Lost Apostles: Forgotten Members of Mormonism’s Original Quorum of the Twelve

333 Pages·2014·5.41 MB·English

by  William Shepard

LOST APOSTLES
Forgotten Members of Mormonism’s
Original Quorum of Twelve
William Shepard
H. Michael Marquardt
Signature Books | Salt Lake City | 2014
© 2014 Signature Books. Signature Books is a registered trademark of Signature Books
Publishing, LLC. All rights reserved. Lost Apostles was printed on acid-free paper. It was
composed, printed, and bound in the United States of America.
For more information, consult www.signaturebooks.com.
Jacket design by Ron Stucki.
18 17 16 15 14 5 4 3 2 1
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Shepard, William.
Lost apostles : forgotten members of Mormonism’s original quorum of twelve/
by William Shepard and H. Michael Marquardt.
pages cm Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-56085-228-5 (alk. paper) 1. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints–History. 2. Mormon
Church–History. 3. Mormon Church–Apostles–History. 4. United States–Church history. I. Title.
BX8611.S45 2014
289.3092’2—dc23
2013050197
To John Boynton, Luke Johnson,
Lyman Johnson,Thomas Marsh,
William McLellin, and William Smith
Contents
Introduction
1. Discovering Mormonism
2. Missionaries
3. School of the Prophets
4. A Quorum of Twelve Apostles
5. Jostling for Position
6. Collapse of Kirtland
7. The End of Zion
8. The New Twelve, Minus One
9. From Heights to Greater Heights
10. From Prairie to Desert
11. An Endless Search
Final Thoughts on Apostasy and Integrity
Photographs and Illustrations
Appendix A: Newspaper Accounts
Appendix B: Ordinations to the Twelve
Select Bibliography
Index
INTRODUCTION
Latter Day Saints today enjoy a sense of continuity and stability that is a
hallmark of Mormonism, whether in Utah or in any of the other major branches
of Joseph Smith’s Restoration Movement. All of these churches choose
individuals for leadership who have been proven over the years as church
employees or prominent business heads, educators, or diplomats. It was not
always so. In the early days, a charismatic convert might be promoted to the top
of the hierarchy, fill a short and stormy tenure in office, and leave with as much
speed as he appeared. There were public disagreements among the apostles.
Joseph Smith tried to stem the chaos by making adjustments to the church
structure and personnel in what was a fluid sea of shifting tides.
Compare that with the current situation where members of the Utah church
rest assured that when a member of the hierarchy dies, his replacement will be
announced at the next semi-annual general conference with the precision of a
Swiss watch. The new apostle or president will generally be as steady and
predictable as the last one. It is the same in the Missouri-based Community of
Christ, even—or perhaps especially—in the case of the women who have been
named apostles beginning in the late 1990s. The other churches that trace their
origin to Joseph Smith include the Church of Jesus Christ in Monongahela,
Pennsylvania, where a Quorum of the Twelve leads the church without the need
for a separate presidency. The Remnant Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day
Saints in Missouri has a president and seven apostles. All these men are reliable
and tested even if they engage in experimentation in community planning. The
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints Strangite, headquartered in
Wisconsin, and the Restoration Church of Jesus Christ in Missouri do not have
quorums of apostles but nonetheless assume that the founding twelve in Joseph
Smith’s day labored reliably to spread the Restored Gospel.
For those of us who were raised in the post-World War II world, it is hard to
imagine the degree of uncertainty and turmoil that existed during the founding
years of the Restoration. The first converts were opposed to dogmas and
hierarchies. Joseph Smith was known as the First Elder, and Oliver Cowdery as
Second Elder, and that was that. However, within two years Sidney Rigdon and
Jesse Gause were named to a First Presidency that quickly overshadowed
Cowdery. The office of Presiding Patriarch was created for Joseph Smith’s
father, and Cowdery’s position was redefined in 1834 as that of an Assistant to
the President, a position that was mostly ceremonial. When Cowdery was
excommunicated, he was not replaced and the position was eliminated. As
branches and stakes were created, they needed leaders. Joseph would become
enamored with someone, become disillusioned with his performance, find a
replacement, and leave bad feelings behind.
