Gems for the Young Folks: Fourth Book of the Faith-Promoting Series. Designed for the Instruction and Encouragement of Young Latter-Day Saints

In Short

This volume brings together first-hand accounts from early Latter-day Saint pioneers and missionaries as they navigate severe persecution, deep family divisions, and perilous journeys across sea and land. Through personal narratives like a runaway youth’s anxious migration to Salt Lake City and a bishop’s recollections of miraculous healings and extreme poverty, the book documents the foundational experiences of a burgeoning religious movement. It has endured as an intimate, unvarnished historical record, capturing the plainspoken resilience, supernatural expectations, and lived reality of nineteenth-century American frontier believers.

The Story

The narrative opens with a personal memoir of childhood abandonment and deep-seated prejudice. After the death of his mother and separation from his father in infancy, a young boy and his brother are bound over to an abusive uncle. Raised in an environment that uses stories of Latter-day Saints as bogeymen to terrify children, the young man grows up harboring an intense dread of the faith. When the domestic abuse becomes intolerable, his grandfather dissolves the arrangement, prompting the youth to flee west toward California.

His journey, however, takes an unexpected turn when he discovers he is actually being steered toward Utah, where his estranged father, Heber C. Kimball, resides. Terrified of falling into the hands of a group he has been taught to view as monsters, the young traveler desperately attempts to escape, at one point stripping off his clothes and swimming across a swift river to avoid a family acquaintance who tries to reassure him. Eventually reaching Salt Lake City, expecting capture or imprisonment, he surrenders to his father’s household instead. Expecting hostility, he is met with quiet hospitality, a warm meal, and an invitation to join a large, unfamiliar family. Over time, physical labor and schooling erode his anxieties, culminating in his voluntary baptism and a mission back east to reunite with his remaining brother.

The volume then shifts into a series of episodic missionary and travel accounts from ministers laboring across North America and Europe. On the high seas, an emigrant vessel bound for Zion encounters thick fog, narrowly avoiding destruction on rocky breakers only when a sudden lifting of the fog allows the captain to violently wheel the ship around. In the American South, itinerant preachers endure fierce public theological debates against hostile local ministers, relying on impromptu rhetoric and spiritual conviction to win over skeptical crowds.

In the final, extensive section, Bishop Benjamin Brown details his conversion and subsequent decades of service. Starting from his youth as a rural farmer, Brown recounts a life steeped in divine interventions, visions, and severe hardship. As persecution mounts against the Saints in Nauvoo, Illinois, Brown and his community face systematic dispossession, selling valuable property, orchards, and homes for pittance under the threat of mob violence. Forced into an arduous winter exodus westward, the displaced believers endure scurvy and starvation in temporary encampments before reaching the Salt Lake Valley, where unexpected trade waves from the California Gold Rush ultimately relieve their desperate poverty.

How It Unfolds

A boyhood under siege Bound out to an uncle after his mother dies, a young boy endures systematic neglect and relentless taunts about his parentage, absorbing a terror of Latter-day Saints that causes him to flee at the slightest sound in the woods.

Escape toward the West Rebelling against his uncle's cruelty, the youth attempts to head to California, only to discover he is being brought to Utah; in sheer panic, he strips, leaps into a swift river, and avoids an emissary rather than face those he fears.

Surrender and reconciliation Entering Salt Lake City with intense trepidation, the boy surrenders to his father, Heber C. Kimball, who receives him warmly, introduces him to a massive family circle, and sets him to work hauling wood to cure his homesickness.

Spiritual adoption and mission After deciding to be baptized in City Creek, the young man is ordained an Elder and commissioned to travel back to the Eastern States to locate his brother and bring him West.

Deliverance on the Atlantic A ship carrying hundreds of converts toward America sails through dense fog until a sudden clearing exposes rocky shoals, prompting the captain to throw the helmsman aside and steer the vessel clear of disaster.

Debating in the wilderness Missionaries traveling through Virginia face public challenges from local ministers, using plain scriptural arguments to overwhelm seasoned debaters and win over large rural audiences.

