Doctrine and Covenants 136, part 2: Rescuing the Saints

Rescuing the Nauvoo Saints

We often hear of the rescue of the Martin and Willie Handcart Companies (in fact, that is the topic of next week's lesson) but seldom do we hear about the many other rescues among the pioneer companies both before and after that.

Long before the Saints left for the Great Basin, in the October 1839 conference, Brigham Young proposed to the saints that they promise to “stand by and assist each other to the utmost of our abilities in removing from [the state of Missouri], and that we will never desert the poor who are worthy…”  

This “Missouri Covenant” had been signed by 214 saints.  Now they made a similar covenant to help the Saints out of Jackson County, Missouri, which they kept.

In 1845, persecutions in Illinois became so great that President Young (president of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles) proposed a similar covenant, this one called "The Nauvoo Covenant," and it passed unanimously.  Their promise was to remove each other and all their brothers and sisters out of the reach of the exterminating order issued by Governor Boggs.  He then promised, “If you will be faithful to your covenant, I will now prophesy that the great God will shower down means upon this people, to accomplish it to the very letter.” 

Photo from Family Search

More than 11,000 members departed Nauvoo in small groups.  They crossed Iowa and camped along the Missouri River, over 300 miles from their former home.  Remaining in Nauvoo were hundreds who lacked the means to leave, either financially or physically.  Many were new arrivals who had expected Nauvoo to be the end of their journey.  Orville M. Allen was charged with heading up a rescue company to return to Nauvoo.   He took 20 wagons and a few men, collecting more provisions along the way as they could.

While Brother Allen was on his trek across Iowa, armed men entered Nauvoo and forced the remaining poor and sick men, women and children across the Mississippi River into the wilderness of Iowa.  Therefore when the rescue team arrived at these so-called “Poor Camps” (present-day Montrose) that October, they were astonished and overwhelmed by the need.  Poverty-stricken themselves, they found their brothers and sisters in dire circumstances.  How could they follow their commitment and rescue the 300 or more people they found, when they had used all they had to rescue so many others so recently?  They had done their best, and it was not nearly enough.  But the Lord honored these covenant-keeping men and, as Brigham Young had promised, He literally “showered down means to accomplish” the task.  Three days after the arrival of the rescue (the word after is key here—it was after they had kept their covenant, after they had done all they could) a miracle occurred.  All morning and into the afternoon, flocks of quail flew near the camps and simply flopped around on the ground.  They did not run or fly away, but just waited for the starving saints to pick them up in their hands.  Soon they had all the meat they could desire to eat. 

About 3:00 in the afternoon, the quail stopped coming.  Right then, Church trustees who had been working in Nauvoo to sell property arrived with shoes, clothing, molasses, salt pork, and salt as well as $100 they had received from non-Mormon citizens they had solicited up and down the Mississippi River. 

About 4:30, Captain Allen started the return trip, taking 157 people and 28 wagons.  (They used the wagons that had been in the Poor Camp as well as the ones he had brought.)  A second rescue team arrived at the end of October to bring the rest.  About 300 saints from the Poor Camps were rescued by their brothers.  (William G. Hartley, “How Shall I Gather?” Ensign, October 1997, p. 5-9)

The Rescue from Iowa

All of the saints had been rescued, but to what?  To the entirely inadequate camp they called Winter Quarters in Nebraska.  D&C 136 was received in the dead of winter with instructions on how to organize the trek.  The vanguard wagon trains headed for the Great Basin the following spring, but many, many saints were left behind, wondering how they would ever make the trip to Zion.

A committee was sent to Washington to seek government employment for financing the move to the west, headed by Jesse C. Little.  President James Polk finally agreed to enlist 500 Mormon men to march west and fight in the Mexican War.  They were to blaze trails along the way.  Each recruit would receive $42 for his uniform, which each of them immediately turned over to the church and marched in his own clothing.  Altogether, the Mormon Battalion brought over $50,000 to the church for their one-year enlistment; the equivalent in today’s U.S. dollars would be around $1.5 million.  (Leonard J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom, p. 21)

Another miracle occurred.  Mormon Battalion members, having completed their enlistment, traveled north from San Diego to northern California where a group of L.D.S. members were now living and prospering. In fact, at the end of 1846, most of the white settlers in California were Mormon. How did they get west ahead of the rest of the saints?  Coincidentally on the very same day the Nauvoo saints had crossed the Missouri River, these impoverished saints had set sail from New York Harbor on the chartered Ship Brooklyn, sailed nearly to Africa before they found winds to carry them around Cape Horn, back up to Chile and nearly out to Hawaii, before finally blowing back to a northern California settlement.  It was an experiment in a cheaper way to get west than overland travel, but the trip was fearsome and treacherous and was not attempted again.  The town of Yerba Buena swelled to a small city with their arrival.  Today it is called San Francisco.  (Joan S. Hamblin, "Voyage of 'The Brooklyn'," Ensign, July 1997) 

About 80 members of the Mormon Battalion found work there while waiting for Brigham Young to come west.  Some worked at Sutter’s Mill.  The rest is history:  The California Gold Rush of 1949!  In fact, it was a Mormon, Sam Brannan, who published the news of the gold discovery to the rest of the U.S. in his newspaper, The California Star, as a 2-inch filler on an inside page.  Mormon Battalion members were hired as express riders to deliver the paper to the major cities back east, hoping to promote growth.  (Church video, "A Legacy More Precious Than Gold".)  The Mormons just wanted to get back to their families and were waiting for Brigham Young’s call, but in the meantime, they discovered the fabulous “Mormon Island,” the richest find of the gold rush.  (California Pioneer) 

The Salt Lake economy swelled as prospectors passed through, and the Brooklyn saints got rich in San Francisco, both from gold and from the booming economy.  Alondus D. Buckland built a hotel called “The Buckland House” on the corner of Kearny and Pacific in San Francisco.  When President Young called the Brooklyn Saints back to Salt Lake City, a corner lot was worth $10,000.  Alondus left California with Thomas Rhoads’ company, later nicknamed “The Gold Train,” bringing altogether $30,000-40,000 in gold with them.  (Okay, have to brag:  Alondus is my ancestor and I’m proud of him.)  Over $80,000 came into the church’s accounts between 1848 and 1851 from the California Saints.  (Stewart R Wyatt, “The Life and Times of Alondus de Lafayette Buckland, p. 24-29.  His source on the dollar amount is J. Kenneth Davies, Mormon Gold: The Story of California’s Mormon Argonauts, p. xv.) 