Consider the case of Jesse Gause, who was baptized in late 1831 and a few
months later, in March 1832, appointed to the First Presidency. Only nine
months transpired before he was excommunicated and disappeared from church
history.1 Following a similar pattern was John C. Bennett except that he did not
go quietly, instead choosing to publish a divisive report of his experiences. In
1837, after the fall of the Kirtland Safety Society Bank, Frederick G. Williams of
the First Presidency left, joined by Oliver Cowdery and the entire Whitmer
family. Another of the original founders, Martin Harris, left and stayed away for
three decades. Polygamy tested the perseverance of William Law of the 1840s
First Presidency. Like Bennett, he broadcast his dissatisfaction, this time by
founding an alternative newspaper, the Nauvoo Expositor. When Joseph tried to
quash this irritant, it was one of the snowballing events that led to his tragic
incarceration and assassination less than a month later.
Six Men
The original Twelve Apostles who were called in 1835 were asked to lead the
missionary effort throughout the world but were forbidden by revelation from
exercising any authority at the church’s headquarters or environs. The first
twelve, ranked oldest to youngest, were Thomas B. Marsh, David W. Patten,
Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, Orson Hyde, William E. McLellin, Parley P.
Pratt, Luke S. Johnson, William Smith, Orson Pratt, John F. Boynton, and
Lyman E. Johnson. Most of these men, with the exception of Heber and
Brigham, clashed with Joseph Smith to the point of temporarily severing their
relationship with him. Three of them—McLellin, Boynton, and Lyman Johnson
—would not return to the fold. Two others—Marsh and Luke Johnson—returned
to the Utah church but without being restored to their former standing as
apostles. Joseph’s brother William would find his way back to church under the
leadership of his nephew, Joseph Smith III. Five of William’s former colleagues
would stay more or less together in Utah: Brigham Young, Heber Kimball,
Orson Hyde (who returned in 1839), Parley Pratt, and Orson Pratt and would
continue to argue over doctrine and standing as they had in Ohio and Illinois.
It is a matter of perspective that allows us to label six of these men as “lost”
because they would not have described themselves that way, and from the
perspective of the Reorganized LDS Church in Missouri, the Utah apostles were
lost, and vice versa. Some readers will assume that we, the authors, have
similarly lost our way, depending on where the reader stands. One of us, Bill,
was born in a Strangite community in Burlington, Wisconsin, and has remained
generally loyal to it. He is the church historian and trustee of the community
land encompassing the most important areas of the settlement that was once
called Voree. It was founded by James J. Strang a century and a half ago under
Joseph Smith’s direction. Strang led the settlement on a separate but compatible
journey to that of Brigham Young and Sidney Rigdon.
The other of us, Mike, converted to the LDS Church as a teenager growing up
in San Francisco but now describes himself as an independent historian. The two
perspectives should satisfy suspicions readers might have that we come to this
project with an agenda and do not understand their viewpoint as either a believer
or non-believer. One of us believes deeply in the divinity of the Restoration and
the other harbors doubts. What we share in common, besides a long-standing
friendship, is a passion for finding out new information about our shared past.
The purpose of this book has been first and foremost to report on what our
research has turned up. Although we have a point of view, we do not insist on it.
We would very much like to correct the injustice we feel has been done to the
memory of these men, but the final judgment rests with the readers. Our
disappointment is over the embarrassment the churches today feel over the
apostles’ perceived betrayal, which makes it almost impossible to quote these
men as authorities on doctrine or history. What little mention is made of them is
usually in the service of cautionary tales about what happens if you disobey the
prophet, exhibit pride, or fail to follow the commandments. Around the globe,
Latter-day Saints of all stripes (those who put a hyphen in their name and those
who don’t) shake their heads over these men, wondering how it is possible that
they could have left the faith after everything they knew and experienced. And
so they have been mostly forgotten and are scarcely understood.
Where we find mention of the six is in the lists of early members. Their
names are given but not their individual characteristics or backgrounds, and they
are skipped over the way the New Testament treats Jesus’s disciples, as having
been more important for their roles than for their backstories or pathways.
Consider Doctrine and Covenants 64, where it states that Christ’s disciples
(apostles) “sought occasion against one another” without sharing details behind
this provocative statement. In the Bible and in church history, the attention is
focused on the main character. The apostles provide anecdotes about human
contrariness and are useful for drawing morals from bad behavior. In a college-
level manual for LDS Institute of Religion classes, Luke Johnson’s baptism is
mentioned but Lyman’s is not, probably because Luke rejoined the church and
Lyman did not. There is a brief entry, “Several Deny the Work of the Lord,” that
discusses apostates without affording them the respect one might think would be
extended to founders. They are instead shown as destroyers of God’s work. Luke
Johnson and Thomas Marsh, who later confessed their errors, receive some
attention. Space restrictions preclude adding too much in the way of gray areas
to a lesson manual, but the fact that the dissidents have been hidden from view is
also obvious.2
Sometimes the apostles are openly ridiculed in Sunday school manuals.
