I could, if they should pop up in the daily news cycle. Or I could just post something from Paint Your Wagon, if you prefer.
Posted on 04/03/2008 9:07:12 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
LDS Church leaders have agreed to seek national landmark status for the church-owned Mountain Meadows Massacre site in southern Utah where Mormons attacked a California-bound wagon train on Sept. 11, 1857.
A national landmark designation would ensure that the 120 Arkansas emigrants of the Fancher/Baker wagon train company who were killed by Mormon militia and some Paiute Indians "will always be remembered as part of our nation's history," said Marlin K. Jensen, an LDS general authority and official historian for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Jensen met Friday in Arkansas with about 20 representatives of the Mountain Meadows Association, the Mountain Meadows Massacre Descendants and the Mountain Meadows Monument Foundation. Each group has a slightly different mission, but all had asked the church to seek landmark status for Mountain Meadows.
The site is already listed on the National Register of Historic Places, but requirements for a landmark designation are much more stringent, according to Jensen. The process involves documenting the historic significance of the site, a public comment period, and reviews by the National Park Service and a government-appointed board of experts. The secretary of the interior will make the final decision.
At Friday's meeting, Jensen also discussed proposed plans to create a second memorial with interpretive markers at the Burgess upper grave site, where remains of some of the victims are thought to be buried. Descendants were worried that new housing might encroach on the area, which they consider to be sacred land, so the church purchased 600 additional acres to avert any development.
The descendant groups were surprised and pleased by the church's gesture, said Patty Norris, president of the MMM Descendants. The church had declined to support previous requests to seek national landmark status for the massacre site.
"It was a very good meeting and a very good day for the church and the descendants," said Norris, great-great-great- granddaughter of Tryphenia Fancher, a toddler who witnessed the slaughter of her entire family on the plains of Utah. "When I got involved some 10 years ago, one of my main goals was to work toward making sure that site was preserved and that we found those upper graves and properly marked them. So today was a huge thing for me personally."
There is not much else to do, Norris said. "Everybody's on the same page. We are going to move forward together. It's a big relief."
LDS officials were relieved, too.
"It couldn't have been a more amicable meeting," said Jensen, who was joined in Arkansas by Richard Turley, assistant church historian, and Steven Olsen, managing director of the LDS history department. "We brought good news and they gave us several standing ovations."
The meeting was held in Carrollton, where the 17 surviving children were returned to their next of kin in 1859. The town erected a marker for the massacre victims in 1955.
"To come here and put a human face [on] this tragedy really has been sobering and humbling," Jensen said.
Six months ago, Mormon leaders gathered at Mountain Meadows with the three descendants groups, Paiute representatives and others at a 150th anniversary memorial service to honor the victims of the massacre.
At that time, Henry B. Eyring, then an LDS apostle and now a member of the church's governing First Presidency, acknowledged that the responsibility rested with regional LDS leaders who also held civic and military positions and with members of the church acting under their direction.
"What was done here long ago by members of our church represents a terrible and inexcusable departure from Christian teaching and conduct," Eyring said at the September service. "We cannot change what happened, but we can remember and honor those who were killed here."
Jensen, Turley and Olsen will remain in Arkansas through Sunday, speaking to various LDS groups about Mormon involvement in the massacre.
LDS Church members there still experience some tension with their neighbors over this episode, Jensen said. "We need to equip them to deal with it in a good way. . . . When we are open and listen and express our regret, walls come tumbling down."
Mountain Meadows was a frequent stop for wagon trains traveling to California on the old Spanish Trail.Led by Capt. Alexander Fancher and John Baker, the Arkansas travelers were attacked and engaged in a week of gun skirmishes before a local church elder, John D. Lee, negotiated a truce between the pioneers and a band of Paiute Indians said to be the assailants.
But Lee's truce was a ruse. Wagon train members were beaten, shot at close range or had their throats slit as they marched single-file and unarmed across the meadow.
Seventeen children all under age 7 survived and were taken into Mormon homes. Two years later, they were returned to relatives in Arkansas.
Lee, the only person held responsible, was sentenced to death for the slaughter.
At memorial services marking the 150th anniversary last fall, high-ranking Mormon church official Henry B. Eyring expressed “profound regret” for the events at the meadows. The statement was seen by many as an apology.
