Book Published by USU Press Wins Award

Polygamy on the Pederales, Lyman Wight’s Mormon Villages in Antebellum Texas 1845-1858 by Melvin C. Johnson recently won the Smith-Pettit Best Book Award from the John Whitmer Historical Association, an independent scholarly society composed of individuals of various faiths who share a lively interest in the history of the Restoration Movement. The book was published by Utah State University Press.

News stories in 2004 and 2005 reporting an invasion of west Texas by polygamous members of a Mormon splinter group hearken back to 1845. Then, another band of dissident Mormons, seeking refuge following the murder of Joseph Smith Jr., their prophet, and led by a maverick apostle named Lyman Wight, arrived in Texas. For 13 years, they attempted to build the Kingdom of God in preparation for Christ’s return, practicing their versions of plural marriage, temple rites and communitarian economics separate from the main body of Mormons gathering in Utah.

 

Experienced millers from the northern woods of Wisconsin, the Wightites brought the first gristmills and sawmills to the Texas hill country. Also farmers, cowboys, office holders and buffers against Comanches, they played important roles in establishing American society in the Austin-Fredericksburg-San Antonio area. Their peculiar religious beliefs, their insular communities and their colorful leader, the “Wild Ram of the Mountains,” added, for a time, distinct dimensions to that cultural landscape.

 

In his book, Texas historian Johnson recounts the surprising hegira of these little-known pilgrims who, in diminishing numbers, repeatedly packed up and moved on, until Wight, apparently suffering ill effects from alcohol and opium use, died during a last attempt to lead them to another new home.