Frederick Granger Williams (1787–1842) fulfilled many roles and was an important figure during the early days of the restoration of the gospel and the organization of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He served as a missionary on the original mission to the Lamanites (1830–31), was a personal scribe to the Prophet Joseph Smith for four years (1832–36), was Second Counselor in the First Presidency for five years (1833–37), and was the principal doctor for the Saints in Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois (1831–42), until his death. In addition, he was a military commander, spy, scout, historian, doctor, and paymaster for Zion’s Camp (1834); a trustee of the Church-sponsored Kirtland School (1835); publisher of the first Latter-day Saint hymnal and the Doctrine and Covenants (1835); artist for the plans of the Independence Temple and the Kirtland Town Plat (1835–36); editor of the Church-sponsored Northern Times newspaper (1835–36); an officer of the Kirtland Safety Society (1836–37); a justice of the peace in Geauga County, Ohio (which made him the first member of the Church to be elected to a government office); and a large landowner in Kirtland whose farm the Lord wished to retain for five years as a stronghold.1
Prior to joining the Church, young Frederick had been a pilot on the Great Lakes, guiding Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry on Lake Erie during the War of 1812. He later taught school and became a farmer before turning to medicine as his life’s work. He held an elected civil office in Warrensville, Ohio, for four years, owned land, and was relatively wealthy and highly respected. He married Rebecca Swain from Pennsylvania in 1815, and to their union were born four children. When Frederick and Rebecca and their older children joined the Church in Kirtland in 1830, he was a successful doctor with an established practice and a bright future. He entered the Church in his mature years, forsaking all these material things, vigorously engaging in the Church’s activities. Although his testimony and love of the gospel and of Joseph Smith caused him to be persecuted and driven from his homes—and in time cost him all he owned and broke his health—it was only within the Church that he rose to his greatest heights. His was the privilege of being equal in holding the keys of the kingdom with Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon.2 He participated in many glorious spiritual experiences, culminating with the dedication of the Kirtland Temple, where he was permitted to see a heavenly personage, the Savior himself. He lost his position of leadership in 1837 and eventually his membership in the Church in 1839. But whatever his personal weaknesses, he had the strength of character to maintain his loyalty to the Prophet and return humbly to the Church in 1840, when it would have been so easy to have disintegrated in bitterness. He died in 1842 in full fellowship, two years before the Prophet’s death.
As a believer in the restored gospel of Jesus Christ and as a member of the Prophet’s inner circle, President Williams participated in many spiritual visions and received many revelations. He was also in a position to see firsthand the reality of trying to live the life of a Saint from the perspective of a doctor, where he saw people at their physical worst; as a judge, where he saw distraught people appealing to the law for redress; and as a member of the highest quorum of the Church, where he participated in many disciplinary councils. It may be that because Frederick was eighteen years older than the Prophet and was already well established in life, he likely was not a threat to Joseph’s leadership, but rather was appreciated as a trusted and wise counselor and friend (Joseph named a son after him). Frederick was also called friend by the Lord.3
Rebecca, his widow, and their son Ezra—the sole survivor of their four children and a doctor himself—also remained faithful to the Church and came west to Utah in 1849, in the companies led by Apostles Ezra T. Benson and George A. Smith, after stops in St. Louis, Winter Quarters, and Council Bluffs. No other member of the original First Presidency had family that remained in the Church or that came west.
Organization of the Documentary History
The narrative of this documentary history is presented chronologically, although it is divided into overlapping sections that are either topical in nature (medicine, justice of the peace, First Presidency) or geographical (Kirtland, Missouri, Nauvoo), with each section containing three to five chapters. Copies of original documents, as well as other materials, are published online at http://byustudies.byu.edu/FGW.aspx. [These documents have been incorporated into this online version of the book, titled as supplemental chapters.] This allows the readers and historians a chance to judge the record for themselves. The contemporary lists of Dr. Williams’s patients found both in his 1837 medical ledger and in his 1842 probate file, plus the list of the citizens Esquire Williams served as justice of the peace, may prove helpful to future historians in establishing the early Mormon community, confirming the work of such predecessors as Susan Easton Black.
