Jedediah Grant was born on February 21, 1816 in Windsor, NY and although the man who would serve as the first mayor of Salt Lake City, UT spent but a short time in Sullivan County, his impact here is well documented.

Grant was a Mormon, a close friend and confidant of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, and his work as a missionary was among the most successful in the annals of that church. Grant preached and converted throughout the east, from Virginia to New York, and it was that calling that brought him to Sullivan County around 1844.

The early Mormons were a nomadic group, forced to travel from place to place by the religious intolerance of Americans whose ancestors had conceived of this country as a safe haven for those persecuted because of their beliefs. Joseph Smith led his people from upstate New York to Missouri, then to Illinois, where in 1839 he established there the community of Nauvoo - it's Hebrew for “beautiful place”-- before he was hanged five years later, leaving Brigham Young in charge of the flock. It was Young who took the Mormons to Utah and founded Salt Lake City.

The Mormons have always been - and are to this day - active and enthusiastic missionaries, unafraid of traveling to faraway places to spread their faith. No early Mormon missionary was ever as persuasive and successful as Grant, who returned to Salt Lake City after his missions had ended and became the city's first mayor, as well as a trusted counselor to Brigham Young.

One of Grant's successful ministries brought him to Sullivan County, where he apparently found some willing converts to his religion in the town of Neversink. Interestingly and coincidentally, for a number of years the town also had been home to a good-sized congregation of Quakers—the only such group in Sullivan County-- and a meeting house for the Society of Friends, seating 150, had been constructed near Grahamsville in 1842.

In his 1873 “History of Sullivan County,” James Eldridge Quinlan calls those Quakers “quiet and inoffensive people” but he was not so polite in relating the story of Grant's success in convincing people to follow him. In a few subtly condescending paragraphs at the end of the section on Neversink, Quinlan writes:

“In 1844, the Mormons, or Latter Day Saints, made several converts in this town. They held their meetings generally in what is now known as the Nauvoo neighborhood, at a house now occupied by a Roman Catholic Irishman named Patrick Burt. Jedediah M. Grant was the missionary of the Saints, and presented his faith to the people of Neversink in such a way, that some who were considered intelligent as well as honest, embraced it.

“Among the converts were Horace Gillett and Isaac Groo and their wives, William L. Brundage, John Hodge, and Miles Wheaton. Jedediah Grant was succeeded by his brother Joshua and some other propagators of Mormonism. The converts were finally gathered together and started for the fold of Brigham Young at Salt Lake.

“Groo became a prominent man in Utah. He was appointed a Regent of the University of Deseret, etc., and gave practical evidence of the faith that was in him by becoming the husband of four living wives. Gillett died of cholera on the Plains, while on his way to the land of promise and polygamy. He was much beloved in Neversink. Notwithstanding his dereliction from the faith of his fathers, a long and laudatory announcement of his death appeared in one of the newspapers of the county.”

Isaac Groo, whose first wife, Sarah Elizabeth, was the daughter of Horace Gillett, eventually had six wives and 28 children, the youngest of whom lived until 1964. He became an elder in the Mormon Church, and even led a delegation of missionaries to Australia. Upon his return home from Down Under, he became a successful rancher in Wyoming, but eventually sold his land and returned to Salt Lake City. He died there in 1895.

The Gillett family remained quite prominent in Neversink long after Horace made his way west with the Mormons. William Gillett owned and operated the Travelers Home hotel, Benjamin Gillett owned the local grocery, J.F. Gillett was a teacher, and Chester, David and Jared Gillett were all farmers. And Horace Gillett's wife was a daughter of William A. Moore, who served as the Superintendent of the Poor in the town.

Likewise, the Groos were a well-known family in the area, and no fewer than six Groo families were operating farms in Neversink at the time of Quinlan's writing. There were even more Brundages active in Neversink at that time, with at least eight Brundages engaged in farming, blacksmithing, and in the mercantile trade. There were other, less notable residents of the town who followed the Grants to Salt Lake City, leaving their erstwhile community behind.

The name Nauvoo, given to the area where the Mormons had resided while in Neversink, stuck, and the area was known by that name well into the 20th century, though few residents ever knew why.

Of course, anyone who has read Quinlan knows he was unable to resist resorting to sarcasm, whether it was called for or not, and he almost always chose overt sarcasm over subtlety. It is perhaps characteristically, then, that he concludes his section on the Neversink Mormons with this paragraph:

“The Nauvoo neighborhood is now generally occupied by industrious Irish farmers, who revere all the Saints of their faith, but who anathematize these Latter Day Saints as the offspring of the devil.”

John Conway is the Sullivan County Historian. His latest book, “In Further Retrospect,” is now available for purchase. Email him at jconway52@hotmail.com for information on how to order a copy.