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The Farmington Daily Times in northwest New Mexico published a detailed series of articles about the migration of Mormons from the United States to Mexico, starting in the 1880s. In Mexico, members of the Church of Latter-day Saints established thriving communities. During 1912, Mexican revolutionaries and bandits raided the Mormon settlements, causing many members of the church to return to the United States through New Mexico's four southwestern counties. Many descendants of the Mormon migrants remain in communities in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, as well as in New Mexico. The series of articles was published by the Farmington Daily Times during the summer of 1995. Parts of this series is reprinted on this website with the permission of the Farmington Daily Times.
June 13,1995
MORMONS JOURNEY 1,000 MILES FOR NEW LIFE
By CHRISTINE WILLMSEN
Along their 1,000-mile trek, Mormons envisioned a place where they could practice their religion and raise families without danger. The place where they gained religious freedom was Mexico. Michael Landon, archivist at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Historical Department, said, "The average church member may have heard of Anglos in Mexico, but they don't understand and know what happened. It's not a real well-known episode in church history, but it's as powerful as any of the preceding epics of the church. "This series is a legacy of their sacrifices." In 1885, some 400 colonists arrived in northern Mexico, near the Casas Grandes River, according to the Deseret News Church Almanac. O.J. and Arwella Merrell of Farmington recall their family's journey through Arizona and New Mexico to reach Mexico. O.J.'s grandfather left Snowflake, Ariz., Feb. 9, 1885, and arrived in Mexico one month later. The wagons slid through the mud and rolled over the desert and mountains, O.J. said. On March 7, they arrived at Casas Grandes River. Once they set up camp, they realized they were in a strange land with no homes. Annie Johnson's book, Heartbeats of Colonia Diaz, reports one woman saying, "When I looked around and saw our neighbors, I had a feeling that the world had been left behind. And I fervently hoped that persecution had, too. The heart of every man in camp beat in unison with the stalwart who put his arms around both wives and said, 'Thank the Lord that I can now acknowledge you both, before the world as well as before my God.' " James Payne of Farmington recalls his grandfather, Harry, moving south because of polygamy. Harry Payne left Utah in October 1891 to settle in Colonia Dublan. The family of nine had a team of horses, wagon and $80 in Mexican money, reports the book The Harry Payne Family History. Payne had no alternative, but to leave with his two wives for Mexico because he already had served six months in the Utah Territorial Penitentiary for practicing polygamy, James Payne said.
June 6, 1995
THE JOURNEY OF THE MORMONS
By CHRISTINE WILLMSEN
This series on the Mormon exodus explores the little talked-about history of the Mormon church. Persecution and polygamy were the reasons behind their journeys. And many of the Mormons who today reside in the San Juan Basin, came here from colonies in Mexico. Stories and testimony of their lives aims to bring understanding of the persecution they faced and their determination to start their lives several times with nothing. This series covers an era beginning when many Mormons left the United States a century ago to start a new life with nothing but their families in Mexico. They left their homes once again in 1912 because of the Mexican Revolution. Mormons sacrificed their homes, careers and lives to continue their religious beliefs. Men were thrown in jail, women were stripped of their husbands and all that remained was their belief in polygamy, which was outlawed in 1887 in the United States. Mormon men had the pressure of either leaving all but one wife or facing jail. American society at the time couldn't comprehend the thought of having plural marriages. Mormons were stereotyped as unlawful and immoral by the government and non-Mormons. The only plausible solution at the time was to flee the United States. Hundreds of Mormons fled to Mexico to escape the perils of jail and social ridicule. The journey wasn't easy. With little time to prepare for the trip that would take them more than 800 miles south, they hitched their wagons to their horses and started their new life. It took some groups three weeks to reach Mexico and others even longer. Their hopes of being able to practice their religion freely and raise their children in a safe environment came true when they settled south of the border. They settled along fertile valleys and dry, rocky canyons, purchasing land and developing eight Mormon colonies in Chihuahua and Sonora. They built brick houses, farmed the land, cultivated orchards and made a success of their endeavors. As the Mormons prospered, turmoil and unrest in Mexico increased. Mexican revolutionary groups and bandits stole from Mormon ranches, homes and communities. The final blow came when the revolutionists and bandits demanded the Mormons turn over all their ammunition and arms, leaving them helpless and unarmed. In view of the danger, church leaders told the Mormons to leave the colonies and go back to their homeland - the United States - where they once had been belittled. With only hours to prepare for the move, families packed clothing, food and bedding, with promises of returning in several days. As the revolution grew more violent, Mormons were encouraged not to return to their Mexican homes and start anew in the United States. Many returned to the battered colonies, finding their farms ransacked and their homes scorched. Some Mormons abandoned the colonies in Mexico, moving to New Mexico and other states. Others grabbed their boot straps, pulled them up tight and started again by building new homes and replanting their farms in Mexico. Of the eight colonies settled a century ago, two thrive today. Some Mormons who fled Mexico in fear of being killed decided to rebuild their homes, farms and lives in the Four Corners area. The stories you will read in the series come from local Mormons who have some relationship to the pioneers of Mexico, whether it be a great grandfather who crossed the West to seek refuge in Mexico or an aunt or a cousin who was born there.
