Dark History Chapter Four: A Militant Prophet- Trouble in Missouri and Ohio

A MILITANT PROPHET: Trouble in Missouri and Ohio

"Give us help from trouble: for vain is the help of man. Through God we shall do valiantly; for he it is that shall tread down our enemies"- Psalms 60 Verses 11-12 KJV

The animosity that the Saints incited among their Gentile neighbors in Jackson County, Missouri was not ignited simply by a few overly zealous sermons but by the fear of being dominated by a theocratic form of government. However the Latter Day Saints' treatment by the old citizens of Jackson County was not only uncivilized and but criminal. Mormon men were beaten, families driven out destitute in approaching winter, property was plundered and homes burned.

The impoverished Missouri Latter Day Saints fled north into Clay County where there the Gentile citizens were at first sympathetic to their suffering. The Clay County Gentiles humanely allowed the Saints to settle among them but they too only wanted the zealots temporarily. On December 15th, 1833 William W. Phelps, editor of the Millennial Star, wrote to Joseph Smith saying: "The situation of the Saints, as scattered is dubious, and affords a gloomy prospect…our people fare very well, and when discreet, little or no persecution is felt."(1)

The residents of Clay County, as were the Jackson County citizenry, not willing to let the Latter Day Saints monopolize their county as Joseph Smith had directed them. Almost immediately as Clay County became inundated with hoards of impoverished Saints, the Gentiles became increasingly alarmed. The religious refugees brought with them not only their extreme millennial beliefs of the immediate advent of Jesus Christ but also their desire for revenge.

When Joseph Smith received Phelps' letter the increasingly militant prophet wrote back to the Latter Day Saints in Missouri telling them "that he heard they had surrendered their arms and fled across the river. If this report was true, he advised them not to recommence hostilities; but if they were still in possession, `they should maintain the ground as long as there was a man left.'(2)

The potential loss of the Jackson County real estate was pushing  Smith towards a military solution. "Up to this time Joseph had been a Prophet, Seer, Revelator, and Translator; but now another role was opened to him-he was to become a military leader and restore the Saints to their possessions in Jackson County." (3)

In February 1834, the 28 year old Joseph Smith declared that he was told by God to raise an army of men to defend the Saints in Missouri and to reclaim the "land of promise". Smith's hard line revelation was interesting because the Lord hedged His bet on how many men it would be needed to march on Missouri, Smith wrote: "It is my will that my servant Parley P. Pratt and my servant Lyman Wight should not return to the land of their brethren until they have obtained companies to go up unto the land of Zion by tens, or by twenties, or by fifties, or by hundreds, until they have obtained the number of five hundred of the strength of my house. Behold this is my will; ask and you shall receive; but men do not always do my will; therefore if you cannot obtain five hundred, seek diligently that peradventure you may obtain three hundred and if you cannot obtain three hundred, seek diligently that peradventure you may obtain one hundred. But verily I say unto you a commandment I give unto you that ye shall not go up unto the land of Zion until you have obtained one hundred of the strength of my house to go up with you unto the land of Zion." (4)

On May 7th, 1834 a Mormon militia was organized in Kirtland, Ohio with Joseph Smith acting as a military general commissioned by the "Lord". The self-anointed commander-in-chief armed himself with "the best sword in the army", "an elegant brace of pistols," a rifle, and was provided with four horses, all purchased on credit. Lyman Wright(5) was appointed by Smith to be second in command. Together the two "warriors" had others "anointed" as their armor-bearers "whose duty it was to be in constant attendance upon their masters with their arms."(6)

Smith's first cousin George A. Smith was selected to be Smith's "armor bearer." The title was an allusion to the Hebraic King Saul and his armor bearers. The Prophet General called his private army "Zion's Camp" and led his paramilitary force on a march across the Midwest to Missouri. Zion's Camp grew to a force of an estimated 220 men and 20 wagons by the time the rag tag army reached Missouri.

