In 1857, just as tensions with the U.S. government were escalating toward the Utah War, a dark and largely forgotten episode of Mormon frontier justice played out in Manti, Utah. It involved a young man named Thomas Lewis, potentially an unnamed teenage girl, and Warren S. Snow, a high-ranking Mormon bishop and militia leader. What unfolded was an act of extreme religious authoritarianism—an emasculation carried out in the name of priesthood power and obedience.
Thomas Lewis
A Suitor Turned Victim
Thomas Lewis was a devout young Latter-day Saint living in Manti, Utah. He was reportedly in love with a young woman—some accounts say she was around 16 years old—and he proposed marriage to her. By some accounts, she would have accepted his proposal, and the happy couple were planning a future together.
Meanwhile, Bishop Warren S. Snow, in his forties and already with several polygamous wives in his harem, had the same fair young woman in his sights. Throughout his own pursuit, the beautiful young girl told Snow that she could not marry him as she was already engaged to a young man. Her fiancé, much closer to her own age, Mr. Thomas Lewis, a fellow member of the church from Wales.
Bishop Snow, in true Joseph Smith and Brigham Young fashion, insisted that it was the will of God that she should marry him instead of Lewis. There is no record of him claiming an angel with a sword, but Snow employed multiple authoritative powers of persuasion to attain his prize. Snow is known to have idolized Brigham Young and behaved similarly. He presided over his area with absolute authority as both a church leader, Presiding Bishop, the head of the local government, Mayor of Manti, a territorial legislator, and militia leader, Commander of the Sanpete Military District of the Navoo Legion.
Snow used his influence to get ward members to visit the young woman and advise her to accept her priesthood leader’s revelation and marry Bishop Snow. The ward also called on Thomas Lewis and directed him to give up the young woman to his priesthood leader. The young engaged couple continued to refuse. Lewis was promised church preferment, celestial rewards, and every other blessing Snow could think of, but he remained true to his fiancée and said he would die before he would surrender his intended wife to the embraces of another. Bishop Snow even issued a call for Lewis to serve a far-away mission, so that he could no longer interfere, but Lewis refused to leave.
Bishop Snow held significant religious and civic authority in the region. He wielded power that went largely unchecked in the isolated theocracy of early Utah. He was outraged that a young man would challenge his claim to the girl’s hand or perhaps interfere in his plans to add another plural wife. Bishop Snow would interpret Thomas Lewis’s actions as insubordination, not just against Snow personally, but against the divine order of priesthood hierarchy. This disrespect could not be ignored, so, in a grim and horrific display, Snow enacted his punishment.
Brutal Punishment
There are two main takes on the story. Both involve Bishop Snow castrating young Thomas Lewis. In one, John D. Lee, states that Bishop Snow called a meeting and invited Thomas Lee, gave him a last chance to give Snow his fiance, and when he continued to refuse, the lights went out, Lee was beaten and tied down. Then Bishop Snow brutally castrated the defiant Thomas Lee, hung “the portion severed, ” and left him for dead.
It was then decided to call a meeting of the people who lived true to counsel, which was to be held in the school-house in Manti, at which place the young man should be present, and dealt with according to Snow’s will. The meeting was called. The young man was there, and was again requested, ordered and threatened, to get him to surrender the young woman to Snow, but true to his plighted troth, he refused to consent to give up the girl. The lights were then put out. An attack was made on the young man. He was severely beaten, and then tied with his back down on a bench, when Bishop Snow took a bowie-knife, and performed the operation in a most brutal manner, and then took the portion severed from his victim and hung it up in the schoolhouse on a nail, so that it could be seen by all who visited the house afterwards.
The party then left the young man weltering in his blood, and in a lifeless condition. During the night he succeeded in releasing himself from his confinement, and dragged himself to some hay-stacks, where he lay until the next day, when he was discovered by his friends. The young man regained his health, but has been an idiot or quiet lunatic ever since, and is well known by hundreds of both Mormons and Gentiles in Utah.
John D. Lee, Mormonism Unveiled, 285-286
https://archive.org/details/mormonismunveile00leej/page/284/mode/2up
The other version of the story, Snow and company jump Thomas Lewis on the road as he is being taken to the Salt Lake City penitentiary, and there they beat him, castrate him, and leave him bleeding in the snow. This is from a May 31, 1857 journal entry of Samuel Pithforth, a clerk in the nearby Nephi Ward.
This second version is then spun into a from a more faithful narrative in John Peterson’s Master’s Theiss at BYU in 1995, states that Thomas Lewis was a prisoner and charged with “what appears to have been a sexual crime,” and the Bishop jumped him during a prisoner transfer, again castrating him and leaving him for dead, but somehow excusing the violence because the victim is allegedly guilty of a sex crime. Is the alleged sex crime the label used for standing in the way of a Mormon leader and his desired teenage bride? Free will, love, and insubordination are not crimes and certainly not a sex crime.
On a cold winter night, Warren, the entire Manti Bishopric, and a few others secreted themselves in some willows near a creek by which the road to Salt Lake City passed. Thomas Lewis, a young member of the church from Ephraim (a town located seven miles north of Manti) was being taken by night to the penitentiary in Salt Lake to serve a sentence for what appears to have been a sexual crime.
When Lewis and his escort reached the creek, Warren and the others stepped out of the willows, and pulling Lewis from his horse, they dragged him into the brush and emasculated him “in a brutal manner.” The prisoner’s escort seems to have been an accomplice (hence the night trip), and soon the entire group fled leaving their victim lying on the snow-covered ground on what was described as “a bitter cold night.” Lewis laid there in a near senseless condition for forty-eight forty eight hours before being found by someone who took him in and saved his life.
John A. Peterson, “Warren Stone Snow, a man in between: the biography of a Mormon defender,” Master’s Thesis, BYU (1985).
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6041&context=etd
Peterson’s main source is a journal entry from Samuel Pitchforth, but his account is also full of assumptions that are not corroborated in any other source. The story in this journal entry does mention that Lewis was under arrest and on the way to the penitentiary, but nothing about a sex crime.
