·
Edmund Durfee was born 3 Oct 1788,
married 18 Oct 1809 (age 21), age 31@FV, baptized 15 May 1831 (age 42), murdered by mobbers 15
Nov 1845 (age 57), in front of Solomon Hancock’s farm house.
·
Magdalena (Lana) Pickle
Durfee was born 6 Jun 1788, married 18 Oct 1809 (age 21), age 31@FV, baptized 1 Jun 1831 (age 42), died 17
May 1850 (age 61), Council Bluffs.
Edmund was murdered at age 57 outside
a Hancock County farm house by a mob.
Lana died at age 61 at Council
Bluffs, Musketol (Mosquito) Creek, Pottawatamie, Iowa.
Edmund was born in October in
Tiverton, RI, on the inland coast of the bay south of Providence, 60 miles
south of Boston, and 60 miles east of Barnstable, MA, where Alpheus Gifford was
born and raised. Edmund was 5 years
older than Alpheus Gifford and 5 years younger than Enos Curtis. He was
the 2nd child and 1st son of Perry Durfee and Annie
Martha Salisbury, both born in Tiverton.
They were 23 and 22 when he was born.
Perry died in 1800, at the age of 34 (an accident?), at Broadalbin, NY,
but Annie died in Tiverton, having lived to be 101. See story below for more details. Edmund’s grandparents and great grandparents had
lived in the general area around Tiverton.
Edmund was at least a 6th generation American from multigenerational
American families in the years leading up to the Revolutionary War.
Edmund and Lana were both 21 when
they married and 31 with 3 girls and 2 boys when this dispensation began in
1820. Edmund and Lana were baptized 15
May 1831 when they had 9 living children of 11 born to them. They received their endowments and were
sealed in the Nauvoo Temple in 1845.
As near as we can determine, in our
ancestry, Edmund and Lana and family were the third First Convert family to
join the Church.
Special thanks to William G.
Hartley, Provo, UT, for his Nov. 1995 document titled, The Murder of Edmund
Durfee, prepared for Albert and Tamma Durfee Miner Family Organization)
Edmund Durfee (sometimes spelled
Durphy) was born in Tiverton, Rhode Island, on 3 Oct 1788, a fifth-generation
descendent of Thomas Durfee, an English immigrant to Rhode Island. Other ancestors were America pilgrims born in
the late 1500’s and early 1600s.
Edmund’s parents were Perry and Annie Salisbury Durfee. (Of biographical sketches circulating among
descendents, the one most relied on is Dora D. Flack, “Edmund and Magdalena
Pickle Durfee,” a typescript written in 1955.
Use details are found in “Tamma Durfee Miner.”)
Edmund was seventeen when his father
died. The next year, Edmund’s
grandparents, James and Ann Durfee, moved from Tiverton to New York state and
took with them Edmund and his brother, Jabez, James, and Perry. They settled in Broadalbin, Montgomery (now
Fulton) County. In 1810, Edmund moved to
Madison County, a bit farther west.
There, he married Magdalena Pickle.
Magdalena’s ancestors had immigrated
from Germany and Prussia to America and had lived in Stone Arabia, Montgomery
County, New York. Magdalena was born on
6 June 1788, in Stone Arabia, New York, a daughter of John and Dolly
Pickle. In 1790, her family moved to
Lincoln, New York, where she grew to young adulthood. She met and married Edmund in Tiverton,
Newport County, Rhode Island.
Edmund and Lana, as she was called,
made their home in Lennox, Madison County, New York, where six children were
born to them by 1820. About the year
1822, Edmund and Lana moved their family to Amboy, in Oswego County, New York,
where they lived for the next eight years.
They bought land, built a home, farmed, tapped a large stand of maple
trees, and Edmund worked in the area as a carpenter and millright. Lana tapped the abundant Maple trees and made
maple syrup.
