I was called a Mormon, boycotted, abused, slandered. . . . All along the pathway of life I had to bear the reproach of Mormonism.
—Solomon J. Salisbury

KATHARINE HAD EXPERIENCED a very difficult marriage with Jenkins but always spoke respectfully of her husband in the years after his death. Others were less tolerant in their assessment of his character. Katharine’s cousin George A. Smith summarized that Jenkins “never provided for her [Katharine’s] wants during his lifetime[,] being drunken [and] licenscious,” but observed that Katharine always remained “thoroughly attached to him.”[1] There had been only minimal contact between the Salisburys and Jenkins’s family in New York during their twenty-two-year marriage, but after his death Katharine wrote to the family informing them of his passing. She felt most comfortable reaching out to Jenkins’s sister Samantha Salisbury Arnold, as she was only fourteen months older than Jenkins and seemingly the sibling he had been closest to in his youth.[2] “We feel Deeply to sympathize with you in your afflictions which are very great,” Samantha responded in a letter written on New Year’s Day 1854, encouraging Katharine to “look to him [God] who is able to sustain you and yours through this life.”[3]

Samantha also sympathized with what she described as the family’s “destitute” circumstances, which Katharine must have written about. It is also clear from Samantha’s letter that she knew her brother well enough to know he had left her in that position. She referred to her brother’s unsteadiness as a provider and supposed it “had made it very hard for you and the children.” Samantha was unable to help financially, but her sympathy-filled letter must have brought some measure of comfort from the Salisbury side of the family. The two updated one another on their respective families, and Samantha expressed her hope that Katharine’s boys would come visit them in New York after they reached adulthood. Katharine wrote again to her sister-in-law several months later, asking Samantha to gather funds from her Salisbury relatives so she could erect a proper gravestone for Jenkins. Samantha appears to have followed through with her plea, and that year Katharine was able to erect a notable marker in the Webster Cemetery that is still standing today. She included a lock of Jenkins’s hair in her letter to Samantha per her request, a common practice in memorializing lost loved ones.[4]

Wilkins Jenkins Salisbury’s gravestone, Webster Cemetery, Webster, Illinois. Photograph by Kyle R. Walker, 2019.

Katharine leaned heavily on her two sisters in the immediate years after her husband’s death. Arthur and Lucy Millikin lived in Fountain Green, Illinois, just two miles from Katharine’s residence in Webster. Sophronia and her only surviving daughter, Mariah, lived with the Millikins in the early 1850s, before moving in 1856 some fifteen miles east to the town of Colchester, across the border in McDonough County.[5] Mariah married a successful merchant named Barnett Woolley in 1852, which likely prompted Sophronia to eventually follow the newlyweds to the budding town of Colchester.[6] Sophronia lived with her daughter’s family in Colchester after she relocated, and Mariah’s family then moved in with Sophronia once she purchased her own home for forty dollars from the Woolley family in 1858.[7]

Arthur Millikin, 1809–82. Photograph by Charles R. Savage, ca. 1875–82. Courtesy L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University.

Lucy Mack Smith gravestone, Smith Family Cemetery, Nauvoo, Illinois. Photograph by Kyle R. Walker, 2010.

The Millikins had led out in caring for Lucy Mack Smith in the years 1846–52, and she remained in their household until she moved back to the Mansion House at Nauvoo in 1852 to be cared for by her daughter-in-law Emma Hale Smith Bidamon, and Emma’s second husband Lewis. Mother Lucy remained in Nauvoo until her death four years later. The Bidamons were attentive to her needs in her declining years, as she struggled with rheumatoid arthritis. During her final years, Lewis even constructed a wheelchair so she could be transported around the house and outside in the yard, an activity she always enjoyed.[8] In her final weeks, Lucy was cared for by Emma’s son Joseph III and his wife Emmeline on the Smith farm, several miles outside of Nauvoo. “Grandmother died the morning of the 14^th of May last easily with her senses to the last moment,” Joseph III described of her final moments. “She appeared somewhat fearful of death at a little while before he came [death] yet appeared resigned afterwards. I sat by her and held her hand in mine till death relieved her.”[9] Katharine would sorely miss her mother’s influence, as she remained her exemplar for the remainder of her life.

