Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 36, Number 1, 1968 by Utah Historical Society

HISTORICAL QUARTERLY WINTER, 1968 • VOLUME 36 • NUMBER I

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STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY k IS*

BOARD OF STATE HISTORY Division of Department of Development Services j . GRANT IVERSON, Salt Lake City, 1971 President MILTON c. ABRAMS, Logan, 1969

Vice-President EVERETT L. COOLEY, Salt Lake City Secretary DEAN R. BRIMHALL, Fruita, 1969 MRS. JUANITA BROOKS, St. George, 1969

JACK GOODMAN, Salt Lake City, 1969 MRS. A. c. J E N S E N , Sandy, 1971 THERON LUKE, PrOVO, 1 9 7 1

CLYDE L. MILLER, Secretary of State

Ex officio HOWARD c. PRICE, J R . , Price, 1971 MRS. ELIZABETH S K A N C H Y , Midvale, 1969

MRS. NAOMI WOOLLEY, Salt Lake City, 1971

ADMINISTRATION EVERETT L. COOLEY, Director

T. H . JACOBSEN, State Archivist, Archives F. T. J O H N S O N , Records Manager, Archives

J O H N J A M E S , J R . , Librarian MARGERY W. WARD, Associate Editor

IRIS SCOTT, Business M a n a g e r

T h e U t a h State Historical Society is an organization devoted to the collection, preservation, and publication of U t a h and related history. I t was organized by publicspirited Utahns in 1897 for this purpose. In fulfillment of its objectives, the Society publishes the Utah Historical Quarterly, which is distributed to its members with payment of a $5.00 annual membership fee. T h e Society also maintains a specialized research library of books, pamphlets, photographs, periodicals, microfilms, newspapers, maps, and manuscripts. Many of these items have come to the library as gifts. Donations are encouraged, for only through such means can the U t a h State Historical Society live up to its responsibility of preserving the record of Utah's past.

T h e primary purpose of the Quarterly is the publication of manuscripts, photographs, a n d documents which relate or give a new interpretation to Utah's unique story. Contributions of writers are solicited for the consideration of the editor. However, the editor assumes no responsibility for the return of manuscripts unaccompanied by return postage. Manuscripts and material for publications should be sent to the editor. The U t a h State Historical Society does not assume responsibility for statements of fact or opinions expressed by contributors. The Utah Historical Quarterly is entered as second-class postage, paid at Salt Lake City, Utah. Copyright 1968, U t a h State Historical Society, 603 East South Temple Street, Salt Lake City, U t a h 84102.

WINTER,

1 9 6 8 • VOLUME 36 • NUMBER I

HISTORICAL QUARTERLY Contents EDITOR'S NOTE

U T A H BEFORE T H E M O R M O N S BY DALE L. MORGAN

CHARLES MAGKAY AND H I S " T R U E AND IMPARTIAL HISTORY" OF THE MORMONS BY LEONARD J. ARRINGTON

T H E H E S I T A N T BEGINNINGS O F T H E C A T H O L I C C H U R C H IN U T A H BY JEROME STOFFEL

SAINTS, SINNERS, AND SCRIBES: A L O O K AT T H E M O R M O N S IN F I C T I O N BY NEAL LAMBERT

T H E EPISCOPAL C H U R C H IN U T A H : SEVEN BISHOPS AND ONE H U N D R E D YEARS BY JAMES W. BELESS, JR

The Cover Scene at the mouth of Mill Creek Canyon, an area once part of the farming community of Salt Lake Valley, but now being overrun with suburban expansion. Only a few relics, such as this wagon and dilapidated barn, remain to attract artists and shutterbugs and remind us of Salt Lake's recent agrarian past. U T A H STATE H I S T O R I C A L SOCIETY

EDITOR ASSOCIATE EDITOR

L. COOLEY Margery W. Ward

EVERETT

Editor's Note

For several years the Society has planned to publish in the form of "Proceedings" the several excellent papers read at its annual meetings. While lack of funds has prevented the fulfillment of these plans, nevertheless some papers have appeared in various issues of the Quarterly over the past few years. Others now form chapters in books published elsewhere. Since the studies presented at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting (September 23, 1967) were of a uniformly high calibre, and since many requests for copies have come to the Society, the editorial staff has collected all the papers into this first issue of Volume 36 of the Utah Historical Quarterly. Both new interpretations and newly uncovered information are offered in this issue. Four of the authors, Leonard J. Arrington, James W. Beless, Jr., Neal Lambert, and Dale L. Morgan, have previously published in the Quarterly. Monsignor Jerome StofTel is a new contributor, whose article on Catholic beginnings on Utah is a welcome addition to the literature on this subject.

Utah Before the Mormons

BY DALE L. MORGAN

to begin by asking that you join with me in playing some tricks with time. On this twenty-third of September 1967, I would like you to go back with me in time exactly 120 years, to the evening of September 23, 1847, so that we may revisit Brigham Young. The Mormon leader is returning to Winter Quarters after a summer during which his Pioneer party has hopefully established a gathering place for the Saints beyond the summit of the Rocky Mountains. Our day's journey of 29 miles in Brigham's company has been through the sandy eastern reaches of the Black Hills, the Laramie Range, and we have camped for the night at a point about 12 miles west of Fort Laramie, which we will reach tomorrow. Our party of 36 wagons and 108 men left the embryo settlement of Great Salt Lake City on August 26. Just west of South Pass, on September 3, we encountered the Mormon family emigration, which set out from Winter Quarters in June, two months in the rear of the Pioneer party, and we can estimate that these companies by now are winding down Emigration Canyon to join those members of the Pioneer party detailed to winter in Salt Lake Valley. With Brigham, we reflect upon this new country seen during the summer, and its potential for the harried Saints; but we do so without relinquishing our vantage point of 1967. Let us shuffle together those two years, 1847 and 1967, 120 years apart, for purposes of dramatic demonstration, at one and the same time watching the stars above Laramie Peak and the yellow blaze of the electric lights which illuminate this room . . . . So then, in Brigham Young's presence we reflect upon the Prophet Joseph Smith, who (in a despairing moment shortly before his brutal murder) half-accepted the idea of fleeing to the Rocky Mountains and went so far as to cross the Mississippi River into Iowa. (The thought AM GOING

Mr. Morgan, research specialist at Bancroft Library, Berkeley, California, is one of the outstanding historians in America. The illustrations in this article were provided through the courtesy of Dixon Paper Company. The first sketch is the work of Nelson White, the others of Farrell R. Collett.

