This is a new book by Matthew Grow and is on order at Salt Lake County Library. I've put a hold on the book at the library but would like some information about the author? Is he an apologist?

My g-g-grandfather was a member of Horny Joe's original council.

Too bad he was so notoriously tight-lipped that he didn't even bother to keep a journal.

Of all the secrets he took to the grave, the truth about the CoF is the one I'm most anxious to know.

I am reading a biography of Charles Shumway.

He was very close to both BY and JS.

No, he wasn't much for journalism. He kept some kind of journal but he wasn't too chatty.

He was another one of BY's very good men, who would endure any hardship, go on any errand, and establish settlement after settlement after settlement, with very little, or no pay. How the women and children survived God only knows.

A good man may have been hard to find for the Women Of Mormonism, but that was because BY had already got ahold of them, and their primary loyalty was not to their families but to BY.

Wonder if BY encouraged polygamy as a way to keep his henchman from fleeing the Kingdom of Deseret.

It's harder to leave with two or three or four wives than it is with just one.

Not to mention the kids.

Just a thought.

Lois

P.S. "Shumway" is a French name, right?

You're correct. Originally "Chamois" according to family researchers.

He must have been very familiar with yours.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/07/2017 02:21PM by Cheryl.

Here's a primer:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Fifty#Establishment


ETA: hopefully the book won't have been tampered with, like this wiki entry! You can see the hand of the apologists all over it!!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/07/2017 02:25PM by elderolddog.

That's my understanding Lois.

Anglicized from Chamois apparently.

One thing that stands out about old Chas, although he bore arms as a bodyguard to HJ, he never again took up arms for BY.

Methinks he'd had a bellyful of blood atonement after he allegedly blood atoned a man who had threatened HJ in Nauvoo.

Who is HJ?
Shumway, chamois, pretty funny.

I forget who wrote this bio, but it is well documented. Told from a TBM POV OF COURSE, but Charles Chamois WAS a TBM, so he is definitely getting into the head of his subject.

There seems to be a LOT of larger-than-life polygamous men running around at the time, fighting Johnston's Army, fighting or befriending the Indians, depending on which course is more expedient, marrying all kinds of women going on missions to strange and exotic places and all the rest of it.

One of them was an ancestor of mine, Thomas Griffin Winn. I don't think he blood atoned anyone, but once, as the sheriff of Smithfield he killed an Indian who was charged with stealing a horse.

When it turned out the Indian was innocent, Thomas Griffin Winn made a vow never again to kill another human being. And he didn't, even though he kept on being the Sheriff of Smithfield until the feds ran him out of town for having more than one wife.

Now I'm going back to the incredible adventurse of your illustrious ancestor.

A time and a place so different from the way we are living in now it might as well have all happened on Mars.

Lois

So different, yes Lois, and yet, their grand children of today are still playing the Church of the Firstborn game, the Holy Order, the Council of Fifty, the Anointed Quorum. They seem to be addicted.

Horny Joe = Joseph Smith, jun.

BTW, what bio are you referring to Lois?

I have the CS family book and have also read "Don't Look Back" by Mary Westover Conover.

The book I have is "CHarles Shumway, A Pioneer's Life" by Kenneth W. Godfrey.

Charles keeps TRYING to be a polygamist, but life just won't cooperate. One of his wives dies, leaving him a monogamist. He finds another, and for a while he is a polygamist. But his new wife runs off with a member of Johnson's Army, A GENTILE. I can just imagine how aggravating THAT was.


Then he marries a fifteen year old girl. He keeps settling new communities and building grist mills.

Chief Walker gets baptised a MORMON. I didn't know about that. That must have been AFTER the Walker War.

Gunnison and his party gets massacred, this guy says by the Indians, but obviously he hasn't read, the Unsolicity Chronicler where it explains that Gunnison gets done in by the Mormons for writing about them. Gunnison had mostly good things to say about the Mormons, but the point was nobody had asked for his opinion and they didn't want him surveying for a railroad when the Mormons were trying to esablish the Kingdom of Deseret.

That is as far as I have got so far.

This man explains that Charles Shumway is a member of the Counsel of Fifty (sometimes spelled Ytfif, by some dislexic Mormons) but he doesn't go into detail of what being a member of the Counsel of Ytfif involves.

Pretty exciting stuff. The MMM still hasn't happened.

Lois

P.S. BTW divorce in polygamous Utah was COMMON. All you had to do was pay BY ten bucks. One of my ancestresses left HER husband for John D. Lee. John D. Lee was a good man (if you don't count the MMM) but he just didn't have time from my ancestress, so she left him too.

Now i have got to the part where Charles Shumway and his wives receive their SA.

In other words, they've gone about as far as they can go.

PRETTY PERSNICKETY!!!!

Lois

P.S. Wonder if the wife who ran off with the GENTILE SOLDIER had any regrets?

I'll bet she didn't.

Charles Shumway was a stern and sometimes cruel father. Treated his sons like slaves. NO sense of humor, but then life wasn't very funny.

Polyg ... Is the biggest Pimple on tscc's shiny ass.

just sayin'

Yes, Charles was stern and even irrational in his treatment of his kids. He played favorites with his wives too, especially in his later years. He took the youngest one to live with him exclusively in Shumway where he died.

As tough a father as he was, his son who is my g-grandpa Wilson Glenn devotedly followed him wherever he moved. Go figure.

Sadly that coldness was a part of Charles' legacy that he passed down for three more generations.

