Episodes

11.1—A false rumor is printed that Dan Jones’s brother was baptized, but Jones debunks it.

11.2—Rees Davies accuses the Saints from New Orleans, and Dan Jones defends from Merthyr

Salient Events

• 1 January 1854—Dan Jones replaces William Phillips as president of the Church in Wales. He selects two old friends, Thomas Jeremy and Daniel Daniels, as his counselors. Jones also replaces his protégé, John S. Davis, as the editor of Zion’s Trumpet.
• 4 February 1854—The Golconda leaves Liverpool with 464 Welsh and English converts on board. Among the 264 Welsh are William Phillips and John S. Davis and their families. Three persons who had intended to be on board were Hannah Daniels Job and two of her daughters—six-year-old Mary and four-month-old Ann. Hannah’s husband Thomas had convinced her to make the journey and had already paid the money for their passage. But as the time for departure drew near, Hannah changed her mind and declared to Thomas that she and the children would remain in Wales. She took the children to Carmarthen to live with her parents after their house had been sold. Thomas went one last time to the home of his in-laws hoping to persuade his wife to change her mind. When he saw six-year-old Mary and two-year-old Elizabeth in front of their grandparents’ house, he attempted to take them both with him. But Mary ran from him, and he was able to get only Elizabeth. With her in his arms, he managed to get to the steamer in Carmarthen Bay that would take them to Liverpool to board the Golconda. Once they had crossed the ocean and the plains and had arrived in Salt Lake City, Thomas sent letters to Hannah back in Wales, still trying to convince her to bring Mary and Ann to join him. Two years later, she decided to make the journey. On 19 April 1856, she sailed on the S. Curling, but only Mary was with her, as Ann had died nearly two years earlier. Her happiness at seeing Thomas in Salt Lake was brief. When he informed her that he had married a second wife the year before and already had a child with her, Hannah opted for divorce. Three months later, she married Albert Miles, a widower with three children, and eventually bore him eight more children. Years later, a granddaughter asked her whether she was happy with her decision to part company with Thomas Job. She confessed that she was sorry not to have stayed with him. Some years later, Thomas converted to the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and became that Church’s most successful missionary in Utah and Idaho.[1]
• 25 March 1854—On this date, Dan Jones is happy to print in Zion’s Trumpet a letter from Thomas Jones, a new convert living in Carmarthen.[2] Thomas Jones tells of his conversion:

• I was 40 years a member with the Baptists; and when I heard about the Saints, I decided to oppose them as far as I was able. I intended to cut off the head of the Saints with their own sword; and for that purpose, I reviewed their books: but the more I searched their doctrinal principles, the more I went along with them, believing the truth, and I received my baptism.[3]

He also tells of the “bitter treatment” he received from his family, but he is especially pleased to relate the following success:

One whom I baptized is the brother who is known as “the Reverend David Davies,” Porth Cawl, a minister with the Independents. He received a witness and much persecution for proclaiming that [witness]. Saturday night, the 19th of this month, I baptized the Reverend John James, a minister of the Baptists, in Cefncoedycymmer, together with a young preacher who belonged to the same house of worship.[4]

• 29 March 1854—The Swansea Herald reports that the Reverend J. Jones of Llangollen had been baptized by Dan Jones, his younger brother. The latter vehemently denies that any such baptism of his older brother ever took place and scolds those behind the false rumor. The Swansea Branch records show a baptism for Sarah Jones, the reverend’s daughter on 12 April 1854, and for his wife, Jane, and his other daughter, Elizabeth, four days later on 16 April 1854. However, the record does not show a baptism for the reverend himself. That he may have been considering going to Utah is implied in a 19 September 1854 letter written by Dan Jones to Brigham Young. See Episode 11.1.
• 8 July 1854—A statistical report in this issue of Zion’s Trumpet[5] for the first six months of 1854 shows the total number of members in Wales at the time was 4,318. Emigration, along with excommunications, would certainly be part of the cause of the decrease from previous numbers.