In June of 1847 the Mormon Pioneer party met Jim Bridger on the Little Sandy, west of South Pass. A long, rather confusing discussion ensued between Bridger and Brigham Young, the latter unable to grasp all of Bridger's knowledge concerning the farranging West. It is out of this meeting that the legend has grown of Jim Bridger's offer of a thousand dollars for the first ear of corn grown in the Great Salt Lake Valley.

Utah Before the Mormons

enters our minds: What would he have done had he come up here -— sought employment as a clerk at one of the forts? Begun to hunt beaver in the impoverished twilight of the mountain fur trade? Taken up a mendicant life with one of the poverty-stricken Indian tribes of the Rockies? No, impossible! The Mormon prophet is inconceivable, except with a people around him.) The prophet was slain, we reflect, just three years ago last summer — that is to say, on June 27, 1964, a few weeks before the political conventions that nominated Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater for the Presidency. We reflect, too, on all the events that preceded the tragedy in Carthage Jail, crammed into so short a time as seventeen years: The Book of Mormon, which gave rise to all the striving, was published so recently as March 1950, three months before the furies of the Korean War were unloosed upon the world. In this way we establish a Mormon time-scale, and also a chronological double exposure for Utah's history before the Mormons. It was just a year ago last month that the Donner party hacked its way over the Wasatch to reach the open expanse of Salt Lake Valley, preliminary to going on to starvation and cannibalism in the far-off Sierra Nevada during the hard winter just past. John C. Fremont was in the Utah country only a little earlier. It was in the dog-days of September 1963, that he floated out on the waters of Great Salt Lake in his rubber boat to reach and give name to Fremont Island. After swinging around through Oregon and California, he rode north as far as Utah Valley in the spring of 1964, arriving there about a month before the murder of the prophet, then going on east to Bent's Fort and Washington, D.C. All this we read with attention in his report, published in Washington two years ago. We also know that Fremont came back to the Utah country in the fall of 1965, but he is yet not home from that third expedition, and we have still to learn the details, which include his horseback visit to Antelope Island in Great Salt Lake from a base camp between the forks of City Creek — the same locality where we, the Mormon pioneers, recently decreed that a temple should arise. How long since Utah was first traversed by emigrant wagons? The Bartleson party, making for California, passed around the northern side of Great Salt Lake six years ago, in August and September 1961, a few months prior to the chilling assassination of President John F. Kennedy, but about this Brigham Young knows little or nothing. He does not know a great deal more about Jim Bridger, though last June, while bound for the Valley of the Great Salt Lake, he fell in with Bridger on the Little Sandy, west of South Pass, and had a long, rather

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confusing discussion with him, Bridger's far-ranging knowledge of the West hard for a greenhorn to take in. Bridger has lived in this high country for a very long while; with some fellow trappers he first holed up for the winter in Cache Valley late in 1944, just before the Battle of the Bulge. And further back in time: it was during the summer of 1925, when a Lincoln Highway across the country was being vigorously promoted, that Meriwether Lewis and William Clark crossed northern Idaho on their way to the Pacific. Still more remotely: In the summer of 1896, seven months after Utah achieved Statehood, Fathers Dominguez and Escalante made the Utah area at last visible to history by embarking upon their pioneering exploration northwest from Santa Fe.

N MAKING my point so forcibly, I hope I have not labored that point excessively. I have been concerned, as you realize, to translate historical time into terms we can individually find meaningful. All these dates â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 1964, 1961, 1944, 1925, even 1896 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; have a personal significance for us that dates like 1847, 1841, 1824, 1805, or 1776 no longer command. Births, deaths, weddings, and graduations mix with the obvious public events to give such dates personal color, each date emotionally different for everyone alive. Nothing is truly real for most of us beyond the reach of our own experience, and coping with this fact is the recurring, often exasperating, problem of historians. This was brought home to me some years ago through a story told me by my brother Jim's wife. Her eldest daughter, then a ripe eight years of age, came home from school one day to beseech: "Mama, tell me what it was like to live back in the olden times, when you were a girl." Mary Beth was and is fast on her feet, and though it disqualifies her as a historian, she got out of that one, she told me, by exclaiming, "I'm not that old!" If I may be permitted a geological image, 1847 represents a faultline in Utah's splendidly varied history. Because of the continuity enforced by the patterns of Mormon experience, the long slope our way from 1847 seems shorter than that across the divide, where the cliffs of time plunge sheerly down past the 1830's and 1820's to the almost inaccessible 1700's far below. It is exactly 191 years today since Fathers Dominguez and Escalante rode down out of Spanish Fork Canyon into Utah Valley, and 120 of those years belong to the Mormon era. The very difficulty of exploring the other side of the divide adds to its fascination. Back of 1776 we have almost no written records to go upon. Captain Garcia Lopez de Cardenas, one of Coronado's conquista-

