2 Brigham Young and the Search for Bible Religion, 1801–1832

While Brigham Young is best known as the leader of the Mormons in the mountain valleys of the West, it is to his New England heritage and his youth and young adulthood in western New York that we must turn to understand the foundations of his later success. Though Young and his family left New England before his third birthday, the Puritan mores of his parents and grandparents formed a vital part of his upbringing and consequently of his character. In western New York the agrarian and western culture of the frontier and Young’s own reactions to the fires of religious revival that seared the region modified this Puritan heritage. Brigham Young was both Puritan Yankee and son of the western soils. This chapter examines the emergence in Brigham Young of those attitudes and perspectives that fused with Mormonism to constitute the religiously based world view that dominated his life.

As with many Mormon converts of this era, there exist few contemporary documents detailing Young’s activities before he joined the Mormons. If he wrote early letters, they are not extant, and his first diary entry barely mentions his Mormon baptism before continuing as a record of his missionary labors. ^[36] Of necessity, this reconstruction of his religious attitudes and experiences before and right after his baptism rests heavily on reminiscences.

The first of Young’s reminiscences came in sermons—major ones by 1845, less than thirteen years after his baptism, with others throughout his life. In addition to these periodic references to his early biography, in the 1850s Young assisted in the preparation of a lengthy “autobiography” or personal history. Published in the Deseret News as the “History of Brigham Young,” this provides detail and some framework missing from isolated retellings in sermons. The several manuscript versions that preceded the published one preserve additional information and reveal something of Young’s thinking as he tried to clarify events.¹ Together, these reminiscences add up to a cohesive whole.

In addition to Young’s own accounts of the period, we have others by close associates that corroborate Young’s and add further details. Two of Young’s brothers left reminiscences of this period. We also have the rich autobiography of his New York neighbor and close associate Heber C. Kimball. Kimball’s account is especially helpful since it is earlier than the others, dating apparently from 1839, just a few years after the events described.² As with Young’s, Kimball’s history exists in two manuscript versions as well as the printed ones. As did Young later, Kimball had access to other records during the preparation of his history.

Because Brigham Young grew to manhood in that region of western New York known as the Burned-over District—and in the same ^[37] region where Mormonism emerged—a good deal is known about the general social and religious setting for his experiences. The classic study of the region by Whitney R. Cross appeared in 1950. Seeking an explanation for the unusual religious intensity and reform impulses that characterized the area, Cross investigated the social and intellectual background for and impact of the waves of revivals that swept the region. Brigham Young developed his own religious philosophy partly in response to this intense religious enthusiasm and these sectarian revivals. In the most recent study of the region, Paul E. Johnson analyzed in detail the social, economic, and religious milieu of Rochester, less than twenty miles from where Young resided when he joined the Mormons. Johnson, moreover, focused on 1830–1831, years that coincide with Young’s Mormon conversion. Other studies have examined the region specifically as the spawning place for Mormonism.³

Young was also influenced by the post-Revolutionary primitive gospel movement and his general reaction to the religious intensity of his region was similar to that of others of his time and place; he was a “seeker” and a “primitivist.” Studies of that movement provide a final perspective for understanding Young’s experiences and testing his memory of them. Dissatisfied with sectarian doctrines and practices—especially the unseemly division and rivalry—primitivists sought a new unity through emphasis on the Bible and a return to New Testament patterns. They generally were anticlerical and lay-led with limited formal training. Although affected by the revivals and interested in religion, they remained aloof from existing denominations awaiting a better day. ^[38] Brigham Young and many of his contemporaries who joined the Mormons had this orientation and this chapter provides a case study of the response of one primitivist to the religious enthusiasm of the Burned-over District. Studies dealing with the movement lend credibility to Young’s own reminiscences of this period of his life.⁴

It should be remembered, as noted in the introduction, that perhaps some of Young’s reminiscences for this period tell more about what he had become than what he was in the 1820s. No doubt his view of these early years before his connection with Mormonism became colored by his experiences after. Still, complimentary reminiscences, along with studies of his time and place, confirm that the memory of his experience is a credible one and that we can have general confidence in the broad outlines of his story. And where his Mormon experiences colored his memory about developing attitudes in this period, it is precisely those memories that became part of his personality, that bolstered his later convictions, that served him as an anchor in later experiences and responsibilities. The remembered perceptions of his world formed the foundation of his sacred cosmos.

Brigham Young’s New England roots ran deep. Numbered among his ancestors were several generations of New England Youngs, Brighams, Howes, and Goddards. His parents, John Young and Nabby Howe Young, were both natives of Massachusetts, he a poor “orphan” and she of an established and respected family.⁵ Among the youngest of ten children, John Young became a bondservant at the age of six after the sudden death of his father. ^[39] Though he married well and was, in Brigham’s words, an “honest, hard-working man, . . . the Lord would never permit him to get rich”—he never overcame the economic circumstances of his youth.⁶ After he and Nabby were married in 1785 they lived for a time near her family in Hopkington, Massachusetts. In spite of her family connections and the couple’s industry and frugality, a large and growing family soon outstripped their resources, forcing them to make several moves in an effort to improve their economic position. One of these took the family briefly to Vermont, where Brigham Young, the ninth child, was born in Whittingham 1 June 1801. Before Brigham’s third birthday they removed to western New York. There they also moved several times, although most of the period they resided in the beautiful Finger Lakes country.⁷ For young Brigham, that landscape of rolling hills and forests, mountain streams, and long, slender lakes was home.

John Young settled his family on new land in communities yet to have their first good road or access to market. In these circumstances the land, inevitably, had a heavy impact on Brigham. He later remembered at an early age clearing land and farming with his father and “passing through many hardships and privations incident to settling a new country.”⁸ For the most part the Youngs supplied the needs of their large family by the work of their own hands in home, shop, and farm. They also labored for others to help make ends meet. Rather than formal schooling, young Brigham’s education consisted of learning to work with his hands, first in the fields and eventually in the shop. As he later ^[40] reminisced of the background he shared with his New York friend and longtime associate in Mormonism Heber C. Kimball,

We never had the opportunity of letters in our youth, but we had the privilege of picking up brush, chopping down trees, rolling logs, and working amongst the roots, and of getting our shins, feet and toes bruised.⁹

On other occasions he commented that, instead of the classroom, he spent his time, summer and winter, poorly clad and often hungry, chopping, sowing, and planting. Assisting in breaking new ground and supporting his family from the soil provided a harsh school for the young man that inured him to hardships and physical labor. After the experiences of his youth, he later felt the difficulties of crossing the plains as a pioneer relatively tame.¹⁰

