ALTERNATIVE LESSON
I have prepared another lesson about the miracles of the Mormon migration, with an accompanying PowerPoint. That lesson is available at this link.
PREPARATION
Scrap of paper at
each place
6 pint jars with
the following amounts of M&Ms (or other small items) in them: 14, 117, 195, 197, 351, 410
Write names on
board: John Brown, James Brown, Hark Lay, Oscar Crosby, Green Flake
Note: The succession of Church leadership will be
address in Lesson #37: “We Thank Thee, O God, For a Prophet”
MOVING ON FROM TRAGEDY
When the Prophet Joseph Smith was killed, most of the
apostles were on missions to the eastern United States, including Parley P.
Pratt. The only two in Illinois were Willard Richards and John Taylor, both of whom
had been with Joseph and Hyrum at Carthage. Parley was the first to return,
having been “constrained by the Spirit” to head back to Nauvoo from New York
before he had planned to. While on a canal boat, enroute,
“…a strange and solemn awe
came over me, as if the powers of hell were let loose. I was so overwhelmed
with sorrow I could hardly speak. I was so over-whelmed with sorrow I could hardly speak; and after pacing the deck for some time in silence, I turned to my brother William and exclaimed—'Brother William, this is a dark hour; the powers of darkness seem to triumph, and the spirit of murder is abroad in the land, and it controls the hearts of the American people, and a vast majority of them sanction the killing of the innocent.' ……This was June 27th, 1844, in the
afternoon, and as near as I can judge, it was the same hour that the Carthage
mob were shedding the blood of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, and John Taylor, near
one thousand miles distant.”
All of the other members of the quorum reported feeling a
terrible sadness on that day. In Wisconsin, passengers boarded the boat Parley was on, gloating over
the news that Joseph and Hyrum had been killed. When Parley got off in Chicago,
he found a great hubbub as the press was issuing extras “announcing the triumph
of the murderous mob in killing the Smiths.”
“I felt so weighed down with
sorrow and the powers of darkness that it was painful for me to…speak to any
one, or even to try to eat or sleep. I really felt that if it had been my own
family who had died, and our beloved Prophet been spared alive, I could have borne
it…I had loved Joseph with a warmth of affection indescribable for about 14
years. I had associated with him in private and in public, in travels and at
home, in joy and sorrow, in honor and dishonor, in adversity of every kind…But
now he was gone to the invisible world, and we and the Church of the Saints
were left to mourn in sorrow and without the presence of our beloved founder
and Prophet.
“As I walked along over the
plains of Illinois, lonely and solitary, I reflected as follows: …in a day or
two I shall be there. How shall I meet the sorrowing widows and orphans? How
shall I meet the aged and widowed mother…? How shall I console and advise
25,000 people who will throng about me in tears, and in the absence of my
President and the older members of the now-presiding council, will ask counsel
at my hands? …When I could endure it no longer, I cried aloud, saying: O Lord!
In the name of Jesus Christ I pray Thee, show me what these things mean, and
what I shall say to Thy people? On a sudden the Spirit of God came upon me, and
filled my heart with joy and gladness indescribable, and while the spirit of
revelation glowed in my bosom with as visible a warmth and gladness as if it
were fire, the Spirit said unto me: ‘Lift up your head and rejoice; for behold!
It is well with my servants Joseph and Hyrum…Go and say unto my people in
Nauvoo, that they shall continue to pursue their daily duties and take care of
themselves, and make no movement in Church government to reorganize or alter
anything until the return of the remainder of the Quorum of the Twelve. But
exhort them that they continue to build the House of the Lord…’
“This information caused my
bosom to burn with joy and gladness and I was comforted above measure; all my
sorrow seemed in a moment to be lifted as a burden from my back.” (
Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt, p.
292-294) (A timeline of Parley's life with brief and interesting notes is available at
Jared Pratt Family Website.)
At a time of great trial, the commandment to Parley was
to “lift up your head and rejoice,” and the comforting presence of the Spirit
made it possible to obey that commandment. “Lift” is a verb, requiring action.
To lift your head would imply that you would be looking upward, towards heaven,
or seeing with an eternal perspective. It would also imply that you would be
looking forward at what to do next, rather than backward in regret. When you
lift up your head symbolically, rejoicing then will naturally follow.
WE ARE COMMANDED TO CHOOSE JOY
Candy Jars Guessing
Game: Ask class members to write on
their paper scraps how many times they think the words below are found in the
scriptures. Then tell them the jars of M&Ms correspond to each word. The
closest guess to each word count wins the jar with that number of
M&Ms. For extra insight into
latter-day church history, I have included in parentheses how many of those are
found in the D&C.
