830s another group of "Saints" emerged from the social upheaval in New York. Disciples of revivalist preachers Erasmus Stone, Hiram Sheldon, and Jarvis Rider claimed they were perfect and could no longer sin. They became known as "Perfectionists." As a part of their doctrine, adherents advocated "spiritual wifery," a concept nearly identical to Mormon eternal marriage, wherein "all arrangements for a life in heaven may be made on earth... spiritual friendships may be formed, and spiritual bonds contracted, valid for eternity" (Ellis 1870). In 1832 Mormon missionary Orson Hyde, a former member of Sidney Rigdon's "family," visited a group he called "Cochranites" and disdainfully described in his 11 October 1832 journal the group's "Wonderful lustful spirit, because they believe in a 'plurality of wives' which they call spiritual wives, knowing them not after the flesh but after the spirit, but by the appearance they know one another after the flesh." Another practitioner of spiritual wifery was Robert Matthews, alias "Matthias the Prophet." Matthews announced that "all marriages not made by himself, and according to his doctrine, were of the devil, and that he had come to establish a community of property, and of wives" ("Memoirs"). In 1833 Matthews convinced two of his followers that, as sinners, they were not properly united in wedlock. He claimed power to dissolve the marriage, married the woman himself, prophesied that she was to "become the mother of a spiritual generation," and promised to father her first "spiritual child" himself. After a brief prison sentence, Matthews turned up on Joseph Smith's doorstep in Kirtland as "Joshua, the Jewish Minister" (Ms History, 8 Nov. 1835). Smith's account of the two-day meeting is sketchy, but apparently Matthews was sent on his way after a disagreement on the "transmigration of the soul." Linked in the public mind with such colorful religionists as Matthias, Shakers, Harmonists, Perfectionists, Rappites, and Cochranites, Joseph Smith was viewed skeptically by many outsiders. But the real problems in Ohio were caused by insiders. The instability created by disastrous financial decisions involving Smith's Kirtland Safety Anti-Banking Society was compounded by stories about Smith's 1835 relationship with Fanny Alger. Benjamin Johnson years later noted that the Alger incident was "one of the Causes of Apostacy & disruption at Kirtland altho at the time there was little Said publickly upon the subject" (Zimmerman 1976, 39). At least one account indicated that Fanny became pregnant. Chauncy G. Webb, Smith's grammar teacher, later reported that when the pregnancy became evident, Emma Smith drove Fanny from her home (Wyl 1886, 57). Webb's daughter, Ann Eliza Webb Young, a divorced wife of Brigham Young, remembered that Fanny was taken into the Webb home on a temporary basis (Young 1876, 66-67). In fact Joseph Smith's journal entry for 17 October 1835 may contain a cryptic reference to this event: [ 9 ] "Called my family together arranged my domestick concerns and dismissed my boarders." [13] Fanny left Kirtland in September 1836 with her family. Though she married non-Mormon Solomon Custer on 16 November 1836 [14] and was living in Dublin City, Indiana, far from Kirtland, her name still raised eyebrows. Fanny Brewer, a Mormon visitor to Kirtland in 1837, observed "much excitement against the Prophet... [involving] an unlawful intercourse between himself and a young orphan girl residing in his family and under his protection" (Parkin 1966, 174). Much of the excitement was evidently caused by the strong reaction of Smith's close counselor and friend Oliver Cowdery to Smith's presumed liaison with Alger. Apostle David W. Patten, visiting from Missouri in the summer of 1837, went to Cowdery in Kirtland to "enquire of him if a certain story was true respecting J[oseph] Smith's committing adultery with a certain girl." Patten later said that Cowdery "turned on his heel and insinuated as though [Smith] was guilty, he then went on and gave a history of some circumstances respecting the adultery scrape stating that no doubt it was true. Also said that Joseph had told him, he had confessed to Emma" (Cannon and Cook 1983, 167). Church leaders in Missouri questioned Cowdery regarding the Alger incident when he arrived in Far West in the fall of 1837. Thomas B. Marsh, president of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles, stated that when Cowdery was asked "if Joseph Smith jr had confessed to his wife that he was guilty of adultery with a certain girl," Cowdery "cocked up his eye very knowingly and hesitated to answer the question saying he did not know as he was bound to answer the question, yet conveyed the idea that it was true." [15] Later that fall, during a discussion at the Far West home of George W. Harris, Marsh reported a conversation "between Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery when J. Smith asked him if he had ever confessed to him that he was guilty of adultery, when after a considerable winking &c, he said No." Smith then gave an apologetic history of the "girl business," adding that "Oliver Cowdery had been his bosom friend, therefore he intrusted him with many things" (ibid., 167-68). After Smith returned to Ohio from Missouri in late 1837 rumors circulated that Cowdery had spread scandalous lies about the prophet and had been chastened by him. The "Second Elder" was furious. He dashed off a 21 January 1838 letter to Smith complaining, "I hear from Kirtland, by the last letters, that you have publickly said, that when you were here I confessed to you that I had willfully lied about you -- this compels me to ask you to correct that statement, and give me an explanation -- until then you and myself are two" (in Cowdery to Cowdery). Apparently the word from Kirtland had come from Warren Cowdery, Oliver's brother, because Oliver included a copy of the letter to Smith in a separate letter to Warren. "I can assure you and bro. __________ 13 If Alger did become pregnant in 1835, the baby either died or was raised by someone else. Her first known child, listed on the 1850 census of Dublin City, Indiana, was a daughter born in 1840. 14 Wayne County, Indiana, marriage license, copy in author's possession. Fanny and Solomon, the parents of nine children, lived in Dublin City their entire married life and were members of the Universalist church (Richmond Telegraph, 1 April 1885)· For additional background information on Fanny Alger Custer, see Samuel Alger/Clarissa Hancock Alger Family Group Sheet, LDS Genealogical Archives; Samuel Alger Obituary, Deseret News, 6 Oct. 1874; Wayne Co., Indiana, census records 1850, 1860, 1880 (Dublin City). The 1850 and the 1860 census list the Custer's children: Mary A. (b. 1840), Lewis A. (b. 1844), Benjamin Franklin (b. 1850), and Lafayette (b. 1854). 15 See further details in Thomas B. Marsh's letter in Elder's Journal, July 1838, 45-46. Marsh worried "that such foul and false reports" were being circulated, but he assured Smith that "none but those who wish your overthrow, will believe them, and we presume that the above testimonies will be sufficient to stay the tongue of the slanderer." [ 10 ] Lyman [Cowdery]," Oliver angrily wrote to his brother, "I never confessed insinuated or admitted that I ever willfully lied about him. When he was there we had some conversation in which in every instance, I did not fail to affirm that what I had said was strictly true" in the matter of "a dirty, nasty, filthy affair of his and Fanny Algers." Smith did not respond to Cowdery's letter. He was embroiled in trying to hold the church together in Kirtland. Prominent church leaders Luke Johnson, John Boynton, Warren Parrish, and others had united to denounce Smith as a heretic and "fallen prophet." They urged church members to rally around them in re-establishing the "old standards." After a clamor of accusations from both sides, leaders of the Johnson faction were excommunicated. But then one of the dissidents obtained a warrant for Smith's arrest on a charge of fraud. Under cover of darkness on 12 January 1838 he and first counselor Sidney Rigdon decided to "escape mob violence, which was about to burst upon us under the color of legal process" (HC 3:1). They fled to Far West, Missouri. While Smith was en route to Missouri, charges against Oliver Cowdery's church membership were initiated in Far West. Prominent on the list of nine charges was "seeking to destroy the character of President Joseph Smith jr by falsly insinuating that he was guilty of adultry &c." [16] Though Smith arrived at Far West on 14 March 1838, he evidently would not grant Cowdery a requested interview. The Second Elder was excommunicated 12 April 1838, effectively disarming his accusations against the prophet. Confusion over the exact nature and extent of Joseph Smith's involvement with Fanny Alger has remained to this day. That there was a sexual relationship seems probable. But was Smith's association with his house servant adulterous, as Cowdery charged? Or was she Smith's first plural wife? Apostle Heber C Kimball, many years later, introduced Fanny's brother John Alger in the Saint George Temple as "brother of the Prophet Josephs first Plural Wife" (Zimmerman 1976, 45). And in 1899 church leaders performed a proxy marriage for the couple. "The sealings of those named," a temple recorder noted of Alger and the ten other women listed, "were performed during the life of the Prophet Joseph but there is no record thereof. President Lorenzo Snow decided that they be repeated in order that a record might exist; and that this explanation be made" (Tinney 1973, 41). If Smith and Alger were sealed in a plural marriage as 1899 church leaders were persuaded, who stood as witness for the ordinance? Who performed the ceremony? In the absence of an officiator or witness, did God himself seal the couple, or did Smith, as God's only legitimate earthly agent, marry himself to Alger? Smith did not claim publicly the power to "bind on earth and seal eternally in the heavens" until 3 April 1836, perhaps one year after the Alger incident (D&C 110:13-16). Could he have viewed her as his __________ 16 The following list of charges is from the "Far West Record": "1st, For stirring up the enemy to persecute the brethren by urging on vexatious Lawsuits and thus distressing the innocent. 2nd, For seeking to destroy the character of President Joseph Smith Jr by falsly insinuating that he was guilty of adultry &c. 3rd, For treating the Church with contempt by not attending meetings. 4th, For virtually denying the faith by declaring that he would not be governed by any ecclesiastical authority nor Revelation whatever in his temporal affairs. 5th, For selling his lands in Jackson county contrary to the Revelations. 6th, For writing and sending an insulting letter to President T. B. Marsh while on the High Council, attending to the duties of his office, as President of the council and by insulting the whole Council with the contents of said letter. 7th, For leaving the calling, in which God had appointed him, by Revelation, for the sake of filthy lucre, and turning to the practice of the Law. 8th, For disgracing the Church by being connected in the "Bogus business" as common report says. 9th, For dishonestly retaining notes after they had been paid and finally for leaving or forsaking the cause of God, and betaking himself to the beggerly elements of the world and neglecting his high and Holy Calling contrary to his profession." [ 11 ] common-law wife, married by connubial relationship rather than by wedding ceremony? [17] Unfortunately, Smith himself provided no help in clarifying his relationship with Alger. His public denouncements of polygamy during this period compounded the confusion. Only three weeks after Cowdery's excommunication, Smith published a statement in the July 1838 Elder's Journal answering several questions about Mormonism. To the question, "Do the Mormons believe in having more wives than one?" he responded emphatically, "No, not at the same time." Several months later, in mid-December, while incarcerated in Liberty, Missouri, he wrote a "Letter to the Church" which reflected his personal difficulties. Perhaps alluding to the Alger rumors, he asked, "Was it for committing adultery that we were assailed?" He then denied the charge as the "false slander" of "renegade 'Mormon dissenters'... running through the world and spreading various foul and libelous reports against us." He dismissed the persistent allegation that the Mormons had "not only dedicated our property, but our families also to the Lord; and Satan, taking advantage of this, has perverted it into licentiousness, such as a community of wives, which is an abomination in the sight of God" (HC 3:230). The difficulties between Smith and Cowdery could probably have been resolved if Smith had admitted, at least to Cowdery, that he was introducing plural marriage into the church. But Cowdery, who left viewing Smith's behavior as adulterous, never became reconciled to Mormon polygamy. Church leaders much later unfairly accused Cowdery of taking a plural wife himself. Brigham Young is recorded in 1872 as having said that "while Joseph and Oliver were translating the Book of Mormon, they had a revelation that the order of Patriarchal Marriag and the Sealing was right." Cowdery, according to Young, proposed to Smith, "Why dont we go into the Order of Polygamy, and practice it as the ancients did? We know it is true, then why delay?" Smith warned that "the time has not yet come." Ignoring the prophet's counsel, "Oliver Cowdery took to wife Miss Annie Lyman, cousin to Geo A. Smith. From that time he went into darknes and lost the spirit. Annie Lyman is still alive, a witnes to these things" (Larson and Larson 1980, 1:349). [18] This second-hand statement of Young, who may not have even been a Mormon at the time of the purported incident, lacks credibility. The Book of Mormon not only consistently denounces polygamy, but it would have been impossible for Cowdery to have been living polygamously during the period charged by Young (1827-30). Cowdery's marriage to his only wife, Elizabeth Ann Whitmer, occurred in 1832, three years after the translation of the Book of Mormon. [19] Furthermore no charges of sexual misconduct were made against Cowdery during his 1838 excommunication trial when there would have been ample opportunity and strong incentive for such retaliation. __________ 17 Apostle Willard Richards in December 1845 entered into such a plural marriage with Alice Longstroth. His 23 December diary entry reads: "At 10 P.M. took Alice L[ongstrot]h by the [hand] of our own free will and avow mutually acknowledge each other husband & wife, in a covenant not to be broken in time or Eternity for time & for all Eternity, to all intents & purposes as though the seal of the covenant had been placed upon us. for time & all Eternity & called upon God. & all the Holy angels -- & Sarah Long[stro]th. to witness the same." Apostle Abraham H. Cannon noted in his 5 April 1894 diary that both George Q. Cannon and Wilford Woodruff approved of such arrangements. "I believe in concubinage," George Q. is recorded as saying, "or some plan whereby men and women can live together under sacred ordinances and vows until they can be married." Woodruff responded to Cannon's suggestion, "If men enter into some practice of this character to raise a righteous posterity, they will be justified in it." 18 See also George Q. Cannon's second-hand account in the Juvenile Instructor 16 (15 Sept. 1881): 206; and Joseph F. Smith's account in JD 20 (7 July 1878): 29. 19 In addition, Cowdery was ordained an "Associate President" of the church on 5 December 1834 -- a position superior to counselors in the First Presidency. He also helped to supervise the selection of the original Quorum of Twelve Apostles in 1835, administered the first endowments in the Kirtland Temple in 1836, and on 3 April 1836 shared with Smith a temple vision of Jesus, Moses, Elias, and Elijah. It is unlikely that Cowdery would have been allowed to participate in any of these events had the "Associate President" been involved in an unsanctioned polygamous relationship. [ 12 ] Cowdery returned to Mormonism for a short time before his death in 1850 and was shocked when his sister and her husband, Daniel and Phebe Jackson, wrote to him from Illinois in 1846 confirming that polygamy was being practiced by church leaders. "I can hardly think it possible," he wrote, "that though there may be individuals who are guilty of the iniquities spoken of -- yet no such practice can be preached or adhered to as a public doctrine." Cowdery viewed polygamy as morally and culturally unthinkable: "Such may do for the followers of Mohamet, it may have done some thousands of years ago, but no people professing to be governed by the pure and holy principles of the Lord Jesus, can hold up their heads before the world at this distance of time, and be guilty of such folly -- such wrong -- such abomination." [20] Neither Oliver Cowdery's dim view of polygamy nor the difficulties the Fanny Alger situation caused seriously hampered Joseph Smith's apparent enthusiasm for plural marriage. But shortly after Cowdery's excommunication, events in Far West reached such crisis proportions that the church was again forced to uproot and move. __________ 20 Another example of Cowdery's opposition to polygamy is found in his 25 January 1836 "sketchbook" entry: "Settled with James M. Carrel who left the office. I gave him a reproof for urging himself into the society of a young female while he yet had a wife living, but he disliked my admonition: he however confessed his impropriety." A third example is in an 1884 reminiscence of Cowdery's former law partner, W. Lang, who said, "Cowdery never gave me a full history of the troubles of the Mormons in Missouri and Illinois but I am sure that the doctrine of polygamy was advocated by Smith and opposed by Cowdery" (Ivins Collection, Notebook 2:33-34). Notes: (forthcoming) |
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Susan Easton Black "Joseph's Experience in Hiram, Ohio: A Time of Contrasts" in: Regional Studies in LDS History: Ohio Provo: BYU, 1990 Ch. 2 excerpt Transcriber's Comments Contents © 1990, 2006 by Brigham Young University All rights reserved; only limited, "fair use" excerpts are presented here. |
