One hundred years of Mormonism, a history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day saints from 1805 to 1905

Front matter

ONE HUNDRED

YEARS - " OF

MORMON ISM k —

Preface To The First Edition

This volume was written primarily for the young men and women of the Church, the sons and daughters, in the main, of those heroic souls whose deeds I have undertaken to relate. My constant aim, therefore, has been to make the narrative as interesting as I could without sacrificing truth and accuracy.

For the argumentative tone of passages here and there throughout the book no apology, surely, will be expected, in view of the pace in this direction which non-" Mormon" writers have uniformly set. The most recent attempt, for instance, at a story of the "Mormons" by an outsider is little else than an argument, from cover to cover of its more than six hundred pages, against the claims of the Church; and the animus of its author is not even disguised by ordinary forms. But, indeed, as the reader will perceive, in this respect I have followed my contentious "historical" brethren only at a comfortable dog-trot, being satisfied, generally, to let the facts speak for themselves without putting myself out of the way to cast javelins after antagonists.

As to the sources of information, a word -must suffice. I have read every book, pamphlet, and article on the subject, "Mormon," non-"Mormon," and anti-"Mormon," that was accessible during the five years I have been engaged in die preparation of this volume.

A committee — consisting of President Francis M. Lyman, President George Reynolds, and Elder Joseph F. Smith, Jr., and appointed by the President of the Church — read the entire work in manuscript ; and while disclaiming any desire to shift upon these brethren the onus of responsibility for vi ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF MORMONISM

imperfections still remaining, I avail myself of this opportunity to thank them thus publicly for the valuable suggestions which they have offered and which I have accepted. To other friends, also, who shall here be nameless, I am grateful for encouraging words and assistance during the progress of my undertaking, without which One Hundred Years of M ormonism would probably not have appeared.

J. H. E.

Salt Lake City, October, 1905.

Preface To The Second Edition

In this second edition I have eliminated the introduction to the work and added an index. Almost the only other changes are verbal. To the preface to the first edition of five thousand I have nothing to add, except a statement of these changes and of my gratitude to the public for the kindly reception my work has been given.

J. H. E.

Salt Lake City, March 2, 1909.

Chapter I

"Mormonism" very properly dates its beginning from an event — the most important in its history — that occurred in the western part of New York State in the year 1820. But before passing to a description of this opening scene, it will be proper to call attention to a few points in the general condition of the country at the time, in the state of society and religion that prevailed in the particular region where this event happened, and in the antecedents and boyhood of the principal actor, Joseph Smith.

The Country in General.

Our nation was then in its infancy, for not more than thirty^ one years had elapsed since the adoption of the Constitution, Speaking in general of the period from 1789 to 1815 — and but slight modification need be made for the succeeding five years — Fiske terms it a third-rate power, and observes further that "in population and wealth it was decidedly inferior to the Belgium of our day, and about on a level with Denmark or Portugal." The inhabited part of the country, over which were scattered nearly nine millions of people, formed almost a perfect triangle, with the base lying along the Atlantic seaboard and the vertex in Central Missouri.

ONE HUNDRED mars 01 MORMON ISM

Twenty-two States made up the Union, Maine having been the last admitted. And beyond these to the west extended the monster plains and mountains, sleeping in silence, which the most sanguine of those days never dreamed of as worthy of being waked into grain fields and pasture land. The vast quiet of these western parts, now echoing confusedly to the din of populous towns and cities, had not been disturbed except by the dismal howl of the wolf, the war-cry of the painted savage, or the occasional crack of the ride in the hands of the solitary trapper. The eastern portion of the country had been for some time free from the danger of* Indian attacks, but tales of massacres by the fierce and stealthy red man continued to come from the borderland of civilization.

In other respects, too. our country presented to tlu».-e who lived during the first few years of the nineteenth century a different aspect from that which we look upon who see the dawn of the twentieth. Philadelphia, the largest city, contained fewer than fifty thousand inhabitants, and Xew York, Boston, and Baltimore followed with even a smaller population. Of these four cities the first two were the trading centers. The locomotive was scarcely more than an idea in the brain of the great English inventor; Fulton had only within recent years performed the incredible feat of launching the first steamboat on the waters of the Hudson; and it was to be many years before time and space were to be annihilated by the electric telegraph. Hence travel was slow and difficult, being accomplished mainly on horseback and by stagercoach, the rude wagon of the period not having come into general use. "It took a week," says Fiske, "to go from Boston to New York in a stage-coach, and all large rivers, such as the Connecticut, had to be crossed in boats, as none of them had bridges." Hence, too, there prevailed in each part of the country a general ignorance as to what was going on in every other part. No national sentiment, like that which unifies the nation today, bound together the different States into a compact whole. People moved about very little, except when they sought new homes in the West. Travel to foreign countries was rare; during the earlier years of the century, a stranger's presence was always remarked upon in the streets of Philadelphia, and a man who had been to Europe was the object of universal envy and curiosity. Balls were given only in the larger centres of population ; very little attention was paid to music, the harpsichord being the favorite, if not almost the only musical instrument commonly in use. Theatres were rare and almost universally disapproved as a source of public amusement. Imprisonment for debt had only recently been abolished by law. By far the larger number of those marvelous inventions that have done so much to bring the ends of the earth together and to raise the masses to a higher plane of living were yet a long way in the future. In our day everybody reads, if it is only a newspaper or a poster; in that early period, few books, none by American authors, found their way to the book-shelf of even the "best families," and the day of the newspaper and the magazine was but just beginning to dawn.