Utah Before the Mormons

dors, reached the southern edge of the Colorado's mighty chasm as early as 1540, but that was in present Arizona. No one to our knowledge, no one capable of recording what he saw, got north and west of the Colorado for another 236 years â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a chasm in time far exceeding anything known to geology. It is true that after Don Juan de Onate launched the colonization of New Mexico in 1598, some knowledge about the immense space west of the Rockies and north of the Rio Grande's sources reached the Spaniards in New Mexico. Dr. S. Lyman Tyler could speak to your profit and mine until dawn on this period "Before Escalante," for that was the topic of his doctoral dissertation some years ago â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a contribution to scholarship that I, and doubtless he too, would like to see published before either of us gets very much older. In general, though, the knowledge about, or emanating from, Utah in the era before Escalante was ethnological, relating to the Ute Indians, from whom the Spanish chroniclers extracted no very useful fund of geographical information or anything like a true knowledge of the conditions of existence in present Utah. Those 236 years before Escalante, in other words, are off any timescale we are interested in devising, whether 1967, 1847, or any other base year is chosen. There were no white men, no chroniclers or annalists, in Utah before 1776 to institute a written history, and I fear that for all their refinements in technique, the archaeologists are never going to be able to speak to us with real authority about the details of the life of the Indian peoples who occupied Utah during this period. A time machine is the only mechanism that ever seems likely to help us develop a detailed primordial history of the Utes, Shoshonis, Paiutes, and Navajos, and time machines seem to be easily devised only on television. Out of prevailing historical murk, the single year 1776 rises like a revolving beacon of incredible candlepower. A great bicentennial for Utah is now only nine years away, and it is certainly none too soon to start thinking about a suitable observance. Utah shares Dominguez and Escalante with New Mexico, Colorado, and Arizona, but these explorer priests mean far more to Utah than to her sister states; here they represent a point of prime beginning in history, which is not the case elsewhere. The year 1976 will be a festive one generally, for at that time our nation will be observing its two hundredth anniversary. (We might remark, in passing, that Dominguez and Escalante originally intended to set out from Santa Fe on July 4, a date American history had not until then vested with emotional impact, but delays attended their preparations, and they did not actually get off until sixteen days later.)

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I am not, tonight, going to retell in any detail the story of that gentle exploration by the two Franciscan priests. Herbert E. Bolton saw fit to title his account of their experiences, as published by this Society in 1951, Pageant in the Wilderness. This title is one to which I have always taken exception. For a pageant is a bloodless, I might say gutless, visualization of times past, something artificial and staged. The Escalante Expedition (so called because Silvestre Velez de Escalante kept the diary, though his associate, Francisco Atanasio Dominguez, was the senior ecclesiastic) — the Escalante Expedition, I say, was no pale image of the real thing — it was the real thing, wrought from faith and piety, hard work and perseverance, suffering and frustration, hope and anticipation, and acquiescence to the will of God. The prime purpose of the expedition was to find, if possible, an overland route north of the Apache lands to connect the New Mexican settlements with those the Franciscans had been founding since 1769 in California. The fathers got as far north and west as Utah Valley, where they heard about, though they did not visit, Great Salt Lake, but no Indian trails or information even intimated that a likely route existed on to the coast of California. The ten-man party turned south down the Wasatch Front, eventually drew lots as a way of allowing God to decide whether or not they should give up the quest and make for the Indian pueblos south of the Colorado, and at last, after many adventures, reached Santa Fe in safety on January 2, 1777. The priests had been immensely impressed with Utah Valley, a paradise indeed to one freshly come from arid New Mexico, and they hoped that a mission could be established there to serve the Ute Indians. We shall always wonder how the history of Utah might have been changed had this project been undertaken and proved successful. But the resources did not exist for such a venture at the limits of the known world; we are not even sure that anybody in authority ever gave the idea a moment's serious consideration. The consequence is that "After Escalante," for forty years or so, we confront another essentially blind period in Utah history. The brilliant beacon has been extinguished, and the murk is penetrated only, now and then, by a little star-shine. We appreciate, nevertheless, that Dominguez and Escalante have got Utah history on a meaningful time-scale; after 1776 we do have glimpses of things happening in Utah, however brief and tantalizing our glimpses of these events. Symbolically, the priests brought back with them to Santa Fe what they called a Laguna Indian -— that is, a Ute from Utah Valley. We have to suppose that in the course

Utah Before the Mormons

of time this Laguna Indian returned home. It may well be that some trader went with him. If not, there were traders to venture out on the path of the fathers, now that the way was known beyond the Gunnison River in western Colorado.

After the Dominguez-Escalante Expedition into Utah in 1776, came traders, trappers, and explorers, such as these depicted here.

Getting at the history of this period nevertheless presents many and grave difficulties. One problem is, from the New Mexican end, that only official expeditions tended to produce the written records that yield the patterns we call history. With scarcely an exception, only the priests, officials, or army officers, could read and write, and these were the very men who stayed out of New Mexico's distant north, sufficiently burdened with responsibilities at home. Those who did follow the padres to the remotest Ute lands were rough men who in all their days never learned to read or write. Only on the rare occasions when one of them was haled before an alcalde for some infraction of law or polity was a written record ordinarily made of their activities. Brigham Young, in his camp in the shadow of Laramie Peak in September 1847, knew nothing of these forerunners of civilization in the

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Great Basin. It is only since 1921, when Joseph J. Hill began to publish his researches respecting the Spanish Trail, that we have known of our unexpected good fortune, that some details concerning an otherwise lost era in Utah history are preserved in the Spanish archives of New Mexico. Hill established to our satisfaction that in the thirty years after Dominguez and Escalante returned home, various traders developed a routine of going off to live with the Utes for months at a time, thereby succeeding where church and state had failed â&#x20AC;&#x201D; in establishing meaningful and workable relations with the more distant Ute bands. (We should not forget that through the 1860's and even later, the Utes ranged through northern New Mexico and western Colorado, as well as northeastern Utah; the Utes are by no means the exclusive historical property of the state that has taken their name.) Something concrete in the way of information comes out when a new governor of New Mexico, Joaquin de Real Alencaster, writes on September 1, 1805, concerning a certain Manuel Mestas (declared to have been a Ute interpreter for fifty years) : In the short time that I have governed this province, he has recovered from the aforesaid heathen [that is, the Utes] eight horses which he himself searched for and brought back. In the month of July he went back to the country of the aforesaid people and not only succeeded in bringing back eleven mules and horses, but according to the report of other Yutas, called Jimpipas, shortly started out on a trip of about a month's duration for the purpose of retaking, not only the aforesaid eleven animals, but also twenty mules and eight horses, which among other things, had been stolen from men of this province last year in the country of the said Jimpipas, by Comanches, and were retaken by the Yutas Timpanoges during a war with the aforesaid Comanches.

