Part Three: Laban B. Fleak Documents

Laban Bramble Fleak was a product of the rapidly expanding and opportunistic river industry. Fleak was born on January 27, 1808, in Hamilton County, Ohio, to Peter and Lavina Bramble Fleak.¹ Peter Fleak had made his fortune on the river, transporting goods from up north to New Orleans. But Peter died in 1813 when young Fleak was only five years old. His mother remarried a man named Andrew Whetsel and made sure that Fleak received a good education at the High School and Academy of Cincinnati.²

As a young man, Fleak moved from one place to the next rather quickly. After finishing school, he visited an uncle in England but stayed only a few months thanks to a smallpox outbreak. Next, Fleak visited an uncle in Indiana before starting a job as a headmaster of a school in Columbus, Ohio. He stayed in that position for eighteen months, during which time he married Harriet Sundbeck. They had a son but not before they separated, she returning to her parents. They later officially divorced when Harriet wanted to remarry. After his short time as headmaster, Fleak took the inheritance money left him by his deceased father and moved to Canada, where he got involved in the wheat business, buying and shipping wheat to Detroit. He also bought a small schooner and operated it on Lake Erie in the early 1830s.

After a short time in Canada, Fleak decided to head back toward home and stopped in New York, where he contracted cholera and nearly died. He next went to Centerville, Pennsylvania, where he met Julia A. Pennock, and they were married in June 1835. Fleak remained in Centerville for several months, enjoying his new wife and friends, but then decided to head out west in search of opportunities. He ended up in Richmond, in western Missouri, and opened a jewelry store there.

Fleak spent nearly five years in Missouri, living in both Richmond and Clarke County, the longest he had stayed anywhere so far in his adult life. While living in Missouri, Fleak had his first serious encounters with the Latter-day Saints. In 1838, Fleak had taken a trip up to Keokuk, in the Iowa Territory at the confluence of the Des Moines River and Mississippi River. He determined that he wanted to move his family there soon. But his journey back home was disrupted when the captain of the boat he was on refused to land because of fighting between the Latter-day Saints and their Missourian neighbors. He finally made it back to Richmond, Missouri, the day before the Battle of Crooked River.³

Immediately following that brief armed encounter, all able-bodied Missouri men were called to gather at Buffalo City to form a militia. Fleak arrived on October 30 and was elected captain of 135 men activated from his township.⁴ As part of the army which marched on Far West, Missouri, Fleak explained, “The militia were determined . . . to exterminate the devils,” but they eventually gave up their determination when higher-up officers forced them to honor the Saints’ white truce flag. Fleak’s account recorded that over a hundred Mormon women, armed with only “corn cutters, [and] Bowie knives,” were prepared to fight.⁵

But Fleak’s status as an anti-Mormon was not yet secure, despite his participation in that march on Far West. More likely, Fleak was at this time responding mainly to what he saw as his civic duty. One source shows him offering compassion to one of his Latter-day Saint neighbors. Elijah Reed explained that while living in Ray County, Missouri, a group of men tried to drive him from his home, but “Mr. L. B. Fleak a Neighbor of mine Kindly Interceded For me & my Fam[ily] . . . [and] Prevailed upon to let . . . us Stay until we were able to remove.”⁶

However, within a couple of years, Fleak would become a prominent and outspoken anti-Mormon, involved in forming the official Anti-Mormon party in Lee County, Iowa. During the winter of 1839–40, Fleak closed his business in Missouri and moved his family up to Iowa while continuing to identify himself as a Missourian. They settled in Keokuk, on the Mississippi river directly across from Warsaw, Illinois. Here in this small but growing river town, Fleak was presented with lots of opportunities. He was the first to open a store in the town, he later ran the first hotel, became the first justice of the peace, and the first town postmaster.⁷ He also operated a successful “lighting” industry along the Mississippi river, a process of lightening boats by removing cargo and/or people and transporting them overland so that the boats could pass through the rapids. The city of Keokuk had been a trading post for the American Fur Company, and their buildings left along the river became known as “Rat Row.”⁸ The early town was known for its “rougher” occupants. Hawkins Taylor explained, “Amongst the numbers was the worst class of men that could be found, murderers and gamblers and thieves of every class.”⁹ Fleak and other incoming settlers and businessmen hoped to transform the small rough river town into a thriving and respectable city. However, the aspirations of businessmen all along this part of the Mississippi River were complicated by the immigration of thousands of Latter-day Saints.