If we glance at a list of the public characters in 1820 and thereabouts, we shall find a good many names that are familiar to the lips of every American schoolboy of our day. The august figure of Washington had indeed disappeared some twenty years since, but there remained others who had performed a lasting benefit to the New Republic in the recent struggle for national existence. Some of the men who had signed the Declaration of Independence and framed the Constitution, might still be seen on the streets. Jefferson and John Adams had yet six years before them ; the death of Chief Justice Jay was not to occur till 1829; Andrew

[ackson had already won those dashing successes which, nine years later, obtained for him the presidential chair; Madison, the famous reporter of the great convention, wain his sixty-fifth year, with sixteen yean to look forward to. The national legislature was at this time convulsed by discussions on slavery, which brought into prominence the celebrated trio, Webster, Clay, and ( alhoun, and produced in this very year the famous Missouri Compromise. Washington Irving, '"the first ambassador of letters from the New World to the Old.*' had just made a name in England by the publication of his inimitable Sketch Book.

Across the waters were some more notables. George the Fourth occupied the throne of England. The great victor of Waterloo was the most conspicuous figure in the English army and politics; and Napoleon, who but recently had held at bay the combined forces of Europe, was eking out his last days on the lonely island of St. Helena. Keats had just published his "Hndymion." Shelley his "Skylark," and "The Cloud" ; Byron had become the lion of England by the publication of those exquisite Grecian lyrics that so signally eclipsed the author of "Marmion" and the "Lady of the Lake;" Scott, striking out in another and original field, had just written one of the greatest historical romances in the language; and Wordsworth and Coleridge were yet in the flush of their literary careers.

( )ne other fact in the record of the period deserves special mention. The administration of Monroe, which includes the year 1820, is characterized by historians as the Era of Good FeeHng. The nation was just lifting its head after the depression and hard times of the preceding fewyears. And now for the only time in the history of our country, not only before this year, but since, the sky was altogether clear of political clouds. In the election of 1820 — the very year we are now considering — there was only one presidential candidate before the public, James Monroe ; and he was permitted to take his seat for a second term with only one vote against him, and that merely because of a romantic notion entertained by one of the electors that Washington should not be deprived of the honor of having been the only President chosen without a dissenting voice in the electoral college. It should be noted further that a new direction was given at this time to public affairs ; for primary questions from now on were to grow out of a universal desire for internal improvement, instead of war as in the past.

Western ATe,zv York State.

The western part of the great Empire State was then in every essential particular a pioneer district. Within the decade lying between 1810 and 1820, immigration had brought into existence three hundred new towns and sixty new villages, requiring the organization of eight new counties. This part of the country, thinly inhabited as compared with parts lying eastward, was then covered by a heavy growth of timber, which the farmers were busily engaged in removing as they had need of the land. The people, though possessed of the characteristic shrewdness and energy of Yankee pioneers, were mostly illiterate ; being, in fact, such a class as even in our day have been seen to push into new districts. Their mode of life was proportionately simple. Most of the houses were small and rudely constructed, having been hurriedly put together of unhewn logs but lately standing in the forest. The homely meal was cooked over the old-fashioned fireplace, and eaten from wooden or pewter dishes. The excessive cost of transporting merchandise from one part of the country to another made it necessary for the westerners of this period to content themselves with few articles of luxury. Educational facilities, as might be imagined, were meagre. There stood, of course, the rude log schoolhouse "sunning like a beggar," by the country roadside, with little else for furnishing than a few split logs, which, set on wooden pegs, served for desks and benches. The "master," not infrequently a man of small learning, taught on a starving pittance, boarding and lodging with each patron of the school according to the number of children in the home. The family library consisted usually of the Bible, Pilgrim's Progress, Rollin's Ancient History, and the well-thumbed speller and reader. News from the rest of the world was confined mostly to what could be learned from the weekly or even the monthly newspaper, which, owing to the irregularity of the mail service, had not unlikely been several weeks on the way. In short, the life of the ordinary western New Yorker of those days must have been essentially the same as that which we might see today in some of our western districts far removed from the railway and with the conveniences resulting from modern inventions subtracted.

