Heroines of "Mormondom" / The Second Book of the Noble Women's Lives Series

by Various

"We sold out our property in Amherst and went to Kirtland, and bought a place west of the Temple, on the Chagrin river, where we enjoyed ourselves in the society of the Saints, but after the failure of the Kirtland bank and other troubles in that place, in consequence of our enemies, we lost all our property except enough to fit up teams, etc., to take us to Missouri. We started in the Spring of 1838, and bade farewell to the land of our fathers and our home to go and dwell with the Saints in what then seemed a far-off place.

"There were several families of us and we traveled on without much difficulty until we came to Caldwell county, Missouri. One day as we were going on as usual, minding our own business, we were stopped by a mob of armed men, who told us if we went another step they would kill us all. They commenced plundering, taking our guns from our wagons, which we had brought, as we were going into a new country, and after thus robbing us took us back five miles, placed a guard around us, and kept us there in that way three days, and then let us go. We journeyed on ten miles further, though our hearts were heavy and we knew not what might happen next. Then we arrived at a little town of about eight or ten houses, a grist and saw mill belonging to the Saints. We stopped there to camp for the night. A little before sunset a mob of three hundred armed men came upon us. Our brethren halloed for the women and children to run for the woods, while they (the men) ran into an old blacksmith shop.

"They feared, if men, women and children were in one place, the mob would rush upon them and kill them all together. The mob fired before the women had time to start from the camp. The men took off their hats and swung them and cried for quarter, until they were shot down; the mob paid no attention to their entreaties, but fired alternately. I took my little girls (my boys I could not find) and ran for the woods. The mob encircled us on all sides, excepting the bank of the creek, so I ran down the bank and crossed the mill pond on a plank, ran up the hill on the other side into the bushes; and the bullets whistled by me like hailstones, and cut down the bushes on all sides of me. One girl was wounded by my side, and she fell over a log; her clothes happened to hang over the log in sight of the mob, and they fired at them, supposing that it was her body, and after all was still our people cut out of that log twenty bullets.

"When the mob had done firing they began to howl, and one would have thought a horde of demons had escaped from the lower regions. They plundered our goods, what we had left, they took possession of our horses and wagons, and drove away, howling like so many demons. After they had gone I came down to behold the awful scene of slaughter, and, oh! what a horrible sight! My husband and one of my sons, ten years old, lay lifeless upon the ground, and another son, six years old, wounded and bleeding, his hip all shot to pieces; and the ground all around was covered with the dead and dying. Three little boys had crept under the blacksmith's bellows; one of them received three wounds; he lived three weeks, suffering all the time incessantly, and at last died. He was not mine, the other two were mine. One of whom had his brains all shot out, the other his hip shot to pieces." This last was Alma Smith, who lives at Coalville, and who still carries the bullets of the mob in his body, but was healed by the power of God through the careful nursing and earnest faith of his mother. "My husband was nearly stripped of his clothes before he was quite dead; he had on a new pair of calf-skin boots, and they were taken off him by one whom they designated as Bill Mann, who afterward made his brags that he 'pulled a d—d Mormon's boots off his feet while he was kicking.' It was at sunset when the mob left and we crawled back to see and comprehend the extent of our misery. The very dogs seemed filled with rage, howling over their dead masters, and the cattle caught the scent of innocent blood, and bellowed. A dozen helpless widows grieving for the loss of their husbands, and thirty or forty orphaned or fatherless children were screaming and crying for their fathers, who lay cold and insensible around them. The groans of the wounded and dying rent the air. All this combined was enough to melt the heart of anything but a Missouri mobocrat. There were fifteen killed and ten wounded, two of whom died the next day."

