5

THE 1944 RAID AND THE PRIESTHOOD SPLIT

In the early morning hours of Tuesday, March 7, 1944, combined federal, state and local law enforcement officers simultaneously pounded on the doors of polygamists’ homes throughout the Salt Lake City area and in Short Creek. Officers had already cut the electricity to each home according to their well-prepared raid plan.

One polygamist, Joseph Lyman Jessop, recalled the loud knocking and rude awakening of his family in darkness and the five officers who pushed their way in without invitation, making their way through the house, shining flashlights everywhere. Without producing a search warrant, they pushed open the doors of bedrooms, throwing “things right and left to see what was there and who they might find” and “threatening to slap mothers and children alike if they made any noise.” Within a few seconds, leading officer George Beckstead, chief deputy sheriff of Salt Lake County, pushed Lyman’s first wife, Winnie, out of the way and entered his bedroom with an arrest warrant. Two officers ransacked his room, rummaging for evidence, while Beckstead announced an arrest warrant for Lyman that charged him with conspiracy and unlawful cohabitation and ordered him to “get dressed now.”¹⁴⁷ Lyman recalled:

By the time I was dressed, they were counting the children and questioning all they could. Beckstead was questioning [my third wife] Beth in the hall.…I immediately…[put] my finger over my mouth [motioning] to not answer their questions. The officers said [to her], “Go ahead and answer and don’t pay any attention to him” as the questioning continued. I said, “Don’t talk. You don’t have to answer their questions.” The officer guarding me said, “You shush.” The questioning continued, and I said again, “Don’t talk” and then the officer poked me and said “You shush!” Beckstead said, “Take him back!” and the other men pushed me back into my room and closed the door while Beckstead tried to question farther.¹⁴⁸

An officer stayed next to Lyman when they came out of his room again. Another officer stood in the bedroom doorway of Lyman’s second wife, Maleta, questioning her, trying to get answers. Lyman again called out, “Don’t talk.”

Striking Lyman with his flashlight, the officer ordered, “You shush! We’ll do with you what we please! You’re under arrest!”

Lyman pleaded, “You men get out of here. I’ll go with you, but get out!”¹⁴⁹

As they pushed Lyman outside, he managed to tell his frightened, wide-eyed little boys goodbye. He counted at least seven more men emerging from doorways around the house, where they had been stationed. Lyman made no resistance. With him, the dozen men loaded into two cars and sped furiously with sirens blazing to the Salt Lake City jail. More police cars arrived with their captives, all people he knew.¹⁵⁰ Their stories were much like his.¹⁵¹

That day, law officials arrested thirty-four men and twelve women, including all members of the Priesthood Council, for involvement in plural marriage, with federal charges against twenty. A lead prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney John S. Boyden, predicted that the arrests “would halt the practice of polygamy in this area” and that the church had given its complete cooperation.¹⁵² LDS Church president Heber J. Grant and his counselors, J. Reuben Clark and David O. McKay, announced: “We commend and uphold the federal and state prosecutions,” stating church-sanctioned plural marriage had ended in 1890 and the church had “repeatedly issued warnings against any apostate group that persisted in the practice” and excommunicated any who did not heed the warning.¹⁵³

Time magazine announced, “It was the biggest raid on polygamists since the orthodox Mormon church officially outlawed plural marriage in 1890.”¹⁵⁴ Several media outlets, including Time, Newsweek and the Salt Lake Tribune, published photos of young, attractive polygamous wives who had been arrested. Time quoted one, Rhea Allred Kunz, a mother of eight, as saying, “Plural marriage cannot be stamped out. Regardless of wars and pestilence, there has always been a surplus of worthy women.” Newsweek estimated there were 2,500 Fundamentalists at the time.¹⁵⁵

Women arrested in 1944 Polygamy Raid. Donna K. Mackert Collection.