Brigham Young’s first occupation, then, was that of farmer. Alongside his father and brothers he learned about the seasons and the soils and the crops. “I have been brought up at the plow and know what it is to raise grain,” he told the early Utah pioneers. Everything was not farming and clearing land, however. The lad learned indoor skills as well. His first store-bought hat came at age eleven. Before that his sisters made him winter caps and he braided his own straw hats for summer. He also made bread, washed dishes, milked cows, made butter, and learned other domestic skills. He later boasted that he could beat many of the women at housekeeping.¹¹

In Utah, Brigham Young controlled large resources and was known as a man of wealth. This contrasted sharply with the poverty of his youth and no doubt his enjoyment of fine things was related to his early adversity. “I have been a poor boy and a poor man, ^[41] and my parents were poor,” said the later Young. While that description fits most of Brigham Young’s childhood, his hardest years came after the death of his mother soon after his own fourteenth birthday.¹² Without mother keeping house, the older children moved on and the family was divided. Brigham Young ended up with his father and younger brother Lorenzo, breaking land for a new farm and harvesting sugar maple on isolated acreage west of the southern tip of Seneca Lake. Lorenzo later remembered an occasion when their father left them while he took sugar to market. Before his return, the boys had exhausted all the food in the house when Brigham shot a robin which, with two spoonfuls of flour thumped out of an empty barrel, provided them their first meal in two days.¹³

This school of poverty reinforced the Yankee in his blood to teach Young the value of frugality, industry and self-sufficiency. In the 1860s he endeavored to explain to an old New York acquaintance why he had done so well as a businessman. Remembering his course “while you knew me” would suggest answers, he wrote. First, his carefully maintained reputation for reliability and integrity had earned him influence and opportunities, he was certain. Secondly, “I never spent my time in idleness, nor spent a sixpence in drink or other folly; but have endeavored to economise my time and my means, and use the latter so that it would increase on my hands.” As his property increased, he remained frugal, even “tight.”¹⁴ Nonetheless, he later pointedly defended his efforts to win for himself and his people the comforts of life. To those who argued that adversity taught more lessons than comfort, he ^[42] replied that he and most of his people had already “suffered enough in this line of suffering” to learn all the necessary lessons if they were going to, that they hardly required more experience in poverty.¹⁵

While under the care of his father Brigham Young enjoyed his times of fun and frolic like most youth, “running, jumping, wrestling” and “laying out [his] strength for naught.” But, according to Young’s later memory, such uses of his time and energy stopped rather suddenly when John Young told his sixteen-year-old son “You can now have your time; go and provide for yourself.” Brigham did not reveal whether he faced this new situation with anticipation or fear, but it seems likely that his youth had given him confidence in his practical abilities and that, with hard work, he anticipated faring better alone than he had with his father during their lean years. Full of energy and anxious to succeed, he set out with discipline and purpose that soon schooled him further in those habits of industry and reliability for which he became known. Rather than sport, at seventeen he used his strength “in planing a board, or in cultivating the ground to raise something from it to benefit myself.”¹⁶

Breaking with the farming of his youth, Brigham Young set out to become an artisan. As an apprentice carpenter and joiner he learned important skills of wood working that he later applied in house building and furniture making. He reputedly assisted in producing some of the finest finished woodwork (mantles, staircases, doorways, and fanlights) in the area of ^[43] Auburn and Aurelius, New York, including those in the famed Seward Mansion.¹⁷ As a young craftsman he developed patience with detail and a concern for honest, reliable work and quality workmanship. More than fifty years later his response to the letter of an old New York friend stressed his lasting commitment to those qualities:

I felt amused and interested in your statement that a chair, made by me, would occupay a place in your Centennial supper. . . . I have no doubt that many other pieces of furniture and other specimens of my handiwork can be found scattered about your section of the country, for I have believed all my life that that which was worth doing was worth doing well, and have considered it as much a part of my religion to do honest, reliable works, such as would endure, for those who employed me, as to attend to the services of God’s worship on the Sabbath.¹⁸

Young Brigham was concerned with his reputation and his standing in society. Although he recognized in himself “weakness, sin, darkness and ignorance,” he sought to use appropriate language and to deport himself in business and social intercourse “in a way to gain for myself the respect of the moral and good among my neighbors.”¹⁹ Almost uniformly those who knew him in western New York reported good of him—a favorable reputation that persisted in the region. Joseph Smith, residing only a few miles away, was early ridiculed as a religious fanatic and labeled a ne’er-do-well and a charlatan because of his youthful claims of visions. In contrast Brigham Young was thought of as upright and sober until after he joined the Mormons at age thirty-one. For example, one resident of Canandaigua who had earlier known the Youngs wrote to the local press in 1857 after the publication of an unflattering article about Young. Stressing that he wrote not to defend the Brigham Young of Utah “but Brigham Young as he was, while in ^[44] Canandaigua, before he became a Mormon,” the writer corrected errors of fact and responded to the charge that Brigham had been poor and indolent. “He was poor but had enough to be comfortable,” insisted the writer. “He was not indolent, but was a hard working man. . . . very handy with tools” who had a trade. In addition, noted the letter to the newspaper, his neighbors thought him “a consistent Christian.”²⁰

By the time Brigham Young married at age twenty-three, he was well-prepared to provide for a family. He had supported himself for a half-dozen years, had a trade, and was thought of as a responsible member of his community. His bride, Miriam Works, was five years his junior when they wed 8 October 1824. A neighbor remembered Miriam as a “beautiful blond with blue eyes and wavy hair; gentle and lovable,” and Brigham as “vigorous, handsome and magnetic. . . . as fine a specimen of young manhood as I have ever known.”²¹ To support his new household, Young hired himself out. He constructed and painted canal boats at Port Byron, helped build a large tannery in Oswego, and worked in a pail factory in Haydenville. By 1829 he located his family near Mendon, where he built a home for his father, and on his father’s land, a workshop and home for himself and family.²² Caring for his family and toiling at his trade, however, were but part of his life. He yearned also for religious fulfillment and for answers to nagging questions about life and salvation. As with his quest for economic independence, his quest for religious fulfillment was a journey of many years that took a decisive turn in Mendon. It was there that ^[45] he first learned of Mormonism in 1830 and where he was baptized in 1832.

Raised by parents of Puritan stock in the western New York hotbed of religious enthusiasm, young Brigham did not grow up without religious and moral instruction. Though John and Nabby Young had discarded the harsher Calvinist beliefs of their ancestors, as Methodists they were strict religionists nonetheless—as Brigham Young put it, “some of the most strict religionists that lived upon the earth.”