While the LDS Church regards this paramilitary force as God's army, to the authorities of the state of Missouri, this Mormon "rag tag force" was simply a group of insurrectionalists consisting of fanatical armed invaders led by a religious impostor. The Missouri governor took the invasion of his state by these outsiders seriously. Governor Dunklin ordered a regiment of the state militia to be raised to defend the citizens of Jackson County from the invading zealots. Caught in the middle of these two combative forces were the Gentile citizens of Clay County. So fearful were the Gentiles of Clay County of the arrival of Smith's commandos that they "positively forbade the Saints to use their territory as a basis of operation against Independence."

The dreadful onslaught that the Gentile citizens of Missouri expected from vengeful Mormon raiders was dramatically allayed when of June 21st Cholera "broke out with a terrible swiftness" and "depleted the ranks of the Lord's army". "So sudden and overpowering was the attack that the strongest men fell to the ground with their guns in their hands. In four days, sixty-eight were attacked and fourteen of them died. "(7)The deadly disease not only ended the lives of Joseph Smith's foot soldiers but also his ill fated attempt to wage war against the Gentiles of Missouri. The Cholera had dashed any hope Smith had of reclaiming lands of the Garden of Eden from the "infidel".

The Gentiles of Jackson County, upon learning that Smith's "re- conquest of the promise land" had failed, offered to buy out all Mormon interest in the county. The petulant Smith refused the proposal and counter offered to buy out the Gentiles. This offer was wisely refused as Smith and his church was virtually in bankruptcy.

Joseph Smith, after the failure of his army to secure the Latter Day Saint's property in Jackson County, requested aid from the same government he had proposed to wage war against. Governor Dunklin of Missouri refused the impertinence and Smith having run out of military and political options, retreated with the remnant of his proud army back to Kirtland, Ohio. He arrived about the 1st of August 1834, just in time to quell a serious breach in Kirtland Church over the collapse of the Latter Day Saint's false economy.

When Joseph Smith returned to Ohio from his failed adventures to redeem Jackson County, Missouri, he became embroiled in a scandal involving his Mormon bank. Smith, having been refused a charter from the state of Ohio to establish a bank at Kirtland, went ahead anyway and established an "Anti-Banking Society". Mormon scholars have acknowledged that Joseph Smith's made a big financial mistake  setting up this "unchartered bank". Others called it fraud.

In the late summer of 1834, Joseph Smith's attempt to get his new converts to deed over to his church their property was stalling. "Jo claimed he had a revelation that the converts must put all their property into the Lord's treasury. Rufus Mapes, who had sixteen children who lived to maturity, said he did not read in his Bible that the Lord required his farm. He and many others left."(8)

Dissident Latter Day Saints in Kirtand were increasingly disillusioned with Smith's prophetic failures especially the failure to reclaim the “land of promise”. Joseph Smith's loyal adherents however retaliated against these members by labeling them "apostates." This growing apostasy in Kirtland accelerated after a group of prominent members of the Mormon priesthood openly rebelled against Joseph Smith's leadership and "branded him not only false prophet but an adulterer and thief as well." (9)

With the insolvency of the Kirtland Anti-Banking Society, Joseph Smith’s control of the Kirtland church was untenable. "In the past it has been suggested by most Mormon authors that the reason for the lack of a charter [for the bank] was religious persecution. Joseph Smith himself declared 'Because we were "Mormons," the legislature raised some frivolous excuses on which the10)y refused to grant us those banking privileges they so freely granted to others.' There is little evidence that the Church in this instance was subject to religious persecution.... In 1835, all requests for additional charters were refused, while in 1836 only one of seventeen requests was granted....just over a month after the restructuring of the Society and its commencement of business, law suits were commenced against Joseph Smith, Sidney Rigdon, and others seeking a forfeiture judgment in the sum of $1,000 against each defendant for alleged violations of the 1816 Ohio statute prohibiting unauthorized banking.” (10)

Joseph Smith's unsecured financial institution issued bank notes that were virtually worthless except among the faithful. Smith duplicitously (if not illegally) manipulated his converts and Gentile investors into accepting these notes that were secured only by the real estate of the credulous wealthy Latter Day Saints. Smith used his charisma and position as president of the Mormon Church to entice his disciples into investing in his pecuniary schemes.(11) The promises of earthly and heavenly rewards were the only collateral offered by Smith.

