Johnson J. Hendershot was 39 years old in 1889 when two Mormon elders stopped by his Fulton County, Pennsylvania farm one evening about 5 p.m., asking for a place to stay the night. Johnson invited them to join the family for supper; they could talk religion after the chores were done, and the visitors could sleep at the Hendershot home. The Hendershots were not surprised by the missionaries’ claim that they were inspired to pass other houses along the main road between Hancock, Maryland and Everett, Pennsylvania, because of inspiration – the Hendershots had been considering a change in churches from the one they had grown up in to one supported by a brother-in-law – and they accepted the idea that the elders had come in response to their own prayers.

Johnson and Laura Hendershot suggested that the elders call on their friends, Cecil and Laura Barnhart. They did, and the Hendershots and Barnharts were baptized on the same afternoon in April 1889. The two families became the anchors of a small LDS community in Buck Valley which continued to grow through the 1890s, being formally organized as a branch in 1896. They were well respected in the community outside of the branch, too – Johnson Hendershot was a boxer who taught boys in the community to defend themselves (but he also assured his sons that if any one of them ever picked a fight, he, their father, would outbox them), and Laura Hendershot was a nurse and midwife who served the women of her neighborhood.

The first few decades of the 20th century were difficult ones for the Saints in the south and west parts of Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh was (and still is) the headquarters of the National Reform Association, an organization that advocates a far greater role for a certain type of Christianity in political life than most Americans are comfortable supporting; in the 19teens they were especially active in the anti-Mormon arena, promoting lectures tours by professional anti-Mormons Frank J. Cannon and Lulu Loveland Shepherd and Vernon Danielsen and Hans Peter Freece and Louie E. Brittain and a great many other notorious names. During World War I, despite decisions by the federal draft board that exempted Mormon missionaries as clergymen until their missions were complete, Pittsburgh succeeded in drafting Mormon missionaries in place of sending their own sons to war; one of those missionaries drafted in 1917, Jens Leslie Stevenson, was a Canadian who was killed on the battlefield.

But despite the national currents swirling in their corner of Pennsylvania, the Saints in Buck Valley thrived as a branch, and made plans to build their first chapel. It wasn’t an elaborate building – a poured concrete foundation with a wooden frame above, shingled in zinc tiles as a precaution against fire. It would be clean and sufficiently large (26 x 40 feet), and theirs. The Church at Salt Lake contributed $75 toward its building; the Saints in Buck Valley contributed the rest of the funds and donated their labor. The building was virtually complete, ready for inside plastering, in January 1916.

On the night of January 21, 1916, at about 1:00 in the morning, the people of Buck Valley were jolted awake by the sound of an explosion that rattled windows “for several miles around,” according to newspaper accounts. People ran from their homes to discover the source of the blast … and quickly found that the almost-completed Mormon chapel had been completely destroyed by dynamite. First on the scene was Johnson Hendershot, and he had the presence of mind to keep excited onlookers at a distance while his son William drove off to the nearest telegraph point to notify Church authorities of what had happened, and also to summon a handler with his bloodhound to help with the investigation. As the sun rose a few hours later, investigators discovered footprints leading away from the building, and when the dog arrived at about 3 p.m., he picked up a scent. The bloodhound tracked the scent for quite a distance, then lost it in the middle of a road. The people speculated that the dynamiter had been picked up in an automobile at that point. There was no way to trace him further.

Walter P. Monson, president of the Eastern States Mission with jurisdiction over Buck Valley, arrived at the nearest railroad point at Hancock, Maryland on the evening of the 26th, and joined Howard S. McDonald, president of the West Pennsylvania Conference – and future president of Brigham Young University. The men stayed overnight in Hancock, taking care to conceal their identity as Latter-day Saints. Everybody, it seems, was still talking about the dynamiting, but “not one person did we hear make an unkind remark toward our people.” The bombing was universally condemned as “un-American and un-Christianlike.” The men took a room at the hotel that happened to be directly above the hotel lobby. Voices carried, and they lay away listening to discussion below. Still, all they heard was sympathy for the Mormons, and indignation toward whoever had caused the destruction.

The next day Elders Monson and McDonald hired a team and drove to Buck Valley.

When we reached the summit of the mountain, which rises to the east of Buck Valley, we saw the beautiful homes dotting the picturesque valley below. President McDonald, having spent a number of weeks working on the new church building, at once recognized the ruins left by the dynamiters. Soon we were upon the meeting house lot.

To describe the scene is not within my power. The zinc shingles were scattered over the meeting house lot and adjoining property. The ruins looked more like the discarded products of a toothpick factory than like a house of worship. Fragments of flooring no larger than two inches wide and six inches long were found 180 ft. from the building. Needless to say the beautiful structure, which was the hope and pride of the faithful saints in the valley, is a total wreck.

The lot, upon which this building was erected, has a gradual sloping toward the west, leaving considerable basement room under the back end. It was planned to use this as a wood shed, therefore an outside door was provided for in the very excellent concrete foundation. It appears that the perpetrators entered at this door and placed a charge, which many say could not have been less than 40 sticks of giant powder, under an 8 x 8 oak beam which was placed in constructing to support the middle of the floor. The explosion was so tremendous as to wreck the concrete foundation on either side. The sill under which the charge was placed was blown through the building and laid a considerable distance from the foundation with about 5 ft. of its length crushed almost to a pulp. The sills were broken from the foundation with a spreading action at the bottom, which caused the roof to fall and get the full benefit of the concussion.

President Monson took pictures, which then appeared in newspapers around the country. “The sheets lying scattered upon the ground are zinc shingles. That part which seems to be standing upright is about one half of the rafters fallen with gable end down. The other debris is the siding, flooring, studding, etc.”

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Local members estimated that more than 500 people had come to view the ruins in the week after the blast, expressing their contempt for anyone who would do such a thing. One man who previously had disapproved of the Mormons’ building a chapel in the valley offered to donate 5,000 feet of lumber toward a new building. Other non-Mormons offered other supplies and labor. President Monson offered a $50 reward for information; Brother Hendershot, and a Brother Hess, each contributed another $50 to the reward fund.

The church was insured for $600, and the members made a claim on the policy … only to be told that their building was insured against accidental fire, but not against deliberate destruction such as this.

Curiously, all the investigation fell upon the Church and its members. President Monson went directly from Buck Valley to Washington, D.C., where he asked Senator Reed Smoot to enlist Pennsylvania’s Governor Brumbaugh to investigate; nothing is known to have come from this effort. Ten days after the explosion, when no official investigation had been conducted, Elder McDonald traveled 30 miles by wagon to the county seat at McConnellsburg to seek local help. The Sheriff was not interested. The county attorney, who struck Elder McDonald as “a very fair minded man [who] will do all that lies in his power to have the men brought to justice,” still could not offer encouragement – Fulton County had only 9,000 residents, and no funds to investigate such a crime. In fact, there was no investigation beyond what the Mormons themselves could do; no one was ever arrested or punished for the violent act of destruction.

As with all acts of violence or oppression against innocent victims, the crime at Buck Valley did tend to produce some small good, if only in sympathy. Six months after the explosion, elders were still reporting sympathy in their magazine, the Liahona:

Elders S.L. Dixon and A.B. Mendenhall, tracting in the vicinity of Buck Valley, where our church building was blown up, were invited to dinner by a gentleman, who told them that previously he had been very much opposed to ‘Mormonism,” but this dynamiting outrage had set him thinking and he now realizes that persecution is the heritage of the true followers of Christ.

I do not know why there was such a delay, but the Saints in Buck Valley finally got their church building, dedicating it in March of 1929.