Sad/Sadness --13 (1 in D&C)
Sorrow--195 (8 in D&C*)
Weep--117 (9 in D&C**)
Glad/Gladness—197 (21 in D&C)
Joy—351 (34 in D&C)
Rejoice—410 (42 in D&C)
*Half of these refer to the wicked. The others counsel
saints regarding sorrow, promise no sorrow, or are prayers offered in behalf of
the sorrowing saints.
**One of these 9 refers to weeping for joy. 7 of them
refer to the wicked.
The message is clear: The gospel is a message of
gladness.
2 Nephi 2:25 – “Adam fell that
men might be, and men are that they might have joy.” Ours is a doctrine
of rejoicing.
D&C 133:42-44 – “O Lord, thou
shalt come down to make thy name known to thine adversaries, and all nations
shall tremble at thy presence— When thou doest terrible things, things they
look not for; Yea, when thou comest down, and the mountains flow down at thy
presence, thou shalt meet him who rejoiceth and worketh righteousness, who
remembereth thee in thy ways.” This scripture gives a definition of
saints caught up to meet Christ in the last days: They are 1) rejoicing, 2) working
righteousness, 3) remembering Christ and his ways.
D&C 112:4 – “Let thy heart be
of good cheer before my face; and thou shalt bear record of my name, not only
unto the Gentiles, but also unto the Jews; and thou shalt send forth my word
unto the ends of the earth.” This scripture implies that you must be of
good cheer to be a missionary.
D&C 107:22-24 – “Of the
Melchizedek Priesthood, three Presiding High Priests, chosen by the body,
appointed and ordained to that office, and upheld by the confidence, faith, and
prayer of the church, form a quorum of the Presidency of the Church. The twelve
traveling councilors are called to be the Twelve Apostles, or special witnesses
of the name of Christ in all the world—thus differing from other officers in
the church in the duties of their calling. And they form a quorum, equal in
authority and power to the three presidents previously mentioned.” This revelation told the saints that the Quorum of Twelve Apostles had all the authority needed to run the Church in Joseph's absence.
THE MISSISSIPPI PIONEERS
And so Brigham Young led the saints west. Although he
fully intended to make the trek in 1846, they actually began April 8, 1847, for
reasons noted below.
Brigham Young started out from Winter Quarters with 143 men, 3 women and 2 children, but he ended up in the Salt Lake Valley with more than that, and it has
to do with some amazing converts from a largely unproductive mission to the Southern States. This is their very little-known (although
well-documented) story and it’s very interesting to hear.
In 1843, John Brown, a convert from Tennessee who had gathered
to Nauvoo, was called on a mission to the South. Generally speaking, the South
was very infertile ground for missionary work, but in one place, he and the
other missionaries found a motherlode: Monroe County, Mississippi. 150-200
people were converted, most of them related to each other. John married one of them.
He was called back to Nauvoo
after the martyrdom to work on the Temple. When the 1846 exodus began, John was
sent back to Mississippi to gather the saints there into the fold and help them
cross the plains. He left for Mississippi (a 1,000-mile trip) in January in
snow and storm. He collected 43 people and 19 wagons and they left their homes
on April 8th. His father-in-law, William Crosby, led the train.
In Independence, they heard wild rumors about Mormons
committing atrocities on the Oregon Trail, so they assumed the saints had gone
west. They joined with a six-wagon party of Oregon Trailers at Independence and
picked up a few other Latter-day Saints and headed out across the plains to
meet
Brigham Young. They got to the
Platte River and there was no Brigham Young. They stopped for one day to think
it over, and decided he must have gone on and they pressed full speed ahead to
catch up. They suffered all kinds of difficulties, but made it nearly halfway
to the Great Basin before they found out that there were no Mormons ahead of
them on the trail
(Leonard J.
Arrington, “
Mississippi Mormons,”
Ensign,
June 1977; also Richard E. Bennett,
We’ll
Find the Place, p. 172-173).
Now, of course, Brigham Young had fully
intended to go west that year, 1846, in an advance wagon train, but the saints didn't want him to leave them; they tried to keep up with him, and by doing so, they slowed him
greatly. “Our president don’t stick [hesitate] at anything
that tends to advance the gathering of Israel, or promote the cause of Zion in
these last days,” wrote Thomas Bullock, clerk to the twelve. “He sleeps with one eye open and one foot out of bed, and
when anything is wanted, he is on hand and his counselors are all of one heart
with him in all things” (quoted in Richard
E. Bennett, We’ll Find the Place, p.
59). Brigham and the other leaders, Heber C. Kimball, etc., had a year’s supply
of food in their wagons, but it was quickly depleted since many others had not
taken that counsel in their zeal. In addition, the terribly muddy weather
slowed their travel unbelievably. The Mormon Battalion had been
called up for a year’s duty, and the use of the funds they would be paid for
their service would be very beneficial to the trek. So they had camped at Winter Quarters, with
groups of saints strung out in encampments all along the trail in Iowa.
