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North and South
Stories and Genealogy of Theodore Charles Anderson and Sara Carlene Shuttleworth
Lynching at Carthage
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The Mormon Temple at Nauvoo
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Joseph Smith, Jr.
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Joseph Smith, Jr.
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Joseph Smith, Jr., the founder of the Mormon Church was born in 1805 in Sharon, VT, into a hard-pressed farm family that eventually included ten children.
His father, Joseph, Sr. and his mother, Lucy Mack, had started their marriage auspiciously enough with Lucy's ample dowry of one thousand dollars. But the dowry was quickly spent and the farm became overgrown with weeds.
In a desperate attempt to recoup his losses, Joseph Sr. invested everything he had left in a shipment of ginseng bound for China. He had heard that the Chinese would pay high prices for the root of the ginseng plant, which grew wild in Vermont.
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When he failed to get a penny for his ginseng, Joseph Sr. moved his family to a farm near Palmyra, New York, in the western part of the state, in the heart of what was called the "burned-over district" for its frequent and fervent Protestant revivals.
There he fared little better than in Vermont. The Smith family often went hungry during the winter months. As soon as they were able to work, the Smith children had to help support the family. Consequently, Joseph obtained little schooling.
It turns out that Joseph Smith, Jr. is Sara’s 5th cousin, 5 times removed. The direct bloodline connection is through Dr. Samuel Fuller (the Elder) who came over on the Mayflower in 1620 and is Sara’s 9th Great Grandfather. He is also Joseph Smith, Jr's. 4th Great Grandfather. The bloodline looks like this:
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 Dr. Samuel FULLER (the Elder) (1612-1683)
   Jane LATHROP (1614-1658)
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Samuel Fuller (1638-1676) John FULLER (1656-1726)
Anne FULLER (1640-1691) Mehitable ROWLEY (?-?)
  Barnabus FULLER (1659-1738) Shubael FULLER (1684-1748)
Elizabeth YOUNG (1661-1738) Hannah CROCKER (1688-?)
 Samuel FULLER (1681-1758)Lydia FULLER (1709-1778)
Lydia CONANT (1692-1764)Daniel GATES (1706-1776)
 Lot FULLER Sr. (1733-1811)Lydia GATES (1732-1818)
Rachel WEBSTER (1737-1812)Solomon MACK (1732-1818)
 Simeon FULLER Sr. (1762-1852)Lucy MACK (1775-1856)
Wealthy WOODWORD (1756-1845)Joseph SMITH, SR (1771-1840)
 Simeon FULLER Jr. (1789-?)Joseph SMITH Jr. (1805-1844)
Lucina WADE (?-?)
 Harriet FULLER (?-?)
John Alden TULLER (1813-1874)
 Wilbur Elam TULLER (1848-1938)
Georgia Grace McDONALD (1862-?)
 Jenne Agnes TULLER (1884-1942)
Clyde Fillmore THOMPSON (1882-1916)
 Eloise Dorthory THOMPSON (1905-1981)
Thomas Henderson SHUTTLEWORTH (1905-1983)
Sara Carlene SHUTTLEWORTH (1934)
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When Joseph was an adolescent, an itinerant magician and diviner stopped in Palmyra and offered his services to the locals. The diviner claimed that he could locate not only ground water near the surface, but also treasure which had been buried by Indians many years before.
Some farmers hired the diviner at $3 per day to look for buried treasure on their lands. The diviner had several “magic stones” which he looked into, in order to discover the sites of the buried treasures.
Young Joseph Smith took a deep interest in the diviner's "skills" and spent as much time as he could in the magician's company, trying to master his divining abilities. When no treasure was found and no more farmers would pay him, the diviner moved on, but by that time Joseph had picked up many of his tricks.
Acquiring some "magic stones" of his own, Joseph was successful in using them to locate some lost tools for a local farmer. It was suspected by many that he had hidden the tools himself and knew where they were, but that was never proven.
A visitor to Palmyra who heard about Joseph's "clairvoyance" was interested in meeting the young seer. The visitor was from the eastern part of New York State, and was convinced that Spaniards had once deposited treasure on his property. Joseph agreed to accompany the visitor east, and to help him locate the treasure, provided that he was paid $3 a day, the same as the diviner had charged. Joseph's father accompanied his nineteen-year-old son on this expedition in 1825.
