Chapter Fourteen
A very ill Brigham Young left Montrose, Iowa, and crossed the Mississippi River to Nauvoo on September fourteenth. Mary Ann Young, also sick, was left with a ten-day-old daughter and with the rest of their children so ill that none of the family could even go to the well for a pail of water. Brigham had lost nearly everything in Missouri and was so destitute that each member of his family had only one set of clothes. One of the brethren helped Brigham make it the thirty or so rods to the riverbank and rowed the Apostle across in a boat. By the time they reached the other side, Brigham could barely move. Another Church member, Israel Barlow, put him on a horse and carried him to Heber Kimball’s house, where he totally collapsed again.
The Kimball family were in about the same straits as the Youngs. Heber was violently ill. On August twenty-third, Vilate Kimball gave birth to David Patten Kimball. Still weak from childbirth, she was no better than her husband. The only one well enough to help fetch food and drink for the rest of his family was little four-year-old Heber Parley Kimball.
Learning that Brigham had not made it any farther than across the river to Nauvoo, Mary Ann Young, leaving all but the baby in the care of friends, crossed the river on the seventeenth of September and persuaded a boy to take her to the Kimballs’. Her intent was to come over and help nurse Brigham, but just as it had done to him, the effort of getting that far exhausted her, and she simply joined her husband and the Kimballs in their sickbeds.
It had been almost six months since Brigham had led his fellow Apostles to the square at Far West, Missouri, and there, shortly after midnight, fulfilled the commandment of the Lord. Six months! It had been over a month since Wilford Woodruff and John Taylor had left. And he and Heber, the two senior Apostles, still lay languishing in Nauvoo. In Brigham’s mind, it was long enough. Sickbed or not, it was time to leave. That night, he sent a girl to the Steeds with a message for Matthew. It was time to pack. They would leave in the morning.
Matthew slowed his step, looking around. The yard was filled with evidence that Heber had just recently completed this log cabin—wood chips, tree limbs, logs that had split in the wrong place. The door to the cabin was shut, and no one was in sight. A wagon and a team of mules were standing in the yard. A boy, about fifteen, stood beside the wagon, holding the reins. “Mornin’,” Matthew said.
“Mornin’,” the boy replied cheerfully.
“Where’s Brother Brigham?”
“Inside. Said they’ll be out in a minute.”
Matthew felt his hopes rise. The girl who brought the note had said the two Apostles were too sick to even get out of bed. So along with packing, Matthew spent a good part of the night worrying about how they were going to make a journey of a thousand miles or more when they couldn’t even walk. Matthew himself was still a little wobbly in the knees from his own illness, so the sight of the wagon was a welcome one indeed.
“You gonna fetch us on down the road?” he asked.
“Yep. Pa says I’m to take the brethren as far south as Brother Duel’s house.” The boy’s eyes dropped to see Matthew’s suitcase. When he looked up, there was new respect in them. “You goin’ with them?”
“Yep,” Matthew said, trying not to look too proud.
Behind them the door opened. They turned and saw Brigham standing there, leaning heavily on the door frame. He raised one hand and waved feebly. “We’re coming, brethren. Hold on.”
Matthew walked quickly toward the door as Brigham gave one last wave to someone inside and shuffled out. In two steps Matthew reached him and was giving him his arm. From inside, he could hear children crying and the weeping of women. Brigham stopped, turning his head. Matthew looked back too. In the light from the doorway, he could see partly inside the cabin. Vilate Kimball was lying on a bed, her newborn at her side. Heber was kneeling beside her, gripping her hand, and weeping along with her.
Matthew looked away, feeling again the pain of his final farewell with Jenny this morning. And they weren’t married yet. He could only imagine what it must be costing these brethren to leave wives and children in such desperate circumstances.
“You’ll have to help me up,” Brigham said as they came around to the back of the wagon. “I can’t do it.”
