June 13, 2011 • 17 mins
In 1850, James Strang was crowned king of Michigan's Beaver Island. He got the opportunity to lead after meeting Joseph Smith and converting to Mormonism. After Smith's death, Strang tried to step in as his successor. Tune in to learn what happened next.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast
I'm to blame a chocolate boarding And and when we
put up the call for listeners to send in their
favorite royal stories a few weeks ago, one of them
(00:21):
really stood out from the rest because it involved an
American monarch. We don't have those, no, not at all,
which is why we have to talk about people like
our King of Pop, Michael Jackson, or even the Kennedy's.
I mean, they might have a slightly better claim to it, right.
But listener Colleen shared a story her grandmother used to
tell her about her grandfather years ago. Colleen's grandfather, you see,
(00:43):
was of Irish descent, but born on a place called
Beaver Island, Michigan, and her grandma told a story of
how the Irish fisherman there went to war with the
King of Beaver Island and eventually claimed the island for
the Irish settlers. So it turns out, while Colleen's grandmother
probably took some create of license in there with the
details of her story that she told, there actually was
(01:04):
a man named James Strang who had himself crowned the
King of Beaver Island in the best parts are true, Yeah, absolutely.
And what's more, he set up a substantial community there
of about people over which he had really absolute authority,
and he even managed to get elected to the Michigan
House of Representatives, yeah, which is a more conventional authority
(01:26):
for you. But we're gonna be talking about how Strang
got to this place in the first place, how somebody
became king, how he managed to take over Beaver Island,
and how his kingdom worked, because if this is an
American kingdom, we've got to go into the details there,
and we're gonna talk about all of that stuff. But
first we're going to take a look at how this
(01:48):
very unconventional monarch got his start. He was born in
eighteen thirteen, and his name was James Jesse Strang before
it was King of Beaver Island. Yeah. He grew up
on a farm. And even though he's often described as
having been frail and broody or moody, you see a
lot of adjectives like that used for him in his
(02:08):
early years. He was apparently really ambitious from the start.
By age eighteen, he was a school teacher, and a
few years later he became a practicing lawyer. He also
served as a postmaster, a real estate speculator, and he
owned and operated a weekly newspaper. Yeah, but he had
higher aspirations than all of that, and according to his diary,
he was hoping to eventually entertain some sort of royal match.
(02:34):
According to an article by Bill Gilbert and The Smithsonian,
in one diary entry, Strength said quote, my mind has
always been filled with dreams of royalty and power. I've
spent the day in trying to contrive some plan of
obtaining in marriage the heir to the English crown, who,
of course, at this time, was young Queen Victoria. I
(02:55):
really want to know what his plans are there. I
don't even know how you started to come up with
a pane like up. And though he obviously held on
to these ideals to some extent, he did give up
on the idea of Mary and Victoria and instead married
a Mary Purse, the sister of his friend, at age
twenty three, and in eighteen forty three they moved to
southern Wisconsin, where Strang started practicing law there. Yeah, and
this is where String's story starts to take a major turn. Up.
(03:19):
Until this point, he's ambitious guy some royal dreams. But
even though he had previously described himself as an atheist,
Strang started to take a really strong interest in the
Mormon religion, perhaps as a way to improve his position,
And he even met the Mormon leader at the time,
Joseph Smith, in eighteen forty four in Illinois, and soon
(03:41):
after was converted and even became a church elder. Really
rapidly in fact, and here's where we should mention that
Strang had pretty much always been a powerful public speaker
ever since he was a young man, and Smith was
apparently really impressed by these particular skills, so he charged
Strang with founding a branch of the church in linked
in Wisconsin. Shortly after that, though, Smith was killed by
(04:03):
a mob on June eighteen forty four, and who should
step up ready to claim the place as his rightful successor.
But Strang, he was thirty one at the time and
had been baptized to Mormon only four months before. That was,
like I said, a very rapid rise in the church,
and he had some evidence to back him up. He
wasn't just saying he should be in charge. He produced
(04:24):
a letter containing Joseph Smith's own blessing for Strang to
take over as six as his successor. But Brigham Young,
of course and other members of the church didn't go
along with that. They accused Strang of forgery, and of
course Young ended up being the one who led the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints. But string
did end up with a small following of his own.
