Introduction and Overview

The Documents

The documents presented here were selected for inclusion in this volume mainly because of their relevance to the history of the Latter-day Saints, personally and institutionally. But the stories in these documents are also relevant to many other areas of history, including the process of American colonization, Manifest Destiny, “frontier” masculinity, violence in antebellum America, nineteenth-century social networks, religious freedom, and more. These documents, most of which are published here for the first time, will be of interest to scholars of American history generally and of the settlement of Iowa and Illinois Territories in particular, as well as anyone interested in Latter-day Saint history from 1839 to 1846.

These documents are especially valuable for Latter-day Saint historians because they were originally written with the purpose of telling the history of Lee County by men who were not Latter-day Saints. While they lack Latter-day Saint bias, instead they have strong biases of their own, as they tell the “other side” of the story from two perspectives: first as early settlers of Iowa and second as faithful people in traditions other than that of the Latter-day Saints.

Three of these documents come from the Caleb F. Davis Collection, discussed above. These are biographical sketches about early settlers of Lee County, Iowa, namely Hawkins Taylor, David W. Kilbourne, and Laban B. Fleak. An additional 1876 autobiography by Hawkins Taylor, which is much longer than his entry in the Caleb F. Davis Collection, has also been included. These three men all experienced some tensions with their Latter-day Saint neighbors, but Kilbourne and Fleak became much more antagonistic than Taylor. It is important to recognize that these sketches from the Caleb F. Davis Collection pose specific historiographical problems: all of them are written a few decades after most of the events they record. Additionally, Kilbourne was deceased by the time Davis began collecting these histories, so Kilbourne’s entry is written by his son, George. Because of this problem, contemporary documents such as letters and newspaper articles have been included to supplement those from the Caleb F. Davis Collection. Additionally, in our editing, we have tried to analyze these less-contemporary documents from the perspective of memory. By comparing these documents to other histories of Lee County written in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, we can see patterns and themes that emerge regarding the Latter-day Saints and Iowans’ collective memories of their interactions with them. Interesting comparisons with similar conflicts between the Missourians and the arriving Latter-day Saint settlers can also be detected and drawn.

Additionally, to provide Iowa-specific local Latter-day Saint perspectives, we have also included the Iowa Stake minutes, along with several other documents of minutes and records kept by a bishop in Iowa. These documents not only give a certain credibility to the claims by Kilbourne and others that Saints in Iowa were often less than saintly, but also provide a unique look into the faithful leadership of men such as John Smith and Asahel Smith (uncles of Joseph Smith Jr.), Abraham O. Smoot, Lyman Wight, and others. Names of people who are often absent in other document collections, including the Joseph Smith Papers, appear here as elders, teachers, or deacons, attempting to work out their differences with other members, in leadership positions, and trying to build a city and community comparable to their neighbors across the river in Nauvoo. The Iowa Stake minutes also included a list, although incomplete, of members of the Iowa Stake. These documents have been edited lightly and provided primarily to supplement the documents which were the focus of this work.

Finally, it is important to recognize another bias of the documents collected herein: They are all written by and about men. This glaring androcentrism undoubtedly gives a skewed and incomplete version of events on either side of the Mississippi River. Hopefully, historians and scholars who use this collection can counteract this through a careful analysis of the gendered aspects of these documents and by supplementing these with documents that provide the voices of women, which these records unfortunately lack.

Why Focus on the Early History of Lee County, Iowa

What do we learn by studying a place that was not, at the time, and has not been, in the work of historians, a focal point of attention for understanding the history of Latter-day Saints during the Nauvoo years? By decentering Nauvoo during the Nauvoo years, historians can see the Latter-day Saint experience during this time differently. In Iowa, across the river, Saints did not operate in the near-constant presence of the most prominent leaders of the Church, such as Joseph and Emma Smith. Outside of the central limelight, the focus and purpose of Church duties and relationships in Iowa were different. In fact, it was the lack of public focus in Iowa that seemed to attract some, who were associated with the Saints or falsely claimed association with the Saints, who wanted to use the rapid development there to mask their ambitious or even criminal activities. And it was that criminal activity that pushed non–Latter-day Saints in Iowa to change their original perspective of the Latter-day Saints, and that negative opinion would remain in some Iowans’ collective memories for decades to come.

