“Of course.” But his question surprised her. Brother Knight and Nathan Steed were such close friends, she had supposed he might have come to make sure Matthew was surviving all right without his family.
Matthew started away. “I’ll see to Rachel, Jessie.”
“No,” Newel blurted. “Please stay, Matthew.” He took a quick breath. “You’re kind of the head of the house now. I think you need to hear this too.”
Puzzled, Matthew nodded and stayed where he was. Jessica was perplexed too. She peered at Newel more closely, which did nothing to relax him.
“I come at the behest of another,” he started. “I mean, I’m acting as his representative. He felt it improper to approach you directly.”
One eyebrow came up and Jessica’s perplexity deepened. “And who might that be?”
“Brother John Griffith. Do you know him?”
“Yes, we have met.” John Griffith had come to Clay County a short time before the Saints had started to move north. Several weeks after Jessie had moved to Shoal Creek, he too came to Haun’s Mill. He spent almost a month in the settlement with one of the families before coming over to Far West, where job opportunities were better. But that had been during her illness, and she had seen little of him or anyone else. He was a recent convert. She also remembered that he had lost his wife on the journey out from Indiana. He had two boys, both under five years of age.
“He’s a good man,” Newel continued. “An honest man and a hard worker.”
“Yes, that is how I remember him.”
“Good,” Newel said with obvious relief. “He’ll be pleased to hear that.”
Jessica started.
Why would that please him?
But she had no chance to finish the thought.
“Brother Griffith knows this is a most unusual way to approach this. But he knew you were leaving first thing in the morning. He wanted you to have some time to consider it.”
“Consider what?” she managed in a small voice.
Newel looked a little startled, as if he thought he had already made that clear. “He would like to propose marriage to you.”
Chapter Eighteen
On January sixth, 1837, four days after the meeting in which the nature and the name of the Kirtland Safety Society were changed, the Kirtland Safety Society Anti-Banking Company began circulating its notes. Brother Jacob Bump, a former pugilist and recent convert, was the first person to receive the newly printed notes. Joseph came and declared to all present that if they would give heed to the Lord’s commandments to be honest and faithful, all would be well. Others quickly followed in buying up the notes, and soon considerable amounts of the new currency were in circulation.
But almost immediately trouble began to rear its head. Other banks in the Western Reserve publicly announced that they would not accept the new notes as valid currency. Several newspapers, some vociferously anti-Mormon, called the new notes nothing more than “rags.” When merchants in Kirtland refused to accept them in legal trade, the price of the notes began to fall. Rumors started to fly that Grandison Newell, one of Kirtland’s wealthiest businessmen and a bitter opponent of the Prophet Joseph, was organizing the opposition. Non–Latter-day Saints began to buy up the notes at reduced prices, then brought them to the bank and demanded full payment in specie. Quickly a speculator’s market in the notes began to form, and the bills were traded back and forth with no one knowing exactly what they were worth.
* * *
On the morning of January twenty-first, the
Painesville Telegraph
, one of the most virulent newspapers in its opposition to the Church, was distributed in Kirtland. The lead article announced that because the Church was violating the law and operating a bank without a charter, it was illegal to trade the notes of the Kirtland Safety Society. Anyone caught doing so would be heavily fined by the state. It wasn’t true, but as is often the case, truth was the loser in the contest with emotion. The news raced through Kirtland like a mighty wind.
* * *
Nathan and Benjamin returned to the house just after noon of the twenty-third of January. Both looked exhausted. Lydia had come to wait with Mary Ann for the news. Rebecca sat with them, searching the men’s faces anxiously. Young Joshua was playing a game with Emily on the table beside them. Little Nathan was asleep.
Lydia took one look at her father-in-law’s face and turned to her son. “Joshua, will you take Emily out for a few minutes? You can play in the bedroom for a while, but not the one where Nathan is asleep.”
Sensing something beyond his comprehension, without a word Joshua took Emily’s hand and they left. Benjamin took off his coat and flung it in the direction of the coatrack. It missed, but he completely ignored it. “Two weeks!” he burst out. “Just barely over two weeks.”
“What?” Mary Ann asked in alarm.
“They’re in business two short weeks, and the system collapses.”
