The user elderolddog posted a quote from HANS P. FREECE's "Letters of an apostate Mormon to his son" and I am currently reading through it. It's amazing that over 100 years ago he was expressing the same exact concerns that we are today regarding the Mormon community dangers and indoctrination. His anecdotes and personal stories of polygamy in Utah are chilling and repulsive, and are things I'd never heard before in my 28 years as a member.

The full text of this document can be found at the URL below (safe link):
http://www.archive.org/stream/cu31924029475062/cu31924029475062_djvu.txt

There are so many excellent quotes from this text, and eloquently written (almost in the comedic style of Samuel Clemens) in a way that made me have to keep from laughing out loud at work... Some of my favorite quotes:

"in every State
where they have settled, the Gentiles of the community
liave been forced to band themselves together for protec-
tion from the assaults of the Mormons. In two States
where the Mormons were numerically strong — Missouri
and Illinois— it became necessary for the Gentiles to call
on the State authorities to protect them from their as-
saults, and ravages. Even to-day, fifty years after the
Mormons were driven from Nauvoo by the State militia,
■the old settlers of that region are every ready to pour into
the listening ear harrowing tales of cruelties and inde-
cencies practiced by the Mormons."

"Every summer thousands of tourists go West. Most
of them, the Mormons say about 100,000, stop over in
Salt Lake to visit the Tabernacle, hear the organ and see
the Temple with all of its myteries. For the conveni-
ence of these many visitors the Mormon Church main-
tains a bureau of information on the Temple Square.
Here the sightseers are met by old and young men or
pretty girls, to suit the occasion, who receive the visitors
with open arms and bland smiles; they feed the gullible,
and make themselves agreeable to the better informed.
The finer points of Mormonism, which points are the
palatable truths of Christianity appropriated from the
Christian Church for the occasion, are explained; but the
real facts of Mormonism are guardedly kept in the back-
ground."

"Joseph Smith was a man of commanding mien and pe-
culiar genius ; a man to whom it might have been given to
lead thousands and thousands of souls onward and upward
to a better life, but who chose the path of crime and de-
struction, leading the besmirched souls of his crazed fol-
lowers down, down into the depths of darkness and misery,
all to gratify a lustful passion."

"When the business men of the East shall have been
assured that their ventures into Utah will not be destroyed
and thwarted by Mormon priesthood, Utah will have a
great awakening and emigration will set in to such a great
extent that the Gentiles will be in the majority. I hope that
day may soon come."

"Lest Satan should put doubt into our hearts, prepara-
tions for our departure to America were hurriedly made.
On board the ship we were under the command of certain
priests of the Melkisidec Order. We believed that they
would perform miracles. One day a storm came up and
the waves threatened to sink the ship. I was sure that the
elders would still the sea, but they huddled together
frightened like the rest of us. But surely they would raise
the dead ! No, they died by the score and were thrown into
the sea."

"I again saw my wife, the
tender girl-bride that she was, crying, and as I think of that
day now, although if is many years ago, the tears force
themselves out. She had been first helping this one and
then the other to pull the hand-cart across the plains. She
had buried her mother, and I was helpless, without a
covering for our heads. And so it was that the pure, deep
love which we had had for each other when we left our
native land had been worn away on the dreary deserts.
The real joy that had been ours had gone, never to coma
back, and she realized it then more than ever before."

"What right has Joseph F. Smith to keep these
many thousands of people in ignorance and bondage and
collect from them tithes amounting to almost two millions
per annum, and use that sum of money for any purpose
desired and make no accounting of it to the people? And
this he does under the special command of God. What right
has Joseph F. Smith to maintain a harem of five establish-
ments in Salt Lake City and bring illegitimate offsprings
mto this world? And this he pretends to do under the
blasphemous assumption that he is God's anointed. This
hierarchy has fastened itself upon the superstition and ig-
norance of these thousands of followers and the govern-
ment ought to see to it that coming generations shall have
a right to the privileges which accrue to them because they
have been born under the Stars and Stripes."

--------

Hopefully you folks found these quotes as interesting as I did. He has a tragic but telling story of life in what he refers to as "Mormondom".

-Blake

Thank you. 1908. Absolutely riveting for me and important.

I am so sick of Mormons to this day going on and on about how persecuted they were and are. They moved in to a town, claiming the Lord had given it to them, and as a banded together unit, treated the "gentile" residents in a disgusting manner. What the Mormons got was retaliation as a defense, not persecution.

The simple straightforward writing here is in the style of truth. No carefully chosen words or flowery phrases, like the LDS Mormon leaders are forced to use with the constant battle to save face.

Loved reading these excerpts will read the whole thing later.

I cannot recommend reading these letters enough. It's such a rollercoaster of emotions, and so incredibly *real* that is hurts.

My boyfriend's great grandfather left the church and moved back to Pennsylvania after coming to Utah from Wales. His descendants are mostly not mormon, but there are some who are. There is a history that someone has written about him and I'd love to be able to read it. I don't even know if my boyfriend has read it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/27/2019 12:33PM by cl2.

Will you let me know the name of this former LDS member? I would be very interested to get access to his biography and his experiences. Biographies are my favorite type of nonfiction, stories so personal and beautiful.

My boyfriend's dad seemed to know more about mormonism than I do. His grandfather's name is John Hughes Taylor. The info that I found in the genealogical library years and years ago, which I gave to my boyfriend when he came back into my life in 2005, is not the info that his family has about his great grandfather. His father died 4 years ago and he doesn't know where the biography ended up that his parents had. If you find it, I'd love to read it. My boyfriend and his father are not mormon, but some of his father's family is. He purposely didn't have an obituary so that his relatives wouldn't dead dunk him. He was raised around mormons, though, back in Ohio and he knew a lot.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/27/2019 04:10PM by cl2.

Came across this book this past summer at the Dordt College Library in northwest Iowa.

I can't emphasize enough how these Dutch Reformed people got all this good stuff on Brighamite Mormonism. You need to find a Christian college library near you; they may have all this stuff.

You should go find all that stuff from John L. Smith of Oklahoma.

Your post so makes me wish I could go back in time with new eyes.

My Mormon ancestors came over in handcarts. They settled a small town in the mountains of northern Utah. They probably all died by the time I was seven or eight but I have fond remembrances.

I remember their old houses were set up on cinderblocks and you could see underneath. We were all very poor. My dad was raised in a house with a dirt floor. When I would go up around the corner to see Great Grandma who was in her late nineties would give me a sugar cube for a treat and I used to go pump water from the well and bring it in. We had black boxes on the wall to wind the handle and ring for the operator.

I don't remember my GG or her sister even talking about being Mormon or why they came. I don't remember anybody going to church. Religious fervor never seemed to be present. I must look and see if what is all in the Book of Remembrance of my family. They do a lot of genealogy and have a lot of letters and journals etc.

I know they all had coffee with their Norwegian pancakes. Nobody thought anything of it then. Survival seemed more important than Salvation.

I want to know so badly now what so many of my handcart ancestors really thought. Didn't know the questions yet as a seven year old. Life is backwards.

I'm just glad they didn't settle in SLC. The old pioneer farming towns were pretty nice back then.

brb ~ book-marked ~


will read later 10/10 ~



thanks for the source OPie ~

Interesting that the mormon church never got it before being published. And didn't hide it in the vault, never to be seen again.