On Andrew’s brief third visit to the mission, he had gone only to St. John, Kansas, to dedicate a meetinghouse. Right after Christmas 1896, four years since he had been personally in the Indian Territory, he set out again. This time he would visit Indian Territory, Kansas, Oklahoma Territory, Arkansas, and Texas—all the states and territories included in his recently expanded mission.
He first went to St. John and learned that the two missionaries there were finding success. The Sunday School Andrew had organized was flourishing. He held many hours of meetings with the missionaries and two local priesthood holders, and he held public meetings with members and friends every day for six days. Some of these meetings served as an evening of entertainment, with singing, recitations, musical performances, and the like.
On January 6, Andrew left, going to Kansas City for a day, then to St. Louis and Chicago for a day or two each. Andrew had never been to the latter two cities, so he took in the sights. He entered Arkansas for the first time, too, and stopped at Pollard, in the very northeast corner of the state. Missionaries from the area had gathered for a missionary conference there.
During Andrew’s mission he had many times experienced insult, but never physical hurt. In Arkansas he experienced mob threat: “Friday, Jan. 15, 1897 . . . we met in the Hadley School house in our first public meeting. Not many present. A bad element of boys came in and were very noisy. I spoke to them and quieted them.”129
On Saturday a mob planned to disrupt the meeting, but because of the cold and rainy weather they did not follow through.
Sunday 17 Meeting at 10 o.c. [in the Pollard schoolhouse] during which time I spoke. We held priesthood meeting between. During the afternoon meeting those ruffians disturbed our meeting again. As Elder Peterson was speaking I arose to have authorities sustained and as I did I spoke to them about disturbing the meeting. I became righteously indignant and set down them again. We had good meeting. Night meeting [with 35 to 40 attending] was remarkable quiet and peacable. The bad element were out planning to mob us. Will Wheat a friend of ours gave us a slip of paper warning us to close our meeting as he could not hold them longer. As we were in the act of singing closing hymn these bad boys threw [three] rocks in the back window, struck sash, broke it. The rock struck Elder Larkin on the cheek bone and bruised it some. Another struck Eld. Kirkman in the back. Otherwise none were hurt. As we [John Knight and I] were going home [with the Farleys], the boys followed us and rocked us on our way. [Some had horses.] We turned around and stepping out of the rode urged them to go on. The rocks struck me five or six times in the back but not to hurt me. We wounded our way carefully home to our friends. Had a day of good meetings and quite an Experience. I stayed with John Farley, one of our members.
John M. Farley, just a boy at the time, remembered:
There was a closing prayer and instructions that the elders go in pairs to the homes of friends. President Kimball and John Knight walked into the mob and tried to reason with them while mobsters yelled, “Hit him, hit him!” He called them cowards and said that if necessary the elders would fight and would whip the best man the mob could put forward. None of the mob wanted to fight.130
A contemporaneous newspaper report adds a few details. “Some of the time mobsters on horseback rode within arms length of the [five] elders.” Andrew brought up the rear, shepherding women and children.131
Leander Farley, then about sixteen years old, was with the elders and reported that when a volley of rocks came from the brush alongside the way and one rock nearly hit Andrew, “he pulled himself up and said: ‘Oh, if only I could lay down my priesthood a minute.’” When they arrived at the Farley home, “President Kimball leaned his head against the mantlepiece and said: ‘Something bad will happen to every one who had anything to do with this mobbing, and you folks will live to see it.’ We knew all these men and this prophecy was literally fulfilled.” According to Leander, two of the men went to prison for theft, another lost everything to fire, one died in an asylum, and the Baptist preacher died a most agonizing death.132
The mobbing aroused the community, and Andrew’s journal reports that the next day “all the Elders set out and started for the town of Piggott. We found that the grand jury were on the track of the perpetrators of the crime.”133
Fifteen Arkansas elders met in conference. Some, with Andrew, were threatened by a mob. Andrew is fourth from left on the front row. Note the uniform dress.
From there, Andrew went by train and wagon to Manard. Here he experienced special welcome and affection. Ten elders met in the log meetinghouse to receive Andrew’s instruction and encouragement. Of these missionaries, two pairs worked in the Cherokee Nation and two others in the Choctaw Nation.
Andrew went to the Massey chapel, then west to hold conference in Choctaw City (near Oklahoma City). He characterized most meetings as highly spiritual occasions,134 but sometimes he felt less satisfied: “Not a good spirit present”; “I commenced with instructions but had no freedom”; or, “The elders did not feel good because they had disregarded council.”135 In this last place, meeting with just the elders,
I presided and spoke on repentance, related a dream I had last night. How I was tormented with snakes and how they seemed to be my friends. I . . . went to sleep and had the interpretation given. Showing my brethren to be in fault and one bit me. Each of the Elders spoke and all were melted to tears by the splendid spirit present. Each in fault asked pardon and all was made right. A remarkable outpouring of the Spirit.136
From Choctaw City, Andrew went to Austin, Texas, his first time in that state. Texas had been transferred to the Indian Territory Mission just weeks before, along with the sixteen elders assigned there. The pair of elders in Austin managed to work without purse or scrip even in that capital city. Andrew spent a day in San Antonio sightseeing then he held meetings in Lockhart (northeast of San Antonio) and Houston. At Galveston he saw the sea for the first time. “Long before day I was up and looking at the breakers as they rolled over each other in their mad rush to get to shore.”137
When the mission was expanded to include Texas in 1897, Andrew met with Elders Dalley and Miner in San Antonio.
Andrew traveled by train back from the Gulf Coast to St. John, perhaps eight hundred miles to the north. In St. John, Andrew spent one last week working in the mission office creating new forms, handling correspondence, and in the evenings giving public lectures with titles like “Final Destiny” and “The Human Family.”138
Notes
129. Andrew Kimball, Journal, January 15–18, 1897.
130. John M. Farley, undated statement in Andrew Kimball, Papers, Church History Library.
131. John Knight, “Stoned by a Mob,” January 28, 1897, Church History Library.
132. Leander Y. Farley to Spencer W. Kimball, no date, Church History Library.
133. Near this time two elders in Louisiana received thirty-six lashes. Elias Kimball to Andrew Kimball, 1896 or 1897, Church History Library. Elders Larkin and Cleverly had rotten eggs thrown at them while holding a meeting in Cushman, Arkansas. In 1897 some Bickertonites threatened a pair of elders. But on the other hand, there were acts of kindness. For example, when an elder took his shoes for repair, the shoemaker gave his own shoes to the missionary.
