USA > Iowa > Decatur County > History of Decatur County, Iowa, and its people, Volume I > Part 14
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This culminated in the murder of Joseph Smith and his brother, Hyrum, by a mob of ruffians at Carthage, Ill., on June 27, 1844. The church then broke up into many factions, following different leaders. One of the most bold and unscrupulous was Brigham Young, who with his faction afterwards settled in Utah and has been a continual source of trouble to the Government on account of the practice of polygamy and other questionable things. This practice. by the way, was not taught, nor indulged in during the lifetime of Joseph Smith, as the evidence abundantly shows, though Young and his followers have dated the practice baek to 1843, doubtless to give this criminal practice the prestige of Joseph Smith's name among those who believed in his claims. It was this faction under Brigham Young who first settled at Mount Pisgah in Jones Township.
The Latter Day Saints, with headquarters at Lamoni, have always strongly advocated the original faith on the marriage ques- tion, and ever since 1862 have maintained a mission in Salt Lake City, Ut., protesting earnestly against the doctrine of polygamy practiced there. One of the articles of faith of the Latter Day Saints reads: "We believe that marriage is ordained of God and that the law of God provides for but one companion in wedlock for
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either man or woman, except in case of death or where the marriage contract is broken by transgression."
THE PRESENT STATUS OF THE CHURCH
The little City of Lamoni, Ia., is the headquarters, the center, of the Latter Day Saints Church in the world. Here are located the general offices, the main church and the official publications. Besides the church at Lamoni there are in Decatur County branches of the church at the following places: Six miles southwest of Lamoni, four miles north of Lamoni, seven miles east of Lamoni, one at Davis City, one at Pleasanton and one at Leon.
Among the general church officers at Lamoni are: Elbert A. Smith, one of the presidency of three men; R. S. Salyards, secretary ; Heman C. Smith, historian, and Claude I. Carpenter, recorder. These officers are located in the Herald Building. The present church building, a handsome and commodious structure, was built in 1882-83.
The church in Lamoni maintains two homes for old folks and one home for homeless or unfortunate children. The old folks' homes are under the charge of a board of control, consisting of Joseph Roberts, Richard J. Lambert and Lorenzo Haver. The Children's Home is incorporated as such, approved by the state authorities, and is under the control of a board of trustees. Heman C. Smith is president of this board; Oscar Anderson is secretary; Joseph Rob- erts, treasurer; Richard Bullard, Mrs. L. L. Resseguie, Mrs. C. B. Stebbins and Mrs. Minnie Nicholson. There are forty acres of land in connection with this latter home, and over one hundred acres connected with the homes for the aged.
THE SAINTS' HERALD
At the semi-annual conference of the Church of Latter Day Saints of 1859, October 6th to 10th, it was resolved that the church publish a monthly church paper and continue it six months, called the True Latter Day Saints' Herald.
This publication was inaugurated at Cincinnati, Ohio, where it was continued as a monthly until March, 1863. At this time the office was removed to Plano, Kendall County, Ill., and the first issue from this place was in April, 1863. Beginning in July of the same year the Herald was issued as a semi-monthly and continued so until
PUBLISHING HOUSE/BINDERY.
-
THE HERALD OFFICE, WITH ADDITION BUILT IN 1891-2
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the end of the year 1882. Then, beginning with the first week in January, 1883, it was issued weekly.
In the latter part of the year 1881 the plant was removed from Plano to Lamoni, Decatur County, Ia., and the first issue from this place was run off the presses November 1, 1881.
The first editor of this paper was Isaac Sheen, and he served until May 1, 1865. Then Joseph Smith took charge of the editorial department of the paper. Associated with him at different times as assistant editors have been: M. H. Forscutt, M. B. Oliver, H. A. Stebbins, Daniel F. Lambert, W. W. Blair, R. S. Salyards, F. M. Smith, Leon A. Gould and E. A. Smith; in April, 1893, the office of corresponding secretary was created and Joseph Luff took the position, to be succeeded by Heman C. Smith, and later by David W. Wight and T. M. Sheehy. Joseph Smith came to his death on December 10, 1914. The board of publication consists of Edwin A. Blakeslee, president; Albert Carmichael, business manager; Thomas A. Hougas, Osear Anderson and Frederick B. Blair; J. A. Gunsal- ley, secretary. Elbert A. Smith and John F. Garver are editors of the Herald; Heman C. Smith is editor of the Journal of History; E. A. Smith is editor of Autumn Leaves; Mrs. Estella Wight is editor of Stepping Stones, a juvenile paper; Ethel I. Skank and Miss Wight are editors of Zion's Hope.
