USA > Utah > Salt Lake County > Salt Lake > History of Salt Lake City > Part 122
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" I said to Mr. Taylor, ' This is a hard case to lay you on the floor, but if your wounds are not fatal, I want you to live to tell the story.' I expected to be shot the next moment, and stood be- fore the door awaiting the onset. WILLARD RICHARDS."
" Upon the tide of grief that swept over Nauvoo, and the consternation that filled the hearts of the mob when the awful deed became known, we will not dwell. Neither will we attempt to depict that scene of woe which occurred when the bodies of the slain were delivered into the hands of their families.
"A whole people had been cruelly, fiendishly betrayed and bereaved. Awful, beyond the power of words to picture was the lament."
Apostle Taylor was with the Saints in the exodus, but the condition of the British Mission ren- dered it necessary for the Twelve to send three of their quorum to England to set the Church in order. John Taylor, Parley P. Pratt and Orson Hyde were the ones chosen. 'They returned to Winter Quarters just at the moment the Pioneers were about to start for the Rocky Mountains, so that they were not in the Pioneer band, but Apostles Taylor and P. P. Pratt followed quickly in the first companies. Elder Taylor's next important mission was to France, and while on that mission he published the Book of Mormon in the French and German languages. He was afterwards sent to preside at New York over the churches in the States, and also to ask for the admission of the "State of Deseret." While on this mission he published The Mormon, in New York City, which, during its existence, was the most vigorously edited paper that the Church had issued. At the time of the Utah expedition, his bold, manly speeches stirred the heart of the whole community. During such times the native courage of John Taylor has always been most conspicuous. In this respect he has perhaps stood next to the Prophet Joseph himself, who, for lion-like courage was a marvel, even to his enemies For this trait of character in his life, John Taylor has long been styled in the Church, "Champion of the Truth." At no period of his life has he shiown himself more sufficient for the times than at the death of Brigham Young. Those outside the Church believed it certain that at the death of this most remarkable man who had led the Mormons for thirty-three years, the Church would experience a terrible convulsion and very likely split into fragments under rival leaders. But
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HISTORY OF SALT LAKE CITY.
it was soon seen that the man of the times had verily risen in John Taylor; and if any of his com- peers ever doubted concerning the "coming man," they quickly discovered who was there leader after Brigham Young. At the burial of him who had been as a Moses to them, while his body was laying before the congregation in state, Apostle Taylor spoke over the dead a becoming eulogy, but plainly told assembled "Israel" that Brigham Young's mission was fully accomplished, and that he was no longer needed for the safety of the Church. The work would continue triumphant as be- fore. It was not the work of man. One greater than Brigham Young was at their head. The King of Zion was their leader. For the first few weeks thereafter it was the talk even among the Gentiles that no revolutionary shock had come to the Mormon Church, but all went on as before. For several years the Twelve ruled the Church as a quorum, and then at the October Conference of 1880, the First Presidency was restored with John Taylor, President of the Church in all the world, and George Q. Cannon and Joseph F. Smith as his counselors.
l'resident Taylor is the third man who has risen to lead the Mormon People; and during his presidency there has come a crisis scarcely less in its historical issues than that of the exodus of the Church from Nauvoo to the Rocky Mountains. The question of the day concerning the Mormon Church is, will it survive, or will it be swept away by the present action of a mighty nation risen, as it were, in arms against it? And this question involves the most vital question of all, which, in fact, gives pertinency to every other-Will the Church give up its institution of patriarchal mar- riage, commonly known as polygamy? President Taylor, in all the manifestoes and epistles to the Saints bearing his name, has answered with no uncertain voice, " Never! the Kingdom of God or nothing." It is the motto of this apostle's life.
GEORGE Q. CANNON.
George Q. Cannon was born in Liverpool, England, on the 11th of January, 1827. His par- ents joined the Mormons when he was 12 years of age. Previously, however, his father's sister left England, for Canada, as a companion to the wife of the Secretary of the Colony, but with the in- tention of returning. While in Canada, however, she met Elder John Taylor, then a Methodist minister, whose wife she afterwards became.
