Rudger Clawson became a folk hero when his missionary companion, Joseph Standing, was murdered at Varnell's Station, Georgia. He again gained notoriety when he became the first polygamist Mormon to be convicted and imprisoned for violation of the Edmunds law of 1882. Clawson's diaries provide a contemporary view of his imprisonment, his subsequent years as an elder of the Box Elder Stake, and his early years as an apostle.
