TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1.........................................................................................................

New England Birthright........................................................................

CHAPTER 2.........................................................................................................

Uprooted By Faith......................................................................................

Mission To Vermont.......................................................................................

Return To Nauvoo..........................................................................................

Tried In The Wilderness.................................................................................

CHAPTER 3.........................................................................................................

Valley Of The Mountains.......................................................................

Home in Lehi....................................................................................................

Grasshopper Year...........................................................................................

Polygamy..........................................................................................................

Utah Territorial Legislature.........................................................................

CHAPTER 4.........................................................................................................

“It Seemed Like A Dream”........................................................................

Mission To England.......................................................................................

Called Home To Zion.....................................................................................

Return To Utah................................................................................................

CHAPTER 5.........................................................................................................

Mountain Common Law.........................................................................

Johnston’s Army In Lehi................................................................................

Jury Duty..........................................................................................................

Another Wife, 1860.........................................................................................

Second Term, Utah Legislature....................................................................

State Of Deseret...............................................................................................

Utah Legislature, Third Term.......................................................................

CHAPTER 6.........................................................................................................

Cares Unceasing..........................................................................................

Bishop of Franklin.........................................................................................

Railroad and School of Prophets................................................................

Franklin Co-op Store and Telegraph.........................................................

Mormon Hotel.................................................................................................

Idaho Legislature...........................................................................................

Railroad Comes to Franklin........................................................................

Arrested For Polygamy..................................................................................

CHAPTER 7.........................................................................................................

To The South...................................................................................................

Zuni Mission....................................................................................................

Visit To Franklin............................................................................................

Called to Arizona...........................................................................................

CHAPTER 8.........................................................................................................

Let Not My House Be Divided.................................................................

Little Colorado Stake....................................................................................

Eastern Arizona Stake...................................................................................

Family Troubles..............................................................................................

A Father’s Pride..............................................................................................

CHAPTER 9.........................................................................................................

He That Will Have A Crown..................................................................

Apache Indian Threat....................................................................................

Hyrum Shot......................................................................................................

Travel To Gila Valley.....................................................................................

Silver City, New Mexico................................................................................

CHAPTER 10.......................................................................................................

Turmoil And Upheaval............................................................................

Apache County Politics.................................................................................

Business As Usual...........................................................................................

The Stover Bill and Polygamy......................................................................

Coveville, Utah...............................................................................................

CHAPTER 11.......................................................................................................

I Must Go, The Bell Is Tolling................................................................

Efforts To Avoid Arrest...................................................................................

Return To Arizona..........................................................................................

Snowflake Stake.............................................................................................

Family Concerns.............................................................................................

CHAPTER 12.......................................................................................................

“Remain In The Field Of Labor”............................................................

One More Woodruff Dam...............................................................................

The Manifesto..................................................................................................

Death of Alice..................................................................................................

Salt Lake Temple............................................................................................

CHAPTER 13.......................................................................................................

Waste And Wear Out Your Life..........................................................

1895..................................................................................................................

More Problems In Arizona............................................................................

Seventy Years Old...........................................................................................

A Grand Celebration.....................................................................................

Grandson, Levi Lorenzo Savage..................................................................

CHAPTER 14.......................................................................................................

“Worn Hands, Weary Hands”...............................................................

A New Prophet, Lorenzo Snow.....................................................................

Visitors, Maeser, Kimball, Grant, and Clawson.......................................

Twenty Four Year Mission Ends..................................................................

Seventy-Fifth Birthday...................................................................................

Last Return To Cache Valley........................................................................

Death of Brother Jeremiah............................................................................

No Time For Repose.......................................................................................

Death of Sylvia................................................................................................

Appendix I.........................................................................................................

Spunky Sylvia..................................................................................................

Loving Catherine............................................................................................

Shy Alice...........................................................................................................

Appendix II.......................................................................................................

Lorenzo Hill Hatch Letters.................................................................

Appendix III......................................................................................................

Photographs and Maps...........................................................................

Bibliography................................................................................................

Index...................................................................................................................

CHAPTER 1

New England Birthright

With patience the old man sat quietly as the painter’s brush rushed to capture his serious demeanor. Though frail with age, there was a dignity and strength in his face born of the assurance of a long and successful life. The portrait mirrored an imposing figure with abundant white hair and neatly trimmed full beard, wearing a dark suit complete with gold watch chain and cravat. The work-worn hands rested lightly on the silver head of a cane inscribed LHH.[1]

Shortly before this portrait setting he described his life in these words, “I have helped build up new homes in the north and the south, from Lehi [Utah] to Franklin [Idaho] to St. George [Utah] to New Mexico...and Arizona. ...In all these places I have had many scenes of rejoicing and, with my family, have passed through much affliction and some privations, but in it all the Lord has been with me.”[2]

Lorenzo Hill Hatch was a sixth generation New Englander. His immigrant ancestor, Thomas Hatch, came to America about 1630 settling in Massachusetts. Lorenzo’s grandfather, Jeremiah, and great grandfather, Nathaniel, were part of the army that fought for the freedom of the American Colonies from England in 1776.[3] His maternal grandfather and great grandfather Sumner were loyal to the crown, and as a consequence lost their rather substantial land holdings in New Hampshire. The Sumner family was exiled to Nova Scotia, and later moved to Canada.[4]

These deep roots and lessons of self sufficiency learned from pioneer forbearers had seen Lorenzo Hill Hatch through an eventful life.

