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| Amasa Mason Lyman |
In Ohio he met the Prophet Joseph Smith who taught him more
about the gospel and called him in August to travel as a missionary for the
church. In a very few days he set forth on his career of preaching which
was to occupy most of his time for the next thirty years. His whole
hearted effort for the Church was to leave him but infrequent and uncertain
intervals to provide for his own comforts. He was to be homeless and destitute,
a wandering sufferer and an exile with the Saints.
He went through the fiery trials of Zion's Camp, and through
the fury of the Missouri persecutions. With the Prophet Joseph Smith he
was sentenced with others to be shot at sun‑rise in Far West, and with them he
lay in chains and torture on the bare floor of a Missouri jail. He bore a
heavy part of the hardships heaped on the Saints in their efforts to establish
themselves in Illinois, and he was one of the objects of mob‑hatred when they
were expelled from the state.
In 1843 he was chosen by the Prophet Joseph to serve as one
of his counselors, and after the prophet's death he was sustained as a member
of the Quorum of Apostles. These prominent positions drew upon him
the fire of the enemy and loaded him with heavy responsibility for the welfare
of the Church, leaving him still less time to provide for his own; though now,
with his increasing family, and seven wives looking to him for spiritual and
temporal guidance, this matter of giving his whole time to the Church was even
more of a sacrifice than it had been before.
He with his wife Maria Louisa was among the first company of
Pioneers to Utah in 1847. Returning to the Missouri that autumn, he
filled a mission to the Southern States soliciting means for the destitute
Saints, and in the summer of 1848 he came as the president of a company across
the plains again, bringing his family with them to the Valley of The Great Salt
Lake.
In 1849 he was called on a mission to California and after
serving in that wild borderland for more than a year, he was called to take his
families there with a company and start a colony. Assisted by his co‑laborer
in the Quorum, Charles C. Rich, he founded and presided over the colony at San
Bernardino, California, till about the time of the coming of Johnston's Army
when the Saints in the outlying colonies were called back to the main body of
the Church, and the California colony was abandoned. During these
troubled times Amasa carried special responsibilities entailing upon him great
hardship and exposure, and as soon as the matter was settled, he and Elder
Rich spent two years presiding over the European Mission.
His eight families, living at various places from Parowan in
the south to Davis County in the north of the territory, and developing into a
tribe of imposing numbers, impressed him deeply with his responsibility as a
father, and the part he must take in determining the quality of this important
multitude. About this time President Young called him to make a home in
Fillmore, and he resolved to gather all his posterity to that place. In
the thirty years of hardship and tribulation since he began sharing the common
lot of the Latter‑Day Saints he had exerted himself so often to the limit of
his endurance, that he had been frequently prostrated and suffering and
helpless for weeks at a time. In his later years, besides much suffering
from illness, he had several accidents and other misfortunes which filled his
latter years with sorrow and suffering.
While in England presiding over the European Mission he
delivered a discourse on the nature of the mission of Jesus Christ. This
was printed in the Millennial Star, No. 4, Vol. 2,4, Sat. 5 Apr 1862. He
was reprimanded by the other brethren in the First Presidency and the Council
of the Twelve for this and other sermons in which he taught that the death and
atonement of Jesus Christ was of no force. In the Millennial Star, Vol
29, Page 199, printed 30 Jan 1867 there was printed a retraction and confession
of error in which he begged forgiveness of the Church and the people who may
have listened to discourses along this line. He made the statement,
"I do most honestly‑ and firmly believe in the sacrifice and atonement
made by Jesus Christ in opening up the way of salvation to mankind, and without
his death, we would all have been lost. Everything that I have said that would
deny this great truth is false, and has a tendency to destroy in the minds of
people the value of redemption." Nevertheless, later that year,
in October 1867, he was dropped from the Quorum of the Twelve.
Later, in 1870, he was excommunicated from the church. There was nothing
vengeful nor punitive in the action taken against him. It was done by
kind and appreciative brethren who had to maintain the basic principals upon
which the church is founded. Yet, it was to him, the greatest shock of
his life.
There is every indication that during his last year of life
he was contemplating very seriously righting himself with the church. Years
later, 12 Jan 1901 in the Salt Lake Temple he had all his former blessings
restored.
Of the numerous Lyman family in New England, he was the only
one with courage to accept the gospel and undertake a work unprecedented among
all his ancestors. As the one who had been chosen and appointed in the
former world for this difficult part of the mutual plan, he stood up gamely
with his burden till its weight bore him staggering to the to the earth, and he
died while a comparatively young man. His heroic effort deserves the loving and
sincere gratitude of the thousands who have his blood in their veins, a great
family group scattered in many states and some in distant countries.
Amasa Lyman bridged the gap between generations groping in
darkness and other generations, his fortunate posterity who, by his
resolute efforts, were born in the light of the gospel. This
privilege of being born to hear and know the gospel from infancy, is by far the
most splendid legacy left to his children. Those among them who enjoy it
to the greatest degree, are deeply grateful for what comes into their lives as
a result of the long labors and sacrifices of Amasa M. Lyman.
By Albert R. Lyman
From the website of: Amasa Mason Lyman Historical and Educational Society
For detailed history of Amasa Mason Lyman, see Vol 1.
"Lyman Family History" published by Melvin A. Lyman, M.D.
Delta, Utah
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