1834–1860

The Succession Crisis of 1844

How one death split the Restoration into a dozen churches

Joseph Smith was killed at Carthage on 27 June 1844 without a public, unambiguous rule for who should follow him. He had instead left a scattering of designations, ordinations and hints — enough that at least eight different succession arguments could each claim some warrant from something he had said or done. Within two years the movement he founded had broken into a Utah-bound majority under the Quorum of the Twelve and a scatter of rival churches under Sidney Rigdon, James J. Strang, Lyman Wight, Alpheus Cutler, William Smith and others, with the Reorganization gathering around Joseph Smith III in 1860.

What is actually in dispute

What is in dispute is whether Joseph Smith actually settled the succession before he died and the Twelve merely executed his plan, or whether he left a genuinely open question that Brigham Young closed by nerve, organization and a well-timed vote. Also contested is the 'transfiguration' of Brigham Young on 8 August 1844: whether a miracle occurred that day, or whether a memory of it formed later and hardened into a founding story.

Too many doors, all of them ajar

The problem in 1844 was not that Joseph Smith had said nothing about who should follow him. It was that he had said a great deal, over fourteen years, to different men, in different rooms, and had never published an order of precedence.¹

In July 1834, in Clay County, Missouri, he ordained David Whitmer 'to be a leader or a prophet to this church' — on the condition that he himself did not live to God. Five months later he ordained Oliver Cowdery Assistant President of the High Priesthood, an office Cowdery understood to place him first among the assistants and ahead of Sidney Rigdon and Frederick G. Williams. In March 1835 a revelation declared the Quorum of the Twelve equal in authority to the First Presidency — and said the same of the Seventy and of the combined high councils, which meant the text could be read at least three ways. In January 1841 another revelation gave Hyrum Smith the office of Patriarch by birthright and the keys and gifts once held by Cowdery, and made him 'a prophet, and a seer, and a revelator unto my church, as well as my servant Joseph.'²

By 1844 Joseph had also organized a Council of Fifty, a body concerned with the political Kingdom of God rather than with church office, whose members would later insist that it, and not the Twelve, carried his authority. Within weeks of his death his clerk recorded that he had said his brother Samuel should succeed if he and Hyrum were both taken.³ D. Michael Quinn counted eight distinct methods of succession available in August 1844, each with some warrant in something Joseph had said or done — and concluded that the Twelve were simply in the strongest position of the eight.⁴

The last charge

The Twelve's own claim came down to a single meeting in the last week of March 1844. Joseph, they said, stood before the Council of Fifty and told them his work was nearly done, that he was going to step aside and rest, and that he was rolling the burden of the kingdom off his shoulders onto theirs: round up your shoulders and bear it.⁵

The words are known from recollection. Orson Hyde recounted them in an 1869 address; Benjamin F. Johnson, the youngest man in the council, wrote his own version; Wilford Woodruff quoted Joseph saying the burden now rested on their shoulders and that if they did not bear it off they would be damned. The Twelve drafted a formal declaration about the charge in late 1844 or early 1845, and Hyde brought a written account to the council on 25 March 1845 for approval before publication. Brigham Young did not dispute its general accuracy — and tabled it, ending the discussion.⁶

William Clayton's minutes for 26 March 1844 record that Joseph gave 'some instructions pertaining to the kingdom of God' and 'continued his instructions on heavenly things and many other important subjects,' none of which the scribe reported. A BYU Studies essay on the minutes puts the difficulty honestly: had Clayton been writing in March 1844 with the detail he used a year later, we would know whether the last charge was among those instructions.⁷

Carthage, and an empty room

On 27 June 1844 a mob drawn largely from the militia Governor Ford had just discharged at Carthage climbed the stairs of the jail. Hyrum Smith was shot first. Joseph was killed at the window. John Taylor took four wounds; Willard Richards was untouched.⁸

Taylor and Richards were the only two apostles in Illinois. The rest of the Twelve were scattered through the eastern states campaigning for Joseph's presidential candidacy, and most of them learned what had happened from unsympathetic newspapers. Sidney Rigdon, the last surviving member of the First Presidency, had left Nauvoo on the steamer Osprey nine days earlier for Pittsburgh, sent partly to establish residency for the vice-presidential ticket and partly, by Joseph's own diary, to get him out of danger.⁹