Grandfather Jeremiah Hatch, a fifer in the 3rd Massachusetts Regiment during the last years of the Revolution, migrated to Vermont before 1790. He prospered and became a substantial land holder eventually settling in the town of Bristol on a farm of 1200 acres split by a stream known as the New Haven River.[5]As a man of some consequence Jeremiah served in the Vermont legislature as a representative from Addison County during 1816-17.[6] In 1789 Jeremiah married Elizabeth Haight, whose parents were of the Quaker faith.[7] After losing at least four children as infants, the couple raised a family of four boys and one girl. Their son, Hezekiah, would become the father of Lorenzo Hill Hatch.[8]

Hezekiah married Aldura Sumner and settled in the town of Lincoln, Vermont near the foothills of the Green Mountains. The icy grip of winter was upon the land, wind and snow whipped the naked branches of maple and birch, but the pleasant farm house of Hezekiah and Aldura was warm and secure when a new babe, their third son, was born on the 4th day of January, 1826. They named him Lorenzo Hill Hatch. [9]

By 1840 Father Hezekiah and Mother Aldura were the parents of seven children, five boys and two girls. Hezekiah, a successful farmer with extensive orchards, built a comfortable home for his family. A well-read man, especially interested in the histories of peoples and lands, he served a term in the Vermont legislature in 1828-29 as a representative from Addison County.[10] Hezekiah was interested in religions of the time and in his beliefs was a Universalist.[11]

The religion known as Universalism was a gentle rebellion against the dismal Calvinism of the 18th Century. It spread into Vermont in the 1790s and the early preachers pretty much reasoned their way into the beliefs.[12] Hezekiah Hatch spent long winter evenings reading and studying his Bible by the soft glow of a tallow candle as the Vermont winter raged outside. His family could hear the scratch of his quill pen far into the night, and by 1840 he had compiled a manuscript of his own sermons and writings entitled, “Universal Salvation.”[13]

Hezekiah believed with other Universalists that there was salvation for all souls, and that it was impossible for a loving God to elect only a portion of mankind for salvation and doom the rest to eternal punishment. Those who believed in Universalism were considered infidels in the Vermont neighborhood of Addison County. The ignominy of belonging to a non-conformist sect weighed heavily. Opposition was often bitter.[14]

With this background it is not surprising that when, in the year 1840, Elder Peletiah Brown of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or the Mormon Church, told Hezekiah of the Prophet Joseph Smith and his teachings of salvation, Hezekiah asked to be baptized a member of that church.[15] This decision would have far reaching effects on the Hatch family for generations to come.

In his fervor for the new found religion, Hezekiah was set apart for the ministry and ordained an elder of the Mormon Church on 7 November, 1840 at Lincoln, Vermont.[16] He explained the teachings of this church to his family, including his father, Jeremiah, who was seventy-four and his mother, sixty-eight-year-old Elizabeth. Mother Aldura and fourteen-year-old Lorenzo were baptized in the nearby Lincoln River on a brittle Vermont day that required a saw be used to open a hole in the ice large enough for the baptisms by immersion.[17]

Along with his aged parents and his wife and children, Hezekiah also brought the new teachings to the family of his brother Josephus Hatch.[18] The stage was set for a great upheaval in the lives of these people.

By 1841 the Mormon prophet, Joseph Smith, had designated Nauvoo the Beautiful, on the Mississippi River in Illinois as the gathering place for the “Saints,” as they called themselves. Hezekiah was determined the Hatches should join them there. With the blessings and cooperation of his wife, Aldura, and his parents, Jeremiah and Elizabeth, Hezekiah began preparations for their exodus from Vermont. Life did not go smoothly during these preparations, and except for the determination of Hezekiah, plans may have faltered.

The family was looked upon with much suspicion by the neighbors because of their affiliation with the strange new church.[19] On April 19, 1841, as the procedure for moving began, the youngest child of Hezekiah and Aldura, five-month-old Hezekiah Moroni, died at their home in Lincoln.

Preparations were nearing completion when Mother Aldura was called to care for the sick child of Elder Peletiah Brown. On April 10, 1842, Lorenzo’s thirty-nine-year-old mother, Aldura, died. She was laid to rest in the Briggs Hill Cemetery by a mournful family.[20]

Her death affected them greatly and created much excitement among the people of the area, as they were surprised and perhaps a little smug in the fact that a Mormon mother could die. Lorenzo said of this event, “The spirit of opposition was great because the Lord had caused the Gospel to be preached and the honest in heart to obey it.”[21]

Arrangements for the trip to Nauvoo continued despite the death of Mother Aldura. Hezekiah sold their lands and home, buying wagons, sturdy horse teams, and all necessary supplies for the long journey. Nearly one year had passed since Hezekiah first determined to move his family, but at last all seemed in readiness.

However, the spirit of opposition was not through with the Hatch family. As Hezekiah and his motherless children were ready to leave Vermont, the oldest son, twenty-one-year-old John Sumner Hatch, a student in the college at Vergennes, Vermont became ill. Despite this, Hezekiah took the small family to Bristol where his father lived.[22] John did not get better, and so, leaving him in Bristol in care of relatives, but taking the remaining five children, including sixteen-year-old Lorenzo Hill, the family began their westward journey to Nauvoo the Beautiful.