But crime was not the only public issue that faced Saints in Iowa. Contested land claims, religious arguments and fears, competition for business and river traffic, as well as high levels of alcohol consumption, all contributed to tensions that developed between Iowans and their new Latter-day Saint neighbors. By focusing more on Iowa, much can be learned about the lived experiences of Saints in the Nauvoo region, as well as the conflicts that everyday Saints faced, the tensions that naturally arose between some of these Saints and their neighbors, and how Church leadership and membership functioned across the river in Iowa, slightly removed from the hegemonic presence of Nauvoo.

The early history of Lee County, Iowa, is, like most places in American history, largely a story of the intentional appropriation of indigenous peoples’ land by white settlers and businessmen. In Lee County, there was at least some attempt by the government to put aside land for people of indigenous descent. The “Half-Breed Tract” was a large stretch of 119,000 acres between the Des Moines River and the Mississippi River that had been set aside by federal territorial law for those who had a mixture of indigenous and white ancestry.¹ However, when land agents, such as Isaac Galland and David Kilbourne, wanted access to the land during the 1830s and 1840s, a series of legislative actions first allowed indigenous peoples with valid claims to sell the land to investors, and then, eventually, gave white men completely unrestricted access to the land for their profit. One history of Lee County, published in 1887 (during the same time Caleb F. Davis was collecting his accounts for his collection of histories of Keokuk), explained the designation of this land for “half-breeds” and stated, “This arrangement did not suit the adventurers and speculators of that day, and finally Congress was induced to pass an act” which allowed for the sale of the land.²

Negative depictions of indigenous peoples in these accounts further serve the purpose of justifying this misappropriation of land. This same 1887 history described the indigenous people of the area as follows: “They neither toiled nor spun, but subsisted by hunting and fishing mainly, and dwelt in tents or wigwams. While they held the land they improved it not.”³ David Kilbourne, in his autobiography included in this volume, depicts the waning presence of Native Americans through the image of two defeated and submissive chiefs, Black Hawk and Keokuk. Chief Black Hawk had become a symbol to white America of an “acceptable” Native American, one who was defeated and forced to submit to white claims and authority.⁴ As one historian explained, Black Hawk represented “the hopelessness of defying the will of white America.”⁵

But the story in this volume, while enmeshed with the story of the appropriation of indigenous lands, is primarily about the contestation of that land between white settlers and the unique religious group seeking to build up a “Zion community” on the banks of the Mississippi. While most members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or the Mormons, eventually settled on the Illinois side of the Mississippi and helped to build a city they named Nauvoo, leaders of that fledgling Church first came to the area because of the promise of land in Iowa afforded through the now opening opportunities to purchase land in the Half-Breed Tract.⁶

Unaware of the complexities of land claims surrounding the Half-Breed Tract, Latter-day Saints began pouring into Lee County, Iowa Territory, as early as 1839. They were encouraged by Robert Lucas, the federal governor of Iowa Territory. In March 1839, he responded to a letter from Isaac Galland assuring him, “Their religious opinions I conceive have nothing to do with our political transactions. They are citizens of the United States, and are entitled to the same political rights and legal protection that other citizens are entitled to.”⁷ Families took refuge at the abandoned army barracks at the Old Fort Des Moines, located in Montrose, Iowa.⁸ At first, settlers in Lee County took pity on these refugees. Daniel F. Miller, another early prominent citizen of Lee County, later wrote that in December 1839, he and a few other men were walking along the Mississippi and stopped at the cabin of John Smith, uncle to the Prophet, Joseph Smith Jr. These men were shocked at the “sight of sickness and poverty there.”⁹ David W. Kilbourne, as justice of the peace in Montrose, helped Latter-day Saints sign affidavits in January 1840 relating to their losses and persecution in Missouri, in hopes of reparations.¹⁰ Around the same time, Governor Lucas wrote to Latter-day Saint Alanson Ripley and stated, of the Saints, “Since their expulsion from Missouri, a portion of them—about one hundred families, have settled in Lee County, and are generally considered industrious, inoffensive and worthy citizens.”¹¹