These remarks need some elucidation: Yutas Timpanoges were those dwelling in Utah Valley; and Comanches in this instance would be the Shoshonis or Snakes, cousins of the Comanches proper. (In a New Mexican document of 1828 we find them referred to as "Comanches Sozoni," which is enlightening enough.) I would hazard the suggestion that the Jimpipas of this document were the Yampa Utes, dwelling in northwestern Colorado and at times ranging into the Uinta Basin. Contact with the northern Ute bands is clearly implied in this document of 1805, and trade with those bands may have become commonplace. At this juncture, because we have reached the year 1805, I would like to abandon our New Mexican vantage point briefly so that we may look at Utah from another direction: in fact, from eastern Idaho, where the Columbia-bound Lewis and Clark Expedition has just crossed the Continental Divide at Lemhi Pass.

Utah Before the Mormons

With my Utah orientation, shared by most of you who listen to me tonight, when I first read the original journals of Lewis and Clark, the passage in those journals most exalting to my imagination I found in William Clark's carefully written notes for August 20, 1805, set down just twelve days before Governor Alencaster made the remarks about Manuel Mestas that we have been discussing. Lewis and Clark were somewhat perplexed about the best route to pursue now that they had left Missouri waters, and sought advice from Snake Indians on whom they had fortunately chanced. They were told of the impossibility of descending the Salmon River, and of a possible route through Nez Perce country farther north. An old man also had a fund of information about the country to the south, and it is this which catches our eye: that old Indian's viewpoint as he faces in the direction of Utah. Let me quote Clark's entry in the original journals, with some interpolated comment of my own. This country to the southwest, Clark observed, the old Snake Indian depicted with horrors and obstructions scarcely inferior to that just mentioned, he informed me that the band of this nation to which he belonged resided at the distance of 20 days march from hence not far from the white people with whom they traded for horses mules cloth metal beads and the shells which they woar as orniment being those of a species of perl oister.

As will become apparent shortly, the old man's band lived on Bear River, and here we have an astonishing picture of quite extensive direct commerce with New Mexican traders, not simply through Ute intermediaries. Clark continues: that the course to his relations was a little to the West of South, that in order to> get to his relations the first seven days we should be obliged to climb over steep and rocky mountains [that is, since Clark was conferring on the Lemhi River, across the Lost River Mountains] where we could find no game to' kill nor anything but roots such as a ferce and warlike nation lived on whom he called the broken mockersons or mockersons with holes, and said [they] lived like the bear of other countries among the rocks and fed on roots or the flesh of such horses as they could take or steel from those who^ passed through their country, that in passing this country the feet of our horses would be so< much wounded with the stones many of them would give out. the next part of the rout was about 10 days through a dry and parched sandy desert [the vast Snake Plain] in which [there is] no food at this season for either man or horse, and in which we must suffer if not perish for the want of water, that the sun had now dryed up the little pools of water which exist through this desert plain in the spring season and had also scorched all the grass, that no animal inhabited this plain on which we could hope to subsist. [Now the old Snake is referring more specifically to the Arco Desert, north of the Snake River.] that about the center of this plain [was] a large river [the Snake] which

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was navigable but afforded neither Salmon nor timber, that beyond this plain th[r]ee or four days march his relations lived in a country tolerable fertile and partially covered with timber on another large river which ran in the same direction of the former. [Now plainly Clark's informant is talking about the Bear River, above its great bend at Soda Springs.] that this last discharged itself into a large river [Here an element of fantasy enters, for of course the Bear discharges itself into' Great Salt Lake.] on which many numerous nations lived with whom his relations were at war [now we are talking about the Utes] but whether this last discharged itself into the great lake [here synonymous with the Pacific Ocean] or not he did not know, that from his relations it was yet a great distance to the great or stinking lake as they call the Ocean, that the way which such of his nation as had been to the Stinking lake traveled was up the river on which they lived and over to that on which the white people lived [the Green River seems referred to] which last they knew discharged itself into the Ocean, and that this was the way which he would advise me to travel if I was determined to' proceed to the Ocean but would advise me to put off the journey untill the next spring when he would conduct me.

With very little distortion, this is a quite reasonable account of the country south to Utah's borders, and accords with our understanding that a normal route from the Bear River toward New Mexico would be up the Bear to some point between present Cokeville and Evanston, then southeast across the Bear River Divide and on via Browns Hole on the Green River, where twenty years later William H. Ashley found a large band of Snakes had wintered. Unfortunately, the light of the old man's understanding did not penetrate into the Utah area proper, glimmering out almost at Utah's borders; from a Utah point of view, we more especially glean from this account that the Valley of the Great Salt Lake did not loom so large in the Snake cosmos of 1805 as in ours of 1847 and 1967. Clark says that he thanked the old man for his information and advice and gave him a knife with which he appeared to be much gratifyed. from this narative I was convinced that the streams of which he had spoken as runing through the plains and that on which his relations lived were southern branches of the Columbia, heading with the rivers Apostles [San Juan] and Collorado, and that the rout he had pointed out was to the Vermillion Sea or gulph of California.