(04:47):
He was charismatic enough to pull that much off. Yeah,
And by September eighteen forty five, about four hundred Mormons
who would come to be known as Strangites had followed
him to southern Wisconsin and Strang's at the next couple
of years proselytizing and preaching, and eventually he unearthed some
mysterious brass plates that essentially corroborated this idea that he
(05:08):
was chosen by God to take over for Smith. And
these plates also became an essential part of the Stringite scripture. Yeah,
so a strange twist in his story. But by eighteen
forty seven, Strang had scoped out a new location for
his his followers. It was Beaver Island, and he decided
that God wanted him to bring the Stringites there. And
(05:30):
it's unclear exactly why exactly how that happened. At the time,
he referred to having received some sort of vision from
God or some directive, like a direct order to move
them to this island. But it's also said that he
spotted the island while he was traveling by ship the
year before, and it probably seemed like a nice place
to go, the ideal place to to shelter your people
(05:53):
from outside influences. It was. It was a small island,
and it was twenty five miles off the mainland, and
like ms again. Yeah, but regardless of the reasons why,
by eighteen forty eight, String had formed a colony there,
and by the summer of eighteen fifty he announced that
he had been divinely directed to become king, and nobody
there really opposed him. So on July eighteen fifty String
(06:16):
was coornated and at the time he was wearing a
red night shirt like robe which was decorated with stripes
of white flannel, and his throne was a chair frame
padded with moss, and his crown was made of gilded
metal and paper. Yeah, so it seems like a low
key king, not too fancy with his his vestments at least. Yeah,
(06:38):
but he still had absolute power over his subjects. He
made all the rules, whether of a political or moral nature.
He could essentially make laws about anything from where you
could live to what you wore, and even who you married.
For example, he legalized polygamy, even though he had been
opposed to it as a Mormon. Yeah, he apparently made
this decision right around the time, coincidently that he met
(07:00):
a beautiful young eighteen year old named Elvira Field, a
recent convert to his faith, and he married her in secret,
I think before he actually came out with his new
feelings about polygamy. He married her about a year before
and sort of traveled around and dressed her actually as
a sixteen year old boy just as an aside, and
(07:21):
introduced her as his nephew, Charles J. Douglas. That's really awkward.
He eventually did come out with it, though, and his
first wife married didn't like that much. She and her
children actually left the area after that. In general, though,
he really didn't get a lot of objections to his
rules from his strang Eite followers. But not everybody was
so happy with this setup. Yeah, not at all, or
(07:42):
with the strang Eit's presence on the island in general.
That's because there were already settlers on the island before
Strang showed up, mostly Irish Catholic fishermen and traders and
their families, and they weren't at all happy with the
Mormon colonists moving in and in some cases stealing their land,
um at the very least just kind of interrupting their
own scene, and it led to a lot of violence
(08:05):
between the two groups. There were buildings that were burned down, gunfights, beatings,
and this might be the war that listener Colleen's grandmother
was talking about. But according to the Beaver Island Historical Society,
the conflict eventually led to something called the War of
Whiskey Point, which the Mormons won by firing a cannon
at a gang of their opponents, and more and more
(08:27):
non Mormons, who were known as gentiles left the island.
They just gave up and got out of there eventually,
and they were increasingly outnumbered, and by eighteen fifty two
they were pretty much gone. Word of this violence did
get out, though, and the government eventually did intervene. In
May of eighteen fifty one, President Fillmore sent a company
(08:47):
of marshals and the Navy's first iron hold warship than
USS Michigan to Beaver Island, who a restaurant on fourteen charges,
including trespass on public lands, counterfeiting, and obstructing the U. S. Mail.
But after a month long trial, Strong was acquitted of
all charges, mostly because some of the prosecution's testimony was discredited. So, yeah,
(09:08):
you'd think that Strong would be pretty happy that he
had gotten away with it. That he was. He was
free and victorious. At that point, he pretty much considered
his kingdom separate from the United States. He figured his
laws were above those of the not only the country,
but the state, and at least as far as his
island was concerned. As far as Beaver Island went, yeah,
he wasn't having jurisdiction over the rest of the country.
