Lyman Wight - Succession Crisis and Wightite Colonization in Texas

Succession Crisis and Wightite Colonization in Texas

During the succession crisis after the death of Joseph Smith, Wight felt compelled to follow the orders Joseph 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, about three miles from Fredericksburg. Sealings, ordinations, washing and anointings, and adoptions were performed in this temple by the Wightites.

Brigham Young tried to get Wight to join the main body of Mormonism (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Utah Territory) several times, but Wight refused each time. Wight was eventually excommunicated in December 1848; his most prominent follower, Bishop George Miller, was also disfellowshipped. Most of the anger between Wight and Young seemed to weigh heavily on Wight.

Wight later recognized William Smith as the President of the Church (Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) for a short time and served as a counselor in William'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 he had no use for Brigham Young, William Smith, and James Strang as pretenders, in his mind, as successors to Joseph Smith. In 1851, after the Pedernales River overflowed its banks and destroyed Zodiac, the colonists moved to Burnet County, establishing Morman Mill.

Wight died on March 31, 1858 with a small remnant of his colony in a few miles from San Antonio. Wight's group had been trekking for Jackson County, Missouri, where he wished to rejoin the remainder of the Mid-Western 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 Morman Mill cemetery near Hamilton Creek, about fifty miles east by north of Fredericksburg.