By Rex L. Christensen
Captain Dan Jones was a close friend to Joseph Smith and indeed was one of the most successful missionaries the Church had ever produced.
Little is known of Dan’s early life. We know he was born to Thomas and Ruth Jones in Flintshire, Wales, 4 August 1810 and that he spent part of his boyhood in Abergele, Wales. On 3 January 1837, in Denbigh, Wales, he married Jane Melling. She bore ten children, only two of whom lived to maturity.
Dan had a college education designed to prepare him for the ministry, but he evidently spent time as a sailor. He lived in New York before coming to Nauvoo and the Mississippi River, where in 1841 he was licensed to operate a steamer called the Ripple.
His name is first mentioned in Church history when in April 1843 he brought a company of Saints up the Mississippi to Nauvoo on the Maid of Iowa, It was on this occasion that he first met Joseph Smith, who had come to greet the new English members. Dan was so impressed that he investigated the Church and was baptized within a few weeks. He lived in the home of Joseph Smith for a time, during which his admiration and esteem for Joseph grew and deepened. Converts in Wales later testified that Jones often shed tears when he spoke of Joseph Smith.
In May of 1843 Joseph Smith bought half interest in the Maid of Iowa and became half-owner of the steamboat.
One of the most colorful episodes in the life of Dan Jones was an attempted rescue of Joseph Smith in July of 1843. Joseph Smith and other Church leaders had been arrested in 1838 in Missouri on trumped up charges, and after being held in Missouri jails for about six months with no real trial were allowed to escape. By 1843 Missouri was being heavily criticized in Congress for her treatment of the Mormons, and some Missouri officials wanted Joseph back to be tried again.
Considering trial in Missouri to be a travesty of justice, Joseph Smith allowed himself to be arrested at Dixon , Illinois, hoping for a fair trial in Illinois; but the posse, led by Sheriffs J. H. Reynolds of Missouri and Harmon T. Wilson of Carthage, Illinois, headed for the Illinois River, where they planned to meet the Chicago Belle, a steamboat from Missouri According to one report, about 100 armed men were on board the Chicago Belle to extradite Joseph Smith.
Hyrum Smith and some friends quickly conceived a strategy to bring the Prophet back to Nauvoo, where he could appear before a friendly court. Wilford Woodruff donated a barrel of gunpowder, and General Charles C. Rich with Sheriff Campbell of Illinois and some 175 volunteers on horseback set out in pursuit of the Wilson-Reynolds posse. Meanwhile, Hyrum Smith and Dan Jones provisioned the Maid of Iowa to blockade the Illinois River, and 75 volunteers came aboard. Early Monday morning, the Maid steamed off to battle.
On Wednesday Dan’s Maid caught up with the Chicago Belle, but she was aground and deserted. By this time, the Missourians were aware that the Maid was in position to block the Illinois River. Changing their plans, they headed west toward Shokoquon and the Iowa territory to try to take the Prophet to Missouri from the north. With the Missourians now off the river, Dan and his crew headed back toward Quincy.
Later that day, the volunteers led by General Rich caught the posse, and Sheriff Campbell arrested Sheriff Reynolds. The Prophet was later tried and freed by the municipal court of Nauvoo.
Dan Jones also had a part to play in the Prophet’s experiences in Carthage Jail, only hours before the martyrdom. When Joseph, Hyrum, and thirteen others submitted themselves to arrest on 24 June 1844, Dan Jones accompanied them and helped raise $7,500 required for their bail. Later, when Joseph and Hyrum went to visit Governor Ford about the matter, they were arrested for treason and jailed without legal examination.
Dan was sent to Governor Ford to protest their second arrest and appeal for their release. When the Governor rejected his appeal, he erupted in futile anger, then went to stay in jail with the Prophet Joseph during the last two nights of his life. The next day, June 25, he helped escort the Prophet through a threatening mob, and with Stephen Markham spent most of the morning ”hewing with a penknife: to get the warped door of the cell to latch, “thus preparing to fortify the place against any attack.”