… Bro W. Snow will loose some influence through that affair. The circumstances are like this Thomas Lewis was under arrest and on the way to the City to be taken to the penetentionary. They were taking him in the night and while passing Willow Creek some men came out and took him into the willows and took from him his stones in a brutal manner, tearing the chords right out, leaving him on the ground when it was covered with snow and a bitter cold night. He was out 48 hours before found and it is a miracle that he lived. He lingered a long time and now is gone crazy. What a severe trial to that good woman his mother Sister Lewis.
Samuel Pitchforth Diary, May 31, 1857, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University (with minor grammar edits for clarity)
https://bhroberts.org/records/qPJ8Nb-0iuCOh/samuel_pitchforth_gives_his_account_and_commentary_of_the_thomas_lewis_castration
Furthermore, the footnote in Peterson’s Thesis acknowledges John D. Lee’s account of the story, and the “fight over a girl,” but dismisses the story as too “so absurd in so many of the incident’s details that it disqualifies itself as a serious source.” The story itself is absurd! It is equally ridiculous to consider that a Bishop would jump a young man and castrate him in the snow on the way to the penitentary as Peterson and Pithforth account attest or that a Bishop would castrate a young man during a night meeting “in the school-house in Manti” where they beat the same young man and castrate him there. What details are so ridiculous that the John D. Lee account should be rejected? Peterson relates the Lee version as absurd because of the details, but then himself gets the details wrong by saying that this was done before a congregation at the Manti Ward House, but the Lee version clearly states it was in the school-house and “a meeting of the people who lived true to counsel,” or in other words, a meeting of those loyal to Bishop Snow above all else.
Peterson only wants to distance from Lee’s version because the motive is clearly explained here, where Peterson would rather create his own motive and make the leap that because a one hearsay account mentions the “brutal” event occured on the road to the penitentiary, the victim must have been guilty of some undisclosed sex crimes without question or pause. The same thesis footnote even confirms that “no minutes or any civil or church trial for Thomas Lewis’ crimes have been found.” Had there been real “sex crimes” the records would more than likely confirm. And even if he were guilty, why be proud of a Bishop who would take it upon himself to personally and brutally castrate the perpetrator and leave him for dead.
Multiple sources mention the link between the castration and plural marriage aspirations of Bishop Snow, although they are deemed “anti-mormon” sources and disregarded as hearsay, speculation, and absurd. How castrating a man for some undisclosed “sex crime” is less absurd than castrating a man to remove the competition for a bride is no less absurd. The apologists never contest the castration, only the motive behind it. Ann Eliza Young, Brigham’s own apostate wife recounts the story in relation to polygamous wishes of Bishop Snow.
There are several references to Thomas Lewis’ castration. Again, this part of the story is not in question; the debate is regarding the motivation for the heinous act. According to FAIR and the BYU Thesis, the young man, Thomas Lewis, was a sexual deviant guilty of some unspecified sex crimes, and his castration was carried out by wild west vigilante justice. Equally likely, the sex crimes were a ruse from the Bishop to put Thomas in his place, and then, when he remained defiant, Snow and company seized the opportunity to make sure Thomas Lewis was unfit for marriage by removing his manhood. Bishop Snow is attributed with saying, “When that is done, he will not be liable to want the girl badly, and she will listen to reason when she knows that her lover is no longer a man.”
In all versions of the story, the message is clear: disobeying priesthood authority, especially in matters of marriage and polygamy, would not be tolerated, and the punishment was permanent.
A “Spiritual Testimony”
After the mutilation, Lewis was brought before a congregation and asked to bear his testimony. He did so, reportedly declaring his love for the prophet and his forgiveness of those who had harmed him. It’s difficult to know whether this was genuine or the result of extreme coercion, trauma, and indoctrination. Either way, the scene illustrates the terrifying depth of control the church wielded over its members’ bodies and minds in early Utah.
In May 1857, Bishop Snow’s counselor wrote that the twenty-four-year-old Lewis “has now gone crazy after being castrated by the Bishop” for an undisclosed sex crime.
Upon hearing the news of what Bishop Snow had done, Brigham Young said: “I feel to sustain him,” even though Young’s brother Joseph, a general authority, disapproved of the punishment. In July, Brigham Young wrote a reassuring letter to the bishop about this castration: “Just let the matter drop, and say no more about it, and it will soon die away among the people.”
If a young woman persisted in rebellion and a young man refused to go on a mission, castration was a punishment the Church did not hesitate to employ.
Some accounts suggest that when Young sent Snow on a mission to England in 1861, it was at least in part to avoid public scrutiny. Snow remained in good standing with the church and would continue to serve in prominent roles. Thomas’ own mother, known as the Welsh Queen in the area, wrote to Brigham Young asking how this could be righteous.
A strange side note, Elizabeth Lewis, joined the church in Wales and immigrated. Her husband stayed behind to settle the family affairs, and before he had caught up with the family in Utah, Elizabeth had already married Captain Dan Jones, who had converted the family in Wales. She later divorced Jones in complaint that he supported her less than his other wife. She discovered the horrific acts against her son, nursed him back to health, and exchanged several letters with Brigham Young, trying to hold Snow accountable. Eventually, she even offered herself as a wife to Brigham Young and moved to Provo. No one was ever held accountable.
Memory, Erasure, and Mormon Violence
The story of Thomas Lewis was once passed around in whispers and footnotes, dismissed by apologists as rumor or anti-Mormon slander. But credible documentation and multiple retellings have confirmed the central facts: a young man was mutilated, and it was done under the authority—or at least with the complicity—of top Mormon leadership. Historians like Will Bagley and D. Michael Quinn have cited this event as one of many that illustrate the violent underbelly of early LDS theocracy.
Today, the incident is rarely acknowledged in official LDS materials. Bishop Warren S. Snow’s name is still commemorated in church records and local Utah history as a pioneer, not a perpetrator.
