Thy Gold to Refine by Gerald N. Lund

Author:Gerald N. Lund [Lund, Gerald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: Deseret Book Company
Published: 1993-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Notes

While the purposes of the novel require that the author place his fictional characters in the midst of the terrible events at Haun’s Mill and provide some detail not given in original accounts, every effort has been made to depict the tragedy as it actually happened. The main events of the massacre come from several eyewitness accounts (see Joseph Young’s account in HC 3:183–86; see also HC 3:186–87; Persecutions, pp. 234–37; Restoration, pp. 399–402).

Later reports of the Missouri militia indicate that there were 240 men in the group that attacked the settlement and that they were led by a man by the name of Nehemiah Comstock. Each man fired an average of seven bullets during the attack. This makes a total of almost seventeen hundred rounds fired against approximately thirty families. Eighteen people, men and boys, were killed, and thirteen other people (including at least one woman) were wounded, some of them critically. Only three of the Missourians were wounded.

The massacre in the blacksmith shop, including the shooting of the wounded and the brutal murder of Sardius Smith, are accurate, as are the mutilation of Father McBride with a corn cutter and the shooting at women and children. The killer of Sardius Smith later boasted about what he had done, showing the totally ruthless nature of some of the mob.

Willard Smith was one of the survivors and one of the heroes of Haun’s Mill, even though he was not yet twelve. He wrote a little-known account of his experience, which gives some details not found in other sources. His hiding in the woodpile, the flight to the cabin of Thomas McBride (who was evidently first shot, then later killed with the corn knife), his getting the old man water from the millpond while under fire, and his daring escape with the six little girls are all based on his journal account (found in By Their Fruits, pp. 180–83).

There was an actual woman, named Mary Stedwell, who fled across the creek with Amanda Smith and who was shot in the hand. Amanda Smith later recalled, “One girl was wounded by my side and fell over a log, her clothes hung across the log [and] they Shot at them expecting that they were hitting her, and our people af[ter]wards Cut out of that log twenty bullets.” (In Redress, p. 538; see also HC 3:186; CHFT, p. 203.) Rather than trying to introduce a new character so that the story of Mary’s heroic escape could be told, the author has taken the liberty to have Jessica experience events similar to those Mary experienced.

Jacob Haun was wounded but recovered. Some time later, after the Saints reached Nauvoo, the Prophet Joseph said: “At Haun’s Mill the brethren went contrary to my counsel; if they had not, their lives would have been spared” (HC 5:137).

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