Busted water pipes, broken valves, fixing sunken parking lot on my trusty Kabota
Cocktails on the patio or the deck tonight? Kubota is waiting for you. Whuts yer sign?
Posted on 04/03/2008 9:07:12 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
LDS Church leaders have agreed to seek national landmark status for the church-owned Mountain Meadows Massacre site in southern Utah where Mormons attacked a California-bound wagon train on Sept. 11, 1857.
A national landmark designation would ensure that the 120 Arkansas emigrants of the Fancher/Baker wagon train company who were killed by Mormon militia and some Paiute Indians "will always be remembered as part of our nation's history," said Marlin K. Jensen, an LDS general authority and official historian for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Jensen met Friday in Arkansas with about 20 representatives of the Mountain Meadows Association, the Mountain Meadows Massacre Descendants and the Mountain Meadows Monument Foundation. Each group has a slightly different mission, but all had asked the church to seek landmark status for Mountain Meadows.
The site is already listed on the National Register of Historic Places, but requirements for a landmark designation are much more stringent, according to Jensen. The process involves documenting the historic significance of the site, a public comment period, and reviews by the National Park Service and a government-appointed board of experts. The secretary of the interior will make the final decision.
At Friday's meeting, Jensen also discussed proposed plans to create a second memorial with interpretive markers at the Burgess upper grave site, where remains of some of the victims are thought to be buried. Descendants were worried that new housing might encroach on the area, which they consider to be sacred land, so the church purchased 600 additional acres to avert any development.
The descendant groups were surprised and pleased by the church's gesture, said Patty Norris, president of the MMM Descendants. The church had declined to support previous requests to seek national landmark status for the massacre site.
"It was a very good meeting and a very good day for the church and the descendants," said Norris, great-great-great- granddaughter of Tryphenia Fancher, a toddler who witnessed the slaughter of her entire family on the plains of Utah. "When I got involved some 10 years ago, one of my main goals was to work toward making sure that site was preserved and that we found those upper graves and properly marked them. So today was a huge thing for me personally."
There is not much else to do, Norris said. "Everybody's on the same page. We are going to move forward together. It's a big relief."
LDS officials were relieved, too.
"It couldn't have been a more amicable meeting," said Jensen, who was joined in Arkansas by Richard Turley, assistant church historian, and Steven Olsen, managing director of the LDS history department. "We brought good news and they gave us several standing ovations."
The meeting was held in Carrollton, where the 17 surviving children were returned to their next of kin in 1859. The town erected a marker for the massacre victims in 1955.
"To come here and put a human face [on] this tragedy really has been sobering and humbling," Jensen said.
Six months ago, Mormon leaders gathered at Mountain Meadows with the three descendants groups, Paiute representatives and others at a 150th anniversary memorial service to honor the victims of the massacre.
At that time, Henry B. Eyring, then an LDS apostle and now a member of the church's governing First Presidency, acknowledged that the responsibility rested with regional LDS leaders who also held civic and military positions and with members of the church acting under their direction.
"What was done here long ago by members of our church represents a terrible and inexcusable departure from Christian teaching and conduct," Eyring said at the September service. "We cannot change what happened, but we can remember and honor those who were killed here."
Jensen, Turley and Olsen will remain in Arkansas through Sunday, speaking to various LDS groups about Mormon involvement in the massacre.
LDS Church members there still experience some tension with their neighbors over this episode, Jensen said. "We need to equip them to deal with it in a good way. . . . When we are open and listen and express our regret, walls come tumbling down."
Hmmm...this is new to me, Fred. Are you saying that friends and relatives of the Fanchers were guilty of these acts...THOUSANDS??? Are you talking about Winter Quarters? If so, click HERE Winter Quarters is in Nebraska.
The Fanchers were from Arkansas, where Parley Pratt died. From Wiki:
"On a preaching mission in the southern United States in 1857, Pratt was being tracked by Hector McLean, who was upset with Pratt for marrying his legal wife Eleanor McLean. Pratt had met Eleanor a few years earlier in San Francisco, California, and she later left Hector and moved to Utah where she married Pratt.[2] Though for religious reasons she considered herself "unmarried", Eleanor was not legally divorced from Hector at the time of her Celestial marriage to Pratt.[3]
McLean pressed criminal charges, accusing Pratt of coming between him and his legal wife. Pratt managed to evade him and the legal charges, but was finally arrested in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). He was tried before Judge John B Ogden, but was only charged with stealing children's clothes. He had helped his wife Eleanor retrieve her children who had been taken from her by McLean. Judge Ogden acquitted Pratt of the charges against him and released him. However, shortly afterward, on 13 May 1857, he was killed by Hector McLean on a farm northeast of Van Buren, Arkansas. Pratt was buried near Alma, Arkansas."