When I was young, I was kept within very strict bounds, and was not allowed to walk more than half-an-hour on Sunday for exercise. The proper and necessary gambols of youth [were] denied me. . . . I had not a chance to dance when I was young, and never heard the enchanting tones of the violin, until I was eleven years of age; and then I thought I was on the high way to hell, if I suffered myself to linger and listen to it.²³

He was brought up so strict that if he exclaimed “Devil,” he believed he had sworn “very wickedly.” Even mild vows or curses brought a whipping. In fact, any violation of family mores meant swift discipline from his father whose practice was “a word and a blow . . . but the blow came first.” His mother mellowed this stern, emotionally narrow approach somewhat, although she generally sustained John’s strict religious views.²⁴

For Brigham Young, the good example of his parents sustained the moral precepts they taught. For years he worked side by side with his father and knew his integrity firsthand, and of his mother he once said, “no better woman ever lived in the world than she was.” No matter the provocation, neither would countenance their children in wronging another. Brigham idealized ^[46] his mother, partly, no doubt, because she died while he was still young and he long remembered her bedside pleas to “honour the name of the Father and the Son, and to reverence the holy Book. . . . do everything that is good; do nothing that is evil; and if you see any persons in distress, administer to their wants.”²⁵

This strict moral training took affect on young Brigham. “I do not know that I ever wronged my neighbor, even to the value of a pin,” he said in reference to his parents’ teachings. From the days of his youth, he said of himself on one occasion, there never was a boy or man

that ever tried to live a more pure and refined life. . . . I have not infringed upon any law, or trod upon the rights of my neighbors; but I have tried to walk in the paths of righteousness, . . . that I might gain eternal happiness.²⁶

He had sometimes yielded to anger, but he had no memory of ever having “stole, lied, gambled, got drunk, or disobeyed my parents.” Indeed, he abandoned his work as a painter when, in his words, “I had either to be dishonest or quit; and I quit.”²⁷

The strictness of Young’s Puritan-influenced upbringing also showed itself in the control he maintained over his feelings and emotions. Not until the sweeping changes in his life brought about through his conversion to Mormonism and his adoption of Joseph Smith as a role model did he find expression for many of his religious and personal feelings, and throughout his life he retained a reticence about revealing deep emotion. This is no doubt one reason for the popular image of the later Young as a flinty and unfeeling leader. Part of this was a matter of ^[47] conscious discipline. He once told the Saints that his heart was so full of tender emotions for them that he could easily weep like a child, “but I am careful to keep my tears to myself.” With habit ingrained since his childhood, there was more than conscious determination at work. The suffering of others occasionally brought involuntary tears to his eyes; his own suffering or loss did not. That was true, he said, even with the overwhelming sense of loss he felt when Joseph Smith was killed. There were no tears, although “I felt as tho my head wo[ul]d crack.”²⁸

In temperament Brigham Young was fiercely independent and, while he may have obeyed his parents and perhaps recognized the wisdom in much of what they taught, he resented their strictness and eventually came to feel that much of it was unnecessary, even counterproductive. As a parent he determined not to subject his children to “such a course of unnatural training.” They would

go to the dance, study music, read novels, and do anything else that will tend to expand their frames, add fire to their spirits, improve their minds, and make them feel free and untrammeled in body and mind.²⁹

In part this determination was related to Mormon concepts of agency. It also sprang from Young’s own soul. The urge to be “free and untrammeled” was a vital part of Brigham Young and emerged early. “I am naturally opposed to being crowded,” was the way he put it on one occasion, adding that he felt instinctively to oppose anyone who tried to force him. Although he never drank, when his father urged him to sign a temperance pledge he stoutly refused. “No,” he told his father, “if I sign the temperance pledge I feel that I am bound, and I wish to do just ^[48] right, without being bound to do it; I want my liberty.” He was certain that it would be useless for anyone to try to drive him to heaven or hell. “My independence,” he announced, “is sacred to me.”³⁰ A son of the generation who fought the War for Independence, he saw himself as a free man before God with all the rights and responsibilities that entailed. He developed a tough honesty and outspokenness and instinctively resisted domination and the arbitrary use of power.³¹

Instead of accepting all of the strict Methodist views of his parents, Brigham Young early developed independent ideas about religion. Of the existence of God he had no doubt; nothing else made sense. “I co[ul]d not get it into my mind that there was a sun moon & stars & nobody to make them—I never co[ul]d get it into my head ‘heres a book, but there was no printer’—it was all a bag of nonsense to me.” He felt it “natural . . . to be reverential” towards God and His creation. Nor did he have any difficulty accepting his mother’s example of reverence for “the holy Book.” As she urged, he read the Bible and endeavored to observe its precepts and apply them in his life.³² Indeed, as with many who came to reject the orthodoxies of that day, his parting came partly from his independent reading of the Bible and his inability to reconcile its teachings with the tumultuous world of religion around him.³³ Also, his personal streak of stubborn independence encouraged him to chart a personal course as he pondered “these eternal things” amid the multiplicity of religious voices around him. ^[49]

Growing up in western New York he was early exposed to contending creeds. “From my youth up,” he remembered, “their cry was, ‘Lo here is Christ, lo there is Christ’: no, ‘Yonder is Christ’; ‘Christ is not there, he is here,’ and so on, each claiming that it had the Savior, and that others were wrong.” He concluded to join none of them until he could judge for himself, and he often prayed, “if there is a God in heaven save me, that I may know all and not be fooled.”³⁴ He was, in fact, a witness to one of the greatest periods of revivals and religious turmoil ever. Though brought up “amid . . . flaming, fiery revivals,” Young found it “all a mystery.”

I saw them get religion all around me—men were rolling and holloring and bawling and thumping but it had no effect on me—l wanted to know the truth that I might not be fooled—children and young men got religion, but I could not.³⁵

The intensity of the religious climate affected others of the Young family, as well. When Brigham Young was only fifteen years old his younger brother Lorenzo had a vivid dream about him, one that he discussed with his father and probably with Brigham as well. In his dream he saw a brilliant gold carriage drawn “with the speed of the wind” by a beautiful pair of white horses.

It was manifested to me that the Savior was in the carriage, and that it was driven by His servant. It stopped near me and the Savior inquired, “Where is your Brother Brigham?” After answering His question He inquired about my other brothers, and concerning my father. . . . He stated that He wanted us all, but especially my brother Brigham.³⁶

So powerful was the impression left by the dream that Lorenzo slept no more that night. Seeing no other interpretation, he felt that it portended some great evil about to befall Brigham and perhaps the rest of the family, though his father felt no such fears about ^[50] it. Such an experience could only have intensified Young’s religious yearnings, perhaps suggesting to him that God was specifically aware of him.

