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affection will be taken from those who forsake the truth, and their identity and existence will eventually cease." 1

The almost unbreakable hedge that surrounded the inhabitants of the valley at this time, under the system of church espionage, has formed a subject for the novelist, and has seemed to many persons, as described, a probable exaggeration. But, while Young did not narrate in his pulpit the tales of blood which his instructions gave rise to, there is testimony concerning them which leaves no reasonable doubt of their truthfulness.

1 Journal of Discourses, Vol. IV, p. 31.

CHAPTER VIII

SOME CHURCH-INSPIRED MURDERS

THE murders committed during the "Reformation" which attracted most attention, both because of the parties concerned, the effort made by a United States judge to convict the guilty, and the confessions of the latter subsequently obtained, have been known as the Parrish, or Springville, murders. The facts concerning them may be stated fairly as follows:

William R. Parrish was one of the most outspoken champions of the Twelve when the controversy with Rigdon occurred at Nauvoo after Smith's death, and he accompanied the fugitives to Salt Lake Valley. One evening, early in March, 1857, a Bishop named Johnson (husband of ten wives), with two companions, called at Parrish's house in Springville, and put to him some of the questions which the inquisitors of the day were wont to ask — if he prayed, something about his future plans, etc. It had been rumored that Parrish's devotion to the church had cooled, and that he was planning to move with his family — a wife and six children - to California; and at a meeting in Bishop Johnson's council house a letter had been read from Brigham Young directing them to ascertain the intention of certain suspicious characters in the neighborhood, "and if they should make a break and, being pursued, which he required, he would be sorry to hear a favorable report; but the better way is to lock the stable door before the horse is stolen.' This letter was over Brigham's signature."2 This letter was the real cause of the Bishop's visit to Parrish. At a meeting about a week later, A. Durfee and G. Potter were deputed to find

1 "There had been public preaching in Springville to the effect that no Apostles would be allowed to leave; if they did, hog-holes in the fences would be stopped up with them. I heard these sermons.' - Affidavit of Mrs. Parrish; appendix to "Speech of Hon. John Cradlebaugh."

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2 Confession of J. M. Stewart, one of the Bishop's counsellors and precinct magis

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out when the Parrishes proposed to leave the territory. Accordingly, Durfee got employment with Parrish, and both of them gave him the idea that they sympathized with his desire to depart. One morning, about a week later, Parrish discovered that his horses had been stolen, and efforts to recover them were fruitless.

Meanwhile, Parrish, unsuspicious of Potter and Durfee,1 was telling them of his continued plans to escape, how constantly his house was watched, and how difficult it was for him to get out the few articles required for the trip. Finally, at Parrish's suggestion, it was arranged that he and Durfee should walk out of the village in the daytime, as the method best calculated to allay suspicion. They carried out this plan, and when they got to a stream called Dry Creek, Parrish asked Durfee to go back to the house and bring his two sons, Beason and Orrin, to join him. When Durfee returned to the house, at about sunset, he found Potter there, and Potter set off at once for the meeting-place, ostensibly to carry some of the articles needed for the journey.

Potter met Parrish where he was waiting for Durfee's return, and they walked down a lane to a fence corner, where a Mormon named William Bird was lying, armed with a gun. Here occurred what might be called an illustration of "poetic justice." In the twilight, Bird mistook his victim, and fired, killing Potter. As Bird rose and stepped forward, Parrish asked if it was he who had fired the unexpected shot. For a reply Bird drew a knife, clenched with Parrish, and, as he afterward expressed it, "worked the best he could in stabbing him." He "worked" so well that, as afterward described by one of the men concerned in the plot,2 the old man was cut all over, fifteen times in the back, as well as in the left side, the arms, and the hands. But Bird knew that his task was not completed, and, as soon as the murder of the elder Parrish was accomplished, taking his own and Potter's gun, he again concealed himself in the fence corner, awaiting the appearance of the Parrish boys. They soon came up in company with Durfee, and Bird fired at Beason with so good aim that he dropped dead at once. Turning the weapon on Orrin, the first cap snapped, but he tried again and put a ball through Orrin's cartridge box. The lad then ran and found refuge in the house of an uncle.

