Review
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Title: Praying with one eye open: Mormons and Murder in Nineteenth-Century Appalachian Georgia
Author: Dr. Mary Ella Engle
Publisher: The University of Georgia Press
Genre: Non-fiction
Year published: 2019
Pages: 228
Binding: Hardback (alk. Paper); Paperback; E-Book
Isbn: Hardback, 9780820355252; Paperback, 978-0820355610; e-book, 9780820355245
Includes bibliographical references and index. Footnotes. Appendix 1: North Georgia converts organized by Branch; Appendix 2: Members of mob accused of Elder Joseph Standing’s murder.
Price: $24.50
Reviewed by Melvin C. Johnson for the Association for Mormon Letters
Praying with one eye open: Mormons and Murder in Nineteenth-Century Appalachian Georgia by Dr. Mary Ella Engle is a wonderful title, provides good history, is an easy read, but is also a messy book flawed in thematic organization and typesetting. Dr. Engle intermingles three stories throughout the book. A biography of John Henry Morgan, a Mormon missionary and later mission president in northwestern Georgia, has been thematically strung to link his tale with the Georgia convert emigration to “western Zion” in Manassa, Colorado, and to the murder of Elder Joseph Standing in 1879. The Standing killing appears to be the focus of the book but, in fact, occupies only one chapter. The title itself is unrelated to the Standing murder but to an incident four years later. In 1883, J. Golden Kimball was serving with Mission President Brigham Henry Roberts in the Southern States mission, when he became aware of the violence possible in the lives of the elders stated: “… ‘Amen, We look back, and there were four men … with guns on their shoulders. I said to my companions, ‘there is another lesson, from this time on in the South, I shall pray with one eye open.’”[1]
John Henry Morgan
John Hamilton Morgan (August 8, 1842 – August 14, 1894), was an early educator in Utah Territory, an official of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), and a politician. Born in Indiana, Morgan served in the Union army that invaded Georgia in 1863 and 1864. Engle describes Morgan ‘marching through Georgia’ and how that influenced him later as a missionary. Morgan actually would serve the LDS Church as a missionary and mission president in northwestern Georgia where he served with the Union Army. That Morgan returned to proselytize for the LDS Church where he had brought war and ruin to the area inhabitants perplexes the mind of the reader.
He returned to Indiana and the north after the war to go to business college. He emigrated to Salt Lake City, established a successful business college, joined the LDS Church, and became prominent in church circles as a missionary and later mission president to the South. He served as a member of the Quorum of the Seven President of the Seventy, just subordinate to the Twelve Apostles. The personal writings of Morgan and those of Brigham Henry Roberts and J. Golden Kimball demonstrates his influence in the development of the latter two as missionaries in the South and as members themselves called to service in the Seven President of the Seventy. Morgan died at the relatively young age of fifty-two in 1894.
Western Zion
President Brigham Young encouraged his missionaries to persuade converts to gather to “zion” in the west. By June 1877, Young and Morgan were communicating where to settle the new members, many of whom greatly desired to join their co-religionists in the west. Wishing to extend the Mormon corridors of settlements, Young first suggested West Texas or New Mexico as possible regional areas for relocation. He advised such areas should have local water resources for feasible cost-benefit irrigation. President Young also desired that the settlements be near the local indigenous peoples so that Mormons could instruct and bring them into control of the church’s local culture.
Morgan gathered information concerning the region of New Mexico and southern Colorado. His attention was drawn to the San Luis Valley. Planning to winter in Pueblo, Colorado the first group of 72 converts, Elder Morgan, and two missionaries departed by train on November 21, 1877. The emigrants obtained winter quarters, jobs, and created a short-lived United Order that did not long survive after their stay in Pueblo. By the spring of 1878, the first settlement was established in the valley and later reinforced by settlers from San Pete County, Utah Territory. Morgan later led another group of northwest Georgian converts in the spring of 1879 to the new colonies in Colorado. Morgan led a final group of settlers from the south in 1881 to the southern Colorado settlements.
