Written by Tamma Durfee Miner
(1813 - 1885)

Submitted by Elaine H. Wood

A Memorial

My father’s name was Edmond Durfee. He was born in Rhode Island October 3, 1788. Father was of Irish descent, I think. Mother was born June 6, 1788 of Dutch descent. Her name was Lanna Pickle. Her father and mother were from Holland, I think, High Dutch.

I was born in the State of New York, Madison County, Town of Lenox, March 6, 1813, and we lived there until I was about nine years old, and then we moved to Oswego County, Tow of Amboy, in a new country. Father bought some land, built him a house, made a small farm, and worked at his trade that was mostly carpenter and millwright. We lived there till the first of June, 1830, and bought more land. There were lots of maple trees on it, and we made lots of maple sugar. Then father wanted to go west, so he sold his sugar bush and farm and everything and started for the state of Ohio. We went through Camden Village to the canal, went on the canal to Buffalo, went across Lake Superior, and landed at Portland. From there we went to Huron County, Township of Buggles. Father bought some land and went to work to make a home, and the next winter in 1831 we heard about the Mormons, and the gold Bible. The next spring, Solomon Hancock came along preaching about Joseph Smith, said that the Lord and the Angel Moroni had revealed them to him. Solomon Hancock came and joined in with us, the Methodists, and the Campbellites, and he would preach in our meeting house. We would go to hear him and were all astonished, for it was so much different from what it had been reported. This was some time in April, 1831, and my father, Edmond Durfee, was baptized about the middle of May, and my mother and sister Martha and brother Edmond were baptized about the first of June by Solomon Hancock. I believed it was the first time I heard him preach it, and [he] told us the Book of Mormon was true.

I was a Mormon in belief but was not baptized till December, 1831, and will tell you the reason I was not baptized. I was keeping company with a good young man as I thought, and I was told he said he would not have a Mormon wife, so I waited till after I was married. I went to the Mormon meetings and sometimes to the Methodist till December, 1831, when my father was going on a mission to the state of New York, and he baptized me before going on his mission.

Albert’s mother, brothers, and sisters had a great deal to say about the Mormons, as they did not believe in the Book of Mormon, but he told them, that “The more they had to say, the sooner he would be baptized.” He waited till the first of February, 1832, when they cut a hole in the ice and baptized him.

My oldest daughter Polly was born on May 1, 1832. My father gathered some of his carpenter tools and seed grain and farming tools, and in company with others he started for Jackson County, Missouri. He left on the first of February, 1832, to build a place for all his family to go to, and he came back the 20th of May. Then he went back to the States on a mission and came home in the fall of 1832. He sold his farm and all his possessions and started for Kirtland, Ohio, on the first of May, 1833. The Lord said He would keep a strong hold for five years in Kirtland. We bought a farm, built us some houses, and prepared to live.

I was here on the Fourth of July when they wanted twenty-four elders to lay the cornerstone to the Kirtland Temple, and they ordained George A. Smith and Don Smith to make the number 24, six to each corner, and my husband Albert Miner helped to haul stone every Saturday for a long time to build the Temple. My oldest boy was born October 22, 1833. We named him Orson. The next spring the most of the elders were called to volunteer to go and redeem Jackson County. Albert told Mr. Dennis Lake he would draw cuts to see which should go or which would take care of the families. Dennis Lake went with the company to redeem Jackson County, and when he got back he apostatized and sued Joseph Smith for three months’ work, $60. Brigham Young and a man with him came to our house and asked him for his license, and he refused to give it to them. Brigham Young said it made no difference. They could publish [his apostasy abroad], and he told Albert Miner that he would receive his blessing. This was in the fall of 1834.

On the 4th day of June, 1835, I had a son born, called his name Moroni, and Joseph Smith blessed him and said “he should be as great as Moroni of old and the people would flee unto him and call him blessed.” They were still building the Temple. There were some of the brethren that came from a distance and stayed till the next Spring. Some stayed with us and received their endowments and was there to the dedication of the temple in March, 1836. After that a good many began to apostatize and broke up the Kirtland Bank. I had a girl born June 18, 1836. We called her name Silva. Land came up and sold for a large sum of money, and they had a great speculation, and a great many left the Church Of Latter-day Saints.