"As I returned from the woods, where I had fled for safety, to the scene of slaughter, I found the sister who started with me lying in a pool of blood. She had fainted, but was only shot through the hand. Further on was Father McBride, an aged, white-haired revolutionary soldier; his murderer had literally cut him to pieces with an old corn-cutter. His hands had been split down when he raised them in supplication for mercy. Then one of the mob cleft open his head with the same weapon, and the veteran who had fought for the freedom of his country in the glorious days of the past, was numbered with the martyrs. My eldest son, Willard, took my wounded boy upon his back and bore him to our tent. The entire hip bone, joint and all were shot away. We laid little Alma upon our bed and examined the wound. I was among the dead and dying: I knew not what to do. I was there all that long dreadful night with my dead and my wounded, and none but God as physician and help. I knew not but at any moment the mob might return to complete their dreadful work. In the extremity of my agony I cried unto the Lord, 'O, Thou who hearest the prayers of the widow and fatherless, what shall I do? Thou knowest my inexperience, Thou seest my poor, wounded boy, what shall I do? Heavenly Father, direct me!' And I was directed as if by a voice speaking to me. Our fire was smouldering; we had been burning the shaggy bark of hickory logs. The voice told me to take those ashes and make a solution, then saturate a cloth with it and put it right into the wound. It was painful, but my little boy was too near dead to heed the pain much. Again and again I saturated the cloth and put it into the hole from which the hip joint had been plowed out, and each time mashed flesh and splinters of bone came away with the cloth, and the wound became white and clean. I had obeyed the voice that directed me, and having done this, prayed again to the Lord to be instructed further; and was answered as distinctly as though a physician had been standing by speaking to me. A slippery elm tree was near by, and I was told to make a poultice of the roots of the slippery elm and fill the wound with it. My boy Willard procured the slippery elm from the roots of the tree; I made the poultice and applied it. The wound was so large it took a quarter of a yard of linen to cover it. After I had properly dressed the wound, I found vent to my feelings in tears for the first time, and resigned myself to the anguish of the hour. All through the night I heard the groans of the sufferers, and once in the dark we groped our way over the heap of dead in the blacksmith shop, to try to soothe the wants of those who had been mortally wounded, and who lay so helpless among the slain.

"Next morning Brother Joseph Young came to the scene of bloodshed and massacre. 'What shall be done with the dead?' he asked. There was no time to bury them, the mob was coming on us; there were no men left to dig the graves. 'Do anything, Brother Joseph,' I said, 'except to leave their bodies to the fiends who have killed them.' Close by was a deep, dry well. Into this the bodies were hurried, sixteen or seventeen in number. No burial service, no customary rites could be performed. All were thrown into the well except my murdered boy, Sardius. When Brother Young was assisting to carry him on a board to the well, he laid down the corpse and declared he could not throw that boy into the horrible, dark, cold grave. He could not perform the last office for one so young and interesting, who had been so foully murdered, and so my martyred son was left unburied. 'Oh, they have left my Sardius unburied in the sun,' I cried, and ran and covered his body with a sheet. He lay there until the next day, and then I, his own mother, horrible to relate, assisted by his elder brother, Willard, went back and threw him into this rude vault with the others, and covered them as well as we could with straw and earth.

"After disposing of the dead the best that we could, we commended their bodies to God and felt that He would take care of them, and of those whose lives were spared. I had plenty to do to take care of my little orphaned children, and could not stop to think or dwell upon the awful occurrence. My poor, wounded boy demanded constant care, and for three months I never left him night or day. The next day the mob came back and told us we must leave the State, or they would kill us all. It was cold weather; they had taken away our horses and robbed us of our clothing; the men who had survived the massacre were wounded; our people in other parts of the State were passing through similar persecutions, and we knew not what to do.

"I told them they might kill me and my children in welcome. They sent to us messages from time to time, that if we did not leave the State they would come and make a breakfast of us. We sisters used to have little prayer meetings, and we had mighty faith; the power of God was manifested in the healing of the sick and wounded. The mob told us we must stop these meetings, if we did not they would kill every man, woman and child. We were quiet and did not trouble anyone. We got our own wood, we did our own milling, but in spite of all our efforts to be at peace, they would not allow us to remain in the State of Missouri. I arranged everything, fixed up my poor, wounded boy, and on the first day of February started, without any money, on my journey towards the State of Illinois; I drove my own team and slept out of doors. I had four small children, and we suffered much from cold, hunger and fatigue.

"I once asked one of the mob what they intended when they came upon our camp; he answered they intended to 'kill everything that breathed.' I felt the loss of my husband greatly, but rejoiced that he died a martyr to the cause of truth. He went full of faith and in hope of a glorious resurrection. As for myself I had unshaken confidence in God through it all.

"In the year 1839 I married again, to a man bearing the same name as my deceased husband (Warren Smith), though they were not in the least related. He was also a blacksmith and our circumstances were prosperous. By this marriage I had three children. Amanda Malvina, who died in Nauvoo; also Warren Barnes and Sarah Marinda, who are still living, the former at American Fork and is counselor to the Bishop, the latter at Hyde Park.