The Young Bride
None of the stories names the young women in the story, but looking at Warren Snow’s family tree, we see he married multiple teenage women around that time. The accounts that mention the young woman indicate that she was 16, this isn’t clear if she was 16 when she and Thomas became engaged, or when she finally reluctantly married Snow, or both.
Maria Baum (March 14, 1840) was married to him as his 3rd wife at age 16 on December 2, 1856 in Provo, Utah. Warren was 38, over twice her age.
Mary Ann Brown (October 2, 1842) was married to him as his 4th wife at age 14 on April 20, 1857, in Salt Lake City. Warren was 38, closer to 3 times her age.
Sarah Elizabeth Whiting (January 2, 1840) was married to him as 5th wife at age 17 also on April, 20 1857. Warren was 38, again over twice her age. Sarah bore Snow 3 children.
Had any of these teenage brides been tied to Thomas Lewis, it’s not likely they would have shared that information with posterity, especially being married to a man such as Warren S. Snow. John G. Turner admits as much in his Things Are So Dark and Mysterious essay, “Not long after Lewis’s emasculation, Snow did marry a sixteen-year-old woman, Maria Baum… Snow married two more women the following April.” Turner includes quotes from multiple letters between the one woman who might have known the full story and been bold enough to state it plainly, Thomas’ mother, Eliza Lewis. She wrote multiple letters to Brigham Young, and though the full letters are not included (they reside in the Church archives), Turner doesn’t mention any more information about the motive behind Snow’s brutality.
Despite Elizabeth Lewis’s detailed letters to Young and scattered references to Thomas Lewis in local Manti records, several aspects of the incident remain mysterious. Who ordered and carried out the attack? Why was Lewis castrated?
From the above evidence, Warren Snow, George Snow, and George Peacock were at the scene of the crime. Nephi resident Samuel Pitchforth asserted the next spring that John Lowry was also “one that helped to cut Lewis.” Thomas Lewis, as will become clear below, blamed Warren Snow for his misfortune…
Why did Thomas Lewis endure this unusual punishment? In explaining Thomas Lewis’s emasculation, authors have offered two competing explanations. As noted above, John D. Lee alleged that Snow ordered the castration after Lewis refused to abandon his interest in a young woman Snow wanted to marry. Ann Eliza Young asserts that Lewis’s mere attentions to the young woman led to the punishment. Not long after Lewis’s emasculation, Snow did marry a sixteen-year-old woman, Maria Baum. The records of the Salt Lake City Endowment House record that Snow and Baum were sealed in Provo on December 2. Snow married two more women the following April. Had Lewis and Snow clashed over a woman, however, Elizabeth Lewis would probably have discussed it in her letters to Young rather than concentrating on her son’s dispute with Isaac Voorhees.
Matthew Harris and Newell G. Bringhurst. The LDS Gospel Topics Series, A Scholarly Engagement
John G. Turner, “Things Are So Dark and Mysterious”: The Thomas Lewis Case and Violence in Early LDS Utah. Page 169-170, 171, 177
Why This Story Matters
There are several references to Thomas Lewis’ castration, and yet, it never shows up in a Gospel Doctrine Manual as a story to share regarding obeying priesthood leaders.
For those leaving or questioning the Mormon faith, stories like this shatter the sanitized narrative of a peaceful, divinely guided people simply seeking religious freedom. Instead, they reveal how authoritarianism, violence, and patriarchal control were not aberrations but features of the early church structure.
Thomas Lewis’s suffering is a tragic reminder of how far church leaders were willing to go to maintain power over communities, over women’s bodies, and over the lives of those who stood in their way. It highlights the dangers of a system where spiritual authority is absolute and unchecked.
Share Your Story
While few stories are as physically gruesome as that of Thomas Lewis, many former Mormons have experienced the emotional, psychological, and social trauma of a system that punishes dissent, shames questions, and demands obedience. You may not have been physically harmed, but if you’ve suffered spiritual abuse, manipulation, or coercion in the name of religion, your story matters too.
At wasmormon.org, we believe in breaking the silence. We invite you to share your own story of deconstruction, doubt, or healing. Stories like Thomas Lewis’s show us why it’s important to speak up—so the past isn’t repeated, and so others know they’re not alone.
Sources, References & Notes
Samuel Pitchforth Diary: May 31, 1857
One thing I forgot to mention that is that Pres Joseph Young & A.P. Rockwood entirely disapproved of the cutting of young Lewis at Fort Ephraim. I believe Bro W. Snow will loose some influence through that affair. The circumstances are like this Thomas Lewis was under arrest and on the way to the City to be taken to the penetentionary. They were taking him in the night and while passing Willow Creek some men came out and took him into the willows and took from him his stones in a brutal manner, tearing the chords right out, leaving him on the ground when it was covered with snow and a bitter cold night. He was out 48 hours before found and it is a miracle that he lived. He lingered a long time and now is gone crazy. What a severe trial to that good woman his mother Sister Lewis.
While Brother Joseph was at Manti he organized a quorum, appointing Daniel Henrie as president, and, from what I over heard them say, that had appointed John Lowery one of the presidents, but learning that he was one that helped to cut Lewis, they wrote from here not for Henrie to Ordain him. Bro Joseph remarked while selecting the presidents for the Quorum that he did not want a man who would shed blood before he was duly commanded. Oh how careful men ought to be—in not steping to far—for they might do something that would give them sorrow forever.
Samuel Pitchforth Diary, May 31, 1857, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University (with minor grammar edits for clarity)
https://bhroberts.org/records/qPJ8Nb-0iuCOh/samuel_pitchforth_gives_his_account_and_commentary_of_the_thomas_lewis_castration
Wilford Woodruff, Journal: June 2, 1857
Bishop Blackburn was present the subject came up of some persons leaving Provo who had Apostitized some thought that Bishop Blackburn & President Snow was to blame. Brother Joseph Young presented the thing to president Young. But when the circumstances were told, President Brigham Young sustained the Brethren who presided at Provo, he said. They had done [blank]. The subjects of Eunuchs came up & Joseph said that he would rather die than to be made a Eunuch. Brigham said the day would come when thousands would be made Eunuchs in order for them to be saved in the kingdom of God.
