John Tanner and his family

Page 397

389 Appendix Prior to this, when the mob was coming into the city, they took several prisoners. My father was taken, and my Brother Myron was a small boy then and was with father. As father went to show the boy a path that would lead him home, that he might inform mother and family, Captain O'dell struck my father over the head with a rifle, inflicting a wound several inches long, laying the skull bare. It was dressed by William E. McClellin, and father was released to help carry Brother Carey to his wife. He had been killed by the mob. charge of the guard that night, and let my father and others through. My father was so covered with blood, that I only knew him by his voice. I helped bear Brother Carey to his family. After our city was guarded by the enemies, the families outside were in a helpless state, unprotected, and we could not go to them by day or night. My wife had an only child, a little girl about a year old. It lay sick, and my wife expected it would die in her arms. She dug its little grave under the floor in case it died before they were compelled to run before the mob, and she still kept it wrapped in mantle and hood in case they I had had to run before it died. While we were guarded in the city, the mob was turned loose to abuse and tantalize us as much as they pleased. A table was brought out on the public square, and we were marched up to it at the point of a bayonet, and required to sign away every thing we had to pay the expenses of the mob that drove us out. And then they took our acknowledgement that it was our free volunteered act and deed. After signing this article I said, throwing down my pen, "It looks like a free volunteered act and at the point of a bayonet as they were presented to us." I was deed hit in the left side with the breech of a rifle which took my senses and I - carried off the ground. We had heard our sentence and had our choice. They had taken our prophet and patriarch and sentenced them to be shot, and had required all they could find anything against us to be given up for imprisonment or death. The balance could have their men women choice to leave the state in six months, or be exterminated and children. This was a fine order to be sanctioned by a state in our republic. Sister Carey, after having her husband killed by the mob, made two two hundred miles in the dead of winter with a four horse team was - - trips, family out of the state. morning as I was walking across the Public Square in company with two or three of our brethren, seven of the mob on horse-back, well armed with rifles laying across the horns of their saddles, accosted me and said, "How are you this morning, my man. Do you feel as much like a fight as common?" "About the same was the reply." "Well, come ahead then, God Damn you," he said, and drew his rifle on me. I threw myoId hat on the ground and said, "You poor pusillanimous cowardly cur to move her One - to draw fire arms on a bare-handed man. Get down off your horse