Today’s Kansas City Star includes an interesting feature article on some legal documents recovered in Missouri relating to a July 1833 mob attack by some Missourians against local Mormons. 

The documents, which were recovered in 2001 in the course of a local records preservation project between state and Jackson County archives, were thought by archivists to have disappeared.

As the article notes, on July 20, 1833, a mob consisting of more than 50 state residents, including several early leaders in Independence, attacked and the destroyed the Evening and the Morning Star press and printing house (owned by W.W. Phelps), tore up the Mormon store, and assaulted several Mormons, including Bishop Edward Partridge and Charles Allen, who were tarred and feathered (historical background on this incident is discussed in a new Latter-day Saint Liberation Front podcast available here).  Phelps and Patridge filed lawsuits against those allegedly responsible for the attacks.  Partridge’s suit claimed $50,000 in damages, while Phelps claimed $55,000 in damages (Edwin Firmage and Richard Mangum, Zion in the Courts: A Legal History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900 (Urbana, IL: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1988, pp. 64, 68-69)).   

Interestingly enough, the defendants did not deny their involvement; rather, they made identical claims that they had responded in self-defense to Patridge, who had allegedly threatened each defendant

and would then and there have beat, bruised, and ill treated him and said defendant, if he had not immediately defended himself against the said plaintiff, wherefore, he the said defendant did then and there defend himself against the said plaintiff, as he lawfully might, for the cause aforesaid, and in so doing did necessarily and unavoidably, a little, did pull and hawl about before a large concourse of people, and thereby, then and [there] in self defense did indignantly treat the said plaintiff, by shaking, kicking, striking, throwing him upon the ground and did then and there for the cause aforesaid, a little, rend, tare and damage the clothes of the said plaintiff, and there being then and there upon the ground, where the said defendant was so compelled, in self defense as aforesaid, to throw down the body of the defendant [plaintiff?], as aforesaid, a large quantity of tar pitch and feathers, by means whereof, the said plaintiff became a little covered and besmeared with tar, pitch and feathers…doing no unnecessary damage to the plaintiff.

(qtd. in Zion in the Courts, p. 69).   Partridge recovered a peppercorn and one penny in damages, while Phelps received $750 (Zion in the Courts, p. 69-70).   

Gordon Madsen, editor of the legal portion of the Joseph Smith Papers project, is surprised that the records survived.  He comments in the article:

“It’s amazing that the records still exist at all,” he said, given the violence of Missouri’s Civil War, era when courthouses sometimes were seized and occupied by opposing troops.

Now they will add to the written record of Mormon experience in frontier Missouri. Previous scholars sometimes have not sought out the existing legal record when researching Smith, said Madsen.

“The major thing that the papers project will do will bring light to Smith’s legal experiences,” he said.

The article adds that the first volumes of the Joseph Smith Papers project will appear in 2007.