• 15 July 1854—A 30 November 1853 letter from Job Rowlands to his brother Ephraim is printed in Zion’s Trumpet.[6] Job had been a member of the Caersalem Baptist chapel in Dowlais, where the Reverend W. R. Davies presided. It was Davies’s comments about Dan Jones that had prompted Rowlands and his family members to leave Davies’s congregation and receive baptism at the hands of the Latter-day Saints: “Mr. Davies said one time in our house that his desire was to do the same with their elders as was done to Joseph Smith, that is to kill them.” Rowlands, his mother, and two of his brothers had emigrated in 1849 on board the Buena Vista. This letter is typical of a number of other such letters that had appeared in Zion’s Trumpet. It begins with Rowland’s acknowledgement of having received Ephraim’s letter dated 28 September 1854, an indication of the two-month period generally required for letters between Utah and Wales. Rowlands tells Ephraim that he could expect to emigrate from Wales in the spring of 1855, an indication that family members already in Utah were working to send financial assistance to those in Wales who wished to emigrate. Rowlands then reports his “wealth at present”: “a fine house worth three or four hundred dollars, two cows, two yoke of oxen, two mules, one horse, three wagons, three pigs, and twenty-three acres of land.” Such reports motivated relatives back in Wales to make the journey to Utah so they too could be landowners, an absolute impossibility for them in their homeland, where their highest hope was to rent land. At the end of his letter, Rowlands sends regards to his sister and her husband, hoping that they had changed their minds about the Church, as well as his regards to other relatives and friends.
• 24 July 1854—Thomas John, a forty-year-old passenger on the Buena Vista five years earlier, puts his “X” on a letter of this date directed to Dan Jones. He tells of the difficulty he had been experiencing to “have any peace of conscience, until I recognized my faults against you, so I beg for your forgiveness.” Following this letter in the Zion’s Trumpet issue is a brief note by Thomas Jeremy in which he vouches for John, declaring him to be “truly repentant” for all he had done against Jones. In his answer, Jones declares: “It is said that there is joy among the angels of God for every sinner who repents, and we ourselves feel joy in reporting that we can forgive Thomas John in light of his repentance, even though his sins were as scarlet.”[7]
• 3 August 1854—The Welsh Hero prints correspondence written by Rees Davies, a young Welshman in New Orleans, to his father in Wales. In his letters, Davies makes many scurrilous accusations against the Latter-day Saints who had arrived in New Orleans on 18 March 1854 on board the Golconda. One of his accounts involved an eighteen-year-old girl named Margaret Williams asking him to “take her somewhere away from the Mormons.” He claims to have taken her to a Mrs. Hughes, where she stayed on as a nursemaid. The following day, he says he went to her previous home “to fetch her clothes” and that “the Mormons were ready to kill me.” Dan Jones responded to these and other claims by publishing a twelve-page pamphlet entitled Defense of the Saints.[8] See Episode 11.2.
• 12 August 1854—Beginning on this date, Zion’s Trumpet is published every other week until the final issue of 1857, then weekly until its demise in April 1862. Only seventeen issues printed during 1858–1861 have survived: three from 1858, five from 1859, six from 1860, and three from 1861. Evidence from these issues strongly suggests that a complete volume was published for each of these years, but none of these volumes are extant in complete form.[9]
• 26 August 1854—Zion’s Trumpet prints the report of Daniel Spencer, counselor to President Samuel W. Richards, after he gave a “second examination to several accusations brought against President D. Jones.” The examination, at the “wish of John Jones and others,” was to determine whether Dan Jones had abused his office in any way. After a “patient hearing lasting many hours, of all that could be raked together against him,” President Spencer reports that “I am happy to be able to say that they completely failed to prove any accusation or transgression in him of a single law of God or man; rather through it all, the behavior of Elder D. Jones appears to be very satisfactory to me and in the eyes of the Lord; yet suspicious men, blinded with envy, have falsely accused him!”[10]
• 28 August 1854—Thomas Jeremy writes a letter to Dan Jones. Jeremy had been a firm and faithful friend to Jones since Jeremy’s baptism in Llanybydder, Carmarthenshire, more than eight years earlier on 3 March 1846. (It was in Jeremy’s house in Glantrenfawr that meetings were held and where a blessing of healing was given to Daniel Jones, the blind man who shouted out during the blessing that “he had come to see the candle in the candlestick on the table.”[11]) In his letter, Jeremy congratulates Jones on the vindication he had recently received from President Spencer. Jeremy also confirms his fidelity to his longtime friend: “It is a comfort to me that I have done my best by you and have agreed with you in all things, and my unshakeable determination is to strive to carry your counsels into action, according to the power and the wisdom the Lord gives me.” And most certainly the beleaguered Jones was comforted by his friend’s letter, since he printed it in Zion’s Trumpet the following October.[12]
• 9 September 1854—Zion’s Trumpet is printed in Swansea for the first time. In his announcement of the change, Dan Jones sounds jubilant and hopeful that the change will provide an improvement in his health:

• After lengthy preparations, at long last we are able to date our Trumpet from Swansea! Whether it sounds more loudly or with a clearer voice, let the hearing of its users be the judge. At least we are confident that the customary clean air of the sea will clear the voice of its Trumpeter, and probably his friends will join with him in wishing that the giver of lives will strengthen his constitution, so as to arouse the sleepy inhabitants of our country to flee from the imminent destruction, to the safe place, before it pours out upon them. Not without feelings besides those we are describing—not without fond memories, and not without pondering over the religious feasts we enjoyed in Merthyr and its environs can we leave, nor shall we forget our dear coworkers in the vineyard of our Jesus, our desire for their benefit will be no less than our Trumpet blast to comfort them, and it will not be long, we trust, before we have the great pleasure of joining hand and voice in unison to convey the praises of our God, until it echoes from the borders of beloved Zion.[13]

Several weeks before the move to Swansea and the reduction of Zion’s Trumpet to a biweekly publication, Jones’s right-hand man Robert Parry (Robin Ddu Eryri) had left South Wales on a mission to North Wales and is never again mentioned in the periodical. Such a loss may have constituted, to some extent, at least, the decision to reduce Zion’s Trumpet’s frequency from weekly to biweekly.

• 23 September 1854—R. Evans asks if there are plans for a second printing of the Scriptural Treasury, a 288-page book of scriptural commentary published six years earlier in 1848. A surprised Dan Jones replies that hundreds of the first printing had been on hand for years and urges all the missionaries and leaders in Wales to get a copy.[14]
• 1 October 1854—Two Latter-day Saint elders, David Jeremy and Daniel Francis, are viciously attacked by an angry mob as they preach in the area of the Saron Chapel, near the town of Brechfa, Carmarthenshire.[15]
• 4 November 1854—The first eisteddfod specifically for Latter-day Saints, organized by Dewi Elfed Jones with permission from the Welsh presidency, is announced in Zion’s Trumpet (see Episode 8.2). The eisteddfod is a longstanding tradition in Wales in which people are invited to enter various competitions, such as poetry, singing, recitation, and the like. In this invitation for competitors, Jones presents the topics, prizes, and other details of the event, to be held on Christmas Day. The tradition of the Welsh “eisteddfod” was carried on in Utah for a time, as well as in Malad City, Idaho, where the number of Welsh settlers was substantial.

