Welcome Chapman - Marriage and Conversion

Marriage and Conversion

In between fishing expeditions he met Susan Amelia Risley (1807–1888), daughter of a prominent Madison County (New York) couple. They disapproved of the relationship because they believed his occupation was too unstable to support a family. In response, Chapman abandoned fishing and took steps toward returning to stone cutting. The Risleys relented, and Chapman married "Amelia" in about 1831.

The Chapmans made their home in a hamlet known as Hubbardsville in Madison County, where they had four children, all daughters. The first two were twins who died in infancy.

While in Hubbardsville, they joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. First Welcome joined, to which Amelia reacted harshly, declaring "You have went and joined those awful Mormons." However, she joined the church about six months later.

Because they joined the Mormons, an unpopular religion, their friends and neighbors shunned them and appeared to look down on them, the prominence of Amelia's parents notwithstanding.

The Risleys were broken-hearted over their daughter joining the Mormons, but they did not turn bitter. However, Welcome's parents disowned him. The Chapmans soon moved to a Latter Day Saint community, possibly Kirtland, Ohio, but more likely Jackson County and then Far West, Missouri.

Armed mobs drove the Chapmans from their homes in Missouri and Illinois. They built a home in Far West, Missouri, in 1838, only to be forced from the state by order of the governor that Fall. Amelia was six months' pregnant when a mob gave the Chapmans and their Mormon neighbors a few hours to clear out before their homes would be burned. They remained in the area long enough for Amelia to carry the baby, a son, to full term. He was born two weeks after the Haun's Mill Massacre. They soon fled to Illinois, where they built a home in Nauvoo along the banks of the Mississippi River and Chapman cut stone for the Nauvoo Temple. While in Nauvoo, Amelia had three more children, all sons, one of whom died at three months.

Chapman was part of the Maid of Iowa expedition sent in support of Joseph Smith when an armed company of men from Missouri were sent to kidnap him.

Mobs drove them from Nauvoo in 1846, when they fled with most other Nauvoo residents across the river to Iowa, and then on to what later became known as Winter Quarters, an unsettled area along the Missouri River in present-day eastern Nebraska. There, Amelia gave birth to another daughter in October 1846. Two months earlier, Brigham Young divided the Winter Quarters settlement into two "grand divisions" presided over by himself and Heber C. Kimball, respectively. Each division had two subdivisions presided over by a foreman. Chapman was foreman of the fourth subdivision, with Hosea Stout serving as its clerk. In the summer of 1848, the Chapmans crossed the plains with their six surviving children to what later became Utah Territory.