So the two men with the clearest formal claims — Joseph and Hyrum — died in the same room, the one with the next clearest claim was six hundred miles east, and the quorum that would inherit the church was a thousand miles away. Into that space came the ordinary business of a bereaved city: Emma Smith, pregnant with a fourth surviving child and facing an estate in which her husband's personal debts and the church's property were hopelessly tangled, wanted the Nauvoo stake president William Marks appointed trustee-in-trust. Bishop Newel K. Whitney objected privately that Marks had rejected plural marriage, and that if Marks were appointed 'our spiritual blessings will be destroyed.' Samuel H. Smith, the brother Clayton's note had named, died on 30 July.¹⁰

Rigdon comes back

Rigdon reached Nauvoo on 3 or 4 August. He declined an invitation to meet Willard Richards, Parley P. Pratt and George A. Smith, preached at Sunday services instead, and told the Saints it was the Lord's wish that a guardian be appointed to build up the church to Joseph. He asked Marks — who tacitly agreed with him — to call a special assembly, and Marks announced it for the morning of Thursday 8 August.¹¹

Brigham Young arrived on 6 August. On the 7th he convened the Twelve, the high council and the high priests in the Seventies Hall and invited Rigdon to explain himself. Rigdon described a manifestation received at Pittsburgh — not an open vision, he said, but presented to his mind. Joseph stood in the same relation to the church in death as in life; no man could be his successor; the kingdom must be built up to him; and Rigdon, ordained as spokesman, would go on speaking for him until Joseph descended as a mighty angel, laid a hand on his head, and said, come up and act for me.¹²

Young answered that he did not care who led the church of God if God said so — even, he added drily, if it were old Ann Lee — but that he must know God said so; and that he had the keys and the means of knowing the mind of God on the subject.¹³

Six days in August

Thousands gathered in the grove near the temple on the morning of the 8th. The wind was up. Rigdon stood in a wagon with his back to it and spoke for more than an hour.

What he actually said was not known for a century and a half. Thomas Bullock took the sermon down in Taylor shorthand, and no one deciphered it until LaJean Purcell Carruth's transcription was published by BYU Studies in 2014. It shows a man making a much smaller claim than the story requires. Rigdon expected Joseph to keep working from beyond the grave — 'I view [Joseph] as sitting in heaven with... power to make himself known to any one' — and located authority not in himself but in the institution: 'is in the church.' He said he had 'the fullest belief... that every man will stand in his own place and stand in his own calling.' His summary of his own position was that he 'should be a spokesman for our prophet who has been taken from us.'¹⁴

Young cut the meeting short and called the congregation back at two. What Rigdon wanted decided slowly, Young settled that afternoon. The quorums took their places as at a solemn assembly. Young told them the Twelve held the keys of the kingdom of God in all the world, and that no man could put another between the Twelve and the prophet Joseph. He asked whether the people wanted a guardian, a prophet, a spokesman — anything of the kind. By the church's own printed report, not a hand went up. Then he put the other question. Wilford Woodruff, writing for the British Saints six months later, described what followed: 'At once there was a sea of hands, a universal vote; a contrary vote was called and not a hand was raised in a congregation of about fifteen thousand Saints. Sidney Rigdon himself, who was present, did not vote against it, but I think in favour of it.'¹⁵

It is the only time in the movement's history that the leadership of the church was decided by a show of hands.

The trial

Rigdon did not stop. Through the rest of the summer he went on arguing that he had been first counselor, Joseph's running mate, and the church's guardian, and he was gathering the undecided. He also, according to Young, held private meetings at which he ordained men prophets, priests and kings.¹⁶

On Sunday 8 September 1844 the Twelve tried him before the Nauvoo high council with Bishop Newel K. Whitney at their head, in the open air, before a crowd the Nauvoo Neighbor put at six to seven thousand. Rigdon was in St. Louis and did not attend. The Times and Seasons printed the whole thing across two numbers, and apologized for it: the two preceding numbers had been much occupied with the trial of Elder Rigdon, the editor wrote, because it was thought best that the facts and arguments be spread before the Saints, since the Saints were the judges of the fact.¹⁷

The transcript is a study in how quickly a doctrinal dispute becomes a personal one. Young recounted asking Rigdon whether the Twelve would be subject to him and being told no, that Rigdon claimed jurisdiction over no man — to which Young replied that such a course would lead to a division of the church, and that a thing with many heads must be a hydra, a monster. He also told the congregation that if they made Rigdon their leader they would soon have John C. Bennett back, with the Laws and the Fosters. W. W. Phelps moved that Rigdon be cut off and delivered over to the buffetings of Satan until he repents. Young asked the congregation to arrange themselves so that everyone could see who voted. About ten hands went up for Rigdon. Bishop Whitney's decision was that Rigdon 'be cut off from the church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints.'¹⁸ Two days later Rigdon left for Pittsburgh.

