In the spring of 1848, Joseph William Clements received a call from the headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, then in Council Bluffs, Iowa, for a mission to Great Britain. It was an inconvenient time. Clements was an ordinary working man, a shoemaker and a farmer. He and his wife, Deborah Ann Price Clements, both thirty years old, were planning to make the arduous journey to the Great Salt Lake Valley with thousands of other Latter-day Saints.1 In the late 1840s and early 1850s, Mormons were scattered from St. Louis to Council Bluffs, strung across the West walking slowly beside oxen-pulled wagons toward Great Salt Lake City, or already in the new Zion building homes and planting crops. The mission call came unexpectedly, but Clements—like other missionaries—accepted that he must quickly change his plans, put his affairs in order, and obey Jesus's imperative to spread the gospel. From his statement when he arrived in England, he had ambitions about being an effective proselytizer.Joseph Clements, born in New Jersey in 1817, married Deborah Ann Price, two weeks younger than himself, in 1837. The couple were baptized into the Mormon Church on January 31, 1841, probably in Philadelphia where Deborah Ann's family lived. The branch in Philadelphia had been organized by Joseph Smith in 1839 and in the early 1840s was the largest LDS branch on the East Coast. Since their marriage, Deborah Ann had given birth to eight babies, but only one survived, the other seven dying as infants.2In 1844 the couple moved to St. Louis, Missouri. St. Louis had a thriving branch of the church, the members representing about 10 percent of the city's population. Many Mormons, especially poor ones who were forced to leave Nauvoo, Illinois, in 1846, went to St. Louis to work and save for an outfit for the trek west. Similarly, some from Great Britain who had sailed from Liverpool to New Orleans and then taken a steamboat north to St. Louis broke their journey there for a few years to earn money. In 1846, church headquarters was driven out of Nauvoo and moved first to Winter Quarters on the Missouri River in Nebraska Territory, and then across the river to Council Bluffs (Kanesville), Iowa. Men from there setting out on missions regularly stopped in St. Louis where church members could help them with temporary lodging, food, and some supplies before they headed farther east. It was thus a hub of Mormon vitality.3Just before Nauvoo was abandoned, Joseph and Deborah Ann had taken a steamboat up the Mississippi River from St. Louis to Nauvoo to receive church ordinances in the nearly completed temple. They received their endowments on January 9, 1846, and were sealed twelve days later. While there, Clements was ordained to the 11th Quorum of Seventies, a Melchizedek priesthood office with the responsibility for missions and proselytizing. Now, two years later, Joseph was called to his first mission.4To be a Mormon missionary in the mid-nineteenth century was quite different from those of today. Typically, they were married men in their thirties or forties who left their wives and children at home. Although the missionary was expected to start without delay, traveling to a mission field could take several months, especially if it meant a sailing ship before the days of steamships. The duration of a mission varied, with the missionaries usually determining their own release date.5Nineteenth-century missionaries went without “purse or scrip,” as Jesus commanded (Luke 10:4). They depended on the hospitality of others—mostly church members—for room and board, clothes, and travel expenses, although some worked before they left to not only leave their families with something, but to help support their own travel. Missionaries received no training before setting off; they were to rely on the Holy Spirit to guide them and supply them with words when they preached. They were not assigned companions, though they often traveled and lived in the same boarding house with other missionaries. Without prescribed discussions, the missionaries taught from the Bible—scripture familiar to the British. Rather than small group discussions, the missionaries usually introduced the faith in rented halls to large audiences of members and nonmembers. An upcoming talk was advertised on handbills and by word of mouth. Missionaries also circulated tracts or pamphlets about Mormonism, a successful proselytizing tool.6Since 1837, missionaries had been sent to Great Britain. More than seventy, including Brigham Young, had already served or were still serving. In 1848 Clements and fourteen other missionaries were called. Harrison Burgess, one of the new missionaries, came through St. Louis in early June, met Clements there, and they decided to travel together. Thus Joseph and Deborah Ann took their six-year-old son and headed east with Burgess.7The first leg was as deck passengers on the sidewheeler steamboat the Highland Mary, heading south on the Mississippi