The Millikins lived within two miles of Katharine in those years after Jenkins’s death, but they ultimately decided to follow Sophronia in relocating to Colchester in 1857.[10] Thus, while Katharine lived in Webster at her own residence, she was still within a twelve-mile radius of her two sisters in the decades that followed, and they lent their support after Jenkins’s death. It is surprising that Katharine did not follow her sisters in removing her family further east. By relocating to the flourishing coal-mining town of Colchester and removing themselves from the turmoil the family had experienced in Hancock County, Katharine’s two sisters raised their children in peace and away from the animosity that still existed in Webster and neighboring Fountain Green. Most residents at Colchester were immigrants and knew nothing about the conflicts between the Saints and their neighbors during the previous decade. Sophronia and Lucy’s families also found much-needed work with the arrival of the railroad in 1855, and the corresponding businesses that grew up in the area, because they were some of the earliest residents in town.[11]

The Webster-Fountain Green community, on the other hand, had sent a contingent to Carthage at the time Katharine’s brothers Joseph and Hyrum were killed and had participated in driving the Saints from the area. The Salisburys’ nearby neighbors read like a who’s who of anti-Mormons during the 1840s. Thomas Geddes, who lived just east of the Salisburys, had earlier served as colonel of the eighty-third regiment of the Illinois militia and had ordered the thirty-seven men of the Fountain Green Rifle Company to Carthage, Illinois, on June 17, 1844.[12] The following year, after the Smith brothers were killed at Carthage Jail, he and prominent local storeowner Stephen H. Tyler publicly declared their opposition to the Saints remaining in their community. Another was Jabez Beebe, the foreman of the jury that in 1845 had acquitted the accused murderers of Joseph and Hyrum.[13] These individuals were instrumental in successfully driving the Saints from their community in 1845–46, and Geddes and Beebe were among those who snatched up the Saints’ properties at bargain prices.[14] Perhaps Katharine remained in the area because it allowed her to live in one of the abandoned homes of the Saints without paying rent, but the decision to raise her children in the area was fraught with challenges and would have a marked influence on their development.

Eagle schoolhouse, where Katharine’s children attended school, Fountain Green, Illinois. Photograph by Kyle R. Walker, 2010.

Solomon J. Salisbury, date and photographer unknown. Courtesy of Estel Neff.

Besides a year or so of schooling for the older children while the family lived in Plymouth, educational opportunities had been limited for the Salisbury children due to their frequent moves. Once the children began attending school and securing employment during the harvest season, it became challenging to integrate with their peers. While they initially tried to keep their church ties a secret, locals quickly ascertained Katharine’s identity as a sister of the prophet, and the family became targets of religious discrimination. Eldest son Solomon, fifteen in the year 1850, bore the brunt of the abuse during those early years. He recalled how the men he worked for “would often curse old Joe Smith” when he was within earshot and how their wives refused to let him eat with the others at their dinner table, even though he was often miles from his own home. In one instance, he began taking Sunday walks and attending Sunday School with a girl who was about his same age, whom he described as “handsome as an artist’s dream.” Solomon felt the affection was mutual until she abruptly quit their excursions. When he finally encountered her and asked if he had done something wrong, the girl’s little sister disclosed that their father “forbade [her] going with me [because he] . . . says you are a Mormon and he does not want anything to do with you.” It was a deeply painful experience for Solomon, and he confided in his history, that even after seventy years “it was one of the wounds that has never healed.”[15]

The Salisburys continued to experience alienation as a family as the children felt isolated from their peers. Solomon recalled that unlike the other children in the area, “there were no young folks that would invite me to parties or have anything to do with me.” He recalled being shunned socially, and being “called a Mormon, boycotted, abused, [and] slandered.”[16] As his younger brothers matured, they related similar experiences that, in at least some instances, were life-threatening. Don Carlos, who was age nine in 1850, recalled swimming in a creek below Webster when an older boy named Jack Broady sneaked up behind him, put him in a headlock, and began dunking him in the creek. Broady boasted that he had been in the mob that killed his uncles and crowed that it would be service to the community if he killed a Mormon—a statement meant to intimidate. Don Carlos felt that Broady would have killed him that day if it hadn’t been for an older neighbor who happened upon the scene as Broady repeatedly held his head under water for an extended period.[17]

The bullying and ostracism the family faced increased to such an extent that Katharine felt it necessary to remove her children from school. Her youngest son Frederick, born in 1850, remembered that these challenges continued into the 1860s when he attended school. In a letter recounting his limited educational opportunities to a relative, Frederick wrote, “I am sorry to say that in my boyhood days I had not obtained an Education on the acount of persecution.” He described how the other kids “would take My Dinner bucket and throw It away So I had no dinner to Eat” and then would “hiss at Me and Say your Mother was a Sister to Old Joe Smith the Mormon Prophet.” Instead of attending public school, Katharine, who in her younger days was briefly hired to teach school, began instructing Frederick at home. Frederick said that his formal education was limited to three months at a district school at the age of twenty and often expressed embarrassment about his spelling in his holograph letters.[18]

Katharine Smith Salisbury with her youngest son, Frederick, ca. 1870. Courtesy of Church History Library.