Eyring also said the church regretted allowing the Paiute Indian tribe to shoulder much of the blame for the ambush.
A forthcoming book by church historians is expected to lay blame on rogue southern Utah church leaders who worked with Paiute Indians. Church officials maintain there is no evidence connecting then-church president Brigham Young directly to the massacre.
Does this mean that the mormons will allow the families of the innocent victims to retrieve their bones ???
Or even enter the area ???
What a coincidence, there is no evidence for the Mormon religion either. < rimshot>
But seriously folks, someone seems to think there is evidence that Young ordered the massacre.
My mother-in-law had some distant relatives that were in that wagon train. She’ll be interested in reading this. Thanks for posting.
But seriously folks, someone seems to think there is evidence that Young ordered the massacre.
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Has there been any follow up on the 6 year old story you linked to?
Has there been any follow up on the 6 year old story you linked to?
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I should have read to the end of the thread before asking Gamecock if there was any follow up on a 6 year old thread.
Here is the last post::::::::::
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/635900/posts?q=1&;page=233#233
To: Pokey78
Update: it's a fake!
From http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,380009464,00.html
Gene Sessions isn't positive for the simple reason no one can be positive when it comes to authenticating something as benign as metal. But he is as close to positive as is humanly possible that the lead sheet engraving found last month in an old fort in Lee's Ferry, Ariz., was not written in 1872 by convicted Mountain Meadows Massacre perpetrator John D. Lee.
“Ninety-nine percent it's a hoax,” says the Weber State University history Ph.D., who detailed why he feels that way in a letter to the Ogden Standard-Examiner after an Ogden writer, Judith Freeman, said the metal sheet — in which Lee not only takes blame for the 1857 massacre of 120 settlers but adds the tidbit that the massacre was ordered by Mormon prophet Brigham Young — was “consistent” with Lee's known diary writings. “Anyone who thinks what's on the metal sheet is consistent with John D. Lee's diary should go to the diary and read it,” says Sessions, who did just that and quickly came up with multiple red flags, including such subtle but illuminating details as the metal sheet spelling out the word “and” while Lee always used an ampersand — & there's plenty more where that came from. (To read Sessions’ entire letter, go to www.standard.net; “The Diaries of John D. Lee” are available in most area libraries).
In addition to the lead sheet's questionable syntax, mood and spelling, there's the problem of how and where it was found. Based on photographs, the best guess of authorities at Lee's Ferry — where John D. Lee spent the latter years of his life — is that the sheet was not on the floor of the fort until about 1984”
233 posted on 04/08/2002 12:47:19 PM PDT by Grig
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You tell me. You are more entrenched in Mormon intrigue than I am.
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“Mormon intrigue”
Your use of words is interesting in how you put two words together to create a derogatory comment.
Was it on purpose?
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Ps. Does this mean you have no interest on anything that might upset what you already think?
You were asked if there was any updated since 2002.
Yes, but not as a derogatory comment.
Are you denying that there seems to be some intrigue in what happened on that day?
BTTT
***You were asked if there was any updated since 2002***
I contended that Smith was involved in the Massacre.
It is not now my job to turn around and defend him. That would be your task, or that of some other Mormon apologist.
Am I right on that counselor Marlowe?
Smith wasn’t involved since he had been dead for 13 years at the time. Brigham Young was the leader of the LDS empire at the time, and yes he was involved, however it may not have happened by his direct order.
I stand corrected. Can’t keep all those old Mormons straight.
Yeah, they were all a bunch of randy old dudes. It’s hard to keep straight after that many women...
Oh my, I’m bad!
I have no doubt based on historical record that Young if he did not directly order the massacre certainly condoned it or turned a blind eye to it.
However I do not hold modern LDS leaders or members responsible for his actions.
I could, if they should pop up in the daily news cycle. Or I could just post something from Paint Your Wagon, if you prefer.
Ping
Hmmm...this is new to me, Fred. Are you saying that friends and relatives of the Fanchers were guilty of these acts...THOUSANDS??? Are you talking about Winter Quarters? If so, click HERE Winter Quarters is in Nebraska.
