St. Louis Luminary Was a Weekly Newspaper Published at St
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48 Nauvoo Journal The St. Louis Luminary was a weekly newspaper published at St. Louis from 22 November 1854 to 15 December 1855. Image is from Our Pioneer Heritage, Vol. 5, p. 452. Sheri E. Slaughter: Index of Early LDS in St. Louis, Missouri 49 “Meet Me in St. Louie” An Index of Early Latter-day Saints Associated with St. Louis, Missouri Sheri Eardley Slaughter On a cold February 1846 morning in Nauvoo, eleven-year-old Ellen Partington bid a tearful farewell to her mother while preparing to cross the frozen Mississippi River with her surrogate family. Little did Ellen know that it would be nearly eight years before she saw her family again in the Salt Lake Valley. She would be married with her own son when next she saw the people she loved. Ellen’s mother, Ann, who had been so terribly ill while in Nauvoo, probably believed she was saying her last earthly goodbye to her young daugh- ter. Ann Taylor Partington was one of the first English women to embrace the Mormon faith in Preston, England, where she was baptized in 1837 in the River Ribble. With her husband Ralph and their four children, they emigrated from Liverpool aboard the ship Swanton in January 1843 to join the growing number of Saints in Nauvoo. Shortly after the ship sailed, Ann gave birth to a son they named Joseph Hyrum. Because both Ralph and Ann suffered severely from ague after landing in Nauvoo, they were unable to work to support their family. Willard and Jeanetta Richards, seeing the family’s plight, decided to adopt eight- year-old Ellen. She reluctantly went to live with the Richards family where she hid food to take to her mother who was near death’s door. Another neighbor took care of the Partington’s baby, Joseph Hyrum, who soon died. Although the Richards were kind and loving, Ellen missed her parents, her sisters Catherine and Sarah, and her brother William. Jeanetta Richards’ untimely death caused Ellen to long for her family even more. Mother Ann gave birth to another son, James Taylor Partington, on 3 May 1845 in Nauvoo. Eventually, Ralph regained his health and worked as a carpenter on the temple SHERI EARDLEY SLAUGHTER is a professional researcher and genealogist. She was the photo researcher for the PBS documentary Trail of Hope. 50 Nauvoo Journal where Ellen Partington was sealed to Willard Richards as his daughter. As the Saints prepared to leave their beloved city on the Mississippi, Ellen anxiously watched as her father Ralph built a wagon to take his family on their long journey. However, they could not afford provisions and were unable to leave with the Richards family that frigid February of 1846. Along the cold, snowy trail in Iowa, Ellen watched and hoped for her family to join the pioneer company, but the Partingtons never arrived. Ralph and Ann Partington were among the poor Saints forced from their Nauvoo homes during the summer of 1846. They crossed the river to Montrose, Iowa, knowing they lacked the provisions to continue. Like many Nauvoo Saints, instead of crossing Iowa, they ventured 190 miles down the river to St. Louis in search of jobs. In 1848 at Winter Quarters, Ellen Partington once again prepared for a long journey with the Richards family. For two years, she had vainly waited for her family to arrive. She occasionally received letters or presents from her family in St. Louis, which she cherished, but they also caused her to yearn even more for them. In Dr. Richards’ home, Ellen felt she “had too many bosses” and longed “to run away to St. Louis, if I had known how to do it. I did want to see moth- er so bad, that I could hardly stand it.”1 During the spring of 1848, Ellen scout- ed the banks of the Missouri River for each steamboat from St. Louis to arrive. She would run on board and peer into every face, but “the faces I looked for were not there . [and] I gave vent to my feelings in a good crying spell.” Her folks did send her some good clothing and shoes, which helped immeasurably in the journey west. Ralph Partington found work as a carpenter in St. Louis from 1846 to 1853, and Ann Partington gave birth to another son, Heber George Partington, on 14 March 1850. Ellen never saw this brother, as he died in St. Louis on 3 September 1850. The Partingtons remained at St. Louis until 1853 when they had sufficient means to cross the prairie and plains with Captain Moses Clawson’s St. Louis Company. Ellen Partington (Richards)2 married James Moburn Kay on 19 June 1851 in Salt Lake. Finally, in September 1853, Ellen Partington Kay had the “blessed