The first Herald monthly was a 24-page paper, 4 by 7 inches; then was reduced to sixteen pages. In 1876 it was made a 32-page paper, and the next year again reverted to sixteen pages. The name has now been changed to the Saints' Herald, and each issue com- prises twenty-four pages, 8 by 1012 inches.
The Herald office as first erected in Lamoni during the summer of 1881 was built of bricks burned in Lamoni. During the years 1891-92 a wing was added on the west, consisting of two stories and a basement. On the morning of January 5, 1907, this building was completely destroyed by fire, but before the day was done steps were taken toward rebuilding. At a citizens' meeting in Lamoni the fol- lowing Sunday $17,000 was subscribed toward a new structure. The work of rebuilding began during the last week in May, considerable work in excavating and cleaning away debris having been prior to that date. The new building consists of two stories and basement. The top floor is used by the editors, proofreaders, church library and offices of general church officers; the ground floor contains the man- ager's office, composing room, mailing room and bindery; in the basement are the presses, repair shops and storerooms. The power,
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heating and lighting plant is in a separate building. This plant not only supplies Lamoni with electricity, but also Kellerton and Davis City. The new building was dedicated in November, 1907.
The present circulation of the Herald is about ten thousand, these papers going all over the world.
In the Herald Building there is located the general church library. This library is controlled by a library commission and is open to the public. The number of volumes in the institution is small, owing to the fact that the most of the valuable books were destroyed by the fire of January, 1907, when the whole Herald Building was con- sumed.
THE BURNING OF THE HERALD OFFICE. JANUARY 5, 1907
CHAPTER XIII EARLY SETTLEMENT AT GARDEN GROVE
By Heman C. Smith
It appears that what is now known as Decatur County, Ia., has had attraction for the oppressed, not only of other nations, but of our own. Five years prior to the advent of the Hungarians a settle- ment was made at Garden Grove by exiles from a sister state. To enter into the merits of the controversy which caused them to be . expelled from their homes is not our province. It is the old story of long-established organizations objecting to the formation of new ones, and of protesting to the point of violence. Without entering into discussion of the issues, it will be sufficient to present the con- dition of this people as they left their former homes and arrived within the precincts of what is now Decatur County. In doing this we cannot do better than to quote from an address delivered by Col. Thomas L. Kane before the Pennsylvania Historical Society, on the 26th of March, 1850:
"A few years ago, ascending the Upper Mississippi in the autumn when its waters were low, I was compelled to travel by land past the region of the rapids. My road lay through the half-breed tract, a fine section of Iowa, which the unsettled state of its land titles had appropriated as a sanctuary for coiners, horse thieves and other out- laws. I had left my steamer at Keokuk, at the foot of the lower fall, to hire a carriage, and to contend for some fragments of a dirty meal with the swarming flies, the only scavengers of the locality. From this place to where the deep water of the river returns, my eye wearied to see everywhere sordid, vagabond and idle settlers; and a country marred, without being improved, by their careless hands.
"I was descending the last hillside upon my journey, when a land- scape in delightful contrast broke upon my view. Half encircled by a bend of the river, a beautiful city lay glittering in the fresh morning
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sun; its bright, new dwellings, set in cool, green gardens, ranging up around a stately dome-shaped hill, which was crowned by a noble marble edifice, whose high, tapering spire was radiant with white and gold. The city appeared to cover several miles; and beyond it, in the background there rolled off a fair country, chequered by the care- ful lines of fruitful husbandry. The unmistakable marks of industry, enterprise, and educated wealth everywhere, made the scene one of singular and most striking beauty.
"It was a natural impulse to visit this inviting region. I procured a skiff, and rowing across the river, landed at the chief wharf of the city. No one met me there. I looked, and saw no one. I could hear no one move; though the quiet everywhere was such that I heard the flies buzz, and the water-ripples break against the shallow of the beach. I walked through the solitary streets. The town lay as in a dream, under some deadening spell of loneliness, from which I almost feared to wake it; for plainly it had not slept long. There was no grass growing up in the paved ways; rains had not entirely washed away the prints of dusty footsteps.