In the season of harvest, Hezekiah’s thoughts were not upon the crops of the field as they had been for all his adult life, but upon the journey he was about to undertake to a new land. “Sometime in the month of August...we took leave of our friends and [our] country. Before we arrived at Nauvoo, John died.”[23]

The Hatch family traveled in horse drawn wagons, probably following the well traveled Genesee Turnpike across New York. There were about eight families in the party according to the account of Lorenzo’s younger brother.[24] Lorenzo himself later remembered there were about 120 persons traveling with them. He also recalled a visit to an elderly Aunt Mary, sister to his grandfather Jeremiah, in a place about thirty miles east of Kirtland, Ohio.[25] It is unclear from these accounts whether Grandfather Jeremiah and Grandmother Elizabeth were traveling with this group, but it would seem they were. Another of the probable families in this group were the Chase family of Addison County who were baptized into the Latter-day Saint Church by Elder Peletiah Brown, the same elder who brought the word to Hezekiah Hatch. John D. Chase and his wife Priscilla of Bristol, Vermont are known to have moved to Nauvoo in 1842.[26]

Twelve-year-old Abram Hatch, Lorenzo’s younger brother, recalled that they passed “near Chicago, which was at that time only a village where teamsters hauled wheat to market from the surrounding country and slept under their wagons at night.”[27]

In September, 1842, the fifth month of the thirteenth year of the founding of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the group arrived in Nauvoo. After a 1200 mile journey they were pleased to find Nauvoo, Illinois a beautiful, new and flourishing city.[28]

CHAPTER 2

Uprooted By Faith

Prior to the Hatch exodus from Vermont, the Mormons, finding bitter opposition to their church among the inhabitants of Jackson County Missouri, fled from that state in 1839 to Illinois and settled near the village of Commerce on the Mississippi River. Commerce was promoted as the central gathering place for the Saints and renamed Nauvoo. The area was swampy and unhealthy, and malaria was rampant.

The Mormons, under the direction of their prophet Joseph Smith, immediately made plans to drain swamps and control the mosquito infestation. They asked for, and received, a liberal city charter from the State of Illinois in 1840. A police force was established, and a public works program to help unemployed immigrants was begun. The Nauvoo Legion was organized in 1841 as a means of self protection and also a show of patriotism. Plans were made to begin a temple in the bustling city.

Though not apparent to the recently arrived Hatch family, all was not tranquil in Nauvoo. In May of 1842 ex-Governor Lillburn Boggs of Missouri was wounded by a would-be assassin and Joseph Smith’s bodyguard, Porter Rockwell, was accused.

About this same time one of Joseph Smith’s counselors, John C. Bennett, was excommunicated from the church and expelled from Nauvoo on morals charges. He began to write inflammatory articles concerning the practice of polygamy within the church. These articles were eagerly published by the Quincy Whig and the Sangamo Journal at Springfield, causing much anxiety and disturbance among the gentiles (non-members) in Illinois.[29]

Hezekiah Hatch, as he arrived in Nauvoo with his family in September of 1842, was probably not aware of the full extent of the tumult that surrounded the Latter-day Saints. In his great faith that he had found the true word of the Lord and the restored gospel of the ancient church, Hezekiah came prepared to make his permanent home with the Saints in Nauvoo.

Lorenzo Hill Hatch remembered: “At the time of our arrival [in Nauvoo] the Prophet was in hiding from the “writs” that were in circulation against him by accusation...made by the State of Missouri. ...this excitement passed in a few weeks after our arrival, and we had the privilege of seeing and hearing the Prophet speak to the Saints.”[30]

Father Hezekiah did not hesitate to put down roots and make a home for his five motherless children. One month after arriving in Nauvoo, he bought a city lot for $300.00 from Daniel H. and Eliza R. Wells. This land was Lot 3, Block 17 of the Wells Addition to Nauvoo.[31] Two weeks later on October 31, 1842, for $500.00, he bought an 80 acre farm six miles east of Nauvoo from Job V. and Marcia Barnum.[32] Hezekiah immediately began building a home on the city lot. “The house was 30 x 16, two stories of brick...with a front porch [it was] located on Mulholland Street... two or three blocks east of the Temple. He [Hezekiah] put up this house in February. In March he commenced fencing and farming on his prairie farm.”[33]

Grandfather Jeremiah and Grandmother Elizabeth bought a building site at the corner of Fulmer and Ripley Streets in Nauvoo. This was Lot 56, Block 2 of the Kimball Addition. Their deed is dated February, 1843. Grandfather Jeremiah built a home very similar to that of his son Hezekiah.[34]

Building these Nauvoo homes may have been seventeen-year-old Lorenzo’s first experience as a carpenter and builder, skills that would be put to good use in his later life. The clearing, fencing and planting of the farm land was not a new experience for the Hatch brothers, as they had worked on their father’s farm in Vermont since early childhood.

