Fern Vilate Brown Hyer: A Narrative Genealogy - Part 2, Redds and Butlers

The Move West to Zion

In 1846 the Spilsburys, the Browns, the Butlers and the Redds were all in or near Nauvoo at the time when the Prophet Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum were martyred and the main body of the Saints, lead by Brigham Young, fled the continued the persecution in Nauvoo and moved west to the Salt Lake Valley by way of Winter Quarters in Nebraska. The Spilsburys, the Browns, the Bulters and the Redds each joined the Saints in moving to the Salt Lake Valley, although at different times and by different routes.

The Redd family, consisting of John and Elizabeth and their six children, Moriah, Libby, Lemuel Hardison, John Holt, Mary Katherine, Benjamin, along with the two African American former slaves and their children, crossed the plains in 1850 in the James Pace Company.[1] They spent the first winter in Provo, Utah. The next they spring moved to Spanish Fork and were among its first settlers. They built the first sawmill, which was then promptly burned by hostile Indians. This was the beginning of what was called the “Walker War.” Lemuel, now a teenager, was assigned to the group charged with defense against the Indians. His father John assisted in erecting a fort that the community families lived in the many years for protection.[2]

In 1852 the Butlers came across the plains as members of the Kelsey Company. The company was largely composed of Danish Saints and John was put in charge of leading that Danish group. These Danish Saints knew absolutely nothing about handling an ox team and the other basic pioneering skills required in this journey across the plains. Although he knew no Danish and the effort was not without frequent challenges, Butler managed to turn them into seasoned ox drivers and Mormon pioneers. They arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1852. Butlers went south and settled in the Spanish Fork area, where the Redds had already settled a couple of years earlier. As they would all live in the same fort for protection from hostile Indians. The families would become well-acquainted and also good friends.

John Lowe Butler was a remarkable man. Most early converts to the church lacked experience in wilderness survival and dealing with Indians and hostile people and environments. But the church was also blessed with a few tough, seasoned frontiersmen, but who were also religiously devote, whom it could call upon to handle the dangerous and primitive situations in the West. Butler was one of those.[3] He lived through some of the most challenging times of the Church and served as Bishop of the Spanish Fork ward for many years. He was also a writer and his lengthy and detailed autobiography is one of the few of that era and of significant historical benefit today.[4]

John’s wife, Caroline Skeen Butler, was also a woman to be reckoned with. While by birth she may have been destined to be a pampered southern belle, she would become a Mormon woman of substance, a faithful member of the church, a good friend to Emma Smith while Joseph was imprisoned at Liberty Jail, faithful and devoted to John and a resourceful and clever pioneer. Because John was away for long periods of time on various church assignments, Caroline ran the farm. This was not unusual for Mormon pioneer women at that time, but also not an easy thing to do in a frontier pioneer environment. She was known as a very skillful, clever woman. For instance, a neighbor cut off his thumb while shearing sheep. Holding the thumb on with his other hand, he came to Caroline and asked her if she could sew it back on. She said she didn’t know anything about that, but she would try. She boiled some thread and with a three-cornered buckskin needle sewed the thumb in place. She covered it with turpentine, pine gum and mutton tallow (this was before antiseptics) and bound the thumb with scorched strips of cotton cloth. It worked; the neighbor’s thumb healed and knitted itself back to the hand. It is a telling incident, not only because it demonstrates her cleverness and skill, but also because it says something about the reputation she had earned in that community; the neighbor had asked her genuinely thinking she could do it.[5]

In 1856 Lemuel Hardison Redd, the son of John and Elizabeth Hancock Redd married Keziah Jane Butler, the daughter of John Lowe and Caroline Skeen Butler. Having lived together in Spanish Fork for many years, the families knew each other well. Shortly after their marriage, Lemuel and Keziah were called by church leaders to help settle Las Vegas, Nevada, something referred to as the “Muddy”. The purpose of this mission was to help open the lead mines in the area to local settlers and learn more about and make peace with the local Indians. The whole endeavor was a failure for a number of reasons, including difficulty in building roads in the rocky terrain and intense summer heat, the fact that the mines in the end were not successful, and finally that they were also never able to make contact with the Indians. The mission was abandoned and the Redds returned to Spanish Fork, Utah.

