Lucy and Almon Whiting's Choice: After the Mormon Exodus

 Lucy and Almon faced a choice. A painful choice, one that, if they did not choose correctly, would separate them from family not only in this lifetime, but in eternity. They were faithful members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Lucy’s childhood was spent following the prophet, Joseph Smith, from Kirtland to Far West, Missouri to Nauvoo, Illinois with a stop in Morley settlement, also in Illinois. It was the same for Almon. But their prophet was murdered - martyred - and church members were thrown into upheaval.

  Almon Whiting, Sr.

     The Church faced an evacuation, an exodus, from Nauvoo, their beautiful city on the Mississippi. They’d been hounded and harassed, run out of three states. Now it was time to leave the United States behind, to find a place so far removed from “Gentiles,” as non-members were called, that they could practice their faith in peace. But an estimated 12,000 people, many of them poor, with immigrants from Europe still arriving, could not make such an exodus overnight. It took money to have wagons and oxen teams and provisions to get a family through two months of travel. The plan was going to Utah, but in an organized way, over time. First, they fled to Iowa and Nebraska.

     There was another crisis in addition to this mass move. Many thought Brigham Young was Joseph’s successor. Several other men thought the mantle of leadership fell upon themselves. Each held the claim that the only way to heaven was theirs. What to decide?

Lucy’s Early Life

     Born in Ohio in 1826, Lucia Louisa Leavitt - Lucy - was the daughter of Enoch Virgil Leavitt and Abigail Leonora Snow, always called Leonora. The Leavitts and the Snows shared much in common. They were New Englanders who were from the generation that first moved west in huge numbers, settling in the Western Reserve – Ohio. Both families would join the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. 

      The extended Leavitt family were among the founders of the Ohio towns of Aurora, Warren and Mantua. Enoch was the oldest child of Enoch Leavitt, Jr., a prominent doctor who by the time of his death in 1827 owned about 1,000 acres of land.

      Enoch married Leonora in 1821 in Mantua. They had three children, Franklin, Cornelia and Lucy before the marriage broke up. Lucy was four when her parents’ marriage ended and Leonora and her children moved back in with her parents. The Snows were a well-regarded couple with a successful farm, and Lucy’s grandfather served as county commissioner. In 1831 Lucy’s mother Leonora and grandmother Rosetta Pettibone Snow met Joseph Smith, received a copy of the Book of Mormon, and listened as he shared the gospel with them in their home. They were the first in the family to be baptized in his fledgling church. Within a few years, Lucy’s Snow grandfather, aunts and uncles joined, as did she.

      Lucy grew up with her Snow grandparents, or living with her mother and Aunt Eliza, the latter of whom would later become the preeminent Mormon woman of the nineteenth century. Her mother helped support them by sewing. As members of a persecuted religion, they were repeatedly driven from their homes by mob violence. For a time, she and her future husband lived in Morley Settlement, a sort of satellite Mormon community about 30 miles from Nauvoo. Eventually about 450 church members lived there. Her future brother-in-law, Edwin Whiting, was second counselor in the stake (similar to diocese) leadership. Her uncle Lorenzo was a teacher in the school for a time. He would later serve as president of the church.

     In 1842, tired of so much strife and upheaval, her grandparents left the community and moved to Walnut Grove, Knox County, Illinois.

Almon’s Early Life

     Like Lucy, Almon Whiting’s parents joined the church when he was a child. They were New Englanders who moved to the Western Reserve - Ohio - before he was born. His father was a carpenter and taught his sons the trade. There were twelve children, eleven surviving to adulthood. 

     Almon was a veteran of the Mexican-American War, part of the Mormon Battalion, the only group in U.S. military service recruited from a single religion. At a difficult time for the church, when they were seeking help from the federal government to leave the United States for Utah, President James Polk asked them to raise a battalion of 500 men. Brigham Young encouraged this as a public relations measure and because members were desperate for funds to make the journey to Utah. Battalion members donated their pay to the church and marched 2,000 arduous miles to California. They were discharged in July 1847. Like most of them, Almon went to Salt Lake afterwards, but eventually made his way back to Iowa. 

Cutlerites

     Joseph Smith’s assassination in 1844 brought on more than the exodus. More than half of church members from Nauvoo accepted Brigham Young as church leader and followed him to Utah over a period of several years, typically denoted as 1846 to 1857. Others followed break-off groups, the most successful of which were called the Josephites and the Cutlerites. And some simply left the church. There were painful separations – not just in physical distance but believing that beloved family members’ souls were at stake. 

     The Cutlerites didn’t form immediately after Joseph Smith’s death. Danny Jorgeson, an authority on Cutlerites, described the situation of those who eventually joined the sect.

