The Culture of Us.

  

The culture of the United States of America has been around for centuries, being the most diverse culture in all of human history. That is just the plain truth. First, it is important to describe cuisine as a very vital part of American culture. How we eat food and the diversity of food ingredients has changed the world in a myriad of positive ways. American cuisine has always been a mixture of foods found in American indigenously and foods from other continents. For example, foods like corn, beans, wild rice, sunflower, seeds, pecans cranberries, blueberries, corn, maple syrup, turkey, and pumpkins are found in North America. They are all found in our backyard. There are other foods that existed originally overseas, like apples, peaches, wheat, rice, onions, carrots, tea park, coffee, and tea. Tons of us love apple pie, sweet potato pie, and lemon pie. We enjoy oatmeal and other items like okra, jumbo, pizza, spaghetti, and other types of foods from different cultures globally. There have been television shows and movies that focus on food culture too, including those found on the Food Network. American culture readily embraces self-reliance, individualism, and independence. That means that many of us believe in using self-determination to achieve profound greatness. Also, this doesn't mean we should embrace or advance a form of selfish individualism, greed, and wicked behavior. There is also a role for community and collective power in enhancing society's general welfare. No one is an island. Religion plays a large role in American society. About 81-83% of all Americans believe in God or a universal Spirit. Religion or spirituality shaped American society for centuries via social activists, the many Great Awakening, and more grassroots churches of the 21st century. Believers in God have always invoked God to stand up against slavery, to promote racial justice, to fight for voting rights, to agree with economic justice, to stand with immigrants, and support other social improvements in society. The largest religious group of people in America is Christians. There are agnostics, atheists, and other followers of various creeds that exist in America too. 

My late 4th cousin was David Lee Claud Sr., who lived from February 11, 1966, to December 17, 2025. He was born and raised in Southampton County, Virginia. Her parents are Thomas Lee Claud and Dotsie Ann Barnes Claud. He attended Southampton High School and graduated from the high school in 1984. He served in the United States Army from August 1984 and served this country with distinction and courage. On January 1, 1994, he married his wife Robin Denise Wingo, and their son is David Robert-Lee Claud Jr. The couple has a daughter named Ashley Shanielle Johnson, and their grandson is Jaylen Tyshaun Scott. After his military service, David Lee Claud Sr. was in the Newport News Shipyard and was a correctional officer with the Greenfield, Deerfield, and Southampton Centers, where he retired after 26 years of services on March 1, 2016. David was baptized and accepted Jesus Christ as his Savior and joined Bryants Baptist Church in Capron, Virginia. He was the youngest child of seven siblings. David loved to play with his siblings and cousins, especially on Sundays at his grandparents' home. He loved learning from elderly human beings to understand their knowledge. He was a friend and spiritual friend to his Aunt Bea Gary. David supported the Washington Commanders football team. He did gardening, fishing, played cards, watched his westerns, and did traveling. His brothers are Zachary T. Claud of Chesterfield, Virginia and Michael Claud of Capron, Virginis. His sisters are Dotsie Claud and Jacqueline Claud Allen (her husband is Luther Allen) of Norfolk, Virginia, Janeifer Claud Smith (her husband is Anthony Smith Sr.) of Fairfax, Virginia, and Tracy Claud Barksdale of Woodridge, Virginia. His godchildren are Cameron Fields and Tiana Parker. His aunts are Elsie Gary and Elizabeth Taylor. The parents of my 3rd cousin Thomas Lee Claud were Thomas Jefferson Claud (1907-1997) and Elsie Elizabeth Owens (1912-2003). The parents of Thomas Jefferson Claud were Richard Washington Claud (1874-1945) and Ann Elizabeth Claud (1876-1960). The parents of my 1st cousin Richard Washington Claud were George Washington Claud (1849-1923) and Martha Velvin Furgeson (b. 1830). The mother of my 4th great-granduncle George Washington Claud was my 5th great-grandmother Zilphy Claud (1820-1893). 

