Sam Brannan, from Representative and Leading Men of the Pacific Coast (1870), edited by Oscar T. Shuck.

Brannan was not disposed to do Brigham Young any good at all.

Early California was filled with colorful characters, few more encrusted with legend than Sam Brannan (1819–1889), the Mormon elder and newspaper publisher who brought a shipload of Mormons to the Mexican province in July 1846 and became the Golden State’s first millionaire. When Brannan sailed into San Francisco Bay aboard the chartered Mormon emigrant ship Brooklyn, his flock was “all armed to the teeth,” and he had hopes of establishing an independent outpost of the Mormon Kingdom of God. (Brannan had even stowed several artillery pieces and the kingdom’s white banner in the ship’s hold.) His plans collapsed when he spotted the American flag USS Portsmouth had raised three weeks earlier over the village of Yerba Buena when seizing the bay for the United States. Realizing the Navy had forestalled his ambitions, Brannan yelled, “By God, there is that damned American flag!”

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The most famous of all Brannan tales tells how he used his office as president of the Latter-day Saints in California to collect “the Lord’s tithes” from Mormon miners, some of whom had been present when James Wilson Marshall discovered gold at Sutter’s Mill on January 24, 1848. Legend has it when Brigham Young sent an apostle to collect “the Lord’s money,” Brannan told him, “You go back and tell Brigham that I’ll give up the Lord’s money when he sends me a receipt signed by the Lord, and no sooner!” According to some versions, the apostle brought along Mormon avenger Porter Rockwell to assure Brannan’s cooperation.

Unfortunately, like many great tales, it didn’t happen. But the story of what really transpired is even better than the legend.

The “receipt signed by the Lord” story assumes that Brannan collected tithes from Mormon miners. No less an authority than William Tecumseh Sherman recalled that when he visited Mormon Island—the first big strike of the gold rush—in July 1848, he found Brannan “was on hand as the high-priest, collecting the tithes.” One Mormon asked military governor Colonel Richard B. Mason, “Governor, what business has Sam Brannan to collect the tithes here?” Mason answered, “Brannan has a perfect right to collect the tax, if you Mormons are fools enough to pay it.”

The primary sources tell a different story. The money Brannan collected in the goldfields was actually a 30 percent finder’s fee assessed by his partners; Brannan’s 10 percent cut was a fee for him to secure title to the land. (Mason decided it was beyond Brannan’s authority to grant land titles, so his services were pointless.) According to Mormon miner Azariah Smith, Brannan called a meeting “to see who was willing to pay toll and who was not” and that Brannan determined that “most of them agreed to pay the toll, and some would not.” John Borrowman confirmed that “Brannan & Co. requires 30 per cent” of the gold he had found, but at the end of May he quit “paying rent, as I consider it an imposition.” Neither Smith nor Borrowman identified the toll, or rent, as tithing

So, if Brannan was not collecting tithes from the Saints in California in 1848, who was? It appears no one. After the first miners reached Salt Lake in the fall of 1848, they deposited gold worth more than $6,500 in the Brigham Young gold accounts. Not all this money was tithing, but Azariah Smith deposited $84.63 and recalled that he went “to Pres. Brigham Young, and paid my tithing.” (Smith also gave a dollar each to the 12 apostles.) Clearly these men paid tithes on their golden windfall directly to Brigham Young, not to Sam Brannan.

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