Autobiography of John M Horner

Extract from the Autobiography of John M. Horner

During the previous three or four years I had been wrought up over the subject of religion. The Methodists were the most persistent in my neighborhood and my preference was for them. In these days came ministers of a new sect calling themselves Latter-day Saints, with a new revelation preaching the gospel of the New Testament with its gifts and blessings. It attracted much attention, people listened and some obeyed thereby enjoying the promised blessing. Members of the Methodist, Baptist and Presbyterian faith as well as non-professors began to join them.(3) Among the latter class were my father, mother and sisters. I was the first of the family to obey being baptized by Erastus Snow in the Layawa Creek on the second day of August 1840. In the spring of 1843, I went up to Nauvoo. Here I was introduced to and shook hands with the Prophet Joseph Smith. I stopped in Nauvoo during the summer and was one of the four men who laid the brick in David Yearsley's three story house and in the Masonic brick lodge under guidance of Brother George Woodward, who was one of the four.

Mixing mortar, handling the trowel, the square, the saw, the plane, etc, was new work for me, but, as in the case of using farm tools, I found it a great help in after years not only in the days of my poverty when I did all my own work but later thus knowing how to handle tools and do things enabled me to build up and superintend the comparatively large business I afterwards controlled.

In viewing my strenuous eventful and comparatively long and busy life the wise counsel of our present president of the Church and the twelve apostles given to the young men to learn mechanical trades as well as book knowledge and book theories, etc., strikes me with great force and I believe that every young man heeding this counsel will double and perhaps treble his value in the world. Not less wise is the move now being made in some of the Church Schools to instruct their students in manual and domestic as well as brain labors. We are taught that man has at least four natures, mental, moral, spiritual and physical and of course if only one or two of his natures are schooled he is not a fully developed man.

But to proceed. There being no labor to be had in Nauvoo, in the fall I went home to the school which I had left, and in the following spring, I returned to Nauvoo, where, at the suggestion of Brigham Young given at a meeting of the Seventies, my name was placed upon the books as one of their number.(4) Things were exciting in Nauvoo in those days. The Laws, Fosters, Higbees and other apostates and enemies were doing all the injury they could to the Church and apparently were seeking the life of the Prophet.

About this time, a convention was called for the purpose of making a nomination of some one for President of the United States. The Prophet was unanimously chosen and many delegates were appointed to electioneer in a number of states, to endeavor to elect the Prophet president. I was sent back to New Jersey; I ordered a thousand or so of the Prophet's "Views of the Powers and Policies of the Government of the United States," printed and took these with me. One night while speaking to a full house of attentive listeners, I invited all to speak who wished to, at the close of my lecture. One gentleman got up and said: "I have one reason to give why Joseph Smith can never be President of the United States: my paper, which I received from Philadelphia this afternoon said that he was murdered in Carthage jail, on June 27th."(5) Silence reigned: the gathering quietly dispersed; but the grief and sadness of this heart was beyond the power of man to estimate.

The Prophet's martyrdom ended our political campaign. It was a severe shock to us. But we kept up our branch meeting, myself and other elders taking short missions into the northern part of New Jersey, and into eastern Pennsylvania, holding wood meetings, preaching in school houses, etc. For one year or so thereafter, in the meantime reading the Nauvoo papers eagerly. Finally word came that the Saints were going to leave Nauvoo for California then a province of Mexico, and counsel was given to the eastern Saints to charter a ship and go around the Horn to California.(6)