A Little Bent Out of Shape

Let’s face it, not everyone was grinning from ear to ear when Zion’s Camp returned home to Kirtland. There were those who wanted to fight the mobs and redeem the Saints back to their lands and properties, but the Lord didn’t see it that way. Honestly though, they had nobody to blame but themselves. The Lord wanted 500 men, He got 200. Maybe if they had gone with the 500, then there might have been a possibility that the situation in Jackson County may have turned out a little different.

When Zion’s camp returned to Kirtland, Dennis Lake, one of the members of the camp, did what to the Prophet?

A)                 Published false stories about the Zion’s Camp experience in the local newspaper

B)                 Confronted the Prophet inside the temple

C)                 Apostatized and sued the Prophet

D)                 Stole from the prophet what he figured he was owed

Yesterday’s answers:

1.      D)   Wrapped in muskrat skins

Mary Elizabeth James (Jones), an early pioneer of the Salt Lake Valley, records the following: “None of [the children] had shoes but wore muskrat skins that had been salted and dried and they tied them on their feet.

Jones, Mary Elizabeth James. “Mormon Diaries, Journals and Life Sketches.”

2.      A)   New shoes

Mary Ann Chapple Warner, an early pioneer to the Salt Lake Valley relates the following:

   It had been such a long time since I had any shoes, that at eight years I hardly knew what they felt like. It happened that one day as I was helping mother lift a heavy

tub used for washing our clothes, I let go of my end and the tub fell on my bare toe. My toe was almost smashed and when Mr. John Gollard, a shoemaker, saw it, he promised me that if a lady didn’t call within six weeks for a pair of shoes that he had made for her little girl, he would give them to me. How I prayed that the lady wouldn’t come for the shoes, and she didn’t. On the sixth week, Mr. Gollard brought me the new pair of shoes, the first real shoes I had since coming to America.

Warner, Mary Ann Chapple. Autobiography. Typescript. Utah State Historical Society, Salt Lake City, Utah

3.      B)   Shoes

   The first newspaper I remember was run by Bernard Maeser, son of Dr. Karl G. Maeser. He had his newspaper shop in the back of the building where the Parowan Stake Academy was located. A friend and I applied for a job and we got it because we were good spellers. This was my first job at which I earned money and the $3.00 a week pay seemed enormous. How happy I was to get my first pay and run to the Sheep Store and buy a pair of shoes. They cost $3.00-my entire week’s pay.

Larsen, Ethel Blain. In Life Under a Horseshoe: A History of Spring City, written and edited by Kaye C. Watson. Salt Lake City: Publishers Press, 1987.