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 1 
 
JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK. 
 
A Biographical Sketch 
 
 OF \ 
 
 i 
 
 John Riggs Murdock 
 
 f 
 
 By 
 
 J. M. TANNER 
 
 THE DESERET NEWS 
 
 Salt Lake City, Utah 
 
 1909 
 

:::^ai. orof t Library 
 
 Foreword. 
 
 The early history of the Church is made up 
 largely of the strenuous and often unexampled 
 efforts of the men and women whose heroic 
 toils, sufferings, patience, and faith gave to the 
 new movement a greatness and glory that in- 
 crease as time goes on. Individual experiences, 
 therefore, enriched that early history and give 
 us a deeper insight into the real characters of 
 the men and women whose devotion and con- 
 stancy are as inspiring as they are interest- 
 ing. 
 
 Among those who dedicated to the Church 
 and its cause their best efforts, efforts of in- 
 tense patriotism, and whose endurance was the 
 crowning glory of those times, the name of 
 John R. Murdock plays an important part. 
 Had others not drawn out from him the story 
 of his life, its inspiration and its example 
 would have been lost to the world. When the 
 manuscript prepared from facts given by him 
 was read for his approval his only remark 
 was : "They have made quite a man of me.'' 
 
iv FOREWORD 
 
 He made himself, but the value of his life to 
 others he had perhaps never realized. When 
 asked how many books he wanted, his reply 
 was an edition just enough for his family. 
 
 Certain that the book would find interest and 
 value beyond the confines of his home and rela- 
 tions, a larger edition is published. The story 
 of his life is one which all who would emulate 
 his integrity and his example may desire to 
 read. 
 
 The Author. 
 
Index. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Infancy on the Frontiers 1 
 
 Childhood in Missouri 15 
 
 Boyhood in Illinois 42 
 
 In the Mormon Battalion 74 
 
 Pioneer in Salt Lake Valley 92 
 
 Early Life in Lehi 108 
 
 Life on the Plains 130 
 
 Life in Beaver 154 
 
 The Evening of Life 178 
 
 Character Sketch 193 
 
John Riggs Murdock 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 INFANCY ON THE FRONTIERS 
 
 John Riggs Murdock was born on the 13th 
 of September, 1826. The date of his birth 
 places his advent into the world on the thresh- 
 old of a new dispensation. It was not only 
 the dawn of a new era in the expansion of his 
 native country, but it was at the beginning of 
 a new era in the development of science, art, 
 and invention. A new earth and a new heaven 
 were just ushering in upon the human family. 
 That year in the world's history was the begin- 
 ning of a new life and he was born, therefore, 
 into the coming opportunities that were await- 
 ing men of pronounced character and unyield- 
 ing faith. The opportunities of his environ- 
 ments were perhaps not so important in his fa- 
 vor as the circumstances of his birth. 
 I 
 
2 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 His father; John Murdock, was one of those 
 pioneers of New England descent who had 
 the courage and the hope to brave the unde- 
 veloped regions of the West. He had, there- 
 fore, transmitted to his son those peculiar qual- 
 ities of life which make of men sturdy and 
 courageous pioneers. The mother, whose 
 maiden name was Julia Clapp, was a daughter 
 of Judge Horace Clapp of Mentor, Ohio, who, 
 in turn, was a son of Abner Clapp, a captain 
 in the colonial army during the Revolutionary 
 War. Abner was himself a direct descendant of 
 Captain Roger Clapp, who came over from 
 England in 1630 in the ship Mary and John, 
 and was captain of Fort Independence in Bos- 
 ton Harbor for twenty-one years. Such par- 
 entage gave to the boy a rich inheritance that 
 marked his life covering a long period of ser- 
 vice both in the church and state. 
 
 Another circumstance which seemed effica- 
 cious in transmitting to the son the courage 
 and independence of religious convictions is 
 found in the fact that the father and mother 
 were members of the Campbellite Church. 
 These followers of Alexander Campbell, who 
 was a bold and adroit leader, had been taught 
 
INFANCY ON THE FRONTIERS 3 
 
 to rest their convictions upon the reformation 
 of those times — a reformation which brought 
 men back to a plain and literal interpretation 
 of Holy Writ. Whatever, therefore, might be- 
 fall the young boy in after life, however mea- 
 gre the chances of a public school education, he 
 was certainly equipped by the circumstances of 
 his birth and a rich inheritance to take a front 
 place in the ranks and in the deliberations of 
 his fellow men. 
 
 In the midst of this religious awakening in 
 northeastern Ohio, a religious movement of 
 greater import and of divine purpose was tak- 
 ing place in western New York, where the 
 Prophet Joseph Smith was the recipient of 
 heavenly revelations announcing the advent of 
 a new dispensation in the world's history. 
 There were in that region of the country, 
 between Canandaigoa and Colesville,about sev- 
 enty members of the Church of Jesus Christ 
 of Latter-day Saints. To them had been com- 
 mitted the Book of Mormon and with it the 
 duty of making the new message known to 
 the inhabitants of the earth. The missionary 
 spirit was upon them, and in the year 1830 a 
 revelation was given requiring Oliver Cow- 
 
4 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 dery, Parley P. Pratt, Ziba Peterson, and Peter 
 Whitmer, Jr. to visit the Lamanites, or Indians 
 of the West, and make known to them the 
 story of their forefathers. As these men set 
 out on their westward journey, they soon 
 reached the district of country about Kirtland. 
 Here Parley P. Pratt met his old friend and 
 teacher, Sidney Rigdon, of the Reformed Bap- 
 tists Society. 
 
 The testimony of these elders and the mes- 
 sage of the Book of Mormon awakened in- 
 tense feelings and interest among the Camp- 
 bellites, who were in a frame of mind and a 
 condition of spirit to receive the new message. 
 Speaking of those times Parley P. Pratt, in his 
 autobiography, says : "The interest and excite- 
 ment now became general in Kirtland and in 
 all the region round about. The people 
 thronged day and night, in so much that we 
 had no time for rest or retirement." 
 
 "In two or three weeks from our arrival in 
 the neighborhood with the news, we had bap- 
 tized one hundred and tv/enty souls and this 
 number soon increased to one thousand. The 
 disciples were filled with joy and gladness; 
 while rage and lying were abundantly mani- 
 
INFANCY ON THE FRONTIERS 5 
 
 fested by gainsayers; faith was strong, joy 
 was great, and persecution heavy. We pro- 
 ceeded to ordain Sidney Rigdon, Isaac Morley, 
 John Murdock, Lyman Wight to the ministry ; 
 and, leaving them to take care of the Church 
 and minister the gospel, we took leave of the 
 Saints and continued our journey." 
 
 The boy John Riggs at this time was only 
 four years of age. From his earliest recollec- 
 tion he was brought up amid scenes of conflict, 
 and in the society of courageous and faithful 
 men. Such a training as befell him, therefore, 
 in his youth was, really, one of rare opportu- 
 nity. As the development of a manly char- 
 acter is, after all, one of the first aims of edu- 
 cation, the boy's schooling in a new and won- 
 derful life was perhaps after all of greater 
 value and consequence to him in his pioneer 
 work than the text-book of a schoolroom could 
 ever have given. 
 
 Sidney Rigdon was anxious to meet the 
 Prophet, and therefore at his earliest oppor- 
 tunity set out for Fayette, New York, where 
 he and Joseph Smith first became associated 
 in the early experiences of the Church. Nor 
 was it a matter of small moment to the boy 
 
6 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 and his environments that his father was -in 
 those early days numbered with such men as 
 Rigdon, Morley, Wight, and Partridge. "Tell 
 me/' says the old adage, "what a man's as- 
 sociations are, and I will tell you what he is/' 
 
 Soon after this a revelation was given re- 
 quiring the Saints in New York to gather in 
 Ohio. This was the first revelation on gath- 
 ering in this dispensation. This divine re- 
 quirement brought the Saints in the spring of 
 1831 to Kirtland, where the Saints were re- 
 quired to receive the new brethren from the 
 East and to divide their lands with them, "un- 
 til the Lord should command them to gather 
 in the land of their inheritance." This new 
 move established the Church in that region of 
 Ohio, where John Murdock and his son lived. 
 
 The elder Murdock was in those days also 
 closely associated with Parley P. Pratt. In 
 their missionary labors there were peculiar 
 spiritual manifestations which troubled these 
 elders, and in the absence of their Prophet 
 they felt somewhat dismayed and in need of 
 his guidance. It was a remarkable priv- 
 ilege given to man to take part with the Proph- 
 et and with the elders whom God had raised 
 
INFANCY ON THE FRONTIERS 7 
 
 up as companions for him. Such a privilege 
 was accorded to John Murdock. In his auto- 
 biography Parley P. Pratt, speaking of those 
 times, says: ''Feeling our weakness and inex- 
 perience, and lest we should err in judgment 
 concerning this spiritual phenomenon, myself, 
 John Murdock, and several other elders went 
 to Joseph Smith and asked him to inquire of 
 the Lord concerning these spirits or manifes- 
 tations. Here, in Kirtland, in the Prophet's 
 translating room, Joseph Smith dictated, in 
 their presence a revelation. Elder Pratt, de- 
 scribing the revelation, says : "Each sentence 
 was uttered slowly and very distinctly, and 
 with a pause between each sufficiently long 
 for it to be recorded by an ordinary writer in 
 long hand. This was the manner in which 
 all his revelations were dictated and written. 
 There was never any hesitation, reviewing, or 
 reading back in order to keep the run of the 
 subject.'' 
 
 The atmosphere of such divine manifesta- 
 tion and such revelations was an atmosphere 
 in which the father lived and whose influence 
 must have been his guiding star. Having a 
 father thus favored,there must have been awak- 
 
8 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 ened in the heart of the boy a confidence that 
 could not easily be shaken ; and those who know 
 John Riggs Murdock will be quick to ascribe 
 that unyielding faith and devotion in his life 
 in some degree at least to the atmosphere from 
 which he received his earliest religious con- 
 victions. 
 
 If there were strong influences and great 
 men carrying John Murdock along in the 
 course of his new-born faith, there were also 
 counteracting influences which compelled him 
 to take an attitude of firmness and maintain 
 the God-given testimony that meant to him a 
 new life and a great sacrifice. His wife, Julia 
 Clapp, was related to Alexander Campbell by 
 marriage, her sister having married a brother 
 of this able religious leader. Nor was oppo- 
 sition the only trial that beset him in those 
 days. To him and his wife were born five 
 children, Orrice Clapp, John Riggs, and Phoebe 
 Clapp, besides the historical twin babies, Julia 
 and Joseph. Upon the birth of the last-named 
 two, the mother died, leaving the care of her 
 five children to neighbors and friends. This 
 happened in the month of April, 1831, before 
 John Riggs Murdock had reached his fifth 
 
INFANCY ON THE FRONTIERS 9 
 
 year. Speaking of those times in later years 
 the subject of this sketch said : *Tresh in my 
 memory is the death of my dear mother, 
 which occurred in Warrensville township, 
 which joins Orange township. There was a 
 dreadfully sad scene among her poor children 
 following her death. It was simply heart- 
 rending to hear little sister Phoebe, only two 
 years old, cry out for her mother as if her 
 little heart would break. We were staying at 
 a neighbor's when father came and told us the 
 sad news. He wept most bitterly; for he re- 
 alized all the sorrow of the situation.'' 
 
 The same day that Julia Murdock gave birth 
 to her twin children, a similar occurrence took 
 place in the family of the Prophet Joseph 
 Smith. Nine days later the Prophet's wife, 
 Emma, to assuage her grief over the loss of 
 her twin children, and to respond to a heart- 
 felt sympathy for the unfortunate little ones in 
 the Murdock family, took these twins, Joseph 
 and Julia. About the time the little ones were 
 eleven months old, the Prophet moved from 
 Kirtland to a nearby town called Hiram, 
 where he lived in the family of Father John- 
 son. 
 
10 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 In consequence of the rapid growth of the 
 Mormon people in that section of the country, 
 and the large number of converts made from 
 the Campbellite Church, persecution grew in- 
 tense. Apostates sought justification in the 
 humiliation of those whose teachings and 
 authority they later came to despise. An ac- 
 count of the death of the twin Joseph and the 
 circumstances leading to it is given by the 
 Prophet Joseph in his biography of March 24, 
 1832: "The twins before mentioned, which 
 had been sick of the measles for some time, 
 caused us to be broken of our rest in taking 
 care of them, especially my wife. In the eve- 
 ning I told her she had better retire with one 
 of the children, and I would watch with the 
 sicker child. In the night she told me I had 
 better lie down on the trundle bed, and I did 
 so, and was soon after awakened by her 
 screaming, 'murder!' when I found myself 
 going out of the door in the hands of about 
 a dozen men, some of whose hands were in 
 my hair, and some had hold of my shirt, draw- 
 ers, and limbs. * * * During the mob- 
 bing one of the twins, Joseph, contracted a se- 
 
INFANCY ON THE FRONTIERS 11 
 
 vere cold and continued to grow worse until 
 Friday, and then died." This was March 22, 
 1832. In one day more the children would 
 have been eleven months old. Julia, the other 
 twin, continued to live in the Prophet's fam- 
 ily until she married. 
 
 About this time there began in pursuance 
 of revelation a move of the Staints from Kirt- 
 land and neighborhood to the land of Zion in 
 Missouri. For five years after the death of 
 the mother of John Riggs Murdock, his father 
 devoted himself to the work of the ministry, 
 and the children were placed in the care of 
 friends. When this boy was six years of age, 
 he, with his brother Orrice and sister Phoebe, 
 were placed in the keeping of Caleb Baldwin, 
 who left Ohio in 1832 to settle with the Saints 
 in Independence, Missouri. 
 
 They were little children to undertake such 
 a journey and under such circumstances of 
 privation and hardship. The second boy, the 
 subject of this sketch, was then already old 
 enough to sense in some measure the change 
 in his surorundings and the new life he was to 
 take on thereafter. It cannot be said, how- 
 
12 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 ever, that he lacked love and friendship and 
 the tender care which springs from them. 
 
 The Saints in those days were subject to per- 
 secution. Their sympathies, therefore, were 
 awakened by every misfortune and suffering 
 that came to their fellow men, and especially 
 those of their own faith; besides, the father 
 of these Murdock children was devoting him- 
 self to the ministry. His devotion, therefore, 
 to the cause of God and the sacrifice which it 
 entails in separating him' from his little ones, 
 would naturally beget a heartfelt interest in 
 their behalf. Caleb Baldwin, the man to 
 whose tender mercies they had been entrusted, 
 was himself in years to come to undergo tribu- 
 lations. Indeed, he must have felt during those 
 days of travel between Kirtland and Independ- 
 ence a solicitous welfare for the little charges 
 entrusted to his keeping. 
 
 When the children reached their destination 
 in Missouri, they were separated — a circum- 
 stance indeed trying to a childish love for lit- 
 tle brothers and sisters. Little Phoebe, a help- 
 less child at that time, was given over to the 
 care of Sidney Gilbert and wife. Having no 
 
INFANCY ON THE FRONTIERS 13 
 
 children of their own, and loving little ones, 
 they bestowed an abundance of love and care 
 on little Phoebe. She lived, however, to be only 
 six years old, having died of the cholera at the 
 same time Sidney Gilbert and several members 
 of Zion's Camp fell victims of that dread dis- 
 ease. The boy, John Riggs, a little older than 
 his departed sister, carried the memories of a 
 childish love and devotion and was wont in 
 after years to declare: ''Truly, she was a 
 lovely child !" The oldest boy, Orrice, passed 
 on to the keeping of different ones. As those 
 days were full of trouble, and men's circum- 
 stances changed so often and so radically 
 they could not continue their guardianship 
 over him. 
 
 The subject of this sketch came under the 
 supervision of the Presiding Bishop of the 
 Church in those days, Edward Partridge, who 
 gave him' over to Morris C. Phelps, who had at 
 that time no little ones. Thus began the life 
 of John Riggs Murdock on the outposts of civ- 
 ilization. It was a life in Jackson County, 
 where he was old enough to witness the sav- 
 age persecutions of his benefactors and of his 
 people. The impressions made during that 
 
14 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 time upon a mind so young can scarcely be 
 comprehended by those whose peaceful sur- 
 roundings are so happyfying, and whose com- 
 forts relieve the childish mind of all fear and 
 forebodings. 
 
CHILDHOOD IN MISSOURI 15 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 CHILDHOOD IN MISSOURI 
 
 The childhood of John Riggs Murdock in 
 Missouri, during those awful days of bitter 
 persecution, must have been one of constant 
 and intense anxiety. He was too young then 
 — for he was only six years old when he 
 reached Independence, Jackson county^ — to 
 feel the supporting influence which comes to 
 those who understand in some measure God's 
 purpose in persecution, and who have the ex- 
 perience of faith and an understanding suffi- 
 cient to comprehend a situation even though 
 it be full of distress. This boy would naturally 
 cling with fear and anxiety to those in whom 
 he trusted. To him the situation was full of 
 bewilderment, he could not comprehend the ar- 
 guments that were carried on between the en- 
 emies and the Saints, and in their contentions 
 he could only know that there was for some 
 reason a murderous intent in the hearts of 
 those who were persecuting his people and his 
 guardians. 
 
16 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 The western Missourians of those days were 
 Southerners. The blighting influence of slav- 
 ery was an object lesson to the Saints, who, 
 by their industry in reclaiming the prairie 
 lands, stood out in striking contrast with their 
 Southern neighbors. Those were days when 
 slave-holders had staked their all on the tri- 
 umph and supremacy of their cherished insti- 
 tution of negro servitude. Politics, therefore, 
 in those frontier territories took on a deadly 
 aspect that perhaps has never had an equal in 
 the history of our country. The political pow- 
 er of the Mormons was to the enemy a subject 
 of grave fears, and the struggle to thwart that 
 coming power, as they viewed it, became to 
 them a matter of life and death. The Mor- 
 mons must leave Jackson county. 
 
 The Phelps family, in which the boy lived, 
 by reason of its prominence, became one of the 
 shining marks against whom the murderous 
 assaults of those Mormon haters were directed. 
 There were constant gatherings of the mobs 
 to intimidate the Saints and to enforce their 
 removal from Jackson county. Sometimes 
 these mobs and bodies of the Saints came 
 into open conflict, but the Saints were in the 
 
CHILDHOOD IN MISSOURI 17 
 
 minority, and their opposition only served as 
 an excuse to perpetrate upon them the inhu- 
 man outrages that characterized their driving 
 from the confines of Jackson county across 
 the Missouri River north into Clay county. 
 
 A picture of those days, the fifth and sixth of 
 November, 1832, scenes to which John Riggs 
 Murdock was in a large measure an eye-wit- 
 ness, has been painted, in the Times and Sea- 
 sons, and in the biography of the Prophet 
 Joseph. Those scenes are here given at some 
 length because, though the history of different 
 communities, they are nevertheless stirring in- 
 cidents that came within the childhood experi- 
 ence of John Riggs Murdock : 
 
 "All through this day and the day follow- 
 ing (November 6th) women and children w^ere 
 fleeing in every direction from the presence of 
 the merciless mob. One company of one hun- 
 dred and ninety — all women and children, ex- 
 cept three decrepit men — were driven thirty 
 miles across a burnt prairie, the ground thinly 
 crusted with sleet, their trail being easily fol- 
 lowed by the blood which flowed from their 
 lacerated feet. 
 
 "Other parties during the two days men- 
 2 
 
18 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 tioned flocked to the Missouri River, and 
 crossed at the ferries into Clay county. One 
 of the companies of the distressed women and 
 children were kindly lodged by a Mr. Bennett 
 for the night in his house." 
 
 If you would see that boy on the banks of the 
 Missouri River on the 7th day of November, 
 1833, read the scene as portrayed by the 
 prophet : 
 
 *'The shore began to be lined on both sides 
 of the ferry with men, women and children, 
 goods, wagons, boxes, chests, provisions, etc., 
 while the ferrymen were busily employed in 
 crossing them over; and when night again 
 closed upon the Saints the wilderness had much 
 the appearance of a camp meeting. Hundreds 
 of people were seen in every direction; some 
 in tents and some in the open air, around their 
 fires, while the rain descended in torrents. 
 Husbands were inquiring for their wives ; and 
 women for their husbands; parents for chil- 
 dren ; and children for parents. Some had the 
 good fotune to escape with their family, house- 
 hold goods and some provisions; while others 
 knew not of the fate of their loved ones and 
 had lost all their goods. The scene was in- 
 
CHILDHOOD IN MISSOURI 19 
 
 describable, and would have melted the hearts 
 of any people upon the earth, except the blind 
 oppressor, and prejudiced and ignorant bigot. 
 Next day the company increased, and they 
 were chiefly engaged in felling small cotton- 
 wood trees and erecting them into temporary 
 cabins, so that when night came on they had 
 the appearance of a village of wig\vams, and 
 the night being clear, the occupants began to 
 enjoy some degree of comfort. " 
 
 The Evening and Morning Star contains the 
 following description of a meteoric phenome- 
 non which gave encouragement to the dis- 
 tressed Saints, and for the moment created 
 some dismay among their enemies : 
 
 "On the night of the 13th of November, 
 while large bodies of the Saints were still in 
 Camp on the Missouri bottoms, exiled from 
 their homes for the gospel's sake, one of the 
 most wonderful meteoric showers occurred 
 that was ever witnessed. The whole heavens 
 and the earth were made brilliant by the 
 streams of light which marked the course of 
 the falling aerolites. The whole upper deep 
 was one vast display of heaven's fireworks. 
 The long trains of light left in the heavens by 
 
20 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 the meteors would twist into the most fantastic 
 shapes, like writhing serpents. Its grandeur 
 was far beyond the power of words to describe. 
 
 "It is needless to say, then, that this sign in 
 the heavens encouraged the distressed Saints; 
 that it revived their hopes ; that it calmed their 
 fears; that the coming of their deliverer was 
 drawing nigh. Nor need I say that it awed 
 the mob, and made a pause in their cruel pro- 
 ceedings for a season. But that pause was 
 brief; for on the twenty-third of November 
 the mob held a meeting, and appointed a com- 
 mittee to warn any of the Saints who might 
 possibly be found within the borders of the 
 county, to leave." 
 
 Of this remarkable manifestation, John R. 
 Murdock says : "The stars fell in countless 
 numbers; and were as vivid and real to my 
 eye as are the immense hail stones or snow 
 flakes that may fall in an ordinary storm." 
 
 The boy found himself north of the Mis- 
 souri River, in Clay county, when only seven 
 years of age, dependent upon foster parents 
 who in turn were largely dependent upon the 
 hospitality of those whose pity had been reach- 
 ed by the inhuman treatment which had over- 
 
CHILDHOOD IN MISSOURI 21 
 
 taken the Saints in Jackson county. When it 
 is remembered that at this time the Saints were 
 poor; that what Httle they had in Jackson 
 county had been destroyed, we can well im- 
 agine the touching poverty that existed in 
 their midst. The poverty was so great that 
 even though the pride of the boy was not 
 touched by its existence, he must have felt it 
 keenly in the want of the ordinary necessities 
 of life, as food would be scant and his raiment 
 poor. At his age of life, too, he would be 
 deeply sensitive to his unfavorable and uncer- 
 tain surroundings. 
 
 Here, too, in the life of John R. Murdock, 
 from the period of seven to nine years of age, 
 was indelibly impressed upon his soul that in- 
 tense and abiding faith in the rightfulness of 
 the Saints to the land of their inheritance, of 
 Jackson county, which to him was the land of 
 promise — the chosen place of the Lord. The 
 history of those times recounts the tenacity 
 with which the Saints held to the hope of their 
 Zion. It was not merely the land they had 
 been compelled to leave, measured in dollars 
 and cents ; it was not the houses burned from 
 over their heads ; it was not the loss of horses 
 
22 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 and cattle, nor the destruction of their mov- 
 ables upon which they had centered their af- 
 fection ; it was upon a particular spot of earth 
 — the Zion of their God — the land of prom- 
 ise — the glory of days to come. How could 
 they abandon it ! It was a part of their faith, 
 and their eyes turned back to Jackson county 
 with a yearning of a steadfast purpose and an 
 unyielding faith. 
 
 While the Saints generally had their hearts 
 set upon Jackson county, this boy was receiv- 
 ing those early impressions of life which are 
 written both on and in the human soul. It is 
 not, therefore, to be wondered that all his life 
 long there was a sacred corner in the heart 
 of John Riggs Murdock, where he treasured 
 up a loving and abiding faith in the thought of 
 Jackson County. It was a part of his life. He 
 spoke about it from the pulpit, he referred to 
 it in private conversation, but what he said 
 must have been small in comparison with his 
 thoughts and feelings about the c|iosen Zion 
 of the Lord. 
 
 The people then had not abandoned their 
 hope of a favorable opportunity to return to 
 this chosen spot. That hope has never been 
 
CHILDHOOD IN MISSOURI 23 
 
 abandoned by the Latter-day Saints, even those 
 born at times long subsequent. If in the chil- 
 dren of the Covenant who had never seen 
 Jackson county there is inborn hope for the 
 redemption of that promised spot of earth, 
 what must be the feelings of a man toward it 
 who, as the subject of this sketch, from his 
 ealriest recollections kept tenaciously to the 
 promise which had been given him respecting 
 the Zion of his God. Perhaps in the decline of 
 life, when he stands on the shores of the great 
 hereafter, no thought has been more cher- 
 ished by him than that of the ultimate return 
 of the Saints to Jackson county. 
 
 He felt as others of his time felt, that when 
 he left Clay county it would be to drop back 
 again across the Missouri River to receive the 
 land there given the Saints as an inheritance. 
 
 From Clay county he went with the Saints 
 to Caldwell. For him in this new county 
 there began a new training. It was the birth 
 of uncommon responsibilities which were to 
 develop a character for manhood, persistency, 
 and industry that gave him much of the prom- 
 inence and prestige he enjoyed in after life 
 among his fellow men. 
 
24 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 During the stay of John R. Murdock in 
 Clay county, he naturally shared the experi- 
 ences of his fellow outcasts. The hardships 
 which such a condition works upon a boy are 
 usually greater than those encountered by per- 
 sons of mature years, who have the physical 
 powers to withstand the cold, want of food 
 and other trials. After he had been baptized 
 by his father in Clay county, on the 14th day 
 of September, 1834, the day after he was eight 
 years of age, he came properly under the des- 
 ignation of a Mormon. He was then old 
 enough to sense, in some measure, the situa- 
 tion, and feel the humiliation to which he and 
 his older brethren had been subjected. In his 
 life, the years of 1835-36-37 and 38, when he 
 was nine, ten, eleven and twelve years old, 
 experiences came to him which had much to do 
 with the convictions on the important question 
 of Mormonism' throughout all his subsequent 
 life. Those were, indeed, rare experiences for 
 a boy who was of his age, an age in which 
 the memory plays so important a part and 
 impressions are so lasting. 
 
