Brigham Young
Brigham Young was an American religious leader and politician. He was the second president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1847 until his death in 1877. He also served as the first governor of the Utah Territory from 1851 until his resignation in 1858.
Young was born in 1801 in Vermont and raised in Upstate New York. After working as a painter and carpenter, he became a full-time LDS Church leader in 1835. Following a short period of service as a missionary, he moved to Missouri in 1838. Later that year, Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs signed the Mormon Extermination Order, and Young organized the migration of the Latter Day Saints from Missouri to Illinois, where he became an inaugural member of the Council of Fifty. In 1844, while he was traveling to gain support for Joseph Smith's presidential campaign, Smith was killed by a mob, igniting the Illinois Mormon War and triggering a succession crisis in the Latter Day Saint movement. After negotiating a ceasefire, Young was unanimously elected as the church's second president in 1847. During the Mormon exodus, Young led his followers west from Nauvoo, Illinois, via the Mormon Trail to the Salt Lake Valley. Once settled in Utah, he ordered the construction of numerous temples, including the Salt Lake Temple. He also formalized the prohibition of black men attaining priesthood and directed the Mormon Reformation. A supporter of education, Young worked to establish the learning institutions that would later become the University of Utah and Brigham Young University.
After arriving in Utah, Young founded Salt Lake City and established the State of Deseret before being appointed Utah's first territorial governor by President Millard Fillmore in 1850. As governor, Young allowed polygamy, supported slavery and its expansion into Utah, and led the efforts to legalize and regulate slavery in the 1852 Act in Relation to Service, based on his beliefs on slavery. He exerted considerable power over the territory through his theocratic political system, theodemocracy. After President James Buchanan appointed a new governor of the territory, Young declared martial law and re-activated the Nauvoo Legion, beginning the Utah War. During the conflict, the Utah Territorial Militia committed a series of attacks that resulted in the mass murder of at least 120 members of the Baker–Fancher immigrant wagon train, known as the Mountain Meadows Massacre. The following month, the Aiken massacre was perpetrated on Young's orders. In 1858, the war ended when Young surrendered; agreeing to resign as governor and allow federal troops to enter the Utah Territory in exchange for a pardon granted to Mormon settlers from President Buchanan.
A polygamist, Young had 56 wives and 57 children. His teachings are contained in the 19 volumes of transcribed and edited sermons in the Journal of Discourses. His legacy and impact are seen throughout the American West, including numerous memorials, temples, and schools named in his honor. In 2016, Young was estimated to have around 30,000 descendants.
Early life
Young was born on June 1, 1801, in Whitingham, Vermont. He was the ninth child of John Young and Abigail "Nabby" Howe. Young's father was a farmer, and when Young was three years old his family moved to upstate New York, settling in Chenango County. Young received little formal education, but his mother taught him how to read and write. At age twelve, he moved with his parents to the township of Genoa, close to Cayuga Lake. His mother died of tuberculosis in June 1815. Following her death, he moved with his father to Tyrone, New York.While there, Young's father remarried to a widow named Hannah Brown and sent Young off to learn a trade. Young moved to Auburn, New York, where he was an apprentice to John C. Jeffries. He worked as a carpenter, glazier, and painter. One of the homes that Young helped paint in Auburn belonged to Elijah Miller and later to William Seward, and is now a local museum. With the onset of the Panic of 1819, Jeffries dismissed Young from his apprenticeship, and Young moved to Port Byron, which was then called Bucksville. Young reported having a strict Puritan-style Christian upbringing. He used tobacco but did not drink alcohol. He refused to sign a temperance pledge, however, stating that "if I sign the temperance pledge I feel that I am bound, and I wish to do just right, without being bound to do it; I want my liberty."
Young married Miriam Angeline Works, whom he had met in Port Byron in October 1824. They first resided in a small house adjacent to a pail factory, which was Young's main place of employment at the time. Their daughter, Elizabeth, was born on September 26, 1825. According to William Hayden, Young participated in the Bucksville Forensic and Oratorical Society. Young converted to the Reformed Methodist Church in 1824 after studying the Bible. Upon joining the Methodists, he insisted on being baptized by immersion rather than by their normal practice of sprinkling. In 1828, the family moved briefly to Oswego, New York, on the shore of Lake Ontario, and in 1828 to Mendon, New York. Young's father, two brothers, and sister had already moved to Mendon. In Mendon, Young first became acquainted with Heber C. Kimball, an early member of the LDS Church. Young worked as a carpenter and joiner, and built and operated a saw mill.