In the main Clark was correct, save that he accepted the idea of a great river flowing parallel to the Snake, which later he decided was connected up with the Willamette River of Oregon, and displayed on his m a p as the Multnomah, a ghost stream of early western cartography. Clark says: I therefore told him that this rout was more to the South than I wished to travel, and requested to know if there was no rout on the left of this river

Utah Before the Mormons

on which we now are [the Lemhi and Salmon], by means of which, I could intercept it below the mountains through which it passes; but he could not inform me of any except that of the barren plain which he said joined the mountain on that side and through which it was impossible for us to pass at this season even if we were fortunate enough to escape from the broken mockerson Indians . . . .

Now let us leave Lewis and Clark to find their way to the Pacific as best they can while we turn back to our New Mexican eyrie. Eight years pass, to 1813—just thirty-four years before the Mormons reach Utah, or back in the first year of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal by our special time-scale — and the New Mexican archives yield a clutch of documents with an astonishing fund of information about the Utah country, so distant, so nearly lost in time, since Escalante's day, a generation past. Again we are indebted to Joseph J. Hill for the facts. As he relates, he found in the New Mexican archives a document giving "an account of a trading expedition to the Timpanogos, and the Bearded Yutas west of the Sevier River in the year 1813. The company consisted of seven men under the command of Mauricio Arze and Lagos Garcia." They left Abiquiu, a still-existing village north of Santa Fe, on March 16, 1813, and returned July 12. In September the governor of New Mexico ordered the members of the party to appear before an alcalde and report what had taken place on the trip, for which he has our gratitude. (Here I would interject that these seven visitors of 1813, Manuel Mestas in 1805, and the ten men of the Dominguez-Escalante Expedition, eighteen altogether, are the only Spanish visitors to Utah that we are able to name during the entire duration of the Spanish empire in America, a period of some three centuries.) Nothing was said in the testimony about the route taken to reach the lake of the Timpanogos — that is to say, Utah Lake — which implies that by now it was well known. The company remained three days at Utah Lake, trading a little and waiting for other Indians to arrive. When all were on hand, a council was held, but it appears that these Ute Indians would trade nothing but Indian slaves — "as they had done on other occasions," the affidavits add. When the Spaniards refused, the offended Indians began to kill the horses of the traders, nine animals being slaughtered before the chief could quiet his people. The Spaniards prudently collected their remaining horses, and after standing guard over them all night, set out next day for the "Rio Sebero" •— the Sevier River, as we suppose, and the first appearance of this name in history. On the Sevier the traders met a Yuta of the Sanpuchi or Sanpete nation, who agreed to conduct them to a place where they could trade

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with a tribe of Yutas new to them. Two of the company were left in charge of the pack train while the other five, guided by the Sanpuchi, set out to the west. Three days' travel brought them to a tribe of Indians characterized as having heavy beards, clearly the bearded Indians encountered by Dominguez and Escalante. In 1776 these Indians had been described as very gentle and affable, but now they presented themselves with "their arms in their hands, saying their trade would be arrows." They were quieted, and arrangements were made to trade next day. But that night the Spaniards overheard the Indians plotting an attack upon them. Accordingly, the Spaniards made off, "traveling stealthily all night and day until they reached the place where their companions and pack train were." Thence they took the road to the Rio Grande — the Colorado, as we suppose; it is vexing that no details of the route are furnished, for the river might also have been the Green at present Green River — and there found what is described as "the rancheria of Guasache, who was waiting on the road to trade with them 'as was his custom.' " As before, the Spaniards were at first received cordially, only to have the Indians take offense when they refused to trade for Indian slaves. Having profited by experience, this time the commandant gave his men permission to purchase the slaves, "in order not to receive another injury like the first one." Twelve slaves were bought, and the Spaniards came home without further adventures except that a mule and a horse were drowned in crossing the "Rio Grande." The traders also acquired on this journey 109 pelts, described as "but a few," most likely deerskins. I have retold this episode at some length, for the obvious importance of the facts, and because the facts are far from well known, notwithstanding their republication in the Utah Historical Quarterly in 1930. The adventures of the Arze-Garcia party are interesting in themselves and revealing with regard to the corrupting effect of Spanish peonage — in plain words, Indian slavery — for hundreds of miles around Santa Fe. After this episode history's spotlight shifts north again. Indeed, there had been some arresting developments on the Idaho side for two years preceding this time. Lewis and Clark had come triumphantly home from the Pacific in the summer of 1806, and very soon thereafter traders began making determined efforts to exploit the fur riches of the Louisiana Purchase and the country to the west that would soon become known as Oregon. Some pressed up the Missouri and the Yellowstone; still others made for Santa Fe; and in New York John Jacob Astor conceived