"Yet I went unchecked. I went into empty workshops, ropewalks, and smithies. The spinner's wheel was idle; the carpenter had gone from his work-bench and shavings, his unfinished sash and casing. Fresh bark was in the tanner's vat, and the fresh-chopped light wood stood piled against the baker's oven. The blacksmith's shop was cold; but his coal heap, and ladling pool, and crooked watering horn, were all there, as if he had gone for a holiday. No work people anywhere looked to know my errand. If I went into the gardens, clinking the witcket-latch loudly after me, to pull the marigolds, heart's-ease, and lady-slippers, and draw a drink with the water-sodden well-bucket and its noisy chain; or, knocking off with my stick the tall. heavy- headed dahlias and sunflowers, hunted over the beds for cucumbers and loveapples-no one called out to me from any opened window, or dog sprang forward to bark and alarm. I could have supposed the people hidden in the houses, but the doors were unfastened; and when at last I timidly entered them, I found dead ashes white upon the hearths, and had to tread a-tiptoe, as if walking down the aisle of a country church, to avoid rousing irreverent echoes from the naked floors.
"On the outskirts of the town was the city graveyard; but there was no record of plague there, nor did it in any wise differ much from other Protestant American cemeteries. Some of the mounds were not long sodded; some of the stones were newly set, their dates recent,
STREET SCENE, GARDEN GROVE
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and their black inscriptions glossy in the mason's hardly dried letter- ing ink. Beyond the graveyard, out in the fields, I saw, in one spot hard by where the fruited boughs of a young orchard had been roughly torn down, the still smouldering remains of a barbecue fire that had been constructed of rails from the fencing around it. It was the latest sign of life there. Fields upon fields of heavy headed yellow grain lay rotting ungathered upon the ground. No one was at hand to take in their rich harvest. As far as the eye could reach. they stretched away-they sleeping too in the hazy air of autumn.
"Only two portions of the city seemed to suggest the import of this mysterious solitude. On the southern suburb, the houses looking out upon the country showed, by their splintered woodwork and walls battered to the foundation, that they had lately been the mark of a destructive cannonade. And in and around the splendid temple. which had been the chief object of my admiration. armed men were barracked, surrounded by their stacks of musketry and pieces of heavy ordnance. These challenged me to render an account of myself, and why I had the temerity to cross the water without a written permit from a leader of their band.
"Though these men were generally more or less under the in- fluence of ardent spirits, after I had explained myself as a passing stranger, they seemed anxious to gain my good opinion. They told the story of the dead city; that it had been a notable manufacturing and commercial mart, sheltering over twenty thousand persons: that they had waged war with its inhabitants for several years and had finally been successful only a few days before my visit, in an action fought in front of the ruined suburb; after which they had driven them forth at the point of the sword. The defense, they said. had been obstinate, but gave way on the third day's bombardment. They boasted greatly of their prowess, especially in this battle, as they called it; but I discovered that they were not of one mind as to cer- tain of the exploits that had distinguished it; one of which. as I re- member, was, that they had slain a father and his son, a boy of fifteen. not long residents of the fated city, whom they admitted to have borne a character without reproach.
"It was after nightfall when I was ready to cross the river on my return. The wind had freshened since the sunset, and the water beating roughly into my little boat, I hedged higher up the stream than the point I had left in the morning and lighted to where a faint glimmering invited me to steer. Here, among the dock and rushes, sheltered only by the darkness, without roof between them and the Vol. I -10
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sky, I came upon a crowd of several hundred human creatures, whom my movements roused from uneasy slumber upon the ground. Pass- ing these on my way to the light I found that it came from a tallow candle in a paper funnel shade, such as is used by street venders, and which, flaming and guttering away in the bleak air off the water, shone flickeringly on the emaciated features of a man in the last stage of a bilious remittent fever. They had done their best for him. Over his head was something like a tent, made of a sheet or two, and he rested on a partially torn straw mattress, with a hair sofa cushion under his head. His gaping jaw and glazing eye told how short a time he used these luxuries; though a seemingly excited and bewild- ered person, who might have been his wife, seemed to find hope in occasionally forcing him to swallow awkwardly, sips of the tepid river water, from a burned and battered bitter-smelling tin coffee-pot. Those who knew better had furnished the apothecary he needed; a toothless old bald-head, whose manner had the repulsive dullness of a man familiar with death scenes. He, so long as I remained, mumbled in his patient's ear a monotonous and melancholy prayer, between the pauses of which I heard the hiccup and sobbing of two little girls, who were sitting up on a piece of driftwood outside.