Another great miracle occurred.  The pioneers had now been in Salt Lake City a couple of years, were running out of supplies and their tools were wearing out.  Salt Lake City Fourth Ward Bishop Benjamin Brown published the story of this miracle:

“There we were, completely shut out from the world…the first shop was a thousand miles off…

“Information of the great discovery of gold in California had reached the States, and large companies were formed for the purpose of supplying the gold diggers with food and clothing and implements of every kind for digging, etc…In fact, these persons procured just the things they would have done, had they been forming companies purposely for relieving the Saints, and had they determined to do it as handsomely as unlimited wealth would allow.

“When these companies, after crossing the plains, arrived within a short distance of Salt Lake City, news reached them that ships had been dispatched from many parts of the world, fitted out with goods for California.  This threatened to flood the market.  The companies feared that the sale of their goods would not repay the expense of conveyance.  Here was a ‘fix’—the companies were too far from the States to take their goods back, and they would not pay to carry them through, and when to this was added the fact, that the companies were half crazy to leave trading, and turn gold diggers themselves, it will easily be seen how naturally the difficulty solved itself into the decision which they actually came to—‘Oh here are these Mormons, let us sell the goods to them.’  Accordingly they brought them into the Valley, and disposed of them…at least at half the price for which the goods could have been purchased in the states.”  (Arrington, p. 67)

In addition, the trail from Fort Laramie, Wyoming to Salt Lake City was littered with abandoned items, which Mormon teams collected for nothing.  Howard Standsbury reported collecting:

• 11 broken wagons
• bar-iron and steel
• large blacksmiths’ anvils and bellows
• crowbars
• drills
• augers
• gold-washers
• chisels
• axes
• lead
• trunks
• spades
• ploughs
• large grindstones
• baking-ovens
• cooking-stoves “without number”
• kegs
• barrels
• harness
• clothing
• bacon
• beans

These, he said, “were found along the road in pretty much the order in which they have been here enumerated…In the course of this one day [July 27, 1849] the relics of 17 wagons and the carcasses of 27 dead oxen have been seen.”  (Arrington, p. 70)

The needs of the 49er’s traveling through Salt Lake greatly inflated the prices of goods the Mormons could offer them, as well.

The infusion of money to the church economy allowed the First Presidency to implement a wonderful new plan:  The Perpetual Emigration Fund.  Once again, it was October Conference 1849, when this new rescue plan was approved as the leaders asked, “Shall we fulfill the covenant, or shall we not?”  The announcement was issued by the First Presidency on October 12^th, 1849:  “Ye poor and meek of the earth, lift up your heads and rejoice in the Holy One of Israel, for your redemption draweth nigh…but in your rejoicings be patient, for though your turn to emigrate may not be the first year, or even the second, it will come, and its tarrying will be short, if all the Saints who have, will be as liberal as those in the valley.”

The first PEF wagon train was organized in 1850.  The first year’s funds of $5,000 were taken to Iowa, and used to purchase livestock for the journey back to Salt Lake City.  The livestock was then sold, and that money was taken back to Iowa and the process repeated.  After just one year of operation, the PEF had nearly $20,000.

In 1852, 10,000 saints came to Utah from the Missouri River area, and “all the exiles from Nauvoo who wished to come had been removed to Zion,” and “the obligations of the Nauvoo pledge of 1846 had been faithfully discharged.”  (Hartley, p. 9-10)

Why so hard?

It was less than 20 years later that the transcontinental railroad was completed, making overland travel so much easier.  Why did the Lord not inspire and implement the faster and easier transportation of trains at the time of the Mormon Exodus, when it was so desperately needed?

The Lord was not simply interested in getting the pioneers out west.  He was interested in making saints of the pioneers.  The difficult process of gathering to Zion provided a refining process.  Not all made the cut:  Scattered along the Mormon Trail are not only the graves of those who died getting to the earthly Zion, but many casualties of spiritual infirmities.  Some saints gave up and stayed behind or turned back along the way.  Those who pushed through the challenges of conversion, persecution and migration could weather any storm.  Part of this refining process was brought about by the great effort required of the saints to rescue each other and bring all to Zion while in poverty themselves.

The Rescue Today

It is not enough for us today to be converted ourselves, or to reach financial prosperity ourselves.  After his terrible ordeal on the Brooklyn, his building role in San Francisco, his gathering with the saints in Salt Lake City, and his contributions to the Church funds, Alondus Buckland returned overland with a great deal of his money, fulfilled a mission in the east, and then returned as captain of a wagon train of 200 people, including his friends, converts and family members who had not been able to afford passage on the Brooklyn, financing much of their supplies himself.  On the return journey, he died of cholera and was wrapped in a sheet and buried in a trunk as a makeshift coffin.  He gave his all for the cause of Zion, leaving a great example for us.  (Wyatt, p. 34-37)

Alondus deLafayette Buckland

Even in our weaknesses, even in our poverty, we must turn around and rescue our brothers.  We cannot sit in our church and ignore the spiritually or physically needy.  We may not  know how their rescue will be accomplished, but if we heed the call and start along the trail, the Lord will “shower down blessings from heaven” and means will appear.  All we must do is our wholly inadequate best.

(At this point, you may be able to tell that I'm a little bit of a pioneer nerd...and I still have more to post...)

