Episode 130: Before They Were Famous: Charles C. Rich

**Bryan Buchanan** (0:06)
Lindsay, what does the C stand for?

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:09)
I feel like I'm missing some context here, but I can do this. C, company?

**Bryan Buchanan** (0:16)
No, no, that's ridiculous. Put some oomph into this.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:20)
Geez, captain.

**Bryan Buchanan** (0:24)
Okay, that one's actually closer. Okay, sorry. What does the C stand for in Charles C.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:29)
Rich? C, I knew there was a critical piece missing. Easy peasy, Coulson.

**Bryan Buchanan** (0:36)
All right, there you go.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:37)
For bonus points, Comrade to Amas Alayman.

**Bryan Buchanan** (0:42)
Yeah, I'll award bonus points for that one because you gentle listeners may remember we talked about his bro dude Amas Alayman a few episodes back. Now it's time to get back to his main squeeze, Elder Charles C. Rich.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:55)
And if you're squeamish about a black crust on the tongue, you'd better gird up those lines because it's go time. Hi, this is Lindsay Hansen Park.

**Bryan Buchanan** (1:06)
And this is Bryan Buchanan.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (1:08)
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** (1:36)
This is the tale of Mormon saints and sinners from our roots until present day. Saddle up.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (1:41)
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** (1:49)
It's the Sunstone History Podcast.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (2:12)
Old Chuck hailed from very different circumstances than some of his other friends. He was born in the woods of Northern Kentucky, not far from Cincinnati. The riches had started in New England, but had moved down to Kentucky a couple generations before Charles was born. They wouldn't stay long since the ghost of Isaac Allen meant that the title to the land was very murky. So the rich family moved over into Indiana since it was a southeast corner. It wasn't actually all that far away. It was a standard primitive area story. Figure out your shelter, clear your trees and get to farming. It can sound rustic and adventurous, but it was really just blisters and swearing.

**Bryan Buchanan** (2:54)
Given the mostly unsettled conditions there, religion was something experienced when preachers randomly rode through or when large camp meetings were organized. But even the best circuit rider couldn't do anything about animal diseases, however. When an epidemic of black tongue hit their animals, the allure of Indiana started to wear off. Gross. If you think that black tongue is bad, you just keep waiting because the black tongue is going to get there.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (3:20)
There's more black tongue in this episode?

**Bryan Buchanan** (3:22)
Oh, it's going to get tongue-ear.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (3:23)
I did not sign up for this.

**Bryan Buchanan** (3:24)
And yeah, tongue-ear is totally a word. So yeah, with all that black tongue in the neighborhood, it's time for the riches to hit the road again. This time, they ended up in Tazewell County, Illinois, a hundred miles due east of Nauvoo. And by this point, Charles is already thinking of starting out on his own, but opted to stay home and teach school. There is no evidence Charles was poisoned, but he did make friends with Jose Stout.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (3:49)
Ah, it doesn't look good. Black tongue and Jose Stout. Something's in the water. I see what you did there. Religion in their new area was largely the same. Itinerant preachers and camp meetings formed the basic skeleton of religious life. By 1831, another rich family friend, Morris Phelps, was hearing from relatives in Ohio about the sexy new Mormon movement. Phelps' friend, James Emmett, remember that guy? Arranged to get two Mormon elders in the area, Lyman White and John Correll, and have them come back and preach to them. And wow, that is a lot of future chaos in one room. Remember, go back to our Emmett, our James Emmett, mountain man, sex cult episode just a few episodes back. Charles Rich wasn't baptized quite yet, but did acquire a Book of Mormon to read. In the following year, another pair of elders came through, and one of them, George Hinkle, baptized Charles. No word on whether his system of preaching involved instructions on how to be a trader. Here's the thing, imagine being baptized by elders like that that just go so off the rails.

**Bryan Buchanan** (4:56)
The missionary unions would have been a whole lot of fun to attend.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (4:59)
It's just making me, it's giving me LeBaron vibes from the Paris mission, the France mission, where all those missionaries went off the rails and joined the fundamentalists in the 50s. This is kind of like that, but if you're a Charles C. Rich ancestor, he was baptized by a crazy person. You may remember from our Hosea Stout episode that this period was also affected by another theme, not just sex cults, frontier sex cults, but the Black Hawk War. Hosea Stout volunteered to fight because of course he did. While Charles prepared to go to Kirtland to visit Joseph Smith. And remember, we're going to be talking about the Black Hawk War with Philip Godfrey Hudson in a few episodes. Different Black Hawk War. There are two Black Hawk Wars that Mormons are involved in. And this is the first one over on the east, back in the Illinois area territory. The other Black Hawk War comes later in Utah. But Charles C. Rich was in the first one.