Joseph Smith dictated by using the same chocolate-colored seer stone he had used previously for treasure hunting placed in a hat. Dictation was completed about July 1, 1829. The completed work, titled the Book of Mormon, was published in Palmyra and first advertised for sale on March 26, 1830. Less than two weeks later, on April 6, 1830, Smith and his followers formally organized the Church of Christ, and small branches were established in Manchester, Fayette, and Colesville, New York. As in 1826, he was arrested and charged with being a "disorderly person." Although he was acquitted, he was again arrested, this time transported to Broome County, where he was again acquitted by a three-judge panel. He and Cowdery fled to escape a gathering mob. Cowdery, Peter Whitmer, and others traveled west on mission to proselytize to the Native Americans. The era of 1831 to 1837 changed Mormonism forever. Church co-founder Oliver Cowdery and others left New York for Ohio. There they encountered the hugely-popular Campbellite minister Sidney Rigdon. Rigdon, who had long preached a Restoration of the true church, converted to the new movement, bring along over a hundred followers. Rigdon's conversion dramatically swelled the ranks of the new organization. Rigdon visited New York, where he had extensive personal conversations with Smith. With growing opposition in New York, Smith announced a revelation that his followers should gather at Kirtland, Ohio.

Smith moved to Kirtland in January 1831. There, many of Rigdon's followers practiced Christian communism by sharing "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." In 1831, Smith began to privately teach the practice of polygamy, according to a variety of sources, including apostles Brigham Young, Orson Pratt, and Lyman E. Johnson. Levi Lewis, Emma's cousin, who had known Smith and Harris in Harmony, accused Smith of trying to seduce local girl Eliza Winters. According to Lewis, he had heard both Smith and Harris say that "adultery is no crime." That year, Smith told twelve-year-old Mary Rollins that God had commanded him to take her as a wife (which is a perversion done by Joseph Smith, as God Almighty never told that man to do such an act, period); she would later be recognized by the church as one of Smith's plural wives in February 1842 at the age of 23. The John Johnson family was baptized into Smith's church, including fifteen-year-old Marinda Johnson. For seven months, Smith and Rigdon lived at the Johnson farm. On March 24, 1832, a mob dragged Smith and Rigdon from their beds, beat them badly, and then tarred and feathered them. Simonds Ryder, writing in the 1860s, argued the attack was precipitated by recent converts having learned their property was to be placed under the church's control, a motivation corroborated in by S.F. Whitney. 

Unlike Rigdon, Smith was tied to a board and stripped naked so a doctor could perform a castration. When the doctor refused to go through with the procedure, the mob tried to force poison down Smith's throat, chipping a tooth in the process. Despite the attack, Smith preached to his congregation the following morning and performed baptisms. His infant adopted son Joseph Murdock died of measles, the fourth child the Smiths had lost; his family linked his death to him being exposed to the cold during the attack. In the 1880s, minister Clark Braden repeated a rumor that claimed Smith practiced polygamy in Kirtland and was intimate with Marinda, a claim later popularized by Fawn Brodie in her psychobiography of Smith. Though the theory has largely been rejected by later scholarship, Mormon polygamy historian Todd Compton speculates on the timing of the 1832 attack: "The castration attempt might be taken as evidence that the mob felt that Joseph had committed a sexual impropriety... they had planned the operation in advance, as they brought along a doctor to perform it. The first revelations on polygamy had been received in 1831... Also, Joseph Smith did tend to marry women who had stayed at his house or in whose house he had stayed..:" In 1842, Marinda, age 26, became one of Smith's wives. Joseph Smith drew up a comprehensive city plan for Zion (Independence), calling for 24 Mormon temples and a grid of streets along with cardinal directions. 