(09:31):
But then he did make a move to increase his
sphere of influence, and it happened a day before election
day in eighteen fifty two, he announced his candidacy for
state representative. And because Beaver Island was the most populous
community in Northern Michigan at the time Strang was he
(09:52):
got an easy win. He was easily able to win
the seat and encourage his supporters to get out and
vote for him. Yeah. Not everyone just accepted it right away, though.
According to an article by Conan Brian Eaton in the
Wisconsin Magazine of History, his opponents really tried to prevent
him from taking this office. But once he did, people
were actually pretty impressed by his skills as a legislator.
(10:14):
Put those old lawyer skills to use. Yeah, the debating skills,
public speaking. Yeah, that had so impressed Smith earlier also
impressed his peers. Yeah. But he also used this opportunity
as state legislator to expand the reach of his religion
in his kingdom. In a sense, even during his time
in office he was reelected in eighteen fifty four, he
(10:37):
managed to extend the reach of these Strangite colonies to
other counties in Michigan. Yeah, and he also worked all
the while to recruit new subjects for his territories. According
to Gilbert's article, the state census of eighteen fifty four
puts Beaver Island and surrounding islands at two thousand, six
hundred and eight permanent residents, making it the largest community
(10:59):
in northern Michigan at the time. It's amazing no one
was threatened by him by this power and his high position. Well,
it's funny you should say that, because I think some
people were. They were intimidated in the sense that they
didn't want to get on his bad side because he
did have this huge contingency. Yeah, I mean, one wrong
word could get all these people voting against you. Yeah.
(11:20):
So you know, that's that's kind of a dark underside
of Strang's kingdom. But he did do some good too,
And we've we've got to mention that while we're talking
about his reign, even though there was violence and shady
dealings involved, he didn't do all that. For one thing,
Beaver Island became quite prosperous thanks in part two exports
(11:41):
like wood, fish and potatoes, which together had an annual
value of about three thousand dollars, which was a lot
of money at the time. And settlers there also created
this network of good roads. And they also made strides
towards improving relations with neighboring Native Americans by feeding them,
building a school for them, and accepting them into their church.
(12:03):
African Americans, by the way, we're also welcome to And
according to Eaton's article, this seemed to be a really
sincere benevolent interest of strengths, which I found to be
really intriguing, concidering. He seems so politically motivated in other aspects, definitely,
But because we talked about those good things, are also
going to go into a little more detail about the
(12:23):
not so good side of of Beaver Island and of
Strang's rule there. But during his eight year stint on
Beaver Island, he continued to keep really tight control over
every single aspect of his subjects lives, and that ultimately
seems to be what led to his downfall. Kind of
reminded us of the Oneida community that we talked about
(12:44):
maybe a month or so ago. Once you get too
personal for your followers, they seem to ultimately rebel. Yeah.
For example, he required that all of his subjects build
their homes and one of the island's villages, even farmers
who had acres and acres of land to tend to,
because he was afraid that isolation, if you were out
in your hundred and sixty acres of farmland, would cause
(13:07):
people to shirk their religious and civic duties. Okay, but
at least that's kind of like your classic Versailles sort
of model on a small scale. It's this next point
that really sort of did him in. In eighteen fifty three,
he made a law that women should dress in knee
linked smocks worn o her pantaloons, because he thought that
(13:27):
the typical dress of women at the time was impractical
and it was unhealthy. And most of his women followers
went along with that. They were okay switching to the pantaloons,
but a few, including Mrs Thomas Bedford, refused to comply.
She she wouldn't wear the new styles, and as a result,
her husband received thirty nine lashes with a willow whip
(13:50):
and became obsessed, absolutely obsessed with getting revenge on his king. Yeah,
and he started conspiring with Alexander Wentworth, who also had
a beef with the king. It's kind of unclear why.
Maybe also because his wife wouldn't comply with the dress code.
Maybe he had been punished for some other reasons too,
but regardless, the two of them started conspiring with a
(14:12):
couple of other rebels who encouraged them and supplied them
with pistols, and on June six, eighteen fifty six, Bedford
and Wentworth ambush Strang at St. James wharf. They shot
him twice in the head and once in his left
side and spine, and miraculously Strang survived the attack and
lived for ten days after that, but he refused to
(14:34):
name a successor, and panic really started almost as soon
as he as he was attacked. He was taken to
his parents home in Wisconsin, and he died there on
July nine, eighteen fifty six, which was six years and
a day after his coronation. Yeah, and as for Bedford
and Wentworth, they were brought to trial, but they were
(14:55):
only fined a dollar twenty five for court costs. Yeah,
and I think he said so people considered them heroes.