Although Young may have found the revivals a mystery and they did not move him to make a profession of religion, still they had an important impact on him. They reminded him that he was still “unchurched,” and they multiplied his religious concerns. They turned him to his Bible, to family and friends who felt as he did. It was in response to them that he concluded that he would gladly give all the gold and silver he ever could possess to meet “with one individual who could show me anything about God, heaven, or the plan of salvation.” Pushed by them he embarked while still a youth on a serious quest for a satisfying religion, and “the path that leads to the kingdom of heaven.”³⁷

Young actively inquired into the beliefs of all the major denominations in his region and of “almost every other religious ism” as well. Always the results were less than satisfying.³⁸ For one thing, he was distressed that the actions of professed Christians were not in harmony with Christ’s example. Too often, he thought, they oppressed the poor or cheated their neighbor, actions out of harmony with his own strict upbringing and his reading of the Bible. Such hypocrisy was not his main objection, however. Where he parted company with all of them was over doctrine. He could not find any who preached doctrine that answered his personal yearnings and growing questions or that seemed in harmony with his reading of the New Testament. He felt that the morals, preachings, and intentions of many were satisfactory, ^[51] but he could find none that taught doctrines that suited him. All had truth, he was certain, but not one could he embrace without reservation. “As far as their teachings were in accordance with the Bible, I could believe them, but no further.”³⁹

Brigham Young wanted more than moral preaching and generalizations. He yearned for solid doctrine and explicit teachings about God. He desired concrete descriptions of the path to salvation, which he concluded required more than a mere profession of belief. When he took these longings to the sects, always he returned empty. In camp meetings he observed men and women worked into a trance by religious excitement and motionless “from ten minutes to probably an hour without the least sign of life in their systems.” When they awoke, Young asked what they had seen or learned. Always the answer was the same: “Nothing or nobody.” “Nothing at all.”⁴⁰ He went to hear the famed preacher Lorenzo Dow, hoping to learn “something about the Son of God, the will of God, what the ancients did and received, saw and heard pertaining to God and heaven.” After an eloquent preachment of two or three hours, Young asked himself what he had learned. “Nothing, nothing but morals.” Dow could talk about the Sabbath, tell the people not to lie, steal or commit adultery, but when it came to teaching the “things of God,” Young thought him “as dark as midnight.”⁴¹

Young became acquainted with many ministers and, as he grew older and bolder, began to question them: “I read so and so in the Bible, how do you understand it?” Not only did they fail to enlighten him—“they would always leave me where they ^[52] found me, in the dark”—when he made known his own feelings, they often called him an infidel.⁴² Young readily admitted his disbelief in many of their teachings. Neither their creeds nor their preaching gave him solace or the answers he sought. He could not, he concluded, learn from the sectarians how to be saved. Continuing to ponder God’s designs for the earth and its inhabitants, he thought that he would walk across the continent to see a man who could tell him “the first thing” about God and heaven.⁴³

Young’s religious longings and his reactions to sectarianism can best be understood in connection with the widespread Christian primitivist movement of which he was a part. Although he may not have been even loosely associated with a “primitivist” or “seeker” group until his mid-twenties, nonetheless he was aware of their beliefs and probably spoke with many from this orientation. Both their assumptions and their conclusions clearly influenced Young’s own deliberations about religion. His disappointments with the sects and his expectations for a Bible religion have too much in common with other primitivists to be entirely coincidental. In general, primitivists were stirred by the revivals but reacted strongly against the sectarian conflict they helped engender. They saw the old-line churches as corrupt and apostate and stressed the need for “a restoration” of the “primitive” faith. Some awaited a new prophet as the best answer to the general apostasy. Finally, like Brigham Young, primitivists turned to the Bible—their own reading of the Bible—as the only authoritative guide. ^[53] Young clearly did not stand alone in these principles. It is likely that from the time he was religiously aware he had acquaintances and associates that shared this orientation. Both his reading of the Bible and his understanding of its message owed something to the primitivist movement that had been gathering momentum since the turn of the century.⁴⁴

Because of his primitivist assumptions, Young’s reading of the Bible convinced him that true religion was more than good morals and professions of belief, that it needed also authority and structure. “I read the Bible for myself,” Young insisted, and although the preachers called him an infidel for failing to accept that faith in Jesus would save him, he thought the Bible taught otherwise.

I understood from the Bible that when the Lord has a church upon the earth it was a system of ordinances, of laws and regulations to be obeyed, a society presided over and regulated by officers and ministers peculiar to itself to answer such and such purposes, and to bring to pass such and such results.

He challenged the ministers to tell him how the kingdom of God should be built up if the New Testament patterns were not the way. My dear friend, they would answer, “these things are done away with.” Ordinances? Mere matters of ceremony; belief was sufficient. A system of religion following the scriptural pattern he could not find. For Brigham Young, as with many primitivists, the conclusion was inescapable: “I knew that Jesus Christ had no true Church upon the earth.”⁴⁵

As Young understood the New Testament pattern, a people “built up and believing” according to its principles would have ^[54] among them “all the gifts and graces of the Gospel,” including apostles “to rule, govern, control, dictate, and give counsel.” Above all Young longed to associate with a man of God—not a preacher of morals alone but a prophet with the knowledge and power of heaven. Later he remembered having felt

that if I could see the face of a prophet, such as had lived on the earth in former times, a man that had revelations, to whom the heavens were opened, who knew God and his character, I would freely circumscribe the earth on my hands and knees.⁴⁶

Although his convictions about biblical religion had not changed, about the time of his marriage in 1824 he formally associated with the Methodism of his parents. “I patiently waited until I was twenty-three years old,” he said later, and then “to prevent my being any more pestered about it I joined.”⁴⁷ Perhaps, wearied of being called an unbeliever, his marriage to Miriam encouraged him to take this step of further legitimacy in his community. According to one scholar, revivals reminded the unchurched that they must belong to a church, “a point about which they were already feeling guilty.” Perhaps repeated revivals finally convinced Young that he ought to do what he could, even if it was not all he had hoped for. It is also clear that he remained concerned about salvation and that he viewed this as a proper time to “break off my sins and lead a better life.” A formal religious commitment might help. He joined the reformed Methodism of his parents, a society that had rejected strict Calvinism and moved in some measure in the directions Young sought. Though he did not agree with all of their teachings, he saw much good in the society and no harm in joining. Because he ^[55] insisted, he was baptized by immersion by a society which held that the form was not important.⁴⁸

It is unlikely that Young was long associated formally with the Methodists. Not long after his baptism he found employment in Oswego, New York, where he joined with other seekers in an informal society of prayer, song, and worship. And, his move to the Canandaigua-Mendon area not long after placed him in an area where the local Reformed Methodist organization had been dissolved.⁴⁹ Young’s involvement with the Oswego group, however, later occasioned a rare and revealing opportunity to see how a friend who had not followed him to Mormonism remembered Young’s early religious quest. More than thirty years later, Hiram McKee, himself a minister and concerned that as a Mormon Brigham Young had lost the piety of his youth, wrote him of the association and desires they had once shared. “How sweet was our communion in old Oswego, how encouraging our prayrs, and enlivening our songs,” wrote McKee.