Then, in 1862, President Brigham Young asked Lemuel and Keziah to again settle in southern Utah. The Seveys and Paces from Spanish Fork were also called to this mission. By that time the couple had four children, including Mary Jane Redd, born on April 27, 1858, in Spanish Fork. That spring the family moved to Harmony, where the Seveys and Paces had already settled. That settlement, however, had been washed out by a storm earlier in the year and the settlers were then moving to a new, higher area known as “New Harmony.” This was where the Redds would live for the next eight years. In New Harmony Lemuel again met John D. Lee, who was one of the missionaries who had originally taught the Redds the gospel in Tennessee. In New Harmony Lemuel also marred a second wife, Sarah Louisa Chamberlain in 1866. Keziah and Sarah got along well and in fact Keziah may have had a hand in picking Sarah as the plural wife. Needing a larger house, Lemuel purchased from John D. Lee a large partially finished two-story home located in the foothills of the Pine Mountains.[6] It was in New Harmony on this large farm and among nine brothers and sisters of Keziah and 12 from Sarah Louisa that Mary Jane Redd, Fern’s grandmother, would grow up. She remembered it as a very happy time.[7]

Like John Butler, Lemuel was a true Mormon frontiersman. When he crossed the plains with his family in 1850 he was fourteen and drove an ox team, and in fact was one of the better ox team drivers teaching others how to do it. He was a soldier in what was known as the Walker War with the Utes in 1853 and in the Black Hawk War in 1863, and was part of an army commissioned to track the Indians in southern Utah and make peace with them, or at least discourage them from attacking the Mormon settlements. [8]

He was among the scouts for the famous “Hole in the Rock” trail through Glen Canyon for the settlement in San Juan. In 1879 eighty families were called to colonize the valley of the San Juan River in southeastern Utah. They left in early October on the roughly 300-mile journey over rough, unsettled country. The party reached the western rim of the canyon above the Colorado River without much difficulty, but could not identify a suitable place to cross and could not even find the San Juan River among the endless twisting canyons. A scouting party consisting of Lemuel Redd, Sr. and three other men were sent on a scouting party to find the San Juan River valley and locate the most suitable places for building a road and crossing. On December 17, 1879, they took off on what they expected to be a 60-mile journey with food and provisions for eight days.  It was snowing and the weather had turned bitterly cold. They ended up traveling in three feet of snow through trees so dense they were often not sure which direction they were going. By Christmas Day they were almost out of food, cold, tired, discouraged, utterly lost and with no idea how to find the San Juan River canyon among the many leading off from the Colorado River. The next morning Lemuel awoke refreshed, revived and hopeful. He told the others that if they would follow him up to the top of a nearby knoll, he would show them the San Juan River. They did and he did; from the top of that knoll they could see in the distance the waters of the San Juan River. Lemuel had been shown that spot and the direction they should travel in a dream the night before. They made it back to the company on January 10, 1890. Their planned eight-day trip had turned into a 28-day journey, the last four without food, but they had blazed the trail that would later become the road and the means to the settlement of what we know today as Bluff, Utah.[9]

With Mary Jane Redd growing up as a young woman in New Harmony, Utah, we return back to Nauvoo in 1846 and the Spilsburys.