The captives who could not arrange bail the first day were jailed. Fourteen shared a dormitory cell. Late that night, from ten o’clock until midnight, they quietly held a prayer and testimony meeting:

[E]very man spoke his feelings and expressed thankfulness for the privilege of being incarcerated for the Gospel’s sake, yet our situation was pleasant in comparison with that which the Prophet Joseph and Hyrum and others and our Lord Jesus Christ suffered for the same cause. We know that our suffering up to now has been practically nothing compared to theirs.¹⁵⁶

The next day, police marched them across the street to the courthouse for arraignment. Lyman remembered feeling they were a spectacle: “[P]eople peered from everywhere to see this bunch of notorious polygamists. Four stories of windows full of faces and hallways lined to see us. We were frontline news in the papers.”¹⁵⁷

The judge set bonds at about $2,500 each, and relatives, friends and attorneys scrambled to raise the funds. Joseph W. Musser later recalled they were able, with the help of the Lord, to arrange some $200,000 for bonds within a week.¹⁵⁸ John McLaughlan later testified in court that he was excommunicated by the LDS Church “after I went bond for these people.”¹⁵⁹

The polygamists had long sensed and predicted trouble coming. Just a month earlier, John Y. Barlow had warned his people: “[I]t looks like we’re going to get persecution. Now is the time to button up your coat and prepare yourselves.”¹⁶⁰

Joseph W. Musser apparently knew a federal grand jury was “investigating our group activities and particularly the TRUTH magazine and its sponsors.” Days before the raid, he wrote in his journal that government prosecutors hoped “to stamp out plural marriage…to stop TRUTH publication, and to make us like the rest of the people.”¹⁶¹ He felt “confident this new crusade would fail because of the faith of his followers.”¹⁶² He wrote:

No principle of life and salvation will be destroyed or taken from the earth in this dispensation of the fulness [sic] of times. Men trying to do it will come to naught. Some of us may have to go to prison, but what of that. We should be willing to bear such a testimony to the nation if that course is the will of the Lord.¹⁶³

Walking the streets of the city after posting bail, Lyman Jessop noted:

People everywhere are beginning to take sides for or against us, realizing that the issue is not us as individuals, but the law of religious freedom. We can hear as we pass people, some saying, “They should pay with their lives,” while others say, “The issue is absurd! Those people should be let alone! As long as they are not harming anyone else, it is their business!”

Four years earlier, in November 1940, Reed E. Vetterli, a former FBI agent, was appointed Salt Lake City chief of police. Polygamists, keenly aware of church surveillance activities that involved local police, noted correctly that surveillance stopped immediately after Vetterli’s appointment. In December 1940, TRUTH editorialized:

It is a noteworthy fact that the “peeping Tom” operations carried on for the past several months, in which nosey busy-bodies, agents of the Church, who were nightly protruding their insolence into the affairs of certain of the Saints, have stopped. This is a step in the right direction. Let there be no “peeping,” no “spying,” no “sneaking” about people’s windows after dark.¹⁶⁴

In fact, Bishop Fred E. Curtis became frustrated when he lost police coordination and support after Vetterli’s appointment. When Curtis interviewed Vetterli, also a church member, early in 1941, he learned that the two officers previously tasked with investigating polygamists had been assigned to other work because Vetterli did not know that the former chief had been investigating. Vetterli assured him “he wanted to cooperate in every way possible,” but Curtis felt worried. He wrote to President J. Reuben Clark that “possibly…a word to Chief Vetterli from a member of the First Presidency would help materially in having this investigation continued, as it would be a shame for this investigation to be dropped at this time when so much valuable information has already been secured.” Nevertheless, Vetterli did not renew the department’s participation as Curtis hoped. In August 1941, Curtis wrote to Clark, “[W]e have had no cooperation whatsoever from…Chief Vetterli.…[He] promised full cooperation…however has given us none whatsoever.”¹⁶⁵

Photo of painting of Joseph Lyman Jessop in court, May 1945, telling the judge: “Justice has not been served.” Authors’ collection.

In 1944, it became obvious that Vetterli had cooperated with the church’s plan when the Salt Lake Police Department coordinated with state law enforcement and the FBI for the polygamy raid.

Thirty-two of the men were charged with state crimes, including unlawful cohabitation and conspiracy.¹⁶⁶ Twenty defendants had federal indictments.¹⁶⁷

On May 20, 1944, fifteen of the forty-six originally arrested were convicted and sentenced to serve one to five years in the Utah State Penitentiary. They immediately filed appeals and remained free on bond.¹⁶⁸ The state trials for conspiracy were another matter. Some charges of conspiracy involved activities such as leading music or playing the piano in religious meetings. All seven of the Priesthood Council members were charged with conspiracy for mailing TRUTH magazine because it published articles about plural marriage, which prosecutors claimed were “lewd” and “obscene,” thus violating federal law prohibiting obscene literature being sent through the mail. Eventually, after almost three years, all conspiracy charges were dismissed when an appellate court judge concluded that he saw “no obscene or filthy word or expression of lewd suggestion…nothing more than an argument in favor of a practice that for many years was a tenet of the Mormon Church.”¹⁶⁹

