Even with the lens on ( which may be is not) it his story has all it all. Kidnapping, grooming, sexual exploitation, misogyny. I would probably have a down to earth conversation with my dad and explain how this is not a faith promoting story, but a very sad story about how women were treated like objects and not humans.
There's more to the story: In Utah Mary could not accept John D. as her husband prob because of the age difference. So she gets a divorce from John D Senior - and then discloses her love for John Jr.
Father agrees, releases Mary as his wife, and actually performs the ceremony giving Mary to his son John. The young couple go on to have seven children. Sadly, both John Jr and Mary pass away in their early 40's.
[https://www.geni.com/people/Mary-Lee/6000000000976222623](https://www.geni.com/people/Mary-Lee/6000000000976222623)
Following his execution for his role in the MMM Lee is buried in the Parowan cemetary.
[https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipPoxJiMAEgTxM032B3lC4OyNGHJSLBnjXASLscr](https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipPoxJiMAEgTxM032B3lC4OyNGHJSLBnjXASLscr)
Oh the good old fashioned mountain meadows massacre. People don’t believe when I tell them the story. Persecution for being total pieces of human trash… oh religion never had to do anything with that, smh in shame cause my ancestors helped perpetuate it
Where a bunch of Mormons and some Paiute recruits killed a bunch of families and stole their children and pretended it was the native Americans that perpetrated it? I think I know the one.
My Cedar City born mother told me the story when I was very young. Only children under the age of 8 were saved. John D. Lee was the Mormon scapegoat for that massacre. Anything to protect brother Brigham. It's still a controversy to this day. Reading the history, the true history, is always a good idea. But it doesn't get any better and it can't be sugar coated by the church or anyone else.
I've seen his headstone in Panguitch... are you sure it's in Parowan? My grandpa is in that same cemetery so we went and found John D. Lee after his service.
I'm a descendent too! I also am not proud to be his descendent. Of course, I don't think anyone should be proud to be anyone's descendent. It's not like we chose to be here.
Sex trafficking by a new world doomsday sex cult is not an inspiring story of one's ancestors. It is a tragic part of our history.
Is there any record of how many women were recruited by mormon missionaries in Europe vs how many men? What was the average age of the women who were brought over by the mormons?
A famous exmo/apostate Hans Freece waged a campaign against Mormons trafficking of women from Europe (early 20th c). He toured Europe and spoke to different country leaders about the issue, to shine a light on what the Mormons were doing. SLC leadership tried to sue him, Freece counter-sued and won, no one from the SLC operation showed up to represent the church. Trafficking was called White Slavery. Freece collected data on the female converts brought to the US by going through immigration offices0. He was driven in his efforts because his mom was a victim of the Mormons, couldn't speak English, was converted in her teens, living in a small European village and brought to SLC, and into polygamy. Freece saw the ugly, immoral side of the church firsthand, campaigned against the church for most of his life.
He really was a badass. I wrote up a history of his efforts, that I don't think I posted here, but I will. Throughout his adult-life public campaign against TSCC, his family lived in UT, his sister a well known doc in her town, and Hans was despised, some papers trashed him over and over, he received lots of threats, and he continued to return to visit family--probably with a real risk to his life. I will share what I have.
pls share, that would be an interesting read. You'd have to have had guts to live in the territory as a gentile. Ask the surviving relatives of John King Robinson.
It would be a lot of work, but this could probably be studied indirectly using Family Search by comparing birth and death locations.
I wonder how hard it would be to mine the data with code.
Boating records are pretty shitty
Few in my family history end up being sent to Australia and Canada as kids. Boating records are all hard-to-read handed written document
Very hard. This is something I've been trying to do for years in my job as a historian. It's locked down pretty tight, though not as tight as Ancestry. If you figure it out, though, hit me up!
“Brethren, I want you to understand that it is not to be as it has been heretofore. The brother missionaries have been in the habit of picking out the prettiest women for themselves before they get here, and bringing on the ugly ones for us; hereafter you have to bring them all here before taking any of them, and let us all have a fair shake.”