The boy had the tailgate of the wagon down, and together he and Matthew helped Brigham up onto the wagon bed. The boy’s mother or father had laid out some blankets, and Brigham collapsed gratefully upon them, breathing heavily, his face grimacing with the pain. “Help Heber,” he gasped.
Heber was down on his knees on the front step, his arms around his four-year-old son. “Young Heber,” he said, stroking the boy’s cheek with the back of his hand, “be my brave little man and care for your mommy and your brothers and your sister.”
The boy was stoic, his eyes large and round but not filled with tears. “I will, Papa.”
“God bless you,” Heber said. He tried to stand, but couldn’t. Matthew jumped to his side and put a hand around his waist. The boy took his other arm, and they helped him hobble to the wagon, then climb up to lie beside Brigham. Matthew closed the tailgate carefully, watching anxiously as the two of them lay there, totally drained even by what it had taken to get into the wagon. He shook his head. A thousand miles? This is insane.
He climbed up onto the wagon seat alongside the driver and nodded grimly to him. The boy, greatly sobered by the condition of his passengers, flipped the reins lightly. “Hee yaw!” he called softly. “Giddyap there, mules.” The team lunged forward and the wagon began to roll.
They had gone no more than ten rods when there was a croak from the wagon box behind them. “Stop!” It was Heber who had called out.
As the boy reined up, Matthew looked back in alarm. Heber’s face was twisted in agony. He looked as though death itself had come to ride with them. Had they discovered so quickly that they couldn’t bear the journey?
But Heber wasn’t looking at Matthew. He wasn’t looking for help. He was looking at Brigham. And when he spoke, Matthew realized it was a different kind of agony he was feeling.
“What is it, Heber?” Brigham managed. “What’s the matter?”
“This is pretty tough, isn’t it? I feel as though my very heart is going to melt within me.”
Brigham’s head had been turned away from his companion. Now he turned to face him. His eyes were filled with tears and his cheeks were wet. He had turned away to hide his weeping. “I don’t know if I can endure it,” he whispered.
Heber nodded; then his shoulders lifted and fell and a certain determination touched his mouth. “This is no way to leave our families, us stretched out in a wagon bed, them too sick to even bid us farewell. Let us rise up and give them a cheer.”
“Of course,” Brigham said instantly. “Yes, let’s do it.”
He came up on one elbow, then reached out and grabbed the side of the wagon to steady himself. He grunted, panting heavily with the effort. Matthew was on his feet and starting to lean over to help, but Brigham waved him off with a shake of his head. He staggered upwards, teeth clenched together, until he was standing. Heber got to his knees, then had to stop. His head dropped and he gasped for air. But like Brigham he refused any help, and finally lurched to his feet.
Heber’s cabin was on a small hillock, and the wagon had just reached the bottom. Its back end faced the cabin. Clutching each other to steady themselves, the two Apostles swept off their hats. Waving them in great circles over their heads, they shouted as loudly as they could, which wasn’t much more than a hoarse croak. “Hurrah! Hurrah for Israel! Hurrah! Hurrah for Israel!”
After a moment, the door of the cabin opened and Vilate Kimball was standing there in her nightdress, blinking at the bright sunlight. In another moment, Mary Ann Young stood beside her. Like their husbands, they clung to each other in a desperate attempt to steady themselves.
“Hurrah!” the men shouted one last time. “Hurrah for Israel!” The hats made one last circle.
Matthew was staring, h
ardly believing what he was seeing. The women were likewise stunned. But then Vilate’s arm came up and a broad smile broke out across her face. Mary Ann began to wave, at first slowly, then enthusiastically. “Good-bye!” they cried. “God bless you.”
“And God bless you!” Brigham said. His arm fell, all strength to keep it up completely gone. “God be with you.”
The two men sank back down heavily, first to their knees, then rolling over onto their backs, drawing breath like men saved from the depths of the sea. “All right,” Brigham said haltingly to Matthew and the boy. “You may drive on.”