The site of the hoped-for treasure was the Susquehanna Valley near Damascus, New York, just north of the Pennsylvania border. While hunting for the treasure, Joseph and his father lived at a farm in Pennsylvania where the Susquehanna dips into that state near Great Bend.
A large party of diggers showed up to help in excavating the treasure. All of them contributed to Joseph's wage, in return for a share in the expected treasure. The work progressed slowly. For the first few days the diggers worked with a will, anticipating the riches that would soon be theirs. But as they dug and found nothing, their spirits began to sink. When Joseph told them that the treasure had begun to sink lower due to an "enchantment," they suspected him of being a charlatan and felt that he had made fools of them.
The search for treasure ended, and Joseph's father returned to his home in Palmyra, but Joseph stayed on in the Susquehanna Valley. He had fallen in love with Emma Hale, the daughter of Isaac Hale, in whose house Joseph and his father had boarded during the treasure hunt.
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Emma Hale
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Emma Hale
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Emma, who was one year older than Joseph, was a beautiful and self-contained schoolteacher who kept herself aloof from him.
Despite Emma's coolness, Joseph took a job as a farmhand just over the border in New York State, within walking distance of the Hale house in Pennsylvania. In his spare time he attended school to improve his skill in reading and writing, very likely so that he would seem a more worthy suitor to a schoolteacher.
As Joseph persisted in his courtship of Emma, she gradually yielded to his ardor. But when Joseph asked her father for Emma's hand in marriage, he was brusquely refused. Mr. Isaac Hale had been one of the original diggers for treasure under Joseph's direction, and one of the first to lose confidence in the young diviner.
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He considered Joseph to be an arrogant, fraudulent, and lazy young man, totally unworthy to marry his daughter. After being turned down by Isaac Hale, Joseph continued to visit Emma while Isaac was away on frequent and extended hunting trips.
In the spring of 1826, some of the former treasure-hunters brought legal charges against Joseph in the court at Bainbridge, New York. Joseph was accused of "disorderly conduct" and also of being an "impostor." One of the witnesses testifying against him was his sweetheart's father, Isaac Hale.
Joseph was found guilty on both charges. There is no record of the sentence imposed on him.
Despite this public humiliation, which was aided and abetted by her father, Emma Hale remained attracted to Joseph. In January 1827, when Joseph was twenty-one, he succeeded in persuading Emma to elope with him. After getting married in New York State, they went to live with Joseph's parents in Palmyra.
In the fall of 1827, Joseph and Emma returned to her parents' home in Pennsylvania to pick up her belongings. There was an emotional meeting between Isaac Hale and his new son-in-law, in which Isaac accused Joseph of having stolen his daughter. Amid tears, Joseph asked his father-in-law for forgiveness. Joseph promised to lead a more honest and responsible life, and to be a worthy husband to Emma.
Isaac seemed reassured by Joseph's contrition, and offered to give the young couple a house on his property.
Joseph and Emma moved into the small house, and Isaac expected that Joseph would help with the work on his farm. Instead, he kept himself occupied with some mysterious indoor activity. One day Isaac decided to investigate what was going on, and paid a visit to his son-in-law.
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The Book of Mormon
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Isaac found Joseph sitting at a table with a hat over his face, uttering long Biblical phrases. Emma sat behind a curtain; hidden from Joseph, while she wrote down the words he was speaking. On the tabletop in front of Joseph sat a square object concealed by a cloth. When Joseph removed his hat from his face, Isaac could see two stones in the hat, similar to the “magic stones” Joseph had used in divining the location of the buried Spanish treasure.
Alarmed, Isaac demanded an explanation of this strange activity. The explanation that Joseph and Emma gave him only alarmed Isaac more. They told Isaac that Joseph had seen a vision of an angel back in Palmyra. The angel had led Joseph to a hill near Palmyra, which Joseph called “Cumorah”.
There, digging at the spot the angel had indicated, Joseph said that he had found a set of golden plates comprising a holy book, called the Book of Mormon. The book was written in symbols that Joseph called "reformed Egyptian," but with the gold plates were two stones, with which Joseph could decipher the ancient symbols on them.
Joseph told Isaac that the gold plates were right in front of them on the table, in the box covered by a cloth. It was not necessary for Joseph to see the plates in order to decipher them. He could read the plates, understand them, and translate them into English, by gazing into the stones!
However, in order to see into the stones, he had to shut out all extraneous light; therefore, he put the stones into his hat and covered his face with a hat.