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Contrast between divine light and satanic darkness is evident in the history of Hiram, Ohio. This contrasting theme began with the conception of Hiram and continued until Joseph fled from there in 1832. Light revealed from God to Joseph was not dulled by the murderous plotting and revelry of Hiram's residents. For Joseph beheld "the glory of the Son, on the right hand of the Father and received of his fulness" and would not deny these truths when he faced eminent danger from mobs in Hiram (D&C 76:20).... (remainder of page not transcribed, due to copyright restrictions) 28 Regional Studies in Latter-day Saint History Early Beginnings in Hiram An original proprietor of land in the Western Reserve was Colonel Daniel Tilden, of Connecticut. In 1799 he and fellow proprietors met at their Masonic lodge to name their land holdings. Colonel Tilden proposed the acreage be known as Hiram, in commemoration of the ancient King of Tyre, a benevolent friend of King David and King Solomon (2 Samuel 5:11; 1 Kings 5:10). The name was unanimously accepted by the Masonic proprietors.However, attempts to settle Hiram in 1803 were marred by tragedy when two of the proprietors, Joseph Metcalf and Levi Case, in separate incidents, died on their way there. Case was found frozen to death while standing against a tree in New York. Quickened by fear, at this ominous turn of events the remaining proprietors sold their land to poor, law-abiding citizens from Pennsylvania who, unaware of the tragic circumstances, were attracted to the financially appealing advertisements of seventy-two cents to three dollars an acre for rich, fertile soil. Thus, in 1804, Hiram began as a rural township in Portage County with a handful of would-be farmers. Hiram in the 1830s By 1831, only twenty-seven years after the first settlers struck a hoe to the soil, Hiram was known for its stable, New England and Pennsylvania families, who had helped the township progress from a primitive, frontier wilderness to a community with newspapers, schools, and churches. 2Earlier fears associated with Hiram had been quelled by hard work, determination, and rural prosperity. Among Hiram's most prosperous citizens in the 1830s were John Johnson 3 and Symonds Ryder. 4 __________ 1 1874-1978, Bicentennial Atlas of Portage County, Ohio, Portage Historical Association, 1978, p. A27. 2 James B. Holm, ed. Portage Heritage (Portage, Ohio: The Portage County Historical Society, 1957), pp. 372-380. History of Portage County, Ohio (Chicago: Warner, Beers, and Co., 1885), pp. 466-475. 3 John Johnson, the son of Israel Johnson and Abigail Higgins, was born 11 April 1778 in Chesterfield, Cheshire, New Hampshire. He married Elsa Jacobs on 22 June 1800 in Chesterfield, Cheshire, New Hampshire. Susan Easton Black, Membership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1830-1848 (Salt Lake City, Utah: Corporation of the President, 1989), 25:580-583. 4 Symonds Ryder was born on 20 November 1792 in Hartford, Washington, Vermont. He married Mahitable Loomis in November 1818. Black, Membership of the Church, 38:70-71. Joseph's Experience in Hiram, Ohio 29 Both men owned approximately three hundred acres of land, 5 were patrons of the Hiram School District No. 1, and were respected leaders in the community. Their opinions and actions were highly esteemed and when they both embraced Mormonism, it began to appear that the community of Hiram would be prepared to receive a prophet of God. In fact, John Johnson extended a cordial invitation of hospitality to the Prophet Joseph Smith, and when Joseph arrived the light of revealed truth shone brightly on the little town for a short time. While translating the Bible in Hiram, Joseph learned truths of biblical concepts. While visiting with the Saints, he rejoiced in their desire "to obtain the word of the Lord upon every subject that in any way concerned our salvation" (HC 1:207). Church meetings and five conferences were held in the Johnson farmhouse, enabling Joseph to inform the Saints of the translation, doctrinal issues, and revelations. Soon the community of Hiram had a strong branch of the Church. If the story of Joseph in Hiram were only to recount these positive themes, there would be no dark side -- for Hiram was a town of contrast. Here, an angry mob would introduce to Joseph a depth of hostile fury which he had not known before. Joseph's hope that Hiram would become a refuge for pondering the scriptures, translating the Bible, meeting with believers, and obtaining the word of the Lord "upon every subject that in anyway concerned our salvation," ended abruptly on 24 March 1832 when a violent mob sought to do him bodily harm (HC 1:207).... __________ 5 John Johnson first purchased 100 acres of land in Hiram, Ohio, on 19 March 1818, from Amos Spicer and A. Norton. On 4 April 1820, he purchased 60 acres from John Whipple. On 14 March 1823, he purchased 100 acres from Mary Hutchinson, et al. On 20 December 1827, he purchased 54 acres from Clarissa Eggleston. When Joseph Smith arrived in Hiram, John owned 304 acres. Salt Lake Genealogical Library, Film #899057, "Locality of Record," Recorders Office, Portage County Courthouse, State of Ohio, Index to Deeds, 1795-1917. -- The Johnson farm house was purchased by the Church in 1956. It was dedicated by Elder James A. Cullimore, Assistant to the Twelve. Church News, May 17, 1969, p. 3. 30 Regional Studies in Latter-day Saint History
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Many church-going citizens of Kirtland and the neigh boring vicinity visited him. Among those who came were John Johnson, his wife Elsa, and Ezra Booth, 6 a Methodist minister from nearby Mantua. During their visit with Joseph, a miracle occurred. As they conversed on the godly gifts that had been conferred during Christ's ministry, one of the visitors exclaimed, "Here is Mrs. Johnson with a lame arm; has God given any power to man now on the earth to cure her?" Joseph, taking Elsa's hand proclaimed, "Woman, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ I command thee to be whole" (HC 1:215216). Immediately Elsa raised her arm, even though she had been chronically afflicted by disabling rheumatism in her shoulder. 7 This miraculous healing was followed by the baptism of John Johnson and his wife, and Ezra Booth in the spring of 1831. After baptism, John and Elsa returned to their farmhouse in Hiram. Booth accompanied them, for he had been called to serve a mission there. __________ 6 Ezra Booth was born in 1792 in Connecticut. He married Dorcas Taylor on 10 March 1819 in Nelsonville, Athens, Ohio. Black, Membership of the Church, 6:168-169. 7 A later critic discounted the possibility of a divine miracle: "The company were awe-stricken at the infinite presumption of the man, and the calm assurance with which he spoke. The sudden mental and moral shock -- I know not how better to explain the well attested fact -- electrified the rheumatic arm." A. S. Hayden, "Life and Character of Symonds Ryder," Early History of the Disciples in the Western Reserve, Ohio (Cincinnati: Chase and Hall Publishers, 1876), pp. 250-251. Joseph's Experience in Hiram, Ohio 31 Booth's brief mission included a visit to a Campbellite minister, Symonds Ryder. His remarks concerning Joseph so impressed Ryder that he sought audience with the Prophet in Kirtland. Little is known of the particulars of Ryder's first visit with Joseph, except that afterwards he, like John Johnson, "Threw the whole power of his influence upon the side of Mormonism." 8 He accepted baptism in early June of 1831, was ordained an elder on June 6th by Joseph Smith, Sr., and on June 8th was called to the proselyting ministry (D&C 52:37). However, because Ryder did not believe that he was called by the Spirit of God; he did not serve a mission. 9 He left the Church with an intense determination to eradicate from Hiram what he saw as the seducing error of Mormonism. As Ryder shifted the power of his influence, first toward and then against the Mormons, Booth, his mentor, was following the same course. 10 In late summer of 1831, Booth joined with Ryder in igniting and fanning the flames of hatred and fear toward Joseph and Mormonism in Hiram, thereby annulling their previous missionary influence in support of Joseph. A noted community historian A. S. Hayden, records that most "Hiramites left the Mormonites faster than they had ever joined them." 11 As Booth and Ryder were trying to rid Hiram of the "Mormon menace," John Johnson, in contrast, was extending an cordial invitation to Joseph and his family to be his guests there. 12 ... (remainder of page not transcribed, due to copyright restrictions) __________ 8 Ryder read a newspaper describing great destruction caused by an earthquake in Peking, China. When he read the account, he recalled having heard a young Mormon girl predicting the event. "This appeal to the superstitious part of his nature was the final weight in the balance and he threw the whole power of his influence upon the side of Mormonism." J. H. Kennedy, Early Days of Mormonism (Scribner's and Sons, 1888), as cited in HC 1:158. 9 When he received communication of his ministerial call signed by the Prophet Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon, Both in the letter he received and in the official commission to preach, however, his name was spelled R-i-d-e-r, instead of R-y-d-e-r .... He thought if the "Spirit" through which he had been called to preach could err in the matter of spelling his name, it might have erred in calling him to the ministry as well; or, in other words, he was led to doubt if he were called at all by the Spirit of God, because of the error in spelling his name! Holm, Portage Heritage, p. 171. -- Allegedly, Ryder's later apostasy was influenced by more than the misspelling of his name. Ryder confirmed this conclusion by writing of his misunderstanding of the law of consecration and stewardship: When they went to Missouri to lay the foundation of the splendid city of Zion, and also of the temple, they left their papers behind. This gave their new converts an opportunity to become acquainted with the internal arrangement of their church, which revealed to them the horrid fact that a plot was laid to take their property from them and place it under the control of Joseph Smith the prophet. - Symonds Ryder, "Letter to A. S. Hayden," February 1, 1868 as cited in Parkin, Conflict at Kirtland, p. 254. 10 At the June Conference that yielded the orthographic turning point for Symonds Ryder, his gospel teacher, Ezra, became a high priest. He immediately began serving as a missionary with Isaac Morley, traveling through Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois to Missouri (D&C 52:23). His mission was a disappointment to him, and became the impetus for his determination to immediately leave the Church and denounce Joseph. In a series of nine letters that appeared in the Ohio Star, he elaborated on his experienced deception and the "Mormon menace." (The letters have also been published in E. D. Howe, Mormonism Unvailed (Painesville, Ohio: E. D. Howe, 1834), pp. 175-221. 11 Ryder, "Letter to A. S. Hayden," as cited in Parkin, Conflict at Kirtland, p. 254. 12 Joseph's family then consisted of his wife, Emma, and two six-month old twins of John Murdock, whom Joseph and Emma were rearing as their own. Emma Smith had given birth to twins, Louisa and Thaddeus, on 30 April 1831. These twins lived for approximately three hours. On the same day, John Murdock's wife gave birth to twins, named Joseph Smith Murdock and Julia Murdock. John's wife died in childbirth. John gave his motherless twins to Joseph and Emma "in the fond hope that they would fill the void in [Emma's life] occasioned by the loss of her own" (HC 1:260). 32 Regional Studies in Latter-day Saint History
Enlightenment in Hiram, Ohio
(remainder of page not transcribed, due to copyright restrictions) __________ 13 Ohio Star, III, No. 2 (January 12, 1832), n.p. as cited in Parkin, Conflict at Kirtland, p. 119. 14 Ohio Star, II, No. 52 (December 29, 1831), n.p. as cited in Parkin, Conflict at Kirtland, p. 118. Joseph's Experience in Hiram, Ohio 33 (pp. 33-36 not transcribed, due to copyright restrictions) Joseph's Experience in Hiram, Ohio 37 Murderous Plotting and Revelry These months of uninterrupted spiritual outpourings came to an abrupt end on the night of March 24th, when violence displaced peace and crushed any sense of haven for Joseph, Sidney and their families. Although Mormon and anti-Mormon sources disagree on the details, all agree that the local citizens tarred and feathered Joseph and Sidney. The local history praises "the good people of Hiram and some others," saying that they "went to the house of Smith and Rigdon, took them out, stripped them to the buff, and treated them to a coat of tar and feathers and a rail ride, which induced them to leave." 20This light-hearted, self-righteous recounting is in stark contrast to the account of God's Prophet and his loyal friends. The Night of March 24, 1832 On 24 March 1832, Joseph and Emma were alternating turns caring for their eleven-month-old twins, who were seriously ill with measles. As the evening ensued, Emma nursed and Joseph rested. His rest was violently interrupted when a dozen men with blackened faces burst into their room. Emma's screams of "Murder!" were too late as the men grabbed Joseph with vengeance. Joseph later recalled that the men had their "hands... in my hair, 21 and some had hold of my shirt, drawers and limbs." Joseph struggled to free himself. In this attempt, he cleared one leg, "with which I made a pass at one [Warren Waste who] fell on the door steps." The mob threatened him with death if he continued his resistance: 'They swore by G-, they would kill me if I did not be still, which quieted me" (HC 1:261). The threat was punctuated by further death threats from Waste, who returned to the fray with a bloody hand, which he thrust in Joseph's face, muttering with a hoarse laugh, "Ge, gee, G- d- ye, I'll fix ye" (HC 1:262).True to his threat, he seized Joseph by the throat and choked him until Joseph lost consciousness. In this state, he was carried by the mobbers some thirty yards from the farmhouse. As consciousness returned, he saw men "disguised with colored faces and stimulated by whiskey" coming from every direction. 22 __________ 20 History of Portage County, Ohio, p. 474. [full quote: "In the winter of 1831 Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon came to Hiram, held meetings and made many converts to the then new faith of Latter Day Saints, or Mormonism, but after a time something leaked out in regard to the Saints having an eye on their neighbors' property, that it was their design to get into their possession all the lands of those whom they converted. Whether the charge was true or not cannot now be affirmed, but at any rate the good people of Hiram and some others went to the houses of Smith and Rigdon, took them out, stripped them to the buff, and treated them to a coat of tar and feathers and a rail ride, which induced them to leave."] 21 Carnot Mason is reported to be the man who dragged Joseph by the hair. Later, Joseph showed Levi Hancock a patch of his hair that had been pulled out by the roots, leaving his scalp bare. Levi Hancock, Levi Hancock Journal, p. 73. (A copy is located at the Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University.) Luke Johnson, "History of Luke Johnson," Millennial Star (December 31, 1864), XXVI, No. 53, pp. 834-835. 22 Symonds Ryder later described them more favorably as "a company formed of citizens from Shalersville, Garrettsville, and Hiram." These men were known to be Campbellites, Methodists, and Baptists. Symonds Ryder letter to A. S. Hayden, February 1, 1868 as cited in Parkin, Conflict at Kirtland, p. 254. 38 Regional Studies in Latter-day Saint History Even more ominous to the wounded Prophet than the growing mob was the bloody and seemingly lifeless body of Sidney Rigdon lying on the frozen ground. Upon seeing Sidney, Joseph more fully understood his own peril. He pled with his captors, "You will have mercy and spare my life, I hope," to which they replied with harsh profanities, "Call on yer God for help, we'll show ye no mercy" (HC 1:262). The mob proceeded thirty rods past Sidney Rigdon to the meadow, where they held council. Joseph assumed the topic in question was whether to kill him or not. He reported their decision was "not to kill me, but to beat and scratch me well, tear off my shirt and drawers, and leave me naked" (HC 1:263). It appears this decision was not accepted by all as one mobber, Dr. Dennison, tried to force a vial of poisonous nitric acid into Joseph's mouth. Failing, the doctor then proposed to emasculate Joseph. In this attempt Joseph had his clothes torn off. His naked body was then attacked by the fingernails of an unknown mobber, who "like a mad cat, [fell on Joseph] and muttered: G- d- ye, that's the way the Holy Ghost falls on folks!" (HC 1:263). Dennison, however, upon seeing Joseph's body stretched on a plank, weakened in his resolve and refused to operate. The refusal seemed to spur on the shouts and assaults by other mobbers, "Simonds, Simonds, where's the tar bucket?" Another replied, "I don't know, where 'tis Eli's left it." When the tar was fetched, the mob forced the tar paddle into Joseph's mouth, nearly smothering him. They covered his scratched and beaten body with the loathsome substance, and Joseph lost consciousness again. As the final touch to this barbaric scene, they further mocked the Prophet of God by covering the tar with feathers. As quickly as they had entered the quietude of Joseph's room, the mob fled to the brickyard of Hiram to wash themselves and bury their filthy clothes, hoping Joseph's Experience in Hiram, Ohio 39 that their participation in the barbaric deed would be hidden. Joseph was left alone. When he regained consciousness, he struggled to pull the tar from his mouth in order to breath more freely. He attempted to rise but failed, because of his weakened condition. In a second effort to rise, he saw two lights in the distance. "I made my way towards one of them, and found it was Father Johnson's" (HC 1:263).When Joseph neared the farmhouse, he called from the shadows to Emma, who, when she saw him, thought that he was covered with blood. Concluding that he was "all crushed to pieces" (HC 1:263), she fainted. It was not until after further pleas by Joseph to neighbors now ministering to Emma, that a blanket was extended to him. Wrapping it around himself, he staggered into the farmhouse. Throughout the night his friends scraped, washed and attempted to lubricate the tar from his wounded body. The After Effects of the Mobbing The local press politely decried the vicious attack as "a base transaction, an unlawful act, a work of darkness, a diabolical trick." However, even the press hinted at the widespread sympathy by the condoning comment, "but bad as it is, it proves... that Satan hath more power than pretended prophets of Mormonism." 