Shadrach Holdaway died 108 years ago today

Shadrack Holdaway was born October 15, 1822 in Rochester, Hawkins county, Tennessee. He was the son of Timothy Holdaway and Mary Elizabeth Trent. In 1883 he moved with his parents from Tennessee to Indiana, and it was there that he heard about the church.


Shadrack Holdaway was baptized by Jefferson Hunt on November 30th, 1843. He was the first member of his family to join the Church. He joined the saints in Nauvoo and was among the first groups that followed Brigham Young to Iowa in 1848. He was selected as one of the Mormon Battalion and placed in Company C where he served as Teamester for Company all the way to California. In California he was part of the group that discovered gold. He took the opportunity to prospect for gold and came away with $3,000 worth of gold dust. After rejoining the saints, he married Lucinda Haws and the two of them went back east with others to obtain wool carding equipment. He returned to Provo with the machinery and became very successful. His work kept him away from home a great deal building roads, canals and ditches, or up in the canyon working at the sawmill. His wife would complain about it from time to time.

It was in the fall of 1902 that Shadrack drove into the yard of the old home in Provo and announced he had come home to stay. He immediately began cutting down the big apple trees so that he could have room to build a shop. The last week of his life he cut down twelve of the big apple trees on his place, but he caught a cold which developed into pleura-pneumonia and in less than a week he passed away on December 24, 1902. The funeral was held Saturday, December 27, 1902 at 11:00 A.M. in the Provo Tabernacle and he was buried in the Provo City Cemetery.

A Mormon Preacher in Kingsport TN

In the March 15, 1843 issue of The Jonesborough Whig I found this early reference to missionary work in Eastern Tennessee.

A Mormon Preacher

One of these renegades, a certain William A. Litz, has recently been holding forth in Kingsport, and advocating that singular Imposition and Delusion taught at Nauvoo. With that imputence which characterizes the teachers of this subversion of revealed truth, this masked imposter, rose up in a Methodist congregation in that village, a few Sabbaths ago, and cried out at the top of his voice, “I will preach at Z. W. Simpson’s
this evening at such an hour!”

Some person present, who understood him to be endowed with the gift of the Holy Ghost, called upon him to work a miracle but the fellow declined the honor – on the ground, we presume, that he could do nothing because of the unbelief of the people!

Of course I had to see if I could find anything else on they people named in the article.

Z. W. Simpson is in the 1840 Census, but that has few details. He was born between 1800 and 1810, and he was married. His wife was also between 30 and 40 , and they had two girls aged 5 or less. Additional notes indicate he owned two slaves (a detail that makes me uncomfortable to even write down) and that he made his living through "commerce." I have no evidence that Mr. Simpson was ever baptized.

Elder William A Litz was born on 6 October 1818 in Washington County, Vermont. He joined the Church on 26 May 1841. He served a mission in eastern Tennessee. Perhaps he was in the area because his parents were from Virginia, and he still had relatives nearby. He appears to have written an autobiography which is on file at the LDS Archives (closed until June 22nd 2009). He was ordained a Seventy, received his endowment in the Nauvoo Temple, but did not follow Brigham Young to Utah. At some point joined the Reorganized LDS Church.