The subject of women & adultery came up Joseph asked if a woman & man who
were married could commit adultery Brigham said that Joseph said they could not, yet he was satisfied they could do wrong. President Young said we cannot cleans the platter because the people will not bear it. Joseph: I am willing to have the people clens the
platter if they can do it in righteousness & judge righteous judgment. Brigham: this people never was half as well prepared to execute righteousness as now. I will tell you that when a man is trying to do right & do some thing that is not exactly in order I feel to sustain him & we all should. I wish there was some prophet on Earth who could tell us just how much sin we must sustain before we can chastize the people & correct their errors. The wicked may go to the states & call for troops. I dont think the people will get rich to come after us they have got a long road to travel we have either got to join hands with sin & sinners or we have got to fight them.The subject of adultery again came up, Joseph said a man cannot commit adultery with his wife so says the revelation on the Patriarchs Marriage yet a man can do wrong in having connexion with his his wife at times. Joseph Young said the Ancient Apostle said this a man should not put away his wife save for the cause of fornication, if he did they would both commit Adultery. Brigham Young said Joseph taught that when a womans affections was entirly weaned from her husband that was adultery in spirit her affections were adulterated from him. He also said that there was no law in Heaven or on Earth that would compel a woman to stay with a man either in time or Eternity. This
Wilford Woodruff, Journal (January 1, 1854 – December 31, 1859), June 2, 1857 ~ Tuesday
I think is true (but I do not know) that if a man that is a High priest takes a woman & she leaves him & goes to one of a lesser office say the Lesser priesthood or member I think in the resurrection that that High Priest can claim her…
https://wilfordwoodruffpapers.org/documents/d2f9c932-bc4b-43b9-9a1f-6b16566f3b6b/page/dda1ce72-11d7-4f9c-8c3a-f907a5c07de2
John D. Lee, Mormonism Unveiled
Warren Snow was Bishop of the Church at Manti, San Pete County, Utah. He had several wives, but there was a fair, buxom young woman in the town that Snow wanted for a wife. He made love to her with all his powers, went to parties where she was, visited her at her home, and proposed to make her his wife. She thanked him for the honor offered, but told him she was then engaged to a young man, a member of the Church, and consequently could not marry the old priest. This was no sufficient reason to Snow. He told her it was the will of God that she should marry him, and she must do so ; that the young man could be got rid of, sent on a mission or dealt with in some way so as to release her from her engagement that, in fact, a promise made to the young man was not binding, when she was informed that it was contrary to the wishes of the authorities.
The girl continued obstinate. The “teachers” of the town visited her and advised her to marry Bishop Snow. Her parents, under the orders of the Counselors of the Bishop, also insisted that their daughter must marry the old man. She still refused. Then the authorities called on the young man and directed him to give up the young woman. This he steadfastly refused to do. He was promised Church preferment, celestial rewards, and everything that could be thought of all to no purpose. He remained true to his intended, and said he would die before he would surrender his intended wife to the embraces of another.
This unusual resistance of authority, by the young people made Snow more anxious than ever to capture the girl. The young man was ordered to go on a mission to some distant locality, so that the authorities would have no trouble in effecting their purpose of forcing the girl to marry as they desired. But the mission was refused by the still contrary and unfaithful young man.
It was then determined that the rebellious young man must be forced by harsh treatment to respect the advice and orders of the Priesthood. His fate was left to Bishop Snow for his decision. He decided that the young man should be castrated; Snow saying, “When that is done, he will not be liable to want the girl badly, and she will listen to reason when she knows that her lover is no longer a man.”
It was then decided to call a meeting of the people who lived true to counsel, which was to be held in the school-house in Manti, at which place the young man should be present, and dealt with according to Snow’s will. The meeting was called. The young man was there, and was again requested, ordered and threatened, to get him to surrender the young woman to Snow, but true to his plighted troth, he refused to consent to give up the girl. The lights were then put out. An attack was made on the young man. He was severely beaten, and then tied with his back down on a bench, when Bishop Snow took a bowie-knife, and performed the operation in a most brutal manner, and then took the portion severed from his victim and hung it up in the schoolhouse on a nail, so that it could be seen by all who visited the house afterwards.
The party then left the young man weltering in his blood, and in a lifeless condition. During the night he succeeded in releasing himself from his confinement, and dragged himself to some hay-stacks, where he lay until the next day, when he was discovered by his friends. The young man regained his health, but has been an idiot or quiet lunatic ever since, and is well known by hundreds of both Mormons and Gentiles in Utah.
After this outrage old Bishop Snow took occasion to get up a meeting at the schoolhouse, so as ‘to get the people of Manti, and the young woman that he wanted to marry, to attend the meeting. When all had assembled, the old man talked to the people about their duty to the Church, and their duty to obey counsel, and the dangers of refusal, and then publicly called attention to the mangled parts of the young man, that had been severed from his person, and stated that the deed had been done to teach the people that the counsel of the Priesthood must be obeyed. To make a long story short, I will say, the young woman was soon after forced into being sealed to Bishop Snow.
Brigham Young, when he heard of this treatment of the young man, was very mad, but did nothing against Snow. He left him in charge as Bishop at Manti, and ordered the matter to be hushed up.
John D. Lee, Mormonism Unveiled, 285-286
https://archive.org/details/mormonismunveile00leej/page/284/mode/2up
Ann Eliza Young, Wife No.19
Among the victims to priestly hatred and jealousy was a young man about twenty years of age, in San Pete County, named Thomas Lewis, a very quiet, inoffensive fellow, much liked by all who knew him, very retiring in his manners, and not particularly fond of gay society. He lived with his widowed mother, and the very sweetest, tenderest relations that can exist between a mother and child existed between them.
