I will have to ask my mom which direction the 20 miles away from Nauvoo they were. I am not sure which of the John Holmans wrote it, but it is either my third great grandfather (born 1830) the nephew of that third great grandfather (born 1832) who is not a direct ancestor, or my fourth great grandfather (died 1847). It is tempting to go with the older John, except that all of the contracts he signed were with an X.

My third great grandfather married one of the Ruttle girls in 1846, when he was 16. (He married three Ruttle girls (his first two wives were cousins who both died in childbirth, and his third wife was his first wife’s twin sister.) His address on the marriage certificate is different from his parent’s farm, so he may have had a farm in 1845.

A total side note, but I always wondered why John’s oldest sister name her second son John. The “older John” was only two years old and the only boy of that generation. I also think it is interesting that three of the girls in the family married first or second cousins, and do they had the same names for their entire lives.

Okay, sorry to ramble. I just thought it was cool to realize that it was the same date in the journal. My mom made all of us kids photocopied all of the source materials for Christmas last year. It is the first time I have actually had any of my family have a connection to the LDS church before the late 60s. Thank you for making a little bit of my family history more alive.

But, names! If only we had more names! He has a few names of the anti-Mormon party, but not of the Mormons. Checking back my only source, History of the Church V7:522, 525, 527, 530, it appears that my ancestor William Kelsey Rice’s home at Camp Creek was burned five days earlier on September 12. I’ve got to get to the CHL and do more work on this.

I think I must side with the author that the Mormon’s should have been more stubborn in defending their rightful property. OTOH, maybe they learned a lesson at Crooked River that we’ve forgotten. In any case, it might explain why BY opted for a firmer stance 15 years later when Johnson’s Army came to Utah.

I have to add a personal note here. One of the homes burned on this day belonged to one of my wife’s ancestors, Edmund Durfee. Along with the other farmers, Durfee and his family retreated to Nauvoo for safety. About a month later, Durfee and several other farmers returned to the area in an attempt to harvest the crops they had left behind. They stayed overnight at the home of a sympathetic non-Mormon, but their presence became know to the mobs, who set fire to the haystack. As the men rushed out to fight the fire, the attackers opened fire, and Edmund Durfee was shot in the back and killed, November 15th.

Durfee’s wife and children, some of them grown and married, traveled west to Utah, but Durfee’s wife died at Winter Quarters, leaving the the older siblings to continue the trek and care for the younger ones. I believe there were 8 children in the family.

“I begin to believe there is no such word in the Mormon dictionary as courage. Men who will suffer their houses to be burned down in broad day, and in their own sight, and will not fight to protect them, cannot possess a particle of courage.”

Thanks for this article! It is a precious find.

What a sad day. Hurrah for the early Saints!