Episode 166: The Morrisite War

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:44)
It's no surprise for the superstitious or mystically inclined like myself, that today's story starts on Friday the 13th, June 13th. But this is June 13th, 1862 to be exact, in South Weber, Utah territory.

**Bryan Buchanan** (1:01)
And just a quick PSA for listeners. I'm from South Weber, and it's Weber, not Weber. Same for Weber State. You people in the East are fired for pronouncing this wrong all the time. But back to our scene. A thousand armed men have surrounded a makeshift fort on the Weber River. They've dragged cannons up onto the ridges. The bluffs look down into the encampment below, a cluster of dirt and willow cabins, a bowery, and a few hundred frightened people.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (1:27)
Inside the fort, a bugle sounds. Not from the militia outside, but from the prophet within. He's gathered his people to hear a revelation. But this is frontier Utah territory, and when we say prophet, we usually mean the big guy, Brother Brigham Young.
The prophet held up inside this fort isn't him.

**Bryan Buchanan** (1:48)
A man with dark hair and a soft English accent stands before the congregation. He has a message from God. The Lord has promised that the enemies will be destroyed. The faithful will be delivered. Christ is coming. He's been coming for a year and a half now. Any day, any hour. I've never heard that story before. The congregation settles into the bowery, someone begins to read the revelation aloud, and then a cannon fires.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (2:11)
The ball ricochets off the plowed earth in front of the settlement and tears into the crowd, killing two women, shattering the jaw of the third, and the Morrisite War begins. Hi, this is Lindsay Hansen Park.

**Bryan Buchanan** (2:28)
And this is Bryan Buchanan.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (2:30)
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** (2:57)
This is the tale of Mormon saints and sinners from our roots until present day. Saddle up.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (3:02)
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** (3:10)
It's the Sunstone History Podcast.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (3:35)
Today, we're telling a story that almost nobody outside Utah knows, and honestly, a lot of people inside Utah have never heard of either. It's one of those stories where the more you dig, the more your jaw drops.

**Bryan Buchanan** (3:46)
Too soon.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (3:47)
It's actually a story that will repeat itself over and over and over and over again in Utah, making us the true crime genre for streamers and documentarians.

**Bryan Buchanan** (3:57)
This story has all the right ingredients. A prophet, a fort, did you hear that Lindsay? There's a fort at the center of this. An apocalyptic community that stopped planting crops because Jesus was literally on his way. A territorial militia with cannons, a three-day siege, and a killing that sparked a murder trial 17 years later. This is the Morrisite War of June 1862, one of the most dramatic and tragic episodes in Utah territorial history.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (4:22)
And we want to give a shout out right at the top to our friend Seth Bryant, who has been a great supporter of this podcast and one of the historians we pull from today. Seth, this one's for you, pal.

**Bryan Buchanan** (4:32)
Before we get into the event itself, we need to understand the man at the center of it. And Joseph Morris is fascinating. We might call him the OG Windjammer. That one's for you, AS. This is not a simple villain story. It's not even a simple story at all. So let's talk about Morris. And the first thing I want to say is, if you're going to build a profile of someone who might break from a religious institution and start their own movement, Joseph Morris checks about every box. He's born in 1824 in Burwoodsley, Cheshire, England, a coal miner, a farm laborer. He's a bit of a fun-sized guy. He's maybe 5'6, by all accounts, well-built. He's got dark eyes, long dark hair that fell in ringlets. And historian GM. Howard, who wrote a key article on all of this, described his complexion as almost feminine and its whiteness. There's something otherworldly about the descriptions of him, even physically.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (5:23)
He's converted by Mormon missionaries in his mid-20s, which is pretty common, pretty common story for the era. Marries Mary Thorpe.

**Bryan Buchanan** (5:31)
Did people just get converted earlier and younger back then?

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (5:35)