During 1841, Iowans and Illinoisans alike began to bristle at the activities of their Latter-day Saint neighbors. Fleak built connections with other like-minded recent settlers in the area, such as the two Kilbourne brothers in Montrose, along with Thomas Sharp, Levi Williams, and the Chittendens in Warsaw. In addition to reflecting obvious religious and social differences, anti-Mormonism in Illinois formed principally in opposition to the seemingly un-American political power that the Latter-day Saint leaders held. In Iowa, anti-Mormonism formed principally in opposition to the criminal element which Latter-day Saint settlement seemed to bring. The Latter-day Saints, thus, seemed to pose a threat to Fleak’s capitalistic ambitions by preventing Keokuk from becoming the respectable town that Fleak needed it to be for his business to flourish.

Because of this, Fleak worked hard to dissuade Latter-day Saints’ presence in Keokuk. He helped organize a vigilance committee which, one history explained, was formed “because the courts were too slow and rarely convicted criminals, though guilty.”¹⁰ Fleak wrote to Thomas Reynolds, governor of Missouri, at least thirteen times during the attempts to extradite Joseph Smith in 1842 and 1843, as also did David Kilbourne, at least twice. Fleak spoke to Reynolds of his connection and loyalty to Missouri, encouraged Reynolds to offer rewards for Smith’s capture, reported on Smith’s whereabouts, accused Smith of forming an alliance with Native American tribes, and even spoke of bringing Smith to Missouri himself and had engaged three partners with whom he would share the reward money.¹¹ Fleak mentioned none of this in his 1882 account of his life for the Caleb F. Davis Collection.

According to Fleak, multiple attempts were made on his life, which Fleak believed to be the actions of the Danites responding to Smith’s orders. In 1844, Fleak removed to Missouri because his wife was understandably anxious that her husband might die. As the Fleaks arrived in Missouri, they received what Fleak’s autobiography calls the “glorious news of the killing of Jo Smith, and his brother Hiram at Carthage,” adding that “no news that Fleak ever rec’d gave as much joy to him and his wife, as did this.”¹² They returned to Keokuk in 1845, just in time for Fleak to be involved with the Anti-Mormon party in Lee County, Iowa.¹³ And then in 1846, during the Battle of Nauvoo, Fleak captured a shipment of guns and ammunitions, which the Latter-day Saints had ordered from St. Louis, and handed them over to the anti-Mormon militia.

After the Mormons were driven out of Illinois and Iowa, Fleak went back to making Keokuk the flourishing city that he wanted it to be. He enjoyed his friends in Keokuk and raised six children, many of whom went off to fight in the Civil War. Fleak moved up to Brighton, Iowa, in the second part of his life and there ran a hotel and edited a newspaper. Fleak, never one to stay put, travelled back and forth between Brighton and Keokuk, as well as other towns in Iowa and Missouri. He died and is buried in Brighton, Iowa. One history of Washington County, where Brighton is located, said of Fleak, “Of a jovial disposition, he manages to keep every one around him in good humor. He is a man of more than ordinary ability, and knows well how to express himself upon every subject of general interest.”¹⁴ Heralded by early citizens of both Keokuk and Brighton as a key figure in the development of their cities, Fleak is also remembered as one of the leading anti-Mormons of Lee County, Iowa, his obituary recalling that “he was an active participant in the movement which resulted in driving the Mormons from Nauvoo.”¹⁵