Setting the Record Straight

Prior to Joseph Smith’s first vision, and not long after his mother Lucy joined the Presbyterian Church, what bold statement did Joseph Smith make to his mother?

a.      She joined the wrong church

b.      She would soon discover her folly

c.       He could learn more by reading the bible for 2 hours than she could in two years at church meetings

d.      He knew more about religion than her minister

Yesterday’s answer:

a.        That she was dead

In 1865 Franz Christian Grundvig was an eyewitness to the capture of his young bride, Jessiene, by Indians. She had been ill and was being helped by her husband to catch up to the wagon train. At Cotton wood Hollow on 22 September, three days west of Fort Laramie, a group of Indians stampeded the cattle and in the melee wounded thirteen men and attempted to capture at least two women. Grundvig nearly died from five arrows that pierced his body as he attempted to save his wife. He recalls: “Thinking me dead, the Indians left with my wife.” He last saw her as she hung limp and helpless across an Indian pony, “unconscious or dead.” James P. Anderson notes, “They also roped one girl, 18, . . . but she managed to free herself from the ropes and escaped.” Oxen were killed and wagons abandoned. The company moved forward to Fort Bridger, and for the next three weeks Grundvig rode in a bumpy wagon, feeling the anguish and sorrow for the loss of his wife.

   Later, when he went to the Endowment House in Salt Lake City to be sealed to her, the clerk asked if his wife was dead. Grundvig said he did not know and then took a few minutes to tell his sad story. “The clerk went into an adjoining room and spoke to President Daniel H. Wells, who followed him back to the doorway. He looked steadily at Brother Grundvig, who returned his gaze. Then President Wells said slowly, “your wife is dead.’”

Holzapfel, Richard Neitzel, Their Faces Toward Zion (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1996), 117.