Mormonism: Its Leaders and Designs/Chapter 8

by John Hyde, Jr.

Chapter VIII.

Chronological History of Mormonism.

1805.	December 23. Joseph Smith, jun., born at Sharon, Windsor county, Vermont.
1815.	April. His father and family remove to Palmyra, Wayne county, New York.
1820.	March. Many revivals of religion in western New York, and Smith's mind becomes disturbed. Under the preaching of Rev. Mr. Lane he becomes partial to the Methodists. April. Smith pretends to receive his first vision while praying in the woods. He asserts that God the Father and Jesus Christ came to him from the heavens; and, like Mohammed's Gabriel, told him that his sins were forgiven; that he was the chosen of God to reinstate his kingdom and re-introduce the gospel, that none of the denominations were right, etc.
1823.	September 21. Smith proved forgetful of his pretended revelation and swore, swindled, lied, and got drunk as formerly; but says that an angel came to him while he was in bed, and told him of the existence and preservation of the history of the ancient inhabitants of America, engraved on plates of gold, and directs him where to find them. September 22. Goes as directed and discovers them in a stone box, in a hill side between Manchester and Palmyra, western New York. He attempts to take them, but is prevented. The devil and angels contend about him; devil is whipped and retreats: he receives many instructions from the angel and begins preparing himself for his future.
1827.	January 18. Smith married to Miss Emma Hale, afterward "Lady elect of the Church." September 22. Receives the "plates" from the hands of the angel.
1828.	July: Translation is suspended, in consequence of Martin Harris stealing one hundred and eighteen pages of MS., which have never been replaced.
1829.	April 17. Translation recommenced, Oliver Cowdery acting as clerk. May 5. Smith pretends that John the Baptist came and ordained Cowdery and himself "priests;" and commanded them "to baptize and afterward re-ordain each other."
1830.	Smith was ordained Apostle by Peter, James, and John. April 6. The Mormon Church organized at Manchester, New York, and consisted of J. Smith, sen., Hiram and Samuel Smith, O. Cowdery, Joseph Knight, and J. Smith, jun. Martin Harris, one of the witnesses, not being one among them!
1830.	June. First conference at Fayette, New York. August. Parley P. Pratt and Sidney Rigdon converted to Mormonism. December. Smith is visited by Rigdon.
1831.	January. The Church commanded to move to Kirtland, Ohio, where Rigdon had a body of persons converted to Mormonism as a nucleus. May. The Elders sent out by twos to preach. June 7. The first endowment given; Elders much disappointed in their expectations. Many ordained and sent out to preach. New branches growing up rapidly. June 17. Smith and party start for Missouri to search for a location for "Zion." August 3. Zion determined to be in Independence, Jackson county, Mo. Smith dedicates the "Temple block;" names the place "The New Jerusalem," and returns to Kirtland. August 27. "The Kirtland Safety Society Bank," store, mill, and other mercantile operations commenced by Smith.
1832.	February 16. Smith and Sidney Rigdon pretend to see in a vision the whole destiny of man, and his different degrees of glory and punishment. March 22. Smith mobbed, tarred, and feathered for dishonorable dealing. April 2. Smith visits Jackson county, Mo., where matters are in disorder; the Saints by their boasts and threats enraging the old citizens, and the "Church" quarreling among themselves about the communism that Smith had attempted to establish.
1833.	March 8. The first presidency organized by the appointment of Sidney Rigdon and Frederic G. Williams as Smith's counselors. July 23. The foundation of Kirtland Temple laid by Smith. The mob at Independence, Jackson county, Mo., rise against the Mormons, and extort a promise of half to leave by January, and all by April, 1834. October 30. The mob destroys ten Mormon houses. Two of the mobbers are killed by the Saints. This was the first blood shed, and the Mormons shed it. November. The Mormons fly from Jackson, and are kindly received in Clay county, Mo.
1834.	February 20. Smith goes with companies from Kirtland to Missouri, to the relief of the Saints; organizes a small army, and begins to dream of physical conquest and temporal sovereignty. May 4. Mormon Church first called "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints" by Sidney Rigdon. at a convention at Kirtland. July 9. Smith returns to Kirtland, where his presence began to be needed.