Doctrine and Covenants 136, Part 1: Black Saints; Choosing Joy in Hard Times

 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; 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 27^th, 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:  Prepare small jars with the following numbers of candies such as M&Ms in them: 13, 195, 117, 197, 351, 410. Write the words below on the chalkboard (without the corresponding numbers). Ask class members to write on their paper scraps how many times they think each word is 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.

 Picture from Orson Pratt Brown Family website

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 8^th. 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 rest of the converts still in Mississippi west that year. Instead he was to handpick a few strong 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 men who were enslaved to them. 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. Note: I highly recommend this trilogy of books about early Black Latter-day Saints: Standing on the Promises.. Darius Gray is a past president of the Church's Genesis group for Black members, started in 1973 before the removal of the priesthood ban.)

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. Slavery had been an institution in every civilization since the beginning of the world. 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 Black slaves (with the permission of their masters); it was remarkable that they considered 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 and servants. 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), then was installed in downtown Salt Lake City, Utah at the intersection of Main and South Temple Streets, and now sits at the entrance to This Is The Place State Park.

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). Black men were actually in Salt Lake Valley before President Young.

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, Alice Rowan Johnson, who taught in Riverside, California, and was the daughter of two of the enslaved people 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.”

Doctrine and Covenants 135

PARALLELS IN THE LIVES OF JESUS CHRIST AND JOSEPH SMITH

I suggest you read the list below without the title and ask your class who is being described.  If you want more participation, print out and cut up the items and pass them among class members to read aloud.

• He was foreordained and his mission was prophecied of thousands of years before his birth. 
• He was born of goodly parents and raised in a righteous home.
• He was born into poverty and stayed poor all of his life.
• He had many siblings.
• As a young teen, his spiritual vision confounded and surpassed that of religious leaders of the day.
• He traveled through the country preaching the new truths of the gospel.
• He depended upon others for room and board.
• He trained twelve apostles to help in the ministry.
• His actions directly affected our salvation
• He called those who followed him "brothers" and "friends."
• He treated children, women, and minorities with unusual kindness (for the culture in which he lived).
• He revolutionized religion and by so doing alienated himself from religious leaders.
• He was subject to temptation but was not overcome.
• He was never allowed much privacy because of his fame.
• He performed many miracles: healing the sick, giving sight to the blind, casting out devils.
• He was visited by angels.
• He was betrayed by friends.
• He was tried illegally and unjustly, convicted of crimes he did not commit.
• He prophesied of his own death repeatedly, yet it was still a shock to his followers.
• He went of his own free will to his death.
• He was comforted by friends and the singing of hymns in his last hours.
• He was martyred in the prime of his life, leaving his widowed mother to the care of others.
• The church was in turmoil at his death.
• At the time of his death, his vision for the church was only in its infancy.
• After his death, he appeared to church leaders to give them added counsel and direction.
• No one who met him had a neutral opinion of him: they either loved him or despised him, or sometimes they did both--one after the other.
• Some who testified passionately of his divine calling later denied the testimony.
• He forgave even those who turned against him or persecuted him even unto death.

EYE-WITNESS DESCRIPTIONS OF JOSEPH SMITH

Parley P. Pratt described Joseph Smith thus:

"President Joseph Smith was in person tall and well built, strong and active, of light complexion, light hair, blue eyes, very little beard, and of an expression peculiar to himself, on which the eye naturally rested with interest, and was never weary of beholding.  His countenance was ever mild, affable, beaming with intelligence and benevolence; mingled with a look of interest and an unconscious smile, or cheerfulness, and entirely free from all restraint or affectation of gravity; and there was something connected with this serene and steady penetrating glance of his eye, as if he would penetrate the deepest abyss of the human heart, gaze into eternity, penetrate the heavens, and comprehend all worlds.

"He possessed a noble boldness and independence of character; his manner was easy and familiar; his rebuke terrible as the lion; his benevolence unbounded as the ocean; his intelligence universal, and his language abounding in original eloquence peculiar to himself--not polished--not studied--not smoothed and softened by education and refined by art; but flowing forth in its own native simplicity, and profusely abounding in variety of subject and manner.  He interested and edified, while, at the same time, he amused and entertained his audience; and none listened to him that were ever weary with his discourse.  I have even known him to retain a congregation of willing and anxious listeners for many hours together, in the midst of cold or sunshine, rain or wind, while they were laughing at one moment and weeping the next.  Even his most bitter enemies were generally overcome, if he could once get their ears" (Parley P. Pratt, Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt, p. 31-32).

A former mayor of Boston, Josiah Quincy, who visited Joseph Smith just a few months before Joseph was killed wrote:

"It is by no means improbable that some future textbook for the use of generations yet unborn will contain a question like this: What historical American of the nineteenth century has exerted the most powerful influence upon the destinies of his countrymen?  And it is by no means impossible that the answer to that interrogatory may be thus written:  Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet.  And the reply, as absurd as it doubtless seems to most men now living, may be an obvious commonplace to their descendants...Fanatic, imposter, charlatan, he may have been; but these hard names furnish no solution to the problem he presents to us.

"Born in the lowest ranks of poverty, without book-learning, and with the homeliest of all human names, he had made himself at the age of 39 a power upon earth, His influence, whether for good or for evil, is potent today, and the end is not yet.  If the reader does not known just what to make of Joseph Smith, I cannot help him out of the difficulty.  I myself stand helpless before the puzzle"  (B.H. Roberts, A Comprehensive History of the Church, 2:349-50, also quoted in Kelly, Latter-day History..., p. 271).

A correspondent to the New York Herald stopped by Nauvoo, a place he called the nucleus of a Western Empire, and wrote the following description of the prophet:

"Joseph Smith, the president of the Church, prophet, seer and revelator, is 36 years of age, six feet high in [heels], weighing 212 pounds.  He is a man of the highest order of talent and great independence of character--firm in integrity, and devoted to his religion; in fact, he is a per-se, as President Tyler would say.  As a public speaker he is bold, powerful and convincing...as a leader, wise and prudent, yet fearless as a military commander; brave and determined as a citizen, worthy, affable and kind; bland in his manners, and of noble bearing.  His amiable lady, too, the electa cyria, is a woman of superior intellect and exemplary piety--in every respect suited to her situation in society, as the wife of one of the most accomplished and powerful chiefs of the age.