The losing side prints its own paper

Within a month of reaching Pittsburgh, Rigdon had organized a church with himself as First President and started a newspaper. He gave it the name of the old Kirtland church organ: the Latter Day Saints' Messenger and Advocate. The first number, dated 15 October 1844, opened with a signed statement to the public promising courtesy toward other men's religious beliefs, and carried letters from correspondents describing conditions in Nauvoo.¹⁹

Because the corpus holds the whole run, the losing argument survives in the losing side's own words. Rigdon's paper made the scriptural case from the 1832 revelation now printed as Doctrine and Covenants 90, which had commanded Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon to continue 'in the ministry and Presidency' and made it their business 'in all your lives, to preside in council and set in order all the affairs of this church and kingdom.' If that was the word of God in very deed, the paper argued, then Sidney Rigdon was beyond all cavil the called of God to preside over his church. It charged that the Twelve had determined to supplant Rigdon before the church at Nauvoo ever acted — that the vote had ratified a decision already made — and that no order of heaven could exist without a First Presidency at all.²⁰ It printed branch resolutions from Pennsylvania withdrawing confidence from the Twelve and acknowledging Rigdon as Prophet, Seer and Revelator, and reports from missionaries in Michigan who told congregations that the Twelve and the people at Nauvoo had departed from the organization of the church and that 'Elder S. Rigdon is the legitimate president of the kingdom of God.'²¹

It also printed what it was like on the ground. One correspondent wrote home from Iowa in May 1845 about arriving in Nauvoo and being told, 'you are a Rigdonite, you will be whistled out of town' — and explained the practice for readers who would not know it: a club of men with dirks and knives who whittle on a stick and whistle after the person they want gone, until he leaves. By January 1845 Rigdon had stopped emphasizing his guardianship and was accusing Joseph Smith himself of having been a fallen prophet, chiefly over polygamy.²²

He was not the only rival with a press. William E. McLellin, an apostle excommunicated in 1838, had launched The Ensign at Buffalo in Iowa Territory on 15 July 1844, less than three weeks after the martyrdom, with George M. Hinkle. McLellin then joined Rigdon, served as one of the clerks of Rigdon's April 1845 Pittsburgh conference, and printed its minutes — which show Rigdon naming his own Twelve, his own Seventies, his own Grand Council, and receiving a vote as Trustee in Trust for the Church of Christ.²³ Then McLellin fell out with Hinkle, and by 1847 was helping to organize yet another church around David Whitmer.

The claimants scatter

James J. Strang had been a member for four months when Joseph died. He had been baptized by Joseph in February 1844 and ordained an elder by Hyrum in March, and sent back a favourable report on Burlington as a place for a stake. He produced a letter dated 18 June 1844 appointing him, said an angel had ordained him on the day of the martyrdom, and in September 1845 had four followers dig up three engraved brass plates at Voree. Martin Harris, three Whitmers, Hiram Page, William Smith and Lucy Mack Smith all followed him for a time. He was crowned king on Beaver Island and assassinated in 1856. The Times and Seasons had cut him and Aaron Smith off in its issue of 2 September 1844 for circulating a revelation falsely so called.²⁴

Lyman Wight took his Wisconsin pine company to Texas — first near Austin, then to Zodiac — holding that Joseph had given him his mission personally and through the Council of Fifty, and that no man but God or Joseph could revoke it. The Twelve had blessed the venture on 12 August 1844 and disfellowshipped him on 3 December 1848. Alpheus Cutler, who had been ordained at Far West to be chief architect of God's holy houses and who sat on the high council that cut off Rigdon, eventually organized his own church in Iowa. George Miller, Wight's partner in the pine country, left in disgust at what he called the usurpation of the arrogant apostles.²⁵

William Smith, the last surviving brother, was ordained Presiding Patriarch by the Twelve on 24 May 1845 and spent the summer arguing that the office carried a right to lead. In an October pamphlet he charged that Brigham Young had privately conceded 'little Joseph' was the rightful heir to his father's office but thought it imprudent to say so for fear of the child's life. He went to Strang, then to Wight, and left behind him in Illinois and Wisconsin a scattered body of Saints who had been taught the doctrine of lineal priesthood. Jason W. Briggs and Zenas Gurley picked it up after William's church collapsed. In 1854 the settlement at Palestine Grove was renamed Amboy.²⁶