 The history of those years, from the stand- 
 point of his youth, are worth here a brief re- 
 
CHILDHOOD IN MISSOURI 25 
 
 capitulation. He had been an eye-witness of that 
 awful hatred known only in religious persecu- 
 tion. It was a hatred both vile and murder- 
 ous. As he looked into the faces of the men 
 who drove him and his foster parents from 
 Jackson county, he must have felt something 
 of the terror that only such a murderous hatred 
 can forget. When he settled in Clay county he 
 felt the sympathy which the people, who re- 
 ceived the refugees bestowed in consequence 
 of the pity which they felt for those unfortu- 
 nate exiles. There would naturally be awak- 
 ened within the boy a deep sense of gratitude 
 for the slightest favor bestowed, but that grat- 
 itude was not left long undisturbed; for the 
 shelter which he received in Clay county was 
 only temporary, and he with his people, was 
 first coldly invited to leave the county and 
 later were threatened if they tarried long. It 
 is not easy to describe what a boy's conception 
 of a free government was under such circum- 
 stances. Then he must have gradually awak- 
 ened to the fact that no government is more 
 just than the people who maintain it. How- 
 ever, the people moved to Caldwell county, 
 where the broad prairie was considered in those 
 
26 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 days unfavorable for the purposes of settle- 
 ment. The county was comparatively free from 
 inhabitants and it looked as though the Mor- 
 mons might dwell there in peace with them- 
 selves. He had now arrived at that age of life, 
 although still young, where his services could 
 be extensively utilized. At eleven years of 
 age he says that he plowed and cultivated ten 
 acres of land. He also remembers, among the 
 early experiences of his boyhood, the fact that 
 he drove a team at the time the excavation 
 w^as made for the foundation of the Temple 
 in the town of Far West. 
 
 There were busy and stirring scenes in Far 
 West during the years of 1836, 1837 and 1838. 
 It was the County Seat, the center of the re- 
 ligious and political organizations of the peo- 
 ple. He saw his father there at the conference 
 of 1837 chosen the senior member of the high 
 council, which was organized for that stake of 
 Zion. With that body of men might be seen 
 a number of strong characters, whose associa- 
 tion with his father not only had an impres- 
 sion upon the boy, but awakened within him 
 feelings of admiration by reason of what he 
 saw and heard. He also learned at that time 
 
CHILDHOOD IN MISSOURI 27 
 
 the importance which the Church had placed 
 upon the Word of Wisdom, for by unanimous 
 vote the people agreed that they would not 
 support any store or shop which sold intoxi- 
 cating liquors, tea, coffee, or tobacco. The 
 leaders of the Church were anxious to secure 
 the favor of the Lord by the observance of his 
 requirements. They were anxious to fortify 
 the brethren against the practices which lead to 
 indulgence and disunion. 
 
 The Church, however, was not to escape 
 temptation; and if its members avoided one 
 snare, others were laid to trap their unwary 
 feet. There were other temptations besides 
 self-indulgence. Best of opportunities were 
 given to gratify selfishness in those who felt 
 the inner temptation. 
 
 Into Caldwell and two or three of the other 
 adjoining counties, the Saints were coming 
 from' Canada and Kirtland, and it was not 
 long before there were some twelve thousand 
 people among the Saints in Missouri. This 
 influx of population naturally created a rise 
 in land values. The old settlers could not re- 
 sist the temptation to speculate at the expense 
 of the new-comers. Along with this selfish- 
 
2S JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 ness there developed among them feelings of 
 pride which resulted in division and later in 
 apostasy. 
 
 Here the boy must have listened to the con- 
 tentions that were the outgrowth of strife and 
 rivalry. He saw the witnesses to the Book of 
 Mormon fall by the wayside. He saw apos- 
 tles undertake to bring trouble and calamity 
 upon the Prophet. Those men who were op- 
 posing the counsels of the Prophet and violat- 
 ing his instructions, no doubt, had their "strong 
 arguments/' Fortunately for him his father 
 and his foster parents, those responsible for his 
 welfare, did not falter. The foster father of 
 his sister, Sidney Gilbert, had declared to the 
 Prophet in the strength of his manhood that he 
 would rather die than go on a mission. Death 
 speedily overtook the man in the days of the 
 cholera plague. Those were days that laid the 
 foundation of that faith in John Riggs Mur- 
 dock which served in future life to guard him 
 against the sophistries of men and the dangers 
 of selfish ambition. He had learned in his 
 youth, perhaps the most important lesson in 
 Mormonism; namely, that there is no safety 
 for men who have not a spiritual guidance 
 
CHILDHOOD IN MISSOURI 29 
 
 stronger and surer than the reasons and argu- 
 ments of their fellows. It was in those days, 
 too, that John R. Murdock learned that might 
 was not right. The brute force which was the 
 only superior power that the Missourians 
 could claim, stood out in striking contrast to 
 the intelligence, industry, virtue,and refinement 
 of the Latter-day Saints. He also saw the ex- 
 cuses which querulous men made use of as a 
 justification for their violence and injustice, 
 and he therefore throughout the remainder of 
 his life avoided those who were given to con- 
 tention and strife. 
 
 The Prophet Joseph had been in Far West 
 in 1837 and had given the people an organ- 
 ization and directed the work of their colon- 
 ization. He then returned to Kirtland, to 
 look after the Saints there. But the Prophet 
 could not travel fast enough between these dis- 
 tant places to subdue the contentions and en- 
 mity which the evil one created. In the spring 
 of 1838 Joseph felt that his presence was need- 
 ed more with the Saints on the frontier, that 
 he must quit Kirtland if his life were to be pre- 
 served. He was soon followed by the majority 
 of the Saints in Ohio. Gathering was going on 
 
30 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 rapidly in Missouri. On the 4th of July, 1838, 
 he witnessed the laying of the corner-stone in 
 the excavation which had been prepared the 
 year before in Far West. The people of Mis- 
 souri clearly foresaw that Caldwell county 
 would not satisfy the requirements of the Lat- 
 ter-day Saints. Their immigration was natur- 
 ally a source of some alarm. They entertained 
 a fear of the Mormon people, whose increasing 
 numbers they considered a menace to their 
 power. They were slave holders, and were 
 anxious that the slave power should predom- 
 inate in every new state of the West. The 
 chasm between the slaveholders of the South 
 and the people of the North was growing wider 
 and deeper. That ''peculiar institution,'' if it 
 prevailed, must do so by political supremacy. 
 The Mormons did not contend against slavery, 
 but that made no difference, for in biblical 
 language the Missourians declared that, "those 
 w^ho are not for us are against us.'' 
 
 It is sometimes said that politics has been 
 the chief cause of trouble to the Mormon peo- 
 ple from the earliest period of their history. 
 No doubt politics had much to do with driving 
 the Saints from Missouri, but Mormons like 
 
CHILDHOOD IN MISSOURI 31 
 
 to vote. They want to exercise their fran- 
 chise as freely as other people do, and some- 
 times they like to vote for their friends. The 
 bringing of 12,000 people into the state of 
 Missouri v^ithin a short time would naturally 
 create some apprehension, and no doubt there 
 appeared upon the horizon of the Missourians 
 of those days the bug-a-boo of Missouri un- 
 der Mormon dominion. In Daviess county, in 
 the year 1838, a few Mormons undertook to 
 exercise their franchise, and they had no doubt 
 been persuaded by their Gentile brethren, that 
 it was not only their privilege but tlieir right 
 to do so, and it may be true that they had a 
 kind of balance of power that the mobocrats 
 feared and determined should not be exercised. 
 A row resulted and false rumors spread 
 throughout the state in the wildest manner 
 about the Mormons. 
 
 Under ordinary circumstances such an ex- 
 citement and such an appeal to arms could not 
 have been brought about. It is perhaps not 
 wholly correct to say that the ministers did it. 
 It was in part a question of animosity on the 
 part of slaveholders towards those of New 
 England descent, whom the slaveholders of 
 
32 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 those days so cordially hated. It was in any 
 event the wrath of the evil one let loose, but be- 
 yond all we now see the finger of God pointing 
 to other lands, to another destiny, to a great- 
 er people located in the valleys of the Rocky 
 Mountains. No explanation of those awful per- 
 secutions, and of the hatred of those days is 
 sufficient to make clear Mormon history in 
 Missouri, which does not recognize the hand of 
 God in the destiny of a peculiar people 
 whose future was to serve his almighty pur- 
 poses. 
 
 Troubles came thick and fast. At first the 
 out-posts were attacked. The Saints at De- 
 witt were surrounded and compelled to gather 
 at Far West. Later came the massacre at 
 Haun's mill; and in the midst of it all Gov- 
 ernor Boggs' awful decree of extermination. 
 Under such circumstances the people could not 
 have failed to see that the coming storm was 
 irresistible, and that they must leave the state. 
 It was no longer a question of what to do, but 
 how to do it. They w^ere in dire distress. The 
 enemy was giving them no quarter. There 
 might have been seen in those days men and 
 
CHILDHOOD IN MISSOURI 33 
 
 women fleeing in all directions toward Far 
 West. 
 
 While all these things were going on John 
 R. Murdock lived with the Phelps family about 
 two and one-half miles from the town. While 
 he was there, Col. Hinkle, in charge of the 
 militia, betrayed the Prophet Joseph into the 
 hands of the mob. There the boy heard the 
 awful howls, wild demonstrations of delight 
 over the treachery which had brought the 
 Prophet and other leaders of the Church under 
 its control. He felt the suspense that was com- 
 mon to his people when the word reached 
 his ears that these leaders had been court- 
 martialed and sentenced to death. If older 
 ones could see no escape for those they loved 
 from what seemed certain death, what must 
 have been the thoughts and feelings of this 
 boy! If the situation taxed their faith, what 
 must have been his trust in the providences of 
 God ! The release from a situation so threaten- 
 ing, from death apparently so certain, must 
 have taught him throughout all his subsequent 
 years, that faith, after all, is the highest and 
 strongest assurance that man can have under 
 such trying ordeals of life. 
 3 
 
34 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 Perhaps this boy did not fully sense the dan- 
 gers with which he was surrounded and the 
 future hardships which then immediately 
 awaited him. His foster father, Morris Phelps, 
 was taken prisoner and subjected to the great 
 indignities that befell the Prophet, Parley P. 
 Pratt and others. At this period of life, when 
 he was only twelve years old, some of the re- 
 sponsibility of the family fell upon him. He 
 was brought into contact with the officers of 
 the militia, w^ho used the boy in securing 
 horses and to make such trades as the officers 
 thought advantageous to them. 
 
 He was thus brought into the whirl of ex- 
 citement and danger which then prevailed. At 
 Far West he was a witness to many evil acts 
 of an infuriated, low-minded mob. 
 
 When the people in Far West gathered on 
 the public square to listen to the words of Gen- 
 eral Clark and learn from him their doom, 
 John R. Murdock again felt those cruel un- 
 certainties of days to come more keenly than 
 he felt his situation when he crossed the river 
 some years before from Jackson into Clay 
 county. Did he realize the meaning of those 
 words which fell from the lips of General 
 
CHILDHOOD IN MISSOURI 35 
 
 Clark? Did he know their awful import? 
 What feelings of misgiving they must have 
 awakened within his breast when those awful 
 words were made clear to his understanding! 
 General Clark said: "As for your leaders, 
 do not think, do not imagine for a moment, do 
 not let it enter your minds that they will be 
 delivered, or that you will ever see their faces 
 again ; for their fate is fixed, their die is cast, 
 their doom is sealed. I would advise you to 
 scatter abroad and never again organize with 
 bishops, presidents, etc., lest you excite the 
 jealousy of the people and subject yourselves 
 to the same calamities that have now come up- 
 on you.'' 
 
 The Saints now well understood that they 
 could not remain another season in Missouri. 
 It was not so much a question of what they 
 should do, as what they could do. They must 
 leave. The people of Illinois along the Mis- 
 sissippi river offered them a place of refuge. 
 The people of Illinois were Northerners and 
 comprehended the misfortunes of the Mor- 
 mons who had fallen into the hands of the irate 
 Southerners of Missouri. Then the awful suf- 
 ferings of the Saints called for action and 
 
36 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 they began immediate preparations during the 
 winter of 1838 and 1839 to cross eastern Mis- 
 souri to the state of Illinois. 
 
 In those days travel was not only slow but 
 difficult. Extensive preparations had to be 
 made for even short journeys. The people 
 vvcre using every endeavor to save all that they 
 could from the loot of the mob. Their horses 
 and cattle had been driven away. Besides the 
 theft to which they were subjected, there was 
 malicious deviltry in much that the mob did. 
 It destroyed property in the most wanton man- 
 ner. Sometimes mobocrats would shoot down 
 a cow while some girl was milking it. Then 
 they brought to their aid all sorts of cunning 
 devices to excuse their theft and robbery, when 
 they preferred to conceal notoriously open and 
 wicked conduct. At the point of their guns 
 they compelled the Mormons to sign away 
 their property for the alleged purpose of de- 
 fraying the expenses of the war. 
 
 The young Murdock boy was an eye-witness 
 of those trying days. The hardships of the 
 people were his hardships. Being naturally 
 sensitive, he felt keenly the ourages which he 
 constantly saw perpetrated upon his people. 
 
CHILDHOOD IN MISSOURI 37 
 
 His home had been broken up by the capture 
 of its head. Fortunately, however, he enjoyed 
 in some measure the protecting care of his fos- 
 ter mother, Laura Phelps, who was the daugh- 
 ter of Timothy B. Clark, a well-to-do man in 
 those days. This brought him into associa- 
 tion with such men as William O. Clark, a 
 great preacher in the early history of the 
 Church. He was also associated with Ezra T. 
 Qark, another member of that family. The 
 Clarks had considerable property for those 
 days. Much of it consisted of cattle and 
 horses. In those times the experiences of John 
 R. Murdock in handling horses and dealing in 
 cattle gave him a ripened judgment far be- 
 yond his years. Those days also developed 
 within him a rare judgment in handling all 
 kinds of live stock, a judgment which turned 
 to most excellent account in later years of life. 
 In the spring of 1839 he was entrusted with 
 one hundred head of the Clark cattle, which he 
 had to drive from Far West to Illinois. In 
 that migration of the Saints the people went in 
 small squads. The individual responsibility 
 was much greater than it was where they trav- 
 eled in large parties. The boy, however, gave 
 
38 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 excellent account of himself in this new re- 
 sponsibility. However, such a trust would not 
 have been imposed upon him had he not given 
 evidence earlier in his boyhood of his fidelity 
 to every duty to which he had been called. Al- 
 though a youth he must have established a rep- 
 utation for industry, care, and judgment far be- 
 yond that enjoyed by boys of that age, for he 
 was not yet thirteen years old. 
 
 He here also learned the first lessons which 
 taught him the superiority of Brigham Young's 
 leadership — a leadership that placed him in 
 good service in Nauvoo in the exodus from 
 Illinois and in the settlement of Utah. Thomas 
 B. Marsh had fallen and in the absence of Jos- 
 eph the leadership of the quorum of the twelve 
 apostles fell upon Brigham Young, who im- 
 mediately began, after the arrest of the Proph- 
 et, preparations for the migration of the Saints 
 beyond the confines of Missouri ; but Brigham 
 was not left long at liberty to carry out this 
 exodus. His enemies drove him from the scene ; 
 and Heber C. Kimball, who sought to take up 
 the work where Brigham Young left off, was 
 also handicapped. A committee had been ap- 
 pointed to prepare for the exodus and to se- 
 
CHILDHOOD IN MISSOURI 39 
 
 cure opportunities for all to leave, the poorest 
 as well as those who were well-to-do. 
 
 The journey of John R. Murdock across 
 Missouri, with his herd of cattle, in the spring 
 of 1839, was the history of a hardship com- 
 mon to the men and women of that time. 
 Through the mud and rain he made his way 
 as best he could, a mere child upon whom 
 fell a responsibility to see that his cattle did 
 not scatter, that none of them escaped him, 
 that they were properly fed and watered and 
 so driven as not to diminish their value when 
 they reached their journey's end. 
 
 Nor was it merely a matter of toil, of want, 
 or of excessive responsibility. He was old 
 enough to ask himself some thoughtful ques- 
 tions. What did it all mean ? Whither was he 
 going? When would he find a permanent rest- 
 ing place ? How would he fare in a new land ? 
 How would his new neighbors treat him? 
 He must have wondered at the providences of 
 God. 
 
 However he had seen the hand of God man- 
 ifest. He had reason to trust his leaders and 
 somehow and somewhere he must have felt 
 that peace and protection of God awaited him. 
 
40 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 On the 26th day of April, 1839, in fulfill- 
 ment of a prophecy which the enemy had de- 
 clared should not come true, the Twelve, from 
 the home of Timothy B. Clark, made their 
 way early in the morning to the public square, 
 where they placed in the ground a cornerstone 
 of the temple, held meeting, sang, spoke, and 
 finally took their departure for the East, pre- 
 paratory to their missions, to which they had 
 been called to the nations of the earth. At 
 this time Wilford Woodruff and George A. 
 Smith were called to the quorum of the twelve 
 apostles. 
 
 In the spring of 1839, John R. Murdock 
 reached a land where he entered upon new ex- 
 periences which characterized his stay in that 
 state. To those who in youth enjoyed the 
 quietude of home and peaceful surroundings, 
 the early life of this boy is not comprehensible. 
 From the days of his earliest recollections he 
 lived in the midst of turmoil and persecution. 
 The anger of the mob and their awful fury 
 were the comtnonplace experiences of his early 
 days. The atmosphere he breathed was charged 
 with anxieties, hardships, responsibilities, and 
 uncertainties. He became in those early days 
 
CHILDHOOD IN MISSOURI 41 
 
 surely a child of emergencies, and was taught 
 to prepare himself for whatever fell in his way 
 to do. It was in those days that he learned to 
 make the most of every opportunity and so it 
 happened, in later life, that he was found put- 
 ting to good account resources of which others 
 had neither the courage nor the ability to avail 
 themselves. He has carried out in mature 
 years the lessons which he learned in child- 
 hood. 
 
42 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 BOYHOOD IN ILLINOIS 
 
 When the Saints saw that further effort to 
 hold their own in Missouri would be fruitless, 
 they began to look about for a new home. At 
 this time Iowa was a territory, and to the 
 northwest of them lay a district of country 
 known as the Half-breed tract. Some effort 
 was made to secure in Iowa land on which they 
 might settle. The country across the Missouri, 
 to the west of them, was the home of the red 
 man, and a movement in that direction seemed 
 quite impossible. 
 
 News of the sufferings of the Saints reached 
 the ears of their neighbors on the east in Illi- 
 nois, just across the Mississippi, in Adams 
 county. A feeling of pity was awakened and 
 the citizens of Quincy, in a friendly and hos- 
 pitable attitude, offered their good services 
 to the people in the hour of their need. 
 
 As the road went in those days, John R. 
 Murdock had to travel with his cattle from Far 
 West, about two hundred miles. New condi- 
 tions awaited him, but he was a boy and could 
 
BOYHOOD IN ILLINOIS 43 
 
 forget, perhaps, sooner than those of mature 
 years. However, by nature he was strong in 
 his judgments, wedded to people and condi- 
 tions he Hked, and it was not easy for him to 
 break loose. When he reached Quincy, Mor- 
 ris C. Phelps was in prison in Missouri. Mrs. 
 Phelps was making preparation to relieve her 
 husband or to render him^ if possible, some as- 
 sistance in making his escape, and if that were 
 impossible, to remain near by to offer such help 
 and comfort as her presence would give to him. 
 
 At this time, however, the boy's father felt 
 the need of his assistance, and may, perhaps, 
 have thought that it would relieve his foster 
 parents from some feeling of responsibility if 
 he took his son home at this time. 
 
 John was loath to leave the Phelps home; 
 his foster parents were dear to him, and he 
 says that for a long time after he was home- 
 sick because of the separation. However, he 
 was obedient to his father's wishes, and with 
 his brother Orrice he began to open a new 
 farm in Adams county, Illinois. The low- 
 lands and the wooded country of western Illi- 
 nois were quite unlike the prairie country 
 with which he had been familiar in Missouri, 
 
44 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 and he therefore found it necessary to adjust 
 himself to his new environments. 
 
 But the Saints did not remain long in Adams 
 county. They had been welcomed by the peo- 
 ple, and as long as they were an object of pity, 
 feelings of kindness and hospitality were ex- 
 tended toward them; but they were a strong, 
 vigorous class, made up of men and women of 
 the deepest convictions and they further pos- 
 sessed indomitable wills. Their progressive 
 methods, their independent character, and above 
 all their pronounced religious views were so 
 much at variance with the sects of that age 
 that it became necessary for them to locate in 
 a place where they could work in harmony 
 with their own characteristics. Indeed, some 
 apprehension began to be felt by a certain class 
 in Quincy, who imagined the Mormons would 
 lower the standard of wages. 
 
 On the 22nd of April, 1839, the Prophet 
 reached his people in Illinois. Brigham Young 
 and others had already explored the country 
 northward for a suitable location, but no defi- 
 nite conclusions had been reached. The Prophet 
 therefore began at once to investigate the situ- 
 ation, and finally determined to locate fifty 
 
BOYHOOD IN ILLINOIS 45 
 
 miles north of Quincy, at a little place in the 
 bend of the river^ called Commerce. Land was 
 bought from Hugh White and Daniel H. Wells. 
 This land became the nucleus of a series of 
 purchases which later became the city of Nau- 
 voo. This move meant another change for 
 John R. Murdock, who went with his father to 
 work on the new farm at Nauvoo. Here he 
 assisted his father in raising two crops; and 
 at intervals, when not occupied on the farm, 
 he labored in making cooper ware. 
 
 While the Saints were struggling to subdue 
 the soil in and about Nauvoo, another short 
 change came to the life of the boy. Levi Mur- 
 dock, a relative from Indiana, visited the boy's 
 father and persuaded the latter to allow him to 
 take the boy home with him to Indiana. Here 
 he remained with his relative from fall to the 
 following spring, a period of about eight 
 months. That was another change — a change 
 not only in environment, but in the social life 
 and experiences of the boy. Here he was oc- 
 cupied in making sugar from the maple sap. 
 All these changes at that peculiar age of life 
 had much to do in training him for a life of 
 emergencies, and thus it happened that in later 
 
46 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 years he was always ready for the exigencies 
 of any occasion. From" his infancy he learned 
 to become an opportunist, and as a conse- 
 quence could more easily make himself the 
 master of almost any situation than could those 
 whose experiences were all of one peculiar kind. 
 
 The boy, however, had convictions of his 
 own. There were developed within him pur- 
 poses in life from which he could not be turned. 
 He therefore decided to return to his father's 
 home at Nauvoo ; but between him and the 
 Mississippi river there was a distance of some- 
 thing like three hundred miles to be traversed. 
 The country was partially settled, the journey 
 a long one, and the difficulties great. He had, 
 however, by this time, put to the test the pos- 
 sibilities of his own energetic nature. He was 
 not easily daunted. He had been doing things, 
 hard things, from his earliest recollection; so 
 he started out afoot with his knapsack and with 
 only one dollar and twenty-five cents in money. 
 The road was lonely and sometimes the set- 
 tlements were as far as thirty miles apart, but 
 he was persistent and finally reached his fath- 
 er's home in safety. 
 
 On his arrival home he accepted an offer to 
 
BOYHOOD IN ILLINOIS 47 
 
 work for a man by the name of John Garner, 
 and was put to work breaking up, with a large 
 plow and five yoke of oxen, the prairie land 
 which Garner was bringing under cultivation. 
 This employment he pursued for two seasons. 
 He evidently gave satisfaction to his employer, 
 as he expected to return and continue his w^ork 
 of breaking up the prairie. 
 
 Before he took up the work of another 
 season, his father required the boy to do some 
 work for a man named Lott, in payment of 
 two bushels of turnips which his father had ob- 
 tained. This new work brought the boy un- 
 der the favorable notice of Cornelius P. Lott, 
 who was at this time the superintendent of the 
 Prophet Joseph's farm. The attachment of 
 Father Lott for the boy led him to induce 
 John R. Murdock to remain w^ith him, thus his 
 surroundings were again changed. He had to 
 adjust himself once more to a new home, and to 
 make himself agreeable to its inmates and use- 
 ful to his employer. This brought him into 
 contact with Almira Henrietta Lott, a daugh- 
 ter of his employer, a girl at that time about 
 thirteen years of age, and whom he subsequent- 
 ly married. 
 
AS JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 This arrangement with the Lott family 
 brought John R. Murdock into somewhat clos- 
 er relations with the Prophet, as he now be- 
 came an employee on Joseph Smith's farm, 
 about three miles east of the Temple in Nau- 
 voo. The farm land belonging to the Saints in 
 Nauvoo during that time naturally extended 
 to the east of the Mississippi into Hancock 
 county. Much of this land was prairie, and 
 had to be broken up by means of strong teams, 
 consisting of four or five yoke of oxen. On 
 the farm where the boy was now employed, 
 there was a large frame building, about forty 
 by sixty feet, the timber of \vhich he had 
 hauled. Around the farm was one of those 
 peculiar so-called "worm'' railed fences. Be- 
 sides, the land was fenced in part by sod. The 
 house on this half-section farm was a frame 
 structure of eight rooms, four on the ground 
 floor and four upstairs. 
 
 This farm lay, so to speak, along the cross 
 roads of the country. Nauvoo became the larg- 
 est city in the state, and travel therefore would 
 be naturally quite extensive from this City of 
 the Saints in the direction of Carthage, of 
 Quincy, of Monmouth and other places. In 
 
BOYHOOD IN ILLINOIS 49 
 
 those days, with the exception of the river 
 traffic, most travel was by horse teams; and 
 the farm house of Joseph Smith was naturally 
 in itself an attractive place. 
 
 There was a newspaper in the City of Nau- 
 voo, known as the Times and Seasons, and 
 later there was established in that neighbor- 
 hood the Warsazv Signal. For a time also 
 there was a newspaper in Carthage, but gen- 
 erally speaking, much of the information in 
 those days came by word of mouth; and as 
 those were exciting times, as well as busy 
 times in the history of the Church, this boy, 
 no doubt, listened with intense interest to those 
 discussions which occupied the thoughts and 
 feelings of his fellow religionists. 
 
 The Saints had not been long in the coun- 
 try before some of the Missourians began to 
 kidnap the Mormons in out-of-the-way places, 
 take them across the Mississippi and subject 
 them to inhuman treatment. As a matter of 
 self-protection and to guard against the disposi- 
 tion on the part of some to scatter out in dif- 
 ferent parts of the state, the Saints were coun- 
 seled to settle exclusively in Hancock county, 
 and across the river in Iowa in Lee county. 
 
50 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 This call centered the activity of the Saints 
 within narrower limits and had a tendency to 
 give to that part of the country a more per- 
 fect cultivation than the land in the west re- 
 ceived in those days when the people were 
 scattered over large areas. The rapid manner 
 in which Nauvoo grew and the marvelous 
 growth of wealth in so short a period, all dem- 
 onstrate the superiority of the co-operative 
 methods employed by the Saints at that time. 
 This rapid growth, both in wealth and popu- 
 lation, naturally excited the enmity of the av- 
 erage westerner in those days. Here, too, the 
 Saints learned important lessons in agriculture : 
 and the boy, who was then, as afterward 
 throughout his entire life, a close observer, re- 
 ceived valuable lessons in tilling the soil. His 
 training on the Prophet's farm, and his experi- 
 ences in Missouri had, therefore, taught him 
 to gather up all the available resources with 
 which he was surrounded, and apply them to 
 his immediate needs. This training, together 
 with his natural adaptability, made him in after 
 life an excellent financier. 
 