River and then east on the Ohio River as far as Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The trip typically took six or seven days. As deck passengers, they lived and slept without privacy on the deck itself or on top of whatever freight was being carried. This bottom deck, open to the elements, was anything but comfortable. Deckhands slept there too, and when at work, passengers were often in their way, much to their annoyance. Disputes and thefts were frequent. Burgess told in his autobiography that their little group was attacked by a gang of robbers who bashed his head. The boat's officers did nothing to help them and they were forced to hire a cabin to hide in for the rest of the trip. Usually on steamboats, the captain would have thieves whipped and either put ashore or given to a committee of passengers for further lashes. The cost for a cabin was about four times that for deck passage, a cost the missionaries could probably ill afford. Burgess continued to have headaches from that blow for several weeks.8From Pittsburgh they traveled on to Philadelphia, where Deborah Ann and her son would stay with her parents while Joseph obeyed his call. Burgess went on to New York City to wait for Clements. He arrived there on July 27 and did some preaching while he waited. Clements spent about a month in Philadelphia with Deborah Ann, his son, and his in-laws. Possibly he got work in a cobbler's shop to earn money to help pay for his passage to England or to leave some support for his wife. In July, Deborah Ann once again became pregnant.9Clements traveled on to New York City, arriving there August 22. The next day he and Burgess walked along the harbor to see which ships were departing soon. They booked passage on the sailing ship Columbus, the largest of the packet ships making regular, fast voyages between New York and Liverpool. Maritime historian Conway B. Sonne writes: “Packets lived for speed. To meet a timetable—with almost fanatical determination—their officers and crews challenged the wild Atlantic on their own terms. In summer and winter, night and day, fair weather and foul these strong and sturdy square-riggers maximized canvas—often carrying sail when it was impossible for sailors to go aloft to take it in.” Those sailing eastward like Clements and Burgess sailed with the wind and were helped along by the Gulf Stream. On August 26, the Columbus set sail from New York and three and a half weeks later, on September 21, 1848, they arrived in Liverpool.10Upon arriving in England, Clements was assigned to the Staffordshire Conference north of Birmingham to assist the president there—essentially a short apprenticeship for learning a missionary's responsibilities in a conference. Each conference included a number of smaller congregations or branches in the area. The American missionaries either led or helped in the administration of conference or branch business, officiated at quarterly conference meetings, and preached the gospel. And there were expectations for behavior: resist all temptations of lust or money, keep your covenants to be a witness to Christ and a servant of God, and be faithful to the trust placed in you by the mission leaders.11Clements's mission started well. He began with enthusiasm saying he wanted to “break up new ground, and build up new branches.” Three months later, in January 1849, he was called to preside over the Macclesfield Conference with its 271 members, just south of Manchester. A cholera epidemic had spread to the Macclesfield area and many were dying. In a September 1849 letter to Orson Pratt, president of the British Mission, Clements told of six cases in which he and other elders had miraculously healed people by the authority of the priesthood, laying on of hands, and rebuking the disease in the name of Jesus Christ.12A month later, Orson Pratt recognized Clements's successes and appointed him as president of the Glasgow Conference with its more than seventeen hundred members, to start in January 1850. In the 1850–1851 period, church membership in Great Britain reached its peak growth, which made being entrusted with one of the largest conferences a sign of Orson Pratt's confidence in Clements.13Harrison Burgess had been the president of the Glasgow Conference just before Clements came. Burgess's autobiography gives a good picture of his duties as conference president and shows that he performed them with true dedication. He held council meetings; traveled and preached from one branch to another; and wrote reports on the condition of each branch—how many officers and members each had and their spiritual and financial states—which were sent to Orson Pratt in Liverpool. Burgess preached to members five to eight times a week, organized new branches, baptized new members, and married others. He attended quarterly conferences in Glasgow and Edinburgh, and he traveled hundreds of miles between branches. “In visiting and laboring in the various branches of these conferences, I