On 6 April 1860, at twenty-seven, Joseph Smith III was ordained President of the High Priesthood at Amboy. His mother Emma travelled with him. He had written to William Marks a month earlier: 'I am soon going to take my father's place at the head of the Mormon Church.'²⁷

The mantle, and what hardened afterwards

The best-known thing about 8 August 1844 is a miracle: that when Brigham Young rose, the Saints saw Joseph's face and heard Joseph's voice. Something on the order of 129 people left accounts of it, some of them vivid and specific — a man turning round because he had had his back to the stand, a nine-year-old telling his mother the prophet was not dead because he could see him.²⁸

Almost all of them were written down decades later. No 1844 source describes it. Wilford Woodruff wrote seven pages in his journal that day and mentioned nothing miraculous; Parley P. Pratt's autobiography, finished in 1856, is silent; so are the writings from that day of Young, Kimball and Richards. Bishop George Miller, who was there, recalled only a long and loud harangue whose point, so far as he could see, was to overturn Rigdon's pretensions. Woodruff's February 1845 Millennial Star address is the earliest printed use of the image — 'It was evident to the Saints that the mantle of Joseph had fallen upon him, the road that he pointed out could be seen so plainly, that none need err therein' — and it is a metaphor about clarity, not a report of a vision.²⁹ The first known public claim of a transfiguration is Albert Carrington's in July 1857. On 15 August 1844 Young had written the exact opposite of a succession-by-inheritance claim: 'Let no man presume for a moment that his place will be filled by another; for, remember, he stands in his own place and always will.' In 1860 he said from the pulpit, 'The brethren testify that brother Brigham Young is brother Joseph's legal successor. You never heard me say so.'³⁰

The scholarly positions are stable and stated plainly by both sides. Ronald Esplin: though there is no contemporary diary account, the number of later retellings, many in remarkable detail, argues for the reality of some such experience. Van Wagoner: the story is a myth that formed after the fact. Reid Harper's point is structural — a consensus of major Mormon historians agrees the Twelve had no need of a miracle in August 1844, and if Young had had one to invoke he would surely have used it three years later, when apostles at Winter Quarters were asking for a revelation.³¹

What happened at Winter Quarters is the real end of the crisis. For three and a half years the Twelve simply governed. Then, on 5 December 1847, at Orson Hyde's house on the Missouri, nine of the Twelve sustained Brigham Young as President of the Church with Kimball and Richards as counselors, and a log tabernacle went up at Kanesville so a conference could ratify it. Orson Pratt objected systematically; John Taylor and Parley P. Pratt, both in the Salt Lake Valley and therefore absent, were opposed; so was Lyman Wight. Historians have argued that with the full quorum present it might not have carried. Nothing about it looked like a rule at the time. It became one. The modern practice — the senior apostle succeeds, automatically, within days — was not the law of 1844 or of 1847; it was built out of these precedents over the following century, which is precisely what Edward Leo Lyman's study of procedural precedent sets out to show.³²

