his "Salt Sermon", warned the dissenters to leave the county, and his words were soon followed up by perceived threats from the newly formed Mormon confraternity known as the Danites. Whitmer moved to Richmond in neighboring Ray County, Missouri. The Whitmer family's complaints and those of the other dissenters are sometimes cited as one of the causes of the 1838 Mormon War. This conflict between Latter Day Saints and their neighbors in northwestern Missouri ended with the expulsion of the former, who eventually relocated to a new headquarters at Nauvoo, Illinois. Whitmer returns to Far West Whitmer's parents and his brother David remained in Richmond for the rest of their lives, but John and his own family returned to Far West. He bought 625 acres of land in the town. Emptied of Latter Day Saints, Far West became a ghost town. Many of its houses were moved off to other settlements, and Far West lost the county seat to nearby Kingston. Whitmer continued to live in Far West, buying up land (including the proposed temple site) and eventually amassing a large farm. He occasionally gave visitors tours of the former settlement. After Joseph Smith's death in 1844, several leaders asserted their claims to be his rightful successor. Among these was Whitmer's brother David. In 1847, Whitmer was briefly part of a renewed Church of Christ (Whitmerite). He never recanted the testimony of the Book of Mormon he'd given as one of the Eight Witnesses. When Jacob Gates visited him in 1861, Whitmer reaffirmed that he believed in the Book of Mormon but expressed dismay with the practice of plural marriage that Brigham Young and his followers adhered to. Whitmer died at the age of 75 on July 11, 1878 in Far West. He is buried in nearby Kingston, Missouri in the Kingston Cemetery. Whitmer's manuscript Whitmer was called as Church Historian, and began to write a record entitled The Book of John Whitmer, Kept by Commandment. His book begins with an account of events leading up to the relocation of the church's headquarters from New York to Kirtland, Ohio. He discusses many of the troubles experienced by the Latter Day Saints in Missouri and ends the work with an account of his own excommunication in March 1838. Afterwards, a continuation tells of the mistreatment he felt he and the other dissenters had received at the hands of Joseph Smith and