The Presleys and the Mormons
compiled by Ed Dunn
Anyone who has been doing genealogical research for very long soon learns about the commitment and resources of the Mormon church to the study of family history. Some members of the Preslar/Presley family have been involved with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, as the Mormon church is officially known, since its earliest days.
The church is based upon the visions of Joseph Smith, who began its organization with six members in Fayette, Seneca County, New York. He discovered metal plates, reportedly left by an ancient prophet in the New World and buried near Manchester, New York. Smith translated these into the Book of Mormon.
The theology and practices of the Latter Day Saints engendered a great deal of hostility from their neighbors as the membership of the group increased. In 1831 the Mormons left New York and moved to Kirtland, Lake County, Ohio. Then, they moved to Independence, Missouri, where they planned to build a community, but hostility there became so acute that they left Missouri in 1838-39 and settled at Nauvoo, Hancock County, Illinois. Violence followed them until in 1844 Joseph Smith and his brother, Hyrum, were murdered by a mob at Carthage.
The Quorum of the Twelve Apostles with Brigham Young as President was then chosen to head the church. A minority of dissenters left to form their own churches, among them a group who followed James J. Strang to Wisconsin. King Strang, as he was called, created his "kingdom" on Beaver Island in Lake Michigan in the 1850s. It flourished for a time until Strang was assassinated. Another group of dissenters who followed Joseph Smith Jr. formed the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in 1847. In 1846 Brigham Young led the main body of Saints on their march to the Great Salt Lake Valley where they arrived in 1847 and built their tabernacle in what became the Territory of Utah in 1850.
Several of the children of Matthew Presler (1775-1839) (see his Will in the Documents section of this web site) went west from New York with the Mormons. Lydia (1797-1880), Joseph (1804- ), William Hawkins (1811-1852), and Hiram Sherman (1818-1912) became followers of Joseph Smith.
The division within the church involved the members of the Preslar family, as well. Lydia Presler married Ludlow P. Hill, and they lived in Jefferson County, New York, until about 1839 when the last deed was recorded for them and when they were reported to be in Illinois (Matthew Presler’s will), their having sold their property presumably to join the Saints, then centered at Nauvoo. Their son, Jedediah Hill was born circa 1840 in Elgin, Kane County, Illinois. With the split in the church, Lydia & Ludlow apparently followed the Strang faction. Ludlow died in 1873 in Wonewoc, Juneau County, Wisconsin; Lydia died in 1880.
A letter written by Lydia’s brother, William Presley, is dated 6 June 1852, written from Pottawatamie County, Iowa and addressed to Ludlow Hill in Kane County, Illinois. It is transcribed as follows:
| Dear brother and sister after the lapse of so long I
set myself down to write a few lines to let you know that I’m still
on my journey. My health is not very good at present nor my family’s.
We have been here about a week and intend on starting next Sunday for the
valley of Salt Lake and knowing you all have been deluded by Mr. Strange,
I felt it my duty to send this epistle to clear my ?? as a servant of the
Lord and as your brother according to the flesh. I therefore warn you to
leave his ranks and go with me for I know that he is not the man that you
must follow for he will lead you to hell.
The Lord has let him go on till he’s taken those that is turned by every wind or doctrine and many good souls will be deceived by him and led to distress and will suffer the loss of their kingdom and will be brought back by their friends. I marvel that you had not a better knowledge of the plan of salvation than to hear and believe any such doctrine. I know that the Lord is with his people and will take us safely through. Now my advise to you all is to come and help to build up the kingdom. Since I’ve seen you I have suffered most every thing that I have been able to bear, but the Lord is able to do wonders for his saints and so far he has for me and I ?? to thank him. Although I have been away from all my friends and relatives the arm of the Lord has upheld me. I lost my wife and four of my children and married again and have had a child. I have thought of all of you many times but could not see nor hear from you. I have not heard from my brothers and sisters either. I saw (John Rituyrile?). He is going along to the Valley. He sends his respects to all with his warning to leave the company of Strang and his followers and go with the people of God and be saved in the Kingdom. Give my respects to all. I have wrote in haste! I have not complimented you with grammatical words and sentences but have wrote the truth as is came to my mind. I know that Brother Young is the man that has the power of the Priesthood and no man can get it away from him in this world to come and Strang has no priesthood unless he got it from the devil. I speak by the authority of the priesthood and not of man. Be careful and do not regret this for the axe is in the act of cutting down trees that bear bad fruit and will continue until the vineyard is cleansed of that bad fruit. It is now getting late and I am sleepy and please write to me in the Valley as soon as you can. My leg is sore still. There are eight of us in family, myself, wife and six children. Send my love to all friends and tell them that I am bound to have a celestial glory. I must now close.