Religion played a more important part in the daily life of Americans during the first quarter of the nineteenth century than it does today. And this was true in a special sense of the western part of New York at this time. Everybody went to church and read the Bible. Infidelity was looked upon with grave suspicion, not only that attitude of mind which openly mocks at all religion, but that also which finds more pleasure on the Sabbath day in sport <ir idleness than in going to church. Religious disputes were common, though questions of mere dogma drew more attention than the fundamental doctrines of salvation or than any matter of L,rreat moral significance. There were, in addition, many people who believed that the same spiritual gifts and manifestations of divine power and wisdom, such as, according to the New Testament, characterized the ancient Church, should be received in our day ; but this idea was by no means peculiar to this locality. Revivals, when there occurred a lapse in spirituality, were prolonged and enthusiastic. Historians of the period have given us graphic pictures of how the people deserted their farms in the busiest season of the year for whole days together and traveled many miles in order to attend a revival meeting. The atmostphere of this particular region was therefore highly saturated with religion.

During the winter of 1819 this religious spirit broke out, in the neighborhood of Manchester, Wayne county, into a revival of unusual proportions. All the churches in that part of the country joined in the work of conversion, it being the understanding that, in the end, the converts might embrace the sect of their choice. This revival extended into the spring of the following year. It began, we are told, with the Methodists, but spread from them to other churches and from the town of Manchester to adjacent towns, till the whole country for miles around presented a scene of the wildest excitement and confusion. And this work was continued till everyone that had not "experienced religion" had been either converted, or had shown himself to be beyond hope. At the time when the excitement ran highest and all denominations were striving for one common object — namely, the securing of the necessary change of heart in the sinner — good enough feelings prevailed among the members of the various churches. But when the time came for the converted to decide what sect they should join, all this peace and harmony strangely disappeared. Each party being anxious to increase its own following, there was a rivalry of claims, which, pressed as they were with bitterness, tended to confuse the minds of sincere converts. Some cried, "Lo, here is Christ!" and others, "Lo, there!" until the wisest might well be puzzled to know where the truth lay. Each sect, moreover, extolled its own virtues and decried the virtues of every other. So that what good the revivals might have accomplished in the way of turning men from their sins and directing their footsteps in the narrow path, was unhappily transformed into positive harm in the strife that followed; for it was impossible but that such conduct on the part of the clergy and religious partisans generally, would give rise to fresh doubts in the minds of those who earnestly sought the truth, as to the precise amount of divinity there was to be found in any of the prevailing religious creeds.

The Smiths and the Macks.

At this time there lived at Manchester a family whose name was destined to be pronounced for good or evil wherever the word "Mormonism" might penetrate. This was the Smith family. It consisted, at the time, of the parents. Joseph and Lucy, and eight children, whose names were : Alvin, Hyrum, Sophronia, Joseph, Samuel, William, Catherine, and Don Carlos. According to all accounts, they were poor, though their poverty was not that abject sort which marks the lazy and shiftless, but merely that kind which characterizes all pioneers of a new country. The father and the older boys worked on their newly-purchased farm, clearing and otherwise preparing it for cultivation, while the mother helped to furnish provisions and replenish the small stock of household furniture by painting oilcloth coverings for tables, stands, and similar articles. They were therefore a hard-working and economical family.

They had not, however, always lived at Manchester, nor had they always been thus poor. Theirs had been a life full of strange vicissitudes, which they had been unable to comprehend while passing through them, but the value and meaning of which they came to see clearly enough in the

LIGHT FROM HEAVEN V

light which subsequent events reflected upon the earlier part of their lives. Tunbridge, Orange county, Vermont, had been their first home. Here it was that Joseph had met and, in January, 1796, married Lucy Mack.

The Smiths and the Macks had for several generations been counted among the most thrifty and respected farmers of New England. Their genealogy stretched back into the days of early immigration to America, and both families had furnished to the Colonial and Revolutionary Wars brave and earnest soldiers whose blood, mingling with that of their compatriots, fertilized the soil whereon was to spring up the tree of liberty and equal rights. The early home of the Smith family was in Massachusetts ; that of the Macks, in Connecticut, from which States both families had been driven by reverses in fortune.