 In June, 1841, an effort was made, through 
 a requisition by Governor Boggs of Missouri 
 
BOYHOOD IN ILLINOIS 51 
 
 and Governor Carlin of Illinois, to have Joseph 
 Smith brought back again to Missouri to be 
 tried on the charges under which he had been 
 indicted before he escaped from that state. It 
 was now over two years since he had left Mis- 
 souri; and while the Saints were staggering 
 under the blow that had been so cruelly inflict- 
 ed upon them by the Missourians, the latter, no 
 doubt, felt that the Saints would fall beneath 
 it. However, their recovery and their wonder- 
 ful success in building up the City of Nauvoo, 
 led the Missourians to break out again in their 
 animosity against the Mormons. What could 
 have been the thoughts of this young man, 
 when, now only fifteen years old, as he beheld 
 the malicious purpose with which his Prophet 
 and his people were hounded. Could he have 
 anticipated, then, another exodus? If not at 
 that time, he must have thought such a thing 
 possible, when he learned of the predictions of 
 the Prophet in August, 1842, while the Mont- 
 rose, Iowa. In his prediction there the Prophet 
 says : "I prophesied that the Saints would con- 
 tinue to suffer much affliction and would be 
 driven to the Rocky Mountains, many would 
 apostatize, others would be put to death by our 
 
52 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 persecutors, or lose their lives in consequence 
 of exposure or disease, and some of you will 
 live to go and assist in making settlements and 
 in building cities and see the Saints become a 
 mighty people in the midst of the Rocky 
 Mountains/' 
 
 John R. Murdock learned in Nauvoo some 
 of the peculiar methods of the adversary. 
 Among the Saints then, unscrupulous charac- 
 ters were found. Men would take advantage 
 of agitation and excitement and prejudice of 
 the times to gratify their own evil inclinations. 
 At times the country round about was infested 
 by thieves ; men followed their natural inclina- 
 tions under a religious guise. They con- 
 cealed under the cloak of sanctimony their ill- 
 gotten gains and the fruits of their thefts. 
 There were those, no doubt, naturally honest 
 who were now and again made the victims of 
 evil deceptions ; but John R. Murdock was not 
 among that class. He was a boy, as he since 
 has been a man, of pronounced convictions, 
 and from the outset of his life in his childhood 
 days, he was most fortunate in his surround- 
 ings. He had before him the example of ex- 
 cellent men; he was industrious and was car- 
 
BOYHOOD IN ILLINOIS 53 
 
 rying out a definite injunction by earning his 
 bread by the sweat of his brow. Those who 
 knew John R. Murdock in later life well un- 
 derstood that he was a good judge of men. 
 He was not easily carried off his feet in ex- 
 citement, and his excellent discrimination en- 
 abled him to determine a safe and correct pol- 
 icy to pursue. To that judgment, which was 
 so pronounced in him in after life, he brought 
 the experiences of his boyhood days. 
 
 When in and about Nauvoo he learned the 
 lesson of discerning good from evil spirits. 
 Those who have had familiar acquaintance 
 with John R. Murdock know how quick he al- 
 ways was to gather up the experiences of those 
 early days and apply them as a test when new 
 conditions arose and when men, through^ their 
 sophistries, undertook to mislead either him or 
 his friends. His experiences in those early 
 trying times were indeed remarkable, and it is 
 doubtful whether any one in the Church had 
 a more varied and remarkable career, both in 
 childhood and in boyhood than that which fell 
 to his lot. 
 
 An attempt on the life of ex-Governor Boggs 
 of Missouri, on May 6th, 1842, gave rise to re- 
 
54 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 newed effort to secure the Prophet Joseph's 
 presence in the state of Missouri. Another 
 requisition was therefore made by the governor 
 of that commonwealth on the governor of II- 
 Hnois. The Prophet, however, was not in Nau- 
 voo, but had gone on a visit with his wife to 
 her sister's home in Dixon, Iowa, where the 
 Prophet was seized unawares and after some 
 effort secured an investigation of his case on 
 the writ of habeas corpus before the officers in 
 Nauvoo. His return to Nauvoo created con- 
 siderable excitement throughout the city and 
 in the surrounding neighborhood. There was 
 a grand demonstration on his return, people 
 going out by the thousands to meet him. These 
 interesting times were all familiar to John R. 
 Murdock, who during his labor on the Proph- 
 et's farm, had frequent opportunities to meet 
 him, to learn something of the character, dis- 
 position and life of the Prophet Joseph. Of 
 him he says : "He was one of the noblest and 
 most admirable men that one could ever meet, 
 both for his physical and mental attractions. 
 Any one in his company would feel that he was 
 with his superior, yet he was so kind and so 
 lovable. He often brought his family to 
 
BOYHOOD IN ILLINOIS 55 
 
 the farm, for his family and Father Lott 
 were on terms of great intimacy. We all 
 passionately loved and revered our Prophet. 
 He used to relate to us many instances of his 
 life. In common labor, as mowing, chopping, 
 cradling, and so forth he was an expert. He 
 scarcely ever met his equal as an athlete, and 
 he took great delight in all healthful sports.'' 
 This boy's conception of the Prophet was 
 unlike that of the sectarian w^orld in his day. 
 There was nothing unscriptural in a young 
 man acting as a Prophet of God, since both 
 Samuel and Daniel of old were youths, but 
 somehow or other the idea of old age is as- 
 sociated with the ideas of both prophets and 
 patriarchs. The long flowing beard, the grace- 
 ful mantel, the slow, dignified movement, long 
 hair, and the absent gaze were the leading fea- 
 tures in the portrayal of prophets by the great 
 artists of the middle ages. Joseph Smith was 
 a young man, worked on the farm beside this 
 boy, John R. Murdock, and told him in the sim- 
 ple language of childhood the experiences of 
 his prophetic career. There was nothing in the 
 Prophet's appearance to arouse any feelings of 
 
56 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 superstition; he was a man lovable, confiding, 
 and inspiring. 
 
 John R. Murdock had learned from his ear- 
 liest recollection that political differences were 
 a source of intense animosity among those who 
 belonged simply to the contending national par- 
 ties of his time. These parties were like 
 great mill-stones, grinding whatever came be- 
 tween them. He further learned that bitter as 
 political controversies could be^ that religious 
 hatred united with political hatred constituted 
 the most awful enmity that can enter the hu- 
 man heart. It required the utmost adroitness 
 to keep from between these two mill-stones of 
 political contentions — an adroitness which the 
 Saints of God, then, and even in earlier times 
 in the history of ancient Israel did not pos- 
 sess ; for the children of darkness are shrewder 
 in their generation than the children of light. 
 
 The writer can not here refrain from an- 
 swering the very common accusation that po- 
 litics on the part of the Church is the source 
 of the Church's trouble. In such accusations 
 the inference is drawn that the elders of the 
 Church are therefore responsible for the per- 
 secutions which beset the Saints. Now, as a 
 
BOYHOOD IN ILLINOIS 57 
 
 matter of fact, there is nothing new in the as- 
 sertion that politics have been a source of trou- 
 ble to the Saints of God ; but it must be remem- 
 bered that politics were a source of trouble to 
 God's children in ancient days. If the reader 
 will take up a map of ancient history, he will 
 quickly see that Palestine of ancient times lay 
 between the Assyrians on the east, and the 
 Babylonians on the west. These great nations 
 were constantly at war with each other. The 
 ancient Israelites sometimes held the balance of 
 powder between them, and these nations were 
 constantly seeking the favor of the Israelites, 
 so there grew up among the Saints of God in 
 those days a partisan spirit. Some were 
 classified with the Babylonians, and others 
 with the Egyptians. Sometimes the prophet 
 of God took a hand in politics, and warned the 
 Saints in those days against relying on one 
 or the other of these great nations. The read- 
 er will find frequent references in Isaiah to 
 his warnings against the trust which those of 
 the Egyptian party put in that country, and in 
 its horses and chariots. There were political 
 contentions in the days of Christ. Political 
 persecutions followed the Saints of God in the 
 
58 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 days of the apostles, and later throughout the 
 Roman empire. It may be remarked that from 
 ancient times up to our own day there has been 
 a peculiar disposition to look to one or another 
 great party for some sort of political salvation. 
 
 In the days of Joseph, the Prophet himself 
 and the Saints generally no doubt struggled 
 to keep from being drawn between the mill- 
 stones that ground the Saints then, and that 
 have ground them in past days. Perhaps the 
 Lord w^as not averse to the grinding process. 
 Before the bran can be separated from the 
 flour, some sort of grinding has always been 
 found necessary. When the wheat has been 
 ground, a slight breeze and a little bolting sep- 
 arates easily the bran. So in God's dispensa- 
 tion the religious persecutions of the times 
 have kept separate the nourishing kernel, the 
 bread of life, from the bran, which is found in 
 the companionship of those unworthy ones w^ho 
 somehow or other gain fellowship in the society 
 of the elect. 
 
 During the closing year of the Prophet 
 Joseph's life, John R. Murdock, though then 
 between seventeen and eighteen years of age, 
 learned considerable about politics in church 
 
BOYHOOD IN ILLINOIS 59 
 
 and state. He learned that political power was 
 really the only power that a majority of the 
 people of Illinois either respected or hated, ac- 
 cording to their political affiliations. The ex- 
 cuse for here commenting on church and state 
 in his biography is his well known views, ex- 
 pressed both in public and private on the sub- 
 ject. The writer here comments upon conver- 
 sations which he had with Elder Murdock on 
 political topics. John R. Murdock used to say 
 that the two greatest public influences were 
 political and religious, and he thought it un- 
 fortunate that men exercising the powers that 
 arise from these influences could not be more 
 tolerant toward each other. In past ages the 
 church overawed the state and assumed pow- 
 ers it had no right to exercise. Now the pen- 
 dulum is swinging to the other extreme, and 
 the state is becoming intolerant toward the 
 church. "For my part," he was wont to say, 
 "I have come to recognize the political powder 
 of the saloon element, the political power of or- 
 ganized labor, the political power of wealth and 
 great corporations, and I expect that influen- 
 tial religious men will have their share of po- 
 litical power. They are naturally leaders in 
 
60 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 society and have their convictions on matters 
 of state. The fact is, there must be some al- 
 lowances made on both sides if we are to get 
 along well. We must learn to respect each 
 other.'' 
 
 He was not mistaken, however, about the 
 motives which governed those that expelled the 
 Saints from Nauvoo. The motives could not 
 be accounted for in political differences. The 
 awful hatred of those times was deeper than 
 politics, deeper than social differences. It ex- 
 tended to the very depths of hell. 
 
 When the Expositor printing press was de- 
 stroyed by order of the mayor of Nauvoo be- 
 cause it was a public nuisance, the whole at- 
 mosphere of the Saints was charged with fear, 
 dread, and deep-seated anxiety. Mob violence 
 even without the law began to manifest itself 
 so intensely that he expected something like 
 the same treatment which the Saints received 
 in Missouri. There was one difference, how- 
 ever, which was manifest, the Saints were more 
 numerous. They had a well organized militia. 
 The most natural question that people asked 
 themselves in those times was whether they 
 should stand their ground and fight it out. 
 
BOYHOOD IN ILLINOIS 61 
 
 Numerous as they were, they were not in num- 
 bers sufficiently strong to cope with the state 
 of IlHnois and perhaps with the state of Mis- 
 souri. If the Saints were more numerous, 
 the enemy had likewise grown to immensely 
 greater proportions. What the Latter-day 
 Saints would do under the circumstances 
 was the absorbing topic of the times. 
 
 Young Murdock had an unbounded faith in 
 the courage and wisdom of the Prophet, and 
 he went to Nauvoo to learn all that he could 
 about the situation. He was present there when 
 Joseph Smith stood upon the framework of an 
 unfinished building, in full uniform, surround- 
 ed by the Nauvoo Legion, of which he was a 
 member, and listened to the remarkable words 
 that fell from the Prophet's lips on that oc- 
 casion : "I call God and angels to witness that 
 I have unsheathed my sword with a firm de- 
 termination that these people shall have their 
 legal rights, and be protected from mob vio- 
 lence, or my blood shall be spilled upon the 
 ground like water, and my body consigned to 
 the silent tomb. While I live I will never 
 tamely submit to the dominion of cursed mob- 
 ocracy. I would welcome death rather than 
 
62 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 submit to this ; and it would be sweet, O, sweet, 
 to rest in the grave, rather than submit to this 
 oppression, agitation, annoyance, alarm upon 
 alarm any longer." 
 
 What must have been the effect of such 
 words as they fell on the ears of this boy, not 
 yet eighteen years of age! The words were 
 somewhat ominous, and were prophetic of the 
 great tragedy which ended the Prophet's life. 
 It was a solemn occasion — one of those which 
 men do not forget after having witnessed such 
 a scene as followed the Prophet's declaration. 
 There are some things in this world that are so 
 solemn and so impressed upon the recollection 
 of the past that they are never forgotten, and 
 it is safe to say that this boy's subsequent life 
 carried wdth it a touch of the solemnity which 
 he felt on that occasion ; besides, it was an oc- 
 casion which he often called to mind and upon 
 which he frequently conversed in the subse- 
 quent years of his life. 
 
 That the Prophet was fully conscious of his 
 approaching death is found in his request that 
 his brother Hyrum go with his family to Cin- 
 cinnati, so that he might succeed the Prophet 
 as President of the Church, in case his fore- 
 
BOYHOOD IN ILLINOIS 63 
 
 bodings were realized. There was in those days 
 a movement to and fro between Carthage and 
 Nauvoo. Along the road was Joseph's farm, 
 where young Murdock labored. That farm 
 was a source of great pride to the Prophet. It 
 was wxll kept by those who were intrusted 
 with its care. 
 
 At first the Prophet acted with a view to self- 
 preservation. He w^ould have gone to the 
 Rocky Mountains in quest of peace, and to be 
 isolated far from his enemies. One naturally 
 asks the question, would the Saints have fol- 
 lowed him; would they have abandoned their 
 beautiful Nauvoo; and if they had done so, 
 would they not have looked back upon the 
 "flesh pots'' of that beautiful city and longed to 
 return? That was not W'hat happened. They 
 were driven, plundered, outraged. When they 
 set out upon that great pioneer journey there 
 were no regrets left behind them. In it all they 
 now see God's providence; and the lessons of 
 that exodus are sources of faith to hundreds of 
 thousands of people who have realized more 
 fully as a consequence, that they are God's peo- 
 ple, and like Israel of old are, after all, depend- 
 ent upon his mercies. 
 
64 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 There was also another testimony — that 
 which Joseph sealed by his blood. That tes- 
 timony grows in significance and in far-reach- 
 ing consequence to the Latter-day Saints, as 
 time goes on. When, therefore, the Prophet 
 yielded to the demands of his enemies and set 
 out upon that fatal journey from Nauvoo, 
 John R. Murdock was one who gazed in wond- 
 erment and silence upon the Prophet, who 
 declared that he was "going like a lamb to the 
 slaughter, but calm as a summer's morning." 
 "I have," he said, "a conscience void of offense 
 toward God and all men. I shall die innocent, 
 and it shall be said of me, he was murdered in 
 cold blood." 
 
 The Prophet halted at his farm, where the 
 boy had another opportunity of witnessing the 
 man whose influence upon his young life had 
 been more powerful than that of any other 
 man. That influence upon him gave a setting 
 to the character of his manhood, and to the 
 unyielding faith which carried him through 
 trying places, and was in a measure to him a 
 guiding star throughout life. 
 
 "If one of you had such a farm," said Jos- 
 eph, *'and knew you would not see it any more. 
 
BOYHOOD IN ILLINOIS 65 
 
 you would want to take a good look at it for 
 the last time." Did the boy take a good look 
 at the Prophet? He had always looked upon 
 him with admiration and reverence ; but a boy 
 so young would not have realized what it all 
 meant. He was like the disciples of Jesus, — 
 there were things that he ought not to know, 
 for he could not endure them. So we trace 
 him throughout life, moving day by day ac- 
 cording to the light and testimony which God 
 vouchsafed for his guidance. That to John R. 
 Murdock was given the privilege of a witness 
 at such a time in the history of his life, and 
 in the history of the Church was perhaps one 
 of the greatest sources of pride that he ever 
 felt. 
 
 As the Prophet stopped at the farm and bade 
 the Lott family there good-bye, he did not for- 
 get the boy who was with them. He says that 
 the Prophet was escorted by a party consisting 
 of about twelve mounted men. Among them 
 were officers of the state, who had arrested him. 
 There were also some of the brethren present. 
 The boy was at the farm w^hen the news of the 
 awful tragedy at Carthage was brought by 
 George D. Grant. He was also a witness of the 
 5 
 
66 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 lamentations of the people, and joined in the 
 mourning which the Saints manifested over the 
 death of their Prophet. It is said : "The 
 groans and sobs and shrieks grew deeper and 
 louder till the sound resembled the roar of a 
 mighty tempest, or the slow, deep roar of a 
 distant tornado/' He was also present at the 
 Mansion House where the bodies lay in state 
 for some time. He witnessed the funeral ser- 
 vices which were held there, and was among 
 those who, in a prayerful and silent demeanor, 
 were wondering who could and who would 
 take the Prophet's place. He knew that Joseph 
 Smith was not the Church, and was old enough 
 to understand that the mantle of the Prophet's 
 authority had been placed upon the leaders' 
 shoulders by divine authority. He still had 
 faith that the same divine power would desig- 
 nate the future leader to the people, and that 
 Joseph's mantle would fall w^here God de- 
 signed it should be. 
 
 The young boy must have shared between 
 the memorable 27th of June, 1844, and Febru- 
 ary, 1846, much of the uncertainty that per- 
 vaded the body of the Saints settled in and 
 about Nauvoo. Between twenty and thirty 
 
BOYHOOD IN ILLINOIS (>7 
 
 thousand people were numbered among the 
 Prophet's followers. From every worldly judg- 
 ment their case seemed hopeless. The Nau- 
 voo Legion numbered about five thousand. It 
 could not cope with the overwhelming forces 
 of the Illinois militia. Although the Prophet 
 was dead, the hatred towards the Saints had 
 not abated; indeed, they felt it more keenly 
 than ever because Joseph stood between them 
 and the murderous intent of blood-thirsty 
 mobs. The people were put upon their own 
 mettle. Each one now, more than any other 
 time in the Church, must decide for himself and 
 cast his die for good or ill. Those who were 
 weary and heart-sore might drop by the way- 
 side if they chose. 
 
 The Prophet, however, had foreseen the 
 days of trial which awaited the Saints. As he 
 turned his gaze for the last time upon Nau- 
 voo when leaving it for Carthage, he re- 
 marked: "This is the loveliest place and the 
 best people under the heavens. Little do they 
 know the trials that await them." "Boys," he 
 said, as he passed the Masonic Hall, "if I 
 don't come back, take care of yourselves." 
 Joseph knew and declared what the Saints have 
 
68 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 confirmed by subsequent experience: "They 
 seek the blood of every man in whose heart 
 dwells a single spark of the fulness of the gos- 
 pel." 
 
 If Nauvoo was dear to the heart of its 
 founder and Prophet, it was also dear to the 
 hearts of the people. They were not recon- 
 ciled to the thought of its abandonment. Its 
 enemies, by their intolerance and cruelty, not 
 only caused distress and mourning, but had 
 awakened a spirit of resistance in the hearts of 
 the Saints. John R. Murdock was a member 
 of the Nauvoo Legion. Would he have to 
 yield to the demands of the enemy, or would 
 he have to fight? He was ready to respond 
 to the call of duty and held himself ready for 
 action at the bugle call. The thought of a 
 struggle at arms could not have carried with it 
 in his heart m.uch hope of success. 
 
 Little by little the pressure upon the Saints 
 grew stronger and stronger. They witnessed 
 the determination of the enemy to drive them 
 — God alone knew where ! The Saints before 
 long learned that they must go. When it came 
 John R. Murdock's turn to look for the last 
 time upon that farm which his own hands had 
 
BOYHOOD IN ILLINOIS 69 
 
 helped to beautify, he felt something of the 
 sorrows which the Prophet realized when he 
 said good-bye to it. 
 
 Upon the Prophet's death, John R. Murdock 
 came under a new leadership — a leadership 
 whose strength and spiritual guidance he rec- 
 ognized from the outset — a leadership to 
 which he became thoroughly devoted in the 
 upbuilding of his own manhood and in the up- 
 lifting of the communities over which he pre- 
 sided for many years. As the new leadership 
 fastened itself so strongly upon the life and 
 character of this young man, it is interesting 
 to know how he first came to recognize it, and 
 then we shall see why he was always loyal 
 to it. 
 
 He was not eighteen years old when the 
 Prophet and his brother Hyrum were mar- 
 tyred, but he was old enough to consider seri- 
 ously what was at that time a new and im- 
 portant question — the leadership of the 
 Church. There had been a First Presidency 
 and there was a quorum of the Twelve Apos- 
 tles upon whom the Prophet had conferred the 
 keys of the new dispensation, and whose right 
 it w^as to exercise the power of control when 
 
70 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 the Prophet should pass away. Sidney Rig- 
 don, however, was a counselor to the Prophet 
 Joseph at the time of the latter's death. The 
 people had not learned then what is now sim- 
 ple and commonplace knowledge, that the 
 death of the president ends the control of the 
 presidency. Sidney Rigdon had been sent to 
 Pittsburg, and Joseph had thanked God that 
 he was out of the way ; for the Prophet knew 
 the decline in Sidney Rigdon's faith and his in- 
 ability to lead the Church. It is said that there 
 were at that time three different views on this 
 important question of Church discipline. There 
 were those who thought Sidney Rigdon should 
 lead, become a "guardian of the Church ;" oth- 
 ers looked to the Twelve, and there were oth- 
 ers, who though perhaps not different, were 
 nevertheless in a state of confusion without 
 any particular conviction upon the subject. 
 Those who were supporting Sidney Rigdon 
 were not a body of men who commanded the 
 respect of the most faithful Latter-day Saints. 
 Sidney Rigdon made his appearance upon 
 the scene shortly after the death of the Prophet 
 when only a few of the Twelve were present. 
 A day was appointed when the matter of lead- 
 
BOYHOOD IN ILLINOIS 71 
 
 ership should be presented to the people. For 
 them, it was their utmost good fortune that 
 Brigham Young and a sufficient number of 
 the Twelve, constituting a majority, appeared 
 upon the scene just before this important meet- 
 ing — perhaps the most important meeting in 
 the Church — convened. The question of lead- 
 ership was involved, and the people were to 
 vote upon that question. Sidney Rigdon had 
 some time before addressed the Saints. They 
 listened respectfully to his message. His 
 claims did not satisfy. His spirit did not feed 
 their hungry souls. President Young also ad- 
 dressed the people. 
 
 It was the good fortune of John R. Mur- 
 dock to be present at this meeting and deter- 
 mine for himself the guidance to which there- 
 after he would give his loyalty. Of Brigham 
 Young's remarks, he said : 'It was the great- 
 est manifestation I ever beheld, for the voice, 
 the gesture, the whole appearance of President 
 Young was just exactly as if the Prophet Jos- 
 eph stood there in person.'' Such a spiritual 
 manifestation must indeed have deeply im- 
 pressed this young man. He had seen the stars 
 of heaven fall in a most miraculous manner 
 
n JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 he had seen remarkable prophecies fulfilled, 
 the healing power of God had been abundant- 
 ly manifested within his observation; the 
 prophetic character of Joseph Smith had indel- 
 ibly marked itself upon his soul; but the ap- 
 pearance of Brigham Young on that occasion 
 was the greatest manifestation that he ever be- 
 held. 
 
 No wonder the young man gave instant loy- 
 alty to the new leadership. No wonder that 
 his devotion was rewarded by the honorable 
 and trusted positions which he held in the 
 Church. From that day on he followed the 
 new Prophet as a guiding star. Nor was his 
 confidence and loyalty ever weakened or ever 
 surrendered to any exigency or even to any 
 misgivings. 
 
 He witnessed nearly two years of the trying 
 scenes in and about Nauvoo, after the Proph- 
 et's death. He saw men in high places fall bv 
 the wayside. He witnessed the spiritual mani- 
 festations grow obscure in those w^ho were 
 contentious and who claimed honor at the 
 hands of the people. He was, therefore, pre- 
 pared to leave Nauvoo and those who were 
 recreant to the cause of God behind him. 
 
BOYHOOD IN ILLINOIS 73 
 
 Those parting scenes were object lessons in his 
 life, and he never forgot them, nor did he 
 forget the lesson taught by those unworthy 
 leaders he left behind when he said good-bye 
 to Illinois. 
 
74 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 IN THE MORMON BATTALION 
 
 John R. Murdock, when the advanced com- 
 pany of Latter-day Saints left Nauvoo, was 
 not quite twenty years of age. He was in the 
 prime and vigor of early manhood and had al- 
 ready at that time of life more experience in 
 pioneer work and encountering the difficulties 
 of a new country than come to most pioneers 
 in an entire lifetime. His early experiences 
 fitted him for the new undertaking — an under- 
 taking that was to tax his energies and en- 
 durance more than anything he could imagine, 
 even from the uncertainties of those times. He 
 knew something about what it required to 
 make a long journey, and well he realized the 
 truth of the old adage, 'Well begun, half 
 done." 
 
 The Saints began their exodus from' Nau- 
 voo on the fourth and sixth of February. They 
 exchanged the conveniences of their homes for 
 tent life in midwinter. Fast as they crossed 
 the Mississippi they gathered at Sugar Creek, 
 where they remained some three weeks pre- 
 
IN THE MORMON BATTALION 75 
 
 paratory to a general advancement along the 
 journey. Intense cold came upon them. The 
 Mississippi froze over so that wagons could 
 cross on the ice. While such conditions fa- 
 cilitated the movement of the Saints over the 
 river, it entailed intense suffering. When a 
 thaw came the roads were almost impassable. 
 In the midst of these difficulties the young man 
 was gaining a new experience. He was learn- 
 ing something of the helplessness of a large 
 class of people in the midst of difficulties. He 
 discovered that many were wholly unfitted for 
 emergencies, that they had to be instructed; 
 and from the outset his own valuable experi- 
 ence naturally made him an instructor of the 
 helpless in those times, and consequently, 
 though young, a leader among his fellow-men. 
 Along the route across Iowa there were 
 three important stations, Sugar Creek, Garden 
 City, and Pisgah. Just about the time the ad- 
 vance company reached the banks of the Mis- 
 souri river, there appeared at Mount Pisgah, 
 James Allen, a captain in the United States 
 army. In his communication to the Saints he 
 says : "I have come among you, instructed to 
 visit the Mormon camp and accept the service. 
 
76 • JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 for twelve months, of four or five companies 
 of the Mormon men who may be wilHng to 
 serve their country for the period in our pres- 
 ent war with Mexico." The leaders, however, 
 at this time were located at Council Bluffs, 
 and Captain Allen set out at once for that 
 place for the purpose of consulting them. On 
 July the first, he held an interview with Presi- 
 dent Young, to whom he presented a commu- 
 nication from Col. S. W. Kerny, in which the 
 colonel says : "Sir — It is understood that there 
 is a large body of Mormons w^ho are desirous 
 of emigrating to California for the purpose of 
 settling in that country, and I have therefore 
 to direct that you (Captain James Allen) will 
 proceed to their camps and endeavor to raise 
 from amongst them four or five companies of 
 volunteers to join me in my expedition to that 
 country. You will give the Mormons distinct- 
 ly to understand that I wish to take them as 
 volunteers for twelve months, and that they 
 wull be marched to California, receiving pay 
 and allowances during the above time, and at 
 its expiration they will be discharged and al- 
 lowed to retain, as their private property, the 
 guns and accoutrements to be furnished to 
 
IN THE MORMON BATTALION 11 
 
 them at this post. Each company will be al- 
 lowed four women as laundresses, who will 
 travel with the company, receiving rations, and 
 the other allowances given to the laundresses of 
 our army. Considering the foregoing conditions, 
 which are hereby pledged to the Mormons, and 
 which will be faithfully kept by me and other 
 officers in behalf of the government of the 
 United States, I cannot doubt, but that you will 
 in a few days be able to raise five hundred 
 young and efficient men for this expedition. 
 Signed at Fort Leavenworth, June 19th, 1846.'' 
 