Even that's true rebels, I guess. But strength kingdom did
not last. It did not live beyond Strang himself. It
dissolved pretty quickly, and some of the residents left on
their own immediately. As I mentioned a minute ago, right
(15:15):
after he was shot, things started disintegrating, and for those
who didn't get out on their own, a lot of
them were herded onto ships by armed groups of non
Mormons who stormed the island headed towards random destinations. They
didn't know where they were going exactly, and a lot
of former Strangites just rejoined the general population after that
(15:35):
when they ended up wherever they ended up, and they
became members of other churches. UM. As of the late nineties,
there were only about three hundred practicing Strangites still around,
but there are still some around. Yeah. And as for
Beaver Island, once Strength's Kingdom was gone, the Irish fishermen
came back. They started to show up. A lot of
them came from County Donegal in Ireland, and eventually some
(15:58):
came to call this area America's Emerald Isle because it
had the look and it had the population, and Gaelic
was commonly spoken on the island until the nineteen thirties.
So that almost seems like too quiet and serene an
end for a podcast that has had some sort of
unusual stories in it. It's been a very unusual podcast. Yeah,
(16:20):
and I think the same island. Beaver Island continued to
have some sort of interesting characters and stories throughout its
history even after the Strangites left. UM. If you know
of any of them and would like to share them
with us, or if you have another personal story concerning
monarchs or anything else that you'd like to share, you
should hit us up at our email address, which is
(16:40):
History Podcast at how staff works dot com, or you
can look us up on Facebook or on Twitter at
miss in History. Yeah, most of our other selections we
picked for the Royalty contest involved mistaken identities of British royals.
They were pretty entertaining. And if you want to learn
any more about polygamy, one of the themes we talked
about today, we have an article on the website. You
(17:03):
can search for how Polygamy works by typing in polygamy
on our homepage at www dot how staff works dot com.
Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff
from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we
explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The
(17:25):
How Stuff Works iPhone app has a rise. Download it
today on iTunes.
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast
I'm to blame a chocolate boarding And and when we
put up the call for listeners to send in their
favorite royal stories a few weeks ago, one of them
(00:21):
really stood out from the rest because it involved an
American monarch. We don't have those, no, not at all,
which is why we have to talk about people like
our King of Pop, Michael Jackson, or even the Kennedy's.
I mean, they might have a slightly better claim to it, right.
But listener Colleen shared a story her grandmother used to
tell her about her grandfather years ago. Colleen's grandfather, you see,
(00:43):
was of Irish descent, but born on a place called
Beaver Island, Michigan, and her grandma told a story of
how the Irish fisherman there went to war with the
King of Beaver Island and eventually claimed the island for
the Irish settlers. So it turns out, while Colleen's grandmother
probably took some create of license in there with the
details of her story that she told, there actually was
(01:04):
a man named James Strang who had himself crowned the
King of Beaver Island in the best parts are true, Yeah, absolutely.
And what's more, he set up a substantial community there
of about people over which he had really absolute authority,
and he even managed to get elected to the Michigan
House of Representatives, yeah, which is a more conventional authority
(01:26):
for you. But we're gonna be talking about how Strang
got to this place in the first place, how somebody
became king, how he managed to take over Beaver Island,
and how his kingdom worked, because if this is an
American kingdom, we've got to go into the details there,
and we're gonna talk about all of that stuff. But
first we're going to take a look at how this
(01:48):
very unconventional monarch got his start. He was born in
eighteen thirteen, and his name was James Jesse Strang before
it was King of Beaver Island. Yeah. He grew up
on a farm. And even though he's often described as
having been frail and broody or moody, you see a
lot of adjectives like that used for him in his
(02:08):
early years. He was apparently really ambitious from the start.
By age eighteen, he was a school teacher, and a
few years later he became a practicing lawyer. He also
served as a postmaster, a real estate speculator, and he
owned and operated a weekly newspaper. Yeah, but he had
higher aspirations than all of that, and according to his diary,
he was hoping to eventually entertain some sort of royal match.
