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Nauvoo's Nadir

1/24/2018

2 Comments

 
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​For background before writing “The Believers In The Crucible Nauvoo”, I read Carol Cornwell Madsen’s book “In their Own Words – Women and the Story of Nauvoo” These pioneers through their letters, diaries, and writings poignantly capture the mosaic that was Nauvoo, women speaking in their own voices. Three days before Vilate Kimball wrote to her husband Heber, Joseph and Hyrum Smith had died, and John Taylor and Willard Richards had been severely wounded. Heber and the remaining seven of the Quorum of Twelve were away on mission. Thus, Nauvoo was leaderless while under siege. The entire letter Vilate wrote can be found in Dr. Madsen’s book. Below is a scene using excerpts from her letter.

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Through a rain-spattered window, Vilate Kimball watched Brother Adams head home. A few Saints hurried while trying to avoid puddles and streams that cut paths to lower lying areas. As she allowed the curtain to drift from her hand, she realized the dreary images were alike her thoughts and Nauvoo’s mood. She picked up a quill to do a frequent task, write to her husband away on mission.

In 1822, a sixteen year old Vilate married Heber Kimball. They, along with Brigham Young’s family, were among Joseph’s early followers. In 1832, they moved to Kirkland, then to Missouri, and to a hopeful last stop in Nauvoo. Elder Kimball became an apostle in 1835 and was often away. Vilate had endured much -- disruptive moves as the Saints fled, prolonged absences of her husband, loss of some children, and the introduction of plural marriage -- yet she remained steadfast to her husband and her Church.

She began to write:

Nauvoo 30 June 1844. 
My dear dear companion,

Never before did I take up my pen to address you under so trying circumstances as we are now placed. But Brother Adams, the bearer of this, can tell you more than I can write. I shall not attempt to describe the scene that we have passed through. God forbid that I should ever witness another like unto it. I saw the lifeless corpses of our beloved brethren when they were brought to their almost distracted families. Yea, I witnessed their tears and groans, which was enough to rend the heart of an adamant. Every brother and sister that witnessed the scene felt deeply to sympathize with them. Yea, every heart is filled with sorrow, and the very streets of Nauvoo seem to mourn. Where it will end the Lord only knows.


She paused as grief overcame her. The quill shook, but knowing Brother Adams would soon return, she gripped her writing hand to ease its trembling. The quill scratched the paper breaking the silence as she wrote amid dank air:

We are kept awake night after night by the alarms of mobs. These apostates say, ‘their damnation is sealed, their die is cast, their doom is fixed’, and they are determined to do all in their power to have revenge. William Law says, ‘he wants nine more that was in his Quorum of Twelve ’. Sometimes I am afraid he will get them. I have no doubt but you are one.

The thought of William Law slaying her husband loomed as she continued writing. Overcome, she paused to wipe a tear away. More tears came, and she drew back so they wouldn’t splatter the paper. She wiped her eyes with her sleeve and continued. Her mind swirled in confusion, and she was unsure what she was wrote until she neared the end:

My time is up to send this, so you must excuse me for I have written in a great hurry and with a bad pen. The children all remember you in love. Now fare you well my love, till we meet, which may the Lord grant for his son’s sake.
​

Amen.

Vilate Kimball

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Immigration, has it changed? January 2018

1/6/2018

4 Comments

 
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Do today’s immigrants face challenges akin to previous waves of foreigners; or is it different ?

The Great Migration (1630 - 1640) consisted of twenty thousand, primary English immigrants trekking to a new world in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. This wave was ground zero, a beginning for what would eventually become America. They dealt with the indigenous people in various way to claim the land and built for themselves a Puritan Theocracy, free of diversity.

For a decade the Puritans had their way until another wave, perhaps more appropriately, a trickle of Scottish Prisoners of War arrived in 1651 — Immigration 1.0. These invaders of an erstwhile virgin land spoke differently with a Scottish burr, were Presbyterians not Puritans, and worst of all had fought against the Puritans’ guardian, their beloved Oliver Cromwell. To some, they were the enemy, and to others, a cheap source of labor for the Saugus Iron Works. The Great Migration had consisted of family units often bound by kindred ties or by residing previously in the same English village. These Scots were young males,  rowdy, and lacking the discipline that marriage and a family require.