Four more children were born into
the family there, and two in Williamstown, New York. Their last child would be born in Ohio in
1835. (Sharon Beeson, “Edmond Durfee and
Magdalena Pickle,” in Sharon Beeson, Ed., Edmond Franklin and Nancy Ellen Durfee,
N.p.: Durfee Family Organization, 1991,
1-4; other branches of the family and early LDS records spell his name Edmund,
not Edmond.)
Edmund and Lana’s children, their
birthdates, marriage dates, and spouse names, and year of death are:
1-
Martha was born in 1811, married
Lyman Stevens in 1836, and died in 1874.
2-
Tamma was born in 1813, married
Albert Miner in 1831, and died in 1885.
3-
Edmund, Jr. was born in 1814,
married Caroline Eliza Clark sometime, and died in 1861.
4-
Dolly was born in 1816, married
David Gardner in 1842, and died in 1885.
5-
John was born in 1818, married Sarah
Ann Wilcox sometime, and died in 1850.
6-
Lana was born in 1820, married
William Davis Dudley in 1838, and died in 1896.
7-
William was born in 1822 and died in
1850.
8-
Ephraim was born in 1824 and died in
1825.
9-
Abraham was born in 1826, married
Ursula Curtis sometime, and died in 1862+.
10-
Henry was born in 1827 and died in
1827.
11-
Jabez ws born in 1828, married
Celestia Curtis in 1850, and died in 1883.
12-
Mary was born in 1830, married
Dominicus Carter in 1844, and died in 1885.
13-
Nephi was born in 1835, married
Amanda Thomas in 1857, and died in 1880.
New lands farther west attracted
Edmund, and in June 1830, he sold his property and moved his family from New
York state. Traveling via the Erie Canal
to Buffalo, they sailed on Lake Erie and landed near Cleveland. In the township of Ruggles in Huron County
(now Ashland County), about sixty miles southwest of Cleveland, they bought
property and settled.
Religiously, the Durfees were
Methodists and Campbellites, according to daughter Tamma. (Edmund and Lana’s daughter, Tamma, who later
married Albert Miner, wrote an autobiographical sketch in 1880, “Tamma Durfee
Miner.” Copies of it widely circulate
among her descendents and one is filed in the LDS Church Historical Department
Archives, cited hereafter, as LDSHD.)
During the Durfee’s first winter in
Ohio, missionaries representing Mormonism, a new faith not yet a year old, won
converts in the Kirtland area just east of Cleveland. By early 1831, founding Prophet Smith moved
his followers from New York to Kirtland.
From Kirtland, missionaries fanned out across northern Ohio. Two came to the Durfee’s neighborhood, Simeon
Carter and Solomon Hancock, and converted the Durfees to Mormonism. (Solomon Hancock was born Aug. 15, 1794, in
Maine, a son of Thomas Hancock and Amy Ward.
His better-known brother, Levi Ward Hancock, became an LDS General
Authority. Levi was nine years younger
than Solomon. Solomon married Alta Adams
in 1815, and he remarried in 1836 to Phoebe Adams. Solomon died near Council Bluffs, Iowa, on 2
Dec 1847. Simeon Carter was born on 7
June 1794 in Vermont or Connecticut, the son of Gideon Carter and Johannah
Sims. In 1818, he married Lydia Kenyon.)
Edmund was baptized on 15 May 1831,
by Simeon Carter and Lana on June 1, by Solomon Hancock. Children Martha and Edmund were baptized the
same day as their mother. Daughter Tamma
waited until after she married Albert Miner in August. Edmund was ordained an elder soon after his
baptism. That fall, Edmund was listed as
one of the local elders attending a major Mormon conference held in Orange,
southeast of Cleveland. During the
conference, he was ordained a high priest. (Minutes of a General conference of
the Church at the dwelling of Brother Serenes Burnett in the town of Orange,
Cayahoga County, Ohio,” in LDS Journal History of the Church, 25 Oct 1831.)
That December, 1831, he left home to
do missionary work, leaving Lana alone with their family. He accompanied Elder Joseph B. Brackenbury on
a mission to Chautauqua County, New York.
