Adventures in Mormon History

Over the years, many people have commented on the last words of Joseph Smith.  But Hyrum's last words have received little attention.  His final words - "I am a dead man" - would have been significant to Americans in the nineteenth century, Americans who valued the Christian art of dying well.  This concept of the “good death” had long been a core of Christian practice.  Dying was an art and the tradition of ars moriendi had specific rules going back to at least the 15th Century.   

On this episode, we'll explore what it meant to die well, especially when death came by violence, leaving no time for the traditions of final words and admonishments.  

To learn more about what dying well meant to 19th Century Americans, please check out Drew Gilpin Faust, "This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (2008).

In his roles as both Church leader and Governor of the Utah Territory, Brigham Young received thousands of letters, and it was not uncommon for him to receive anonymous letters.   Some of these were intended to convey friendly advice or warnings, some were death threats, and some pleaded with him to shut down offensive plays  in Salt Lake City.   In these letters, we get a surprising glimpse into life in Pioneer Utah.   

Thank you to the Church History Library for making these letters available!  To learn more about the material in this episode, please visit https://history.churchofjesuschrist.org/section/library?lang=eng.  

This wraps up Season 1 in Adventures in Mormon History.  Thank you to everyone who has been a part of it!  If you would like us to produce more episodes, please review our podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and let us know in the comments that you would like to see a second season.  Thank you so much! 

This concludes our three-part series on the trial of the accused killers of Joseph and Hyrum Smith.

Josiah Lamborn, the prosecutor, was in trouble.  After several days of testimony, none of the witnesses were able -- or willing -- to incriminate any of the five defendants.  Lamborn then called his three star witnesses - William Daniels, Benjamin Brackenbury, and Eliza Jane Graham.  

The episode gives an overview of their testimonies, the closing arguments, and the ultimate result.  It then discusses what happened to the people involved with the trial later in their lives.  While some would come to ruin, most of them lived long, prosperous lives.  

To learn more about the stories in this episode, please check out: Dallin H. Oaks & Marvin S. Hill, Carthage Conspiracy: The Trial of the Accused Assassins of Joseph Smith (1979).

Illinois in 1844 was a dangerous, violent place -- but it was not without law, and the law had its champions.  After Joseph and Hyrum Smith were murdered in the Carthage Jail on June 27th, Governor Thomas Ford set out on a yearlong crusade (often without allies and wading through considerable political opposition) to bring the killers to justice.  Struggling to find a prosecutor willing to take the case, he finally found an ally in the mercurial, hard-drinking Josiah Lamborn.      

This episode covers the first half of the trial -- Lamborn's struggle to get useful evidence from reluctant witnesses.  We discuss how some witnesses were openly hostile, using their testimony to denounce Mormons (one, John Williams, testified that Mormons were "hellhounds" and should all be "exterminated.").  Finally, in desperation, Lamborn called Frank Worrell to the stand, a committed anti-Mormon as any in Hancock County.  We explore that and more on this second episode on the trial of the Carthage killers.

To learn more about the information in this episode, please check out:  Dallin H. Oaks & Marvin S. Hill, Carthage Conspiracy: The Trial of the Accused Assassins of Joseph Smith (1979).        

Illinois in 1844 was a dangerous, violent place -- but it was not without law, and the law had its champions.  After Joseph and Hyrum Smith were murdered in the Carthage Jail on June 27th, Governor Thomas Ford set out on a yearlong crusade (often without allies and wading through considerable political opposition) to bring the killers to justice.  Struggling to find a prosecutor willing to take the case, he finally found an ally in the mercurial, hard-drinking Josiah Lamborn.      

But who were the accused killers?  And what were their motives behind the desperate act of daylight murder?  We explore that and more on this first of a three-part series on the trial of the Carthage killers.

To learn more about the information in this episode, please check out:  Dallin H. Oaks & Marvin S. Hill, Carthage Conspiracy: The Trial of the Accused Assassins of Joseph Smith (1979).        

Amy B. Loader was one of the survivors of the Martin Handcart Company in 1856.  Too weak to wade across the freezing water, she was carried by one of the rescue party members (probably David P. Kimball).  She was deeply moved by his heroic act of sacrifice, and told him so.  His response, through chattering teeth, was a short burst of profanity that shocked the pious Amy.  It was his way of saying, "You're welcome."   

This episode recounts the Martin Handcart Company's final crossing of the Sweetwater River, November 4, 1856,  

To learn more about the material in this episode, check out the following resources:

Howard A. Christy, "Weather, Disaster and Responsibility: An Essay on the Willie and Martin Handcart Story," 37 BYU Studies 1, 7 (1997-98).