Notes

John G. Turner, Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2025), epilogue: Joseph Smith 'never outlined any sort of succession plan.' → source ↩
D. Michael Quinn, 'Joseph Smith III's 1844 Blessing and the Mormons of Utah,' Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 15:2 (Summer 1982), 71–72, listing the 8 July 1834 ordination of David Whitmer and the 5 December 1834 ordination of Oliver Cowdery as Assistant President. Journal of Mormon History 1 (1974), 33 n., noting that the 28 March 1835 revelation (D&C 107:23–26, 36) made the Twelve equal in authority to the First Presidency but said the same of the Seventy and of the combined stake high councils. Doctrine and Covenants 124:91–95, as quoted in Journal of Mormon History 14 (1988), 43, in an article on the office of Presiding Patriarch; Saints, vol. 1, ch. 35, describes the same revelation. → source ↩
Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 1844–January 1846, The Joseph Smith Papers; see also 'Understanding the Council of Fifty and Its Minutes,' BYU Studies, on the council as a civil rather than ecclesiastical body. William Clayton, journal entry of 12 July 1844, as quoted in Quinn, Dialogue 15:2, 80, and in Saints, vol. 1, ch. 45. The Clayton Nauvoo journals held in this corpus are UNVERIFIED TRANSCRIPTS and are not quoted here directly. → source ↩
D. Michael Quinn, 'The Mormon Succession Crisis of 1844,' BYU Studies 16 (Winter 1976): 187–233, characterized in Journal of Mormon History 5 (1978), 124, as 'a thoroughly documented study of eight alternatives for succession, all with some color of authenticity based upon some action or statement of Joseph Smith,' finding the Twelve strongest in August 1844. The Quinn article itself was not retrieved from this corpus. → source ↩
R. Jean Addams, 'Aftermath of the Martyrdom: Aspirants to the Mantle of the Prophet Joseph Smith,' Interpreter Foundation, §29, quoting the last charge: 'I roll the burthen and responsibility of leading this church off from my shoulder on to yours.' → source ↩
Orson Hyde, 1869 address, as quoted in Richard S. Van Wagoner, 'The Making of a Mormon Myth,' Dialogue 28:4 (Winter 1995), 29; Wilford Woodruff's and Benjamin F. Johnson's versions are collected in the same article. 'I Roll the Burthen and Responsibility of Leading This Church Off from My Shoulders on to Yours': The 1844/1845 Declaration of the Quorum of the Twelve Regarding Apostolic Succession, BYU Studies, on the drafting of the declaration after 8 September 1844; 'Understanding the Council of Fifty and Its Minutes,' BYU Studies, on Hyde's 25 March 1845 draft being tabled by Brigham Young. → source ↩
'Understanding the Council of Fifty and Its Minutes,' BYU Studies, §8: 'Had Clayton been writing with the same detail in March 1844 as he did in March 1845, presumably we would know if the Last Charge was among Joseph Smith's important instructions the morning of March 26, 1844.' → source ↩
'Physical Evidence at Carthage Jail and What It Reveals about the Assassination of Joseph and Hyrum Smith,' BYU Studies, on the discharge of the Warsaw militia by Governor Ford on the morning of 27 June 1844; the Nauvoo Neighbor–Extra of 30 June 1844 announced 'Awful Assassination!' → source ↩
LaJean Purcell Carruth and Robin Scott Jensen, 'Sidney Rigdon's Plea to the Saints,' BYU Studies Quarterly 53:2 (2014), introduction: most of the Twelve and Sidney Rigdon were away campaigning, and 'only two of the members of the Twelve — Willard Richards and John Taylor — had remained' in Nauvoo. Joseph Smith diary, 22 June 1844 ('I have sent Br. R[igdon] away'), and Wickliffe Rigdon's recollection of the departure on the Osprey, both quoted in the MormonThink reproduction of Van Wagoner, 'The Making of a Mormon Myth.' → source ↩
Saints, vol. 1, ch. 45, 'An Almighty Foundation,' quoting Newel K. Whitney: 'If Marks is appointed, our spiritual blessings will be destroyed, inasmuch as he is not favorable to the most important matters'; the same exchange is recorded in Dialogue 15:2, 80, from Clayton. Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery, Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 240: Samuel Harrison Smith died 30 July 1844, aged thirty-six. → source ↩
Addams, 'Aftermath of the Martyrdom,' §28, on Rigdon declining the 4 August meeting, preaching that a guardian must be appointed, and asking William Marks to schedule the assembly for the morning of 8 August. → source ↩
Van Wagoner, 'The Making of a Mormon Myth,' on the 7 August meeting in the Seventies Hall, quoting Rigdon that he would speak for Joseph 'until Joseph Smith himself shall descend as a mighty angel, lay his hand on [my] head & ordain [me] & say, Come up & act for me.' → source ↩
