Praying with One Eye Open: Mormons and Murder in Nineteenth-Century Appalachian Georgia

by Mary Ella Engel

In 1878, Elder Joseph Standing traveled into the Appalachian mountains of North Georgia, seeking converts for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Sixteen months later, he was dead, murdered by a group of twelve men. The church refused to bury the missionary in Georgia soil; instead, he was laid to rest in Salt Lake City beneath a monument that declared, “There is no law in Georgia for the Mormons.” Most accounts of this event have linked Standing’s murder to the virulent nineteenth-century anti-Mormonism that also took the life of prophet Joseph Smith and to an enduring southern tradition of extralegal violence. In these writings, the stories of the men who took Standing’s life are largely ignored, and they are treated as significant only as vigilantes who escaped justice.

Historian Mary Ella Engel adopts a different approach, arguing that the mob violence against Standing was a local event, best understood at the local level. Her examination of Standing’s murder carefully situates it in the disquiet created by missionaries’ successes in the North Georgia community. As Georgia converts typically abandoned the state for Mormon colonies in the West, a disquiet situated within a wider narrative of post-Reconstruction Mormon outmigration to colonies in the West. In this rich context, the murder reveals the complex social relationships that linked North Georgians―families, kin, neighbors, and coreligionists―and illuminates how mob violence attempted to resolve the psychological dissonance and gender anxieties created by Mormon missionaries. In laying bare the bonds linking Georgia converts to the mob, Engel reveals Standing’s murder as more than simply mountain lawlessness or religious persecution. Rather, the murder responds to the challenges posed by the separation of converts from their loved ones, especially the separation of women and their dependents from heads of households.

Genres: True Crime, History

248 pages, Paperback

Published July 15, 2019

Reviews

[Brent]

This was some stuff: I had no idea Mormon missionaries preceded others in parts of Appalachia, including the ridge and valley region of NW GA, documented here.
This was shorter than I thought, and super well documented and researched. I wished, after finishing the 150+ page narrative, that I had consulted the appendix of characters in their local groups while reading. No harm done (to the reader...)
Highly recommended.
Thanks to University of Georgia Press for publishing, and to the Woodruff Library of Emory University for the loan.

[Chad Alexander Guarino da Verona]

Praying with One Eye Open is the meticulously researched account of the murder of Mormon Elder Joseph Standing by angry mob in the late 19th century Georgia. While this is an event that I had never heard of, author Mary Ella Engel does a fantastic job of setting the historical context of the events leading up to the murder, covering both the Mormon missionary work in Georgia and the religious and economic situation of the native Georgians. Engel's goal is to paint a picture of the social anxiety created by the Mormon missionaries among the population as they worked to convert followers, which in turn created familial separation, especially with women and heads of household. Engel succeeds in replicating this tension, as well as the anti-Mormon sentiment of the time which was centered strongly around the practice of polygamy.

While it's a bit dry at times, it's a short read is recommended for anyone with an interest in meditations on religious freedom and/or Mormonism.

**I was given a copy of this book by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My thanks to University of Georgia Press.**

[Mags]

This is very much a scholarly work, rather than a more general history, I feel.

Fairly dry book, with a lot of different people - I struggled to keep all the names separate to be honest. I'd previously enjoyed things such as 'Under the Banner of Heaven', so assumed I'd like this. It reads more like someone's doctoral thesis, which means if you're not incredibly into the subject matter, I think you may struggle (as I did). Can't fault it for being painstakingly researched though.

I was given a copy of this book by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[James Biser]

This is an interesting story of a group of missionaries in the southeastern United States after the Civil War.

[Shauna]

This is a part of the Latter Day Saints history I hadn’t ever heard of, I was excited to get into this book to see what it was all about. It read much like a text book. The subject matter was interesting in its own way, but there was little excitement or anything gripping. It was good history, and that’s about it.