Three months after the family arrived in Illinois, Lorenzo’s older brother, nineteen-year-old Jeremiah (Jerry), married Louisa Pool Alexander on Christmas day, 1842. The Alexander family had come to Nauvoo from New Hampshire. The couple was married by Elder Peletiah Brown, the missionary who first brought the word of Mormonism to the Hatch family in Vermont two years before.[35]

In early March, 1843 Father Hezekiah was given a patriarchal blessing under the hands of the Prophet’s brother Hyrum Smith. Hezekiah was told of “tribulations that await you, yet there are blessings which you shall realize...” He was also assured “that your name shall not be forgotten but be continued and perpetuated from generation to generation....”[36]

On April 9th Grandfather Jeremiah and Grandmother Elizabeth received patriarchal blessings from Hyrum Smith, and Jeremiah was ordained an Elder of the Church of Jesus Christ with the express injunction that “...[he] quit the use of tobacco and keep the Word of Wisdom.”[37] On June 7, 1843, Hezekiah Hatch was issued an elder’s license by the Latter-day Saints Church.[38] This was a license to preach, and perform ordinances in accordance with their teachings.

The new Hatch home was nearly complete and forty-four-year-old Hezekiah was making plans to be married for the second time. The wedding date had been set for June 26th. Life seemed promising, but it was not to be. The ague, or malaria, with its chills and fever took many lives before the swampland was drained and the mosquito controlled. Hezekiah became ill with this dread fever and after only a few days he died on the very day that he was to have been wed.[39] He was buried in the cemetery on the hill with Brigham Young preaching his funeral sermon.[40]

Twelve years later Lorenzo Hill recorded the events following the death of his father: “...and thus we were left in the midst of the Saints without father or mother whilst many sought the advantage of us and took it...not the Saints, but those who professed to be. Let them have their reward.”[41]

Abram, who was thirteen years old at his father’s death recalled, “After the death of my father, my uncle, Jeremiah Hatch, came on to Nauvoo from North Carolina and was appointed administrator of my father’s estate.”[42] Lorenzo continues the saga, “...he [Uncle Jeremiah] sold the personal property, such as wagons, harnesses, stock, cloth, clothing and bedding which ought to have been kept for the heirs.... The estate was never settled. How much he collected, I do not know. This much I do know, the heirs received nothing except a few articles which they bought at the sale. Had Jerry [brother] and I known how things were going we would have bid on everything and let the administrator and scoundrels go to the devil, where they have gone. [after Father’s death] ...Abram lived with grandfather’s folks, I lived with Jeremiah, my brother, and we were poor enough. The little girls, [eight-year-old Adeline and five-year-old Elizabeth], lived from place to place as they could find places to stay.”[43]

Though Uncle Jeremiah Hatch was named guardian for the minor children, Abram, Adeline and Elizabeth,[44] their care fell to the grandparents, Jeremiah and Elizabeth Hatch, who were quite elderly, being seventy-seven and seventy-one.

Another of Lorenzo’s Uncles, Josephus Hatch, arrived in Nauvoo after the death of Hezekiah. Josephus and his wife Melinda, who had joined the Mormon Church in Vermont, came now to look after the aged grandparents, and help take care of Hezekiah’s orphaned children. Josephus bought a lot on the north side of Knight Street in the Kimball Addition to Nauvoo in November 1843 for $250.[45] He also purchased two pieces of farm land, one containing 40 acres and another with 89 acres.[46]

The uncle, Jeremiah Hatch, Jr., who rushed forward to take charge of Hezekiah’s estate was the only member of the family who had not accepted the Mormon faith. He was twenty-one years younger than Hezekiah and a graduate of Middlebury College in Vermont.

Though not professing the Mormon religion, twenty-four-year-old Jeremiah Hatch, Jr. remained in Nauvoo for more than a year, teaching at the Nauvoo Select School. He taught English Literature, Latin and Greek.[47] Intelligent, cultured and possessed of a charming grace, he soon became a close friend of Sidney Rigdon, counselor to Joseph Smith, though he still did not embrace the Mormon faith. At the death of the Prophet Joseph, Jeremiah, Jr. left Nauvoo, first settling in Pittsburgh and afterwards going with the Rigdonite Church to Greencastle, Pennslyvania where he married Lucy Ann Rigdon, a daughter of Sidney.[48] He supported Rigdon in his attempts to wrest the presidency of the LDS church from Brigham Young, and was ordained an apostle to Sidney Rigdon.[49]

Many years later Lorenzo Hill Hatch corresponded with a grandson of his Uncle Jeremiah. The letters, copied into Lorenzo’s journal in the year 1903, are addressed to Judge Edward Hatch, New York City, and begin, “Through my brother Abram of Heber City, I have learned of your recent visit to Utah and California, and at his suggestion I write you briefly of myself and family.”[50] Lorenzo relates to his cousin, Edward Hatch, what he knew of the family history concerning Edward’s father Jeremiah Hatch, Jr. and his grandfather Sidney Rigdon. He also bears testimony of the truthfulness of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and soft-pedals the earlier antagonism against Jeremiah’s performance as administrator of Hezekiah’s estate.

During the summer and winter of 1843, following Father Hezekiah’s death, the Hatch family remained in Nauvoo and Lorenzo remembers this winter as “a very lonesome time.” He was “ordained a priest and traveled through the city as a teacher and was blessed.”