Frederick G. Williams did not record his life. He left no known diary, biography, memoir, or history. The few personal writings he left us consist of a dozen notes on scraps of paper and one brief letter. However, thanks to his engaged life in the Church, his activities were recorded in the writings of the Prophet and of the Prophet’s scribes, as well as in the writings of several of his contemporaries who mentioned him in passing. He is also occasionally mentioned in the local press, most notably in Church newspapers such as the Kirtland (Ohio) Messenger and Advocate and the Nauvoo (Illinois) Times and Seasons. His name also appeared from time to time in the Painesville (Ohio) Telegraph and in the Quincy (Illinois) Whig.
Something of Frederick’s life is also revealed in the records of the societies and organizations to which he belonged, such as the account book for the firm of F. G. Williams & Co. and the ledger for the Kirtland Anti-Banking Safety Society. He is also found in the public documents of the townships and counties in which he lived, chief among them the Kirtland Township Minutes and the Geauga County records of taxes and deeds. The most substantial record that has survived is President Williams’s 1837 medical ledger, although admittedly thin on personal information, except for the genealogy and biographical sketches recorded by the second and third generations in its unused portions.
Objective of the Documentary History
My main objective in writing this documentary history is to gather every contemporary reference to Frederick G. Williams and set it in its historical context for future studies by historians and biographers. Because President Williams was involved with nearly every program and project of the Church from 1830 until his death in 1842, each section, if not each chapter, could have been the subject of a volume unto itself. Such an in-depth analysis was not contemplated, however, for it would have required expertise in more subjects than I possess. I chose instead a broad and comprehensive approach in order to give as complete a picture of President Williams’s life and character as possible. Without his personal writings, the record is necessarily of the public man, with only glimpses of his inner self from time to time. While generally pleased with the many things I was able to discover, with the lack of personal writings by Frederick G. Williams and an incomplete Church record, I was unable to shed as much light as I had wished on some important events in his life, such as why he was voted out of the First Presidency in a general assembly of the Church in Missouri in 1837 when he had just been sustained in that calling in a conference held in Kirtland two months before. Also, why was he included in the group that was excommunicated in Quincy in 1839, and what was the nature of his transgression? At this distance chronologically, and lacking firsthand information, it may not be possible to adequately answer those questions, which is a disappointment. On the bright side, I was able to shine a light on such topics as Williams’s Kirtland property, his medical practice, his role in Zion’s Camp, and his scribal activities in the service of the Prophet, while also bringing to light his term as justice of the peace and the previously unknown authorship of the songs he composed, which appeared in the first Latter-day Saint hymnal.
Writing a documentary history carries with it a responsibility to be not only informative and interesting but also fair and accurate. I readily admit that I am a believer in the same faith embraced by my ancestor and namesake. With regards to the personal weaknesses found in Williams and his fellow associates in the highest councils of the Church, I subscribe to the position taken by Latter-day Saint historian and General Authority B. H. Roberts in the preface to his Comprehensive History of the Church. Speaking of those early leaders, Roberts observed:
But while the officers and members of the church possess this spiritual “treasure,” they carried it in earthen vessels; and that earthliness, with their human limitations, was plainly manifested on many occasions and in various ways, both in personal conduct and in collective deportment. But back of all that, and it should never be lost sight of, is the supreme fact—and it was a controlling element in all their proceedings—that they occupied such relations with God that they were, on occasion, moved upon to speak and act as God would speak and act.4
Roberts goes on to state that although those early leaders made mistakes, they were the best men to be had for the work and were called by God to carry it forth.
While many of them fell into grievous sins, and all of them at times plainly manifested errors of judgment and limitations in their conceptions of the greatness and grandeur of the work in which they were engaged, yet doubtless they were the best men to be had for the work, since they were chosen either directly of God, or else by a divinely appointed authority, and in either case called of God, and ordained to bring forth the work.5
Speaking specifically of President Frederick G. Williams, B. H. Roberts wrote the following to Williams’s grandson Ezra Henry Granger Williams.
My attention has been called to what is considered a little neglect of your . . . grandfather’s historical connection with the Church and concerning the work to be done for him in the Temple. The matter was called to my attention because of the sympathy that I have for our early Church leaders and the recollection of the fact by me that in some cases perhaps fairness and justice was not always dealt out to them in the dark and cloudy days thru which the Church passed, and when men thru lack of experience and adjustment to the new and developing organization got out of step and lagged behind.
