Читать книгу Heroines of Mormondom - Various - Страница 2

Hyrum Smith, the Patriarch, married Jerusha Barden, November 2, 1826. They had six children, viz: Lovina, Mary, John, Hyrum, Jerusha and Sarah. Mary died when very young, and her mother died soon after the birth of her daughter, Sarah. Hyrum, the second son, died in Nauvoo, in 1842, aged eight years. The Patriarch married his second wife, Mary Fielding, in the year 1837, she entering upon the important duty of stepmother to five children, which task she performed, under the most trying and afflictive circumstances, with unwavering fidelity. She had two children, Joseph and Martha. Thus, you see, Hyrum Smith, the Patriarch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was really a polygamist many years before the revelation on celestial marriage was written, though, perhaps, about the time it was given to the Prophet Joseph Smith; but not exactly in the sense in which the word is generally used, for both his wives were not living together on the earth; still they were both alive, for the spirit never dies, and they were both his wives – the mothers of his children. Marriage is ordained of God, and when performed by the authority of His Priesthood, is an ordinance of the everlasting gospel and is not, therefore, merely a legal contract, but pertains to time and all eternity to come, therefore it is written in the Bible, "What God hath joined together let no man put asunder."

There are a great many men who feel very bitter against the Latter-day Saints, and especially against the doctrine of plural marriage, who have married one or more wives after the death of their first, that, had their marriages been solemnized in the manner God has prescribed and by His authority, they themselves would be polygamists, for they, as we, firmly believe in the immortality of the soul, professing to be Christians and looking forward to the time when they will meet, in the spirit world, their wives and the loved ones that are dead. We can imagine the awkward situation of a man, not believing in polygamy, meeting two or more wives, with their children, in the spirit world, each of them claiming him as husband and father. "But," says one, "how will it be with a woman who marries another husband after the death of her first?" She will be the wife of the one to whom she was married for time and eternity. But if God did not "join them together," and they were only married by mutual consent until death parted them, their contract, or partnership ends with death, and there remains but one way for those who died without the knowledge of the gospel to be united together for eternity. That is, for their living relatives or friends to attend to the ordinances of the gospel for them. "For, in the resurrection, they neither marry nor are given in marriage;" therefore marriage ordinances must be attended to here in the flesh. Hyrum Smith, however, was a polygamist before his death, he having had several women sealed to him by his brother, Joseph, some of whom are now living.

At the death of the Patriarch, June 27th, 1844, the care of the family fell upon his widow, Mary Smith. Besides the children there were two old ladies named respectively, Hannah Grinnels, who had been in the family many years, and Margaret Brysen. There was also a younger one, named Jane Wilson, who was troubled with fits and otherwise afflicted, and was, therefore, very dependent, and an old man, named George Mills, who had also been in the family eleven years, and was almost entirely blind and very crabbed. These and others, some of whom had been taken care of by the Patriarch out of charity, were members of the family and remained with them until after they arrived in the valley. "Old George," as he was sometimes called, had been a soldier in the British army, had never learned to read or write, and often acted upon impulse more than from the promptings of reason, which made it difficult, sometimes, to get along with him; but because he had been in the family so long – through the troubles of Missouri and Illinois – and had lost his eye-sight from the effects of brain fever and inflammation, caused by taking cold while in the pineries getting out timbers for the temple at Nauvoo, Widow Smith bore patiently all his peculiarities up to the time of her death. Besides those I have mentioned, Mercy R. Thompson, sister to Widow Smith, and her daughter, and Elder James Lawson were also members of the family.

On or about the 8th of September, 1846, the family, with others, were driven out of Nauvoo by the threats of the mob, and encamped on the banks of the Mississippi River, just below Montrose. There they were compelled to remain two or three days, in view of their comfortable homes just across the river, unable to travel for the want of teams, while the men were preparing to defend the city against the attack of the mob. They were thus under the necessity of witnessing the commencement of the memorable "Battle of Nauvoo;" but, before the cannonading ceased, they succeeded in moving out a few miles, away from the dreadful sound of it, where they remained until they obtained, by the change of property at a great sacrifice, teams and an outfit for the journey through Iowa to the Winter Quarters of the Saints, now Florence, Nebraska. Arriving at that point late in the Fall, they were obliged to turn out their work animals to pick their living through the Winter, during which some of their cattle, and eleven out of their thirteen horses died, leaving them very destitute of teams in the Spring.

