HAUN'S MILL--JOSEPH YOUNG'S STORY OF THE MASSACRE--SISTER AMANDA
SMITH'S STORY OF THAT TERRIBLE TRAGEDY--HER WOUNDED BOY'S MIRACULOUS
CURE--HER FINAL ESCAPE FROM MISSOURI.
Towards the close of October, 1838, several small detachments of
migrants from Ohio entered the State of Missouri. They were of the
refugees from Kirtland. Their destinations were the counties of
Caldwell and Davies, where the saints had located in that State.
Haun's Mill, in Caldwell county, was soon to become the scene of one of
the darkest tragedies on record.
The mill was owned by a Mormon brother whose name it bore, and in the
neighborhood some Mormon families had settled.
To Haun's Mill came the doomed refugees.
They had been met on their entrance into the State of Missouri by armed
mobs. Governor Boggs had just issued his order to exterminate the
entire Mormon community.
The coming of the refugees into the inhospitable State could not have
been more ill-timed, though when they left Kirtland they expected to
find a brotherhood in Far West.
"Halt!" commanded the leader of a band of well-mounted and well-armed
mobocrats, who charged down upon them as they journeyed on their way.
"If you proceed any farther west," said the captain, "you will be
instantly shot."
"Wherefore?" inquired the pilgrims.
"You are d--d Mormons!"
"We are law-abiding Americans, and have given no cause of offence."
"You are d--d Mormons. That's offence enough. Within ten days every
Mormon must be out of Missouri, or men, women and children will be shot
down indiscriminately. No mercy will be shown. It is the order of the
Governor that you should all be exterminated; and by G--d you will be."
In consternation the refugees retreated, and gathered at Haun's Mill.
It was Sunday, October 26. The Mormons were holding a council and
deliberating upon the best course to pursue to defend themselves
against the mob that was collecting in the neighborhood, under the
command of a Colonel Jennings, or Livingston, and threatening them with
house-burning and killing.
Joseph Young, the brother of Brigham, was in the council. He had
arrived at the mill that day, with his family, retreating from the mob.
The decision of the council was that the neighborhood of Haun's
Mill should put itself in an attitude of defence. Accordingly about
twenty-eight of the brethren armed themselves and prepared to resist an
attack.
But the same evening the mob sent one of their number to enter into a
treaty with the Mormons at the mill. The treaty was accepted on the
condition of mutual forbearance, and that each party should exert its
influence to prevent any further hostilities.
At this time, however, there was another mob collecting at William
Mann's, on Grand River, so that the brethren remained under arms over
Monday, the 29th, which passed without attack from any quarter.
"On Tuesday, the 30th," says Joseph Young, "that bloody tragedy was
enacted, the scenes of which I shall never forget.
"More than three-fourths of the day had passed in tranquillity, as
smiling as the preceding one. I think there was no individual of our
company that was apprised of the sudden and awful fate which hung over
our heads like an overwhelming torrent, and which was to change the
prospects, the feelings and sympathies of about thirty families.
"The banks of Shoal Creek, on either side, teemed with children
sporting and playing, while their mothers were engaged in domestic
employments. Fathers or husbands were either on guard about the
mills or other property, or employed in gathering crops for winter
consumption. The weather was very pleasant, the sun shone clearly, and
all was tranquil, and no one expressed any apprehension of the awful
crisis that was near us--even at our doors.
"It was about four o'clock P. M., while sitting in my cabin, with
my babe in my arms, and my wife standing by my side, the door being
open, I cast my eyes on the opposite bank of Shoal Creek, and saw a
large body of armed men on horses directing their course towards the
mills with all possible speed. As they advanced through the scattering
trees that bordered the prairie, they seemed to form themselves into
a three-square position, forming a vanguard in front. At this moment
David Evans, seeing the superiority of their numbers (there being two
hundred and forty of them, according to their own account), gave a
signal and cried for peace. This not being heeded, they continued to
advance, and their leader, a man named Comstock, fired a gun, which
was followed by a solemn pause of about ten or twelve seconds, when
all at once they discharged about one hundred rifles, aiming at a
blacksmith's shop, into which our friends had fled for safety. They
then charged up to the shop, the crevices of which, between the logs,
were sufficiently large to enable them to aim directly at the bodies of
those who had there fled for refuge from the fire of their murderers.