The Fanchers were from Arkansas, where Parley Pratt died. From Wiki:
"On a preaching mission in the southern United States in 1857, Pratt was being tracked by Hector McLean, who was upset with Pratt for marrying his legal wife Eleanor McLean. Pratt had met Eleanor a few years earlier in San Francisco, California, and she later left Hector and moved to Utah where she married Pratt.[2] Though for religious reasons she considered herself "unmarried", Eleanor was not legally divorced from Hector at the time of her Celestial marriage to Pratt.[3]
McLean pressed criminal charges, accusing Pratt of coming between him and his legal wife. Pratt managed to evade him and the legal charges, but was finally arrested in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). He was tried before Judge John B Ogden, but was only charged with stealing children's clothes. He had helped his wife Eleanor retrieve her children who had been taken from her by McLean. Judge Ogden acquitted Pratt of the charges against him and released him. However, shortly afterward, on 13 May 1857, he was killed by Hector McLean on a farm northeast of Van Buren, Arkansas. Pratt was buried near Alma, Arkansas."
The mormons were incensed at the death of Pratt. Your post sounds like a half-true lie to me.
The scene, a waterfront bar in San Francisco
Parley: Well hello there, whuts yer name?
Eleanor: Eleanor
Parley: Hello, I’m Parley, Where ya frum?
Eleanor: Arkansas
Parley: Whuts yer sign?
Eleanor: Dunno, whuts a sign?
Parley: Hold muh hand, I’ll give ya a sign....Halalulu! Now yer muh speshul heavenly wife.
Where ya been, my homey?
Isn’t it ‘Fred’ who is constantly accusing folks of half-truth lies? Is the ol’ sod now ‘lying for the lord’ with a half-truth lie of his own, so he doesn’t count his half-truth as a lie?
Busted water pipes, broken valves, fixing sunken parking lot on my trusty Kabota
Cocktails on the patio or the deck tonight? Kubota is waiting for you. Whuts yer sign?
I’m a Vertigo....especially after drinks on the patio.
How ‘bout U?
Me too except we call it Virgo in this neck of the woods. Especially before the drinks. On the cusp though. Leo/Virgo.
As Virgos, it is no wonder we drink.... we have to forget how ‘perfect’ we are.
I am glad the Saints finally quit tearing down the monuments constructed by the U.S. Army and the Fancher family members (at least eight by my count), before putting up this permanent memorial.
I wish, however, the Mormons would honor the family members' request to erect a cross at the site.
Incidentally, you can read much more about the Massacre, John Lee's trial, and the Mormon cover-up (including Brigham Young's involvement) HERE in this excellent site prepared by a law professor at the University of Missouri Kansas City.
These INNOCENT people from ARKANSAS were butchered and their bones scattered.
What kind of proof do you have that these innocent victims of Mormon butchery were friends or relatives of the people in Illinois where the Mormons lived before they moved out West?
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Not saying it was justified, it just seems to me that the anti’s here at FR, and other places, want to make it seem that all of the LDS history is bad because of ONE, REPEAT, ONE such incedent, while ignoring the hundreds of “good christians” that did many , many times worse.
I think that it is amassing that the Saints controlled their feelings and actions so well that only ONE group was attracted, given the thousands of opportunities to act like the “real christians” who caused the deaths and suffering of thousands of Saints.
Fred,
Do you have one bit of proof to back up this outrageous accusation?
If so, would you please post links to credible references.
Thanks
/Zak
That all the time in IL, the Mormons just ‘took it’?
They didn't. It was called the Mormon Wars for a reason.
Mormons were killed by non-mormons. Non-mormons were killed by Mormons.
It wasn't just ONE incident. Good grief, if you are a Mormons, you sure are lacking in your knowledge of your own religion's past.
Of course they tend to dwell on only the ones where the Mormons were the victims.
Just like some claim that Bush Knew about 9/11 as well.
ROTFL....been missin’ your comments!
Yep, every Virgo I ever met thought he was perfect! Us Sags just pull out our trusty bow, (you know what a "bow" is, don't ya, cc?) and shoot 'em in their perfect hineys. THAT puts a dent in their perfection!