Converts poured into Kirtland. By the summer of 1835, there were fifteen hundred to two thousand members in the vicinity, many expecting Smith to lead them shortly to the Millennial kingdom. In July 1831, Smith visited Independence, Jackson County, Missouri, and announced a revelation that the frontier hamlet was the "center place" of Zion. Smith again visited Missouri again in early 1832 to prevent a rebellion of prominent church members who believed the church in Missouri was being neglected. In Jackson County, existing Missouri residents resented the Latter-Day Saint newcomers for both political and religious reasons. Additionally, their rapid growth aroused fears that they would soon constitute a majority in local elections, and thus "rule the county." Tension increased until July 1833, when non-Mormons forcibly evicted the Mormons and destroyed their property. Smith advised his followers to bear the violence patiently until after they had been attacked multiple times, after which they could fight back. Armed bands exchanged fire, killing one Mormon and two non-Mormons, until the old settlers forcibly expelled the Mormons from the county. After petitions to the Missouri governor were unsuccessful, in May 1834 Smith organized and led a 200-man paramilitary expedition, called Zion's Camp, to aid church members in Jackson County, Missouri. As a military endeavor, the expedition was a failure. The men of the expedition were disorganized, a cholera outbreak killed 14, and they were severely outnumbered. By the end of June, Smith deescalated the confrontation, sought peace with Jackson County's residents, and disbanded Zion's Camp. Nevertheless, Zion's Camp transformed Latter Day Saint leadership because many future church leaders came from among the participants.

After the Camp returned to Ohio, Smith drew heavily from its participants to establish various governing bodies in the church. He gave a revelation announcing that in order to redeem Zion, his followers would have to receive an endowment in the Kirtland Temple, which he and his followers constructed. In March 1836, at the temple's dedication, many who received the endowment reported seeing visions of angels and engaged in prophesying and speaking in tongues. In 1836, Smith traveled to Salem, Massachusetts, to search for a trove of coins there. Smith announced a revelation that God had "much treasure in this city." After a month, he and his companions returned to Kirtland empty-handed. In 1837, a series of internal disputes led to the demise of the Kirtland community. In 1836, church apostle Orson Hyde was sent to the Ohio legislature to request a bank charter, while Oliver Cowdery went to Philadelphia and acquired plates to print notes for the proposed bank. On January 2, Hyde returned to Kirtland empty-handed, unable to persuade any legislator to sponsor a bill for a bank charter; Smith and other bank leaders proceeded with their plans, calling their organization an 'anti-banking society' and issuing bank notes. "Anti" and "ing" were engraved before and after "Bank"—in smaller typeface—on the printing plates Cowdery had previously purchased in Philadelphia. Smith encouraged his followers to buy the notes, in which he invested heavily himself. The bank failed within a month.

As a result of the bank failure, Mormons in Kirtland suffered losses and intense pressure from debt collectors. Smith was held responsible for the failure, and there were widespread defections from the church, including many of Smith's closest advisers. Construction of the Kirtland Temple had only added to the church's debt, and Smith was hounded by creditors. Smith and Rigdon were charged with illegally operating a bank; both were found guilty and fined. In June 1837, Smith was arrested on a charge that he had conspired to have critic Grandison Newell murdered. Solomon Denton and Orson Hyde testified for the prosecution. Smith was acquitted.

Also in 1837, Oliver Cowdrey, who was then assistant president of the church, accused Smith of engaging in a sexual relationship with a teenage servant in his home, Fanny Alger. Smith, who was married to Emma at the time, said little of the relationship, but he did specifically deny being guilty of adultery. Indeed, contemporaries of Smith agree that he had likely married Alger as a polygamous wife. Cowdrey was subject to excommunication proceedings for "seeking to destroy the character of President Joseph Smith, Jun., by falsely insinuating that he was guilty of adultery", but in 2014, the LDS church admitted Smith had had a marital relationship with Alger. By 1838, Smith was facing widespread dissension from high-profile church leaders, accusing him of being a fallen prophet, as well as mounting lawsuits. That night, he and Sidney Rigdon fled Kirtland to join up with the Mormons in Far West, Missouri. Smith's critics in Kirtland took control of the temple, but many Kirtland Mormons eventually followed Smith to Missouri. By 1838, Smith had abandoned plans to reclaim the city of Independence and instead declared the town of Far West as the new "Zion." In Missouri, the church also took the name "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints", and construction began on a new temple. In the weeks and months after Smith and Rigdon arrived at Far West, thousands of Latter-Day Saints followed them from Kirtland. Smith encouraged the settlement of land outside Caldwell County, instituting a settlement in Adam-ondi-Ahman, in Daviess County.

