Missouri Mormon War - Battle of Gallatin

Adam-ondi-ahman

August 6, 1838, was another hot day in what had been a hot dry summer in Gallatin, the county seat of Daviess County in northwestern Missouri. It was also Election Day and tempers were running as hot as the weather. Although Gallatin was blessed with rich soil and water and agricultural promise, it had not been until 1831 that the first settlers, mostly southerners, came to the area, eventually forming a small community named Millport in 1836 on the east bank of the Grand River. In 1837, the Gallatin settlement was established, a few miles away on the west side of the river and became the county seat.[1]

For members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormons, this was a time of turmoil. The Mormons had established two principal gathering areas in Kirtland, Ohio, and Far West, in Caldwell County in Missouri. Driven by persecution by outsiders and from dissenters within, those in Ohio had abandoned their Temple in Kirtland and were fleeing to Missouri. Mormons had earlier also settled further south in western Missouri in Independence, but had been driven out by persecution to settlements farther north in Caldwell and Clay counties. Now those that had settled in Clay County were again fleeing and seeking refuge in Far West. With these displaced Mormons from Clay County, Missouri, and Kirtland, Ohio, all coming into Far West in Caldwell County, Missouri, the Prophet Joseph Smith was looking for additional places for the Saints to gather and Daviess County was a promising location. The Prophet Joseph had identified a place a few miles from Gallatin in 1838 as “Adam-ondi-Ahman, the place where Adam blessed his posterity after leaving Garden of Eden and where Adam will return prior to Second Coming.[2] On June 28, 1838, the Adam-ondi-Ahman stake was formed and the place was declared a settling place for the Saints.[3] Within a few months that “beautiful country … drew in floods of [Mormon] emigrants [and] there “were upwards of two hundred houses built in this town [Adam-ondi-Ahman], and also, about forty families living in their wagons.”[4]

In contrast, Gallatin, although established a year earlier, still wasn’t much of a town - a row of four houses and several saloons. Not surprisingly, the original settlers, most of whom were southerners, were concerned about losing political control to the Mormons, a people and religion they generally despised and, in any event, many of whom were northerners. At the time the two political parties in the county were fairly balanced, such that the vote of the newly arriving Mormons could swing an election, giving Mormons, who often voted as a block, considerable political power.[5]

William Penniston, a prominent citizen representing the views of the original settlers, was a candidate for the state legislature. Having previously led a mob trying to drive the Mormons out of Daviess County, Penniston was hardly expecting any Mormon support and so had an alternative plan. On the Election Day about 200 non-Mormons, largely original settlers, had gathered at Gallatin for the purpose of preventing the Mormons from voting. Penniston stood up on a whiskey barrel and gave an insulting rant against the Mormons, saying among other things that the “Mormon leaders was a set of horse thieves, liars, counterfeiters” and that they “profess to heal the sick, cast out devils …  and you know this is a damn lie [and that if] we suffer such men as those to vote, you will soon lose your suffrage [and that] Mormons had [no] more right to vote than the damned niggers.”[6]

By that time about 30 Mormons had arrived at the polling place to vote and although little was said the situation was tense. Then:

[A] drunken brute by the name of Richard Weldon, stepped up to a little Mormon preacher, by the name of [Samuel] Brown, and said: “Are you a Mormon preacher, sir?”

“Yes, sir, I am.”

“Do you Mormons believe in healing the sick by laying on of hands, speaking in tongues, and casting out devils?”

“We do,” said Brown.

Weldon than said, “You are a d—d liar. Joseph Smith is a d—d imposter.”

With this, he attacked Brown, and beat him severely. Brown did not resent it, but tried to reason with him; but without effect. At this time a Mormon, by the name of Hyrum Nelson, attempted to pull Weldon off of Brown, when he was struck by half a dozen men on the head, shoulders and face. …  Immediately the fight became general.”[7]

This Samuel Brown was a New Englander, a shoemaker, who had joined the Saints in Kirtland shortly after his baptism in New Hampshire. He was not a tall man, was neat and clean, and walked with a slight limp due to a deformity in his heel. He was among the most faithful, having worked on the Kirtland Temple and experienced the marvelous blessings of its dedication. He had been a member Zion’s Camp that marched from Kirtland, Ohio, to Jackson County, Missouri, to aid the Saints. And he was indeed a preacher. He had served several missions and he had been called to the First Quorum of Seventy. Notwithstanding the dissension and persecution in Kirtland, he and his wife Lydia Mariah, another faithful Saint and fellow New Englander and incidentally a fourth great granddaughter the influential Pilgrim Reverend John Lathrop, had followed the Prophet Joseph Smith’s call to leave Kirtland and come to Missouri. On the Election Day, he came to vote even though he was still sick and recovering from an illness.[8]

With the non-Mormons pummeling their fellow Saints other Mormons, although vastly outnumbered, came to their defense, including a Mormon named John Lowe Butler. Butler was from Kentucky and he and his wife’s families were among its early frontier settlers. Butler, a schoolteacher, had received the Mormon missionaries in Kentucky where he and his family were baptized and confirmed members of the church. At the time of his baptism, John was essentially an invalid with a shrunken body and suffering from rheumatism. After baptism and several priesthood blessings, he was healed and grew in size and strength. At the time of this Election Day he was a large, strong man of about six feet two inches with broad shoulders.[9] He also worked as a blacksmith. At that time the South was not an easy place to be a Mormon and, after having endured the persecution of their neighbors and family in Kentucky for a year following their baptism, the Butlers had recently joined the Saints in Missouri.[10]  He had come to Gallatin with the other Mormons to vote. This is how Butler described what then happened:

