John H. Gibbs

Resident of Paradise, Utah murdered while on a mission in Tennessee

A number of the gathering congregation were loitering about the gate and doorway of the house, and some were in the orchards at the rear of the house, when the mob from ambush rushed upon the Condor home. At the gate the mob seized the older Condor and held him fast, but not before he had shouted to James R. Hudson, his wife's son by a former husband, and his own son, Martin, to get their guns and resist the attack. The two young men made a dash for the house. Young Hudson had to go to the attic of the house for his gun, which he, that morning, had loaded at the request of his mother In anticipation of trouble. Martin's gun was suspended in deer horns over the back door of the living room, where the morning's religious services were to be held. As Martin entered the door the leader of the mob was taking down this gun, and a short, fierce struggle ensued for possession of it, during which young Martin Condor was shot down by others, and the mobber, turning the gun upon Elder Gibbs, who was in the act--Bible in hand--of seeking a text for the pending morning service--shot him, and the elder sank to the floor a dead man.

Meantime other bloody work had been going on. Many guns had been fired. One aimed at Elder Thompson, Elder Berry seized and pushed aside, enabling Thompson to escape from the back door through the orchard and to the woods, but at the instant he had saved Thompson's life Berry himself fell riddled with bullets. The mobber who had shot down Elder Gibbs had just stepped from the front door of the house when young Hudson came from the attic, gun in hand. Two men seized him at the foot of the rude stairway, but flinging them off, he rushed to the door and shot the murderer of Elder Gibbs, killing him instantly. The man so killed proved to be Dave Hinson, the leader of the mob, and the arch enemy of the elders in that region. Then pandemonium reigned. Young Hudson was fired upon and fatally wounded-he died within an hour; the mob yelling for vengeance for the killing of their leader, rushed to the open windows and fired promiscuously into the house, savagely wounding Mrs. Condor in the hip, from which to the time of her death she remained a cripple; but most of the shots thus fired riddled the bodies of the dead elders upon the floor. This done the mob took their dead leader and departed.


Source: B. H. Roberts, Comprehensive History of the Church, Volume 6, Chapter 158, Page 92