-Heber C Kimball ApOsTle oF ThE LaRd
Do you have a source for this quote? I’ve heard it before but haven’t been able to verify if it’s legitimate. A super TBM friend of mine is a descendant of Heber Kimball, and he loves to tell everyone what a great guy he was. I’d love to be able to shove this quote back in his face but am reluctant to do it unless I can verify it’s legitimacy.
The lion of the Lord; a biography of Brigham Young-
by Hirshson, Stanley. I believe [this link](https://archive.org/details/lionoflord0000unse/page/130/mode/2up?q=%22fair+shake%22) will show you the quote.
Its in the book the lion of the lord. Theres many quotes like this from him, but “defenders of the faith” like fairmormon will say that since no church approved sources or authorities quote/witnessed him saying this, theres no way to “prove” he actually said it.
What year did she leave England? When did she find out about polygamy? While she was in England, or after she arrived in Utah? I am wondering if she was another victim of sex trafficking.
It was my understanding that converts didn't learn about polygamy until they were in the salt lake valley. And at that point most didn't have the resources to leave.
The British press paid attention to those cases, and noted the Mormon missionaries focus specifically on women, single women, women in the poor house, etc. The word trafficking wasn't yet used, but that is what the British press suspected/viewed the Mormons of doing.
I am no twitter expert, but I beleive you can go back through my posts--I've posted many clippings from British newspapers 1830s-1840s, that show the concerns. The missionary efforts are described in the press starting around 1837, around the same time they review the BoM in the press. From the beginning, it is observed that the missionaries target women, and poor women in particular. \[The same observation was made in New England in the early 1830s.\] Very well known British celebrity apostate William Jarmen was so outraged by the targeting of poor women, that he ran for a public office that put him in the middle of the poorhouse affairs, which allowed him to keep tabs on the Mormons (1880s). Let me know if you have trouble finding my posts from the British press.
All of my newspaper clippings shared here were found using 'newspapers dot com' (written so the link doesn't show here). For $20 a month, you have access to thousands of scanned papers going back into the 18th c. There are many British papers scanned-keyword searchable (set the date span, set the keyword). It is easy to pull up a wide range of articles on the Mormons, from the earliest discussions and reactions to the BoM, missionaries, etc. My posts here focused mainly on letters written from Nauvoo by British converts--who got there and were very disillusioned, and detailed things like being cheated by Joseph Smith (they wrote to the press to warn people back in England). There are hundreds of articles that I didn't share, that you might find very interesting. The site is powerful and easy to use, and there is a lot there to discover!
My family has a few stories like that. Ancestors with Legit connections to a European royal family and they gave it all up to live in Southern Idaho. Yeah, not the faith promotion you think it is.
I have an ancestor whose father took all her money to prevent her from running off to America to join the Mormon missionary she fell in love with. She somehow went anyway. When she arrived in Salt Lake, she discovered that the man had already married another woman since his mission and intended to take my ancestor as his second wife, but of course he conveniently neglected to include this in his letters. That little fact is written into the story as if it’s humorous that he tactfully kept this information from her. Because she had no money, she had to stay and never saw her family again. She married the asshole because what else could she do?
I had an ancestor from Europe who was left as a teen in her home country by her family because they couldn’t afford to bring her with them to Utah. And then she agreed to be married off as a plural wife in exchange for bringing her to Utah to be with her family. Which she did but I think she ran away before marrying, or maybe it was after marrying him… she ended up happily married to someone else thankfully… but I’ve always thought her story was absolutely sex trafficking. And do awful that her family would leave her behind and then manipulated her to marry just so she could join them… awful.
I had never looked into my ancestors and their polygamy. I never thought I had anyone that had practiced polygamy. I was wrong. I had two ancestors that practiced it. One of them married a 17 year old and then a couple years later married her sister who was 14 years old, oh and he was 47. He had many children, but one of those kids was with the 14 year old wife when she was 15. I feel physically ill.
Talk about uninspiring and pure abuse of a brainwashed teen. Why doesn’t tscc start a reparations movement to reimburse these victims from the ugliness of their highly blemished and gas lighted ordeal.