 It will be noted that the letter of Colonel 
 Kerny to Captain Allen contained an assur- 
 ance that the Mormons would be treated fairly 
 in the matter and the pledges made with them 
 kept. This call for volunteers brought about 
 important changed conditions. The young 
 men qualified for enlistment were of that class 
 greatly needed for the hardships of pioneer 
 work among the Saints, and such a condition, 
 therefore, made the exodus of the Mormon 
 people across the plains from the Missouri 
 river all the more trying. 
 
 President Young, with the other lead- 
 ers, began at once to raise the required 
 
78 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 number of companies. There were not 
 enough young men then at Council Bluffs 
 to respond to the call. He, therefore, on a 
 mounted horse with a few others, set out for 
 Mt. Pisgah, that from among the people there 
 the necessary number of volunteers might be 
 obtained. The sight of a prophet of God rid- 
 ing over the hills of western Iowa, to the un- 
 believer and Christian minister must have 
 seemed indeed a remarkable and somewhat 
 ludicrous situation. It is perhaps a circum- 
 stance wholly unique in the religious history of 
 the world. Those were times of great emer- 
 gencies. Leaders had to be practical men, un- 
 derstanding from personal experience the 
 work at hand, and having the ability to do 
 whatever came to hand. It was a peculiar 
 quality of generalship, which required unusu- 
 al talents and a genius for great things. 
 
 Naturally, such a call would create consid- 
 erable confusion. There was hurry and wor- 
 ry. On the 20th of July the first companies 
 started or set out for their march down the 
 Missouri to Fort Leavenworth. John R. Mur- 
 dock enlisted in the Mormon Battalion on the 
 16th day of July, 1846. From that date it 
 
IN THE MORMON BATTALION 79 
 
 would be nearly two months before he reached 
 his twentieth birthday. 
 
 This divided the pioneers into two groups. 
 The advance body of the Church set out the fol- 
 lowing year on its journey for Salt Lake Val- 
 ley, and the Mormon Battalion was to reach 
 the same objective point around the circuit of 
 what are now Colorado, New Mexico, Arizo- 
 na, California, and Nevada. 
 
 From the detailed account of these two pio- 
 neer journeys as given by the historians of 
 each, it is quite within the range of truth to 
 say that the Battalion had the greater hard- 
 ships to endure. As time goes on, the details 
 of this great march across the American des- 
 ert come into more prominent interest and are 
 appreciated more and more by those valiant 
 and enduring men of the Mormon Battalion. 
 
 Of the march from Council Bluffs to Fort 
 Leavenworth, John R. Murdock says : "I 
 bade farewell to my friends and people and 
 started for California. In the beginning the 
 government was unable to supply us with the 
 necessary cooking utensils, clothing, etc., for 
 the campaign, hence our cooking was very 
 crude. We had to mix our bread in the mouth 
 
80 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 of a flour sack, roll our dough on a stick and 
 roast it by the fire until it was baked. We 
 broiled our meat on the coals and made our 
 coffee in any available vessel. In this way we 
 traveled down the Missouri river to Fort 
 Leavenworth, a distance of two hundred miles. 
 There we received our clothing, blankets, 
 knapsacks and all other equipments necessary 
 for a soldier's kit; we also received here our 
 first payment of eight dollars a month. Prep- 
 arations were then made to commence our 
 march across the plains to Santa Fe. I was 
 selected to drive a company team of six mules, 
 all wild and unbroken for use except one, the 
 saddle mule. In driving around the fort one 
 day the team ran away, and I was thrown out, 
 iand the wagon, which fortunately, was not 
 loaded, passed over my body and very nearly 
 killed me. I was so badly hurt that I had 
 to be carried to camp on a blanket by my 
 comrades. The effects of that accident I feel 
 to this day. After remaining in Fort Leav- 
 enworth for nineteen days we commenced the 
 march. I was then able to drive my team. 
 We started on the 19th of August, 1846.'' 
 After reaching Fort Leavenworth each sold- 
 
IN THE MORMON BATTALION 81 
 
 ier drew $42.00, his clothing money for the 
 year. Along with the Mormon Battalion at 
 that time some of the elders took the jour- 
 ney preparatory to their mission to Great 
 Britain. Much of the money paid to the 
 soldiers was sent by them to their families 
 and brethren at Council Bluffs for the pur- 
 pose of aiding the main body of the Church 
 in reaching its destination. The missionaries 
 were also aided by the liberality of the soldiers 
 in making their way to the mission field. It 
 will, from these circumstances, be seen that 
 the condition of the Mormon Battalion, when 
 compared with oth^r volunteers, was most 
 unfortunate, and that they had to depend upon 
 themselves for the means necessary to supply 
 them comfortable clothing on their long and 
 hazardous journey. These soldiers, however, 
 had left behind them either wives or parents, 
 and cheerfully gave their first money to the 
 support of those who were comparatively 
 helpless. Nor was this all. From Santa Fe 
 money was sent back to Council Bluffs to 
 sustain the families of the soldiers there. 
 Such an expedition as they were setting out 
 upon had no comparison anywhere in history. 
 
82 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 The country over which they were passing, 
 so many thousand miles was almost wholly 
 uninhabited. Unexplored deserts lay before 
 them. Nor had they any knowledge of the 
 nature of the country, its vegetation or its 
 climate. True, much of it had been explored, 
 but knowledge of its explorations had not 
 been widely circulated. The leaders had some 
 knowledge of certain objective points and of 
 the nature of the country that lay between 
 them and these forts. 
 
 "It was eight hundred miles," says the sub- 
 ject of this sketch, "from Fort Leavenworth 
 to Santa Fe, and through a very wild country, 
 indeed. Except the teamsters, all had to walk. 
 There was much suffering on account of the 
 want of water and extreme heat in a desert 
 country. Being foot-sore we found the march 
 terribly hard, and there was much sickness 
 from the change of water. In order to reach 
 Santa Fe at a given time we had to make the 
 last hundred miles of the journey by a forced 
 march, and traveled therefore night and day. 
 We reached Santa Fe on the 10th of October 
 1846." 
 
 Something of the heat on that journey may 
 
IN THE MORMON BATTALION 83 
 
 be gathered from the fact that the thermometer 
 at Fort Leavenworth was 101 in the shade and 
 135 degrees in the sun. Another circumstance 
 was distressing to the soldiers, and that was the 
 death on the 23rd of August of Captain Allen. 
 He was a kind-hearted man, and from the out- 
 set won the confidence and good will of the Bat- 
 talion. He was succeeded later by Lieut. A. 
 J. Smith, contrary to the wishes of the men. 
 
 The first part of the journey was made 
 measurably safe from the fact that on the 11th 
 of September the Battalion reached the Arkan- 
 sas river whose banks they followed for about 
 one hundred miles. It would be quite natural 
 for such a body of men to find petty annoy- 
 ances that would create some discontent. Be- 
 fore they reached their first objective point 
 and on the 16th of September Captain Higgins 
 was detailed to take a number of families to 
 the Mexican town of Pueblo. This circum- 
 stance aroused some fear that there might be 
 other separations and the Battalion so divided 
 as to be thrown among the Missourians who 
 were distasteful as well as hateful to them. 
 Another circumstance of a more serious nature 
 was the conduct toward the soldiers of Doctor 
 
84 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 George P. Sanderson, a Missourian physician, 
 to whom was intrusted the health of the men. 
 In him they had no confidence and were fully 
 assured that he had even administered poison in 
 the medicine which he distributed among them. 
 They were so sure, that many of them refused 
 to take his medicine and preferred to endure 
 the sickness from which they were suffering 
 rather than to endanger their lives at his hands. 
 George Sanderson, like hundreds of others, is 
 known to history only through the annals of 
 the Church. He never suspected that the char- 
 acter by which he would be known in genera- 
 tions to come is the character given to him by 
 the Mormon people That, indeed, is a remark- 
 able circumstance in the history of the Mormon 
 Church. 
 
 Before leaving Santa Fe for Southern Cali- 
 fornia, those considered in an unfit condition 
 to endure the hardships that were sure to come 
 to the Battalion were taken to Pueblo for the 
 winter where they arrived on the 17th day of 
 November, requiring thirty days for the march. 
 John R. Murdock was among those who took 
 up that long and memorable journey of eleven 
 hundred miles across the southern deserts to 
 
IN THE MORMON BATTALION 85 
 
 the Pacific Ocean. At that season of the year 
 they were in the highlands of the Colorado and 
 New Mexico. They were insufficiently clad 
 to endure the cold with any degree of comfort. 
 They had not long left Santa Fe before it 
 became necessary to send some of their teams 
 back. Those who returned encountered un- 
 usual hardships. They were equipped with one 
 wagon and four yoke of oxen and rations suf- 
 ficient for only five days. The distance to be 
 traveled by them on their return was three hun- 
 dred miles. This was another parting which 
 the soldiers of the Battalion regretted, and the 
 parting scenes were very affecting. John R. 
 Murdock was still among those who made the 
 march to California. He says: "We passed 
 through a wild, unsettled country whose only 
 inhabitants were hostile Indians. Provisions 
 were scare at Santa Fe, so we were not well 
 supplied with food at the beginning of this long 
 march. The country was rough, rugged, and 
 mountainous. Water was to be found only at 
 long intervals and there was consequently great 
 suffering among the men. We were put on 
 half rations and later, on third rations during 
 the journey. The sheep and cattle driven along 
 
S6 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 for fresh meat became so poor that they had to 
 be killed and taken as rations, — a sorry lot of 
 stuff it was. The rations were weighed out to 
 us, and two or three little Mexican sheep could 
 be hung at once on a pair of hang balances." 
 
 The parts of the country through which they 
 passed had large herds of wild cattle, many of 
 which were killed and used for food by the Bat- 
 talion. These cattle, however, in places proved 
 themselves dangerous to the march of the men. 
 Sometimes the bulls would lead in a furious 
 stampede, and it became necessary for the Bat- 
 talion to guard itself by shooting down the cat- 
 tle when they could, and by using every pos- 
 sible means of keeping out of these great wild 
 cattle rushes. Along the road down the river 
 San Pedro, the attacks became quite frequent. 
 At one time there was what the Battalion boys 
 termed a "bull fight." Two men were severe- 
 ly injured, one mule was gored to death while 
 others were knocked down and hurt. "I was 
 engaged in the bull fight and was in all the 
 forced marches across the desert," says John 
 R. Murdock, in giving an account of that jour- 
 ney. 
 
 Those familiar with the character of south- 
 
IN THE MORMON BATTALION 87 
 
 ern Arizona, especially from Tuscon to the 
 coast, will realize something of the hardships 
 to be endured in crossing the deserts at that 
 early period in our history. The Battalion 
 reached the San Luis Rey mission on the 27th 
 of January,1847, and the San Diego mission on 
 the 29th. ''I do not believe/' says this young 
 Battalion boy, "that the parallel to that march 
 to the coast is on record when all circumstances 
 are considered. My usual weight was one hun- 
 dred and sixty pounds and it was only one hun- 
 dred and twenty when we reached the coast. 
 During the journey, everything, even the hide 
 and parts of the entrails of the animals were 
 used for food. The teams became so jaded 
 that we undertook to raft a portion of the pro- 
 visions down the Gila river. The food was all 
 lost in the river, thus greatly lessening the al- 
 ready scant supply. We obtained some wheat, 
 corn, and beans from' the Pima Indians, a tribe 
 that lived along the Gila river. Upon the 
 southern route there were some deserts from 
 seventy to ninety miles in extent and not a 
 drop of water was to be found on them. We 
 had quite an experience in crossing the Color- 
 ado river over which the men had to carry most 
 
88 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 of the supplies and wade the river up to their 
 arm pits. From the Colorado to Warner's, the 
 first settlement in California, it was about two 
 hundred and thirty miles, and there were very 
 few watering places. When we reached that 
 place we obtained plenty of fresh, fat beef, but 
 had nothing else except coffee. We had had no 
 flour for weeks. When we reached the coast 
 we obtained some provisions, but still no flour." 
 That his estimation of the difficulties of such 
 a perilous journey was well within the truth, is 
 fully attested by the statement of their com- 
 manding officer. Col. P. St. George Cook, who 
 writes as follows : 
 
 "Headquarters, Mission of San Diego, 
 
 January 30, 1847. 
 
 "Lieutenant Colonel commanding congratu- 
 lates the Battalion on its safe arrival on the 
 shores of the Pacific Ocean, and the conclusion 
 of its march of over two thousand miles. His- 
 tory may be searched in vain for an equal 
 march of infantry ; nine-tenths of it through a 
 wilderness, where nothing but savages and 
 wild beasts are found, or deserts where, for 
 want of water, there is no living creature. 
 
IN THE MORMON BATTALION 89 
 
 There, with almost hopeless labor, we have 
 dug deep wells, which the future traveler will 
 enjoy. Without a guide who had traversed 
 them, we have ventured into trackless prairies, 
 where water was not found for several 
 marches. With crowbar and pick-ax in hand 
 we have worked our way over mountains, 
 which seemed to defy aught save the wild goat, 
 and hewed a passage through a chasm of liv- 
 ing rock, more narrow than our wagons. To 
 bring these first wagons to the Pacific we 
 have preserved the strength of the mules by 
 herding them over large tracts, which you 
 have laboriously guarded without loss." 
 
 During the sojourn of the Battalion in the 
 San Luis Rey and San Diego mission the sol- 
 diers did not relax their energies, but set them- 
 selves at work building houses and giving an 
 air of life to everything about them. "My 
 company,'' he says, "was stationed at San Luis 
 Rey, about one hundred and fifty miles below 
 Los Angeles. At the latter place the other 
 four companies of the Battalion were stationed. 
 Later, Company B, the one to which I belong- 
 ed, was sent to San Diego, about fifty miles 
 
90 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 further south. While in that country there 
 grew up quite an extreme practice among the 
 soldiers of hunting and purchasing wild horses, 
 and some of them won for themselves a rep- 
 utation in their successful efforts in riding 
 them. Company B remained in San Diego 
 until about the first of July, 1847, when it left 
 for Los Angeles where it joined the other com- 
 panies of the Battalion. 
 
 Some persuasion was offered to induce the 
 soldiers to re-enlist, but the great majority of 
 them understood very well that they were need- 
 ed by the Saints who w^ere then on their way 
 across the plains. They were mustered out on 
 the 16th of July, 1847, just one year from the 
 day they enlisted. Preparations were immedi- 
 ately begun for their homeward journey. There 
 were two routes open to them, the southern 
 and the northern. It was now mid-summer 
 and the unexplored deserts of southern Cali- 
 fornia and Nevada were evidently thought to 
 be dangerous for the return journey. The 
 northern route was therefore selected, and after 
 appointing officers, the Battalion made its way 
 in the .direction of the Sacramento Valley. 
 
 From Sacramento they crossed the Sierra 
 
IN THE MORMON BATTALION 91 
 
 Nevada mountains and reached the head-wat- 
 ers of the Truckee river. While in this part of 
 Nevada, they met Samuel Brannan who had 
 taken a company of Saints by water to Cali- 
 fornia. Brannan gave the soldiers a very dis- 
 couraging account of the conditions in Salt 
 Lake Valley, where, he said, there was a heavy 
 frost every month in the year. The climate, he 
 said, was so dry that nothing could be raised 
 without irrigation, and the water was so cold 
 that it would freeze the seeds that were put 
 into the ground. Captain James Brown, how- 
 ever, who met them about the same time, 
 brought word from the Twelve Apostles that 
 those who had not means for their support had 
 better return to California for work, and com"e 
 to the valleys later on. John R. Murdock, 
 however, forged his way along by the way of 
 Humboldt, Goose Creek, and Fort Hall, which 
 was then situated on Snake river about two 
 hundred miles north of Salt Lake City. Here, 
 he and his comrades obtained some provisions. 
 They paid fifty cents a pound for bacon, and 
 twenty-five cents a pound for flour. Leaving 
 Fort Hall they crossed Bear river and reached 
 Salt Lake City, October 12th, 1847. 
 
92 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 PIONEERS IN SALT LAKE VALLEY 
 
 The members of the Mormon Battalion *who 
 came in that year increased the number now 
 located in the "Old Fort" to something like 
 eighteen hundred. The son, John R., found 
 his father and family who had only a short 
 time before arrived in the valley. The vicis- 
 situdes of the father had been those common 
 to the Latter-day Saints in general. After 
 the death of John's mother, the father mar- 
 ried in 1836 Amaranda Turner in the state of 
 New York. This wife he took with him to 
 Missouri, where, after about a year's residence 
 in that state she died, leaving no children. 
 In 1837, the father married Electa Allen, by 
 whom he had three children, Gideon, Hyrum, 
 and Rachel. This third wife died in Nauvoo in 
 1845. Before starting West he married a fourth 
 wife with whom he journeyed across the plains 
 to Salt Lake City. This wife,however, survived 
 her husband but never bore to him any children. 
 When, therefore, the son reached Salt Lake 
 
PIONEER IN SALT LAKE VALLEY 93 
 
 City, he found his father, the last wife, and the 
 three children of Electa Murdock. 
 
 As the "Old Fort'' was the home of the pio- 
 neers during the summer of 1847,the Murdock 
 family lived there. The son, ever dutiful to the 
 obligations he felt toward his father, began at 
 once to make his first home in the valleys. 
 •*We made adobes and built a little house in the 
 "Old Fort/' I went into Red Butte and ob- 
 tained timber to finish the house and got 
 some fencing and firewood for the winter. I 
 also made further preparation by getting 
 forage for the stock." 
 
 His life that winter in the "Old Fort"was re- 
 lieved of those intense hardships through which 
 he had passed in the deserts of the South. It 
 was a mild winter and the Saints had such so- 
 cial fellowship and pastime as to give some re- 
 lief to a situation that was difficult in the ex- 
 treme. Much of the winter was favorable to 
 plowing, so that there were opportunities for 
 a busy life. In the canyons and on these arid, 
 parched lands might be seen the active work 
 of Utah's pioneers. 
 
 "In the following spring," John R. Murdock 
 says, "I took up a piece of property in Mill 
 
94 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 Creek near Neff 's mill. I built a log house and 
 father's family moved up there. I brought a 
 one-half bushel of wheat all the way from' Cali- 
 fornia with me. This^ I planted, and reaped 
 from it about ten bushels of wheat. This, with 
 the small quantity of immatured corn which 
 we had raised.constituted the next year's supply 
 of breadstuff for the family." 
 
 When the necessity of reserving all the seed 
 possible for another year's planting is consid- 
 ered, it will be seen that the food supply in the 
 Murdock home was indeed scanty. However, 
 the supply, small as it was, was enjoyed with 
 feelings of gratitude over the miraculous man- 
 ner in which it had been obtained. It was the 
 cricket year in the history of Utah. The Saints 
 had watched their grain fields go down before 
 the devouring pest and wondered what was to 
 become of them. They had already an insuf- 
 ficient supply to last till harvest time. The 
 Pioneers who reached the Valley in July, 1847, 
 broke up some ground, did some planting, but 
 of course, had no harvest. When, therefore, 
 the crickets began to devour the crops, the 
 Saints must have felt themselves doomed to 
 starvation. There was nothing to support their 
 
PIONEER L\ SALT LAKE VALLEY 95 
 
 courage or to offer hope but that faith in God 
 which they had learned to value in their stren- 
 uous experiences of the past. They never lost 
 the conviction that they were God's people. Re- 
 liance on Him w^ould bring them some relief 
 they knew\ How it w^ould come they could not 
 imagine. To them, it was a new, a queer exper- 
 ience. It is remarkable that in all their history 
 in those early days no two experiences were 
 alike, except, it may be said that re- 
 liance on God and his deliverance constituted 
 an experience. In every case the circum- 
 stance was unlike everything that had gone 
 before it. They had now a new manifesta- 
 tion of God's providence. Sea-gulls came 
 in great swarms and devoured the crickets, and 
 saved to them something like half a crop. It 
 was a remarkable experience in the life of a 
 people, — an experience which the men and wo- 
 men who went through it had to confirm their 
 faith and treasure up as a beautiful remem- 
 brance in after life. It was one of the choice 
 souvenirs in the life of John R. Murdock. He 
 proudly adds his testimony to that of the oth- 
 ers: "I wish to say that 1 experienced the 
 cricket ravages on the crops of all kinds in this 
 
% JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 Valley. The insects came in countless num- 
 bers. I witnessed the phenomenon of the gulls 
 coming and destroying them. We all regarded 
 this as very miraculous." 
 
 There was nothing spectactular in the exper- 
 iences which followed the harvest of 1848. 
 This scanty provision meant distress, and in the 
 quietude of the home men and women were put 
 to those severe tests that require fortitude and 
 faith. It was that silent endurance which, af- 
 ter all, is the strongest test in the character of 
 men and women. The story of how they lived 
 has been told again and again. It is a grand 
 story, even though a sad one. "We had to dig 
 thistles and sego roots and every kind of weed 
 that could be made into greens, and even this 
 kind of food, too," he says "was very scarce. 
 At this time father's family consisted of his 
 son Gideon, his son George, and two adopted 
 daughters." It was a large family for such a 
 meagre supply, but they like others, bravely 
 made the most of a trying situation, which was 
 not at all hew to the young man who had just 
 undergone the ordeals of the Mormon Battal- 
 ion. 
 
 The farm' work of 1848 did not constitute 
 
PIONEER IN SALT LAKE VALLEY 97 
 
 all the summer's labor of the subject of this 
 sketch. Pres. Young was on his way from Win- 
 ter Quarters to Salt Lake Valley. The Pre- 
 sidency of the Church had been organized on 
 December 27th, 1847. It consisted of Brig- 
 ham Young, Heber C. Kimball, and Willard 
 Richards. These leaders started out from Elk 
 Horn early in June of 1848. The first com- 
 pany, consisting of one hundred and twenty- 
 nine souls and having three hundred and nine- 
 ty-seven wagons, was led by Pres. Young; 
 the second, with six hundred and sixty- 
 two souls and two hundred and twenty-six 
 wagons, by H. C. Kimball; the third, with 
 five hundred and twenty-six souls and one hun- 
 dred and sixty-nine wagons, by Willard Rich- 
 ards. Willard Richards had been detained by 
 the misfortunes that overtook his company, but 
 Pres. Young was closely followed by Heber C. 
 Kimball and made good progress. 
 
 They needed aid, and competent young men 
 were required to take fresh teams and go out 
 to meet these companies whose arduous jour- 
 ney had told upon man and beast alike. These 
 pioneers now enroute were made up of men, 
 women, and children. In the selection of aid 
 7 
 
98 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 for them, it is quite natural that John R. Mur- 
 dock, whose experiences were so favorable and 
 whose ability in such trying places had been 
 thoroughly tested, should be called. He took 
 his team, therefore, and under the Captaincy 
 of Ira Eldredge went back with others to meet 
 Pres. Young. They made roads through Par- 
 ley's canyon and Park down Silver creek in 
 order to intercept the other road at the mouth 
 of Echo canyon.- They came upon Pres. 
 Young and company at the head of the Sweet- 
 water, about three hundred miles from Salt 
 Lake. They also met Pres. Kimball's company 
 which was close in the rear. 
 
 John R. Murdock naturally felt some inter- 
 est in the second company where he met his 
 old time benefactor, Father Lott, and his 
 daughter Almira, who was awaiting an op- 
 portunity to fulfil an engagement of matri- 
 mony. The two, therefore, had an oppor- 
 tunity to rehearse the strange and wonderful 
 experiences they had both undergone since 
 their parting in Iowa. 
 
 In those trying times, the renewed associa- 
 tions of old friends must have afforded a joy 
 indescribable. Toil, anxiety, hardships, and 
 
PIONEER IN SALT LAKE VALLEY 99 
 
 suffering created a brotherhood that those 
 who have known naught else but prosperity 
 could hardly understand, much less appre- 
 ciate. There developed within those early pio- 
 neers a brotherly love, a friendship, a hospital- 
 ity that was indeed beautiful; and the friend- 
 ship of those early days left little opportunity 
 for criticism and distrust. Those who remem-. 
 bered the deep friendships of Utah's pioneers, 
 and the generous hospitality of those early days 
 know something of the fruits of hardship 
 which gave rise to such splendid results. The 
 young man, with others of the relief party, 
 loaded their teams from' President Young's 
 train and accompanied him into Salt Lake 
 Valley, which they reached on the 20th of Sep- 
 tember, 1848. 
 
 The arrival of the First Presidency of the 
 Church gave new life to the Saints in the Val- 
 ley. On the 8th of October a general confer- 
 ence was held in the old Bowery which had 
 been built in the Fort. The new Stake Presi- 
 dency was organized, consisting of Charles C. 
 Rich as president and John Young and Erastus 
 Snow as counselors. 
 
 The new-comers neither had nor brought 
 
100 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 with them sufficient food for the winter; and 
 the fact that the crickets had destroyed one- 
 half of the crop of the Saints that year made 
 the outlook for the winter of 1848-9 a dreary 
 one, indeed. The Saints, however, had taken 
 all available means to provide every comfort 
 possible, however meagre. The young man 
 cut hay, hauled it, and supplied wood for the 
 needs of his father's family, and late that year 
 engaged himself to work for John P. Barnard, 
 who had taken up a farm between what is 
 now known as Centerville and Farmington. 
 This farm had to be fenced, and young Mur- 
 dock was sent to North Mill Creek to chop 
 timber for that purpose during the winter. 
 
 That winter is well remembered by the ear- 
 liest settlers as one of the severest in the his- 
 tory of Utah. Chopping timber, therefore, 
 "waist deep in snow,'' as he says, was in no 
 sense a comfortable occupation. The hardships 
 of that winter was likewise one that tried his 
 powers of endurance, but the young man kept 
 faithfully at his post and after the farm work 
 was finished his employer, Mr. Barnard, 
 wished him to rent it from him. This John R. 
 consented to do, and began at once to break up 
 
PIONEER IN SALT LAKE VALLEY 101 
 
 the new ground. He was thorough in his 
 work and therefore successful. He planted 
 some wheat, a considerable amount of corn, 
 and reaped a good harvest during the sum- 
 mer of 1849. This enabled him to supply him- 
 self and to assist his father. 
 
 John R. Murdock was also a witness of an- 
 other of those remarkable interpositions in fa- 
 vor of the Latter-day Saints, which they have 
 always regarded as divine. During the winter 
 of 1848-9 the excessive cold and short rations 
 naturally created a spirit of gloom. The Saints 
 were in need of comfort and encouraging 
 words to buoy them up in those days when they 
 were so beset by misgivings as to their future 
 ability to succeed in their newly chosen home. 
 At one of the meetings at which the half- 
 starved and poorly-clad Saints had gathered, 
 Heber C. Kimball, in one of his prophetic out- 
 bursts, declared to the people that states' 
 goods, food, and raiment to supply their needs 
 would soon be sold in Salt Lake City cheaper 
 than they were sold in St. Louis. How could 
 such a thing be ! Some of the leaders were 
 openly skeptical over such remarks whose ful- 
 filment was wholly beyond the comprehension 
 
102 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 of the people. But the prophesy was ful- 
 filled, as the eastern merchants had loaded large 
 numbers of teams with merchandise which 
 they were transporting to California in order 
 to provide the miners there with merchandise. 
 The excitement, however, became so strong 
 when they reached Salt Lake City in the fall of 
 1849 that they abandoned their merchandise in 
 order to reach the gold fields at the earliest 
 possible moment. They sold merchandise and 
 teams at whatever price they could get, and 
 made any sacrifice necessary to get fresh ani- 
 mals. The story of this relief to the Saints is 
 told in a few brief words by John R. Murdock : 
 "For one good mule I received three yoke of 
 good oxen and a new wagon. This provided 
 me with a team so that I could go right on and 
 make a home for my wife." 
 