Wm Presley |
William H. Presley was ordained into the Seventy priesthood on 20 Dec. 1836 at Kirtland, Geauga County, Ohio. He was in Ohio in 1839 (Matthew Presler’s will) and was listed in the 1840 census as living in Portage County, Ohio. In 1834 he married Eleanor Johnson, who died circa 1846 at Nauvoo, Illinois. By her he had six children: Lydia Aby (1835 Lawrence County, Ohio), Daniel (1837-8 Portage County, Ohio), Joseph Smith (1839 Portage County, Ohio), Alma (1843 Ohio), Emma (1844 Hancock County, Illinois), and William H. (1845 Nauvoo, Hancock County, Illinois). Daniel died in 1847; Alma, Emma, and William H. all died in 1845.
William married secondly to Margaret (Holden) Hardman, widow of Richard Hardman, who had been born in 1809 in Lancashire, England. By her he had a daughter, Jane Amanda, born 17 Feb. 1851 in Pottawatamie County, Iowa.
The story of their crossing the plains is told in a history of the Hardman family (The Hardman Pioneers, O. LaVell Sadler (Provo, UT, 1989), pp. 33-36), quoted here:
| "Just exactly what the circumstances were surrounding
our great Grandmother Margaret Holden Hardman during her four and a half
year stay in Missouri will probably never be known. It is presumed that when
the mobs forced her to flee her home in Nauvoo in the fall of 1846, she went
down to Missouri to join her brother-in-law, John Hardman, the brother of
her martyred husband, but beyond that their history remains utterly
silent.
"The church authorities at that time advised those who had been so unfortunate as losing their partner to marry another mate suffering under the same circumstance. Grandmother Hardman, being the obedient person that she was, had responded to this counsel and had married a man by the name of William Prestley, but we are not certain just when or where this marriage took place. This couple had a new little daughter, Jane Amanda Prestley, born to them somewhere in the Council Bluffs area on February 17, 1851. "The next we hear anything about this family is in the Spring of 1852, where we now find them making preparations to cross the plains to be once again with the main body of the Saints in the Great Salt Lake Valley. The children now consists of William Prestley with his two children, a son and a daughter from his previous marriage, and our Great Grandmother Margaret Holden Hardman with her three children, Alice Eliza, 16 yrs., Lehi Nephi, 11 yrs., Richard, 6 yrs., and their new baby, Jane Amanda Prestley. "By the summer of 1852, the Church had acquired a great deal of experience transporting many thousands of people across the plains from Winter Quarters to the Great Salt Lake Valley. They had established and refined their programs using their own people to carry out this horrendous task, and they were keeping extensive records of all those who traveled in their companies. Unfortunately, we can find no record of our Hardman or Prestley relatives in these Church accountings, and it is supposed that they elected to come to the valley with a private or independent wagon train. "In their verbal history, they maintain that they came in Captain Burbank’s company, but in Church records there is no Captain Burbank listed. He was probably one of the many professional guides that had established his own wagon train business and kept his own records, and as a consequence all we know is that they made their entrance into the valley sometime late in the Fall of 1852. "The wagon train was not far out on the plains from Winter Quarters when a cholera epidemic struck, and William Prestley and his son contracted the disease and soon died leaving Grandmother Hardman a widow with five children, including a babe. Lehi Nephi, now eleven, became the man of the family once again. "Mother and Aunt Al both listened to their father, Lehi Nephi, and recorded how he, as a lad of eleven, drove the ox team across the Great Plains for his mother. It is also recorded that when they were threatened many times by the great buffalo herds that roamed through the wagon trains, he would walk out on the tongue of the wagon between the oxen and remove the bolt through the yoke that secured the oxen to the tongue and stand there tapping the oxen lightly on the head with the bolt and talking quietly to them, comforting and quieting them so they would not wander off with the buffalo, pulling their wagon with them." |
Thus, William Presley and his son, Joseph Smith Presley, both died of cholera while crossing the plains on 16 July 1852. His two daughters were carried on to Utah by his widow. I have no further information about the younger daughter, Jane Amanda, but the older one, Lydia Aby Presley, married on 27 Jan. 1853 in Salt Lake City, Utah, to Orlando Fish Mead (1823 Connecticut - 1897 Price, Utah).
