And a note on the original post, Emma did not adopt the child after the mother died. The mother, Nancy Abercrombie, outlived Emma by many years. In her final few weeks, Emma requested upon her passing that Lewis marry Nancy to provide the child, Charlie, with a legitimate family. Lewis did so roughly six months after Emma’s death.

Thank you for sharing all these things you did about BY. This is what I need to hear and understand about him so I can work through all the negative feelings and thoughts circulating in my mind about him. I try to be very open minded and give people the benefit of the doubt and I need to do this with BY. For some reason, it has been really hard for me when it comes to him.

I don’t like to write things without a reference, so I was apprehensive to write that I had heard him say something to someone that was rude. I honestly thought you would know what I was talking about because you know so much about BY. I would like to find out the source of what I heard and make sure it is based on truth. I am positive I read it on MM, so I’ll have to do some research.

Thanks for the perspective. I think you are right about needing a leader like BY in those times. It makes sense that it would take a strong personality to match the challenging times. I also think that any leader is always going to be criticized for the things they do or don’t do by some people and I need to remember to be glad it wasn’t me who had to deal with it all.

I don’t know if you read my post A Case For Slavery. Indians would often trade captured women and children from other tribes, and sell them to the Mexicans. After the Mexican War which ceded much of the Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado to the US, The Indians tried to sell Indian slaves to the Mormons. In one particular case, the Indians dashed the brains of a slave on the ground and said “If you had a heart, you would have saved the life of this child.”

Brigham Young directed members of the church from this point forward to buy Indian slaves (and make them a “white and delightsome people”), and that is another reason Utah made slavery legal prior to the Civil War. While I’m still not comfortable with Brigham’s position on slavery, hearing this story made me more sympathetic to Brigham’s position.

Fast Offerings (check this link)were implemented during the droughts of the 1850’s, and historians say that nobody died during these especially harsh winters. Much of the credit goes to Brigham Young’s spartan leadership. He pretty much forced people to share, and it kept people alive. So, while I understand your position that Brigham could be rude, yet his toughness literally saved lives of early pioneers. We don’t have to endure Willey and Martin handcart disasters, and it took a strong (perhaps rude) leader to help people survive in this rough environment. I understand people’s problems with Brigham Young, but I don’t think they look at the whole picture with some of their criticisms. He was a rough man in a much rougher environment that we live in today. A more refined leader probably would not have helped people survive in the rough Utah environment of the 1850’s. He innovated many amazing feats, and started the Perpetual Emigration Fund to help poor people emigrate from Europe to Utah. He honestly cared deeply for the poor, and made many policies to reduce poverty and starvation.

I know Brigham Young gets a bad rap on the Bloggernacle (even from me), but all these bad raps against Brigham almost make me want to put out something good about him. Jen, I don’t know if you read my posts on Consecration, but I think Brigham Young really cared for the poor, and wanted no poor. You might want to check out the first 2 posts that come up on this link. http://www.mormonheretic.org/?s=consecration

Thanks for helping me understand better what you meant by spiritual offspring. I don’t like to think of myself as spiritual offspring of Brigham Young because I really have a hard time liking him from everything I have read about him. I prefer thinking of myself as being the spiritual offspring of God, that is why I had some confusion in understanding what you meant at first.

I can no more imagine the RLDS/Community of Christ tradition coming into being and continuing than I can imagine the Utah branch of the Restoration becoming what it has without Brigham Young. Every CofChrist prophet up until the 1990’s was a son, grandson, or great-grandson of Joseph and Emma. The character she imparted in her son informs everything he and his descendents built and therefore everything we are. In that sense we are her spiritual offspring.