(02:34):
According to an article by Bill Gilbert and The Smithsonian,
in one diary entry, Strength said quote, my mind has
always been filled with dreams of royalty and power. I've
spent the day in trying to contrive some plan of
obtaining in marriage the heir to the English crown, who,
of course, at this time, was young Queen Victoria. I
(02:55):
really want to know what his plans are there. I
don't even know how you started to come up with
a pane like up. And though he obviously held on
to these ideals to some extent, he did give up
on the idea of Mary and Victoria and instead married
a Mary Purse, the sister of his friend, at age
twenty three, and in eighteen forty three they moved to
southern Wisconsin, where Strang started practicing law there. Yeah, and
this is where String's story starts to take a major turn. Up.
(03:19):
Until this point, he's ambitious guy some royal dreams. But
even though he had previously described himself as an atheist,
Strang started to take a really strong interest in the
Mormon religion, perhaps as a way to improve his position,
And he even met the Mormon leader at the time,
Joseph Smith, in eighteen forty four in Illinois, and soon
(03:41):
after was converted and even became a church elder. Really
rapidly in fact, and here's where we should mention that
Strang had pretty much always been a powerful public speaker
ever since he was a young man, and Smith was
apparently really impressed by these particular skills, so he charged
Strang with founding a branch of the church in linked
in Wisconsin. Shortly after that, though, Smith was killed by
(04:03):
a mob on June eighteen forty four, and who should
step up ready to claim the place as his rightful successor.
But Strang, he was thirty one at the time and
had been baptized to Mormon only four months before. That was,
like I said, a very rapid rise in the church,
and he had some evidence to back him up. He
wasn't just saying he should be in charge. He produced
(04:24):
a letter containing Joseph Smith's own blessing for Strang to
take over as six as his successor. But Brigham Young,
of course and other members of the church didn't go
along with that. They accused Strang of forgery, and of
course Young ended up being the one who led the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints. But string
did end up with a small following of his own.
(04:47):
He was charismatic enough to pull that much off. Yeah,
And by September eighteen forty five, about four hundred Mormons
who would come to be known as Strangites had followed
him to southern Wisconsin and Strang's at the next couple
of years proselytizing and preaching, and eventually he unearthed some
mysterious brass plates that essentially corroborated this idea that he
(05:08):
was chosen by God to take over for Smith. And
these plates also became an essential part of the Stringite scripture. Yeah,
so a strange twist in his story. But by eighteen
forty seven, Strang had scoped out a new location for
his his followers. It was Beaver Island, and he decided
that God wanted him to bring the Stringites there. And
(05:30):
it's unclear exactly why exactly how that happened. At the time,
he referred to having received some sort of vision from
God or some directive, like a direct order to move
them to this island. But it's also said that he
spotted the island while he was traveling by ship the
year before, and it probably seemed like a nice place
to go, the ideal place to to shelter your people
(05:53):
from outside influences. It was. It was a small island,
and it was twenty five miles off the mainland, and
like ms again. Yeah, but regardless of the reasons why,
by eighteen forty eight, String had formed a colony there,
and by the summer of eighteen fifty he announced that
he had been divinely directed to become king, and nobody
there really opposed him. So on July eighteen fifty String
(06:16):
was coornated and at the time he was wearing a
red night shirt like robe which was decorated with stripes
of white flannel, and his throne was a chair frame
padded with moss, and his crown was made of gilded
metal and paper. Yeah, so it seems like a low
key king, not too fancy with his his vestments at least. Yeah,
(06:38):
but he still had absolute power over his subjects. He
made all the rules, whether of a political or moral nature.
He could essentially make laws about anything from where you
could live to what you wore, and even who you married.
For example, he legalized polygamy, even though he had been
opposed to it as a Mormon. Yeah, he apparently made
this decision right around the time, coincidently that he met
(07:00):
a beautiful young eighteen year old named Elvira Field, a
recent convert to his faith, and he married her in secret,
I think before he actually came out with his new
feelings about polygamy. He married her about a year before
and sort of traveled around and dressed her actually as
a sixteen year old boy just as an aside, and
(07:21):
introduced her as his nephew, Charles J. Douglas. That's really awkward.
