Letter from Thomas Ward and Hiram Clark, 16 March 1843
Source Note
and , Letter, , England, to the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, , Hancock Co., IL, 16 Mar. 1843; handwriting of ; signatures of and ; dockets in handwriting of and ; four pages; Sidney Rigdon Collection, CHL.
Historical Introduction
On 16 March 1843, and wrote a letter from , England, to the and the in , Illinois, to convey information pertaining to the emigration of Latter-day Saints from to Nauvoo. Ward was the of the in Europe; Clark was one of Ward’s counselors and was responsible for overseeing emigration. The two had written a letter to the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles on 1 March 1843 seeking advice on church publications in England.
The logistics of getting Saints from to had been of concern to church leaders for a few years. In 1841, the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles instructed those desiring to move to the to work through the church’s emigration agent in England rather than going on their own and to travel through rather than . The apostles supplemented this direction in 1842 with a plan to generate funds for emigration. According to this plan, church members in England would “collect as great an amount of Cotton, Linen, and woollen Goods; Silks, Cutlery, Hardware” as they could and send them to Nauvoo. The apostles would pay the British Saints for these goods by providing them with land, housing, cattle, and other kinds of property when the emigrants reached Nauvoo. The apostles would also use proceeds from the sale of the goods to buy “flour, meat and all things necessary for a sea voyage” at lower prices than those in England and send them to the British Saints, who would then be able to emigrate “at a cheaper rate.”
It is unclear how extensively the Twelve’s plan was put into place, but it may have been hindered by tariffs in both and the . and stated that they were having difficulty getting ships and captains to take Saints to , the main port to which British church members migrated, because of reports that captains had to enter into bonds to guarantee that their passengers did not become wards of Louisiana after arriving there. To induce ship captains to bring Saints to New Orleans, Ward and Clark proposed that Clark be stationed in New Orleans to serve as a broker to find cargos of cotton for the ships to take back to England. Ward and Clark also requested that church leaders send someone to help them oversee the Saints’ emigration from England.
wrote the letter and signed it, after which signed it. They then mailed it from on 18 March 1843, and it arrived by ship in on 19 April. The letter reached by mid-May, when it was read in a meeting of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. JS presumably read the letter around the same time. No reply has been located, but the apostles did vote to send to to serve as both the presiding elder and the overseer of emigration. After Hedlock’s arrival, Ward and Clark served as his counselors. Ward continued to serve as editor of the Millennial Star, while Clark continued to coordinate emigration efforts in England.
Page [2]
We feel that these difficulties might have been avoided, had we had an Agent in to attend to our interests there and regularly to communicate all necessary information.
We have therefore taken the liberty of suggesting the propriety of establishing an agent there, not merely to communicate intelligence to , and receive our Immigrants on landing, but that such agent should also act as a Broker, between the Cotton growers and the Captains, to find cargoes for Ships; by which we should exercise an influence that would be extremely beneficial to the ,— and by which funds to a considerable amount might be realized to forward the purposes of the Lord in the building of his houses, and in the establishing of .
Indeed from what we know of business of late, we believe that had an agency been established some time ago we might have realized not far from [p. [2]]