Lydia turned to Nathan, her eyes wide and questioning.
He shucked off his coat wearily. “Sidney announced it just about an hour ago now. I tried to stop them. Get them to wait for Joseph. But they wouldn’t.”
“What?”
“They’ve suspended all payments in specie. The cash reserves have been seriously threatened.”
* * *
On February tenth, another application for a bank charter for the Kirtland Safety Society was considered in the Ohio Senate. In this second application, the proposal for capital stock was reduced to three hundred thousand dollars. Along with six Church members (including Joseph Smith, Sidney Rigdon, and Oliver Cowdery), five influential non-Mormons attached their names to the application. In spite of that, the application was denied. Had the charter been granted, it would have accomplished two significant things. It would have done much to restore confidence in the bank and its legality. It also would have put Joseph and the other officers of the Society on firm legal ground and eliminated their vulnerability to lawsuits. But the charter wasn’t granted, and that meant that in the eyes of the state of Ohio the Kirtland Safety Society Anti-Banking Company was not a legal banking institution.
* * *
In the early spring of 1837 the United States was fully caught up in an artificial boom economy, and Kirtland was right in the mainstream of it. In northern Ohio, land prices were rising at a dizzying rate. One piece of prime development land sold for ten thousand dollars. Four or five weeks later it sold again for twice that. Two days later the new owner was offered twenty-five thousand dollars and turned it down with a sniff of disdain.
In tandem with these dazzling opportunities for profit came the cheap money of the Kirtland Safety Society. Even the poorest were able to acquire some of the heavily devalued notes. One brother bought ten thousand dollars’ worth of stock for $52.50. Suddenly people were “rich,” and it was heady wine indeed. Borrowing heavily from the bank, many people bought more and more land in order to turn around and sell it for huge gains. With so little “real money” and so much paper available, inflation—already running wild—approached astronomical amounts. Prices on food and other commodities rose as much as a hundred percent in a few months. Unfortunately there was no corresponding rise in wages. Men who held thousands of dollars’ worth of stock, land deeds, or bank notes couldn’t purchase enough food to feed their families.
Instant “wealth” and crushing poverty. These were common neighbors in Kirtland by mid-March of 1837.
* * *
On May tenth, just sixty-seven days after the inauguration of Martin Van Buren as the nation’s eighth president, the banks in New York City suspended payments to stop disastrous runs on their funds. Other northern city banks followed suit the next day. In what would later come to be known as the Panic of 1837, the conflagration spread like a prairie fire before a whistling wind. Eight hundred banks closed their doors and suspended payments before the end of the month. The U.S. government lost over nine million dollars in deposits held in some of its pet banks. Not all of these banks would fail, but during the panic money became extremely scarce. Creditors were no longer able to extend credit or postpone dates when loans were due. Prices—especially land prices—plummeted. What had been paper fortunes the day before were now worth less than the paper on which they were printed. Financial institutions found their bank notes worthless, irredeemable for even the most minimal purchases.
America was reeling. The infant nation, barely half a century old, was experiencing its first major financial crash and hurtling full tilt into its first full-scale economic depression.
Chapter Nineteen
Jessica Roundy Steed had only one Sunday dress, and it was showing signs of wear. Across the shoulder blades, where the dress pulled when she leaned over, the fabric was shiny and thin. The lace trim on the belt that tied at the back was starting to look frayed.
It didn’t really surprise Matthew to see the dress in such a condition; he just hadn’t paid attention to it before. He calculated quickly. Nathan had brought Jessica and Rachel back with him from Missouri when Zion’s Camp had been disbanded in the summer of 1834. It had been only a few days later that Matthew’s mother took Jessica and her daughter down to the Newel K. Whitney store and bought them both new dresses. That was the same dress that Jessica now wore, which meant that the dress was not quite three years old. But in a wagon, large wardrobes—even if Jessica had had one—were an unacceptable luxury. So for the last year it had been Jessica’s only good dress.
But worn dress or no, Jessica looked as lovely as Matthew could ever remember seeing her. Her hair was a light brown, and she had always worn it straight and cut square at the neck. But a few months earlier Matthew and Rachel had teased her into letting it grow longer. Now it reached just slightly below her shoulders. She had brushed it until it gleamed, and it almost glowed in the subdued sunlight coming through the open cabin door.