When Isaac asked to see the golden plates, Joseph refused permission. He said that, if anyone other than himself looked at the golden plates, it would mean instant death for that person.
So far as Isaac could tell, no change had occurred in Joseph since his treasure-hunting days. Isaac later said, "The manner in which he pretended to read and interpret was the same as when he looked for the money-diggers, with the stones in his hat, and his hat over his face."
Isaac failed to notice that, although Joseph's occult techniques had not changed, the purpose of Joseph's life had taken a new direction.
Formerly, Joseph had been looking for gold, now he seemed indifferent to money. As described by Joseph, the gold plates he had found at Cumorah were worth millions of dollars; yet Joseph valued only the message engraved on them.
Isaac felt certain that there were no gold plates at all and that Joseph was plotting some sort of elaborate fraud. But Emma remained loyal to her husband, dutifully taking down Joseph's dictation, hour after hour, day after day.
The words Joseph spoke through his hat told the story of Jewish families which had migrated to America from Israel in the seventh century before Christ, becoming the ancestors of the American Indians. According to the scriptures that Joseph was translating, Christ himself had come to America before his ascension.
During his work of translation, Joseph received some financial support from a few acquaintances that believed in the importance of his task. One man mortgaged his farm to support Joseph. The man's wife, who considered Joseph's scriptures a hoax, was so incensed that she left her husband.
Emma worked as Joseph's secretary until the summer of 1828, when she gave birth to a son who survived for only a few hours. Emma was so depressed by the death of her firstborn that Joseph was deeply worried about her. To give Emma a rest, he called in one of his supporters to serve as his scribe, and Emma regained her health and stability.
The following year 1829, the second secretary was replaced by a third. Finally, in 1830, the work of translation was completed. Joseph was now twenty-four years old, had spent two and a half years translating the Book of Mormon. He had dictated a total of 275,000 words.
His translation complete, Joseph had one further use of the golden plates. To assure skeptics that the plates did, indeed, exist, he showed them to several trusted witnesses, who signed statements affirming that they had beheld the plates.
In preparation for viewing the plates, the chosen witnesses prayed for several hours. After lengthy praying, one witness reported that he saw only an empty box. Joseph sent him out for additional prayer, after which the golden plates were fully visible to the witness.
Joseph later announced that he had returned the plates to the angel who had first led him to them. The angel took them off to eternity.
The manuscript of the translation then went to a printer in Palmyra. On March 25, 1830, the Book of Mormon went on sale in the bookstore in Palmyra. A week later, the book was reviewed in the newspapers of Rochester, New York, under the headlines: "Blasphemy!"
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The Early Church
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The rewriting and revisions of the Bible, which were contained in the Book of Mormon, in general, shocked leaders of established churches. But the Mormon narratives, which tied together their religious and patriotic sentiments, fascinated many people living in western New York State.
Utilizing the popular theory that the Indians were the descendants of the lost tribes of Israel, the Book of Mormon incorporated the history of the western hemisphere within Biblical history. The entire book was written in the style of the King James Version of the Bible and abounded with phrases like, "And it came to pass..."
Judeo-Christian and American traditions were welded together in the Book of Mormon, in which America's "fruited plain" was an extension of the Holy Land.
Before and during Joseph's time, western New York State had seethed with religious ferment. Fantastic religious sects had arisen and briefly flowered there. Camp meetings, with their unbridled exhibitions, had been frequent. Seasoned evangelists tended to avoid western New York State because they considered it "burnt over territory." Its inhabitants had participated in so many revivals that they had become jaded with religious ecstasy.
They were weary of agonizing guilt and had lost faith in the healing power of Christ's sacrifice. Western New York was ripe for a new religious message, and for many that message was contained in the Book of Mormon.
Several days after the publication of the Book of Mormon, Joseph organized his first congregation of the Mormon Church. Among the converts who Joseph baptized by total immersion in Lake Seneca were his parents and brothers.
Joseph and Emma traveled back to her parents' neighborhood in the Susquehanna Valley, where they made some converts. But they did not convert any of his former associates in treasure hunting.
His father-in-law, Isaac Hale, thought that Joseph was the same charlatan as before, and was merely practicing a new confidence game. With the encouragement of the local Presbyterian minister, Joseph was once more put on trial on the charge of "disorderly conduct." After the trial, Joseph and Emma left the Susquehanna Valley. Emma would never see her parents again.