I have often thought of you as I have been engaged in trying to preach the gospel . . . I have not forgotten your advise, counsel, prayrs. My confidence was great in you, in view of your deep piety, and faith in God. You was one of my early spiritual friends, and guides, and I have often enquired in my mind, I wonder if Brigham enjoys as much piety now as then, or wheather ambitian, and love of power, and distinction did not hold some sway in that mind, that was once so humble, contrite and devoted.⁵⁰

Brigham Young assured his friend that he, too, vividly remembered “the scenes, feelings and experience” of Oswego “when we were fellow seekers after the truths revealed from Heaven,” adding that, “so far as I am able to determine, I feel that I am and ever since ^[56] have been as honest a seeker after truth as I was during our acquaintance in Oswego.”⁵¹

As we have noted, among his acquaintances Brigham Young was known as an honest and sober man of industry, a “consistent Christian” who was interested in religion but not carried away by religious enthusiasms. When a local newspaper reprinted many years later the charge that Brigham Young had been “very fanatical and consequently noisy in meetings, shouting, screaming and howling with all his energy,” one who had known him well during this period replied. Young’s older brother Phinehas, himself a preacher at this time, may have been “noisy,” conceded the respondent, “but it is not true of Brigham. . . . We never thought him fanatical until after he became a Mormon.”⁵²

This was the sober and practical Brigham, not a man of visions and dreams, who long remembered a remarkable “vision” that he and others witnessed in the fall of 1827. He later described to associates in Nauvoo the remarkable lights which for two hours on a moonless night formed marching armies across the sky. “I gazed at it with my Wife—the light was perfectly clear and remained several hours—it formed into men like as if there were great armies.” Some miles away Brigham’s sister Fanny, father John Young, brother-in-law John P. Greene, and others witnessed the same display. Heber Kimball told the same Nauvoo audience that “President Young has given a short sketch of what has been. . . . I distinctly heard the guns crack and the swords clash.”⁵³

Joseph Young saw it as a sign of the coming of the Son of Man. No doubt Brigham and Miriam also saw it as a sign, but what ^[57] it portended they did not know. For several years the experience remained for them a vivid memory without specific meaning.

It was probably soon after this experience that Brigham Young first heard of Joseph Smith’s “Indian Bible.”

I suppose it was the first time that Joseph Smith gave to his Father the account of the finding of the records, that there was printed in the newspaper a short paragraph . . . that a young man had seen an angel and [the angel] had told him where to find an Indian Bible—and went on to inquire what if it should come forth and we should know about the Indians.⁵⁴

Living only a few miles from the Smiths, Young heard other stories about the young man and the book, generally negative stories that ridiculed his pretensions or exaggerated his foibles.⁵⁵ It would be years still before he would learn that 22 September 1827, the very night he and his wife had observed the lights in the sky, the angel, according to Joseph Smith, delivered to him the gold plates. Nor could Brigham yet have known that the mysterious book would be involved in his own long quest for personal religious integrity.

In 1829 Brigham and Miriam moved to Mendon, New York, and set up shop and home near the residence of Heber C. Kimball, a cousin of Young’s, soon to become his closest and lifelong friend. Father John Young was already in Mendon and sisters Fanny Murray and Rhoda Greene, along with brothers Lorenzo and Phinehas, lived nearby. Some of his relatives and new associates in Mendon could be described as seekers, like himself. In the words of Heber Kimball, they shared the same principles, “for the truth was what we wanted and would have.”⁵⁶ Others, like Phinehas and Joseph Young, were preachers, teaching abroad the religion they knew. It was here, in Mendon and vicinity, less than fifteen miles ^[58] from Palmyra, that they would all encounter the Book of Mormon and eventually accept it as a new scripture. All that was yet future, however, and when they read in the local press that Martin Harris had been to Rochester to prepare for the publication of the Golden Bible the notice apparently aroused no great sense of anticipation.⁵⁷

Far from feeling anticipation about the future, Brigham Young at this time experienced considerable gloominess, even despair. No doubt he was despondent, in part, about his failure to satisfy his deep religious longings. Continuing poverty and perhaps feelings of inferiority may also have contributed. Frequent moves suggest that he had not yet fulfilled his ambitions or found his niche in the world. Years of experience had also discouraged him about mankind and about human nature generally. Already he had seen firsthand enough examples of how men treated one another “to make me sick, tired, and disgusted with the world.” He felt like withdrawing from society and leaving behind “the vain, foolish, wicked, and unsatisfying customs and practices of the world”—a feeling that has importance for understanding his later commitment to establishing in Utah and elsewhere a new society apart from the world.⁵⁸ Brigham was not alone in feeling cast down. His friend Heber remembered feeling so gloomy that he wished he were dead. Brigham’s brothers Joseph and Phinehas sometimes expressed the same heaviness. According to Phinehas, in the fall of 1829 both he and Brigham felt so disheartened that they could not even pray with any enthusiasm. At that time Phinehas, echoing a common primitivist hope, tried to encourage his brother that ^[59] surely things would soon change: “Hang on,” he said, “for I know the Lord is agoing to do some thing for us.”⁵⁹

This, then, was the Brigham Young which Mormonism found. He was a man whose speech, ways of looking at the world, practical abilities and lack of formal training and refinement all related to the developing western New York of his youth and young manhood. His vision of the good life, his closeness to the soil and to the men who produced with their hands, his knowledge of men and human nature all grew out of the fertile soils of his homeland. He was a Puritan, disciplined and introspective, who had found life less than fulfilling, who was pessimistic about his own future and the condition of mankind, and who found no solace in the philosophies of his day. He was a man of rough-hewn toughness, independence and ability who had found no belief to unify mind and soul, no key to unlock his energies and harness his determination, and no cause to prod him to the growth sparked by great efforts. Nearly thirty, he was liked and respected but not distinguished. If he overcame his melancholy, appearances suggested he was likely to remain a craftsman, or certainly nothing more ambitious than a local politician.