 This unexpected supply of all sorts of mer- 
 chandise — merchandise which, it must be re- 
 membered, was selected for the needs of the 
 miners in California, was peculiarly helpful to 
 the Saints. It set them up in house-keeping. 
 The young man Murdock was, therefore, in 
 circumstances favorable to the responsibilities 
 of married life, which he entered into with 
 
PIONEER IN SALT LAKE VALLEY 103 
 
 Miss Almira Lott, on the 12th day of Novem- 
 ber, 1849, at the Lott home, which stood on 
 the corner now occupied by the Knutsford Ho- 
 tel. The ceremony was performed by Heber 
 C. Kimball. The new prosperity of that year 
 made it possible to have a wedding supper and 
 a good social pastime. 
 
 The city was extended in 1848, and all the 
 land lying south of the Fort came rapidly un- 
 der cultivation during the summer of 1849. A 
 large field fence had been constructed so as to 
 separate the farm lands near the mountains 
 on the east from the pasture lands of the Jor- 
 dan on the west. Young Murdock, some time 
 after his marriage, moved to the old Church 
 Farm, which is now known as Forest Dale. 
 His early experiences in Missouri and Illinois 
 and his success on the Barnard Farm naturally 
 made him a desirable man for an important 
 trust, and it was therefore quite natural that 
 Father Lott should want him to assist in the 
 development of this large and important farm. 
 
 Before, however, he entered upon his farm 
 work south of the city, he was called to par- 
 ticipate in one of those early Indian wars 
 which the Saints of those early times had to 
 
104 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 meet for the preservation of their stock and of 
 their lives. John Higbee had led a number of 
 the Saints to Provo. They crossed the Provo 
 river and settled what was known in early 
 times there, ''the old Fort Field." During the 
 winter of 1849-50 the Ute Indians made an at- 
 tack upon these settlers, and he was called 
 from' his home at the old Church Farm to go 
 to Provo that he might take part in the defense 
 of the people there against the attacks of the 
 Ute Indians, who had driven off a considerable 
 number of stock and were constantly menacing 
 the people. 
 
 General D. H. Wells was in command, and 
 young Murdock belonged to the company of 
 General Robert T. Burton. Soon after their 
 arrival, there was some skiiTnishing with the 
 Indians, and after an effort of a day or two 
 to dislodge them, an order was made to cap- 
 ture a log house in the vicinity of where the 
 Indians were located. This house was taken 
 at considerable risk. A number of horses were 
 shot, and two men were wounded on their ad- 
 vance upon it. Young Murdock's horse was 
 shot through the neck and fell just as he 
 reached the house. The ball missed the young 
 
PIONEER IN SALT LAKE VALLEY 105 
 
 man's head by only a few inches, as he had just 
 dismounted and was standing for a moment by 
 his horse. After crawling into the house, 
 which was done at considerable risk, they were 
 fairly well protected. The firing was kept up 
 for some time between the Indians and the men 
 on the inside of the cabin. In this skirmish one 
 man, Joseph Higbee, was killed, and several 
 others were severely wounded. The men re- 
 mained in the house until after dark, and then 
 stole away to their camps. During the night, 
 it is said, the Indians took some of the horses 
 and went to the mountains. The men, how- 
 ever, followed them to Spanish Fork, where 
 some of the Indians were overtaken and a 
 number of them killed. This fight took place 
 in February, 1850. 
 
 The gold excitement in California caused a 
 constant stream of emigration through Salt 
 Lake City to the Pacific coast during the sum- 
 mer of 1850. Those who reached the Valley 
 somewhat late in the season were, of course, 
 extremely anxious to hasten their journey and 
 cross the Sierra Nevada before the cold set in. 
 Here they desired to secure new outfits, for 
 which they were ready to make almost any 
 
106 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 exchange. John R. Mudock was instinctively 
 a lover of good horses and cattle. His experi- 
 ences with horses had made him not only skil- 
 ful in the use of them, but a splendid judge of 
 a good animal. He w^as, therefore, just the 
 right kind of a man to avail himself of the ex- 
 cellent opportunities the emigrants afforded in 
 horse trading. He knew not only the kind of 
 animal the gold-seekers wanted, but his judg- 
 ment indicated at once the most desirable ani- 
 mals they had to exchange. The fact was, in 
 plain English, he was a good horse-trader. Of 
 the summer of 1850 he says : "My means were 
 limited, and this trading gave me a start in life 
 by which I could take care of myself and fam- 
 ily." 
 
 His stay at the Forest Dale farm was not of 
 long duration. Father Lott died July, 1850, 
 and was buried in what is known as the Salt 
 Lake cemetery. His tombstone of native red 
 sandstone was the first erected in that City of 
 the Dead. "Father Lott,'' as he was familiarly 
 known in his family, was a man who evidently 
 enjoyed the confidence of the Church leaders, 
 as he was trusted both by Joseph Smith and 
 Brigham Young with their leading farming 
 
PIONEER IN SALT LAKE VALLEY 107 
 
 operations. Li December, 1850, young Mur- 
 dock left the farm and lived some time with 
 his wife's family at their home on the Knuts- 
 ford corner. This left him' somewhat at sea, 
 and he therefore began to look around for 
 some place where he might cast his lot and 
 make a home. His lot had been cast a great 
 many times, and his feelings respecting the 
 permanency of home could not have been very 
 strong, in view of the rapid and radical 
 changes that came to his life from the days 
 of his infancy. Thus far he had been trained 
 in the school of emergencies and was always 
 ready at a moment's notice to respond to duty's 
 call. 
 
108 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 EARLY LIFE IN LEHI 
 
 ''Early in the spring of 1851/' says John R. 
 Murdock, ''I took my family and household ef- 
 fects and moved to Lehi and commenced work 
 on what was really my first home. In 1850 
 my father went on a mission to Australia, and 
 was gone over three years. It was the opening 
 of a mission in that country. He went as far 
 as California with an ox-team, with Rich and 
 Lyman's companies of emigrants. I helped 
 take care of his family during his absence." 
 
 During the fall of 1850 there was a general 
 movement for the colonization of the leading 
 towns of Utah Valley. The location of these 
 towns was governed by the streams of water 
 which flowed from the mountains. This move- 
 ment was, of course, attracting the attention 
 of those who needed,and were therefore seek- 
 ing,new homes. The choice lands immediately 
 south of Salt Lake City had been generally se- 
 lected, and the farms in the Salt Lake Valley 
 by this time were growing so in value that 
 
EARLY LIFE IN LEHI 109 
 
 men without means could not purchase them. 
 Young Murdock, with two of his brothers-in- 
 law therefore set out for Lehi, which at that 
 time was perhaps not so attractive as some of 
 the other settlements, because of its meager 
 supply of water. However, young Murdock 
 there secured forty acres of land, which he 
 commenced at once to cultivate. 
 
 "The first work on my farm in Lehi was to 
 take the w^ater from Srping Creek by means 
 of a ditch and dam. I then began to break up 
 the new land and to put in a crop. I built a 
 log house down by Utah Lake, together with 
 other settlers. Later we took out a canal from' 
 American Fork canyon and brought water 
 across the bench. This was at that time, per- 
 haps, the most extensive canal work that had 
 been made. The undertaking was considerable 
 because of the distance over which the water 
 had to be taken, but the soil in and about Lehi 
 was rich and, therefore, inviting." "From the 
 first,'^ he says, "there was a continual stream 
 of new settlers pouring into Lehi, and as time 
 went on, the Indians became very troublesome 
 to the people. We all had to move into a 
 square fort and guard our stock night and day 
 
110 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 against their encroachments. Some time aftei 
 this we incorporated as a city. In a most un- 
 expected and rather singular manner I became 
 one of the first mayors of Lehi City. It came 
 about in this way. As it usually happens, there 
 are two parties concerned in the election of city 
 officers. The party in power took what I re- ^ 
 garded as rather an improper course, and I 
 arose in the meeting and undertook to vindicate 
 the weaker party, with no thought whatever 
 of its resulting in my election as mayor, and 
 without any effort on my part. However, it 
 seemed that I was the choice of the people.'' 
 
 John Murdock was naturally a leader among 
 men. He had strong convictions, and better 
 still, he always had the courage to express 
 them. His experience and superior judgment 
 naturally gave him a pre-eminence among his 
 fellow men. It was not at all strange that he 
 should be elected one of the first mayors of 
 Lehi City. 
 
 During the early days of his residence there, 
 the Indian troubles came to the people of Lehi. 
 Their homes and cattle were valuable in those 
 times, and perhaps the principal source of 
 ready money. As the thieving propensities of 
 
EARLY LIFE IN LEHI 111 
 
 the Indians manifested themselves, protective 
 measures had to be adopted. Of these times he 
 says : "The Indians again became very trou- 
 blesome at the south end of the lake, and we 
 sent a party of men to gather up the stock on 
 that range which belonged to our people. They 
 had succeeded in collecting the stock and 
 stopped to eat their supper, when the Indians 
 suddenly came upon them and killed three of 
 their men, Cousins, Catlin, and George Winn. 
 A continual watch had to be kept. We put 
 the cattle in corrals at night. I had charge of 
 them until the Indian troubles were over." 
 Speaking of his early experiences of those 
 times he recounts his Indian mission to South- 
 ern Utah, with some twenty others, known as 
 Parley's company. The purpose of this mis- 
 sion was to establish friendly relations with the 
 red men and to teach them the art of farm- 
 ing. The company broke up new land and 
 taught the Indians how to plant and cultivate. 
 Quite a number of them were baptized. This 
 mission continued over a period of four or five 
 months. Later, he went on a similar mission 
 to the one in Southern Utah, among the French 
 and Indian tribes at Green River, and at Pa- 
 
112 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 cific Springs. Here, they met some success in 
 their efforts, and he returned from that mis- 
 sion with his brother-in-law, John Lott, to 
 Lehi, where he continued to labor on his farm 
 until 1856. 
 
 In the fall of 1856 John R. Murdock, who 
 was now thirty years old, went with a relief 
 party to assist the hand-cart company in its 
 struggles to reach the valleys during the se- 
 vere cold weather of that season. The com- 
 pany was in a precarious condition, and grave 
 fears were entertained that the hand-cart peo- 
 ple might perish. It was a time of intense 
 anxiety, and men everywhere responded, not 
 only with willingness, but with anxiety, to the 
 call. "Our party," he says, ''met the emi- 
 grants near Fort Bridger. It began to snow 
 on us in Echo canyon and did not cease until 
 the snow was three feet deep on the low 
 grounds and on the Big Mountain it was at 
 a depth of ten feet, largely through drifting. 
 In getting over the Big Mountain, I consider 
 that I had performed the big feat of my life. 
 The train, consisting of about seventy-five 
 wagons, had been ploughing in the deep snow 
 all day. I went ahead on horseback, leaving 
 
EARLY LIFE IN LEHI 113 
 
 the rest of the relief party behind. It was very 
 difficult, but I managed to struggle through 
 the snow to the top of the Big Mountain. I 
 was quite alone, but here met two men, with 
 six yoke of oxen, who had come up on the 
 west side of the mountain. They had come 
 from Provo to assist the hand-cart company. 
 
 When I told them their teams were need- 
 ed at the farthest end of the train, they said 
 they would go back to their camp and remain 
 until the next day. I said no, and told them 
 that if they would do as I said we would get 
 the whole train over that night. I took full 
 charge of all ; for I realized that many of the 
 people would perish if left on the mountain that 
 night. My plan was to take the oxen and 
 hitch on to the first two wagons and pull them 
 through the snow, and thus open the road and 
 enable the whole train to pass through. My 
 advice was followed, and we succeeded in get- 
 ting the entire train over by ten o'clock at 
 night. The company then passed on quickly to 
 a camp ground, where there was plenty of 
 firewood prepared by the men who had been 
 left behind. When the train had passed 
 through, the cut in the snow bank was ten feet 
 8 
 
114 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 deep. You could lay a pole across the chasm 
 and a covered wagon could easily pass under 
 it. The next day we went into Salt Lake City, 
 w^here the snow Vv^as about three feet deep. 
 After seeing the company safely in the Valley, 
 I returned to my home in Lehi.'' 
 
 "In 1857 President Young called me to join 
 the Y. X. Co., an abbreviation for Brigham 
 Young Express Company, to carry the mail 
 from Salt Lake to Missouri, a distance of 
 twelve hundred miles." "This,'' he says, "was 
 Hyrum Kimball's contract. I accepted the call 
 and accordingly took my mules to drive. Por- 
 ter Rockwell was in charge of the company, 
 which consisted of about ten men. Horace Eld- 
 redge and N. Groesbeck, who were going east 
 on business, accompanied us. 
 
 "We left Salt Lake City on the first day of 
 March, 1857. Travel was so difficult and the 
 snow so deep that it took us eleven days to get 
 with our pack mules to Fort Bridger, a distance 
 of only one hundred and fifteen miles. Not 
 wishing to follow further the old emigrant 
 road, we took from there a new route across 
 the country by what is known as the Bitter 
 Creek route, toward Devil's Gate on the Sweet- 
 
EARLY LIFE IN LEHI 115 
 
 water. We had a great deal of difficulty in 
 getting through the country, and there is one 
 special incident of this journey that I must 
 speak of. We were on the lookout for game, 
 especially buffalo, when we came suddenly on 
 a herd of five. Porter Rockwell and Craw- 
 ford wxnt out and got a shot at them and 
 wounded one, and as it was near night we went 
 into camp. 
 
 ''Crawford remarked to me : 'We can get 
 that wounded buffalo, if you are the kind of 
 a man I think you are.' We struck out with a 
 mule apiece, without having had anything to 
 eat since early morning. We took the trail of 
 the buffalo, and as there was snow on the 
 ground the tracks were rapidly and easily fol- 
 lowed. We pursued the buffalo until it was 
 almost dark, before we finally overtook them. 
 We were at least fifteen miles from camp, and 
 attempted to return, but the country was so 
 uneven and rough that we lost our road and 
 finally were compelled to stop, for our mules 
 were tired out and we were also. The night 
 we spent there was most terrible. The wind 
 blew dreadfully, and there was one of the most 
 terrible northwest storms I was ever in. We 
 
116 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 could get no wood anywhere except on a high 
 knoll. There we found some green sage brush, 
 which we had to pull up by the roots, to make 
 a fire of, and we struck the last one of eleven 
 matches which we had to kindle the fire. The 
 exercise of pulling up the green brush was 
 perhaps what kept us from freezing to death, 
 for we hadn't a blanket nor a bite to eat. Our 
 mules came nearly freezing with their saddles 
 on, it was so terribly cold. We were a happy 
 pair of men to see daylight again, so that we 
 could find our way to camp. We were met by 
 a party of men who had set out to find us, 
 fearing, almost expecting, to find us frozen to 
 death." 
 
 After leaving this place, the company made 
 its way on to Devil's Gate without further de- 
 lay or difficulties. There they found a French 
 trading post, where the hand-cart company, the 
 year before, had left a large amount of their 
 luggage, which Daniel W. Jones and Benjamin 
 I'lampton were delegated to take charge of un- 
 til it could be removed to Utah. After reach- 
 ing the regular course of the journey. Fort 
 Laramie, Porter Rockwell remained at that 
 l)ost and the company then fell under the direc- 
 
EARLY LIFE IN LEHI 117 
 
 tion of N. Groesbeck. On leaving Fort Lar- 
 amie the most direct route to Independence was 
 taken, and though the country was not so 
 rough and uneven as that over which they 
 passed, and the climate very much more 
 agreeable, this latter part of the journey was 
 made extremely difficult from the fact that the 
 men had to walk most all the way in conse- 
 quence of the poor condition of their animals. 
 At that season of the year they, of course, 
 found no grass except that which was dry and 
 not very nourishing. The company reached 
 Independence the 26th of April, almost two 
 months from the time they left Salt Lake City. 
 Independence at this time was not only near- 
 er to the City of Washington, but it was on a 
 direct line from St. Louis, which was then 
 the chief commercial city of the West. 
 Railroads had not then superseded water traf- 
 fic of the Mississippi, and consequently the 
 boats coming up that river from New Orleans 
 made it not only the most available point for 
 landing merchandise, but the Saints who were 
 now arriving in krge numbers from Europe 
 also came by way of New Orleans to St. Louis, 
 and thence on to Independence. Here, the 
 
118 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 mail was brought not only from' the Eastern 
 States, but also from Europe. After procur- 
 ing an outfit at Independence consisting of 
 light vehicles, mules, and horses, John R. Mur- 
 dock set out upon his return for Utah on the 
 first day of May with the United States mail, 
 and George A. Smith, Doctor Bernhisel, 
 Truman O. Angell, a young man, and two 
 West Indian planters, as passengers. 
 
 The return journey was more quickly ac- 
 complished because of the favorable season of 
 the year. There was more grass for the ani- 
 mals and the roads were in better condition. 
 When out about three hundred miles they lost 
 three of their best mules which, however, they 
 subsequently found. Although this loss of the 
 animals hindered them somewhat, they still 
 kept steadily going and made good time. The 
 route from' Independence brought them to the 
 South Platte, which at this season of the year 
 they found some difficulty in crossing. "All the 
 passengers,'' he says, "except the doctor, had to 
 wade the river, which w^as as much as a mile 
 and a half across, and was full of mud and 
 ice. Though the stream was shallow there were 
 numerous holes in its bed which was consti- 
 
EARLY LIFE IN LEHI 119 
 
 tuted largely of quicksand. I waded out into it 
 several rods, but the water was so cold it took 
 my breath. I therefore returned to the shore 
 at once. All the men, including Brother George 
 A. Smith, worked hard and faithfully in get- 
 ting the wagons across. The two West Indian 
 planters, however, concluded that they would 
 prefer to ride the loose mules; so I caught 
 two, and after they had mounted them and got 
 out into the stream, perhaps one third of the 
 way across, one of the mules plunged into one 
 of the deep holes and fell. The planter went 
 down with him, and while in the water lost 
 some of his money and a pistol, which he car- 
 ried in his pocket. He turned his mule loose 
 and got over the best he could. The other 
 planter went a little farther and met a similar 
 experience. He lost his knife and other arti- 
 cles which he carried in his pockets. When 
 they reached the other side of the river they 
 looked like drowned rats. When we all suc- 
 ceeded in getting over the Platte we made a 
 fire and dried our clothing." 
 
 "From the river the party continued its trav- 
 els without further incident to Fort Laramie. 
 At Horse Shoe, a little stream above Fort Lar- 
 
120 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 amie, they met a party of fifty missionaries, 
 who were traveling with hand-carts and were 
 on their way from Utah to their mission fields 
 in the East. Continuing on their journey they 
 reached Salt Lake City the last of May, having 
 covered the distance in about one month. 
 
 After remaining at home in Lehi with his 
 family for one month, John R. Murdock was 
 called to make a second trip with the mail and 
 express from' Salt Lake City to Independence. 
 There were special reasons why his services 
 were particularly sought after at this time by 
 President Young. The Overland Mail service 
 between the East and the Pacific Coast had 
 been very unsatisfactory. The mails were long 
 delayed in transit, and passenger accommo- 
 dations were meagre, and the people of Utah 
 were greatly dissatisfied over the contemptuous 
 neglect to which they were subjected. Gov- 
 ernment contractors had no special desire to 
 cater either to the wishes or comforts of the 
 Mormons. When, therefore, the time came to 
 bid for the transportation of the mail, Hocka- 
 day and McGraw were underbid by Hyrum 
 Kimball, who took over the government con- 
 
EARLY LIFE IN LEHI 121 
 
 tract which was organized into a company, 
 briefly styled the Y. X. Company. 
 
 The Mormons were, of course, ambitious to 
 reform the service by making it expeditious, 
 safe and as comfortable as the circumstances 
 of those times would permit. Men were there- 
 fore needed whose judgment, courage, pru- 
 dence, and skill could be relied upon. Brig- 
 ham Young had a large acquaintance with the 
 men who had proven themselves throughout 
 the trying times of Missouri and Nauvoo. Here 
 was a man who had such a test, who had been 
 a member of the Mormon Battalion, who was 
 a minute man, who was quick to size up a sit- 
 uation and make the best of it. Such men were 
 not easy to find, and it is not therefore to be 
 wondered at that John R. Murdock, during 
 those early days, and subsequently during the 
 emigration period in which practical men were 
 required, should be frequently called upon. 
 Murdock always had the happy faculty of do- 
 ing things — doing them in the right way and 
 at the right time. 
 
 The eyes of jealous contractors were upon 
 this company. Its conduct would be care- 
 fully watched; every failure would be noted. 
 
122 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 criticised, and of course, reported to Washing- 
 ton. There must be no failures. President 
 Young and the leaders must demonstrate to 
 the officials at Washington that they could dis- 
 charge this new trust with promptness and 
 ability, that the new service which they were 
 to render was to be in every way superior to 
 the service of those whom the new company had 
 superseded. Men called to this work had a 
 record to make, not only for themselves but for 
 the reputation of the Mormon people. 
 
 "We left Salt Lake City,'^ says John R. 
 Murdock, "about the first day of July, 1857, 
 carrying with us United States mail. There 
 were three vehicles and six men in the party. 
 John Kerr, an agent for Kincaid & Bell, the 
 successors of Livingstone & Bell, merchants, 
 also traveled with us. He had with him' a 
 large amount of money, about sixty thousand 
 dollars. I also had about thirteen thousand dol- 
 lars in Church drafts. We felt, naturally, the 
 great responsibility placed upon us. In fifteen 
 days we covered the entire distance of twelve 
 hundred miles from Salt Lake City to Inde- 
 pendence, Missouri. Our stock was fed on 
 grass only, but this was good all along the 
 
EARLY LIFE IN LEHI 123 
 
 road. Our method of traveling was as fol- 
 lows: We arose at daylight, hitched up and 
 traveled twenty miles, then stopped for break- 
 fast and rested an hour or two while our stock 
 fed and watered. We then traveled twenty 
 miles and made another stop. In the after- 
 noon we made a like drive and stopped for sup- 
 per, after which we made a fourth drive into 
 the night, thus making an average of eighty 
 miles' travel each day, for fifteen days.'' 
 
 That was certainly a marvelous record, and 
 it is very doubtful whether it has a parallel in 
 all the history of western pioneer life. Those 
 who know something of the capacity of horses 
 and mules will appreciate the difficulty of cov- 
 ering so great distance in so short a time. 
 Such persons would naturally ask, "How could 
 he do it?" Those who know the man, in the 
 first place, know that he is a lover of fine 
 horses, and that he has always taken great 
 pride in driving a beautiful team'. His experi- 
 ence from his earliest boyhood taught him the 
 capacity of horses, mules, and oxen. He had 
 learned how to treat them ; and what was per- 
 haps of greater value to him, was his love and 
 sympathy for animals^ which naturally respond 
 
124 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 to a friendship which they instinctively feel, 
 and that response is always the best there is in 
 them. John R. Murdock was always proud of 
 that record. 
 
 Speaking of what he considered as a prov- 
 idential escape on this second journey, he says : 
 ''Thirty-five miles above Grand Island on the 
 Platte river we stopped for supper and then 
 proceeded a short distance, when we saw a 
 large body of horsemen on the road, coming 
 toward us. At first we thought they were gov- 
 ernment troops, as the Johnston Army was 
 then moving toward Utah ; but as it advanced, 
 we discovered that they were a war party of 
 Cheyenne Indians, about forty in number, and 
 heavily armed with guns, spears, bows and ar- 
 rows. This tribe of Indians was very turbu- 
 lent and savage and very hostile to the whites 
 at this time. As it afterwards proved, the band 
 was out for booty, and was ready to commit 
 any depredation. Our vehicles were covered, 
 and we had a few loose animals which we were 
 driving to stock the road. 'Boys,' I said, 'we 
 must act wisely or we may get into trouble. 
 We must not stop and let them discover our 
 strength.' There were only seven of us in the 
 
EARLY LIFE IN LEHI 125 
 
 party. The fact that we had loose horses in- 
 dicated to the Indians that there must be a 
 number of men inside our vehicles, and this 
 was confirmed by Mr. Kerr, who, in recapping 
 a double-barrel shotgun, discharged it, the shot 
 passing through the cover. By this time the 
 Indians were within two or three hundred 
 yards of us. They stopped suddenly and in- 
 sisted that we also should stop. I told the 
 boys not to do this, but to go on as fast as pos- 
 sible, and I would remain and talk with the In- 
 dians. I had an armful of tobacco which I 
 had brought to use in an emergency, knowing 
 the fondness of the Indians for this article. I 
 went up to them and asked for the chief. He 
 was pointed out to me. I gave him the to- 
 bacco and told him to distribute it among his 
 men. I had ridden a little ahead of our party, 
 and while I was talking to the Indians and in- 
 sisting that they should let us pass on, our boys 
 drove by them as fast as they could, without 
 any interruption. After we passed, the Indians 
 appeared to hold a consultation, but they evi- 
 dently decided to give us no further trouble, 
 and we passed quickly on to Fort Kearney. 
 From that place, a distance of thirty-five miles, 
 
126 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 we traveled without a pause, as we feared they 
 would surprise us by an attack if we went into 
 camp before reaching the Fort. Such would 
 certainly have happened had we stopped and 
 permitted them to see how weak we were in 
 numbers. Besides, we had just what they 
 wanted, about thirty head of good horses and 
 a large amount of money in gold and silver. 
 This same band of Indians, about a week later 
 attacked eighteen men who were driving a gov- 
 ernment beef herd on their way to Utah. A 
 fight took place near the Platte river. Two 
 men were killed and the Indians got away with 
 all the cattle." 
 
 The money they carried with them was in 
 Mr. Kerr's charge, but Murdock assisted him 
 in protecting it, and later in carrying it to the 
 bank in St. Louis, whither he went to do some 
 business with H. S. Eldredge, the Church 
 agent there. 
 
 From Fort Kearney the rest of the journey 
 was made to Independence without any further 
 adventures. There, the United States mail was 
 delivered into the custody of the proper offi- 
 cers ; but this was the last mail carried by our 
 people for the government in those early times. 
 
EARLY LIFE IN LEHI 127 
 
 Orders had been sent on from Washington to 
 lendependence to the effect that mail directed 
 to Utah must be withheld. 
 
 The army was now on its way to Utah, and 
 the whole situation was changed. The mail 
 contract terminated abruptly, and John R. 
 Murdock was again subjected to another of 
 those dangerous uncertainties which had fre- 
 quently fallen to his lot from his earliest recol- 
 lection. He had learned, however, that new 
 dangers meant new activities, and that he must 
 turn his hand to whatever lay before him to do. 
 He was always resourceful, and had no diffi- 
 culty in adjusting himself to new and unusual 
 tasks. Now that his services for the govern- 
 ment were ended he went on to St. Louis and 
 from there made his way to Atchison, on the 
 Missouri river. Here, he loaded a mule and 
 horse train with merchandise for Bell & Kin- 
 caid of Salt Lake City. On the return jour- 
 ney there was much excitement along the road 
 in view of the attitude of the United States 
 government toward the Mormon people. He 
 had been, however, under fire before, and was 
 equal to the dangers and troubles ahead. 
 