They converted several before Elder Brackenbury became ill and died on 7
Jan 1832, apparently from being poisoned by opposers of Mormonism. (Journal History, Dec. 31, 1831, History of
the Church, 7:523-524.)
In the spring of 1832, Edmund, with
nine other converts, went to new Mormon settlements in Jackson County,
Missouri, to put in grain and build houses, and then returned home. That fall he left home to go out proselyting
as a missionary once again in New York.
In May, 1833, he and his family moved into Kirtland, Ohio, and he was
one of the twenty-four elders who laid the cornerstones of the Kirtland
Temple. (Milton V. Backman, Jr., The
Heavens Resound: A History of the
Latter-day Saints in Ohio, 1830-1838,
SLC, Deseret Book Company, 1983, p. 149.)
At a meeting on 7 Mar 1835, Joseph
Smith noted down the names of all those who had assisted to build the Kirtland
Temple, and then, those workmen present received blessings under the hand of
Joseph Smith’s counselor, Sidney Rigdon.
Edmund Durfee was one of them.
(HC, 2:206.)
In 1837, the Durfees moved to
Caldwell County, Missouri, and settled at Log Creek, six miles south of Far
West. Inn 1838-1839, they were expelled
from Missouri with the Saints. Edmund’s
namesake son signed a petition, seeking redress for losses his own family
suffered when forced out of Missouri.
His petition is illustrative of one type of loss out of many suffered by
LDS families, including his parents.
I Edmund Durphy, Jun., solemnly
declare that sometime in October in year of our
Lord One Thousand eight Hundred and thirty eight the Militia
under the command of Generals Lucas Willson & Clark took possession of a
house belonging to Uriah B Powell contrary to his wishes likewise that they the
said militia burned timber belong to me that I moved in to the Citty Far West
for a dwelling House.
Forced from Missouri by orders of
the state’s governor, Lilburn Boggs, the Mormons headed east for the
Mississippi River and crossed into Illinois for safety. Edmund and Lana settled in Yelrome, or
Morley’s Settlement, Hancock County, Illinois, 23 miles south of where Nauvoo
soon sprang into existence. (Ibid.,
7:523-524).
Surrounding Nauvoo, which served
like a hub, there grew up a ring of LDS branches in nearby towns or in solidly
LDS settlements. Morley’s Settlement,
also known at the time as Yelrome (Morley spelled backwards), and sometimes
called Lima, stretched out near Hancock County’s southern line, shared with
Adams County, Ill, a little south and west of present Tioga. When two Mormons, Isaac Morley and Titus
Billings, made plans to settle there in early March, 1839, only one partial
building stood in the area. That spring,
many Mormon refuges from Missouri settled in the area, bought or rented land,
and started farming. (Richard H. Morley,
“The Life and Contributions of Isaac Morley,” (Master thesis, BYU, 1965, pp.
75-77, subsequently referred to as “Morley.”)
Apparently, the Durfees lived near
the Hancock family---Solomon was one of the elders who converted Edmund and
Lana back in 1831. Their area was
sometimes referred to as the Hancock Settlement (within Morley’s
Settlement). Another Mormon cluster was
centered at Lima, within three miles of Morley’s Settlement, and just across
the county line in Adams County. Church
authorities in Nauvoo organized these two settlements into a single branch
which became a stake, the Lima Stake.
(Andrew Jenson, Encyclopedic History of The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints, p. 434.)
Lima existed before the Mormons
arrived, and from the ranks of settlers already there came several anti-Mormon
activists by 1844. Five miles north of
Morley’s Settlement was a non-Mormon district, Green Plains, which became a
staging place for raids against the Mormons.
Warsaw, which became a hotbed of anti-Mormon activity leading to the
murders of Joseph and Hyrum in 1844, was just ten miles northwest of the
Durfees, and Carthage was seventeen miles northeast.