Unfortunately for Smith, the national panic of 1837 undermined the confidence of Latter Day Saints who had invested their money in the institution. After the bank failed, these church members, many who lost thousands of dollars, felt that they had been duped and swindled by Joseph Smith.

Warren Parrish, who had been one of the bank's officers, charged Joseph Smith with deceit. He said “I have been astonished to hear him declare that we had $60,000 in specie in our vaults and $600,000 at our command, when we had not to exceed $6,000 and could not command anymore; also that we had but about ten thousand dollars of our bills in circulation when he, as cashier of that institution, knew that there was at least $150,000.'"(12) Smith countered Parrish's accusations claiming that Parrish had embezzled the missing funds from the Kirtland bank.

Among those who lost their money and faith in Joseph Smith was a Latter Day Saint named Grandison Newell(13) "who almost single- handedly drove the Mormons out of Kirtland."(14) Grandison Newell, who was a wealthy manufacturer and entrepreneur(15), had joined the fledgling church shortly after it moved its headquarters to Ohio. He was a long time resident of Geauga County, Ohio who had hired Orson Hyde in 1823 at 6 dollars per month, to work in a small iron foundry".(16)

Newell accepted the original teachings of the LDS Church as taught by Sidney Rigdon and Parley P. Pratt but became increasingly skeptical of Smith's seemingly insatiable appetite for the things of this world. Newell actually had become disillusioned with Joseph Smith several years before the collapse of the Kirtland Anti-Banking Society. He had helped finance D. Philastus Hurlbut's attempt to discredit the Smith family by interviews with Palmyra, New York neighbors.

Anti-Mormon Eber D. Howe, publisher of the Painesville Telegraph, was present in the area at the time, wrote "In 1833 and 34 Grandison Newel, Orri[n] Clapp, Nathan Corning of Mentor and many leading citizens of Kirtland and Geauga Co. employed and defrayed the expenses of Doctor Philastus Hurlbut who had been a Mormon preacher and sent him to Palmyra NY and Penn to obtain affidavits showing the bad character of the Mormon Smith Family."(17) Newell reportedly contributed three hundred dollars to the financing of Dr. Hurlbut's book.

However as he lost confidence in the Mormon prophet, Newell embroiled Joseph Smith in a series of litigations over the failure of the Kirtland bank. Newell brought numerous civil suits against Smith to recover damages incurred from the loss of thousands of dollars that were invested in the Kirland Anti-banking Society. The numbers of lawsuits filed against Smith were "estimated as high as thirty."

It is evident that money was not the only object of these suits against Smith. Having felt duped and betrayed by an imposter, Newell wanted to attack Smith in court where public opinion might destroy him. Now labeled as an apostate Mormon, Newell wanted to expose Smith as a fraud. He sought to destroy him "by entangling him in a series of financial as well as legal law suits. Smith was enraged by his entrapment in the legal machinery of Kirtland legal system and fumed against those he now considered his enemies."

Eber D, Howe stated, "many of our citizens thought it advisable to take all the legal means to counteract the progress of so dangerous an enemy in their midst, and many lawsuits ensued."(18)

It is likely that Grandison Newel was one of several people described by Eber Howe who was accused of conspiring to rid Ohio of the Saints through the use of vexatious lawsuits. James Thompson recalled: "I worked for Grandison Newell considerable. He used to drive about the country and buy up all the Mormon money possible, and the next morning go to the bank and obtain the specie. When they stopped payment he prosecuted them and closed the bank."(19)

As troubles mounted in Kirtland "seventy-one Mormons, led by Joseph Smith" signed a warning to an anti-Mormon justice of the peace to "depart forthwith out of Kirtland." A dozen of those signers later joined the "Danites" in Missouri. John Whitmer was of the opinion that this event was the beginning of "secret combinations" in Kirtland.(20)