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[1] The presence of African Americans among the early Mormon pioneers seems surprising, since they were rarely mentioned in pioneer histories, but not as unusual as it my seem. Soon after the Redds settled in Spanish Fork the older of the former slave women, Chaney, died and was buried in the Spanish Fork Cemetery. We have no real information on her daughter Amy. However, the other daughter Miranda, who was described as “slim, happy and very attractive,” married another former slave named Alex Bankhead. They lived in a small adobe home in Spanish Fork and had a son named Billy, who grew up and moved to Salt Lake where he worked in the homes of the wealthy. Marinda, who was known as “Aunt Rindy,” seems to have been well liked in the community. She died in 1902 and was buried in the Spanish Fork Cemetery. Venus was the second of the two African-American women that came west with the Redds. She had been given to Elizabeth Hancock as a wedding gift by her father Zebedee Hancock to be her maid. As noted, she was freed by John Redd in Tennessee, but decided to remain with the family. Apparently, she and the Redd family were devoted to each other. Mary Jane Redd Spilsbury said: “Venus had a beautiful voice and sat in the Spanish Fork choir for many years. My fondest memories of her is seeing her in her seat at church every Sunday dressed in a red velvet gown, her eyes rolling and her mouth opened wide as she sang the gospel songs she loved.” The Redd family was devoted to her. She had a great desire to go to the temple and when told it was closed to African Americans (Negros) she scratched her arm until it bled and said: “See, my blood is as white as anyone’s.” Her son, Luke went with the Lemuel Redd family when they moved to New Harmony and lived there until a grown man. Kate B. Carter, “The Negro Pioneer,” Daughters of the Utah Pioneers, Lesson for May, 1965 497, 521-523 (copy available at familysearch.org on the documents page for John Hardison Redd (KWJC-FG5).

[2] Nelle Spilsbury Hatch, “Stalwart” 559.

[3] Hartley Preface ix.

[4] Hartley, Preface x.

[5] “Life Story of John Lowe Butler” available at familysearch.org on the “stories” page for John Lowe Butler (KWJC-HXZ); Hartley, 350.

[6] Lee had been involved, and indeed was then alleged to have been a key leader, in the tragic Mountains Meadows Massacre that occurred not too far from New Harmony in 1857. Federal efforts to prosecute the perpetrators had been interrupted by the Civil War, but with that war now settled, the federal government had renewed those efforts. Lee had decided to make himself scarce by moving from New Harmony to the remote area of Arizona along the Colorado River, establishing what is now known as Lee’s Ferry and Lonely Dell. Lee’s Ferry is now best known as the starting point for boat trips down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon.

[7] C.S.M. Jones LLC, Family Heritage Consulting, “Lemuel Hardison Redd,” written for the Hole in the Rock Foundation and available at familysearch.org in the stories section for John Hardison Redd KW8Z-7GX); Hatch, 1-16 (Chap 1). The happy times at the prosperous and successful farm in New Harmony would not last. Lemuel was not a polygamist and was being sought by federal agents. This would cause him to move to San Juan and then to Colonia Juarez for sanctuary, dividing his time between Keziah and children in New Harmony and Sara and her children in Mexico.  Deprived of proper attention by this hectic and clandestine lifestyle, the New Harmony farm suffered. Keziah died of cancer in 1895, and Lemuel then sold his interests in New Harmony and became a permanent resident in Mexico. Hatch, Stalwarts, 561-562.

[8] C.S.M. Jones LLC, Family Heritage Consulting, “Lemuel Hardison Redd,” written for the Hole in the Rock Foundation and available at familysearch.org in the stories section for John Hardison Redd KW8Z-7GX); Hatch, 1-16 (Chap 1)

[9] Hatch, Stalwarts, “Lemuel Haridson Redd (1836-1910) 561-62 (by Nelle Spilslbury Hatch); C.S.M. Jones LLC, Family Heritage Consulting, “Lemuel Hardison Redd,” written for the Hole in the Rock Foundation and available at familysearch.org in the stories section for John Hardison Redd KW8Z-7GX).

