Well, Cora herself may not have had this question, but somebody at the general Church level was certainly responding to Cora’s case when this appeared in the Juvenile Instructor in the summer of 1903, six weeks after Cora’s excommunication.
Church Courts and Land Disputes
Question: Has a Bishop’s court authority to try cases involving land disputes?
Answer: Before our lands were surveyed by the government, settlements had been formed and boundaries clearly established. After the survey was made it was found that, as a general thing, the lines of a quarter section would run through the lands of more than one settler; and in order that every man might have title to that which belonged to him, one of the interested parties would comply with the provisions of the law and obtain the title, and after doing this he would deed to the others such portions of the homestead entry as belonged to them; and it was not an uncommon thing for our Church courts to settle disputes arising under those circumstances. But since the government survey it has not been customary for church courts to entertain complaints involving the title to lands, and the same may be said with respect to water. All disputes involving legal titles must be adjudicated by courts of competent jurisdiction. The point is this, Church courts must not undertake to interfere with the legal rights of any member.
President Young held that when any person secures title to land from the government, part of which has been occupied and cultivated by others, he or she should respect the rights of such persons by being willing to deed to them the land they have improved, provided that they pay their share of the expenses incurred in securing the government title, and also a fair remuneration to the pre-emptor or homesteader, for the loss of his or her pre-emption or homestead right in proportion to the amount of land which the various parties received.
In addition to the timing of this Q&A, one more tiny detail points squarely to its being in response to Cora’s case: Church magazines do not normally use “he or she” in writing like this, especially when it involves the traditionally male sphere. They add “or she,” because it’s a “she” whose case they have in mind!
Questions I cannot answer: Whose idea was it to publish this Q&A, and who wrote it? Since Church leaders decided in response to Cora’s case to emphasize that “Church courts must not undertake to interfere with the legal rights of any member,” then why didn’t they nullify her proceedings?
Cora exhibited the first serious signs of mental illness just as this issue of the Juvenile Instructor came off the press. She still believed then, and for months afterward, that “the Apostles” could make things right. What might her life have been had Church leaders in 1903 applied this rule to the case at hand, and not only to future cases?
“he or she” caught me right off, too.
And “court of competent jurisdiction” is a phrase we still use but in the context of dodging or compromising language to avoid such that would attempt to subject the feds to state courts except where Congress tells us we have to be subject to them. (Dang, McCarren Amendment! – water adjudications).
I don’t have a good timeline in my mind. Is this before or after they forced her to transfer her deed to Leavitt?
She had just been excommunicated. It would be eight or nine months later before she signed the deed. Plenty of time to have stopped it all.
The last paragraph certainly seems added to indicate that in disputes, the legal holder of the title should “Do the right thing” by then giving a deed to those where the existing claims were compromised by the government survey. I take that as a subtle direction to recognize the previous claims of settlers, and it may be this part that the high council felt that Cora was not respecting. Certainly, the timing and language seems directly pointed at Cora’s case.
So in the intervening months were the church leaders focusing on the bit about “he or she should respect the rights of such persons” and conveniently ignoring the statement about “Church courts must not undertake to interfere with the legal rights of any member”?
I guess this is the same year my grandmother’s grandmother entered into a post-manifesto marriage, so perhaps whole sections of church members were used to ignoring what the Church was saying in public, assuming they needed to read between the lines, that the Church actually *wink, wink* meant something else?
It’s puzzling.
This is so interesting. And I agree with the others that the answer is puzzling, in that the two paragraphs seem to be saying different things. The answer “chastises” both the High Council and Cora.
Oh, and good catch on the “he or she” thing!
So much doesn’t make sense about this. I am not sure what I would have done if I was Cora. It might make me lose it too.