Brigham Young Letter (1846)

Brigham Young kept this copy of a letter he wrote to his brother Joseph Young on March 9, 1846. It is one of the relatively few surviving letters written entirely in Brigham’s handwriting. A year and a half after the assassination of Joseph Smith, the Saints were forced to evacuate Illinois. In the letter, Brigham reported on the status of the Saints who had already fled, admonishing others to “get away as fast as they can” from the “dark clouds of sorrow” in Nauvoo.