Utah Before the Mormons

his Pacific Fur Company to exploit the Columbia Basin from a base to be established at Astoria. It is the latter enterprise that chiefly concerns us. One division of the Astorians went out to the Columbia by sea, around Cape Horn. Another, under Wilson Price Hunt, crossed the continent in the summer and fall of 1811. The latter reached Henrys Fork of the Snake in October, and before going on toward the Columbia, detached Joseph Miller with four hunters and four horses to go beaver-trapping. These five men have come down in history as the Detached Astorians, and their wanderings the subsequent winter make them more than worthy of note, difficult as it may be to follow their wanderings in the light of the scanty available information. It is definitely known that they got as far south and west as the Bear River, which accordingly became known to the Astorians as Miller's River. Escalante possibly alluded to the Bear in his journal, and William Clark most certainly alluded to it in his own journal, but both at a distance, and on the basis of Indian information. The Detached Astorians are the first white men we can unequivocally say reached the banks of this river. It seems doubtful, however, that the Detached Astorians descended the Bear far enough to enter present Utah. Nor can Utah quite claim that party of Returning Astorians led east next year by Robert Stuart. Coming from the Columbia, much of the way traveling what would eventually be established as the Oregon Trail, the Returning Astorians reached the Bear at its great bend in September 1812, and journeyed up the river as far as Thomas Fork before veering north in an unsuccessful effort to escape the ardent attentions of Crow horse thieves. Stuart and his companions afterward went on east via Teton Pass and South Pass, wintered on the North Platte, and made it safely through to St. Louis in April 1813. The eastward passage of the Returning Astorians late in 1812 and the troubled passage of the Arze-Garcia party through the Ute lands in the spring of 1813 effectively close the history of Utah in what we might call the proto-historical period. It is not a very extended record we have to work with; and unfortunately, the prospects are not very bright that scholarly ingenuity will significantly enlarge that record. Utah's history before the Mormon era, as a promising field of scholarship, must primarily be concerned with the twenty-eight years before the Mormons plowed their first furrow in Salt Lake Valley. We have already emphasized the shortness of that time span, equivalent to the time that has elapsed since the German invasion of Poland touched off the second World War, and most of that history dates from a time commencing five years later, equivalent to the period since the

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Battle of the Bulge marked the last German offensive, twenty-three years ago. The critical significance of the year 1819 we have begun to appreciate only in the past sixteen years, as the Hudson's Bay Company archives in London have yielded up some of their treasures, for it was this year, as we know beyond all question, that British trappers first reached Utah from the north.

Peter Skene Ogden, in the employ of the Hudson's Bay Company, was one of the mountain men who trapped the streams in Utah.

The circumstances require explanation. At the same time Astor's people were establishing themselves at Astoria, and at various points in the broad basin of the Columbia, the North West Company was thrusting westward across Canada with the same objective. When the outbreak of the War of 1812 seemingly doomed the Astorian enterprise, the field partners sold out to the Canadian concern, which thereby remained in sole possession of the field. Some of the Astorians entered the service of the North West Company, and one of these men was Donald Mackenzie, who eventually was given the job of revitalizing the interior trade.

Utah Before the Mormons

Mackenzie established an inland base among the Nez Perces near the confluence of the Snake and the Columbia â&#x20AC;&#x201D; this in the summer of 1818 -â&#x20AC;&#x201D; then, during the fall, pushed southeasterly into the great watershed of the Snake River. It was at this time that most of the southern tributaries of the Snake received their names, including the Malheur, the Owyhee, the Bruneau, Raft River, and the Portneuf. The precise circumstances are not known, but we infer that in the late winter or spring of 1819 one detachment of Mackenzie's party, led by Michel Bourdon, pressed on south to trap the stream the Astorians had called Miller's River. Our authority is the journal of Peter Skene Ogden, at the head of a later British trapping party. In April 1825 Ogden commented: we reached Bear River a fine large stream of Water about the ]/Q of a mile in width this River was discovered in 1819 by Michel Bourdon & the upper part has been trapped twice but the lower part never has been it takes its rise due east & was supposed to be the Rio Colorado & even now Said to be a Fork of the same as our route is to follow it we shall be enabled to ascertain this point.

Ogden's clerk, William Kittson, in a diary entry of the same date, added the valuable information that "the Deceased Michel Bourdon named Bear river from the great number of those animals on its borders." Subsequently, on May 9, 1825, having reached Cache Valley, Kittson spoke of encamping on a fork, "one that Michel Bourdon called Little Bear and it has three others falling into it before it enters the Bear River main Branch." Two days later Kittson told of putting up on the borders of "Bourdon or middle Fork" -â&#x20AC;&#x201D; known to us today as Blacksmith Fork, south of Logan (a name subsequently applied by American trappers). Nearly four years later, in March 1829, Peter Skene Ogden again was in Cache Valley with a fur brigade, and at that time he observed: the [Bear] River here makes a considerable bend to the Westward and this gave rise to Supposition by the first who descended this River the late M. Bourdon that it was a fork of the Wallamet had he advanced a days travel he would have been undeceived as it discharges in Salt Lake and as that Lake has no* discharge there it remains.

By so narrow a margin, Michel Bourdon failed of becoming the discoverer of Great Salt Lake. He was killed by Blackfeet in 1823, so did not survive to relate his experiences in a later day. Until 1951, when the Ogden journals of 1824-25 were published, we knew nothing of Bourdon's special distinction in Utah history. The North West Company merged with the Hudson's Bay Company in 1821, the combined firm taking the name of the British concern. By

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this time a Snake Country Expedition had become a settled tradition in the Columbia Department, and in 1823 the six-foot four-inch Finan McDonald led the Hudson's Bay Company brigade south as far as Bear River, then apparently went up the Bear and across the divide to the Green River. He established to British satisfaction that the Bear was not "the Spanish River," as had been supposed since Bourdon's foray of 1819. McDonald may have led his whole party, or sent a detachment, as far down the Bear as Cache Valley, which is what Ogden thought of in 1825 as the Bear's "upper part." But again this year Great Salt Lake eluded discovery. That discovery was made at last in the fall of 1824 by American trappers, who after so long a time had penetrated finally to the very heart of Utah. Jim Bridger is usually credited with the discovery, but my personal conviction is that Etienne Provost saw the lake some weeks — even, perhaps, some months ahead of Old Gabe, who wintered in Cache Valley with members of John H. Weber's company in 1824-25, and may not have descended the Bear to determine its course and settle a bet until late in the winter. William Marshall Anderson, who visited the Rockies in the summer of 1834, has something interesting to say on this subject, in The Rocky Mountain Journals of William Marshall Anderson, a book edited by myself and Eleanor T. Harris lately published by the Huntington Library. On August 28, 1834, after encamping on the North Platte below Ash Hollow, Anderson recorded in his trail diary: The great salt lake at the termination of Bear river, which has been claimed to be discovered by Genl Ashley & which in the U.S. bears his name, I am informed by good authority has never been seen by him. False ambition often doubtless prompts to false assertion! Tis believed the credit, if there is any in the accidental discovery of a place, is due to Weaver or Provost.

