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Ray County Seat
Platted as the county seat in 1827, with about 500 people by 1840. It had the courthouse and the jails, which is why the prisoners from Far West were brought here in 1838.

The Charges
Treason, murder, arson, robbery, burglary and larceny, all tied to the fighting that fall. The hearing before Judge Austin A. King was a court of inquiry, held to decide whether there was evidence enough for a trial.

• November 9, 1838: The prisoners arrived from Independence. Joseph Smith and the leaders with him were kept in an old log house, each with a shackle on one ankle and a chain linking him to the rest. Forty-six other Latter-day Saint men were held in the unfinished courthouse.
• November 1838: One night the guards boasted of atrocities they had committed against the Saints. Parley P. Pratt, lying on the floor, wanted to rebuke them and held back. Then, as he told it, Joseph rose in his chains: "Silence, ye fiends of the infernal pit! In the name of Jesus Christ, I rebuke you and command you to be still!" The guards lowered their guns, begged his pardon, and stayed quiet until their relief came.
• November 12 to 29, 1838: The prosecution called more than forty witnesses. The defense called only a few. Parley Pratt and four others were held in Richmond on murder charges from the Crooked River fight. Joseph, Hyrum, Sidney Rigdon, Lyman Wight, Caleb Baldwin and Alexander McRae were sent to the jail at Liberty to wait for trial on treason.
• March 3, 1850: Oliver Cowdery died in Richmond, at the home of David Whitmer's parents, Peter and Mary Whitmer. He had been rebaptized at Kanesville, Iowa, on November 12, 1848, and on a visit to his in-laws here, before going west, he caught tuberculosis.
• January 25, 1888: David Whitmer, the last living member of the Three Witnesses, died here after four decades in the town. Ten years earlier, on September 7, 1878, Orson Pratt and Joseph F. Smith had come to Richmond to interview him.

1. The site where Joseph Smith and the other leaders were held between court sessions is just north of the Ray County Courthouse. The building is gone, and the Mormon Missouri Frontier Foundation has marked the spot with a sign and a picket fence. On the west side of the courthouse stands a bronze statue of Alexander W. Doniphan, who refused the 1838 order to execute Joseph Smith and then served as his lawyer. The state put the statue up in 1918, though, for his service in the war with Mexico in 1846.
2. David Whitmer built a house one block east of the courthouse in 1838 and lived in it for forty years. A tornado wrecked it on June 1, 1878, and it was rebuilt. A one-story brick building stands on the lot today, with a small bronze plaque marking the spot.
3. Oliver Cowdery is buried in the Pioneer Cemetery. President Joseph F. Smith directed that a monument go up there to all three witnesses, and Junius F. Wells found the unmarked grave in August 1911. The monument was dedicated that November, with the Tabernacle Choir singing at the service in the town's Ferris Opera House. The Church has looked after the cemetery since 1949.
4. David Whitmer, who ran a livery stable and served a term as mayor, lies under a tall limestone monument in Richmond Cemetery on West Main Street. The most prominent monument in that cemetery belongs to Austin A. King, the judge of 1838, who later became governor of Missouri.
5. The Ray County Museum keeps a room on the town's Latter-day Saint history, refurbished and reopened in 2010.

• During the hearing, Joseph testified that he believed Daniel's prophecy of a stone that would fill the earth. "Write that down," Judge King told the clerk. "It is a strong point for treason." Joseph's lawyer answered, "You had better make the Bible treason."
• The Three Witnesses Monument has four panels. Three carry the names of Cowdery, Whitmer and Martin Harris. The fourth carries Joseph Smith's, because he was with them that day in 1829. The granite came from the same Vermont quarry as the Joseph Smith birthplace obelisk.