Thomas B. Marsh - Church History

Thomas B. Marsh - Church History

If you had stood on the crowded streets of Boston in the late 1820s, you might have crossed paths with Thomas Baldwin Marsh, a man whose soul was deeply dissatisfied with the cold, traditional religions of his day. Born in Massachusetts in 1799, Thomas was a printer by trade, working in a type foundry, but he harbored a quiet, unshakable conviction that the Almighty was about to raise up a church possessing the truth in its absolute purity.

In the summer of 1829, obeying a distinct, unexplained prompting from the Holy Ghost, Thomas packed his bags and traveled 400 miles west into upstate New York, completely blind to the true purpose of his journey. It was a strange, blind march of faith. He wandered for three months, and just as he prepared to turn back home, empty-handed, a woman at a lodging house asked if he had heard of Joseph Smith's "Golden Book."

Thomas hurried to Palmyra, walked into E.B. Grandin’s printing shop, and there the printer handed him a fresh, wet proof sheet containing the very first 16 pages of the Book of Mormon.

The moment Thomas laid eyes on those pages, the spirit of revelation kindled within him. He returned to Boston, where his wife, Elizabeth, read the pages and instantly knew they were the word of God. They sold what they had, moved their three children to Palmyra, and were baptized in September 1830.

Thomas was immediately recognized as a spiritual giant, receiving profound personal revelations now canonized in the Doctrine and Covenants, including Sections 31, 52, 56, 75, 112, and 118. In Section 31, the Lord explicitly called him to be a "physician unto the church," a spiritual and physical healing calling he performed with great devotion. By 1835, based on seniority, he was ordained an Apostle and became the very first President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, standing next in leadership succession to the Prophet Joseph Smith.

The Marshes sacrificed their material comfort repeatedly for the sake of the gathering. They abandoned their home in Ohio and relocated to Jackson County, Missouri. There, Thomas built a comfortable log cabin near the Big Blue River, only for violent mobs to destroy his property and drive his family out into Lafayette and Clay counties. Through the bitter winter expulsions and the loss of multiple homesteads, Marsh managed to keep his family alive and remained a key pillar of strength to the suffering Saints.

In late 1836, Thomas moved his family to the newly laid-out city of Far West, Missouri (Caldwell County). The town was designed around a massive four-block Public Square, with four wide cardinal streets extending outward. Because Thomas served as the President of the Quorum of the Twelve and a top leader of the Church in Missouri, his home was built near the central core of the city, just blocks from the main Public Square and the temple corner. He procured a lot immediately, erected a home, and dedicated his energies to building up the headquarters of the Church.

It is here, in the mud of Missouri in the year 1838, that Thomas Marsh allowed the creeping frost of self-importance and jealousy to enter his heart. The catalyst was deceptively small—a legendary dispute between his wife, Elizabeth, and Sister Harris over the "milk cream strippings" for cheese-making. The matter was taken all the way to the high council, and when the council ruled against his wife, Thomas felt personally insulted.

Magnified by his growing anxiety over the militant actions of the Danites and Sidney Rigdon's fiery sermons, Thomas let his hurt feelings obscure his vision. He chose to look for faults in the Prophet Joseph Smith. In October 1838, he walked away from the Church, eventually signing a scathing legal affidavit that was weaponized by Governor Boggs to justify the infamous Extermination Order. Thomas was formally excommunicated on March 17, 1839.

For nearly nineteen years, Thomas lived in spiritual exile, poverty, and darkness. He watched the Church he once helped lead march across the continent without him, carrying all the keys, blessings, and authority he had thrown away over a dispute about cream.

In his late-life autobiography, published in the Millennial Star in 1864, he looked back with raw transparency. He recalled a confrontation with Joseph Smith right before he left, where Joseph asked if he intended to leave, and Marsh haughtily replied: "Joseph, when you see me leave the Church, you will see a good fellow leave it."

Marsh recorded that after leaving Far West, he immediately tracked down David Whitmer and Oliver Cowdery in Richmond, Missouri, hoping to find validation for his rebellion. Instead, he cornered David Whitmer and strictly cross-examined him about his testimony. Whitmer looked him in the eye and completely shattered his expectations, declaring that an angel had indeed shown him the plates, and that while Joseph Smith may have stumbled, the Book of Mormon was undeniably true.

Even during his decades of apostasy, Marsh never denied the book. He spent years in deep reflection, realizing he had allowed petty grievances to blind him, perceiving a "mote" in the Prophet's eye while carrying a "beam" in his own.

Recognizing his errors, a broken, partially paralyzed Thomas wrote to Heber C. Kimball in 1857, begging for nothing more than a place "as the lowest member" in fellowship. In July 1857, he walked into the Salt Lake Valley with just $5.10 to his name. On September 6, 1857, he stood before a massive congregation in the bowery and openly confessed that his apostasy had begun with jealousy and pride. The Saints forgave him, and he was rebaptized into full fellowship in Spanish Fork and dying in Ogden in January 1866.

But here lies the solemn, inescapable warning of this history, a truth that must be weighed with the deepest reverence.

When a person decides to let pride, hurt feelings, or the perception of being treated unfairly drive them to leave the Church, they may eventually find the humility to repent and return, just as Thomas Marsh did. But they cannot always bring their posterity back with them.

When Thomas made the choice to walk away in 1838, his family splintered.

His wife, Elizabeth, never returned to the Church, eventually migrating to California, where she died in 1878, completely separated from the Saints. His surviving children likewise did not stay in the Church; they scattered across the Midwest and California, far from the main body of the Saints.

Thomas B. Marsh’s modern posterity is estimated to number between 1,500 and 3,000 living descendants today, and virtually 100% of them grew up completely outside the blessings of the restored gospel.

His personal reconciliation with God was secure, but his decision altered the spiritual lineage of thousands of his children and grandchildren, causing them to lose the generational blessings of the priesthood, the temple, and the covenant line.

Think of the grand keys of presidency, the privilege of leading the Saints into the tops of the mountains, and the eternal glory of an unblemished apostleship that could have been his and his family's, had he chosen to overlook an offense.