The Durfees lived in a community of
practicing religionists, with Church meeting and weeknight prayer meetings held
regularly. Church authorities often
visited and preached there. Saints were
the urged to donate money and materials for the building of the Nauvoo Temple. They participated in baptisms for the dead,
apparently in Nauvoo. Branch records
record that on 7 Nov 1840, Edmund and Lana Durfee, along with Albert Miner and
five others, were baptized for the dead in behalf of people they once
knew. A week later, Edmund and Lana were
again baptized as proxies for deceased people.
Some Saints in Yelrome were taught the not-publicly-announced doctrine
of plural marriage. (Morley, p. 81.)
Yelrome was a stopping place for
Saints and others traveling between Quincy and Nauvoo, so residents entertained
lots of visitors. On 23 Oct 1841,
Apostles Brigham Young, John Taylor, and Willard Richards held a two-day
conference for the Lima Branch, consisting of 424 members, “mostly in good
standing.” It was agreed that they men
would donate one-tenth of their time and property to the building of the temple
at Nauvoo. (History of the Church,
4:439-440.) During a conference on 13
May 1843, Elders Woodruff and George A. Smith lodged with “Bro. Durfee,”
probably Edmund and Lana. A month later,
a twelve-man high council was approved, making the stake organization much more
complete. Isaac Morley was the stake
president.
In mid-June, 1844, twelve days
before Joseph and Hyrum were killed in Carthage Jail, several local
anti-Mormons called on President Morley on a Saturday night and gave until
Monday morning to make one of three choices for the settlement: (1) take up arms and ride with a vigilante
group to Nauvoo to arrest Joseph and others; (2) move their own families to
Nauvoo; or, (3) surrender their arms to the vigilantes and remain neutral
during upcoming hostilities against Nauvoo.
President Morley wrote and reported this to the Prophet Joseph, who told
him to call up the troops of the Nauvoo Legion who lived nearby, and prepare to
defend the settlement. He said,
“Instruct the companies to keep cool, and let all things be done decently and
in order.” Finally, the Prophet told
Morley to report the threats to a judge and to the Illinois governor.
During the next two weeks, Mormons
at Morley’s Settlement received personal threats from the “mob committee,”
causing President Morley to have affidavits formally registered with the
justice of the peace and given to Joseph Smith.
One of these was signed by Edmund Durfee. The Prophet forwarded these complaints to
Governor Tom Ford and U.S. President John Tyler. (HC, 6:481-483, 505-514.)
One affidavit said that two named
men went to where Edmund Durfee was at work in a field and “said they had come
to notify him that said Durfee must comply with one of the above
propositions: if not that said Durfee
would smell thunder” (HC 6:510). The
ongoing threats and abuses eventually forced the Morley Settlement Saints to
leave their homes and move to Nauvoo for protection.
The anti-Mormon zeal ultimately led
to the murders of Joseph and Hyrum and the serious wounding of John Taylor on
27 June 1844. After those murders, the
mobbers expected retaliation by the Nauvoo Legion. But the Mormons obeyed their leaders’ counsel
to be calm and not seek revenge. The
mobs disappeared and relative peace settled over Hancock County for about a
year. The Morley Settlement Saints
returned to their homes and resumed something of their normal family, farming,
and community life.
Peace was short-lived, however. In February, 1845, trouble started all over
again and lasted throughout the summer.
In September, 1845, almost every Saint living in Morley’s Settlement was
forced from home and their houses and outbuildings were torched by mobs. At this time, Edmund was about to turn 57 and
Lana was 57. They were the parents of 13
children, 10 still living, 6 married, and 4 still at home, Abraham (18), Jabez
(17), Mary (15), and Nephi (10).
President Morley had stayed until
the end of summer, when he obeyed Brigham Young’s counsel to place Solomon
Hancock in charge and move to Nauvoo. On
September 12, Hancock called a council that decided to propose to the mob that
the Saints would sell their deeded lands and improvements at low prices,
“reserving to ourselves the crops now on the premise,” and as payment for their
houses and farms would accept cattle, wagons, store goods, and other
property. Their proposal received no
particular answer. That evening, “they
set on fire three buildings…, and we expect them to renew their work of
destruction” (HC 7:441-42, CDHC, Roberts, 2:477).
