Nathan Ayres West was born in Trumbull County, Ohio on April 10, 1808, the son of William West and Mary (Ayres) West. Not much is known of Nathan’s early years. His father was a Baptist minister and had moved to Ohio from New Jersey in about 1806. Ohio had been a state for only 3 years at that point, and the West family was one of the earliest families to live in the area.
Nathan married Mary Hulet in Portage County, Ohio, just west of Trumbull County, on October 11, 1828. She was the daughter of Sylvanus Hulet, a Revolutionary War veteran, and Mary (Lewis) Hulet, whose families had been in New England for several generations. Nathan and Mary had two daughters, Tryphena and Maria. Tryphena was born on April 7, 1830 in Portage County, Ohio. She married George Doughty on July 12, 1849 in Atchison County, Missouri and the couple had 6 children. Tryphena died on May 30, 1865. Maria was born on March 20, 1833 in Independence, Missouri. She married (1) Manley W. Greene on April 25, 1853 in Atchison County, Missouri, and (2) William Kempton on June 15, 1862 in Glenwood, Iowa. She died April 25, 1917 in Omaha, Nebraska.
At some point in the late 1820’s, Nathan became involved in the early Mormon movement, which had its origin in western New York. For the next 20 years of his life he was involved in all the movements, trials and tribulations that the early church endured. He eventually became an elder in the early LDS church. The Wests moved to Independence, Missouri with the Mormons in 1832, the site of the first “Zion, Kingdom of God”. The Mormons were driven from there in 1833 and went to neighboring Clay County. After spending a couple of years there, they went to a sparsely populated region of northwest Missouri in Ray County and established their own county, Caldwell, and its county seat Far West. Eventually they were driven out of this area, too. The next stop was Nauvoo, Illinois, after wintering in 1838-39 in Quincy, a few miles down river from Nauvoo. These towns were located in a swampy area on the eastern bank of the Mississippi River. Nathan was still in Quincy in 1840 with his family before eventually going to Nauvoo. The Mormons continued to increase membership in their new church, to the extent that, in 1845, Nauvoo was the largest city in Illinois, with a population of 11,036. Religious intolerance eventually drove them out of Nauvoo, as had been the case in all their previous communities. After leaving Nauvoo, they lingered in southwest Iowa for a couple of years before beginning their monumental trek to Utah over the next few years. Many of the original Mormons broke away from the mainstream LDS church and formed their own version, the Reformed Church of Latter Day Saints (RLDS). This was brought about by the murder of Joseph Smith while he was in a jail cell at Carthage, near Nauvoo. He alone had been able to keep the differing factions unified, but with his death, the discontents were able to break away and form the RLDS in 1844. Most of the breakaways remained in Iowa and Illinois. The RLDS was never a large or influential group like the mainstream LDS. Nathan was still a member of the original LDS church in 1847 when he crossed Iowa from Nauvoo and settled in Pottawattamie County in an area that later became a part of Mills County, formed in 1851 from part of Pottawattamie County.
In 1843, Nathan became a member of the Nauvoo Legion with rank of First Lieutenant. The Nauvoo Legion was an independent militia not under control of the state. In 1844 the Nauvoo Legion was “the largest trained soldiery in the U.S., excepting only the U.S. Army”. In April 1844 Nathan West was one of several Illinois residents appointed to campaign for Joseph Smith, who had decided to run for president. The campaign ended abruptly on June 27, 1844 when Smith was attacked and killed while in the Carthage, Illinois jail.
Nathan West was an elder in the church, having been ordained on July 18, 1833 in Jackson County (Independence) and performed marriages in Missouri and later in Nauvoo. He was also a member of the Quorum of Seventy, or, simply, Seventy, “a special witness of Christ.” In the Fall of 1834, Nathan undertook a missionary journey that took him back to Kirtland, Ohio (LDS Headquarters), baptizing and preaching the Gospel along the way, mainly in eastern Indiana. His travels are chronicled in early LDS missionary records. Upon his return he continued his functions in the church while farming and raising his two daughters in Missouri and Illinois.
Later, back in Iowa, Nathan, and several others, were “cut off” from the church on April 20, 1851, after “aiding and abetting Father Cutler and promulgating his insidious views”. The charges brought against him included (1) “a spirit of dissention…in the vote of the General Assembly not to support shops selling spirituous liquors, tea, coffee, and tobacco”, and (2) “teaching incorrect doctrine in that he said that the Word of Wisdom did not concern our spiritual salvation”. The result of this excommunication was that he stayed on in Iowa rather than going on to Utah with the main body of Mormons. Mills County, in southwest Iowa, was his home for the remainder of his life. It is not known whether he had originally intended to go on to Utah or whether he joined the RLDS.
Mary (Hulet) West died on September 6, 1835 in Clay County, Missouri at the age of 30. Nathan married again on March 13, 1836 in Clay County to Adeline Louisa Follett, daughter of King Follett and Louisa Tanner. No children were born to this union. Adeline died on August 1, 1884. Nathan married for the third time on November 11, 1884, at the age of 76, to Julia (Johnson) Fleming. Julia died in Emerson, Nebraska on March 27, 1910.
Nathan West was a farmer all his life, although he did some woodworking as a sideline (his occupation in the 1850 Census is given as “joiner”). In 1853, he became the first elected Justice of the Peace of Silver Creek Township, Mills County and served in other minor civil posts. Nathan Ayres West died on May 8, 1888 in Mills County at the age of 80 from “heart failure”. He was laid to rest at the Malvern Cemetery (known then as Calvary Cemetery) next to his wife Adaline. Here is an excerpt from his obituary in the Malvern Leader of May 17, 1888: “He saw our unbroken prairies developed into cultivated farms, and the rude cabin give place to the home of comfort. He saw the old trading posts, where goods were given in exchange for grain, no longer a necessity, for the railroads were almost at his door, and money the medium of exchange. He was a resident of this great Northwest when there was no town of any size north of St. Louis, and lived to see and take part in the wonderful development and prosperity of a section of country whose growth finds no parallel in the history of nations.”
Nathan A. West
headstone, Malvern, Iowa Cemetery
Source: Submitted by John Wilkins