June 6, 1995
MORMON HISTORY BEGINS WITH 1,300-MILE TREK
By CHRISTINE WILLMSEN
The exodus of Mormons from the United States to Mexico was just one of many exoduses Mormons have faced since founding the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Based on revelations that founder Joseph Smith of New York says he received from God in the 1820s, the religion believes it is the pure Christian church reestablished. Smith also compiled the Book of Mormon as a second witness of Jesus Christ in addition to the Bible. The church was formally organized in 1830. Headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, the fast-growing church has nine million members worldwide and 12,000 congregations. Due to the differences between Mormonism and conventional Christianity, Mormons were uprooted from their homes on more than one occasion. Their journey began in upstate New York, where Smith started Mormonism, and moved westward. First, Smith and other Mormons settled in the Ohio towns of Kirtland and Hiram. His followers began feeling pressured by non-Mormons, who feared political and social takeover. People were further threatened when Mormons were elected to local government offices. By 1838, 1,600 Mormons fled Kirtland in the face of angry mobs. Others had left earlier, resettling in Missouri as early as 1831. In Missouri, the Mormons were again persecuted for their religious beliefs. However, polygamy wasn't the issue Mormons and non-Mormons fought over until the 1850s. The governor of Missouri issued an order to drive out all Mormons or "exterminate them," states the Encyclopedia of Mormonism. Three days later, Col. William Jennings and his militia attacked Haun's Mill, a Mormon settlement, killing 17 men and boys. Under the leadership of Brigham Young, more than 12,000 Mormons left Missouri in hopes of a better future in Illinois. However, "Nauvoo, Illinois, headquarters of the Church and home for many of its members from 1839 to 1846, began and ended as a community in exile," the encyclopedia states. Nauvoo was a prosperous, booming town. But after seven years of a somewhat stable existence, the Mormons were on the run again - a much longer run than they imagined, LDS Archivist Michael Landon said. Their leave-taking was prompted by Smith's murder in 1844. Charged with treason against the state of Illinois, Smith had been confined at the Carthage Jail in the western part of the state. There, he and his brother Hyrum were shot to death. Threats of violence raged throughout the city, prompting the Mormons to pack their bags. During an 1845 conference among church leaders, Mormons decided to evacuate the following spring. More than 6,000 Mormons departed Nauvoo on Feb. 4, 1846, and arrived at the valley of the Great Salt Lake, later known as Salt Lake City, on July 24, 1847. The 1,300-mile trek included 265 miles across Iowa and 1,032 miles across the Great Plains to reach their promised land.