With the departure of the Twelve for England and the coming of fall, things in Nauvoo began to settle down. The cooler weather brought a respite from the ague, as it usually did, and life returned somewhat back to normal. Building continued at a rapid pace as the Saints continued to pour into Hancock County, Illinois, and its surrounding areas.
Things settled in for the Steed family as well. Melissa wrote and told the family of the reaction of Carl’s father to the suggestion that Carl and Melissa and their children move west. That came as a major disappointment, especially to Mary Ann. But other than that, the plan devised by Nathan and Lydia for a family cooperative moved ahead steadily.
The Monday after Matthew left with Brigham and Heber, Jessica began the first day of classes in her new school. There were twelve students. When young Joshua and Emily returned from Palmyra— whenever that would be—she would have fourteen. But even twelve left the small room quite full. They ranged in age from just under seven to seventeen years. Three were family—Jessica’s own Rachel, turning eight in January; Luke Griffith, her older stepson, who would turn seven in mid-October; and Caroline’s Olivia, who would be twelve in November. Three were adopted family—Peter Ingalls, now fifteen, helped Jessica with the teaching; and the two McIntire sisters, Kathryn, now thirteen, and Jenny, almost eighteen, lived with Jessica to help with the children as their pay for the schooling. The other six students were neighbor children, their families paying Jessica in meager services or future promises.
There were no chairs, only two long benches. The benches were made from split logs, and though Matthew and Peter had spent days smoothing them with a drawknife, a person could still pick up a sliver or two in the backside if he or she became too restless. Jessica had only enough slate boards for eight and had to rotate them around for writing and arithmetic lessons. Her most treasured items were the five sets of McGuffey readers Joshua and Caroline had brought as a present from St. Louis.
While teaching in Missouri, she had managed to find several copies of The New England Primer and had used that as her reading textbook. But she had never really liked them. First printed over a hundred years earlier, the Primer had been a staple of American education ever since. It contained a hefty dose of prayers and pieties along with basic reading material, which was fine. But many of the lessons, couched in verse to make them easier to memorize, were dour in their content and illustrated with pictures to match. It was the pictures that Jessica loathed. For example, the letter F was taught with the rhyme, “The idle Fool is whipt at school,” and a wicked-looking schoolmaster with a long switch proved the point. The Y entry suggested, “While Youth do chear, death may be near,” a Puritan reminder that one ought to take one’s happiness with a dose of gloom. Here a skeleton was shown arriving at a party of children.
But the new readers were sweeping the country now. A schoolteacher named William H. McGuffey had written new reading textbooks for the Ohio public schools. Volumes one and two of the Eclectic Readers, as they were titled—or the “McGuffey readers,” as they were more commonly called—were published in 1836 and became an instant success. Three more volumes came out the next year. McGuffey infused the books with a high moral tone. One might read stories like “True Manliness,” or “Perseverance,” but there was none of the grimness of The New England Primer. Children loved to study from them, and parents were pleased with the fact that their children were being taught important values. The five sets were a gift of inestimable worth to Jessica, and word that Jessica Griffith had the latest in educational materials was already spreading through Nauvoo.
The Steed store opened for business on the first day of October. It was not the only store in Nauvoo, but there was no question that it was the most spacious and had the broadest selection. They opened their doors to a brisk business that steadily increased almost daily. With Nathan and Lydia in New York, Caroline—now midway through her pregnancy—took the lead in running the store, but got consistent help from the women and older children of the family.
Joshua shuttled back and forth between Nauvoo, Quincy, and St. Louis on a regular basis, maintaining freight offices in each place. With the influx of population, the need for goods in Nauvoo outpaced the ability of the haulers to bring them in. By October, Joshua had doubled the number of wagons and teams he owned and still could not keep up with the demand. He and Benjamin worked with Joseph and the city leaders to get a steamboat landing built so Nauvoo could become a stop for the riverboats. Bringing in freight by boat was considerably less expensive than bringing it in by wagon.