Wilford Woodruff, later a president of Mormon Church in Utah, wrote of these troubles saying, "President Smith spoke in the afternoon, and said in the name of the Lord, that the judgments of God would rest upon those men who had professed to be his friends, and friends of humanity, and in building up Kirtland, a stake of Zion, but had turned traitors to him, and the interests of the kingdom of God, and had given power into the hands of our enemies against us; they had oppressed the poor Saints, and had brought distress upon them, and had become covenant-breakers, for which they will feel the wrath of God."(21)

In the summer of 1837, Mormon Apostle Dr. William McLellin, who had moved to Kirtland Ohio after being driven out of Jackson County, was subpoenaed as a witness for Grandison Newell in one of his suits against Smith. Dr. McLellin was warned by his Mormon colleagues of the acute consequences of testifying in behalf of Newell. He was told, "men had slipped their wind for smaller things then Newell was guilty of."(22)

Dr. McLellin was astounded by the insinuation of physical harm to himself if he testified honestly in court on behalf of Newell. He privately sought out Sidney Rigdon, and learned that some Mormons "were employed by Smith to assassinate Grandison Newell!"(23) After Dr. McLellin had "satisfied himself fully that the man's statement was true," he decided, "that it was prudent to leave Kirtland."(24) Fearing  for his life and for the safety of his family if he remained in Kirtland and answered the subpoena, Dr. McLellin fled Ohio. He and his wife "lit out" on horseback, leaving all their property and former associates behind.

Dr. McLellin left Kirtland before the plot to assassinate Grandison Newell was implemented and relocated to his former home in northern Missouri, believing that after the Jackson County conflict, he would be safe from Mormon intrigue. Unfortunately for Dr. McLellin, events in Ohio would cause him in a few short months to be "surrounded by the Saints again," however he stated that he "was careful to keep still and have no intimacies with them."(25)

Grandison Newell received information from Dr. McLellin before he fled that Smith had directed a Mormon named M.K. Davis to kill him. One of the assassins who later apostatized him self claimed that "he and Davis had twice gone to Newell's house to carry out Smith's order, and were only prevented by the absence of the intended victim."(26) Fanny Brewer, in an affidavit published in 1842, declared, "I am personally acquainted with one of the employees (of Smith), Davis by name, and he frankly acknowledged to me that he was prepared to do the deed under the direction of the prophet, and was only prevented by the entreaties of his wife."(27)

William Rockafellow collaborated Brewer's testimony:"I resided in Kirtland after the Mormons had mostly left. Leonard Rich, a Mormon elder, told me Jo Smith had a revelation that Grandison Newell must be killed, and he was the man indicated to do it. Rich refused and Jo engaged M.C. Davis, a gunsmith, who went on horseback and said he saw Newell sitting with his back to a window reading a newspaper, but could not shoot him. He told prophet Jo, Newell was not at home."(28)

S. F. Whitney of Ohio wrote of the planned attacks on Newell saying: "I was well acquainted with Grandison Newel, before and after the Mormons arrived in Kirtland. He was a "go-ahead" fellow and carried through what he undertook. He was a public-spirited man and tried to break down Mormonism by legal persecution. Jo Smith claimed he had a revelation that Newel must be killed. I heard M.K. Davis say he went up to Newel's house, and when he stepped out of the door, before going to bed, he (Davis) tried to raise his rifle to shoot him but he had not the strength. Newel told me when he was coming home from Painesville one night, he was in deep thought and his team passed the road where he should turn off; he continued on to the next road and escaped being murdered, as men were waiting to kill him on the road he usually came [upon] from Painesville . . ."(29)

A Kirtland resident remembered the fear that Smith's followers instilled in the residents of Northern Ohio: "Travelers dared not pass through Kirtland in the night there was so much shooting. Dr. Seely, of Mentor, opposed the Mormons and he was a number of times shot at while passing through Kirtland nights; sometimes he was mistaken for Grandison Newell."(30)

After learning of these attempted assaults on his person, Grandison Newell brought an additional charge of conspiracy to commit murder against Jospeh Smith. Newell made an affidavit that a "seceding" Mormon had confessed that he and a Latter Day Saint named Davis had been ordered by Joseph Smith to commit the attempted murder. Smith was placed under a five hundred dollar bond on a conspiracy charge to commit murder.(31)