June 6,1995
U.S. GOVERNMENT GOES AFTER POLYGAMISTS
By CHRISTINE WILLMSEN
When Mormons moved to Utah in hopes of practicing their religion in peace, they did not get it. For several years Mormons practiced polygamy there without making a formal statement supporting it. In 1852, church leaders finally pronounced polygamy as a Mormon tenet of faith. The public statement outraged non-Mormons, who made threats of Utah never becoming a state if polygamy continued. Polygamy wasn't yet illegal in the United States. Action against the Mormons started after the Utah Territory was organized in 1850. In 1862, Congress passed an anti-bigamy law saying those who practice polygamy could be fined $500 and sentenced to five years in prison. In the 1870s, government and political groups in Utah formed anti-polygamy campaigns to stir up antagonism, said Michael Landon, archivist from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints historical department. To spur further anger toward the Mormons, propaganda in anti-Mormon publications was scattered throughout the country. Non-Mormons feared Mormons would take the land and control the United States, said John Palmer in his book Mormon Settlement in the San Juan Basin of Colorado and New Mexico. Palmer said Mormon adults weren't the only people sworn at. For example, Mormon children were called "yellow-bellied Mormons" in Mancos, Colo. Rarely did violence erupt against Mormon children. During the 1880s, political leaders such as U.S. Rep. Schuyler Colfax said Utah would never become a state as long as they continued to condone and support polygamy, according to information in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism. Polygamist George Reynolds challenged the anti-polygamy laws, but lost when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against plural marriage in 1879. Mormons thought their religious-based practice of polygamy was protected by the U.S. Constitution that says: "Congress shall pass no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Reynold's lawyer attempted to prove that polygamy was a part of the religious life of Utah. The government enforced the U.S. Supreme Court decision by denying Mormons, who practiced polygamy, the right to vote. The U.S. government gave the Mormons a choice to either stay with one wife and leave the other wives or go to jail. More than 1,300 LDS members were jailed for practicing polygamy because of anti-polygamy laws passed by Congress such as the 1887 Edmunds-Tucker Act. A prominent Mormon, Junius Payne, served six months in prison because he practiced polygamy. Mary Eliza Tracy Allred's autobiography states her father spent one year in jail for having three wives. Polygamists were placed in the Utah State Penitentiary, Yuma Territorial Prison and a prison in Detroit. Besides arresting men and putting them in jail, the act dissolved the church as a legal corporation and required the church to forfeit all property in excess of $50,000 to the government. It also prohibited them from voting, serving on a jury or holding public office unless they signed an oath pledging his support for anti-polygamy laws. After several anti-polygamy laws passed it became difficult for men to support their multiple families without being captured by federal marshals, Landon said. Many Mormon men felt they couldn't abandon their families and children, leaving them homeless and without food and financial support, so they ran, Landon said. The Mormons developed an underground, where church members would hide church leaders who feared being arrested and who were on the run. Both husbands and wives traveled from town to town and state to state. The husbands were trying to avoid jail terms and the wives were trying to avoid testifying against their husbands. While hundreds of men were jailed in Utah, other Mormons moved to other states, Mexico and Canada to escape the marshals. Although polygamy pushed hundreds of Mormons out of Utah, it also helped develop and settle the San Juan Basin. Palmer states most Mormons who settled the Fruitland area were polygamists. After receiving a revelation, LDS President Wilford Woodruff announced in the 1890 Manifesto, the church would no longer permit plural marriage in the United States, Landon said. Woodruff's actions facilitated the process of Utah becoming a state in 1896, Landon said.
