REMARKABLE FULFILMENT
OF AN AWFUL IMPRECATION
In the month of
February or March, 1835, Mr. Francis G. Bishop, a minister in the church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, came into the town of Oxford, New Haven
County, and State of Connecticut, to preach the gospel. He delivered once
discourse in the Methodist Chapel, Zoar Bridge. Mr. Asahel Mead, a member of
the Methodist Episcopal Church, attended Mr. Bishop’s meeting, and at the close
thereof (having heard some things advanced by Mr. B., contrary and repugnant to
his own views) said to some of his friends, that when Mr. Bishop returned to
preach there two weeks from that day, he (Mr. Mead), would go at the head of a
mob to mob Mr. Bishop. He then said that if Mr. Bishop was right in his views
and doctrine, he hoped that he should be taken away before the two weeks came
around; if he was not, he would surely go at the head of a mob to mob Mr. B. So
confident did he seem to be that he was right, and Mr. B. was wrong, that he
repeated his request to be taken out of the way if Mr. B. was right. He
emphatically requested the whole company to remember what he said. He indulged
in abusing and slandering the Latter-day Saints very much—His conduct ill
comported with the character of a Christian.
He was taken ill in a
day or two, became deranged, and the very day that he proposed to head a mob,
he headed a funeral procession and was carried to his grave, a cold and
lifeless corpse.
Having been eye and
ear witnesses to the facts above stated, we cheerfully give our names to the
world, in testimony of the same, by the request of Mr. Hyde.
BURR TOMLINSON,
CAROLINE TOMLINSON.
Oxford, New-Haven
County,
Conn., Jan. 20th,
1841.
(Burr Tomlinson and
Caroline Tomlinson, “Remarkable
Fulfilment of an Awful Imprecation,” The Latter-day Saints; Millennial
Star 1, no 12 [April, 1841]: 301)