Death in 19th-century Mormonism
Sermons and poetry were composed to memorialize the deceased; death masks, coffin canes, and locks of hair also served as tokens of the person's life and were believed to possess spiritual power.
Expulsion from settlements in Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois resulted in small skirmishes such as the Battle of Crooked River and Haun's Mill massacre, contributing to the Mormon death toll.
Smith, the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, spoke of his distrust of traditional physicians after the use of calomel contributed to the premature death of his brother Alvin.
Approximately 200 to 300 Mormons were buried in the Far West burial ground, including David W. Patten, Gideon Carter, and many other victims of the Battle of Crooked River, which occurred in 1838.
[9]: 94 He and Brigham Young occasionally referred to diseases as demonic possessions, but this teaching died out when the field of medicine advanced and illnesses began to be understood.
A statue of two parents mourning the death of their newborn child stands at the Mormon Pioneer Cemetery in Florence, Nebraska, commemorating those who were lost and those who lived on to complete the trek west.
[13] Settling the western U.S. presented challenges such as obtaining sufficient nutrition and establishing healthcare, but it also protected the Latter-day Saints from the cholera and smallpox epidemics raging on the east coast.
They did slightly rise, however, from the 1860s to the 1880s; the influx of immigrants to Utah – brought on by the 1869 completion of the transcontinental railroad – led to the spread of more contagious diseases, particularly through the water supply.
When knowledge of how to prevent disease spread towards the end of the century, church leaders released a statement urging members to maintain cleanliness, especially in the water they drank.
[3]: 76 Uncertainty surrounding a person's actual status as alive or dead was commonplace because of the limits of 19th-century medical science, which in turn produced myths of live burials and resurrections.
[14]: 39–46 A question-and-answer article in the July 1838 edition of the Elders' Journal, of which Joseph Smith was editor, asked if Mormons could revive the deceased; the answer given was: "No … but God can raise the dead through man, as an instrument.
A prayer would be said aloud, pleading with God to accept the dying man or woman into heaven, and the actual event of death was expected to occur moments later.
"[19]: 61 There are, however, accounts of Joseph Smith using consecrated oil to heal the sick and dying prior to the construction of Kirtland Temple, the first to be built by the Latter Day Saints.
Then, in 1849, George B. Wallace, Daniel H. Wells, and Joseph L. Heywood designated 20 acres of land in the nearby foothills as the Salt Lake City Cemetery.
At funerals, the community would join "at the church, home, or graveside to sing hymns, pray, and listen to sermons," mirroring common Protestant practices at the time.
[13] Joseph Smith's teachings on the subject of death and the afterlife often took the form of funeral sermons, such as the King Follett discourse,[21] which expanded Mormon eschatology to feature a "complex, highly structured immortal existence.
Latter-day Saints commonly added a twist to this Protestant tradition by including language centered around the specifics of LDS doctrine and the traits of ideal believers.
Brown wrote that, for these early church members, "mourning too much risked offending God and proving to outsiders that Mormonism had not solved the problem of death.
It was also a common practice to have an artist paint a portrait of the dead; if the family could not afford to hire a painter, they would remember their face through death masks made of plaster.
George Q. Cannon made death masks of Joseph and Hyrum Smith using "layers of plaster and fabric strips" before the public viewing in Nauvoo, Illinois.
[31] While Mormon men expressed their grief by giving funeral sermons, their women counterparts turned to writing death poems both to feel community support and experience a sort of private catharsis.
[7] Klaus J. Hansen writes: "According to Mormonism only those few who had committed the unpardonable sins of shedding innocent blood, or of denying the Holy Ghost, would suffer the kind of tortures that Puritans believed would be meted out to most mortals.
[17] Joseph Smith directly taught that Jesus Christ's sacrifice granted all people resurrection to an immortal life, wherein the righteous would enjoy living alongside God the Father.
"[3]: 10–18 However, Mormons also believed that baptism at the hands of someone holding the proper authority – found only in the church – was necessary for salvation; so, many expressed anxiety for their loved ones who had not yet joined the faith.
[2] Thus, Mormon eschatology combined the "certainty of orthodox Calvinism" with "the Arminian opportunities for humans to collaborate with divine grace" to produce a sort of middle ground.
[4] Additionally, Book of Mormon teachings such as the story of the Three Nephites asserted that some believers would "never taste of death" but instead live on the earth until the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
[9]: 98 Wilford Woodruff once described a vision of Joseph Smith laboring to teach in the spirit world, the post-mortal realm which Mormons believed to house the souls of all the deceased who had ever walked the earth.
[22] After Joseph Smith's time, LDS leaders taught that death was a painless, pleasing process through which people traveled to a world much more joyful and beautiful than earth.
[1] : 101, 104–105 This eternal sealing of husbands and wives, along with other temple ordinances such as the endowment, encouraged faithful Latter Day Saints that they could conquer death[9]: 92 and alleviated stress concerning the post-mortal fate of loved ones.
"[28]: 68, 72–73 In addition, some corroborate things taught by 19th-century leaders of the LDS Church, such as the quick movement of post-mortal beings and increased intellectual ability after death.