was treated with the utmost respect and kindness by their officers and members wherever I went. I labored very hard for the good of the Saints, preaching night and day, in every place where an opportunity could be found. I found but little time to rest or to note down the many passing events, which transpired around me,” he wrote.14Burgess had asked for a release to return home, and then Orson Pratt asked him to leave two weeks earlier than planned to take a large box containing money and goods to Brigham Young in Salt Lake City. But before he left Glasgow, Burgess attended a farewell soirée at which members had composed songs and speeches in his honor and gave him gifts of a plaid and a Glengarry bonnet. One of the elders helped him put them on and ended his speech with: “We have witnessed your indefatigueable labors in preaching the Gospel and building up the Kingdom in our midst even to the injury of your health. We have seen the purity of your life and have shared in your love to that degree that we can truly say we have been under a tender and indulgent parents charge. . . . Beloved Brother, Farewell, till we meet in Zion. . . . May the blessing of God still continue to attend you wherever you go. Amen.” This was followed by a chorus of “Amens.”15The love that Burgess engendered in the Glasgow Conference would have made it difficult for anyone to follow. And it was for Clements. In late March 1850, after Clements had been in Glasgow three months, he presided at the quarterly conference held on a Saturday at Carrick's Temperance Coffee House. The tone he set during the two days of meetings exhibited none of the joy and spiritual uplift that Burgess had brought to such events. This first day in the coffee house was probably a relatively small council meeting of missionaries and branch leaders. After the reports from the several branches were handed in, Clements remarked that they “seem generally in good standing, with the exception of the Irvine [Ayrshire] Branch, which was reported . . . to be in notorious bad standing.” The branch consisted of thirty-six members and included three elders. The report of the members’ bad behavior included drunkenness, backbiting, and opposing Clements in everything, calling him out if they disagreed with any part of his preaching. By the time of the conference, Clements had visited the Irvine Branch three times, each time counseling the members to change their ways. On the second visit, he decided to appoint his own man to act in place of the branch president William Aird who lived eight miles away in Kilmarnock. This caused an outcry, with the members wanting their own choice, Br. Mark Barnes, who “had done so much good and had preached them into the church.”16Even though the Irvine Branch got the man they wanted, when Clements returned for the third time, he found them “ten times worse” and going around like “roaring lions.” Some of the members had gone over Clements's head and written their complaints to Orson Pratt in Liverpool. Pratt had handed the case back to Clements and had agreed that the only cure for the “infection” was to cut off the whole branch, with the exception of one elderly woman “not fit to go to the waters of baptism” (presumably because the water of the River Irvine was too cold) who would remain a member, and a few “good Saints” who were transferring their membership to the Kilmarnock Branch. The meeting sustained Clements's motion to cut off the Irvine Branch, ending the business for the day.17The next day, Sunday, the conference continued with presumably a larger number of the members meeting in Mechanics’ Hall in Cowcaddens, near the center of Glasgow. Graham Douglas, formerly the Glasgow Branch president, called the meeting to order and after singing a hymn, Crandell Dunn, president of the Edinburgh Conference, gave a prayer. Clements was then asked to preside and he “rose and congratulated the Saints in meeting with them.” He then proceeded to put the same motion forward to the full membership in regard to cutting off the Irvine Branch. The motion sustained, he turned to subjects that appeared to be close to his heart. He noted that the Girvan Branch had also been cut off and he did not want people rebaptized until “sufficient repentance” had been made. He also spoke about marriage, that it be done “decently and in order” and officiated by himself as president of the conference or by his appointee. He spoke for some time on drunkenness, of which they had been “troubled a great deal.” He moved that for the first offense of being drunk, a man would lose his priesthood “until he brings forth fruit meet for repentance and make public confession to the church that he will get drunk no more.” For a second offense, he would be cut off from the church. The conference attendees unanimously carried the motions.18The next subject was rebaptism: “Some individuals sin and get rebaptised for any transgression they fall into & do it where they please & when they