The publication of the Book of Mormon set in motion the process that would change Brigham Young’s life, dismissing eventually the gloom, satisfying his deep religious longings, and sending him in directions he had never anticipated. He remembered being aware of the Book of Mormon, both by news accounts and by word of mouth, as soon as it was published. This occurred in March 1830, only a few miles away from his own home.^{60 [60]} Had he expected anything important in connection with it, he would have sought an early copy, no doubt. Instead, Joseph Smith’s brother Samuel’s earliest missionary labors left two copies of the book with members of the Young family, one purchased by Brigham’s brother Phinehas and another left with Brigham’s sister Rhoda and her husband John P. Greene.⁶¹ Phinehas set aside all other labors, “read it twice through, and pronounced it true.” He then lent the book to his father who, after reading it, said it was “the greatest work and the clearest of error of anything he had ever seen, the Bible not excepted.” Phinehas’ sister Fanny Murray got it next, read it “and declared it a revelation.”⁶² As the volume was passed about, Brigham Young first saw the book and soon had a turn to read either Phinehas’ or the Greene copy.⁶³

Although Brigham Young apparently had access to the book within a month of its publication and read it without delay, he was not as quick as some of the members of his family to pronounce the work divine.⁶⁴

“Hold on,” says I. . . . “Wait a little while; what is the doctrine of the book, and of the revelations the Lord has given? Let me apply my heart to them”; and after I had done this, I considered it my right to know for myself. . . I wished time sufficient to prove all things for myself.⁶⁵

No missionaries appeared to teach him; no organized group of believers invited him in. He sat down, alone, to ponder the book and test it the only way he knew—slowly, carefully, methodically. While he did not intend to be taken in by still another religious novelty, he would not risk passing over something that might satisfy his long-felt desires. As he approached the book, he felt no need for divine revelation about its authenticity. His “natural ^[61] wisdom and judgment” had been sufficient, he thought, to comprehend the deficiencies and discrepancies in the creeds of the day and he expected the same to be true with the Book of Mormon. Instead, he found something he could not immediately judge, either to embrace or discard. As he later told his assembled kin in Nauvoo, “I could get to the bottom of all religions that I have any knowledge of, but this I reasoned on month after month . . . this was out of my reach.”⁶⁶

Brigham Young read the book and pondered its message for perhaps eighteen months, and it would be two years between the time he first received the book and his Mormon baptism. He compared the book’s teachings with the Bible and allowed its ideas to ripen in his mind. Though he had long felt that traditions lay heavy upon the Christian world and blinded it to simple Biblical truths, he now struggled with his own traditions and presuppositions.⁶⁷ After considering the book for more than a year, Brigham told his brother Phinehas that he was “convinced that there was something in Mormonism.” Phinehas replied that he had long been satisfied of that.⁶⁸

As he began to be satisfied in his mind about the Book of Mormon, Young desired to meet those “who professed to believe it” and to judge in them the fruits of the doctrines. Ever practical, he wanted “to see whether good common sense was manifest; and if they had that, I wanted them to present it in accordance with the Scriptures.”⁶⁹ The first Mormon elders that either Young or Kimball heard were probably those from a small Mormon branch in Columbia, Bradford County, Pennsylvania, who several times passed ^[62] through the Mendon area traveling to or from Kirtland, Ohio, where Joseph Smith resided. Heber Kimball may have listened to them before Young—likely in the spring of 1831 when the Mormon elders traveled to Kirtland, Ohio, for a conference to be held in June. Although he first listened out of curiosity, their message that an angel had visited Joseph Smith with the fulness of the gospel, calling upon all men to repent, and their promise that the gifts of the Spirit would follow those who believed, immediately interested him.

As soon as I heard them I was convinced that they taught the truth, and that I had only received a part of the ordinances under the Baptist church. I also saw and heard the gifts of the spirit manifested by the elders, for they spoke in tongues and interpreted, which tended to strengthen my faith.⁷⁰

Young and Kimball both heard these elders preach in the fall of 1831 on their return from the June meetings in Ohio. According to Kimball’s account, they were “constrained by the Spirit to bear testimony of the truth which we had heard, and when we did this, the power of God rested upon us and we had a testimony that the work was true.” Young noted simply that he there heard preached “the everlasting Gospel as revealed to Joseph Smith the Prophet, which I heard and believed.”⁷¹

Now Young and Kimball pondered not only the Book of Mormon but the messages left by the elders and what they had felt and experienced personally. On one occasion Brigham, his brother Joseph and his father went out with Heber to get wood for brother Phinehas Young. Kimball related that as they labored they reflected upon the things the elders had told them, especially the ^[63] gathering of the Saints. They felt the glory of God around them and saw in vision

the gathering of the Saints to Zion, and the glory that would rest upon them; and many more things connected with that great event, such as the sufferings and persecutions which would come upon the people of God, and the calamities and judgments which would come upon the world.

For Heber this experience was one of several testimonies that the Mormon message was of God.⁷²

Although increasingly interested in Mormonism, they still had found no opportunity to observe a Mormon meeting or meet in worship with a Mormon family. Soon after the elders left Mendon, Kimball proposed to Brigham and Phinehas Young that they use his horse and sleigh to visit the Pennsylvania members in their own homes.⁷³ Apparently Vilate Kimball remained behind to care for the children so the other wives could accompany their husbands. Miriam must have been as anxious to visit the Pennsylvania Mormons as was Brigham or she would not—especially with her poor health—have braved in winter the two-hundred-fifty mile round trip journey.⁷⁴ As Young summarized,

We stayed with the church the[re] about six days, attended their meetings, heard them speak in tongues, interpret and prophecy: these things truly caused us to rejoice and praise the Lord. We returned home being convinced of the truth of these things . . . and bore testimony to the truth of those things which we had seen and heard to our friends and neighbors.⁷⁵

As soon as they returned from Pennsylvania, Brigham Young used the horse and sleigh to travel two hundred miles to discuss the gospel with his brother Joseph, then preaching in Canada. He had now to a large extent satisfied his own mind about Mormonism, but he wanted to share his feelings with his respected older brother and ^[64] see if Joseph concurred and would also join. Young’s Methodist minister brother-in-law John Greene, traveling his own preaching circuit, accompanied him part way that February. As the two men talked Mormonism, Brigham told the preacher, “if you dont get snagged I’ll treat.”⁷⁶