The mormons were incensed at the death of Pratt. Your post sounds like a half-true lie to me.
The scene, a waterfront bar in San Francisco
Parley: Well hello there, whuts yer name?
Eleanor: Eleanor
Parley: Hello, I’m Parley, Where ya frum?
Eleanor: Arkansas
Parley: Whuts yer sign?
Eleanor: Dunno, whuts a sign?
Parley: Hold muh hand, I’ll give ya a sign....Halalulu! Now yer muh speshul heavenly wife.
Where ya been, my homey?
Isn’t it ‘Fred’ who is constantly accusing folks of half-truth lies? Is the ol’ sod now ‘lying for the lord’ with a half-truth lie of his own, so he doesn’t count his half-truth as a lie?
Busted water pipes, broken valves, fixing sunken parking lot on my trusty Kabota
Cocktails on the patio or the deck tonight? Kubota is waiting for you. Whuts yer sign?
I’m a Vertigo....especially after drinks on the patio.
How ‘bout U?
Me too except we call it Virgo in this neck of the woods. Especially before the drinks. On the cusp though. Leo/Virgo.
As Virgos, it is no wonder we drink.... we have to forget how ‘perfect’ we are.
I am glad the Saints finally quit tearing down the monuments constructed by the U.S. Army and the Fancher family members (at least eight by my count), before putting up this permanent memorial.
I wish, however, the Mormons would honor the family members' request to erect a cross at the site.
Incidentally, you can read much more about the Massacre, John Lee's trial, and the Mormon cover-up (including Brigham Young's involvement) HERE in this excellent site prepared by a law professor at the University of Missouri Kansas City.
These INNOCENT people from ARKANSAS were butchered and their bones scattered.
What kind of proof do you have that these innocent victims of Mormon butchery were friends or relatives of the people in Illinois where the Mormons lived before they moved out West?
++++++++++++++++++
Not saying it was justified, it just seems to me that the anti’s here at FR, and other places, want to make it seem that all of the LDS history is bad because of ONE, REPEAT, ONE such incedent, while ignoring the hundreds of “good christians” that did many , many times worse.
I think that it is amassing that the Saints controlled their feelings and actions so well that only ONE group was attracted, given the thousands of opportunities to act like the “real christians” who caused the deaths and suffering of thousands of Saints.
Fred,
Do you have one bit of proof to back up this outrageous accusation?
If so, would you please post links to credible references.
Thanks
/Zak
That all the time in IL, the Mormons just ‘took it’?
They didn't. It was called the Mormon Wars for a reason.
Mormons were killed by non-mormons. Non-mormons were killed by Mormons.
It wasn't just ONE incident. Good grief, if you are a Mormons, you sure are lacking in your knowledge of your own religion's past.
Of course they tend to dwell on only the ones where the Mormons were the victims.
Just like some claim that Bush Knew about 9/11 as well.
ROTFL....been missin’ your comments!
Yep, every Virgo I ever met thought he was perfect! Us Sags just pull out our trusty bow, (you know what a "bow" is, don't ya, cc?) and shoot 'em in their perfect hineys. THAT puts a dent in their perfection!
THAT, is a "full-true lie!" What, pray tell, is "many, many times worse" than ambushing from secret and killing every man, woman and child over the age of eight?
Source and links for these acts you are accusing Christians of.
You didn't answer my post about the "friends and relatives" claim you made, Fred...can't you back up your "half-true lie"?
Come on, add this with the illegal destruction of the Nauvoo Examiner, murderous raids by the Danites and ripping the people of Kirkland off, just for starters. During the period of the massacre, mormons were either denying or extorting the immigrants of there limited resources for supplies. Young was ranting about his 'blood atonement' and all. No, the Christians time and again didn't pick the fight, but they wouldn't cowtow either to the general and king smith.
I love Sags. No wonder I love you, FRiend!
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