Luke S. Johnson, Early Member of the Church
In the fall of 1831,
while Joseph was yet at my father's [John Johnson home], a
mob of forty or fifty came to his house, a few entered his
room in the middle of the night, and . . . dragged Joseph
out of bed by the hair of his head; he was then seized by as
many as could get hold of him, and taken about forty rods
from the house, stretched on a board, and tantalized in the
most insulting and brutal manner. . . . The mob then
scratched his body all over . . . and in attempting to force
open his jaws, they broke one of his front teeth, to pour a
vial of some obnoxious drug into his mouth.
The mob . . . poured tar
over him, and then stuck feathers in it and left him, and
went to an old brickyard to wash themselves and bury their
filthy clothes. At this place a vial was dropped, the
contents of which ran out and killed the grass.
"History of Luke Johnson," Deseret News, May 19, 1858, 53–54.