Thomas Marsh left in a huff, we are told, over his wife’s conflict with a neighbor
over milk strippings. One could hope for a more balanced portrait of the senior
apostle. Given the sheer number of men who clashed with Joseph Smith, perhaps
the real question is why anyone would have joined the church in the first place,
not why they would leave. What was the attraction behind the Restoration
Movement? How did the prophet, whose visionary talent made him like an Old
Testament figure, touch peoples’ hearts?
Things did not go exactly as we have been told. The impression we are
sometimes left with is that the church brought peace and harmony to people’s
lives. In most cases, the opposite is true! As an example, the Johnson family was
by all accounts exemplary before they embraced Mormonism, and then they
became quarrelsome and dissatisfied, engaging in rancorous arguments. One can
detect this pattern in other converts. Nearly all the first apostles experienced
extreme turmoil. Orson Pratt thought Joseph had seduced his wife and refused,
for a time, to endorse the prophet. Pratt finally concluded that the church was
more important than his own petty concerns. The outliers were Brigham Young
and Heber Kimball, but this is not to say that they did not have their own, more
private disagreements with Joseph Smith or with the church generally.
Uncertainty and discontent were ubiquitous, and there was little harmony or
peace.
It was no doubt the depth of feeling people had for Joseph Smith and his
doctrines that created the degree of anxiety they experienced when they had
honest disagreements with policies and teachings. This does not mean they
moderated their affection for Joseph himself. It was often quite the contrary.
Where LDS commentators have pointed to affirmations of faith by apostates to
show the rightness of Joseph’s actions and correctness of the Book of Mormon,
the statements are also testaments to the honesty and strength of character of the
apostates themselves.
The seed for this book was a visit Bill received from LDS missionaries when
they knocked on his door in Burlington one day and accepted his invitation to
attend church. Afterward one of the missionaries mentioned that he had seen
Lyman Johnson’s grave in Prarie du Chien on the other side of the state. Bill was
intrigued enough that he drove two hundred miles east to that picturesque spot
on the Mississippi River. It was easy enough locating Johnson’s badly weathered
tombstone in Evergreen Cemetery, but the surprise was discovering, after
laboring to read the date of December 20, 1859, that Lyman died three years
later than traditionally assumed. This was the first of many object lessons in
being cautious in accepting facts from official histories.
One thing led to another as we were drawn into an ever-expanding project,
first looking into the life of Lyman Johnson and then researching his colleagues’
experiences. One conclusion we came to was that historical facts have value
outside of interpretation—or at least that whatever conclusions one might draw,
there is more to the story than meets the eye and that the more we learn, the less
like their stereotypes the apostles seem to be. We wonder how anyone could
have made so many assumptions about these men with so little evidence to go
on. It is nice to be able to see the larger picture, the bad with the good. Each
individual proves to be unique despite some obvious commonalities.
As we formulated a plan of attack, we realized that we had both visited the
restored home of John and Elsa Johnson in Hiram, Ohio, and both of us were
struck by the lavish praise the tour guides heaped on John Johnson Sr., patriarch
of the Johnson family. His generosity helped facilitate the growth and stability of
the Restoration Movement. We agreed that he had filled a key role, of course,
and it is not that we were unaccustomed to the standard fare for simplicity and
exaggeration at LDS visitor centers. But in this case, the guides seemed unable
to moderate anything they said about the Johnson family’s involvement in the
church’s founding. The Johnsons provided shelter and sustenance for Joseph and
Emma Smith, as well as for Sidney and Phoebe Rigdon, in 1831-32. Elsa had
lost the use of an arm that had become disabled by rheumatism, so Joseph healed
it. The most famous vision in the church in the 1830s, that of the three degrees of
heavenly glory in the afterlife, canonized as LDS and Community of Christ
Doctrine and Covenants 76, occurred in the Johnson home in February 1832.3
Father Johnson supported construction of the Kirtland Temple. He defended