Orlando Fish Mead & Lydia Aby Presley
with sons
Orlando (standing) & George (being held)
Orlando had gone to Nauvoo in 1851 and was one of 500 volunteers who served in the Mormon Battalion in the Mexican War, enlisting at Council Bluffs in 1846. He was a shoemaker during the California Gold Rush days, working on the Mormon Island near Sacramento, and arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1849. He located in Cottonwood and later in Salt Lake City, until after his marriage when he lived in Spanish Fork, Utah, for 21 years. Lydia and Orlando had eleven children. Lydia died on 19 June 1919 at Price, Carbon County, Utah, and both she and Orlando were buried in Peterson Cemetery in Price.
Hiram & Polly (Shears) Presley
Hiram Presley married in 1842 to Mary (Polly) Shears, daughter of Smith & Polly (Handy) Shears. They had ten children, born between 1843 and 1859. Fred and Arthur Presley visited their great uncle Hiram Presley in 1911. Here are the notes about that interview with Hiram written by Arthur W. Presley, dated 24 June 1911:
| Hiram Presley said that his father, Mathew, found and
married his wife in Vermont and that he, Hiram, was born at Lake Champlain
and Betsy (his youngest sister) was born in Jefferson County. His father
is buried in the town of Ellisburg near Hagen’s corners [Ellen Wild
of Pulaski, NY, daughter of Arthur, stated in 1984 that Mathew and Abiar
are buried on the bank of the creek on or near the Tift farm. The gravestones
were there a few years ago, but have since disappeared.] William Presler,
his brother, died out on the route to Salt Lake City. William was a Mormon
preacher. William’s daughter, went on with the Mormons.
Hiram said he was a man of war 3 years and 10 months when Germany was at war with Turkey. He was 19 at that time. He was with the Mormons when they were driven out of Missouri. He was a guard for Joe Smith. He crossed the Mississippi at Oxbow Bend when he was 17. After the Civil War, he was Mrs. Lee’s guard. His brother, Joseph, married Charlotte Holenbeck. He also went West. Hiram’s father’s brother, Enos, lived in Jefferson County. |
If Hiram was born in 1818 and was age 17 when he "crossed the Mississippi", then that would have been 1835, so he must have joined the Mormons very early. However, he was reported in Ohio in 1839 (Matthew Presler’s will).
It is unclear to what German-Turkish conflict Hiram might have been referring. Possibly he referred to the Crimean War (1853-1856) which involved the Ottoman Empire (Turkey), Russia, France, Britain, Austria (Germany was not unified until 1871), but Hiram said he was only 19 years old, which would have dated the conflict around 1837-1840. By 1842 he was married, living in New York, and starting a family. How would he have become involved in a European conflict, anyway?
In any case, Hiram did return to New York. He and Polly both died in 1912 in Woodville, Jefferson County, New York, and are buried in Evergreen Cemetery in Adams in Jefferson County.
Joseph Presley was the eldest son of Matthew Presler and was in Illinois in 1839 according to his father’s will. In the 1840 census he was listed in Brown County, Illinois, with one male 0-5, one male 5-10, one male 10-15, one male 40-50, one female 0-5, one female 5-10, and one female 30-40. Beyond the information provided in the above interview by Hiram Presley that Joseph married Charlotte Holenbeck and went West, nothing more is known by this compiler about Joseph Presley.