In June of 1837, at a formal hearing, Joseph Smith was acquitted of the charges due to insufficient evidence to support them. Although Smith was acquitted, court records revealed that Smith's own defense witnesses acknowledged that he did discuss with them the "possibility of killing Newell." Mormon Apostle Orson Hyde admitted under oath that,"Smith seemed much excited and declared that Newell should be put out of the way, or where the crows could not find him; he said destroying Newell would be justifiable in the sight of God, that it was the will of God."(32)  Another Mormon Apostle, Luke S. Johnson testified under oath that Smith said, "if Newell or any other man should head a mob against him, they ought to be put out of the way, and it would be our duty to do so."(33)

In spite of the fact that Joseph Smith was cleared of conspiracy to commit murder, his legal troubles were not over. In October of 1837 Joseph Smith and his counselor Sidney Rigdon were in court again defending themselves against charges of unauthorized banking. A Samuel D. Rounds commenced a series of lawsuits against Smith and Rigdon for fraudulently running an unchartered bank. According to the faithful, "there was widespread belief that the notorious Mormon hater Grandison Newel was behind (the charges), that it was trumped up." (34) On 2 February 1838, "A writ was sworn out against Joseph Smith, Jr., and Sidney Rigdon by Samuel D. Rounds, a front man for Grandison Newell. The writ accused the two Mormon leaders of illegal banking and issuing unauthorized bank paper." The following month [March 1838] a hearing was held on the lawsuit but the trial was postponed until the fall of 1838.(35)

According to LDS historians, "the most interesting feature of the Rounds cases, that were prosecuted against Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon and that established the illegality of the Society, is their apparent sponsorship. So far as we are aware, Samuel D. Rounds is a person having no prominence, or dealings with Joseph Smith for the Church and its members, except for these lawsuits. His name simply appears nowhere else. The Geauga County Execution Docket, however, states that the judgments against Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon were assigned to Grandison Newell, who sought to collect them, and did obtain partial satisfaction in the amount of $605.”  (36) These Mormon Historians quick to shift blame stated that Newell maintaining litigation against Smith in the name of Rounds may have been a crime known as Maintenance” at the common law. While absolving Smith of any wrongdoing, these LDS writers feel the need to disparage Grandison Newell's character at all cost. What these scholars fail to consider was that Newell was in hiding from Mormon assassins and was "maintaining these litigations in the names of others" for self-preservation.

In October 1837 Samuel Rounds' case against Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon for illegal banking was adjudicated. "Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon were found guilty and fined $1,000 each plus some court costs, a fine for violating the 1816 Statute which they appealed."(37) This judgment held the entire Kirtland Anti-Banking Society’s activity criminal and made it impossible for it to survive. The 31 year old Joseph Smith lost much of his prophetic credibility and facing numerous lawsuits and threats upon his life, Smith fled his creditors, left his temple behind and the community he had gathered in Kirtland.

The convicted clergymen, Smith and Rigdon, "alarmed by rumors that Grandison Newell had secured another warrant for their arrest on a charge of fraud fled from Kirtland on horseback on the evening of January 12, 1838, and Smith never returned to Ohio. (38)

James Thompson recalled Joseph Smith's last days in Kirtland. He stated: "The week before Jo left for Missouri, meetings were held in the temple about every day. I attended several. I heard John F. Boynton (39) say that the prophet Jo had secretly instructed him and others who were to go out as missionaries, that if the world's people molested them to knock them over and throw them over a log. He said he could not endure such instructions. Jo ordered him ejected, which was done. Mr. [Warren] Parish said substantially the same and others did who were also put out. One Sunday night I saw Jo, Hyrum and their father with Rigdon in the west pulpit. Father Gould stood ten feet from them and denounced Mormonism for three-fourths of an hour. None were ejected that night.(40)

The Mormon prophet and his sidekick Rigdon would claim that as they fled a posse of lawmen pursued them. "We were obliged to secrete ourselves sometimes to elude the grasp of our pursuers, who continued their race more than two hundred miles from Kirtland, armed with pistols,etc., seeking our lives." However another source stated that there is,"no other authority for this story of an armed pursuit, and the fact seems to be that the non-Mormon community was perfectly satisfied with the removal of the mock prophet from their neighborhood."(41)

