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Charlevoix County Michigan 
The Beaver Islands lie at the north end of Lake Michigan, in the civil jurisdiction of Charlevoix County, and a short distance west of the Straits of Mackinac. There are twelve islands in the group, the largest being Big Beaver, which is about twelve miles long and six or seven miles wide. On it are several small lakes, the largest being Lake Galilee, and the stream running out of that body of water into Lake Michigan is called the Jordan. These Biblical names are about the only impress left on local geography as a result of the half dozen years while Big Beaver was the seat of a Mormon kingdom, ruled by
James J. Strang, the “king.”
These islands were known to the earliest explorers who went through the Straits of Mackinac into Lake Michigan. The islands are delineated on the earliest French maps of that region. After the fur trading era had passed its peak, they were favorite fishing grounds. The largest of these, Big Beaver, was on the main steamboat route between Buffalo and Chicago. At the north end was an excellent harbor, known to the sailors as Paradise Bay. The Indian title to this region had been extinguished in 1836, but some Indian families continued to occupy the islands. On Paradise Bay was a small trading post supplying goods to the Indians and fishermen. The promoters exercised some preemption rights, but apparently none of the land had yet been transferred from government ownership. Big Beaver was heavily wooded, and during the season of navigation there was employment for a considerable number of men getting fuel for the passing steamships. The situation and the resources of the island had been only partly utilized by the owners of the trading establishment and offered an attractive prospect for a colonizing venture.
This prospect was beheld, with mingled feelings of colonizing promotion and social and religious zeal, by James J. Strang while on an exploring voyage from his home at Voree, Wisconsin, around the Great Lakes in August, 1846. His vision pictured it as “a land amidst wide waters, and covered with large timber, with a deep, broad bay on one side of it.”
Strang at that time was 33 years of age. He was born on the frontier in western New York. His parents were Baptists. He was physically slight, had suffered from prolonged illness during his childhood, but had a very alert and eager mind and inordinate ambitions. He became a schoolteacher, village postmaster and editor, was admitted to the bar in 1836, and about the same time married a fine young woman of good family, Mary Perce. One of her relatives, a convert to Mormonism, had moved west and settled at what was later Burlington, Wisconsin.
Strang and his wife moved to Wisconsin Territory in 1843. In February, 1844, he took personal instruction from the leaders of Mormonism at Nauvoo, Illinois. Joseph Smith, then the head of the church, constituted Strang a missionary elder in his Wisconsin community. Smith and his brother Hyrum became victims of an Illinois mob on June 27, 1844. A few weeks earlier, Strang had received a letter from Smith in which he was instructed to develop a new seat of Mormonism on the White River of Wisconsin. This new seat was to be called Voree, meaning “garden of peace.”
As is well known, the Mormons, wherever they went, were considered a “peculiar people.” They had a religion different from that professed by others, drawn from Old Testament sources, but “improved” and elaborated by “later revelations.” Industry, thrift, sobriety, practical helpfulness to their fellow communicants, were cardinal virtues. Undoubtedly one important source of the antagonism to Mormon colonies, whether in Ohio, Missouri or Illinois, was the material prosperity which every group of Mormons seemed to enjoy. They seldom had difficulty with their Indian neighbors, and they were usually prompt in payment of debts or in carrying out any contractual obligations.
The Nauvoo massacre resulted in a temporary dispersal of the Mormons. After the death of the Smiths, the leadership fell upon Brigham Young. Young through his emissaries negotiated with the Mexican government and also with the administration at Washington under President Polk with a view to securing a location far away where the saints might be forever freed from relations with the gentiles. In 1845 the great exodus of the main body of Mormons started from the banks of the Mississippi across the plains to Utah. But thousands never participated in that exodus. Many of them simply dropped, at least for a time, their open affiliation with the sect. Many became “apostates.”
James J. Strang apparently believed himself fully qualified to succeed to the responsibilities of leadership among this chosen people. “Revelation” came to him as it did to all the Mormon elders at that time. During this period of persecution naturally all the practices of Mormonism were reviled. Contrary to popular opinion, plural marriage was not an accepted doctrine of the Mormon church until after 1844. In a condemnation that in part at least was caused by the isolation inevitable to the practice of a religion that had a very firm economic base, all sorts of charges of immorality were readily believed by the gentiles. But the scandalous stories spread abroad were hardly justified by the life of the Mormon people as a whole.
