E95: Bandits in Blue

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:44)
By the middle of 1846, Winter Quarters, although intended to be a temporary halfway house to Zion, was a fully functioning, settled town, sort of. Remember that it had no charter and no official status under federal or state jurisdiction, which meant it was sort of a squishy, lawless territory with no real accountability.
Around 3,500 people at the time give or take the fluctuating incoming and outgoing wagon companies.
It hosted around 600 cabins, according to a census taken in 1846, several mills, a school, and stores. For the Mormons in the room, it was also divided into wards, averaging around 13 wards and 22 wards at its height.

**Bryan Buchanan** (1:29)
Outside of Winter Quarters proper, there's about 7,000 other saints and little acampments all over Iowa, on both sides of the Missouri River. Indian treaties be damned, we're going to just plop ourselves here.
The Mormons were divided into Brigham Young's favorite way to organize the block system. Very geometric and orderly. The settlement was kind of like the love child of Salt Lake City and Nauvoo. Because running north and south, you've got first and second main. Then running east and west, kind of like Nauvoo, you had streets named Cutler, Cahoon, Pratt, Woodruff, Russell, Smith.
No Young. I thought that was interesting. Each of the blocks was then divided into 20 equal lots. Marie Kondo would have been so proud. Like older Marie Kondo, not like today's Marie Kondo, but I digress.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (2:15)
You have kids and messes up your streets. We get it. It's the orderly part we're going to focus on in today's episode. This episode was inspired by a fantastic article, one of my favorites about Winter Quarters, Law and Order in Winter Quarters by Edward L. Kimball and Kenneth W. Godfrey, published in the Journal of Mormon History in the Spring Volume 32
We're going to link it in the show notes because it is worth the read.

**Bryan Buchanan** (2:42)
The article title basically sums up the topic of how Law and Order were needed in Winter Quarters.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (2:47)
I know, I know, sweet baby Mormon loves. We like to think of our Mormon ancestors as cooperative, earnest, hardworking people who work together like busy little bees with no conflict. That's a true perspective.
If you descended from Avatar robots, not people. But I don't know about you, my ancestors were human beings with lots of big human feelings, little skills and resources that allowed healthy exploration of those feelings. And they had a lot of very difficult challenges. All that gobbledygook is to say that Mormons had problems just like everyone else, and in many cases, created more problems for themselves with their choices.

**Bryan Buchanan** (3:28)
You mean to say that people who have experienced a lot of community trauma and discrimination, abandoned their wealth at the hands of injustice, camped illegally on Indian land in the middle of a muddy swamp, aren't happy all the time?

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (3:39)
And yet, grid system, grid system, we are orderly. And Mormons like to organize ourselves into nice, orderly little hierarchies. Today's episode is going to discuss how we dealt with the issues of being human under some pretty extraordinary circumstances, and also some pretty ordinary ones too. How did Mormons during this period deal with conflict? It's worth exploring, and today, we dive into it all.
Hi, this is Lindsay Hansen Park.

**Bryan Buchanan** (4:14)
And this is Bryan Buchanan.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (4:15)
Bringing you the story of Mormonism from the shadow of the Everlasting Hills, straight out of Zion, this isn't your grandpa's Mormon history.

**Bryan Buchanan** (4:43)
This is the tale of Mormon saints and sinners, from our roots until present day.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (4:48)
Gird your loins, lock your hearts, and pay your tithing, because we're bringing you the story of Mormonism in all its paradisiacal glory.

**Bryan Buchanan** (4:56)
It's the Sunstone History Podcast.
Before any diving, however, first a word from our friend's signature books. Plural marriage in the Nauvoo era of LDS Church history has long been a fascinating subject. To understand it fully requires one to look at it from the perspective of the man who introduced it, but just as crucial is a dive into the lives of the women he married, all who have their stories to tell. In his 1997 award-winning study In Sacred Loneliness, The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith, Todd Compton focused on the 33 women who he could demonstrate the Smith married, providing life stories of many who are well known and others who have been largely forgotten. In his new work, In Sacred Loneliness, The Documents, Compton returns to his subject and provides the raw materials that helped him create his original study, Writings Composed by the Women Themselves. This volume includes many autobiographical writings, diaries and letters, with Compton providing annotations and introductory material that illuminates these crucial primary sources.