 From Atchison he traveled with several de- 
 
128 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 tachments of the United States army on its way 
 to Utah. He therefore understood what was 
 going on, and from the soldiers learned some- 
 thing of what they intended to do upon reach- 
 ing Salt Lake City. It was the old story of 
 Mormon persecution — a story he knew by 
 heart. He was not dismayed, for he had learned 
 to trust to the providences of God. On reach- 
 ing Devil's Gate, he met Gen. Burton and his 
 forces. There, a new and important duty came 
 to him'. It was necessary to forward an ex- 
 press from General Burton's camp to President 
 Young in Salt Lake City. "My errand," he 
 says, "was very urgent. I rode day and night, 
 and with a change of horses covered the dis- 
 tance in four days — a distance of three hun- 
 dred and forty miles." He knew how to ride a 
 horse as well as how to drive it. Such a ride 
 must certainly have taxed his energies very 
 greatly. Though it was not famous in poetry 
 or in song, it was nevertheless a great feat — 
 a record not elsewhere easily found. 
 
 He reached Salt Lake City on the last day 
 of Steptember, and after delivering his mes- 
 sage repaired at once to his home in Lehi. 
 After such a strenuous life and such remark- 
 
EARLY LIFE IN LEHt 129 
 
 able endurance, he naturally found some relief 
 in the quiet and comfort of a home; but one 
 of his children died soon after his arrival, so 
 that a journey of remarkable endurance had 
 its closinof scene in the sorrows of death. 
 
130 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 CH/VPTER VII 
 
 LIFE ON THE PLAINS 
 
 The winter of 1857-58 was one full of anxi- 
 eties to the Latter-day Saints, who were face 
 to face with conditions that might result in an- 
 other exodus. Preparations were under way 
 for the abandonment of homes, and perhaps 
 another exodus was before the people. John 
 R. Murdock must have felt in those days that 
 the lot of a Latter-day Saint was that of a 
 wanderer. But no man in the Church was bet- 
 ter prepared for just such emergencies as con- 
 fronted the people than he was, since he had 
 been inured to them from his infancy. Speak- 
 ing of that winter, he said: "I remained at 
 home, attending to my private affairs.*' He 
 had no private affairs that might not be in- 
 terrupted ; he had no personal interest that he 
 would not gladly surrender to the interests of 
 the Church. He knew what was going on at 
 the frontier. He understood the movement of 
 the army which was then advancing upon 
 Utah. He had been intrusted with important 
 
LIFE ON THE PLAINS 131 
 
 work, which he had accompHshed in a most sat- 
 isfactory manner. 
 
 During the trying hours of a threatened in- 
 vasion of Utah, President Young remembered 
 the kind-hearted man and a loyal friend, Thom- 
 as L. Kane, who had visited the Saints while 
 they were exiled on the banks of the Missouri 
 River. His home was in Philadelphia, and Pres- 
 ident Young had assurance of the kindly feel- 
 ings of Colonel Kane for the Mormon people. 
 Samuel Richards was therefore sent to ask the 
 kind-hearted Colonel to intercede in behalf of 
 Utah, and to bring to the knowledge of the 
 President the untruthful reports upon which 
 the army had been sent. Although Col. Kane 
 was then in poor health, he at once undertook 
 the mission of a peace-maker. He proceeded 
 at once to Washington, where he interviewed 
 the President and obtained from him a com- 
 mission to visit the scenes of trouble and pro- 
 mote peace and a proper understanding be- 
 tween the Mormons and the government. Col- 
 onel Kane set out at once from New York to 
 the Pacific Coast by steamer and by the Isth- 
 mus. He reached Salt Lake City on the 25th 
 of February, 1858, and after a hurried consul- 
 
132 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 tation with the authorities made his way to 
 Fort Bridger, where he held interviews with 
 the newly-appointed governor, Mr. Cumming. 
 He found the hostiHty against the Mormons 
 very great, and General Johnson was bitterly 
 opposed to Colonel Kane's mission. Indeed, 
 at one time an open conflict between the two 
 seemed almost inevitable. 
 
 Colonel Kane returned with Governor Cum- 
 ming to Salt Lake City, which they reached on 
 the 12th day of April. After the way had been 
 paved for an amicable adjustment between the 
 newly appointed governor and the Mormon 
 people, and prospects of settling the troubles 
 were in sight, Colonel Kane set out upon his 
 return to the East across the plains. The hos- 
 tility of General Johnson to Colonel Kane was 
 known to Brigham Young, and he was there- 
 fore extremely anxious that their warm-heart- 
 ed friend, the colonel, might be conveyed across 
 the plains without danger and as expeditiously 
 and comfortably as possible. President Young 
 therefore selected a sepecial escort of men 
 whose proven courage, wisdom, and loyalty 
 could be depended upon. He therefore ap- 
 pointed for Colonel Kane a tried and proven 
 
LIFE ON THE PLAINS 133 
 
 escort of five men, under the direction of 
 Howard Egan. John R. Murdock was made a 
 member of that escort. Governor Gumming 
 went with them as far as Fort Bridger. 
 
 Speaking of that mission, John R. Murdock 
 says: "We started about the first of May, 
 1858. When we arrived at Fort Bridger, we 
 found the most hostile feeHngs against us, and 
 against everything concerning the welfare of 
 the Mormons. We remained a few hours at 
 the Fort and then proceeded on our journey. 
 We met several government supply teams, and 
 those who accompanied them were also very 
 hostile. Nothing of any note on. the way trans- 
 pired. We made the whole trip, a distance of 
 one thousand and sixty miles, in twenty-two 
 days, and without a change of animals." 
 
 That, too, was a remarkable journey at that 
 early season of the year when feed through the 
 mountains was insufficient and when it is re- 
 membered that they were crossing a country 
 whose feed had been quite thoroughly exhaust- 
 ed by the government animals. Upon reach- 
 ing the Missouri river, Howard Egan went 
 on with Golonel Kane to Washington that he 
 might bring back with him to Utah any com- 
 
134 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 munication which the President of the United 
 State desired to send to Governor Cumming or 
 to General Johnston. Egan's absence on this 
 journey caused a delay of the rest of the escort 
 at Florence for about six weeks. 
 
 At the end of that period the escort returned 
 to Fort Bridger, making as good time on the 
 return trip as they had made going E^st. Egan 
 had brought with him important documents 
 from Washington to President Young. It was 
 necessary that they be forwarded to Salt Lake 
 City at the earliest possible moment. The dis- 
 tance from' Fort Bridger was one hundred and 
 fifteen miles, and to John R. Murdock was 
 committed the duty of conveying this important 
 da::;iment with speed and without delay. He 
 covered the distance of one hundred and fifteen 
 miles in twenty-four hours. 
 
 ''I rode/' he says, ''the same horse, Painter, 
 that I had ridden during the whole trip to 
 Omaha and back." Some of these rides of 
 John R. Murdock will go into history in days 
 to come with the celebrated rides that are char- 
 acterized in the poetry of our national hero- 
 ism. They are so remarkable as to appear al- 
 most incredible when compared with the pres- 
 
LIFE ON THE PLAINS 135 
 
 ent endurance of both man and beast. That 
 faithful horse, Painter, will hold his place, too, 
 in the honorable mention of great deeds. No 
 wonder his rider holds his name in loving re- 
 membrance, and mentions him with pride when 
 recounting his early experiences in Utah. 
 
 ''I went home to Lehi and worked at pri- 
 vate business until the year 1861.'' That was 
 a very modest account to give of himself after 
 so important a mission. In these simple words 
 there was no ostentation, no self-glory. It was 
 a duty well performed. It was a mission of 
 high honor. It was a part of a great history 
 in the lives of a great people. It was one of 
 those events that time alone could magnify 
 and give its true setting in the fame it was to 
 bring to the life of a man who did his duty 
 humbly as he did it well. He had reason, how- 
 ever, to feel grateful ; a child had been born to 
 him in his absence. 
 
 Soon after his return, the army came to Utah 
 and made its encampment not far from Lehi, 
 at a place known as Camp Floyd. The en- 
 campment of the army, and the presence of a 
 large number of camp-followers gave enlarged 
 opportunities to the people in the vicinity of the 
 
136 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 camp and Salt Lake City to speculate and ad- 
 vance their material interests. John R. Mur- 
 dock's favorable location at Lehi and his in- 
 herent genius to avail himself of such oppor- 
 tunities was not, however, to be gratified. The 
 faithful discharge of one duty made him' all 
 the more desirable for new- and enlarged re- 
 sponsibilities. 
 
 "In the year 1861 I was called," he says, "to 
 take charge of a Church train consisting of 
 fifty wagons and as many drivers. There were 
 four yoke of oxen to each wagon. It was our 
 mission to go down to the Missouri river and 
 bring emigrants to Utah. After making our 
 preparations, we started about the first of May, 
 1861. Grass was short, consequently we had 
 to use great care in providing suitable food foi 
 our teams, and to drive prudently until the 
 grass improved. Before leaving Salt Lake City 
 we loaded up with flour and other provisions to 
 meet the needs of the emigrants with whom 
 we were to return. These supplies we depos- 
 ited at certain points along the road, so that 
 we could use them on our return. 
 
 "It generally took about nine weeks to cross 
 the plains, and though it was a laborious trip, 
 
LIFE ON THE PLAINS 137 
 
 we had a great deal of enjoyment out of it. 
 We had musicians with their instruments and 
 would sometimes have what the boys called 
 'stag dances/ as there were no ladies with us 
 on the 'down' trip. There were always several 
 trains on the road which frequently camped 
 close to ours, so the drivers often mingled with 
 ?ach other and engaged in such contests as 
 wrestling, racing, and jumping. I took a 
 great deal of pleasure in such association with 
 the boys." 
 
 These trains were generally made up from 
 different sections of the territory, and there 
 would naturally be some feelings of rivalry 
 among them. As these rivalries took on the 
 form of honorable contests, they naturally gave 
 rise to sympathies and friendships that lasted 
 throughout life. How often in after years 
 men were wont to say, when introduced to a 
 supposed stranger. Yes, I knew him. We 
 were old friends together on the plains." To 
 know each other on the plains was the badge of 
 friendship and the assurance of hospitality. 
 How these old-time friends were men and 
 women who underwent trials together and re- 
 joiced in lasting friendships, those of later 
 
138 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 generations can hardly realize. There is an 
 old adage which says : "If you would know a 
 man you must first travel with him/' 
 
 How unlike, however, were the Mormon 
 travelers on the plains in those early days when 
 compared with other travelers ! The latter 
 were quite contentious from the familiarity of 
 their associations with their fellow men. Their 
 companies were frequently broken up, hatreds 
 were engendered, and sometimes men fought 
 to the death. On the other hand, the Mor- 
 mons were men and women of religious con- 
 victions, who deeply sensed their obligations 
 and desired to live in harmony with their fel- 
 low men. They were under the watch-care of 
 Sod and were taught unity and brotherly love 
 by humbly submitting themselves to the direc- 
 tion of a kind Providence, both morning and 
 night, in an attitude of prayer. They were 
 taught to feel the need of divine protection, 
 and the approbation of their God. How 
 could they have, then, they asked themselves, 
 these blessings, if in their midst there were 
 not brotherly love and a willingness to make 
 sacrifice for the good and happiness of others. 
 The relationship of these Mormon emigrants 
 
LIFE ON THE PLAINS 139 
 
 was both, instructive and joyful. What, 
 therefore, John R. Murdock has to say of those 
 days on the plains is full of interest. He gives 
 us some insight into a life far from anything 
 that we have ever experienced, but into a life 
 that had much to do in laying the foundations 
 of that faith, love, and friendship that char- 
 acterized the beginning of the Church in the 
 early history of Utah. 
 
 ^'Our first trip down," he says, "was without 
 any particular incident. We remained at the 
 river a short time and then loaded the luggage 
 of the emigrants into our wagons. There 
 wxre from sixteen to tw^enty persons, 
 men, women, and children, assigned to each 
 wagon. Those who were old enough to walk 
 were expected to do so the greater part of 
 the way. They would ride, occasionally, 
 when the roads were good. I always appointed 
 two men whose duty it was to look after the 
 passengers. It was certainly novel to see a 
 train starting out with everything that could 
 be put into w^agons and everything that could 
 be tied to the outside, such as buckets, cans and 
 all kinds of cooking utensils. It reminded one 
 of an old turkey with a brood of young ones 
 
140 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 keeping her company. Generally there were 
 about seven hundred passengers in one train. 
 The organization was systematic and complete. 
 It consisted of a captain, an assistant, a chap- 
 lain, a quarter-master, hospital steward, a 
 camp guard, and a night guard for the stock. 
 The chaplain took charge of the religious ser- 
 vices, and we had prayer night and morning. 
 We also had a choir with its leader. The peo- 
 ple were called together by means of a 
 bugle.'' 
 
 This description applies to all the companies, 
 which required about nine weeks going and 
 coming. The experiences of the emigrants 
 were educational as well as fraternal. Frequent- 
 ly the teamsters, who were usually unmarried 
 men, formed attachments for the young ladies 
 among the emigrants. These attachments re- 
 sulted in life-long friendships, and sometimes 
 in matrimony. 
 
 On reaching home from his trip across the 
 plains in 1861, he returned to Lehi to pass the 
 winter of 1861 and 62. This gave him no op- 
 portunity to till his fields and harvest his crop. 
 His stay at home was at a season of the year 
 in which it was most difficult to provide means 
 
LIFE ON THE PLAINS l4l 
 
 of sustenance for his family. John R. Mitr- 
 dock was a thoughtful man — a man who 
 could foresee possible dangers and was there- 
 fore constantly on his guard to escape troubles 
 that foresight and prudence might protect him 
 from. There is seen in his narratives of those 
 early experiences a deep-seated satisfaction 
 which he felt in the fact that he and those in his 
 charge escaped accidents and avoided both dan- 
 ger and trouble. The personal conquests of his 
 life were the conquests of peace. He put great 
 store upon timely prudence, which was a pro- 
 tection to himself and others; and although 
 he was pre-eminently helpful in assisting others 
 out of difficulty, he found greater satisfaction 
 in keeping them from it. He had, therefore, a 
 right to speak of that particular satisfaction 
 which he felt in the fact that he had lost few 
 passengers among all those whom he had 
 helped across the plains. 
 
 The spring of 1862 brought to him another 
 call. It might seem hard to draft him again 
 into a service to which he had devoted so much 
 of his life. Why not let others try their hand? 
 It was not, however, work upon which to make 
 experiments. The lives, as well as the comfort 
 
142 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 and happiness of thousands, depended upon 
 the skill and efficiency with which the emigra- 
 tion trains of those days were conducted. Men, 
 tried and true, must bear the responsibility. 
 Moral questions were involved, and men of 
 known moral character were needed. 
 
 John R. Murdock responded again to a call 
 in the spring of 1862. Of that year he says: 
 "The season was very different from that of 
 the year before. It was exceedingly wet, and 
 every little stream was filled from' the melting 
 snows. At Yellow Creek, about seventy miles 
 from Salt Lake City, we were a whole day 
 crossing a little stream not more than twenty 
 feet wide. All the low country '^near this 
 stream was covered with water waist deep. 
 7\11 that day we struggled in getting our train 
 over a small bridge. While we were at work, a 
 man with his family came along and asked to 
 cross our bridge. His request was granted. 
 He felt so grateful about it that he handed out 
 to me a keg of whisky and asked me to have 
 a drink. Of course I could not regard what 
 he intended to be a treat as something I could 
 accept as a personal favor. I told him that 
 when I drank all the boys must have the same 
 
LIFE ON THE PLAINS 143 
 
 privilege, fie told us to take it all. Having 
 wallowed in mud and water for ten hours that 
 day, without very much to eat, we accepted the 
 liquor as a stimulant, especially as we still had 
 ten wagons to get across; and by the aid of 
 the stimulant we were enabled to bring them 
 all over that night. When we reached Ham's 
 Fork we found the entire bottom-lands covered 
 for a distance of one-half mile with water, 
 which was six feet deep in some places. I 
 succeeded in getting my train across in two, 
 days, but some of the other trains were three 
 .weeks in getting over." 
 
 Owing to the wet season and the consequent 
 high waters, his train that year was very great- 
 ly delayed. He reached Winter Quarters about 
 the middle of July. There, he met for the first 
 time Mary Ellen W^olfenden and her mothers 
 family, which consisted of two ctaughters and 
 two grandchildren. Subsequently Mary Ellen 
 became his wife. While East, during this trip, 
 he visited his sister Julia, who had married a 
 man by the name of Dixon, with whom she 
 went to Texas, where he was killed in a steam- 
 boat explosion. She afterwards married John 
 Middleton with whom she was living when he 
 
144 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 found her at St. Louis. The visit was a source 
 of pleasure to both of them. 
 
 "1 went," he says, "by way of Nauvoo to 
 see Sister Emma Smith and her family and to 
 visit the city where I had lived in former 
 times.'' During the years that he had been in 
 the employ of Joseph Smith on his farm he 
 became naturally associated more or less inti- 
 mately with the Prophet and his family. Be- 
 sides, Joseph and Emma Smith had been the 
 foster parents of his twin sister and brother, 
 whose love and kindness for the little ones he 
 had never forgotten. That visit and the joy- 
 ful meeting that he had with his sister whom 
 he had not seen for eighteen years made the 
 trip of 1862 both pleasurable and remarkable 
 to him. On his return from these visits, he 
 took command of his train and reached Salt 
 Lake City early in the month of October. Dur- 
 ing his absence, another child was born to him, 
 a circumstance which almost resulted in the 
 death of the mother. 
 
 "In January, 1863,'' he says, 'T was married 
 on the same day to Mary Ellen Wolfenden and 
 May Bain. The ceremony was performed by 
 
LIFE ON THE PLAINS 145 
 
 Daniel H. Wells in the Endowment House at 
 Salt Lake City/' 
 
 It must have seemed to John R. Murdock in 
 those early days that his life was to be devoted 
 wholly to the service of others. For the most 
 part, his home consisted largely of a wagon- 
 box, and perhaps most of the tim.e he was 
 crowded even out of that, and forced to take 
 shelter beneath it and between the wheels, that 
 is, when he was not required to give up such a 
 shelter for the comfort of others. 
 
 The spring of 1863 brought another call, 
 and, with the same fidelity that had charac- 
 terized his devotion to the Church, he respond- 
 ed with promptness. It is a pleasing tribute to 
 the life and character of John R. Murdock to 
 say that, as he recounts the experiences and in- 
 cidents of those trying times, he never once 
 speaks of a hardship or a sacrifice. What he 
 remembers about that time, and that about 
 which he takes the greatest pride is that he was 
 able to do it. His experiences, his emigration 
 training of 1863, are worthy of quotation at 
 some length. They reveal the ambitions of the 
 man and show how well he loved to excel in 
 
 10 
 
146 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 action; for John R. Murdock was more emi- 
 nently a man of deeds than of words. 
 
 Recounting the experiences of 1863, he says : 
 "There were ten Church trains of fifty wagons 
 each. Among the men called to act as captains 
 was W. B. Preston. I was partial to him 
 then, and have always been since. He was a 
 little ambitious, and I w^as ambitious also. He 
 remarked to Bishop Hunter, who had general 
 charge of the emigration, that he was going to 
 lead all the other trains down and back again. 
 Bishop Hunter knew what I had done in past 
 seasons, and was very much pleased with what 
 he considered my success in handling teams 
 and in helping emigrants. He was, perhaps, a 
 little partial to me and so he told me when I 
 met him at the mouth of Echo Canyon what 
 W. B. Preston had said to him. Brother Pres- 
 ton being already three days ahead of me with 
 his teams. Bishop Hunter, perhaps, meant by 
 his words to give me both a warning and a 
 challenge. He evidently did not want me 
 'beaten.* 
 
 "I overtook Brother Preston after we had 
 traveled about three hundred miles. After that 
 I was sometimes ahead and sometimes he 
 
LIFE ON THE PLAINS 147 
 
 would be in the lead. However, I had resolved 
 in my mind to outgeneral him and to do it hon- 
 orably and without injury to our teams. When 
 we made our last deposit of supplies at Wood 
 River, about one hundred and seventy miles 
 this side of Florence, I saw that he intended to 
 make good his word; and I should, perhaps, 
 have allowed him to go in ahead of me without 
 any particular exertion on my part to prevent 
 it, had it not been for what he said to Bishop 
 Hunter. Brother Preston made longer marches 
 than usual and arrived first at Loup Fork, a 
 branch of the Platte River. There we had to 
 cross by ferry. I planned to pass him at that 
 point by crossing the river first. I did it in 
 this way: When my train reached the river, 
 he had all his across the ferry except twelve 
 wagons. The river was low. Upon making 
 necessary inquiries, I found that by taking a 
 certain direction in the river below the ferry 
 down to a given point on an island and then 
 turning at a certain angle up the river, I could 
 reach a landing on the other side near a Cot- 
 tonwood tree. Before starting, however, I 
 rode up to the ferryman to make some in- 
 quiries. Some of Preston's men jokingly re- 
 
148 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 marked that they thought they had lost me. 
 In reply I told them I thought I was good for 
 the home stretch. They then had no idea what 
 my plans were. 
 
 ''I called the ferryman aside and asked him if 
 there were not a contract between him and 
 Mr. Little, who was then a Church agent, that 
 the crossing of the river ferry both going and 
 coming would be at the rate of one dollar for 
 each wagon. He replied that there was, and 
 that it would be just the same for my train 
 whether I ferried or not. I said, 'all right,' 
 and then took to the river. My whole train 
 crossed without any trouble, incident or acci- 
 dent. When we were all over. Brother Pres- 
 ton had still ten wagons to ferry across, and 
 he saw that I had out-generaled him. We 
 Avere then about eighty miles from Florence, 
 and the important thing was to keep ahead. 
 Being well acquainted with the road and wa- 
 tering places, I took advantage of suitable 
 camp grounds. The first night Brother Pres- 
 ton was behind us, as I thought he should be. 
 
 "Here I wish to say that it is my belief that 
 I made the best time with ox-teams that was 
 ever made on this continent under similar cir- 
 
LIFE ON THE PLAINS 149 
 
 cumstances. It was in the long days of June 
 and the weather was not excessively hot. Our 
 oxen were well 'seasoned' and in good condi- 
 tion to travel. We made forty miles the second 
 day from Loup Fork. That brought us to Elk 
 Horn, twenty miles from Florence. There were 
 at one time fifty men living who could con- 
 firm the truth of the above statement, and 
 there are some now living w^ho will remem- 
 ber this record. 
 
 ''We reached Florence a half a day in ad- 
 vance of Preston's train. On our arrival we 
 found ready for emigration about seven hun- 
 dred Saints, a ship load of emigrants. That 
 number was sufficient to load my train, which 
 was consequently loaded at once. This caused 
 Brother Preston a delay of five weeks, as he 
 had to wait for the next ship load before he 
 could leave with his train." 
 
 This circumstance related by him is given at 
 considerable length, as it shows the inherent 
 disposition of the man to excel in whatever he 
 undertook. The fact that he arrived in Salt 
 Lake City weeks ahead of his old-time friend, 
 W. B. Preston, was something that always en- 
 livened his spirit in after life whenever the 
 
150 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 pleasantries of those days were talked over. 
 Bishop Hunter also must have had faith in 
 John R. Murdock when he warned him that 
 he would have a strong competitor in the field 
 for honors among the emigrant trains of that 
 season. No doubt Bishop Hunter felt some 
 satisfaction when the man who enjoyed both 
 his love and his confidence made good the ex- 
 pectations which the venerable Bishop had for 
 him. 
 
 His home coming that year was not without 
 its sadness, for he not only found his wife in 
 delicate health, but his son Orrice died not long 
 after his return. The spring of 1864, like clock 
 work, brought with it a new summons to an 
 old service. This time he was called to take a 
 mule and horse train across the plains to the 
 Missouri River. In this train there were 
 about seventy-five wagons, some of which were 
 private conveyances that were taking President 
 D. H. Wells and Brigham Young, Jr., with 
 their families, to the mission field in England. 
 The journey was made without any incidents 
 worthy of special mention. 
 
 Of that trip he says: "The south fork 
 of the Platte was high, and we had a 
 
LIFE ON THE PLAINS 151 
 
 dreadful time in crossing it. We reached the 
 Missouri river, about six miles above Nebraska 
 City, On reaching that city we made our pur- 
 chases and loaded up with freight and emi- 
 grants. We remained at Nebraska City about 
 ten days and then commenced our journey for 
 Salt Lake City. The first night out, our 
 horses stampeded and scattered all over the 
 country. It took us four days to find them 
 and get them together again. After that we 
 were frequently threatened with a repetition 
 of a similar experience. We consequently 
 had to keep men mounted all the time to pre- 
 vent another stampede. 
 
 "One who has never seen animals stampede 
 can scarcely understand the nature of it, nor 
 how impossible it is to stop a stampede when 
 once it begins. The horses and mules would 
 all be scattered over quite an area of ground 
 quietly feeding and at any little noise they 
 would all jump together and away they would 
 go like a flash. We continued our journey, and 
 at the south fork of the Platte we were over- 
 taken by two families. One was that of Judge 
 Gilchrist. They had made forced marches to 
 reach us and to travel in our company to Utah. 
 
152 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 On our way home I was met at the mouth of 
 Echo canyon by my devoted wife Almira. Up- 
 on reaching Salt Lake City and unloading my 
 train, I returned with her to Lehi." 
 
 Speaking of these ''emigrant days," John R. 
 Murdock says, more in a spirit of satisfaction 
 than in boasting: "I think I am safe in say- 
 ing that I brought more emigrants to Utah 
 than did any other one man. I was also most 
 successful with my teams and lost but very 
 few." 
 
 He may easily be excused for entertaining 
 a feeling of pride over such a record. Those days 
 of emigration responsibilities characterized 
 John R. Murdock as a man of affairs — a man 
 fitted by nature and experience for a great va- 
 riety of duties and responsibilities. This trip 
 of 1864 was made when he was forty-four 
 years of age. Certainly there was nothing in 
 his life from childhood to this fulness of his 
 manhood that could in any way be regarded as 
 a rut. Experience and schooling made him 
 pre-eminently a well-qualified man for those 
 days. Thus far in life there had been no fail- 
 ure on his part to limit the confidence of the 
 
LIFE ON THE PLAINS 153 
 
 leaders of the Church in the trust that might be 
 reposed in the man. 
 
 In those days the Church was growing rap- 
 idly. New counties were in process of form- 
 ation and men of genius and leadership were 
 needed as much in these new and growing 
 counties as they were needed upon the plains. 
 John R. Murdock had demonstrated his ability 
 to preside over people on camp-grounds and in 
 emigrant trains. Could he preside over them 
 in their newly-chosen homes where they were 
 to enjoy greater comforts and a larger meas- 
 ure of individual initiation? He could lead in 
 those peculiar experiences which had fallen to 
 his lot from childhood. Success, however, in 
 leadership under trying circumstances is one 
 of the best evidences of leadership in the wider 
 opportunities and broader fields of life. Up to 
 this age of life he had lived in the enjoyment 
 of a pre-eminent confidence which the lead- 
 ers of the Church had always shown him. 
 Nothing had occurred to limit that confidence, 
 and what they thought of him then is shown by 
 the honors that fell to him later in life. 
 
