Vickie C. Speek - God Has Made Us a Kingdom: James Strang and the Midwest Mormons

God Has Made Us a Kingdom
James Strang and the Midwest Mormons

VICKIE CLEVERLEY SPEEK

Signature Books Salt Lake City 2006

Jacket design by Ron Stucki

Cover images: James Jesse Strang, ca. 1855, probably photographed by Dr. Thomas Aiken; Sarah Wright and son James Phineas Strang, ca. 1858; Elvira Field posing as Charles Douglass, ca. 1849, courtesy Clarke Historical Library, Central Michigan University; sketch of a merchant ship on the back of a letter from Peter Hess to James Strang, Feb. 13, 1850, courtesy Beinecke Library, Yale University.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Speek, Vickie Cleverley

God has made us a kingdom : James Strang and the Midwest Mormons / by Vickie Cleverley Speek.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 1-56085-192-9

1. Strang, James Jesse, 1813-1856. 2. Church of Jesus Christ (Strangite)History19th century. 1. Title

BX8680.S88S86 2006

289.3092dc22

[B]

2006042287

f or Stupe

Contents

Preface

I wasnt looking for Mormons during the summer of 1991. I was simply looking for some basket-making materials and the nearest shop was about thirty miles away in Burlington, Wisconsin. I found the shop at the corner of Highway 36 and Mormon Road. Mormon Road? I thought to myself. There werent any Mormons in Wisconsin.

I figured I should know. After all, I was a sixth-generation Mormon from Idaho, active in my church, and a Mormon history buff. In all of my religious education, I had never heard of Mormons in Wisconsin. So I took the unfamiliar road that sunny day and what I found astonished me. It started me on the highway of an adventure, the like of which I never would have anticipated.

From a series of plaques and monuments installed near the edge of Mormon Road, I became acquainted with a group of Latter Day Saints from the 1840s and 1850s who called their community Voree, which they said meant Garden of Peace. I saw their houses, the remains of their cemetery, their Hill of Promise, and groves along the river where they held their services. I learned about their leader, James Jesse Strang.

When the Mormon prophet, Joseph Smith, was killed in 1844, Strang claimed to be Smiths successor even though Strang had been baptized only four months earlier. He based his claim on a letter of appointment from Smith and the anointing of an angel. Over the next few years, Strangs leadership attracted hundreds, perhaps thousands of people to Voree and to the Beaver Islands, a remote area in the northern part of Lake Michigan.

The Strangites built temples and tabernacles, served proselytizing missions, practiced baptisms and sealing ordinances for the dead. They established a communal order of living which they called the Associated Order of Enoch. Strang found and translated ancient historical records. He experienced revelations and visions to guide his people. Twelve years to the very day of receiving his religious calling, he died of a gunshot wound administered by former friends and members of his church.

Curious about this religious group, I started researching their story in various historical repositories. I found that a great deal had been published about Strang and his life but that very little had been written about his five wives. I wondered what had happened to these women and their children. Their lives did not end when his did. In fact, four of Strangs five wives were pregnant at the time he died. The youngest children did not begin life until after their fathers was over.

As I studied these women and children, I suddenly realized I was working on something of much broader scope. I began to comprehend that the story of the wives and children was, in a sense, the actual history of the Strangite people. All four of Strangs plural wives had family members who were similarly Strangite adherents. His first wife, Mary, continued to interact with her husbands followers. The trials and hardships of these women were echoed in the experiences of those related to them.

For most of the Strangites, the journey of faith began in Nauvoo, Illinois, with the death of Joseph Smith. Eyewitnesses to singular religious events and participants in the social upheaval that occurred when the Mormon people were left leaderless, they chose Wisconsin and Strang rather than Utah and Brigham Young. While building their own communities, they were witness to some important events in the broader history of America such as the emergence of Wisconsin as a state, the steamboat trade on the Great Lakes, and the demise of the great fur and fishing empire centered on Mackinac Island. They made their homes on the frontier in both Wisconsin and Michigan, lost their homes on Beaver Island, and made new homes and communities. For the most part, they were hardworking ordinary folk looking for simple religious truth.

I am not the first to write about the Strangites, and I am sure I wont be the last. At least two experts in Mormon history told me I should not waste my time studying the Strangites because everything about them had already been written. They were wrong. I learned that new facts and new resources are still being discovered. Old records are ready for re-examination and reinterpretation.

This book is not a biography of James J. Strang. Information about him can be found in other volumes. Nor is the intent to discuss whether Strang was a prophet or charlatan. This, too, has been debated again and again. It really doesnt matter to me whether Strang was a genuine prophet or not because the people who followed him obviously believed he was. This book is simply an attempt to tell the fuller story of the Strangitestheir trials and tribulations and efforts to maintain the Strangite Church during their founders ministry and after his death. I have drawn extensively on primary sourcesletters, diaries, memoirs, public records, and Strangs newspapers and religious materials. Whenever possible, I have allowed the eyewitnesses to speak for themselves.

To avoid confusion in terminology, I have used the same names that were common in Strangs day for the different segments of the Mormon Church. Those who followed Strang will be called Mormons, Saints, or Strangites interchangeably, while those who followed Brigham Young will generally be called Brighamites. Members of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, now the Community of Christ, will be referred to as Josephites. Those who did not belong to any of these churches were known as gentiles. I have referred to Strangs wives and most of the women in this narrative by their maiden names.

The story of this movement is a compelling and intriguing one. Many writers, including Strangs own descendants, have struggled with the logistics of how to relate the tale without sensationalizing it, and so have I. Strangs grandson, Mark A. Strang, wrote the following words to a cousin in 1956:

Over the past hundred years, hundreds of thousands of words have been written about Strang. Much of it has been based on downright lies and vindictive gossip of his enemies. My correspondence with writers of sensational articles on the subject indicates a general complaint of a dearth of search materials from which to paint the brighter picture. I am at work now on a project assembling the historical facts about him and his followers; many of his remarkable concepts; and anecdotes illustrative of the fine qualities of his character. My thought is that if I make this material easily available, some of the future writers (and there will be many of them, the subject is so intriguing) will use some of it and thereby truth and justice will to some extent be served.