Transcripts For CSPAN2 Latter-day Saints Migration In The 18

Latterday saints traversed hundreds of miles across across the state despite a government extermination threat issued by the governor. Woods has been a professor of Church History and doctrine at Brigham Young University Since 1998. He specializes in latterday saint immigration studies. And is the editor of saints by the sea saints by the sea website which documents lds maritime immigration in america in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Hes editor and compiler of the mormon immigration index which was released in 2000 in his widely used by researchers. Woods has authored and coauthored more than a dozen books and scores of articles on lds history and as collaborated collaborated on several documentary films. The most recent being the saints of tonga a century of island faith, which is a companion work to his 2019 book. He is what lectured extensively at conferences universities churches and libraries and we are thrilled to have him back at here in kansas city at the central library. Please join me in welcoming dr. Fred woods well, good afternoon. And thank you jeremy for your kind introduction. I also appreciate on this sunday afternoon we have. Joel jones the assistant director of the library and appreciate him being here. Appreciate all the help that ive had with the technology. I hope things are. Working well, this sound like things are up. Okay, so even though theres only a few here. Theres untold at least 10,000 listening in right now. So well, i hope you have a good time today. I want to have a good time. I think history should be enjoyable even when you you deal with some things that the good the bad and the ugly right . So i for me, i like to generate light instead of heat. I will tell you right up front that im not six six generation mormon heritage. Im a guy that street wise from la that tied into the latterday saints is an adult and so i think it might be helpful for the audience. Those are very face and cultures because ive looked at this topic in many others from the outside looking in and now from the inside looking out that makes sense. So im going to kind of just take you on a tourism of some things. Im going to talk about this topic. About 4550 minutes and then open it up for questions. I want you to have that opportunity, but if you can wait till im finished and i say okay q a time. That would be nice. So lets just kind of get into this. I wanted to thank byu for their support of all my projects. And by the way, i love the Missouri Valley room right over here if youve never been in it, youve got a youve got a pop in on your way out. And most recently i was looking to have 532 sources only to be used in the misery valley room on if you searched a word mormon if youre looking under latterday saints, theres 459 sources only to be used so they have a very rich collection of latter days saint sources here. So with that i want to go back to 1833. Now what you need to understand and so what this is like were talking history, right . Its like i you know you have this demon us, but hopefully by the time that you we finish this, its like we right we go from conflict understanding and things work out but i wanted you to say before even laying this thing out that i was thinking this morning of a 1828 Protestant Missionary journal. I read a guys coming from new england. Hes being sponsored he gets to Jackson County right on the the border right . You have the, you know, organized territory once you crossed the river. And hes saying that this area at that time certainly not now. Was the most godless place he had ever seen. I mean this was on the santa fe trail this makes you know gunsmoke look like kiddie cartoons. Okay, it was a wild place and you know you read that in his account. There was a multiplication of the women practicing the worlds oldest profession. There was a lot of whiskey it was crazy. It was wild there was cockfighting and and people trying to take each other out from time to time and when the federal marshals would come into erie. He said there was a scurrying across the border, right . Kind of like if youre a drug runner in san diego and youre going to tijuana Something Like that, but this is how it was in the 1830s. It was rough and tumble now we have some great upstanding citizens and things have changed but it was i mean mixing latterday saint culture with what was in at the time was like oil and water. It just wasnt jowling at all. Okay, so i want to just point that out as we get into this and there was this they call it the mob manifesto in history where the missourians at the time were making their point of why they wanted latterday saints to leave. Okay, they were tampering with the slaves or they were northerners and he had a lot of people of course that were southerners coming in on the missouri side accused of being friendly to native americans in indian territory, right we had missionaries that were sent over there and they were worried youre going okay, youre gonna get the slaves to revolt youre gonna get the native americans and youre going to come after us and there was economic and competition as well so this these were these were issues. I mean when the latterday saints were all voting for one person kind of block voting. This was a problem when you have like 3,500 people in the community and all of us sudden. Youve got a herd of these mormons coming in, you you know the tune of 1200. So weve got to understand i i mean i can really see the other of the issue. And so we have these land policies. You know, how would you feel if someone said to you . Well, you can either sell us your land or were going to take it from you right this kind of an attitude. It was so we could have done better as latterday saints. We could have generated light instead of heat on a number of days weeks and even years so theres two sides of the story and im hoping by the time i get through this shell you can see this so some of the factors i can see so this is what the mob manifesto this is what they laid out like july of 1833. You need to leave because of this this just is not working. Okay. So this idea