At this time Elder Parley P. Pratt was on a mission to Canada, preaching the doctrines of Mormonism, to which Mr. Taylor and wife were soon converted. Mr. Taylor having been chosen one of the Twelve Apostles of the Mormon Church, visited England in 1839, as a Mormon mis- sionary, where he first made the acquaintance of his brother-in-law, Mr. Cannon's father, whom, with his wife and family he succeeded in baptizing into the Mormon Church. Mr. Cannon states that "as soon as my mother saw Mr. Taylor, and before she knew he was a religious man, she said, "he is a man of God.'"
The headquarters of the Mormon Church was then at Nauvoo, to which place the new con- verts were very desirous to emigrate, but active operations in that direction were for some time de- layed on account of Mrs. Cannon having strong premonitions that she would not reach " Zion." These were supported by certain analogous dreams by Mr. Cannon, all of which were literally ful- filled in the death of Mrs. Cannon while crossing the Atlantic Ocean. The rest of the family reached Nauvoo in safety.
Two months after the massacre of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, Mr. Cannon's father left Nauvoo on a business tour to St. Louis, and, while there, died, leaving seven orphan children.
After reaching Nauvoo, George Q., then but a lad, went to work in the office of the Nauvoo Neighbor and Times and Seasons, where he learned the printing business.
In 1847 young Cannon crossed the plains with the emigrants, and, during the winter following.
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JOSEPH F. SMITH.
and up to the fall of 1849, he was engaged in house building, farming operations, canyon work, adobe making, and other labor incident to the settlement of a new country.
In the fall of 1849, he accompanied Apostle Charles C. Rich to California, where he worked in the gold mines until the summer of 1850, when he, with five others, was called to go a mission to the Sandwich Islands. They sailed from San Francisco, and after a three weeks' voyage, landed at Honolulu, on the 12th of December of that year. Mr. Cannon acquired the Hawaiian language very rapidly, and, after being there six weeks, he started out to travel among, and preach to, the natives. In a few months he succeeded in organizing branches of the Church in various places.
While there be translated the Book of Mormon into the Hawaiian language, and with the other missionaries made arrangements for the purchase of a press and printing materials nec- essary for its publication.
He returned to Salt Lake Valley in the winter of 1854. In 1855 he went on a mission to Cali- fornia, and established a printing office and a newspaper, the Western Standard, of which he was editor.
The news of what is known as the "Utah War" reached California in in 1857, and Mr. Cannon soon after returned to Salt Lake to take part in the defence.
In April, 1858, the abandonment of Salt Lake commenced, and Mr. Cannon was appointed to take the press and printing materials belonging to the Deseret News to Fillmore City, where he pub- lished that paper from April to September of that year.
He was then sent on a mission to the Fastern States, which duty he performed until he received an official notification that he had been elected on the 23d of October, 1859, as one of the Twelve Apostles, to act in the place made vacant by the death of Parley P. Pratt. In the fall of 1860 he returned to Salt Lake City, where he remained six weeks, during which time he was called to fill a mission to England. He was appointed to take charge of the emigration in Europe, and of the Millennial Star office ; and to act as president of the European Mission.
In May, 1862, he received a dispatch to the effect that he had been elected United States Sen- ator by the legislature of the inchoate State of Deseret, and was requested to join Mr. Hooper in Washington early in June, which he did.
Both Senators-elect labored diligently in Washington to get Utah admitted into the Union as a State during the remainder of that session of Congress.
Upon the the adjournment of Congress, Mr. Cannon returned to England, where he labored with marked success until August, 1864, when he returned home, having, while in England, shipped upwards of 13,000 souls, as Latter-day Saints, for Utah.
For three years after his return to Salt Lake he acted as private secretary to President Brigham Young, having been elected in the meantime a member of the Legislative council. In the fall of 1867 he took charge of the Deseret News,-then published semi-weekly,-as its editor and pub- lisher. He immediately commenced the publication of the Deseret Evening News (daily), and his connection with that paper continued until the Fall of 1872, when he was elected Delegate to Con- gress, and served his constiuency to their entire satisfaction until he was retired by the Edmunds law. [See Congressional history in foregoing chapters.]
JOSEPH F. SMITH.