Lucy's grandparents had been well-to-do while living in their native State, and her father had received, therefore, a tolerable education. It appears from his biography, composed towards the end of an active life, that Solomon Mack was a man of energy and character, with a faculty for narrating his military exploits in a manly and entertaining style. He served with credit in the Colonial Wars and also in the war with England. At the age of twenty-five or six he married Lydia Gates, a school-mistress, the daughter of a well-to-do family. To this couple were born eight children, including Lucy, several of whom became men and women of more than usual ability. Stephen, a man of no common energy, business acumen, intelligence, and patriotism, won honors in the Revolutionary War. Subsequently he settled in Michigan, where he became one of the founders of Detroit, and where he afterwards owned and operated large and successful mercantile establishments, and held political positions. It is related that while residing at Tunbridge he and his partner in business gave Lucy one thousand dollars as a

10 ONE HUNDRED YEARS OE MOKMONISM

marriage present. Lydia married into a family of wealth and intelligence. Jason was a zealous preacher and missionary all his life. Lucy, herself, born at Gilsum, Cheshire county, New Hampshire, just four days after the Declaration of Independence, was a woman of character and piety. At sev stages of her married life while her husband was away from home, we find her exhibiting a talent for managing affairs that indicates a good deal of natural tact and wisdom.

Of the Smith family, not so much is known. They were of English descent, the earliest American progenitor, Robert Smith, having come from England before the middle of the seventeenth century. It appears that they, too, were farmers, respected by their neighbors and measurably prosperous in this world's affairs, and that several of their number rendered voluntary and honorable service to their country in the Colonial Wars and in the struggle for national independence. A letter written by Asael Smith, grandfather of the Prophet, to a friend in Massachusetts, in 1796, reveals no small amount of intelligence, prosperity, independence of character, and a faith that God would over-rule events for the best good of the new government. Inter-marrying with some of the best families of New England — and we make the statement on the strength of the names which appear on the female side of the house — they were thus desirable citizens of the growing nation. The strength of both the Smiths and the Macks, therefore, lies in their having belonged to the energetic and successful tillers of the soil, to that class of people which constitutes the backbone oi the American nation, and of any nation.

Moreover, the records of both families proclaim them td have had a strong and well-defined religious character. They believed firmly and positively in God and in the Bible, and endeavored to make their lives conform to the teaching the Holy Scriptures. It is a point worthy of notice here that in both families there were men and women who were considered heterodox in some respects by their contemporaries. Their faith was not, therefore, of that unreasoning kind which accepts unquestioningly every religious tenet merely because it happens to find a place in some particular creed. Instances are recorded of the simple faith and devotion on the part of the younger Joseph's ancestors, on both sides of the family, that are touching and beautiful. Jason Mack, as we have already stated, was a preacher and missionary, though unorthodox in some respects ; he believed "that by prayer and faith the gifts of the gospel, which were enjoyed by the ancient disciples of Christ, might be obtained by the followers of Jesus in modern days." A very pathetic description has been left us of the piety of the sisters Lovisa and Lovina Mack under the shadow of an early death ; and fragments of verse remaining attest the poetic, as well as the religious, inclination of the latter. In one instance, there appears to have been a distinct premonition on the part of a member of the Smith family — Asael, the father of the elder Joseph — concerning the work which the Lord was about to establish. "It has been borne in upon my soul," he is known to have remarked, "that one of my descendants will promulgate a work to revoluntionize the world of religious faith." This premonition he lived long enough to see partly realized, for shortly before his death, he was presented with a copy of the Book of Mormon, which he accepted as a divine revelation, "and with the light of inspiration which sometimes illumines the mind of man as the veil of eternity opens to his gaze, Asael solemnly warned his attendants to give heed to the book, for it was true, and its coming forth heralded a renewal of gospel light."