"Hyrum Smith, the patriarch of the Church and brother of Joseph, is 42 years of age, five feet, eleven and a half inches high, weighing 193 pounds.  He, too, is a prophet, seer and revelator, and is one of the most pious and devout Christians in the world.  He is a man of great wisdom and superior excellence, possessing great energy of character and originality of thought"  (Holzapfel, A Woman's View: Helen Mary Whitney's Reminiscences of Early Church History, p. 147-148).

There is an excellent church video that coordinates with this lesson that could be played at this point:  "Joseph Smith: The Prophet of the Restoration" from the video collection "Teachings from the Doctrine and Covenants and Church History."  (This is not the hour-long movie the church made, but a 13-minute clip.  Please see Lanise's comment at the end of this post for directions on downloading it from the Church's website. Thanks, Lanise!)

DISCUSSION

What impresses you the most about Joseph Smith?

THE PROPHET'S HYMN

In conclusion, you may want to sing, or have performed, the hymn "Praise to the Man."  The lyricist of this hymn was William W. Phelps.  Brother Phelps had been a stalwart member of the church, helping to print The Book of Commandments, The Doctrine and Covenants, and the first hymnbook, contributing $500 to the building of the Kirtland Temple, and writing "The Spirit of God" for its dedication, but when questions arose regarding his mismanagement of the purchase of lands in Missouri for the Saints, he was excommunicated.  For two years, he was one of the Prophet's bitterest enemies, inflicting great harm upon the church and contributing substantially to a sentence to prison.  But Brother Phelps fast realized his error and sought forgiveness in a letter to Joseph Smith.  President Smith read the letter to the congregation of the church and then sent this reply to him:

"It is true, that we have suffered much in consequence of your behavior--the cup of gall, already full enough for mortals to drink, was indeed filled to overflowing when you turned against us...'Had it been an enemy, we could have borne it'...'Come on, dear brother, since the war is past, For friends at first, are friends again at last..."  (quoted in Gordon B. Hinckley, April 2006 General Conference; also see Susan E. Black, Who's Who in the Doctrine and Covenants, p. 224-225).

Elder Phelps once again began publishing for the prophet, served as his spokesman, and rode with the prophet to Carthage, also visiting him in the Carthage Jail on the morning of his death.  Shortly after the martyrdom, he wrote this hymn.

Praise to the Man is Hymn no. 27 available at this link.  Many lovely recordings of the hymn can be found on YouTube, including one by the MTC Choir (5 minutes long).

FURTHER RESOURCE

Wikipedia has an article which contains a lot of historical details about the martyrdom at this link.

Doctrine and Covenants 133-134

THE ELEPHANT IN THE SECTION

Rather than providing lesson material for all of Sections 133-134, this post will focus solely on the verse in Section 134 that "Come, Follow Me" did not mention: 

"...we do not believe it right to interfere with ^bbond-servants, neither preach the gospel to, nor baptize them contrary to the will and wish of their masters, nor to meddle with or influence them in the least to cause them to be dissatisfied with their situations in this life, thereby jeopardizing the lives of men; such interference we believe to be unlawful and unjust, and dangerous to the peace of every government allowing human beings to be held in ^cservitude" (D&C 134:12).

I'm sure you all know that "bond-servants" is a euphamism for "slaves." 

Wow. 

I don't feel competent to address this topic. I'm Danish and English. I don't have the perspective of Black or Native American Saints. None of my ancestors were enslaved. I recently discovered one was a slaveholder, which appalls me! But despite my lack of experience, I feel it would be worse to ignore this verse than to write something with flaws. So if you are Black or Native American, please give me your grace as you read my bumbling efforts, and please feel free to share any helpful insights or perspectives in the comments (if you are on a computer--phones don't have the option).

THE CRIME OF SLAVERY

Today when we discover someone has been held captive and forced to labor for another (a case of which was just discovered today by police in my home state of Utah), we are aghast, appalled, incensed, and our stomachs literally turn. And rightly so! It's insane for "civilized," "cultured," rich, educated people to think that it is okay to enslave others to do their bidding.

And yet, in 1835, not only tradition but scientific evidence supported the "fact" that there was a natural human hierarchy: that whites, Blacks, and Native Americans were all completely different "races," and one of those was fit to be the master (even master/benefactor!) of the others, one was fit for hard labor, and one was simply savage. And since the Bible advised slaves to obey their masters, religion could back it up as well. (For example, see Ephesians 6:5.)

The truth is that the economy of the cotton plantations and a few other industries absolutely depended on free labor to flourish. The truth is that the white colonists needed free land upon which to expand their farms and cities. The truth is that when a civilization thinks it needs something morally reprehensible, it finds justification for it. And the truth is that when an ethnic group is oppressed, they behave in a way that justifies the belief that they are inferior. For example, it was illegal in almost every state of the Union to teach an enslaved person to read, for fear that they would be able to use words as tools and weapons to rise above their "station." (See, for example: North Carolina law.) White people knew in their hearts that their slaves had reason to be deadly angry with them. If Latter-day Saint missionaries shared the gospel with slaves, they would teach them to read the Book of Mormon, they would give them potential tools of rebellion. The economy absolutely required Blacks to remain illiterate. And since enslaved Blacks remained illiterate, they seemed less intelligent.

In many ways, the world has become more evil as time goes on. But in many ways, it has become much, much better. The fact that a scripture like this would never, ever be found among the writings of the leaders of any but the most extreme religions today is reason to rejoice. The fact that a religion in most countries of the world, certainly in the western world, would never need to consider how to deal with converts who had not the legal freedom to choose anything but their own thoughts is reason to rejoice. Although I would love to meet the Prophet Joseph Smith, I would never want to live in the society of Joseph Smith's day. Joseph Smith became more and more opposed to slavery as his life progressed, making manumission (the gradual freeing of enslaved people--considered by many a safer and more manageable solution for both Blacks and whites than abolition) part of his platform as a candidate for United States President, but the membership of the Church was still mostly European. He had a pretty homogenous population to work with. 