Earlier that morning Matthew had gone walking along Shoal Creek until he found a patch of wild roses. He had cut several, carefully whittled the thorns off the branches, and brought them to her. It would be the only present he would be able to give her on this day. As she turned to face him, he was pleased to see that she had pinned one of the flowers in her hair. It was an appealing effect. It not only made her eyes seem a richer, deeper brown but also heightened the natural color of her cheeks.
Matthew looked at his sister-in-law more closely. There was so much color in her face that for a moment he wondered if she had somehow been hiding a supply of rouge from him all these months. But finally he saw that Jessica, who rarely showed any emotion, was nearly bursting with excitement.
Rachel was standing by Matthew’s side. She too was in her only Sunday dress, a white and blue cotton gingham with little bows on the front. Her hair, half again as long as her mother’s, was pulled back away from her face by a blue bow and hung down her back in long, dark brown ringlets. She looked up at her mother in wonder. “Oh, Mama, you look beautiful.”
Pleased, Jessica did a small curtsy, then twirled around once, laughing softly in her self-consciousness. “Why, thank you, Rachel.”
“You really do, Jessie,” Matthew said. “You look lovely.”
“Thank you for the flowers, Matthew. That was so sweet of you.”
He nodded, then reached down and picked up the two bags she had packed the night before. As he did so, the smile on her face slowly faded and she looked around the cabin. It was plain, almost Spartan, in its furnishings, but it had been home to her and her daughter. Now she was leaving it.
She turned to Matthew. “Am I doing right, Matthew?” she half whispered.
“Of course.”
She reached up and touched her face. “I’m too old to be a bride,” she murmured.
He laughed right out loud. “You’re only thirty-two, for heaven’s sake. Now, if you were thirty-three, I’d have to agree with you.”
It was the perfect response, this not taking her seriously, and she slapped him playfully. “But I
will
be thirty-three in just over a week.” She laughed now too. “You’re hopeless, you know that, don’t you?” Then she sobered again. “I feel bad, leaving you here alone. You’re still only sixteen.”
“Seventeen in two more months,” he corrected her. He lowered the bags to the floor again. “Look, Jessie,” he said earnestly, “I’ll be fine. I want to show Pa that I’m man enough to run my own farm.”
“You are that, Matthew. You’ve been a marvelous help.” She smiled warmly at him, thinking of what it had meant to her to have him with her and Rachel these past eight months. Then suddenly the reality of leaving hit her again—this time with even greater force. Her face fell as she looked around for one last time. “What am I doing, Matthew?” she whispered. “I barely know this man.”
Matthew turned to his niece, who was looking up at her mother with sudden concern. “Rachel, you go make sure Old Red isn’t pulling those reins loose from the hitching post, will you, hon? You can take the smaller bag out and put it in the wagon.”
Pleased to be entrusted with such a task, Rachel picked up the carpetbag and lugged it out of the door. Matthew watched until she was out to the horse, then he swung back around. He gave Jessica a stern look. “He’s a good man, Jessie.”
“So you have no reservations?”
His mind started a little at that. It had been April sixth when Newel Knight had shocked them both with the news that John Griffith, a widower with two young boys, was proposing marriage to Jessica. Twice in the seven weeks since that time, Matthew had driven her to Far West. Once he had served as “chaperon” when Brother Griffith came to Haun’s Mill and spent three days in the village. He had watched with mixed emotions as the gentle, quiet man courted his sister-in-law. At first, he had been filled with questions and concerns. Jessica had suffered so much, seen so much heartache. What if the marriage didn’t work out? Was this just prelude to more sorrow? What if this man didn’t treat her as she deserved? What if Rachel was given second place behind his own two natural children? What if? What if?
Then gradually his doubts had vanished. Part of that was due to his having come to know that John Griffith was a good man—quiet, but decent and filled with integrity. But more important, Matthew had seen Jessica change. She sang to herself, laughed right out at times, and sometimes her eyes were positively radiant. He would miss her and Rachel fiercely, but it was Jessica’s time for happiness, and he wasn’t about to stand in the way. “No, Jessie,” he said firmly. “I have no reservations.”