     “Through the late 1840s and early 1850s, those people who were to become Cutlerites remained with the largest body of Latter-Day Saints rather than becoming dissenters or joining any of the existing or emergent splinter groups. The group was bound by friendship, kinship, and a shared experience of living in the same communities but they did not yet compose a distinct Mormon faction.” [1]

     Alpheus Cutler was part of Joseph Smith’s inner circle. He remained a trusted leader after the martyrdom of the prophet. He crossed Iowa in the summer of 1846 and at Winter Quarters, Nebraska became president of the Municipal High Council. Brigham Young appointed him to take a company and begin missionary work among Delaware Indians in Kansas Territory. He did so, and also established a small colony, the Silver Creek branch in Iowa, of which he was president. 

    The colony had the official sanction of Brother Brigham, but problems arose. Followers began to view Alpheus as the true president of the church. They were investigated by the High Council of the church and disfellowshipped. Alpheus Cutler was excommunicated in 1851.

     In fact, he came to see himself as Joseph Smith’s rightful heir. He said he was ordained in Nauvoo by Joseph Smith by divine revelation in a special, secret quorum of seven men. Smith’s murder signaled God’s rejection of the Mormon church, according to Alpheus, but not  the priesthood and most of Joseph’s teachings. 

     In 1852 he gathered his followers, about twenty families, and went to an area near present-day Shenandoah, Iowa where he founded Manti, which was named after a city in the Book of Mormon. In 1853 he organized the Church of Jesus Christ - Cutlerite. Key differences with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints were that they believed the death of Joseph Smith signaled the end of an era and a major shift in the work of God; that the redemption of Zion was impending and would be accomplished by unity and consecration, the latter being a form of communal living. They believed Zion would be established in Jackson County, Missouri and would happen in Alpheus’ lifetime. He turned 70 in 1854, a year after founding the church.

     Members believed they were literally in the last days before the return of Christ on earth, and that there were three things that would happen before that time:

• People would live the Law of Consecration. This was something Joseph Smith attempted, but abandoned as he said members were not yet ready for it. It was utopian communal living.

• The “Lamanites,” or Native Americans, would convert to the Cutlerite Church.

• Members would establish Zion in Independence, Missouri. 

      

     Manti, then, was a way station. Joseph Smith III wrote in his memoir that Cutlerites had wagons and tents at the ready “at a moment’s notice to throw their household goods into the vehicles and start for Independence,” their belief so strong that they didn’t furnish their homes to make them comfortable or make improvements on their lands even though it was among the best and most fertile in Iowa. They considered it their responsibility to always be prepared to reestablish Zion in Independence. The failure of the Delaware tribe in Kansas to accept the gospel as preached by Alpheus, then, was a great disappointment as this conversion had to happen before a big move. 

Lucy and Almon

      Lucy was 18 when Joseph Smith was killed. Her mother was “sealed” in plural marriage to Isaac Morley, leader of the Morley settlement in Illinois before its destruction by mob action. It's nor clear if the two ever lived together, however. It’s uncertain exactly where Leonora and Lucy were until the 1850 census showed they were living in Walnut Grove on the Snow farm. In their household were Lucy’s two uncles who left the church, Samuel and Lucius, and Lucius’s new wife. (The Snow grandparents passed away in 1845 and 1846.) Leonora was listed as Leonora Leavitt, not Morley.

      In 1853, at age 27, Lucy married Almon Whiting in Knox County. Her sister Cornelia, aunt Eliza and Uncle Lorenzo and other relatives  had already gone to Utah, as had some of Almon’s siblings. If she’d been intent on going to Utah, she had opportunities to go. She and Almon joined Alpheus Cutler’s group, as did Almon’s siblings Chancy, Sylvester, Francis Lewis and Louisa. Lucy had another link to Chancy in that he was married to one of Isaac Morley's daughters. Lucy’s cousins, Hilbert and Augusta McConoughey joined also, and Augusta married a Whiting cousin, Edmond.  It’s believed there were about 500 members of the Church of Jesus Christ (Cutlerite) forming the town.

     The Whiting brothers operated furniture-making, wagon-making and clock- and watch-making businesses outside the main district. This was an era in which Almon made his own furniture glue from deer hooves and used horsepower to run his turning lathe. Cousin Hilbert owned a chair factory in Manti. The early Mormons enjoyed dances and socials, and Almon played the violin at many dances.

     Religious life revolved around advancement: striving to advance in righteousness to be worthy of Zion. Joseph Smith III said they spoke a lot of preparation. Being worthy to live the Law of Consecration and all their other plans meant being prepared.   