Commentary

1854: 20 January, Monmouthshire Merlin, p. 2 (180 words). “The Great Salt Lake.”

A brief description of the area and the settlers.

1854: 4 February, Cardiff and Merthyr Guardian, p. 3 (100 words). “The Latter-day Saints.”

Mormonism still retains its hold on a considerable number of the working men of this place, and large numbers are wistfully turning their longing eyes to that holy land which borders on the Great Salt Lake. One part of the Merthyr Mormonites took their departure for this Western Canaan on Friday last; and many others were anxious to have gone. This is another of the signs of the times, which we commend to the serious consideration of the religious world, for the existence of such infatuation surely indicates that there is “something rotten in the state of Denmark.”

1854: 4 February, Monmouthshire Beacon, p. 8 (80 words). “The Mormons.”

On Saturday morning last, about 250 men, women, and children, from the neighboring hills passed through Newport, en route to Liverpool, there to embark for the Mormon’s Land of promise—the valley of the Great Salt Lake. By Mr. Mann’s report upon the various forms of religious worship at present existing in this country, it is stated that there are at least 30,000 persons in England belonging to the Mormon community, and that 20,000 have already departed.

1854: 4 February, Monmouthshire Beacon, p. 4 (130 words). “A Freight of Mormonites.”

On Sunday morning last, the Newport up train arrived at the Abergavenny station, when the unusual number of carriages attached caused no little excitement to the parties collected at the station. It appeared that the carriages contained between 200 and 300 of those deluded fanatics called Latter-day Saints, who were proceeding to Liverpool, from whence they take their departure for the Salt Lake River [sic], to join the wolves in sheep’s clothing; who inform them that upon their arrival at their place of destination, they will not only lead a heavenly life, but that their deceased relatives will be restored to them and live together as they formerly did. Nearly the whole of these deluded creatures are natives of Glamorgan and Monmouthshire.

1854: 4 February, The Silurian, p. 2 (55 words). “Emigration of Mormons.”

About 300 of these infatuated people, disciples of Joe Smith, known by the title of Mormons, or Latter-day Saints, from this neighborhood and Merthyr, left Cardiff, on Friday evening, by South Wales Railway for Liverpool, from which port they intended to sail on Wednesday last, in several ships, for the Salt Lake.

1854: 4 February, Caernarvon and Denbigh Herald, p. 6 (70 words). “Aberystwyth. Latter-day Saints.”

The Zephyr steamer took, on Friday last, about 20 persons, converts to Mormonism, to Liverpool, intending to emigrate to the Salt Lake City. They were all from the neighborhood of Llanarth in this county, with the exception of one from this town, who had been in service at Llanarth, and married one of the Saints. There were old women about 80 years of age among the emigrants.

1854: 18 February, The Silurian,p. 3 (38 words).

In a tract distributed by the Mormon preachers, the following question and answer occur.—“What shall be the reward of those who have forsaken their wives for righteousness’ sake?—A hundred-fold of wives here and wives everlasting hereafter.”[16]

1854: 4 March, Caernarvon and Denbigh Herald, p. 7 (220 words).

Reprinted from the Leeds Mercury. J. M. Browne of Northallerton sends an extract of a letter received from his brother in St. Louis, dated 15 Jan 1854. The brother tells of his “delusion” after four years with the “Mormons.”

1854: 25 March, Udgorn Seion (Zion’s Trumpet), pp. 190–91.

Thomas Jones, the author of this letter written to Dan Jones, tells of his conversion:

I was forty years a member with the Baptists; and when I heard about the Saints, I decided to oppose them as far as I was able. I intended to cut off the head of the Saints with their own sword; and for that purpose, I reviewed their books. But the more I searched their doctrinal principles, the more I went along with them believing the truth, and I received my baptism.[17]

Despite receiving considerable persecution from his family and his “old religious friends,” Jones began to preach his new beliefs. He reports:

I had the privilege of baptizing several; and since it happened that I baptized some well-known men, perhaps you will permit me to name them, so that the reading of their names may lead other men, like them, to consider and perceive a little of the value of the religion of the Son of God.[18]

He tells of baptizing the Reverend John James, a Baptist minister in Cefncoedycymmer, “together with a young preacher who belonged to the same house of worship.” He also tells of a meeting held the morning after the baptisms:

Brother J. James met with the people, in the Chapel of the Baptists, the next morning, for the purpose of terminating their obligation with one another; and a host came together in the afternoon, to witness the confirmation of the two brothers.[19]

He also tells of the baptism of “a young student enrolled in the school [in Carmarthen] where preachers are taught by men”:

He was confirmed at the water’s edge; he gave himself to earnest prayer; and within forty-eight hours, he had a clear witness; but, because he spoke of what the Lord had done to his soul, he was turned out of the school, the chapel, and the house of his father![20]

These conversions may possibly have been the cause of the alarm expressed by the author of an article in the July 1854 issue of the Churchman (see entry later in this chapter).

Episode 11.1

Start: A false rumor is printed that Dan Jones’s brother was baptized, but Jones debunks it.

1854: 15 April, Udgorn Seion (Zion’s Trumpet), pp. 226–27 (365 words). “Refutation to a False Accusation.”