THAT, is a "full-true lie!" What, pray tell, is "many, many times worse" than ambushing from secret and killing every man, woman and child over the age of eight?
Source and links for these acts you are accusing Christians of.
You didn't answer my post about the "friends and relatives" claim you made, Fred...can't you back up your "half-true lie"?
Come on, add this with the illegal destruction of the Nauvoo Examiner, murderous raids by the Danites and ripping the people of Kirkland off, just for starters. During the period of the massacre, mormons were either denying or extorting the immigrants of there limited resources for supplies. Young was ranting about his 'blood atonement' and all. No, the Christians time and again didn't pick the fight, but they wouldn't cowtow either to the general and king smith.
I love Sags. No wonder I love you, FRiend!
They didn't. It was called the Mormon Wars for a reason.
Mormons were killed by non-mormons. Non-mormons were killed by Mormons.
It wasn't just ONE incident. Good grief, if you are a Mormons, you sure are lacking in your knowledge of your own religion's past.
Of course they tend to dwell on only the ones where the Mormons were the victims.
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Just what do you believe the biggest reason for the “good” folks in the east wanted to get rig of the LDS for.
Why were the “christian” mobs driving the LSD off their lands?
When did the Mormons ride into a farm and tell a family to get out of town at the risk of loosing their lives?
What time of year were the Saints forced to cross the river on the ice and live outside without proper shelter?
Why did the mayer of Nauvoo have the printing office closed?
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Just what would the Tannerites and Deckerites consider good credible references?
Fred, you're pretty good at stringing whole derogatory sentences against Christian churches together ( See below..) Not unlike the founding prophets of Mormonism have done over the years.
Since the charges against God's Church has not changed since before I joined His Church...
We can only repeat the truth, no matter how often those who do not want to follow God's church try to deceive others into also not following Him.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is God's Church on earth
Source and links for these acts you are accusing Christians of.
You didn't answer my post about the “friends and relatives” claim you made, Fred...can't you back up your “half-true lie”?
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After a night's sleep, I can see that your misunderstanding on this one is my fault.
As I was growing up, the term “friends and relatives” was used to refer to people who had something in common.
You who are Mormon bashers and/or anti-Mormon, would fall in the category of “friends and relatives”.
Even being from the same end of the country, when so many of the people in that end of the country were armed anti-Mormons, to the way I was using the term, would be “friends and relatives”.
Most any wagon train from the east, from the way I used the term, would have been looked on as “friends and relatives”.
Sorry to have used a term that caused confusion.
You who are Mormon bashers and/or anti-Mormon, would fall in the category of “friends and relatives”.
Even being from the same end of the country, when so many of the people in that end of the country were armed anti-Mormons, to the way I was using the term, would be “friends and relatives”.
Most any wagon train from the east, from the way I used the term, would have been looked on as “friends and relatives”.
Boy, nothing like really stretching to find an alibi for a vicious ambush massacre of innocent men, women and children over the age of eight, Fred.
You paint with a REALLY broad brush to bash Christians. Guess I'll copy your spam message and substitute Christian where you use mormon. Did I see you post at one time that you are a convert? You don't seem to be too knowledgeable of mormon history.
The bodies of the Mountain Meadows Massacre were left unattended and unburied for days to rot in the weather. What is many, many times worse? I'm waiting for your links.
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I use you folks here at FR for the role models,
You are the ones that say it is you christians vs, us Mormons, not us.
If you do not like the distentions you make, stop using them.
That's a new one, Fred. Link is to archives of the NY Times. My virus protection isn't controlled by the LDS church.
Good dodge to try and keep others from reading of the atrocities committed by the mormons at the MMM.
Where are the links to the source for your comment that there were "many, many worse things done to mormons"?
Funny, someone complains consistently about the "half true lies" posted here, and then they post a blatant lie and won't back it up with sources.
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That's a new one, Fred. Link is to archives of the NY Times. My virus protection isn't controlled by the LDS church.
Good dodge to try and keep others from reading of the atrocities committed by the mormons at the MMM.
Where are the links to the source for your comment that there were “many, many worse things done to mormons”?
Funny, someone complains consistently about the “half true lies” posted here, and then they post a blatant lie and won't back it up
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I try to be helpful and see what I get.
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