Contrary to his usual habit, he attended a dancing-party one evening at the urgent and repeated entreaties of his friends, and during the evening he was quite attentive to a young lady-friend of his who was present, and with whom he was on terms of greater intimacy than with any other in the company. She knew his shy, retiring disposition, and seemed to take pleasure in assisting him to make the evening a pleasant one; just as any good-natured, kindly girl will do for a young fellow whom she likes, and who she knows is ill at ease and uncomfortable.
It happened that Snow, the Bishop of the ward in which the Lewis family lived, had cast his patriarchal eye on this young girl, and designed her for himself; and he did not relish the idea of seeing another person pay any attention to his future wife. He had a large family already, but he wished to add to it, and he did not choose to be interfered with.
Lewis’s doom was sealed at once ; the bewitched Bishop was mad with jealous rage, and he had only to give a hint of his feelings to some of his chosen followers, who were always about, and the sequel was sure. He denounced Lewis in the most emphatic manner, and really succeeded in arousing quite a strong feeling of indignation against him for his presumption in daring to pay even the slightest attention to a lady who was destined to grace a Bishop’s harem.
The closest espionage was kept upon him by the Bishop’s band of ruffians, and one evening a favorable opportunity presented itself; he was waylaid, and the Bishop’s sentence carried out, which was to inflict on the boy an injury so brutal and barbarous that no woman’s pen may write the words that describe it.
He lay in a concealed spot for twenty-four hours, weak and ill, and unable to move. Here his brother found him in an apparently dying state, and took him home to his poor, distracted mother, who nursed him with a breaking heart, until after a long time, when he partially recovered.
He then withdrew himself from all his former friends, and even refused to resume his place at the table with the family. He became a victim of melancholia, and would take no notice of what was occurring around him. He staid with his mother for several years, when he suddenly disappeared, and has never been heard of since ; his mother and brother made every effort to find him, but they could not obtain the slightest clew to his whereabouts.
Whether this victim of priestly rule is dead or living must for ever remain a mystery. It is probable that the emissaries of Bishop Snow have put an end to his existence. Yet during the whole of this affair the bishop was sustained by Brigham Young, who knew all about it. He has held his sacred office as securely as though the stain of human blood was not on his conscience ; he has been sent on a mission to preach “the everlasting gospel of Jesus Christ to the poor benighted nations of Christendom,” and he has also taken more wives, which were sealed to him by Brigham Young in the Endowment House.
Ann Eliza Young, Wife No.19, or, The story of a life in bondage : being a complete exposé of Mormonism, and revealing the sorrows, sacrifices and sufferings of women in polygamy, 280-281
https://archive.org/details/wifeno19orstoryo00youn/page/280/mode/2up
John A. Peterson’s BYU Thesis: “Warren Stone Snow: Mormon defender”
As Bishop Warren worked hard because of his commitment to the church and his undeviating devotion to Brigham Young he considered the church president to be a prophet of God as well as a close friend. He seemed to hang on Brigham’s every word and as one Manti settler sized him up, he would “come as near cutting his throat as any man if Brigham Young told him to.” President Young’s own success as a leader and colonizer was based in part on his ability to recognize such devotion and capitalize upon it, and in the church leader’s mind, Warren was definitely an asset to the church.
Warren idolized Brigham Young and did his best to emulate him but at times went to far in this and caused himself serious problems…
As far as he was concerned, “it was better to kill a man in faith than to let him damn himself by” evil conduct. The Saints “had to cut out every bad thing” in order to be pure. In the high-pitched frenzy of the Mormon reformation, Warren had railed that “their
is some of our sisters … that will ask those cussed Gentiles to go home & sleep with them.” “Warren would say,” he cried, “that a dagger should be put through both of their hearts.”To Warren, who trusted his leaders implicitly, such preaching was more than simple hyperbole. Exposed as he had been to violence, and the mormon vengeance
mentality, the doctrine fit neatly into his world view and somehow in the geographic distance that separated him from church headquarters, Brigham’s temperance was lost. Thus it was that sometime during the winter of 1856-1857, during the height of the reformation, Warren and a handful of Manti’s most influential Mormon leaders
committed what appears to have been a ritualistic act of Mosaic retribution.On a cold winter night, Warren, the entire Manti Bishopric, and a few others secreted themselves in some willows near a creek by which the road to Salt Lake City passed. Thomas Lewis, a young member of the church from Ephraim (a town located seven miles north of Manti) was being taken by night to the penitentiary in Salt Lake to serve a sentence for what appears to have been a sexual crime.
When Lewis and his escort reached the creek, Warren and the others stepped out of the willows, and pulling Lewis from his horse, they dragged him into the brush and emasculated him “in a brutal manner.” The prisoner’s escort seems to have been an accomplice (hence the night trip), and soon the entire group fled leaving their victim lying on the snow-covered ground on what was described as “a bitter cold night.” Lewis laid there in a near senseless condition for forty-eight forty eight hours before being found by someone who took him in and saved his life.