June 6, 1995
POLYGAMY - A WAY OF LIFE FOR SOME MORMONS
By CHRISTINE WILLMSEN
Imagine supporting three wives and more than 20 children. Many Mormon men in the 1800s had to do just that. Typically, most husbands had two wives, but some had more. Church leader Brigham Young was believed to have had more than 20 wives. Jessie Embry, who wrote The Mormon Polygamist Families, said the stereotype that polygamists had numerous wives like Young is untrue. Most of the men who were involved in plural marriages averaged 16-30 children total, Embry said. For example, Morten Mortensen had three wives and 25 children. Mortensen, who lived in Mexico, is the grandfather of Farmington resident Arwella Merrell. Charles William Merrell married three women and had 14 children. O.J. Merrell of Farmington, who's married to Arwella, is the grandson of Charles. John Rowley, who was born in 1841, married 10 women and had 35 children. Phoebe Maxwell of Farmington is the granddaughter of Rowley. George Payne, who grew up in a polygamist family, described plural marriage as "a man and his wife are like . . . objects tied at each end of the string, no matter how you move it, they move together. But, add a third on it and they all have to step together or they get tangled." In some situations, when a man married more than a couple wives, the love wasn't there. Rather, it was an issue of serving the church, LDS Archivist Michael Landon said. Books, diaries and testimonies of polygamy showed sexual desire wasn't the main reason for polygamy. The motive was to fulfill the revelations of church leader Joseph Smith, Embry said. In the earliest days of polygamy, some men were excommunicated because they used plural marriages for immoral sexual acts instead of in the name of the gospel, Landon said. Most of the men married a 19-year-old woman when they were 21. Once the men got older, they married a second woman who usually was 19 years old, Embry said. Depending on the husband, some men had their multiple wives in the same town or living on the same street while other men, due to their career, had wives in different cities and states, Landon said. here are instances where the wives lived in the same house, however 60 percent of the women lived in separate homes, Embry said. As imagined visiting schedules were arranged so husbands could spend time with their families. Bertha Shupe of Colonia Juarez, Mexico, said her father, John Whetten, married her mother, Ida, in 1900. Later he married a second wife in 1903. "We called her (the second wife) aunt," she said. They lived in houses across the street from each other. "We were bound to the church and we had to do just what we had to do," she said. Shupe treated the other wife's children the same as her own brothers and sisters. "We were just one family and grew up together. He looked after us both, and each had her turn, you might say," she said. The wives had as good of a relationship as sisters, said Shupe, who was born in 1902. The wives borrowed each other's clothes, helped with chores and raised the children together, she added. A common procedure was to spend one week with one wife and her family, then spend the next week with the other wife and family, Embry said. Floriene Taylor's grandfathers Albert Farnsworth had three wives and Anson Call had four wives. "They were all like one big family, with separate homes," Taylor of Colonia Juarez, Mexico, said. "He (one of her grandfathers) would spend a week with one and then a week with another. There was a great deal of love in those families." Some visits were every couple days, nightly and even monthly, Embry said. At social events, more than half of the husbands took all the wives and families to dances and plays, she reports. A major concern was dividing what little the husband made to support all the wives and their children, Landon said. With the husband being at other homes for several days, jealousy and disagreements arose. Because of their belief that God wanted them to practice polygamy, many disputes were settled quickly, Embry said. The husbands had to help the wives get along with each other and many wives experienced loneliness. Overall, most of the wives were friendly toward each other, Embry said. Polygamy wasn't an easy life and it wasn't an easy thing to do for some Mormons, Landon said. "A lot of people who entered into polygamy were conservative and brought up in the cultural norms of society," he said. One of the best examples of the agony Mormons faced when entering into polygamy was the Udall family, Landon said. David Udall had two wives, Ida Hunt and Elisa Stewart. Udall had been asked by church leaders to marry another wife besides Elisa, but he had a problem with it, Landon said. The LDS archives have correspondence between Ida and Elisa showing Elisa didn't want to share her husband with another wife. Ida wrote Elisa asking for her permission to marry David. Elisa wrote her back, saying she couldn't even discuss it in the form of a letter. Landon said he doesn't know if Elisa gave her blessing to Ida. David didn't know what to do. Landon said he literally stood at a fork in the road trying to decide if he should marry another woman. His remembering of Joseph Smith's revelation weighed heavily on him and he married Ida, Landon said. Although David and Elisa had difficulty with the thought of another woman in their lives, the families blended and the plural marriage worked, Landon said. There are no exact statistics available as to how many Mormons practiced polygamy from the 1840s to the 1890s. Embry reports only 20 percent of the Mormons practiced polygamy, while other historians say it was more than 50 percent. Embry said Mormon monogamous marriages and plural marriages had more things in common than not. Mormon wives in both types of marriages worked at home, she said. Many of the children didn't spend much time with their fathers because they were so busy farming, she added. While some people would be uncomfortable talking about their ancestors as polygamists, Embry said most Mormons are proud of their polygamist families and heritage. Although polygamy was illegal in Canada and Mexico, Mexican officials decided not to enforce the law because they wanted colonists to settle in there, Embry said. Mormons continued to practice polygamy in Mexico until 1904.
