Joseph: Tarred and Feathered

Mormon Series

Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer, 2003, Excerpts

One of the first women rumored to have been intimate with Joseph outside his marriage to Emma was Marinda Nancy Johnson, whom he met in 1831. In the summer of 1831 the Johnson family took Joseph and Emma Smith into their home as boarders, and soon thereafter the prophet purportedly bedded young Marinda. Unfortunately, the liaison apparently did not go unnoticed, and a gang of indignant Ohioans – including a number of Mormons – resolved to castrate Joseph so that he would be disinclined to commit such acts of depravity in the future.

According to Luke Johnson, Marinda’s older brother, on March 24, 1832, “a mob of forty or fifty” came to the Johnson house, forced their way into Joseph’s room. Having lost the nerve to follow through with their castration plans, the mob severely beat Joseph, covered his naked body with tar, plastered him with feathers from a down pillow, and then abandoned him in the woods.