please,” Clements said. He then moved that no one should be rebaptized until he or she presented their case to their branch president. He spoke on the “evil [that] had been done in times past, [when] individuals in transgression, they have went to an elder or priest and they [took them] away with them to the water for baptism and after a little they were into transgression again.” Clements's final grievance of the day was about the “abominable practice” of smoking. Before he was willing to ordain someone, he wanted to know “if they were willing to make an everlasting covenant with him and the Almighty to quit the smoking and refrain from it, eternally worlds without end.”19 There was no mention of the usual evening soirée when the members could share their joy in the spirit and delight in being together. Except for the hymn and opening prayer, nothing uplifting shines through the record.Some explanation needs to be given about the drinking habits of Scotland, where whisky20 was ingrained in the culture. Births, weddings, apprenticeships, funerals, New Year's Day were all celebrated with whisky. One went to a pub to socialize, for a job interview, to collect wages, or to attend a meeting of a friendly society (a self-help club for insurance). Men, women, and children drank. People commonly took a hot toddy in wet and cold weather, before bed, and to cure a cold or the flu. In January 1847, Samuel W. Richards, an American missionary serving in Scotland, mentions taking a whisky toddy for his cold. One could tipple a drink at the grocery shop, a favorite spot for women. As industrialization grew and the standards of living declined, whisky drinking increased, furnishing a temporary escape from “a drab life in a drab climate.” To go to a pub was to escape the crowded and dirty slum tenements where most lived. One observer wrote in 1850 that “From the toothless infant to the toothless old man, the population of the wynds [alleys] drinks whisky.” Thus, drunkenness among the Mormon converts is not surprising. A temperance movement had started, but only a small percentage of the population was interested. The height of whisky consumption was in the 1830s. By the 1840s and early 1850s, it had come down a bit. But it was not until the government passed an act in 1853 to shut the pubs on Sundays and to institute weekday closing hours that consumption began to drop.21In 1833, the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith had received a revelation titled “The Word of Wisdom” that gave health guidance to church members. It stated that alcoholic drinks, tobacco, and hot drinks such as tea and coffee were not good for people. In this early period, up until 1867, the revelation was given as advice, not a prohibition.22 From his statements in the March 1850 quarterly conference, Clements wanted to prohibit smoking and drunkenness, though he didn't forbid alcohol or coffee or tea. Banning tea, a fundamental tradition in Great Britain, would have been hard.In looking back at what happened the first day of the conference, one wonders what was going on in the Irvine Branch. Was thirty-year-old William Aird not up to the job? Based on his life after the Irvine debacle, Aird was not lacking in faith: he worked as a traveling elder or local missionary from early 1851 until at least September 1852, and in March 1853 he and his bride, with the help of the Perpetual Emigrating Fund, started for Utah. Instead, it appears that the eight miles between Irvine and Kilmarnock, where Aird lived, made it nearly impossible to consistently carry out the duties of a branch president. These included attending weekly council meetings, weeknight meetings, and Sunday meetings; making sure pamphlets and tracts were circulated; finding new places for meetings if needed; and sending out some members as traveling elders to the surrounding countryside to spread the good news.23Aird was a handloom weaver at a time when wages were dropping because of the oversupply of weavers. The increase in weavers came from the Highland Clearances, where landowners were clearing away people in favor of sheep, and from Ireland where people were escaping the potato famine. On top of depressed wages, the demand for their cloth began to fall as mechanized weaving was introduced. To make a living meant working longer hours, ten or twelve a day, which undoubtedly limited how often Aird could attend meetings in Irvine. Getting to Irvine was another matter. There was a train that ran between Kilmarnock and Irvine, but it is questionable whether Aird could afford that on a regular basis. If he could not hitch a ride with someone traveling by cart, he walked the eight miles there and then back. Without Aird's presence, it is likely that many meetings never happened and thus there were many fewer opportunities for instruction and inspiration. Aird's experience shows that it was important for a branch president to live in the same town and know the church flock.24Another question