Hyrum (1798-1846) & Orson (1802-1855 ) Spencer

Hyrum Spencer

Orson Spencer

The 1847 New Year edition of the Millennial Star (an England-based LDS Church newspaper) included distressing news: “Elder Orson Spencer is numbered with the dead!!”(MS1, 13).  Church leaders and English Saints alike were stunned. In October of the previous year President Brigham Young appointed Orson to lead the Church in England (LOS, 50–51).  Leaving his motherless children at Winter Quarters and in the watch-care of the oldest child, Ellen, Orson headed east and crossed the cold Atlantic in December. Orson was to replace another with the same first name, Orson Hyde, as presiding officer, but obviously eager anticipation was quashed by sorrow.

Though impaired throughout his life by a lame right leg—a condition he acquired at age 14 through typhus fever—Orson Spencer pushed himself to success within his sphere of limitation (LSOS, 9–10, 13). Orson was educated at an academy and two colleges—one of which had a theological focus, which led him to the ministry in the Baptist church for twelve years (LOS, 2–3); he wed Catherine Curtis in 1830, and together they had eight children; and he was a lifelong learner—he devoured books, studied independently, and wrote extensively.

While serving as a Baptist minister from 1837 to 1841 in Middlefield, Massachusetts the United States suffered through an economic Panic. He “voluntarily reduced his own salary [by] $100” as the financial crisis washed over his little flock (HMM, 288). Any affection his Baptist congregation bore him for his generous action dissolved when he converted to Mormonism.

Orson’s brother, Daniel, already a convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, visited Middlefield in 1840 or 1841 with a copy of a Book of Mormon. After days and nights of discussion and thought, Catherine turned to her husband and pointedly observed, “Orson, you know this is true!” (LSOS=16). Orson announced his conversion in a farewell sermon to his parishioners. Baptist officials excommunicated the minster, noting that his conversion was “her[e]sy” (HMM, 288). One local Baptist adherent expressed his feelings about his minister’s exit with a poem that might contain an underlying jab about Orson’s gimpy leg: “Just why Elder Spencer a Mormon became/ I never could tell, though his story I heard./ But his arguments seemed to me very lame,/ And they neither my reason nor sympathy stirred” (HMM, 288).

Catherine not only faced excommunication from the Baptists but also from her family. Thus, Orson and Catherine, along with their children, gave up much to cast their lots with the Mormons and head to Nauvoo, Illinois.

Following Catherine’s death, and seeing that the children were poised to succeed in Winter Quarters, Orson headed to England. He did not in fact die en route, though indeed another Spencer had perished. Hyrum Spencer, Orson’s brother, was camped with the Mormon pioneers in Garden Grove, Iowa in the summer of 1846. He and a nephew named Claudius returned to Nauvoo to sell Spencer land and acquire cattle for the continued migration west. It rained continuously as uncle and nephew rode back to Nauvoo, and though they acquired cattle and wagons, the two riders drove the herd west while being tracked by a group of men bent on stealing the livestock. The exposure, lack of sleep, and unrelenting pace was too much for Hyrum’s constitution. During his final moments he asked Claudius to tell his ten children and wife (his first wife died), “Live and die with this work.” With the assistance of nearby strangers Claudius saw to his uncle’s burial at Mt. Pisgah, after which he drove the herd to Garden Grove and relayed the sad news. The lamentable news was at one point misapplied to Hyrum’s brother, Orson, which in turn was relayed to England (LSOS, 42–46, 82).

As the Saints mourned the loss of Orson, he was in fact enduring a storm-filled, forty day sea passage. Upon his safe arrival, the Mormon newspaper in England printed a retraction: “Elder Spencer is alive and in our midst” (MS2, 42, emphasis in original). The article then quipped, “Few men in the 19^th century possess that degree of longevity which enables them to read … their own obituary notice” (MS2, 42).

After serving for a year and a half Orson was released from his service in England (LOS, 59).

HMM=Edward Church Smith, A History of the Town of Middlefield, Massachusetts (Menasha, Wisconsin: The Collegiate Press, 1924).

LOS=Richard Wallace Sadler, “The Life of Orson Spencer” master’s thesis, University of Utah, 1965.

LSOS=Aurelia Spencer Rogers, Life Sketches of Orson Spencer and Others, and History of Primary Work (N.P.: George Q. Cannon and Sons Company, 1898).

MS1= “Important from America,” Millennial Star 9, no. 1 (1 January 1847)

MS2= “Address,” Millennial Star 9, no. 3 (1 February 1847).