I could, if they should pop up in the daily news cycle. Or I could just post something from Paint Your Wagon, if you prefer.
Posted on 04/03/2008 9:07:12 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
LDS Church leaders have agreed to seek national landmark status for the church-owned Mountain Meadows Massacre site in southern Utah where Mormons attacked a California-bound wagon train on Sept. 11, 1857.
A national landmark designation would ensure that the 120 Arkansas emigrants of the Fancher/Baker wagon train company who were killed by Mormon militia and some Paiute Indians "will always be remembered as part of our nation's history," said Marlin K. Jensen, an LDS general authority and official historian for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Jensen met Friday in Arkansas with about 20 representatives of the Mountain Meadows Association, the Mountain Meadows Massacre Descendants and the Mountain Meadows Monument Foundation. Each group has a slightly different mission, but all had asked the church to seek landmark status for Mountain Meadows.
The site is already listed on the National Register of Historic Places, but requirements for a landmark designation are much more stringent, according to Jensen. The process involves documenting the historic significance of the site, a public comment period, and reviews by the National Park Service and a government-appointed board of experts. The secretary of the interior will make the final decision.
At Friday's meeting, Jensen also discussed proposed plans to create a second memorial with interpretive markers at the Burgess upper grave site, where remains of some of the victims are thought to be buried. Descendants were worried that new housing might encroach on the area, which they consider to be sacred land, so the church purchased 600 additional acres to avert any development.
The descendant groups were surprised and pleased by the church's gesture, said Patty Norris, president of the MMM Descendants. The church had declined to support previous requests to seek national landmark status for the massacre site.
"It was a very good meeting and a very good day for the church and the descendants," said Norris, great-great-great- granddaughter of Tryphenia Fancher, a toddler who witnessed the slaughter of her entire family on the plains of Utah. "When I got involved some 10 years ago, one of my main goals was to work toward making sure that site was preserved and that we found those upper graves and properly marked them. So today was a huge thing for me personally."
There is not much else to do, Norris said. "Everybody's on the same page. We are going to move forward together. It's a big relief."
LDS officials were relieved, too.
"It couldn't have been a more amicable meeting," said Jensen, who was joined in Arkansas by Richard Turley, assistant church historian, and Steven Olsen, managing director of the LDS history department. "We brought good news and they gave us several standing ovations."
The meeting was held in Carrollton, where the 17 surviving children were returned to their next of kin in 1859. The town erected a marker for the massacre victims in 1955.
"To come here and put a human face [on] this tragedy really has been sobering and humbling," Jensen said.
Six months ago, Mormon leaders gathered at Mountain Meadows with the three descendants groups, Paiute representatives and others at a 150th anniversary memorial service to honor the victims of the massacre.
At that time, Henry B. Eyring, then an LDS apostle and now a member of the church's governing First Presidency, acknowledged that the responsibility rested with regional LDS leaders who also held civic and military positions and with members of the church acting under their direction.
"What was done here long ago by members of our church represents a terrible and inexcusable departure from Christian teaching and conduct," Eyring said at the September service. "We cannot change what happened, but we can remember and honor those who were killed here."
Jensen, Turley and Olsen will remain in Arkansas through Sunday, speaking to various LDS groups about Mormon involvement in the massacre.
LDS Church members there still experience some tension with their neighbors over this episode, Jensen said. "We need to equip them to deal with it in a good way. . . . When we are open and listen and express our regret, walls come tumbling down."
Mountain Meadows was a frequent stop for wagon trains traveling to California on the old Spanish Trail.Led by Capt. Alexander Fancher and John Baker, the Arkansas travelers were attacked and engaged in a week of gun skirmishes before a local church elder, John D. Lee, negotiated a truce between the pioneers and a band of Paiute Indians said to be the assailants.
But Lee's truce was a ruse. Wagon train members were beaten, shot at close range or had their throats slit as they marched single-file and unarmed across the meadow.
Seventeen children all under age 7 survived and were taken into Mormon homes. Two years later, they were returned to relatives in Arkansas.
Lee, the only person held responsible, was sentenced to death for the slaughter.
