1840-1850, Nauvoo Period and Exodus: 5 Families of 10 First Converts

During the Nauvoo and Exodus period, approximately 1839 to 1850, 11 more first converts in our ancestral family joined the Church, 7 more who were like the first 10, multi-generational Americans, and for the first time, new immigrants, 1 from Ireland, and 3 from England.  These first converts represented 5 extended families:

1.      Cox

2.      Miller

3.      Carbine

4.      Williams

5.      Graham

The number of states in the U.S. went from 26 to 30.  Florida became the 27^th state Mar. 3, 1845, followed by Texas Dec. 29, 1845, Iowa Dec. 28, 1846, Wisconsin May 29, 1848, and California September 9, 1850, making 31 states by the end of the Exodus period. 

The U.S. population went from 17 million in 1840 to 23.2 million in 1850.

1840
U.S. population: 17,069,453.

March 31: President Martin Van Buren institutes a 10-hour work day for federal employees.

1841
The first wagon train arrives in California.

March: Dorothea Dix is shocked when she enters the East Cambridge, Mass., House of Correction and observes the ill-treatment of the mentally ill. After a two-year investigation, she submits a Memorial to the Massachusetts legislation, describing the mentally ill confined "in cages, closets, cellars, stalls, pens--chained naked, beaten with rods, and lashed into obedience."

April 1: Brook Farm, a utopian community near Boston inspired by American Transcendentalism, seeks to combine manual labor and intellectual pursuits.

April 4: President William Henry Harrison dies after 30 days in office.

October 27: Creole Affair. Slaves on the brig Creole revolt and sail to the Bahamas. Britain refused to return the slaves but the U.S. won financial compensation.

1842
The Massachusetts Supreme Court upholds the right of workers to organize in the case of Commonwealth v. Hunt.

May: The Dorr War. To protest Rhode Island's outdated charter of 1663 which restricted voting rights to property holders and their oldest sons, Thomas Dorr and his supporters unsuccessfully attempted to capture the armory at Providence. A new Constitution was subsequently adopted that granted the vote to citizens who paid a $1 poll tax or owned at least $134 in real estate.

1843
August 23: Mexico warns that American annexation of Texas would be "equivalent to a declaration of war against the Mexican government."

1844
May 3: Rioting erupts in Philadelphia when anti-Catholic "Native Americans try to hold a street meeting in the heavily Irish Kensington district.

May 24: Samuel F.B. Morse sends the first message by telegraph: "What hath God wrought." He sent the message from Washington to Baltimore.

June 27: A mob storms a Carthage, Ill., jail, and murders Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, and his brother. Smith was being held for destroying the printing press of a dissident who had attacked the practice of polygamy.

December 3: The House of Representatives lifts the Gag Rule.

1845
The Baptist Church splits over the slavery issue.

July: John L. O'Sullivan, the editor of the U.S. Magazine and Democratic Review, declares that the United States has a "manifest destiny" to occupy the North American continent. Manifest destiny became one of the most influential slogans in American history.

August: A blight devastates the Irish potato crop. Over 1 million people died and 2 million emigrated, 1.3 million to the United States.

December 29: Texas is admitted to the Union as a slave state.

1846
January: President James K. Polk orders Gen. Zachary Taylor to march southward from Corpus Christi and occupy position near the Rio Grande River, 150 miles south of the Texas border as defined by the Spanish and Mexican authorities.

May 4: Michigan becomes the first state to abolish capital punishment.

May 13: President Polk tells Congress that Mexico has "invaded our territory and shed American blood on American soil." Congress then declares war on Mexico.

June 15: The United States accepts the 49th parallel as the boundary between the United States and Canada west of the Great Lakes.

July 23: Henry David Thoreau, living in a cabin at Walden Pond, near Concord, Mass., was arrested for refusing to pay a $1 poll tax, his protest against slavery and the Mexican War. This incident that inspired him to write the essay Civil Disobedience, in which he argued in behalf of non-violent protest against unjust government policies. He wrote: "Any man more right than his neighbor constitutes a majority of one."

August: Rep. David Wilmot submits an amendment to a military appropriations bill prohibiting slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico. The proviso passes the house twice but is defeated in the Senate.

October: A party of pioneers headed by George Donner is trapped in the Sierras by early snows. In April 1847, 47 survivors of the original party of 82 finally reached California.

1847
July 24: The first Mormons reach the Great Salt Lake.

September 13-14: Mexico City falls to a U.S. army under Gen. Winfield Scott.

1848
Alexander T. Stewart opens the first department store on Broadway in New York.

The Free Soil party is formed, opposing the expansion of slavery into the western territories.

New York State grants married women the right to own property apart from their husbands.

January 24: James Marshall discovers gold at John Sutter's sawmill near Sacramento, Calif.

February 2: The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ends the Mexico War. The American negotiator, Nicholas Trist, had been ordered home four months earlier, but had continued the negotiations. The United States acquired California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, and parts of Arizona, Colorado, Kansas and Wyoming for $15 million and assumption of $3.25 million in debts owned by Mexico to Americans.

July 19-20: The first Woman's Rights Convention in history is held in Seneca Falls, New York. The convention called for women's suffrage. Only two participants lived to see the 19th amendment to the Constitution, granting women the right to vote.

1849
80,000 people migrate to California; about 55,000 overland and 25,000 by sea. Only about 700 are women.

Elizabeth Blackwell becomes the United States' first women to receive a medical degree.

1850
U.S. population: 23,191,876.

The U.S. navy and merchant marine outlaw flogging.

August: Congress adopts the Compromise of 1850, which admits California to the Union as a free state, but does not forbid slavery in other territories acquired from Mexico. It also prohibits the sale of slaves in Washington, D.C. and includes a strict law requiring the return of runaway slaves to their masters.

October 23-24: The first national women's rights convention, held in Worcester, Mass., attracts delegates from nine states.