In the Fall of 1847, Widow Smith and her brother, Joseph Fielding, made a trip into Missouri, with two teams, to purchase provisions for the family. Joseph, her son, accompanied them as teamster; he was then nine years of age. The team he drove consisted of two yokes of oxen, one yoke being young and only partially broke, which, with the fact that the roads were very bad with the Fall rains, full of stumps in places, sometimes hilly, and that he drove to St. Joseph, Missouri, and back, a distance of about three hundred miles, without meeting with one serious accident, proves that he must have been a fair teamster for a boy at his age.

At St. Joseph they purchased corn and other necessaries, getting their corn ground at Savannah, on their return journey. Wheat flour was a luxury beyond their reach, and one seldom enjoyed by many of the Latter-day Saints in those days. On their journey homeward they camped one evening at the edge of a small prairie, or open flat, surrounded by woods, where a large herd of cattle, on their way to market, was being pastured for the night, and turned out their teams, as usual, to graze. In the morning their best yoke of cattle was missing, at which they were greatly surprised, this being the first time their cattle had separated. Brother Fielding and Joseph at once started in search, over the prairie, through the tall, wet grass, in the woods, far and near, until they were almost exhausted with fatigue and hunger, and saturated to the skin; but their search was vain. Joseph returned first to the wagons, towards mid-day, and found his mother engaged in prayer. Brother Fielding arrived soon after, and they sat down to breakfast, which had long been waiting.

"Now," said Widow Smith, "while you are eating I will go down towards the river and see if I can find the cattle."

Brother Fielding remarked, "I think it is useless for you to start out to hunt the cattle; I have inquired of all the herdsmen and at every house for miles, and I believe they have been driven off." Joseph was evidently of the same opinion, still he had more faith in his mother finding them, if they could be found, than he had either in his uncle or himself. He knew that she had been praying to the Lord for assistance, and he felt almost sure that the Lord would hear her prayers. Doubtless he would have felt quite sure had he not been so disheartened by the apparently thorough but fruitless search of the morning. He felt, however to follow her example: he prayed that his mother might be guided to the cattle, and exercised all the faith he could muster, striving hard to feel confident that she would be successful. As she was following the little stream, directly in the course she had taken on leaving the wagons, one of the drovers rode up on the opposite side and said, "Madam, I saw your cattle this morning over in those woods," pointing almost directly opposite to the course she was taking. She paid no attention to him, but passed right on. He repeated his information; still she did not heed him. He then rode off hurriedly, and, in a few moments, with his companions, began to gather up their cattle and start them on the road towards St. Joseph. She had not gone far when she came upon a small ravine filled with tall willows and brush; but not tall enough to be seen above the high grass of the prairie. In a dense cluster of these willows she found the oxen so entangled in the brush, and fastened by means of withes, that it was with great difficulty that she extricated them from their entanglement. This was evidently the work of these honest (?) drovers, who so hurriedly disappeared – seeing they could not turn her from her course – perhaps in search of estray honesty, which it is to be hoped they found.

This circumstance made an indelible impression upon the mind of the lad, Joseph. He had witnessed many evidences of God's mercy, in answer to prayer, before; but none that seemed to strike him so forcibly as this. Young as he was, he realized his mother's anxiety to emigrate with her family to the valley in the Spring, and their dependence upon their teams to perform that journey, which, to him, seemed a formidable, if not an impossible, undertaking in their impoverished circumstances. It was this that made him so disheartened and sorrowful when he feared that the cattle would never be found. Besides, it seemed to him that he could not bear to see such a loss and disappointment come upon his mother, whose life he had known, from his earliest recollection, had been a life of toil and struggle for the maintenance and welfare of her family. His joy, therefore, as he looked through tears of gratitude to God for His kind mercy extended to the "widow and the fatherless" may be imagined, as he ran to meet his mother driving the oxen towards the wagons.