To quote a guidebook that we picked up today, "In 1839, Joseph Smith and his faithful fled Missouri, whose governor had ordered the Mormons to leave or be exterminated. They [subsequently] found refuge in Illinois, where an advance group of Latter-day Saints had prepared a new town site. There, in a horseshoe bend of the Mississippi River, they built the settlement of Nauvoo, meaning 'The Beautiful Place,' and began work on a stately limestone temple."
By then my three-times great grandfather, Moses Daley, had been a Mormon for the past eight years and had risen high enough in the church to have been appointed a Branch President while the church was centered in Ohio. He was also entrusted with the job of purchasing property for the church.
On March 31, 1836, Moses was ordained a high priest. Then, in 1838, Moses and his family moved to Missouri and settled at Adam-ondi-Ahman, Daviess County. It was there that the Prophet Joseph Smith and [his brother] Hyrum Smith, among others, stayed at Moses’ home at least once while laboring for the Church and surveying the property there [in Missouri].
Then, with the 1839 expulsion from Missouri, Moses with his wife, Almira, and several children began what turns out to be nearly two decades of privation and constant moving until the family finally settles in San Bernardino, California, where the Mormons had established a colony in 1851.
The task for me has been to figure out just where Moses and the various family members were located in space and time between their settling in Nauvoo, Illinois, in the early 1840s, until their trek down the Old Spanish Trail (northern branch) from Salt Lake City to San Bernardino in the mid to later 1850s. The tale involves everything from plural marriage to murder, and from conspiracy to mysterious vanishings and death. This branch of the Davis family tree is not boring, but it is hard to fathom, that's for sure.
The Mormon stay in Illinois lasts just long enough for them to craft beautiful farms and houses for themselves, as well as a huge and impressive limestone temple, when the old rancor between the Church and the surrounding non-Mormons to once again lead to trouble in 1844. But this time the trouble leads to the deaths of Church head, Joseph Smith, and his brother Hyrum. Things quiet down for a time, but in 1845 trouble flares again and outsiders succeed in burning 100 Mormon homes and several farms.
At this point the Mormons know the end of any hope of a peaceful existence is once again upon them. Throughout the winter of 1845/1846 they struggle to complete their masterpiece temple even tough they know they will not be around to enjoy or make use of it. In the interim they work quietly at constructing sturdy wagons and organizing themselves into wagon train companies.
Unfortunately, before the winter months of early 1846 had had a chance to slide gently into spring so that the companies could depart Nauvoo in good traveling weather, rumors of a potential attack on the new head of the Church, Brigham Young, forced the Mormons to move up their departure date plans. Many were not nearly ready, but the first wagon train of westward-bound immigrants left Nauvoo on February 4, 1846. The weather was so cold that February that the Mississippi River froze hard enough for wagons to drive across instead of having to be ferried. Some 500 wagons escaped Nauvoo, and, along with Church head, Brigham Young, began their trek westward on March 1, 1846.
Of course, there were still as many as 17,000 Mormons left behind in Nauvoo. Those remaining church members planned to leave in waves throughout the spring and summer assuming that the surrounding non-Mormon population would leave them alone that long.
But what of my 3-times great grandfather, Moses Daley? Where does he figure into all of this? Well, the record states that "he resettled in Big Neck Prairie, Adams County, Illinois, about 49 miles south of Nauvoo." after being kicked out of Missouri. Unfortunately, I don't find any evidence of Moses in the 1840 census for that area of Illinois. Also in the record is this reference from The story of the John Daley Jr. family, westward pioneers by James D. Martin: "Moses and his wife, Almira, both received their Endowments in the Nauvoo Temple on February 3, 1846 before they left to cross Iowa with the 15,000 Mormons who began leaving on February 13th." So it would appear that they had left Big Neck Prairie by 1846 to take part in the Mormon migration out of Illinois.
And I found this in the record: "Moses and Almira [Daley], and their children who came with them, stayed at Winter Quarters from 1847 to 1849. In the 3 December 1847 entry of the “Journal History of the Church” we find: “A brother Daley was living at Block House Branch, 9 miles up the river from Winter Quarters on the Iowa side of the river." So we know that they made it all the way across Iowa and were temporarily resettled, not at Winter Quarters, but just across the river in Iowa.
One might question whether the "brother Daley" mentioned in the above paragraph was actually my 3-times great grandfather, but then the record further states that "On 10 July 1849, Moses (about 53 years old), Almira, their son Edward, son Moses Jr., and daughter Samantha Ann left to go to Salt Lake in the Silas Richards Company." Well, that's my Moses alright. Can't be anybody else.
So now we encounter a new mystery. At the time that Moses supposedly moved from Nauvoo, and out across the Iowa plains, his two eldest sons "stayed behind." The younger of the two brothers who stayed behind, Stephen Daley, took the opportunity to marry Favoretta Marie Clark in Hancock County, Illinois, on 8 January, 1846, just prior to when the first wagon train was due to leave from the west bank of the Mississippi near Nauvoo. Nauvoo, of course, is located in Hancock County. There is no mention in the record of the newly-married Daley couple actually leaving with the first wagon train bound for Nebraska, which you would expect since he supposedly "stayed behind."