23It is obvious from the attitude of the press and the local sympathy for "appropriate mob rule" that Joseph was not safe in Hiram. Still he remained at the Johnson farm for about a week. His activities during that week express much about his character. On the following morning, March 25, Joseph appeared in a public church service "all scarified and defaced" and "preached to the congregation as usual" (HC 1:264). __________ 23 Warren News-letter and Trumbull County Republican, vol. 4, no. 8 (10 April 1832), n.p., as cited in Parkin, Conflict at Kirtland, p. 252. 40 Regional Studies in Latter-day Saint History In the afternoon he baptized three people. On Monday morning, March 26, the Prophet comforted Sidney Rigdon. He reported that he "found him crazy" (HC 1:265), suffering from a concussion and delirium. Instead of an exchange of consoling words to each other, Joseph listened to Sidney's delirious harangue, punctuated by abusive language. Yet never once did Joseph reprimand his friend. On Thursday of that week, March 29, Joseph buried his eleven-month-old son, Joseph Murdock Smith, and two days later on April 1st, the sorrowing father fled from Hiram. Threatened by mobbers who pursued him from Hiram to Cincinnati and seeing that the mob was not yet satiated, he now feared for the immediate safety of Emma and his child, Julia. He instructed Emma by letter that she quickly move back to Kirtland to stay with Newel K. Whitney's family. (remainder of text not transcribed, due to copyright restrictions) Note 1: Transcription taken from digital media -- actual published formatting may vary from this html reproduction. Note 2: In an address given at BYU-Hawaii on Nov. 21, 2002 Dr. Black stated that "Joseph Smith... inadvertently incurred the ill will of Simonds Rider, the wealthiest man in the area when he called him to serve a mission that a 17-year-old boy had turned down. -- 'He couldn’t imagine this was all the Lord had in store for him,'... Later, in a local newspaper, Ryder challenged the Prophet to a debate on the 'falseness of the Book of Mormon and Mormonism in general.' Smith wrote back, suggesting he challenge Rigdon, a former Campbellite preacher like Ryder." Black evidently provided no citation for this alleged 1831 (1832?) journalistic challenge to Joseph Smith. Perhaps the challenge recalled by Black can be attributed to her misreading of some article or letter published by "a local newspaper" such as the Ravenna Western Courier or Ohio Star. Note 3: In her Nov. 21, 2002 address, Dr. Black also said "that by March 1832 Ryder was so upset he decided 'the only way to get rid of Mormonism was to kill Joseph Smith; but how?'" Again Black evidently provided no citation for this alleged threat, reportedly voiced by Elder Ryder (who is not otherwise known to have murdered or threatened to murder anyone during his life). According to Black, it was Symonds Ryder who "organized a mob of about 60 men from the surrounding communities," with the intent of carrying out this planned assassination. However, in the midst of the March 24, 1832 assault upon Smith, Black reports that "one man choked him [Smith] unconscious," but then "The other mobbers stopped him because they didn’t plan to strangle him." This is a striking statement, but one seemingly unsupported by any particular evidence. Dr. Black is quoted as saying that the attackers took the unconscious Joseph Smith and "put him on a rail." Smith himself, writing in 1839, speaking of these assailants, said "one coming from the orchard had a plank, and I expected they would kill me, and carry me off on the plank." How an unconscious person might be ridden about on a narrow "rail," Dr. Black fails to explain. Note 4: In her Nov. 21, 2002 address, Dr. Black also said, "A Dr. Dennison, who had attended Joseph’s birth years earlier in Vermont and since moved west, planned to castrate the Prophet. 'His hand began to shake, and he dropped the knife.'" This is also a striking statement, but also one unsupported with any clear evidence. Black has evidently conflated allegations made by Luke S. Johnson in 1846 and 1858 with some of the information presented by Larry C. Porter, in his 1971 PhD dissertation, "A Study of the Origins of the Church," in which (on page 13 of the 2000 published edition) Porter documents the possibility that "Dr. Joseph Denison of South Royalton, Vermont... delivered Joseph Smith, the founder of the Latter Day Saints," in 1805. Since this particular physician died in Vermont and was buried at Royalton in 1855, he could not have been the same Ohio physician cited by Dr. Black. See Mary E. W. Lovejoy's 1911 History of Royalton, Vermont..., Vol. 2. p. 749ff, as well as the Hudson, Ohio Western Intelligencer of July 21, 1829, (which reported that a "Dr. Richard A. Dennison" had recently been admitted to the regional medical society -- his name also appears in the 1830 Census tabulation for Nelson Township, Portage Co., Ohio). |
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Linda K. Newell & Valeen T. Avery
Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984, 94 (all excerpts given below are from the 1994 edition) Title page Ch. 3 excerpt Transcriber's Comments Contents Copyright © 1994 by Newell & Avery All rights reserved; only limited, "fair use" excerpts are presented here. |
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Mormon Enigma Emma Hale Smith ________________ '*' Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery Second Edition University of Illinois Press Urbana and Chicago |
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3 Gathering in Ohio 1830-1834 The winter of 1830-1831 was one of the most severe recorded in the eastern United States. The December snows were soft and deep; what little melting occurred was soon covered over by storms that maintained a four-foot level through February. Freezing rains in January enabled the wolves to run on the crust while heavier game sank through helplessly. Deer and elk could not find browse of twigs and shrubs. That winter the elk disappeared from the plains of Illinois and Missouri -- never to return. A storm covered the breadth of the United States, blizzards whirled snow until familiar landmarks disappeared, and streams could be recognized only by breaks in the forests. Newspapers suspended publication when the mails could not go out. Human life maintained a precarious balance. On January 2 of that winter, Joseph announced at a church conference that he had received new revelations commanding the entire group to sell or rent their farms and move three hundred miles to Kirtland, Ohio. The revelations promised them "power from on high... great riches, a land of milk and honey, and an inheritance for them and their children forever." [1] The village of Kirtland, which lay northeast of Cleveland, boasted a gristmill, a sawmill, a hotel, and the Gilbert and Whitney Mercantile store. Most of the thousand or so settlers were of New England stock. Before long Emma sat with Joseph, Sidney Rigdon, and Edward Partridge in a crowded sleigh, gliding over the frozen roads toward Kirtland. She was now twenty-six years old, uncomfortable from her pregnancy, and still weak from an extended illness in December. They rested briefly at the home of her sister-in-law, Sophronia Smith Stoddard, but for the remainder of the month-long __________ 1. LDS D&C 38:18, 32-42; RLDS D&C 38:4d-f, 7-10. 38 MORMON ENIGMA: EMMA HALE SMITH journey the travelers sought public houses or relied on the hospitality of farmers. On February 1, 1831, the sleigh came to a stop in front of the Gilbert and Whitney store in Kirtland. Joseph jumped out, strode into the store, and thrust his hand out to the proprietor. "Newel K. Whitney, thou art the man!" he boomed. The astonished Whitney parried for time. "You have the advantage of me," he replied. "I could not call you by name as you have me." "I am Joseph, the prophet," came the response. "You have prayed me here, now what do you want of me?" A few evenings earlier Newel and Elizabeth Whitney had prayed fervently for religious instructions. Elizabeth said a voice told them to "prepare to receive the word of the Lord, for it is coming." [2] They accepted Joseph as the embodiment of the Lord's instruction. Whitney's partner, Algernon Sidney Gilbert, invited the Smiths to stay with his family and, while new friends helped transfer the travelers' belongings to a wagon, Joseph went ahead with him. Emma's driver started the horses down the hill toward the Gilberts' house. Suddenly the wagon slid sideways, lurched, and overturned, throwing Emma in the snow. Her scream brought Joseph bolting from Gilbert's home to help. She was not hurt and when the wagon was righted she and Joseph went to the house to choose a room. Emma could see that the family was already crowded. Henry Rollins, his mother, and his sister Mary Elizabeth also lived there. Emma declined the Gilberts' offer, and Elizabeth Whitney took the Smiths into her own home for several weeks. Di§appointed that Emma and Joseph found other lodging, Henry Rollins reported that none of "our rooms suited her." [3] A generous warmhearted woman, Elizabeth Ann Whitney became Emma's first friend in Kirtland. Six-year-old Sarah Ann Whitney and young Mary Elizabeth Rollins came to regard their "Prophet Joseph" with awe and wonderment. Emma, not suspecting the role the two young girls would eventually play in her life, watched as Joseph gave eleven-year-old Mary Elizabeth Rollins his appreciative attention when he discovered she had eagerly read a Book of Mormon and. had begun to memorize part of it. [4] Newel and Elizabeth Whitney felt pleased and honored to have Emma and Joseph in their home, but Elizabeth's elderly Aunt Sarah pursed her lips at the thought of a self-appointed preacher under her roof. After a month Joseph became increasingly conscious of Emma's impending confinement and he announced a revelation. It stated, "It is meet that my servant Joseph Smith, Jun. should have a house built, in which to live and translate." [5] In obedience to the commandment, Isaac Morley began building a cabin on his land about a mile north of Kirtland. Emma and Joseph moved into it in early spring. Though small, the single room was private, and it was Emma's. She began housekeeping __________ 2. Elizabeth Ann Whitney, "A Leaf from an Autobiography," Woman's Exponent 7, Nos. 7-15 (June-December 1878): 51. [Sept. 1, 1878] This is a lengthy article that ran over several issues of the Exponent and was written after the Mormons immigrated to Utah. 3. Reminiscences of James Henry Rollins, 1888, LDS Archives. 4. Statement of Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner, 8 February 1902, original in Mary Lightner collection, BYU. 5. LDS D&C 41:8; RLDS D&C 41:3a. GATHERING IN OHIO 39 with few provisions and little furniture, for they had abandoned almost everything in New York. On April 30, 1831, Emma gave birth to twins in the cabin. The "gentle Morley girls" assisted with the delivery and helped with the housework. The lifants, a boy and a girl, were probably premature and lived only three hours. Emma and Joseph named the twins Thaddeus and Louisa, then buried them. In a six-month period Emma had made the difficult break with her parents, endured a strenuous trip, adjusted to a new town, and established her own home. After only four years of marriage, all three of her children lay in graves. The day after Emma's twins died, Julia Clapp Murdock died in child-bath, leaving her newborn twins and three other young children motherless. John Murdock considered the grim difficulties of caring for his five small children alone and concluded that he must divide his family among his friends. [6] The survival of his newborn twins, named Joseph and Julia, depended an a woman who could nurse them. When they were nine days old Emma took them as her own. This adoption did not separate the natural father from his children, as John Murdock boarded at Emma's home periodically over the years. Nevertheless, Emma and Joseph did not tell the children they were adopted and the community recognized and accepted the children as Smiths. The same evening that Emma received her new twins, she greeted her mother-in-law with surprise and relief, for she had thought that Lucy was dead. Local newspapers had reported a boat loaded with immigrating members of the church from Waterloo, New York, had sunk in Lake Erie with all drowned. [7] Lucy led this group in much the same way as she had led her family to New York when Joseph was still a child. He had often seen his mother in this role, and Emma would learn that he expected her to exercise similar responsibility -- much to the chagrin of some of his associates, who would bristle to see Emma make decisions on her own. Lucy's Waterloo immigrants arrived in Kirtland almost penniless. The influx of destitute Saints taxed the resources of those with property. Economically, no room existed for a large group of displaced people. Pressure to find another place to settle mounted against the Mormons in Kirtland until Joseph finally found a solution: Zion. Emma had frequently heard Joseph discuss an unknown gathering place he called "Zion." Parley P. Pratt and Oliver Cowdery described Missouri in glowing terms. Joseph mulled over the reports, decided to investigate the area himself, and told the Colesville Saints to leave immediately for the eight-hundred-mile trek to Missouri. They prepared to move again on faith and little else. Joseph, Sidney Rigdon, Martin Harris, Edward Partridge, and Sidney Gilbert and family also left. Gilbert expected to establish a new store for dry goods and groceries in Missouri, while his partner Newel Whitney continued with the store in Kirtland. William W. Phelps, who would become Emma's associate in a publishing venture, also joined the group. __________ 6. Journal of John Murdock, 1792-1851, LDS Archives. 7. Lucy Smith, Joseph the Prophet, pp. 172-84, gives the full account of this voyage to Ohio. 40 MORMON ENIGMA: EMMA HALE SMITH In Missouri Joseph saw space for a Mormon community in the midst of the rough frontier settlements. By revelation he announced that this area was Zion and that the Mormons who came there should purchase property, build homes, and prepare to stay. He dedicated a site for a temple near the small town of Independence and laid the cornerstone for the future building. The designation of the area as Zion and the temple site induced Mormons to immigrate to Missouri. The Colesville Saints arrived in July, and for the next eight years the Mormon settlements and interests would be separated by the eight hundred miles between Ohio and Missouri. Emma remained in the cabin at the Morley settlement throughout the summer. Certainly the twins demanded care, but this may have been her first opportunity to work on the hymnbook mentioned as her responsibility in the Elect Lady revelation. When her husband returned from Missouri in September 1831, much of the social life in Kirtland again revolved around Emma and Joseph. A stream of visitors -- the skeptics, the curious, the seekers, and the believers -- came to see Joseph. He gradually developed a strong style of oratory that could hold audiences captive for hours. They sometimes laughed, sometimes cried, and often accepted his message. Word spread that spiritual phenomena, including miraculous healings, were part of this new religion. Curiosity about this brought John and Elsa Johnson to Emma and Joseph. At a meeting someone drew attention to Elsa's withered arm, long rendered useless by rheumatism. "Here is Mrs. Johnson with a lame arm; has God given any power to man now on the earth to cure her?" Joseph rose and walked to her. Taking her arm gently in his hands, he said, "Woman, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ I command thee to be whole." Elsa raised her arm above her head and moved it around with no pain. The next day she washed clothes with full use of the arm. As a result, the Johnson family, as well as a Methodist minister, Ezra Booth, joined the church. [8] By the time Emma and Joseph met the Johnsons, Joseph had begun compiling his revelations. He believed that some sections of the Bible had either been lost or misinterpreted over the centuries of translations. He labored over revisions in the biblical text while Sidney Rigdon wrote the corrections in the margins and between the lines. But people frequently interrupted Joseph's work in the crowded cabin at the Morley settlement. Dissatisfied with living the revealed Law of Consecration, a communal system designed to care for the destitute who straggled into Kirtland with no means of support, church members came to Joseph to complain. Members of the church signed over their assets to a group represented by a lay bishop. Each had promised to labor faithfully and was promised in return the receipt of supplies according to. need. With increasing frequency, Joseph was called on to arbitrate disputes. When __________ 8. HC 1:215-17. GATHERING IN OHIO 41 John and Elsa Johnson offered Emma and Joseph quarters in their large farmhouse thirty-six miles south of Kirtland near a settlement called Hiram, the Smiths accepted. John Johnson had built the large New England colonial-style house five years earlier, but instead of chimneys at either end he had built a central complex of fireplaces. Johnson's acreage and buildings showed evidence of hard work and good care from his four grown sons, John, Jr., Luke, Olmstead, and Lyman, and one daughter, Nancy Marinda, age sixteen. Only Olmstead had refused to join the church. Emma, Joseph, and the twins moved in with the Johnson family on September 2, 1831. They lived in two rooms, one on either side of the giant kitchen on the main floor. Emma and Joseph slept in the south room,.. and the twins occupied the room to the north. Emma soon cleaned, cooked, and mended alongside Elsa and Nancy Marinda. Emma baked in the brick bustle oven built in the fireplace wall. She shoveled hot coals into the oven, then stoked them to a flame. Once the fire was roaring, she shoved the door forward against the lintel, forcing the smoke and fumes up the flue. To test the temperature she held her hand in the oven and counted slowly. If her hand felt uncomfortably hot in twelve seconds, the oven was "hot," it was "quick" in eighteen seconds, "moderate" at twenty-four seconds, and "warm" at thirty seconds. [9] When the oven was hot Emma removed the coals and placed her bread dough on the bricks inside. Then she pushed the door in as far as possible, closing the oven and shutting off the flue. Although cooking required effort, one ate well at the Johnsons'. But the quiet peace of the Johnson farm was an illusion. In November Ezra Booth charged Joseph with "a want of sobriety, prudence, and stability a spirit of lightness and levity, and temper of mind easily irritated, and an habitual proneness to jesting and joking." [10] To Booth, these actions were unbecoming in a prophet. He accused Joseph of having revelations too conveniently for them to originate from God. Booth's friend Simonds Ryder, misunderstanding the Law of Consecration, claimed to have found papers outlining a plot to take people's property from them and place it under Joseph's control. When the Johnson boys saw farmers sell their holdings and consecrate their profits to the church, they feared that their expected inheritance would go the same way. John Johnson was respected in the community, but the neighbors grew bold and devised a way to circumvent Johnson and reach Joseph Smith in Johnson's own house. A barrel of whiskey fortified their courage one night as winter's hold began to break. In the big white farmhouse Emma and Joseph tended the eleven-monthold twins, who had been feverish for days with a hard case of measles. Neither parent had slept much and on the night of March 24, 1832, Emma insisted that Joseph take their son to the children's room and rest with him on the trundle bed. Emma stayed in her own bed with Julia beside her. Exhausted, __________ 9. Sue Foster, "How the Baking Heat Was Determined on up into the Mid-1800's," Western Reserve Magazine, November-December 1976. Thanks to Mr: and Mrs. O. Glen Chapman for this article. 