On July 9, 1856, James Jesse Strang, King of the Mormons dies of gunshot wounds at Voree, Wisconsin. The ramifications of the death of James Jesse Strang would change many lives forever, in particular within the Wing family.
The Wives of James Jesse Strang
Wikipedia, James Jesse Strang

One of James Jesse Strang's wives was the young, Sarah Adelia Wright Strang. At the time of her husband's death, Sarah was pregnant with her first child, a son. * When she was five months pregnant with her first child, Sarah Wright left her dying husband and prophet in Voree and moved with her father, Phineas, to Racine, Wisconsin. Phineas and his son Zenas worked temporarily on the railroad while the other men in the Wright families went to work harvesting crops. When the 1856 summer harvest season was over, the Wrights set out for the Black River pineries in wagons conveyed by ox teams. They arrived in September, 1856. For the winter they moved into a shanty, all three families living together under the same roof.

Four months after Strang's death, on November 11, 1856, Sarah gave birth to her first child, a male, who she named James Phineas for his father and grandfather. Oh, what a dismal time this must have been for poor Sarah. A widow and a new mother at the age of nineteen, living in a shanty with two other families in cold Black River Falls, Wisconsin. Not only was Black River Falls, Wisconsin cold, but it was a rough and tumble town, lumberjacks, Indians, drinking men and sorry looking prostitutes, drugs & death, all of these things combined surely dampened Sarah's thrill of the birth of her son.

Sarah Wright Strang

There is evidence that JSW was kept appraised of all of the events that were transpiring in Pike County, Illinois by his brother, Benjamin Franklin Wing and his nephew, Samuel Joseph Wing. Benjamin was a single guy, footloose and fancy free. In the fall of 1856 he would have been about twenty-three years old. He managed to evade the sheriff's who tried to deliver summons to attend the divorce trial for Rebecca Davis Wing and he did his best to watch over Amy Pettis Wing which is what JSW charged him to do when he left for Wisconsin in the first place.

In fact, on March 21, 1857,there is a lawsuit that Benjamin Franklin Wing began against Clark Parker Davis (Rebecca Davis Wing's brother). The whole dispute centered around a barn and the fact that Clark Parker Davis accused Benjamin Wing of not being a resident of the state of Illinois because he had been gone for 8 months or longer. That would be when Benjamin was at Black River Falls, Wisconsin with his brother, Joseph Smith Wing.

It is very likely that young Samuel Joseph Wing who was about 14 at the time and the son of JSW's brother, Matthias, accompanied his Uncle Benjamin on these journeys to Wisconsin. Perhaps a little starstruck by his renegade Uncle Joe, Samuel expressed an interest in becoming a doctor like his uncle who was now going by the name of Dr. Joseph Wing Smith.

In fact, in 1860, Samuel Joseph Wing will marry Sarah Adelia Wright's sister, Elizabeth Jane Wright.

Glimpses of Pioneer Life from the Whitehall Banner, September, 1928

Glimpses of Pioneer Life from the Whitehall Banner, December, 1923

* From the book, GOD HAS MADE US A KINGDOM By Vickie Cleverly Speek.
(I highly recommend this book. You can get it much cheaper at Amazon.com)