This attitude would soon change, however, and citizens like Kilbourne would decide that their Latter-day Saint neighbors were both offensive and unworthy citizens. While anti-Mormonism’s official organization in Illinois was often inspired by and centered around Joseph Smith’s inappropriate use of political power and the affront to American democracy and values which his actions seemed to outsiders to be, as well as in opposition to rumors of his and others’ plural marriages, the growth of anti-Mormonism in Iowa was based largely around different issues. While Iowans certainly took strong issue with Smith’s exercise of political power while also serving as a strong religious leader, it was the actions of ordinary people in Iowa that really seemed to push certain individuals, especially Fleak and Kilbourne, over the edge, giving them popular credence as well as reinforcing their old Missourian animosities. Thieving and drinking seemed to be particular problems among Iowan Latter-day Saints; even the Iowa Stake minutes corroborate this. Additionally, thanks to the complicated legislation surrounding land ownership in the wake of repealing the land set aside in the Half-Breed Tract, Iowans and Latter-day Saints in Iowa found themselves competing and arguing over land ownership, both with each other and with other Iowans. When the Latter-day Saints staked out land for their settlement of Zarahemla, Iowa, where they intended to build a temple and a great city to match the edifice across the river, Iowans gawked at their seeming disregard for current land ownership.

Tensions with Latter-day Saints in Lee County

Before discussing specific contributing factors to the tensions between Latter-day Saints in Lee County and their neighbors, it is important to recognize the different visions which leading citizens of Iowa and leading Latter-day Saints had for Lee County. When individuals like Laban Fleak, David Kilbourne, and Hawkins Taylor arrived in the small settlements along the Mississippi River in Lee County, they explained that the place was occupied by “river rats and steamboat roustabouts, the gamblers, assassins, and outlaws of the Upper Mississippi” who “made day and night hideous and black with their drunken debauches.”¹² Hawkins Taylor wrote that Keokuk was “a men wreckers town,” explaining, “There were but a few hundred people in the place. . . . Amongst the numbers was the worst class of men that could be found, murderers and gamblers and thieves of every class.”¹³ As “gentlemen” and capitalists, these men knew that they needed to rid the area of this “border society” and establish a unified “genteel or polite” society.¹⁴ To do so, they created strong social networks with like-minded men and put themselves and each other in positions of power. Taylor became sheriff and began arresting members of known gangs of criminals. Fleak and Kilbourne were both elected justice of the peace in their respective towns. Ridding these towns of their “border society” helped to assure that other members of the “polite” society would move into the area, and it helped protect businesses from criminal activity, both of which increased the possibility that men like Fleak and Kilbourne could expand their capital. Thus, Fleak, Taylor, Kilbourne, and other non–Latter-day Saint Iowans’ vision for Lee County was to create respectable and flourishing cities along the Mississippi, where they could profit from the unique short-term business opportunities provided by the development of these river towns.

Joseph Smith and other Latter-day Saints also had a vision of creating thriving cities along the Mississippi River, but these cities would provide a unique place for Latter-day Saints to practice their religion freely. And in 1840, Smith’s vision for Iowa was not simply to be a small extension of Nauvoo, but to build up a sister city across the river from Nauvoo. In the summer of 1840, there began to be discussions of building a temple in Nashville, a settlement close to Montrose which was densely populated by Latter-day Saints.¹⁵ In March 1841, after most other stakes in the Church had been disbanded and Saints had been asked to gather to Nauvoo, Smith declared that the Saints in Iowa were to “build up a city unto my name upon the land opposite to the city of Nauvoo and let the name of Zarahemla be named upon it. And let all those who come from the east and the west, and the north and the south that have desires to dwell therein, take up their inheritances in the same.”¹⁶ Smith had designated an area of land to be the city of Zarahemla in July 1839 on a visit to Iowa, but now he emphasized its importance by revealing it to be one of the two principal places that Latter-day Saints were to gather.¹⁷

