The Real COJCOLDS

Persecution and Exodus

So I have been off researching for this topic for a long time. Now I'm finally at a place where I think I have a grasp on what I need to say.

Over my life, I have heard many things about "Mormon Pioneers". The show Miracle Workers: Oregon Trail has a couple of episodes portraying the members of my church as dotting, delusional idiots. Mark Twain, a contemporary of the Pioneers, wrote about how his protagonist met "The king of the Mormons, Brigham Young." There is even a scene at the beginning of Sir Arthur Connan Doyle's "A Study in Scarlet" that portrays Pioneer as a bunch of deluded, murderous zealots.

Worse than that, as a cashier at a thrift store in Utah, I had the displeasure of a customer purchasing a commemorative tin depicting the Willie Martin Hand Cart Company trudging through a snow storm. This individual was from the Eastern United States and they said to me "Those Mormons, that was bad leadership right there!"

Luckily I knew how to smile and nod even back then. Now though, I feel a duty to bring the truth about why the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints had to flee from where it got its start. Be warned it got violent and reader discretion is advised.

The church's first prophet, Joseph Smith, was from Palmyra. Thats in upstate New York for any geography buffs out there. It was there that a teenage boy had a vision of God the Father and The Son. Not many outside my faith know this. In fact most people from New York know or even care about what happened in early 1800s Palmyra.

A while after sharing this vision with people outside his family, preachers of every denomination of Christianity got wind of Joseph's belief that he had seen and spoken to deity. This was the beginning of the persecution of Joseph Smith.

It got worse when Joseph received a visit from an Angel named Moroni(pronounced Mow-roe-nai). This Angel told Joseph that he had buried a record of his people on a hill. Moroni asked Joseph to find the plates with this record inscribed on them. The Angel then showed Joseph where they had been hidden.

Joseph went to the hill he had been shown by Moroni. The boy, being human and his family poor farmers, thought to himself about taking the plates and selling them to help his parents. However, Moroni stoped Joseph and told him to come back at the same time next year. This was because the Angel knew what he'd been thinking and knew that it was important that Joseph's heart be in the right place.

So for years, Joseph revisited that spot. Finally, when he was older and married to his wife, Emma Hale, the Angel said he was ready for the plates. As soon as Joseph had obtained the plates and relics buried alongside them, men who had been lying in wait attacked Joseph.

These were individuals motivated by hate and greed. Luckily Joseph survived and went on to begin translating.

All the people who were paid ministries were not too fond of the idea of a new religion in the United State's Burnt Over District. This was a name given to New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware by virtue of the fact that several different denominations of Christians were fighting over members. Why? Because the more attendees their particular parish attracted, the more money they earned.

They felt so threatened that by the time Joseph got to organizing the church, he and anyone who believed what he was saying, they had to flee to Kirkland, Ohio.

What would've happened if they had stayed? We need look no further than what happened to these people later to know.

Wherever the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints went, it found its self at odds with local culture. Angry men often tarred and feathered followers of the new religion. One mob dragged Joseph Smith out of his home and tried to force him to drink poison. There were even arrests by local law enforcement for charges that nobody had any proof for. Just because people didn't approve of Joseph Smith and his ideas or the new church he founded.

This pattern repeated. It lead to the death of one of Joseph Smith's infant children that he and Emma had adopted after the loss of their own.

The church fled from Ohio and founded a small settlement in Indipendence, Missouri. For a while, things were fine...until it got out what the church believed.

Unlike most Americans at the time, people in this new religion believed we were all sons and daughters of our Heavenly Father. Regardless of the color of our skin. This idea was not popular with local slave owners.

From their point of view slavery was a divine institution and the natural order of things. The church and those who converted to this religion were seen as a threat to their way of life. (Nobody was too fond of plural wives either but thats a different story for another entry.)

Because of this, they wrote a letter to the Governor of Missouri complaining about these "Mormons" and worrying about what would happen to them if they continued to spread their doctrine. This led to the "Govenor Boggs Extermination Order."

Members and people who sympathized with them were driven from their homes in the middle of the night. People were beaten, raped and killed.

These people had to escape to another place in Illinois that members of the church named Nauvoo. From about 1840-46 things were good. The church even built another Temple because they felt safe in Nauvoo. Well it turns out they weren't.

During that time, Joseph Smith, his brother Hyrum and a couple of other church leaders were sent to Carthage Jail. It was a two story jailhouse where the prophet and the others who had been arrested were awaiting trial in a court of law. Soon after their arrival an angry mob broke into the jail and shot both Joseph and Hyrum dead.

It was a hard time for the church and its friends and followers. There was no established way for there to be a successor to Joseph Smith. So there was a debate between two candidates Orson Pratt and Brigham Young. Long story short, Brigham Young won and became the new President and Prophet of the church.

The people who had murdered Joseph and Hyrum were still angry. They set the Nauvoo temple on fire and drove the church members across the frozen river. Men women and children who hadn't had time to gather their shoes or possessions walked in their bare feet through the snow and ice.

Eventually a temporary camp was made and called Winter Quarters. Here, Brigham Young and others gathered and prayed about what to do. Eventually it was decided that the church would leave what was known as the United States at this time and travel West.

There were many hardships and many died from dysentery, exposure to the elements and starvation. These Pioneers had to bury their loved ones in shallow graves along the way. Yet they made the journey because they had no other choice. They could have stayed and been persecuted. They could have fought for their lives but The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has always been mostly peaceful.(I say mostly because there was that fiasco where a group of armed church members organized something called Zion's Camp in an unsuccessful attempt to retake their settlement. It was quickly abandoned due to revelation that this wasn't God's plan for his church.)

The journey to the Rocky Mountains was hard. As I mentioned many died. It took two years for Brigham Young to put his walking stick into the sandy soil of what would become Salt Lake Valley and say "this is The Place."


A few years after the first Pioneers arrived from Nauvoo, members of the church began immigrating from countries like England, Scotland and parts of Scandinavia to help establish what the church began to refer to as Zion.

Companies eager to capitalize on these recent immigrants often provided covered wagons to those wealthy enough to afford them and hand carts to those who were less affluent.


Hand carts are basically wooden boxes with wheels and a handle that someone could pull to make it move. People using the hand carts could only take seventy pounds of goods in their cart. Fully loaded, these vehicles weighed about 432 pounds. It was pulled by one or two people at a time. Everyone who was able bodied helped pull the family's hand cart.

I don't think anyone needs to be told this was very hard. It got even tougher when the United States Army took most of the men to fight in the Mexican-American War. That left only able bodied women and children to pull the hand carts.(My so many great grand uncles, Reddin and Reddick Allred, were among the volunteers who went to fight in that war.)

The Willie Martin hand cart company had an especially hard time. Due to getting a late start. This group ended up getting stranded in a blizzard near enough the Salt Lake Valley that Brigham Young sent teams of settlers to rescue the survivors.(Later, this incident would be made into a church film called "17 miracles".)

So, after reading all that, I'm going to ask a question. You don't have to answer if you don't want to. Was this bad leadership? My answer is no. These people didn't become Pioneers for the fun of it or because they were zealots, they did so when they had no other choice.