Brigham Young characterized his brother Joseph as a solemn man of sad heart and a “very spiritual man” who was always praying. Like Brigham, he had sought wisdom and solace from the Bible and had concluded that there were no “Bible Christians” on the earth. That conclusion left him in despair; he neither laughed nor smiled. “I do not see any possible escape for the human family,” he announced, “all must go to perdition.” It was to this older and trusted brother that Brigham Young explained his feelings about the “folly and nonsense so prevalent in the Christian world” and what he had found in Mormonism.⁷⁷ Joseph Young remembered that Brigham reported to him

many things of interest concerning the signs and wonderful mericals being wraught through the believers in this new faith. I was ripe for receiving something that would feed my mental cravings, and this seemed to be the food I wanted—nothing could have been more acceptable to my poor famishing soul. I hailed it as my spiritual jubilee—a deliverance from a long night of darkness and bondage.⁷⁸

Immensely interested, Joseph Young arranged to leave his Canadian ministry and return to Mendon with his brother. In March, shortly after the two brothers arrived in Mendon, Joseph Young accompanied his father and his brother Phinehas to the Pennsylvania Mormons and the three were baptized. Brigham Young was not with them. If he had found the message acceptable, why was he still hesitant to make the commitment? ^[65]

Apparently Young recognized that Mormonism presented him with a momentous decision. If it was not what it seemed, he must know and not be deceived. If, as he had progressively come to believe, it was what it professed to be, he must carefully prepare himself for a lifetime commitment. The weight of such a decision intensified his usual caution. He would not act without “time sufficient to prove all things for myself.”⁷⁹ Was he weak and tentative, unable to make up his mind—unwilling to take a risk—awaiting a manifestation so that he could be certain? Some of his later statements suggest this. Or was he slowly and carefully preparing himself for a crucial decision? It seems probable that his hesitancy resulted from both tentativeness and from a feeling of being inadequately prepared. It is also likely that there was at the time more of the tentativeness and unwillingness to be mistaken than is revealed in Young’s later statements, which stressed the careful preparation.

In addition to thoroughly examining the Book of Mormon, by this time Young had listened to the preaching of Mormon elders and visited the Saints in their homes. All of this he had discussed with his family and friends. Still, although his cautious mind had gradually been satisfied and his major concerns removed, he went to Canada not only to share the tidings with his brother but also because he was unwilling to trust his own wisdom—he wanted reassurance. “I had more confidence in [Joseph’s] judgement and discretion, and in the manifestations of God to him,” he later acknowledged, “than I had in myself, though I then believed the Book of Mormon to be true.” He did not intend to be mistaken. He ^[66] wanted all his doubts removed and he wanted to feel and to know he was right before he acted. Had this not eventually occurred, he later insisted, “I never would have embraced it to this day.”⁸⁰

No matter how diligently Young applied himself, his rational, methodical approach to Mormonism was not by itself sufficient. He had found the teachings of Mormonism reasonable as far as he could understand them, but he was full of questions, and some of the questions must have expressed lingering doubts. He had understood that the biblical pattern required apostles; why had he heard none preached? And if the officers were incomplete, what about the ordinances of the New Testament church; did Mormonism have all the ordinances and the authority to administer them? The Mormons spoke of a prophet on earth again, continuing revelation and new scripture, suggesting possibilities for an expanding vista of knowledge that, in Young’s words, “led the vision of my mind into eternity” and opened up possibilities beyond his immediate ability to grasp. When neither a practical approach to Mormonism nor the example of family members who accepted baptism had moved him to commitment, he knew that he must pray “and feel right about it” in every respect before he could go ahead.⁸¹

“I could not more honestly and earnestly have prepared myself to go into eternity than I did to come into this Church,” he later affirmed.⁸² During this period Young sorted out in his own mind the implications of joining the Mormons and tested himself on his willingness to stick to a commitment before he made one. If this was really the Bible religion he had long sought, ^[67] then, as the Bible challenged, it had to take precedence over all else, even his family commitments. Although he was not, in reality, forced to leave his family for Jesus’ sake, he consciously tested his feelings by applying the biblical injunction. He wrestled within, sorting out his feelings, until he knew “in the vision of my mind” he could, if required, leave his family and “know no other family but the family of God gathered together, or about to be, in this my day.”⁸³ Perhaps it was partly because he had tested himself this way that later, when sacrifice was required, he seemed not to hesitate to put his commitment to Mormonism—to his God, as he saw it—above all else. And it was because of this preparation that he could later say that his heart, soul and affections had been with the kingdom of God since the day of his baptism.⁸⁴

It was the plain testimony of a simple elder that firmly launched Brigham Young into Mormonism. Young’s own “judgment, natural endowments, and education” bowed to the direct word of a man without eloquence who could say only “I know.” Said Young of the experience,

the Holy Ghost proceeding from that individual illuminated my understanding, and light, glory, and immortality were before me. I was encircled by them, filled by them, and I knew for myself that the testimony of the man was true.

For Young the testimony of this man and his associates “was like fire in my bones . . . it bore witness to my spirit, and that was enough for me.”⁸⁵ The experience swept his doubts away and planted his feet in new directions. Thereafter he could say that when ^[68] Mormonism came along, “I fathomed it as far as I could and then I embraced it for all the day long.”⁸⁶

Eleazer Miller, one of the Pennsylvania elders, baptized Brigham Young on a cold and snowy fourteenth day of April 1832. With the ordinance came “a humble, child like spirit,” in his mind a confirming that his sins were forgiven even as the Savior had said. Young marveled as Miller ordained him an elder before the clothes were dry upon his back.⁸⁷ Three weeks later Brigham’s wife Miriam joined the Mormons. During this same period, in addition to Joseph, Phinehas and John Young, Brigham saw Lorenzo Young, the Kimballs, the Greenes and other relatives and acquaintances cast their lot with the Restoration.⁸⁸

Seldom was baptism by immersion as a symbol for death and resurrection to new life more appropriate than in the case of Brigham Young. Instead of gloom and despair, he was filled with “good feelings, with joy rejoicing” until both man and nature took on new aspects in his eyes. Hope and purpose replaced discouragement. He felt as if a curtain had been removed from the face of the sun to allow him to bask in the light of truth. Suddenly it became “Glory! Hallelujah! Praise God!” instead of sorrow and grief.⁸⁹ Indeed, he later explained, from the day of his baptism forward, he had felt as if he were in another world: “I never look back upon the old world but it is like looking into Hell.”⁹⁰

Young was certain that Mormonism had the power to revolutionize the world and from the time of his baptism, preaching was for him a high priority. He had thought society corrupt and foolish; now he felt he knew why: “The whole world . . . was ^[69] vailed in darkness. . . . what they understood was nothing more than a faint glimmering of light.” Just as the veil of darkness had been lifted from him, he could be an instrument to help lift it from others. His would be a message not of the brimstone and torment awaiting the wicked, but one of the hope and joy awaiting those who would repent.⁹¹ Truth and the gospel of salvation were his text, he said, and the world his circuit.⁹²