At first, these two visions did not seem to contradict each other. The Saints could build up Zarahemla and develop sister cities opposite each other on the Mississippi River, and Kilbourne, Fleak, and others could profit from the presence of the Saints and other incoming respectable citizens. However, by the end of 1841, the same year as Smith’s revelation regarding Iowa, individuals such as Kilbourne began speaking out publicly about their problems with the Saints. These problems typically centered around two issues: land disputes and criminal activity. Moreover, Laban Fleak had prior connections with the Saints in Missouri. He had been a Missouri militia leader in the Battle of Crooked River, and he appears to have followed the Saints to this northeast corner of Missouri but planned to return to western Missouri, having ingratiated himself to Missouri Governor Thomas Reynolds¹⁸ after facilitating either the death or extradition of Joseph Smith back to Missouri for trial as an alleged accessory to an attempted assassination of the former Governor Lilburn Boggs, an archenemy of Joseph Smith.¹⁹ Considerable correspondence from Fleak to Governor Reynolds in 1842 and 1843, as well as two letters from Kilbourne to Reynolds and Fleak in 1842 and seven more letters from Kilbourne to Reverend Dent, 1842–1845, all in this present collection, show that political and religious issues were also prime sources of their hostilities toward Joseph Smith in particular.

On April 6, 1843, the Church held their annual conference at the temple in Nauvoo, Illinois. The leaders of the Church had officially disbanded the Iowa Stake a little over a year prior, but many members remained in Iowa. The entire morning session of the conference was taken up by discussions about funds for the Nauvoo temple. When they met back up in the afternoon, Hyrum Smith began by discussing “a band of men, and some who pretend to be strong in the faith of the doctrine of the Latter Day Saints,” but who “hold that it is right to steal from anyone who does not belong to the church provided they consecrate one third of it to the building of the Temple.”²⁰ He told the story of two men, David Holman and James Dunn, who were living in his house and confessed to stealing “from the world, not from the brethren.” They asked for forgiveness and said they would never do it again, but immediately went “across the river” to Montrose, Iowa, and stole salt and flour. Hyrum ended with, “Should I catch a Latter Day Saint stealing, he is the last man to whom I would show mercy.” Joseph Smith then spoke and continued the same topic, declaring, “Thieving must be stopped.”

Smith then discussed legal issues he was having with the new governor of Iowa, followed by a story about a man named Jacob Remick, who had deeded land in and around Keokuk, in the Half-Breed Tract, to Smith during the summer of 1842, but it later became apparent that this man might not actually have legal claim to that land.²¹ After explaining this complicated story, Smith stated, “I would not buy property in Iowa Territory: I consider it stooping to accept it as a gift.”²² In this conference, Smith highlighted these two key issues that, for the past several years, had made the Church’s position in Iowa precarious and problematic.

Isaac Galland is well known in the history of Nauvoo for his role in bringing the Saints to the area and for helping them buy up land.²³ He originally came to the area on his own but later partnered with the New York Land Company. David Kilbourne came to Montrose from New York as a representative of the New York Land Company. However, the two men began to develop a strained relationship and in October 1841, Kilbourne accused Galland of fraud in an article he published in the Iowa newspaper Hawkeye and Patriot.²⁴ In accusing Galland of fraud, Kilbourne was challenging the validity of the claims with Latter-day Saints in Iowa had to the land.

But it was not only Galland with whom Kilbourne took issue. In the next article that Kilbourne published, he continued to give an account of the complicated and discordant claims to the Half-Breed Tract, and then explained that Joseph Smith and the Saints assumed their claims to the land to be “Heaven derived.”²⁵ In the summer of 1841, Alanson Ripley²⁶ went over to Iowa and, with a group of men, surveyed a townsite for the town of Zarahemla which Smith had revealed was to be built up. However, Kilbourne claimed, Ripley paid little attention to existing land claims, and “with compass and chain they strided through gates and over fences to the very doors of the ‘Gentiles,’ and drove the stakes for the lots,” of the city. He continued, “They heeded not enclosures; why should they? is not the earth the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof? and shall not his ‘Saints’—of the Latter Day—inherit and possess it forever?”²⁷