At Tunbridge where, as already noted, Lucy had met Joseph while she was on a visit to her brother Stephen, the couple were married, settling in easy circumstances on their own farm. But they were not Long to remain so. After six years Joseph rented his farm and engaged in the business of store-keeping. Investing beyond his means in crystalized ginseng, which at the time commanded a high price in China, he sent a quantity of this article across the waters. Had no ill-fortune intervened, he would have realized several times the amount of his investment ; but as it was, a "friend" and "neighbor" cunningly cheated him out of both the profits and the original sum, leaving him in consequence involved in debt. To pay the obligations held against him on this and other accounts, he sold his farm at much less than its real value ; and the money thus obtained, together with Lucy's marriage gift of one thousand dollars, which she had carefully treasured, served to liquidate all their indebtedness. But they were left penniless, though with a name and conscience of which they had no reason to be ashamed. During the next few years they moved about considerably, along the borderline separating New Hampshire and Vermont. Among the towns where the}' resided in these unsettled years were Royalton. Randolph, Sharon, Tunbridge (their former home), Lebanon, and Norwich. Continuous industry and economical living would have measurably brought back their former prosperity, but sickness in their growing family proved too heavy a drain on their meagre resources. Failure of crops for three successive years in the neighborhood of Norwich, their last home, in New England, drove them ultimately from that place to western New York State, which, as we have seen, was then a pioneer district. They first settled at Palmyra, Wayne (then Ontario) county where, with characteristic hope and industry, the father, assisted by his sons, began the arduous task of clearing more than a hundred acres of land. This farm they had purchased and were paying for in installment.-, but in consequence of their inability to make the final payment, and also because of a technical question concerning the title, they lost everything, and were compelled to make a new home. Hence, after having lived at Palmyra for two years, the family moved to Manchester, where, it seems, they were prospered more than at any time since their misfortune at Tunbridge. This removal occurred some time in the year 1817.

Such, in brief, is the history of Joseph Smith's antecedents. But anti-"Mormon" writers have labored most assiduously to wrest from these simple facts a testimony of low birth, ignorance, and indolence. The pious nature of these deserving people has been stigmatized as religious eccentricity and credulity ; the frequent removals of the Smith family as vagabondage ; their unfortunate reverses in a material way and their unpretentious efforts to regain their prosperity, as soul-bankruptcy and mere shiftless incapacity. And one would be led to think the whole race of Smiths and Macks entirely destitute of a single virtue. Two things, however, the reader must bear in mind as he peruses this gloomy catalogue of short-comings; first, that it was compiled by those who not only took no pains to hide their animus, but openly avowed themselves enemies of the "Mormon" people and their creed ; and, second, that it was conceived at a time when these enemies felt it imperatively necessary, as an effective weapon against the Church, that the originators of the new religion should have borne a bad name among their neighbors. For confirmation of the first of these statements we have only to look into any of the numerous and bulky volumes by anti-"Mormons." It will then be perfectly clear that these charges against the character of the Smith family, were conceived in bitterness and disappointed hate. And if any proof of the other statement were asked for, it would be necessary only to make a list of the points in evidence soberly put down in what purport? to he authenticated and unbiased histories of the Latter-day Saints by outsiders. In nearly every instance the testimonies i usually sworn affidavits given with incredible willingness) nst the character of Joseph Smith and the members of the family are distortions of otherwise innocent facts, the repetition of pure hearsay, often by a great many removes, or the expressions of persons enfeebled by age, struggling, at the pressing invitation of the "careful and unbiased historian," to recall some "facts" about their early connection with the Smiths, which, if these people had really ever known would long since have slipped away from their remembrance. In the last case the flattering and conciliating manner of the "inquirer," but more especially his helpful leading questions, brings back a ready memory, that doles out with surprising volubility rose-colored stories about the Smiths, which are themselves the strongest evidence at once of the corrupted understanding of those who gave them out in the first instance and of the total lack of conscience on the part of those who repeat them in works laying the least claim to being historical.

We have therefore been thus particular in reviewing the history of these two families partly because of these attempts to cast odium upon honorable names, partly because we wish to show what strange, yet simple and withal natural, means the Lord employs to accomplish his purposes respecting man. We may see from this brief narrative of their checkered lives that God was using these circumstances for the purpose of training the Smith family for the labor he was about to require of them, and also of bringing them near the scene of the younger Joseph's future activity.

Early )'cars of the Prophet Joseph.

It is not, however, with the Smith family, as such, that we

are primarily concerned, but rather with one of its members.

Joseph Smith, Jr., the fourth child, was at this time (1820) onlv a little more than fourteen years of age. He had been born on the 23rd of December, 1805, while the family was living at Sharon, Windsor county, Vermont. Concerning his life before this fourteenth year but little is known. It is related that when about seven years old he was afflicted with a fever sore on his leg, which nearly caused him to lose that member, but through an operation, in which, however, it was necessary to remove several pieces of bone, the leg was fortunately saved. He worked like the other boys of the family in assisting the father to make a home at Palmyra and at Manchester; so that he had been inured to daily toil from the beginning, and early made to know the significance of hardship and privation. During the winter months he attended the village school, where he learned to read, to write, and to do simple sums in arithmetic. Of the other branches taught even then at the best country schools it was not his privilege to learn at the time. At home he was taught by precept and example the value of faith in God and devotion to duty in his dealings with his fellow men. The early age of fourteen brought Joseph a studious habit and thoughtfulness beyond his years ; and in consequence he was highly respected among the neighbors.