Despite setbacks, the church grew and spread. Mormonism had distinct advantages over conventional churches. It had its own unique scriptures and its own living prophet, who had brought its sacred writings down from Mount Cumorah, just as Moses had brought the Ten Commandments down from Sinai.
Joseph, whose powers as a writer had increased as he translated the Book of Mormon, now grew as an orator. Unlike the evangelists with whom he was competing for souls, he didn’t terrify his audiences with vivid pictures of hellfire and brimstone; in fact, Joseph's sermons were punctuated with humor. His audiences laughed more than they quaked.
He held out for his converts not the dangers of hell but the likely prospect of eternal bliss. Heaven was not hard to attain. Ordinary sinners like blasphemers and adulterers would not go to hell. It was true that frequent sinners would not go to the luxurious and carefree abode of the saintly, but the heaven of sinners would be comfortable enough.
Joseph taught that every person contained some divinity that could be augmented indefinitely, transforming the human into a god. Each person who wanted such exalted status could one day become master or mistress of one of the many stars in the firmament. There were plenty of stars in God's creation to go around. For many people, Joseph was a welcome relief from the itinerant fire-and-brimstone evangelists.
By the early fall of 1830 there was only one person whom Joseph wanted to convert who had still not joined his church. That holdout was his wife, Emma.
Why Emma refused to join Joseph's church for six months isn’t known. It’s not known either whether she believed in the existence of the golden tablets or not.
It was, of course, embarrassing for Joseph to be proselytizing for his new church while he was unable to win the soul of his own wife. Under considerable pressure from Joseph, the woman who had recorded the first words of the Book of Mormon finally became a Mormon herself.
The membership of the Mormon Church was significantly enlarged in 1831, when a preacher of another denomination in Kirtland, Ohio, converted and took his entire congregation with him into the Mormons.
The church in Kirtland grew so rapidly that it became the largest center of Mormons in the country. Joseph and his elders moved the headquarters of their new national church to Kirtland, from where Joseph exerted a tight control over his rapidly expanding movement. Joseph announced new policies for the church from time to time as he personally received revelations directly from God.
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Temple at Kirtland
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Mormons were hard workers and their communities prospered. The economy in Kirtland was at first communistic, like that of the early Christians. When communism proved to be impractical, the Mormons returned to free enterprise, with members paying one-tenth of their incomes to the church as tithes.
Eventually a great temple was built in Kirtland, an architectural gem that was the grandest building in the west. The Mormons' prosperity was consistent with Joseph's theology that the Kingdom of God prevailed not only in heaven but on earth, as well.
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The Temple at Nauvoo
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Tintype of the Nauvoo
Temple in 1846
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Despite their affluence, or perhaps because of it, the Mormons were continually suffering abuse from their non-Mormon neighbors, whom they called "gentiles."
The Mormon beliefs struck many gentiles as extremely strange and out of step with the mainstream of American life. The Mormons' serene assurance of the correctness of their beliefs impressed the gentiles as being smug. Joseph once said, "Truth is Mormonism. God is the author of it."
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Joseph began to plan for an earthly paradise for Mormons that would be far removed from people of other faiths. In 1832 Joseph was tarred and feathered by a gentile mob near Kirtland. The fury of the mob was ignited by rumors that Joseph had made sexual advances to a seventeen-year-old girl.
The attack on his person intensified Joseph's determination to establish a Mormon utopia far away from the gentiles. The Mormon's new home, with its ideal society, would be called Zion.
At first Joseph placed his hope for Zion in Missouri. Although Joseph himself remained in Ohio during the middle 1830's, other Mormons settled in Independence, Missouri, then a frontier town. As soon as the Mormons were settled and had begun to thrive in Independence, gentiles began to harass them and drove them out of town.
A new Mormon settlement outside of Independence was also harried, forcing a flight to a completely new settlement in Missouri, which the Mormons named Far West. Joseph, still maintaining his headquarters in Kirtland, Ohio, began referring to Far West as Zion.
When Far West was attacked by the gentiles, Joseph decided that the Mormons had taken enough punishment. He organized a company of armed Mormons in Ohio and marched at their head to defend their beleaguered brethren in Missouri.
By the time the small Mormon fighting force arrived in Missouri, however, the gentiles had called out the Missouri state militia and were waiting to do battle. Joseph was outnumbered ten-to-one and saw at once that a shoot-out with the Missourians would be suicidal for him and his men. He capitulated.