Katharine also ensured her children received spiritual instruction, much like her mother Lucy had done during her own childhood. Not only did she read to her children from the Bible, but she also emphasized scriptural passages from the Book of Mormon, including her personal involvement in the publication of the book. Frederick recalled that his mother “read the Book of Mormon a great deal,” “was well versed in the doctrine,” and spoke often of her brother Joseph as a prophet. “As she spoke as one who knew of what she was talking [about],” recalled Frederick, “I was impressed that he was a prophet [and] that impression from my boyhood days I never forgot.”[19] Despite their complicated relationship with the church, the family continued to identify with at least some elements of the Restoration.

The boys were also occasionally privy to discussions between Katharine and her sisters about those early days. When Katharine’s mother Lucy died on May 14, 1856, Sophronia stopped by the Salisbury home on her way to the funeral. Much like Katharine and Joseph had done during his visit to the Salisbury home in 1843, the two sisters reminisced about their girlhood days in Palmyra and how they had successfully protected the Book of Mormon plates during one tense experience when Joseph was being chased by a mob.[20] The children who were present listened attentively to the stories the Smith sisters recounted.

Widowhood and Poverty

Katharine struggled to keep things afloat financially for her family. Besides her family being socially isolated, being a widow in rural nineteenth-century America meant additional hardships. At some point, Katharine had acquired a large loom and began making and selling rugs that provided some income, but not enough to subsist on.[21] Solomon said that after his father’s death, he and his next-eldest brother, Alvin, lent their best efforts in contributing to the family’s support.[22] As early as 1850, at the age of twelve, Alvin was already living with various farmers during the summer to help provide income for the family.[23] Despite those efforts, Solomon remembered that “work was scarce and wages were low” in those immediate years after his father’s death as the two boys worked at “haying, harvesting, and threshing.”[24] Don Carlos joined his older brothers once he reached his teens, and the same would hold true for their youngest brother Frederick, but any income they provided was meager at best.

Women living in the mid-1800s knew to whom they would go for support if their husband should die long before that event occurred, explained social-historian Nancy Grey Osterud, and parents and their oldest children were clear about those “mutual obligations.” “Inheritance practices that favored sons over daughters presumed that widows would live with sons, for men inherited the obligation to support their mothers at the same time that they inherited the family farm.”[25] Though Jenkins had owned no property or a farm that he could bequeath to his boys, the Salisburys still followed that pattern. While Katharine’s daughter Lucy and her husband lived nearby and were better established than her boys, Katharine still chose to live with her sons: first Solomon, then Alvin, and finally Frederick in her final years.

Marriage to Joseph Younger

In her attempt to mitigate financial hardship and assist her and the children during this difficult time, Katharine married a longtime member named Joseph W. Younger on May 3, 1857, in Carthage, Illinois, after only a brief courtship.[26] Younger’s first wife, Susan McCurley, had died less than a year earlier, and Joseph was ten years older than Katharine.[27] She had waited four years after Jenkins’s death to remarry, about the same period her sister-in-law Emma Hale Smith had waited to marry her second husband, Lewis Bidamon, after Joseph Smith’s death. Younger had been affiliated with the Saints for more than thirteen years, having been converted by John Murdock in March 1832 in Greeneville, Illinois, and had weathered the Saints’ difficulties in Missouri and Illinois.[28] After his excommunication from the main body of Saints for “apostacy” in December 1845, Younger had bounced around various factions of the church, much like Katharine’s brother William had, including joining with James J. Strang, then James C. Brewster (Brewsterites), and afterward Charles B. Thompson (Baneeymites).[29] He was also likely drawn to William Smith’s organization at some point because of his affinity for the Smith family. In 1850 he had unsuccessfully attempted to coerce a young Joseph Smith III to join him in following Charles B. Thompson’s church, and nine years later Younger united with the RLDS Church.[30]

Mariah Stoddard Woolley, only surviving daughter of Katharine’s sister Sophronia. Mariah assisted in raising Katharine’s son, Don Carlos Salisbury. Date and photographer unknown. Courtesy of Mary Dennis.