After he got back to Kentucky, Anderson expanded his trail diary into a journal, and fortunately the extension of remarks included this particular entry. In the expanded version he says: It has been asserted by, or for Genl Ashley, that he was the first white discoverer of the great salt lake; in either case, he is to blame, as it is not the fact •— The credit, if the accidental seeing of a spot is entitled to any credit, is due to Mr Provost of St. Louis — At all events it seems to be generally believed that Genl A. not only did not first find that remarkable inland sea, but, that he has not ever yet seen it — From the accounts of others, he gave a description of it — on which account it is sometimes called by his name — prompted by false glory he acquiesces in the reception of false honours —

Utah Before the Mormons

These remarks by Anderson are the more interesting in that Provost was trail boss for the very party he was accompanying down out of the mountains. We are not sure that Provost spoke English; but on the other hand, Anderson was facile in French. We would give much to have heard the discussion in camp that night. Indeed, any night's discussion in almost any camp during these years is part of our irrecoverable history. Etienne Provost we must view as the first American trapper to enter Utah, whatever the merits of the claim that he first laid eyes upon Great Salt Lake. Eleanor Harris and I have provided a considerable account of him in our Anderson book, so I shall be content tonight to say that he was born in Canada about 1782, and appears to have first entered the fur trade in 1814. He trapped in the southern Rockies with the ChouteauDe Mun parties between 1815 and 1817, knew the inside of a Santa Fe jail for a while as a trespasser on Spanish territory, and after the opening up of New Mexico to American trade, was among the first to go out to Santa Fe from St. Louis in 1822. He acquired a partner, Leclerc, and by the summer of 1824 the two had made their way into the Uintah Basin, setting up a base camp on the banks of the Green near the mouth of the White River. Early that fall Provost led a party west across the Wasatch Mountains â&#x20AC;&#x201D; as far, I believe, as the Valley of the Great Salt Lake. In October, probably on the Jordan River, a band of Snakes treacherously attacked his party, killed eight, and forced Provost with the only other survivor to flee back to the base camp on the Green. Undeterred, he recrossed the Wasatch in the spring of 1825, this time descending the Weber River, where, near present Mountain Green in late May, he encountered the men of John H. Weber's party. Utah's history during that spring of 1825 is incredibly complicated, and we would still be here when the sun rises tomorrow morning if I were to unravel the whole story for you. It must suffice us that five entirely distinct trapping parties converged upon the Weber River during May and June. There were the Ashley free trappers led by John H. Weber, who had crossed South Pass from the Big Horn River the previous summer. These trappers eventually reached the Bear and wintered in Cache Valley (Bridger was one of this group). There was Peter Skene Ogden's Snake Country Expedition, which had made its way south from Flathead Post in northwestern Montana. There was Jedediah Smith's seven-man party which had got as far as Flathead Post in the fall of 1824, by way of the Green and the Snake, and which had accompanied Ogden most of the way south to Bear River (after which, seeing signs of Weber's presence in the country, they followed down the

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Bear to the Valley of the Great Salt Lake to come up with their compatriots near the site of Ogden). There was Provost's party, making its second penetration of the Great Salt Lake Basin. And finally, a little behind the others, William H. Ashley himself, who had brought a substantial party to the mountains during the winter and divided it into four detachments to trap in different directions (one of which was expected to seek out Weber and Smith). He himself took a party down the Green River in a voyage of exploration through the canyons the river has

A sketch of the party of Etienne Provost, perhaps the first American trapper to enter Utah.

knifed around the Uinta Mountains. Ashley had reached the mouth of the Duchesne by May 23, when the other parties collided in the valley of the Weber. He subsequently met Provost, returning to the Green, and by him was guided over to the Provo River, across Kamas Prairie to the Weber, and eventually back into Wyoming by way of Chalk Creek, in the wake of Weber and Smith, who had set out to rendezvous with him near the mouth of Henrys Fork of the Green. Thus briefly we account for the different parties, but we must note also that near Mountain Green Ogden's British brigade ran afoul of Weber's Americans, who rode up the canyon to intercept him. The

Utah Before the Mormons

Americans prevailed on some two dozen of the British trappers to desert, an extraordinary episode of clashing nationalisms and revolt against economic exploitation. In the sequel Ogden was forced into headlong flight, back to the Snake River, and he did not again venture into Utah until the winter of 1828—29. During that time the American trappers were left in almost undisturbed possession of the Utah country — actually, Mexican land, had anyone desired or been able to determine where the boundary ran (identical with the present boundary between Utah and Idaho). During this time, from 1825 to 1828, the first great rendezvous of the fur trade were held in Utah — in 1825 at Henrys Fork, in 1826 in Cache Valley, and in the summers of 1827 and 1828 at the south end of Bear Lake. After that, the beaver having been trapped nearly to extinction in Utah, the fur trade's center of gravity moved north toward the Blackfoot country; most of the later rendezvous, down to 1840, were held in Idaho and Wyoming. In the sense that a reasonably connected and reasonably detailed pattern of events can be worked out, Utah's history before the Mormons effectively dates from the fall of 1824 and covers a period of just twentythree years. Many of the events are dramatic, like Jedediah Smith's first and second journeys to southern California in 1826 and 1827, down through the heart of Utah to the Virgin River, and thence to the Colorado. Some are pathetic, like the death of a man killed while constructing a cache, which gave Cache Valley its enduring name. Nearly all are tantalizing, like the exact sequence of events by which the Spanish Trail came into being, first connecting central Utah with New Mexico's frontier settlements, later evolving as a feasible caravan route from Utah across the Vegas and Mojave deserts to Cajon Pass. Very slowly and very reluctantly has the record for this bare quartercentury yielded to the industry of scholars — and, I may say, to their prayers, for there is a necessary element of good luck in the emergence of every fresh detail that extends that history. A great deal remains to be learned, but we have learned so much, every year bringing something new, that I have every confidence the pre-Mormon history of Utah will have been incredibly extended before most of us here tonight lose interest in earthly things. Broad areas of this history I have not even begun to mention — overland emigration between 1841 and 1846, for example, which has interested this Society very much. In 1951 the Society published J. Roderic Korns's West From Fort Bridger, which was centrally concerned with the