privilege of meeting my father, mother, brothers and sisters, after a separation of almost eight years.” Her mother “held up her hands and thanked God, that He had spared her life to see that day.” Baby Willard Kay was eleven months old when he met his grandparents for the first time. Ellen’s brother “Jimmy” had been a nine-month-old baby when she last saw him in Nauvoo. He was now an eight-year-old whose “black eyes . were sparkling with fun.” The poignant story of the Partington family is just one of the many dramas carried out during the Church exodus. Not all Nauvoo families were able to make the 1846 pilgrimage across Iowa. Many families “went south” to St. Louis, where they found employment to pay their passage to Zion. This was just one way in which St. Louis played a vital role during the early “gathering” years of Sheri E. Slaughter: Index of Early LDS in St. Louis, Missouri 51 the Church. There were an estimated fifteen hundred Latter-day Saints in St. Louis during the winter of 1846–47.3 According to the federal census, in 1840, St. Louis had a population of 16,469 (History of the Church, 4:xxiv). During this important period of Church history, Latter-day Saints comprised nearly 10 per- cent of the population of St. Louis. The Significance of St. Louis to the Mormons St. Louis, Missouri, became known to the Latter-day Saints in the late 1830s when Oliver Cowdery, Parley P. Pratt, and three other missionaries passed through on their way to Independence in Jackson County; and since that time, St. Louis has been prominently connected with the history of the Church. Thousands of LDS emigrants landed in America at New Orleans and than trav- eled up the Mississippi by river boat and located temporarily at St. Louis until they earned means to take them to the Salt Lake Valley.4 Following Governor Lilburn Boggs’ 1838 anti-Mormon “extermination order,” many St. Louis residents sided with the Mormons and sympathized with their plight. Several leading St. Louis newspapers condemned the actions of Governor Boggs. When the St. Louis Stake of Zion was organized in 1855, the LDS mem- bership there was numbered at about three thousand. Thousands of missionaries bound for the eastern states and Europe made their way through St. Louis, where the members gave them food, lodging, supplies, and financial aid to continue their journeys. “Throughout the Missouri and Illinois periods of the Church, up to the coming of the railroad to Utah in 1869 and beyond, St. Louis was the most important non-Mormon city in Church history. St. Louis has played two important roles in Mormon history—as a city of refuge and as an emigrant cen- ter.”5 Almost every major Church leader of the period was connected with the Church in St. Louis, including Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, John Taylor, Parley P. Pratt, Sidney Rigdon, Oliver Crowdery, Martin Harris, Frederick G. Williams, Willard Richards, Charles C. Rich, Franklin E. Richards, Ezra Taft Benson, George A. Smith, Orson Pratt, Jedediah M. Grant, Orson Hyde, Amasa Lyman, and others.6 These names are not included in the index that follows. In 1855, the Church encouraged European emigrants to sail to the East Coast; and by 1856, the emigrants no longer went through St. Louis on their route to Utah. St. Louis gradually lost its importance to the Church. The St. Louis Luminary In the interest of the Church, the St. Louis Luminary was a weekly newspa- per published at St. Louis from 22 November 1854 to 15 December 1855. It con- sisted of a four-page folio, each page containing five wide columns. The paper 52 Nauvoo Journal was edited by Apostle Erastus Snow and was filled with details of important Church events and emigration news. The subscription price was $2 per annum. Its motto was “Light Shineth in Darkness, and the Darkness Comprehendeth it not.”7 Rationale for an Index of St. Louis Saints To date, there has never been a compiled inventory of Latter-day Saints who were born, lived, worked, or died in St. Louis, Missouri, during the early his- tory of the Church. Mormons are noted for keeping good records, but such was not the case in early St. Louis. The clerks, as well as the general membership, were constantly coming and going, so the written records, if kept at all, were brief and incomplete. The purpose of the “St. Louis” index that follows is to compile as many names as possible of early LDS members who spent time in St. Louis. This list does not include the thousands of LDS immigrants who simply passed through St. Louis on their way to Nauvoo or Utah. The most important records used in this compilation are the St.