arises as to whether cutting off a whole branch was a common occurrence in this period. Historian Richard L. Jensen points out that from 1848 to a peak in 1851 membership increased rapidly and it was a “volatile” time. “Excommunications during the 1850s far exceeded any other period.”25 While there were many individuals who were cut off for causes such as neglect of duty, denying the faith, contempt of the branch council, bad conduct, drunkenness, adultery, or lying, how often were branches disorganized? The conference reports in the years immediately before and after Clements's time in Glasgow show only one instance of a branch being dissolved. In March 1849 President Eli Kelsey cut off the Girvan Branch, saying: “It was resolved by this council, at last conference, that unless the president, council, and members of the Girvan branch, would come out from their filth, drunkenness, quarrelling, backbiting, &c., that we would disfellowship the whole branch. From what he could learn, he believed they were in the same state now, that they were at last conference, and he would move that we disfellowship the Girvan Branch. It was seconded . . . and unanimously carried.” Three months later in the next quarterly conference, Kelsey reported that members from Girvan had been rebaptized and he asked Burgess, the incoming president, to visit to see if it would be wise to organize them into a branch again. They became a branch once more and thus their disfellowshipped status was short lived.26The Irvine Branch was reorganized more quickly than the Girvan Branch for on April 7, 1850, a week after being cut off, it was reinstated. Matthew Rowan, a traveling elder, rebaptized twenty-four, including Mark Barnes on April 23, 1850. Then Barnes baptized two more in July and continued baptizing others into the fall. Between April 5 and July 5, 1850, twenty-five people were brought back into good standing, almost 70 percent of the members counted the previous March. At the next quarterly conference a motion was passed that “we sanction the re-organization of the Irvine branch by Elder Matthew Rowan, and that he stand as President of the same.”27The second quarterly conference over which Clements presided was a happier affair. The first day, June 15, 1850, was probably again a council meeting. The branch reports were made and all found to be in good standing except the Maybole Branch, which had not met for six or seven weeks. Then the regular motions were put forward to “uphold and sustain” the various church leaders. These unanimously agreed to, Clements spoke on the difficulty of getting “pure” oil to consecrate for administering ordinances and for the sick. The oil they had been using was “mere fish oil, neither fit to be taken inwardly or applied outside of the skin.” Regarding “this stinking fish oil, he could not ask the blessing of the Lord to follow such stuff.”28This June quarterly conference marked the introduction of the Perpetual Emigrating Fund (PEF) to Glasgow. It had been explained in an epistle dated April 10, 1850, to the European Saints by Franklin D. Richards, newly appointed as British Mission president, and published in the May 1, 1850, issue of the Millennial Star. The idea was that European converts could borrow money from the PEF to emigrate to Utah, but that once they got there, they were to quickly repay the loan so that others could borrow and emigrate. Richards suggested that the president of each conference “appoint a trust-worthy man to receive these donations,” and that that man needed to be ready to report to the head of the British Mission every three months or whenever called for. Rather than choosing another “trust-worthy” man, Clements appears to have chosen himself as the conference that day ended with his being sustained as treasurer of the conference's PEF.29The following day, Sunday, Eli B. Kelsey—an American missionary who had served as conference president in Glasgow in 1848 and 1849—joined them for the full membership meeting. Clements was pleased to have him visit along with the president of the Edinburgh Conference, Crandell Dunn, and said he anticipated having a good time: “He presumed they had all come together to enjoy themselves, for they all looked so good natured. He did not see any person otherwise. . . . He had seen people who were bitter enemies before coming to hear the Saints, that their minds were changed when meeting with them, when they had met for a time of rejoicing, and they have come into the church.”30A social was held on Monday evening, and a large number of members enjoyed the addresses given by Kelsey, Dunn, and Clements, and the “Songs of Zion” that they sang. In the end, “never did the Saints enjoy such an outpouring of the Holy Spirit among them.” This was a marked departure from the gloom and reprimands of the March quarterly conference. The records show that the January conferences were important with many attendees, visitors, and much jubilation. Perhaps the June