In reality, Young’s original circuit was confined to his own region, where he was assisted by Joseph and Phinehas and Heber C. Kimball. As Brigham Young later summarized the labors of that spring and summer, from Mendon they preached in every direction and “seven months had scarce passed away when there was a dozen branches raised up.” After that he went twice to Canada to preach and also traveled twice to Kirtland, Ohio, preaching along the way. Clearly he felt an urgency, a fire within that would not let him rest.⁹³

I wanted to thunder and roar out the Gospel to the nations. It burned in my bones like fire pent up. . . . nothing would satisfy me but to cry abroad in the world, what the Lord was doing in the latter-days. . . . I had to go out and preach, lest my bones should consume within me.⁹⁴

It was remarkable that Young, a man of humble background with unpolished speech who had not been in the habit of addressing the public, should have launched at once into preaching. No doubt he could express himself adequately in conversation, but he was untrained and lacked the confidence to face an audience. Unlike his brothers, Brigham had not developed his skills as a lay preacher and felt self-conscious and hesitant in public. He thought later that only his excitement over the Mormon message and ^[70] his conviction that the Lord could use even the weak things of the world could have persuaded him to become a public speaker.⁹⁵

Young’s initiation as a speaker came dramatically. One week after his baptism he attended a meeting with several experienced Mormon elders. They insisted, to his surprise, that they did not have the spirit to speak and that he must.

I was but a child, so far as public speaking and a knowledge of the world was concerned; but the Spirit of the Lord was upon me, and I felt as though my bones would consume within me unless I spoke to the people and told them . . . what I had experienced and rejoiced in.

He spoke for over an hour: “I opened my mouth and the Lord filled it.”⁹⁶ On other occasions, as well, it was the “fire” in his bones that motivated him to overcome his natural timidity. “I was obliged to do it, for I felt as though my bones would consume within me if I did not.”⁹⁷

Young’s success as a public speaker came only after much effort. Because of his lack of education, his speech was unsophisticated and he long felt embarrassed and “destitute of language” before an audience. In spite of these recognized liabilities, he consciously concluded: “I have the grit in me, and I will do my duty anyhow.”⁹⁸

While Young’s speech had little in common with the eloquent and studied oratory of the schools, its conversational tone and illustrations rooted in the experiences and idiom of the people proved effective. Indeed, his style came to resemble that advocated by the prominent revivalist Charles Finney, who recommended even for learned preachers not “splendid exhibitions of rhetoric” but extemporaneous speech filled with the impassioned utterances ^[71] of the common exhorter. He suggested simple language, short sentences and a colloquial manner, with frequent repetition and parables derived from the habits of the people. For Young these things came naturally. His speech was the direct, forceful and vivid idiom of the frontier, full of homespun imagery and colloquialisms. His approach to speaking also resembled that urged by the seminarian Lyman Beecher. “Young men,” said Beecher to his charges, “pump yourselves brim full of your subject until you can’t hold another drop, and then knock out the bung and let nature caper.”⁹⁹ In public or in private, in written or spoken language, the vigorous and colorful mode of discourse rooted in western New York and developed as a Mormon traveling missionary remained a part of Brigham Young’s personality and characterized his later leadership.¹⁰⁰

Some of the changes in Young’s life following his baptism were subtle and not immediately evident. Here began the process that eventually transformed Brigham Young, “carpenter, joiner” who made fine furniture with his hands into “President Young,” committed to making Saints and working with people more than things. Here, too, began the process that eventually transformed an obscure and uneducated working man of upstate New York into a major religious leader and a widely acclaimed pioneer and colonizer of the far West. For Brigham Young, Mormonism meant new directions, new priorities, and new opportunities. These released and channeled his energies, harnessed his abilities, and helped him develop new ones. From the time that Young embraced Mormonism, his relationship to it and responsibility toward it assumed first importance in his ^[72] life. Preaching and teaching it became his first love, seeing its message spread and obeyed his chief satisfaction, attending to its needs his principle concern.

In addition to his new priorities, Young also had his family to care for. His wife Miriam, ailing from the progressive disability of tuberculosis, needed assistance and special care, and apparently Young conscientiously provided it. His daughter remembered him explaining how he had helped when she was nearly bedridden. He

got breakfast for his wife, himself, and the little girls, dressed the children, cleaned up the house, carried his wife to the rocking chair by the fireplace and left her there until he could return in the evening. When he came home he cooked his own and the family’s supper, put his wife back to bed and finished up the day’s domestic labours.¹⁰¹

Years after Brigham Young left the area the charge appeared in a local newspaper that he had been indolent, neglected his family, and often left his wife without provisions. An acquaintance from this period who responded in print affirmed his industry and labeled the charge that he was neglectful of his family

the most unjust charge of all; there could scarcely be a more kind and affectionate husband and father than he was, and few men in his circumstances would have provided better for their families. Mrs. Young was sick, most of the time unable to do any kind of work, but she was a worthy woman, and an exemplary Christian; she was well deserving his care and attention, and she had it while she lived in Canandaigua.¹⁰²

While his wife was still alive Young apparently limited his missions to his own region, permitting him to assist Miriam and spend time with her. The Kimballs, some of the Young family and Grandma Works were near enough to assist Brigham’s wife and children when he was away. ^[73]

Less than five months after their baptism, Miriam died, leaving Brigham alone with two young daughters. She departed life sharing with Brigham a conviction that they would meet again. Young later insisted that he did not mourn her passing, though he would have except for the gospel. He was certain that “because the Priesthood is here,” the way was opened from earth to heaven “and my wife was going there.”¹⁰³ Brigham and his daughters moved in with the Kimballs and for the next eighteen months Vilate Kimball mothered her little namesake Vilate Young and Vilate’s older sister Elizabeth.

Disestablishing his household after Miriam’s death apparently led Brigham Young to act on an impulse he had felt since baptism—he gave away most of his possessions to friends and acquaintances who could use them. From the time of his baptism he had felt not only a spirit of unity with all of the new faith, but also a conviction that out of that faith and unity would come a new social and economic order. Laboring together to build up and beautify the earth, he was certain the Saints would produce more than they needed and all could share in the plenty. In the spring he had commenced to contract his business and lay aside his ledgers. With his daughters in Vilate’s care, he felt he now could go further. He wished to be unencumbered with material things, free to preach the message of joy and peace until Christ should come. This was his impulse and he acted on it.¹⁰⁴ Later he would ascribe to a different time table as he learned that the road to the new society he envisioned was long and difficult. But in 1832, ^[74] filled with the enthusiasm of the new convert, he set out Quixote-like to change the world. ^[75]