Thompson's account however does represent a precarious escape for Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon. He recalled that on the night the disgraced pair "left on horseback by back road… about a dozen men who had renounced Mormonism watched for Jo and Rigdon in the bushes with guns to shoot them, but they did not pass that way."(42)

Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon after absconding from Ohio fled to the relative safety of the Mormon settlement of Far West in Caldwell County in January 1838. They arrived in the Mormon settlement destitute, humiliated and furious. They were resolved to never let their enemies get the upper hand again. The official Mormon version of Smith's flight from justice is blamed on apostasy in Ohio and threats against the "prophet's" life. In reality, Sidney Rigdon and Joseph Smith ran away in the middle of the night in order to "escape creditors, lawsuits, and possible jail time."

After Smith departed Ohio Grandison Newell dropped out of the historical record for nearly twenty-five years. Newell was listed in probate court records of Lake County, Ohio as late as 1860 in regards to the sale of the Kirtland Temple. "Beginning on 29 October 1860, the probate court of Lake County, Ohio, took action to settle the question of ownership of property in the Kirtland area that had been recorded in the name of Joseph Smith, Jr., the Trustee in Trust for the Church. A part of this property included the temple. The court concluded that all this Kirtland property should be sold to pay the debts that Joseph smith had incurred to a local merchant, Grandison Newell, and other residents of the area."(43)

Grandison Newell was primarily responsible for the sheriff sale of the Kirtland Temple to pay off Smith's debts from his ill-fated experiment in financial machinations. Newell died 10 June 1874 at the ripe old age of 89 years; nearly thirty years after his nemesis hadbeen lynched in Illinois.

Footnotes:
(1)Times and Seasons Vi 944

(2)Times and Seasons VI 914-15

(3)T.H. Stenhouse. History of the Rocky Mountain Saints PG 49.

(4)IBID pg 51

(5)Lyman Wight known as the Wild Ram of the Mountains was a member of the Mormon Quorum of Twelve Apostles. Stenhouse said of Smith's military advisor, He was doubtless the inspiring deity of Joseph's revelation that called in existence Zion's Camp and the "Lords armies." After Smith's death in 1844, Wight went to Texas with a small company of disaffected Mormons who would not accept Brigham Young's leadership. "There they suffered a good deal and finally broke up and scattered where they could."

(6)Howe's Mormonism Unveiled pg. 147-59

(7)Stenhouse. pg 55

(8)A.B. Deming The Naked Truth of Mormonism Vol.1 No. 2 April 1888; Testimony of Joel Miller.

(9)Schlinder Pg 25

10)Marvin S. Hill, C. Keith Rooker, and Larry T. Wimmer. Brigham Young University Studies, Summer 1977, pp. 437-38, 458

11)"In an address before the Oneida Historical Society of Utica, New York, in 1890, James H. Kennedy, one of the earliest students to write a book-length study of Kirtland affirmed that Joseph Smith's early career evolved amidst 'moral barrenness,' and that Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris, the three witness to the Book of Mormon, 'were in truth three corner stones of a huge edifice of religious fervor, sad delusion and cunning fraud, of which Joseph Smith was the fourth.'"(James Harrison Kennedy, "The Three Witnesses of the Book of Mormon," Magazine of Western History 11 (March 1980): 464.; as quoted by Marvin S. Hill, C. Keith Rooker, Larry T. Wimmer, BYU Studies, Vol. 17, No. 4, p.392; see also: James Harrison Kennedy, "Early Days of Mormonism" (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1887)

(12)Letter to Zion's Watchman, printed March 24, 1838, (as quoted in No Man Knows My History, p. 197)

(13)Grandison Newell was born May 3, 1785 in Barkhamsted, Litchfield, Connecticut the son of Captain Solomon Newell and Damaris Johnson. He
married Elizabeth "Betsy" Smith April 16, 1807 and died June 10, 1874 in Geauga County, Ohio.