ones were similar, and those held in March and September were smaller and more focused on the business at hand.31The January 1851 Glasgow quarterly conference, which marked Clements's first year as Glasgow Conference president, suddenly turned dramatic and revealed much about Clements and how the Scottish members looked at him. Clements welcomed those attending, but then, without preamble, said: “Our enemies talk about money speculations, but had money been the object I had in view, I would have stayed at home, where I could have earned twenty times the amount. Still I am not without ambition, neither do I mean to labour for nought; but I mean to lay up for myself treasures in heaven, and when we have fully realized the promise, ‘All are yours, and ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's,’ then shall we be rich indeed.”32Who were “our enemies”? Outsiders who sometimes persecuted members attending local meetings? Or the anti-Mormons who published pamphlets ridiculing the faith? What did Clements mean about money speculations and earning money? Some unorthodox way of investing conference funds for his personal benefit? He was treasurer of the conference's Perpetual Emigrating Fund, so perhaps he was using those funds to make money before mission headquarters asked for them? The conference report notes that £40 7s. 7½d. was collected for the PEF and that £30 13s. 7½d. had been sent to mission headquarters on October 1, 1850, leaving £9 13s. on hand. These accounts had been audited by fellow missionary Robert Campbell and William McGhie, secretary.33 Whatever irregularities in the accounts there might have been is unclear.Starting in January 1850, the January and June conference reports—where they have survived—give a financial accounting for the previous half year. The June 1850 quarterly conference report shows that since January the conference paid: Board, Lodging, and Washing, for Joseph Clements, and others£412s0dClothing for Joseph Clements600The clothing amount appears high compared to what was spent on room and board, but the January 1850 report shows £7 10s. 8d. had been spent on clothing for Burgess.34The report for the January 1851 quarterly conference, in which Clements had his outburst about “money speculations,” shows that since June the conference paid: Board, Washing, and Rent of Room for President Clements£50s0dClothing for ditto360Traveling expenses to Manchester Conference200To President Clements’ Family200A note at the end of the accounts says, “A reference to the column devoted to President Clements’ Family will show that it is empty all to 5s.” Again, it is unclear what this might imply. Had Clements sent that money to his family? Had he used it in some other way?35When it came time to vote to sustain Clements as conference president, it became evident that at least some members disliked him. Usually sustaining a leader was routine, but not this time. Twenty-eight-year-old Thomas Barr stood up and said that “he considered him [Clements] unqualified; his preaching was nothing but theatrical buffoonery, and in other respects his conduct was very questionable.” Barr then asked the conference to petition Orson Pratt for a new president. Elder David Drummond, thirty-eight years old, “then arose, and stated that he did not know what the country branches thought of Brother Clements, but what Brother Barr had said, was the general feeling of the Saints of Glasgow.”36 Some of the feeling Drummond alluded to may have come from Clements's denunciation in the March conference of drunkenness and other behaviors, but now it seems there were greater objections to his leadership.In response, Clements lashed out, saying he wanted to know who was for him and who was against him: I have done the best I could since I came here; I know I have been actuated by the spirit of God, and that I have regulated the affairs of this conference, in accordance with its dictates. Still, I am but a man, and liable to err, and if any of my Brethren or Sisters, have ever seen anything in my character that they may think blameable, I would thank them to let me know it personally, and in a proper place, but not to come and interrupt a Conference Meeting with it. . . . As for these two men who have spoken against me, I am glad they have at last came [sic] out in their true colours. It has not taken me by surprise, for I have known them to be hypocrites since my first acquaintance with them, and they have been colleaging [sic] with apostates against the Church of God. Brother Barr has not magnified his office, since he wrote a pamphlet falsifying the Atonement of Christ; some six months ago we had to silence him for colleaguing with apostates, and refusing to act in his office. . . . As for Elder Drummond, he has for sometime [sic] been known unto the Presidency in Liverpool. I am not the first servant of God he has sought to destroy in this Conference, since the period he was himself removed from the Presidency; besides,