1835.	February 14. The first quorum of the Twelve Apostles ordained at Kirtland; and among them Brigham. Young and Heber C. Kimball. Classes of instruction and school of Prophets commenced. Sidney Rigdon delivers six lectures on Faith, generally attributed to J. Smith, being unaccredited to their author, and bound in the book of Smith's Revelations (Doctrines and Covenants).
1836.	March 27. The Kirtland Temple, finished at a cost of $40,000, is dedicated; at which Smith pretends to see Moses, Elias, and Elijah, who give him different "keys" of priesthood, which guarantied to their possessors unlimited power in spiritual and temporal things. June 29. The Mormons are requested by the citizens. to move from Clay county, Mo., to Carrol, Davis, and Caldwell counties, they having become impudent, encroaching, and threatening. They wisely decide to move, and leave with friendly arrangements.
1837.	June 1. O. Hyde and Kimball appointed to go to England as missionaries. November. Smith's Kirtland Safety Society Bank broke, store seized, goods sold, and himself insolvent.
1838.	January 12. Smith and Rigdon run away in the night from their creditors in Ohio, who were threatening their arrest for fraud. March. They arrive in Missouri, and begin to scatter the Saints, in order to obtain political ascendancy in other counties of the State of Missouri. The citizens commence to murmur at being under Mormon rule. About this time Smith pretended to obtain a revelation from God authorizing him to practice polygamy, and began to practice it accordingly. July 4. Sidney Rigdon, in an anniversary oration, familiarly called by the Mormons "Sidney's Salt Sermon," threatens the Mormon enemies and apostates with physical violence. July 4. The Danite Band, or United Brothers of Gideon, organized, and placed under the command of David Patten, an Apostle, who assumed the alias of Captain Fearnot. Martin Harris, Oliver Cowdery, and David Whitmer, the three witnesses to the Book of Mormon, are charged with lying, theft, counterfeit-coining, and defamation of Smith's character, and are cut off from the Church. Orson Hyde, Thomas B. Marsh, W. W. Phelps, and many others apostatize from the faith, and give evidence against Smith, accusing him of being accessory to several murders and many thefts, and of designing to rule that part of the State of Missouri, and eventually the whole Republic. August and September. Several emeutes occur between the mobbers and Mormons. The latter steal sixty or eighty stand of arms at Richmond, and fire. on the militia, mistaking them for the mob, at Crooked river, where several are shot, when the militia return. the fire, and David Patten is killed. September 30. The militia, to avenge the death of their comrades, brutally attack the Mormon women and children at Hawn's Mill, shooting them down and burning the houses, and committing other barbarous atrocities on the women. November. The Saints are kindly received at Quincey, Illinois. Smith arrested and about to be shot by the excited military, but is handed over to the civil authorities, and is subsequently released.
1839.	March 25. Brigham Young and others relay the foundations of the Temple at Independence, Jackson county, Mo. May 9. Smith goes to Commerce, Ill., by invitation of Dr. Isaac Galland, of whom he obtains gratis a large tract of land, to induce him to settle there with the people. He accordingly receives a revelation, calls the Saints about him, and sells them the town lots he had received for nothing. September. Brigham Young, H. C. Kimball and others leave for England as missionaries; O. Hyde, although previously appointed by "revelation," not accompanying them. October. Smith and others go to Washington, to try and obtain redress from Congress for their injuries in Missouri. 5. The town of Commerce chosen a "Stake of Zion" by Smith.
1840.	April 21. Commerce changes its name to Nauvoo. October 3. Mormons begin preparing to build the Temple, and petition the State Legislature of Illinois for the incorporation of Nauvoo.
1841.	February 4. Nauvoo incorporation act, passed in the preceding winter, begins to be in force. Nauvoo Legion organized. J. Smith, Lieutenant-General. April 6. The foundation stones of Nauvoo Temple laid by Smith, with grand military parade.
1842.	May 6. Governor L. W. Boggs of Missouri shot at by Orrin Porter Rockwell (now at Salt Lake City), with the connivance and under the instructions of Joseph Smith.