He eventually did come out with it, though, and his
first wife married didn't like that much. She and her
children actually left the area after that. In general, though,
he really didn't get a lot of objections to his
rules from his strang Eite followers. But not everybody was
so happy with this setup. Yeah, not at all, or
(07:42):
with the strang Eit's presence on the island in general.
That's because there were already settlers on the island before
Strang showed up, mostly Irish Catholic fishermen and traders and
their families, and they weren't at all happy with the
Mormon colonists moving in and in some cases stealing their land,
um at the very least just kind of interrupting their
own scene, and it led to a lot of violence
(08:05):
between the two groups. There were buildings that were burned down, gunfights, beatings,
and this might be the war that listener Colleen's grandmother
was talking about. But according to the Beaver Island Historical Society,
the conflict eventually led to something called the War of
Whiskey Point, which the Mormons won by firing a cannon
at a gang of their opponents, and more and more
(08:27):
non Mormons, who were known as gentiles left the island.
They just gave up and got out of there eventually,
and they were increasingly outnumbered, and by eighteen fifty two
they were pretty much gone. Word of this violence did
get out, though, and the government eventually did intervene. In
May of eighteen fifty one, President Fillmore sent a company
(08:47):
of marshals and the Navy's first iron hold warship than
USS Michigan to Beaver Island, who a restaurant on fourteen charges,
including trespass on public lands, counterfeiting, and obstructing the U. S. Mail.
But after a month long trial, Strong was acquitted of
all charges, mostly because some of the prosecution's testimony was discredited. So, yeah,
(09:08):
you'd think that Strong would be pretty happy that he
had gotten away with it. That he was. He was
free and victorious. At that point, he pretty much considered
his kingdom separate from the United States. He figured his
laws were above those of the not only the country,
but the state, and at least as far as his
island was concerned. As far as Beaver Island went, yeah,
he wasn't having jurisdiction over the rest of the country.
(09:31):
But then he did make a move to increase his
sphere of influence, and it happened a day before election
day in eighteen fifty two, he announced his candidacy for
state representative. And because Beaver Island was the most populous
community in Northern Michigan at the time Strang was he
(09:52):
got an easy win. He was easily able to win
the seat and encourage his supporters to get out and
vote for him. Yeah. Not everyone just accepted it right away, though.
According to an article by Conan Brian Eaton in the
Wisconsin Magazine of History, his opponents really tried to prevent
him from taking this office. But once he did, people
were actually pretty impressed by his skills as a legislator.
(10:14):
Put those old lawyer skills to use. Yeah, the debating skills,
public speaking. Yeah, that had so impressed Smith earlier also
impressed his peers. Yeah. But he also used this opportunity
as state legislator to expand the reach of his religion
in his kingdom. In a sense, even during his time
in office he was reelected in eighteen fifty four, he
(10:37):
managed to extend the reach of these Strangite colonies to
other counties in Michigan. Yeah, and he also worked all
the while to recruit new subjects for his territories. According
to Gilbert's article, the state census of eighteen fifty four
puts Beaver Island and surrounding islands at two thousand, six
hundred and eight permanent residents, making it the largest community
(10:59):
in northern Michigan at the time. It's amazing no one
was threatened by him by this power and his high position. Well,
it's funny you should say that, because I think some
people were. They were intimidated in the sense that they
didn't want to get on his bad side because he
did have this huge contingency. Yeah, I mean, one wrong
word could get all these people voting against you. Yeah.
(11:20):
So you know, that's that's kind of a dark underside
of Strang's kingdom. But he did do some good too,
And we've we've got to mention that while we're talking
about his reign, even though there was violence and shady
dealings involved, he didn't do all that. For one thing,
Beaver Island became quite prosperous thanks in part two exports
(11:41):
like wood, fish and potatoes, which together had an annual
value of about three thousand dollars, which was a lot
of money at the time. And settlers there also created
this network of good roads. And they also made strides
towards improving relations with neighboring Native Americans by feeding them,
building a school for them, and accepting them into their church.