Salisbury descendants say this union was very brief, perhaps only lasting a few weeks, some denying that it had ever taken place.[31] When Katharine’s nephew Samuel H. B. Smith visited Katharine’s residence in Webster the same month as her marriage, he made no mention of Joseph Younger being present at her home. In a letter Samuel H. B. Smith wrote to his uncle George A. Smith about his visit with the Salisburys, he expressed his belief that Katharine (in the singular) would come west.[32] Perhaps Younger had married Katharine to strengthen his religious ambition, and when she refused to follow him, he moved on. One descendant recounted hearing that once Younger moved in with Katharine, he experienced immediate conflict with Katharine’s sons and that caused him to leave Katharine and return to his family.[33] Her boys may have discerned Younger’s ulterior motives and tried to protect her. Whatever the reason for this brief union, it evidently did not survive the summer, and Katharine quickly returned to using the surname of Salisbury.[34] Neither Katharine nor her children ever mentioned the marriage in any document or history, further evidence that the union was brief.

In need of support for her growing boys, Katharine’s older sister, Sophronia, and her married daughter, Mariah (age twenty-five in 1857), offered to take Don Carlos into their home in Colchester, Illinois, and provide him with a quality education.[35] Don Carlos turned sixteen in 1857, the same year the first school was completed in Colchester, and he initially attended the common school and later a cadet school in nearby Middletown (later renamed Fandon).[36] The educational opportunity afforded Don Carlos had a significant influence on him and his posterity, something denied Katharine’s other children. Don Carlos’s children were highly educated, including a university president, a daughter who became a surgeon in Chicago, another an Illinois legislator, and a grandson who was a professor at Harvard.[37] His aunt Sophronia, cousin Mariah, and Mariah’s husband, Barnett Woolley, became a second family to Don Carlos, and he remained close to them throughout his life.

At the age of twenty-one, eldest son Solomon married Eliza Swisher on February 19, 1856.[38] Solomon said that he purchased a town lot in Webster on credit around the time of his marriage, and with the assistance of neighbors, he moved one of the abandoned log homes of the Saints on to his lot. Solomon eventually paid for his property and indicated it was the first home he or his parents had ever owned during his lifetime.[39] After Katharine and Joseph Younger separated, she went to live with Solomon and his new bride, bringing Alvin and Frederick with her.[40] Alvin married Mahala Aldrich several years later, on October 16, 1861.[41] By the early 1860s, Katharine’s two eldest boys had obtained more secure work, enabling them to support themselves and their growing families. The three eldest boys all got together and decided they would collectively ensure their mother would never want for anything.[42] Despite those efforts, finances remained a hardship for both Katharine and her boys in the intervening years.

Notes

[1] George A. Smith diary, 1872 May–November, files 1–20, entry for September 18, 1872, unpaginated, CHL.

[2] The Salisbury Family Bible records Samantha’s birthdate as August 6, 1807. Gideon Salisbury Family Bible, in Gideon Salisbury Revolutionary War Pension File, US, Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files, 1800–1900, Ancestry.com. Samantha’s grandson gives the date of her birth one year earlier, August 6, 1806. Paul W. Arnold, Application for Membership in the Empire State Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, National #40295, New York State #4150, US, Sons of the American Revolution Membership Applications, 1889–1970, vol. 202.

[3] Samantha Arnold (n.p.), to Dear Sister [Katharine], January 1, 1853 [1854].

[4] Samantha Arnold to Dear Sister [Katharine], January 1, 1853 [1854]; and Samantha Arnold to Katharine Salisbury, May 15, 1854, photocopies of originals, Katharine Smith Salisbury Correspondence, 1853–1879, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT.

[5] Sophronia and Mariah were living in Colchester, Illinois, by the summer of 1856. Samuel H. B. Smith reported on the living situation of his relatives when he stopped in Illinois on his way to his mission in May of 1856. Samuel H. B. Smith, reminiscences and diary, 1856 April–1863 July, 14, entry for May 20, 1856, CHL.

[6] Mariah Stoddard married Nathaniel Barnett Woolley on June 6, 1852, in Fountain Green, IL. Marriage License Book, vol. 2, p. 12, #1904, Hancock County Courthouse, Carthage, IL.