     The Josephites, the group Joseph Smith’s widow and sons belonged to, began making successful overtures to convert the Cutlerites, inviting Alpheus to join them in 1855. His son, whom he presumed to be his successor, joined the group, which would become the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. (Today they are known simply as Community of Christ.) 

      By 1860 about half the Cutlerites had joined the Josephites. Remaining members began looking to move to Minnesota where they could be free of the ecclesiastic “sheep stealers.” The census that year shows that Lucy and Almon were among those who made the move. They lived  in Red Wing, Minnesota, next-door to Uncle Samuel Snow. (Samuel was just five years older than Lucy; they had grown up more as brother and sister.) Her brother Franklin also lived there, and their father, Enoch, lived with him. The official move of the church did not take place until after the death of Alpheus, however. 

      Lucy died in 1862. 

Afterword

      Two years after Lucy’s death, Alpheus Cutler died and her brother-in-law, Chauncey Whiting, was chosen as leader of the church. He officially moved the group to Minnesota, wintering in Red Wing before moving to Otter Tail County.

      Lucy and Almon did not have children. He moved with the Cutlerites to the town they founded, Clitheral, in Otter Tail County, remarried, had nine children, became a leader in the Cutlerite Church, and lived till 1908. The abandoned town of Manti, Iowa no longer exists. Clitheral is similarly abandoned. The church moved to Independence, Missouri where an estimated twenty members remain. 

Notes -  Here is how Lucy fits in my family tree: Her mother, Leonora Snow, was the daughter of Rosetta Leonora Pettibone. Rosetta was the daughter of Rosetta Barber. Rosetta’s brother was Roswell Barber, my fourth great-grandfather. 

   For more on this branch of the tree read the following articles:

• “The Deepest Faith: Cornelia Leavitt’s Life, A Pioneer and Plural Wife’s Story,” about Lucy’s sister

• “Hannah Maria Goddard: Mormon Pioneer, Plural Wife,” a cousin of Lucy’s. Hannah was the daughter of Percy Amanda Pettibone, Lucy’s great-aunt (Rosetta Leonora Pettibone’s sister).

• “A Prophet’s Brother: Samuel Pearce Snow,” about Lucy’s uncle. Samuel was Leonora Snow’s brother. 

     Lucy’s cousins, Hilbert and Augusta McConoughey, were the children of her aunt, Amanda Percy Snow. 

 

Sources:

 

      Jorgeson, Danny L. “The Morley Settlement in Illinois 1839-1846: Tribe and Clan in a Nauvoo Mormon Community,” The John Whitmer Historical Society Journal, Vol. 32, No. 2 (Fall/Winter 2021), p.p. 149-170.

     Jorgeson, Danny L. “Annointed Queens and Priests: Alpheus Cutler’s Plural Wives,” The John Whitmer Historical Society Journal, Vol. 38, No. 1 (Spring/Summer 2018), pp. 55-79. 

      Jorgeson, Danny L. "Early Mormon Marriage, Family and Networks of Kinship: Begats and Horizontal Genealogy in the Case of the Later Cutlerites at Nauvoo,” The John Whitmer Historical Society Journal, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Spring/Summer 2014)pp. 127-154.

      Jorgeson, Danny L. “The Scattered Saints of Southwest Iowa: Cutlerite-Josephite Conflict and Rivalry, 1855-1865,” The John Whitmer Historical Society Journal, Vol.13 (1993), pp. 80-98.

      Jorgeson, Danny L. “The Cutlerites of Southwestern Iowa: A Latter-Day Saint Schism and Its Role in the Early Settlement of Iowa,”Annals of Iowa, Vol. 58 (Spring 1999), The State Historical Society of Iowa.

      Whiting, Chauncey. Letter to Mrs. Hattie Jensen, 18 March 1901, http://www.kathysfamily.org/grinnell/whiting/chaunceyletter.html.

      Ursenbach, Maureen. Eliza R. Snow’s Nauvoo Diary, BYU Studies Quarterly, Vol. 15 Issue 4, https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1733&context=byusq

Accessed July 4, 2022.

      Blythe, Christopher James. “The Church in the Days of Alpheus Cutler: New Insights Into Nineteenth-Century Cutlerite Ecclesiology,” The John Whitmer Historical Society Journal, Vol. 29 (2009). pp. 73-93.

      Kimber, Alta. “The Coming of the Latter Day Saints to Otter Tail County,” Minnesota History, Vol. 13, No. 4 (Dec. 1932), pp. 385-394.

 

[1] Jorgeson, Annals of Iowa

 

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