I went to where the affray was and saw they had attacked the brethren with sticks, clapboards (or shakes) and anything they could use to fight with. They were all in a muss together, every one of the Missourians trying to get a lick at a “Mormon.” It made me feel indignant to see from four to a dozen mobbers on a man and all damning ’em and G— damning the “Mormon.”… I turned around and ran a few steps to get a stick and I soon found one suitable, though rather large; it was the piece of the heart of an oak, which I thought I could handle with ease and convenience.  … I remembered that I never in my life struck a man in anger, had always lived in peace with all men and the stick I had to fight with was so large and heavy that I could sink it into every man’s head, that I might chance to strike. I did not want to kill anyone, but merely to stop the affray and went in with the determination, to rescue my brethren from such miserable curs at all hazards, thinking when hefting my stick that I must temper my lick just so as not to kill. … When I got in reach of them, I commenced to call out aloud for peace and at the same time making my stick move to my own utter astonishment, tapping them as I thought light, but they fell as dead men, their heads often striking the ground first. I took great care to strike none except those who were fighting the brethren. … The whole scene was soon over. I believe there was as many as 30 men with bloody heads and some of them badly hurt. I believe that I knocked down as many as six or eight myself. I never struck a man the second time, …[11]

John Butler believed with all his heart that the Spirit of the Lord was upon him and strengthened him in this defense against these attackers. He later wrote, “the Lord did strengthen my body far beyond the common strength of man, so much so that the enemy could not stand before me. It was the power of God that was with me to my own astonishment.”[12]

Battle of Gallatin

The fighting soon ended and everyone dispersed.While the general sense was that the Mormons won the melee, it would still end badly for the Mormons, as this brawl would be followed by Missouri Governor Bogg’s infamous extermination order, the imprisonment of the Prophet Joseph Smith and key leaders in the Liberty Jail and a desperate forced exodus of the Saints from Missouri.The Browns and the Butlers were among the Saints who would flee Missouri to what was then a disease-ridden swampland along the Mississippi River known as Commerce, Illinois. Because of his role in this melee, Butler became something of a “marked man” and was forced to flee to Illinois ahead of Caroline and his family. Caroline Butler, however, was herself a woman to be reckoned with. She dealt with the hostile mobs that came looking for John and that continued to harass her and her family with calmness and courage, and then alone  she managed to take her family across Missouri to Illinois to meet up with John in what was then Quincy, Illinois. The Butlers later moved to Commerce, Illinois, where the Saints were gathering.

There, having lost all in Missouri and starting all over again with nothing but their faith and vision, the Browns, Butlers and the other Saints would turn that swampland into a beautiful city that Joseph Smith would rename “Nauvoo, the City Beautiful,” rivaling for a time Chicago as the largest city in Illinois, and becoming an important commercial center on the upper Mississippi.

Samuel Brown and John Butler were as we see very different men. One was a small, humble New England Mormon preacher and shoemaker with a slight limp, not easily provoked by the insults or Penniston, Weldon and the others, but nonetheless firm in his beliefs.  In contrast, John Butler was a large, strong man from Kentucky frontier stock who, when moved upon the Spirit, was able to move through that brawl whacking about the attackers of his brethren with the power of a 19^th century Book of Mormon Ammon hacking off the arms of the thieves of King Lemhi’s flocks. What they had in common, however, a steadfast belief in God and the Restored Gospel was far more important than their differences.  

They would also have something else in common – you and me. John Lowe Butler is a maternal great, great grandfather of my mother Fern Vilate Brown, and Samuel Brown is her great grandfather. How this genealogical connection came to be will be the topic of some more postings yet to come.

[1] Reed C. Durham, Jr., “The Election Day Battle at Gallatin,” BYU Studies, 13,no. 1 (1972), 3-4;

[2] Joseph Smith Papers, “Adam-ondi-Ahman, Missouri,” http://www.josephsmithpapers.org/place/adam-ondi-ahman-missouri.

[3] Jacob W. Olmstead, “Far West and Adam-ondi-Ahman, D&C 115, 116, 117,”Church History, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, September 12, 2013, https://history.lds.org/article/doctrine-and-covenants-far-west?lang=eng; “Adam-ondi-Ahman,” in Encyclopedia of Latter-day Saint History, 7; “Adam-ondi-Ahman," in Encyclopedia of Mormonism, 1:19–20;

[4]Durham, 3 (quoting Lyman Wight).

[5] Durham, 9; William G. Hartley, “My Best for the Kingdom: History and Autobiography of John Lowe Butler A Mormon Frontiersman,” (Aspen Books: Salt Lake City, Utah 1993), 51-52

[6] Durham, 4-5 (a compilation from various accounts quoted in the Durham article). See Hartley, 52053

[7]Durham, 5.

[8] Durham, 5; See Narrative Genealogy in Appendix.

[9] Hartley, 10-11, 24-27; Ruby Spilsbury Brown, “Cloak of John Lowe Butler,” undated and unpublished manuscript in possession of author). Hatch 7-10.

[10] Hartley, 29-31; Hatch 7-10.

[11] Durham, 6-7. This incident is also described in Hartley 51-57; and in Hatch 7-10. It is now understood that Butler was acting in his capacity as a captain in a Mormon militia knows as Danites. In early Mormon histories the Danites acquired a strongly negative stereotype as a secret sinister group of “Destroying Angels.” William G. Hartley in his book “My Best for the Kingdom: History and Autobiography of John Lowe Butler A Mormon Frontiersman,” provides an excellent explanation of this group and the context for Butler’s involvement. In short, it was not the secret, sinister group many historians and popular writers have often claimed, but a militia openly organized by the Mormons for self-defense and nothing particularly unusual for those times and circumstances. Hartley, 41-50.

[12]Durham, 7.