During Joseph Smith’s last night in the Carthage jail, Dan lay beside him on the floor to avoid the bullets fired through the windows. When all had become quiet, Joseph turned to Dan and whispered, “Are you afraid to die?” Dan replied, “ Has that time come, think you? Engaged in such a cause, I do not think that death would have many terrors.” Then Joseph promised Dan, “You will yet see Wales and fulfill the mission appointed you before you die.” (DHC, 6:601.) It was the last recorded prophecy made by the Prophet.
When Dan left the prison the next morning at Joseph’s request to ask about the shooting during the previous night, he overheard one of the soldiers boasting of a plan to kill Joseph Smith that day. Dan Jones again called on the Governor and demanded protection but met with no success. The guards refused to readmit him to the jail, so he waited outside in the street until the Prophet directed him to carry a letter to lawyer O.H. Browning. While Dan was gone, Joseph and Hyrum Smith were killed.
The promise the Prophet made to Dan was fulfilled in January 1845, when Dan and his wife arrived in Liverpool, England, where they were immediately assigned to labor in Wales. The first LDS missionaries had come to Wales in the spring of 1840. Only six are mentioned in the records of the first five years, but by 14 December 1845 they had baptized 493 people. On 15 January 1846, Wilford Woodruff, president of the British Mission, put Dan Jones in charge of all Welsh missionary work. President Woodruff stated that Dan was the only person in England who could speak, read, write, and publish in the Welsh language. ( See the Millennial Star 7:7) He was credited with being a fluent, rapid, intelligent speaker in both Welsh and English, exhibiting an astounding power to touch the hearts of his audience. ( See the Millennial Star, 5:170.) Witnesses have recorded that he could hold audiences in rapt attention longer than seven hours. ( See Thomas C. Romney, the Gospel in Action, pp, 87-92.)
Under Dan’s direction, the American missionaries (ten or so), assisted by short-term Welsh missionaries, established twenty-nine branches of the Church, and brought a great deal of public excitement to the missionary activity. In at least one case, an entire congregation had been baptized. The Millennial Star reports that the missionaries “ had lately baptized the only remaining two of an entire church…they had now the chapel, priest, and hearers.” (7:187,.) By February 1847, the Church had over 2,000 converts in Wales. And when Dan left Wales in February 1849, the records show a total of seventy -two branches in operation and a total LDS population of 4,645 members. Nearly a thousand persons entered the Church each year Dan was there.
Captain Jones did extensive writing and publishing during these four years. He edited and published a monthly periodical in Welsh entitled Prophwyd y Jubili ( Prophet of Jubilee), the first Mormon periodical published in a language other than English. Dan published over two million pages of tracts and books in Welsh during his first three years in that country. (See Rex L. Christensen, The Life and Contributions of Captain Dan Jones, USU master’s thesis, 1977, p.24.)
On 28 August 1852, after less than three years in Utah, Dan was called on a second mission. Leaving his family in Manti, he spent four more years in Wales. Opposition to the Church had increased in Wales, but over 2,000 converts were baptized by 1856. Dan was made a counselor to the mission president and acted as editor of the Church magazine , Udgorn Seion, until he became president of the mission in 1854.
Dan Jones lived only eight years in Utah, between his missions and after his second mission, but he crowded his short life with many activities. He shepherded to America converts who formed the nucleus of the first Tabernacle choir. With fifty other men he explored 700 miles of Southern Utah during the winter of 1849. He directed the construction of the Salicornia, used by Captain Howard Stansbury to explore the Great Salt Lake. He was elected the first mayor of Manti. He served as captain of the Timely Gull, one of the few commercial boats on the Great Salt Lake. And he continued to teach and guide the Welsh people in Utah. By the time he died of tuberculosis in Provo at the age of fifty-one, he had helped to bring some 5,000 Welsh colonists to the Great Basin.