Despite Joseph's surrender, he was charged with treason for appearing in Missouri in command of an armed force, and was also charged with plotting the murder of a Missouri man killed in a skirmish with the Mormons. While Joseph was in jail awaiting trial, gentiles attacked Far West and drove the Mormons east toward the Mississippi River.
Joseph got out of his Missouri jail by bribing the sheriff with a jug of whiskey and $800, and then joined the last straggling Mormon refugees from Missouri in their retreat to Illinois. He was 33 years old.
Fifteen thousand Mormons crossed into Illinois in 1839 and settled on a horseshoe bend of the Mississippi, about half way between Davenport, Iowa and Saint Louis, Missouri. The Mormons were granted a very liberal charter by the State of Illinois for their new city, which they named Nauvoo.
Within three years, Nauvoo was one of the largest cities in Illinois and the tenth largest in the United States. It was famous for its beautiful homes, its many fine shops and its magnificent Temple on a bluff overlooking the city and the river that surrounded it on three sides.
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Joseph Smith reviewing his Mormon Troops at Nauvoo
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Joseph became mayor of Nauvoo. Thanks to the eagerness of Illinois politicians to win the Mormon vote, he was commissioned as a Lieutenant General in command of the Nauvoo militia. He delighted in wearing his general's uniform and reviewing his troops. In 1844, at the age 38, he announced his candidacy for the office of the President of the United States.
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Troubles
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Outwardly, Joseph's troubles seemed to be over, but appearances were deceiving. Despite his titles, gaudy uniforms, and vaulting political ambitions, he was standing on a very shaky foundation. His position was weakest within his own church.
All his life, Joseph had a tendency to quarrel with his closest friends, who then became his bitter enemies. As a young diviner-treasure-hunter, he had made lifelong foes of the men who had helped him dig for treasure.
After translating the Book of Mormon, Joseph had a series of close friends and colleagues who worked with him in building the Mormon Church. However, after a limited time of cooperation, one-by-one, he quarreled with each of them. His former friends either left the church or were excommunicated from it by Joseph.
Outside the church, these former friends circulated malicious rumors about Joseph among the gentiles.
The whispering campaign against the Mormons was concerned largely with what the gentiles considered their bizarre sexual practices, mostly that of plural marriage.
Along with breaks in his relationships with ecclesiastical colleagues, a rift also grew between Joseph and his wife, Emma. Although she continued to live with him and bear his children, a problem arose between them in the 1830’s, which was never resolved. That problem was Joseph's pursuit of other women.
Ever since Joseph had founded the Mormon Church, his status as a prophet had brought him the adoration of his followers, including many attractive women. Seducing Mormon women was easy for him, and was apparently irresistible too.
As much as she was able, Emma tried to ignore Joseph's infidelities and pretended they had not happened. But once when she caught him embracing a woman whom she considered her good friend, Emma lost control of herself and attacked the woman with a broomstick.
There is evidence that Joseph started to think about making plural marriage a moral practice within his church as early as 1831, one year after the church was founded. He knew, however, how shocking such a practice would be not only to many Mormons, but to the gentiles as well.
He intended to postpone the announcement of the new practice until people were more ready to accept it. Meanwhile, he let a few trusted colleagues know that plural marriage had been sanctioned by God in a special revelation made only to him. God, said Joseph, was no more opposed to polygamy in 1831 than he had been in the time of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who all had large harems.
Meanwhile, although Joseph had not yet announced God's sanction of plural marriage to the entire church, Joseph himself was practicing it.
He proposed what he called "celestial" marriage to a number of women, some of whom were already legally married to other men. Joseph considered celestial marriages to be on a higher plane than earthly marriages, lasting forever, and taking precedence over mundane marriages. By his death, he had taken 24 “celestial wives” and had children by almost all of them.
Only polygamy, the custom of one man taking multiple wives, was sanctioned. Women were not allowed to have more than one husband. Joseph taught that a woman's possibility of entering heaven depended largely on the worthiness of her husband, rather than on her own worthiness.
When Joseph mentioned his revelation about plural marriages to Emma, she was beside herself with rage. She had helped him translate the Book of Mormon and had never asked to see his gold plates. She had borne him children. She had scraped tar and feathers from his naked and bruised body, but she was not going to bless her husband's practice of polygamy.
