Many interesting items are to be found in the archives of The Crittenden Press. Who would have thought in the late 1800's that Mormons would have been traveling through our county wanting to share their beliefs with the people that would listen. It seems they traveled the rural areas and communities of our county and caused some controversy in their beliefs. Two visits were reported, one at the Oakland church/school house and another on Pinnacle Rock. Pinnacle Rock was located near Baker Church, on Hwy. 365, high on a hill.
The information below was shared by Mr. Gervas M. Russell, a newspaper reporter and writer for the Crittenden Press, he always signed his articles, simply by “Nemo.”
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Oct. 6, 1891 - Mormon Missionaries
Last week the Press learned that a meeting of Morman preachers was to be held at Oakland, and a reporter was dispatched to that place to learn something of these wanderers and of their work.
Oakland is a neat little frame church house about seven miles east of Marion. It was built by the Universalists some sixteen years ago, after a time the builders became somewhat disorganized and now the doors are open to whatsoever sect that chooses to use it properly for the the worship of God.
This fact probably drew the Mormon preachers to friendly portals for the purpose of talking over the effect of their law in Kentucky and Tennessee. The business meeting Saturday was attended by seven of these missionaries and as they evidently preferred to be alone on that occasion, they were not intruded upon.
They were all from Utah and have been traveling and preaching over Kentucky and Tennessee. Wherever they find the people friendly enough to listen, they preach, and whenever they find that a community prefers “their room to their company” they “fold their tent like Arabs and as quietly steal away.”
It soon became known abroad in the neighborhood that these itinerants would preach on Sunday, accordingly a large number gathered to hear them.
Three discourses were made by as many discoursers, each more or less along the same line, and permit the writer to say, that they said some mighty good things.
They took no text from the Bible, but their discourses were not wild nor scattering, but were confined mainly to three things, namely Faith, Repentance and Baptism.
The congregation listened to these things patiently and not with disapproval, but wanted to here about some other doctrines of the “Latter day Saints, that of a plurality of wives, for instance.
One of the preachers, who appeared to be higher in ecclesiastical authority than the others, seemed to anticipate our wants, and he took the stand and said that they used to teach polygamy, allowing a man to have more than one wife, if he was able to support more than one, but now as the laws of the country forbid it, they no longer taught nor practiced it, as they believed in being subservient to the laws of the country in which they lived.
They thanked the congregation for its attention and, leaving a sharp sprinkle of their literature behind, they departed for other fields.
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In the forgotten passages of time, many different kinds of footprints have traveled over our county.
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