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Show CHAPTER 8 Another Try for a Home Leaders of the militia in Missouri had stated that if the Saints would scatter and live "like other people" they could find homes in Missouri and would be welcome. In other words it was not the people they objected to, but their religious beliefs, institutions, and leaders.' Whether there ful, but in any were case, any who accepted this invitation is doubt of the Tanners did. Everyone was so none with the mob's brutality that they took the shortest route 2 of Missouri, and thanked God their lives had been spared. frightened out There were a few who were near enough to the Iowa border on the north to choose that route of escape, but by and large they fled eastward and crossed the Mississippi River near Quincy, illinois, as that was known the nearest they could have place would settle with near ferriage facilities. Had the Tanners Montrose, Iowa, within saved themselves many miles a year they there. 3 by going directly Nathan, who had been tipped off that the mob leaders were looking for him,' fled the area ahead of the other members of the family, but he has left us a vivid description of the Saints compelled to move two or three hundred miles in the dead Here is one who were of winter. of his comments: In moving from Far West to Illinois, the people were very much crowded for room in the wagons. John J., [John Joshua Tanner], brought his family and old Father Baker and his wife, and my wife and child, and all their goods in one wagon, and John J. Tanner's wife was liable to be sick on the road. [she was delivered of a child March 28, 1839, only a few days after reaching Illinois.] When these |