10. Ezra Booth to Rev. I. Eddy, 21 November 1831, LDS Archives. 42 MORMON ENIGMA: EMMA HALE SMITH she fell into a heavy sleep, undisturbed by a light tapping at the window. She did not hear the front door open nor did she hear the Johnson boys creep upstairs to bar the entrance to their father's room so he could not get out. [11] Suddenly the door burst open. Emma woke with a start, then screamed when she saw a mob of men with blackened faces attempting to carry her husband out of the house. The group, led by Ezra Booth and Simonds Ryder, numbered about fifty or sixty. They overpowered the struggling, kicking Joseph and staggered into the yard with him. An undocumented account says the terrified Emma grabbed both babies and ran to the barn to hide, perhaps fearing rape by the violent, drunken men. Whether she remained in the house or hid in the barn, Emma could hear oaths and heavy grunts as Joseph fought to free himself in the yard. One man held a flickering lantern fashioned from a gallon can. The light bobbed and swung as it lit up portions of the men's faces. The delicate diamond-, heart-, and crescent-shaped perforations in the tin glowed softly in contrast to the ugly brutality silhouetted by the lantern. [12] Joseph managed to get one leg free and kicked so hard he sent a strong man sprawling. The man picked himself up and shook a bloody fist in Joseph's face. "God damn ye, I'll fix ye!" He grabbed Joseph by the throat and choked him into unconsciousness. The mob moved out of the yard until the light flickered in a field and the curses were muffled by the distance. Joseph regained consciousness to see Sidney Rigdon on the ground where the men had dragged him by his heels over the frozen earth. Joseph assumed he was dead. Fearing the same fate, he pleaded for his own life. "God damn ye, call on yer God for help, we'll show ye no mercy!" was the reply. The violent men carried him farther into the field, never letting his feet touch the ground for fear he would have leverage to free himself. They tore his clothes from his body, leaving only his collar, then laid him out on the frozen ground and called for a Dr. Dennison. Dennison, a respected physician, had been induced to come along for the purpose of castrating Joseph, but when he saw the helpless man stretched out before him he refused to perform the mutilation. Joseph overheard snatches of the conversation and concluded they were deciding whether of not to kill him. One man dug at Joseph's flesh with his fingernails, muttering, "God damn ye, that's the way the Holy Ghost falls on folks." Another cried, "Simonds, Simonds, where's the tar bucket?" "I don't know where 'tis, Eli's left it," came the answer. They sent someone to fetch the crude bucket made from a hollowed-out log with a rope handle. "Let's tar up his mouth." Joseph wrenched his head away when they attempted to jam the tar paddle into his mouth. Someone tried to force a vial between his lips, but it __________ 11. Roberts, CHC 1:280-82; HC 1:261-65; Luke Johnson, "Autobiography of Luke Johnson," Latter-day Saints' Millennial Star 26:835; John Wycliff Rigdon, "The Life and Testimony of Sidney Rigdon," Karl Keller, ed., Dialogue 1, No. 4:24-25; and "History of Luke Johnson," Deseret News (Salt Lake City), vol. 8. See also HC 1:261-65 for an account of the tar and feathering. Additional information regarding Emma and also the role of Dr. Dennison comes from Luke Johnson. 12. Statement of John D. Barber, 21 March 1902, LDS Archives. Two Mormon missionaries met a Mr. Silas Raymond in Grand Rapids, Michigan, 24 March 1902, who "stated that his father was one of the leaders of the mob" and produced the tar bucket and lantern which had been handed down in his family. [transcriber's note: See entry for "Glenn Hyde Raymond" in Vol. 3, p. 1729 of Harriet T. Upton's 1902 History of the Western Reserve, where she reports: "Silas Raymond, [Sr.]... was expecially positive regarding the harmful workings of the Mormon doctrines, and always spoke with pride of his participation in the tarring and feathering of Joe Smith and his right-hand prophet, Rigdon, which occurred on the old Stevens farm. Mr. Raymond being one of those who furnished the tar pot... died at Hiram, November 11, 1881... his wife [Rebecca Pitkin Raymond]... March 9, 1878." GATHERING IN OHIO 43 shattered, breaking one of Joseph's teeth. They poured tar over his head, smeared it down his body, rolled him in an open feather tick, and then left him lying on the frozen ground. Joseph later said that "his spirit seemed to leave his body, and during the period of insensibility he consciously stood over his own body, feeling no pain, but seeing and hearing all that transpired." [13] Joseph clawed the tar from his nose and mouth until he could breathe better, then lay motionless until the vertigo diminished. In the distance he discerned two lights and stumbled toward them. In the house Elsa and John Johnson freed themselves from the bedroom. John was too late to help Joseph; Elsa calmed Emma and helped with the feverish babies. When Joseph appeared at the dimly lit doorway the tar looked like blood to Emma. Thinking he had been "torn to pieces," she fainted. Joseph called for a blanket, wrapped it around himself, and went inside. Throughout the night friends softened the tar with lard and scraped it from Joseph's battered body. The next morning Emma watched as he calmly delivered his usual Sunday sermon from the front steps of the Johnson home, the broken tooth adding a sibilant lisp to his words. Among the crowd gathered in the yard were several men who had raided the house the night before, including one who had supplied the mob with a barrel of whiskey to "raise their spirits." That afternoon Joseph baptized three people. Several of the mob would eventually be baptized. When Joseph visited Sidney Rigdon the next day he found him delirious and calling for his razor, threatening to kill his wife and Joseph. Rigdon did not regain his strength for some time, and there were those who believed that the blows he received on his head affected him for the rest of his life. The victim who suffered most, however, was not Joseph with his bruises and scratches, or the delirious Sidney Rigdon. It was the adopted baby, Joseph. Already weakened by a difficult case of measles and the accompanying high fever, the cold night air aggravated the child's condition. Through the next six days and nights Emma hovered over her baby with growing apprehension. On Friday, March 29, 1832, Emma realized her worst fears as she watched life ebb from his tiny body. She and Joseph buried the fourth of their first five children. Emma grieved alone for the dead child. Joseph had delayed his departure for church conference in Missouri and now, three days after the baby's death, he left with Newel K. Whitney and Sidney Rigdon. The Johnson home was still in turmoil over the violence of March 24; Joseph and Newel assured Emma that she should stay at the Whitney home while they were gone. Unfortunately, Newel neglected to tell his wife. When Emma arrived, Elizabeth Ann Whitney was ill in a bed at the back of the house. Her elderly Aunt Sarah answered the door and turned Emma away. Elizabeth's aunt had always lived with them, and she assumed by right of years that she had a say in the family affairs. While the Whitneys regarded Emma's and Joseph's presence in their home as the fulfillment of a vision, __________ 13. Inez A. Kennedy, Recollection of the Pioneers of Lee County, p. 98; [transcriber's note: the revelent excerpt reads: "...in March, 1832, the most violent persecution followed. Mr Smith was dragged from his bed, beaten into insensibility, tarred and feathered and left for dead. A strange part of this experience was, that his spirit seemed to leave his body, and that during the period of insensibility he consciously stood over his own body, feeling no pain, but seeing and hearing all that transpired. When, after returning to consciousness, he managed to drag himself back to his home, Mrs. Smith fainted at the sight..."] see also journal of Aroet L. Hale, p. 3 of small tablet titled "First Book or Journal of the life and Travels of Aroet L. Hale," LDS Archives. 44 MORMON ENIGMA: EMMA HALE SMITH Aunt Sarah looked with skepticism at all preachers and did not want Joseph to make her family the dupes of "priestcraft." When Elizabeth Ann learned what her aunt had done she was chagrined. "I would have shared the last morsel with either of them," she said. [14] Humiliated, Emma found another place to stay and said nothing for fear it would "injure feelings." She told Lucy thirteen years later, and even then she was not able to conceal her mortification. [15] Emma spent the summer of 1832 shuttling between the homes of Frederick G. Williams, Reynolds Cahoon, and the senior Smiths. Oblivious to Emma's circumstances, Joseph chided her in a letter: "Sister Whitney wrote a letter to her husband which was very Chearing and being unwell [myself] at that time and filled with much anxiety it would have been very Consoling to me to have received a few lines from you but as you did not take the trouble, I will try to be contented with my lot knowing that God is my friend in him I shall find Comfort." [16] But Lucy commented, "During Joseph's absence [Emma] was not idle for she labored faithfully for the interest of those with whom she staid cheering them by her lively and spirited conversation... her whole heart was in the work of the Lord and she felt no interest except for the church and the cause of truth. Whatever Her hands found to do she did with her might and did not aske the selfish question shall I be benefited any more than anyone else?... Her countenance always wore a happy expression of zeal and let her own privations be what they might." [17] What Emma may not have revealed until it became obvious was that she was pregnant again. When Martin Harris carried word to Missouri that the families in Kirtland were well, Joseph wrote to Emma that the news "greately Cheared our hearts and revived our Spirits we thank our heavenly Father for his Goodness unto all of you." [18] Hyrum's family was not so fortunate. Jerusha had followed Hyrum to Kirtland with the Colesville Saints. Late in May her daughter Mary, not yet three, became ill and her health steadily failed. She died in Hyrum's arms on May 29, 1832. Joseph wrote to Emma, "I was grieved to hear that Hiram had lost his little Child. I think we can in Some degree Simpathise with him but we all must be reconsiled to our lots and Say the will of the Son be done." Four years later, in January 1836, he would receive a comforting revelation for parents who lost children in death: "And I also beheld that all children who die before they arrive at the years of accountability, are saved in the celestial kingdom of heaven." [19] While in Missouri, Joseph called a meeting to discuss publishing efforts of the church. His revelations would appear in a Book of Commandments, supplementary scripture to the Book of Mormon and the Bible. He assigned W. W. Phelps to correct and print hymns that Emma had selected. After the meeting Joseph started home to Kirtland with Newel Whitney and Sidney Rigdon. Part way through Ohio the stagecoach horses bolted and Whitney leaped from the door. His leg caught in the wheel spokes and broke __________ 14. Elizabeth Ann Whitney, "A Leaf from an Autobiography," Woman's Exponent 7, No. 7:51. 15. Lucy Smith, Prelim. Ms. 16. JS to ES, 6 June 1832, original in Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Conn. 17. Lucy Smith, Prelim. Ms. 18. JS to ES, 6 June 1832. 19. Ibid. For the revelation, see HC 1:381. GATHERING IN OHIO 45 in several places. Rigdon went on ahead while Joseph remained with Newel in an inn and cared for him until the leg mended. At some time during their four-week stay Joseph became very sick and vomited so hard he dislocated his jaw. He believed he had been poisoned and that Newel healed him by laying hands on his head in the name of the Lord. Joseph would suspect poisoning again in his life, but this may have been food poisoning or the beginning of a chronic illness. On his return Joseph and Emma again lived briefly at the Johnson farm, but they needed a place of their own. Newel Whitney offered them three storage rooms above his store. This arrangement left Emma space enough to take in boarders and, except for infrequent intervals, she would earn money in this way for the remaining forty-seven years of her life.... (remainder of text not transcribed, due to copyright) Note 1: On page 42 Newell and Avery make a passing reference to "a flickering lantern" carried by one of the assailants of march 24, 1832. In the accompanying footnote, the authors explain that the lantern and a tar buncket used in the incident had been preserved by Silas Raymond, one of the tarring and feathering participants. Sials Raymond, Sr., the father of the Silas who preserved these two artifacts, made it known that he was one of the attackers of Smith and Rigdon that night. His self-confessed role in the 1832 episode is made all the more interesting, by the fact that he ws the brother-in-law of George W. Pitkin, a Hiram Mormon and an associate of Joseph Smith. The following is taken from Clara Seager McRae and Kara Seager-Segalla's on-line article, "Harriet Vilate Pitkin" -- "The Pitkin family left the east and traveled to Hiram, Portage County, Ohio... [where] George White Pitkin met and married his first wife, Amanda Eggleston.... George White [was] baptized... May 17, 1831, by the Prophet Joseph Smith.... His sisters, Abigail and Laura, also joined the Church and later became the wives of Heber C. Kimball. The rest of the Pitkin family was anti-Mormon, especially his brother-in-law, Silas Raymond, who had married his sister, Rebecca.... According to Church history some of the townspeople dragged Joseph Smith out in the night and tarred his month and body. Silas Raymond was among these townspeople and it was his tar bucket and paddle that was used. -- George White Pitkin was Sheriff of Portage County and was one of those who helped to clean the tar from the Prophet's body and to clean and dress his wounds. A few days later, George Pitkin hauled the Prophet and his party in his wagon a distance of seventy-five miles." Note 2: See also "Autobiography of Sister Laura L. Kimball," Deseret News Weekly, XV, No. 52 (November 28, 1866), p. 413, where Laura says she is the daughter of Paul Pitkin of Hiram, and that, "In the summer of '31, br. Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon removed their families from Kirtland to Hiram, Portage county, where [I] was then living. Persecution against the Saints was very strong and a mob led by some apostates tarred and feathered br. Joseph and Sidney, and left br. Joseph, as they supposed, dead upon the ground. They had flattered themselves that by that act they should destroy the faith of the church; but an acquaintance of mine told me she was disappointed, that it had increased the faith and union of that people. -- On the last day of April, 1832, I left my home in Portage county, Ohio, my brother George, his wife and my sister Abigail, together with a large company of Saints, and journeyed to Missouri..." Laura became a plural wife of Heber C. Kimball. Her half-brother George White Pitkin transported Joseph Smith to Warren after the tarring and feathering incident. Note 3: On page 45 Newell and Avery state that "On his return Joseph and Emma again lived briefly at the Johnson farm," but do not provide the relevant dates. Mark L. Staker, in his "Remembering Hiram, Ohio," (Ensign, Oct 2002, p. 32) says of Smith: "He returned in July and spent the summer working on the translation of the Bible. On 12 September 1832, exactly one year from the day they first arrived, the Smiths moved back to Kirtland." |
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Todd Compton
In Sacred Loneliness... Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1997 Title page Ch. 9 excerpt Transcriber's Comments Contents Copyright © 1997 by Signature Books All rights reserved; only limited, "fair use" excerpts are presented here. additional excerpts |
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In Sacred Loneliness _________ The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith T O D D C O M P T O N SIGNATURE BOOKS - SALT LAKE CITY |
Because of copyright law restrictions,
only limited "fair use" excerpts are presented here.