Joseph F. Smith was born November 13th, 1838, at Far West, Caldwell County, Missouri. He is the son of Hyrum Smith, who with his brother, the Prophet Joseph, was assassinated in Car- thage jail. He was born at the time of the expulsion of the Mormons from Missouri. The follow- ing is a passage from " The Women of Mormondom," relative to Joseph F. Smith's mother and his own birth :
"' On the first day of November, 1838, her husband and his brother, the Prophet, with others,
30
HISTORY OF SALT LAKE CITY.
were betrayed by the Mormon Colonel Hinkle into the hands of the armed mob under General Clark, in the execution of Governor Boggs' exterminating order. On the following day liyrum was marched at the point of the bayonet, to his house, by a strong guard, who with hideous oaths and threats commanded Mary to take her last farewell of her husband, for ' his die was cast, and his doom was sealed,' and she need never think she would see him again ; allowing her only a moment, as it were, for that terrible parting, and to provide a change of clothes for the final separation. In the then critical condition of her health this heartrending scene came nigh ending her life; but the natural vigor of her mind sustained her in this terrible trial. Twelve days afterward she gave birth to her first-born a son ; but she remained prostrate on a bed of affliction and suffering for several months. In January, 1839, she was taken in a wagon, with her infant, on her sick bed, to Liberty. Clay County, Missouri, where she was granted the privilege of visiting her husband in jail, where he was confined by the mob, without trial or conviction, because, forsooth, he was a ' Mormon.' "
Joseph F. Smith's youth was spent amid the scenes and vicissitudes incident upon the martyr- dom of his father and uncle, and in the journeying of the Church from Nauvoo and the cariy set- tlement of Utah. He came to the mountains with his widowed mother and brother John, in the migration of the body of the Church from Winter Quarters in 1848. In 1852 his mother died. His youth and early manhood were fraught with struggles, but the Church at an early period saw that Joseph F. would make a strong mark, and for many years now past, the Saints have been pro- phetic that he is destined some day to be their leader.
In 1854 he went on a mission to the Sandwich Islands, where he labored with very encouraging success. He was at that time but sixteen years af age. "According to promise," he says, "and by the blessings of the Almighty, I acquired the language of the islanders and commenced my labors, pre iching, baptizing, etc , among the natives, in one hundred days after my arrival at Honolulu." He returned at the time of Johnston's expedition. In 1860 he went on a mission to England, re- turning in 1863, and in 1864, again went to the Sandwich Islands, in company with Elders E. T. Benson, Lorenzo Snow, W. W. Cluff and A. L. Smith, remaining about one year. In 1865 he was elected a member of the House of Representatives of the Utah Legislature, and was returned in 1866-7-8-9-'70 and '72. In 1866, he was ordained an Apostle, and in 1867 was called to fill a vacancy in the Quorum of the Twelve. He has served a number of terms in the council of Salt Lake City.
He also served once in the same capacity in the City of Provo, where he resided a portion of the year 1868. During 1874 and a part of 1875 he presided over the British Mission, and had charge of the Church emigration. He went again in the Spring of 1877, and was called home by the death of Brigham Young. During his charge of the European emigration, he was instrumental in breaking the conference combination which had been formed by the great shipping companies of Liverpool. For years the Saints had come to America on the Guion & Co's line. The fare had risen to six guineas per passenger. A Philadelphia company sought the Mormon emigration. Guion & Co. sought to recover it and the shipping combination, being in contention with itself, broke up, and Joseph F. succeeded in making contracts for three seasons for the taking of passen- gers at three pounds per head, saving to each of the Mormon passengers three pounds, ten shillings.
On the reorganization of the First Presidency of the Church, Joseph F. Smith was chosen one of the presidency.
In 1879 he was elected to the Council of the Legislature, and re-elected in 1881; and in the organization of the next Legislature he was chosen President of the Council. He was retired from the Legislature and city council by the Edmunds law.
Joseph F. Smith holds the hearts of the entire Mormon people. The whole community trust in him. 1Ie is a man of strong idiosyncrasies, but he is withal a just and thoroughly honest man. Of his uncle Joseph he testifies, " I am as confident of the divine mission of Joseph Smith as I am of my own existence."
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WILFORD WOODRUFF.
WILFORD WOODRUFF.
Wilford Woodruff, third son of Aphek Woodruff and Beulah Thompson Woodruff, was born March Ist, 1807, in that part of Farmington now called Avon, Hartford County, Conn. His an- cestors for several generations were also residents of that district. Up to his 21st year he remained at home, assisting his father in attending to the Farmington mills.