The editor of Zion’s Trumpet at this time was Dan Jones, back in Wales on his second mission. Here he is taking issue with an announcement that had appeared in the 29 March 1854 issue of the Swansea Herald. Jones quotes the following from that publication:

That the people of Aberdare marvel because of a circumstance that took place lately—the Rev. Mr. Jones, better known by the name of “Jones, Llangollen,” was immersed by one of the “Apostles of the Latter-day Saints.” What next?[21]

Jones responds to this allegation regarding his older brother, John Jones:

We answer that it is totally untrue—completely unfounded, without reason, without even any excuse for it; rather it was evil malice that caused anyone to believe or publish such a thing. . . . Had he acted according to our counsel he would have been baptized years ago, or had he known what was best for his own good.[22]

Though John Jones had not been baptized, he had allowed Dan Jones to use his press to print materials in support of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (to which Dan had converted only three years earlier) during the time John Jones was living in the village of Rhydybont in the county of Carmarthenshire. These materials included twenty-eight issues of Prophet of the Jubilee, the periodical for which Dan Jones was editor from July 1846 to October 1848.

John Jones’s family had been baptized right around the time of this printing. The Swansea Branch records for 1854 show the baptisms for Sarah Jones on 12 April and for Elizabeth Jones and Jane Jones on 16 April. Sarah and Elizabeth were John Jones’s daughters, and Jane Jones was his wife. These three women sailed on the Chimborazo the following year, but they ended up in Ohio instead of Utah. John Jones joined them in Ohio, where he died in 1856. That his intention may at one time have been to settle in Utah is implied in Dan Jones’s 19 September 1854 letter to Brigham Young (original English spelling has been preserved):

I am happy to be able to introduce two of my Brotheren to Zion, hopeing that if they feel as they ought and as others do, they will be of service in the upbuilding of Zion. The Elder is called a scientific character and classed among the “literati” of Wales, of many years experience as Coal (Master) Iron manufacturing and is said to be some thing of a mineralogist, &c. But you will be able to analyse him soon no doubt and make him usefull I hope. The other is a Botanist and has had several years experience in some of the principal Gardens of England, one reason why he did not like to reside at Manti in preference to G.S.L. City, but I presume he will be subject to your counsels should you deem him worthy of them.[23]

The first of the two “Brotheren” mentioned is John, Dan’s older brother by nine years, and the other is Edward, Dan’s older brother by seven years. Edward Jones had left Wales in February 1854 on the Golconda with his wife and three children and ended up in Ephraim, Utah. His family would live there until their deaths.

End: A false rumor is printed that Dan Jones’s brother was baptized, but Jones debunks it.

1854: 8 April, Udgorn Seion (Zion’s Trumpet), pp. 201–4 (1,380 words). “The Mormons.”

Dan Jones quotes an entire article from what he calls “some little paper that is called Press,” apparently published in Aberystwyth, Cardiganshire.[24] Here is the article:

These pitiful people are rushing from their country in droves toward the vicinity of the Salt Lake. To swell the ranks, on the 28th of last month, several were seen starting from this town on board a steamboat to Liverpool, with the intention of heading toward the imaginary Canaan across the ocean. In their midst was an old woman, 87 years old, who professed her strong confidence of seeing her old husband (who was buried years ago) after landing there, and presenting him with warm stockings, which, to prove the truth of her faith, she had gone to the trouble of knitting, to warm the feet of one who had become cold so long ago. I can hardly praise the behavior of these people, for if they believe the truth of their religion, they should, before being worthy of Canaan, strive more than they have done on behalf of their fellow men, in order to enlighten them about the desirability of the blessed place, instead of turning their backs at once and leaving them so destitute in the old wilderness. Alas and alack! we have been surprised over and over again that anyone in the enlightened land of the Sunday schools would give credence to such a concoction of unscriptural nonsense! It shows that we have a great work yet to do, to enlighten and establish the country in the simple and priceless principles of true Christianity.[25]

Jones responds to this vicious attack with an equally vicious counterattack in his own periodical:

It [the above article] is a mirror, then, in which he is seen from his crown to his sole, and in it one can detect the unclean, lying stench of the atrocious pit of his stomach.[26]

Not being personally acquainted with the editor of “Press,” nor with anyone in that area of Wales, Jones is left to draw his conclusions simply from the content of the article:

His story was formed from libelous materials, woven and entwined together, every thread of it, from the coarse hemp of slander—Mr. Editor, the weaver, and the Press from Aberystwyth is the loom that weaves it. . . . If this is the kind of editors the Sunday schools of Cardiganshire turn out, may the God of truth keep the literature of our country out of the reach of the ruinous stench of their breath.[27]

1854: 28 April, Cardiff and Merthyr Guardian, p. 4 (95 words).

Reprinted from the Baton Rouge Advocate:

The John Simonds, a three-decker steamer, running to St. Louis, passed our landing yesterday with about 800 emigrants on board, all bound for the Mormon settlement at Utah. They are composed, we were told, nearly exclusively of English and Welsh converts to the Mormon religion and morality (or immorality), under the guidance of one of the Latter-day Saints, who has been on a missionary tour to Great Britain. About half, or more than half, the number were women, mostly young and buxom-looking lasses. What were their views of spiritual matrimony we did not ascertain.

1854: 29 April, The Silurian,p. 2 (115 words).

The new number of the Edinburgh Review has a good long article on those strange people the Mormons. It appears they have had more converts in England than elsewhere, and that the places in which they have gained the greatest number have been Manchester and Merthyr Tydfil. The reviewer shows it is not want of education that makes men Mormons, and [he] also hints that many victims of this imposture might have been saved had our popular teachers taught their hearers to draw the line of separation between the religion of the Old Testament and that of the [N]ew. There is some truth in these remarks, and the whole article is well worthy [of] perusal.

1854: 5 May, Monmouthshire Merlin, p. 6 (95 words).