(Footnote 17: Samuel Pitchforth, “Diary of Samuel Pitchforth, 1857-1868” May 31, 1857, typescript, CHD. No minutes of any civil or church trial for Thomas Lewis crime have been found but Pitchforth makes it clear that Lewis was “under arrest and on the way
to the city (Salt Lake City) to be taken to the penetentionary.” The writers of The Life and Confessions of the late Mormon Bishop John D. Lee and others who were far removed from the incident, both in time and space, have mistakenly identified the issue of the emasculation as being the result of a fight over a girl between Warren and Thomas Lewis. The Account in Life and Confessions is so absurd in so many of the incident’s details that it disqualifies itself as a serious source. For example, the authors state that the emasculation occured before the entire congregation, and that after Bishop Snow did the deed with a “bowie knife,” he allegedly “took the portion severed from his victim and hung it up” on a nail on the Manti Ward House wall “so that it could be seen by all who visited the house afterwards.” See John D. Lee, Mormoniem Unveiled or The Life and Confessions of the Late Mormon Bishop John D. Lee (St. Louis: Bryan, Brand and Co., 1877), pp. 285-286. This work, much of which was put together after John D. Lee’s death by non-Mormons attempting to debunk the Church, contains much that Lee, or any other Mormon would have known to have been false. The absurd qualities of its account of the emasculation Thomas Lewis identifies itself as a collection of of folk beliefs regarding the affair gathered and written by hostile persons many years after its occurance. The only other account of the event that I am aware of is found in Murray Averett, “History of Johanna Christina Neilson Averett, as known her son Murray Averett”, CHD, and was written by remembering what his mother told him her mother told her. Its details do not match up with those presented in Life and Confessions or Samuel Pitchforth. Pitchforth, the clerk of the Nephi Ward, was privy to the dealings of his presiding bishop and wrote his account soon after the incident occured. It is clearly the only reliable source of the three discussed. The Sermons delivered in the Manti Ward, the spirit of the times, the form of punishment itself and the record of Brigham’s reaction to it, make it clear that Lewis had committed a sexual crime. See text around footnote 19. Pitchforth considered the fact that Lewis lived a “miracle” and lamented that Lewis “now is gone crazy.”)Late in the spring, Joseph Young (Brigham’s Brother) and a few other members of the Church’s First Quorum of the Seventy, learned of the incident while visiting the central Utah area. Joseph was incensed and “entirely disaproved” of the action. He mentioned it in Nephi as he returned to Salt Lake City. He furiously declared that he “did not want” that man as a leader that “would shed blood before he was duly commanded.” “Oh how
careful men ought to be in not steping to far,” he cautioned the Nephi leadership, “for they might do something that would give them sorrow forever.”Upon his arrival at church headquarters Joseph Young, and Warren’s Brother, James, who was then president of the Utah Stake at Provo, talked with Brigham Young in his office. Undoubtedly in connection with Warren’s recent action, the subject of “eunuchs” came up. In a near rage Joseph said that “he would rather die than to be made a Eunuch.” Brigham, much more placid than his brother at this point, simultaneously referred to the
emasculation and paraphrased a statement made by Jesus by saying that “the day would come when thousands would be made Eunuchs for them to be saved in the kingdom of God.”Obviously referring to Lewis’ crime they then discussed sexual sin. Brigham again emphasized his feeling that the time for such severe punishment was still in the future by saying that church leaders could not “Clens the Platter because the people will not bear
it.” He expressed his fear that if such penalties were carried out, “the wicked [would] go to the states & call for troops.” But then, making obvious reference to Warren, he said, “I will tell you that when a man is trying to do right & does some thing that is not exactly in order I feel to sustain him,” and perhaps looking at Joseph, he authoritatively added “& and we all should.” (Scott G. Kenney, ed. Wilford Woodruff’s Journal 1833-1898, 9 vols. (Midvale, Ut.: Signature Books, 1984))Within days of the above conversation, Brigham, who had in all probability heard of the incident firsthand from Warren before he heard it from his brother, wrote a letter to Warren and affirmed his friendship. Then, a few weeks later, he again wrote Warren concerning the affair. Warren, receiving complaints from some of his ward members evidently requested Brigham Young to write an “Epistle” to the Sanpete Saints to explain the action of the Bishop and his counselors. Brigham declined, however, suggesting that doing so would be like pouring water on “a hot Iron,” making only “the more smoke.” “Just let the matter drop,” he told Warren, “and say no more about it, and it will soon die away amongst the people.” (Brigham Young to Warren S. Snow, June 10, 1857, and July 7, 1857, Brigham Young Collection.)
John A. Peterson, “Warren Stone Snow, a man in between: the biography of a Mormon defender,” Master’s Thesis, BYU (1985).
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6041&context=etd
D. Michael Quinn: The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power
170. Peterson, “Warren Stone Snow,” 112-15, citing Thomas Pitchforth diary, 31 May 1857, and Brigham Young to Warren Snow, 7 July 1857, also Kenney, Wilford Woodruff’s Journal 5 (2 June 1857): 55, for Young’s initial reaction.
Various LDS sources indicate that Thomas Lewis was twenty-three, twenty-four, or twenty-five at this 1857 incident, so my text discussion uses the middle one. He was listed as age 16 when his mother Elizabeth emigrated to Utah with her six children in 1849. The 1860 census listed Thomas as a twenty-eight-year-old Welch bachelor living with his mother in Manti. The LDS International Genealogical Index gives only the year 1833 as the birth date of Thomas Lewis, while the LDS Ancestral File for his father David Thomas Lewis (who never came to Utah) gave his son Thomas’s birth year as 1834, and indicated that the son died unmarried in 1854, the latter date being an obvious error. His actual death date is presently unknown, but Thomas Lewis lived long enough to join his younger brother Lewis Lewis and two friends in an attempt to castrate Warren Snow in revenge in March 1872. Snow used a pistol to shoot two of his attackers, and perhaps this was when Thomas Lewis actually died. See Elizabeth Lewis and children in Utah Overland Immigration Index (1847-68), the Manti Ward Record of Members (1850-75), 18, 19, 20. Ancestral File for David Thomas Lewis (b. 1809), and Thomas Lewis in International Genealogical Index (IGI) for Wales, Family History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah (hereafter LDS Family History Library); 1860 Census of Manti, Sanpete County, Utah, 23 (p. 656 of entire census); Peterson, “Warren Stone Snow,” 120-21. Some historians have also confused the castrated and never-married Welshman Thomas Lewis (born ca. 1832-34) with a decade younger Englishman of the same name who married, fathered children, and first appeared with his wife and one-year-old child in the 1870 Utah census of Salt Lake City. Aside from the significant age disparity, the Utah census consistently distinguished Wales from England as a birthplace. See U.S. 1870 Census of Salt Lake City, Salt Lake County, Utah, sheet 724-B, microfilm, LDS Family History Library.