He was drawn to the Prophet Joseph Smith and sought every opportunity to get as close to the Prophet as possible when he spoke in public. The tall, light complected Prophet, with his commanding, yet musical voice seemed to the young Lorenzo to possess inspiration and the gift of prophecy. The young man attended a cottage meeting of twenty or thirty people and heard the words of Joseph and of Apostle Orson Hyde, who had just returned from Jerusalem. Lorenzo later remembered, “The meeting was at the house of a German neighbor. Perhaps I was an intruder, but nevertheless, I was at that meeting. The Prophet talked of the great beauty of the German language [and] also extolled the German Bible. He spoke of the confounding of the languages at the Tower of Babel, and told how it would be restored.[51]

“I heard Joseph say he would soon take a rest, and the responsibility of building up the church and sending the gospel to the nations would be required of the Twelve Apostles.”[52]

In the fall of 1843 The Scroll Petition, a document to be submitted to Congress applying for redress for suffering endured by the Mormons in Missouri, was prepared and signed by 3,419 Nauvoo residents. Not all of the signers, such as the Hatches, had been in Missouri, but many signed in support of those who suffered there. The single petition was fifty feet long and rolled up like a scroll. Jeremiah, Elizabeth, Josephus and Melenda Hatch were among those who attached their signatures. Orson Pratt, John E. Page and Orson Hyde took the memorial to Washington, D.C., but the Congress rejected their plea to present the petition.[53]

Before the year was out the first born child of Brother Jeremiah and Louisa was buried in the cemetery on the hill next to his grandfather and namesake, Hezekiah. On January 11, 1844 Lorenzo received a blessing at the hands of Patriarch Hyrum Smith, brother of the Prophet Joseph.[54] The Patriarch addressed Lorenzo as “a lad” and among other things admonished him to be “steadfast, immovable and you shall abound in Grace and possess your inheritance and the mansion that is prepared with the blessings of years multiplied upon your head.”[55]

During the first month of this new year, the twelve apostles, advisors to the Prophet, agreed to press for Joseph Smith’s candidacy for President of the United States. Negative action, or no action, on the part of former holders of this office concerning problems of Mormon persecution seemed to them just cause for this move. “At the April conference [of the Mormon Church], speakers endorsed and the congregation unanimously affirmed Joseph Smith’s candidacy. More than three hundred people volunteered to preach the restored gospel and campaign for him across the nation.”[56]

On April 14th Lorenzo was ordained a Seventy under the hands of Joseph Young, and called to fill a mission to his native state of Vermont. Though Lorenzo’s mission undoubtedly included campaigning for Joseph Smith’s presidency bid, he never mentions this in his journal, but only tells of preaching gospel sermons.[57]

Mission To Vermont

On April 15th Lorenzo Hill Hatch, accompanied by Thomas E. Fuller, left Nauvoo for Vermont. In bidding his Uncle Jeremiah, Jr. goodby, Lorenzo remembered, “He gave me twelve and a half cents and regretted that he had no more to give me.”[58]

During the next ten days, the two missionaries were not always welcome at the doors they knocked upon in the evenings, and so, spent many nights sleeping on the hard, cold ground, sometimes in the rain. By April 25th, Lorenzo and his companion, Elder Fuller, reached the town of Milford in extreme eastern Illinois, where they found an established branch of the church. Upon reaching Milford Lorenzo “was taken sick in consequence of sleeping out of doors” and says of those who refused them shelter, “May they receive their rewards according to their works.”

On May 6th the two elders took a boat on the Wabash and Erie Canal running through the State of Indiana, then traveled by steamboat for Buffalo, working for their passage. “...[We] were treated worse than dogs. One of the firemen threw a stick of wood at Brother Fuller and just missed his head.”

On the night of May 28th the missionaries arrived at the home of Edward M. Fuller, Elder Thomas Fuller’s father, in Saratoga Springs, New York. Lorenzo was “quite sick when I arrived.” While recovering from his illness at the Fuller home, Lorenzo became acquainted with a daughter, Hannah, who would become his future wife. In a foreshadow of the relationship that would develop between Lorenzo and his future father-in-law, his journal says, “I stayed from the 28^th of May to the 17^th of June and worked for Father Fuller. He gave me nothing when I left for Vermont, a distance of 125 miles.”[59]

Lorenzo arrived in Vermont and preached his first sermon, at age eighteen, in the home of his great uncle, Charles Haight, of Ferisberg. He felt the Lord blessed him and he was able to preach with some success. On June 25th he arrived in Bristol, where he found his Aunt Hannah, his mother’s youngest sister, who “received me kindly.”

On June 27th he started on foot, with Brothers Chase and Harding, for Northfield, a distance of some thirty or forty miles. They were to hold a conference there with Erastus Snow who was in charge of missionary work in Vermont. Brother Snow did not arrive. It was the middle of July before the missionaries learned that the Prophet Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum had been murdered in the Carthage, Illinois jail.

“At first I could not believe it, but at last was convinced that it was a fact. Then I mourned and wept as the children of Israel did when Moses was taken from them.” Later in his life, Lorenzo would remember, “I was alone, a young man being but eighteen years old, 1500 miles from home. The question in my mind was, who would lead the church now that the Prophet Joseph was gone? About a month later I was at the house of one of my cousins in the town of Bristol, Vermont [when] a letter came from my uncle, Jeremiah Hatch, who had married a daughter of Sidney Rigdon. He claimed that the Lord had called Sidney Rigdon to lead the church. It was about noon [and] I stood in the middle of the sitting room reading the letter to my cousin, when a voice plain and distinct said, ‘Brigham Young is the man God has chosen to fill the vacancy.’ I so declared to my cousin.”[60]

Lorenzo remained in Vermont, working for a cousin of his mother’s, Seneca Sumner. “I worked for $7.00 per month...that was all they would give me although I earned twice that much. During the winter I threshed some grain and chopped wood for different ones, among these a man named Thomas Wilder for whom I fixed up a shop. He didn’t pay me all that he agreed to do. Let him have his reward.”[61] Lorenzo and Brother Harding went to the state of New York to preach several times, and he preached once or twice in Vermont, then in the spring of 1845 began preparing for his return to Nauvoo.