At memorial services marking the 150th anniversary last fall, high-ranking Mormon church official Henry B. Eyring expressed “profound regret” for the events at the meadows. The statement was seen by many as an apology.
Eyring also said the church regretted allowing the Paiute Indian tribe to shoulder much of the blame for the ambush.
A forthcoming book by church historians is expected to lay blame on rogue southern Utah church leaders who worked with Paiute Indians. Church officials maintain there is no evidence connecting then-church president Brigham Young directly to the massacre.
Does this mean that the mormons will allow the families of the innocent victims to retrieve their bones ???
Or even enter the area ???
What a coincidence, there is no evidence for the Mormon religion either. < rimshot>
But seriously folks, someone seems to think there is evidence that Young ordered the massacre.
My mother-in-law had some distant relatives that were in that wagon train. She’ll be interested in reading this. Thanks for posting.
But seriously folks, someone seems to think there is evidence that Young ordered the massacre.
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Has there been any follow up on the 6 year old story you linked to?
Has there been any follow up on the 6 year old story you linked to?
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I should have read to the end of the thread before asking Gamecock if there was any follow up on a 6 year old thread.
Here is the last post::::::::::
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/635900/posts?q=1&;page=233#233
To: Pokey78
Update: it's a fake!
From http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,380009464,00.html
Gene Sessions isn't positive for the simple reason no one can be positive when it comes to authenticating something as benign as metal. But he is as close to positive as is humanly possible that the lead sheet engraving found last month in an old fort in Lee's Ferry, Ariz., was not written in 1872 by convicted Mountain Meadows Massacre perpetrator John D. Lee.
“Ninety-nine percent it's a hoax,” says the Weber State University history Ph.D., who detailed why he feels that way in a letter to the Ogden Standard-Examiner after an Ogden writer, Judith Freeman, said the metal sheet — in which Lee not only takes blame for the 1857 massacre of 120 settlers but adds the tidbit that the massacre was ordered by Mormon prophet Brigham Young — was “consistent” with Lee's known diary writings. “Anyone who thinks what's on the metal sheet is consistent with John D. Lee's diary should go to the diary and read it,” says Sessions, who did just that and quickly came up with multiple red flags, including such subtle but illuminating details as the metal sheet spelling out the word “and” while Lee always used an ampersand — & there's plenty more where that came from. (To read Sessions’ entire letter, go to www.standard.net; “The Diaries of John D. Lee” are available in most area libraries).
In addition to the lead sheet's questionable syntax, mood and spelling, there's the problem of how and where it was found. Based on photographs, the best guess of authorities at Lee's Ferry — where John D. Lee spent the latter years of his life — is that the sheet was not on the floor of the fort until about 1984”
233 posted on 04/08/2002 12:47:19 PM PDT by Grig
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You tell me. You are more entrenched in Mormon intrigue than I am.
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“Mormon intrigue”
Your use of words is interesting in how you put two words together to create a derogatory comment.
Was it on purpose?
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Ps. Does this mean you have no interest on anything that might upset what you already think?
You were asked if there was any updated since 2002.
Yes, but not as a derogatory comment.
Are you denying that there seems to be some intrigue in what happened on that day?
BTTT
***You were asked if there was any updated since 2002***
I contended that Smith was involved in the Massacre.
It is not now my job to turn around and defend him. That would be your task, or that of some other Mormon apologist.
Am I right on that counselor Marlowe?
Smith wasn’t involved since he had been dead for 13 years at the time. Brigham Young was the leader of the LDS empire at the time, and yes he was involved, however it may not have happened by his direct order.
I stand corrected. Can’t keep all those old Mormons straight.
Yeah, they were all a bunch of randy old dudes. It’s hard to keep straight after that many women...
Oh my, I’m bad!
I have no doubt based on historical record that Young if he did not directly order the massacre certainly condoned it or turned a blind eye to it.
However I do not hold modern LDS leaders or members responsible for his actions.
I could, if they should pop up in the daily news cycle. Or I could just post something from Paint Your Wagon, if you prefer.
Ping
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