Exodus from Nauvoo Faced with mob violence and forced expulsion from Illinois, Bishop Benjamin Brown and his neighbors liquidate houses and thousands of orchard trees for tiny sums, spending a frantic winter building wagons for the trek west.

Providence in the Valley Struggling with extreme poverty and lack of supplies in their new desert settlement, the displaced community experiences sudden relief when California-bound gold seekers flood the valley, selling tools and goods below cost.

The People

• The Runaway Boy: An orphaned youth raised by an abusive uncle, he wants only freedom and safety. Hindered by intense childhood indoctrination and fear of his father's faith, he eventually transforms from a distrustful, pugnacious escapee into an ordained minister reconciled with his family.
• Heber C. Kimball: A prominent leader within the church and the runaway's estranged father. He wants to reunite his scattered children and build a stable family life in the West, offering calm patience, practical farm work, and paternal discipline to win over his skeptical son.
• Benjamin Brown: A farmer turned Bishop who seeks direct spiritual guidance and the restoration of biblical Christianity. Hindered by severe mob hostility, loss of property, and his wife's initial bitter opposition to his faith, he remains an unshakeable, pragmatic leader through forced migrations and mission trips.
• Lewis Robison: A traveling acquaintance who attempts to bridge the gap between the terrified runaway boy and his father, patiently enduring the boy's evasions across riverbanks to deliver messages of safety.
• Elder Robert Hamilton: A fluent, energetic Scottish missionary who travels through Virginia, facing down hostile clergy in open public debate through sheer rhetorical force and memory of scripture.

In Its Own Voice

"More than once when gathering berries in the woods, were we alarmed by the flight of a bird or the rustling noise of some small animal in the underbrush."

This vivid memory reflects the intense, paralyzing dread instilled in the young boy during his childhood by relatives who used rumors of religious monsters to terrify him.

"He sprang to the wheelhouse with the agility of a tiger, and knocked the man at the helm 'heels over head,' sending him sprawling upon the deck."

An eyewitness captures the desperate, split-second action of a sea captain turning his vessel away from jagged rocks when the fog suddenly parts.

"I saw the spirit by which she was influenced, so I walked up to her and said, 'I am a servant of the Lord, I obey no command of the devil.'"

Bishop Benjamin Brown describes confronting a severe, erratic affliction during a home visit, framing his ministry as a direct struggle against visible physical and spiritual forces.

What It's Really About

At its core, the text examines the friction between external demonization and internal reality, showing how personal experience shatters absorbed prejudices. It explores how individuals cope with total dislocation—whether fleeing domestic abuse, crossing oceans, or being driven from their homes at gunpoint—by reframing chaotic suffering as a necessary, purposeful test of faith. The book argues that spiritual conviction is not merely a matter of theological agreement, but a practical survival mechanism that enables displaced communities to build order out of frontier exile. Through its varied accounts, it asks how ordinary working people maintain agency, familial ties, and moral certainty when thrust into severe physical danger and social isolation.

Why Read It Today

This collection will appeal to readers of American frontier history, modern religious movement origins, and authentic nineteenth-century memoirs. Reading it feels like sitting in a rustic hall listening to aging pioneers recount the raw, unedited highlights of their youth. There is no polished literary embellishment here; the prose is plain, direct, and infused with the candid vernacular of nineteenth-century working folk.

The book does present genuine difficulties for a modern reader. Its structure is episodic and fragmented, shifting abruptly between vastly different authors, geographical settings, and narrative styles without smooth transitions. Readers must also navigate nineteenth-century religious sectarianism, stark theological arguments, and period attitudes regarding domestic structure and mobility. What stays with you, however, is the remarkable physical endurance of its contributors. The image of families selling entire orchards for a pittance, building homemade wagons through bitter winter nights, and marching into an unfamiliar wilderness creates a gripping human portrait of grit, displacement, and unwavering conviction that lingers long after the final page.