Return To Nauvoo

Lorenzo’s arrival in Illinois found brothers, sisters and grandparents well. He had been gone one year and three months. “I was happy to be home and found Nauvoo flourishing, such crops, I never saw growing on the earth before.” Lorenzo now saw Nauvoo as his home. His family and loyalties were there. The Yankee transplant had taken root.

When Lorenzo returned to Nauvoo in 1845, an uneasy truce had been declared between the Mormon leaders and the public officials of Illinois. Problems between the Latter-day Saint people and their neighbors were caused in part by the Mormon practice of polygamy and partly by jealously as the Illinois people watched Nauvoo becoming a beautiful, prosperous city. The city grew by leaps and bounds and attracted some undesirable characters. Transients could not be distinguished from the immigrant converts, and some who were there only to cause trouble, were protected by this factor. The strong city charter that the state had issued to Nauvoo was now a cause for concern to state officials. The charter gave the city control over Nauvoo University and the Nauvoo Legion. Such power, coupled with the industry and aggressiveness of the Mormons, now gave the politicians second thoughts.[62]

Many believed that with the death of their prophet, the church would die a natural death. In January 1845 the Illinois legislature repealed the Nauvoo City charter in an effort to reduce the strength and unity of the Saints. This act left the city without a court of law or any form of police protection and so, in March of that year the Mormons organized a countywide militia. These men patrolled the city streets and acted as bodyguards for church authorities.

In Lorenzo’s absence his brother Jeremiah had moved onto the farm land six miles east of Nauvoo, which was cleared and fenced by the family before the death of Father Hezekiah. Despite the uneasy atmosphere in the surrounding country, the two brothers now concluded to build a house on the farm, and began cutting prairie hay on shares, using other farmers equipment and animals. By this means they were able to purchase brick, lime and other necessary materials for their home.[63]

In the summer months antagonistic local newspapers again raised their voices against the Mormons. In September 1845, as Lorenzo and Jeremiah Hatch cut prairie hay and gathered materials to build a home on their farm, Lorenzo declared, “The devil commenced raging and mobs commenced burning the houses of the Saints in the surrounding country and the inhabitants had to flee for their lives [into] Nauvoo.”[64]

“In September 1845 the anti-Mormons under Colonel Levi Williams began burning Mormon homes. In all more than two hundred homes and farm buildings were destroyed.”[65]. Church leaders ordered all Saints living in rural areas to sell their property if possible and move into the city of Nauvoo.

Lorenzo and Jeremiah had lumber and lime on the ground where they planned to build their home. The brick were ready to be hauled from the kiln when they received the evacuation order. “Our lime still lies there and our brick is in the kiln to this day for all I know about it,” were the words of Lorenzo as he wrote of this time nearly ten years later.[66]

Of the retreat to Nauvoo, Lorenzo only says, “I went to Nauvoo and stood guard with the rest of my brethren. I went to put down the mob. We went to Warsaw and the town was all vacated, the devils had gone, so there was no fight for us.”[67]. Lorenzo’s brother Abram, who was fifteen-years-old at this time, claims to have joined the Nauvoo Legion as a volunteer and ridden with the posse of men who made a tour of Hancock County under Colonel Markham and Sheriff Backenstos for the purpose of arresting the ring leaders of the houseburners.[68]

As early as the spring of 1845 Brigham Young and other church authorities were looking at the unfinished plan Joseph Smith had begun for moving the Saints west to a place where they would be unmolested. Plans for leaving Illinois were activated in early 1845 and parties sent out to scout likely areas for settlement. However, these plans were not announced to the membership until mid September. At a general conference in October, the anxious Saints were assured the move was necessary “to give the church needed room for growth.”

On September 24, 1845 the church council, headed by Brigham Young, (he had not yet been officially designated as president), made an agreement with Illinois officials to vacate the town of Nauvoo in the spring of 1846, when there would be enough grass to feed their animals on a trek westward and the prairie would be dry enough for the passage of their wagons.

In it’s battered way Nauvoo still prospered. Both before and after the martyrdom, the Saints most important building project was the temple. They had completed nearly half the work on this edifice since the death of Joseph Smith a year earlier and despite the mobs, work on the building continued at a frantic pace. “By October, the church [issued] an official letter urging all Saints in the United States to sell their property, gather to Nauvoo to receive their endowments in the temple, and then join the migration westward. Without the completion of the endowments, the Mormons’ departure from Nauvoo would have been only flight. But with the endowments completed, they could go a saved and covenanted people.”[69]

The three Hatch brothers, Jeremiah, Lorenzo and Abram, having been evicted from their farm and now no doubt living with their Uncle Josephus and grandparents, Jeremiah and Elizabeth, spent the fall and winter days either with the militia which was protecting the city, or working on the temple building.