Whether Ripley intentionally disregarded existing land claims in laying out Zarahemla, or whether he was simply clumsy and wanted to finish this job as fast as possible, Kilbourne interpreted this and other actions to mean that the Saints assumed they had a divine claim to this land that would supersede any legal claims that he and others held. For a land agent who came to Iowa for the purpose of profiting from the sale of this land, this idea was unacceptable. While David Kilbourne and his brother Edward would eventually make some sort of outward peace with their Latter-day Saint neighbors, even coming to Nauvoo in July 1842 to deny rumors that they were conspiring with John C. Bennett,²⁸ David Kilbourne would remain privately very opposed to the Saints.²⁹

But, as previously stated, land disputes were not the only issue which Kilbourne and others had with their ever-increasing Latter-day Saint neighbors. In Iowa, crime became a large concern for men like Laban Fleak, Hawkins Taylor, and David Kilbourne. As sheriff, Taylor recorded many instances of tracking down horse thieves and other criminals who seemed to be associated with the Latter-day Saints. However, in examining the often-amusing stories he tells, it becomes clear that there were several groups of people who committed crime in Lee County. There were those who clearly had no association with the Latter-day Saints, especially those whom Taylor arrested before or after the Saints’ time in Lee County. Then there are those whom people assumed to be Latter-day Saints but are not and do not claim to be. For example, while chasing a horse thief who is assumed to be a Latter-day Saint, Taylor follows him to Missouri, where he comes to a town where several men are being held in the jail there. The citizens of the town explain to Taylor that these are Mormons, but after going into the jail to talk with them, Taylor discovers that they were “not Mormons but abolitionists.”³⁰ Because of this, it is likely that at least some of the crime in Lee County which was attributed to the Latter-day Saints was committed by individuals or groups who had no connection to the Church at all.

However, there were a group of people who committed crime in Lee County and who claimed to be associated with the Latter-day Saints in hopes that the Church would protect them, but who were not actually members. The most prominent example of this are the Hodges brothers, who appear in several of the documents in this collection as well as in other histories of Lee County written in the late-nineteenth century. These men were trying to steal from a house in Lee County when they thought the occupants were not home, but upon discovering that they were home, killed the owner of the house and a man who was staying there. After being arrested, they claimed to be Latter-day Saints and demanded that the Church bring them over to Nauvoo. They did have a brother who had joined the Church and was living in Nauvoo, but they themselves were not Latter-day Saints, a fact that Iowans did not take time to distinguish. Rather, Iowans convicted these brothers, and the memory of their crimes and conviction, along with their association with the Latter-day Saints, remained in the memories of Iowans for decades to come.³¹

The final group of individuals who committed crime in Lee County cannot be ignored, and that is those who were active and accepted Latter-day Saints. Perhaps the most intriguing example of this is William A. Hickman, known to many as “Wild Bill” Hickman. An 1876 history of Lee County recorded a description of Hickman, referring to him as “the terror of Lee County,” that sounded like something out of fiction: “Tall, raw-boned, sandy haired and of a florid complexion, he was strong and sinewy, and in height about six feet, though appearing taller. His cold grey piercing eye proclaimed him a villain of the deepest dye, who hesitated at nothing from larceny to murder.” The history continued:

Like a pestilence which walks abroad in noon-day, he, with his fast horse, was omnipresent on the roads and at all public gatherings, a keen observer of all passing events, a secret spy upon the actions and conversations of the Mormons as well as his hereditary enemies, and the enemies of the Mormon Church, (whom he considered or affected to consider the chosen people of the Lord,) the Gentiles upon whom he made relentless war to the knife, and from the knife to the hilt. He and his followers accordingly seized and appropriated their property wherever they found it by stealth or by force.³²

“Notorious Bill Hickman” committed numerous crimes in Lee County for which he was never imprisoned, from thieving to murder (according to this history).³³ Hickman does appear in other histories of Lee County, recounting his crimes for which he was never brought to justice. Hickman’s stealing from an elderly man named John Wright is mentioned in multiple accounts.³⁴