of latterday saints boasts of taking missouri lands or going to take they were gathering in haste. They were told dont gather in haste, but be consistent with the feelings of the people dont over try to overpower them. Okay . And some of the things they were doing wrong. There were jarrings contentions indian strife. Theyll say lustful and covetous desires and their latterday saints scriptures, so this is kind of laying out the big picture and anyways a result of this by 1833 latter days saints are cast out of Jackson County. But that isnt the really thats kids stuff compared to what happens five years later. Five years later, we have the governor of missouri lilburn w boggs. Who issues an extermination order and quite frankly and fairness to him. I think he didnt want to just go around and trying to kill mormons but rather he was saying look at if you dont remove peaceably were going to have to do something else, but i dont think he was trying, you know to to. Take out as many latter days saints as he is he could but this is whats happening. Theres a lot of misunderstanding today, you know, i think were Getting Better at this. I hope we are i you know, i love the the idea of seeking to understand before we seek to be understood, you know, trying to understand the other persons perspective. This is what its all about. Trying to look for the the Common Ground instead of the battleground, but this is the background of whats cooking here. So what happens is that latterday saints by the thousands about 10,000 theyre going to leave western, missouri right go east and theyre going to go into the area for the most part in quincy, illinois. And eventually theyre going to migrate a little bit north to an area called commerce. Thats later called nauvoo, which is a hebrew word, which means beautiful. So some of the saints are saying to their leader joseph smith. I mean joseph this place is like a mud pit, you know, theres mosquitoes or swamps and he says look at well just drain it and will call it nauvoo meaning a beautiful place. So that was the idea. But whats happens here is when theyre driven out. Its its during this frigid scenar season always seems to be winter when the saints were moving and then we created that frigid season with bitter feelings. And this resentment youre going to see . Carries on into salt lake and theyre a little bit more i think comfortable talking about what happened in missouri once they were on safe turf quite frankly. So theres a number of them had a very difficult time. Theres 678 petitions we know of that are file that the federal government. And the president United States at the time in 38 says your causes just but i can do nothing for you because of the issue of states rights, you know and didnt want to lose the vote. So we have these kinds of issues that are going on, but what i want to talk about today, im dribbling the ball now were going stocked and malone slam dunking. Heres the focus. I want to talk about. Well what happened after the extermination order between the time of 38 and 68 because remember the Transcontinental Railroad comes in at 69, right . So what happens and i might also say that people that study pioneer history they to have this issue, its kind of a cultural myopia where theyre always thinking about the trail the trail the trail they dont think about the sale and the rail, right . Theyre just focused on this and so hopefully today you can see kind of a different aspect of migration west immigration west and and see whats cooking here in the will be fair to now is this showme state . So and i want to also say that my familys lived in missouri. I used to be a visiting professor at umsl out in st. Louis and really the the western side and the eastern side and this time period was really quite different. We say the extermination order in the you know in all of missouri when in actuality there are newspapers saying that boggs is you know, what the heck is he doing . Right . This is so is an oasis in st. Louis at the time. Okay, rather than it being a hotbed as it was in, western, missouri. Lets just get into this and by the way the most important part. Is that last five minutes and when mike brings up the mics here and its my sign . Okay. I got five minutes before q a. I want to drive it home that even though things were looking rather bleak. Right and the early period that things have really changed in the last 50 years, which is awesome. So here we go. So what did latterday saints experience when they passed through, missouri . Okay. So this is you know, you might be wondering. I mean it was a twosided things. They werent you know, these are people that have strong feelings towards each other. Those are those are tough things. To deal with and we have to kind of we got to listen to the other person. I want to go back to the idea that as you if you picture so theyre driven from western, missouri. Clear across the state about 200 miles. So theyre going into that area if you picture quincy north of saint louis. And then they go into this little area that they call nauvoo. Now in this area, this is actually a deguerreotype from 1845 okay, so we get we whats nice about the nauvoo period is the first time that we have latterday saint history and photographs because louie dalgur is frenchman that invinced this photography to gerotype once we get here and they came in 39 right now. We have actual photographs of what is cooking in these latterday saint communities. So this is an important time period and that building right . There is really important. That is the latterday saint temple. Okay, ill come back. Ill end on temples at the end of this thing. But this is the outhouse picture. Were here. This is the the river here looking up and so this will become a magnet for latterday saints coming from the british isles. So about one out of every four latterday saints in the nauvoo period were from england. Theyd sent missionaries over. All right, and they came from liverpool. Up the mississippi cross the atlantic up the mississippi through saint louis and on their way to nauvoo and so we have this interesting history and i should tell you this too latterday saints. Felt