Junius F. Wells Builds Monuments to the Book of Mormon Witnesses — A Labor of Faith and Reconciliation

Junius F. Wells (1840–1930) was a faithful Latter-day Saint who served as a force for historical preservation and reconciliation in the early twentieth century. A son of Daniel H. Wells (a counselor to Brigham Young), Junius combined deep personal faith with practical vision and organizational talent.

His most celebrated achievements were two remarkable monument projects that honored the foundational figures of the Restoration. In 1905, Wells successfully negotiated the purchase of Joseph Smith's birthplace in Sharon, Vermont, on behalf of the Church. He erected there a massive granite monument in Smith's honor — a 38.5-foot obelisk weighing nearly 40 tons, one foot in height for each year of Joseph Smith's life. It was a bold, faith-driven act of commemorating a prophet the world had largely dismissed.

Then, in 1911, Wells undertook an even more delicate mission: traveling to Richmond, Ray County, Missouri — a place where Latter-day Saints had been violently expelled in the 1830s — to erect a monument at the grave of Oliver Cowdery, the Second Elder of the Church, chief scribe of the Book of Mormon translation, and one of the Three Witnesses. The Richmond community had long been home to descendants of the original Whitmer family and to the memory of Oliver Cowdery, who had rejoined the Church before his death in 1850.

Wells approached the project with sensitivity and faith. He worked to earn the trust of Richmond's citizens and of George W. Schweich, the nearest Cowdery family descendant. He conducted interviews with those who had known or were related to the early witnesses. He commissioned photographer George Edward Anderson — the first Latter-day Saint to professionally document Church historic sites — to capture the entire process.

At the dedication ceremony on November 22, 1911, Mormons and Missourians stood together at the grave of Oliver Cowdery, joined in honoring a man whose testimony of seeing an angel and hearing the voice of God had never wavered. Wells later described the spirit of the occasion as one of unity, healing, and reverence.

Junius F. Wells's life's work in preserving these sacred sites and honoring these witnesses was itself a miracle of reconciliation — transforming former battlegrounds into places of tribute and bringing together communities that had once been at war, united by their shared recognition of sacred history.