1843.	J. Smith, mayor of Nauvoo, vice J. C. Bennet cut off for imitating Smith in his spiritual-wife doctrine. July 12. Smith pretends to have a second revelation. on polygamy, in order to conciliate his first wife, who was angry with his "ladies."
1844.	February 7. J. Smith, as candidate for the Presidency of U. S., issues his address. May 6. Smith and party destroy the material of "The Expositor:" suit issued against him in consequence. June 24. The arms are demanded from the citizens of Nauvoo by the Governor of Illinois. June 27. Joseph Smith, Jr., and his brother Hiram are shot in jail at Carthage, Illinois, by a gang of Missourians. August 15. The Twelve Apostles, with Brigham. Young at their head, assume the presidency of the Church; and address, as such, an epistle to the "Saints in all the world." October 7. Brigham Young's authority is fully recognized by the majority of the Mormon people. Rigdon and all the contumacious members cut off, cursed, "and delivered to the devil to be buffeted in the flesh for a thousand years!" by Brigham.
1845.	January. Nauvoo charter is repealed by the State Legislature February. Brigham Young and the Mormon authorities begin to seriously contemplate a general move to the west. John Taylor, an Apostle, proposes Vancouver's Island, British America. Lyman Wight, also, then an Apostle, proposes Texas. Others suggest California, then but little known. Much dissension as to locality. Some valley in the Rocky Mountains finally selected. May. The cap-stone of the Mormon Temple laid: and endowments soon after begin.
1846.	January. Baptizing for the dead administered in the river Mississippi. 20. Pioneers leave Nauvoo to find some resting-place on the borders of Iowa. They select Council Bluffs. February. Mormon companies cross the ice-covered river en route for Council Bluffs. July. Brigham Young sells a company of his brethren as a Mexican battalion, for $20,000. September. Nauvoo, in which many of the Mormons were remaining, was besieged by the mob.
1847.	April 14. The pioneers leave their Winter Quarters, Council Bluffs, Iowa, for the Rocky Mountains, and by following the trail of Colonel Fremont, arrive at Salt Lake. July 23 Orson Pratt and a few arrive at the Valley. 24. Brigham and main body of pioneers enter. This day, instead of the 23d, is always celebrated, as a compliment to Brigham, a species of sycophancy very customary from the Mormon people to the Mormon Prophet. December 24. Brigham Young nominated "President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in all the World," at a special conference. He appoints Heber C. Kimball and Willard Richards as his coadjutors. N. B.—He was not the appointment of God. but the choice of the people, even by his own statement.
1848.	April 6. His appointment confirmed at the General Conference at Kanesville, Iowa. May. The Saints start for Salt Lake City, where they arrive in the fall. September. Some of the Mormons who had sailed from New York for San Francisco, expecting the Church to locate in California or Vancouver's Island, as first intended, came in to Salt Lake Valley from the west.
1849.	March 5. Convention held at Salt Lake City; Constitution of State of Deseret drafted by them, and Legislature elected under its provisions. July 2. They send delegates to Washington to present Constitution, and petition for admission into the Union. as a "sovereign and independent State." August. Captain Stansbury, T. E., arrived to make survey of the Valleys and of the Salt Lake. September 9. Bill organizing Utah Territory, signed by President Fillmore.
1850.	February. Brigham takes oath of office as Governor of Utah Territory and Superintendent of Indian Affairs. April 5. Assembly met, and State of Deseret was merged into Territory of Utah. June 5. "Deseret News" commenced under editorial charge of Dr. Willard Richards, "a prophet, seer, and revelator." September. Judges Brocchus Day, Brandebury, and Mr. Secretary Harris arrive at Salt Lake. 22. Mr. Brocchus insults the people. Brigham threatens violence, and the judges leave Utah.
1851.	The Salt Lake Tabernacle built.
1853.	February 14. Temple excavations commenced. April 6. Corner stones of Temple laid.
1854.	August. Colonel Steptoe and soldiers arrive at Utah.
1855.	May. Colonel Steptoe, having resigned the governorship of Utah, left with troops for California. August. Judge Drummond, General Burr, Surveyor-General, and other U. S. officials arrive at Salt Lake.
1856.	May. Judge Drummond left.
1857.	April. General Burr and the other U. S. officials leave Utah and return to the States.