Latter Day Saint conversion
By the time Young moved to Mendon in 1828, he had effectively left the Reformed Methodist Church and become a Christian seeker, unconvinced that he had found a church possessing the true authority of Jesus Christ. Sometime in 1830, Young was introduced to the Book of Mormon by way of a copy that his brother, Phineas Howe, had obtained from Samuel H. Smith. Young did not immediately accept the divine claims of the Book of Mormon. In 1831, five missionaries of the Latter Day Saint movement—Eleazer Miller, Elial Strong, Alpheus Gifford, Enos Curtis, and Daniel Bowen—came from the branch of the church in Columbia, Pennsylvania, to preach in Mendon. A key element of the teachings of this group in Young's eyes was their practicing of spiritual gifts like speaking in tongues and prophecy. This was partly experienced when Young traveled with his wife, Miriam, and Heber C. Kimball to visit the branch of the church in Columbia.After meeting Joseph Smith, Young joined the Church of Christ on April 9, 1832. He was baptized by Eleazer Miller. Young's siblings and their spouses were baptized that year or the year afterwards. In April 1832, a branch of the church was organized in Mendon; eight of the fifteen families were Youngs. There, Young saw Alpheus Gifford speak in tongues, and in response, Young also spoke in tongues. Young and Kimball spent the summer following their baptism conducting missionary work in western New York, while Vilate Kimball cared for Young's family. After Miriam died of consumption, Vilate continued to care for Brigham's children while he, Heber, and Joseph Young traveled to visit Joseph Smith in Kirtland, Ohio. During the visit, Brigham spoke in a tongue that Smith identified as the "Adamic language".
After visiting Joseph Smith in Kirtland, Brigham set out to preach with his brother Joseph in the winter of 1832–1833. Joseph had been a Reformed Methodist preacher and the two made a similar "preaching circuit" in eastern Canada. They described the Book of Mormon as the "stick of Joseph", mentioned in Ezekiel 37. Young continued to preach in eastern Canada in the spring and accompanied two Canadian converts to Kirtland in July 1833. Young and his two daughters moved to Kirtland along with the Kimball family later that summer. Here he became acquainted with Mary Ann Angell, a convert to the faith from Rhode Island, and the two were married in February 1834 and obtained a marriage certificate on March 31, 1834.
In May 1834, Young became a member of Zion's Camp and traveled to Missouri. He returned to Kirtland with members of the camp in August. After his return to Kirtland, Young did carpentry, painting, and glazing work to earn money. He also worked on the Kirtland Temple and went to a grammar school. His third child and first son, Joseph A. Young, was born shortly after his return. Mary Ann, who was pregnant at the time, had provided for Young's two daughters and the children of her brother Solomon Angell and their friend Lorenzo Booth while Young was away with Zion's Camp.
LDS Church service
At a conference on February 14, 1835, Brigham Young was named and ordained a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. On May 4, 1835, Young and other apostles went on a mission to the east coast, specifically in Pennsylvania and New York. His call was to preach to the "remnants of Joseph", a term people in the church used to refer to indigenous people. In August 1835, Young and the rest of the Quorum of the Twelve issued a testimony in support of the divine origin of the Doctrine and Covenants. He oversaw the finishing of the Kirtland temple and spoke in tongues at its dedication in 1836. Shortly afterwards, Young went on another mission with his brother Joseph to New York and New England. On this mission, he visited the family of his aunt, Rhoda Howe Richards. They converted to the church, including his cousin Willard Richards. In August 1837, Young went on another mission to the eastern states. He then returned to Kirtland where he remained until dissenters, unhappy with the failure of the Kirtland Safety Society, forced him to flee the community in December 1837. He then stayed for a short time in Dublin, Indiana, with his brother Lorenzo before moving to Far West, Missouri, in 1838. He was later joined by his family and by other members of the church in Missouri. He became the oldest member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles when David Patten died after the Battle of Crooked River. When Joseph Smith arrived in Far West, he appointed Young, along with Thomas Marsh and David Patten, as "presidency pro tem" in Missouri.Under Young's direction, the quorum organized the exodus of Latter Day Saints from Missouri to Illinois in 1838. Young also served a year-long mission to the United Kingdom. There, he showed a talent for organizing the church's work and maintaining good relationships with Joseph Smith and the other apostles. Under his leadership, members in the United Kingdom began publishing Millennial Star, a hymnal, and a new edition of the Book of Mormon. Young also served in various leadership and community organization roles among church members in Nauvoo. He joined the Nauvoo city council in 1841 and oversaw the first baptisms for the dead in the unfinished Nauvoo temple. He joined the Masons in Nauvoo on April 7, 1842, and participated in an early endowment ritual led by Joseph Smith that May and became part of the Anointed Quorum. Young and the other apostles directed the church's missionary work and the immigration of new converts from this point forward. Young served another mission to the Eastern seaboard.