There were several families tented in the rear of the shop, whose lives
were exposed, and amid showers of bullets these fled to the woods in
different directions.
"After standing and gazing at this bloody scene for a few minutes, and
finding myself in the uttermost danger, the bullets having reached the
house where I was living, I committed my family to the protection of
heaven; and leaving the house on the opposite side, I took a path which
led up the hill, following in the trail of three of my brethren that
had fled from the shop.
"While ascending the hill we were discovered by the mob, who fired at
us, and continued so to do till we reached the summit. In descending
the hill I secreted myself in a thicket of bushes, where I lay till
8 o'clock in the evening. At this time I heard a voice calling my
name in an undertone. I immediately left the thicket and went to the
house of Benjamin Lewis, where I found my family--who had fled there
in safety--and two of my friends, mortally wounded, one of whom died
before morning. Here we passed the painful night in deep and awful
reflections upon the scenes of the preceding evening.
"After daylight appeared some four or five men, with myself, who had
escaped with our lives from this horrid massacre, repaired as soon as
possible to the mills to learn the condition of our friends whose fate
we had but too truly anticipated.
"When we arrived at the house of Mr. Haun, we found Mr. Merrick's body
lying in the rear of the house, and Mr. McBride's in front, literally
mangled from head to foot. We were informed by Miss Rebecca Judd, who
was an eye-witness, that he was shot with his own gun after he had
given it up, and then cut to pieces with a corn-cutter by a man named
Rogers, of Davies county, who kept a ferry on Grand River, and who
afterwards repeatedly boasted of this same barbarity. Mr. York's body
we found in the house. After viewing these corpses we immediately went
to the blacksmith's shop, where we found nine of our friends, eight of
whom were already dead--the other, Mr. Cox, of Indiana, in the agonies
of death, who soon expired."
But to sister Amanda Smith must be given the principal thread of this
tragedy, for around her centres the terrible interest of the Haun's
Mill massacre, which even to-day rises before her in all the horrors of
an occurring scene. She says:
"We sold our beautiful home in Kirtland for a song, and traveled all
summer to Missouri--our teams poor, and with hardly enough to keep body
and soul together.
"We arrived in Caldwell county, near Haun's Mill, nine wagons of us in
company. Two days before we arrived we were taken prisoners by an armed
mob that had demanded every bit of ammunition and every weapon we had.
We surrendered all. They knew it, for they searched our wagons.
"A few miles more brought us to Haun's Mill, where that awful scene of
murder was enacted. My husband pitched his tent by a blacksmith's shop.
"Brother David Evans made a treaty with the mob that they would not
molest us. He came just before the massacre and called the company
together and they knelt in prayer.
"I sat in my tent. Looking up I suddenly saw the mob coming--the same
that took away our weapons. They came like so many demons or wild
Indians.
"Before I could get to the blacksmith's shop door to alarm the
brethren, who were at prayers, the bullets were whistling amongst them.
"I seized my two little girls and escaped across the mill-pond on a
slab-walk. Another sister fled with me. Yet though we were women, with
tender children, in flight for our lives, the demons poured volley
after volley to kill us.
"A number of bullets entered my clothes, but I was not wounded. The
sister, however, who was with me, cried out that she was hit. We had
just reached the trunk of a fallen tree, over which I urged her,
bidding her to shelter there where the bullets could not reach her,
while I continued my flight to some bottom land.
"When the firing had ceased I went back to the scene of the massacre,
for there were my husband and three sons, of whose fate I as yet knew
nothing.
"As I returned I found the sister in a pool of blood where she had
fainted, but she was only shot through the hand. Farther on was lying
dead Brother 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 the monster cleft open his head with the same weapon, and
the veteran who had fought for his country, in the glorious days of the
past, was numbered with the martyrs.
"Passing on I came to a scene more terrible still to the mother and
wife. Emerging from the blacksmith shop was my eldest son, bearing on
his shoulders his little brother Alma.
