Latter-day Saint

CHARLES COULSON RICH--John Henry Evans--Macmillan ($3.50). Of all the restless religious sects spawned in the U. S., Mormonism went furthest, made the biggest splash. Nowadays as settled and respectable as any other church, in its early years it roused its neighbors to a fury of apprehensive persecution, even threw a scare into the U. S. Government. Present-day "Gentiles" know little of Mormon history, few Mormon heroes except Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. After reading Charles Coulson Rich they could add another name to their list of Latter-day Saints, many an historical fact to a little-known tract of U. S. history. Far from being a debunking biographer, Author Evans is onetime Professor of Church History in Latter-day Saints University (Salt Lake City); his chronicle of a Mormon hero is enthusiastic but this side idolatry.

Mormonism got Rich at both their beginnings; he was 21, the Faith, 1. That was in 1831. He was a big boy (6 ft. 4) who worked on his father's 600-acre Illinois farm in the summer, in winter taught school. After his conversion he left home from time to time to preach the new gospel. On one of these sallies he heard of a pious and nubile maiden named Sarah Pea, straightway sat down and wrote her a sober proposal of marriage. Like a good girl, Sarah shut her eyes, opened her Bible, stabbed with her finger. On the strength of the text her finger touched, she wrote him an enthusiastically respectful assent. Two weeks later they met, in four months hey were married.

Polygamy--or, as the Mormons delicately called it, plural marriage--was not et an acknowledged Mormon practice. Mormon communities in the East and Midwest were surrounded by citizens who frowned on such Old Testament goings-on. But Prophet Joseph Smith had already secretly taken the step, initiated a chosen few into the same fellowship. Rich, a sobersided, promising and healthy recruit, was one whom the Prophet commanded to do likewise. He talked the matter over with Sarah and both decided to comply with the semi-divine command, provided Sarah chose the candidates. In quick succession Husband Rich took on four more wives, later a fifth. They were not love-matches. A son of Wife No. 5 once asked his mother: "Mother, did you girls love father?" Said she: "We learned to love him."

Meantime Rich had left home, settled with fellow-Saints in Missouri. When local antagonism against the Mormons got too hot for them, the Riches went along with their brethren on the 1,100-mile trek to the Promised Land of Utah. As a hard working, efficient officer, finally as second in command of the Mormon army (the Nauvoo Legion), Charles Rich made a name for himself as one of the most useful Saints in Zion. After the hardships of the journey and the first starvation days in the new land, he was further upped in rank to one of the Twelve Apostles, soon became known as the canniest of the lot. When the Mormons planned to extend their empire to California, Rich was one of the two apostles they sent in charge of the expedition. The California experiment eventually petered out, but as a reward for his efforts, Rich was sent to Europe with another apostle on an innocent junket, to stir up the Saints in foreign lands.

Monogamous Europeans were wont to ask Rich how many children he had. His invariable reply: I have 38 children, and I haven't seen one of them!" According to Biographer Evans, that was just his little joke; Rich knew at a glance every one of the 50 children he fathered. His six happy families lived in neighborly amity. He treated his wives with care; when he made one present, he made six. Always on circuit, he lived a week with each wife.

Plural marriage has gone the way of other social experiments, but it helped the Rich family to a good start. Biographer Evans estimates the present number of Rich descendants at 1,500, notes admiringly that not one of them has queued up in a Depression breadline. From the maternal founders of the clan, no complaints or criticisms have been forthcoming. But Founder Rich himself, looking back on it all, was not perfectly sure he had done the right thing. Toward the end of his long life he confessed to one of his 21 daughters that the "principle of plural marriage is too pure for man to practice in his present stage of imperfection."

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