Captain Dan Jones in Wales
The question of his destination having been settled, Captain Dan Jones lost little time in reaching the land of his birth. He proceeded at once to Merthyr Tydfil, where he organized himself and family, consisting of Dan Jones and wife, into the Welsh District (Conference).
“At a general conference of the British Mission held in Manchester April 16, 1845, Captain Dan Jones delivered his first public discourse outside of Wales. When he arose to speak, he was suffering from a severe attack of fever and ague, and remarked that he believed it was the intention of the evil one to prevent his speaking that evening, but he was determined to bear his testimony in spite of every opposing power. He said that he came not in the character of a delegate; he represented no conference; for if he had but baptized one, he should be able to represent three. But he would speak of a nation renowned in history, one of the most ancient nations of the earth, who had never been subdued and to whom he hoped to be instrumental in bearing the tidings of the work of God in the last days. He enlarged on the characteristics of the Welsh people in a manner, and with an eloquence, that told how ardently he loved his native tribe and his fatherland. He remarked that, for many years, as a mariner, he had been in search of the principles of truth–he had sought it in almost every clime- among the red men of the woods, or the civilized denizens of the city; but he found it not until he came in contact with the followers of the Prophet of the Lord, the “notorious’ Joseph Smith; but of that despised individual he would bear his testimony, and though he might feel more at home among a tribe of Indians, or on the deck of a ship, than upon that platform and before such an audience, yet he could not flinch from bearing a faithful testimony to the character of the Prophet of the Lord. He had been with him in the domestic circle; he had been with him in peril and in prison, and only left him about an hour before the murderous deed of his assassination was perpetrated; and he had now come in obedience to the counsel of the a martyred Prophet, as a messenger to his native land, to bear testimony of the work of which his brother, the Prophet, had died, and which he and sealed with his blood.”( We would here remark, “ records the Millennial Star correspondent, “ that we are utterly incapable of doing anything like justice to the address of Captain Jones, for though delivered while struggling with disease, such was its effect upon ourselves, and we also believe .upon others, that we ceased to write, in order to give way to the effect produced upon our feelings.” Journal History of British Mission, April 6, 1845.
Sixty days later Dan Jones reported to the president of the British Mission that he was publishing pamphlets and was busily engaged in distributing them.
“I have more places to preach in around here than I can possibly attend to. I have one Elder in this circuit besides myself. The prospect is good everywhere for a plentiful crop of good souls ere long. I have two chapels now in the neighborhood to preach in when I can. I intend publishing a Welsh magazine monthly to proclaim the everlasting truths of “Mormonism” to Wales.”– Millennial Star. Vol. 7 p. 63.
Such marvelous results attended his ministry, that at a conference held in the city of Manchester May 31, 1846, the Welsh District was reported by Dan Jones as consisting of 28 branches and 687 members, 378 new members baptized since the last conference. “He reported that they had lately baptized the only remaining two of an active church of Baptists. They had now the chapel, priest, and hearers. His conference at one time extended to a presidency consisting of himself and wife, but now it is nearly 700. He had been much engaged in publishing some six different pamphlets, illustrative of the principles of the Church or in defense of the many false statements and calumnious reports in circulation. It was his determination to
sound the praise of that man of God, Joseph Smith, with whom he had lived, among mobocrats, even up to the hour of the Prophet;s death.” Millennial Star, Vol. 7. P. 187.
The gifts of the Spirit of God were wonderfully manifested in the labors of Captain Dan Jones. In a letter to the President of the British Mission, written at Merthyr, July 24, 1846, he wrote: “Since I left you, I have been preaching on my way through the principal towns of eight counties. One circumstance in particular is worthy of note, because of the power of God it manifested thereby. In one place a young man who had a sore leg–past cure by the doctors–upwards of twenty pieces of bone having been worked out of it, and he not able to walk without a crutch since a year last Christmas. When he believed the Gospel, I told him he would be healed if he would obey; he walked about a mile with crutchers. By the river side we prayed that he might be able to dispense with his crutch, and he walked into the water without it;; out again, and home–and so far as I have heard, has never used it since. I carried his crutch home through the town on my back, the man telling them that he was healed, but strange to say they would neither believe him nor their own eyes, but cried out impostors, etc., and that he might have walked before:although they knew better however, the man got a blessing, and when I left, the wounds in his leg were closing finely, and free from pain. Two others, a priest and a Saint, were miraculously healed by the power of God publicly, yet for all that, there were none but the Saints that would ‘return glory to God!’”