So when John Brown and his company were beyond Chimney
Rock, they met John Richards (pronounce REE-shaw), a French trapper who told them
there were no Mormons on the trail ahead. They decided to winter on the trail
rather than go back. John Richards invited them to stay at Fort Pueblo,
Colorado with him. Fort Pueblo was occupied by 6-8 mountain men and their
Spanish and Indian wives. The Mormons built a little community of log homes
outside the church/school. With their Southern gentility, they hosted dances
there and invited the mountain men, but they didn’t forget to be missionaries:
When the mountain men arrived to dance with the fair Southern belles, they
found they had to listen to a gospel sermon first!
John Brown headed back east to meet with President Young and reached Winter Quarters in October. That same month, 154
Mormon Battalion members, discharged because of illness, arrived from the southwest to winter at Fort
Pueblo. Their captain was none other than another of the
missionaries who had converted many of the Mississippi saints, James Brown. They built 18
more cabins for the Battalion.
Arriving back at Winter Quarters, John Brown received word from Brigham Young not to bring the whole group that
year but to handpick a few men to join Brigham’s vanguard company which would
be traveling west that spring. So John headed south, in January again, where he picked 4 white men and 4 black slaves. Two
of the black men died along the way (Arrington). The two remaining were
brothers Oscar Crosby, 32, and Hark Lay, 22. They had different last names
because they had different masters. Oscar “belonged” to John’s father-in-law,
William Crosby, and had been converted through James Brown’s missionary efforts
(the Battalion Leader). William Crosby had shared the gospel with the Lays,
Hark’s masters (Margaret Blair Young and
Darius Aidan Gray, One More River to
Cross, p. 257).
At Winter Quarters, the two were joined by another black
slave, 19-year-old Green Flake, who was a friend of theirs, and had gone to
Nauvoo with his master, James Flake. Green had been baptized at the age of 16
by John Brown. “It may strike you as funny that a
Brown baptized a black named Green, but that’s how it was—colorful.” (Young/Gray,
p. 249)
Green Flake remained a faithful Latter-day Saint
all his life
At this point I need to interject that some of the early
saints felt that slave-owning was acceptable if the slaves (or what they euphemistically called
“colored servants”) were treated kindly, since there was counsel in the Bible
on how slaves and masters should treat each other. It was a confusing time in
the pre-Emancipation Proclamation United States in that respect. Utah was not a state, and was neither slave nor free.
Actually, it was quite remarkable for that time that the
missionaries even taught the gospel to some slaves, considering them children
of God. Sadly they generally were not considered as quite the same class, though, even after they joined the church.
For instance, while white saints were called by their last names (Sister
Smith), black saints were called by their first (Sister Jane), following the
manner of address given to slaves. Still, many Church members loved their
“servants” almost as dearly as family members.
When Green Flake’s
master left the south for Nauvoo upon his baptism, he offered freedom to all of
his slaves, but Green chose to remain with him as a slave, along with two of
his friends. Later in life, Green Flake became a (free) servant of Brigham Young’s (Young/Gray, p. 256).
Hark, true to his name, had a beautiful singing voice,
and he and Green would often sing together. The
Negro Spirituals floated across the plains, along with “Come, Come, Ye Saints?”
Hark would also dance a mean jig to the music of the fiddle playing in the evenings (Young/Gray).
The names of Green Flake, Hark Lay and Oscar Crosby are
immortalized as members of the first Mormon pioneer company on the Brigham
Young monument which was first displayed at the Chicago World’s Fair (
Wikipedia) and now
resides in downtown Salt Lake City, Utah at the intersection of Main and South
Temple Streets.
Brigham Young's wagon train left Winter
Quarters on April 8, 1847, and reached Fort Laramie on June 3. Seventeen of the Pueblo
saints had been there waiting and watching for them for 2 weeks and were ecstatic to recognize from a distance the apostles leading the wagon train. Apostle Amasa Lyman was sent to gather up the rest of the members still in Pueblo and
bring them to the Great Basin. The body of Mississippi saints arrived in Salt
Lake 5 days after Brigham Young’s vanguard group, but the three black men were in Brigham Young's party. The main group arrived in the Salt Lake Valley on July 22, and Brigham (since he was in the sick group that went a little slower) on July 24 (now celebrated as a state holiday,
Pioneer Day).
