There is now in Jackson County a body of people calling themselves Latter-day Saints. They are in fact a branch of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, of which church, Joseph Smith, Jr., the eldest son of Joseph Smith, the putative father of "Mormonism," is the president. The present headquarters of the church is at Plano, Kendall County, Illinois; where they have a printing house, containing engine, press, type and other facilities for carrying on quite an extensive business. They number some fifteen thousand members now, dispersed through the United States in over four hundred congregations, including branches in Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, St. Louis, Salt Lake City and many other prominent cities; and are most numerous in Illinois, Iowa and Missouri. In many places they have houses of worship, which they by the engagement and aid of the citizens have built; one of these buildings is in Independence. This church, under Mr. Smith's presidency, has kept an active ministry at work in Utah, endeavoring to disabuse the "Mormons" of that Territory of the dogma of polygamy, which they assert to be no part of primitive "Mormonism;" and from the history of the sect during its stay in Missouri from 1835 to 1838, it would appear that these organizers are correct; for not a single charge of such dogma being held or taught appears in the many statements made against them, or in the published orders and reports of the officers engaged in expelling them from the State. They, at all events, oppose the tenet, and are directly antagonizing Utah "Mormonism." APPENDIX II. "MORMON" WAR. (_Taken from the History of Clay County as published in St. Louis by the National Historical Company,_ 1885.) In 1832 the "Mormons" under their Prophet Joe Smith came into Jackson County, where the previous year large tracts of land had been entered and purchased for their benefit and began to occupy and possess the land with the intention, as they said, of remaining for all time. "But their years in that land were few and full of trouble." They were in constant collision with their Gentile neighbors, who frequently tied them up and whipped them with cowhides and hickory switches, derided their religion, boycotted them where they did not openly persecute them, and at last engaged in a deadly encounter with them, tarred and feathered their bishops; threw their printing press into the river and finally drove them from their homes and out of the county.