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[ 228 ]
According to a family history, Marinda Johnson first met Joseph Smith in early 1831 when she was fifteen. She and her sister Emily had been attending boarding school in a town near Hiram, Ohio, their home, and she had heard stories about this so-called prophet -- all of them disparaging -- and little imagined that anyone she knew might become associated with him. Then a letter arrived requesting the sisters' presence at home. When they reached the family farm, they found, to their chagrin, that their parents had invited none other than Joseph Smith himself to a cottage worship meeting in their house, and that they had converted to Mormonism. Marinda remembers that she felt only "indignation and shame" at her parents' belief in such a "ridiculous fake." She did not want to attend the meeting, but her parents prevailed upon her, and she agreed reluctantly. That night, as she walked into the meeting room, "The Prophet, raising his head, looked her full in the eye. With the greatest feeling of shame ever experienced, she felt her very soul laid bare before this man as she realized her thoughts concerning him. He smiled and her anger melted as snow before the sunshine. She knew he was what he claimed to be and never doubted him thereafter." So once again we see Smith's enormous psychic presence. Mary Rollins Lightner had almost precisely the same experience when she first met him: a feeling that he understood her every thought. Marinda Hyde was an extraordinarily important woman who lived in the maelstrom of nineteenth-century Mormon history in most of its important periods, Kirtland, Missouri, Nauvoo, and Utah. Two of her brothers were early Latter-day Saint apostles, though they eventually turned against Joseph Smith and Mormonism (one returned). She married Orson Hyde, soon another early apostle, who remained an important church figure until his death. So she had a first-hand view of church administration throughout most of her life. In addition, she was a polyandrous plural wife of Joseph Smith, a relationship that still has many MARINDA NANCY JOHNSON 229 puzzling aspects. She married Smith when Hyde was on a mission, and it is uncertain how much the apostle knew of the marriage. Antagonistic evidence is ambiguous on the subject and sympathetic witnesses are silent. Marinda left no known reference to the marriage, beyond signing an affidavit attesting that it happened. After Smith's death, she presents a classic case study of a plural wife. When Orson Hyde became a full-blown polygamist, Marinda, unlike some first wives, such as Vilate Kimball, did not reign supreme in her husband's emotional life, and she and Orson eventually divorced. Unfortunately, for such a complex, significant figure, not a single holograph from her pen survives, though Edward Tullidge's Women of Mormondom includes a brief interview with her and some letters written to her are extant. I. On the Johnson Farm Marinda Nancy Johnson was born on June 28, 1815, in Pomfret, Windsor County, Vermont, to John Johnson, a thirty-seven-year-old farmer from New Hampshire, and Alice (Elsa) Jacobs, thirty-four, a native of Massachusetts. John was known for his scrupulousness in paying debts and "living independently," according to family traditions. Maririda was the seventh of fifteen children. The first, Alice (Elsa), was born in Chesterfield, Cheshire, New Hampshire in 1800, and Robert was born there in 1802. The next seven Johnson children were born in Pomfret, Windsor, Vermont -- Fanny (1803), John Jr. (1805), Luke (1807), Olmstead G. (1809), Lyman Eugene (1811), Emily H. (1813), and Marinda. Marinda's religious upbringing was probably Methodist, for her father became a Methodist in approximately 1824.The Johnsons moved to Hiram, Portage County, Ohio, thirty miles southeast of Kirtland, in February 1818. There John farmed, reportedly, "on a large scale." More children were soon added to the Johnson family: Mary the same year, Justin Jacob in 1820, Edwin and Charlotte, twins, in 1821, Albert G. in 1823, and finally Joseph in 1827. II. "They Were Convinced and Baptized" In the winter of 1830 Ezra Booth, a Methodist minister friendly to the Johnsons, obtained a Book of Mormon and, wrote Marinda, "brought it to my father's house. They sat up all night reading it and were very much exercised over it." As often happened, the Book of Mormon made the first initial impact on the new investigator, if not the complete conversion. When the Johnsons heard that Joseph Smith had arrived in Kirtland, they and the Booth family traveled to meet him. "They were convinced and baptized before they returned," wrote Marinda. An important aspect of that conversion was a healing that became well known in Mormon tradition. According to Marinda's brother Luke, Elsa had been suffering from230 APOSTLE'S WIFE chronic rheumatism for two years and could not even raise her hand to her head. But "the prophet laid hands upon her, and she was healed immediately." Remarkably, a non-Mormon source gives an even fuller account. The Johnson were visiting at Joseph Smith's home when conversation turned to "supernatural gifts" in the apostolic church: Some one said, "Here is Mrs. Johnson with a lame arm; has God given any power to men now on the earth to cure her?" A few moments later, when the conversation had turned in another direction, Smith rose, and walking across the room, taking Mrs. Johnson by the hand, said in the most solemn and impressive manner: "Woman, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I command thee to be whole," and immediately left the room.It was at this point that Marinda was called home from school, reluctantly met Joseph Smith, and soon converted. Smith and Sidney Rigdon stayed at the large Johnson farmhouse as they preached in the Pomfret area, so Marinda became closely acquainted with the young prophet at this time. Soon other Johnson were converted. In February 1831 Lyman was baptized by Rigdon, and two months later, on April 31, Marinda was baptized at the age of fifteen. A week and a half after that, on May 10, Joseph Smith baptized Luke Johnson. Marinda later wrote, "The next fall [after her baptism] Joseph came with his family to live at my father's house. He was at that time translating the Bible, and Elder Rigdon was acting as scribe." Joseph Smith wrote, "On the 12th of September I removed with my family to the township of Hiram, and commenced living with John Johnson... from this time until the fore part of October I did little more than to prepare to recomence the translation of the bible." III. Night Mobbing When Joseph and Emma Smith had stayed with the Johnson for some seven months, they went to bed one night, on March 24, 1832, and fell into a peaceful sleep. Then, with no warning, a mob of some forty or fifty men broke into the Johnson house in search of the prophet. Marinda described the event:A mob, disguising themselves as black men, gathered and burst into his MARINDA NANCY JOHNSON 231 [Smith's] sleeping apartment one night, and dragged him from the bed where he was nursing a sick child. They also went to the house of Elder Rigdon, and took him out with Joseph into an orchard, where, after choking and beating them, they tarred and feathered them, and left them nearly dead. My father, at the first onset, started to the rescue, but was knocked down, and lay senseless for some time.According to Luke Johnson, Smith was stretched on a board, then "they tore off the few night clothes that he had on, for the purpose of emasculating him, and had Dr. Dennison there to perform the operation. But when the Dr. saw the prophet stripped and stretched on the plank, his heart failed him, and he refused to operate." The motivation for this mobbing has been debated. Clark Braden, a late, antagonistic, secondhand witness. alleged in a polemic public debate that Marinda's brother Eli led a mob against Smith because the prophet had been too intimate with Marinda. This tradition suggests that Smith may have married Marinda at this early time, and some circumstantial factors support such a possibility. The castration attempt might be taken as evidence that the mob felt that Joseph had committed a sexual impropriety; since the attempt is reported by Luke Johnson, there is no good reason to doubt it. Also, they had planned the operation in advance, as they brought along a doctor to perform it. The first revelations on polygamy had been received in 1831, by historian Danel Bachman's dating. Also, Joseph Smith did tend to marry women who had stayed at his house or in whose house he had stayed. Many other factors, however, argue against this theory. First, Marinda had no brother named Eli, which suggests that Braden's accusation, late as it is, is garbled and unreliable. In addition, two antagonistic accounts by Hayden and S. F. Whitney give an entirely different reason for the mobbing, with an entirely different leader, Simonds Ryder, an ex-Mormon, though the Johnson brothers are still participants. In these accounts the reason for the violence is economic: the Johnson boys were in the mob because of "the horrid fact that a plot was laid to take their property from them and place it under the control of Smith." The castration, in this scenario, may have only been a threat, meant to intimidate Smith and cause him to leave Hiram [where the Johnsons lived]. After describing the event, Marinda wrote only, "Here I feel like bearing my testimony that during the whole year that Joseph was an inmate of my father's house I never saw aught in his daily life or conversation to make me doubt his divine mission." While it is not impossible that Marinda became Smith's first plural wife in 1831, the evidence for such a marriage, resting chiefly on the late, unreliable Braden, is not compelling. Unless more credible evidence is found, it is best to proceed under the assumption 232 APOSTLE'S WIFE that Joseph and Marinda did not marry or have a relationship in 1831. [25] (remainder of page not transcribed, due to copyright) ABBREVIATIONS, BIBLIOGRAPHIES, AND REFERENCES 691
REFERENCES TO CHAPTER 9.
I. Birth date: Johnson Family Bible, which is also the source for other birth dates in this section, as cited by Myrtle Hyde, personal communication.... John Johnson: Luke Johnson, "History." Cook, RP 199. He was born on April 11, 1779 in Chesterfield, Cheshire, New Hampshire. Alice (Elsa): was born on April 17, 1781, in Dixglitou (Dighton), Bristol, Massachusetts. Elsa the younger: married Oliver Olney, an early Mormon who eventually left Mormonism and wrote an idiosyncratic anti-Mormon book, The Absurdities of Mormonism (Hancock Co., IL: [Oliver Olney], 1843). She died on July 16, 1841. There are some Oliver Olney papers at Yale. Oliver viewed himself as a prophet and headed a minor Mormon splinter group, see Steven Shields, Divergent Paths of the Restoration (Nauvoo, IL: New Nauvoo Neighbor, 1975), 227; Faulring 301. Interestingly, Olney's book deals with Nauvoo polygamy -- he regarded the Relief Society as a quasi-Masonic group developed by Joseph Smith to foster polygamy, p. 11. For another quasi-masonic view of Joseph's polygamy, see Bennett, HS220-25. There is no solid documentary evidence to substantiate these claims, though in Nauvoo there were always connections between Masonry, the temple endowment (sharing many elements with Masonry), and polygamy. Compare the Kinsman's degree in the Zina Young journal, June 5-9, 1844 (discussed in the Zina Huntington chapter). Also the Relief Society first met at the "Nauvoo Lodge Room" (RS Min., p. 1), the upper room of Joseph's "Red Brick Store," on March 17, 1842, only two days after Joseph had received the first degree of Masonry in the same place, see The Founding Minutes of Nauvoo Lodge, ed. Mervin Hogan (Des Moines, IA: Research Lodge No. 2, Feb. 1971), p. 12. Kenneth Godfrey, "Joseph Smith and the Masons," Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 64 (Spring 1971): 79-90; Launius, Red Brick Store 21; Robert Cole, Masonic Gleanings ([Chicago]: Kable Printing, 692 ABBREVIATIONS, BIBLIOGRAPHIES, AND REFERENCES 1956, 2nd ed.), 190-92. Bathsheba Smith, in Temple Lot Case 358-60, testified that when endowed, she was washed and anointed "for the purpose of initiating me in the secret society and order of endowments." Then she went to the "lodge room over Joseph's store" for the rest of the endowment in company with her husband, George A. Then (as she discusses the endowment) she states that she had "one or two degrees" of a "side degree" of Masonry, the Order of Rebecca, "in that lodge." However, her statement is somewhat confused. Finally, the Nauvoo charter was revoked in part because of charges that Joseph was inducting women into the lodge (Launius 21). Robert: was born on January 13, 1802 at Chesterfield, Cheshire, New Hampshire. Fanny: was born on March 3, 1803 and died in 1879. [transcriber's note: Fanny was born in Pomfret, Windsor Co., Vermont and on Jan. 21, 1822 she married Jason Ryder (1798-1897) in Hiram, Portage Co., Ohio. Jason was the brother of the Johnsons' next-door neighbor, Symonds Ryder. Fanny Johnson Ryder died on Nov. 17, 1879 at Hiram] John Jr.: was born on March 20, 1805, and married Eliza Ann Marcy in 1830, and in 1887. Luke: was born on November 3, 1807 (or 1808, FGS) and was baptized a Mormon in 1831. He married Susan Armilda Poteet in 1832/33 and had ten children with her. He fulfilled a number of missions and in 1834 joined Joseph Smith in Zion's Camp. He was ordained an apostle in 1835, only to be excommunicated from the church three years later. He was rebaptized in Nauvoo. Susan died in September 1846 and Luke married America Morgan Clark in 1847 at Council Bluffs. With America he had eight children. After arriving in Salt Lake in July 1847 he moved to Tooele County and served as a bishop there before his death in 1861 in Salt Lake City. See his "History"; BE 1:85-86; Quinn, MHOP 554-55; Cook, RP 110. Olmstead G.: was born on November 12 (or October 8), 1809, in Pomfret, and died on February 24, 1834. Lyman Eugene: was born on October 24, 1811, in Pomfret and married Sarah Long. After his baptism in 1831 he served missions, was a member of Zion's Camp in 1834, then was called to be an apostle in 1835. He was excommunicated in 1838 and was drowned in the Mississippi River on December 20, 1859, at Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. See BE 1:91-92; Quinn, MHOP 555; Cook, RP 111; Jessee 2:560. Emily H.: was born on August 30 (or 13), 1813, in Pomfret. She married Christopher Quinn, and died in 1855. move to Ohio: Cook, RP 199, compare Luke Johnson, "History." John Johnson, Methodist: Luke Johnson, "History." Mary: was born on May 24, 1818, and died in 1833. Justin Jacob: was born on November 13, 1820, and married Mary Ann Ivins in 1846. Edwin and Charlotte: were born on December 18, 1821. Albert G.: was born on February 6, 1823. Joseph: was born on December 26, 1827. II. Marinda on the Book of Mormon's arrival: Tullidge, WM 403-404. Booth would later apostatize and write early anti-Mormon newspaper letters, see Jessee 1:363-64. healing of Mrs. Johnson: Luke Johnson, "History"; Hayden, EH 250-51 [transcriber's note: see also Philo Dibble, in Early Scenes of Church History (1882) p. 79]. Lyman's baptism: Cook, RP 111. Marinda's baptism: WM 403-6 † ; AF. Luke's baptism: Luke Johnson, "History." family traditions of first meeting with Joseph: Stone, "Life," 1. "the next fall": WM 404 †. September 12: Jessee 1:363. III. Mobbing: WM 404 †. Compare Hill, JS 146; ME 42-43; HC 1:261-65; Van Wagoner, SR 108-18. For an extralegal castration of a man seen as sexually immoral, see HStj, Feb. 27, 1858, OMF 2:653. Luke quote: "History." Braden: Clark Braden and E. L. [Edmund Levi] Kelley, Public Discussion of the Issues between the Reorganized Church... and the Church of Christ, Disciples (St. Louis, MO: C. Braden, 1884), 202. Clark Braden was a member of the Church of Christ, the "Disciples." Compare ME 41. Simonds Ryder: Hayden, EH 221. The other account is by S. F. Whitney, Newell Whitney's brother, who said that the Johnson boys were angry because Joseph and Sidney were trying to convince the father to "let them have his property." "Several of Johnson's sons were of the party." Again this evidence is quite late, and the Johnson boys are nowhere else characterized as antagonistic to Joseph Smith at this time. "Statement of Rev. S.F. Whitney on Mormonism," Naked Truths About Mormonism, ed. Arthur B. Deming, 1 (Jan. 1888): 3-4, 4. Sidney Rigdon biographer Richard Van Wagoner, Sidney Rigdon 108-18, believes that Rigdon was the main focus of the mobbing, and Orson Hyde later charged Rigdon with trying to gain control of the Johnson farm. Compare Van Wagoner, MP 224 n. 4. Bachman's dating: See Fanny Alger chapter. "horrid fact": Hayden, EH 221. Marinda on Joseph's visit: WM 404 †. __________ † ...Her maiden name was Marinda M. Johnson, she being the daughter of John and Elsa Johnson... "In February of 1818," she says, "my father, in company with several families from the same place, emigrated to Hiram, Portage county, Ohio. In the winter of 1831, Ezra Booth, a Methodist minister, procured a copy of the Book of Mormon and brought it to my father's house. They sat up all night reading it, and were very much exercised over it. As soon as they heard that Joseph Smith had arrived in Kirtland, Mr. Booth and wife and my father and mother went immediately to see him. They were convinced and baptized before they returned. They invited the prophet and Elder Rigdon to accompany them home, which they did, and preached several times to crowded congregations, baptizing quite a number. I was baptized in April following. The next fall Joseph came with his family to live at my father’s house. He was at that time translating the Bible, and Elder Rigdon was acting as scribe. The following spring, a mob, disguising themselves as black men, gathered and burst into his sleeping apartment one night, and dragged him from the bed where he was nursing a sick child. They also went to the house of Elder Rigdon, and took him out with Joseph into an orchard, where, after choking and beating them, they tarred and feathered them, and left them nearly dead. My father, at the first onset, started to the rescue, but was knocked down, and lay senseless for some time. Here I feel like bearing my testimony that during the whole year that Joseph was an inmate of my father’s house I never saw aught in his daily life or conversation to make me doubt his divine mission." (Edward Tullige's 1877 Women of Mormondom, pp. 403-04). (remainder of text not transcribed, due to copyright) Notes: (forthcoming) |
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Blaine & Brent Yorgason Joseph Smith Tarred & Feathered (Orem: Grandin Books, 1994) |
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Copyright © 1994 Grandin Book Company. Only limited, "fair use" excerpts presented here.
