An open guide to the sources, archives, places, and scholarship on the movement Joseph Morris organized at Kington Fort on the Weber River in 1861, and on the congregations that carried it from Utah to Idaho, Nevada, California, Nebraska, Iowa, and Montana.
This is an independent scholarly resource. It is not affiliated with any church, descendant organization, or repository. Entries are being added and checked; corrections are welcome.
Joseph Morris, an English convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, began recording revelations in Utah in the late 1850s. On April 6, 1861, he organized his own church at South Weber, and his followers gathered at Kington Fort on the Weber River. In June 1862 a territorial posse besieged the fort for three days; Morris was killed at the surrender, others died in the siege, and the men were taken prisoner and later tried. After Governor Stephen S. Harding pardoned those convicted in 1863, the Morrisites scattered: to Soda Springs, Idaho, under the protection of Patrick Edward Connor; to Carson Valley, Nevada, and San Francisco; to Omaha and Council Bluffs; to William W. Davies’s community near Walla Walla; and to the Deer Lodge Valley in Montana, where the last organized Morrisite church disbanded in 1969.
This guide gathers the records they left and what has been written about them. Read the chronology and the place pages for the story, the essential works below for the movement’s own texts and its standard history, and Questions for what is still unsettled.
A dated chronology from 1857 to the present, and the places of the movement from South Weber to Racetrack.
Documents to read online, a bibliography, and the archives that hold Morrisite records.
The 430 names on the 1861–62 roll of membership, with FamilySearch links, notes, and pages on individual members.
What the record has not settled yet, for students, family historians, and researchers.
The movement's own scripture, a later compilation from within the movement, and the only book-length history of it.
Joseph Morris's revelations, articles, and letters, recorded from 1857 to 1862 and published after his death by his follower George S. Dove. It holds more than 300 revelations, making Morris one of the most prolific revelators in Mormon history. For his followers it was scripture.
Read online: Internet Archive · Google Books. Both are free scans of the University of California copy (684 pages).
A Collection of Sublime Thoughts by Modern Prophets, compiled by John R. Eardley, a leader of the Montana church after Williams’s death, and printed in San Francisco by Joseph A. Dove in 1899. It shows how the movement kept and passed on its prophetic writings a generation after Morris.
Read online: Internet Archive.
Anderson, a sociologist at the University of Montana, built the book on Morrisite papers found in a Deer Lodge attic and on the records of Andrew Hendrikson, who presided over the Montana church from 1886 to 1921, kept by his family. His research files are the core of the Morrisite collection at USU.
The 2010 edition is in print in paperback and as an ebook. Please buy it from Utah State University Press, an imprint of the University Press of Colorado; buying from the publisher supports keeping the book in print.
Forscutt (1834–1903) was clerk of the Morrisite First Council and an apostle in Morris's church, and later a minister in the Reorganized Church. He wrote about the movement at least twice.
Further reading: Eric Paul Rogers, “Mark Hill Forscutt: Mormon Missionary, Morrisite Apostle, RLDS Minister,” John Whitmer Historical Association Journal 21 (2001): 69–100. Author’s copy (Zenodo)