(14)Scott H. Partridge, BYU Studies, Vol. 12, No. 4, p.433

(15)Grandison Newell, was an owner of a sawmill and chair factory on the east branch of the Chagrin River in Geauga County, Ohio.

(16) 19 November 1864 Millennial Star No. 47 Vol. 26 "History of Orson Hyde" pg 743

(17)Eber D. Howe Statement to Arthur B. Deming, Apr. 8th 1885, Mormon Collection, Arthur B. Deming MSS, Chicago Historical Society Library.

(18)E. D. Howe, Autobiography, p.45;

(19)A.B. Deming The Naked Truth of Mormonism Vol.1 No. 1 January 1888; Testimony of James Thompson

(20)D. Michael Quinn. The Mormon Hierarchy, pg. 91

(21)Dean C. Jessee, "The Kirtland Diary of Wilford Woodruff," BYU Studies, Vol. 12, No. 4, p.393 April 9."Joseph Smith. . .proclaimed that severe judgment awaited those characters that professed to be his friends & friends to humanity & the 'Kirtland Safety Society' but had turned traitors & opposed the currency & its friends which has given power into the hands of the enemy & oppressed the poor saints such have become covenant breakers for which they will feel the wrath
of God."

(22)6 October 1875 The Salt Lake Daily Tribune. "History of the Saints and Their Enemies."

(23)Ibid.

(24)William A. Linn The Story of The Mormons 1902 pp 155-156

(25)Ibid.

(26)6 October 1875 Salt Lake Daily Tribune

(27)Ibid.

(28)A.B. Deming The Naked Truth of Mormonism Vol. 1 No. 2 Oakland, Ca. April 1888 pg 2 Testimony of William Rockafellow.

(29)Quinn. pp 91-92

(30)A.B. Deming The Naked Truth of Mormonism Vol.1 No. 1 January 1888; Testimony of Mrs. J.D. Barber

(31)Linn pp 160-161

(32)Quinn. pp 91-92

(33)Ibid

(34)R. Kent Fielding, "The Growth of the Mormon Church in Kirtland,
Ohio," p. 233

(35)Dale W. Adams; BYU Studies Vol. 23, No. 4, pg.472; and Marvin S. Hill, C. Keith Rooker, Larry T. Wimmer, BYU Studies, Vol. 17, No. 4, p 472.

(36)Marvin S. Hill, C. Keith Rooker, Larry T. Wimmer, BYU Studies, Vol. 17, No. 4, p.441.

(37)B. H. Roberts, Comprehensive History of the Church, Vol.1, Ch.31, p.403.

(38)Dale W. Adams; BYU Studies Vol. 23, No. 4, pg.472.

(39)A former member of Joseph Smith's inner circle, John F. Boynton, was disfellowshipped on 3 September 1837 by the Kirtland High Council for not supporting Joseph Smith's financial schemes. Boynton attributed his difficulties with Smith to the failure of the 'Kirtland bank' which he had understood was "instituted by the will of God, and he had been told it would never fail, let men do
what they would.”

(40)A.B. Deming The Naked Truth of Mormonism Vol.1 No. 1 January 1888; Testimony of James Thompson

(41)Linn pp 160-161

(42)A.B. Deming: Testimony of Thompson

(43)The probate court made the appropriate arrangements for the sale, and on 18 April 1862 sold the property to William L. Perkins, a prosperous businessman in the area. On the same day Perkins conveyed that portion of Smith's estate containing the temple in a quit claim deed to Russell Huntley, a member at one time or another of several Mormon splinter groups and a man who had long had an interest in the temple. Huntley held the temple for more that a decade, but on 17 February 1873 Joseph Smith III and Mark H. Forscutt acquired Huntley's title for $150. They controlled the Kirtland Temple without dispute until 1875 when the RLDS church leadership, Smith and Forscutt included, determined that the quit claim deed was insufficient to ensure the perpetual ownership of the property and
that the church should undertake a lawsuit to secure a final settlement. Accordingly, the Presiding Bishop, the church's chief financial officer, filed suit in the Lake County Court of Common Pleas in 1878 and received a favorable verdict in February 1880." (BYU Studies, 25:11)