Hancock County Murders

The tombstone of Andrew Daubenheyer, one of the Hancock County residents killed in September 1845. (Photo courtesy of Ancestry.com)The body content of your post goes here. To edit this text, click on it and delete this default text and start typing your own or paste your own from a different source.

In 1843 at age 22, Franklin Angus Worrell moved to Quincy from Ephrata, Pennsylvania, with his mother Elizabeth and his brother Milton. His mother was a recent widow who would later become famous as a Civil War nurse known to the soldiers as Mother Leebrick. Milton Worrell and his mother remained in Quincy, but Franklin moved to Hancock County and settled in Carthage where he became a well-known and generous with credit merchant. He married Ann Elizabeth Lawton on February 22, 1844.

Quincy was becoming an important city on the western frontier of Illinois. The city was known for hospitality and had sheltered thousands of Mormons during the winter of 1838-39. After a brief stay in Quincy most of the Mormons moved 40 miles north to establish their town of Nauvoo. As a frontier town, Nauvoo experienced rapid growth. The July 21, 1939 Quincy Herald Whig said, Nauvoo had attracted “its normal share of criminals who always infect the boom town…”.   

The Worrells arrived in Illinois as the relationship between the Mormons and their neighbors was disintegrating. Their leader, Joseph Smith wanted to expand his community and set up more settlements in Hancock and Adams Counties, which angered the “old citizens” as the local settlers were known. Governor Thomas Ford in his History of Illinois described the settlers as “hard cases.” There was also dissent within the Mormon community. A newspaper was set up in Nauvoo to challenge Smith’s leadership. Smith had the newspaper destroyed, which caused him and his brother Hyrum to be arrested and sent to the Carthage jail, where they were killed on June 27, 1844.

At the time of the murders of the Smith brothers, Franklin Worrell was a well-known anti-Mormon. He was a lieutenant of the Carthage Grays and in charge of the seven-man guard at the jail. The rest of the Grays were camped nearby. Worrell was one of the five men accused of killing the Smiths. In addition to being charged for the murders, he was a prosecution witness. Another witness said that Worrell told him the day before the murders, “We have had too much trouble to bring Old Joe here to let him escape alive, and unless you want to die with him, you better leave before sundown.” Worrell denied saying that. He also said there was “so much noise or smoke that I could not see or hear anything what was said or done.” When asked on the witness stand if the Grays had loaded their guns with blanks, he said, “I will not answer that question.” 

By September 1845, Hancock County and northwest Adams County were embroiled in conflict with historian William Hartley stating, “If Illinois ever had an arson month in its history, September 1845 was it.” 

Thomas Gregg’s 1880 History of Hancock County describes the 1845 events as “not law or order… [which] brought the people to a state of recklessness.” The book describes a September 9th anti-Mormon meeting held at the Green Plains School which was located in a small community southeast of Warsaw. Shots were fired into the building. In retaliation, cabins were burned, and the Mormon settlement known as Morley-Town was destroyed. 

Franklin Worrell was in the midst of those conflicts, but later accounts varied as to his fate. His wife’s obituary in 1906 says her first husband was killed on September 16, 1845, by the Mormons while guarding settler’s property east of Warsaw.  

According to the October 11, 1845, American Penny Magazine, using the Warsaw Signal as its source, the Hancock County Sheriff, J. B. Backenstos, was considered a “Jack-Mormon” who was “very obnoxious to the anti-Mormons.” Backenstos backed the Mormons for political reasons as he had served as a circuit clerk and in the state legislature. He wanted their votes. He wanted to stop the violence but could not raise a posse “among the old citizens.” He issued a proclamation on September 13, calling for the rioters to stop and asked for a posse comitatus to assist him. The magazine described Frank Worrell as a Carthage merchant who alone was shot on September 16, while riding with a group of 12 to 14 other men. The magazine went on to say that the people talked of a general battle and that “women and children are leaving the county as fast as they can get away.”

 According to Gregg’s History, Frank Worrell was killed while riding his horse from Carthage to Warsaw with a group of eight men. He was not part of the arsonists or rioters. Sheriff Backenstos and Orrin Porter Rockwell were indicted for the murder. They were both acquitted of the charge after a change of venue for their trials. No one knows for sure who killed Worrell, but Rockwell said many years later that he did under the order of the sheriff.

By order of Governor Ford on September 17, the Quincy Riflemen took a steamboat to Warsaw and marched to Carthage where they camped before marching to Nauvoo with loaded weapons expecting resistance. Although Nauvoo citizens were well armed and organized, there was no resistance. 

The September 24, 1845, Quincy Whig published several separate accounts of what happened, all originally published in the Warsaw Signal, one saying the Mormons killed Franklin, one accusing Sheriff Backenstos, and one saying the sheriff had confessed to the murder and calling him “the leader of a band of murderers.” The newspaper called Worrell, “one of the bravest, best and most beloved of our citizens.” “He has left a young and most amiable wife to mourn his death, and an infant too young to know the loss it has sustained.” 

Shortly after Worrell’s death, three more citizens were killed before Governor Ford sent soldiers into Hancock County to quell the disturbances. Less is written about them. One man, Andrew Daubenheyer disappeared on the road to Carthage on September 18. He was found in a shallow grave, shot in the back of his head. His tombstone in the Tull Cemetery in Pontoosuc says, “Killed by the Mormons, Sep. 1845.” 

Sources

American Penny Magazine and Family Newspaper. Vol. 1, No. 36, October 11, 1845.

Ford, Thomas. A History of Illinois from its Commencement as a State in 1818-1847. 

Chicago: S. C. Griggs & Co., 1854.

Gregg, Thomas. History of Hancock County, Illinois: together with an outline history of the 

state, and a digest of state laws. Chicago: C. C. Chapman & Co., 1880.

Hallwas, John E. & Roger D. Launius [editors]. Cultures in Conflict; A Documentary History 

of the Mormon Wars in Illinois. Logan UT: Utah State University Press, 1995.

“The Hancock Troubles.” Quincy Whig, September 24, 1845, 2.

Hartley, William G. The 1845 Burning of Morley’s Settlement and Murder of Edmund Durfee. 

Salt Lake City, Utah: Primer Publications, 1997.

Lindbloom, Sharon. Nauvoo’s Bloody Autumn of 1845. Nauvoo’s Bloody Autumn of 1845 – Mormonism Research Ministry (mrm.org)

Linder, Douglas O. The Carthage Conspiracy Trial: An Account, The Carthage Conspiracy Trial: An Account (umkc.edu), 2010

Oaks, Dallin H. and Marvin S. Hill. Carthage Conspiracy: The Trial of the Accused Assassins 

of Joseph Smith. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1975.

“Troubles of the Mormons in Illinois and a Discussion of it From a Political Angle.” Quincy 

Herald Whig, July 21, 1939, 6.