Some reminiscent accounts confused this 1857 incident involving a Welshman with an 1859 incident in which a diary referred to an unnamed bishop who had just castrated a young Danish man so that the bishop could marry his girlfriend (see below). Some reminiscent accounts claimed the bishop in this 1859 castration was Warren Snow. This indicates either that Bishop Snow committed a second castration (not inconceivable in view of Brigham Young’s approval of the 1857 castration) or that later accounts mistakenly blamed him for a castration performed by someone else two years later.
D. Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power, Signature Books, 1997. Page 535, Note 170
Brigham Young, June 1857 Letter to Warren S. Snow
I do not see that I can at present visit your settlements, from the increasing accumulation of duties here. I thought I would advise you of that which may appear to you, as it is indeed to me, a disappointement. As ever desiring your welfare and that of all the faithful in your district, I remain, Your Friend.
Brigham Young, Letter to Bishop Warren S. Snow, June 10, 1857
https://www.familysearch.org/memories/memory/33489589
Brigham Young, July 1857 Letter to Warren S. Snow
Dear Brother, Your letters 28 inst. came to hand in one season. I wish you to write me the names of those persons who have “written letters” to Sanpete concerning the Lewis affair. In relation to an epistle upon that subject, it would be like pissing upon a hot iron, only make the more smoke. Just let the matter drop, and say no more about it, and it will soon die away, amongst the people.
All is peace and prosperity with us in this vicinity. The saints are faithful, the harvest has commenced and is abundant, and all things seem working together for the benefit of Zion. The public works are progressing timely under the energetic labors of over 300 men. Weather is fine, on Thursday last we had a plentiful shower of rain. Buisiness, is lively, trade answering for money, and cattle are the circulating medium.
I some expect you to be with us on the 24th in cottonwood canyon. If you do come invite as many as you please to come with you, and enjoy themselves after the event opposed neithor.
With many thanks for your good wishes and a sincere desire that you may be adequate to every duty, I subscribe myself your Brother in Christ, Brigham Young.
Brigham Young, Letter to Bishop Warren S. Snow, July 7, 1857
https://www.familysearch.org/en/memories/memory/33488985
John G. Turner, Brigham Young – Pioneer Prophet
Even if Young primarily considered the doctrine a prod to repentance, several brutal acts of violence indicated the dangerous nature of his rhetoric. On October 29, 1856, at the height of the reformation in Manti, Thomas Lewis was castrated. Lewis was a Welsh immigrant in his early twenties; a few weeks earlier, he had been excommunicated from the church because he had nearly killed Manti resident John Price with a shovel. More recently, he had threatened to kill his brother-in-law Isaac Vorhees and had been sentenced to five years in prison. While being transported to the penitentiary, according to his mother, Elizabeth Jones, Lewis “was taken out of the wagon a blanket put round his head & … like a pig by taking his testicles clean out & he laid at this place in a dangerous state he was out two nights & part of two days before he was found.” Manti bishop Warren Snow had ordered her son’s castration. Two later anti-Mormon exposés alleged that Lewis had courted a woman also desired by Bishop Snow, but the incident may also have simply stemmed from Lewis’s violent behavior.
Elizabeth Jones wrote to Young for an explanation. Young was aware of Lewis’s crimes and punishments, for local leaders had discussed the Price incident with him. According to Jones, Young had authorized her son’s transportation in handcuffs to the Salt Lake City penitentiary. Now she asked the church president if her son’s punishment was “right and righteous.” Young responded with a letter that, while expressing sympathy, offered a theological justification for the castration by alluding to the concept of blood atonement. “I would prefer that any child of mine should lose his life in atonement for his sins than lose eternal salvation,” he counseled. The following spring, when other church leaders questioned Snow’s judgment, Young defended the bishop. “I will tell you,” Young insisted, “that when a man is trying to do right & do[es] some thing that is not exactly in order I feel to sustain him.” Snow kept his bishopric. Though he condoned it afterward, it is uncertain whether Young had authorized Thomas Lewis’s castration in advance…
In Utah, though, the governor and head of the territory’s quasi-established religion lent his approval—at least after the fact—to shadowy acts of retribution that alarmed even some loyal Mormons. Ordering the deaths of horse thieves was unremarkable in the American West, but Young also condoned the castration of Thomas Lewis and the Parrish-Potter murders and suggested that an unspecified number of other individuals deserved to die. Brigham Young, who had feared for his life while on the margins of Illinois society, created a climate in which men and women on the margins of Mormon society lived in a similar state of fear…
John G. Turner, Brigham Young – Pioneer Prophet, 2012, Pages 258-259 & 262.
John G. Turner, The Thomas Lewis Case
On October 29, the day after Dan Jones signed the bill that granted Elizabeth Lewis her divorce, Thomas Lewis was handcuffed and placed in a wagon driven by George Snow (another brother of Warren Snow), ostensibly bound for the Salt Lake City penitentiary. Lewis never reached the jail. At William Creek, to the south of Ephraim, he was—according to Elizabeth Jones—“taken out of the wagon a blanket put round his head & actulay alter him like a pig by taking his Testicles clean out & he laid at this place in a dangerous state he was out two nights & part of two days before he was found.” Three Indians sent to search for him tracked his blood for seven miles. Lewis, who crawled on his hands and knees due to the loss of so much blood, was eventually found in the “Stock Yard.”
A few days after the attack, during her return from Salt Lake City, Elizabeth Jones met Warren Snow at Nephi. At that point, the bishop “seemed to doubt whether he [Thomas Lewis] would be found or not.” Snow told her that he did “not know” who had attacked Lewis, “no more than if they came from the moon.” Warren Snow and George Peacockinformed Jones that they had ridden up to the spot of the attack and had been fired upon by “Ruffains [ruffians].” The attackers had allegedly dragged George Snow out of the wagon before assaulting Lewis. Even while disclaiming any responsibility for the attack, Bishop Snow told Jones that her son Thomas was “full of the devil,” just like his father and her former husband David Lewis.
