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Show 90 John Tanner and His Family minimum price of one dollar and a quarter per acre, would give them land holdings of over two hundred and fifty thousand acres, which represented for that day very large interests." persecution began in Jackson County, in the In There has already been brief mention of it as related to Zion's Camp because this included two of John's sons, John Joshua and Nathan, and Amasa M. Lyman who later married Louisa Maria, one of John's daughters. This savage dependence area. holdings in Jackson County, they Clay, Ray, Van. Buren, Lafa Far West in the newly created yette, Caldwell, and Davies Counties. of Caldwell the final became county gathering place in Missouri and to be a of considerable grew city proportions. Here in July of 1837 was broken a for ground temple, and later a cornerstone was laid at the appropriate place by members of the Twelve Apostles. After the Saints gave up their moved gradually northward into About twenty-five miles north of Far West, in Davies County the north side of Grand River, was a place called Spring Hill by the Saints. During a visit by the prophet he told the citizens that this was the site of the ancient Garden of Eden. "It is the .place on where Adam shall come to visit his people, shall sit as spoken of Daniel," he said." or the Ancient of days, This is the origin of the Mormon belief that the Garden of Eden was in America rather than in the Old World. The name of the town was changed to Adam-ondi-Ahman, and became the in spiration for many Mormon writers, including the poet William W. Phelps who composed a song by that name which became popu lar and was sung by Mormon choirs for many years." If the Saints regarded Jackson County as the "Center Stake" of Zion and Adam-ondi-Ahman as the Garden of Eden, the old Missouri settlers were in no mood to allow them to enjoy these religious sanctuaries. When John Tanner and his family reached the storm, they were caught up in the eye of the hurricane. Many of the well-known scenes of violence included one or more of the Tanners as participants. circumstances surrounding the violence are so bizarre as to defy belief. Myron says people have described the Missouri State Militia as a mob militia. He says this is not the proper des cription, that a better term is "mobbing militia" because it was made up of Missouri militiamen and led by commissioned officers wearing The |