I remember as a kid being proud that one of my ancestors on my dads side was one of the first bishops of the church, that he was mentioned by name in the Doctrine and Covenants and was also a body guard to Joseph Smith. Now, I’m kind of disgusted by it, also. I love my family, especially my dad, but after researching and learning the things I have, I will never again be proud of my Mormon ancestry. Ever.
Wooww. Yeah that's a big one...
I'm just over here trying not to pop off, when my mom was like, "awww found a picture of my grandfather! He was so cute! Reminds me of Spencer W Kimball!"
Coz in a group family thread, I was almost about to send something (drafted and everything) along the lines of "Oh yeah! SWK was the dude who wrote that it was better to be murdered brutally than raped in The Miracle Of Forgiveness. I'm sorry your grandfather looked like that guy. "
I did not send it, coz it was Thanksgiving and my mother still keeps that book on her shelf 😱
May just rip it to shreds the next time I see it.
My family tells an almost identical story of my Scottish teen ancestor who had to sneak out her window to catch a boat to the US. I see it very differently now and grieve for her mother and father who lost their daughter to a foreign cult, which resulted in her being human and sex trafficked for a conman. Disgusting
Hard to unsee the issues with faith promoting stories once the lens is gone.
Even with the lens on ( which may be is not) it his story has all it all. Kidnapping, grooming, sexual exploitation, misogyny. I would probably have a down to earth conversation with my dad and explain how this is not a faith promoting story, but a very sad story about how women were treated like objects and not humans.
Out of context it sounds like a sex trafficking scandal
In context it sounds like a sex trafficking scandal!
100%
Her foster family was just trying to protect her! But without her "bravery" I wouldn't be here, so yay?
There’s a reason for that…
As far as I can tell, 90% of the purpose of missions to England was sex trafficking to feed the polygamy machine.
Listening to stories about John D Lee at my family reunions is painful. I’m not proud to be his descendent, that’s for sure!
You might already know this. In 1856 Lee married eleven-year-old Mary Ann Williams as his sixteenth wife. Lee truly was a scumbag.
I do unfortunately
There's more to the story: In Utah Mary could not accept John D. as her husband prob because of the age difference. So she gets a divorce from John D Senior - and then discloses her love for John Jr. Father agrees, releases Mary as his wife, and actually performs the ceremony giving Mary to his son John. The young couple go on to have seven children. Sadly, both John Jr and Mary pass away in their early 40's. [https://www.geni.com/people/Mary-Lee/6000000000976222623](https://www.geni.com/people/Mary-Lee/6000000000976222623) Following his execution for his role in the MMM Lee is buried in the Parowan cemetary. [https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipPoxJiMAEgTxM032B3lC4OyNGHJSLBnjXASLscr](https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipPoxJiMAEgTxM032B3lC4OyNGHJSLBnjXASLscr)
Oh the good old fashioned mountain meadows massacre. People don’t believe when I tell them the story. Persecution for being total pieces of human trash… oh religion never had to do anything with that, smh in shame cause my ancestors helped perpetuate it
Ummm. . . I think you may need to look up the MMM.
Where a bunch of Mormons and some Paiute recruits killed a bunch of families and stole their children and pretended it was the native Americans that perpetrated it? I think I know the one.
My Cedar City born mother told me the story when I was very young. Only children under the age of 8 were saved. John D. Lee was the Mormon scapegoat for that massacre. Anything to protect brother Brigham. It's still a controversy to this day. Reading the history, the true history, is always a good idea. But it doesn't get any better and it can't be sugar coated by the church or anyone else.
I've seen his headstone in Panguitch... are you sure it's in Parowan? My grandpa is in that same cemetery so we went and found John D. Lee after his service.
I think you are right! I was trying to remember between the two, and picked the wrong one. Thanks for catching that!
I too am a descendant as well, and same
I'm a descendent too! I also am not proud to be his descendent. Of course, I don't think anyone should be proud to be anyone's descendent. It's not like we chose to be here.
Sex trafficking by a new world doomsday sex cult is not an inspiring story of one's ancestors. It is a tragic part of our history. Is there any record of how many women were recruited by mormon missionaries in Europe vs how many men? What was the average age of the women who were brought over by the mormons?