Now comes a really weird part. The record states that Stephen Daley dies on August 15th, 1847, just a year and a half after he married Favoretta. Okay, maybe he and Favoretta actually DID go along with the wagon train and he died on the trail. And for awhile I entertained this possibility. But then some lucky searching in the census record for 1850 in, of all places, Atchison County, Missouri, turned up Favoretta living with Stephen's older brother, John -- my 2-times great grandfather -- and John's wife Eliza (Fisher) Daley.
To me that would indicate that Stephen and Favoretta could not have gone west with the wagon trains, but for some reason left Nauvoo and traveled west toward a Missouri River town about a day's travel below Nebraska City, Nebraska. Can we think anything but that the brothers had probably withdrawn from the Mormon church, at least temporarily, and decided to try and make a living more or less where they were? John Daley lists his occupation as "freighter" on the census document, one of nine in the whole of Atchison County. In 1850 there was a tremendous amount of freighting potential based on the California goldrush and the westward expansion. The brothers would have had no trouble finding work, especially if they had their own wagon(s) and team(s).
But how did Stephen die so young? He was only 26! But after diligent searching I have found no mention of the cause of Stephen Daley's death, nor exactly where he died and was buried.
In 1852, Moses would travel back across the prairies from Utah to St Joseph, Missouri and talk John Daley and his wife Eliza into coming west with him again. Favoretta stayed in Missouri, and in 1853 married a man named Philip Henry Fisher. We know that John and Eliza were living in st. Joseph by then because Eliza writes a letter to her brother, Willard from there in March of 1852.
So, the mission for Concetta and I today was to see if my 2-times great grandfather's deceased brother, Stephen Daley, could possibly be buried in Winter Quarters, Nebraska, even though it was an extreme long shot. My personal belief is that the two brothers were working together as teamsters 80 miles south of Winter Quarters and had no intention initially of going west, so finding him in Winter Quarters would be a huge surprise.
Winter Quarters became the town of Florence once the last Mormons left for Salt Lake City and the promised land. But the cemetery is still there, carefully tended by a current crop of the Mormon faithful. They have a nice two-page list to hand out that displays the names of all the folks who never traveled any further west then the top of the hill beside the Florence museum. As you might guess, Stephen's name was not listed.
However, we spent a thoroughly fascinating two hours with a couple of young Mormon teenagers who insisted on shepherding us around the museum from exhibit to exhibit. They regaled us with the story of Winter Quarters and were perfectly charming the whole time. The day might have been gray and foreboding outside, but inside we four had quite a camaraderie going.
This joviality lasted only until Concetta and I got back to the motor home and discovered that the sewer tank was full to overflowing, and though I thought I had completely emptied it, I obviously had not. Now it was imperative that we find a camp with a nice, easily-accessible sewer connection so that I could perform whatever surgery I needed to perform to make sure things were evacuating properly.
So, even though we hadn't put many miles on the rig today, we found a KOA camp that lay just a short 50 miles or so up Iowa Route 29 and headed there as quickly as our V-10 motor could manage it. My fear was that if we whiled away the afternoon sight-seeing or visiting more historic sites that we'd arrive in camp at such a late hour that I might be working on the sewer problem in the cold and dark.
We got another surprise when we arrived at the KOA, I suppose just to keep us on our toes. We found NO ONE in the office. When I tried the knob it was locked. Heeding the advice of the "night registration" instructions posted on the door, I opened the big yellow box meant for late arrivals, and discovered that the reason no one was in the office was that there were almost no spaces left to be rented anyway. There was just one for a rig like ours. There was just one for tent enthusiasts. And beyond that, everything else was pre-registered and merely awaiting the campers' arrival. In other words, if we hadn't arrived at such an early hour -- I think it was 2:15 p.m. -- there would have been NO spaces left to rent to us, and we would have been compelled to start over in selecting and driving to a new camp. Yes, the Davis luck was in full bloom today. AND, once we had arrived, the sewer problem seemed to have miraculously cured itself as we drove, because everything worked just fine when I flushed the system. Just a bit more nice luck to finish the day.
So tomorrow we start our trek towards the great state of Kentucky, though I have no idea what route we might choose to accomplish that task. My search for the Daleys has, for now, come to a close, though there's lots more to tell you about. You see my 2-times great grandfather eventually got himself into a peck of trouble out there in the promised land of Utah. He was accused in 1857 of being a murderer along with several other Mormons. AND, it's entirely possible that he was murdered himself in 1861. He took a second wife without permission, and had a baby with the second wife in the mid 1850s. And somewhere along the way, he got excommunicated by the Mormon church for reasons they're not willing to share with me. So, there's lots more to learn about good ol' John Daley, and someday we'll talk about him and his family some more. Until then, we wish you Happy Traveling.
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