Fern Vilate Brown Hyer: A Narrative Genealogy - Part 1 Nauvoo

How it came to be that George Andrew Brown, a Mormon, was in the right place at the right time to meet, court and marry Ruby Vilate Spilsbury, also a Mormon, so that they could have a daughter named Fern Vilate Brown (my mother) is a long and complicated story, but here are the essential elements (and this may take more than one blog post):

George and Fanny Spilsbury

In 1842 a young 18-year-old girl named Fanny Smith living in Cradley, a village in Herefordshire in the West Midlands of England, was invited by some of her girlfriends to go with them to hear “some funny men from America” preach about a “gold bible.” It was a lark, a chance for a little fun watching these silly people. And, being teenagers, it was also a little act of rebellion. Their local Church of England minister had told all to avoid the Mormon missionaries. The wrath of that minister, and likely their parents, would come down hard on them if they were found out. Fanny and her friends went giggling to the meeting that evening. As the meeting unfolded, however, Fanny did not find the missionaries laughable or their message funny; she was not amused but interested, experiencing a feeling of “peace and hope” and being “touched to the depths of her soul.” She sought out these missionaries to learn more about this religion and, becoming convinced of its truthfulness, was baptized. To avoid persecution and harassment the baptisms were done at night at a secluded place on a river. On the evening Fanny was baptized it was so cold that the ice on the river first had to broken by one of the missionaries, a young man named George Spilsbury.

This missionary, George Spilsbury, from Leigh Parish in the neighboring shire of Worcester, was himself only 19 years old at the time and had only been a member of this church for less than two years. George was a bricklayer and plasterer with his father. The family were devote members of the Church of England. When he was 16, however, George had had a remarkable experience where, while resting under a shade tree, a voice came to him saying, “you will become a preacher of the Gospel.” George thought the experience strange since in the Church of England you were not allowed to preach unless trained for it and, as a practical matter, that training was not open to George. A few months later he attended a meeting and heard some Mormon missionaries from Utah in America preach. After more meetings and study he became convinced of the truthfulness of this message and was baptized a member on October 11, 1840. Two months later he attended a conferenced presided over by Brigham Young, then the leader of the British Mission. After the conference, at Brigham Young’s direction, he was conferred the Aaronic Priesthood and ordained to the office of a Priest and shortly afterwards called on a mission to teach this gospel. He and two others then spent the next year traveling by foot in Herefordshire and Wales preaching this gospel. George baptized 17 souls into this church, including Fanny.

Fanny and George later became better acquainted, fell in love and decided to marry and follow the Prophet Joseph’s call to gather in Zion – Nauvoo, Illinois. This was not an easy decision. Both of their families objected to this new religion and considered their desire to join these Mormons in Zion foolish and imprudent, but it was especially difficult of Fanny. Fanny’s father was a tailor and solid member of the growing English middle class. Fanny’s mother had died a few months after she was born. With her mother gone, her father had lovingly doted upon her. He had hired a housekeeper, mostly to train Fanny in the art of being a refined and cultured English lady. There was also a young male admirer, suitable middle class, but whose affection she had not then reciprocated. This was a promising future for a young middle class English girl to walk away from. Fanny had been baptized in secret because she had expected her father would disapprove. She was right. He strongly objected to her involvement in this church and her marriage to George and their plan go to across the ocean to join other members in this “Zion” in America. Her father declared that she was “a bamboozled fool and would be sorry” and further ordered that until she realized it herself she was not to enter the home and was not allowed to take any of her things from the house.

George and Fanny, however, had made their decision and weren’t looking back. They were married on September 5, 1842. Fanny went to work as a milliner and George went back to working in his trade and in a few months they had saved enough for passage to America. Finally, on March 8, 1843, they left Liverpool on the Yorkshire for America. After a difficult and perilous voyage they arrived in New Orleans and made their way up the Mississippi to Nauvoo arriving on May 31, 1843, absolutely penniless. However, with George’s trade and with Fanny helping out with sewing where she could they soon began to settle in with the Saints in Zion.[1]

Samuel and Lydia Brown

When Fanny and George Spilsbury arrived in Nauvoo 1843 there were also some others in Nauvoo who are important to this family history, including a shoemaker named Samuel Brown and his wife Lydia Maria Lathrop. Samuel was from New Hampshire, where he was born in 1801. When he was 29 he met and married an English girl named Harriet Cooper. They had a son named Samuel, Jr. Harriet died shortly after the baby’s birth. Samuel, then a widower with a small son, accepted the gospel message from some Mormon missionaries and immediately joined the main body of the church then in Kirtland, Ohio. He was one of the faithful. He was part of the Zion’s Camp trek to Missouri in 1834, and he helped in building the Kirtland Temple. While serving as an usher at the temple he met Lydia Maria Lathrop, who was also working in the temple. 