After researching the cases, historian and constitutional attorney Ken Driggs stated: “Today the allegation [of conspiracy] is beyond ridiculous, but the fact prosecutors made the argument in 1944 probably is indicative of how much hostility was directed at Fundamentalists.”¹⁷⁰

In the wake of the raid, polygamous families tried to present their lives in a positive light to sympathetic reporters. Life photographer Johnny Florea arranged to take pictures of several families and featured Rulon Allred’s family in a March 1944 issue and Joseph Lyman Jessops’s in a June 1944 issue. This last issue also contained Florea’s photos of 55 women and 283 children, the families of the 15 convicted men, who had gathered at a park where Florea snapped over one hundred photographs.¹⁷¹ About the same time, Joseph Musser published another book about plural marriage that featured a composite photograph of many of the children whose parents were arrested in the raid.¹⁷²

Children of polygamists arrested in 1944 raid. Composite published in Fundamentalist book Celestial Marriage after the raid. Authors’ collection.

In May 1945, after losing appeals, the fifteen convicted men began their one- to five-year sentences in the Utah State Penitentiary. As religious men, they conducted themselves as model prisoners and labored admirably in their prison work assignments. Perhaps the most difficult test for each man individually came after a few months when a document “Declaration of Policy” was prepared, offering the men early release if they agreed to sign the document to no longer live plural marriage. The men believed LDS Church leaders were behind the state’s efforts to have them sign the policy because of the negative publicity resulting from the fifteen going to prison and subsequently appearing as martyrs. Although emotions were intense among the men because of how they had been treated, Joseph Musser convinced nine others to sign, explaining that God desired for them to do their duty to protect the church from negative publicity and urging them to go home and earn a living to support their wives and children. Ultimately, four men refused to sign, choosing instead to remain in prison for conscience’s sake.

Louis A. Kelsch in prison clothes, 1940s. Authors’ collection.

Joseph Musser had first used the term Fundamentalists to describe polygamists excommunicated from the LDS Church. In the early 1940s, he wrote, “ [T]his group may be called the ‘Priesthood Group’ or the ‘Fundamentalists’…because of their refusal to accede to certain changes in the fundamentals of the Gospel.”¹⁷³ However, polygamists themselves did not use or recognize this term until after the 1944 raids, when contemporary newspaper articles started using the term.¹⁷⁴ Joseph Lyman Jessop’s diaries, which span from 1910 to 1954, did not include the word until 1945, when he became a prisoner and objected to being called by that term.¹⁷⁵ The LDS Church referred to the polygamists as “cultists” in 1944, and Apostle Mark E. Petersen said the church regarded the term Fundamentalists as a misnomer because it “gave the impression (which is what the cultists sought) that they are old line Mormons, which they are not.”¹⁷⁶ Polygamists adopted the term and have self-identified as Fundamentalist Mormons ever since.

Several important developments came from the raid and its aftermath: 1) the community of polygamists gradually became known as Fundamentalists or Fundamentalist Mormons after their arrests; 2) the 1944 raid did not end plural marriage as predicted, and none of the men who served time ever gave up their belief in or practice of plural marriage; 3) the community grew and adherents became more staunch in their beliefs; 4) those sentenced to prison were considered religious martyrs; 5) the community became more reclusive, going underground for at least two generations; and 6) internal division over authority, doctrine and ideology emerged among the men while in prison, with some separating over disagreement with Priesthood Council leadership.¹⁷⁷

Osiris Mill built by polygamists, including Joseph Lyman Jessop, in late 1940s near Antimony, Utah. Authors’ collection.

Joseph Lyman Jessop with daughters and a granddaughter about 1946. Authors’ collection.

THE PRIESTHOOD SPLIT

Differences among members of the Priesthood Council that had slowly grown over several years erupted in 1950 with bitterness and rancor and culminated in separating the community permanently in 1952. The “Priesthood Split” divided the larger Fundamentalist community into two distinct groups, the Musser group and the Johnson or Short Creek group, with a third division comprising a few families who remained aloof from either side, later becoming known and self-identifying as “Independent” Fundamentalists.