Now as you know, I was careful to hunt up and obtain from you a photograph of . . . [your] grandfather, . . . Frederick G. Williams, once in the presidency of the Church, and as I had hoped, rescued him from oblivion into which his memory had fallen. . . . I think that it devolves upon you to earnestly carry that forth to completion, removing obstacles that may have arisen concerning it so that justice may be secured for this veteran in the work of the Lord, for I am one who believes that the little weaknesses and misfortunes that baffle men ought not to stand in the way of those who were undoubtedly chosen of the Lord to assist in bring[ing] forth this work, and Dr. Williams was one who contributed to that cause and his legal representatives should be diligent in seeing that there is secured to him every blessing which of right can be claimed in his behalf.6
The Research for the Documentary History Came in Stages
It has been a desire of mine for many years to see a comprehensive documentary history of Frederick G. Williams come to fruition. The first significant steps began when my wife, Carol, and I moved from South Gate, California, to Provo, Utah, to attend Brigham Young University in 1965. We determined to do research in the Church Historian’s Office and to visit with as many relatives as we could find. The Church Historian’s archives had a file containing President Williams’s papers, as well as his 1837 medical ledger. We were permitted to copy the file and portions of the ledger.
The most fruitful contact among President Williams’s descendants was my Aunt Elizabeth “Beth” Williams Rogers of Salt Lake City, the sister of my father, Frederick Salem Williams; Beth had assisted their mother, Nancy Abigail Clement Williams (1872–1954), in the preparation of the first biography on Frederick G. Williams, entitled After 100 Years.7 Aunt Beth turned over to me assorted papers, letters, and journals her mother had used in writing her book. These papers contain valuable information on President Williams and help identify many of Nancy C. Williams’s sources.
Others who provided helpful information included Annie Rebecca Williams of Ogden, daughter of Ezra Henry Granger Williams (1855–1929), a grandson of President Williams. She had inherited the painting of Frederick G. Williams (which she donated to the Church and which today is in the Church History Museum) and President Williams’s signed and dated Bible concordance, which is in my possession. She also gave me papers, books, and photographs belonging to the family. Another helpful source of information was Gwenivere Richards of Pleasant Grove, a great-great-granddaughter of President Williams, who allowed me to copy certificates, photographs, and notebooks that had belonged to Ezra Granger Williams (1823–1905), Dr. Frederick G. Williams’s son.
The second significant step that made possible the writing of this documentary history came when Carol and I moved to Madison to attend the University of Wisconsin for my MA and PhD degrees in Luso-Brazilian literature. During the five years we lived there (1966–71), we took advantage of the relative proximity to Nauvoo, Illinois, and Kirtland, Ohio, and took trips to those and other Church history locations, searching for documents. We copied President Williams’s probate file in Quincy, Illinois (which showed he had died on October 10, 1842, and not on October 25 or October 2, dates that had been recorded by his descendants), and read through the early years of the Quincy Whig newspaper. In Kirtland, Chardon, and Mentor, Ohio, we copied civil records that touch on President Williams’s career as a doctor and as a justice of the peace. We also copied records of deeds and taxes and other documents.
From the stories that had been handed down and collected by Frederick G. Williams’s descendants in Utah and from the civil records we copied in the Midwest, I was able to write and publish two articles: “Frederick G. Williams, ‘Veteran in the Work of the Lord,’” and “Frederick Granger Williams of the First Presidency of the Church.”8 Over the years, while teaching and publishing in Portuguese studies, I also took short vacations to Utah to do research on President Williams in the Church archives, and occasionally published my findings, such as the 1988 article “Did Lehi Land in Chile? An Assessment of the Frederick G. Williams Statement,” published by the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies at Brigham Young University. But I was a long way from writing a complete documentary history.
That changed when the third significant step was taken. In 1999, after twenty-seven years of teaching at the University of California (first at UCLA and then at UCSB), I accepted the invitation to join the faculty of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at BYU. The move to Utah was providential, for it allowed Carol to sing with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and gave me an opportunity to be near the Church archives and professional historians to aid me in my quest. I am most grateful for the Gerrit de Jong Jr. Distinguished Professorship, which has provided me with funding for supplies and trips to Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois to do research. I am likewise grateful to Brigham Young University, which has granted me leaves of absence to concentrate my efforts.