During his time in Nauvoo, Joseph Smith introduced the doctrine of plural marriage among church leaders. Young performed the sealing ordinances for two of Joseph Smith's plural wives in early 1842. Young proposed marriage to Martha Brotherton, who was seventeen years old at the time and had recently immigrated from Manchester, England. Brotherton signed an affidavit saying that she had been pressured by Young and then Smith to accept polygamy. The affidavit was created at John C. Bennett's request, after his excommunication and in conjunction with his distribution of false information combined with true information about the church's practice of polygamy. Brigham Young and William Smith discredited Brotherton's character, and Brotherton herself did not associate with the church afterwards. Young campaigned against Bennett's allegations that Joseph Smith practiced "spiritual wifery"; Young knew of Smith's hidden practice of polygamy. He also helped to convince Hyrum to accept polygamy.
Young married Lucy Ann Decker in June 1842, making her his first plural wife. Young knew her father, Isaac Decker, in New York. Lucy was still married to William Seeley when Young married her. Young supported her and her two children while they lived in their own home in Nauvoo. Lucy and Young had seven children together. Young was one of the first men in Nauvoo to practice polygamy, and he married more women than any other polygamist while in Nauvoo. While in Nauvoo, he married Clarissa Decker, Clarissa Ross, Emily Dow Partidge, Louisa Beaman, Margaret Maria Alley, Emmeline Free, Margaret Piece, and Zina Diantha Huntington. These wives bore him children after they moved to Utah. He also married in Nauvoo, but did not have children with Augusta Adams Cobb, Susannah Snively, Eliza Bowker, Ellen A. Rockwood, and Namah K. J. Carter. Eight of Young's plural marriages in Nauvoo were to Joseph Smith's widows.
Young traveled east with Wilford Woodruff and George A. Smith from July to October 1843 on a mission to raise funds for the Nauvoo temple and its guesthouse. Young's six-year-old daughter Mary Ann died while he was on this mission. On November 22, 1843, Young and his wife Mary Ann received the second anointing, a ritual that assured them that their salvation and exaltation would occur. In March 1844, Brigham Young was an inaugural member of the Council of Fifty, which later organized the Mormon exodus from Nauvoo.
In 1844, Young traveled east again to solicit votes for Joseph Smith in his presidential campaign. In June 1844, while Young was away, Joseph Smith was killed by an armed mob who stormed the jail where he was awaiting trial for the charge of treason. Young did not learn of the assassination until early July. Several claimants to fill the leadership vacuum emerged during the succession crisis that ensued. Church members gathered at a meeting on August 8, 1844, with the intent to choose between two claimants, Young and Sidney Rigdon, the senior surviving member of the church's First Presidency. At the meeting, Rigdon argued no one could succeed Smith and that he should become Smith's "spokesman" and guardian of the church. Young argued that the church needed more than a spokesman and that the twelve apostles, not Rigdon, had "the fullness of the priesthood" necessary to succeed Smith's leadership. Young claimed access to revelation to know God's choice of successor because of his position as an apostle. The majority of attendants voted that the Quorum of the Twelve was to lead the church. Many of Young's followers stated in reminiscent accounts that when Young spoke to the congregation, he miraculously looked or sounded exactly like Smith, which they attributed to the power of God. Young began acting as the church's president afterwards, though he did not yet have a full presidency. He also led the Anointed Quorum. Young led the church as president of the Quorum of the Twelve until December 5, 1847, when the quorum unanimously agreed to organize a new First Presidency with Young as president of the church. A church conference held in Iowa sustained Young and his First Presidency on December 27, 1847.
Not all church members followed Young. Rigdon became the president of a separate church organization based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and several other potential successors emerged to lead what became other denominations of the movement.
Before departing Nauvoo, Young focused on completing the Nauvoo temple. After the exterior was completed on December 10, 1845, members received their temple endowments day and night, and Young officiated many of these sessions. An estimated 5,000 members were endowed between December 10, 1845, and February 1846. With the repealing of Nauvoo's charter in January 1845, church members in Nauvoo lost their courts, police, and militia, leaving them vulnerable to attacks by mobs. Young instructed victims of anti-Mormon violence on the outskirts of Nauvoo to move to Nauvoo. Young negotiated with Stephen A. Douglas and agreed to lead church members out of Nauvoo in the spring in exchange for peace. Some Mormons counterfeited American and Mexican money, and a grand jury indicted Young and other church leaders in 1845. When officers arrived at the Nauvoo temple to arrest Young, he sent William Miller out in Young's hat and cloak. Miller was arrested but released when it was discovered he was not Brigham Young. Young himself condemned the counterfeiting. John Turner's biography states: "it remains unclear whether Young had sanctioned the bogus-making operation". The indictment of Young and other leaders, combined with rumors that troops would prevent the Mormons from leaving, led Young to start their exodus in February 1846.