In the midst of turmoil and uncertainty, new members were still daily arriving at this gathering place for the Saints. One such family who came in the fall of 1845 amid hostilities and plans for yet another exodus, were the Fullers of Saratoga Springs, New York. Edward M. Fuller, his wife, Hannah Elizabeth, and eleven children, came well prepared with wagons, strong teams, milk cows, and sufficient supplies to last their large family for some time. Thomas Fuller, a son, was already in Nauvoo, or had been in 1844, as he accompanied young Lorenzo Hill Hatch eastward on a mission at that time.

The fall and winter months of 1845-46 were not all work and fear in Nauvoo. Though the Saints knew their days in Nauvoo were numbered, there were still cornhusking parties, Christmas celebrations, and quilting bees along with church meetings for instruction and edification of members young and old. The upper rooms of the temple were finished by December 10, 1845, and church members began receiving ordinances.[70] January 21, 1846, Jeremiah and Elizabeth Hatch received their endowments in the partially completed edifice.

Twenty-year-old Lorenzo renewed his acquaintance with Thomas Fuller’s sister Hannah, whom he first met in New York a year earlier, and on February 3, 1846 they were married by Bishop Jonathan H. Hales. They visited the uncompleted Nauvoo temple and received their endowments making solemn vows to cling to one another through time and all eternity. Lorenzo and Hannah were among the last to enter into covenants in this temple, since February was the final month of it’s existence as an endowment house.

Early in the year 1846, while cold and rain still gripped the land, two new threats came to the Mormons causing the possibility of an early and hasty exit from Nauvoo. An indictment was issued against Brigham Young and eight apostles accused of instigating a Nauvoo counterfeiting operation, and also a report was received of federal troops from St. Louis who intended to interfere with the orderly leave taking planned for spring.[71] While the earth was wet with winter storms and the grass had not yet begun to grow, church authorities felt they must cross the river out of Illinois.

Tried In The Wilderness

So it was that on February 4th, fully two months earlier than planned, Charles Shumway, one of the Council of Fifty,[72] crossed the Mississippi and located a campground seven miles into Iowa on Sugar Creek. The exodus had begun. Progress was slow at first, but gained momentum as more families felt they were prepared to follow.

Sixteen-year-old Abram Hatch was one who worked in the raw winter wind at the cold, wet, job of helping families load all they owned onto flatboats to cross the Mississippi.[73] On February 24th the ice closed and thickened on the broad river, allowing team drawn wagons to cross the expanse with more ease for a few days.

Edward Fuller, who had arrived in Nauvoo only months before, still owned the wagons, stock and money brought from New York. Now he asked his three sons-in-law, Lorenzo Hill Hatch, Daniel McArthur and Guy Barnum to accompany him in the trek across the river, in the capacity of wagon drivers and herders.

Lorenzo says, “The property [farm] left of my father’s estate...was worth $3000 before this difficulty...but at this time couldn’t be sold at any price. So of necessity I was obliged to comply with the request [of Father Fuller] as I had no means to take me away. We fitted up the wagons, broke the cattle, got all things ready and on the 27^th of February I bade my friends farewell and we crossed the Mississippi River on the ice.”[74] For the next year Lorenzo would continue to chafe at the circumstances making him dependent upon Father Fuller.

When the Fuller party arrived at Sugar Creek campground in Iowa about three P.M. the afternoon of February 27th, there was deep snow on the ground, but plenty of timber available for fires. They were organized into Benjamin Johnson’s company. The company remained at Sugar Creek several days and during this time Lorenzo made a trip back to Nauvoo to collect some “store goods” for one Samuel Gurley. While he was away, the camp moved a few miles and from then on moved slowly and stopped several times when the men found an opportunity to work for supplies on the farms and in the settlements along their trail. Eliza Snow, who traveled this route about the same time, records in her journal that on March 25th, “Twenty five men of our [group] took a job of making rails for which they got 10 bushels of corn, which was distributed Tues. night. They also got 100 [pounds] of bacon....”[75]

Traveling west across Iowa in winter was slow of necessity. Many Saints were not prepared with the needed food supplies and those who did have sufficient were asked to share with others. There was no grass for the animals who had to subsist on browse, and so, grew weaker day by day. The weather was unpredictable, but one thing the travelers could depend upon was the sticky, clay mud that hampered everything they tried to do. It wound in balls on the hubs and spokes of their wagon wheels and at times sank the heavy wagons to the bed. Every camp site had rivers of clinging clay around the tents and cooking fires. On March 2nd the thermometer stood at 23 degrees with clear skies.[76]

Entries of “rained all day”, “rainy yet”, “mud intolerable”, and “quite windy”, are found throughout the Mormon journals kept during this winter and spring of 1846. Eliza R. Snow mentions in her journal that March 15th was “...so intolerably windy the men failed in their efforts to keep the tent upright.”[77]

Lorenzo Hill Hatch records, “After traveling a few weeks, Father Fuller and Hyrum Bostick were put into George Miller’s company.” This was a stroke of fate that gave Lorenzo’s life a turn he might not have otherwise taken.