I had a boy born September 26, 1837, and we called his name Mormon. In the spring of 1837, my father sold his farm and all he possessed and started for Caldwell County, Missouri, and we stayed that summer and fall. Those that left the Mormons grew worse till Joseph and Sidney and Father Smith had to leave in January in the middle of winter. That fall Albert had a very sick spell. The last of January he got some better so he could ride in a sleigh on a bed, and I held the umbrella over him and with two children on my lap we went 80 miles from Kirtland to Huron County, New London, where Albert’s folks lived. The four days on the road had been pleasant and warm, but it turned fearfully cold winter weather. Albert got better, and we stayed there till May.

Albert went back to Kirtland and sold his farm, put some of his means in to help the Kirtland camp, and with the balance, Albert Miner, wife, and children started for Farwest, Missouri, about the middle of June, 1838, bidding his mother, sisters, and brothers all farewell for the Gospel’s sake. His father died in 1829. We traveled till we got short of means, and then we stopped and worked till we got some more money, and then [we] went back to the camp to pay them a visit. Then we went on to Missouri and got to Dewit the last of August. The children were all sick, and I had been so sick that I could not walk. Albert had been so sick he could not harness his team nor take care of it, but he soon got better. We stayed one week to Dewit, and then we started for Farwest all alone. We got to my father’s about the first of September. The children were all sick, but father said they would get better, and they did so, in a few days, all but Silva who got worse and died about the first of October, 1838.

The mob gathered and killed a number at Hans Mill and gathered and drove all the Mormons from Adam-Ondi-Ahman to Farwest; then not being satisfied, the whole state, with the governor at the head, gathered by the thousands to drive them from Farwest. They wanted Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon, our leaders, and the Twelve, and all they could get and put in prison. And they got many. Some were bailed out. Others had to stay and take up with such fare as they could get. They were given human flesh, but Joseph told them not to eat it, for the spirit of the Lord told him it was human flesh. Thus we were plundered, smitten, and driven and our lives threatened, and we were ill treated on every side by our enemies—enemies to the truth of heaven. They would come one to five hundred right to out houses and nobody around but women and little children, take our men prisoners without any cause whatever—only because they were Mormons and believed in the truths of the Gospel. They wanted to know if we had any guns or pistols or ammunition or butcher knives and all such things. No one can describe the feelings of the saints and what they passed through. No tongue can tell, only those that experienced it and was an eye witness.

Those men that were at Liberty and had teams had to help others to the Mississippi River and then go back after their own families. Father’s folks had lived there one year. He left in 1837, and Albert Miner and myself and our five children got to Missouri the first of September, 1838. We lived on what they called Log Creek, six miles from Farwest. I was there when they killed David Patten, when they took lots of prisoners, and when the saints had to lay down their arms for their enemies.

Mr. Miner was one that had to take a load to the Mississippi River, so we did not get away till the first of April, 1839. We had witnessed a good many leaving in the cold and dreary winter. We crossed over to Quincy, went up the river to the placed called Lima, and prepared to live there a short time. But the devil wasn’t dead yet. In a short time there were some that would go to Lima and get drunk, and come back swearing and tearing enough to frighten men, let alone women and children. I told Mr. Miner that I did not like to live there. I did not like to see those drunkards and hear them swear.

While at Lima I had a girl born January 12, 1840, and we called her Matilda. We stayed there till one year from the next September and got along the best we could, every fall and spring going 30 miles to Conference and then on the 4th of July to training. I had a boy born September 7, 1841. We called him Alma L. The next spring we sold out and my husband bought a place four miles east of the temple in Nauvoo, and we lived there where we could go to meeting and back at night. I had a boy born June 12, 1843, and we called him Don C. Miner. We were there in 1844 when Joseph and Hyrum were martyred. I went and saw them after their deaths, and when they were brought back to their home. I had been acquainted with them for 12 years. In May I had heard them both preach. I had heard them talk to the saints a great many times. I once heard the Prophet Joseph talk five hours to a congregation and no one was tired. This was in Kirtland before they built the first temple.

The Nauvoo Temple was completed, and then the mobs became violent again. They threatened and told around how they would kill and drive the Mormons out. They did kill several and drove them from Lima. They shot my father Edmond Durfee and killed him instantly on November 19, 1845. He had never done them any harm in his life, but on the contrary had always taught them good principles of truth and uprightness and greatness and morality and industry all the days of his life. But before this they drove them all out of Father Morley’s settlement, turned their sick ones out, drove them all out to live or die, rolled my brother Nephi up in a bed and threw it outdoors even when he was sick, went to the oat stack, got two bundles of oats, put a brand of fire in them, threw them on top of the house, and said they would be back in the morning. Father was trying to move someplace, and they came back and shot their guns and ran them all off. They plundered, made fires, burned houses, furniture, and clothing looms, yarn, cloth, carpenter tools. The iron from the tools they picked up and filled barrels. Everything [was] all burned to ashes. The mob went from house to house, driving them out, sick or well, it made no difference, until they had burnt every house in the town that was Mormons.