But Hickman does not appear in the documents written by Laban Fleak, Hawkins Taylor, or David Kilbourne in this collection. It is certainly possible that Iowans’ memory of Hickman was exaggerated by Hickman’s 1872 autobiography, Brigham’s Destroying Angel: The Life, Confession, and Startling Disclosures of the Notorious Bill Hickman, which was written and published after Hickman’s excommunication from the Church in Utah. However, Hickman barely discusses his time in Iowa in this autobiography. Additionally, the editor of his autobiography noted, “Many old residents in [Iowa] will remember in the work published by E. W. Bonney, of Montrose, Iowa, and in old numbers of the Burlington Hawkeye, and Warsaw Signal, many allusions to Hickman.”³⁵ The memories of Hickman, it would seem, persisted even before his scandalous autobiography made his image as a villain popular. But one other important source which Hickman does appear frequently in are the minutes of the Iowa Stake and the Nashville Branch, published in this collection.³⁶ In these, Hickman, an elder in the priesthood, appears frequently as his fellow Latter-day Saints accused him of theft and in one instance of assaulting and threatening to kill another member with an axe.³⁷ If Hickman had no problem committing these kinds of crimes against other Latter-day Saints, then the accounts of Hickman as the “terror of Lee County” in which he committed larceny and murder against non–Latter-day Saints may not be too exaggerated.

The citizens of Lee County responded to this criminal activity by organizing themselves. In Keokuk, Fleak helped to organize a vigilance committee. This committee, one history explained, “was organized here . . . because the courts were too slow and rarely convicted criminals, though guilty.”³⁸ When citizens of Keokuk became increasingly frustrated with the amount of theft which was happening and their inability to convict anyone, they called a meeting which, Fleak explained, “was really called to devise some means to rid the town of Mormonism,”³⁹ and those present determined that if the Mormons refused to leave, “the neighborhood is pledged to drive them.”⁴⁰ At this meeting, likely held in November 1841, the citizens proposed that someone should buy all the property owned by the Mormons in Keokuk so that the Mormons could leave immediately.⁴¹ “The Mormons present, treated the proposition with contempt, and declared that they, as American citizens, had rights in Keokuk, . . . [and] that they would not leave the town.”⁴² Finally, the proposition was accepted. Within a few days, the Latter-day Saints property was apparently all paid for and the Saints left Keokuk.

In Montrose, Kilbourne first began to speak out publicly against the Latter-day Saints by recounting a string of thefts of which he had been the victim.⁴³ These robberies had forced him, Kilbourne explained, to reconsider his view of Latter-day Saints as mere victims. When the leaders in Nauvoo seemed unwilling to help him and others in Iowa ferret out the thieves from among them, Kilbourne felt that speaking out publicly about theft was his only option. However, in the spring of 1842, about six months after his articles were published detailing his issues with the Latter-day Saints, Kilbourne was able to outwardly create peace with the Latter-day Saints in Iowa. Daniel F. Miller, an early resident of Lee County, recounted a meeting he attended where John Smith, uncle of Joseph Smith Jr., and David Kilbourne both agreed to “cease hostility.”⁴⁴ This apparently calmed the relations between the two groups enough that Kilbourne did not speak out publicly against the Latter-day Saints again, although he did remain privately opposed to them as evidence in letters he wrote to Governor Thomas Reynolds and a reverend in England named T. Dent.⁴⁵

At a mass meeting held at Fort Madison, Iowa, on October 16, 1845, it was decided that “the Mormons and others who do not belong to their peculiar faith cannot reside together in peace, and whereas for the purpose of preventing further violence it is thought advisable that the Mormons and citizens of Lee county should no longer remain together.”⁴⁶ The meeting resulted in a selection of Anti-Mormon candidates to represent Lee County in the upcoming election, and an address sent to the citizens of the county on the proceedings of the meeting. As for the necessity of an Anti-Mormon ticket, they cited the many crimes purported to be committed by Mormons in the area, and the lack of convictions for those crimes. They promised that the goal of these candidates would be to remove the Mormons from among them.⁴⁷

Tensions between Latter-day Saints and their neighbors in Lee County, Iowa, developed in connection with but distinct from tensions in Hancock County, Illinois. Political power played much less of a role in Lee County, although the number of Latter-day Saints living there was significant. Rather, it was land disputes and criminal activity which seemed to create the most problems for Iowan Latter-day Saints. The overarching theme, however, was the threat which Latter-day Saints posed to the capitalistic interests of leading citizens in Lee County. Both land disputes and criminal activity would slow down profits which individuals such as Kilbourne and Fleak could be making from land sales and other business ventures. The distinct beliefs of Latter-day Saints were hardly critiqued, only mentioned as curiosities. Thus, it was not theology which anti-Mormons had issue with but the potential for that theology to prevent the success of their own economic enterprises.