After helping plant and build and settle, John Brown and his
party headed back east on August 26 to get the rest of the Mississippi Saints,
traveling with Brigham Young as far as Winter Quarters. Once again, John Brown
arrived in Mississippi in the dead of winter--December this time--and
immediately made preparations to cross the plains for the fifth time in less
than two years. He and his converts left Mississippi on March 10, 1848. There were 13
families, including 56 white saints and 34 black. They arrived in Salt Lake
City in October, bringing the total population of the Valley to about 200 white
and 37 black Mississippi saints.
The first Mormon community in Utah outside of Salt Lake City was
settled by these saints. It was called Cottonwood and is presently called
Holladay after one of the Mississippians who was bishop there. In March of
1851, the Mississippi saints were sent to colonize Southern California with
Charles Rich. They founded the city of San Bernadino. Later, many of them
helped colonize Southern Utah and Arizona as well.
The Mississippi saints were classy, as well as being hard
workers. They raised the level of frontier society with their Southern drawl,
hospitality and etiquette. They were also excellent record keepers and even
recorded funny incidents. “One of the children at
the school in San Bernardino asked the teacher how to spell rat. The teacher
replied ‘R-A-T.’ The child said, ‘I don’t mean mousy rat. Anybody knows how to
spell that! What I mean is like in “do it rat now!”’”
Very likely the first black teacher of white children in
the United States was a Mormon, Alive Rowan, who taught in Riverside, California, and was
the daughter of two of the slaves who had come west with John Brown (
Arrington).
CHOOSING JOY
The road west was rough for the Mormon pioneers, no doubt. But “while many wept at the inexplicable tragedy of it all,
others chose deliberately to wear a happier face. ‘How can I go without you?’ inquired Irene
Hascall of her non-supportive parents in New England. “Or how can you stay
behind?...Do not worry anything about it, there will be some way. I suppose father would not like to travel
across the Rocky Mountains but I should think he might like it real well for he
can hunt all the way. I think probably [we] will cross the Rocky Mountains to a
healthier climate. What good times we will have journeying and pitching our
tents like the Israelites” (Bennett,
p. 23). Irene was a happy camper.
Helen Mar Whitney was buoyed by the beauties of nature as
she trekked. “This day the sky was cloudless and
beautiful, and I was happy…Our tent was pitched on a gentle slope, and below,
some distance away, was a crystal stream of water babbling over the rocks down
through a little grove of trees and willows, where I accompanied [my husband] Horace
the next day, Sunday, to fish, taking along our books to read. This was his favorite pastime, and in which
he indulged every opportunity. This was
the most delightful spot we had seen, the whole landscape around us was lovely,
they called it rolling prairie, and it had such a variety of hills and dales,
all dressed anew in their bright velvety robes of spring.
“The first morning I took an early stroll to enjoy the
scene, and I was almost enchanted as I stood there alone gazing at the glorious
sight as the sun was peeping over the hills—and to lend more to the scene of
enchantment here came a beautiful fawn and also an antelope, skipping
fearlessly over hill and dale and out of sight, with naught to disturb them nor
the peace and tranquility of my thoughts…” (Helen Mar Whitney, A Woman’s View,p. 363-364).
Once Irene Hascall arrived in the Salt Lake Valley, she
wrote to her parents again,
“This is our place of residence. It is in the midst of the rocky mountains
surrounded on every side by impassable mountains and just one passage in and
another on the west side which will not take much labor to stop an army of ten thousand. Now let the mobbers rage. The Lord has provided this place for us and
if we are faithful the trouble and calamities of the Gentile nation will not
harm.” [Truer words were never spoken, as the expulsion from Missouri completely
removed the saints, both black and white, from the one of the greatest hotbeds
of destruction in the Civil War. For a fascinating tangent, see
The Civil War in Missouri and Illinois.]
“When all is
past we will step forth from our hiding place…I wish you would come and stay
with us. You would if you could see the
future” (Bennett, p. 351).
Parley P. Pratt chose joy and the presence of the Spirit
at the martyrdom of Joseph Smith, when he was “weighed down as it were unto death.”
Hark Lee and Green Flake sang and danced their way across
the plains, though they were slaves.
Helen Mar Whitney chose to rejoice in nature, rather than
whine about sore feet.
We would do well to carry the optimism after tragedy that these saints possessed. Paraphrasing the words of Irene Hascall, “[We] would if [we] could see the future.”
