The Hickory-Stick Stand: Shadrach Roundy Turns Back Forty Men at Joseph Smith's Gate (June 1844)

Shadrach Roundy was born January 1, 1789, in Rockingham, Vermont. Hearing the gospel preached, he traveled to Fayette, New York, in the winter of 1830-31 to meet Joseph Smith, after which he was baptized. He helped build the Kirtland Temple, moved to Missouri, and by 1843 had joined the Nauvoo police force, where he became captain and "once intercepted an attempt to kidnap Joseph Smith." Described as fully six feet tall, raw-boned and muscular, "positively fearless and full of integrity... such was his character that he would rather have died than fail to do his duty," he stood among the Prophet's most trusted bodyguards.

On the night Joseph Smith was indicted for "inciting a riot" after the destruction of the Nauvoo Expositor press in June 1844 — days before Carthage — the Prophet warned Roundy that there would be an attempt to kidnap him that night. Roundy was sent to guard the Prophet's home with explicit instructions that no one was to be allowed in.

His weapons had been turned over to the government militia after the Expositor affair; he carried only his wits, his courage, and a hickory walking stick. While patrolling near the river he heard voices at the gate and hurried to find William Law and some forty armed men trying to force their way in. Using his hickory cane like a sword, Roundy drove the men back through the gate, then laid the cane across it and demanded their business. Law answered that they were "gentlemen merchants" come to see the Egyptian mummies in the Prophet's possession. Roundy retorted that "if they were gentlemen, they should come at gentlemen's hours."

Joined by his fellow guard Josiah Arnold, Roundy refused every demand to step aside. Asked if they knew who they were talking to, the guards answered that yes, they knew William Law too well. Finally the two policemen told the mob plainly that if they gained admission, it would be over their dead bodies. Seeing their resolution, Law and his forty men withdrew into the night. The Prophet, guarded by a fifty-five-year-old Vermont convert and a walking stick, was delivered.

Ten days later Roundy was among the bodyguards who escorted the bodies of Joseph and Hyrum Smith from Carthage back to Nauvoo. He lived to become a major in the first pioneer company, one of three men who plowed the first furrows in the Salt Lake Valley, the first bishop of the Sixteenth Ward, a founder of ZCMI, and a man who crossed the plains five times to assist poor immigrants, before his death in Salt Lake City on July 4, 1872, at age 83.

Fuller account of this event (as retold in Shadrach Roundy: The Hickory Stick Superman, Mormon History (historyofmormonism.com), October 21, 2017):

On the night Joseph Smith was indicted for "inciting a riot" after the destruction of the Nauvoo Expositor press in June 1844 — days before Carthage — the Prophet warned Roundy that there would be an attempt to kidnap him that night. Roundy was sent to guard the Prophet's home with explicit instructions that no one was to be allowed in. His weapons had been turned over to the government militia after the Expositor affair; he carried only his wits, his courage, and a hickory walking stick. While patrolling near the river he heard voices at the gate and hurried to find William Law and some forty armed men trying to force their way in. Using his hickory cane like a sword, Roundy drove the men back through the gate, then laid the cane across it and demanded their business. Law answered that they were "gentlemen merchants" come to see the Egyptian mummies in the Prophet's possession. Roundy retorted that "if they were gentlemen, they should come at gentlemen's hours." Joined by his fellow guard Josiah Arnold, Roundy refused every demand to step aside. Asked if they knew who they were talking to, the guards answered that yes, they knew William Law too well. Finally the two policemen told the mob plainly that if they gained admission, it would be over their dead bodies. Seeing their resolution, Law and his forty men withdrew into the night.