Reprinted from the Baton Rouge Advocate:

The John Simmonds, a three-decker steamer, running to St. Louis passed our landing yesterday with about 800 emigrants on board, all bound for the Mormon settlement at Utah. They are composed, we were told, nearly exclusively of English and Welsh converts to the Mormon religion and morality (or immorality), under the guidance of one of the Latter-day Saints, who has been on a missionary tour to Great Britain. About half, or more than one half, the number were women, mostly young and buxom-looking lasses. What were their views of spiritual matrimony we did not ascertain.

1854: 13 May, North Wales Chronicle, p. 5 (125 words).

Aberystwyth. On Thursday last a lecture was delivered, by the Rev. William Williams, in Zoar Chapel, Aberystwyth; the subject being the “false doctrines of Mormonism, and their Salt Lake Valley.” Several of the Mormonites came there for the purpose of having a debate on the subject, which Mr. Williams would not allow. Among the Saints was the noted Robin Ddu who visited this town a few years ago, and who lectured then on total abstinence, being then a member with the Independents, but who has been since converted to the Mormonial faith. On Tuesday, the 9th inst., the Saints held their meeting at the Assembly Rooms, for the purpose of disproving Mr. Williams’s lecture, which they did in some unimportant parts, but left the leading facts untouched.

1854: 3 June, The Silurian,p. 2 (70 words).

A brief report of Samuel Richards’s appearance before a private committee on emigration in the House of Commons. Richards made a favorable impression on the committee:

Mr. Richards gave his evidence in a straightforward manner, and earned and received the thanks of the committee in consequence. The impression seemed to be, that however objectionable Mormonism may be, still there was one thing they did decently and well, and that is carry their converts decently, and properly, and healthfully across the Atlantic. It is a pity only Mormonites may go out in these Mormon ships.

1854: 24 June, The Silurian,p. 3 (25 words).

The death of Clarissa, wife of John Smith, and mother of the Mormon imposter Joe Smith, is announced by the Deseret News. She was aged 63.

Obviously, Clarissa and John Smith were not Joseph Smith Jr.’s parents, but they were his aunt and uncle on his father’s side. Both Clarissa and John passed away in the first half of 1854.[28]

1854: 16 June, Monmouthshire Merlin, p. 6 (95 words).

Lieutenant Gunnison states that, when he was in Utah, the three members of the Mormonite Presidency had no less than eighty-two wives between them, and that one of the three was called an old bachelor, “because he had only a baker’s dozen.” And Captain Stansbury describes the numerous family of the president (Brigham Young) as mingling freely in the balls, parties, and other social amusements of the place. Utah is now in the transition-state of a “Territory,” containing somewhat above 30,000 inhabitants. During the fourteen years from 1837 to 1851, 17,000 Mormons had emigrated from England.

1854: 23 June, Monmouthshire Merlin, p. 2 (95 words).

A review of The Great Highway: A Story of the World’s Struggles, a three-volume book recently published in London by S. W. Fullom. The writer makes some observations about what Fullom had to say about the Latter-day Saints:

The author gives us a lengthened description of those deluded, but many of them deluding men called Latter-day Saints. He exposes their proceedings; and shows how the leaders of the movement make capital out of the ignorance, superstition, and degradation of the unenlightened masses. Mormonism tells a deplorable tale! It tells us, that nothing but audacity was wanting, to enable a man of some greatness, it must be confessed, though the greatness of a fiend, to set himself up as the founder of a religion, which now numbers above two millions of adherents.

1854: July, Yr Eglwysydd (The Churchman), pp. 75–77 (1,105 words). “Mormonism.”

The unnamed author draws on numerous English-language sources for the greater part of his writing. In his introduction, he expresses alarm at the growth of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Wales and especially that preachers numbered among the converts:

As there were false prophets enticing the Israelites astray, so there are false teachers in our midst who are leading a host of learned and sensible men to all sorts of false religion and absurdity. Of the recent heresies or schisms, one of the most notable is Mormonism. However repugnant and despicable the doctrines contained in this deceitful system may be, many hundreds of Welsh people, yes, and several Non-conformist preachers in Wales have embraced them! We will give herein some of the story of “The Book of Mormon,” or the new bible of the Latter-day Saints.[29]

The writer’s concern may well have originated from preacher conversion in the area, details of which can be found in Thomas Jones’s letter to Dan Jones that had been printed in Zion’s Trumpet a few months earlier (see previous entry in this chapter).[30]

1854: 1 July, Wrexham Advertiser, p. 3 (40 words). “An Immoral Religion.”

In a tract distributed by the Mormon preachers, the following question and answer occur.—“What shall be the reward of those who have forsaken their wives for righteousness’ sake?—A hundred-fold of wives here and wives everlasting hereafter.”[31]

1854: 3 August, Y Gwron Cymreig (The Welsh Hero), p. 4, Item 1 (85 words). “Mormons Leaving Abergele Last Year.”

A poem of three 4-line stanzas by “A Welshman.” Here is the first stanza:

Fleeing from Abergele—flew,

Some swam in the guise of saints,

Who can say after they have moved further

That they will not sail after them?

Episode 11.2

Start: Rees Davies accuses the Saints from New Orleans, and Dan Jones defends from Merthyr

1854: 3 August, Y Gwron Cymreig (The Welsh Hero), p. 4, Item #2 (965 words). “Letters from America.”