(12:03):
African Americans, by the way, we're also welcome to And
according to Eaton's article, this seemed to be a really
sincere benevolent interest of strengths, which I found to be
really intriguing, concidering. He seems so politically motivated in other aspects, definitely,
But because we talked about those good things, are also
going to go into a little more detail about the
(12:23):
not so good side of of Beaver Island and of
Strang's rule there. But during his eight year stint on
Beaver Island, he continued to keep really tight control over
every single aspect of his subjects lives, and that ultimately
seems to be what led to his downfall. Kind of
reminded us of the Oneida community that we talked about
(12:44):
maybe a month or so ago. Once you get too
personal for your followers, they seem to ultimately rebel. Yeah.
For example, he required that all of his subjects build
their homes and one of the island's villages, even farmers
who had acres and acres of land to tend to,
because he was afraid that isolation, if you were out
in your hundred and sixty acres of farmland, would cause
(13:07):
people to shirk their religious and civic duties. Okay, but
at least that's kind of like your classic Versailles sort
of model on a small scale. It's this next point
that really sort of did him in. In eighteen fifty three,
he made a law that women should dress in knee
linked smocks worn o her pantaloons, because he thought that
(13:27):
the typical dress of women at the time was impractical
and it was unhealthy. And most of his women followers
went along with that. They were okay switching to the pantaloons,
but a few, including Mrs Thomas Bedford, refused to comply.
She she wouldn't wear the new styles, and as a result,
her husband received thirty nine lashes with a willow whip
(13:50):
and became obsessed, absolutely obsessed with getting revenge on his king. Yeah,
and he started conspiring with Alexander Wentworth, who also had
a beef with the king. It's kind of unclear why.
Maybe also because his wife wouldn't comply with the dress code.
Maybe he had been punished for some other reasons too,
but regardless, the two of them started conspiring with a
(14:12):
couple of other rebels who encouraged them and supplied them
with pistols, and on June six, eighteen fifty six, Bedford
and Wentworth ambush Strang at St. James wharf. They shot
him twice in the head and once in his left
side and spine, and miraculously Strang survived the attack and
lived for ten days after that, but he refused to
(14:34):
name a successor, and panic really started almost as soon
as he as he was attacked. He was taken to
his parents home in Wisconsin, and he died there on
July nine, eighteen fifty six, which was six years and
a day after his coronation. Yeah, and as for Bedford
and Wentworth, they were brought to trial, but they were
(14:55):
only fined a dollar twenty five for court costs. Yeah,
and I think he said so people considered them heroes.
Even that's true rebels, I guess. But strength kingdom did
not last. It did not live beyond Strang himself. It
dissolved pretty quickly, and some of the residents left on
their own immediately. As I mentioned a minute ago, right
(15:15):
after he was shot, things started disintegrating, and for those
who didn't get out on their own, a lot of
them were herded onto ships by armed groups of non
Mormons who stormed the island headed towards random destinations. They
didn't know where they were going exactly, and a lot
of former Strangites just rejoined the general population after that
(15:35):
when they ended up wherever they ended up, and they
became members of other churches. UM. As of the late nineties,
there were only about three hundred practicing Strangites still around,
but there are still some around. Yeah. And as for
Beaver Island, once Strength's Kingdom was gone, the Irish fishermen
came back. They started to show up. A lot of
them came from County Donegal in Ireland, and eventually some
(15:58):
came to call this area America's Emerald Isle because it
had the look and it had the population, and Gaelic
was commonly spoken on the island until the nineteen thirties.
So that almost seems like too quiet and serene an
end for a podcast that has had some sort of
unusual stories in it. It's been a very unusual podcast. Yeah,
(16:20):
and I think the same island. Beaver Island continued to
have some sort of interesting characters and stories throughout its
history even after the Strangites left. UM. If you know
of any of them and would like to share them
with us, or if you have another personal story concerning
monarchs or anything else that you'd like to share, you
should hit us up at our email address, which is
(16:40):
History Podcast at how staff works dot com, or you
can look us up on Facebook or on Twitter at
miss in History. Yeah, most of our other selections we
picked for the Royalty contest involved mistaken identities of British royals.
They were pretty entertaining. And if you want to learn
any more about polygamy, one of the themes we talked
about today, we have an article on the website. You
(17:03):
can search for how Polygamy works by typing in polygamy
on our homepage at www dot how staff works dot com.
Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff
from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we
explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The
(17:25):
How Stuff Works iPhone app has a rise. Download it
today on iTunes.
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Holly Frey
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