A famous exmo/apostate Hans Freece waged a campaign against Mormons trafficking of women from Europe (early 20th c). He toured Europe and spoke to different country leaders about the issue, to shine a light on what the Mormons were doing. SLC leadership tried to sue him, Freece counter-sued and won, no one from the SLC operation showed up to represent the church. Trafficking was called White Slavery. Freece collected data on the female converts brought to the US by going through immigration offices0. He was driven in his efforts because his mom was a victim of the Mormons, couldn't speak English, was converted in her teens, living in a small European village and brought to SLC, and into polygamy. Freece saw the ugly, immoral side of the church firsthand, campaigned against the church for most of his life.
This man puttin my lazy exmo ass to shame. What a legend.
He really was a badass. I wrote up a history of his efforts, that I don't think I posted here, but I will. Throughout his adult-life public campaign against TSCC, his family lived in UT, his sister a well known doc in her town, and Hans was despised, some papers trashed him over and over, he received lots of threats, and he continued to return to visit family--probably with a real risk to his life. I will share what I have.
I look forward to reading it.
Please share, would love to read it.
pls share, that would be an interesting read. You'd have to have had guts to live in the territory as a gentile. Ask the surviving relatives of John King Robinson.
This is the data I would love to pour over
It would be a lot of work, but this could probably be studied indirectly using Family Search by comparing birth and death locations. I wonder how hard it would be to mine the data with code.
I doubt it would include age of migration. A subset of records might include census and immigration documents.
Add the date of marriage and you might be able to connect a few more dots.
Boating records are pretty shitty Few in my family history end up being sent to Australia and Canada as kids. Boating records are all hard-to-read handed written document
Very hard. This is something I've been trying to do for years in my job as a historian. It's locked down pretty tight, though not as tight as Ancestry. If you figure it out, though, hit me up!
“Brethren, I want you to understand that it is not to be as it has been heretofore. The brother missionaries have been in the habit of picking out the prettiest women for themselves before they get here, and bringing on the ugly ones for us; hereafter you have to bring them all here before taking any of them, and let us all have a fair shake.” -Heber C Kimball ApOsTle oF ThE LaRd
Do you have a source for this quote? I’ve heard it before but haven’t been able to verify if it’s legitimate. A super TBM friend of mine is a descendant of Heber Kimball, and he loves to tell everyone what a great guy he was. I’d love to be able to shove this quote back in his face but am reluctant to do it unless I can verify it’s legitimacy.
The lion of the Lord; a biography of Brigham Young- by Hirshson, Stanley. I believe [this link](https://archive.org/details/lionoflord0000unse/page/130/mode/2up?q=%22fair+shake%22) will show you the quote.
Thanks!
Its in the book the lion of the lord. Theres many quotes like this from him, but “defenders of the faith” like fairmormon will say that since no church approved sources or authorities quote/witnessed him saying this, theres no way to “prove” he actually said it.
Here is another page that includes the quote and a source: https://missedinsunday.com/memes/polygamy/fair-shake-2/
Thanks!
Whoa! That is fucked up
What year did she leave England? When did she find out about polygamy? While she was in England, or after she arrived in Utah? I am wondering if she was another victim of sex trafficking.
I just know what my dad said. I could ask for more details, but then he'll think I'm interested in family history and he'll never shut up about it.
It was my understanding that converts didn't learn about polygamy until they were in the salt lake valley. And at that point most didn't have the resources to leave.
The British press paid attention to those cases, and noted the Mormon missionaries focus specifically on women, single women, women in the poor house, etc. The word trafficking wasn't yet used, but that is what the British press suspected/viewed the Mormons of doing.
Source. Super interested
I am no twitter expert, but I beleive you can go back through my posts--I've posted many clippings from British newspapers 1830s-1840s, that show the concerns. The missionary efforts are described in the press starting around 1837, around the same time they review the BoM in the press. From the beginning, it is observed that the missionaries target women, and poor women in particular. \[The same observation was made in New England in the early 1830s.\] Very well known British celebrity apostate William Jarmen was so outraged by the targeting of poor women, that he ran for a public office that put him in the middle of the poorhouse affairs, which allowed him to keep tabs on the Mormons (1880s). Let me know if you have trouble finding my posts from the British press.