Later, Joseph Smith and his followers claimed to see visions and worked in Missouri. There were more tensions between Mormons and non-Mormons in Missouri. There was an event on August 6, 1838, when non-Mormons in Gallatin, Missouri, tried to prevent Mormons from voting, and a brawl ensued. The election day scuffles initiated the 1838 Mormon War. Non-Mormon vigilantes raided and burned Mormon farms, while Danites and other Mormons pillaged non-Mormon towns. In the Battle of Crooked River, a group of Mormons attacked the Missouri state militia, mistaking them for anti-Mormon vigilantes. Governor Lilburn Boggs then ordered that the Mormons be "exterminated or driven from the state." On October 30, a party of Missourians surprised and killed seventeen Mormons in the Haun's Mill massacre. 

The following day, the Mormons surrendered to 2,500 state troops and agreed to forfeit their property and leave the state. Smith was immediately brought before a military court, accused of treason, and sentenced to be executed the next morning, but Alexander Doniphan, who was Smith's former attorney and a brigadier general in the Missouri militia, refused to carry out the order. Smith was then sent to a state court for a preliminary hearing, where several of his former allies testified against him. Smith and five others, including Rigdon, were charged with treason, and transferred to the jail at Liberty, Missouri, to await trial. During his imprisonment, Smith wrote a personal defense and an apology for the activities of his followers. Though he directed his followers to collect and publish their stories of persecution, he also urged them to moderate their antagonism toward non-Mormons. On April 6, 1839, after a grand jury hearing in Daviess County, Smith and his companions escaped custody, almost certainly with the connivance of the sheriff and guards.  Later, Joseph Smith lived in Nauvoo, Illinois. The state of Illinois accepted Mormon refugees who gathered along the banks of Mississippi River, where Joseph Smith purchased high-priced, swampy woodland in the hamlet of Commerce. He attempted to portray the Mormons as an oppressed minority and unsuccessfully petitioned the federal government for help in obtaining reparations. He had many rich allies like John C. Bennett, the Illinois quartermaster general. Joseph Smith lived in a city named Nauvoo. The city had religious liberty.  The charter also authorized the Nauvoo Legion, a militia whose actions were limited only by state and federal constitutions. Bennett and Smith became its commanders and were styled Major General and Lieutenant General respectively. As such, they controlled by far the largest body of armed men in Illinois. Smith appointed Bennett as Assistant President of the Church, and Bennett was elected Nauvoo's first mayor. Joseph Smith promoted baptism for the dead in 1840 and started the building on the Nauvoo Temple as a place of recovering lost ancient knowledge in 1841. 

 An 1841 revelation promised the restoration of the "fullness of the priesthood"; and in May 1842, Smith inaugurated a revised endowment or "first anointing." The endowment resembled the rites of Freemasonry that Smith had observed two months earlier when he had been initiated "at sight" into the Nauvoo Masonic lodge. At first, the endowment was open only to men, who were initiated into a special group called the Anointed Quorum. For women, Smith introduced the Relief Society, a service club and sorority within which Smith predicted women would receive "the keys of the kingdom." Smith also elaborated on his plan for a Millennial kingdom; no longer envisioning the building of Zion in Nauvoo, he viewed Zion as encompassing all of North and South America, with Mormon settlements being "stakes" of Zion's metaphorical tent.  Zion also became less a refuge from an impending tribulation than a great building project. In the summer of 1842, Smith revealed a plan to establish the millennial Kingdom of God, which would eventually establish theocratic rule over the whole Earth. In Nauvoo, Smith secretly practiced plural marriage. He introduced the doctrine to a few of his closest associates, including Bennett. When rumors of polygamy (called "spiritual wifery" by Bennett) got abroad, Smith forced Bennett's resignation as Nauvoo mayor. In retaliation, Bennett left Nauvoo and began publishing sensational accusations against Smith and his followers. Many people turned against Mormons in Illinois by mdi 1842. 

