that someone in my ancestory joined the Mormons and pissed off his relatives. It had to happen at some point. For evidence, I present my mother: first and last Mormon in her family. She admitted that her father made fun of Joseph Smith. Grandpa Robert Everett thought that Mormonism was a fraud. So on the Bagley side there must have been a first convert. I can imagine the family telling him he was astray, just like my Mormon father told me for leaving. That's the big picture, and I believe that Mormons are willfully blind to it.

Of course in mormondum, if someone goes against their family and loses everything to join "the church" that's a faith promoting story to be told and retold . On the other hand if someone leaves Mormonism obviously it's only because they are lazy, offended or want to sin.

Always was curious what joseph smith looked like and sounded like while he was trying to convince people of seeing jesus and other things. If he were alive today would he be seen as a nutcase? Most likely yes.

I tell my children that we are not the apostates--our ancestors were the apostates, when they left the church of their forefathers to join their neighbor JS's creepy new cult. Some of their diaries tell about how upset their families were with them for joining the cult of a con-man, who's father was also a con-man. One of my female ancestors was driven off of her father's farm, when she married a Mormon. Out of pity, her wealthy father gave her a beautiful new wagon and oxen, and money as her dowry. JS and the cult gobbled up the money, immediately. When her husband died, JS and the gang "confiscated" her wagon and team, for the trek to Utah, leaving my widowed ancestor and babies to spend the winter living in a cave, with some others at Winter Quarters.

I can imagine how much that father hated his Mormon son-in-law and the Mormon cult.

I can also imagine how much the father of my female ancestor on the other side of my family felt, when one of JS's sidekicks converted and married not one but both of his young daughters, when they were 16 and 18. One of them died in childbirth, crossing the plains to SLC. The surviving younger sister raised her sister's children, along with her own.

Now, THAT'S APOSTASY! Joining a crazy cult! Polygamy! Associating with criminals! Risking your life and the life of your children!

What happens now, when we leave the Mormon cult--we offend a few people. We vacate a calling, and the Mormons are in a snit, when they have to replace us. LDS, Inc. loses our tithing money, to pay for new facades for their crumbling temples.

Big. Fat. Deal.

One of my great grandfathers became a convert, when he met my BIC TBM great grandmother. He was a Civil War veteran who had infiltrated enemy lines as an intelligence officer for the North. And was a personal messenger for General Sherman before his marriage and conversion to Mormonism. He was considered a "catch" in the pioneer Mormon community he ended up after he went west with Sherman following the Civil War to Wyoming to settle Indian land claims.

And there he stayed on and spent the remainder of his years as a Mormon gent.

His mid-West mother however disinherited him for becoming a Mormon. She wanted nothing to do with it. She was quite wealthy. So when she died her property went to her grandson - a child by my great grandfather's of a wife he'd loved but who'd died when the child was young - during the war years. So his mother raised the grandson, and great grandpa was cut off completely. His father, whom he was very close to, had been a physician. But was murdered by Indians when he came west to join his son in Wyoming traveling alone with his team of horses.

His son out of rage at what happened went with a posse of men to avenge his father's murder and was nearly killed himself in a skirmish, but survived.

It wasn't the Civil War that did him in. Or the Indians who got him. It was some blood sucking Mormons who done him in one Sunday at church. I believe he was poisoned by either a woman who wanted him to make her a polygamous wife, whom he spurned after she tried courting him because my great grandmother was adamantly opposed to the practice. Or the Mormon lawyer in town who stole his land claim real estate out from under my great grandmother after he died on fraudulent charges leaving her penniless and destitute with three young children to care for.

He was a mensch who was surrounded by some very designing evil doers. He remained the great love of my great grandmother's life - despite their May-December romance. She remarried some years later, but no one could take his place.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/28/2018 07:09AM by Amyjo.

My grandfather stopped talking to my mom for fourteen long years after she converted to Mormonism. He only began speaking to her again on his deathbed.

That's how much he despised Mormons. He'd been a lifelong Mason living in Utah during my mom's lifetime. In those years Mormons were not allowed to be Masons. That only changed several years after gramps died. Maybe he had something to do with that policy I wonder?

Thanks for the stories. I can't help feeling that I was born into a curse. The added burden of membership is too much for those who struggle with abuse and self-esteem, I think.

(((Sigh))) I was the one in my family who pissed off the relatives when I joined. Now, I have pissed off the TBMs because I’ve left. What to say? What to do? Fuck ‘em! I never liked them that much to begin with! You’re awesome, Don! The Boner.