obligated to record their experience of what they said was like going design just like for a would be coming to jerusalem the alia the ascending so i would say this along with this, Missouri Family room here. In Salt Lake City they have whats called the Church History library and even if your catholic jewish protestant agnostic atheist, whatever theres hundreds and thousands of first person immigrant accounts describing what it was like to go through america in the mid19th century. This is really interesting stuff with a lot of you know people that were fresh converts and its like what was it like to experience this or that and so i love it and i share with my my historian friends of different cultures and faith that this is you got to you got at least take a look at this. You got to to look at everything, right . So here we go. So these these . Latterday saint converts coming from the british isles. Theyre coming as i said from liverpool in new orleans and just kind of making their way up here. You can see nauvoo. And you know, i dont know if you remember the the movie. Do you remember dead Poet Society Robin williams . He says sees the day, you know the stories they had to tell, you know, leaving your your homeland youre joining in a different faith. I have four different faiths in my own family alone seventhday Adventists Church of christ evangelical baptist and latterday saint me but this was really Emotional Trauma when somebody joined the church of jesus christ, saints made that leap and the adjustments of leaving homeland family. These were real things real things. And there was some feelings about missouri. This is one of the famous latterday saint leaders partly parker pratt. And so hes talking about how he landed with my family 80 miles below saint louis the company continued on my reason for landing. There was i would not venture in missouri after the abuses. Id experienced their informer times. Now as i go through all these things keep in mind that im fully aware that theres two sides to every story right, but this im just going to give you now from the that latterday saint perspective of what theyre theyre thinking about these things. Thomas wrigley we for some time felt afraid of the extermination orders of governor boggs, which were still enforced. Okay. So this is five years after the extermination order. Stand kimball who is a great historian from edwardsville. He knows at the time of the extermination or several saint louis newspapers condemn governor boggs and supported the saints. Some of the local saint louis citizens even held meetings for the purpose of raising funds to a sense the latterday saints in their dire conditions, so a different story there and in quincy, you know, its right at the time theyre coming across where theres been, you know 800 banks of collapsed in america. It was a financial panic kind of a deal. They wanted someone to boost the political side of things so economics politics and really humanitarian appeal. They just felt sorry for them. So this was big big business in the the mid 19th century coming through saint louis the steamboat business, you know, youre youre traveling about six days across this the state and esteem boat and 207 miles on the hannibal and saint joe Railroad Rides so a little faster, but so we have these different accounts. I dont know if youre aware of this but somewhere between 3,000 to 4,000 latterday saints. Were in saint louis during this period of the early 50s. And there was an immigration agent here at Church Leader nathaniel feld and its interesting the latterday saints even had their own newspaper the saint louis luminary. Okay now because of polygamy these latterday saint newspapers were launched in the 50s. So in 1852 from Salt Lake City it came out. Yes, we do practice polygamy just like Abraham Isaac and jacob, right . So the message is boom came out there then all this sudden you see the western standard newspaper of a latterday saints in san francisco. Youve got the mormon in new york. Youve got the st. Louis luminary and even as far as sydney, australia, youve got science watchmen, so they have these things in place to defend their doctrine of polygmy for example is a biblical doctrine and also to teach the immigration the gathering design as they called it. Okay, so you had these newspapers. Saint louis is a fine large and flourishing city and as furnished employment to many hundreds and thousands of our brethren. Heres another misnomer for latterday saints that do like use family search and and i have the saints spicy website that jeremy talked about um anyway a of Different Things. People think that mom and dad and the kids all came together they left from wherever liverpool and then they went to salt lake. They dont realize that sometimes they were stuck in boston, philadelphia, new york saint Louis New Orleans for months and sometimes years. Trying to raise enough money to be able to continue the journey. Once they crossed the atlantic. Does that make sense . So this is this idea of having jobs and in the missionaries be looking. Okay. We need they had they send the passenger list ahead of time. Its like, okay. We need eight miners over here. We can use someone, you know, whatever vocation theyre just theyre setting things up to try to help them. But the idea at this time was it was a temporary location. To make it to salt lake. Once the city the saints is firmly established, then it becomes out migration. And latterday saints in the mid 20th century start coming out to the st. Louis area, kansas city area those kinds of things largely because of employment. Now youre i know youre many of you. Probably all of you are familiar with the missouri republican. So i think this is interesting what they have to say about latterday saints. Okay, our city is the greatest recruiting point for mormon immigrants from england and the Eastern States whose funds generally become exhausted by the time they reach here for anything i was talking about they stopped for several months and not in frequently remain here for a year or two pending the resumption of their journeys assault lake there at this time in st. Louis about 3,0