Bits of History — 3

in this new country. But it was not to be. August 6, 1838, at the town of Gallatin, just eight miles from their farms, began in earnest the war between the mobsters and the Saints. The battle of Crooked River followed October 25 and the Haun’s Mill Massacre on the 29th. The main portion of the local manpower of the Saints was chased through the snow clear up to the Des Moines River in lowa under near starvation conditions before the pursuers gave up. The “Mormons” had left their families in a desperate condition. The mob returned and proceeded to burn up everything burnable and killed their animals including their milk cows, and destroyed or stole everything else the “Mormons” might use. Clara’s father had in some way evaded Clark’s army and the Des Moines River action. He gathered up the two families and escaped clear across the state to Morgan County, Illinois. The Missouri Exodus was on. This period also marked the breaking up of the Decker family. As mentioned before, Clara had been temporarily absorbed by the Prophet Joseph’s family. Charles Franklin, according to the obituary in the Deseret News, March 25 19901, though only 14 years of age had tried to help the family fortunes by riding “Pony Express” out of Dublin, Indiana. This was followed by three years working on river boats. He did not rejoin his family until the unhappy days at Nauvoo. Sometime in 1839, the record doesn’t say where or when, but probably in or near Far West, Clara’s older sister Lucy Ann married William Seely. This left Harriet Amelia, Clara and Fanny Maria with their parents. The Lorenzo Young and Isaac Decker families continued to be very closely associated. They farmed in Scott and Morgan counties through 1839-40. It was here in Winchester, Scott, Illinois that my grandfather Isaac Perry Decker was born. Nauvoo had now definitely become the rallying place of the Saints. Isaac headed out in the Fall of 1840 stopping over in Warsaw for the winter and arrived in Nauvoo in 1841. Lorenzo spent the summer of 1841, in Warsaw and in the Spring of 1842 he moved to Macedonia and bought a house about four miles from the town of Carthage. The biographers say that it was in 1841 that Isaac and Harriet separated on amicable terms. Harriet Page Wheeler Decker Young was born 7 September 1803 at Hillsborough, New Hampshire. Oliver

Wheeler and Hannah Ashby were her parents. She was reared in Salem, Massachusetts. From age rive to ten she attended school and then went to work in a local mill where she learned spinning of flax and wool. Her mother taught her weaving, millinery and cooking. At age 17 she was sufficiently self confident, to take a job school teaching in Phelps, Ontario, N.Y. For a girl who had no more than five years’ formal education this looks to me like she had plenty of intestinal fortitude. She married Isaac Decker sometime in 1820. He was nearly four years older than she was, and already a successful bright young farmer. A right good “catch”. They set about raising a family without too much delay — a baby about every two years through 1830. Then Harriet took an unexplained vacation of ten years and then bore her last child by Isaac, named after his father, August 7, 1840. My grandfather was in his first year apparently at the time the historians claim Harriet and Isaac broke up. My father, Fera Decker, told me that the family tradition was that the split was over polygamy. Harriet had picked out a second wife for Isaac and he wouldn’t take her. At the request of Joseph Smith, he had converted his substantial property into funds with which he had redeemed Kirtland Bank paper and made himself destitute. This had been done under secrecy from Harriet. She felt he was failing away from the church and under well meaning, and I suspect fanatical advisors (who knew nothing of his financial situation) she was talked into repudiating Isaac and marrying Lorenzo as a plural wife. My Dad said that this tradition was supported by Orson F. Whitney as a speaker at the funeral of Clara Decker Young (My father’s Aunt Clara). “Now it can be told” he said and proceeded to give his version of the meeting between Isaac and the Prophet Joseph at which the request was made and the secrecy agreed to. At any rate Isaac apparently considered himself unqualified to take on the responsibilities of polygamy at that time. He did not go West with the first companies, but stayed back to recoup his fortune, which he did. Eventually he came to Utah a successful rancher up Heber-Charleston way where he did finally embrace polygamy. In my own mind I wonder along another line of thought. When Harriet finally realized their destitution, followed by more of the same through the mobocrat days of Missouri and Illinois, might she have become so frustrated at the loss of the family security she had helped build up for twenty years, that she decided to do

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