Sioux City Academy of Science and Letters. 89 
A brief sketch of the early life of Chas. B. Thomp- 
son, the founder of the Monona County Colony, will bet- 
ter enable us to understand his subsequent career, and 
we give it from his own written sketch of himself. 
With relation to the revelation to Joseph Smith as 
to polygamy, I have this personal information to add, 
which I believe has never been published. A member of 
Congress from Northwest Iowa was in Salt Lake City 
when the memorial funeral services were held after the 
death of Brigham Young, and through an official ac- 
quaintance was permitted to attend. One of the surviv- 
ors of the early day of Joseph Smith spoke on that occa- 
sion, and attempted to give the true history of that reve- 
lation, because even among Mormons, it had been claim- 
ed there never had been such a revelation. The speaker 
was the official clerk of the Church, or recorder of the 
Church, and said that Smith came to him and handed him 
the writing which contained the authorization for plural 
marriages, which had come to him, Smith, as a divine 
command, and that it was to be recorded and promul- 
gated as a law of the Church. This secretary kept it, and 
made a copy of it. That shortly after this Joseph Smith 
came back and wanted the revelation paper, saying he 
had told his wife about it, and she was very much ex- 
cited, and was making a great fuss over it, and he would 
have to pacify her by destroying the revelation, and took 
it away with him. This accounted for the original not be- 
ing found among the records, but the speaker on this 
occasion spoke as being a living witness to the fact that 
polygamy came as a divine command to Joseph Smith. 
The congressman was surprised to find that in the full 
newspaper accounts of these funeral exercises nothing 
was said of this part of the proceedings, and concluded 
that it was intended for Mormon ears only. 
Chas. Blancher Thompson was born January 27th, 
1814, at Niskanna, Schenectady county, New York. His 
father was a Quaker; his mother died when he was three 
years old, and his father supported him until he was 
eight, from which time up to when he was fourteen he 
earned his own living, and then commenced to learn the 
tailor’s trade. At 17 years old he became interested in 
religion and at 18 joined the Methodist church, and com- 