Leonard Arrington & Rebecca Bartholomew, Rescue of the 1856 Handcart Companies (1981).

Chad M. Orton, The Martin Handcart Company at the Sweetwater: Another Look, 45 BYU Studies Quarterly 1 (2006).

David Roberts, Devil's Gate: Brigham Young and the Great Mormon Handcart Tragedy (2008).   

In July 1844, just 10 days after the murder of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, Dr. Robert D. Foster came back to Nauvoo, ready to start up in business again.  Foster had been a leading critic of Joseph Smith, and had been instrumental in getting the Smiths locked up in the Carthage Jail (and, it was suspected, of conspiring in the murder).  While many people in Nauvoo were outraged at his brazen return, he defied any man in the city to make him leave.  

But Foster forgot an important aspect of life in Nauvoo -- You don't mess with the sisters.  

To learn more about the stories in this episode, please check out:

Andrew H. Hedges,  Joseph Smith, Robert Foster, and Chauncey and Francis Higbee, 18 Rel. Edu. 89 (2017), available at https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/facpub/3753/.  

The Journals of William Clayton (ed. George D. Smith) (1995).

James B. Allen, No Toil Nor Labor Fear: The Story of William Clayton (2002).

Dallin H. Oaks & Marvin S. Hill, Carthage Conspiracy: The Trial of the Accused Assassins of Joseph Smith (1979).

Deseret News (24 June 1857), re-printing John Taylor's 1844 editorial in the Nauvoo Neighbor railing against mob violence and the attack on Chisolm, a Black resident of the City.  

The second in our two-part series about the incredible life of Jacob Hamblin, this episode covers:

1) Jacob's first mission to the Navajo Nation in southern Utah in 1854  (and how he got peer-pressured into fighting for a bride); 

2) His near-death experience after falling 30 feet while cutting wood in the summer of 1858; 

3) Leading the first Mormon expedition to the Hopi Tribe of southeastern Utah; 

4) His attempt to lead another expedition to Oraibi which culminated in a deadly struggle with a party of Navajo warriors; and

5) How in February of 1862, Jacob woke up to a flashflood wiping his town (Santa Clara) off the map.

To learn more about Jacob Hamblin and the material here, please see Todd M. Compton, In and Through the Roughest Country it has Ever Been My Lot to Travel: Jacob Hamblin's 1858 Expedition Across the Colorado, Utah Historical Quarterly (Winter 2012, Volume 80).

Shortly after he arrived in the Salt Lake Valley, First Lieutenant Jacob Hamblin led Mormon Soldiers against the Native American Tribes near Skull Valley.  His orders were straightforward and grim -- find the Native American raiding parties, chase them down, and kill them all.  But following a series of experiences that he believed were divine guidance to him, Jacob  Hamblin-- far from destroying them -- became the single greatest friend to the Native peoples of Utah.  Time and again, he brokered peace between the Native Tribes, the Mormon pioneers, and Americans heading west.  

In this first of a two-part series, we will cover the incredible life of Jacob Hamblin.    

To learn more about the stories in this episode, you can check out:

James Little, "Jacob Hamblin: A Narrative of His Personal Experience as a Frontiersman, Missionary to the Indians, and Explorer" (1909).

Howard A. Christy, "Open Palm and Mailed Fist: Mormon-Indian Relations in Utah, 1847-1852 (Utah Historical Quarterly, Vol. 46: 3 (1978), available at https://collections.lib.utah.edu/details?id=422592.  

On Independence Day, 1839, Parley P. Pratt was a prisoner of the State of Missouri.  

Along with other early leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he had been arrested for his actions during the Missouri-Mormon War of 1838 (in Parley's case, the charge was murder).  Convinced he would not get a fair trial, he and his fellow prisoners decided to risk everything on a high-risk jailbreak . . . in the middle of the town's 4th of July Celebration.  

This episode explores what it was like to be a locked up in Missouri in the 1830s, the way the guards mistreated both their prisoners and Black women of the town, and how Parley and the others carefully concealed their preparations (and then, in their excitement, almost gave it all away).  Finally, how Parley's fellow prisoner -- Morris Phelps -- tried to evade capture by a posse by pretending to be a "true breed" or "Old Kentucky."  Finally, it ends with the bravest member of the jailbreak team-- Mrs. Laura Phelps.     

To learn more about the story, you can check out The Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt (first published in 1873).   

To see court records, affidavits and other original sources for the Mormon War of 1838, you can visit the Missouri State Archives Mormon War Digital Collection, available at https://www.sos.mo.gov/archives/resources/mormon.asp.