At a very early age his mind was considerably exercised upon religious subjects, although in a somewhat different view from the orthodox teachings of those days. A notable point of difference was his firm conviction that the gifts and graces that belonged to the ancient apostles ought still to obtain among the the true disciples of Jesus, although the ministers of his acquaintance taught that such things had been done away. This difference in belief caused him to hold aloof from any es- pousal of particular doctrine until 1833, when he, in company with his brother Azmon (being at that time in Oswego County, New York), chanced to hear two Mormon elders preach. A single sermon convinced both him and his brother, and they thereupon presented themselves for baptism.
Young Woodruff was an enthusiastic convert, and soon gravitated to Kirtland, where he was kindly received by and temporarily domiciled with the Prophet Joseph. Surrounded by influences so congenial to his natural cast of mind, his spiritual nature developed rapidly, and in a few months' time he had reached the point of joyfully accepting an ordination as an elder, and a commission to go on a mission. He had in the meantime removed to Clay County, Missouri.
He straightway, in company with an elder by the name of Brown, started out on a tour in which which was traversed a most desolate and perilous section of country, viz: southern Missouri, northern Arkansas, and western Tennessee. It is worthy of note that this journey (on foot) was made to embrace the traversing of the Mississippi Swamp, a distance of 175 miles, most of the way in mud and water up to their knees. Young Woodruff being stricken with rheumatism in the midst of the swamp, his companion abandoned him. But, kneeling in the water, he cried to God for succor, and was immediately healed. He thereupon continued his journey and in due time re- turned to his brethren.
His life thereafter was made up almost entirely of mission work. In January, 1837, he was set apart to be a member of the first quorum of Seventies, and remained for a while in Kirtland. Here, on the 13th of April of that year, he was married to Miss Phoebe W. Carter, at the house of Joseph Smith.
Shortly thereafter he went on a mission again, and continued in that work until appointed a member of the quorum of the Twelve. In the following fall, 1839, he started on the mission to England. His ministry in that country was very successful. During the seven months of their labors in Herefordshire, Gloucestershire and Worcestershire, he and his confreres of that mission baptized over eighteen hundred persons, including over two hundred preachers of various denomi- nations ; their success so greatly alarming the orthodox ministers of those localities, that it was made the subject of a petition to Parliament.
Returning in 1841, he was shipwrecked on Lake Michigan, but escaped with his life, and reached Nauvoo in October of that year.
It is not the design of this sketch to give more than a general view of this faithful apostle ; suf- fice it to say, therefore, that he was on a mission in the Eastern Statss at the time of Joseph and Hyrum's martyrdom ; that he thereupon returned and prominently participated in the events suc- ceeding that monstrous wrong ; that he was a member of the famous mission to England in 1844, remaining there a year, and returning to join the exodus; that he was one of the 143 pioneers ; that he again went on a mission to the Eastern States in 1848, returning to Salt Lake in 1850; and in December of that year was elected a member of the Senate of the Provisional State of Deseret.
Since that time Apostle Woodruff has been one the very foremost in all the affairs at home. The Church history is mostly compiled from his journals, and the success of his mission to England is to this day a marvel in the Church. He is emphatically one of the founders of Utah, and as an apostle well deserves the name of " Wilford, the Faithful."
At the present time Wilford Woodruff is President of the Twelve Apostles and the principal historian of the Church, his assistant being Apostle Franklin D. Richards His portrait, in the
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HISTORY OF SALT LAKE CITY.
body of this HISTORY, which contains many items of interest from his life, will illustrate to the eye of a judge of character, the type of this Apostle. It is a most remarkable likeness of a New Eng- land Puritan of the days of the nation's purity and moral might. A century hence, that likeness will preach a sermon to a coming generation of the Mormons, as a grand type of a God-fearing people and of Wilford Woodruff as an honest man and an apostle in character as in name.
ORSON PRATT.