Violence and the murder of Joseph Standing
At times I like to give a shout out in selections that express a writer’s sound and feeling. Below Engel carefully explains how the role or the absence of patriarchal heads of household affected the missionary experience, how that influenced the women’s conversions, and how that created possible dynamics for violence:
When Elder John Morgan and other representatives of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints moved into the region to attract converts, they deliberately negotiated the ties of family and friendship in order to advance their gospel and promises of a better life in the Mormon West. Such promises proved seductive as, by the 1870s, both men and women found it increasingly difficult to scratch a living from the ridges of northwest Georgia. With few options for upward mobility, the poorer classes of whites—men and women—experienced the familiar push-pull of migratory forces. (152)
These community interactions involved religion, gender, sexuality, and family subtleties. One example engaged a “sister whose adherence to the Mormons prompted a crisis in her marriage” because of “the solicitous care of the young male representatives [from] a polygamous lifestyle in the West.” And as the missionaries and their interactions touched “the strings that linked family, kin, and neighbors, the tiny cords were disturbed. Some frayed; others simply snapped (153). Thus, new converts could and did find incensed groups in which “familiar faces dominated the groups. Community members later testified that neighbors and kin of the Varnell’s Station Saints frequently patrolled the community in their search for elders, if necessary, bursting into homes where they may have once been welcomed as family. The Kaneasters and the Elledges reported nighttime visits from men who demanded the whereabouts of Mormon preachers” (97).
Engle explains the context of the killing of Standing:
Though Clawson had only a passing acquaintance with the residents of Varnell’s Station and so did not recognize the armed men, Standing likely understood that the mob represented the families and neighbors of Whitfield and Catoosa County converts.
Four of Elizabeth Elledge’s cousins rode with the mob. The oldest, thirty-three-year-old Jasper “Newt” Nations, Clawson described as “tall, dark and swarthy” and sporting a “pointed black beard.” Dave Nations, his younger brother, rode alongside, motivated by a perceived injury that extended beyond the loss of the Elledge family. Married to Josiah Kaneaster’s sister, Dave likely viewed the destruction of the Kaneaster marriage as the result of Mormon conversion. Bill and Joe Nations also participated in the apprehension of Standing and Clawson.
Hugh Blair, a neighbor of the Brittain Williams family, also numbered among the group assembled to punish the Mormon elders. Blair anticipated the loss of two sisters due to the proselytizing of LDS missionaries. One sister, Nancy, was married to David Williams, who now planned to abandon his Baptist father in order to join his aunt and uncle, Elizabeth and Dillingham Elledge, in the western Zion. Another of Hugh Blair’s sisters, Martha Blair, planned to accompany them to Colorado. Blair’s neighbor, Andy Bradley, described by Clawson as “a coarse and brutal specimen of humanity,” rode with the mob. David Smith, neighbor to Andy Bradley and the now-emigrated Huffakers, also joined the armed group, as did A. S. “Jud” Smith, who possessed a reputation for violence…. Gang members Jefferson Hunter and Mac McClure were linked by marriage, not blood, but both had lost neighbors to Mormonism. Jim Faucett of Catoosa County, kin to numerous Walker County converts, declared himself the leader of the armed group. Ben Clark was a Baptist deacon and related by marriage to John S. Martin, who had left the Baptists for the Mormons.
Resentful at the family and community divisions that resulted from conversion to the LDS Church, mob members resolved to punish Elders Standing and Clawson. (104-105)
Problems
First, the focus of Morgan’s biography becomes erratic at times, switching back and forth from Georgia to Colorado and back, interspliced with trips to Utah Territory.
Second, the writer misses an opportunity (and I think necessary for a more integrated book) by not including a summary and parallels of the Cane Creek massacre (five dead Mormons) in 1884 across the Tennessee border with the Standing murder. Yet again the assault was the result of supposed, unverified allegations of unacceptable randy uncontrolled lusts of Mormon missionaries. Again, the highly publicized reports of Mormon polygamy and conversion then emigration of local young, unmarried women to Utah Territory fueled the fires of violence and retaliation.
And third, several minor typos flaw the work, but the real issue is the foul-up in editing and publishing a work with page numbers either out of order or missing. This is not an issue of one or two out of place numbers. There are pages omitted and or out of order. The paging seriously flaws the production of the book.[2]
Conclusion
The strengths, however, outweigh the erratic continuity of President Morgan’s biographical sketches in unifying the work as well as the page-numbering problems, and the omission of the Cane Creek Massacre. The author does give an interesting mini-biographical sketch of Morgan and a worthy story of the southern immigration to the San Luis Valley. The depicted intricacy of gender, patriarchy, and the control of female sexuality catches and holds one’s attention.
Historians and interested laypersons of Mormon Studies should read the book.
[1] Conference Report, Oct. 1925, p. 158.
[2] The copy received by the reviewer had this flaw of missing and out of order pages. The copy purchased by the editor who posted the review did not. Hopefully this error occurred in a limited number of copies.