Influence of Iowans on Events in Nauvoo

While focusing on Iowa during the Nauvoo years does reveal a unique and often unrecognized narrative about the tensions between Latter-day Saints and their neighbors in the 1840s, it also reveals how influential certain individuals and events in Iowa were to events in Nauvoo. For example, two events discussed in the documents in this collection in which Iowans had an important and sometimes unrecognized role were the 1842 attempts to extradite Joseph Smith to Missouri and the 1846 Battle of Nauvoo.

It did not appear that Joseph Smith was a suspect in the attempted assassination of previous Missouri Governor Lilburn Boggs until David Kilbourne wrote a letter to Governor Thomas Reynolds, current governor of Missouri, suggesting that “it was done by some of Joes minions at his instigation.”⁴⁸ In July 1842, Fleak wrote the first of several letters to Reynolds, keeping him up to date on extradition attempts and encouraging him to offer a reward, which Fleak would be happy to contribute to.⁴⁹ In August 1842, Kilbourne wrote to “Friend Fleak” about the extradition attempts, saying, “I suppose the next step will be to offer a reward for him as a fugitive from justice.”⁵⁰ Kilbourne and Fleak, who had lived in Missouri prior to coming to Iowa and who moved back there for a short period from 1844 to 1845, played critical roles in these extradition attempts and in connecting Missourians’ concerns over the Saints with Iowans.

Another well-known event which Iowans influenced in critical ways was the Battle of Nauvoo during the summer of 1846. In his autobiography, Fleak explained his role in stealing ammunitions which were being shipped from St. Louis to Nauvoo for the Latter-day Saint militia there. After a brief altercation with the men transporting these ammunitions, Fleak and a few others sent them “over the river” to the anti-Mormon forces gathering outside of Nauvoo “where they would be put to good use.”⁵¹

Accounts such as these, found within the documents in this collection, help to create a more complete version of important events in Nauvoo during the time that the Latter-day Saints were a prominent presence in the area.

This introduction, focusing mainly on materials relating to Iowa, is not meant to give a complete account of what these documents add to our knowledge of the Latter-day Saint experience in Lee County, Iowa, and in Nauvoo, Illinois, during the 1840s. These are but a handful of examples of ways in which these documents challenge or enrich previous historical narratives, showing why it is important to study Iowa during the Nauvoo period of Latter-day Saint history.

Editorial Method

The goal of this volume is to bring together and publish transcripts of documents related to Latter-day Saints in Iowa Territory during the Nauvoo period of Church history, making available primary sources that have been underutilized and that reveal different perspectives of Nauvoo. While most of the documents were written by three non–Latter-day Saints, who each contributed in some way to the development of anti-Mormonism in the greater Nauvoo area, we also included official Church minutes and documents from the Iowa Stake and Iowan congregations.

The transcriptions preserve original spelling and punctuation. Square brackets [ ] indicate editorial insertions such as manuscript page numbers. Where necessary for clarity, we added missing letters or information in square brackets. Question marks indicate unclear words. Incorrect dates, place names, and other errors of fact were left, occasionally with such errors noted in the historical introductions for the document. Salutation and signature placements have been standardized. Paragraph breaks, punctuation marks, and subheadings have been added occasionally to facilitate readability.

The purpose of the historical introductions, editorial notes, footnotes, and other such annotation were not to provide a complete narrative of this history, but rather to provide important background and context for the events, individuals, and places discussed in the documents. These historical documents are presented in the long-standing tradition of documentary editing and publishing that has been professionally carried out by BYU Studies since the 1960s.