After one unknown assailant shot and wounded former Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs in May 1842, anti-Mormons promoted rumors that Smith's bodyguard, Peter Rockwell, was the gunman. In July, the recently excommunicated John C. Bennett published a letter claiming Smith had admitted sending Rockwell to 'fulfill prophecy' by killing Boggs; Bennett's claims were widely viewed as an attempt at vengeance for his recent excommunication, with even Gov. Ford later wrote that Bennett "everywhere accounted the same debauched, unprincipled and profligate character."  Though the evidence was circumstantial, the new governor of Missouri petitioned Illinois for Smith's extradition, and Illinois Governor Carlin issued an arrest warrant. Certain he would be killed if he ever returned to Missouri, Smith went into hiding twice during the next five months, until the U.S. Attorney for Illinois argued that his extradition would be unconstitutional. Rockwell was later freed after a Missouri grand jury declined to indict him for the shooting. In May 1843, Smith married Helen Mar Kimball, age 14, the daughter of apostle Heber C. Kimball, who himself had two wives at that time and had encouraged his daughter to accept the marriage. In June 1843, Illinois Governor Thomas Ford issued a warrant to extradite Smith to Missouri on the outstanding charge of treason. Two law officers arrested Smith but were intercepted by a party of Mormons before they could reach Missouri. Smith was then released on a writ of habeas corpus from the Nauvoo municipal court. The events caused significant political fallout in Illinois.

On July 12, 1843, Joseph Smith dictated a revelation about polygamy; Hyrum read the revelation to the High Council on August 12, dividing the hierarchy into polygamist and anti-polygamist factions. On August 1, Smith assaulted County assessor Walter Bagby; Smith pleaded guilty, a fine was imposed, and it was paid. In September, Smith was charged with assault and battery against a Warsaw resident by the name of Bennett [not John C. Bennett]; arriving in Nauvoo with a warrant for Smith's arrest, Constable James Charles was informed that Smith had been tried and acquitted by the Nauvoo municipal court. On November 5, Smith became ill and suspected he had been poisoned, perhaps by wife Emma. In December 1843, Smith petitioned Congress to make Nauvoo an independent territory with the right to call out federal troops in its defense. Smith then wrote to the leading presidential candidates, asking what they would do to protect the Mormons. After receiving noncommittal or negative responses, he announced his own independent candidacy for president of the United States, suspended regular proselytizing, and sent out the Quorum of the Twelve and hundreds of other political missionaries. Smith launched a presidential campaign in 1844 on a platform which proposed gradually ending slavery, protecting the liberties of Latter Day Saints and other minorities, reducing the size of Congress, reestablishing a national bank, reforming prisons, and annexing Texas, California, and Oregon.

By early 1844, a rift developed between Smith and a half dozen of his closest associates. Robert D. Foster, a physician and general in the Nauvoo Legion, returned home to find Smith with his wife Sarah; She later confessed that Smith had preached polygamy and attempted to seduce her. After Joseph Smith made similar proposals to William Law's wife Jane, Law threatened to expose Smith unless he went before the High Council to confess and repent. On January 8, 1844, Smith removed Law from the First Presidency.

In March 1844, Smith secretly organized the Council of Fifty and tasked it with deciding which national or state laws Mormons should obey, establishing its own government, and finding a site where Mormons could live under theocratic law beyond the control of other governments—perhaps in Texas, Oregon, or Mexican-controlled California. On March 9, Smith preached a sermon on the plurality of gods—a doctrine the dissenters regarded as polytheistic blasphemy. On April 18, the Council unanimously elected Smith as "Prophet, Priest, and King"—a common description of Jesus Christ's offices.

