The Story of the Mormons, from the Date of Their Origin to the Year 1901Linn, William Alexander
History
The Story of the Mormons, from the Date of Their Origin to the Year 1901
Linn, William Alexander
Latter Day Saints -- History; Utah -- History
After Wight's death his people scattered. A majority of them became
identified with the Reorganized Church, a few gave in their allegiance
to the organization in Utah, and others abandoned Mormonism entirely.
CHAPTER XVII. -- BRIGHAM YOUNG
Brigham Young, the man who had succeeded in expelling Rigdon and
establishing his own position as head of the church, was born in
Whitingham, Windham County, Vermont, on June 1, 1801. The precise
locality of his birth in that town is in dispute. His father, a native
of Massachusetts, is said to have served under Washington during the
Revolutionary War. The family consisted of eleven children, five sons
and six daughters, of whom Brigham was the ninth. The Youngs moved
to Whitingham in January, 1801. In his address at the centennial
celebration of that town in 1880, Clark Jillson said, "Henry Goodnow,
Esq., of this town says that Brigham Young's father came here the
poorest man that ever had been in town; that he never owned a cow,
horse, or any land, but was a basket maker." Mormon accounts represent
the elder Young as having been a farmer.
His circumstances permitted him to give his children very little
education, and, when sixteen years old, Brigham seems to have started
out to make his own living, working as a carpenter, painter, and
glazier, as jobs were offered. He was living in Aurelius, Cayuga County,
New York, in 1824, working at his trade, and there, in October of that
year, he married his first wife, Miriam Works. In 1829 they moved to
Mendon, Monroe County, New York.
Joseph Smith's brother, in the following year, left a copy of the Mormon
Bible at the house of Brigham's brother Phineas in Mendon, and there
Brigham first saw it. Occasional preaching by Mormon elders made the new
faith a subject of conversation in the neighborhood, and Phineas was an
early convert. Brigham stated in a sermon in Salt Lake City, on August
8, 1852, that he examined the new Bible for two years before deciding
to receive it. He was baptized into the Mormon church on April 14, 1832.
His wife, who also embraced the faith, died in September of that year,
leaving him two daughters.
Young married his second wife, Mary A. Angel, in Kirtland on March 31,
1834. His application for a marriage license is still on file among the
records of the Probate Court at Chardon, now the shire town of Geauga
County, Ohio, and his signature is a proof of his illiterateness,
showing that he did not know how to spell his own baptismal name,
spelling it "Bricham."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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