The split was probably inevitable after John Y. Barlow died because of differences between Barlow and Joseph W. Musser, which had surfaced early. When J. Leslie Broadbent died in 1935, even before his burial, Barlow told others that “from now on things will be run different.”¹⁷⁸ After the death of Barlow on December 29, 1949, the Priesthood Council consisted of Musser and Charles F. Zitting, who had been called by Lorin C. Woolley, and seven men called by John Y. Barlow in the 1940s: Leroy S. Johnson, J. Marion Hammon, Guy H. Musser, Rulon T. Jeffs, Richard S. Jessop, Carl N. Holm and Alma A. Timpson. Two members, Louis A. Kelsch and LeGrand Woolley, were still living but had withdrawn and did not participate in any council matters after about 1945.

Barlow’s tendency toward an autocratic leadership style was apparent from the outset. It showed when Barlow first moved to Short Creek in 1935 and initiated his United Trust plan, which fomented much disunity among brethren because of its “harsh and unfair” clauses.¹⁷⁹ A year later, he allowed the same type of plan to be reinstituted, even though the Priesthood Council had unanimously agreed for him to withdraw from its management.¹⁸⁰

Musser disagreed with some of Barlow’s policies and certain practices of the newer members of the Priesthood Council. He “spoke out against these practices, including marriages of very young girls, taking wives without the knowledge or consent of the bride’s parents, and the expectation that each wife should give birth to a child every year.” However, because “John Y. Barlow himself advocated these ideas, Joseph Musser’s admonitions [against them] had little effect.”¹⁸¹

A major point of contention erupted over Musser’s calling of Dr. Rulon C. Allred. In 1950, Joseph Musser privately ordained Allred an apostle and patriarch, called him as a member of the council and appointed him as his Second Elder.¹⁸² When Musser informed the other council members about it, they initially sustained this action, but at the same meeting some began having second thoughts, saying that Allred was only Musser’s counselor, not a member of the council. They felt that Musser was trying to place Allred ahead of them in seniority. Musser allowed them their differences of opinion without argument. However, when he announced Allred’s calling to a Salt Lake congregation of Fundamentalists, opposing council members became openly defiant. One charged Allred of having “impugned this Priesthood [Council] by going to Bro. Musser and asking for a blessing.” Musser denied this and said, “Any man that claims Allred asked for that blessing is a damned liar!”¹⁸³ Later, in private, he stated, “[T]he Council will not sustain me, and I refused to be over-ridden in the matter.…I did what the Lord told me to do, and if these brethren will not uphold me, they will be broken to smithereens.”¹⁸⁴

Joseph W. Musser (left) and Dr. Rulon C. Allred about 1952. Authors’ collection.

The council members began citing various other reasons for their lack of support, even accusing Musser, who was quite incapacitated from an earlier stroke in June 1949, of being a demented old man who didn’t know what he was doing.¹⁸⁵ Leroy Johnson told Musser and Lyman Jessop, “If the Lord wants to use an incapacitated leader [referring to Joseph Musser] to lead some people astray, that is the Lord’s business.”¹⁸⁶

Ultimately, it became an issue of authority—whether Musser could authoritatively act without getting the entire council’s explicit approval. Some claimed that it was improper for Musser to have called Allred privately, even though three of them had been privately called by Barlow the same way before it was made known to the others.

In a priesthood meeting on December 3, 1950, the council members told Allred “that they were empowered to accept or reject Joseph [Musser]’s actions, and that they had decided Rulon [Allred] was not a member of the Council, nor an Apostle as Joseph had told him. The Council informed Allred that he was an assistant to Joseph, holding only a commissioned authority during Joseph’s life.”¹⁸⁷

Friction between Musser and the other council members culminated on May 6, 1951, when the council members openly refused to sustain Musser’s calling of Allred.¹⁸⁸ Between May 1951 and the summer of 1952, the Priesthood Council, consisting of Charles F. Zitting and the seven men called by Barlow, entirely rejected Musser. Most Fundamentalists, whether they lived in Salt Lake or in Short Creek, sided with them. A much smaller number stayed with Musser.