The men from Nauvoo got their teams and started for Lima. They traveled all night and day to get the families that had been turned out of doors. My husband was one that traveled all night, and he got sick, took a chill, and was very sick for a long time. The mob said they could come back and gather their crops, and when they were very near done, they decided to stay over Sunday. When it got dark Saturday night, they built a fire close by the barn and stables. The Mormons thought they meant to burn their houses, and the men ran out to stop the fire. The mob stood back in the timber and our men got between them and the fire, and they shot off about a dozen guns, but my father was the only one killed.

They built a fire in different places. One fire they built in a corn crib where the shucks were very dry. The fire burned a little and then went out, so you see they could not go any further than the Lord would let them. This was the fall of 1845, and they still kept gathering and threatening all the fall and winter. The saints worked hard all winter. In the temple they gave endowments and sealed others. They worked at repairing and building wagons, getting ready to leave. Some of them left before the ice broke up in the river and the rest soon after.

A little over a year before, my husband had his farm bought from under him by a man by the name of Ephraim S. Green, with all he had worked and done and paid on it and was turned out doors with a family of little children, so he rented on year and turned out one span of horses and bought a piece of land in order to make another home.

On March 5, 1846, I had a girl born; called her name Melissa. We remained there for a time. The mob gathered every little while and threatened all the time how they would drive the Mormons. At last a great many left, not knowing where they were going [except] to hunt a place in the wilderness among the savages and wild beasts over the desert beyond the Rocky Mountains where white men had never lived. In the spring the mob began to get together once a week and threatened to drive out what was left. The first of May we moved to town, sold our place for a yoke of cattle and a wagon, thinking to start on in two or three weeks, but the mob gathered every week right on the public square close by the house. The Mormons told them they would go as fast as they could get ready and get teams to go with. It was mostly women and children that were there, and they did not want any more of the men to leave for fear of what might happen. So we stayed, and my oldest brother and family was with us.

Till at last the mob gathered in full and reports came that they were camped outside the town about a mile, about 2,000 of them. One afternoon they started to come into town, cross-lots. There were only fifty of our men to go out to meet them, but they drove them back that night. In the morning at 2 o’clock it was moonlight, and the Mormons went and fired right in their camp. They fired guns and cannons on both sides till 2 o’clock in the afternoon. They killed three Mormon men. One man was named Anderson, and he and his son were both killed by one cannon ball. One man was killed with a cannon ball in a blacksmith shop. Three men were slightly wounded. My brother was wounded by a gun between the cords of his heel. There were only 50 of the Mormons against 2,000 of them in the mob. Ten of them had to be on guard, two on the top of the temple with spy glasses. They went into Law’s cornfield and there they had their battle. They were seen to fill three wagons with the wounded and killed. And the next morning a woman stood in the second story of a house and saw the mob put seventy-six bodies in calico slips with a drawstring around the neck and feet before they left for home.

The Mormon women rolled the cannon balls up in their aprons, took them to our boys, and they would put them in the cannon and would shoot them back again when they were hot. It was a fearful time. I could have crossed the river, but I would not leave my husband. In about two days the men had to surrender, lay down their arms. I saw the mob all dressed in black ride two by two on horseback. It looked frightful. They said there was about 2,000 of them rode around the Temple in Nauvoo.

The men had to ferry the boat over five times for each family. My husband had to ferry it over ten times, five for my brother that got wounded and five for us. We got over and stayed there two weeks. We slept on the ground waiting for help. There were fourteen of us to one wagon. My baby got sick, but we started and in three days my baby died on the first of October, 1846. We traveled on one day, and the next morning, we buried her. She was seven months old. Her name was Melissa Miner. We went on three days and came to Iowaville. We stayed there through the winter, and there my husband worked at hauling and running a ferry boat.

When my baby died, I took sick and never sat up, only to have my bed made for nine months. My husband thought of moving to the Bluffs, but a good many came back to get work, so he cut and put up some hay for his stock, and then he said he would go back to Ohio to see all of his folks. He started afoot to the Mississippi River all alone, short of means. He went two or three miles when he looked down on the ground and right before him was about $5 in silver. He went on and found his folks all well, but no one believed in the gospel. All opposed him. He was gone ten weeks. He came home very unwell and being gone so long, he was homesick and tired and had walked in the rain all day.

