The highest density of Mormons in Texas

[MikeWaters]

is in rural East Texas?

Upshur and Camp counties? Counties with 40k and 12k people respectively.

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/m...ctive_map.html

[BlueK]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

is in rural East Texas?

Upshur and Camp counties? Counties with 40k and 12k people respectively.

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/m...ctive_map.html

Is that where Gilmer, TX is? I think the story there is that a rogue group of LDS went to Texas when the rest of the church went to Utah. Then a couple of generations later the church sent missionaries there and baptized all the descendants who were "LDS" but not part of the official church. My details may be slightly off, but that's the gist of it. So that is why there are several wards out there in a small area where you wouldn't expect many LDS.

[MikeWaters]

I think you're right about Gilmer. Very interesting. Was not aware of that.

The only Mormon colonization in Texas that I was aware of was Lyman Wight. I've read a short about that, and been to the museum down there near San Antonio and Fredericksburg that has one of this old milling stones.

From wikipedia:

During the succession crisis after Smith's death, Wight felt compelled to follow the orders Smith had given him to found a safe haven for the Latter Day Saints in the Republic of Texas. Wight moved a group of Latter Day Saints there and eventually founded several communities on the central Texas frontier. The first Mormon temple west of the Mississippi was built at Zodiac, Texas,[5] about three miles from Fredericksburg. Sealings, ordinations, washing and anointings, and adoptions were performed in this temple by the Wightites.

Brigham Young attempted several times to persuade Wight to join the main body of Latter Day Saints, which had organized as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Utah Territory, but Wight refused each time. Wight was eventually excommunicated by Young in December 1848; his most prominent follower, Bishop George Miller, was also disfellowshipped.

Wight later recognized William Smith as the president of the Latter Day Saints for a short time and served as a counselor in Smith's short-lived First Presidency. After 1849, Wight wrote and stated that he believed the prophetic mantle of church leadership should fall on the shoulders of Joseph Smith's sons. By then, Wight had rejected Brigham Young, William Smith, and James Strang as pretenders to Joseph Smith's successor. In 1851, after the Pedernales River overflowed its banks and destroyed Zodiac, the Wightite colonists moved to Burnet County, establishing Mormon Mill.

Wight died with a small remnant of his colony with him a few miles from San Antonio. Wight's group had been traveling to Jackson County, Missouri, where he wished to rejoin the remainder of the mid-western Latter Day Saints. He was buried in his temple robes at the Mormon cemetery at Zodiac, which no longer exists. The only remaining material infrastructure of the colony is the Mormon Mill cemetery near Hamilton Creek, about fifty miles east by north of Fredericksburg. Most of Wight's followers went on to become members of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, led by Joseph Smith III.

[MikeWaters]

https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/ikm01