The first letter is dated 26 March 1854 and was sent from New Orleans by the writer, Rees Davies, to his father who lived in Cardiganshire. Upon seeing the letter, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints expressed doubt to Davies’s father about the claims made therein. Here is a list of the claims:

1. The Latter-day Saints marry the young little girls to the oldest old men.
2. If they are not willing, two of the elders take hold of the girl and put her in bed with the one who loves her most.
3. Many women run away from them here [in the United States].
4. Those who run away and are caught are tied up until the boat leaves New Orleans.
5. One girl named Margaret approached Rees Davies and asked him to take her away from the Latter-day Saints.
6. When Davies went to retrieve the girl’s clothes from her home, the Latter-day Saints were ready to kill him.
7. Old Esther [Jones] was ready to come back to Wales if she could.

Because the Church member challenged the truthfulness of these claims, Rees Davies’s father agreed to write a letter to his son in New Orleans to give him a chance to re-state his claims where necessary. The son wrote a reply, dated 10 June 1854, in which he expressed anger that anyone would doubt his claims. And in this second letter, he made the following additional claims:

1. He told Margaret about his father’s letter.
2. The Latter-day Saints wrote home to her mother but would not allow Margaret to see the letter.
3. They would not allow Margaret to write a letter to her mother.
4. Margaret asked Davies to write to her mother and tell her that she was very sorry that she did not act on her advice to remain in Wales.
5. The Latter-day Saints took nearly all of Margaret’s clothes.
6. They tied Margaret to the bed post to prevent her from going with Davies.
7. When Margaret was leaving the boat with Davies, three other girls were trying to run away.
8. The Latter-day Saints were holding the three girls, carrying them back to the boat, and tying them hand and foot.

Following this second letter is a paragraph in English, presumably by Rees Davies also, about “a young girl of 15 . . . a native of South Wales,” who had previously arrived in New Orleans. Davies had learned the following from this girl’s sister:

On the Atlantic coming over, the leader of the Mormons wanted the young woman to marry an old shoemaker with one leg, but she refused. For three days they tried to coax her to marry, but she would not. On the 4th day, the chief compelled her to marry the wooden-leg shoemaker, and the villain even with his own hands laid her in bed against her will with the old clump. So much for the Mormon religion.

Davies ends this paragraph in English with a request:

Show this to my uncle, Rev. H. Davies, Cenarth, and he can send it to be published.

This odd request makes one wonder whether perhaps Davies’s intention with his two letters, filled with rather astonishing accusations, may have been to get them into print in Wales to negatively affect the Latter-day Saint proselytizing activities among his compatriots.

1854: September, Yr Haul (Sun), p. 301 (360 words). “Mormonism.”

Merely a shortened version of Rees Davies’s first letter, dated 26 March 1854.

1854: October, Yr Haul (Sun), p. 337 (460 words). “Mormonism.”

The same letter that Rees Davies wrote, dated 10 June 1854, though in this article, the letter is misdated 20 June 1854.

1854: Amddiffyniad y Saint; sef, gwrth-brofion o gamgyhuddiadau maleis-ddrwg dyn o’r enw Rees Davies, o New Orleans, yn erbyn y Saint (A defense of the Saints; refutations of the false and malicious accusations of a man by the name of Rees Davies, from New Orleans, against the Saints), pamphlet, 12 pages.[32]

Dan Jones faced serious challenges and disadvantages in defending his religion against attacks made by Rees Davies, a fellow Welshman, not of the same faith, writing from the other side of the Atlantic. In his twelve-page refutation of Davies’s claims, Jones appeals to the common sense of his readers and states that he is certain that such actions would not be allowed among the men of good standing on board the ship, many of whom Jones had known for years. He points out the inconsistencies of Davies’s accusations and includes evidence gleaned from letters sent back to relatives in Wales by passengers on the Golconda that suggests the accusations were false.

Much of Jones’s defense centers around Margaret Williams, an eighteen-year-old girl from Aberystwyth who purportedly had asked Rees Davies to help her escape from the “Mormons” and to write to her mother and tell her that she (Margaret) was sorry for not following her mother’s counsel to remain in Wales.

Davies’s account is contradicted by Margaret’s letter as printed in Jones’s pamphlet. She writes:

I wish for you, my dear mother, not to worry about me, as if I were going to destruction by going to the land of America, for many have gone before me; they are doing well, and they are sending assistance to their parents, and perhaps I shall be able to do the same for you, before the end of our lives.[33]

One of Davies’s numerous claims was that “Old Esther was ready to come back to Wales if she could.” This has reference to Esther Jones, listed on the shipping list as being eighty-four years old. Margaret writes the following in her letter about Esther:

Esther Jones from Rhiwbren Fawr is hale and hearty and sends her regards, grieving that you are not here with her.[34]

Margaret’s letter is dated 17 March 1854, one day before the arrival of the Golconda in New Orleans. But lest Jones’s readers think that Margaret had finished writing her letter before all of Davies’s claims were made, Jones adds the following in a postscript to his pamphlet: “We understand that the letter [by Margaret Williams] was finished the day R. D. [Rees Davies] says [in his 26 March 1854 that] she escaped, or after that.”

End: Rees Davies accuses the Saints from New Orleans, and Dan Jones defends from Merthyr

1854: September, Y Cyfaill o’r Hen Wlad yn America (The Friend of the Old Country in America), p. 359 (90 words). “Mormonism as It Is.”

The Mormon law on polygamy reads as follows: “If any man espouse a virgin, and desire to espouse another, and the first give her consent, and if he espouse the second, and they are virgins, and have vowed to no other man, then is he justified; he cannot commit adultery for they are given unto him; for he cannot commit adultery with that that belongeth unto him and to no one else.”[35] There is another article (that follows) to take the virgin if the previous spouse refuses to give her consent.

