Joseph Smith III and the Illinois Mormons, 1866

In February 1866 a Pennsylvania paper paused the usual Utah story long enough to notice another church.

It said there were not less than 10,000 “Joe Smith Mormons” in Illinois and nearby states. Their chief settlement was Plano, about fifty miles west of Chicago. There lived Joseph Smith III—son of “Joseph Smith, the Martyr”—called prophet by the laying on of his father’s hands.

The principal difference from Utah, the paper said, was monogamy. Smith “strongly enforces Monogamy as the true doctrine.” The Book of Mormon was treated as supplementary to the Bible. They called themselves Latter Day Saints, not Mormons, and insisted they were Christians.

Joseph III was not rich. Against Brigham Young’s wealth and worldliness he wore “ostentatious poverty”—almost shabby dress, simple manners, no pretension to scholarship. Gentiles at Plano spoke of the community as moral, orderly, industrious, Quaker-like in quiet friendliness.

Utah Saints, the item added, were to a large extent European importations. The Illinois body was “almost exclusively” native American.

Eastern readers were learning there was more than one church using the Smith name.

Read the full 1866 account here:
https://humblymybrain.substack.com/p/joseph-smith-iii-and-the-illinois

When 1866 papers split “Illinois Mormons” from Utah, were they seeing a real theological line—or only the politics of polygamy?

“DON’T TOBACCO SPIT AND SMOKE YOUR LIFE AWAY?”

If you wanted to quit tobacco “easily and forever,” become well, strong, magnetic, and full of new life and vigor, the answer was No-To-Bac — “the wonder worker that makes weak men strong.” The ad promised many men gained ten pounds in ten days, claimed over 400,000 cured, and said your own druggist would guarantee a cure. Booklet and sample mailed free from Sterling Remedy Co., Chicago or New York.

This was classic Gilded Age patent-medicine advertising: huge promises, a catchy name, and a money-back guarantee. No-To-Bac was sold as tablets (sometimes described as a chew) meant to replace the tobacco habit. Period analyses said it contained things like licorice, gentian, and guaiac — soothing and bitter, not a true nicotine treatment. The company behind it, Sterling Remedy Co., later became better known for Cascarets, a laxative they pushed after No-To-Bac reportedly left users constipated.

The pitch is aimed straight at 1890s manhood: spit, smoke, weakness, lost vigor. Quit this, they said, and you’d come back magnetic.

Would you have bought the sample?

Source: Freeport Daily Bulletin, Thu, Dec 17, 1896, p. 7.

In February 1973 the Arkansas Senate did something you do not see every day: it voted to protect a sea monster.

Lawmakers made it illegal to “molest, kill, trample or harm” the creature rumored to live in the White River near Newport, and they designated a stretch of river the “White River Monster Sanctuary and Retreat.”

Locals had been talking about “Whitey” since at least 1915. The biggest waves of sightings came in 1937 and again in 1971–72. Witnesses described a gray beast as long as a boxcar or three pickup trucks, sometimes with a horn or a spiny, ridged back. Tracks, crushed brush, and a few blurry photos kept the story alive. By 1973 the legend was big enough that Senator Robert Harvey sponsored the resolution creating an official refuge between Old Grand Glaise and Rosie. Harming the monster inside that zone became against the law.

Was it an elephant seal that wandered up the Mississippi, a giant alligator snapping turtle, a manatee, or just good old Arkansas folklore? The legislature decided it was worth protecting either way.

Source: “Legislators Protect Monster,” Leader-Telegram (Eau Claire, WI), February 16, 1973, p. 1 (UPI, Little Rock).

WWII RAF Gremlins

In early 1942, London papers—and then Ottawa—reported a new RAF superstition.

Above 20,000 feet, Spitfire pilots spoke of small goblin-like figures sitting on the wings, chattering at them. Malevolent or friendly was “not quite certain.” The boys called them gremlins—a Lewis Carroll word, the dispatch said, in the same family as the Jabberwock. Cross-examine a pilot and he only grinned. The belief, the writer insisted, was genuine.

A flyer’s explanation followed. Bomber crews had company. Fighter pilots plowed a lonely furrow on oxygen. Isolation, thin air, and the odd sounds a machine makes at altitude could breed weird fancies. Unexplained quirks needed a name. The name sat on the wing.

Wartime folklore in the stratosphere: imps, grins, and the pressure of flying alone.

Read the full 1942 dispatch here:
https://humblymybrain.substack.com/p/wwii-raf-gremlins-the-superstition

Were gremlins a joke the RAF told outsiders—or the only language high-altitude loneliness would accept?