Meet the Mormon King Nobody Talks About (John Hamer 4 of 6)

James Strang is one of the strangest turns in Restoration history, including being crowned as a Mormon King. Historian John Hamer opens part four of this series by explaining just how unexpected his rise was.

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Almost as soon as Joseph Smith died, and right after Sidney Rigdon’s own short-lived church fizzled out, Strang emerged as an incredibly successful rival to Brigham Young. Strang gathered a following at Voree, Wisconsin, and John traces how his church took shape there. Strang was a firm opponent of polygamy, so as he built his movement he began unwinding some of Nauvoo’s newer practices while holding on to others. Baptism for the dead, which had been performed on the banks of the Mississippi, continued at Voree: Strang set apart a stretch of the White River, a small creek running through the community, and held a ceremony dedicating land there for a temple.

That temple never left the drawing board, but the plan was ambitious. Strang published a floor plan in the church newspaper, and John describes a design more elaborate than a simple meeting house, with ceremonial spaces suited to the rituals he was reviving. It’s a striking detail: a rival prophet in rural Wisconsin sketching out a temple of his own within a few years of Nauvoo’s fall.

Mormon King

The conversation turns to two of Strang’s most colorful episodes. The first is a family rupture. William Smith, Joseph Smith’s brother, joined Strang’s movement, but he was secretly practicing polygamy, the very thing Strang had built his church in opposition to. When Strang found out, he expelled him. The second is Strang’s coronation. George J. Adams, whom John describes as very theatrical, is the one who staged the ceremony that saw Strang crowned king, an image that has followed the Strangites ever since. John connects the ritual back to the Council of Fifty, which had already set Strang and others apart with titles like prophet, priest, and king before the coronation made it official and public.

Rick and John also weigh whether Strang’s community had anything like a full endowment. John’s answer is careful: they performed ordinances, and Strang cared about them as much as anyone, but John doesn’t think Voree had a dedicated endowment house in the way other groups did. The temple plan on the White River was the closest th