Who were the Morrisites?

[_GR33N]

Weren't the Morrisites one of the offshoots of the Strangites?

[_Blixa]

Weren't the Morrisites one of the offshoots of the Strangites?

Nope. Something entirely different.

[_Blixa]

With a little google search, I found a beautiful scan in pdf. of Joseph Morris's The Spirit Prevails:

http://archive.org/details/spiritprevails00morrrich

Also, David Bigler writes a few pages about Morris in Forgotten Kingdom. When I get time, I will read through and if I find any details I think might interest you, I will pass them along.

Oh that's really cool, Joe!

I have to get to that Turner biography! It's sitting in my book stack, but I got sidetracked...

[_The Erotic Apologist]

She was the 14 year old girl whose face was shattered by the cannon ball fired by Burton into the Morrissite's meeting bower.

Here, at the lower right corner of page ten (link).

"At fifteen years of age, Mary’s jaw had been shot away during the fight at Kingston Fort in Weber Canyon. For the rest of her life, she would cover her lower face with a handkerchief whenever she met a stranger"

ETA--

Several months ago I did a lower extremity venous doppler exam on a guy at the Davis County Jail who'd been shot in the leg by what he believed to have been a .44 magnum handgun. The bullet shattered his tibia into about a dozen pieces and tore out a hunk of muscle about the size of my fist.

I can't begin to imagine what an iron cannon ball would do to a human body!

[_lulu]

information

http://imnh.isu.edu/digitalatlas/geog/r ... 0/79.htm#3

[_Willy Law]

Nice finds TEA and Lulu. Thanks

[_GR33N]

Weren't the Morrisites one of the offshoots of the Strangites?

Nope. Something entirely different.

Like most Latter Day Saint denominations, the Church of the Firstborn taught that Joseph Smith, Jr. was a prophet of God. The church taught that Smith's rightful successor after his death was James J. Strang, and that Strang was succeeded by Joseph Morris.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_Firstborn_(Morrisite)

[_Willy Law]

Like most Latter Day Saint denominations, the Church of the Firstborn taught that Joseph Smith, Jr. was a prophet of God. The church taught that Smith's rightful successor after his death was James J. Strang, and that Strang was succeeded by Joseph Morris.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_Firstborn_(Morrisite)

Weird. The book Scattering of the Saints Schisms within Mormonism makes no connections between the Strangites and Morrisites. I was unaware the Strangites had any influence in Ut.

[_Willy Law]

For Christ Will Come Tommorrow: The Saga of the Morrisites, by C. LeRoy Anderson is, as far as I know, the standard text. It appears to be available on Amazon in a cheap knock-off paperback form (I don't recognize that cover!!), the used copies may be better.

Just got the book in the mail and am a few chapters in. Struggling with it so far. I had hoped for a fair treatment of the issue, but that does not appear to be where the book is heading.
He devotes the first two chapters of the book to the Reformation yet his treatment of the MMM is limited to:

"Open conflict had occurred from time to time, the most serious of which was a shocking tragedy in September that left over 120 members of a wagon train dead at Mountain Meadows in west-central Utah.
Much of the tension and hostility that produced the Mountain Meadows affair was fostered by the presence on the Wyoming plains of a large military force authorized by the United States government to enforce obedience from the mortar Mormon people."

Despite only giving the MMM a few lines he devotes nearly three pages to the correlated first vision account and links Joseph Morris' commitment to the church with his belief in the first vision.

"what is significant for our purposes is that Smith personal account was and remains the official one endorsed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and the one adhered to by faithful Mormons everywhere. It was the account preached by missionaries, and it must have been a prime factor in converting Joseph Morris Mormonism in England in 1848."

Must have been? I will give Anderson the benefit of the doubt since the book was written in 1981. Perhaps at that time he was not aware of research showing that the early members of the church had no clue about the first vision and it was not taught by the church until nearly the turn of the century.

I'll keep reading, but I am going to assume by the first few chapters that Anderson is going to toe the company line. Hope I am wrong.

[_Willy Law]

For Christ Will Come Tommorrow: The Saga of the Morrisites, by C. LeRoy Anderson is, as far as I know, the standard text. It appears to be available on Amazon in a cheap knock-off paperback form (I don't recognize that cover!!), the used copies may be better.

Anderson wrote a follow up, Joseph Morris And the Saga of the Morrisites (Revisited), which I have not read.

by the way Blix, these two books are the same book. I made the mistake in ordering both. Title is different but the content is identical.