1 Durfee's confession, appendix to Cradlebaugh's speech.

2 Affidavit of J. Bartholemew before Judge Cradlebaugh.

The outcome of this crime? The arrest of Orrin and Durfee as the murderers by a Mormon officer; a farcical hearing by a coroner's jury, with a verdict of assassins unknown; distrusted participants in the crime themselves the object of the Mormon spies and would-be assassins; the robbery of a neighbor who dared to fondemn the crime; a vain appeal by Mrs. Parrish to Brigham Yung, who told her he "would have stopped it had he known anything about it," and who, when she persisted in seeking another interview, had her advised to "drop it," and a failure by the widow to secure even the stolen horses. "The wife of Mr. Parrish told me," said Judge Cradlebaugh, when he charged the jury concerning this case, "that since then at times she had lived on bread and water, and still there are persons in this community riding about on those horses."

The effort to have the men concerned in this and similar crimes convicted, forms a part of the history of Judge Cradlebaugh's judicial career after the "Mormon War," but it failed. When the grand jury would not bring in indictments, he issued bench warrants for the arrest of the accused, and sent the United States marshal, sustained by a military posse, to serve the papers. It was thus that the affidavits and confessions cited were obtained. Then followed a stampede among the residents of the Springville neighborhood, as the judge explained in his subsequent speech in Congress, the church officials and civil officers being prominent in the flight, and, when their houses were reached, they were occupied only by many wives and many children. "I am justified," he told the House of Representatives, "in charging that the Mormons are guilty, and that the Mormon church is guilty, of the crimes of murder and robbery, as taught in their books of faith."1

Another of the murders under this dispensation, which Judge Cradlebaugh mentioned as "peculiarly and shockingly prominent,” was that of the Aikin party, in the spring of 1857. This party,

1 "I say as a fact that there was no escape for any one that the leaders of the church in southern Utah selected as a victim. . . . It was a rare thing for a man to escape from the territory with all his property until after the Pacific Railroad was built through Utah." - LEE, " Mormonism Unveiled," pp. 275, 287.

Charles Nordhoff, in a Utah letter to the New York Evening Post in May, 1871, said: "A friend said to me this afternoon, 'I saw a great change in Salt Lake since I was there three years ago. The place is free; the people no longer speak in whispers. Three years ago it was unsafe to speak aloud in Salt Lake City' about Mormonism, and you were warned to be cautious.""

consisting of six men, started east from San Francisco in May, 1857, and, falling in with a Mormon train, joined them for protection against the Indians. When they got to a safer neighborhood, the Californians pushed on ahead. Arriving in Kayesville, twentyfive miles north of Salt Lake City, they were at once arrested as federal spies, and their animals (they had an outfit worth in all about $25,000) were put into the public corral. When their Mormon fellow-travellers arrived, they scouted the idea that the men even knew of an impending "war," and the party were told that they would be sent out of the territory. But before they started, a council, held at the call of a Bishop in Salt Lake City, decided on their death.

Four of the party were attacked in camp by their escort while asleep; two were killed at once, and two who escaped temporarily were shot while, as they supposed, being escorted back to Salt Lake City. The two others were attacked by O. P. Rockwell and some associates near the city; one was killed outright, and the other escaped, wounded, and was shot the next day while under the escort of "Bill" Hickman, and, according to the latter, by Young's order. 1

A story of the escape of one man from the valley, notwithstanding elaborate plans to prevent his doing so, has been preserved, not in the testimony of repentant participants in his persecution, but in his own words.2

Frederick Loba was a prosperous resident of Lausanne, Switzerland, where for some years he had been introducing a new principle in gas manufacture, when, in 1853, some friends called his attention to the Mormons' professions and promises. Loba was induced to believe that all mankind who did not gather in Great Salt Lake Valley would be given over to destruction, and that, not only would his soul be saved by moving there, but that his business opportunities would be greatly advanced. Accordingly he gave up the direction of the gas works at Lausanne, and reached St. Louis in December, 1853, with about $8000 worth of property. There he was made temporary president of a Mormon church, and there he got his first bad impression of the Mormon brotherhood.

1 "Brigham's Destroying Angel," p. 128.

2 Leavenworth, Kansas, letter to New York Times, published May 1, 1858.

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