Most of Strang’s followers were poor. Poverty was a tie that bound them together. Strong, self-reliant individuals or families possessing the initiative or the capital to make a success on the frontier, were normally not attracted to fellowship with these semi-communistic and religious projects. One of Strang’s early discoveries was that “mankind are frail,” and like many other self-constituted leaders, he did not fail to emphasize those points in divine revelation made to him which promised material security for his disciples. Most of the government lands had been taken up at Voree, and consequently there were few opportunities to hold out to new arrivals whose possessions were limited to what they had on their backs. It was in the midst of these difficulties that Strang paid his first visit to Big Beaver Island and realized its possibilities as the seat of a new Mormon realm, in which he would be ruler of its material and spiritual affairs.
From a steamer Strang and four of his followers landed at Paradise Bay early in 1847. They were without money and had scarcely two days’ supply of provisions, but replenished their stores by the work they found at the fishing settlement. During the following weeks they explored the island. They made a report, published in Strang’s newspaper at Voree, the Voree Herald, emphasizing the economic opportunities of the island and also the opportunity to evangelize the Indians.
The first Mormon settlers reached Beaver Island in July, four families constituting the population of the saints on the island during that year. In the spring of 1848 Strang sent out to his followers an address, dated at the “City of James,” declaring that an Indian mission house was nearly ready, and a school was about to open for the children of both whites and redmen. By the end of 1848 the colony had increased to twelve families. Increasing numbers arrived with the spring of 1849, and growing capital reinforced the industry of the colonists. A sawmill was erected, a schooner was built, and work was started on a road leading back from Paradise Bay to the interior. Strang called it the “King’s Highway,” a name still applied to the modern road on the island. A church conference was held at the “City of James” in the spring of 1849, following which twelve elders were sent out with instructions to return with converts as new colonists the next year. In the fall Strang and his chief lieutenant George J. Adams left for an extended tour of the East, and at Washington endeavored to procure some legal concessions for the saints at Beaver Island.
During the winter Strang was vouchsafed some new revelations, being a portion of the record of the “plates of Laban.” Among other things they foretold that the Kingdom of God was to be reestablished on earth, and that “his servant James” was to occupy the throne as his vicegerent. For the fulfillment of this vision there were gathered together at Beaver Island on July 8, 1850, not only the older colonists but the new converts brought by the elders from the East to the number of 400 in all. The prophet was impressively robed in scarlet, and a crown with a cluster of stars was placed upon his head. The ceremonial delighted Strang’s followers, who were quite ready to be his loyal subjects as long as he could justify his kingship and keep in subordination some of the ambitious and jealous leaders with whom he had to divide responsibility.
Strang had denounced the doctrine of polygamy as late as August, 1847. Now he had a new revelation on this subject. During his sojourn in the East preceding his coronation he had been accompanied by a young woman as his personal secretary, dressed as a boy, whose real name was Elvira Field. Elvira’s people were members of the saints. Some form of secret marriage had been performed in July, 1849. Strang’s legal wife spent the following winter with her parents in western New York. Immediately after his assumption of the kingship, Strang announced his secret marriage and proclaimed plurality of marriage as a practice commanded in the “plates of Laban.” Before his death Strang had four wives in addition to his legal spouse. Polygamy was Strang’s chief offense against the laws of society.
This offense was not the chief cause of his downfall. If the Mormon doctrine condoned a looseness of the marital relationship, it imposed heavy penalties upon forms of immorality such as drunkenness, idleness and other vices that were familiar on the frontier. A social and economic order such as Strang set up at Beaver Island involved a strong centralized authority. It was almost the antithesis of the usual American frontier community. There were many ordinances to be observed, and the liberty of the individual was sharply curbed. Contemporary accounts agree that the people of the island were fairly prosperous and that the habitations and other equipments of the little capital city of St. James on the bay and extending back into the country were equal if not superior to those on the mainland.
The first resentment against these people was exhibited by the fishermen and traders who resorted to the bay. The trading establishment was familiarly known as “Whiskey Point.” At the beginning the saints had to endure a number of acts of tyranny and abuse from those who resorted there. By 1850 the saints greatly outnumbered the resident gentiles, and many of the latter moved over to the mainland, locating at the mouth of Pine River at what is now Charlevoix, which became the chief seat of the enemies of King Strang and the saints.