He might have God's permission to sleep with other women, but he would never get hers. She begged him to renounce the new doctrine, but he wouldn’t even consider it.
More than one former colleague with whom Joseph fell out was the husband, brother, or father of a woman to whom Joseph had proposed celestial marriage.
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Marcellus Black
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Masonic Symbol
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While all this was going on with the Mormons, the Black clan was growing and thriving in Arkansas.
(visit Black's Road for the story of Ted’s 2nd Great Grandfather John C. Black’s wagon train to Arkansas.)
Marcellus Black, son of Robert Black and Mathilda Alexander, was born in 1791 in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. He journeyed farther to reach Arkansas than any other member of the Black clan.
Marcellus Black is Ted’s 2nd cousin, 4 times removed.
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The bloodline looks like this:
Samuel BLACK (1700-?)
Agness GLENN (1707-?)
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Patriot Robert BLACK (1732-1781)Patriot James BLACK (1728-1818)
Eleanor RODGERS (1741-1845)Elizabeth RUSSELL (1736-1804)
Robert BLACK, Jr. (1776-1836)Robert Whitfield BLACK (1767-1843)
Martha KEITH (1773-1839)Matilda ALEXANDER (1771-1860)
John C. BLACK (1799-1860)Marcellus BLACK (1791-1849)
Jane DAVIS (1806-1837)
Francis Putnam BLACK (1833-1874)
Mary F. MILLER (1840-1922)
Raleigh Miller BLACK (1865-1931)
Katherine Susan Sarah IRBY (1872-1929)
Susan Ida BLACK (1902-1981)
Oscar Thoralf ANDERSON (1904-1994)
Theodore Charles ANDERSON (1934)
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The Blacks were a restless bunch and Marcellus, after leaving Mecklenburg County, NC, probably lived several places before he reached Carthage, Illinois where he became an active member of the Masonic Lodge.
Masons (also known as Freemasons) belong to what may be the oldest and largest fraternal organization in the world. No one knows just how old Freemasonry is because its actual origins have been lost in time. Most scholars believe Masonry arose from the guilds of stonemasons who built the majestic castles and cathedrals of the middle ages.
In 1717, the Masons created the first formal organization when four Lodges in London joined to form England’s Grand Lodge. By 1731, when Benjamin Franklin joined the Masons, there were already several Lodges in the Colonies. In Canada, the first Lodge was established in 1738.
Many of North America's early patriots were Masons. Thirteen signers of the Constitution and fourteen Presidents of the United States, including George Washington, were Masons. In Canada, the Father of the Confederation, Sir John A. MacDonald, was a Mason, as were other early Canadian and American leaders.
Today, there are more than two million Masons in North America alone. Masons represent virtually every occupation and profession, yet within the Fraternity, all meet as equals. They come from diverse political ideologies, yet meet as friends. Masons come from varied religious beliefs and creeds. What they have in common is that they are all deeply religious and strongly believe in only one God and the Ten Commandments.
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Carthage Jail
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A relationship of sorts existed early on between the Mormons and the Masons. Some historians even think that some of the secret combinations of the Gadianton Robbers referred to in the Book of Mormon, are symbolic of the Masons.
Many early Mormons were Masons prior to joining the Church; however, the Mormons had no formal relationship with Masonry until Joseph Smith Jr. arrived in Nauvoo, Illinois.
Many of the Mormons in Nauvoo who had been Masons in the past longed to become Masons again, which they bared from doing during their many persecutions and travels. They urged Joseph Smith to form a Masonic Lodge of their own in Nauvoo, which he did in 1842.
The problem was that the Mormon practice of polygamy outraged gentile Masons who thought it to be an affront to God, the Ten Commandments and to their beliefs, and they were determined to take action to stop it. They wanted nothing to do with what they considered to be the illegitimate Masonic lodge created by Joseph Smith.
Soon internal dissention among the Mormons themselves, religious antagonism from the gentiles, both Mason and non Mason, and the fear of the political power of the Mormons exploded into fury. The stage was set for big trouble in Nauvoo.
In 1844 a major schism occurred among the Mormons of Nauvoo, which resulted directly from Joseph's proposals of celestial marriage to the wives of several leaders of the church.
The husbands felt wronged by their prophet, challenged his leadership, bought a printing press, and issued a dissident Mormon newspaper with editorials attacking Joseph's policies.
