The Quincy Miracle — How One Illinois Town Saved 10,000 Mormon Refugees (1839)

On October 27, 1838, Missouri Governor Lilburn W. Boggs issued Executive Order 44 — the infamous 'Extermination Order' — commanding that Latter-day Saints be 'exterminated or driven from the state.' More than 10,000 Saints were given until March 8, 1839 to flee or be killed. Joseph and Hyrum Smith were imprisoned as hostages. With winter closing in, mobs plundering their settlements, and the western frontier blocking their escape, the Saints had nowhere to go but east — across the Mississippi River into Illinois.

By January 1839, hundreds of men, women, and children were strung along a 200-mile trail in snow, mud, and bitter cold. Some were barefoot; their path was marked by bloody footprints. Wagons dropped families and their few remaining belongings at the frozen river's edge, then turned back for more. The mighty Mississippi alternately froze and thawed, trapping thousands on the Missouri bank while mobs terrorized them from behind.

Across the river, the citizens of Quincy, Illinois — a prosperous river town with no prior connection to the Latter-day Saints — witnessed the suffering firsthand. The Quincy Whig documented: 'A large number of families are encamped on the opposite bank of the Mississippi waiting for an opportunity to cross... common humanity must oblige us to aid and relieve them all in our power.'

On February 25, 1839, the citizens of Quincy held a public meeting at the courthouse and passed a formal resolution:

'Resolved, That we recommend to the citizens of Quincy and its vicinity to extend to them all the kindness in their power to bestow; to open their houses to their reception, to furnish them with employment, and in every way to endeavor to alleviate their sufferings.'

This was not an anonymous donation — it was an official civic act by a community of strangers who voted to open their homes, their farms, and their livelihoods to thousands of destitute religious refugees. Citizens organized a 'Committee of Arrangements' to coordinate housing, employment, food, and supplies. Some Saints were taken directly into Quincy homes. Others camped in Washington Park, the town square, where citizens brought food and blankets daily.

Eleven-year-old Mosiah Hancock crossed the frozen river barefoot; as he reached the east bank the ice broke behind him. Many Saints kissed the ground upon arrival. Within weeks, nearly the entire membership of the Church had been rescued through Quincy. Joseph Smith, when he escaped captivity in April 1839, walked directly to Quincy where his family was sheltered.

Without Quincy, the Church might not have survived. It was on the riverbanks of Illinois that the Saints regrouped, that Joseph Smith received some of his most profound revelations (Doctrine & Covenants 121–123, written from Liberty Jail), and that the city of Nauvoo was founded just miles upstream.

Latter-day Saint historians have consistently called this one of the most remarkable acts of community humanitarian intervention in American religious history — and a providential miracle of timing, geography, and human compassion.

Among the refugees camped on the Missouri bank, Martha Thomas gave birth in a bed made of a rope contraption hung under quilts draped over a tree limb — the only shelter her family had. Wilford Woodruff, arriving among the first at Quincy, recorded the scene on the Illinois shore: 'I saw a great many of the saints, old and young, lying in the mud and water, in a rainstorm, without tent or covering. ... The sight filled my eyes with tears' ('Wilford Woodruff History, from His Own Pen,' Millennial Star). Quincy's leading citizen Orville Browning — later a U.S. Senator and lifelong friend of the Saints — bore eyewitness testimony to what the town had seen: 'Great God! Have I not seen it? Yes, my eyes have beheld the blood stained traces of innocent women and children in the drear winter, who had traveled hundreds of miles barefoot through frost and snow, to seek refuge from their savage pursuers' (History of the Church, 4:368).

Fuller account of this event (as retold in “We Weep When We Remember Zion”: Early Latter-day Saints as Refugees, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints):

Although the Saints were sorrowful and anxious in their scattered condition, Haven explained that Quincy was a refuge for them. About 12 families crossed the Mississippi River daily and found shelter and employment in the town. She noted that the residents of Quincy had donated more than $400 to the impoverished Saints. The Saints were in Quincy for only a matter of months in 1839, but the town provided a measure of stability for the displaced Church members. After spending the winter imprisoned in a Missouri jail, Joseph Smith arrived in Quincy in April 1839, where he reunited with his family and the Saints. Although grateful to the people of Quincy for caring for exiled Church members, Joseph realized that the Saints would need a more permanent home. Along with other Church leaders, the Prophet started a new settlement about 45 miles north of Quincy in Commerce, which was later called Nauvoo. Elizabeth Haven reported in the fall of 1839 that Joseph spoke of Commerce as “a place of gathering” for Church members.