"Dreadful, indeed, was the suffering of these forsaken beings; bowed and cramped by cold and sunburn, alternating as each weary day and night dragged on, they were, almost all of them, the crippled victims of disease. They were there because they had no homes, nor hospital, nor poorhouse, nor friends to offer them any. They could not satisfy the feeble cravings of their sick: they had not bread to quiet the fractious hunger-cries of their children. Mothers and babes, daughters and grandparents, all of them alike, were bivouacked in tatters, wanting even covering to comfort those whom the sick shiver of fever was searching to the marrow.
"These were Mormons, in Lee County, Ia., in the fourth week of the month of September, in the year of our Lord 1846. The city -- it was Nauvoo, Ill. The Mormons were the owners of that city, and the smiling country around. And those who had stopped their plows, who had silenced their hammers, their axes, their shuttles, and their workshop wheels; those who had put out their fires, who had eaten their food, spoiled their orchards, and trampled under foot their thousands of acres of unharvested bread; these were the keepers of their dwellings, the carousers in their temple, whose drunken riot insulted the ears of the dying.
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"I think it was as I turned from the wretched night-watch of which I have spoken, that I first listened to the sounds of revel of a party of the guard within the city. Above the distant hum of the voices of many, occasionally rose disinct the loud oath-tainted ex- clamation, and the falsely intonated scrap of vulgar song; but lest this requiem should go unheeded, every now and then, when their boisterous orgies strove to attain a sort of ecstatic climax, a cruel spirit of insulting frolic carried some of them up into the high belfry of the temple steeple, and there, with the wicked childishness of in- ebriates, they whooped, and shrieked, and beat the drum that I had seen, and rang in charivaric unison their loud-tongued steamboat bell.
"They were, all told, not more than six hundred and forty persons who were thus lying on the river flats. But the Mormons in Nauvoo and its dependencies had been numbered the year before at over twenty thousand. Where were they? They had last been seen, carry- ing in mournful train their sick and wounded, halt and blind, to dis- appear behind the western horizon, pursuing the phantom of another home. Hardly anything else was known of them: and people asked with curiosity. 'What had been their fate-what their fortunes?'"
As stated by Colonel Kane, these people whom he visited on the banks of the Mississippi were but the remnant of the people who had inhabited the city described by him, most of whom had already departed for the West.
Iowa, with her magnificent resources, was then but little known. In December, 1853, George William Curtis wrote to a friend in the Fast from Milwaukee, Wis., saying: "I have seen a prairie, I have darted all day across a prairie, I have been near the Mississippi. I have been invited to Iowa, which lies somewhere over the western horizon."
It was into this almost unknown region that this unfortunate people launched in those early days to find a resting place where they could again build their homes and enjoy the freedom of which their country boasted. Several companies had left the City of Nauvoo. taking a westward course into this unknown region. The particular company of which we speak left Nauvoo in the early part of Feb- ruary, 1846. It was composed of several hundred families. They made their first camp on Sugar Creek. a few miles west of the river. where they remained for nearly a month, during which time they had great difficulty in getting sustenance for themselves and their cattle and horses. Orson Pratt who was a leading spirit in the movement,
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in his private journal, remarks concerning this time that they required many hundreds of bushels of grain daily; but as they had not yet launched into regions altogether uninhabited, they were enabled to buy large quantities of Indian corn from time to time with money and labor.
On March Ist the company moved on. The following day they camped on the banks of the Des Moines River, four miles below the Village of Farmington. Then they proceeded up the east bank of the river until they reached Bonaparte's Mills, where they crossed the river on March 5th. The weather was cold; and it being too early in the spring for grass, their teams subsisted upon the limbs and bark of trees. Heavy rains and snows impeded their progress, while frosty nights rendered the situation very uncomfortable. Their camp was organized thoroughly, with captains of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens; and all other necessary officers. Their condition was made more tolerable by the hunters finding game; and Mr. Pratt says they brought into camp more or less deer, wild turkeys and prairie hens every day.