June 6, 1995
MORMONS SAW POLYGAMY AS A DIVINE CALLING
By CHRISTINE WILLMSEN
To some, polygamy is unthinkable. To the Mormons in the 1800s, it was a command from God. While Mormons today can't imagine having plural marriages, several can see why their devout forefathers did it. Mormons received a calling for polygamy in the early 1840s, when church leader Joseph Smith had a revelation, LDS Archivist Michael Landon said. Through the revelation he received, Smith started practicing and encouraging plural marriage or "celestial marriage." His revelation viewed plural marriage as a "divine commandment to 'raise up seed unto' God," (Jacob 2:30) in the Book of Mormon, according to the Encyclopedia of Mormonism. According to V.S. Peet, a non-Mormon who has written about Mormon polygamy, the Mormons, when first settling in Utah in 1847, upheld the teachings of the Bible to "multiply and replenish the earth," or populate the West by practicing plural marriage and raise large families as "a rite of their religion." Polygamy would "fulfill God's commandment to Adam and Eve to multiply and replenish the earth," said polygamist Orson Pratt in 1852. At first, Smith had a difficult time accepting the revelation to engage in plural marriages. However, he felt he must act on God's orders, so he married two women, Landon said. Mormons "practiced polygamy because they believed God commanded them to do so," Landon added. For several years, Mormons didn't encounter problems from non-Mormons for practicing plural marriage because it was not widely talked about outside the church. After church leaders announced polygamy as a practice of the Mormon church in 1852, the public was stunned and appalled. From 1852 to 1885, Mormons were repressed and persecuted by society and the U.S. government, Landon said. Most husbands had two wives but some had more including church leader Brigham Young, who is believed to have had more than 20 wives, said Jessie Embry, a historian on polygamy in the Mormon Church. The Mormon Articles of Faith instructs Mormons to obey the law of the land. When the 1887 Edmunds-Tucker Act forbidding polygamy was passed by Congress, the church had to follow the laws of the land, Landon said. "It's a difficult situation (for the members) because how do you do both," practice the beliefs of the church - polygamy - and obey the law of the land, he said. After receiving a revelation, LDS President Wilford Woodruff announced in an 1890 church manifesto that the Mormon Church would no longer permit plural marriage in the United States, Landon said. Woodruff explained the reasons for stopping polygamy in the Doctrine and Covenants: "Which is the wisest course for the Latter Day Saints to continue to practice plural marriage with the laws of the nation against it and the opposition of 60 million people at the cost of the confiscation and loss of all the temples and the stopping of all the ordinances therein both for the living and the dead, the imprisonment . . . of the heads of families of church and the confiscation of the personal property of the people" or to "submit to the law and through doing so leave the prophets, apostles and fathers at home so they can instruct the people and attend the duties of the church and also leave the temples in the hands of the saints so they can attend to the ordinances of the gospel. "The Lord showed me by vision and revelation exactly what would take place if we did not stop this practice," of polygamy, he added. He further explained if they continued to practice polygamy, all ordinances would stop, "confusion would reign," trouble would cloud the church and many men would be prisoners. Landon said, "It was going to stop one way or another. It's just a matter of how it was going to be stop. "God told him to stop. With the threat of the temples being confiscated, there was no other choice. The Edmunds-Tucker Act provided for the disincorporation of the church properties, including the temples, which would have stopped the work of the Latter-day Saints." Landon said Woodruff saved the church from a much more serious circumstance of the church being eliminated by the government. For this period of time polygamy is "totally abandoned by the church," Landon said. As a theological principle, plural marriage is valid, he added. "I'm not going to say there wouldn't be a time some day that they might reintroduce that principle," Landon said. Some Mormons believe polygamy will be reinstated, maybe not in their lifetime, but in the future. Jane Law, a woman prepared to enter into plural marriage, signed a statement concerning plural marriages and her support of husband Robert Froster having several wives. "I certify that I read the revelation referred to in the above affidavit of my husband. It sustained in strong terms the doctrine of more wives than one at a time, in this world, and in the next; it authorized some to have to the number of TEN, and set forth that those women who would not allow their husbands to have more wives than one should be under condemnation before God" she wrote May 4, 1844. In 1904, a second church manifesto was written, stating any church member practicing or advocating plural marriages would be excommunicated. People still practicing polygamy in Utah, Colorado City, Ariz., and the LeBaron Colony in Mexico aren't part of the Mormon Church, Landon said. If a person is practicing plural marriage the person is excommunicated because, "The church doesn't tolerate it."