Joseph ordered his faithful followers to destroy the printing press of his opponents. After the press was wrecked, the Governor of Illinois, Thomas Ford, charged Joseph with violating the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, and issued a warrant for his arrest. Ford ordered that he be taken to the jail at Carthage, Illinois.
Carthage is located about 12 miles East of the Mississippi, and about 18 miles South-East of Nauvoo.
The jail was built in 1839. Constructed of native red limestone, the two-story rectangular, gable-front building measures twenty-nine by thirty-five feet. Like other county jails in Illinois, the Carthage Jail was built to incarcerate petty thieves and debtors and to serve as a temporary holding place for violent criminals. It contained a debtor's room in the northwest corner of the first floor, and a dungeon, or "criminal cell" on the second floor, north side. There was also a living area for the jailer's family that included a kitchen, a dining room, and bedrooms.
The Carthage Grays militia unit marched to Nauvoo and took Joseph, his brother Hyrum and several other Mormon leaders into custody.
The governor sent the militia because he feared that if the police tried to arrest Joseph, the local population might overwhelm them.
The solders took the Mormons to the jail in Carthage, Illinois, and locked them up in the "dungeon" cell on the second floor. They stationed themselves outside the jail to guard it.
The Carthage Jail Today
Outside of Nauvoo, feelings against Joseph and the Mormons had reached the boiling point. On the second day of his imprisonment, Ted’s cousin Marcellus Black (age 53), his young friend William Vorheas (age 26), other Masons and locals from Carthage formed a vigilante posse of about 150 people (the Mormons call it a mob) and stormed the jail, their faces painted black to conceal their identities.
When the disguised mob approached the jail, the guards on duty did nothing to stop them. Some say they actually joined in. As members of the vigilantes mounted the inside steps of the jail leading to the second floor, shots were fired. Hyrum Smith, Joseph’s brother was killed on the spot.
Joseph, who inexplicably had a six-shooter pistol, shot the first vigilantes to reach the second floor. Before he ran out of bullets, he wounded several more of his attackers.
As the mob came on unopposed, Joseph ran to the window. As he straddled the windowsill, those inside the jail shot him from behind. At the same time, others shot him from the ground below.
Calling out, "Oh, my God!" Joseph fell out of the window. He was still alive when he hit the ground. Vigilantes standing nearby put several more bullets into him, ending his life at age thirty-eight. William Vorheas always thought his was the fatal shot.
When his body was brought home to Nauvoo, Emma flung herself across it and moaned, "Oh Joseph, Joseph, they have killed you at last."
While no charges were ever filed after the lynching at the Carthage Jail, Marcellus Black decided to get out of town. He quickly moved his entire family to Union County, Arkansas where the rest of the Black clan was already well established.
William Vorheas fled with them.
Today’s Visitors Entrance to the Carthage Jail
The Statue is that of Joseph and Hyrum Smith
Following the death of Joseph Smith a succession crisis ensued in the Mormon Church. Several claimants vied for his role as church president. At a meeting of the congregation in Nauvoo, Brigham Young successfully argued that a committee of twelve men should lead the Church. Young, as president of that committee, became the de facto head of the church. The committee was named “The Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.”
After three years under the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Young reorganized a new First Presidency and was declared President in 1847.
Since the death of Joseph, relations between Brigham Young and Emma Hale Smith had steadily deteriorated. Young had cut her, her friends and other members of the Smith family off from the church.
Relations between the "Latter Day Saints", as they now called themselves and their gentile neighbors also declined into near open warfare.
Finally, Young made the decision to relocate again to the West. He led his group to an area next to the Great Salt Lake in the territory that is now Utah but was then part of Mexico. Young organized the journey that would take his faithful first to Winter Quarters, Nebraska, in 1846, then on to the Salt Lake Valley where they arrived on July 24, 1847.
When he and the majority of the Latter Day Saints abandoned Nauvoo in early 1846, Emma and her children remained behind in the mostly empty town. She died in Nauvoo in 1879.
Back in Arkansas, William Vorheas married Marcellus’ oldest daughter, Isabella Black. All Marcellus’ other children married and reared families in Union County, AR.
Marcellus Black died in Union County, March 7, 1849.
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Tune "Mozart March in D Major"
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The introductory tune used on this page is Mozart's "March in D Major" written in 1776.
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This page and all genealogical data contained on it are Copyrighted © 2007/2008
by Theodore C. Anderson
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