Lydia was a fourth great-granddaughter of the Reverend John Lathrop, the immensely influential Pilgrim minister in New England. Not surprisingly, she was a refined, religious woman and schoolteacher and also an excellent seamstress and glove maker. Her father Grant Lathrop and her mother Sybil Bliss had been married in Connecticut. They continued to live in Connecticut and had six children, including Lydia. Grant, however, died in 1823. The then widow Sybil and her family moved with her father to the Palmyra, New York area. They were in this area in 1830, just in the right time and place to hear about Joseph Smith and this new religion. Sybil and three of her children, including Lydia, joined the church and then followed the Saints to Kirtland, Ohio. There, while working in the temple, Lydia met this widower Samuel Brown and his five-year-old son Samuel, Jr.

Samuel and Lydia were married in 1837, with Lydia becoming a mother for Samuel, Jr. Samuel and Lydia were witnesses to the marvelous spiritual experiences of that temple’s dedication, but they were also witnesses to the apostasy and dissension within the church and persecutions that shortly followed. They, however, remained faithful and followed the main body of the saints to Missouri. But in Missouri they found only find more dissension and persecution. Fleeing the persecution in Missouri, the Browns had gathered with the other Saints in Nauvoo, Illinois.[2] 

John Lowe and Caroline Skeen Butler

John Lowe Butler and his wife Caroline Skeen Butler and their family were also in Nauvoo at this time. The Butler and Skeen families had lived within a few miles of each other on the Tennessee and Kentucky border. Both families were early and prominent settlers in the area and were well acquainted. The Skeens were slave owners. John, then a tall handsome 22-year-old young man, was a teacher, blacksmith and farmer, but suffered from bouts of rheumatic fever which often left almost wholly incapacitated. John married Caroline Skeen, an attractive southern belle, in 1831 in a wedding linking these two prominent area families. Caroline’s father, Jesse Skeen, a moderately wealthy plantation owner, gave the couple three weeding gifts – an expensive sidesaddle so Caroline could ride in a style proper for a well bred southern woman and two slaves. Caroline had grown up being served by slaves and the family tradition was that until her marriage she had never combed her own hair. The slaves would allow her to continue that lifestyle. The Butlers, however, although having lived for years in slave states, did not believe in slavery and had never owned slaves. John and Caroline graciously accepted the gifts but then shortly after they freed both the slaves, much to the displeasure of Caroline’s father.

During John’s frequent periods of illness he would often think deeply about religion. This search included profound personal struggles and prayers. He had been disappointed with the strife and confusion among the various sects in the area and had found them all lacking. John recounted that on one occasion while praying alone in a field a voice spoke to him saying, “stand still and see the salvation of God and that will be truth.” He said he was then content to let the truth find him.[3] In 1835 Mormon missionaries came to the area. John and Caroline listened to their message. Thinking of his earlier experience, John recognized their message as a fulfillment of that promise. When he asked Caroline about her thoughts on the missionaries, she said she thought, “they were men of God, and that it was the only true church of God and the only way to be saved.”[4] John and Caroline were baptized March 9, 1835. Following their baptism they endured bitter persecution from ministers, neighbors and friends and, sadly, most harshly from Caroline’s own father, Jesse Skeen. Skeen was bitterly opposed to Mormonism, spread false, but especially vicious and scandalous, rumors about the couple and the Mormon missionaries. After enduring this persecution for a year, John and Caroline and their family left Kentucky in March 1836 and joined the body of the saints in Missouri. There they suffered with the Saints the Missouri persecutions and depredations and fled Missouri for Nauvoo, Illinois in 1839. The Butlers would have 11 children, but the third, a daughter named Keziah Jane, born on February 25, 1836, during that difficult year in Kentucky following their baptism, is the most significant to our story.[5]