Within another week, Lewis’s mother somehow learned that several Manti leaders (including Warren Snow, George Snow, and George Peacock) had planned and carried out the attack. She lamented that her son was now a “bloodless breathing tabernacle.” Jones, who placed great emphasis on money matters and apparently did not have a close relationship with her son, complained to Young that she would have “the grief, trouble, and expense of having him on my hands.” “If such a deed was right,” she asked Brigham Young in a November 8 letter, “why not have it done decently in a private room and not leave him so low and helpless that he cannot turn himself or help himself any more than a new born babe?” “[T]hings are so dark and mysterious,” she added.
Indeed, despite Elizabeth Lewis’s detailed letters to Young and scattered references to Thomas Lewis in local Manti records, several aspects of the incident remain mysterious. Who ordered and carried out the attack? Why was Lewis castrated?
From the above evidence, Warren Snow, George Snow, and George Peacock were at the scene of the crime. Nephi resident Samuel Pitchforth asserted the next spring that John Lowry was also “one that helped to cut Lewis.” Thomas Lewis, as will become clear below, blamed Warren Snow for his misfortune…
Why did Thomas Lewis endure this unusual punishment? In explaining Thomas Lewis’s emasculation, authors have offered two competing explanations. As noted above, John D. Lee alleged that Snow ordered the castration after Lewis refused to abandon his interest in a young woman Snow wanted to marry. Ann Eliza Young asserts that Lewis’s mere attentions to the young woman led to the punishment. Not long after Lewis’s emasculation, Snow did marry a sixteen-year-old woman, Maria Baum. The records of the Salt Lake City Endowment House record that Snow and Baum were sealed in Provo on December 2. Snow married two more women the following April. Had Lewis and Snow clashed over a woman, however, Elizabeth Lewis would probably have discussed it in her letters to Young rather than concentrating on her son’s dispute with Isaac Voorhees. Moreover, Lewis’s five-year term in the penitentiary would have removed him as a viable suitor.
Dismissing the explanations of Mormonism Unveiled and Ann Eliza Young, John Peterson concludes that the “[s]ermons delivered in the Manti Ward, the spirit of the times, the form of punishment itself and the record of Brigham’s reaction to it, make it clear that Lewis had committed a sexual crime.” Elizabeth Jones may have had this rationale for castration in mind. “I never knew him to tell a lie or do any thing mean,” she wrote to Young, “to try to injure a female or any kind of guilt.” However, there is no record of Lewis having committed a sexual crime or indiscretion in the ward minutes or court records in September or October of 1856. Lewis assaulted and nearly killed John Price, and he was convicted of threatening Isaac Voorhees. It seems unlikely that Lewis committed a sexual crime immediately after the latter incident…
For his part, Thomas Lewis continued to live in misery. In April 1859, the non-Mormon Valley Tan reported that he “live[d] in a hole in the ground near one of the settlements [in] San Pete Valley, and is perfectly crazy.” With only one exception, there is no mention of Lewis in any known historical record after the 1860 census. Then, in 1872, a group of men attempted to exact vengeance upon Warren Snow. According to a letter Snow wrote to one of his wives, the group included the brothers “Cana [Canaan] Lewis And Tom.” They apprehended Snow with shot guns and revolvers. At one point, Snow lay on the ground with two revolvers pointed at his head. The attackers may have intended to inflict the same punishment on Snow that Snow had inflicted on Thomas Lewis. Remarkably, the fifty-three-year-old former bishop fought back, shot two of his attackers, and escaped intact. Snow intended to track down the surviving assailants “when they little think of it and make them bite the dust.”
Matthew Harris and Newell G. Bringhurst. The LDS Gospel Topics Series, A Scholarly Engagement
John G. Turner, “Things Are So Dark and Mysterious”: The Thomas Lewis Case and Violence in Early LDS Utah. Page 169-170, 171, 177
More reading:
- Samuel Pitchforth Diary, May 31, 1857, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University
https://bhroberts.org/records/qPJ8Nb-0iuCOh/samuel_pitchforth_gives_his_account_and_commentary_of_the_thomas_lewis_castration - Wilford Woodruff, Journal (January 1, 1854 – December 31, 1859), June 2, 1857 ~ Tuesday
https://wilfordwoodruffpapers.org/documents/d2f9c932-bc4b-43b9-9a1f-6b16566f3b6b/page/dda1ce72-11d7-4f9c-8c3a-f907a5c07de2 - John D. Lee, Mormonism Unveiled, 284-286
https://archive.org/details/mormonismunveile00leej/page/284/mode/2up - Ann Eliza Young, Wife No.19, or, The story of a life in bondage : being a complete exposé of Mormonism, and revealing the sorrows, sacrifices and sufferings of women in polygamy, 280-281
https://archive.org/details/wifeno19orstoryo00youn/page/280/mode/2up - John A. Peterson, “Warren Stone Snow, a man in between: the biography of a Mormon defender,” Master’s Thesis, BYU (1985).
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6041&context=etd - D. Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power, Signature Books, 1997. Page 535, Note 170
- Brigham Young, Letter to Bishop Warren S. Snow, July 7, 1857 –https://www.familysearch.org/en/memories/memory/33488985
- MormonThink summary on Warren S. Snow and Thomas Lewis
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_S._Snow
- https://history.churchofjesuschrist.org/chd/individual/warren-stone-snow-1818?lang=eng&timelineTab=all-events
- https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/answers/Question:_Did_Bishop_Warren_S._Snow_forcibly_castrate_twenty-four-year-old_Thomas_Lewis%3F
- https://sunstone.org/episode-138-mormon-castrations-and-warren-snow/
- History of Johanna Christina Neilson Averett, as known her son Murray Averett
- https://www.mormonstories.org/home/truth-claims/violence-in-mormonism/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/gngzcs/a_mormon_bishop_castrating_another_man_because_he/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/38q3dv/in_1857_bishop_warren_snow_of_manti_wanted_to/
- Brigham Young’s Blood Atonement Distorts Love – He Had “no wife whom I love so well that I would not put a javelin through her heart”
- The Drawn Flaming Sword of Polygamy – Spiritual Abuse and Manipulation
- Church Reveals What To Do With Disturbing Anti-Mormon Literature?