Daughter Tamma Durfee Miner, living
east of Nauvoo at the time, later told what she had heard from her parents
about the burnings. “The mobocrats drove
all of the people out of Father Morley’s Settlement, turned the sick ones out,
drove them all out to live or die, rolled my brother Nephi up in his bed and
threw him out doors when he was sick, and then set fire to their house by
throwing some bundles of oats that were afire, on top of the house….They
plundered, made fires, burned houses, furniture and clothing looms, yarn, cloth,
carpenter tools. Even the iron from the
tools they picked up and carted away in barrels. Every wall burned to ashes, and the mob went
from house to house driving them out, it made little difference if they were
sick or well, until every house in that town that a Mormon lived in was burnt”
(Tamma Durfee Miner typescript).
Enos Curtis, who also lived with his
family in Morley’s Settlement, and who would marry Tamma later (after she
became a widow and he a widower), saw his family burned out too. Mobs came to the Curtis home while the men
were away. They ordered the Curtises to
vacate the house. Enos’ wife Ruth
Franklin Curtis was too ill to move.
Mobbers twice asked the family to leave and the third time they set fire
to the house. “The women rolled Ruth up
in a blanket and carried her out of the burning house.” When Mormon men rushed to the rescue, they
put Ruth in a wagon because she could not walk.
Mobbers chased the wagon, but when more Mormon help showed up, they
desisted. (Fmily manuscript in the
possession of William G. Hartley). When
word of the depredations reached Nauvoo, Brigham Young called for volunteers to
take teams to Morley’s Settlement and assist President Hancock in moving
people, goods, and grain to Nauvoo (HC 7:440-41). Albert Miner, Edmund’s son-in-law, married to
daughter Tamma, was among those who went to Yelrome to help. Over one hundred teams performed this
rescue.
When the burnings stopped, Solomon
Hancock returned to his property—his home had not been torched. The Durfees, however, their home burned to
the ground, remained in Nauvoo, although Edmund was determined to go to harvest
his crops (Nauvoo Neighbor, Extra, 19 Nov 1845). Refugees from the surrounding countryside poured
into Nauvoo that fall, bring with them thousands of pounds of harvested
grain. Placed in storehouses, it was
sufficient to feed the populace of Nauvoo for perhaps two years (Morley, p.
95).
At October General Conference, LDS
leaders instructed the Saints to be ready to leave Illinois by the next
spring. But despite the promises to
depart, arsonists resumed their work that month. Enos Curtis, in a 25 Oct 1845 affidavit,
testified that on or about October 18, he saw two houses and three stables
burning and two mobbers with guns running from the fires. He also saw a widow named Boss’s house
burning on October 21 in the same area (HC 7:488).
While most of the residents of
Morley’s Settlement had fled, a few remained or returned. Solomon Hancock, whose home had not been
burned, was one of them. His home became
a temporary inn and his yards a place to deposit the gathered crops until they
could haul them away (Charles Hancock Recollections, p. 35).
Major William H. Warren and his
troops were in the area, sent to guard the Hancocks and the crop
gatherers. Militia officers had boarded
with the Hancocks for some ten days, but then they left to visit friends and
said they would be back soon. Almost
immediately, the mob spirit rekindled and arsonists again went on the
war-path. On Saturday, November 15,
Edmund Durfee returned from Nauvoo to Morley’s
Settlement “for a load of grain.”
He and relatives dug potatoes and gathered corn that day, took the
harvest to Solomon Hancock’s, and went to bed for the night.
Charles Hancock was there that night
when nightriders torched his family’s buildings and shot and killed Edmund
Durfee. He wrote down what happened:
“Some boys were a sleeping in our
barn, it being well filled with unthreshed wheat, oats, corn and hay. Horses in the stable and cows in the yard, it
being well nigh covered with dry rubbish where feeding was done. About 11 o’clock the boys were awakened by
the noise of fire, smoke and light, they saw the fire running to the barn, as
the wind blew lightly that way; my brother George informed father at the house,
he came to the scene in his night clothes, they raked the straw from the barn,
took the horses from the stable and let the cows out of the yard, they ran from
the barn when out, as scared.