John Hardison and Elisabeth Hancock Redd

There was also another southern family important to our story visiting in Nauvoo at that time, John Hardison Redd and Elisabeth Hancock Redd. The Redds were originally from Onslow, County, North Carolina, where the Redds and Elizabeth’s family, the Hancocks, were prominent and financially successful members of the community. Elizabeth was a descendent of John Hancock, the one with the bold signature on the Declaration of Independence. As part of the westward growth of the country, John and Elizabeth and their family moved to Murfreesboro, Tennessee in 1838 and purchased a large plantation and along with a few African American slaves to work it. At the time of this move John and Elizabeth had six children, including a then two-year-old son named Lemuel, who is particularly important in our story. Four years later the family was taught the gospel by John D. Lee, a powerful Mormon missionary who would later become a prominent church member. John and Elisabeth accepted the gospel message and were baptized and confirmed members of the church. Southerners at that time were not particularly welcoming to Mormons and the decision to join the church took some courage. They came to Nauvoo to meet Joseph Smith and receive patriarchal blessings by Hyrum Smith. Following his conversion, John freed his slaves by an act of court and made a financial provision for each. However, two of former slave women, Venus with her son Luke and Chaney her two daughters Amy and Miranda, decided to stay on with the family.[6]

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[1] Nelle Spilsbury Hatch, Mother Jane’s Story (Shafer Publishing Company, Inc. Wasco, California 1964) 65-72; MayBell Harmon Anderson, “ Fanny Spilsbury Story,” undated history available at familysearch.com under the stories entry for Fanny Smith (LHZS-YLB).

[2] Irene Brown Martineau, “Samuel Webster Brown 1801 & Lydia Maria Lathrop 1815,” undated history available at familysearch.com under the entry for Samuel Brown (KWJX-SDP); Emily Brown Hatch, “Lydia Maria Lathrop Brown 1815-1852” undated history available at familysearch.com under the stories entry for Lydia Maria Lathrop (KWJX-SDG); Ruby Brown Bradfield and Della P. Ware, “Samuel Webster Brown,” (undated history available at familysearch.com under the stories entry for Samuel Brown (KWJX-SPD)); Mavis Buchanan, "Pioneer Sybil Bliss Lathrop Jacobs and her Pioneer Family,"(undated available at familysearch.com under the stories entry for Sybil Bliss L44V-15Z)).

[3] Hartley 23

[4] Hartley, 25.

[5] Hartley, 28-31; “John Lowe And Caroline Skeen Butler — Of Courage And Faith,” 3-11 (This unpublished manuscript is included in “Redd Review,” a compilation of Redd family histories made in1996 and is available at familysearch.com in the documents section for John Hardison Redd KW8Z-7GX); Hatch, 7-10.

[6] Hatch, Mary Jane’s Story, 6-7; Lura Redd, “John Hardison And Elizabeth Hancock Redd,” 46-60 (This unpublished manuscript is included in “Redd Review,” a compilation of Redd family histories made in1996 and is available at familysearch.com in the documents section for John Hardison Redd KW8Z-7GX); Nelle Spilsbury Hatch, “Lemuel Hardison Redd,” in “Stalwarts South of the Border,” compiled and edited by Nelle Spilsbury Hatch and B. Carmon Hardy (published 1985) 559-563. The Redds never actually reside in Nauvoo. After meeting Joseph Smith and receiving these blessings they return to Tennessee, sell their plantation and leave from Tennessee to join the Saints in Missouri for the move west.

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.

Music simply doesn't get better than this.