154 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 LIFE IN BEAVER 
 
 In the fall of 1864 the settlement of various 
 counties throughout the territory had become 
 so rapid, and the growth of the various towns 
 so great, that satisfactory presiding officers 
 were in great demand. Beaver City and the 
 outlying districts, in that year, needed a man 
 whose influence would promote harmony and 
 whose leadership would be sufficiently strong 
 to bring the contending elements together. 
 There were circumstances in the settlement, 
 growth, and environments of the country 
 there which required not only an upright, cap- 
 able man, but a man of discerning judgment 
 and tactful methods. "It gave me a severe 
 shock," said John R. Murdock, 'Svhen upon 
 invitation I entered the office of President 
 Young and learned that he wanted me to be 
 the Bishop of Beaver.'' 
 
 In Lehi, in those early days, a strong class 
 of men had gathered — men who subsequently 
 figured prominently in the history of the 
 
LIFE IN BEAVER 155 
 
 Church — men Hke x\bram Hatch, Canute Pe- 
 terson, John R. Murdock, and others. Natur- 
 ally, there sprang up among them feelings of 
 friendship and mutual good will. It was the 
 boast of the people in Lehi in later years that 
 the little community had been honored by the 
 call of so many presiding men from its midst. 
 One might very safely have predicted that 
 John R. Murdock would receive some such re- 
 sponsibility. 
 
 "I was received very kindly and apparently 
 very favorably by the people, who expressed a 
 willingness that I should come and preside over 
 them." After looking over the situation, he re- 
 turned to Lehi, where he gathered his cattle 
 and took them to his new home to winter. 
 However, he remained at Lehi through most 
 of the winter of 1864 and 65, and in May re- 
 turned to his new home, and by the fall of 
 that year had all his family with him prepar- 
 atory to another beginning which he was to 
 make in life. "I bought a farm and some town 
 lots and built houses for my family to live in. 
 I also immediately set about building school- 
 houses, a meeting house, and other public 
 buildings. I w^as very zealous in this labor and 
 
156 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 carried a great part of the responsibility of it 
 myself." 
 
 His appointment, however,as Bishop brought 
 with it a general responsibility of looking after 
 the welfare of all the settlements in the county. 
 And when, therefore, after about ten years all 
 the settlements of the county were organized 
 into a stake, John R. Murdock was chosen its 
 President. From the outset he found the peo- 
 ple considerably divided into factions, but he 
 insisted that he was the Bishop of all of them 
 and kept himself aloof from factional interests 
 and individual favoritism. His position was a 
 delicate one, as Beaver was then, as it has since 
 been, made up of a great diversity of elements. 
 
 In those early days the southern settlements 
 were considerably removed from the center of 
 commerce. One of the first problems which 
 confronted Bishop Murdock was to learn and 
 make available the best resources of the people 
 in that community. Beaver, like most other 
 parts of the Territory, offered opportunities 
 for cattle and sheep, but its water supply was 
 limited, and the farming interests of the peo- 
 ple could not be made very extensive. How- 
 ever, he set himself to work at figuring out 
 
LIFE IN BEAVER 157 
 
 every available resource. It was not long be- 
 fore he organized a co-operative woolen fac- 
 tory with a capital stock of forty-five thousand 
 dollars, and subsequently a mercantile co-oper- 
 ative institution with a capital stock of twenty 
 thousand dollars. During these times, the cat- 
 tle interests of John R. Murdock greatly in- 
 creased, and his horses, sheep, and cattle, to 
 whose care he gave scrupulous attention, 
 brought means at his command. 
 
 In those early days he was fortunate in 
 gathering arovmd him men of good judgment 
 and loyal friendship. One of these men whose 
 support was always valuable and whose friend- 
 ship he appreciated was M. L. Shepherd, a 
 man of vast energies and financial abilities. 
 Murdock and Shepherd, who had much in 
 common in native ability and experience, saw 
 eye to eye. They were quick to avail them- 
 selves of the resources about them'. They ac- 
 cumulated wealth and became the leading spir- 
 its in the establishment of those co-operative 
 institutions which supplied labor and devel- 
 oped commerce of the community. Speaking 
 of the factory the former said: "This insti- 
 tution has always been a credit to the people 
 
158 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 and has proven a great benefit to them both 
 by supplying good articles of goods, and work 
 for the people." 
 
 "In those early days, we had a good deal of 
 trouble with the Indians, as they were con- 
 stantly driving off our stock/' Speaking of 
 himself and others, he says : "We established 
 an outpost on the Sevier river called Fort 
 Stanford. This we furnished with supplies 
 and men and were obliged to keep it up for 
 our protection. We organized companies of 
 militia and I was chosen lieutenant-colonel. 
 
 "Among other incidents of those times that 
 took place with the Indians, there is one I must 
 relate. The people of Beaver had come to- 
 gether for the purpose of putting a roof on 
 the meeting-house and nearly all of the men 
 in the county were assisting in the work when 
 word came to us that the Indians had attacked 
 John P. Lee's home, located on South Creek, 
 about eight miles from Beaver. The word 
 was brought to us by two little children, one, 
 Charley Lee, about twelve years old, the other, 
 a little girl by the name of Baker, a child per- 
 haps ten years of age. Mrs. Lee had put them 
 out of the back of the house opposite the side 
 
LIFE IN BEAVER 159 
 
 attacked by the Indians. The children went 
 through the brush and consequently were not 
 seen by the Indians. The little ones ran all the 
 way to Beaver. There was the greatest pos- 
 sible haste made and men rushed to the scene 
 as soon as they heard the news. They se- 
 cured their horses and equipments and were 
 off within twenty minutes. I took with me in 
 my buggy a surgeon, as a man by the name of 
 Jos. L. White, who lived at that time on South 
 Creek, had been wounded in the shoulder by 
 a shot from one of the Indians' guns. The 
 Indians had surrounded the house, which had 
 a lumber roof, which they set on fire. While 
 Lee stood at the door with his large blunder- 
 buss, keeping the Indians out and resisting the 
 Indians who were trying to break in, Mrs. 
 Lee succeeded in putting out the fire with her 
 pans of milk. The situation had been very 
 critical before we reached the scene. Mr. and 
 Mrs. Lee both displayed remarkable courage 
 and presence of mind, but before we reached 
 the spot the Indians became frightened and 
 withdrew. Two of them, however, were killed 
 by shots from Lee's gun and pistol. We took 
 the wounded man and the Lee family, with all 
 
160 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 their household effects, back with us to Beav- 
 er/' 
 
 The trouble of longest duration with the 
 Indians was their practice of stock stealing. 
 Cattle and horses were often about the only 
 resource that many people had, and their loss 
 from the depredation of the Indians was often 
 a source of distress. Several expeditions were 
 organized against these troublesome outlaws; 
 and large expeditions, time, and money were 
 required to stamp out a practice that was so 
 destructive to their interests. 
 
 In the course of time, in the district of coun- 
 try lying west of Beaver City, mining interests 
 were developed and markets were opened for 
 the products of both the farm and the ranch. 
 The growth of the town and the demands of 
 the mines gave rise to new resources — re- 
 sources that John R. Murdock was one of the 
 first to discover and appropriate. 
 
 "E. W. Thompson and I," he says, "sent 
 teams to the eastern frontier, where we pur- 
 chased the first saw-mill ever brought to Beav- 
 er or to the southern part of Utah. We put 
 it up on South Creek, where it worked very 
 successfully for a number of years. The coun- 
 
LIFE IN BEAVER 161 
 
 try, however, had no extensive forests, and 
 the lumber trade could not, therefore, continue 
 very long. The saw-mill answered the purposes 
 of those times and supplied the lumber neces- 
 sary for improving the town and multiplying 
 new homes. It was an additional factor in the 
 employment of both capital and labor.'' 
 
 A matter of some importance to the people 
 in the early days of Beaver was its town gov- 
 ernment. John R. Murdock was called to pre- 
 side over the religious destinies of the place. 
 Beaver City had no charter. Upon his elec- 
 tion to the territorial legislature in 1867, he 
 succeeded in getting a bill through, giving to 
 his home town a charter, in consequence of 
 which a municipal government was organized. 
 There was some friction at first, owing to the 
 fact that the people were divided, but he fin- 
 ally succeeded in harmonizing most of them. 
 
 Speaking of his legislative experience he 
 says : "I was elected to the legislature for 
 four consecutive terms. I was also a mem- 
 ber of the Territorial Convention over which 
 General Barnum presided. The object of that 
 convention was to draft a state constitution." 
 
 Only four years had elapsed since his trip 
 U 
 
162 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 across the plains in 1864. They were years 
 of a busy life in which he was the leading fac- 
 tor in the establishment of industrial life in 
 Beaver City. They were years devoted to the 
 care and comforts of his family, a period in 
 which he was given opportunity to discover 
 and develop resources necessary for the well- 
 being and happiness of the people over whom 
 he presided. 
 
 At the close of four years after his call to 
 Beaver, and in the spring of 1868, he was 
 called to conduct a train of seventy-five wag- 
 ons to Laramie City for the purpose of bring- 
 ing to Utah the emigrants who were arriving 
 there. By this time the railroad had made its 
 way across the plains and was ascending the 
 eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains. The 
 days of emigrant trains were soon to be a thing 
 of the past. But the later chapters, as well as 
 the earlier ones in John R. Murdock's pio- 
 neer experiences in Utah, w^ere filled with ac- 
 counts of emigration companies and episodes 
 of a trying character on the plains. 
 
 Speaking of this, his last experience of 
 that kind, he said : "I had seventy-five wag- 
 ons in my train. Fifty of them belonged to the 
 
LIFE IN BEAVER 163 
 
 Church, and twenty-five were private convey- 
 ances. That year, as I remember, six other 
 companies were called for a similar purpose. 
 They were ahead of mine on the way down, 
 but they consisted of only twenty-five wagons 
 each. It was the custom among those com- 
 panies to load in the order of their arrival. Of 
 the two trains ahead of me, Joseph Rawlins 
 was in command of one and Chester Love- 
 land of the other. After loading their trains 
 they set out for home. Just as they were leav- 
 ing, a shipload of passengers arrived by train 
 at Laramie. I, therefore, loaded my train at 
 once and followed the advanced companies. 
 The authorities had advised us to break a new 
 road for about one hundred miles over the old 
 emigrant road on the lower waters. The object 
 of this was to avoid the railroad men who 
 were then engaged in large numbers in the 
 construction of the Union Pacific Railroad. 
 The two companies in advance followed the 
 new road, but my company was so large, and 
 some of my teams were so heavily loaded that I 
 decided, after due deliberation,to follow the old 
 road. This seemed under all the circumstances 
 about the only thing that I could do, and I 
 
164 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 kept along the old Bitter Creek route. The 
 water of that creek was correctly named, for 
 it was bitter indeed. Fortunately, I had two 
 loads of empty barrels, which I was taking as 
 a part of my freight. Before starting out, I 
 took the precaution to fill these with good 
 water for the use of the emigrants. 
 
 ''Before Rawlins left with his company I vis- 
 ited his camp to bid him good-bye and speak 
 encouraging words to the emigrants. He re- 
 marked that as I had a large train and my pas- 
 sengers had not yet arrived he would reach 
 Salt Lake and forget all about his trip before 
 I got there. 'Yes, I suppose so,' I replied." 
 
 That was just the kind of a remark to put 
 the spur deep in the flesh of John R. Mur- 
 dock; competition always gave a healthy im- 
 pulse to his efforts. He naturally loved to 
 excel, wanted to do greater things than others, 
 and was always excessively proud of a good 
 record. All things being equal, his determina- 
 tion not to be outdone never forsook him. If 
 there was anything in this world he knew, per- 
 haps as well as any man, it was how to get the 
 best in a team out of it. He knew how to 
 keep things going. He could keep in mind at 
 
LIFE IN BEAVER 165 
 
 the same time a large number of things to be 
 done immediately, and he rarely ever lost his 
 presence of mind. He foresaw danger and 
 provided against it, and made allowances for 
 every possible contingency which a fertile mind 
 could create. 
 
 Note what he says of this return trip to 
 Utah : ''We did not have to wait for our load, 
 and we made very good time down the Bitter 
 Creek road and across Green River, where we 
 intercepted the old pioneer road. On our ar- 
 rival there, we learned that Rawlins and Love- 
 land had not yet passed. They had been de- 
 tained by the heaviness of their loads and by 
 the Indians, who had driven away some of 
 their stock. The stock, however, they succeed- 
 ed in recovering, but not without delay. We 
 pushed on with our train and reached Salt 
 Lake City without any serious accident except 
 that one boy broke his leg. The emigrants 
 were unloaded in Salt Lake and I returned 
 home to Beaver with my private loads of 
 freight." 
 
 Besides the experiences of a pioneer and 
 those of a legislator, a new duty came to Pres- 
 ident Murdock in the appointment from the 
 
166 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 Territorial Legislature which made him the 
 probate judge of Beaver county. This posi- 
 tion he held for four years. During that time, 
 he entered the town sites of Greenville, Adams- 
 ville, and Minersville. This authority was 
 conferred by the territorial law on the pro- 
 bate judge. 
 
 In the winter of 1874, he again took up his 
 work in the legislature. This work made him 
 more or less familiar with conditions existing 
 in every part of the territory. The work also 
 brought him in contact with the leading men of 
 those times, and enabled him to bring back to 
 his people in Beaver the experiences, sugges- 
 tions, and observations of others similarly lad- 
 en with responsibilities. While he was gen- 
 erous in giving out to others the results of 
 his own experiences, he was equally anxious to 
 gain information from every available source. 
 He made inquiries about the best breeds of 
 stock, about the best implements for the farm, 
 about the best methods of developing the re- 
 sources which he thought were within the 
 reach of his people. He not only possessed 
 the rare faculty of accumulating means from 
 the resources about him, but he was zealous in 
 
LIFE IN BEAVER 167 
 
 urging the people to avail themselves of the 
 very same opportunities that came to him. He 
 rejoiced in the prosperity and progress of 
 others, and he therefore did much to promote 
 the spirit of industry and prudence among 
 those over whom he presided. 
 
 However successful the life of John R. 
 Murdock may appear in its material aspects, 
 however well he performed every duty as- 
 signed to him, and however enviable his repu- 
 tation to others may seem, he nevertheless had 
 his own afflictions. He learned to his sorrow 
 that there are troubles enough in this world to 
 go round, and that as a rule^ each man has his 
 share. One after another of his children died, 
 and with their precious little bodies he buried 
 ambitions and fond hopes which he had cher- 
 ished concerning them. As one reads the 
 story of his life, of the hardships he endured, 
 of his exhausting journeys and bodily priva- 
 tions, one can scarcely withhold the thought 
 that may be, after all, the remarkable physical 
 energies which were lavishly given for the 
 safety and welfare of others, were indirectly 
 the physical disinheritance of his own off- 
 spring; and yet he has lived on to a remark- 
 
168 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 able old age and in the enjoyment of a sturdy 
 and splendid manhood. 
 
 In 1878 he was called to mourn the loss of 
 his first wife, the honorable mother of a large 
 family, though at the time of her death only 
 forty-nine years old. 
 
 Throughout all his maturer years he had re- 
 sponded to a variety of calls which he had al- 
 ways sacredly regarded as missions. In 1880 
 a new mission came to him. It was a call, up- 
 on the recommendation of John Morgan, to 
 preach the gospel in the Southern States. In 
 the experiences of his mission in Tennessee he 
 mentions the acquaintances he made and refers 
 to the work of B. H. Roberts and James T. 
 Hammond in that mission. It has been said 
 in this biography that President Murdock took 
 pleasure in the thought of the things he did, 
 but he took no less pleasure in the friends he 
 made. It was always a source of gratifica- 
 tion to him to claim the friendship of men and 
 women whose character and integrity he es- 
 teemed. His friendships were, after all, more 
 valuable acquisitions than the accumulation of 
 wealth. In speaking not long since about the 
 remarkable experiences and the life of Presi- 
 
LIFE IN BEAVER 169 
 
 dent Murdock the writer was told by the party 
 with whom he was conversing that he was 
 personally not very well acquainted with John 
 R. Murdock. What he knew of him he knew 
 chiefly through his old and intimate friend, 
 Erastus Snow. ''Erastus Snow," said he, "es- 
 teemed President Murdock as one of his best 
 and staunchest friends.'' Strong friendships 
 that last throughout a man's life — friendships 
 with men likewise tried and true are perhaps 
 the best factors in determining the inmost 
 qualities in the life of a man. 
 
 "From Tennessee I went to Nauvoo, 111., to 
 visit my sister Julia. She had been very un- 
 fortunate in her second marriage. I found 
 her at the home of a Mr. Moffet, whose wife 
 took care of her with a sisterly tenderness. 
 Julia's foster mother, Emma, had died, and she 
 was left without a home and under the most 
 distressing circumstances. She was suffering 
 from a cancer in her right breast. This was 
 caused by a severe blow that she had received. 
 I remained with her about one month, but on 
 leaving I left sufficient means to provide for 
 her and to cover the expenses of her burial 
 and of a tombstone. She died soon after my 
 
170 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 departure and was buried in the Catholic cem- 
 etery, having been converted to that faith 
 through her husband's influence. On leaving 
 Nauvoo I returned to Tennessee and continued 
 to travel among the people there until the year 
 1881, when I was released and returned home, 
 where I resumed my ecclesiastical duties." 
 
 Soon after his return from the Southern 
 States, the Edmunds Bill of 1882 was passed. 
 The law, however, was not enforced with re- 
 spect to the offenses against polygamy until 
 the latter part of the year 1884, when the so- 
 called raid began. For four years the most en- 
 ergetic and drastic measures were taken to 
 imprison every man within the territory who 
 acknowledged or sustained more than one wife. 
 The courts allowed the widest scope to be given 
 to the interpretation of the law which was 
 aimed exclusively at the Mormon people. 
 Through a peculiar combination of circum- 
 stances John R. Murdock escaped prosecution, 
 but the sympathy which he manifested for his 
 brethren who were arrested during those try- 
 ing times was both magnanimous and sincere. 
 The court for his district held its sessions at 
 Beaver City. Some of the outlying districts 
 
LIFE IN BEAVER 171 
 
 were more than one hundred miles from this 
 judicial center. A regular corps of deputy 
 marshals scoured the country in quest of poly- 
 gamists and of fees. Men and their wives 
 were brought to Beaver, where many of them 
 were strangers. These had no opportunities to 
 provide themselves with assistance and they 
 must either give bonds or go to jail. The re- 
 quirement of the court in the matter of bonds 
 was strict. Only those of well-known ability 
 to meet financial obligations were accepted. 
 John R. Murdock's financial standing in Bea- 
 ver was first-class and he was ever ready to 
 render every possible assistance to his unfor- 
 tunate brethren, and went on the bonds of 
 not fewer than fifty different men. Nor was 
 this legal and financial assistance the only ex- 
 pression of his kind-hearted sympathy toward 
 those in distress. The hospitality of his home 
 was a source of comfort and consolation to 
 many. The fact that his assistance was so gen- 
 erally sought by men who needed bonds is a 
 splendid testimonial of the confidence that his 
 friends in southern Utah had in him. They 
 had known him for many years and his integ- 
 rity and generous impulses were an assurance 
 
172 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 that he would come to their relief in the hour 
 of distress. Many a man well remembers that 
 in him the old adage was fulfilled, '*A friend 
 in need is a friend indeed." 
 
 John R. Murdock for many years of his life 
 filled one of the most trying positions of any 
 Stake President in the Church. He not only 
 had the opposing elements, and some of them 
 were bitter from a religious point of view, but 
 he also had more or less of the contentious ele- 
 ment within the Church to reckon with. That, 
 however, which w^as not least among the diffi- 
 cult problems which he had to solve was his re- 
 lationship and that of his people to the soldiers 
 who, two miles and a half east of Beaver, oc- 
 cupied Fort Cameron. A military post under 
 ordinary circumstances so near a community is 
 always a source of more or less friction. In 
 his case the difficulties were doubly great. The 
 preservation of the morals of the people, espe- 
 cially those of the young people, required his 
 careful, constant w^atch care. The officers at 
 the Fort manifested in numerous ways their 
 respect for the religious leader of the com- 
 munity near which the soldiers were stationed. 
 In view of the religious differences and at 
 
LIFE IN BEAVER 173 
 
 times the great unpopularity of the Mormon 
 people, it was often extremely difficult to avoid 
 contentions. All things considered it may 
 fairly be said that President Murdock conduct- 
 ed himself wisely under the peculiar circum- 
 stances and under the delicate relations which 
 existed between citizens and soldiers. 
 
 When, later. General "Phil" Sheridan came 
 to Utah and visited Fort Cameron, he was re- 
 ceived by the officers and troops at Milford, 
 the railroad terminus. John R. Murdock from 
 the days of his Mormon Battalion experiences 
 felt a special pride in military discipline. He 
 had been a soldier in his country's service, had 
 undergone severe trials, and had always con- 
 ducted himself in such a manner as to make 
 him' proud of his military record. Quite a 
 number of his family before him had enjoyed 
 distinguished military honors and it is not too 
 much to say that he inherited military tend- 
 encies. 
 
 As he had been a soldier in the service of 
 his country and was perhaps the most con- 
 spicuous citizen in the community at Beaver, 
 he felt it a pleasure as well as a duty to wel- 
 come at Milford the distinguished military 
 
174 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 hero of the Shenandoah Valley. The General 
 accepted the invitation to ride in President 
 Murdock's carriage and the two now made 
 their way to Fort Cameron. 
 
 When the war department at Washington 
 finally determined to abandon Fort Cameron, 
 its buildings were offered for sale at public 
 auction. John R. Murdock felt that it was 
 very desirable that these buildings and the 
 land, as soon as it could be secured from the 
 general government, be devoted to some pub- 
 lic use. He therefore enlisted with him' the 
 support of the Church and the aid of his son- 
 in-law, Philo T. Farnsworth, in the purchase 
 of the buildings. 
 
 The government had expended something 
 like two hundred thousand dollars in the con- 
 struction of the Fort, which occupied a beau- 
 tiful spot at the mouth of Beaver Canyon. 
 The buildings were large and so erected as to 
 leave a broad public square in the center for 
 parades and military drills. All these build- 
 ings were bid in by the above-named parties 
 at the modest sum of forty-eight hundred dol- 
 lars. Later, President Murdock succeeded in 
 securing the title to the land upon which the 
 
LIFE IN BEAVER 175 
 
 buildings stood, as they would be of no value 
 without it. 
 
 A guard was assigned to the Fort as a pro- 
 tection against the vandalism that might have 
 soon made the place comparatively worthless. 
 As soon as patents for the land were secured 
 steps were taken to make some disposition of 
 it for the benefit of the public. It was finally 
 detennined by these two liberal and patriotic 
 citizens to contribute their share of Fort Cam- 
 eron to the Brigham Young Academy of Provo 
 in order that a branch school of that institu- 
 tion might be established there. The gift was 
 gratefully accepted, and the organization of 
 the Beaver Branch as it was familiarly known 
 was efiFected. 
 
 The school opened under favorable circum- 
 stances ; from the outset there were something 
 like two hundred in attendance and the school 
 yearly increased in both numbers and effici- 
 ency. Nor was this the end of John R. Mur- 
 dock's efforts. He, with a few other leading 
 men, pledged himself to render financial sup- 
 port to the school of something like twelve 
 hundred dollars annually for a given number 
 of years. He was a loyal supporter of the in- 
 
176 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 stitution, and manifested a special pride in its 
 progress, and was liberal in the expenditure of 
 means for its growth. 
 
 Much of his time in subsequent years was 
 given to the improvement of the buildings 
 which he frequently visited and whose im- 
 provement he often planned. He was always 
 on hand when educational men visited the 
 school and showed them every courtesy and at- 
 tention. He was an appreciative man and was 
 a strong admirer of good quality and intellec- 
 tual refinement in manhood and womanhood. 
 From the day of its dedication by Apostles Ly- 
 man and Teasdale he worked unceasingly to 
 promote its usefulness, not only to the com- 
 munities in Beaver County, but to the commu- 
 nities throughout southern Utah. 
 
 He continued to preside over the Beaver 
 Stake until 1892, when, to the surprise of the 
 people and to the Church leaders, he offered 
 his resignation. He was sixty-six years of age 
 and had borne the burden of public responsi- 
 bilities in a most liberal manner from the time 
 that he entered the Mormon Battalion. All 
 the best years of his life had been devoted to 
 his Church and his state with scrupulous re- 
 
Life in beaver i7? 
 
 gard for claims that both laid upon him. 
 It was not an easy matter to find a suitable 
 man to succeed him, as his leadership over the 
 people was pronounced, both from the stand- 
 point of their financial and religious interests. 
 The First Presidency, therefore, accepted his 
 resignation with great reluctance. He was, 
 however, in his retirement universally esteemed 
 as a leader, and the people manifested their high 
 regard for him whenevet there was an oppor- 
 tunity to do him poHtical honor. 
 
 12 
 
178 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCIC 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE EVENING OF LIFE 
 
 After laying aside the public cares and re- 
 sponsibilities of a life that made large and 
 constant demands upon his physical, spiritual, 
 and intellectual power, he felt some freedom in 
 moving about at his own pleasure, and of ren- 
 dering service wherever and whenever an op- 
 portunity offered. John R. Murdock, while 
 a careful man in the administration of his pri- 
 vate affairs, was nevertheless open-hearted and 
 generous in every public undertaking. He was 
 kind to the poor, quick to respond in the hour 
 of distress, and generous to all classes. A 
 federal officer who served some years in the 
 district of Beaver once said of him : "Whenever 
 there was a paper passed around soliciting 
 private contributions, it was first taken to John 
 R. Murdock, who was always expected to head 
 the list. Opposite the amount contributed w^as 
 usually found the word paid. The officers of 
 the court, in various charities, felt compelled, 
 through a sense of pride, to contribute half the 
 amiount given by a Mormon Bishop. He often 
 
THE EVENING OF LIFE 179 
 
 placed his contribution at a figure which his 
 non-Mormon friends did not always like to 
 meet by the donation of one-half that given by 
 him'. He was certainly a generous-spirited 
 and charitable man/' 
 
 His interests and contributions covered a 
 wide field. Not least among his contributions 
 was his support of the Temples. In these build- 
 ings he felt a special pride. "To the Saint 
 George Temple," he said, ''I subscribed be- 
 tween four and five thousand dollars ; to the 
 Manti Temple I gave over six thousand ; and 
 to the Salt Lake Temple, near the time of its 
 completion, fifteen hundred and twenty-five 
 dollars, in addition to former donations." He 
 was one of the body of men w^ho met in Salt 
 Lake City in 1892, at a special meeting of the 
 leaders of the Church, which included stake 
 presidents, to take into consideration the best 
 ways and means for the completion of the Salt 
 Lake Temple. A special effort was put forth 
 to bring about the completion of that edifice 
 in order that it might be dedicated in the 
 spring of 1893. To finish it, something like 
 twenty thousand dollars were required. At a 
 priesthood meeting the matter was laid before 
 
180 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 these leading men. John R« Murdock prompt- 
 ly arose and suggested that those present on 
 that occasion first determine what they them- 
 selves could do before appealing to the people. 
 President Cannon approved the suggestion and 
 asked him to start the contribution. This he 
 did by setting the pace at one thousand dol- 
 lars. Thereupon a person was appointed to 
 go through the audience and receive the con- 
 tributions of others. President Murdock was 
 then asked if he would not bear the expense 
 of one of the three beautiful art windows in 
 the interior of the Temple. He promptly re- 
 sponded in the affirmative, and gave as above 
 mentioned on that occasion fifteen hundred and 
 twenty-five dollars. When there is taken into 
 consideration his years of gratuitous service to 
 the interests of the Church in bringing emi- 
 grants to the valleys of the mountains, in pro- 
 viding ways and means for the support of pub- 
 lic institutions, the public-spirited manner in 
 which he met any call legitimately laid upon 
 him, it will be conceded that few men in Utah 
 have done more to entitle them' to the respect 
 of the people than he has done throughout a 
 lifelong service. 
 