Fourteen months after Dan Jones arrived to open up the work to which he was appointed by the Prophet Joseph Smith, a remarkable showing was made at a conference held in Merthyr Tydfil, March 15, 1847. He reported 102 baptisms for three months, making the total number of Saints in Wales to be 900. On the 16th day of the same month Captain Dan Jones was appointed to preside over the Merthyr Tydfil District in addition to his presidency over Wales. This district included the branches of Beaufort, Rhymney, Tredagar, Merthyr Tydfil and Abedare.
When Captain Jones returned to Merthyr Tydfil July 8, 1847, he says: “The whole place appeared to be in as great an uproar as Mars Hill of old. The first salutation after my arrival was an invitation from the Mayor to defend myself against charges. When I reached his worship, he was in a hasty stew, reading a long catalogue of charges which were at the head of a lengthy petition to banish us from the limits of the city; attached were names of the clergy, reverends, doctors, lawyer, and deacons, and following , the names of their deluded followers. After a dozen attempts I succeeded in hearing my own voice, and proceeded to defend myself against their charges, one at a time. The first was blasphemy. 2. Infidelity, 3. Saying that the end of the world was at hand, thereby scaring people out of their senses=-taking them to a foreign country, and selling them as slaves, etc., etc. You;ll be surprised to hear that the chief magistrate had been made to believe these lies so firmly, that he had actually made his arrangements to put me in prison, which he told me to my face! But I had weathered too many storms to give up the ship so soon. I reasoned with him until he pledged himself to befriend me. He summoned the aldermen, and I had a broadside with each of them in turn. I was alone amidst all the lions of the city, yet I was uppermost at every turn, until it was after midnight. Their clergy, my accusers , had refused to toe the mark. When I cited them to the treatment which we received in our native land, and among the graves of our fathers, for our religion, there was hardly a dry face in the vast assembly, even the sergeant of police who had presented, and big nobs who had signed the petition, wept like babes. The mayor had ordered the police and reporters there, and they never were in a more suitable place of worship!:–Millennial Star, Vol. 9 pp. 299-300
At the close of the year 1847 Dan Jones reported: “In regard to the press department in Wales, alone I have continued the Welsh Star monthly, and increased its circulation to about 1,200. I have published in the past year ten other pamphlets besides, containing in all about 850,000 pages 12 mo. many of which win their way into every circle of society, and make ‘Mormons’ from every grade–the priests, protestant and catholic, not excepted.
“I have been much afflicted with some disease like the pleurisy, but through the kindness of our Father and the prayers of the Saints, I am now able to walk out a little . Since you were here, I have written and published three pamphlets of 52 pages each, and some smaller ones, besides my publication. Udgorn Seion, to which cause I attribute principally my illness, and which hints to me that I have published about enough for the present, I have published in Welsh the Compendium, or book of reference (288 pages) illustrative of the doctrines of the Church.” Millennial Star, Vol. 10. P. 121
In a letter to Orson Pratt, president of the British Mission, dated Merthyr, January 6, 1849, he says: “ The last Welsh General Conference, which was held last Sunday, December 31, 1848, and following days, was much the largest and most interesting of any other; our hall, which will hold two thousand people, was so crowded before the morning service commenced, that we had to engage another hall nearly as large, which was also soon filled to overflowing, and continued for two days with but little intermission. Scores had come from one to two hundred miles; all the hotels, taverns, and private lodgings in the town, so far as I have heard, were thronged like an Egyptian fair; yet order, union, and love were so characteristic of the Saints throughout, that the Babylonians were astonished.
