Green Flake - A slave given to Brigham Young as tithing.

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_Fence Sitter
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Green Flake - A slave given to Brigham Young as tithing.

Post by _Fence Sitter »

On April 7, 1844, the same day Brown ordained James M. Flake into the priesthood, Brown baptized Flake’s slave “Green Flake,” the most well documented black Mormon slave. Later that same year, Green Flake and his master moved to Nauvoo. Green Flake was a member of Brigham Young’s Vanguard Company, which entered the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847. Before leaving Utah for the Mormons’ settlement in San Bernardino, California, in 1854 James Flake’s widow Agnes Flake tithed Green Flake to the church. According to James Flake’s son, William J. Flake, Green then worked two years for Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball before the Mormon leaders freed him. Green Flake lived in Union, Utah’s small black community, before settling in Idaho where he died in 1903. In 1897, along with the some 250 surviving pioneers of 1847, including Jane Manning James, Green Flake was awarded a golden badge made by Tiffany’s in New York as part Utah’s 1897 Pioneer Jubilee. William J. Flake, letter to Church Historian, February 14, 1894, transcribed in Dennis Lythgoe, “Negro Slavery in Utah” (MA thesis, University of Utah, 1966), 27–28. See also “Green Flake (1828-1903),” in Richard Van Wagoner and Steven C. Walker,, A Book of Mormons (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1982), 87; Ronald Coleman, “A History of Blacks in Utah, 1825-1910” (PhD diss., University of Utah, 1980), 59. Throughout his journal, John Brown refers to white southern converts’ slaves as “servants.” John Brown, The Autobiography of John Brown: A Member of the Original Company of Utah Pioneers of 1847, ed. John Zimmerman Brown (Salt Lake City: Stevens & Wallis, 1941)


Interesting glimpse into slavery in early Utah.
"Any over-ritualized religion since the dawn of time can make its priests say yes, we know, it is rotten, and hard luck, but just do as we say, keep at the ritual, stick it out, give us your money and you'll end up with the angels in heaven for evermore."
_Fence Sitter
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Re: Green Flake - A slave given to Brigham Young as tithing.

Post by _Fence Sitter »

Brigham Young organized and led the first few hundred Mormons who, between the spring of 1846 and the fall of 1847, established a viable route from Winter Quarters in Nebraska to the Salt Lake Valley, and who began the farming and homebuilding needed to supply and house the thousands of Mormons who would follow them. James was not in the famed “Vanguard Company,” which included three slaves, Green Flake, Hark Lay, and Oscar Crosby who arrived on July 24, 1847, now celebrated as Utah’s “Pioneer Day.” With the Spencer/Eldredge Company, James entered the valley on September 22, 1847. “Daniel Spencer/Ira Eldredge Company,” The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, accessed January 4, 2012, http://history.lds.org/overlandtravels/ ... panyId=285. Also, see Leonard J. Arrington, Brigham Young: American Moses (New York: Knopf, 1985), 130-153.


I did not know the vanguard company included "three slaves".
"Any over-ritualized religion since the dawn of time can make its priests say yes, we know, it is rotten, and hard luck, but just do as we say, keep at the ritual, stick it out, give us your money and you'll end up with the angels in heaven for evermore."
_moksha
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Re: Green Flake - A slave given to Brigham Young as tithing.

Post by _moksha »

Green Flake was driving the wagon with a sick Brigham Young laying down in the back when they were descending from Emigration Canyon. Green Flake paused the wagon and shouted to Brigham, "This is the place, Massa Brigham!"
Cry Heaven and let loose the Penguins of Peace
_SuperDell
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Re: Green Flake - A slave given to Brigham Young as tithing.

Post by _SuperDell »

How did they figure out the worth of him in tithing dollars?
“Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love truth.”
― Joseph Joubert
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