PVT Dexter Stillman, 23 Mar 1803, 43 years, unknown, unknow, Company B and Brown Sick Detachment

My impatience with “official comprehensive rosters” always gets me into trouble. As the chief Mormon baiter on campus at San Gabriel High in 1967, I constantly searched for ways to argue with Los Flores ward members as I was from Temple City and RLDS. So while recently researching RLDS Mormon Battalion members I found Private Dexter Stillman with two “unknowns” I decided to double down on the family from Mills County, Iowa, who had to be from my church. Opps, Dexter was not a member, but was a Cutlerite.[1]

While the bulk of LDS folk went west to Utah, Dexter and family went south to the new Mills County, Iowa. Here high priest Dexter supported elder Alpheus Cutler in the opposition to leaders like Orson Hyde and polygamy practices at Winter Quarters.

The Stillmans came into the restoration at Kirtland, Ohio, in 1834 through wife Barbara Redfield (1808-1878). They moved to Nauvoo, Illinois in 1840 where Dexter worked as a carpenter on the Nauvoo temple. By 1846 they were headed west to the Missouri River and Winter Quarters, Nebraska.

Dexter and his son Clark joined the Mormon battalion on October 17, 1846 and marched to California. They were mustered out on July 16, 1847. They were the first settlers of Pierce Township, Page County Iowa in 1850. They were anti polygamy and refused to go west.

In 1851 The Fisher family offered Manti, Fremont County, Iowa as a gathering location for the followers of father Cutler. This was 12 miles south of the Stillmans.

On November 11, 1852 Dexter and the son, Franklin were buried in the Franklin Grove cemetery. Now the unknown is known. But was there a RLDS connection? Barbara, a widow, followed her children and the family faith in the Cutlerite restoration. Clark married Amelia Sperry on February 19, 1851 and went north to Clitherall, Minnesota in 1865 in the second caravan.

However, the leaders of the church had neglected to anticipate the numbers who wanted to settle the colony so they only bought four lots to share. Clark and Amelia moved to Deer Creek Township twenty two miles north and his sister, Mary Sperry and her husband, Loring Dewitt Sperry settled in Oak Lake, Becker County fifty four miles north.

There, in 1875, T. W. Smith, RLDS missionary organized the Oak Lake branch and Barbara was admitted into the branch on her original baptism. This branch grew and provided many future saints including the Walden family whose great grandson, Tom was the silent Rlds student at San Gabriel in 1867, and Greg, a dear church brother when we lived in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

The moral of this tale is that when you jump to conclusions you will be pleasantly surprised. [1] Followers of Alpheus Cutler in the post Nauvoo leadership conflict