Polly, my oldest girl who was fourteen years old, took care of the family of nine and waited on me while I was sick and while her father was gone. Not feeling very well when he came home, he thought he would feel better after he got rested, but he grew worse. He would try to work a half a day and go to bed the other half. He came home about May 17, 1847. He would be first better then worse till at last he dropped off very suddenly and died.

That was a hard blow, for we thought he was getting better. I and the children thought a better man never lived, a kind, good-natured disposition, free hearted, industrious. He won many friends and was a genius at doing anything he saw anyone else do. Alma and the little boys said, “Which way shall we go; we will not know the way.” They thought their father was so perfect that he could not do anything wrong, and that he knew everything.

Polly and Orson were the oldest; they had to take the lead and go ahead and plan. Albert’s folks had offered him everything if he would stay with them and not go with the Mormons, but the Gospel and the truth of the Book of Mormon and the4 Holy Priesthood was all that he wanted. Polly was a true and faithful girl to [me] and all the children. Albert, my husband, died January 3, 1848. He had been so very anxious to go to the Bluffs and keep up with the Church, so myself and children went to work and got things together, and the next July, 1848, came to Council Bluffs. We stayed there about two years. We worked and got things together to come to the valleys.

I and my five boys and two girls started with one-hundred wagons June 10, 1850. We traveled across the plains with ox teams. We had many a hard struggle, although we got along much better than we had anticipated. The first of September, we landed in Salt Lake without any home or anyone to hunt us one. We were very lonesome indeed. We stayed with Father and Mother Wilcox two weeks when Enos Curtis came along and said he would furnish me and the children a home. That was what we needed, for it was coming winter. We were married October 20, 1850. We lived on the Jordan the first winter, and I and my children all had the irricipliss [erysipelas] in the throat, and my oldest boy died with it on March 5, 1851. He had driven the team across the plains for me, and he was as kind and good-natured a boy as ever lived.

The next April we moved to Springville and got a farm and a place to build. We got along first rate. We had gone into the wilderness trying to build up the Kingdom. On October 18, 1851, I had a girl born and called her Clarissa Curtis. We lived there, and the boys grew, and Mr. Enos Curtis, my husband, his boys, and mine all worked together, raised wheat and grain and stock, and paid their tithing. I had a girl born February 23, 1853. We called her Belinda Curtis. The next spring Enos Curtis went to Iron County with Brigham Young and company. When they go back they made a party for the company, June 12, 1854. One year from that day I had a pair of twin girls, naming one Adelia and one Amelia Curtis.

The next spring my husband was complaining of not being very well but kept on working for a while till at last he gave up. After a while he began to take something and thought he was better, then he got worse, lived till the first day of June, 1856, when he passed away just like going to sleep without a struggle or a groan. His children were all with him but two, one of his boys was on a mission in England. Myself and four boys were left to keep house and three little girls. One boy was twenty years old, the other fourteen, and the other twelve. We still lived in Springville City, farmed, and raised our wheat and stock and paid our tithing. I raised the little girls all but one. She took sick and died before her father. She was Adelia, one of the twins.

In 1857 I married John Curtis at April Conference, and I had a girl born January 16, 1858, calling her Mariette Curtis. I had five boys and four girls by Albert Miner, I had four girls by Enos Curtis, and I had one girl by John Curtis. I had 58 grandchildren and 11 great grandchildren. Belinda Curtis took sick and died November 17, 1873. We still lived in Springville.

The children that lived all grew up to be men and women, all married, and left home. They are all in the Church and pay their tithing and try to live their religion as far as I know. I had fourteen children in all, and they are all very good and kind to me.

Albert Miner was Joseph Smith’s lifeguard in Kirtland. My brother was also, but he left the Church. In those days there was but a handful in comparison to what there is now.

I have passed through all the hardships and drivings and burnings and mobbings and threatenings and have been with the saints in all their persecutions from Huron County to Kirtland and from Kirtland to Missouri back to Illinois and then across the desert. I write this that my children may have a little idea of what their parents passed through. For want of time I have passed over some things of importance. I hope my children will appreciate these few lines, for I do feel highly honored to be numbered with the Latter-day Saints, and I pray that our children will all prove faithful, that they may receive a great reward.