{"id":4521,"date":"2008-04-26T10:46:30","date_gmt":"2008-04-26T14:46:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=4521"},"modified":"2008-04-26T17:36:39","modified_gmt":"2008-04-26T21:36:39","slug":"the-dennis-wendt-jr-post-undercover-for-the-lord","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2008\/04\/the-dennis-wendt-jr-post-undercover-for-the-lord\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dennis Wendt Jr. Post*:<\/em> Undercover for the Lord"},"content":{"rendered":"

2 August 1888: Elder Alma P. Richards, ten months into his missionary service and working without a companion, stopped at a hotel in Meridian, Mississippi and made arrangements with a porter to keep some books and clothing until the elder\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s return, expected to be a few days later. Richards, on foot, left Meridian to visit friends just over the state line in Jasper County, Alabama. <\/p>\n

He was never heard from again.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

6 November 1888: Mission President William Spry had become increasingly uneasy over Richards\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 failure to contact the mission office at Chattanooga, Tennessee. When written inquiries to members and civil authorities in Richards\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 district failed to locate him, Spry and six of his elders took the train to Meridian in order to conduct a personal investigation. <\/p>\n

The elders were recognized the moment they arrived. Minutes after checking into a hotel, Spry found the chief of police at his door, warning him that the Mormons would be arrested if they dared to preach. He and another elder went down to the street to gauge the town\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mood and saw two of their elders sprinting toward the train station, a group of angry, cursing men at their heels. Following another visit from the chief of police that evening, informing him that several of the missionaries were under police protection from a rapidly increasing crowd, Spry and his elders left Meridian on the 10:00 train.<\/p>\n

Unable to search in person for Richards, Spry employed a private detective to make inquiries. The detective submitted regular bills to the mission, but as 1888 turned to 1889, and as winter turned into spring, no clue to Richards\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 whereabouts had been found.<\/p>\n

In May, the mission received a tip that a man who might be Richards had been imprisoned in the East Mississippi Insane Asylum; two elders were dispatched to investigate, but it was not Richards.<\/p>\n

One of these elders was James Tillman, a man who joined the church in northern Alabama in 1885. At the time of his baptism, he was heard by a newspaper reporter to say, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153he thanked the Lord for sending Mormon Elders to teach him the true religion.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d He was married, but I do not know his wife\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s name. Where he came from, when he was born, whether he ever came west, whether he lived a long life in fellowship with the saints or fell away, I have so far been unable to learn. <\/p>\n

I do know that in the summer of 1889, he was where the Lord needed him, and he was able and willing to render a service that few if any others could have given.<\/p>\n

James Tillman had the advantage of a southern accent and a native knowledge of local culture. This brave man, able to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153pass\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as one of the people, assumed the identity of an itinerant stove-repairman, one who tramped the back roads, calling at lonely cabins, offering his services and spending long evenings in conversation. No one questioned his comings and goings; it seemed perfectly natural that he would gossip over supper, ask about local excitements, inquire about passers-by.<\/p>\n

One evening, while Tillman stayed overnight with a family about six miles from Meridian, his host recalled that months before, a man had been killed by a train in that neighborhood. No one knew the dead man, he said, who had been buried in a pauper\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s grave. <\/p>\n

The next day, Tillman called on several of the men who had served as the coroner\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s jury, showing them a photograph of Richards. Yes, they thought, the photo did resemble the man they had buried. Tillman immediately telegraphed the news to the mission home in Chattanooga. Spry contacted John Morgan, former missionary and future president of the Southern States Mission, who traveled from his home in Manassa, Colorado, to investigate.<\/p>\n

Tillman and Morgan interviewed the local coroner about the circumstances of the unidentified man\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s death. The coroner had decided the man had been walking along the train track, had heard a train approaching from behind and stepped off the track; when it passed, he had stepped back onto the track, not realizing that the first train was followed by a second section, which struck and killed him.<\/p>\n

The elders obtained permission to dig into the grave. After ten months, the body was unrecognizable. However, he had been buried as he was found, and the two Mormons had no difficulty recognizing distinctive marks on the man\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s undergarments. They obtained a metal coffin, and the remains of Elder Alma P. Richards were returned to his family for burial in Morgan, Utah. <\/p>\n

The details of Richards\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 death were never fully settled \u00e2\u20ac\u201c what of his watch, and money, and valise, and umbrella, items he was believed to have been carrying? The coroner knew nothing of them. Had Richards been killed by accident, as assumed, with his belongings disappearing after death? Or had he been robbed and murdered, his body placed on the tracks to disguise the manner of his death? Partisans of both theories debate the matter to this day.<\/p>\n

My last sighting of James Tillman is at the graveside of Elder Richards. He is a Latter-day Saint who deserves to be remembered \u00e2\u20ac\u201c should any reader have further information about him, I will be grateful to hear from you.<\/p>\n

*This \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Dennis Wendt Jr. Post\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is named in honor of the winner of last week\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s contest<\/a> to guess the moment of a T&S milestone. Dennis is a graduate student at BYU, studying philosophical and theoretical psychology; one of his current theological interests concerns \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a pragmatic and pluralistic approach to \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcfolk theologies.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Dennis is the author of a relatively new Mormon-themed blog, Thinking in a Marrow Bone<\/a>. He explains the source of the title here<\/a> as:<\/p>\n

In one of my favorite poems, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153A Prayer for Old Age,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d W.B. Yeats writes:<\/p>\n

God guard me from those thoughts men think
\nIn the mind alone;
\nHe that sings a lasting song
\nThinks in a marrow-bone.<\/p>\n

Here Yeats makes the provocative claim that thinking is not restricted to the mind, and that the wise person is the one who is able to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153think\u00e2\u20ac\u009d deep in the interior of one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bones.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Keep an eye on TMB \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I like his current post<\/a> on questions raised by the attempts to locate the remains of Parley P. Pratt.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2 August 1888: Elder Alma P. Richards, ten months into his missionary service and working without a companion, stopped at a hotel in Meridian, Mississippi and made arrangements with a porter to keep some books and clothing until the elder\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s return, expected to be a few days later. Richards, on foot, left Meridian to visit friends just over the state line in Jasper County, Alabama. He was never heard from again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/95"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4521\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}