Thomas C. Sharp

Thomas Coke Sharp (September 25, 1818 – April 9, 1894) was a prominent opponent of Joseph Smith and the Latter Day Saints in Illinois in the 1840s.

Sharp promoted his anti-Mormon views largely through the Warsaw Signal newspaper, of which he was the owner, editor, and publisher.

[1] He attended Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and was admitted to the legal bar of Cumberland County, Illinois, in April 1840.

Approximately 18 months earlier, Latter Day Saints had begun to arrive in the same county and settle in the town of Commerce, which by 1840 had been renamed Nauvoo.

[4] In a June 14, 1844, extra edition, the Signal published the minutes of a meeting of Warsaw residents organized by Sharp; those in attendance condemned Smith's destruction of the printing press of the anti-Mormon Nauvoo Expositor and resolved that "the Prophet [Smith] and his miscreant adherents, should ... be demanded at their [the Latter Day Saints'] hands, and if not surrendered, a war of extermination should be waged to the entire destruction, if necessary for our protection, of his adherents.

"[5] Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum were arrested and jailed on charges of destruction of the presses of the Nauvoo Expositor.

[6] On September 25, 1844, a deputy sheriff attempted to arrest Sharp as a suspect in the murders of Joseph and Hyrum Smith.

Two days later, Illinois governor Thomas Ford issued a proclamation offering a reward of two hundred dollars for the arrest of Sharp.