Also on April 18, Smith excommunicated the dissenters from the church, alleging they were plotting to kill him. In response, Law and others formed the True Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which taught that Smith was once a true prophet but had since fallen into sin. On May 23, Law and Foster testified before the grand jury in Carthage, which issued indictments against Smith for "adultery, fornication, and perjury." On May 26, Smith responded with another public denial.

On June 7, the dissidents published the first issue of the Nauvoo Expositor, a four-page tract which "exposed" Smith's secret practice of polygamy and his intention to establish a theocracy. The paper similarly decried Smith's recent doctrine of "many Gods." Arguing the Expositor would provoke a new round of violence against the Mormons, the Nauvoo City Council declared the newspaper a public nuisance, and Smith ordered the Nauvoo Legion to assist the police force in destroying its printing press. During the council debate, Smith vigorously urged the council to order the press destroyed, not realizing that destroying a newspaper was more likely to incite an attack than any of the newspaper's accusations. On June 11, a warrant was issued for Smith's arrest on the charge of inciting a riot resulting in the destruction of the Expositor. Destruction of the newspaper provoked a strident call to arms from Thomas C. Sharp, editor of the Warsaw Signal and longtime critic of Smith. 

On June 12, Constable David Bettisworth arrived in Nauvoo to place Joseph Smith under arrest and convey him to Carthage, but Smith was again freed by the municipal court. Bettisworth left but promised to return. Fearing further arrest attempts and mob violence, Smith mobilized the Nauvoo Legion on June 18 and declared martial law. Officials in Carthage responded by mobilizing a small detachment of the state militia, and Governor Ford intervened, threatening to raise a larger militia unless Smith and the Nauvoo City Council surrendered themselves. Smith initially fled across the Mississippi River to avoid arrest, but shortly returned and surrendered to Ford after he was given assurances of his safety. On June 25, Smith and his brother Hyrum arrived in Carthage to stand trial for inciting a riot. Once the Smiths were in custody, the charges were increased to treason, preventing them from posting bail. John Taylor, Willard Richards, and Dan Jones voluntarily joined the Smiths in the Carthage Jail. John S. Fullmer and Cyrus H. Wheelock visited the prisoners in jail, smuggling two pistols to Joseph in the process.

On June 27, 1844, Smith and the other prisoners were staying in the jailer's bedroom, which did not have bars on the windows. Although Smith both faced death threats and had a history of successful jailbreaks, he and the other prisoners were left guarded by only six men. Upon learning that Smith was relatively unguarded, an armed mob with blackened faces stormed the jail. Smith, mistaking the mob for the Nauvoo Legion, initially told a jailer: "Don't trouble yourself ... they've come to rescue me." The guards reportedly feigned defense of the jail by firing shots or blanks over the attackers' heads, and some of the Greys even reportedly joined the mob, who rushed up the stairs. The mob first attempted to push the door open to fire into the room, though Smith and the other prisoners pushed back and prevented this. Hyrum, who was trying to secure the door, was killed instantly with a shot to the face. Smith fired three shots from the smuggled pepper-box pistol, wounding three men, before he sprang for the window. He was shot multiple times before falling out of the window, crying, "Oh Lord my God!" He died shortly after hitting the ground, but was shot several more times by an improvised firing squad before the mob dispersed. Smith was the first U.S. presidential candidate to be assassinated. Immediately following Smith's death, non-Mormon newspapers were nearly unanimous in portraying Smith as a religious fanatic. Conversely, within the Latter Day Saint community, Smith was viewed as a martyred prophet.

After a public funeral and viewing of the deceased brothers, Smith's widow—who feared hostile non-Mormons might try to desecrate the bodies—had their remains buried at night in a secret location, with substitute coffins filled with sandbags interred in the publicly attested grave. The bodies were later moved and reburied under an outbuilding on the Smith property off the Mississippi River. Members of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS Church), under the direction of then-RLDS Church president Frederick M. Smith (Smith's grandson), searched for, located, and disinterred the Smith brothers' remains in 1928 and reinterred them, along with Smith's wife, in Nauvoo at the Smith Family Cemetery. These are the events of the controversial life of Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism. 

By Timothy