The practice of polygamy in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had been announced to the Welsh through the 1 January 1853 issue of Zion’s Trumpet.[36]

1854: September, Y Tywysydd a’r Gymraes neu Cylchgrawn i Feibion a Merched Cymru (The Instructor and the Welsh Woman or the Periodical for the Boys and Girls of Wales), p. 182 (645 words).

A long poem of twelve 8-line stanzas. The poem is entitled “Song” and has this brief explanation at the beginning: “In the manner of a conversation between Mother and Son on the day of the Son’s departure to the Salt Valley, he being one of the Latter-day Saints.” The mother speaks in the first stanza:

Oh! David why do you now leave

Your mother to grieve for you so;

Who studied your dearest face,

Who nursed you upon her lap?

Oh, don’t break my aching heart,

Don’t load so my spirit with grief;

Why not be content to stay home

As always in times hitherto?

The son responds:

Sweet mother, is this the last time

I’ll ever behold your face?

Such a thought is just like a spear

Piercing my very heart;

But I must set forth whatever the pain—

So farewell, farewell my mother:

You’ll never be far from my mind—

I’ll always retain you there.

The mother says (second-to-last stanza):

There is no need of a Vale of Salt

Nor California land

For a Latter-day Saint,

To voyage forth

To gain a fuller share

Of all salvation’s joy—

For Jesus who was crucified

Encompasses the world.

The son (final stanza):

Perfect joy abides but there

Where sickness is not known;

Within the Valley’s happy bounds

No winter, only Summer comes;

And there our dear prophet lives,

His loving spirit stays,

With Book of Mormon close at hand—

My parents both, farewell!

1854: 22 September, Monmouthshire Merlin, p.6, Item # 1(1,280 words). “Spirit of the Press. Mormonism.”

An abridgement of an article in the Times (published in London). Here are two quotes that indicate the flavor of the article:

We do not propose that a man should be persecuted because he is a Mormonite; but we submit to the good sense of the country that he should not be entitled to call himself a “Protestant Dissenter,” and as such to claim rights and privileges which were intended for others. Let a man, by all means, be a Mormonite, if he is silly enough, or wicked enough, to credit so monstrous a tissue of absurdities as the creed involves; but, at least, let not the Parliament of England stamp the mystic twaddle which he calls his Bible, with its imprimatur. Let us not, in other words, sacrifice the feelings and opinions of a million rational beings, to the distempered ravings of a single blockhead or knave.

1854: 22 September, Monmouthshire Merlin, p. 6, Item #2 (2,660 words). “Middlesex Sessions, Wednesday, Sept. 13.”

A very long account of the trial of Andrew Hepburn for having “willfully and maliciously disturbed a certain number of persons, who had assembled for the purpose of religious worship in a place duly registered according to the statute.”

1854: 23 September, The Silurian, p. 4 (580 words). “A Visit to a Mormon Prophet.”

A brief account of Henry Caswall’s visit to Joseph Smith.

1854: 30 September, North Wales Chronicle, p. 7 (210 words). “Isolation of the Mormon Settlement.”

A quotation from Benjamin G. Ferris’s Utah and the Mormons, in which he indicates all the many disadvantages of the Great Basin, the Latter-day Saints’ chosen settling place.

1854: 6 October, Monmouthshire Merlin, p. 3 (45 words). “Return of the Mormons Eastward.”

From the New York Herald:

A Western paper says that a few days since, a train, composed of nine wagons and 50 persons, crossed the Missouri eastwardly in search of a new home. They had left the Salt Lake City on account of the oppression and immorality of their church.

1854: 6 October, The Cambrian (120 words). “To the Editor of the Cambrian.”

A brief letter supposedly sent by one Ichabod Roberts who claims to have been severely criticized in the previous issue. Here is the letter:

Sir, In your newspaper, called the Cambrian, last week you inserted some letters against the Mormonites and the Peace Society, and one of them stabs at me, I suppose, because I delivered an oration on peace at our last gathering. I should like to lay my hands on that man anywhere and in any place, and I demand on you to deliver up that person to me. The workings of the Spirit is on the Mormonites and the men of peace and we will defy the powers of darkness to work evil against us.

Yours obediently, Ichabod Roberts

(It would be unlawful to comply with Mr. Roberts demand to deliver up; and his intemperate application can receive no courtesy from us. Editor.)

Blatant is the irony of a man who speaks on peace and yet wishes to “lay his hands” on the one who would dare to criticize him. One just might believe that the editor was using the nom de plume Ichabod Roberts and was himself the writer of the article.

1854: November, Y Bedyddiwr (Baptist), p. 352 (50 words).

A very brief notice of the death of “William Richards.” This probably has reference to Willard Richards, who had been serving as counselor to Brigham Young in the First Presidency. Here is the notice in full:

We have learned that a Mormon Elder by the name of William [Willard] Richards died lately in the town of the Great Salt Lake and has left twenty widowed women to mourn his loss! If this is not a shame to mankind, we do not know what is.

1854: November, Yr Eglwysydd (The Churchman), pp. 125–27 (1,060 words). “Mormonism.”

An article probably written by the editor William Morris, who was an Anglican bookseller in Holywell. In his opening paragraph, the author tells of an encounter he had with two members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:

As the Scriptures say that the man who went from Jerusalem to Jericho fell among thieves, so too did I fall on my journey one day, if not among thieves, certainly among false teachers, namely some of the apostles of the Latter-day Saints. And, if they failed to strip me of my religion, wound my feelings, and leave me half dead, it was not a lack of sufficient impudence to try to do so that was the cause, but a lack of skill and ability, for they attacked me with all their might and cunning as soon as I fell into their midst.[37]

Morris then uses the form of a conversation to describe the “attacks” he received. The first such attack has to do with authority:

Mormon How do you know that your ministers have authority from God to preach the gospel?

