Biography of John Tidwell
Written by Himself
John Tidwell and Jane Smith Tidwell
John Tidwell, son of William Tidwell and Sarah Goben, born January 14, 1807 in Shelby Co. Kentucky. From there my father moved to Henry county in the same state, and there near the fork of Kentucky river he was called to go and fight for the Independence of his country in the War of 1812 & 1813. On his return home he was taken sick from exposure and died at a place then called Fort Ball. The war was between the United States and England. Soon after the war, the news came to mother of the death of my father, after which she moved to her father’s who lived in the county of Clay in the state of Indiana. Her father’s name was William Goben. Some little time after my mother moved to Indiana she married a man by the name of John Conner. He was the half brother to my wife Jane Smith. I will say here that my mother had five children by her first husband William Tidwell, my father. There names were John, Littleton, Nancy, Moriah, and William. […..] second husband, she had eight children, James, Lewis, Mary, Isaac, Wesle, Alexander, Robert, and John.
On December 18, 1828 I was married to Jane Smith at Marysville Clark County, Indiana. September 25, 1835, I was baptized in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints by Levi Bracken in connection with Uriah Curtis who were both on a mission together at that time. I […] ordained an Elder in the church and left in charge of a small branch of saints, about twelve in number, which had been baptized previous to this time. This number increased to about twenty-two or twenty-three.
September 11, 1839, I left Clark county, Indiana to gather with the church at Nauvoo, Hancock county, Illinois. I reached there November 6, 1839, where I remained until after the martyrdom of the Prophet Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum Smith. This took place June 27, 1844 by a mob while they were in charge of the law, in the jail at Carthage. In the fall of 1844 I was ordained a seventy and organized the ninth quorum of seventies.
I must say in connection with our stay in Nauvoo, which was less than six years, we had a great deal of sickness, also trouble caused by mobs of outlaws of the state of Illinois, who continually sought to disturb the saints. June 10, 1844 the Nauvoo Expositor a libelous paper edited by the Law’s and Fosters, was considered a nuisance by the City Council and was destroyed by the City Marshall, John P. Green. Great excitement arose about this time in the county of Hancock, by the mobers of the state of Illinois so that the Governor of the state, Thomas Ford, with pretense of protection, come to Carthage, the county seat of Hancock county. On the 27th day of June, 1844, while Ford was in Nauvoo with the pretense of friendship, a mob broke into the jail where Joseph the Prophet, Hyrum Smith the Patriarch and Willard Richards and John Taylor were confined and under pretense. Those were days of trouble for the saints in Hancock county, Illinois. On the second day of February 1846 in the city of Joseph, John Tidwell and Jane Tidwell received their Patriarchal Blessing by John Smith, brother of the Prophet, who was Patriarch.
On June 5, 1852, I left Council Point, Southwest on Kansville, Iowa for Salt Lake Valley and crossed the Missouri River June 8, 1852. The fifth company was organized for crossing the plains the present season by Ezra T. Benson. I was appointed Captain of the fifth Company for crossing the plains. The Journal of the company will be found in another book kept by the Clerk of the Company. The record of the fifth company of 1852 shows the rest of the journey. September 15, we arrived in Salt Lake City. After a few days I moved from there to Utah County to a place called Pleasant Grove. July 14, 1855, I was ordained a President of Seventies at Provo by Joseph Young, Andrew Moore, Uriah Curtis, and David Hunt.
Joseph Young took the lead and afterward I was assigned to the thirty-fourth quorum of Seventies and appointed to preside over the mass quorums of Seventies Pleasant Grove, Utah county.
I lived at Pleasant Grove from September 20, 1852 until June 9, 1859 when I concluded to go to some place where I could get land enough for farming so as to provide for my family and also on account of things being in such an immoral state that I feared my family would get into bad habits such as I did not wish them to do. I thought I would move to some other place so I moved to Sanpete County, a distance of about eighty miles to Mt. Pleasant, where I arrived June 13, 1859. On the 19th of June, 1850 [1860?] I was appointed to take charge of the building of the east wall of the Fort. It was 26 rods long, 12 feet high, 4 feet thick at the bottom and two feet thick at top this was completed before the 24th day of July of the same year. It was built to protect the people from the Indians.
John Tidwell dies at Mt. Pleasant, January 24, 1887. He had the following children:
James Harvey
William Nelson
Mary Jane
Jefferson Lyman
Nancy Ann
Martha
Margaret
Sarah
John
EmmaJane
Emeline Mariah
Child eleven, Emma Jane was born in Emigration Canyon, September 13, 1852 died at birth two days before they entered Salt Lake Valley.
Postscript by Jessie Lusk:
The immoral state mentioned above was no doubt caused by Johnston’s Army being in Camp 20 miles to the West. They traded and sold produce and of course some romances crept in. They were there from 1849 to 1851 [1861?] when the Civil War broke out.
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