My Mom would always tell me how Dad really loved me but that was how his own father treated him.

I really had a hard time accepting that because grandpa Will was always warm and caring to me for the 6 years that I knew him.

I'm now glad I took the extra effort with my son to break that awful cycle.

Sorry for hijacking the thread but it has been good reminiscing with you Lois.

I finished the main part of the book.

There is an appendix that consists of Wilson's recollection of his father.

Wilson's narrative is very candid and fascinating, but you have probably already read it.

If not, I urge you to get this book. I will find the name of the publisher in Provo who you can get it from. My recollection is it didn't cost that much. The man who wrote this book did an excellent job.

It is strange how much of father and son's recollection consists of bargains they made, how much they got paid for this or that, work they did that they never got paid for. They remember every dollare and cent that ever changed hands, exact figures. Charles Shumway was stingy with his son, and treated him like a slave. A real control freak.

You don't have to be a Shumway to like this book. Just someone like me who is fascinated with early Mormon history.

And I do apologize for hijacking this thread. I think I was the one that did it.

My g grandmother also used her journal as her accounting ledger. It was full of entries like knitted scarf and sold to X For $2.00 and so forth.

Okay, that makes perfect sense.

Saves having to keep multiple journals. Just write everything down in the same book.

So if nothing else we have an accounting of who paid whom for what.

I'd love to read the book if I can find it.

Thanks for taking the time to share Lois.

I have a good excuse for being crazy considering my Shummy roots plus my grandmother being a grand cousin of ole Horny Joe.

You come from a very fine lineage.

Unlike Joseph Smith, the Shumways were hardworking and honest.

The one Shumway I know is intelligent, highly educated, charming, and he DOES have a sense of humor.

Wilson Shumway, your Grandfather, comes across as a sterling character who managed to maintain a good relationship with his selfish, grim control-freak of a father.

By the way Charles Shumway DID keep a journal. He just didn't say much. I will say this for him: He had nice handwriting.

If I kept a journal, I wouldn't need to put it in code, because no one can read my handwriting, not even me.

I thinkthere is a Gary Shumway who has done a lot to promote family history and was responsible for collecting a four-volume set of family histories from residents of the city of Blanding Utah.

One generation has to learn from the lives of the previous generations, or how are we ever going to get anywhere?

You can get a copy throuogh J. Grant Stevenson, Publisher, Provo Utah.

You can order it online. Just Google "J. Grant Stevenson."

It doesn't cost very much.

I am going to fade back into the woodwork now.

Lois

My great-grandfather was a member of The Council of Fifty.

He couldn't read, but he sure had brains, and knew how to get rich. He was sent from SLC to begin a settlement in South Arizona. Most of his wife's didn't want to start all over again in the deseret of So. Arizona, so they stayed in SLC (by the, civilized), where they were comfortable.

His last wife was young, a red-head, and pretty. She kept the books of his wealth for him, and his kids (from any of his wives) were the ones who did the work that made him wealthy--but he knew how to teach them to do this. (A lot of coming and going of his kids between Utah and Arizona.)

My cousin gathered what was written about his history and doings (written at his funeral, as people talked about his achievements), and what my cousin wrote was turned into a book (of which I have a copy). He knew how to take advantage of those less able than he, and he did. You can't say he cheated anyone, he just knew how to get the advantage over them.

For instance, when would-be settlers went though his territory, he bought their worn-out horses for very little, and sold these horses after he had turned them out into his pasture, and gotten them healthy again.

He had one wife make straw into hats to sell passing-through pioneer women (to keep the sun off their faces).

He sent a son or two into the mountains in wagons full of hay, to cut blocks of ice and bring them back---where it was buried in a prepared hole full of hay, which helped keep them frozen, and then sold the ice for making ice cream, or cool drinks, to those who could afford to pay for these luxuries.

So, all ya gotta due to get rich, is notice what is needed, and provide it.

And so forth.

The Joseph Smith Papers project quietly released the full Council of Fifty minutes in the fall of last year. The full collection had previously been kept from public consumption.

Not a lot of new or earthshaking info that I could discern, but a bit of palace intrigue and political machinations that were previously unknown and likely felt to be sensitive by church leaders.

You don't have to rely upon a Mormon source to parse the information for you. You can own a copy of it for yourself from Amazon, though it is a bit pricey: http://a.co/g9iXGZy

Great stuff...love to read of those who made it comfy for the rest of us....I'd rethink my assessment of JD Lee...couple sources I read for what they are worth painted him as a real piece of work...like most I'm sure he had his good points...but if half of what I read is true...they shudder shot him again...sharp business covers a multitude of crooks...the best pencil whippings I ever for we're from church going religious folks...and seems they slept well at night...you can't teach conscience it seems

Well ya know, Horny Joe cloaked himself in multiple layers of sworn secret service societies.

Besides the CoF, he had the MM's aka the Mormon Minutemen, as well as his dirty duty-bound Danites.

From what I have researched and understand the Counsel of Fifty was just a group selected individuals to support JS' Presidential campaign. Much like a superpac of today. It was started in about April 1844 but never really accomplished anything because JS was summarily and mobcratically executed 2 months later in June 1844 more so for his political platform and assertions than his polygamous adventures or the printing press fiasco. Stuff the church doesn't talk about or acknowledge. The church paints and presents another white wash history of the facts. I find that very few long time or BIC members even know old Joe was a viable Presidential candidate. Even Joe himself was surprised and encouraged at the support his campaign was getting from the north eastern states at the time.