SLAVERY IN UTAH

When Brigham Young led the Church, the issue of racism became more pronounced because there was a large group of Southern families from Mississippi who joined the Church. Naturally, they had slaves. Slavery was the biggest political issue in the United States--so big that it would later cause the deadliest war in the United States. Although the body of the Church moved west and completely escaped the horrors of the Civil War, they took some racist ideas with them. In fact, they took some actual slaveholders with them: those Mississippi Saints. Some of these Church members did not free their slaves. They had never known life without servants; perhaps they did not know how to live without them. Definitely they were wrong in keeping slaves--all of us know this today--but even Brigham Young thought slavery had Biblical precedence and went with the prevailing opinion that slavery was okay with God, as long as masters treated their slaves kindly.

Crazy, right?

Blacks were not the only enslaved people in Utah. 

"The arrival of the pioneers in 1847 disrupted a thriving trade in Native American slaves. Utah-based Indians, particularly Chief Walkar’s band of Utes, served as procurers and middlemen in a slave-trading network that extended from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to Los Angeles, California, and involved Spanish, Mexican, American, and Native American traders" (History To Go).

 Brigham Young advised the Saints to buy Native children who were offered for sale in order to give them a better life and raise them in the gospel. They were going to be sold anyway, and this way they would be in a safer, kindlier place. One chief brutally murdered an infant in front of settlers when they refused to purchase the child, then blamed them for its death. No one wanted that to happen again! But by buying the children--into either adoption or temporary servitude--the white Utahns unwittingly increased the slave trade.

THE PRIESTHOOD BAN

The policy that evolved into banning Blacks from priesthood ordination, including temple familial priesthood, was based on racist traditions and interracial conflict. It was unfair. It was hurtful to many. It took place within a society that was poorly informed and ill-equipped to be fair.

We know that Church leaders have made mistakes because they are imperfect humans, but we beg to ask, "Why would God not intervene and give a revelation on it?" My best answer is that He did intervene, but in His timeframe, which seems really, really slow in our timeframe because His intervention will not supercede agency, even the agency of an entire culture. (Read my thoughts on the priesthood ban here.)

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

It is absolutely impossible to understand the past without living in it. And yet we must learn from the past in order to improve the future. We Saints are sorely flawed and will continue to make mistakes as did the Saints of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Let's just make sure they are not the same ones. Look around your ward, neighborhood, school, workplace! Make sure everyone is valued, everyone is included, everyone is heard. Sometimes the best thing we can do is consider that our assumptions or traditions might be wrong, and then listen without our defenses up.  

One thing is sure: The gospel is the way to lasting joy for everyone. We are more alike than we are different, and in 2021, with global travel and instant communication, we are more alike than we have ever been throughout history. We must avoid polarization. There is only one race of humans. There is only one family of God. We are all on the same team. Let's embrace everyone equally and celebrate the uniqueness of each child of God. In the heavens, all will be made more than fair--all will be made glorious through Christ.

(Picture from Church Media collection)

Doctrine and Covenants 129-132

Section 130 contains one of my favorite scriptures of all time:

"There is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, upon which all blessings are predicated--and when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated" (D&C 130:20-21).

I love how this scripture teaches that God rewards those who keep His laws, even if they do not know they are keeping God's laws. Many people consider they are being rewarded by "the universe" or by the "Law of Attraction," but they are merely receiving the fruits of obeying the laws set in motion by God. He loves all His children and provides means for them to learn His laws and obtain as much happiness as they are willing to receive. His children in all cultures and times learn a measure of these laws as they see the results. I love knowing that we are not the only people who are blessed by keeping God's laws.

God rewards those who keep His laws even if those laws are temporary, as in the case of plural marriage. This was an extremely difficult commandment to obey, and many people obeyed it even though doing so demanded that they give up some of their dearest hopes and dreams.

For Section 132 and the practice of plural marriage in the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I point to contributions by three women scholars--one in a written essay, one in an audio podcast, and one in a YouTube video. All three have come to the same conclusion after their studies on the subject--that polygamy was a temporary exception to the Lord's law of monogamy, an "Abrahamic sacrifice"--and I invite you to choose any one of the three to read, hear, or watch. 

Valerie Hudson Cassler, "Polygamy," Square Two Journal: Volume 3, Number 10, Spring 2010

Kate Holbrook, "Follow Him" podcast, with Hank Smith & John Bytheway, November 6, 2021

Lynne Hilton Wilson, "Hard Questions in Church History, Episode 46b: The Law of Plural Marriage," Doctrine & Covenants Central, October 28, 2021

I have great-grandmothers in my family tree who were second or third wives in polygamous families. Their lives were very difficult, but they still experienced the blessings of the gospel and the joy of the Saints. Their children were great blessings to them and grew to live righteous and faithful lives. These women lived as they believed and were blessed by the Lord for their sacrifices. I honor their lives. I wouldn't trade places with them, however I'm not sure they would trade places with me. Each of us has our own challenges in this life, but one thing is sure: the Lord blesses us as we seek to obey his commandments.

I'm grateful that today the New and Everlasting Covenant of Marriage has reverted to the standard of one man and one woman, and I'm grateful for the sealing power of the temple in making those marriages eternal. I recently discovered this darling photograph in my mother-in-law's photo album, depicting my husband (the oldest child) and his family just after they were sealed in the Logan Temple. I am also grateful that there are so many more temples today that a struggling young family living in Delaware is no longer in the Logan Temple district, and I'm so happy that 134 more temples are being built or planned in the world today.

Doctrine and Covenants 125-128: Baptism for the Dead

VICARIOUS ORDINANCE WORK IN EARLY CHURCH HISTORY

Love this gorgeous photo of the Nauvoo Temple doors

I found on DeviantArt. 

