The New International Encyclopædia/Young, Brigham

YOUNG, Brigham (1801-77). The successor of Joseph Smith, Jr., as president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. (See Mormons.) He was born in Whitingham, Windham County, Vt., June 1, 1801. He removed to Mendon, Monroe County, N. Y., and was baptized into the Mormon Church April 14, 1832. Appointed an elder, he first met the Prophet Joseph at Kirtland, Ohio. After a successful mission to Canada he went to Missouri in the ‘Army of Zion.’ Elected as one of the original Quorum of Twelve in 1835, he was called to preach to the Indians, and finally started on a mission to the Eastern States. In 1840 he was sent to Liverpool to assist Apostles John Taylor and Wilford Woodruff (qq.v.) in the English mission and became an editor of the Millennial Star. Upon the apostasy of T. B. Marsh, Young was left president of the Twelve, and held this position until his election as president of the Church, December 5, 1847. After the murder of Smith in 1844 Young remonstrated with the Mormons for their depredations in Missouri, and in turn demanded fair treatment from the Quincy Committee upon the expulsion of the Mormons from Illinois. The next year, having vainly sought Federal aid from President Polk, he urged the Saints to move somewhere west of the Rocky Mountains. In February, 1846, he was himself a member of the first party to leave Nauvoo, but stayed in winter quarters on the Missouri till the following January. Then he promulgated his first and only ‘revelation,’ to be found in the Book of Doctrine and Covenants. Reaching the Salt Lake Valley in 1848, he selected the site of the temple. Young's power over his followers was now shown by his prohibition of gold-mining, by his organization of the ill-fated hand-cart expedition, and by his election as Governor of the State of Deseret in 1849. The following year he was appointed by President Fillmore as Federal Governor of the Territory of Utah. Young's choice of his own ward bishops enabled him to control all local affairs and receive the bulk of the tithes. His suppression of the schismatic Gladdenites in 1853 led him to further steps against the exodus of the discontented, such as the murder of W. R. Parish, the organization of the ‘Wolf Hunters,’ and the instituting of ‘blood atonement.’ Defying the United States authorities sent out by President Buchanan in the so-called Mormon War of 1857, and indicted for treason after the Mountain Meadows massacre (q.v.), Young was nevertheless let alone by the Central Government. About this time he made his sole contribution to the body of Mormon divinity, the doctrine of the worship of Adam as God. In 1866 Young founded the Zion's Cooperative Mercantile Institution. In 1871 the case against him for unlawful cohabitation was dropped as unconstitutional, but the divorce suit brought by Ann Eliza Young, known as wife ‘No. 19,’ was sustained. Young died August 29, 1877, and was reputed to have left between $2,000,000 and $3,000,000, 24 widows, and 44 children.