“A Message to Strengthen Us: Sally Randall’s Letter about the Martyrdom,” Liahona, June 2024, United States and Canada Section.
A Message to Strengthen Us: Sally Randall’s Letter about the Martyrdom
A letter written shortly after the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith offers us an example of bravery, courage, and determination to help us face the battles of our own day.
Death of a Prophet, by Gary E. Smith
“There are many that will rejoice and think Mormonism is down now,” wrote Sally C. Randall in a spirited letter to family and friends only days after the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. “But they will be mistaken, for the Lord has begun His work and He will carry it on in spite of all mobs and devils.”
In the same letter, Sally wrote: “Never has there been such a horrible crime committed since the day Christ was crucified. It seems that all nature mourns. The earth is deprived of the two best men there was on it.”
“Sally’s letter is remarkable for several reasons,” explained Latter-day Saint historians Jordan Watkins and Steven C. Harper. Though Church history is rich with other accounts from the time of the martyrdom, “in [this letter] we hear a believing woman’s voice, and in it we have captured a very early response to the tragedy, a raw and revealing reaction.”
Written on July 1, 1844—when hostility raged against the Saints by mobs that besieged them on every side—this letter reveals a Nauvoo that was filled with faith. The letter reveals Sally’s rock-solid confidence in God and her ironclad determination to defend her faith, even though the Saints were outnumbered by persecutors and she was aware that further sacrifices could be required.
Sally was a relatively new member at the time of the martyrdom. She and her husband and their two sons had joined the Church near Buffalo, New York, and migrated to Nauvoo in 1843. Here they found many Saints sick with fevers, malaria, and measles. Writing to her family in the eastern United States, she said, “It is very sickly here at present … , and a great many children die” from the diseases.
Sally’s oldest son, 14-year-old George, soon got sick and died about three weeks later. With “a heart full of grief and sorrow” from her son’s death, she received word eight months later of the Prophet’s martyrdom. In this state of grief, she wrote her family to detail the events, share her emotions, and give perspective to events of the time.
“They Have Sealed Their Testimony”
While in the county jail in Carthage, Illinois, Joseph and Hyrum Smith were shot by a mob on June 27, 1844. A few days after, Sally Randall wrote: “About 6 in the afternoon … about one hundred and fifty of the mob made an attack upon the courthouse and the guard[. They] went into the jail, and the first one they shot was Hyrum. He was killed dead on the spot. Elder Taylor was badly wounded. Joseph then jumped out of the window. They shot him I know not how many times. The mob then fled as quick as possible.”
Martyrdom, by Gary E. Smith, may not be copied
In the letter she notes that some men were spotted the next day crossing the river still wearing paint on their faces and that on the day of the martyrdom, only eight men had been left to guard the courthouse and jail.
She describes how, about four miles (6 km) outside Nauvoo, troops intercepted a man who was heading to Nauvoo to deliver “the sad news.” The troops would not let him proceed and detained him, delaying the Saints from receiving news of the martyrdom until the next morning.
“If you can imagine … how the Apostles and Saints felt when the Savior was crucified,” Sally continued, “you can [get] something of a guess of how the Saints felt here when they heard that their prophet and patriarch were both dead and murdered, too, by a lawless mob. … They have sealed their testimony with their blood.”
Sally expressed the sentiment of the time that Governor Thomas Ford of Illinois was at fault for failing to protect Joseph. She declares the belief of her neighbors and fellow Saints that Joseph and Hyrum voluntarily suffered martyrdom to seal their testimonies with their blood.
A Providential Find
Yet this letter appears to have never found its destination to family and friends, leaving historians to speculate what happened. Did the local militiamen prevent postal service due to hostile sentiment? Perhaps letters from Nauvoo during this turbulent time went only as far as a local town in Illinois or maybe Chicago and were never forwarded? Maybe Sally never mailed the letter and left it behind when she migrated west.
For more than 100 years this letter lay yellowing and obscure to the world until an unusual set of circumstances suddenly aligned to bring it to light. A doctor in the Chicago area with an interest in antique items bought an old trunk in an estate sale. Rummaging through its contents, he discovered the letter.
The doctor recognized its importance and took care of the letter until one day in 1963 when two missionaries knocked on his door. They had come to deliver a Church magazine with his name on the label that had been inadvertently delivered to a member of the Church several blocks away. The doctor, who had spent time in Utah years earlier, had developed an interest in the Church and had subscribed to the magazine to stay informed.
On this day the missionaries were tracting in this neighborhood west of Chicago when they unknowingly knocked on the door of a member of the Church who had received the magazine in error only a few minutes earlier.
The missionaries took the magazine to the proper home, where they met the adult son of the doctor. During the conversation, the son showed the letter to the missionaries and allowed them to make a photocopy.
Jim Nowa, one of the missionaries, says, “I believe it was providential that the mailman delivered the magazine to the wrong address, even though the correct address was clearly labeled. It was fortuitous that the member was home and we were tracting that area, or we may have never met the son of the doctor with the letter.”
The missionaries delivered copies of the letter to the Church History Department after their missions.
Strength for Our Day
Brother Nowa believes that Sally’s testimony and account of the horrific events the Saints faced at the time of the martyrdom serve as a message to strengthen us in our day.
From his study of her letter, Brother Nowa concludes that Sally had confidence in her own spiritual sensitivity and capacity to act on promptings. Despite mobs who threatened her community, opposition from family and friends who fought her conversion, and the premature death of her son, she was faithful in her conviction of the truth.
“Sally’s clear and faith-filled voice allows us to draw on the bravery, courage, and determination of the Nauvoo Saints to battle the tides of opposition of our own day,” he adds.
Shortly before leaving Nauvoo, Sally wrote her family: “The mob are threatening continually to come upon us. We heard they were coming today but I have not seen anything in the least, for I believe there is faith enough in the city to keep them back until the Saints all get away.”
She described how they planned to travel “with a yoke of oxen and a mule,” while driving their cows. “I don’t know when I shall have another opportunity to write, but as soon as I have I will improve it, and I must close for the present so goodbye to all, earthly friends.”
Sally and her husband, James, with their surviving son, settled in Nephi, Utah, where she resided until her death in 1874.