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JOSEPH SMITH: TARRED & FEATHERED BLAINE AND BRENTON YORGASON GRANDIN BOOK COMPANY, OREM, UTAH |
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[ 49 ]
Chapter VII After midnight with the mob "Waste, get his chin! Get it... Get it..." "Now, d___ ye, Joe Smith, I've got a drink for ye. Ye'll lead no more good citizens of Hiram to hell with your flatterin' words and heathen doctrines." One of the ruffians then put his filthy hand down over my face, and I felt a vial of glass forced against my lips. With determination made strong by the power of God, I held my lips closed against the vile corruption they were trying to force into my mouth. Harder they tried, cursing and yelling as I gritted my teeth and twisted my head back and forth against them. And then somehow the odor of the fluid got past the man's hand and into my nostrils; and in a frenzy of fear I renewed my resistance. It was nitric acid, [1] and I knew that if I let even a single drop of it past my lips, it would do a great deal of damage. "D___, but he's a strong one," someone panted. "I can hardly hold him." __________ 1. McKiernan, 55; Johnson, 834. Roberts identifies the liquid as aqua-fortis, which is merely another name for nitric acid. According to Luke Johnson, Doctor Dennison had prepared this liquid for use by the mob. Later that night the vial was dropped in the brickyard where the mob had gone to clean up. There the liquid ran out and killed the grass. 50 JOSEPH SMITH: TARRED AND FEATHERED "You;" someone shouted at Carnot Mason, "hold his head tighter!" "Carnot, take a better grip on his hair!" "I can't, d___ ye. I've already pulled out two handfuls, [2] and I can't get a good grip." "Well, do something! I can't get this vial past his teeth." "Push it harder! No man can hold his teeth against --" A sudden sound of cracking glass whispered though the cursing mob, and for an instant all movement ceased. "What was that?" "Oh, h___, the mouth of the vial broke against his teeth!" [3] "Well, be careful, d___ ye. I don't want any of that on me." "Nor I! Give it up, man. That acid could get on all of us." "He's right! Get back, before --" "No!" the man with the acid cried with anger. "Dennison fixed this for me, and I'll force it into Smith's mouth if it's the last thing I ever do. Now, back off and give me room. I've almost --" "Warren," somebody called out, his voice filled with fear, "get at man with the acid away from us before we all get burned." "Yeah, get him out of here." There was a further chorus of agreement, a brief scuffle, and suddenly the man's hand was gone from my face; I found myself spitting out fragments of glass and broken tooth. "Now what?" someone panted. "Now I'll show ye!" another voice cried out. And then I felt the tremendous blow of a big man landing astride my body. Instantly I felt a fiery pain starting near my neck and tearing like ribbons of me down across my chest, stomach, and groin. __________ 2. Hancock, 73. According to Mosiah Hancock, the prophet Joseph showed his father, Levi Hancock, a patch of his hair that had been pulled out by the roots, leaving the scalp bare. 3. History, 1:263. YORGASON AND YORGASON 51 "G___ d___ ye," he seethed, "that's the way the Holy Ghost falls on folks! [4] Do ye like it, Joe? Do ye like feelin' what ye cause others to feel, good folks who were doin' fine until ye came along?" And then over and over, exactly as though he were a mad cat destroying its prey, the man raked my body with his sharp nails. Someone then dumped the bucket of tar down upon my head. [5] Others took the paddle and several sticks and smeared it about my body in a most abusive and shameful manner, and then I was thrown off the board and rolled in feather tick that someone had torn open. [6] And strangely, while all this was happening, my spirit seemed to leave my body; and for some time I stood above myself, feeling no pain, but seeing and hearing all that transpired. [7] Most of the black-faced men were scurrying here and there in the dark, trying to gather up what evidence of them remained. A few of them still beat upon my body with sticks and fists, but their efforts were futile. Already they had spent their fury, and I saw quite clearly how soon their satanic actions would turn to shame, heaped by themselves upon their own heads. I saw, too, their fear and suddenly realized that they feared me more than any other single thing. Or rather, though they did not understand it, they feared the power of God which was in me. "Hurry," someone gasped while I watched, "let's be done and get back to the brickyard [8] and get changed." "He's right," another agreed. "Someone's certain to come looking..." "Or Joe's liable to come to..." "I wouldn't want to be around when that happens!" __________ 4. Ibid. (History, 1:263). See also Johnson, 834-35. 5. Newell and Avery, 43. 6. History 1:265. These feathers came from one of Sidney Rigdon's pillows, stolen earlier. Joseph says that when one of the mob returned to Rigdon's to get another pillow, the women closed the door upon him and held him prisoner for some time. 7. Inez A. Kennedy, Recollection of the Pioneers of Lee County, 98. See also journal of Aroet L. Hale, 3 of small tablet titled "First Book or Journal of the Life and Travels of Aroet L. Hale," Church Historian's Office Archives. 8. Johnson, 835. 52 JOSEPH SMITH: TARRED AND FEATHERED "Me either! I wish..." "Hurry! I think I heard something:" "Good G___, men, let's get away from here! Hurry, before Joe wakes up." "Or they come after us." When at last I came to my senses, I was alone, naked, lying upon the frozen earth in Father Johnson's meadow. I attempted to rise, fell back in a swoon, and nearly gave up. [9] Moments later I ought of the tar about my nose and mouth and realized that I was not breathing very well. With my aching hand I pulled the tar away from my lips so that I could breathe more fully. [10] Then I again rested. The mob had beaten me even after the man had scratched me so terribly. While they were tarring me and rolling me in the feathers, the cowards had pounded and pummeled me with their fists so that my entire body ached like one great bruise. [11] Still, much as I felt like remaining where I was, I knew that I would freeze to death if I did. Accordingly I pulled myself to my feet. Off in the distance I saw two lights. I made my way toward one of them and soon found that it was Father Johnson's home. [12] Staggering to the door, I called out, giving no heed to the fact that I was naked. Emma opened the door, and when she saw the tar glistening in the darkness, she supposed it was blood and fell into swoon. [13] Behind her stood other brothers and sisters who had come from various houses in the neighborhood when they heard the noise of the mob. [14] "One of you, please throw me a blanket," I called to the hushed room of people. __________ 9. History, 1:263. 10. Ibid 11. Roberts, 281. 12. History, 1:263. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid. Joseph says that the sisters had collected, but there is much evidence that several men had also gathered. It is not known just who helped remove the tar from his body, except that Luke Johnson declares that his mother helped. YORGASON AND YORGASON 53 A blanket was quickly procured and tossed to me, and the door was shut against my nakedness. Carefully I wrapped it about myself. I directed that someone go out and find Brother Sidney and ascertain if, in fact, he were dead. Next, I looked around and saw that Emma was up and seemed to be doing better. Mother Johnson was comforting our two feverish babies. Father Johnson sat next to her, and I could see that he was in a great deal of pain. "What happened?" I asked him as a few of the brethren and sisters took lard and began to smear it over my body, preparing to remove the tar. [15] "It is nothing, Brother Joseph. Let us take care of you." "I am being well cared for," I assured him, doing my best to smile. "Joseph," Emma cried, "What have they done to you?" "I have had a little encounter with Satan's miserable hosts, my dear, but with the Lord's help I have come off the victor." "But your body is so torn and scratched. And look! they have broken your tooth." [16] "They have?" I asked. And for the first time I realized that one of my front teeth was broken and that the cold air was causing me quite a bit of pain. Later the pain diminished, but from then on I spoke with a peculiar whistle whenever I addressed the people. I gritted my teeth as someone carefully scraped the tar from one of the long scratches that had been administered to me. And then while more of it was being removed, I turned again to Father Johnson. "I see, my dear friend, that you are in pain. Has one of them wounded you as well?" __________ 15. Newell and Avery, 43. 16. Johnson, 835. The broken tooth is mentioned in many places, and caused a distinctive whistle that continued until Nauvoo, when Joseph had it repaired. in a letter to George F. Gibbs, declared that at the August 1844 conference in Nauvoo, when Brigham Young arose to speak, said "...and I heard the real and perfect voice of the Prophet, even to the whistle..." 54 JOSEPH SMITH: TARRED AND FEATHERED "Joseph," the elderly man declared weakly, "they locked me in my room. My own sons locked me in my room." "I know," I said, sensing his shame and aching for him. "I saw them." "They only left when I said to Mother that I was getting my gun. [17] Once out of the room I picked up a club and ran into the cornfield, where I came upon one of the party that had taken Brother Rigdon. I knocked him down and went after another, exclaiming, 'What are you doing here?' The mob then left Brother Rigdon and started after me. I turned and fled back through he cornfield." "That is correct," John Poorman declared from where he stood sear Father Johnson's side. "I, too, had gone into that cornfield, looking for the mobocrats. When Father Johnson and I came upon each other, we each thought the other was a foe. I struck Father Johnson quite heavily upon his shoulder; and when he fell vith a cry to the earth, I thought surely I had killed a man and came running back here to see what I should do." [18] "I was not dead," Father Johnson declared, "but I do feel certain that my shoulder is broken." "Can you bear it?" "Of course. When I see what they have done to you, Brother Joseph, then I feel to say --" "Dear brother, you need not suffer on my account. Brother David, place your hands upon his head and give him a blessing." I watched as David Whitmer gave Father Johnson a blessing and felt to rejoice when at its conclusion the elderly gentleman was immediately healed. [19] __________ 17. Ibid. (Benjamin F. Johnson). 18. History, 1:263-64. 19. Johnson, 835. YORGASON AND YORGASON 55 Sometime later I noticed that little Joseph seemed to be doing even more poorly than before. Upon inquiry I learned that after I had been dragged from the house, Emma had taken the two children and fled, fearing not only for her own safety but for the safety of the children as well. For some time she had hidden in the bitterly cold barn with no adequate clothing or blankets for the children. Julia seemed not to have been troubled, but little Joseph was racked with fits of coughing, and I feared for his health. [20] The rest of the night passed slowly, the only excitement coming when word came that Brother Rigdon was not dead. He had apparently regained consciousness and had wandered about for some time in a dazed condition, somehow eluding those I had sent out to find him and offer assistance. Finally he had happened to reel past his own home, where his wife was out watching for him. She gathered him in, did her best to clean the tar from his body, and finally got him into bed. [21] He was not at all well, however; apparently the mob had dragged him by his heels across the rough and frozen ground, severely injuring his head. The word that came to us was that he was delirious and was calling out over and over for a knife that he might do away with his wife and myself. [22] My heart ached when I heard of that, and I determined that in the morning, first off, I would venture out to see him. The next day, the Sabbath, passed without notice. I went to see Elder Rigdon, who was still out of his head. Then, although my flesh was all scarred and defaced, [23] I attended meeting and preached as usual, noting with interest that several members of the mob were in attendance, including Simonds Ryder and Felatiah Allen, __________ 20. Newell and Avery, 42. See also page 66, Chapter I, note 7, this volume. 21. Rigdon, 26. 22. Ibid. See also Roberts, 281-82. 23. History, 1:264 56 JOSEPH SMITH: TARRED AND FEATHERED who had provided the attackers with a barrel of whiskey to goad their actions. [24] I suppose they expected to hear that I would not speak that day, but to their chagrin and eternal shame I arose and spoke upon the first principles of the gospel, making no allusion to the events of the night before. [25] I will say, however, that if those men do not repent of the evil they did last night, then I fear greatly for their future. They will have no happiness in this life, and they will suffer greatly when it is done and they stand to be judged. [26] In the afternoon after I had seen to the needs of my poor, sick little boy, and after I had once again visited the home of Elder Rigdon, I went out and baptized three people into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. [27] Truly the Lord continued to bless his people. And just as truly, no matter how the hounds of Satan rage, am I blessed. For that, forever and ever will I give praise to my God. __________ 24. Ibid. (History, 1:264). Apparent reasons for the mobbing have been reduced to three: (1) objections to the economic order of the Church, the law of consecration and stewardship, which some thought would interfere with the private ownership of property of the new converts in Hiram; (2) desire to prevent Hiram from becoming a major Mormon center; and (3) resentment for breaking up family solidarity. 25. Ibid. Though Joseph didn't speak of the mobbing, apparently he allowed others to do so. 26. Johnson, 835. "Soon after this persecution, Mason had an attack of the spinal affection. Fullars, one of the mobocrats, died of the cholera in Cleveland. Dr. Dennison was sent to the penitentiary for ten years, and died before the term expired." What happened to any of the other attackers is unknown. 27. History, 1:264. |
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[ 57 ]
APPENDIX A Joseph Smith, History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1974), 1:261-265. (page not transcribed, due to copyright restrictions) 58 JOSEPH SMITH: TARRED AND FEATHERED (page not transcribed, due to copyright restrictions) YORGASON AND YORGASON 59 (page not transcribed, due to copyright restrictions) 60 JOSEPH SMITH: TARRED AND FEATHERED (page not transcribed, due to copyright restrictions) YORGASON AND YORGASON 61 (page not transcribed, due to copyright restrictions) |
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William D. Morain
The Sword of Laban Wash. DC: Am. Psychiatric Press, 1998 Title page Ch. 7 excerpt Transcriber's Comments Contents Copyright © 1998 by American Psychiatric Press. All rights reserved; only limited "fair use" excerpts are presented here. |
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The Sword of Laban: Joseph Smith, Jr. and the Dissociated Mind ==|============== William D. Morain, M.D. [ American ] [Psychiatric] [Press, Inc.] Washington, DC London, England |
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[167]
The Arrows
