The Patriarch and the Martyr:

Joseph Smith, Senior and Eli Bruce in the Canandaigua, New York Jail

by John E. Thompson

The Philalethes Society, April 1983

Reprinted from The Philalethes CD-Rom© by permission.

Near the end of 1830, Joseph Smith Senior, father of the Prophet, was, according to his wife's account, imprisoned about a month in Canandiagua, New York, until he worked off a fourteen dollar debt. (1) While in the jail, the future Patriarch of the Mormon Church preached to the prisoners on Sundays and later baptized two of them. (2) Samuel Smith visited his father during this period and reportedly found him "confined in the same dungeon with a man committed for murder." (3)

Since it apparently was not normal procedure to keep those convicted of violent crimes in local jails for extended periods of time, it may well be that the man Samuel Smith was speaking of was none other than Eli Bruce, the "Masonic Martyr." (4) Bruce had been elected Sheriff of Niagara County, New York, in 1825, but, in October of 1827, he was removed from office by Governor DeWitt Clinton after being implicated in the mysterious disappearance of William Morgan of Batavia, New York. (5) The next year, a Court of General Sessions at Canandaigua convicted Bruce of conspiracy to kidnap Morgan and sentenced him to serve two years and four months in the Canadaigua Jail. (6)

William Morgan, it will be recalled, had intended to expose the secrets of the Masonic rite in a book. (7) About the time this became known, he was required to go to Canandiagua to settle a small debt. Jailed a short time and then released, Morgan was kidnapped from in front of the jail in September, 1826, and never reappeared. This kidnapping and presumed murder of William Morgan was a catalyst which fused persons of Anti-Masonic tendencies into a political party in New York and elsewhere. (8) Since it was a tenet of this movement that Morgan had been murdered by a Masonic combination of conspirators, and since Eli Bruce (himself a Mason) had been convicted of conspiracy to kidnap Morgan, it is not hard to see how Bruce would have been viewed, by persons at least influenced by the Anti-Masonic interpretation, as an accessory before the fact, and therefore for all practical purposes, one of Morgan's murderers. In November of 1830, then, Eli Bruce the Martyr conversed with the future Patriarch of the Mormon Church in the Canandaigua Jail. Bruce reported on the nature of the conversation in his diary, which has been preserved for us by the Masonic historian Rob Morris. (9) This account is important not only as an external witness to the historicity of Joseph Smith Senior's debt imprisonment, but also, as a very early Gentile witness to the content of the Mormon Gospel as it was being proclaimed in the New York period.

November 5th - Not so much pain in my head as yesterday. Had a long talk with the father of the Smith, (Joseph Smith,) who, according to the old man's account, is the particular favorite of Heaven! To him Heaven has vouchsafed to reveal its mysteries; he is the herald of the latter-day glory. The old man avers that he is commissioned by God to baptize and preach this new doctrine. He says that our Bible is much abridged and deficient, that soon the Divine will is to be made known to all, as written in the new Bible, or Book of Mormon. (10)

References

(1) Lucy Mack Smith. Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith the Prophet and His Progenitors For Many Generations (Liverpool, England: Orson Pratt by S.W. Richards, 1855), pp. 159 169.

(2) Lucy Mack Smith, Biographical Sketches, p. 165.

(3) Lucy Mack Smith, Biographical Sketches, p. 165.

(4) Manslaughter and murder cases, among others, tended to be sent to the State Prison at Auburn, New York. See, for example, People vs. James Jackson, Court of Oyer and Terminer, Canandiagua, Ontario County, New York, 1827. p. 251. The phrase "Masonic Martyr" is usually attributed to Rob Morris, who wrote The Masonic Martyr The Biography of Eli Bruce, Sheriff of Niagara County, New York, who For His Attachment to the Principles of Masonry, And His Fidelity to His Trust, Was Imprisoned Twenty-eight Months in the Canandiagua Jail (Louisville: Morris and Monsarrat, 1861).

(5) Henry Brown, "A Narrative of the Antimasonick Excitement in the Western Part of the State of New York, During the Years 1826, '7, '8, and Part of 1829," Universal Masonic Library, 28 (1856): 118-119. Ontario Repository, Canandaigua, New York, August 29, 1827. See also the Rochester Observer, The Rochester Album, October 9, 1827, states that Clinton removed Bruce from office on October 1, 1827.

(6) People vs. Eli Bruce, Orsemus Turner, David Haight, and Jared Darrow, Court of General Sosions, Canandiagua, Ontario County, New York, August, 1828, n.p.

(7) William Morgan's work was published after his disappearance under the title Illustrations of Masonry, By One of the Fraternity, Who has Devoted Thirty Years to the Subject (Batavia, New York: Printed for the Author, 1826. A copy of the First Edition is at the Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio. A copy of a later edition, dated 1827, is at the Ontario County Historical Society, Canandaigua, New York.

(8) See Ronald P. Formisano and Kathleen Smith Kutolowski, "Antimasonry and Masonry: The Genesis of Protest, 1826-1827," American Quarterly 29 (1977): 139-165. William H. Brackney, "Expedience Versus Conviction: The Baptist Response to the Antimasonic Impulse 1826-1830," Foundation: A Baptist Journal of History and Theology 21 (1978): 167.

(9) Rob Morris, The Masonic Martyr, pp. 266-267. A search for a holograph Bruce diary in collections of Rob Morris papers has to this date, been unsuccessful.

(10) "Rob Morris, The Masonic Martyr, pp 266 -267.