THE EVENING OF LIFE 181 
 
 From the time that John R. Murdock, a 
 mere child, had been consigned to the tender 
 mercies of strangers, to his later years in Utah, 
 he had known but Httle of his people who re- 
 mained at their homes in Ohio. He was a 
 child, and therefore not of much consequence 
 to them, especially in view of the fact that his 
 lot had been cast with an unpopular people. 
 His family on his mother's side had rendered 
 a considerable military service. His Uncle 
 Henry Clapp, his mother's brother, had a son, 
 Major William H. Clapp, who was then sta- 
 tioned in the Sixteenth United States Regi- 
 ment at Fort Douglas. About the time of his 
 retirement from eccleiastical services, his Un- 
 cle Henry came to Utah for the purpose of 
 visiting his son, the major. The cousin bore 
 the distinguished honor of having fought in 
 the Union Army during the rebellion. 
 
 While in Utah his uncle paid him a visit in 
 Beaver. They had not seen each other for 
 more than sixty-five years. The prominence 
 of the nephew in the affairs of Utah Territory 
 made him a worthy object of honor to his 
 Uncle Henry Clapp. It was on this visit that 
 the nephew learned of the Clapp genealogy, 
 
182 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 which had been followed back to the tenth cen- 
 tury, and in this genealogical record the family 
 name of Clapp was traced back to King Ca- 
 nute's court in England. The publications 
 contained the names of ten thousand six hun- 
 dred people. To John R. Murdock the dis- 
 covery of this record was a matter of first im- 
 portance. After his resignation from' the pres- 
 idency of Beaver Stake, he was ordained a pa- 
 triarch. This gave him not only the opportunity 
 to perform the functions of his new calling, 
 but to labor in the Temples, which he had 
 helped to erect for the salvation of his kindred 
 dead. 
 
 In the evening of life he could surrender 
 himself to the spiritual enjoyment that comes 
 from associations in the House of God. To 
 him it was miraculously marvelous that in the 
 hour of a genealogical need the publication of 
 such a family record was brought to his knowl- 
 edge. 
 
 He was one of those who in 1893 enjoyed 
 the privilege of taking part in the dedication 
 of the great Salt Lake Temple, which for so 
 many years had been in the process of con- 
 struction. It was a grand occasion in his life, 
 
THE EVENING OF LIFE 183 
 
 an occasion in which his family could partici- 
 pate with him. His oldest daughter, Mrs. P. 
 T. Farnsworth, had moved from Milford to 
 Salt Lake City, where the hospitality of her 
 home was enjoyed by her father. 
 
 In the year 1892 John R. Murdock was ap- 
 pointed a member of the Utah Agricultural 
 Commission to the World's Fair. In the fol- 
 lowing year, in September, with his wife Mary 
 Ellen, he paid a visit to that great exposition. 
 
 After the death of his first wife, his wife 
 Mary Ellen, who had always been prominent 
 in the counsels of his family, became a strong 
 supporter of those liberal policies which char- 
 acterized the later years of his life. Her devo- 
 tion to the Church and her pride in its material 
 welfare made her enthusiastic over the comple- 
 tion of the Temples. In educational matters 
 she seconded the efforts of her husband, who 
 did so much to establish and maintain the 
 academy which subsequently bore his name. 
 Mrs. Mary Ellen Murdock will always be 
 gratefully remembered by those who enjoyed 
 the hospitality of her home during those try- 
 ing hours when men and women were sorely 
 afflicted by the persecutions which so many of 
 
184 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 the people had to bear from 1884 to 1890. 
 In later years it was her good fortune to enjoy 
 the opportunities of visiting with her husband 
 many of the early land marks of Church His- 
 tory, and at a time when her husband felt the 
 need of her companionship and care. 
 
 She had accepted the principle of plural mar- 
 riage, which she consistently supported and 
 faithfully carried out. In the early efforts of 
 members of the Church to practice a belief 
 against the traditions of centuries and the sel- 
 fishness of human nature, her faith predomi- 
 nated ; and in the evening of life, after all the 
 disturbances, discords, and trials of her earlier 
 year had been overcome, she saw no reason to 
 recant or doubt the principle she had done so 
 much to perpetuate and honor. On her jour- 
 ney, therefore, to the East, her testimony was 
 mingled with her husband's wherever oppor- 
 tunity afforded. 
 
 The World's Fair was the greatest in- 
 dustrial exhibition that the world had ever 
 witnessed. John R. Murdock passed through 
 its buildings and witnessed there the achieve- 
 ments in science, art, and inventions. He 
 was impressed by the wonderful changes that 
 
THE EVENING OF LIFE 185 
 
 had taken place since his boyhood days when 
 he himself was a humble and despised citizen 
 of Illinois. The contrast to his mind was strik- 
 ing. The marvelous and the wonderful changes 
 were so great as to be miraculous to him'. 
 
 He himself, however, was not without his 
 honorable place in the march of modern civ- 
 ilization ; he was a pioneer to the new and un- 
 developed West. Within his own life there 
 was a wonderful story of change and progress. 
 What he himself had witnessed within his life- 
 time was a most remarkable transformation in 
 the life, opportunities, and achievements of 
 men. Few men were in a better position to ap- 
 preciate that great exposition than he was. He 
 mentions, too, with pride the satisfaction he 
 felt in the distinguished place occupied at the 
 World's Fair by the great Tabernacle choir. 
 
 As the vision of this remarkable progress 
 crowded upon his mind, he became reminiscent ; 
 he remembered the beginnings of his own life 
 and longed to visit the places where he had 
 passed his childhood. After his stay at the 
 Fair he visited his birth-place in Orange town- 
 ship, Cuyahoga County, Ohio. In the well- 
 kept cemetery there, his mother had been laid 
 
186 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 away in his early childhood. He was told that 
 she was the first person to occupy a grave in 
 that city of the dead. 
 
 Orange township is about fifteen miles east 
 of Cleveland. While in that neighborhood he 
 also visited the tow^n of Mentor, which is 
 about six miles west of Painesville. Mentor 
 was the home of his mother's family. While 
 there he listened to an address by Governor 
 McKinley, a governor who subsequently be- 
 came president. It evidently made a most 
 favorable impression upon him. He refers to 
 President McKinley as an impressive and in- 
 spiring speaker. During the upheaval in 
 Utah over the silver question, John R. Mur- 
 dock stood firmly in 1896 for President Mc- 
 Kinley and his policy. 
 
 From Ohio he returned to Chicago, where 
 he visited the principal places of interest. Its 
 great mercantile houses interested him and 
 the stock yards excited his wonder. His trav- 
 els abroad were in striking contrast with his 
 travels during his frontier life. He had both 
 the means and the inclination to enjoy such 
 a tour. He returned to his home in 
 October of that vear. 
 
THE EVENING OF LIFE 187 
 
 The last years of John R. Murdock's life 
 were characterized by strong political color- 
 ing. When the people of Utah divided upon 
 national party lines he cast his lot with the 
 Republicans. In the fall of 1894 he was ap- 
 pointed a delegate from Utah to the national 
 Republican league which met that year in 
 Denver, Colorado. 
 
 About that time his life was tinged with 
 sadness through the death of his oldest son, 
 familiarly known as "J^^^^y*' -^^ ^^^ 
 died at McCammon, Idaho, while on his way 
 from that place to his father's home in Beaver. 
 
 The division of party lines created consider- 
 able excitement throughout the territory. It 
 was a newly found occupation to many of 
 Utah's prominent men. The political excite- 
 ment of those times pointed to the early ad- 
 mission of Utah as a state. Fraternal good 
 feeling was quite universally manifested. Con- 
 gress passed an enabling act, calling for a con- 
 stitutional convention, which met in Salt Lake 
 City on the 4th of March, 1895. To this con- 
 vention he was elected a delegate and was 
 made chairman of the water and irrigation 
 committee. He was also a, strong advocate of 
 
188 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 woman's suffrage. He took a general interest 
 in all those constitutional provisions which 
 safe-guarded the rights of the people of Utah. 
 
 In November of that year, when the first of- 
 ficers were elected, the state went Republican. 
 Men of all classes, without respect to religious 
 dififerences were elected to office. The advent, 
 therefore, of Utah to statehood was an im- 
 portant milestone in the history of his life in 
 Utah. 
 
 On the 7th of April, in Salt Lake City, the 
 first Republican convention was held. John R. 
 Murdock was a delegate and became its first 
 chaplain. John E. Dooly was chairman, and 
 Julia Farnsworth, subsequently Julia Lund, a 
 granddaughter of President Murdock, was sec- 
 retary. 
 
 The year 1897 was a jubilee in the history 
 of the Utah pioneers. It was fifty years since 
 the Mormon leaders had first entered the val- 
 ley of Great Salt Lake. It was, therefore, fit- 
 ting that a celebration in honor of those vet- 
 erans be held. It was a joyous occasion. All 
 classes took part in the celebration. To wear 
 the pioneer's badge on the 24th of July, 1897, 
 was a rare distinction bestowed upon those 
 
THE EVENING OF LIFE 189 
 
 entitled to the honor. Among them' was John 
 R. Murdock, a member of the Mormon Bat- 
 talion, whose hardships exceeded even those 
 of the pioneers. The legislature had appropri- 
 ated to each county one hundred and twenty- 
 five dollars with which to prepare some ap- 
 propriate display in the parade on the 24th. 
 President Murdock was made an agent for the 
 expenditure of this fund for Beaver county, 
 and prepared a sulphur grotto float, which 
 was indeed a unique display. His daughter 
 Almira was chosen as Beaver county's queen 
 on that occasion. 
 
 In the parade he was assigned to the com- 
 mand of the survivors of the Mormon Bat- 
 talion, about thirty-five in number, a distinction 
 which he truly merited, not only as a part of 
 the organization, but because of his conspicu- 
 ous and prominent part in the pioneer life of 
 Utah. To him it was a great day. Between 
 that day and the day when he was marshaled 
 into the service on the banks of the Missouri 
 river there lay fifty years of remarkable vicis- 
 situdes and experiences. No wonder his heart 
 was touched. He never dreamed of such hon- 
 ors during all the years in which he was win- 
 
190 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 ning a title to them. No wonder he said, 
 "When I saw those venerable survivors of the 
 Mormon Battalion and the Utah pioneers the 
 tears would come to my eyes. The scene was 
 indeed sublime and pathetic.'' 
 
 As time went on, the political affairs of Utah 
 became more interesting. The political major- 
 ities of the Republican party were swept away 
 by the free silver excitement. Utah cast an 
 overwhelming vote for Mr. Bryan. However, 
 in the fall of 1898 John R. Murdock was nom- 
 inated by acclamation as a representative to 
 the state legislature. He at first declined the 
 honor of the nomination, but finally yielded to 
 the persuasion of his friends, who were not 
 mistaken about the loyalty of the people of 
 Beaver county to him and the support he 
 would receive from them. Though the county 
 had always been Democratic he was neverthe- 
 less elected, November 8th, to the third state 
 legislature. He was the senior of the house. 
 He belonged during the session of the legisla- 
 ture of that year to a frail Republican minority. 
 He v/itnessed the exciting scenes in the bitter 
 contest for the election of a United States sen- 
 ator ; and in that body of men who were exhib- 
 
THE EVENING OF LIFE 191 
 
 iting the greatest factional enmity, he became 
 a peacemaker. A man of naturally generous in- 
 stincts, his influence was persuasive upon oth- 
 ers. He did much to mitigate animosities that 
 had been almost unbearable. 
 
 During those experiences, however, he 
 formed new friendships which became to him 
 a source of satisfaction in subsequent years. 
 
 His political influence was no greater than 
 his interest in those conventions which were 
 called to promote the material welfare of the 
 West. He was a member of the irrigation con- 
 gress at Missoula, Montana, in September, 
 1899 ; and in 1900 he was a member of the con- 
 vention that nominated James T. Hammond 
 as a representative to congress. Though ad- 
 vanced in years, his manly form became con- 
 spicuous in political assemblies and various 
 conventions of the people. His interests had 
 grown far beyond the stake over which he 
 formerly presided. He took a special in- 
 terest in the proposed projects for the irriga- 
 tion of the great West. His extensive travels 
 over the western deserts gave to him a sympa- 
 thetic interest in whatever gave promise of 
 their reclamation. 
 
192 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCIC 
 
 In speaking of his family attachments, he re 
 fers to the return to Utah of his brother Or- 
 rice, who had been with him in the Mormon 
 Battalion. "This brother,*' he says, "remained 
 in California until the year 1848, when he came 
 to Utah. Here he married, but upon the death 
 of his wife he married a second time and went 
 back to Iowa, where he remained for a season. 
 Later he went to Nebraska, where his second 
 wife died and he returned to Utah in 1896. 
 
CHARACTER SKETCH 193 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 CHARACTER SKETCH 
 
 A mother's love throughout a man's Hfe is 
 always tender and solacing. In moments of 
 depression, in hours of disappointment, and in 
 the trying ordeals of this world, especially in 
 bodily infirmities, it is indeed one of the surest 
 anchors to a man's hope and joy. In childhood 
 it is all but indispensable to the clinging nature 
 and loving regard of a boy. Those who have 
 felt a mother's tenderness and love throughout 
 their youth wonder as they look back in life 
 how they could have been happy without it. 
 There is always something wanting in a man's 
 life when he is deprived of that fond sympathy 
 and loving care. Their loss constitutes a void 
 which nothing else can fill. John R. Murdock 
 was thrown out upon the world at a time of life 
 when his earliest recollections merely called to 
 mind the fact that he once had a mother, but 
 her tender care and loving fondness never came 
 within any lasting memories. He was a mother- 
 less boy and was left to the care and mercy of 
 13 
 
194 JOUS RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 strangers. Such a loss, however, is not with- 
 out its compensation. If he had to win his way 
 in the world upon the merit of his industry and 
 patience, he also learned in life that if he were 
 to enjoy the love of others he must win it. 
 Life, therefore, with him from the beginning 
 was one of conquest. From childhood, his 
 life was a struggle for material, spiritual, and 
 social betterment, and he therefore realized how 
 he came by every confidence, every friendship, 
 and every heart-felt devotion that made life 
 joyful to him. Throughout all the years of 
 his manhood he esteemed the friendships of 
 life as the most valuable assets that he acquired 
 in his associations with others. If there is any 
 one thing in the life of John R. Murdock more 
 characteristic than another, it is the deep-seated 
 love and confidence which he always mani- 
 fested for his friends. That a worthy man, 
 tried and true, was his friend was more to him 
 than a passing circumstance. Speaking of 
 those he knew, especially in trying ordeals of 
 earlier days, he is wont to say, "He is my 
 friend." 
 
 Nor was his sense of appreciation for the 
 friendship of others any greater than the de- 
 
CHARACTER SKETCH 195 
 
 votion which he always manifested toward 
 those who won and enjoyed his confidence and 
 love. His feelings were intense. With him 
 there was nothing too good in this world for 
 those he esteemed as his friends. His friend- 
 ship was always sincere and heartfelt. Who, 
 that has seen him meet an old-time companion 
 with whom he had been closely associated in 
 life, that has not noticed the light of an inward 
 and supreme satisfaction beam in his eyes, and 
 joy radiate from his whole being. The recol- 
 lections, therefore, of those personal associa- 
 tions and friendly ties cheered him on his way 
 wherever his lot was cast among men. 
 
 xA^nother and peculiar characteristic of the 
 man was his native industry and untiring zeal. 
 What he put his hands to do he did with all his 
 heart. There was about him an inspiring en- 
 thusiasm" which was alw^ays refreshing and en- 
 couraging. In early life he had to do things 
 whether they were difficult or not, whether they 
 were agreeable or disagreeable, tasteful or dis- 
 tasteful. He learned, therefore, to apply his 
 will power to every task that beset him, nor 
 had his tasks been easy ones. If there were 
 difficult places to be filled, if a man was wanted 
 
196 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 whose courage rarely or never failed him, John 
 R. Murdock was sought after whenever he 
 was available. From the habit of conquering 
 unusual and difficult tasks in early life, things 
 that looked hard to others were easy to him; 
 and when he knew, therefore, a thing could be 
 done he was not easily turned from the under- 
 taking. What made him helpful to so many 
 of his fellow-men was the fact that hav- 
 ing learned what he himself could do, he also 
 learned what others could do for themselves 
 if they would only venture. From the habit of 
 doing things he became deviceful, ingenious, 
 and had at his command all sorts of contriv- 
 ances for getting on in the world. 
 
 Throughout southern Utah the name of 
 John R. Murdock is a household word to 
 thousands; his prominent position in the 
 Church and his -services in political life made 
 him conspicuous to the public eye. All those 
 days of his public life he deported himself in 
 a modest and becoming manner. While he was 
 unassuming, he always possessed sufficient dig- 
 nity to command the respect of those with whom 
 he was associated. He was a leader in the 
 highest and best sense of the term. In teach- 
 
CHARACTER SKETCH 197 
 
 ing others the work and the duties of a pioneer, 
 he could point to a model record of his own 
 pioneer days. When teaching others whatever 
 was necessary to do, he first did it himself, 
 and did it well. He was more a man of action 
 than a man of words. The experiences of his 
 early life taught him' prudence, and the diffi- 
 culties and triumphs of his early manhood gave 
 him wisdom'. Perhaps no higher compliment 
 could be paid to his consistent, well-balanced 
 life than to say that he was always a safe man. 
 Throughout all his history he is found on the 
 safe side of every question. He was not car- 
 ried away by excitement ; for he was cool and 
 deliberative. He was not easily deceived, for 
 he alw^ays possessed a conscientious regard for 
 the truth. By nature he was free, frank, and 
 open. 
 
 To the everlasting honor and credit of John 
 R. Murdock, it may be truly said of him, that 
 he was a model ex-Stake President. When he 
 lay down voluntarily, and from his own high 
 sense of duty, the conspicuous office which he 
 held for so many years of his life, he must 
 have realized that he surrendered an honor 
 which he, like other conscientious men, must 
 
198 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 have highly esteemed. From the day he stepped 
 out of that office he never manifested the least 
 sentiment of dissatisfaction, discontent, or 
 envy. His soul never soured, no jealousy actu- 
 ated him; he was just as devoted, loyal, and 
 true in the humble walks of life as he had been 
 while clothed with the dignities of a high and 
 important office. He never descended to things 
 that were unbecoming and undignified in one 
 who had enjoyed distinguished honors. He 
 was just as loyal to his new president as any 
 other man had ever been to him. He never be- 
 littled his former office or calling. There are 
 always misgivings about those who surrender 
 authority and the dignities of a high office. Few 
 men who stand high in command in life main- 
 tain their zeal when in the ranks. It is hard 
 for most men in such circumstances to forget 
 what they have been and become so wedded to 
 principle that its triumph is of more conse- 
 quence to them than their own personal ambi- 
 tion, or the honors of the world; and when 
 President Murdock determined to ask that the 
 duties and honors of his office be conferred 
 upon others, he did so in the sincerest convic- 
 tion that it was in the interest, first of all to 
 
CHARACTER SKETCH 199 
 
 the Church, and secondly to his own personal 
 well-being. The step he never regretted, and 
 the influence of his life was as conspicuous in 
 his retirement as it had been in his ministra- 
 tions. What has been said may here be re- 
 peated "John R Mug^j^^^^^el ex- 
 Stake President. •^^'sb.^ 
 
 That which made the life of John R. Mur- 
 dock both interesting and inspiring through- 
 out a long and consistent career was the en- 
 thusiasm which he brought to every task, and 
 an accompanying ambition that never forsook 
 him from the period covered between fire of 
 youth and the calm of old age. Enthusiasm 
 and ambition frequently manifest themselves in 
 youth. Their chief value, however, is to be 
 found in the will power sufficiently strong to 
 make the dreams of youth a reality in after life. 
 Those who know the man will readily testify 
 that his enthusiasm never waned, that there 
 were behind him ambitions that were con- 
 stantly urging him to a better and higher life. 
 
 But even enthusiasm and ambition and will 
 power are of little value to a man that does 
 not sincerely and earnestly work. John R. 
 Murdock was never, throughout a long and 
 
200 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 distinguished career, an idle man. In youth 
 there was about him a physical prowess that 
 enabled him to do extraordinary things and 
 accomplish unusual tasks. All through life, 
 even after the blessings of material well-being 
 came to him, he was the same industrious man 
 that he had been in youth and upon the plains. 
 
 In old age, when his physical powers were 
 yielding to the decrees of Father Time, his 
 mind was occupied in the companionship of 
 good books. Knowledge always interested and 
 delighted him ; and when the struggles of early 
 life gave way to the opportunities of intellec- 
 tual pursuits, he manifested an uncommon 
 pleasure in the intellectual acquirements of 
 men and the progress of human life. With a 
 God-given intellect which it had been his good 
 fortune in life to enjoy, it is not easy to say 
 what his station in the world would have been 
 had he been born in a scholastic atmosphere, 
 and had he been allowed to enjoy from his 
 youth the advantages of good schools. 
 
 The writer, having known President Mur- 
 dock for many years, confesses some surprise 
 at the achievements of the man, not having 
 known his earlier record. A closer study into 
 
CHARACTER SKETCH 201 
 
 his life and character reveals the fact that John 
 R. Murdock was a man highly endowed, and 
 a man who put to most excellent service the 
 talents and extraordinary powers which a kind 
 and benevolent Creator had placed at his com- 
 mand. This eulogy upon the life of the man is 
 far in excess of that which the writer believed 
 he could justly give when he began the task of 
 this biography. Little by little and with ever- 
 increasing conviction there has grown upon the 
 writer an enthusiastic admiration for the sub- 
 ject of this sketch, and what he has written has 
 been the result largely of a more familiar 
 knowledge of the man which the study of his 
 career has given. 
 
 Fearing that this eulogy might appear to be 
 a highly colored panegyric on the life of John 
 R. Murdock, the writer has sought the opinions 
 of others, one of which is hereby given by a 
 man whose knowledge of men in general, and 
 of John R. Murdock in particular, qualifies him 
 to speak as one having authority. 
 
 "Are you well acquainted with John R. Mur- 
 dock?" asked the writer, of President Francis 
 M. Lyman. 
 
 "Yes, indeed,*' was the reply. "I have known 
 him nearly all my life," 
 
202 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 "What, in your judgment/' further queried 
 the writer, "were the most striking character- 
 istics of the man V 
 
 "The most remarkable thing about John R. 
 Murdock,'' he continued, "was his unyielding, 
 his undying faith in the prophetic mission of 
 Joseph Smith. He is naturally a great student, 
 and in late years has been an indefatigable 
 reader. You will find him well versed in an- 
 cient history and familiar with the history of 
 his own country, especially that of the early 
 patriots. When he went on his mission some 
 years ago to the Southern States, he learned 
 perhaps, what he never knew before, the real 
 value of the Book of Mormon. He became a 
 close student of the book and an enthusiastic 
 advocate of its teachings.*' 
 
 "President Murdock always possessed most 
 excellent business qualifications, and so far as 
 I know, all his accummulations of wealth were 
 brought about in the most honorable manner. 
 He has always attended carefully to the details 
 of his business, and has been a hard worker as 
 well as an industrious student. He has al- 
 ways been a good judge of men, and when on 
 the plains he had a happy faculty of getting 
 along well with the emigrants and looking af- 
 
CHARACTER SKETCH 203 
 
 ter their comfort and safety. He was also an 
 excellent judge of animals, and I have heard it 
 said of him that in those days of the ox-team 
 emigration he knew every ox and where every 
 ox belonged with respect to the wagon to 
 which it was hitched and with respect to the 
 team in which it worked. From what I can 
 learn, John R. Murdock was perhaps the great- 
 est of all the captains that conducted emigrant 
 companies across the plains. 
 
 "As a stake president he always gave satis- 
 faction and it was some time before the pres- 
 idency would consent to his release. He has 
 sustained himself well throughout life, and is 
 not only a man of affairs but is really quite a 
 philosopher. After he was released from his 
 duties as president of the Beaver Stake, he 
 never sulked, never got into a corner, but stood 
 right at his president's side and was helpful 
 to him in every possible manner. We have 
 always taken him into our private counsels 
 whenever we visited Beaver and had business 
 of any importance to transact. I consider his 
 conduct as an ex-president most commendable. 
 Of course, there are those who have criticized 
 him. No man who has b^^n as prominent 
 
204 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 among his fellow men as he has been can hope 
 to escape criticism." 
 
 The author of the foregoing statement may 
 be a little surprised to find it in print, but it 
 was given in such a free, frank, and sincere 
 manner that the writer has taken the liberty 
 to quote the remarks as accurately as possible 
 and immediately after they were uttered. 
 
 A study of the life and character of John R. 
 Murdock has revealed the fact that many a 
 man lives comparatively unknown to the world 
 and unappreciated simply because his life of 
 extraordinary usefulness and great accom- 
 plishments has not been recorded on the pages 
 of history. 
 
 At the time of this writing, Jan. 1, 1999, he 
 lives in Beaver City at the venerable age of 
 eighty-two years. The vision of his mind car- 
 ries him back over almost the entire history of 
 the Church. With its leading men and its great 
 events he has been closely associated. He, 
 too, has learned the value of a well-spent and 
 useful life. 
 
 Joseph M. Tanner. 
 
Family of John Riggs Murdock. 
 
 FIRST FAMILY. 
 
 John Riggs Murdock,born September 13,1826. 
 Wife, Almira H. Lott, born December 15, 
 
 1829; married. November 13, 1849; died 
 
 December 16, 1878. 
 His children by her are as follows : 
 
 John C. Murdock, born December 17, 
 1850. 
 
 Julia P. Murdock, born December 23, 1852. 
 
 Orrin P. Murdock, born April 22, 1855 ; 
 died September 8, 1863. 
 
 William S. Murdock, born September 15, 
 1857; died October 15, 1857. 
 
 Joseph R. Murdock, born May 19, 1860. 
 
 George C. Murdock, born July 6, 1862. 
 
 Orrice C. Murdock, born August 31, 1866. 
 
 Benjamin Murdock, stillborn 1869. 
 
 SECOND FAMILY. 
 
 Wife, Mary Ellen Wolfenden, born November 
 12, 1842; married January 10, 1863. 
 
206 JOHN RIGGS MURDOCK 
 
 His children by her are as follows : 
 
 Charles E. Murdock, born December 12, 
 
 1864. 
 Sarah A. Murdock, born November 12, 
 
 1866; died July 27, 1867. 
 Mary I. Murdock, born May 18, 1866; 
 
 died August 27, 1869. 
 Lillie M. Murdock, born July 9, 1870, 
 
 died Febuary 25, 1884. 
 Phoebe J. Murdock, born March 11, 
 
 1873 ; died December 27, 1874. 
 Abraham E. Murdock, born October 6, 
 
 1875 ; died June 6, 1876. 
 Albert P. Murdock, (twin) born April 1, 
 
 1877; died May 7, 1877. 
 Arthur W. Murdock, (twin) born April 1, 
 
 1877; died May 10, 1877. 
 Almirah H. Murdock, born January IS, 
 
 1879. 
 John R. Murdock, Jr., born July 30, 1883. 
 
 THIRD FAMILY. 
 
 Wife, May Bain, born October 25, 1833 ; mar- 
 ried December 10, 1863. 
 Alexander Murdock, stillborn, December, 1866. 
 
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