Recordpub.com - PORTAGE PATHWAYS: Dark chapter in Portage history: Mormon leaders targets of vicious attack in Hiram 175 years ago

By Roger J. Di Paolo

Record-Courier Editor

One of the most shameful episodes in Portage County's history occurred 175 years ago today on a farm in Hiram Township, where a dispute fueled by religious differences escalated into a near-lynching.

Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon had been living in the Hiram area since the fall of 1831 at the invitation of John and Elsa Johnson, who lived on a farm on Pioneer Trail near S.R. 700, south of Hiram Center.

Smith was the first prophet and president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which had organized a year earlier in the state of New York, and Rigdon was one of his closest followers in what was commonly referred to as Mormonism.

The Johnsons had become Mormons and had opened their home to Smith, his wife, Emma, and their children after the Latter-day Saints had moved to Ohio and established headquarters in the Kirtland area. Rigdon and his wife, Phebe, lived in a log cabin near the Johnson farm.

The Mormon leaders' stay in Portage County had not been without controversy. A number of Mormon converts had left the church and aired their theological differences in a series of broadsides published in the Ohio Star, the Ravenna weekly newspaper (and the journalistic "parent" of the Record-Courier). Smith and Rigdon attempted to refute their critics during a series of appearances in Ravenna, Shalersville and elsewhere in January 1832, but ill feelings persisted.

The dispute took a violent turn on the evening of Saturday, March 24, 1832, when a mob of men from Hiram, Garrettsville and Shalersville appeared at the Johnson home and dragged the 26-year-old Smith from his bed.

"The mob burst open the door and surrounded the bed in an instant," Smith wrote. "I found myself going out of the door, in the hands of about a dozen men, some of whose hands were in my hair, and some had hold of my shirt, drawers and limbs.

"I made a desperate struggle, as I was forced out, to extricate myself... They swore they would kill me if I did not be still, which quieted me," he recalled.

Smith was taken to a frozen field, about 150 yards from his home. There he saw Rigdon, who had been dragged by his heels and set upon by some of the attackers. Smith thought his companion was dead.

The mob stripped Smith of all of his clothing except for his shirt collar, scratched and tore at his body and stretched him out on a plank. According to one account, a doctor was summoned to castrate him, but refused to do so. Someone fetched a pot of tar, and a coating of tar and feathers was applied. Smith also said that a vial of nitric acid was forced into his mouth in an apparent attempt to poison him.

Rigdon also was tarred and feathered in addition to being beaten severely.

Following the attack, Smith made his way to the Johnson residence. "When I came to the door, I was naked, and the tar made me look as though I had been covered with blood," he wrote. Emma Smith fainted at the sight of her husband.

"My friends spent the night in scraping and removing the tar, and washing and cleansing my body," he wrote.

The following morning was a Sunday, and a group of Mormons assembled for a scheduled worship service. Despite his ordeal, Smith led the service. "With my flesh all scarified and defaced, I preached to the congregation as usual, and on the afternoon of the same day I baptized three individuals."

Among those in the crowd, Smith claimed, were several men who had attacked him and Rigdon just a few hours earlier.

Smith and Rigdon left Hiram about a week later, following continued harassment of the Johnson family by members of the mob. The Mormons continued what would prove to be a long journey westward, moving first to Missouri, then to Illinois, where they faced continued persecution.

A dozen years after being attacked in Portage County, Joseph Smith was set upon by a lynch mob that forced its way into a jail in Carthage, Ill., where he and his brother, Hyrum, were being held. Both men were murdered.

The Johnson Home, located at 6203 Pioneer Trail, is considered a Mormon shrine, not only because of Smith's brush with martyrdom but because he received 16 revelations there while it was the temporary headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Mormons purchased the site in 1956 and it has been restored as it might have looked when Joseph and Emma Smith lived there 175 years ago.

In 1984, the Mormons re-established a branch in Hiram, more than 150 years after being driven from the area. A worship facility constructed on the grounds of the Johnson Home was dedicated in 1987. The shrine itself, which is open to the public, was rededicated in 2001.