Lamoni: Where the Other Mormons Made Their Home

Near the Iowa-Missouri border, the small city of Lamoni was platted in eighteen seventy-nine beside a new railroad and became a center for members of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, now called Community of Christ. This was the branch of the Mormon movement that did not follow Brigham Young to Utah after Joseph Smith's death in eighteen forty-four, and whose members believed the presidency should pass through Smith's own bloodline.

In the early eighteen eighties, Joseph Smith the Third, son of the founder, moved his family and the church's administrative offices to Lamoni. His home, Liberty Hall, still stands as a historic site. The church printed its newspaper and managed its affairs from this quiet Iowa town for about four decades. A church-affiliated college, Graceland, was founded here in eighteen ninety-five and still operates today. By nineteen twenty the church's headquarters had shifted back to Independence, Missouri, which Joseph Smith Senior had designated as the Zion of his faith. But Lamoni remains a Community of Christ town, a living remnant of the faith's Iowa chapter.