Something new has been introduced in this passage. Heretofore, in his own description of events, Joseph had alleged finding only the gold _________ 1. Doctrine and Covenants, Section 17, v. 1. Salt Lake City, Deseret News Company, 1880, p. 111. 168 The Sword of Laban plates, at least one pair of magic stones, and the breastplate in the box at Hill Cumorah, as cited in Chapter 4. His mother, in her recollection (2), however, and Joseph Knight, in his (3), both refer to Joseph, Jr.'s accounts to them of his setting aside the plates in search of "something else" of great value in the box. Oliver Cowdery recalled Joseph's perusal of the contents of the box for something that "would still add to his store of wealth" (4). A significant unanswered question remained in Chapter 4 concerning the identity of this unfound object in the box at Hill Cumorah -- the object of greater worth than the engraved record of the ancients and the magic translator-stones and the object toward which Joseph's greed was so great that his avarice caused forfeiture of the right to acquire the plates. That object of inestimable worth -- the sword of Laban -- is now placed by Joseph into his contemporary world for the first time. The central talisman of The Book of Mormon, the dissociated image of Nathan Smith's fearsome amputation knife, was for Joseph the ultimate power symbol. He would introduce the sword of Laban into the opening pages of The Book of Mormon, carry it through the chapters of the book to a climactic burial, resurrect it through the sexual symbolism of a treasure search, and, finally, brandish it triumphantly before witnesses. And nine years later, one of Joseph's armed band of defenders in Missouri would write to a fellow Mormon in a letter, "Come to Zion and fight for the religion of Jesus. Many a hoary head is engaged here, the Prophet goes out to the battle as in days of old. He has the sword that Nephi took from Laban. Is not this marvellous?" (5) By possessing this object himself in fantasy, Joseph gained the omnipotence and invincibility that it symbolized. Like a boy dreaming of his surgery, he now held the horrible scalpel and all the awesome power that had once confronted him. Regardless of the mechanism by which the witnessing took place (for the historical record is muddied with disparate recollections), Joseph was able to obtain the signatures of eleven men to two separate statements supporting his claim to the ancient treasures. The statements were published on the final two pages of The Book of Mormon. That Joseph himself wrote the statements is strongly suggested by his characteristic phrasing, the use of the imagery of blood on garments, and the fact that the text _________ 2. Smith LM: Biographical Sketches ofJoseph Smith the Prophet and His Progenitors for Many Generations. Liverpool, S. W. Richards, 1853 [reprinted New York, Arno Press, 1969], pp. 85-86. 3. Jessee DC: "Joseph Knight's Recollection of Early Mormon History." Brigham Young University Studies 17:29-39, 1976; see p. 31. 4. Cowdery O: Letters to W W. Phelps (1835). Cited in Quinn M: Early Mormonism and the Magic World View. Salt Lake City, Signature Books, 1987, p. 124. 5. "Brother Winchester" letter, November 19, 1838. Quoted in Brodie F: No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet, 2nd Edition. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1989, p. 237. The Arrows of Eros 169 agreed completely with his own accounts rather than those given later by at least one of the signatories. The first statement describes a mystical event, the second a sort of exhibition. But publishing The Book of Mormon was one thing; distributing it would be quite another. By making the book more means than end, Joseph may have used the book as a marketing tool to sell himself and not vice versa. As the text of The Book of Mormon presupposed a new religious movement, Joseph founded his church eleven days following publication, proclaiming himself a "Seer, a Translator, a Prophet, an Apostle of Jesus Christ, and Elder of the Church through the will of God the Father, and the grace of your Lord Jesus Christ" (6). The tiny cult of Smith family members and believing friends stirred angry passions among skeptical neighbors and townsfolk, who were only too familiar with the necromantic activities of The Book of Mormon's author. The first weeks and months of the tiny new church were precarious for the life and limb of the founders, even as abundant door-to-door sales and distribution of the book swelled the membership among those in towns and villages where Joseph's tainted reputation was not so appreciated. But soon the struggling group would be given a quantum boost in strength when the charismatic Campbellite preacher Sidney Rigdon professed his belief in the divinity of The Book of Mormon and brought his own Ohio followers into the fold. Joseph left New York State for Ohio in January 1831, together with his devoted band of sixty disciples, in the first westward leg of one of the most unusual institutional odysseys in the history of the United States. Since this phase of frontier history has been thoroughly chronicled by historians, it is not necessary here to detail the eventful economic and social interactions of this burgeoning society other than to allude to the brief narrative provided in Chapter 1. Suffice it to say that Joseph Smith, Jr. maintained, by dint of his personal resourcefulness and growing charisma, firm control of the dynamic organization despite recurring crises from within and without. Borrowing concepts of communal property sharing from his Campbellite associates, Joseph established islands of socialistic theocracy on the frontier, with himself as both spiritual and fiduciary leader, and with nearly every faithful adult male _________ 6. Doctrine and Covenants, Section 21, v 1, p. 130. 170 The Sword of Laban appointed to some form of priesthood office. Always financially undercapitalized, the rapidly growing organization coaxed away the personal assets of new converts in futile efforts to catch its inaccessible tail of collective indebtedness. From Kirtland, Ohio, to western Missouri and back to the Mississippi River at Nauvoo, Illinois, the group fled from creditors, political enemies, and social and religious detractors, all the while swelling in numbers and in fealty to its undaunted prophet. But Joseph's inner turmoil would be no less with him in triumph than in poverty. The torment in his mind continued to vent itself in ways that can be glimpsed at many notable intervals throughout the narrative. Although many are of no more than passing consequence, some of these nuances in behavior appear to have become entombed in lasting effigy within the structure, ritual, and tradition of the church he founded. One such important behavioral pattern may be introduced with an event known to nearly all Latter-day Saints. In March of 1832, Joseph and Emma were living near Kirtland, Ohio, with the Johnson family, one of whose members Joseph had apparenty healed of a lame arm. Emma had recently lost both of a set of twins in childbirth for the second successive natal tragedy the couple had had to bear. Shortly thereafter, when another set of twins was born in Kirtland to a mother who had died in the course of delivery, the infants were given to Joseph and Emma to raise. With both twins shortly contracting measles, Joseph was conducting a post-midnight vigil with the more ill of the two when a drunken mob smashed into the Johnson home, bent on tarring and feathering the Mormon prophet. One might well imagine that Joseph experienced more than a little sense of déjà vu on this occasion. Occupying the bedside of a suffering small boy should by itself have aroused some uncomfortable lingering memories. The unwelcome and unanticipated entry of an assault force of men at this moment must have evoked as much sheer terror as he had experienced during the original awful events of nineteen years before. Although an eyewitness account placed the number of attackers at "forty or fifty" (7), it is significant that Joseph, in his own recollection, described a more familiar number: "I found myself going out of the door, in the _________ 7. Johnson L: "History of Luke Johnson (by himself)." Millennial Star xxvi, 1865, pp. 834-836. The Arrows of Eros 171 hands of about a dozen men" (8), the same number burned into his mind from the earlier assault and indeed the number central to much of his life's ritual. Had there been two hundred on this occasion, one suspects he would still have imagined there were "about a dozen men." (A famous mural in Salt Lake City shows the twelve assailants of Joseph's own account.) What is known of Joseph's behavior on this occasion further suggests that the event represented something more than its face value to the prophet. One William Waste, widely regarded as "the strongest man on the Western Reserve," had boasted he could take Joseph out of the Johnson house by himself. Mormon accounts of the episode proudly describe Joseph's flattening of Waste with one kick in terms that suggest a tribute to the prophet's personal strength and virility (9, 10). Luke Johnson quotes Waste as saying later that Joseph was "the most powerful man he ever had hold of in his life" (11). Although such a statement is undoubtedly true, the strength displayed on that occasion must not be regarded as Joseph's customary power but rather as resulting from the severest kind of adrenaline rush. Waste and his comrades had found themselves facing a thrice-traumatized seven-year-old fending off a fourth mortal assault on his manhood. Joseph screamed for mercy as he was stretched out on a large board and stripped of his clothes. Nitric acid was forced into his mouth, and a tooth was chipped. He was scratched, beaten, taunted, and tarred and feathered. But these insults, painful and humiliating though they were, paled before the real threat. It seems that a physician was part of the mob. A Dr. Dennison had been persuaded to join the assault and to bring along his set of surgical instruments to perform the unthinkable act. The oaths shouted at Joseph while he was restrained on the board were prelude to the literal emasculation that was planned as the climax to the event. He saw the doctor approach with his surgical instruments in what must have been the single most terrifying moment of his adult life. On encountering the prostrate man, however, Dr. Dennison was unable or unwilling to proceed and withdrew, leaving Joseph's manhood physically intact. The prophet was merely beaten unconscious and deserted on the cold March ground (12, 13, 14). _________ 8. Smith J: History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Vol. I. Annotated by Roberts BH. Salt Lake City, Deseret Book Company, 1927, pp. 263. 9. Johnson L: "History of Luke Johnson (by himself)," pp. 834-836. 10. Young B: Journal of Discourses, Vol. 11. Liverpool, Albert Carington and others, 1864, p. 5. 11. Johnson L: "History of Luke Johnson (by himself)," p. 835. 12. Ibid., pp. 834-836. 13. Smith J: History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Vol. I, pp. 261-265. 14. Young B: Journal of Discourses, Vol. 11, 1864, p. 5. 172 The Sword of Laban Joseph's own description of his experience, as related through a friend, is most revealing: "...his [Joseph's] spirit seemed to leave his body, and during the period of insensibility he consciously stood over his own body, feeling no pain, but seeing and hearing all that transpired" (15). This statement is a textbook description of dissociation. Joseph retreats wholly into the split-off world of his mind, able to induce a self-hypnotic trance that separates him completely from the pain of reality. In Terr's words, "Dissociation is a mechanism that enables a person to quit a place where bad thoughts or events are happening" (16). Such experiences are seen very frequently as learned responses among victims of repetitive childhood trauma as protective reactions. Such individuals, Terr states, "tend to separate themselves from these attacks as they happen, creating spontaneous self-hypnosis and massive denial" (17). The parallels for Joseph between this adult event and the childhood trauma he experienced do not end with his dissociative self-hypnosis and the physical similarities of the two assaults. It seems that the mob's motive for selecting emasculation as the proper punishment had little to do with Joseph's religious views. Eli Johnson, an older brother in the host family, appears to have arranged for the surgical dismemberment because of his anger over Joseph's intimacies with his sixteen-year-old sister, Nancy Marinda Johnson. It is likely that Eli and his friends conveyed this fact to Joseph in the clearest of terms in the moments before Dr. Dennison's arrival. Joseph's screams for mercy must therefore be seen in the context in which he uttered them: not as the plaint of an innocent victim of religious persecution, but as the guilt-laden pleas of one who had engaged in forbidden sexuality and had been discovered -- precisely the predicament in fantasy under which he had faced the assault nearly two decades before. This time, Eli Johnson played the jealous, rivalrous father role, and Dr. Dennison stood in for the evil paternal accomplice, Dr. Nathan Smith; the rest of the mob played medical students -- the "Council of Surgeons." On emerging from unconsciousness, Joseph stumbled home to spend the rest of the night undergoing removal of the tar by his wife and her friends. As he was scheduled to preach the next _________ 15. Quoted in Kennedy IA: Recollections of the Pioneers of Lee County, Dixon, Illinois, 1893, p. 98. See also Newell LK, Avery VT: Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith. Garden City, NY, Doubleday & Co., 1984, p. 43. 16. Terr L: Unchained Memories: True Stories of Traumatic Memories, Lost and Found. New York, Basic Books, 1994 pp. 77-78. 17. Terr L: Too Scared to Cry: Psychic Trauma in Childhood. New York, Harper & Row, 1990, p. 299. The Arrows of Eros 173 morning, many of his assailants waited gleefully in the congregation. Joseph reportedly arrived on schedule and delivered a dignified sermon to the astonishment of those who had anticipated a different kind of spectacle. It is said that this so impressed a sizable number on this occasion that many were inspired to join ranks with this remarkable man. Knowing, however, of the childhood precursor to this particular event, one might wonder if the sermon wasn't more likely a benumbed, shame-inspired act of contrite redemption than a manifestation of the serene strength of an innocent martyr. The point was emphasized in Chapter 3 that repetition of a stressful stimulus is a powerful force in strengthening the development of abnormal mind functions. It is therefore likely that this violent event, so closely paralleling the circumstances of the nightmarish incident of Joseph's childhood, strongly reinforced the fantasies and dissociative forces still actively churning just outside of conscious memory from that already thrice-repeated event of fantasied dismemberment. Eroticism and the threat of violence would be yet more tightly fused in Joseph's mind. Nancy Marinda Johnson had indeed been an object of Joseph's passion. So, with little doubt, had others before her, and so would there be many, many more. The pattern of expression of this passion, so consistent, repetitive, and almost ritualistic from woman to woman, was sufficiently bizarre in the aggregate that it merits closest scrutiny. To understand the origin of this aberrant behavior would be to understand a root cause of much of the Mormon conflict on the American frontier. Indeed, if there is one feature of Mormon history that is popularly recognized as most distinctive, it is undoubtedly the practice of polygamy. The responsibility for the conception and introduction of this practice belongs squarely with Joseph Smith, Jr. The historical record on this point is clear and unambiguous. But to dismiss Joseph's sexual behavior as mere rakish promiscuity, as some Mormon detractors have done, is to miss the central feature of a complex structure of ego defenses built to deal with some very troublesome conflicts. The record of Joseph's adolescent and early adult years is understandably scanty concerning his private sexual behavior. Notes: (forthcoming) |
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Lloyd Alan Knowles
Appeal and Course of... Sidney Rigdon East Lansing: Michigan State Ph.D. dis., 2000 Title page Contents Ch. 12 excerpt Transcriber's Comments Contents Copyright © 2000 by Lloyd A. Knowles all rights reserved; only limited "fair use" excerpts are presented here. |
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THE APPEAL AND COURSE OF CHRISTIAN RESTORATIONISM ON THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY AMERICAN FRONTIER -- WITH A FOCUS ON SIDNEY RIGDON AS A CASE STUDY VOLUME 2 By Lloyd Alan Knowles A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of History Spring Semester 2000 |
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF FIGURES xix
INTRODUCTION: Restorationism -- The Concept
1. Elements of Restorationism In Church History 16
2. A Fertile Soil for Restorationism: The New American Republic 33
I. The Post-Revolutionary Era 34
II. The New Frontier 44
III. The Western Reserve 52
The Inception of Pristine Ecumenical Restorationism On The Frontier 59
I. Barton Stone and Holy Spirit Restorationism. 60
4. The Inception of Pristine Ecumenical Restorationism On The Frontier 77
II. Thomas Campbell and Minimalist Doctrinal Restorationism 77
5 Alexander Campbell and the Demarcation and Organization of Restorationism 99
6. Sidney Rigdon and The Attraction of Restorationism 121
7. Walter Scott and the Development of Evangelistic Restorationism 139
8. The Evolution To Isolated Sectarian Restorationism 165
9. The Birth of An Alternative Exclusivistic Restorationism 186
10. Sidney Rigdon and The Attraction of Authoritarian Restorationism 210
11. Quarrelsome Restorationism: Contentions Between The Two Movements 233
The Spaulding Controversy 249
12. Persecuting Restorationism: Violence Between The Two Movements 266
13. Disenchanted Restorationism - Disillusionment and Internal Dissensions 288
14. Dissipating Restorationism - Divisions and Subdivisions 323
I. Other Mormon Divisions and Subdivisions 338
II. Dissension and Division Within The Stone-Campbell Movement 340
[xviii]
15. Conclusion 357
I. An Evaluation of Rigdon 357
II. An Evaluation of Restorationism 362
ADDENDUM: On Alexander Campbell 379
BIBLIOGRAPHY 381
I. Background Readings 381
II. Readings on the Concept of Restorationism 385
III. Readings on The Stone-Campbell Movement 386
IV. Readings on Mormonism 389
V. Readings on Sidney Rigdon 392
VI. Other Works Cited 394
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Because of copyright law restrictions,
only limited "fair use" excerpts are presented here.