“ The statistics of the morning at this conference meeting showed the total number of branches in Wales to be 55 and 17 new branches organized; including 156 elders, 180 priests, 147 teachers, 67 deacons. Baptized since last conference 1,001; total members 34,603; total baptized last year, 1,939, which will average nearly 1,000 a year since I have been in Wales, with brighter prospects for the future. This fills my soul with joy and gladness unspeakable, because the Lord God of Joseph so abundantly fulfills the predictions of the devoted martyr on myu head; and because I hear my own kin and nation rejoice in the blessing of heaven, and show forth the wonderful power of God in the language and land that gave them birth; and in the prospects of a heaven on earth in Zion.
“I have changed the name of our monthly magazine at the end of the 4th volume to be Zion’s Trumpet, have increased its circulation to 2,000, and have increased its size to eight pages, for the same price as before.”
“All kinds of lying stories that the father of lies and his emissaries can invent are being told of me; such as, that I am going to take this company over and sell them as slaves. I am called a swindler, thief , and everything but what I really am; even this is preached out of pulpits, and published in the religious magazines of the day unblushingly; and when I walk the streets I am frequently gazed at as though I had hoofs and horns; and , with the fingers of scorn pointed at me, they say, ‘there is the man who is taking all the property of the latter-day Devils, and is going to sell them as slaves.” etc.
“ Furthermore did I prove that I was so far from deserving the accusation of taking people’s money, that I bore my own expenses and my family’s to come from a distance of nearly 6,000 miles, to preach for nothing to my own kindred; – that I have preached in all the principal towns of the Principality without having a night’s lodging, or a meal’s victuals unless I paid for them; and that I have not to this day even asked, or laid any plans to be remunerated; and furthermore I had it to boast of, that I not only came there but intend to pay my own and family’s expenses back again to Zion, without levying one collection for that purpose on the Saints. I seek not money for reward, but the riches that fade not away.” Millennial Star, Vol. 11, p.38.
At the close of 1848 complete statistics for Wales were reported as follows; 12 conferences, 100 branches, 426 elders, 239 priests, 221 teachers, 119 deacons, with a total membership of 4645. Elder Jones sailed from England February 26, 1849, after being released from his Welsh mission. He sailed from Liverpool on the Buena Vista with 249 Welsh Saints on board. The company arrived in Kanesville, Iowa, in May, 1849, and crossed the plains in twenty-five wagons, with Dan Jones as captain.
After the arrival in the Valley the so-called Welsh settlement was formed on the west side of the Jordan River, but most of the Welsh Saints subsequently became residents of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Wards, Salt Lake City. The arrival of the Welsh company tinder Captain Jones virtually marked the introduction of Welsh blood and influence into the Church.
In August, 1852, Captain Jones was called on a second mission to Wales, during which he again performed a mighty work among his countrymen. He published again the Udgorn Seion. Returning from this mission in 1856, he had charge of a large company of 703 emigrating Saints, who crossed the Atlantic in the Samuel Curling, sailing form Liverpool, July 6, 1856.
Captain Dan Jones later moved to Provo, where he resided until the time of his death, which occurred there on January 3, 1861.
In his Gospel labors Dan Jones was an eloquent and rapid speaker, having both English and Welsh completely at his command. With his forceful personality and colorful language, it is said that he could hold his audience spellbound for hours at a time.
Directly and indirectly he was the means, in the hands of the Lord, of converting thousands of his kindred and county men, and while he was by no means the first missionary to preach the Gospel restoration in Wales, he will probably always be known as the “father of the Welsh Mission.” From his native land have come two past conductors of the tabernacle choir–John Parry and Evan Stevens and much that is cherished in “Mormon: music; and since he took the first company of 249 Welsh emigrants to the Valley of the Great Salt Lake in 1849, there have continued to come from that ancient land and noble people, men and women who have brought into the church the useful talents and superior culture of a great and hardy race.