Kirtland Camp

The Kirtland Camp was a migration company made up of several hundred Latter-day Saints that traveled from Kirtland, Ohio to northern Missouri in 1838 and is notable as the first mass emigration company for Mormon families. The group was led by the third-highest ranking priesthood quorum in the hierarchy of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: the First Seven Presidents of the Seventies. Those who stayed with the main company to the end of the journey settled in Mormon communities in Daviess County, Missouri during the 1838 Mormon War and shortly afterwards were forced to evacuate the area due to conflicts with non-Mormon settlers in the region.

Within a year of the establishment of the Church of Christ (later the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) by Joseph Smith, Jr. and his followers in New York, Mormon converts were commanded to gather to Kirtland, Ohio, where a sizable community of Mormons had previously been established by Mormon missionaries. By 1835, some 900 Mormon settlers lived in Kirtland with another 200 nearby, making up approximately half of the town’s population. Due to internal dissentions within the church and antagonism from non-Mormons in the community, the Kirtland area became increasingly hostile to Latter-day Saints during the latter part of the 1830s. Major Church leaders and faithful Mormon members who could afford to leave evacuated the area and migrated to more promising Mormon settlements in northern Missouri. There were several hundred other Mormons who also wished to leave, but who were too poor to do so. Many of these Mormons came together under leadership of the highest ranking church leaders left in Ohio—Joseph Young, Henry Harriman, Zerah Pulsipher, Josiah Butterfield, James Foster, Elias Smith, and Benjamin Wilber—who were serving as the First Seven Presidents of the Seventy at the time. The seventies began planning the exodus in the Kirtland Temple on 6 March 1838 and extended the opportunity of joining the company to all members of the church in the area shortly afterwards. Despite poverty and ongoing opposition from other community members, the company was organized and departed with over 500 members in June 1838.

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