Lyman Wight and Mormon Pioneers in Texas (August 18, 2026)

by Scott Sosebee

During the nineteenth century there were many reasons why migrants made their way to Texas. Some came looking for economic opportunity, more came to escape perilous conditions in their home, and still others were either trying to outrun the law or financial debt. There was one group who traveled to Texas hoping to escape religious persecution. However, the adherents of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who came to establish a colony in Texas were not fleeing religious persecution in some far-off land, but instead these migrants—led by Lyman Wight—came to Texas after their presence in the town they founded in Illinois grew too dangerous for them to stay. While the most well-known of the Latter-day Saints who left Illinois made the trek to Utah under Brigham Young, another not near as well-known assemblage traveled instead to Central Texas in the mid-1840s to found a colony near Fredericksburg.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was one of a number of new Christian sects that were founded during the period of The Second Great Awakening, a religious revival movement that swept the United States in the first few decades of the nineteenth century. Officially founded on April 6, 1830 in Fayette, NY, they were led by their first prophet and founder Joseph Smith, with an initial group of just six members. The theology as laid out by Smith was deemed heretical by the Christian adherents of upstate New York, so Smith and his early followers moved first to Kirtland, Ohio and later to Missouri to escape the hostility and accusations of heresy their neighbors cast upon them.

Lyman Wight, who would come to lead the group that would come to Texas was also a New Yorker, born in 1796 in Herkimer County. He fought in the War of 1812, and afterward married Harriet Benton. The couple moved to Centerville, New York to farm in 1824, but the need for a greater plot of land led them to Cuyahoga County, Ohio in 1826. While there, he and Harriet converted to the Latter-day Saint Church after hearing Joseph Smith’s message in Kirtland. When Smith decided to leave Ohio and make the move to Missouri, the Wights followed him and became part of a colony in Independence, Missouri.

Wight became a leader in the Latter-day Saints congregation; in fact, he developed into the leader of the group in Independence and he also became an evangelist of the Latter-day Saint doctrine. Just as they had experienced in New York and Ohio, the non-Latter-day Saint Christians in Missouri began to cast recriminations at the new denomination and its leaders. The conflict led to what could only be termed as a “civil war” between the Latter-day Saints and the other residents of western Missouri. Eventually, Wight, Smith, and other Latter-day Saint leaders were arrested and charged with treason. However, hoping to avoid more acrimony and bloodshed, the group’s jailers “allowed” the Latter-day Saints to escape. The religious refugees thus encamped to western Illinois, where in 1839 they founded the town of Nauvoo along the Mississippi River.

Wight rose to the very top of leadership in the Church and town in Nauvoo. He was elected to the Quorum of Twelve Apostles in 1841 and also placed in charge of a grist mill. In both capacities, Wight succeeded. He turned a good profit at the mill, and also was one of the Church’s most effective apostles. In many ways, the Latter-day Saints in Illinois were too successful in both regards as well. While they were able to make many converts to their doctrine, they also built a very success amount of commerce, so much so that Nauvoo’s population grew in large numbers, so much so that by the mid-1840s the city contained just as many if not more non-Latter-day Saints as it did adherents. That was what led to a repeat of the pattern that the Latter-day Saints had faced in New York, Ohio, and Missouri—violence and rancor between them and the rest of the population.

This battle, though, had serious consequences. Joseph Smith was arrested on charges of instigating a riot, but he was then seized by a mob and killed in June 1844. Wight was not in Nauvoo when Smith was killed and had to rush back in order to take part in choosing a new leader. Wight had no doubt hoped he would be chosen, but instead Brigham Young was named as Smith’s successor. Young subsequently announced plans to move to Utah, but Wight—who no doubt had hoped to be Smith’s successor, refused to accept Young’s authority. He then claimed that he and Smith had discussed going to Texas, and now Wight resolved to do just that.

Wight led two hundred Latter-day Saints to Texas in November 1845. With the coming onset of winter, the group remained in Grayson County until August 1846, when they began to move south. They first tried to found a settlement in Travis County near present-day Webberville. They built a gristmill and dwellings, but a terrible flood on the Colorado River in the spring of 1847 destroyed the mill. They then received permission from John O. Meusbach, who held a grant to settle German families in Texas, to found a colony on the Pedernales River just southeast of Fredericksburg. The Germans in Central Texas—who had also escaped persecution in their homeland—were known to be tolerant of other faiths, and they were also anti-slavery, something else Wight and his fellow Latter-day Saints also believed.

Wight and his fellow colonists founded the town of Zodiac, and very quickly—just as had happened in Nauvoo—the diligence and thrift of the residents became a success. They once again built a gristmill, opened a store, and also built a temple and a school. They became a key supplier of seed and other goods to the residents of Fredericksburg, and they became a key part of Gillespie County. Brigham Young, however, had not forgotten the wayward flock and he sent a number of missives asking that the Texas colony disband and come to Utah. Wight rebuffed his efforts and was determined to make the Texas colony a success. But mother nature again had other ideas. Another flood destroyed the gristmill and much of the town in 1853. They moved first to Burnet County and then to Bandera, but none of those communities were ever as successful as Zodiac. Wight died on March 31, 1858 and his followers then dispersed, ending that particular Latter-day Saint experiment in Texas. But today there are almost 400,000 Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint members in Texas, which makes it the fifth largest LDS congregation in the U.S. and the largest outside the Rocky Mountain states.

The East Texas Historical Association provides this column as a public service. Scott Sosebee the Executive Director of the Association and can be contacted at sosebeem@sfasu.edu or via www.easttexashistorical.org.