[7] Mortgages, Book K, p. 29, McDonough County Courthouse, Macomb, IL.

[8] 1850 US Census, Hancock County, Illinois, Lucy Smith, Arthur Milican, and Catherine Salisbury. Lucy Mack Smith was living in the Mansion House in Nauvoo by late November 1852. Perrigrine Sessions Reminiscences and Diaries, 1839–1886, vol. 4, entry for November 29–30, 1852, CHL; Lavina Fielding Anderson, ed. Lucy’s Book: A Critical Edition of Lucy Mack Smith’s Family Memoir (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2001), 211, 793–96.

[9] Joseph Smith III (Nauvoo, IL) to John M. Bernhisel, August 6, 1856, John M. Bernhisel papers, 1818-1872, CHL.

[10] Mortgages, Book J, 260, McDonough County Courthouse, Macomb, IL; John Smith (Colchester, IL) to Joseph F. Smith, December 21, 1859, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT.

[11] During the 1850s Colchester’s population was rapidly expanding due to the coal-mining industry. The Quincy Burlington Railroad (QBR) passed through the middle of town, and the Quincy Canal Company would eventually employ 130 men and 60 boys. The greatest year of growth in town was 1856–57, the same time the Millkins relocated to the community. Arthur Millikin and his boys would work in the mines and with the railroad. June Moon, “Multum in Parvo,” A History of Colchester, Illinois (Colchester, IL: Colchester Chronicle, 1956), 14–15; Nathan H. Williams, “Lucy Smith Millikin,” in United by Faith: The Joseph Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith Family, ed. Kyle R. Walker (American Fork, UT: Covenant Communication and BYU Studies, 2006), 417–19.

[12] Fountain Green Rifle Company Roll, January 25, 1849; Thomas Geddes, Certificate, January 25, 1849, Fountain Green Vertical File, Hancock County Historical Society, Carthage, IL.

[13] Susan Sessions Rugh, Our Common Country: Family Farming, Culture, and Community in Nineteenth-Century Midwest (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 51.

[14] Deed Record, Town of Webster, Hancock County Clerk’s Office, Carthage, IL, as cited in Rugh, Our Common Country, 220n135.

[15] Solomon J. Salisbury, Reminiscences of an Octogenarian (self-pub., ca. 1926), 7, 9.

[16] Salisbury, Reminiscences of an Octogenarian, 7.

[17] H.[erbert] S. Salisbury, “The Western Adventures of Don Carlos Salisbury,” San Rafael, CA, unpublished typescript, ca. 1945, 5.

[18] Frederick Salisbury to Audentia Anderson, June 2, 1930, Audentia Anderson Genealogy Research Letters, Miscellaneous, P78-4, folder 37, Community of Christ Library-Archives, Independence, MO.

[19] Frederick V. Salisbury, “The Teachings and Testimonies of My Mother,” unpublished typescript, ca. 1926–1928, 1–2, 14, Warren L. Van Dine Papers, Hancock County Historical Society, Carthage, IL.

[20] Emma M. Phillips, Dedicated to Serve: Biographies of 31 Women of the Restoration (Independence, MO: Herald House, 1970), 17.

[21] Warren L. Van Dine, “Catharine Smith Salisbury,” unpublished typescript, 1972, 14, Community of Christ Library-Archives.

[22] Salisbury, Reminiscences of an Octogenarian, 7.

[23] At the age of thirteen, Alvin was living with a local farmer named John Thompson in the summer of 1850. 1850 United States Federal Census, Alvin Salisbury, Hancock County, Illinois.

[24] Salisbury, Reminiscences of an Octogenarian, 7, 9.

[25] Nancy Grey Osterud, Bonds of Community: The Lives of Farm Women in Nineteenth Century New York (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), 134.

[26] The two were married by justice of the peace Kendrick N. Leach at Carthage, IL. Marriage Book A-2, 1849-1857, #2937, Joseph Younger and Catharine Salisbury, Hancock County Courthouse, Carthage, IL.

[27] Joseph Younger was born December 10, 1803, at Chatham County, NC. H. Michael Marquardt, ed., Early Patriarchal Blessings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2007), 341–42.

[28] John Murdock Diary, 1832 February–September, entry for March 15, 1832, in John Murdock Journal and Autobiography, 1830–1867, CHL.