"'Oh! my Alma is dead!' I cried, in anguish.
"'No, mother; I think Alma is not dead. But father and brother Sardius
are killed!'
"What an answer was this to appal me! My husband and son murdered;
another little son seemingly mortally wounded; and perhaps before the
dreadful night should pass the murderers would return and complete
their work!
"But I could not weep then. The fountain of tears was dry; the heart
overburdened with its calamity, and all the mother's sense absorbed
in its anxiety for the precious boy which God alone could save by his
miraculous aid.
"The entire hip joint of my wounded boy had been shot away. Flesh, hip
bone, joint and all had been ploughed out from the muzzle of the gun
which the ruffian placed to the child's hip through the logs of the
shop and deliberately fired.
"We laid little Alma on a bed in our tent and I examined the wound. It
was a ghastly sight. I knew not what to do. It was night now.
"There were none left from that terrible scene, throughout that long,
dark night, but about half a dozen bereaved and lamenting women, and
the children. Eighteen or nineteen, all grown men excepting my murdered
boy and another about the same age, were dead or dying; several more of
the men were wounded, hiding away, whose groans through the night too
well disclosed their hiding places, while the rest of the men had fled,
at the moment of the massacre, to save their lives.
"The women were sobbing, in the greatest anguish of spirit; the
children were crying loudly with fear and grief at the loss of fathers
and brothers; the dogs howled over their dead masters and the cattle
were terrified with the scent of the blood of the murdered.
"Yet was I there, all that long, dreadful night, with my dead and my
wounded, and none but God as our physician and help.
"Oh my Heavenly Father, I cried, what shall I do? Thou seest my poor
wounded boy and knowest my inexperience. Oh Heavenly Father direct me
what to do!
"And then I was directed as by a voice speaking to me.
"The ashes of our fire was still smouldering. We had been burning the
bark of the shag-bark hickory. I was directed to take those ashes and
make a lye and put a cloth saturated with it right into the wound. It
hurt, but little Alma was too near dead to heed it much. Again and
again I saturated the cloth and put it into the hole from which the
hip-joint had been ploughed, and each time mashed flesh and splinters
of bone came away with the cloth; and the wound became as white as
chicken's flesh.
"Having done as directed I again prayed to the Lord and was again
instructed as distinctly as though a physician had been standing by
speaking to me.
"Near by was a slippery-elm tree. From this I was told to make a
slippery-elm poultice and fill the wound with it.
"My eldest boy was sent to get the slippery-elm from the roots, the
poultice was made, and the wound, which took fully a quarter of a yard
of linen to cover, so large was it, was properly dressed.
"It was then I found vent to my feelings in tears, and resigned myself
to the anguish of the hour. And all that night we, a few poor, stricken
women, were thus left there with our dead and wounded. All through the
night we heard the groans of the dying. Once in the dark we crawled
over the heap of dead in the blacksmith's shop to try to help or soothe
the sufferers' wants; once we followed the cries of a wounded brother
who hid in some bushes from the murderers, and relieved him all we
could.
"It has passed from my memory whether he was dead in the morning or
whether he recovered.
"Next morning brother Joseph Young came to the scene of the massacre.
"'What shall be done with the dead?' he inquired, in horror and deep
trouble.
"There was not time to bury them, for the mob was coming on us. Neither
were there left men to dig the graves. All the men excepting the two or
three who had so narrowly escaped were dead or wounded. It had been no
battle, but a massacre indeed.
"'Do anything, Brother Joseph,' I said, 'rather than leave their bodies
to the fiends who have killed them.'
"There was a deep dry weir close by. Into this the bodies had to be
hurried, eighteen or nineteen in number.
"No funeral service could be performed, nor could they be buried with
customary decency. The lives of those who in terror performed the last
duty to the dead were in jeopardy. Every moment we expected to be
fired upon by the fiends who we supposed were lying in ambush waiting
the first opportunity to dispatch the remaining few who had escaped
the slaughter of the preceding day. So in the hurry and terror of the
moment some were thrown into the well head downwards and some feet
downwards.