The Funeral of Seymour Brunson

D&C 124:127-130. I give unto you my servant Brigham Young to be a president over the Twelve traveling council; Which Twelve hold the keys to open up the authority of my kingdom upon the four corners of the earth, and after that to send my word to every creature. They are Heber C. Kimball, Parley P. Pratt, Orson Pratt, Orson Hyde, William Smith, John Taylor, John E. Page, Wilford Woodruff, Willard Richards, George A. Smith; David Patten I have taken unto myself; behold, his priesthood no man taketh from him; but, verily I say unto you, another may be appointed unto the same calling. The 11 living apostles are named, and the Lord states that he has received David Patten, the apostle killed at Crooked River, unto himself and that he still retains his priesthood on the other side of the veil.

D&C 124:131-132. And again, I say unto you, I give unto you a high council, for the cornerstone of Zion—Namely, Samuel Bent, Henry G. Sherwood, George W. Harris, Charles C. Rich, Thomas Grover, Newel Knight, David Dort, Dunbar Wilson—Seymour Brunson I have taken unto myself; no man taketh his priesthood, but another may be appointed unto the same priesthood in his stead; and verily I say unto you, let my servant Aaron Johnson be ordained unto this calling in his stead—David Fullmer, Alpheus Cutler, William Huntington. The high councilors are named, and the Lord states that he has received Seymour Brunson of that council, unto himself, and that he also retains his priesthood on the other side of the veil.

Seymour Brunson was a veteran of the war of 1812, who gave his life in the service of God. He was baptized at the age of 30 by Soloman Hancock. (The one who wrote the cute little poem, “Once I was a Methodist, Glory Hallelujah…”) He immediately served a mission, and was sad to observe the persecution of those he baptized. After he moved to Kirtland, he experienced this type of thing firsthand. “He was physically attacked and captured by mobbers, and only narrowly escaped by putting his shoes on backward to mislead his pursuers and treading lightly through the snow.” Eventually he made it through the persecutions to dwell in safety in Illinois, but he chose to return to Missouri to try to help Parley P. Pratt escape from prison. He was not successful, but by being on this journey, he was able to help the Joseph Smith Sr. family get safely ferried across the Mississippi to Illinois. He only lived two more years after the Missouri persecution. He served on the Nauvoo high council, in the Nauvoo Legion, as a colonel in the Hancock County militia, and as a body guard for Joseph Smith. In July of 1840, he became overly chilled after herding cattle, got very ill, and died on the 10^th of August in the home of Joseph Smith. He was 40 years old.

What is so interesting to consider when reading those two passages of scripture which we just read, is that in Heber C. Kimball’s account of Seymour’s death, he said, “Seymour Brunson is gone. David Patten came after him. The room was full of angels that came…to waft him home.”

Seymour was very well-loved and had many mourners. The procession to the gravesite, according to Brother Kimball, was a mile long. Joseph Smith chose this very poignant occasion, attended by a very large crowd, honoring a faithful servant of the Lord, to introduce a wonderful doctrine: Baptism for the dead. How marvelous that he chose this occasion! Those in attendance were lifted from sorrow to great joy. Vilate Kimball said that she had never seen anything more joyful than the funeral procession to Seymour Brunson’s burial, “on account of the glory that Joseph set forth.” (All this information from Susan E. Black, Who's Who in the Doctrine and Covenants, p. 36-38)

Probably every person at the funeral had experienced the death of an immediate family member, more likely the deaths of several immediate family members. And the Church having been organized only 10 years, many of these had not received baptism before they died. Baptisms for the dead began immediately, before any order could be established, because the joy and enthusiasm of the people was so impatient. Following the funeral sermon, Jane Neyman asked Harvey Olmstead to baptize her in the Mississippi River in behalf of her son Cyrus, who had died at the age of 14. Many others did the same. Vilate Kimball wrote in a letter to Heber C., “Since this order has been preached here, the waters have been continually troubled. During conference there were sometimes from 8 to 10 elders in the river at a time baptizing.” (Jeni & Richard Holzapfel, editors, A Woman's View: Helen Mar Whitney's Reminiscences of Early Church History, p. 179)
Wilford Woodruff recorded that the brethren barely had time to eat or rest, since they were constantly in the river, baptizing people for their loved ones who had died. Emma Smith was among the first to participate. She had received word that both her parents had died, so she was baptized for them, as well as her uncle, her sister and several aunts. (Gracia N. Jones, Emma and Joseph: Their Divine Mission, p. 222)
Later, the guideline was set forth that you had to be the same sex as the person whose work you were doing, so those who were not done that way were redone.

Commandment to Build a Temple

The following January, 1841 was when Section 124 was received, in which the saints were commanded to build the Nauvoo Temple for the performance of baptisms for the dead. D&C 124:28-31. For there is not a place found on earth that he may come to and restore again that which was lost unto you, or which he hath taken away, even the fulness of the priesthood. For a baptismal font there is not upon the earth, that they, my saints, may be baptized for those who are dead— For this ordinance belongeth to my house, and cannot be acceptable to me [outside a temple], only in the days of your poverty, wherein ye are not able to build a house unto me. But I command you, all ye my saints, to build a house unto me; and I grant unto you a sufficient time to build a house unto me; and during this time your baptisms shall be acceptable unto me. 
Outdoor baptisms for the dead continued until October 3^rd of that year when Joseph said that they now needed to wait until they could do it in the temple. The baptismal font was dedicated the next month.

Elijah Fordham, Builder of the Font

July 22, 1839 was the day of miraculous healing at the site of the future town of Nauvoo. Many, many of the saints were deathly ill with malaria. Joseph Smith called upon the Lord in mighty prayer, and went forth to heal all those that he and his wife were caring for in their home and in tents in their yard. Then he continued on through the makeshift community and into Montrose. He went to Brigham Young’s and healed him; he called Wilford Woodruff along after passing by his door. Without a word, they crossed the city square and entered the house of Elijah Fordham. Elijah was within minutes of death; he was speechless and unconscious. After rousing him and speaking with him briefly, Joseph commanded him in the name of Jesus of Nazareth to rise up and walk. Elijah immediately was healed, and jumped up out of bed, kicking off his foot poultices, asked for some bread and milk, and after consuming it, put on his hat and continued along with them down the street to heal others.

