Competing Identities and Contested Places: Mormons in Nauvoo and Voree

Abstract

The religious restoration movement in the early nineteenth century United States that involved the emergence of the Mormon (Latter Day Saint) family of religions has contributed to the complex politics of identity and place that characterize the contemporary American cultural scene. Since its 1830 beginnings, but especially following the 1844 death of the founder, Joseph Smith, Jr., the movement has been fertile ground for schismatic tendencies. Major claimants to the church leadership in 1844 included Brigham Young who was followed by the majority of members, and James Strang, who attracted a much smaller group of adherents. Some church members also regarded Smith's son, Joseph Smith III, as the rightful leader. The principal 1844 settlement, Nauvoo, Illinois, was abandoned with Young accepted as leader by most Mormons and initiating the exodus to the intermontane West, and Strang founding a small and short-lived settlement in Voree, Wisconsin. This paper examines the competing identities of four of the churches belonging to the Mormon family as these relate to the symbolic importance of church name, and discusses two contested places of Mormon settlement, Nauvoo and Voree, as these are remembered and reinvented.