Yup most did...colonia juarez and colonia lebaron continue to this day and many are plygs...even spence and eyring go back to those roots as do some of the romneys...not that long ago either...member when mittens ancestry was called into question...thats why...his friends just call him paco...its definitely a past the church hopes to forget...plygs really are more like the early church than tscc...hell plygs still worship joe and briggy and john...the rest...not so much...they say mittens grandpa left the states in a hurry over some crookedness of sorts...follow the profit
My father was from Colonia Juarez, and I still have quite a lot of family there and in Dublan, although it seems that most of them have moved to the States. Not that I'm super clued in to the goings on down there, but I've never seen nor heard of polygamists in those towns. Lots of deep mormon roots there. Romney, Turley, Skousen, Whetton, Taylor, etc. There was certainly polygamy back in the day, but to say that "many are plygs" to this day seems well off the mark to me.
Does the name Jasper McClellan mean anything to you? He was from one of the colonias. And he was my MP, 65-67. A good man, whose only instructions to me the two years I was there, via the APs, was to get a hair cut.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/29/2016 01:18AM by elderolddog.
Oh, and re Catnip's questions. There are mormons in the colonies who are dual citizens and some who are solely Mexican citizens. And there are some more recent expats also. My family from down there all speak fluent spanish and love the Mexican people and culture.
There is still polygamy there. A couple of women were interviewed a while back. I think one lives in Arizona now. I'm sorry I can't remember the specifics. They were related to the LeBaron family--one to each of the brothers.
Interesting! We know a Whetton family who moved back to the colonies a few years ago because his family was from there, he said. I didn't realize how far back his family went. Good to know. And, I totally wondered at the time if they still did polygamy there, lol!
The name colonia lebaron alone should give you a bit if a clue Bacon...the whole place was started by a lebaron...if you know nothing of lebarons by all means dive in..theres a ton to be shocked by...having relatives there past and present i can assure you many are plygs...its like its own little mecca for plygs gone awry of the law in the states just as it was when it started...you will also find many there took the whitening of the lamanites seriously and married mexican women....yes several have come back to the states to other plyg groups...oh the stories they can tell around the campfire
I'm well aware of the LeBarons. As far as I know they were long gone from Juarez when I spent summers there in the 60s and 70s. All I'm saying is that I spent a fair amount of time down there and have a lot of family from there and to say that most of the Mormons that were/are in C.Juarez are currently polygamists is the opposite of my experience.
To get a good rundown of how polygamy was practiced in Colonia Juarez after 1912, I recommend Scott Anderson's book, the 4:00 Murders, which chronicles the history of the LeBaron family.
The man did his homework.
As I remember it, polygamy was definitely being phased out in Colonia Juarez when the LeBarons first arrived. While the old polygamists were revered, the people who kept on practicing it, like the LeBarons, were shunned. This was something that simply wasn't done any more. It could get you exed. It was just too embarrassing to have practicing polygamists in our midst.
So the Lebarons, who were both better looking than average and more intelligent than average were shunned by mainstream Mormons in Colonia Juarez. One of the many reasons they started their own colony (Colonia LeBaron) where polygamy continued to be practiced.
Until recently. Like almost everyone else the LeBaron's figured out that polygamy was more trouble than it is worth, and it is becoming less and less popular. There are also two non-LDS "Christian" churches in COlonia LeBaron
For any one interested in the history of the LeBaron family, there is an abundance of reading material.
Of course, there are the many books of Irene LeBaron, and her sister wife Susan Schmidt, not to mention Daughters of the Saints and The Sound of Gravel. Each generation seems to produce a new chronicler.
Thankfully, most of the violence and the lunacy have gone away, but there is still plenty to write about.
Camille Kimball, Spencer's wife, gives a very candid account of growing up in a polygamist household in Colonia Juarez, and escaping the revolution with nothing more than the clothes on her back.
And her embroidery. Camille never went anywhere without her embroidery, even when there was a revolution going on.
I know some of my tbm's from the colonies and speak good Spanish. Of course they send their kids back to the Wasatch to get a Utah education and marry white. They would never marry mexican.
One of my great grand uncles became a polygamist, and took a wife of his from what was then Kane County, Utah (today Washington Cty,) to New Mexico. Not sure if they went further south into Mexican territory ....
What I've been finding out about some of these polygamous marriages, is that they were in name only. Many times the man who took more than one wife basically abandoned the first for the second, and so on.
Many of the wives married into these marriages learned real fast how much polygamy stank, and ended up leaving because these relationships proved disastrous financially, morally, and emotionally.
I grew up there, and no, the mormon colonies do not practice polygamy. The Lebarons are a small colony near the two main colonies of Juarez and Dublan and they occasionally try to recruit the mormons in the colonies. Many families travel out to the US to have their babies, giving them dual citizenship, but most are fully mexican citizens. It is a great place to raise families, but it is a typical mormon town with all of the gossip and social control.