The real condition of this company can be best described by quoting again from the address of Colonel Kane:
"Under the most favorable circumstances, an expedition of this sort, undertaken at such a season of the year, can scarcely fail to be disastrous. But the pioneer company had set out in haste, and were very imperfectly supplied with necessities. The cold was intense. They moved in the teeth of keen-edged northwest winds, such as sweep down the Iowa peninsula from the ice bound regions of the timber-shaded Slave Lake and Lake of the Woods; on the bald prai- rie there, nothing above the dead grass breaks their free course over the hard rolled hills. Even along the scattered water courses, where they broke the thick ice to give their cattle drink, the annual autumn fires had left little wood of any value. The party, therefore, often wanted for good camp fires, the first luxuries of all travelers; but, to men insufficiently furnished with tents and other shelters, almost an essential to life. After days of fatigue, their nights were often passed in restless efforts to save themselves from freezing. The stock of food proved inadequate; and as their systems became impor- erished, their suffering from cold increased.
"Sickened with catarrhal affections, manacled by the fetters of dreadfully acute rheumatism, some contrived for a while to get over the shortening day's march and drag along some others. But the sign of an impaired circulation soon began to show itself in the liabil-
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METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, GARDEN GROVE
PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, GARDEN GROVE
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ity of all to be dreadfully frost-bitten. The hardiest and strongest became helplessly crippled. About the same time the strength of their beasts of draft began to fail. The small supply of provender that they could carry with them had given out. The winter-bleached prairie straw proved devoid of nourishment, and they could only keep them from starving by seeking for the browse, as it is called, a green bark, and tender buds, and branches of the cotton wood, and other stinted growths of the hollows.
"To return to Nauvoo was apparently the only escape; but this would have been to give occasion for fresh mistrust, and so to bring new troubles to those they had left there behind them. They resolved at least to hold their ground, and to advance as they might, were it only by limping through the deep snows a few slow miles a day. They found a sort of comfort in comparing themselves to the exiles of Siberia, and sought cheerfulness in earnest prayers for the spring- longed for as morning by the tossing sick.
"The spring came at last. It overtook them in the Sae and Fox country, still on the naked prairie, not yet half way over the trail they were following between the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. But it brought its own share of troubles with it. The months with which it opened proved nearly as trying as the worst of winter.
"The snow and sleet and rain which fell, as it appeared to them without intermission, made the road over the rich prairie soil as im- passable as one vast bog of heavy black mud. Sometimes they would fasten the horses and oxen of four or five wagons to one, and attempt to get ahead in this way, taking turns; but at the close of a day of hard toil for themselves and their cattle, they would find themselves a quarter or a half mile from the place they left in the morning. The heavy rains raised all the watercourses; the most trifling streams were impassable. Wood fit for bridging was often not to be had, and in such cases the only recourse was to halt for the freshets to subside-a matter in the case of the headwaters of the Chariton, for instance, of over three weeks' delay.
"These were dreary waitings upon Providence. The most spirited and sturdy murmured most at their forced inactivity. And even the women, whose heroic spirits had been proof against the lowest ther- mometric fall, confessed their tempers fluctuated with the ceaseless variations of the barometer. They complained, too, that the health of their children suffered more. It was the fact, that the open winds of March and April brought with them more mortal sickness than the sharpest freezing weather.
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"The frequent burials made the hardiest sicken. On the soldier's march it is matter of discipline, that after the rattle of musketry over his comrade's grave, he shall tramp it to the music of some careless tune in a lively quickstep. But, in the Mormon Camp, the companion who lay ill and gave up the ghost within view of all, all saw as he stretched a corpse, and all attended to his last resting place. It was a sorrow, too, of itself to simple hearted people, the deficient pomp of their imperfect style of funeral. The general hopefulness of human -including Mormon-nature, was well illustrated by the fact, that the most provident were found unfurnished with undertaker's articles; so that bereaved affection was driven to the most melancholy make- shifts.
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