Saints, vol. 1, ch. 45: 'I do not care who leads the church, but one thing I must know, and that is what God says about it.' The 'old Ann Lee' remark and the claim to 'the keys and the means of knowing the mind of God' are given in Van Wagoner, Dialogue 28:4. → source ↩
Carruth and Jensen, 'Sidney Rigdon's Plea to the Saints,' §10, from Thomas Bullock's Taylor shorthand of the morning meeting of 8 August 1844. → source ↩
Saints, vol. 1, ch. 45: 'There has been much said about President Rigdon being president of the church, but I say unto you that the Quorum of the Twelve have the keys of the kingdom of God in all the world'; and 'no man can put another between the Twelve and the prophet Joseph.' Wilford Woodruff, address 'To the [Church] Officers and Members' in the British Islands, published in the Latter-day Saints' Millennial Star, February 1845, reproduced in the Millennial Star 1840–1859 run at p. 1130. The question put to the congregation is quoted there in full. → source ↩
Times and Seasons 5:17 (15 September 1844), 'Trial of Elder Rigdon,' p. 648 of the bound volume: Brigham Young's account of confronting Rigdon about a meeting at which men were ordained prophets, priests and kings. → source ↩
Times and Seasons, vol. 5, p. 290: 'The two preceding numbers have been much occupied with the trial of elder Rigdon. This was judged most advisable, in order that the facts and arguments might be spread before the saints,' the Saints being 'the judges of the fact.' (OCR of the original sheet is imperfect; wording lightly normalized.) → source ↩
'Trial of Sidney Rigdon,' reprinted in the Latter-day Saints' Millennial Star, at p. 1098 of the 1840–1859 run: Phelps's motion that Rigdon 'be cut off from the church, and delivered over to the buffetings of Satan until he repents,' Young's request that the congregation arrange themselves so all could see who voted, and the roughly ten hands raised for Rigdon. Nauvoo Neighbor, 11 September 1844, as quoted in 'Nauvoo Neighbor: The Latter-day Saint Experience at the Mississippi River, 1843–1845,' BYU Studies, §17, which notes that the Neighbor was the only newspaper to give full coverage to Rigdon's claim and his excommunication. → source ↩
Latter Day Saints' Messenger and Advocate (Pittsburgh), vol. 1 no. 1, 15 October 1844, p. 1, 'To the Public,' signed Sidney Rigdon. → source ↩
Latter Day Saints' Messenger and Advocate (Pittsburgh), p. 26, quoting the revelation then numbered section 84 of the Book of Covenants (now D&C 90) and concluding: 'If this is the word of God in very deed, then is Sidney Rigdon, beyond all cavil or dispute the called of God, to preside over his Church, and Kingdom.' Latter Day Saints' Messenger and Advocate (Pittsburgh), p. 38, arguing that the Twelve had resolved to supplant Rigdon before the church at Nauvoo acted, and that 'in no circumstances . . . could the order of heaven exist without the first presidency.' (OCR imperfect; sense given, wording normalized.) → source ↩
Latter Day Saints' Messenger and Advocate (Pittsburgh), p. 121 (resolutions of the Six Mile Ferry branch, Mifflin Township, Pa., 20 January 1845, withdrawing confidence from the Twelve) and p. 320 (missionary report from Brownstown, Michigan: 'Elder S. Rigdon is the legitimate president of the kingdom of God'). → source ↩
Latter Day Saints' Messenger and Advocate (Pittsburgh), p. 224, letter dated Iowa, 11 May 1845, describing being told in Nauvoo 'you are a Rigdonite, you will be whistled out of town,' and explaining the whittling-and-whistling practice. Journal of Mormon History 21:2 (1995), 86, on Rigdon de-emphasizing the guardianship and accusing Joseph Smith in January 1845 of being a fallen prophet, primarily over polygamy; roughly forty per cent of the Philadelphia branch was excommunicated between September 1844 and 1847. → source ↩
The Ensign, vol. 1 no. 1, Buffalo, Scott County, Iowa Territory, 15 July 1844, prospectus: 'Whereas, George M. Hinkle and William E. McLellin propose publishing a Monthly Periodical in Buffalo, Scott county, Iowa Territory . . . to be called The Ensign.' The Ensign, vol. 1 no. 11 (May 1845), pp. 127–49, reprinting from the Messenger and Advocate the minutes of Rigdon's Pittsburgh conference of 6–11 April 1845, with McLellin, Joseph M. Cole and George W. Robinson as clerks; Rigdon is named 'the first President of the whole church' and voted Trustee in Trust. → source ↩