Churchman I know that from the complete devotion many of them have for the work of the ministry, and that they have received their authority from those who were authorized successively from Christ to send ministers into the vineyard.

Mormon Successive authority is what you have; I have restored authority.[38]

The conversation also includes differing opinions on gifts of the Spirit, modern-day revelation, and living prophets. The author ends the conversation by presenting the following reminder to his opponent:

You and I will have to appear before the Omniscient Judge to give an accounting for that which we do at present. And remember that all false intents, although hidden to men, are exposed and open to His eyes, and will be brought forth plainly visible before the whole world.[39]

1854: 10 November, Cardiff and Merthyr Guardian, p. 3 (60 words). “To the Mormons.”

We advise all sane and rational people to read a little book, entitled “Utah and the Mormons”—six-months’ residence in the Great Salt Lake City, by Benjamin G. Ferris, late Secretary of Utah Territory. It is published by Low, Son, and Co., London. If this work does not abate the low Welsh fever, no other remedy can avail.

1854: 2 December, The Silurian, p. 4 (155 words). “A Luckless Mormon Journey.”

A letter from Berlin of the 20th [of November] says: “At the commencement of the present year the king of Prussia procured through his Minister Plenipotentiary at Washington, and through the Chevalier Bunsen, at that time minister at London, a complete collection of all the publications concerning the Mormons in the United States and in England. The Mormons considered this measure as likely to be favorable to the propagation of their religion in Prussia, and, in consequence, they determined on sending to Berlin a deputation to compliment his Majesty. This deputation arrived, a few days ago, by the railway from Stettin; but no sooner had the persons composing it quitted the carriages, than a detachment of soldiers who were in waiting at the station, marched them off to the director of police. That functionary subjected them to a lengthened interrogatory—after which they received orders to leave Berlin in twenty-four hours. The next morning they left the capital.”

1854: 9 December, Caernarvon and Denbigh Herald, p. 2 (70 words).

The King of Prussia having ordered a collection of the books of the Mormons, the Latter-day Saints jumped to the conclusion that he must be about to favor their views. So a deputation set out from Stettin to wait upon the Monarch to “compliment” him; but when the train arrived at Berlin, the Mormons were arrested by the police, interrogated at great length, and ordered to leave the city in twenty-four hours.

Notes

[1] The source of the foregoing information is The Book of Thomas Job by Bliss Brimley, available at https://archive.org/details/ThomasJob/mode/2up?view=theater.

[2] Zion’s Trumpet, 25 March 1854, 190–92.

[3] Ibid., 190.

[4] Ibid., 191.

[5] Zion’s Trumpet, 8 July 1854, 403.

[6] Zion’s Trumpet, 15 July 1854, 419–20.

[7] Zion’s Trumpet, 29 July 1854, 451–52, emphasis in original.

[8] For a facsimile translation of Jones’s pamphlet. see Defending the Faith: Early Welsh Missionary Publications, Item J20.

[9] For greater detail concerning Zion’s Trumpet and its predecessor, Prophet of the Jubilee, see Welsh Mormon Writings from 1844 to 1862: A Historical Bibliography (Brigham Young University Religious Studies Center), 1988, p. 27-32 and 72-79. Complete facsimile translations of all surviving volumes of Zion’s Trumpet are posted on the website http://welshmormon.byu.edu/. [Put more precise information]

[10] Zion’s Trumpet, 26 August 1854, 480–84.

[11] “Haman” Hanging from His Own Gallows! Or Daniel Jones (the Blind) Proving the Truth of Mormonism!!</i> in <i>Defending the Faith, Item J10, p. 4.

[12] Zion’s Trumpet, 7 October 1854, 531–32.

[13] Zion’s Trumpet, 9 September 1854, 493–94, emphasis in original.

[14] See Welsh Mormon Writings, 65–68.

[15] For more details, see Zion’s Trumpet, 18 November 1854, 569–73; see also this book’s preface.

[16] (Also printed in the Wrexham Advertiser for 1 July 1854, p. 3.)

[17] Zion’s Trumpet, 25 March 1854, 190.

[18] Ibid., 191.

[19] Ibid.

[20] Ibid., 191–92.

[21] Zion’s Trumpet, 15 April 1854, 226.

[22] Ibid., 227.

[23] Dan Jones to Brigham Young, 19 September 1854, LDS Archives, original spelling preserved.

[24] At time of writing, the publication in which this article appeared has not been determined.

[25] Zion’s Trumpet, 8 April 1854, 201.

[26] Ibid., 202.

[27] Ibid., 202–3.

[28] https://www.churchhistorianspress.org/the-first-fifty-years-of-relief-society/people/clarissa-loomis-lyman-smith?letter=S&lang=eng; https://familypedia.wikia.org/wiki/John_Smith_(1781-1854)

[29] Churchman, July 1854, 75, emphasis in original.

[30] Zion’s Trumpet, 25 March 1854, 190–92.

[31] Also printed in the Silurian, 18 February 1854, 3.

[32] (Defending the Faith: Early Welsh Missionary Publications, Item J20.)

[33] Dan Jones, A Defense of the Saints, 11.

[34] Jones, A Defense of the Saints, 12.

[35] Doctrine and Covenants 132:61.

[36] Zion’s Trumpet, 1 January 1853, 5–16. See entry in Chapter 10.

[37] Churchman, November 1854, 125.

[38] Ibid., 125–26.

[39] Ibid., 127.