Father went to see what was there, a
man stepped from behind a tree and fired a gun at him the shot taking no
effect, a shrill whistle was heard and some sixteen men arose that were
secreted behind the log fence, with which the yard was built and shot at the
boys in the yard, the bullets lodging in the barn and fence on the opposite
side, no one being hit but an elderly man by the name of Edmund Durphy. A bullet striking him in the hollow of the
neck, cutting but one thread in a woolen necktie that was around his neck and
he fell dead at once.”
Charles said that his father told
the boys to get their guns and defend themselves.
“The mob fled, setting some fires as
they went back from whence they came, I followed some distance the moon shining
bright, I could plainly see their tracks in the road as they came and went back
towards Lyma, a town some five miles off from whence they came. Durphy and some of his boys had been
gathering their corn and digging their potatoes, and securing them at our
place, so that they could be got for winter, his house and wheat being
previously burned by mob violence.”
(Charles Hancock Recollections, p.
34)
Edmund’s grandson, Mormon Miner, who
was very young at the time, wrote in his autobiography that his grandfather was
shot by a man named Snyder who did it to win a bet of two gallons of
whiskey. According to Mormon, some time
after this, Snyder, in a drunken row, was shot and the wound never healed. He actually rotted alive with the stench so
offensive that his friends forsook him, although he lingered for months before
he died. How Mormon ever learned this is
not known—the story needs corroboration before it can be trusted. However, Joseph Smith’s History of the
Church mentions the whiskey bet, saying the mob boasted, after the murder,
that they had fired at Durfee on a bet of a gallon of whiskey that they could
kill him the first shot, and they won (HC 7:524).
Such a story, if true, indicates
that Durfee was the selected target, not Solomon Hancock or simply any Mormon
in rifle range. Durfee’s house was the
first one torched back in September, so if he were singled out to be shot in
November, possibly somewhere, somehow, he had become a personal enemy of one or
more men in the anti-Mormon crowd. There
is no evidence whatsoever that Durfee or his family members were ever accused
of any wrongdoing or misbehavior, let alone some major act that would warrant
his being killed. No anti-Mormons
afterwards said or even hinted that Durfee might hae “had it coming.”
Not until the next morning, Sunday,
November 16, did the Quorum of the Twelve learn of Durfee’s murder. That day Sheriff Backenstos rushed this
message to the Twelve:
“On last night Elder Edmund Durfee
was basely murdered by the mob in the Green Plains precinct, what shall be done
to avenge his blood? The troops afford
us no protection” (Ibid., 7:525).
The sheriff attended the LDS
leaders’ council meeting that evening and gave a verbal report about the murder
(Willard Richards Journal, Nov. 16, 1945).
Nauvoo police officer Hosea Stout recorded in his diary entry for
November 16, that after dinner he met with the Nauvoo Police “and there was
informed that Br Edmund Durfee had been shot dead by the mob on Bear Creek.” Stout then penned the detailed about the
mobbing that he had heard:
“The mob had set some straw on fire
which would communicate with his bard & he on discovering the fire ran in
company with some other brethren to put it out and was fired upon by the mob
who concealed in the darkness. One ball
went through his breast and he died in a few moments. He had been driven into the City by the mob
during their house burning in September last & had gone down there in
company with some other brethren to take care of his grain and thus fell a
martyr to his religion.”
Stout diaried that Edmund’s body had
reached Nauvoo that day and he, Stout, went to view it—“a melancholy scene” he
said.
He was in a heart rending condition
all steeped in his gore and his numerous family all weeping around him. The scene is one not to be forgotten. He was one of the oldes(t) in the church
having been in the church almost from its rise and had passed through all the
persecutions & vicissitudes of the Church & was a faithful brother”
(Diary entry for 26 Nov 1845, in Juanita Brooks, ed., On the Mormon
Frontier: The Diary of Hosea Stout,
1844-1861, 2 vols., 1964, University of Utah Press, 2:92).