"But when it came to the burial of my murdered boy Sardius, Brother
Joseph Young, who was assisting to carry him on a board to the well,
laid down the corpse and declared that he could not throw that boy into
this horrible grave.
"All the way on the journey, that summer, Joseph had played with the
interesting lad who had been so cruelly murdered. It was too much for
one whose nature was so tender as Uncle Joseph's, and whose sympathies
by this time were quite overwrought. He could not perform that last
office. My murdered son was left unburied.
"'Oh! they have left my Sardius unburied in the sun,' I cried, and ran
and got a sheet and covered his body.
"There he lay until the next day, and then I, his mother, assisted by
his elder brother, had to throw him into the well. Straw and earth were
thrown into this rude vault to cover the dead.
"Among the wounded who recovered were Isaac Laney, Nathaniel K. Knight,
Mr. Yokum, two brothers by the name of Myers, Tarlton Lewis, Mr. Haun
and several others, besides Miss Mary Stedwell, who was shot through
the hand while fleeing with me, and who fainting, fell over the log
into which the mob shot upwards of twenty balls.
"The crawling of my boys under the bellows in the blacksmith's shop
where the tragedy occurred, is an incident familiar to all our people.
Alma's hip was shot away while thus hiding. Sardius was discovered
after the massacre by the monsters who came in to despoil the bodies.
The eldest, Willard, was not discovered. In cold blood, one Glaze,
of Carroll county, presented a rifle near the head of Sardius and
literally blew off the upper part of it, leaving the skull empty and
dry while the brains and hair of the murdered boy were scattered around
and on the walls.
"At this one of the men, more merciful than the rest, observed:
"'It was a d--d shame to kill those little boys.'
"'D--n the difference!' retorted the other; 'nits make lice!'
"My son who escaped, also says that the mobocrat William Mann took from
my husband's feet, before he was dead, a pair of new boots. From his
hiding place, the boy saw the ruffian drag his father across the shop
in the act of pulling off his boot.
"'Oh! you hurt me!' groaned my husband. But the murderer dragged him
back again, pulling off the other boot; 'and there' says the boy, 'my
father fell over dead.'
"Afterwards this William Mann showed the boots on his own feet, in Far
West, saying: 'Here is a pair of boots that I pulled off before the
d--d Mormon was done kicking!'
"The murderer Glaze also boasted over the country, as a heroic deed,
the blowing off the head of my young son.
"But to return to Alma, and how the Lord helped me to save his life.
"I removed the wounded boy to a house, some distance off, the next day,
and dressed his hip; the Lord directing me as before. I was reminded
that in my husband's trunk there was a bottle of balsam. This I poured
into the wound, greatly soothing Alma's pain.
"'Alma, my child,' I said, 'you believe that the Lord made your hip?'
"'Yes, mother.'
"'Well, the Lord can make something there in the place of your hip,
don't you believe he can, Alma?'
"'Do you think that the Lord can, mother?' inquired the child, in his
simplicity.
"'Yes, my son,' I replied, 'he has shown it all to me in a vision.'
"Then I laid him comfortably on his face, and said: 'Now you lay like
that, and don't move, and the Lord will make you another hip.'
"So Alma laid on his face for five weeks, until he was entirely
recovered--a flexible gristle having grown in place of the missing
joint and socket, which remains to this day a marvel to physicians.
"On the day that he walked again I was out of the house fetching a
bucket of water, when I heard screams from the children. Running back,
in affright, I entered, and there was Alma on the floor, dancing
around, and the children screaming in astonishment and joy.
"It is now nearly forty years ago, but Alma has never been the least
crippled during his life, and he has traveled quite a long period of
the time as a missionary of the gospel and a living miracle of the
power of God.
"I cannot leave the tragic story without relating some incidents
of those five weeks when I was a prisoner with my wounded boy in
Missouri, near the scene of the massacre, unable to obey the order of
extermination.
"All the Mormons in the neighborhood had fled out of the State,
excepting a few families of the bereaved women and children who had
gathered at the house of Brother David Evans, two miles from the scene
of the massacre. To this house Alma had been carried after that fatal
night.