June 6, 1995
MORMON HISTORY MORE THAN A CENTURY OLD
By CHRISTINE WILLMSEN
Polygamy was a blessing in disguise for the Four Corners area, which was heavily settled by the Mormons in the 1800s. John Palmer, in his book Mormon Settlement in the San Juan Basin of Colorado and New Mexico, says an important factor in the Mormons settlement of Fruitland was the "government pressures" against polygamy. He writes that politicians and non-Mormons developed hate material against the Mormons and laws prohibiting plural marriages. To escape the pandemonium in Utah, some Mormons involved in plural marriages moved to different states seeking cover from the marshals, Palmer says. He states most of the Mormons who settled the Fruitland area were polygamists. In 1886, Hyrum Taylor settled in Fruitland after having difficulties with the laws against polygamous marriage in Moab, Utah, where he was threatened with criminal charges. This is according to a book about Fruitland entitled "Our Valley," compiled by Rosetta Biggs. aylor married two sisters in 1882. In 1881, Jefferson and Henry Slade moved to Fruitland. Jefferson had two wives and for a short period of time, both families lived under the same roof. Although Mormon men were being arrested in Utah, Palmer's book and other sources have no evidence of marshals or local authorities enforcing the anti-polygamy law in the San Juan Basin area. The area was settled by Mormons as early as 1876 by the Coolidge brothers. Other Mormon families who moved to the area include the Websters, Mosses, Simpsons, Boices and Hatches. Several Mormons bought land near the San Juan River and called the town Fruitland because of the high quality of fruit produced, Our Valley says. Both Fruitland and Kirtland were called Olio at first. By 1888, 12 Mormon families had settled in Fruitland, including farmer Benjamin Black and his three wives who came in 1897. Some Mormons first moved to Mexico, then migrated to the San Juan Basin. For example, H.T. Stolworthy had one wife, Johanna Covington, living with him in Fruitland and another, Lydia Young, who lived in Mexico for a short period of time and later moved to Fruitland. Some of the Farnsworths, Merrells, Cluffs and Johnsons moved from Mexico and settled in San Juan County. Joseph Lehi Foutz had three wives and 29 children. He traveled throughout the west and his last home was in Fruitland where he died in 1907, Our Valley states. Loren Black, the third son of John Martin and Sylvia Evans Black, was born in 1906 in Mexico. He moved to Kirtland, where he went to school. He married Inoa Jensen and moved to Farmington where he was an electronic engineer for the city. In 1880, Walter Joshua Stevens and his brother David, sons of Walter and Abigail Stevens of Holden, Utah, settled in Fruitland. The Stevens are related to Phoebe Maxwell of Farmington. Thomas Bryan and a Mr. Virden, an early settler of Farmington, built a trading post called Naschitia in 1880. Bituminous coal was produced in Fruitland and Hogback for the main market in Farmington. In 1896, the first fire bricks were made by Elmer Taylor and Jonathan Biggs. The first brick house was made for church leader Brigham Young Jr., just west of Fruitland, where it still stands today. Today there are more than 4,000 Mormons in the Kirtland Stake, which includes Kirtland, Shiprock, Fruitland and Waterflow, Kirtland President Dan Sherwood said.
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