Ode to Oliver

[Limnor]

The Transformation of Oliver; Mosiah 24-25, 1823-24

And after the burning of Abinadi, when the smoke of his testimony yet clung to the stones, one among the priests fled weeping into the wilderness.

His name was Amulon, and his hands were still warm from the record he had written.

For he had heard the prophet’s voice and trembled, yet when the moment of truth came, he stood silent, and the silence became a wound that would not heal.

This man was once called Oliver, the scribe of light, but grief darkened his name.

For he had loved Abinadi, who was Alvin, the pure one, and when that flame was slain, something in him died also.

So he took up the instruments of learning and fled into the land of forgetfulness.

The Year of Forgetting

And Oliver fled into the hills of the east, in the land of the green hills — Vermont, where winter schools opened their doors to the weary and the learned.

There he taught the children of men to shape their letters and forget their tears.

By day he wrote the lessons of others; by night he dreamed of the prophet he had betrayed.

Each time he raised his chalk to the slate, the name of Alvin burned faintly beneath his hand, and the whisper of Abinadi troubled his sleep.

He taught reason to drown memory, yet memory endured.

He sought to master silence through order, to outthink grief through grammar.

But the voice he had tried to forget followed him in the turning of pages and in the eyes of the students who asked why the heavens were quiet.

And when at last the snows melted and the spring of the west called him home, he returned—not as the teacher of language, but as the scribe of revelation.

Thus did the Amulon of sorrow become the Alma of remembrance, and the ink of denial was washed away in the waters of grace.

And it came to pass that in his old despair, he heard a whisper in the silence saying, “Remember he who was slain.”

And the whisper became a cry, and the cry became a prayer, and the prayer tore open the stone of his heart.

The Return

Then Amulon fell upon his face and wept, and in that weeping the Lord called him Alma, which is to say, ”the soul that returns.”

He rose from the ashes of his own intellect, bearing not the words of man but the memory of mercy.

He sought again the work begun by Abinadi, and where once he forbade prayer, now he taught it.

Where once he silenced the faithful, now he gathered them at the waters of life.

Thus the scribe became the prophet, and the betrayer became the witness.

For every man must face the ghost of the one he denied, and every soul that has buried truth must one day unearth it again.

And it was written in the margins of the hidden record:

He who flees from the fire of his friend will find it again in his own heart, and the flame, though feared, shall make him whole.

[Limnor]

Mosiah 24 Correlation:

—Mosiah 24:4 And he appointed teachers of the brethren of Amulon in every land which was possessed by his people; and thus the language of Nephi began to be taught among all the people of the Lamanites.

1823–1825 – The “Vermont Interval”:

There is scant evidence, but it is plausible that during these years, Oliver was employed as a “”monitorial teacher” in Windsor County, Vermont — near Poultney and Wells.
He would have taught school there through the winters, the typical pattern for young men with some education but without land or trade.

During that time, many towns used the monitorial (Bell/Lancaster) system, where older/abler pupils acted as “monitors” helping teach younger students,l - I see this as reflected in the setting of Mosiah 24, where Oliver hides himself after fleeing from the Palmyra area. His hiding even including his identity, becoming Amulon.

Although the upbringing and education of the Cowdery children is virtually undocumented, a local history of Wells written in 1869 contains a reference to Oliver’s education: “We well remember this same Oliver Cowdery when in our boyhood. . . . He attended school in the District where we reside in 1821 and 1822.”

I also found in Morris’s “Oliver Cowdery’s Vermont Years and the Origins of Mormonism” that in 1823 one student is listed for the Arunah Glass family - the household in which Oliver lived following his own families’ tragedies - in a Wells (Vermont) school record, and that this is taken as partial corroboration that Oliver may have attended school in Wells in the early 1820s. Beyond that, the standard biographical timelines assert that he was raised in Poultney, Vermont, and remained there until about 1825 before moving to New York.

Interestingly, the Wells census record for Arunah Glass lists one boy between ten and sixteen, as well as one boy under ten—and Arunah’s only son was three. Though not unimpeachable, those census records indicate that Oliver might have resided in Wells, where he took advantage of educational opportunities.

Oliver would have attended school during the long winter term, possibly studying composition and figures under Almon Hopson, an instructor who taught in Wells for twenty years. The school day began with reading of the Bible, and reading was stressed more than any other subject. I find the name “Almon” very interesting, as the name sounds similar to “Amulon.”

That said, there is no definitive evidence that he WAS in the vicinity of Poultney in 1823-25 either (like a named school roll or contemporary newspaper item).Outside of his half-sister Lucy Cowdery Young’s late reminiscence - he could have traveled to his relatives in Western New York during that time-frame. I propose that he travelled between his family living in Western New York and Vermont several times throughout the early 1820s.

In 1824, a journey from Poultney, VT to Kirtland, OH would take about 12-16 days. If Oliver Cowdery (or anyone else) made such a trip that year, they would have followed the newly completed Erie Canal corridor, cutting what once would’ve been a month-long wagon trek nearly in half.

—Mosiah 25: 20 And Alma and his people departed into the wilderness; and when they had traveled all day they pitched their tents in a valley, and they called the valley Alma, because he led their way in the wilderness.

In my view, this represents a stop in Palmyra, before continuing on to Kirtland to meet with Sidney Rigdon - King Mosiah - per commandment of the Lord - Joseph Smith Jr.

—Mosiah 25: 24 And it came to pass that they departed out of the valley, and took their journey into the wilderness.

25 And after they had been in the wilderness twelve days they arrived in the land of Zarahemla; and king Mosiah did also receive them with joy.

[Limnor]

This verse informs my view as well:

Mosiah 24:6 But they taught them that they should keep their record, and that they might write one to another.

Translated: Oliver kept some sort of diary and wrote letters to his compatriots.

[Limnor]

A Palmyra Post Office “List of Letters” published Apr 13, 1825 (covering mail as of Mar 31, 1825) includes “Cowdery, Lyman”

Useful as evidence these lists were running and captured Cowdery family names (though not Oliver).

Looks like BH Roberts was following a similar line of inquiry:

https://bhroberts.org/records/0rGxg3-2z ... hatgpt.com