We have named Orson Pratt the St. Paul of the Mormon Church. He was also one of the Pioneers of Utah. Of his family descent in America he wrote:
"The genealogy runs thus: Our father, Jared Pratt, was the son of Obadiah, who was the son of Christopher, who was the son of William Pratt, who was the son of Joseph Pratt, who was the son of Lieutenant William and Elizabeth Pratt, who is supposed to have come with his brother, John Pratt, from Essex County, England, about 1633, who were found among the first settlers of Hartford, Connecticut, in the year 1639. They are supposed to have accompanied the Rev. Thomas Hooker and his congregation, about one hundred in number, from Newtown, now called Cambridge, Massachusetts, through a dense wilderness, inhabited only by savages and wild beasts, and became the first founders of the colony at Hartford, Connecticut, in June, 1636, and thence to Saybrook about the year 1645."
Apostle Orson Pratt, was the last surviving member of the first quorum of the Twelve. He was born September 19th, 1811, in Hartford, Washington County, New York, and may justly lay claim to be of semi-apostolie stock, -- being descended from the Puritan founders of New England.
The first quorum of the Twelve Apostles, which included Parley P. and Orson Pratt, was or- ganized in 1835, when the Prophet Joseph gave to them the commission to preach the gospel to all the nations of the earth. In 1840, Orson, with nine of that quorum, were in England, and it fell to his lot to open a mission in Scotland. After much labor and great privation he succeeded in build- ing up the Edinburgh Conference. Subsequently he has served several times as president of the European mission.
He and Erastus Snow were the two first Mormons who entered the Valley of the Great Salt Lake.
During Orson Pratt's second mission to Engiand, beginning in 1849, in about two years, there were nearly 18,000 souls brought into the Church under his ministry and presidency, and their con- versions were mainly through his own writings, and the impulse which those writings gave to the splendid corps of elders under his direction. It was the period when the great Mormon preachers flourished-men who almost worshipped Orson, and in whom he delighted, because of their mag- nificent ability as orators and logicians. Indeed, he may have been said to have been their theo- logical father. Not in all England among any of the denominations were there greater pulpit orators and disputants than several of those elders. The most famous were John Banks and James Mars- den. Perhaps England never produced a man of the pulpit who possessed more of the natural genius of oratory than John Banks. We doubt if either Spurgeon or Beecher was his equal in spontaneous gift. Native eloquence flowed from his mouth as a river. Marsden on his part beat the most famous sectarian champions in England in public discussion on Mormonism-beat the very men who became themselves famous in discussion with George Jacob Holyoak, Joseplı Barker and Charles Bradlaugh, the great ' Iconoclast' of England. Holyoak and his class greatly admired Orson Pratt and these splendid disputants and logicians whom Orson Pratt created.
During those periods of Orson's presidency over the British Isles, he wrote numerous tracts, and published in all, several millions, scattering them broadcast over the whole British realm. At
33
ERASTUS SNOW.
that time the organized tract societies of the British Mormon Mission were, we believe, not equalled in all Christendom for their thorough working and missionary results. These, united with the active ministry, comprising (we should estimate) 5.000 elders, constituted the vast missionary machinery by which Orson Pratt brought into the Church, in two years, nearly 18,000 souls.
Orson Pratt was truly a great apostle in every sense of the term. As for his life, no man ever lived a purer one. From his birth he never drank scarcely as much as a glass of ale, nor used a bit of tobacco: his beverage was pure water.
He also possessed real apostolic courage. We may give an anecdote of this: Orson Pratt with Ezra T. Benson, Edward L. Sloan, and John Kay, went on a visit to the Isle of Man. Much excitement was produced by this visit and the preaching of these elders. On the return by steamer to liverpool, the crowd of passengers became quite as a mob arrayed against these Mormon apostles. E. T. Benson escaped below, while this mob on shipboard surrounded Orson Pratt and clamored to cast him into the sea as a Jonah who troubled the ship. They seized him to cast him into the sea. Orson calmly stood in their midst, and placing his hand on the side of the ship, "Sirs," he said, " do with me according to your threatenings. If it be God's will, I am ready." This genuine apostolic courage conquered. The mob was awed; the captain interposed, and there was peace in the ship the remainder of the passage.
Scarcely need we enlarge on his famous discussion on polygamy with Dr. Newman, before ten to fifteen thousand people in the great Tabernacle of Salt Lake City. Daily were those discussions published in the New York Herald, and reproduced entire or in part in nearly every paper in America ; while almost the universal decision throughout the land was that Orson Pratt was victor.
The Paul of the Mormon Church is verily his fitting name. Orson Pratt will live throughout a dispensation.
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