This was my ticket to an extraordinary event on Thursday, March 24, 2016 - The performance by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, with the Orchestra at Temple Square and some Met opera level soloists, of the entire Handel's Messiah, live in the Tabernacle. It just doesn't get any better than this. I have some history listening to Handel's Messiah (see Messiah Talk ), but I still get goosebumps just thinking about this performance on Thursday.

There were performances both on Thursday and Friday (Good Friday) that were also simulcast at the theaters in the conference center and Joseph Smith Building, and the Friday performance was also "streamed". On demand streaming is still available for a few days at this link MoTab-Messiah . Tickets were made available sometime in February but were sold out within seconds, including tickets for simulcasts overflow areas in the Conference Center and the Joseph Smith Building.

Look carefully. This ticket is to the first performance on Thursday and in the Tabernacle, and it didn't come easy.  On Thursday after a temple session in the Salt Lake Temple and with Evie working diligently in the Family History Library, and being retired and not otherwise occupied, I decided to take a chance in the standby line that forms at the flag pole on Temple Square. It was almost 6 PM and things weren't looking too hopeful. Then a choir member (all dressed up in his tuxedo) came by with 5 tickets and at that time I happened to be number 5 in line. (I had earlier got a ticket from a lady walking by the, but gave it away to a very nice lady visiting Salt Lake from Minnesota so she and her husband could both attend - sort of a "casting bread upon the waters" story.)

Hearing the performance live in the tabernacle was the special kicker for me (you can always buy the Choir's new CD). A performance in the Tabernacle, with its amazing acoustics, is one of the rare, truly "unplugged" musical experiences. There are no speakers or amplifiers or a sound engineer sitting at sound board mixing, modulating, filtering, equalizing and otherwise managing and enhancing the electrons that will come out of the speakers as sound into our ears. Rather, what you hear are the raw vibrations coming directly out of the singer's mouth or the organ pipes or off the violin strings and, after mixing with the other sounds in the rare acoustics of the building, hitting your ear drums. I'm not such a discriminating listener that I suspect in many cases I probably really couldn't tell the difference between this "purely natural" sound and the "electronic" sounds coming out of speakers, but I still revel in the thought of it.

There are, of course, plenty of rock concerts where the sound is loud - so loud you can feel the vibrations, but that is not the Tabernacle Choir/Tabernacle experience. Nonetheless, when the 360 nearly perfect pitch, well trained, disciplined and controlled voices of the choir open up on the Hallelujah chorus, backed by a full orchestra with brass and a timpani and the tabernacle organ and with all those sounds swirled around by the acoustics of that building, it is by no means screeching rock concert loud, but you really not only hear, but feel, the sound. It was marvelous. What was even more remarkable was how beautifully quiet that all those 360 voices could be, even the sopranos singing very high notes, e.g., the opening of "Since by Man Came Death."

Here are a couple of pictures, just to document that I was in fact there (there are a lot of better pictures of the choir and tabernacle).

Note, the orchestra included a harpsichord and some sort of small, baroque like era organ (along with the main tabernacle organ). Mack Wilberg, the choir director, actually re-orchestrated the entire score to more closely correspond to what Handel originally intended, but while also utilizing a large choir and orchestra.  see Mack Wilberg-Messiah

This includes the soloists - all New York Metropolitan Opera level singers and there were all very good. The Soprano - Erin Morley (in black and white dress on the far left if you were looking at them from the audience) is not only a famous opera signer, but also a Mormon originally from the Salt Lake area. Her mother plays a violin in the orchestra and her father at one time sang in the choir.

This is a picture of the orchestra tuning just before the performance. The arrow points to one of the two trumpets in the orchestra. This guy absolutely nailed the trumpet solo on "The Trumpet Shall Sound" - essentially a duet between the bass soloist and the trumpet with the violins playing in the background. I almost got tears listening to it.  I listened to it again on the simulcast on Friday. It sounded much better live in the Tabernacle. So never underestimate what a pudgy, balding, short haired middle aged guy with lousy posture may be able pull off. The choir also did this number again on the Sunday "Music and the Spoken Word" Easter broadcast.