On January 12, 1952, Joseph W. Musser filled his vacated quorum with new members whose names he said were received by revelation. They were Rulon C. Allred, Margarito Bautista, John Butchereit, Eslie D. Jenson, Owen A. Allred, Marvin L. Jessop, Joseph B. Thompson and Joseph Lyman Jessop. Musser told them, “Brethren, I have spent the night with the Lord. He has disappropriated them [the other council members] and has instructed me to call you in their place.”¹⁸⁹ Later, speaking of the council members he dismissed, he said, “They have been rejected because they would not accept the word of The Lord.”¹⁹⁰

Musser’s new Priesthood Council emphasized free choice in marriage matters, still holding to old-fashioned Mormon practices of courtship and marriage in which parents and priesthood leaders were consulted. Joseph Musser died in 1954, leaving Rulon C. Allred as his successor. The group was known at first as the Musser group, then the Allred group. The group organized as a 501c3 corporation for legal and tax purposes under the IRS code, calling it the “Corporation of the Presiding Elder of the Apostolic United Brethren” (AUB), but continues to teach that the LDS Church is God’s church, though out of order, and theirs is a priesthood work outside of it.¹⁹¹

The council members who in Musser’s view had “disappropriated” themselves continued to function together. Charles F. Zitting, who lived in the Salt Lake area, was recognized by some as presiding until he died in 1954, six months after Musser.¹⁹² Sixty-six-year-old Leroy S. Johnson, who lived in Short Creek, and had acted as de facto leader while Zitting lived, then assumed full leadership after his death.¹⁹³

Clockwise from top left: Joseph W. Musser (1872– 1954). Authors’ collection; Charles F. Zitting (1894–1954). FamilySearch. org Family Tree; LeRoy S. Johnson (1888–1886). Authors’ collection; J. Marion Hammon (1905–1988). FamilySearch. org Family Tree; Richard S. Jessop (1894–1978). Authors’ collection.

The practice of leaders deciding marriage partners began with council members in Short Creek earlier in the 1940s and was rather well established by the time Barlow died. For example, in 1948, one of Lyman Jessop’s daughters was married secretly, being persuaded at the moment, after a dance, to marry one of John Barlow’s sons without her parent’s knowledge or consent. Returning home afterward, she told no one for two weeks, then finally confided in her father, who took the matter to Joseph Musser. Because Barlow supported those involved, the situation could not be resolved until after his death.

After the split, some young women were urged by Short Creek priesthood leaders “to leave their father’s homes and marry according to their direction…because the father is out of harmony with them…[and] that he has lost his rights to the family, therefore the children of that father should listen and obey they who call themselves the Priesthood.”¹⁹⁴

Margarito Bautista (1879–1961). Authors’ collection.

Musser’s New Priesthood Council visiting Mexico about 1955. Authors’ collection.

In August 1952, another of Lyman Jessop’s daughters, a thirteen-yearold, was taken from Salt Lake to Short Creek after he refused to grant his permission for her to marry. When the note she left was discovered, he immediately went after her and brought her back before any marriage could be performed.¹⁹⁵ The following month, another young girl was spirited away to Short Creek to become a plural wife. Lyman wrote:

It seems certain that somebody’s teaching and practicing some damnable doctrines of just taking away at will some of our daughters against the consent of parents until the attitude and practice is disgusting, to say the least, and we (some of us) feel it must not be tolerated when it involves members of our own families. How far will this priestcraft go?¹⁹⁶

But in early 1953, Musser’s council learned of “brethren [in Short Creek] assuming the right to go into another man’s house and advise the wives there to leave their husband because the husband was not in harmony with the brethren who claimed leadership.”¹⁹⁷

First issue of Star of Truth magazine, January 1953. Authors’ collection.

Leroy Johnson daughters, 1950s. Authors’ collection.

Time and distance between the groups allowed some softening over the next few decades, especially important for families with relatives on both sides of the fence. However, arranged, appointed or “placement” marriages directed by council members became the norm during Leroy Johnson’s administration from the 1950s to the 1980s, although his leadership style was mostly gentle and persuasive. The people wholly embraced the concept, believing this to be a more godly pattern than when individuals, even with parental and priesthood guidance, chose their own mates.

Council practices of involving themselves in families, arbitrarily and unilaterally declaring a man unworthy of governing his own family and pitting family members against one another became ingrained in Short Creek in the period surrounding the split. It played out again later under Rulon Jeffs when he did the same thing against families involved with Centennial Park. And it happened again, even more radically, with Warren Jeffs, who pitted his own people against one another and tore families apart.