Burned the Church: William Glade in the Southern States Mission, Introduction

William Glade served in the Southern States Mission in the 1890s. I found the mention of his missionary service rather interesting in the last two histories posted here. The only difficulties mentioned in regards to his mission were: 

• leaving his pregnant wife Annie and young son Lester to live with Annie's mother for two years
• having to rent the home he had built for his family
• a delay in connecting the home to city utilities

The histories didn't mention that at the time, the Southern States Mission was the most dangerous mission in the church. It was the site of a number of missionary murders including the deaths of Elders John Gibbs, William Berry, and Joseph Standing. It was the site of regular violence against the missionaries and church members as told in the recent book by Patrick Mason, The Mormon Menace: Violence and Anti-Mormonism in the Postbellum South, which I am currently reading. As Southern States Mission historian Bruce Crow mentioned in a recent post, however, by the time that William Glade served in the 1890s, it was more common for the missionaries to be attacked with eggs than with guns. But still a family must have received a mission call to the Southern States Mission with much trepidation.

William Glade was mentioned a number of times in a long article in the Deseret Weekly (1895) called "Burned the Church." I will serialize it over two or three days, and it will take until the second or third day to learn what the title of the article meant.

To be continued...

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3