The baptismal font in the basement of the Nauvoo Temple was mounted on 12 oxen and built of Wisconsin pine by Elijah Fordham. Apparently his healing blessing “stuck,” as he outlived all those who were there to witness it. He died in 1879 in Wellsville, Utah.

Gravestone of Elijah Fordham, in Wellsville Cemetery

 Just for fun:  a picture of my husband and me with our first five children, standing on the remains of the baptismal font at the Nauvoo Temple foundation site in 1997.

Who knew then that it would be back before these kids were grown?

Below: the rebuilt font

 Our youngest four children at the entrance

to the rebuilt Nauvoo Temple in 2006.

Samuel Rolfe, Temple Carpenter and Assistant Doorkeeper

D&C 124:142. And again, I say unto you, Samuel Rolfe and his counselors for priests, and the president of the teachers and his counselors, and also the president of the deacons and his counselors, and also the president of the stake and his counselors. 

Thomas B. Marsh, an apostle who had become a bitter apostate over a pint of cream, upon returning to the Church with a broken and repentant heart, quoted David from the Bible and said, “I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of God than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.” (Black, p. 189) Well, Samuel Rolfe was the personification of that desire. In fact, he was not even a doorkeeper in the house of God, he was an assistant doorkeeper of the Kirtland Temple. He was not a prominent figure in church history. But he was always steadily serving where he could. When in December of 1835, the Prophet Joseph was in financial distress, several of the brethren gave him money. The Prophet was so grateful, he itemized them and their donations in his History of the Church and wrote along with it, “My heart swells with gratitude inexpressible when I realize the great condescension of the heavenly Father, in opening the hearts of these my beloved brethren to administer so liberally to my wants. And I ask God, in the name of Jesus Christ, to multiply blessings without number upon their heads…And whether my days are many or few, whether in life or in death, I say in my heart, O Lord, let me enjoy the society of such brethren.” Elijah Fordham and Samuel Rolfe are both on that list, Elijah having given $5.25, and Samuel $1.25. (Joseph Smith, History of the Church 2:327) At the time, Samuel was a carpenter, working on the Kirtland Temple.

When the saints began the Nauvoo Temple, Samuel was called to be one of the full-time carpenters there as well. The Nauvoo Temple was finished and dedicated room by room and story by story. The baptismal font, which Elijah Fordham had built, was in the basement to symbolize dying before being reborn, and therefore it was the first part completed. A very unusual blessing took place there for Samuel Rolfe. He was seriously afflicted with a “felon,” an acute and painful inflammation of the deeper tissues of a finger. This would, of course, be a real problem for a carpenter working on the temple.  Samuel Rolfe apparently did not keep a journal, nor did any of his descendants write his history, as far as we know, but according to Edward Stevenson’s biography, Samuel Rolfe was promised that if he would dip his finger in the baptismal font, he would be healed. He did so, and was healed.

Just before Joseph’s death, he asked for volunteers to go west scouting for a new home for the Saints. Samuel was one of the few who volunteered. Because of the martyrdom, they did not go. Instead Samuel served as a bishop in Winter Quarters, and a captain of a pioneer company. He died in Utah at the age of 72. (Black, p. 250-251)

The Triumph of the Nauvoo Temple

Samuel Rolfe and Elijah Fordham are two of the many, many early Saints who did a great work behind the scenes. The Nauvoo Temple itself did not last. Although ordinances were performed in each room as it was finished and dedicated, the entire temple wasn’t finally dedicated until May 1^st, 1846, after most of the saints had already left Nauvoo, and as you can see by the For Sale sign, it was placed on the market that very month. A few years later, an arsonist burned it down, and the stones were gradually carted away to be used in other buildings in the area.

But it was not a tragedy, it was a triumph. Because of the temple-building efforts of Samuel and Elijah and the others, many members of the Church were able to have the great joy of receiving their temple ordinances, and being baptized for their deceased family members before they headed out west. It would be 31 years before there would be another temple on the earth (in St. George, Utah).

GENEALOGY AND ORDINANCE WORK IN OUR DAY

One Genealogist’s Dream

Fast forward to the year 2001.  On February 20th, in Lindon, Utah a church member named Natalie Harris had a remarkable dream. She saw a lone Black man. Turning and looking back, she saw a huge line of Black people. She said, “I go up to the man leaning against the wall and say, 'I know what you want,' and then I turn and all of the people come running toward me.”

She woke up then, with an overwhelming feeling of love. She got right up, went to her computer genealogy database with some names she had heard in her dream and found an ancestor who had a large plantation and many slaves. She knew those were the people she had seen in her dream, begging her to do their work and connect their families.

She had a very busy week and couldn’t get right on it, so she made a promise in prayer that she would start doing the research in one week. In the meantime, she asked around among her genealogy friends about how to find records of slaves. No one knew.

February 27, 2001 was exactly one week from the day she had had her dream and made her promise. She sat down at the computer to start the work and was interrupted by a phone call from her husband, who was “absolutely flabbergasted.” On his way into work he had heard the press announcement that the Church had completed their research on the Freedman Bank records, and was now releasing a CD with names of 484,000 former slaves to anyone who wanted to buy it for $6.95!

The Freedman’s Bank Savings and Trust Company was a charter after the Civil War to help former slaves and Black soldiers with their new financial responsibilities as freed men. Unfortunately, due to mismanagement and fraud, the bank collapsed nine years later, adding more tragedy to the lives of the African-Americans. But a wonderful treasure trove remained in the records of that bank. Not only were the depositors’ names and finances recorded, but the names of their spouses, children, parents, in-laws, and other relatives, including details about who had been sold away into slavery elsewhere. There were even oral histories taken.

