When pondering over what historical figure to put into the mystory, I was faced with a dilemma. True, I was part of the Arizona public education system and as such was exposed to many of the same historical figures as my peers. However, that is not the community that I most strongly identify with. That community comes from my religious faith as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints or Mormons. This is a stronger, more closely knit community than the one I encountered in school, as many of my friends from school were also members of that faith and we saw each other in the classroom Monday through Friday but in the Sunday School room on the weekends. Ulmer supports this view when he writes that it is possible to define community in terms of religion (192).
Within that community, there is one historical figure that I remember studying that embodied the problems and solutions inherent in the latter day saint community, and that was Erastus Snow, my great-great-great-great Grandfather. He was a Mormon pioneer, an early Apostle in the Church and in my mind came to be synonymous with the history of the Church. He joined early and was present at every major event in those tumultuous early years.
I remember hearing the terrible persecutions that the members of the Church endured in those early years. For example, Erastus was in Missouri in 1938 when Lilburn W. Boggs issued the extermination order, wherein Mormons "must be exterminated or driven from the State if necessary to preserve the public peace- their outrages are beyond all description." This order would not be rescinded until 1978 when the then Governor of Missouri issued an apology.
In these church history classes, excerpts of Erastus' diary were read, stating that the mobs burned down homes and crops and tarred and feathered the members. As a result of this terrible persecution members of the church fled to Illinois where the leader of the church was murdered and the saints forced to leave their homes behind and seek asylum in the west, eventually settling in Utah. The trek west was filled with hardship, with many of Erastus' children dying of exposure along the way.
This narrative is filled with many of the things that the Mormon community "thinks for us, and prior to us, on our behalf". To say that I 'liked' this story would be false. How can one like stories of murder and bloodshed with members of your own family murdered and driven from their homes? However, it does set up the important dichotomy of what the problems are for the Mormon community as well as its preferred method of solution. The problems that the church has faced historically have centered on misinformation. At the beginning of the church stories and rumors swirled around its founder, Joseph Smith, and around the odd practices of its members. This mystery, coupled with the exponential growth of the church initially, made the Mormon church a political force in whatever state they settled in, supposedly one of the factors that prompted Boggs to issue the order (the Mormons were voting contrary to his agenda and Joseph Smith had political aspirations himself).
How did the LDS church respond to persecution? After a few skirmishes the Mormons left the state, expanding westward. In terms of fight or flight the church definitely chose flight. They fled to Utah, where the United States sent an army under the command of General Johnston to depose the leader of the church, then a man named John Taylor (who spent most of his life in hiding) for various reasons. Eventually the church would change and grow to be more accepted, eventually allowing Utah to become a state in 1896.
How, then, are Mormons interpellated? As a misunderstood people, constantly persecuted and scrutinized for their beliefs. The people of the church, embodied here by Erastus Snow, have long been asked to sacrifice all for their beliefs and that conviction has frequently been tested in the people having to (more than once) pick up and move to a new home. Having a family member feature so prominently in these early narratives of sacrifice and faith places no small amount of pressure upon the direct descendant, who frequently struggles with feelings of inadequacy in the face of this mythic narrative.
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| The bust of Erastus Snow in St. George, the city he founded |
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