"In our utter desolation, what could we women do but pray? Prayer was
our only source of comfort; our Heavenly Father our only helper. None
but he could save and deliver us.
"One day a mobber came from the mill with the captain's fiat:
"'The captain says if you women don't stop your d--d praying he will
send down a posse and kill every d--d one of you!'
"And he might as well have done it, as to stop us poor women praying in
that hour of our great calamity.
"Our prayers were hushed in terror. We dared not let our voices be
heard in the house in supplication. I could pray in my bed or in
silence, but I could not live thus long. This godless silence was more
intolerable than had been that night of the massacre.
"I could bear it no longer. I pined to hear once more my own voice in
petition to my Heavenly Father.
"I stole down into a corn-field, and crawled into a 'stout of corn.' It
was as the temple of the Lord to me at that moment. I prayed aloud and
most fervently.
"When I emerged from the corn a voice spoke to me. It was a voice as
plain as I ever heard one. It was no silent, strong impression of the
spirit, but a _voice_, repeating a verse of the saint's hymn:
"That soul who on Jesus hath leaned for repose,
I cannot, I will not desert to its foes;
That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,
I'll never, no never, no never forsake!
"From that moment I had no more fear. I felt that nothing could hurt
me. Soon after this the mob sent us word that unless we were all out of
the State by a certain day we should be killed.
"The day came, and at evening came fifty armed men to execute the
sentence.
"I met them at the door. They demanded of me why I was not gone? I
bade them enter and see their own work. They crowded into my room and
I showed them my wounded boy. They came, party after party, until all
had seen my excuse. Then they quarreled among themselves and came near
fighting.
"At last they went away, all but two. These I thought were detailed to
kill us. Then the two returned.
"'Madam,' said one, 'have you any meat in the house?'
"' No,' was my reply.
"'Could you dress a fat hog if one was laid at your door?'
"'I think we could!' was my answer.
"And then they went and caught a fat hog from a herd which had belonged
to a now exiled brother, killed it and dragged it to my door, and
departed.
"These men, who had come to murder us, left on the threshold of our
door a meat offering to atone for their repented intention.
"Yet even when my son was well I could not leave the State, now
accursed indeed to the saints.
"The mob had taken my horses, as they had the drove of horses, and the
beeves, and the hogs, and wagons, and the tents, of the murdered and
exiled.
"So I went down into Davies county (ten miles) to Captain Comstock, and
demanded of him my horses. There was one of them in his yard. He said I
could have it if I paid five dollars for its keep. I told him I had no
money.
"I did not fear the captain of the mob, for I had the Lord's promise
that nothing should hurt me. But his wife swore that the mobbers
were fools for not killing the women and children as well as the
men--declaring that we would 'breed up a pack ten times worse than the
first.'
"I left without the captain's permission to take my horse, or giving
pay for its keep; but I went into his yard and took it, and returned to
our refuge unmolested.
"Learning that my other horse was at the mill, I next yoked up a pair
of steers to a sled and went and demanded it also.
"Comstock was there at the mill. He gave me the horse, and then asked
if I had any flour.
"'No; we have had none for weeks.'
"He then gave me about fifty pounds of flour and some beef, and filled
a can with honey.
"But the mill, and the slaughtered beeves which hung plentifully on its
walls, and the stock of flour and honey, and abundant spoil besides,
had all belonged to the murdered or exiled saints.
"Yet was I thus providentially, by the very murderers and mobocrats
themselves, helped out of the State of Missouri.
"The Lord had kept his word. The soul who on Jesus had leaned for
succor had not been forsaken even in this terrible hour of massacre,
and in that infamous extermination of the Mormons from Missouri in the
years 1838-39.
"One incident more, as a fitting close.
"Over that rude grave--that well--where the nineteen martyrs slept,
where my murdered husband and boy were entombed, the mobbers of
Missouri, with an exquisite fiendishness, which no savages could have
conceived, had constructed a rude privy. This they constantly used,
with a delight which demons might have envied, if demons are more
wicked and horribly beastly than were they.
"Thus ends my chapter of the Haun's Mill massacre, to rise in judgment
against them!"