Bishop George Miller was an early convert to Mormonism and being a capable and aggressive man, he was given assignments of no small scope. In his book, The Gathering of Zion, Wallace Stegner describes him well as, “Miller will always be out ahead; he is impatient and headstrong, one who does not readily accept counsel, especially the counsel of Brother Brigham.”[78]

With the George Miller company, Lorenzo built bridges, roads, houses, and planted farms for the great mass of people who were now streaming across Iowa. They felled timber for log cabins, built a bridge across a branch of Grand River, plowed, planted and fenced fields, and dug wells. Their first efforts were at a place of grassy rolling hills and timber groves, which had been located and named Garden Grove by Parley P. Pratt. In May the George Miller company moved on to Mt. Pisgah to build another settlement for those who would come. Lorenzo and a few others returned to Missouri for corn to feed the hungry builders. This trip was memorable for the rain and soft ground, causing them to call for more teams and to double team and triple team the wagons while crossing the quagmires.

As spring and summer progressed, the George Miller company built bridges to Council Bluffs, which was for a time called Miller’s Hollow. On arriving at the Bluffs in June they found there weren’t enough provisions to last the builders for any length of time. Lorenzo again was sent with a company for food supplies. This trip, however, was more pleasant without the winter mud and cold.

On returning to Iowa, Lorenzo found his company had moved across the Missouri River to Cold Springs, some two or three miles from the river. His wife Hannah was ill and though she improved, “she never entirely got over it during the time we were camped at Cold Springs.”

On June 26, 1846 the Saints, in their makeshift homes, were remembering that the morrow would bring the second anniversary of the death of their beloved prophet, Joseph Smith. Into their forward camp at Mt. Pisgah on this day, came Captain James Allen of the United States Army, with a request for 500 men to march against the Mexicans in Santa Fe and southern California with General Kearney’s Army of the West. The Saints were incredulous that a government which denied them any protection whatsoever would now ask for their help in the war with Mexico.

However, when Captain Allen presented his request to Brigham Young in Council Bluffs, it was accepted. Brigham Young saw this as an opportunity to get part of his group to California with food and transportation furnished by the army, while supplying the Saints with much needed cash in the form of soldiers wages.

In early July the call went out for volunteers for the Mormon Battalion, but by this time Bishop George Miller had moved his company well out into the Platte Valley and Lorenzo laments the fact he had no opportunity to join the Battalion which left for Leavenworth on July 22nd. “...Bishop Miller left,[at Mt. Pisgah], two or three of his teamsters to make up this [battalion] company because he had no use for them, then left with the balance of us for Pawnee---a distance of 160 miles from Winter Quarters---and we were entirely out of the way of the President so that he did not get any of us to make up the numbers that were wanted for soldiers. This was the fault of the Bishop [Miller] having taken us out of the way. Thus others had the privilege that some of us were deprived of. Some of us were not apprised of the importance of this move until too late.”[79]

On the same day the Mormon Battalion left Winter Quarters for Leavenworth, another group of Saints,150 wagons strong, left to join Bishop Miller’s Company with the idea of traveling on westward with them. They found the Miller company, which included Lorenzo Hill Hatch and his in-laws, camped on the west bank of the Loup Fork near modern Fullerton, Nebraska, at a site occupied by protestant missionaries. The Sioux Indians had frightened the protestants so badly, they bargained with Bishop Miller for an escort back to the Missouri River in exchange for the crops they had planted and the shelters they had erected. Miller readily agreed, as his company was always short on food supplies.

When the men who escorted the missionaries back to the Missouri rejoined the Miller Company, they brought word from Brigham Young that Bishop Miller was to go no further west, but prepare to ride out the winter months where he was.

Looking over the country near them on the Loup Fork, they found no desirable wintering site. Lorenzo’s journal says, “...some Puncaw [Ponca] Chiefs came and wished us to go with them for the winter. The Bishop and Council which consisted of twelve men concluded to go with them.... The distance...to Puncaw [Ponca] was some 160 miles and is located on the Missouri River, on the west side. It is a river of running water and very swift. Here we built a fort which consisted of log houses. It was a beautiful place.”[80]

Soon Bishop Miller and his company were in trouble again. Lorenzo’s journal says, “The fifty [wagons] to which I belonged lived on rations of three fourths of a pound of breadstuff a day to each person, which was quite scanty. We commenced living this way back near Garden Grove and continued for about five months. At this place, [Ponca], the provisions were divided out to each one and we found there was not enough to last us through the winter and accordingly it was concluded it would be best to go back to Missouri for breadstuffs [wheat]. Quite a number of teams were fitted out from different companies among which I was one of the members.

“At Winter Quarters the company was stopped by the President, [Brigham Young], while they tried Bishop Miller for some misconduct. ...It was late in the season when we got back to Puncaw [Ponca]...[we had] traveled a distance of 450 miles and our teams were badly wore out.”[81]

When Lorenzo returned to Ponca, in the month of December, he found his wife, Hannah, sick. Exposure and malnutrition brought a demoralizing wave of sickness to the camp and death was a constant companion. A lack of vegetables caused scurvy for some and others suffered of consumption, chills and fever.

Despite his lengthy absence and the condition of Hannah, Lorenzo was asked by Father Fuller to go at once with a brother-in-law, Sanford Fuller, to take twenty head of cattle to a grazing area some ten miles from the fort. Father Fuller had made arrangements to pasture the cattle with those of Captains Clark and Bartholomew, who had as their herders John Dalton and Alvin Green.

“Traveling on foot...we took our dinner with us. ...We arrived [at the grazing grounds], about one o’clock and after eating our dinner, we conversed with Mr. Green and Mr. Dalton. They swore that old man Fuller should not leave his cattle up there for he had money and could pay for herding. ...We offered to come help herd, but nothing would do but for us to take them away again.”