Mary Ann was being matriarch and grandma to a growing clan, but with the store done, the school up and running, and Joshua’s business burgeoning, Benjamin found himself with little to do. Now fully recovered from any effects of the summer’s illness and his imprisonment the previous fall, the drop in activity left him increasingly restless. So on the tenth day of October, without saying anything to Mary Ann, he left their cabin and moved south, toward the Old Homestead.
Benjamin heard the noise of the children while he was still several rods away from the cabin where Joseph and Emma lived. Moving more slowly, not wanting to disturb whatever was happening, he came around the corner of the building and stopped. Instantly he started to chuckle.
The Old Homestead property was on the corner of Water Street and Main Street fronting the river. The cabin faced south, providing a wonderful view of the Mississippi as it straightened out again and headed for St. Louis and New Orleans. But that was not what made Benjamin stop. Joseph Smith was out in front of his house, where the grass sloped down to the water’s edge. A blindfold was tied around his eyes, and he was down on all fours. Julia, young Joseph, Frederick, and Alexander were dancing around him, taunting and yelling at him.
With a roar he came up on his knees, his hands clawing at the air, striking out blindly in the direction of their voices. They screamed and scattered, darting away from the “bear’s” deadly claws. Little Alex, not yet eighteen months old, was the slowest, his fat little legs pumping hard but not moving him nearly fast enough. Growling, and obviously peeking out from beneath the blindfold, Joseph grabbed Alex and went down, rolling over and over, “biting” Alex’s arms and stomach and neck. Laughing, screeching, hollering for help, Alexander struggled to get free. Instantly his siblings responded and swarmed Joseph to the ground.
“Good morning, Father Steed.”
Turning in surprise, Benjamin saw that Emma was standing at the door. She had seen him pass her window and stepped out to say hello. “Good morning, Emma.”
“Bang! Bang!” Young Joseph was pointing his finger at his father and fired off two “rounds.” With a great yelp of pain, Joseph stiffened, threw his hands in the air, then rolled over and went limp. Alex scampered free.
“Yea! Yea!” the children cried, dancing around the fallen monster.
Emma just shook her head. “I’m glad it’s you, Benjamin.”
“Why’s that?” he said, still smiling as he watched them poke at the bear and make sure he was truly dead.
“Some of our newer converts would find it hard to believe that this is the prophet of the Lord.”
Benjamin was nodding. He knew exactly what she meant. “Well, I think it’s wonderful.”
“It’s wonderful to have him home again,” she said, her voice soft as she looked in Joseph’s direction. “Really wonderful.”
Joseph heard t
heir voices and sat up, pulling off the blindfold. “Good morning, Brother Benjamin,” he called out. Scooping up Alexander, he stood and started toward the house. Frederick gave a whoop and dove, throwing his arms around his father’s leg.
“Oh, no!” Joseph cried in horror. “The alligator’s got me.” He started forward, dragging Frederick with him. That was too much for the others. Young Joseph grabbed the other leg and hung on. Julia collared him around the waist and dug in her feet. “The alligators have got me! The alligators have got me! I have to get out of the river.” He came forward, lurching and moaning, dragging the giggling reptiles along behind him.
When he reached the step where Benjamin and Emma were waiting, he collapsed. “I made it!” he breathed in relief. “I’m safe.”
“Is there anything I can do to be of help, Joseph? I . . . I guess I’m feeling kind of useless at the moment.”
They were walking west along Water Street toward the river. Joseph stopped and looked at his old friend in surprise. “Emma said something to you, didn’t she?”
Benjamin shook his head. “No. About what?”
“About me coming to see you.”
Now Benjamin was genuinely puzzled. “No, she didn’t say anything.”
“Well,” Joseph said, laying his arm across Benjamin’s shoulder and moving forward again, “I have been thinking about you ever since conference.”
“Oh?” The second general conference since Joseph’s release from prison had been held just a few days before.
“Yes, as you remember, I preached a great deal on the importance of missionary work and having the Spirit with us as we teach the gospel.”
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