The material and moral welfare of the Mormons was probably improved under Strang’s almost absolute rule, but this rule did not go unchallenged. Strang had a quarrel with his prime minister George J. Adams, whose services had been invaluable. As a result of the dispute Adams was deprived of his office as first president of the church. The charges of gross immorality against Adams were apparently better sustained than those against Strang. After being deposed, Adams returned from Mackinac bringing the sheriff of the county with a writ for the arrest of Strang on the charge of threatening the life of “Mrs. Adams,” who if anything was a common-law wife. At the ensuing trial, before a justice of the peace at Mackinac, opportunity was provided for all the enemies of Strang to bring in testimony, much of which was published in the newspapers far and near. These stories were the chief foundation of the popular reputation which Strang and his Beaver Island colony enjoyed then and for years afterward.
The Beaver Islanders, according to this testimony, were not only guilty of practically all the moral sins, but of many actual offenses against the criminal laws of the land. Accusations of treason, counterfeiting, mail robbery and trespasses upon government lands were brought before the United States district attorney at Detroit. The treaty laws with Canada permitted keeping one naval vessel on the Great Lakes. That ship, the Michigan, carried the district attorney to St. James in the summer of 1851. Warrants were served, and Strang and several of his followers were brought to Detroit where they were put on trial for mail robbery.
The trial soon took on a political cast. It was pointed out that ten members of the jury were Whigs and the other two Democrats. The leading Whig paper, the Advertiser, in many successive issues paraded the evident criminal character and deeds of Strang before the public. The Democratic paper, the Free Press, on the other hand, took the view that the only proven fact against the defendants was that they were Mormons. The judge in the case was Ross Wilkins, of the Federal District Court. Strang conducted his own defense, with the aid of Andrew T. McReynolds. The partisan composition of the jury and the eloquence of the district attorney were not convincing in the absence of any real evidence, and a verdict of acquittal was given, after which the remaining indictments were dropped.
Strang now made use of political methods to effect his purposes. In 1852 he was elected a member of the State Legislature. The entire vote of Beaver Island was cast for him. Through his influence a new county was set up, named Manitou, embracing the Beaver, Fox and Manitou islands, with St. James as its county seat. The Mormons also exercised control over Emmet County, on the mainland opposite Beaver Island. In 1856 the Mormons in this region numbered more than 2,500 and they exercised virtual control of all the local political and judicial machinery. Strang was well liked in Lansing and made an excellent record in the Legislature.
Controlling the law-enforcing agencies of Manitou and Emmet counties, the Mormons attempted to extend their rigid moral code over the several hundred Indian families, whom they regarded as their special wards. These Indians derived most of their livelihood from fishing, and they were among the most profitable customers of the traders who had headquarters at Mackinac Island. Prohibition of the liquor traffic would cut off the most profitable part of the trade. A mass meeting held at Mackinac adopted resolutions condemning the high-handed and immoral measures threatened by the Mormons. They also expressed sympathy with the announced intention of a group of fishermen at the mouth of Pine River and on Gull Island to take the law into their own hands in resisting the Emmet County authorities. The resident fishermen called the Mormons outlaws and were in turn denounced by Strang’s newspaper as vagabonds and thieves.
On July 12, 1853, a party of men headed by the sheriff left St. James to issue summons for jury service among individuals at Pine River. The party reached the beach at the mouth of the river, the sheriff delivered his summons and he and his followers had launched their boats for return when a volley was fired from the crowd of fishermen on shore. Six of the Mormons were wounded. The remainder rowed desperately toward Beaver Island, with three boatloads of fishermen in hot pursuit. The Mormons were unarmed and were unable to reply to the gunfire poured upon them. Finally they were rescued by a boat bound for Chicago. The settlement of fishermen, apparently fearing retaliation, deserted their Pine River location.
The saints increased steadily in numbers and prosperity, and King Strang came to the climax of his power. He was a man of remarkable energy and industry. Among his numerous activities he published a paper at St. James, The Northern Islander; wrote a creditable book, Ancient and Modern Michilimackinac; he contributed a report on “The Natural History of Beaver Island” to the Smithsonian Institution. But he was despotic and arbitrary in the use of his power. In the end, internal dissension was a greater factor in his overthrow than the hostility of the gentiles living outside the Mormon settlement. He prescribed and tried to enforce a uniform dress for women; a much resented feature was the short skirt and pantalet trousers. One of his subjects, Mrs. Thomas Bedford, refused to conform, and in this attitude she was encouraged by her husband. Strang had earlier incurred the personal enmity of Dr. H. D. McCulloch, who had acquired a place of much influence in the settlement. One or two other lesser characters were potential conspirators; but Bedford, and a somewhat vicious character named Wentworth, became the tools used by McCulloch to accomplish the destruction of his enemy.
McCulloch had presented a report of the situation on the island to the governor at Lansing, and the state authorities set out to make an investigation.
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