Addams, 'Aftermath of the Martyrdom,' §§31–37, on Strang's baptism on 25 February 1844, ordination by Hyrum Smith on 3 March, the Letter of Appointment received 9 July, the September 1845 plates, and the 1856 assassination; Journal of Mormon History 34:2 (2008), 173, gives the Strangite chronology. Times and Seasons, 2 September 1844, 'To the Saints,' cutting off James J. Strang and Aaron Smith for circulating a 'revelation (falsely called)' dated 18 June 1844 and attempting to establish a stake called Voree — reproduced in Jerald and Sandra Tanner, The Case Against Mormonism, vol. 2, 19. The Times and Seasons volume itself is held here, but this notice was not recovered cleanly from its OCR. → source ↩
Journal of Mormon History 25:2 (1999), 99–101, on Wight's colony, the Twelve's blessing of the venture on 12 August 1844, the disfellowshipment of 3 December 1848, and Wight's pamphlet appealing to the 'Grand Council'; 'Polygamy on the Pedernales,' BYU Studies, on the Black River pine company as the colony's core. Journal of Mormon History 25:2 (1999), 99, quoting George Miller that he was 'broken down in spirit on account of the usurpation of these arrogant Apostles, and their oppressive measures'; Journal of Mormon History 34:3 (2008), 163, on Alpheus Cutler's Far West ordination. → source ↩
William Smith, pamphlet of October 1845, quoted in Quinn, Dialogue 15:2, 83: 'this Brigham Young was pampering the church with the idea that although little Joseph was the rightful heir to the priesthood and office of his father as a prophet, seer, and revelator, that it was not prudent to mention this for fear of the little child's life.' Journal of Mormon History 40:4 (2014), 105–7, on William Smith teaching lineal priesthood at Beloit and Palestine Grove, on Briggs and Gurley picking it up after his church collapsed, and on the renaming of the settlement to Amboy in 1854. → source ↩
Addams, 'Aftermath of the Martyrdom,' §48, quoting Joseph Smith III's letter to William Marks of 5 March 1860 and describing the ordination at Amboy on 6 April 1860; Dialogue 39:4 and Journal of Mormon History 34:3 (2008), 63, on the Reorganization's subsequent theology. → source ↩
Lynne Watkins Jorgensen, 'The Mantle of the Prophet Joseph Passes to Brother Brigham: A Collective Spiritual Witness,' BYU Studies, foreword and appendix: 'At least one hundred people wrote or otherwise passed on their remembrances of this witness'; the accounts of Wandle Mace, James Madison Fisher and William Van Orden Carbine appear in the appendix. → source ↩
Van Wagoner, 'The Making of a Mormon Myth,' Dialogue 28:4, 38, quoting George Miller on Young's 'long and loud harangue'; the survey of contemporaneous silence (Woodruff's seven pages, Pratt's 1856 autobiography, the Laub diary shown to be a later copy) is set out at LDS Discussions, 'Overview of the Transfiguration of Brigham Young.' Woodruff, Millennial Star, February 1845, at p. 1130 of the held run — the earliest known printed use of the mantle image about Brigham Young, quoted in full in Journal of Mormon History 22:2 (1996), 57. → source ↩
Van Wagoner, as reprinted in Dialogue 34:1–2, 192: 'The first public reference to a transfiguration may have been a 19 July 1857 statement by Albert Carrington.' Brigham Young, epistle to the Saints, 15 August 1844, quoted in Jorgensen, 'The Mantle of the Prophet Joseph Passes to Brother Brigham,' §7, which also states that 'records do not indicate that he publicly acknowledged the manifestations at the time they occurred.' Brigham Young, 3 June 1860, Journal of Discourses 8:69, quoted as the epigraph to Van Wagoner, 'The Making of a Mormon Myth.' → source ↩
Reid L. Harper, 'The Mantle of Joseph: Creation of a Mormon Miracle,' Journal of Mormon History 22:2 (1996), 74: 'A consensus of major Mormon historians agree: the Twelve had no need for a miracle in August of 1844'; and at 77, on two apostles wanting a revelation at Winter Quarters in 1847. Esplin's formulation is quoted in Jorgensen, §2. → source ↩
Journal of Mormon History 22:2 (1996), 76, summarizing Richard Bennett and Quinn: John Taylor and Parley P. Pratt, both in the Salt Lake Valley, and Lyman Wight were opposed, and with the full quorum present the reorganization might not have happened; Journal of Mormon History 40:2 (2014), 108–9, on Orson Pratt's objections. Edward Leo Lyman, 'Succession by Seniority: The Development of Procedural Precedents in the LDS Church,' Journal of Mormon History 40:2 (2014), 100: for more than a century succession has been 'entirely predictable and therefore routine,' so that members assume 'the contemporary tradition has always been so. But that simply was not the case.' → source ↩