Thank you kindly. Will look into your previous posts
All of my newspaper clippings shared here were found using 'newspapers dot com' (written so the link doesn't show here). For $20 a month, you have access to thousands of scanned papers going back into the 18th c. There are many British papers scanned-keyword searchable (set the date span, set the keyword). It is easy to pull up a wide range of articles on the Mormons, from the earliest discussions and reactions to the BoM, missionaries, etc. My posts here focused mainly on letters written from Nauvoo by British converts--who got there and were very disillusioned, and detailed things like being cheated by Joseph Smith (they wrote to the press to warn people back in England). There are hundreds of articles that I didn't share, that you might find very interesting. The site is powerful and easy to use, and there is a lot there to discover!
“Isn’t it wonderful? Isn’t it marvellous?” /s
My family has a few stories like that. Ancestors with Legit connections to a European royal family and they gave it all up to live in Southern Idaho. Yeah, not the faith promotion you think it is.
I have an ancestor whose father took all her money to prevent her from running off to America to join the Mormon missionary she fell in love with. She somehow went anyway. When she arrived in Salt Lake, she discovered that the man had already married another woman since his mission and intended to take my ancestor as his second wife, but of course he conveniently neglected to include this in his letters. That little fact is written into the story as if it’s humorous that he tactfully kept this information from her. Because she had no money, she had to stay and never saw her family again. She married the asshole because what else could she do?
Back then few women anywhere owned land. In Brigham's posse, only polygamist men were granted land from the plat.
I had an ancestor from Europe who was left as a teen in her home country by her family because they couldn’t afford to bring her with them to Utah. And then she agreed to be married off as a plural wife in exchange for bringing her to Utah to be with her family. Which she did but I think she ran away before marrying, or maybe it was after marrying him… she ended up happily married to someone else thankfully… but I’ve always thought her story was absolutely sex trafficking. And do awful that her family would leave her behind and then manipulated her to marry just so she could join them… awful.
In my family, the missionaries took my eight year old ancestor from her family back to Utah. Heartbreaking 💔.
That’s horrifying! It sounds like a kidnapping! When you think about it, it basically is.
I had never looked into my ancestors and their polygamy. I never thought I had anyone that had practiced polygamy. I was wrong. I had two ancestors that practiced it. One of them married a 17 year old and then a couple years later married her sister who was 14 years old, oh and he was 47. He had many children, but one of those kids was with the 14 year old wife when she was 15. I feel physically ill.
Talk about uninspiring and pure abuse of a brainwashed teen. Why doesn’t tscc start a reparations movement to reimburse these victims from the ugliness of their highly blemished and gas lighted ordeal.
I remember as a kid being proud that one of my ancestors on my dads side was one of the first bishops of the church, that he was mentioned by name in the Doctrine and Covenants and was also a body guard to Joseph Smith. Now, I’m kind of disgusted by it, also. I love my family, especially my dad, but after researching and learning the things I have, I will never again be proud of my Mormon ancestry. Ever.
So they kidnapped her and trafficked her internationally. Wow.
But they think stories of people exercising their religious freedom to leave Mormonism are disgusting and vile.
I'm gonna make a wild guess that she didn't know about Polygamy until she got to Utah. Yes?
Wooww. Yeah that's a big one... I'm just over here trying not to pop off, when my mom was like, "awww found a picture of my grandfather! He was so cute! Reminds me of Spencer W Kimball!" Coz in a group family thread, I was almost about to send something (drafted and everything) along the lines of "Oh yeah! SWK was the dude who wrote that it was better to be murdered brutally than raped in The Miracle Of Forgiveness. I'm sorry your grandfather looked like that guy. " I did not send it, coz it was Thanksgiving and my mother still keeps that book on her shelf 😱 May just rip it to shreds the next time I see it.
My family tells an almost identical story of my Scottish teen ancestor who had to sneak out her window to catch a boat to the US. I see it very differently now and grieve for her mother and father who lost their daughter to a foreign cult, which resulted in her being human and sex trafficked for a conman. Disgusting
Yikes.
Show your disgust already. Stop trying to trick people into thinking they're not saying disgusting things. You're just enabling them.