That Sunday night, November 16,
state attorney Mason Brayman in Carthage wrote to a state official, possibly
Governor Ford, and shared what he had heard about the murder:
“Today information came of an
attempt to burn the house of one Hancock, a Mormon near Lima during last
night—and the murder of a man named Durfee under the following circumstances,
as related by a son of Hancock, who brought the intelligence this
afternoon. Hancock’s house had been
threatened. Last night, a company of men
set fire to a stack of straw near the barn.
Persons sleeping in the barn came out, and while endeavoring to prevent
the fire from reaching the barn, were fired upon. They started to go to the house—a general
volley was fired, killing Durfee on the spot.
No shots were fired by the Mormons.
On firing, the villains fled, setting fire to a crib of some hundred
bushels of corn as they went. None were
identified, but I think they can and will be” (Mason Brayman Papers, Nov., 16,
1845, microfilm copy, HBL Library, BYU).
Edmund’s daughter, Tamma, heard that
the attackers started fires in different places—corn, rib, shucks of corn, dry
rails and dry shacks “and it burned a little and went out” (Tamma Durfee Miner)
James H. Woodland, who was at the
Hancocks’ when Edmund was killed, filed an affidavit, sworn before Justice of
the Peace Aaron Johnson. Woodland
testified that on Saturday night he saw fire, and he with others “turned out to
suppress the flames.” While raking hay
away from the barn, he heard a whistle on the east and one of the west, after
which six guns were discharged at him and others. The fourth shot killed Durfee who was hit
just above his heart and died instantly (HC, 7:529-30).
A brief description of the murder
was included in History of the Church, under the date of November 15, 1845:
“A considerable party of the mob set
fire to a stack of straw near Solomon Hancock’s barn and concealed
themselves. Hancock and others went out
to put out the ifre which was the only way to save the buildig, whenthey wer
fired upon by the burners, and Elder Edmund Durfee was killed on the spot, many
balls flew around the rest of the brethren, but none of the rest were hurt.”
(HC, 7:523)
Governor Ford’s history of Illinois
says of the Durfee murder:
“The anti-Mormons also committed one
murder. Some of them, under Backman, set
fire to some straw near a barn belonging to Durfee, an old Mormon seventy
(really 57) years old; and then lay in ambush until the old man came out to
extinguish the fire, when they shot him dead from their place of
concealment.” (Ford, History of
Illinois, 2:299-300)
Edmund Durfee’s body was buried in
the cemetery east of Nauvoo up Parley’s Street.
His brother James is also buried there, whose headstone is still
standing in the north part of that recently reclaimed and beautified cemetery.
A few hours after Durfee’s murder, before
daybreak, Solomon Hancock sent his young son Charles to look for officers and
soldiers—the ones who were supposed to be protecting the Mormons in the
area. On the way to Lima, Charles met a
man named Snyder, whom he knew was of the mob party, and was afraid of
him. When he found the soldiers in Lima,
he told them what had happened, and they told him to go home and they would be
there soon. When Charles reached his
house, his father sent him to Carthage to report to Major Warren. Charles eventually got to Major Warren, then
helped him and his men locate the suspects and they took into custody fourteen
out of sixteen.” (Charles Hancock Recollections)
The following morning, November 17,
the prisoners were brought to the Hancock house “to see if any could be
recognized.” But the Hancocks had been
unable to see the attackers because of nighttime darkness. With officers present, Solomon Hancock asked
the accused if any of them had anything to say against his character. Had he not been an honest man, a true patriot
to the laws of country and God? They all
agreed they knew nothing against the Hancocks.
(Charles Hancock Recollections)
That same day, November 17, Apostle
Orson Hyde, acting on behalf of the Twelve, wrote to Major Warren. Durfee was murdered by a mob, he said, “who
fired a quantity of straw to decoy him out, and while he engaged in raking the
straw so that the fire might not communicate with the buildings, six shots were
made a him, one of which took effect in his breast and he died immediately….