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Immigration 2.0 and succeeding versions followed. The Great Potato famine (1845 - 1849) caused mass starvation, disease, and desperation, and a wave of Irish came to America. By 1850 these Catholics made up a quarter of Boston’s once Protestant population. By the 1860s, NINA (No Irish Need Apply) accompanied help wanted signs. A song of the same name became popular in 1862 in London, which Irish-Americans adapted the lyrics to reflect the discrimination they felt as they sang.

Later, French Canadians streamed down from Quebec, cheap labor  to work the textile mills along the Merrimack River in Manchester, NH, and Lowell and Lawrence, Mass. By the mid-twentieth century, French-Canadian Americans comprised thirty percent of Maine, and towns like Lewiston had their enclaves known as “Little Canada”.

Similarly, at the turn of the last century Italians arrived, congregating in an enclave in Boston’s North End. Like the waves before, they faced challenges - poverty, discrimination, and a language barrier. They were full of emotion and more swarthy than the reserved, pale Yankee Puritans who were Boston’s establishment, seemingly under siege.

And the waves continue. Today, Hispanics and Muslims are in the news. Even on this tiny island of Martha’s Vineyard, we have a significant minority of Brazilians. Some come seeking jobs and, as a source of cheap labor, their opportunities abound. They seek a new start, some seek asylum. They speak different languages, and certain groups are viewed by some Americans as terrorist, the enemy similar to the view some Puritans had of the Scottish Prisoners of War who arrived 367 years earlier.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Did John Law face greater discrimination than subsequent immigration waves would face? And how about today’s immigrants? If you read The Immigrant, you might find some answers to these questions. ​

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Plural Marriage December 2017

1/6/2018

1 Comment

 
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​When I tell people The Believers In The Crucible Nauvoo is about Naamah Carter who becomes Brigham Young’s plural wife, some, particularly males, elbow my ribs while offering a lecherous, “Heh, heh.” Others mention the sensational headlines about Warren Jeffs, the FLDS President, or the HBO series “Big Love”. A few do not realize the LDS church received a revelation and banned polygamy over century ago, paving the way for Utah to become our 45th state.

Joseph Smith received his troubling revelations to engage in plural marriage three times between 1834 and 1842 before finally acting upon it. In May 1843 with his wife, Emma, at his side, he entered in “celestial marriages” with Emily and Eliza Partridge, servants in his household. Soon after, Emma rued her decision. As the Female Relief Society of Nauvoo’s President, she spoke out against plural marriage and, eventually 
in March 1844, Joseph suspended their meetings. Joseph is believed to have had twenty-seven “celestial wives”, which was determined years after his death and, each is supported with varying degrees of objective evidence.

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​Brigham Young on the other hand is far more complex. Facts vary on what constituted a marriage and when it may have occurred. Throughout Brigham's life, he was less than forthcoming about his marriages. Some historians have him with fifty-five wives and fifty-nine children from sixteen of those wives. One wife, Emmeline Free, bore him ten children. Thus, many were childless, begging a question if some of those marriages were conjugal.  In January 1846, the month preceding the exodus west, Brigham wrote in his diary he work in one stretch twenty hours a day for a fortnight, endowing the faithful and overseeing the Herculean task to cross the Mississippi and endure a harsh prairie winter as wandering nomads; and he married nineteen women, including his widowed mothers-in-law from his first and second marriage and a widowed sister-in-law. Neither these women nor several others he married in the January bore him children. Surely, Brigham’s reasons for marriage varied.

Naamah Carter married Brigham in January 1846. She was twenty years his junior, recently widowed, virtually alone, and dedicated to temple work. What were Brigham’s reason for proposing marriage to her, and how much soul searching did she undergo before saying, “yes”? The Believers In The Crucible Nauvoo offers answers to these questions as it unfolds this unusual love story. 


If you desire a robust insight to plural marriage, you might read Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s recent work A House Full of Females.

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    Author

    In 2002, Alfred Woollacott, III retired from KPMG and began pursuing his family history. His research is meticulous and in December 2017, he began blogging about it, giving further insight to his novels

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