I think very few people are aware of a small Mormon group sometimes called the Hedrickites. Their official name is the Church of Christ, and they were the first Mormon Restoration group to return to Missouri and purchased part of the original temple lot where Joseph Smith had a revelation that 24 temples would be built there. Why don’t we know more about this group? Jean Addams is a former president of the John Whitmer Association, and will tell about his family connection to Granville and John Hedrick.
Jean: My wife is a Hedrick. She said she had never told that to anybody because it had some connotations that weren’t what she wanted to convey when she was a conver,t herself, at 14 in Los Angeles.
GT: Oh, really? I don’t think very many people know who Granville Hedrick was.
Jean: No.
GT: That’s interesting that she was kind of hiding that.
Jean: After she had been baptized, her mother sat down and told her about her Mormon history.
GT: No way.
Jean: Yeah. She didn’t want to tell anybody about that. When she told me about that. I got quite excited. She said, “You know about the Hedrickites?” And I said, “I know a little,” and I says, “I guess we’re going to go find out a lot. So let’s start with your dad’s name or your your ancestor’s name. Granville Hedrick was my great-great-uncle. His brother was John. John Hedrick is the first Saint of any sect that came back to Jackson County in 1865 and scouted out the place for the movement of the whole Crow Creek branch out of Illinois in1867. He then started buying up the temple lot property that same year in 1870.
GT: So, it was John Hedrick, not Granville.
Jean: That is correct. Oh, I did not know that either. Wow, that’s interesting.
Following Granville Hedrick’s return to Missouri, the RLDS Church eventually made their way to Independence as well. But even though the Church of Christ had purchased the land legally, the RLDS Church felt they should be the true owners of the Temple Lot. Court battles ensued. Jean Addams will tell how these bitter battles turned out.
Jean: From what I found there was a good rapport between RLDS and Church of Christ for a period of time. Then, unfortunately, the big event of the 1890s was the effort by the RLDS Church to take away the temple lot. That’s known as the Temple Lot Case or the Temple Lot Suit, which got lots and lots of coverage across the country in terms of what was going on.
GT: Really?
Jean: Of course, you’ve got one small little body and one fairly large body and it didn’t look good for the Church of Christ. Their leader, at the time, which is another one of my wife’s ancestors another great-great-grandfather, Richard Hill, more or less stepped aside about that time for Charles Hall, who had been a former RLDS leader on the district level. He became the spokesperson/the leader of the Church of Christ Temple Lot, and he’s the one that shepherded the lawsuit for them. They were actually sued by the RLDS Church to take away the property. The first go around in the district court was in their favor.
GT: In the Temple Lot favor.
Jean: No, in the RLDS favor. The Temple Lot people then had to go to the appeals court, and the appeals court overturned [the previous decision.] Then it went to the Supreme Court in 1896. Then the Supreme Court remanded it back to the US Circuit Court of Appeals for implementation, and everything stayed the same.
GT: Okay, so the claim for the RLDS Church was, “We’re the rightful heirs because Joseph Smith, III is the rightful heir.”
Jean: Yes, and therefore, he should be the one that should have the property. Well, that didn’t sit well with the the Court of Appeals because they said, everybody, basically, in Independence that used to own some of that original land could run into the same problem. So I’m not remembering exactly what the correct legal terminology is, but it’s basically, you’ve waited too long to bring your action to the front.
This was one of several disputes among the Church of Christ and RLDS Churches. Have you heard of this group before? What do you know about them?
Has there been a podcast that you’ve done for the Temple Lot case? Temple lot case is extremely interesting for a few reasons:
1) LDS church got in trouble for having people sign off saying that Joseph had them practice polygamy after they’d signed off stating that he didn’t.
2) The LDS church sided with the Church of Christ in order to fight the RLDS, providing them with witnesses and evidence… WOW!!!
3) According to the RLDS write up of the case, Joseph Smith was found by the Judge to not have been a polygamist.*
*I’ve never found the actual court documents. What I thought was the case, I was told was actually the RLDS write up on it.
For those of us that need a refresher, what’s the significance of the temple lot? Is this THE site of the temple in Jackson county?
@theotherclark Yep!
The Other Clark,
Yes, the Church of Christ owns the land where the original temple in Jackson County was supposed to be. The footprint of the temple is shown in the top photo. Next week, we will talk about their (failed) attempts to build the temple over the years.
Andy, I’ve done a few episodes on the Temple Lot Case with Steve Shields : https://gospeltangents.com/2018/12/06/who-owns-temple-lot-missouri/ and Brian Hales: https://gospeltangents.com/2017/07/03/polygamy-temple-lot-case/ Hales probably goes into more details regarding polygamy that you are interested in. The funny thing is that neither the RLDS nor Church of Christ accepted polygamy, but LDS Church members wanted to assist the Church of Christ to prevent the RLDS Church from owning the lot. One of the main points by the RLDS Church was that they should be the “real” owners because they were the true church. The LDS Church, on the other hand, said RLDS weren’t the real heirs because they DIDN’T practice polygamy, so polygamy became a weird focus of the trial, despite the fact that neither RLDS nor Church of Christ believed in polygamy. We will get into the case more next week.
I will add that John Hamer has some amazing maps and history at BCC on Joseph Smith’s plans for 24 temples in Independence: https://bycommonconsent.com/2009/01/19/the-temple-lot/
Andy,
The Temple Lot Case is a big enough deal for those who still believe Joseph was a monogamist (chiefly the Restoration Branches) that you can go to the Restoration Bookstore in Independence and buy the complete transcript of the case in a single neatly-bound volume.
Thank you Rick B!
The Temple Lot case is a prime example of the time in the Restoration movement when the top priority appeared to be who’s right and true (and therefore who would be wrong and false). I’m heartened by the fact that the Community of Christ (RLDS) have, for the most part, left those days long behind. It’s worth noting here that the Churchof Christ (Temple Lot) and RLDS churches came very close to merging back in the 1920s but negotiations fell apart, perhaps due to stubborness on both sides. There is, of course, far more to that story (for one thing the Temple Lot folks look to the early 1830s time period as a basis for theology and organization) but this isn’t the time/place to get into the weeds about all that.