Joseph E. Johnson (Mormon)

Joseph Ellis Johnson (April 28, 1817 – December 17, 1882) was an American Mormon newspaper proprietor, politician, and businessman.

Johnson was born at Pomfret, Chautauqua County, New York. He moved to Kirtland, Ohio, in 1832 and was baptized into the Latter Day Saint church in 1833. He taught school in Springfield, Illinois in 1840 and went to Nauvoo, Illinois, a center for the Latter Day Saints, in 1840. There he married Harriet Snider on October 6, 1840; the marriage was performed by Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter Day Saint movement.

Johnson accompanied Joseph and Hyrum Smith on their way to Carthage Jail the day before the Smiths were murdered. Johnson was taken prisoner when the mob entered Nauvoo.

After the majority of Latter Day Saints abandoned Nauvoo, Johnson went to Kanesville, Iowa, in 1848, where he built the first house in Pottawattamie County, Iowa. Johnson was postmaster at Council Bluffs for five years. In this position, Johnson obtained the change of the settlement's name from Kanesville to Council Bluffs. He was a member of the first city council for several years. He established the Council Bluffs Bugle in 1852; the Bugle was vocal in supporting the establishment of Omaha as the capital of Nebraska Territory.

Johnson opened the first store Omaha and sent the first train of goods to the Cherry Creek mines in Denver, Colorado. In 1854, he published the Omaha Arrow, the first newspaper published in Nebraska, and the same year accompanied the first party of explorers for a railroad crossing on the Missouri River and Loupe Fork of the Platte River. Johnson wrote the first article published favoring the North Platte route for the Pacific Railroad.

Johnson crossed the plains to Utah Territory and back in 1850. In 1857, he started the Crescent City Oracle and laid out Crescent, Iowa. In 1858. he published the Council Bluffs Press. In 1858 to 1861 he published The Huntsman's Echo at Wood River, Nebraska.

In 1861, Johnson moved to Utah Territory. He traveled in the pioneer company of Sixtus E. Johnson, which had about 200 people. In 1863, he established the Farmer's Oracle at Spring Lake Villa, Utah County. In 1864–65, he removed to St. George and began a supply garden and nursery. In 1868–69 he published Our Dixie Times, afterward the Rio Virgen Times [sic]. In 1870, Johnson began publishing the Utah Pomologist and Gardener as a monthly. In 1876, he went to Silver Reef and built a store and printing office, but sold part of office before the newspaper was fairly started. In 1879 it was burned out, with others. He restored the store immediately, but on a larger scale.

Johnson was a colorful figure in the early Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In response to a presentation on plural marriage given by Brian Hales at a FAIR Conference in 2012, D. Michael Quinn wrote:

"Using a slang vulgarity for sexual intercourse, her [Mary Heron Snider's] son-in-law Joseph E. Johnson privately told a group of devout Mormons in 1850: 'He was familiar with the first frigging that was done in his house with his mother in law by Joseph.' Johnson said this during a council meeting that was deciding whether to excommunicate him for impregnating one of Apostle Lorenzo Snow's plural wives whom Johnson now wanted to marry. She loved him, not the apostle. "A Church court in Kanesville, Iowa, had already decided that 'his priesthood was required to be laid down [i.e., he was dis-fellowshipped] until he came here' to Salt Lake City. I cannot take seriously the suggestion by Hales that this Church court's official minutes misquoted Johnson's words. First, by any reasonable logic, who would assume that any LDS clerk introduced a crudely sexual term into a non-sexual remark or into a remark that only implied sex? Second, by 1850, the LDS Church's clerks routinely used stenographic shorthand to accurately record such meetings, especially when Brigham Young participated (as he did in this one)."

Hales stated that he believes the Johnson account:

"I think he’s telling the truth. I believe it. I'm willing to make this assumption. But, the next assumptions you are willing to make are very important. Because if you assume there was no plural sealing, that Joseph is just involved with Mary Heron, without any kind of a marriage, then it’s adultery. If you want to assume there was a plural sealing and that she was also having conjugal relations with her legal husband, then it's sexual polyandry and this is what Michael Quinn is promoting and believes happened."

Two of Johnson's sisters were married to Joseph Smith as plural wives: Delcena in 1842, and Almera in 1843. In the spring of 1843, Smith proposed to Johnson's 16-year-old daughter Esther, but she declined.

In 1882, Johnson moved at his church's call, this time to settle what would become Tempe, Arizona. He died in Tempe and was buried at the City of Mesa Cemetery.

External links

• Joseph E. Johnson at Find a Grave
• Biography on Nebraska State Historical Marker, at ancestry.com (text) (photo)
• Bassett, Samuel Clay. History of Buffalo County and Its People. Vol I. Chicago: C.S. Clarke Pub. Co., 1916. Chapter V at ancestry.com.