Stories from the record

Human-scale episodes inside this topic, each anchored to a source.

The wind in the grove

On the morning of 8 August 1844 the Saints gathered in the grove near the unfinished temple. It was blustery. Sidney Rigdon, who had been ill for years and whose voice was his one great asset, stood in a wagon with his back to a steady wind and spoke for more than an hour. Some who were there remembered afterwards only that it 'did not have the right ring to it.' The actual text of what he said was locked in Thomas Bullock's shorthand until 2014, and it turns out to be a modest argument: authority is in the church, every man stands in his own calling, and he asked only to remain the dead prophet's spokesman.

Sources: Sidney Rigdon's Plea to the Saints: Transc… · The Mantle of the Prophet Joseph Passes to…

Whistled out of town

In May 1845 a man who had been away from Nauvoo for nearly a year came back to settle his business and was met with, 'you are a Rigdonite, you will be whistled out of town.' He wrote home to explain the practice to his wife: a club of men equipped with dirks and large knives take up a cane, start whittling on it, and whistle after the person they want gone until he leaves. They had run Austin Cowles to the river and put him in a skiff. Rigdon printed the letter in his Pittsburgh paper.

Sources: Latter Day Saints' Messenger and Advocate…

A branch votes

On 20 January 1845, at Elder John Frazer's house at Six Mile Ferry in Mifflin Township, Pennsylvania, a small congregation met and passed resolutions: that they no longer had confidence in the Twelve, knowing that they had been teaching and practising doctrines calculated to destroy the church of God; that they put their confidence in President Sidney Rigdon as Prophet, Seer and Revelator; that they would call themselves the Six Mile Ferry branch; and that a book should be procured to keep the branch record in. The minutes were sent to Pittsburgh and printed.

Sources: Latter Day Saints' Messenger and Advocate…

William Marks changes his mind, in print

Marks had scheduled the 8 August meeting at Rigdon's request and had privately said he had prayed and got a testimony that Rigdon was the man to stand at the head. In December 1844 he published a notice in the Times and Seasons: after mature and candid deliberation he was fully and satisfactorily convinced that Rigdon's claims were not founded in truth, that he had been deceived by specious pretences, and that he now wished to warn everyone over whom he had any influence to beware of Rigdon and his pretended visions and revelations. The Twelve, he wrote, are the proper persons to lead the church. Sixteen years later he was one of the men who persuaded Joseph Smith III to take his father's place.

Sources: Times and Seasons, Volume 5 (1844–1845) · Aftermath of the Martyrdom: Aspirants to t…

Seven pages and no miracle

Wilford Woodruff kept a diary all his life and kept it well. For 8 August 1844 — the day the church chose its leadership, the day around a hundred people would later say they saw the dead prophet's face on Brigham Young — he wrote seven pages. He recorded that a meeting had been appointed at the grove for prayers, that because of some excitement among the people and a disposition by some spirits to divide the church it was thought best to do the business in the afternoon, and then he recorded the business. He did not mention a transfiguration, a change of voice, or anything else miraculous. Twenty-eight years later, in April 1872, he bore public testimony that he had seen it.

Sources: The Making of a Mormon Myth: The 1844 Tran… · The Mantle of the Prophet Joseph Passes to…

Mormon Stories leads

Search phrases for the Mormon Stories transcript database. Episode numbers are deliberately absent — the transcript index was not queried for this build, and a guessed episode number is worse than none.

eight methods of succession 1844 Quinn BYU Studies Brigham Young RigdonDiscussion of Quinn's finding that Joseph Smith left at least eight plausible succession paths and no published order of precedence.

transfiguration of Brigham Young Van Wagoner mantle myth contemporary sourcesEpisodes weighing the roughly 129 late mantle accounts against the total silence of 1844 sources, including Woodruff's journal.

Sidney Rigdon guardian Pittsburgh Messenger and Advocate excommunicated September 1844Treatment of Rigdon as a serious claimant with his own church and paper, rather than as a footnote or a punchline.

James Strang letter of appointment Voree plates Beaver Island kingHow Strang's claim worked, who followed him — Martin Harris, the Whitmers, Lucy Mack Smith — and why the movement collapsed.

Reorganized Church 1860 Amboy Joseph Smith III Emma Smith lineal successionThe Community of Christ counter-history and what Joseph Smith III did and did not know about his father's Nauvoo teachings.

Winter Quarters 1847 First Presidency reorganized Orson Pratt objected succession by seniorityHow the modern automatic seniority rule was assembled out of contested precedents rather than revealed in 1844.

People who also appear elsewhere

Joseph Smith Jr.Emma Hale Smith Sidney Rigdon Lyman Wight Hyrum Smith Wilford Woodruff Brigham Young