Mr. Durfee was one of the most quiet and inoffensive citizens in these United
States, and from our acquaintance with him, and from the nature of his business
in securing his crops we are persuaded that his murder was wholly unprovoked.”
(HC, 7:525)
The fourteen suspects were taken to
Carthage and charged with killing Edmund Durfee. When court was convened, they were arraigned
and proofs offered that they, plus two that escaped by taking a steamboat to
Warsaw, were the ones who had loaded their guns at Lima, the evening of
Durfee’s death, taken their liquor, gone to the Hancocks’ corral, set fire, and
shot at the boys and men who were putting out the fire, and then returned to
Lima the way they had come. (Charles
Hancock Recollections)
But, as Charles Hancock recalled,
even though Durfee had been killed and the Hancock family threatened, “the
prisoners were discharged. The
Prosecuting Attorney exclaimed, justice cannot be done in Hancock County,
Illinois.” (Ibid.)
The official history of the Church
notes that by November 18, the Twelve had received a letter from state attorney
Mason Brayman desiring that any witnesses against Durfee’s murderers go to
Carthage. He told the Twelve that three
men had been arrested and charged with murdering Durfee: George Backman, a Mr. Moss (or Morse), and a
Mr. Snyder. The Twelve called for any
witnesses to go to Carthage the next day “to perform their part in another
judicial farce.” (HC, 7:527)
The next day, November 19, the Nauvoo
Neighbor issued an “Extra” edition with the headline: “Murder and Arson. Edmund Durfee Shot—Two Houses Burned.” It contained the basic facts of what it
called the “bloody outrages of a midnight mob.”
On November 24, nine days after the
murder, Apostle Willard Richards stated in a letter to Theodore Turley that the
accused would not be tried:
“We have learned that the person who
murdered Edmund Durfee…were discharged by the magistrate without
examination. Our brethren went…as
witnesses…, but returned unheard, and the farce closed sooner
than…anticipated.” (HC, 7:532)
Governor Ford admitted that “The
perpetrators of this (Durfee) murder were arrested and brought before an
anti-Mormon justice of the peace and were acquitted, though their guilt was
sufficiently apparent.” (Ford, History of Illinois, 2:300)
On 21 January 1846, two months after
Edmund’s death, Lana received her endowment in the Nauvoo Temple and was sealed
to Edmund, with Edmund’s brother Jabez standing in as proxy. On that same day, Lana and Jabez, who was
himself a widower, were married for time only.
Durfee children who also received their endowments were Martha, Tamma,
Edmund, Jr., John, Delana, Abraham, and Mary.
Within three months of Edmund’s
murder, the exodus of Latter-day Saints from Illinois began, and by fall, the
vast majority had left for the Rocky Mountains.
Lana and Jabez took her sons Jabez and Nephi with them, crossed the
Mississippi River on the ice, and spent the winter in Winter Quarters.
We do not know for sure when Edmund
and Lana’s son, Abraham Durfee, and Ursula Curtis were married, but both were
nineteen years old at the time of the exodus, and on 17 May 1850, while
crossing the plains, they had Mahala Ruth Durfee, who married Samuel Parker,
Jr. about 1872 in Utah and had Mahala Strong Parker who married John William
Hepworth 2 Dec 1891.
They were making plans and
preparations to leave from Council Bluffs, Pottawattamie, County, Iowa, for
Utah in 1850, when Lana died at Mosquito Creek, close to Kanesville (Council Bluffs),
Iowa on 19 May 1850. She was possibly
buried in the Mormon Cemetery that is now the southeast part of Fairview
Cemetery in Council Bluffs.
Charles B. Hancock, who went west
and lived the rest of his life in Utah, wrote his recollections about the
murder of Edmund Durfee, and also contracted with LDS painter, C.C.A.
Christensen, to paint two LDS Church history scenes that depict the mob’s
activities at Morley’s Settlement.
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