How the Freedman Bank CD Became Available

KBYU wanted to do a documentary series on genealogy and entitle it “Ancestors.” They appealed to PBS to get a grant, but the woman in charge of the grants thought there would be no audience for a series on genealogy. To surmount this problem, KBYU decided to present her with her own genealogy, so she could see how fascinating it could be. They assigned an employee, Marie Taylor, to do this genealogy, but Marie found it to be incredibly difficult because the woman was African-American. Marie searched everywhere for the information, but it wasn’t until she came across the Freedman Bank records that she found the links she needed. The woman was moved, and KBYU got the grant.

Marie, however, was just getting started. She had found that reading these Freedman Bank records was like translating Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. They were extremely difficult to wade through, but Marie could see how incredibly valuable they were.

 An example of a record from the Freedman Bank

Darius Gray

She enlisted Darius (pronounced Da-RYE-us) Gray, a prominant Church member with African-American ancestry, to help her to find a way to index this information and make it available. It was going to take an enormous amount of work, so they looked for groups who would help them, and one group after another fell through. Finally, they turned to the South Point Family History Center. The South Point Family History Center is located within the walls and bars of the Utah State Penitentiary.

 This photo from lds.org, Prisoners Rescuing Prisoners

They called upon the prisoners to volunteer to help with this huge name extraction, and the prisoners clamored to work on the project.

It took 11 years and the labor of more than 550 prisoners. Those who volunteered and qualified were required to attend church meetings of their choice, read the scriptures daily, and pray morning and evening. They called themselves the “spiritual parole board,” as they felt they were letting prisoners go free. But they themselves were also being freed. Recidivism (or relapse into crime) among those who worked on this project plummeted. Commonly inmates take a personality profile when they come into prison. One man’s profile was so different after he had worked on the project for a while that he didn’t test as the same person! Another prisoner who begged to work on the project had received a blessing the night before he left home for prison in which he was promised the prison would become a temple to him.

The symbolism doesn’t stop there: The project was finished on Independence Day 2000.

The CD was released to the public in February of 2001 to commemorate Black History Month. The original 10,000 CDs sold out in days and another 20,000 were pressed. Darius Gray said, “The whole thing reminds me of an old Negro spiritual: “When the Lord Gets Ready, You’ve Got to Move.” 

An executive at the Distribution Center said, “I don’t know of any other time during my years here that we have ever released a product that has given our telephone operators the kind of impressions and feedback from our customers, both member and particularly non-members, that this product is producing. We have people literally weeping on the phone and wanting to know who we are, what other products we have, why we do this type of thing, why it doesn’t cost more money.” (This information on the Freedman Bank story comes from Maurine Proctor, "Let My People Go: The Healing Story Behind the Freedman Bank Records," published online in Meridian Magazine, accessed July 2013.)

Our Great Commission to Free the Prisoners

The Utah State Prison inmates at the South Point Family History Center join Samuel Rolfe and Elijah Fordham as backstage workers who each did a little bit, within their own capacity, to redeem the dead.

When Joseph Smith gave that sermon at Seymour Brunson’s funeral, he quoted the words of Paul to the Corinthians regarding baptism for the dead. Other than that little bit of vicarious work mentioned there by Paul, the redeeming of the dead has been left almost entirely to our dispensation. It wasn’t until Christ preached to the spirits in prison after his death that the missionary work among them commenced. Then, here on the earth, the Great Apostasy occurred, and not until the Restoration through Joseph Smith could the ordinances for those converted in the Spirit World be begun.

Is it surprising at all, then, to realize that although Priesthood ordinances and offices were revealed line upon line as the Church grew and developed, the importance of the work for the dead was pressed upon the young Joseph Smith by the Angel Moroni before a temple was built, before the Priesthood was restored, before the Church was organized, even 4 years before he took the golden plates from the hill? Moroni appeared to Joseph Smith in his bedroom three times in one night preparing him for the great work of the Restoration, giving him instructions and quoting scriptures, and each time, the first scripture he quoted was Malachi 4:

JS-H 1:36-39 – “After telling me these things, he commenced quoting the prophecies of the Old Testament. He first quoted part of the third chapter of Malachi; and he quoted also the fourth or last chapter of the same prophecy, though with a little variation from the way it reads in our Bibles. Instead of quoting the first verse as it reads in our books, he quoted it thus: For behold, the day cometh that shall burn as an oven, and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly shall burn as stubble; for they that come shall burn them, saith the Lord of Hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch. And again, he quoted the fifth verse thus: Behold, I will reveal unto you the Priesthood, by the hand of Elijah the prophet, before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. He also quoted the next verse differently: And he shall plant in the hearts of the children the promises made to the fathers, and the hearts of the children shall turn to their fathers. If it were not so, the whole earth would be utterly wasted at his coming.”

D&C 128:17 “And again, in connection with this quotation I will give you a quotation from one of the prophets, who had his eye fixed on the restoration of the priesthood, the glories to be revealed in the last days, and in an especial manner this most glorious of all subjects belonging to the everlasting gospel, namely, the baptism for the dead; for Malachi says, last chapter, verses 5th and 6th: Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.”  

Challenge

The work for the dead is the most glorious subject of the gospel. Why? Because this doctrine shows so clearly the love and mercy of God for all of his children.  This glorious gospel of Jesus Christ is a gospel of second chances.

  

Every bit of research and ordinance work you do (even your own ordinances!) welds this link. Each family night lesson you teach about an ancestor, every photo you put in an album (or a shoebox – but labeled!), every family reunion you drag your kids to, every Memorial Day gravesite visit, every journal entry knits this eternal project together. I hope you can see how many things you are already doing in the spirit of Elijah. Pat yourself on the back and continue! If you feel you could do more, pick one additional thing that you will do this year and get started.

D&C 127:4 – And again, verily thus saith the Lord: Let the work of my temple, and all the works which I have appointed unto you, be continued on and not cease; and let your diligence, and your perseverance, and patience, and your works be redoubled, and you shall in nowise lose your reward, saith the Lord of Hosts.