John Doyle Lee was born in Kaskaskia, Randolph County, Illinois. His father, Ralph Lee, was born in Virginia and according to the son "was of the family of Lees of Revolutionary fame" (Mormonism Unveiled, p. 36). At the age of eight he was left an orphan among relatives, and very early learned to shift for himself.
He had little formal schooling.
At nineteen Lee saw action in the Black Hawk War. In 1833, he settled in Fayette County, Illinois. He had been reared a Catholic but had always shown an interest in various religions. Upon hearing of Mormonism from missionaries, he traveled to Missouri to investigate the new sect at first hand and remained there a convert. He was soon zealous in the new church and as a member of the Mormon military organization took part in several skirmishes with the Missourians.
At Nauvoo, Illinois, he rose rapidly in favor with the Mormon leaders, holding important municipal and ecclesiastical offices. He twice (1839 and 1841) served as missionary. He reports a number of prophetic dreams and visions which assisted him in his conversion of others. These "spiritual" phenomena suggest that he was neurotic, which supposition is confirmed by a kind of hysterio-epileptic attack during his last imprisonment (Whitney, post, II, p. 786). In 1843 he became a Mason. Like many other Mormons, he spent the spring of 1844 in near-by states supporting Joseph Smith's campaign for the presidency of the United States. After the Prophet's assassination, Lee returned to Nauvoo where he soon transferred his loyalty to Brigham Young.
Upon removing to Utah he was active in colonizing outlying sections and finally settled in southern Utah not far from the Mountain Meadows. He was a fanatical mystic about his religion. Like many other Mormons he was highly aroused during the summer of 1857 over the impending invasion of Utah by federal troops under Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston and over the rumors that a company of emigrants en route from Arkansas to California was robbing Mormon settlements.
Early in September 1857 a band of Indians and Mormons treacherously massacred this company at Mountain Meadows. Doubtless Lee helped to plan and execute this atrocity. The first attempt (1859) to indict the leaders in the crime was unsuccessful. Finally in 1875 Lee and others were brought to trial. Lee's first trial ended in a disagreement of the mixed jury of eight Mormons and four non-Mormons. At the second trial (1876) Lee was found guilty of murder in the first degree and sentenced to be shot. After the supreme court of Utah had upheld the original judgment, he was executed on the spot where the massacre had taken place nearly twenty years before. Certainly Lee alone was not guilty of planning and carrying out the massacre. In his Mormonism Unveiled (1877), which he wrote only after being sentenced to death, he throws all the blame upon local Mormon leaders: William H. Dame, Isaac C. Haight, John M. Higbee, and Philip Klingensmith. He tried to implicate Brigham Young, but this accusation has evidently no basis in fact. However, there is no denying that Lee served as a sacrifice to appease public clamor to punish those who committed the butchery. Lee sensed this and naturally his confessions are marked by extreme bitterness against those who formerly were his friends.
( This is a reprint of the 1891 edition of John Doyle Lee...)
(This selection from the writings of John Doyle Lee includ...)
( John Doyle Lee (18121877) was one of the most controve...)
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Lee married Agathe Ann Woolsey on July 24, 1833. In 1845-1846 he accepted the Mormon practice of polygamy and added seven more wives to his household. He informs us that altogether he had eighteen wives who bore him sixty-four children. He refused to count as a wife one elderly woman--a mother-in-law--whom he married "for her soul's sake. "
