The Latter-day Saints in Wisconsin Territory were practicing a system of communal economics, which may have created tensions. John Pierce Hawley, a son of Bishop George Miller’s counselor Pierce Hawley, later recollected that the group had entered into a “covenant” to “have all things common.” Allen J. Stout, a Latter-day Saint living at Black River Falls, wrote in September 1843, “Every man has given a sc[h]edule of his property to the bishop and we have all things common accordi[ng] to the law in the book of covenants every man has his own goods to do what he pleases with the thing is we are all on an equality eve[ry] man far[e]s alike labours alike eats drinks wares alike but at the same time he lives to himself and what he has he has to himself and at his own controll.” Scarcity apparently loomed during the Wisconsin winter. Stout later recounted that the settlement temporarily ran out of food around 1 March 1844—within two weeks after the letters were written. (Hawley, “Autobiography of John Pierce Hawley,” 6; Allen J. Stout, Black River Falls, Wisconsin Territory, to Hosea Stout et al., Nauvoo, IL, 10 and 13 Sept. 1843, Allen J. Stout, Letters to Hosea Stout, CHL; Stout, Reminiscences and Journal, 20.)

Hawley, Robert, ed. Autobiography of John Pierce Hawley. Hamilton, Mo: Robert Hawley, 1981. Copy at CHL. M291.7 H396a 1981.

Stout, Allen J. Letters to Hosea Stout, 1843. CHL.

Stout, Allen J. Reminiscences and Journal, 1863–1889. CHL.

Unlike many logging camps in Wisconsin Territory, the Latter-day Saint lumbering and milling operation came to be seen as more than temporary. Saints had purchased two mills in 1842, and a third was under construction. Miller recounted that after he returned to Wisconsin with a new group of settlers from Nauvoo in August 1843, “We had houses to build for the comfort and convenience of the families, and having great facilities for building (and Joseph wishing to make those mills a permanent establishment) it was thought best to make them permanent, good houses.” (George Miller, St. James, MI, to “Dear Brother,” 27 June 1855, in Northern Islander, 23 Aug. 1855, [1]; Mills, “De Tal Palo Tal Astilla,” 100–105; Rowley, “Mormon Experience in the Wisconsin Pineries,” 121, 130–131, 134.)

Northern Islander. St. James, MI. 1850–1856.

Mills, H. W. “De Tal Palo Tal Astilla.” Annual Publications Historical Society of Southern California 10 (1917): 86–174.

Rowley, Dennis. “The Mormon Experience in the Wisconsin Pineries, 1841–1845.” BYU Studies 32, nos. 1 and 2 (1992): 119–148.

For more information on the Menominee, see the annotation in Letter from Lyman Wight and Others, 15 Feb. 1844–A.