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Chapter 12 Persecuting Restorationism: Violence Between The Two Movements Quarrels over religious opinions are one thing, but threats to one's political, social, or material condition are quite another. Somehow the latter seem to pose a more personal, or at least a more immediate, menace to one's welfare, and he or she is more apt to respond forcefully to the perceived danger. As the Mormon influence grew, and as its rather radical message spread amongst ever-widening circles, a correspondent reaction paralleled its growth. When Mormonism was first introduced into the Western Reserve, many regarded it as a curiosity. Some scorned it as an amusement, while a few considered it to be a nuisance, a con, or even a heresy. But once established in the Kirtland area, Mormonism began to grow and be perceived as a threat to the established society and denominations. in 1831 church membership quadrupled. [1] By 1832, in some places, like Portage County for instance, "the Mormons seemed to be engulfing the Campbellites and other religious groups." [2] The incumbent Protestant denominations and the dominant Anglo-Saxon culture resisted various incursions into their "Righteous Empire," even though at the core ____________________ 1 Roger D. Launius. "The Latter Day Saints And The 'House of the Lord' At Kirtland, Ohio," The Lake County Historical Society Quarterly (Mentor, Ohio), Vol. XXI No. 4 December, 1979), p. 2. 2 H. F. Lupold, The Latch String is Out -- A Pioneer History of Lake County, Ohio (Mentor, Ohio: Lakeland Community College Press, 1974), p. 108. [ 267 ] of its democratic philosophical foundation "America was a pluralistic society.... Her charter did not permit religious monopolies, did not establish hosts to welcome (or shun) guests, did not license empires within the republic." [3] Without doubt many Mormons contributed to, rather than alleviated, the natural tensions produced by unknown or misunderstood newcomers invading someone else's territory. Some of the first missionary elders, in boldness and lack of tact, had a knack for stirring up beehives of resentment. Joel Johnson, for example, audaciously informed his Amherst, Ohio, audience that, since the Roman Catholic Church was widely regarded as the "Mother of Harlots," the Protestant denominations must be her daughters. [4] James Caroll, graciously invited by a Baptist preacher to preach in his pulpit, began his sermon with the terse remark, "You have a pretty meeting-house and good buildings and farms; but do you know that the 'Mormons' are coming here to posses the whole of them?" [5] And Joseph Smith himself when he was once asked, "Will everybody be damned but Mormons?" answered, "Yes, and a great portion of them, unless they repent and work righteousness." [6] Fears intensified whenever evidence would be produced that designs on personal property, for instance, were not just the ravings of a few maverick preachers but official Mormon policy instead. In 1832, when many of the Hiram Latter-day Saints traveled to Missouri to lay the foundation of the temple of Zion, they apparently left some papers ____________________ 3 Martin Marty, Righteous Empire: The Protestant Experience in America, p. 123. 4 Parkin, p. 158, quoting the personal journal of Joel Hills Johnson (June, 1831), a copy of which may be found in the Special Collections Library at Brigham Young University. 5 Ibid., p. 160, quoting The Journal of Discourses, IV, p. 306. 6 Joseph Smith, ed., The Elders Journal (Far West, MO.), Vol. I, No. 3 (July, 1838). p. 42. [ 268 ] behind "which revealed to [the townfolk] the horrid fact that a plot was laid to take their property from them and place it under the control of Joseph Smith the prophet." [7] Max Parkin, after citing numerous instances of such abrasive agitations, marveled and proclaimed, 'Perhaps, the real wonder is that the message of the Mormon elders continued to find interested hearers in [the] face of all of their problems." [8] Feelings were also injured whenever a prominent Disciple, Baptist, or Methodist was converted to Mormonism, but animosities increased whenever one of them would "apostacize" back out of the movement. Whitmer's history of the Latter-day Saints states, "There was much trouble and unbelief among those who call themselves disciples of Christ. Some apostacized and became enemies to the cause of God, and persecuted the Saints." [9] One of these was Simonds Ryder, a prominent Hiram Disciple who was "the most important accession that the Hiram Church has ever had," and "perhaps the most influential man in the township." [10] At first exposure, Ryder rejected Mormon Restorationism because he did not believe that the gifts of the Holy Spirit were legitimately manifested in the modern day. [11] But after reading about a devastating earthquake that hit Peking in China, and remembering that a young Mormon girl had predicted the event just six weeks earlier, he converted and became an ordained Mormon ____________________ 7 Hayden p. 221. 8 Parkin p. 162. See chapter VII in Parkin's "Conflict at Kirtland for a listing and analysis of the political and economic factors which contributed to the Mormon conflicts there. 9 Whitmer, p. 6. 10 Hinsdale, p. 17. For a brief background on Simonds Ryder see Richardson Vol. II, pp. 257-258. 11 Pancoast, p. 40. [ 269 ] elder in June of 1831. [12] However, Ryder quickly recanted his conversion after a special revelation to Joseph Smith erroneously spelled Ryder's name "Rider," because Ryder had the conviction that God would not misspell any name in a true revelation. [13] From that time forward Ryder became one of the Western Reserve's most avid persecutors of the Mormons. The conflict began verbally, with Ryder and Ezra Booth preaching and writing attacks upon the Saints. Rigdon finally challenged both to public debates, but Ryder declined and Booth didn't show up as scheduled. Inflammatory words led to militant action on a dark night in March (24th) of 1832. A mob of infuriated -- and apparently somewhat inebriated -- Disciples, Baptists, and Methodists, [14] allegedly led by Simonds Ryder, stormed the homes of Rigdon and Smith and pulled them outside. Rigdon's head was beating on the floor as they dragged him out of the house, and someone tried to throw nitric acid in his face, but missed as he turned his head. [15] Due to a concussion he lost consciousness. He was then stripped naked, tarred and feathered, and left on the ground. Smith, who had been babysitting with his twins, both sick with the measles, put up more of a fight then Rigdon. Dragged from his bed by the hair, clothes and limbs, Smith -- with Emma screaming in the background -- managed to free one leg and kick one of the ____________________ 12 See Hayden, p. 251; Joseph Smith's History of the Church. Vol. I, p. 158 (including the footnote); McKiernan, p. 52; and Van Wagoner, p. 109. 13 McKiernan. p. 52. See Joseph Smith, Doctrine And Covenants. Section 52:8c, for misspelling. 14 Ivan Barrett (Joseph Smith and the Restoration, 1973 - p. 205) numbers the mob at forty men, While Dean Hughes (The Mormon Church,: A Basic History, 1986 - p. 46) tallies it at fifty. Joseph Smith's History of the Church (Vol. I, p. 264) tells of a man "who gave the mob a barrel whiskey to raise their spirits," which Fawn Brodie (p. 119) and Van Wagoner (p. 115) then reiterate. M. R. Werner (p. 77) constitutes the mob as being from the Disciples, Baptists, and Methodists. 15 Van Wagoner, p. 115. Many sources tell of this event, but Van Wagoner gained access to the "Manuscript Minutes" of April 6, 1844, which gave more specific details of the occasion. [ 270 ] men in the face, sending him sprawling to the ground. This man, Warren Waste, reputed to be the strongest man in the Western Reserve, had previously bragged to his compatriots that he could handle Joseph Smith all by himself, and in a fury he got back up and, shouting "God damn ye, I'll fix ye," choked Smith into unconsciousness. [16] He soon revived, however, and as the mob dragged him past Rigdon, he thought Sidney was dead. Smith began to beg for his life, and someone in the mob responded, "God damn ye, call on yer God for help, we'll show ye no mercy." But after conferring together, the mob determined to tar and feather Joseph as well. When they attempted to push the tar paddle into Smith's mouth, Smith turned his head and again they shouted, "God damn ye, hold up yer head and let us giv ye some tar." Someone else tried to force a glass vial allegedly containing poison into his mouth, but the vial broke in his teeth. Another man clawed his naked body with his fingernails "like a mad cat" muttering while he did so, "God damn ye, that's the way the Holy Ghost falls on folks!" [17] Eli Johnson attempted to then have Smith castrated for supposed indiscretions with his sister, but the mob apparently lost its resolve when it beheld the pitiful condition of the two men. [18] The mob left both men lying on the ground-naked, bleeding, dazed, and in Rigdon's case, still unconscious. Smith arose, pulled the tar away from his lips so he could breathe better, and made his way to "Father Johnson's." "When I came to the door I was naked, and the tar made me look as if I were covered with blood," he reported, "and ____________________ 16 Joseph Smith, History of the Church. Vol. I, pp. 261-262; and Barrett, p. 205. 17 Ibid., p. 262-263. 18 Brodie, p. 119. [ 271 ] when my wife saw me she thought I was all crushed to pieces, and fainted." [19] His friends spent most of the night scraping and peeling the tar off his body, and the next morning being Sunday, incredibly he still preached to his congregation -- which that morning also included Simonds Ryder and other members of the mob! [20] Rigdon was not so durable. His son Wickliffe described the events that followed [errors not mine]: My father must have lain on the ground when the mob left him for some time. At last he got up in a dozed condition did not know where he was nor where to go but at last got his face turned toward his home more by accident than design and went realing along the road not knowing where he was and would have past his house but my mother was out the door watching for him and went out as he came along and got him in the house. She got the tar and feathers off from him as best she could and got him to bed. In the morning J. Smith came over to see him but he was crazy. He wanted him to get him his razor. J. Smith wanted to know what he wanted it for he said he wanted to kill his wife. J. Smith sooth him as best he could and left him. In a few days my father regained his mind. [21]Max Parkin has listed three factors as motivating the violent events of March 24, 1832: (1) the Mormon Law of Consecration, which some feared would interfere with private property rights; (2) the increase in Mormon converts in the Hiram area, leading to anxieties of becoming a major Mormon center, (3) resentment due to the conversion of family members. [22] But from the Mormon perspective the reason was simpler. Eva Pancoast has contended that "All Mormon accounts of this tarring and feathering, as well as of later persecutions, attempt to make the ground of attack the hostility to the ____________________ 19 Joseph Smith, History of the Church. Vol. I, p. 263. 20 Ibid., p. 264. 21 John Wickliffe Rigdon typescript, p. 9. See also Joseph Smith's description in his History of the Church. Vol. I, p. 265. 22 Parkin, p. 255. [ 272 ] Mormon’s religious beliefs, presenting them entirely in the light of outrages on liberty of opinions." [23] Reflecting back on the episode at Hiram four years later, as well as problems in the meantime, Sidney Rigdon charged that men like Simonds Ryder "as well as others, of the smaller animals of this species (I mean the Campbellites)...," were simply puppets "held in bondage, whose minds are too limited to exercise one independent thought for themselves, and only think as they are permitted by their masters." Portraying Disciple leaders as theological tyrants, he complained about their stooges: They are not at liberty to believe what the bible says, unless they first find it in the Evangelist or Harbinger, and then, and not till then dare they believe it, but if they find it in the Evangelist, or Harbinger, it matters not whether it is in the bible or whether it is not in it, of course, in their estimation it is true; because brother Campbell or brother Scott, has said it, that is enough: bible or no bible.A year later he attempted to identify the root of the Saints' persecution problems. As Pancoast has suggested, the cause was said to be intolerance. In an article entitled "Persecution," Rigdon wrote: There is no country, perhaps, in the world, which boasts more of its liberties, than our own;... and yet, wonderful to tell, after all our pretensions, a man is not at liberty to worship according to the dictates of his own conscience.Included in the article was his forecast of doom: ...millions and tens of millions of the human race will make their____________________ 23 Pancoast, p. 45. 24 Sidney Rigdon, "For The Messenger And Advocate" (a letter to "Br. O Cowdery"), The Messenger And Advocate. Vol. II, No. 7 (April, 1836), pp. 297-298. [ 273 ] bed in hell for persecuting and reviling men on account of their religion. [25]... (remainder of text not transcribed) Notes: (forthcoming) |
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Richard McClellan
"Sidney Rigdon's 1820 Ministry..." Dialogue - A Journal of Mormon Thought Volume 36, Number 4: Winter 2003 Introduction pp. 152-153 excerpt Transcriber's Comments Contents Copyright © 2003 by Dialogue Foundation All rights reserved; only limited, "fair use" excerpts are presented here. Full text available on-line |
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[Page 151]
Sidney Rigdon's 1820 Ministry:
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Richard L. Bushman
Joseph Smith... NYC: Alfred A. knopf, 2005 Title page Ch. 9 excerpt Ch. 10 excerpt Transcriber's Comments Contents Copyright © 2005 by Richard L. Bushman All rights reserved; only limited, "fair use" excerpts are presented here. |
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JOSEPH SMITH _______ ROUGH STONE ROLLING RICHARD LYMAN BUSHMAN with the assistance of JED WOODWORTH ALFRED A. KNOPF [ ] NEW YORK 2005 |
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NINE
JOSEPH SMITH to WILLIAM W. PHELPS, July 31, 1832 Bearing the Sheaf of Revelations, on November 20, 1831, Oliver Cowdery and John Whitmer left Kirtland for Independence, where William Phelps was setting up a press for printing the Book of Commandments. Joseph and Sidney returned to the translation of the Bible, until a revelation on December 1 sent them on a preaching tour to counteract Ezra Booth's letters in the Ohio Star Some readers considered Booth's letters devastating. [1] Sidney Rigdon replied to Booth in the Star and invited him to meet in public debate. Not until early 1832 did Joseph and Sidney feel they had allayed the "excited feelings." [2] Booth then dropped from sight. Only his letters, republished in Eber D. Howe's 1834 expose of Mormonism, remained to mark his trail across Joseph's life. Booth thought Joseph was "highly imperious and quite dictatorial." When criticized, he gave way to "violent passions, bordering on madness, rather than the meek and gentle spirit which the Gospel inculcates." [3] Booth thought God would never honor a man like Joseph with revelations. Unruffled, Joseph dismissed Booth's fumings as the outpourings of an evil heart. The letters, Joseph thought, "exposed his weakness, wickedness and folly rid left him a monument of his own shame." The criticisms were dismissed baseless. Booth's observation, however, was not entirely unjustified. Bitter and disillusioned though he was, Booth was right about Joseph's strong reactions. He lashed back at critics and could be a bulldog when contradicted. As his response to Booth showed, he brushed off the jibes of his enemies. "Their shame shall be made manifest," he would say of opponents, sure he was in the right. Incongruous as it seemed to Booth, that kind of strength may have been a requirement of Joseph's position. He had to be tough. A weaker, gentler soul could scarcely have survived the incessant hammering __________ 1 Whitmer, Book of John Whitmer, 102; D&C [1835], 90 (D&C, 71). Ambrose Palmer, a recent convert, said the letters gave Mormonism "such a coloring, or appearance of falsehood, that the public feeling was, that 'Mormonism' was overthrown." Quoted in Van Wagoner, Sidney Rigdon, 110. See also Rowley, "Ezra Booth Letters," 133-37. 2 Van Wagoner, Sidney Rigdon, 111; ManH A-1, in PJS, 1:370. 3 ManH A-1, in PJS, 1:364; MoU, 205, 202. 178 1832 he endured as head of the Church. By 1832, Joseph led an organization of a thousand members, with multiple problems, and huge projects under way, and he was just a twenty-six-year-old, learning on the job. Only by shrugging off criticism and maintaining rock-hard resolve could he keep going. Even then, strong as he was, the burdens of office were sometimes too much. [4] TAR AND FEATHERS In early 1832, opposition took a violent turn. On Saturday, March 24, Joseph was dragged from his bedroom in the dead of night. His attackers strangled him until he blacked out, tore off his shirt and drawers, beat and scratched him, and jammed a vial of poison against his teeth until it broke. After tarring and feathering his body, they left him for dead. Joseph limped back to the Johnsons' house and cried out for a blanket. Through the night, his friends scraped off the tar until his flesh was raw. [5]Accounts differ on how many men were involved. Joseph said about a dozen hauled him from the room where he was sleeping in a trundle bed with one of the twins. Someone tapped gently on the window, perhaps to see if anyone was awake, and then the men burst through the door. Outside there may have been fifty others. [6] About 150 yards from the house, Joseph saw Sidney Rigdon lying on the ground apparently dead, dragged there by his heels. Joseph said "one McClintic" clutched his hair and Felatiah Allen, Esq., gave the mob "whiskey to lift their spirits." Joseph heard calls of "Simonds, Simonds," presumably meaning Symonds Ryder, the former Mormon and custodian of a Campbellite congregation in Hiram. [7] The attack came as the culmination of a number of petty harassments over the preceding weeks. Booth's letters in the Ohio Star brought the opposition to the boiling point. Booth claimed that Joseph Smith was an insidious fraud. Behind Joseph's plans for Zion, Booth saw a plot to trap the unsuspecting "in an unguarded hour [as] they listen to its fatal insinuations. The plan is so ingeniously contrived, having for its aim one principal point, viz: the establishment of a society in Missouri, over which the contrivers of this delusive system, are to possess unlimited and despotic sway." Booth thought Joseph's doctrines were "designed to allure the credulous and the unsuspecting, into a state of unqualified vassalage." [8] Booth's friend Symonds Ryder shared the fears. Like Booth, Ryder had been a Mormon for only a few months before becoming disillusioned. Writing thirty years later, Ryder could remember only evil of the Mormons. Naive converts soon learned "the horrid fact that a plot was laid to take their property from them and place it under the disposal of Joseph Smith the prophet." Ryder wrote without embarrassment that __________ 4 D&C [1835], 90:2 (D&C, 71:7). Milton Backman estimates 600 members by the spring of 1831. Heavens Resound, Sr. William W. Phelps counted 810 members in Missouri in November 1832. E&MS, Nov 1832, [45]. 5 Joseph himself gives the best account of the attack in ManH A-1, in PJS, 2:374-78. The story has been given numerous retellings. Two of the best are Newell and Avery, Mormon Enigma, 41 -- 44, and Van Wagoner, Sidney Rigdon, 114-18. 6 A newspaper account said twenty-five or thirty men were involved. Geauga Gazette, Apr. 17, 1832. Luke Johnson estimated between forty and fifty. Latter-day Saints' Millennial Star, Dec. 31, 1864, 834. 7 ManH A-1, in PJS, 1:375,377-78. 8 Van Wagoner, Sidney Rigdon, 115; MoU, 178, 195. THE BURDEN OF ZION 179 some who had been the dupes of this deception, determined not to let it pass with impunity; and, accordingly, a company was formed of citizens from Shalersville, Garrettsville, and Hiram, in March, 1832, and proceeded to headquarters in |