[29] “Notice,” Times and Seasons 6, no. 19 (December 15, 1845): 1065; “Withdrawal.—Joseph Younger,” Olive Branch (Springfield, IL.) 2, no. 11 (May 1850): 12 [172].

[30] Joseph Smith III (n.p.) to Caroline Case, March 27, 1894, Joseph Smith III Letterbook #5, Vault Collection, P6, folder 102–218, 172–75, Community of Christ Library-Archives, as cited in Mark Scherer, Journal of a People: The Era of Reorganization, 1844 to 1946 (Independence, MO: Community of Christ Seminary Press, 2013), 59. For Younger’s conversion to the RLDS Church, see W. W. Blair Journal, March 4, 1859–January 14, 1860, entry for July 20, 1859, P2, J1, Community of Christ Library-Archives, Independence, MO. Katharine’s brother William had given Joseph Younger a patriarchal blessing at Nauvoo, on July 23, 1845. Younger’s wife, Susan McCurley, and the couple’s twenty-year-old daughter, Polly Jane, also received their blessings on the same day. Marquardt, Early Patriarchal Blessings, 341–42. Younger appears to have followed Smith’s lead when he affiliated with James J. Strang’s church because they both traveled to Voree, Wisconsin, in the summer of 1846 and were ordained to offices in Strang’s hierarchy on the same day. “Chronicles of Voree, 1844–1849,” typescript, June 11, 1846, CHL. Joseph and Susan had married at Maury, Tennessee, on September 28, 1824, and had five children by the year 1850. Tennessee Marriage Records, 1780–2002, Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville, TN; 1850 United States Federal Census, Sangamon County, IL, Joseph Younger; 1850 United States Federal Census, Sangamon County, IL, under “Joseph Younger.”

[31] Van Dine, “Catharine Smith Salisbury,” 15; Estel G. Neff, interview by the author, May 17, 2002, Nauvoo, IL.

[32] Samuel H. B. Smith to George A. Smith, June 2, 1857, George A. Smith Papers, 1834–1877, General Correspondence, Incoming Letters, 1857, CHL.

[33] Warren Van Dine, “Statement by Warren L. Van Dine about certain points sometimes brought up in connection with Mrs. Salisbury after his [her] death,” unpublished typescript, 1, n.d., n.p., Hancock County Historical Society, Carthage, IL.

[34] Van Dine, “Catharine Smith Salisbury,” 15. The last-documented reference to Katharine being referred to by the surname of Younger was made by Katharine’s niece Mary Bailey Smith Kelteaux in August 1857, just three months after the couple married. However, it is also possible that Mary, who lived some distance away in Iowa at the time, had not yet have been informed that the two had separated. Mary Bailey Smith Kelteaux to Dear Aunt Catharine Younger, Katharine Smith Salisbury Correspondence, 1853–1879, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT. Younger was living in Decatur, Iowa, in the summer of 1859. W. W. Blair Journal, March 4, 1859–January 14, 1860, entry for July 20, 1859, Community of Christ Library-Archives.

[35] Mary Salisbury Hancock, “The Three Sisters of the Prophet Joseph Smith, Part III,” Saints’ Herald 104, no. 4 (January 25, 1954), 11; Salisbury, “Western Adventure of Don Carlos Salisbury,” 5.

[36] “Don Carlos Salisbury. Died,” Carthage Republican 46, no. 16 (April 16, 1919): 1. The first school in Colchester was completed by 1857, and the first schoolteacher was Cyrus Holt. History of McDonough County, Illinois (Springfield, IL: Continental Historical Co., 1885), 614.

[37] Salisbury, “Western Adventure of Don Carlos Salisbury,” 18.

[38] Salisbury, Reminiscences of an Octogenarian, 9.

[39] Salisbury, Reminiscences of an Octogenarian, 8. George A. Smith, who delivered five hundred dollars from Brigham Young to Katharine in September 1872, also indicated this was the first home she could ever call her own. George A. Smith diary, 1872 May–November, files 1–20, entry for September 18, 1872, CHL.

[40] 1860 United States Federal Census, McDonough County, Hire Township, Illinois, under “Solomon Salisbury.”

[41] Alvin married Mahala Aldrich on October 31, 1861, in McDonough County, Illinois. Marriage License 1704, McDonough County Courthouse, Macomb, IL.

[42] Warren L. Van Dine, “Information on the Smith and Salisbury Families, 1966–1975,” typescript from a taped interview conducted by Norma Hiles, Burnside, IL, 1975, p. 33, CHL.