The Mormons in Jackson County, Missouri, Part Two
"In the spring they were determined to return to their homes, although they were so badly destroyed, and claimed again as before that God would vindicate them..."
From: 1833 C.E. To: 1838 C.E.
Location: Nauvoo, Illinois
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
“The Mormons,” part two, from Seventy Years on the Frontier by Alexander Majors, 1893.
I have said before that the Mormons all crossed the Missouri into Clay County, where they wintered in tents and log cabins hastily thrown together, and lived on mast, corn, and meat that they would procure from the citizens for whom they worked in clearing ground and splitting rails, and other work of a like character.
In the spring they were determined to return to their homes, although they were so badly destroyed, and claimed again as before that God would vindicate them and put to flight their enemies. The people of Jackson County, however, watched for their return, and gathered, at the appointed time, in a large body, on the opposite side of the river to where the Mormons were expected to congregate and cross back into the county. Their spies came to the river, and seeing camps of the citizens, who had gathered to the number of four or five hundred strong (I being one of the number) to prevent their crossing, then changed their purpose and sent some of their leading men to locate in some other part of the State, for the time being, with the full understanding, however, that at the Lord's appointed time they would all be returned to Jackson County, and complete their mission in building the city of the New Jerusalem.
The delegation they sent out selected Davis and Colwell counties as the portion of the State where they would make their temporary rally until they became strong enough for the Lord to restore them to their former location.
During that spring the citizens of Jackson County, feeling that there had been, in many cases, great outrages perpetrated upon the Mormons, held a public meeting at Independence and appointed five commissioners, whose duty it was to meet some of the leading elders of the Mormons at Liberty, the seat of Clay County, and make some reparation for the damages that had been done to their property the fall before in Jackson County. They met, but failed to agree, as the elders asked more and perhaps wanted to retain the titles they had to the lands, as they thought it would be sacrilege to part with them, for that was the chosen spot for the New Jerusalem.
During the time that elapsed between the commissioners crossing the river in the morning and returning in the evening, the ferryman (Bradbury), whom I have often met, a man with a very large and finely developed physique, a great swimmer, was supposed to be bribed by the Mormons to bore large auger-holes through the gunwales of his flatboat just at the water's edge.
The boat having a floor in it some inches above the bottom, there could be no detection of the flow of the water until it was sufficiently deep to cover the inner floor. The commissioners went upon the boat with their horses, and had not proceeded very far from the shore until they found the water coming up in the second floor and the boat rapidly sinking. This, of course, produced great consternation, for the river was very high and turbulent. Bradbury, the owner of the ferry, said to his two men:
"Boys, we will jump off and swim back to the shore."
As above stated, he was a great swimmer, and had been known to swim the Missouri upon his back several times not long before this occurred. When the water rose in the boat so that it was necessary for the commissioners to leave it, three of them caught hold of their horses' tails, after throwing off as much clothing as they could before the boat went down with them. The other two men who could swim attempted to swim alone, but the current was so turbulent that they were overcome and were drowned. Those who hung on to the tails of their horses were brought safely to shore. One of the men drowned was a neighbor of my father's and as fine a gentleman and good fellow as ever lived. His name was David Lynch.
I remember well their names, and was well acquainted with two of the men who were pulled through by their horses, S. Noland and Sam C. Owens, the foremost merchant of the county, a man who stood high in every sense, and of marked ability.
This occurrence put the quietus on any further attempt to try to settle for the damages done the Mormons when driven from the county, for it caused in the whole population the most intense feeling against them, and they never were remunerated.
When Bradbury jumped off the boat he swam for the shore, but was afterward found dead, with one of his hands grasping the root of a cottonwood tree, so there was no opportunity for trying him for the crime, or finding out how it was brought about. It was supposed that he was bribed, as no one knew of any enmity he had against the commissioners.
The town the Mormons started, which they selected for their home in Paris County, they called Far West. This was the first experience that the people of Western Missouri had with the emigrants of the Eastern or New England States. Brigham Young, who afterward became the leader of the Mormons, was from Vermont, and many others composing the early pioneers of the Mormon church were from the New England States; some, however, from Ohio and Illinois, as well as some proselytes from Missouri. Up to the time of their appearance in Western Missouri the entire population was from some one of the four States Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, or Kentucky.
It has been claimed by some that one of the causes of the dissatisfaction was that the Mormons were Abolitionists. This, however, played no part in the bitter feeling that grew up between them and their neighbors, for at the time of their coming to Jackson County there were but very few slaves, the people generally being poor farmers who lived from the labor of their own hands and that of their families. And then, when the Mormons were driven entirely from Missouri to Illinois, which was a free State, they soon got into difficulty with their neighbors there, as they had done in Missouri.
It is claimed now, universally, by the people of this country that polygamy, or the plurality-wife system, is the only objection that good citizens can have to Mormonism. This was not the cause of their difficulties or their trouble in Illinois and Missouri, as they had never, up to the time they left Nauvoo, Ill., proclaimed polygamy as being a church institution. And as I have previously stated, it was their clannishness, as is natural for a church to do, more or less, only they carried it to a greater degree than other denominations. Also the new doctrine they were preaching, stating that they were the only and chosen people of God, and that they had the key of St. Peter, which was lost during the dark ages and was revealed again to Joseph Smith, their prophet; that the Lord would stand by them and enable them to prevail in their undertakings as against any array of opposition, no matter how much greater the numbers might be than their own.
They built up the city of Far West, of several thousand people, and while there increased very rapidly, having missionaries in many parts of the country preaching their doctrine. As quickly as an individual would accept their faith, they would at once rally to the headquarters, and in the course of a few years they had put a great deal of the prairie lands into cultivation and increased their numbers until they were so formidable that when they began to be odious to their neighbors by showing a hostile attitude toward any power that might interfere with them, they got into trouble much in the same way as they did in Jackson County.
A party of Gentiles and Mormons met at a point called Horn's Mill, and became involved in a quarrel, when there were some killed on both sides. This created such a feeling in the community that both Mormons and Gentiles felt insecure, living neighbors to each other as they were, and the trouble went on until it culminated in the Governor, Lilburn W. Boggs, calling out a portion of the militia of the State and ordering them to Far West, the Mormon center. The Mormons were drilling continuously, and increasing their facilities for fighting, when the militia reached the place designated, and organizing, placed themselves in battle array.
The Mormons were also drawn up in long lines, and for a short time it looked as if a bloody battle was unavoidable, but before any engagement occurred the Mormons again surrendered. They then agreed to leave the State of Missouri, and in April, 1839, the last of the band left Far West, moved across the Mississippi into Illinois, where they afterward located and built the city of Nauvoo, but with no better results with the people in the free State than they experienced in Missouri. This shows that slavery had nothing to do with the hard feelings and prejudice they aroused in every community in which they lived.
Majors, Alexander. Seventy Years on the Frontier. McNally & Co., 1893.
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