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trail-making of 1846 (and characteristically printed a newly available diary by James Frazier Reed of the Donner party, among many other documents of prime importance). More information has appeared since, some of it incorporated into my Overland in 1846, which was published four years ago. I might add that I have myself given a great deal of attention to the pioneering Bartleson party of 1841, which passed around

Along with Andrew Henry, William H. Ashley established the Rocky Mountain Fur Company in 1822 and personally headed a trapping brigade which penetrated Utah.

the north side of Great Salt Lake en route to California, and in the quite early future I expect to publish all the source narratives relating to this episode, including several new diaries. We are by no means done with John Charles Fremont yet; indeed, it may be said that the Utah phase of his explorations of 1843-45 has not even had a thorough first examination. On Fremont, too, fresh information keeps emerging. This happily burgeoning record of Utah's pre-Mormon era becomes richer each year. I think it very interesting that the story of the redheaded mountain man, Miles Goodyear, whose Fort Buenaventura,

Utah Before the Mormons

founded in the late summer of 1846, marks the true beginnings of Ogden, has had to be rewritten half a dozen times during the past fifty years. It has been constantly expanded to assimilate fresh information. At this very moment Charles Kelly is again addressing himself to Goodyear, in association with Robert Greenwood. Among the latest developments in the Goodyear saga, we have a letter he wrote from the Mojave River in May 1848, extraordinary for the details it adds to the history of agriculture in Utah. At his fort in 1847, Goodyear says in this letter, his men succeeded in raising a mess of beans some radishes, hills of corn, cabbages and greens. A greater variety I could tell but to raise this much I assure you I had to work well, apropos, A few peach and plum trees in the garden grew which I am in hopes will do well if not hurt by frost or mountain dew.

If this sounds like verse, that is exactly what it is; Goodyear naturally expressed himself in rhyme that is more quickly apparent to the ear than to the eye. Everywhere we turn, we find an ever richer history emerging out of the blue haze of the distances beyond the Mormon fault-line, a territory we can map in increasing detail, and ever more confidently. So pronounced are the advances that we may be led to exclaim in wonder: Is there more to be found out? After so much time, dare we hope for more? Consider that to Escalante's journal of 1776 we have now added Ashley's diary of 1825, Ogden's of the same year, and all that has survived of Smith's record for the years between 1822 and 1828. For a long while we had no reason to expect that an Ashley or a Smith record of the kind existed, even. We now have both. Perhaps that thins out the lode, less remaining in the vein to be recovered. But I have seen so much of enduring importance emerge into the sunlight just in the last thirty years, that I am disposed to argue the probability of further advances â&#x20AC;&#x201D; letters and diaries by more Ashley men, maybe; diaries kept on the Spanish Trail, for instance. I would hesitate to say what form the new discoveries may take; ten years ago, I would never have dreamed that this coming year I would be publishing a detailed account by a British botanist, Joseph Burke, who from a Fort Hall base traveled widely through northern Utah in the spring and fall of 1845. There seems no limit to the possibility of fresh discoveries. And for us, that is the abundant life! New sources, dedicated scholars to labor with them, an audience like the Utah State Historical Society membership to appreciate them! The prospect is enough to bring a sparkle to any man's eye.

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Charles Mackay and His ff True and Impartial History" of the Mormons BY LEONARD J .

ARRINGTON

N T H E SPRING of 1851 Charles Mackay, a leading British poet, songwriter-historian, and journalist, compiled The Mormons: Or Latter-Day Saints. With Memoirs of the Life and Death of Joseph Smith, the cc American Mahomet." * Beautifully illustrated with forty engravings, many of which have been endlessly reproduced in subsequent works, this first professedly "true and impartial history" of the Mormons 2 was the fifth volume in the National Illustrated Library of Britain â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a half-crown series that included BoswelVs Life of Dr. Johnson and The Book of English Songs. Published anonymously, The Mormons went through at least five D r . Arrington is professor of economics at U t a h State University. Most of the research for this p a p e r was done while he was visiting professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles. H e is grateful for a g r a n t from the U t a h State University Research Council a n d for the help of Guy Potter in obtaining copies of materials in the British M u s e u m , L o n d o n . T h e illustrations in this article were taken from a n original edition of The Mormons .... T h e captions are as they a p p e a r in the book. a A second title page gives the work the title The Contemporary History.

Mormons,

2 T h e phrase is from Charles Mackay, Forty Years' Recollections Public Affairs, from 1830 to 1870 (2 vols., L o n d o n , 1 8 7 7 ) , I I , 156.

or Latter-Day

Saints:

of Life, Literature,

A and

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editions in London (1st, 1851; 2nd and 3rd, 1852; 4th, 1856; 5th, 1857) and two in the United States (Auburn, New York, 1852, 1853). Slightly revised and abridged, it appeared in other editions under the names of other authors in France, Germany, and the United States. As the most widely reviewed book on the Mormons in nineteenth-century Britain, the book catapulted the Mormons into a topic of international conversation, introduced the religion to tens of thousands of readers, and provided some of the stimulus and subject matter for the writing and publication of a package of books with Mormon themes, including histories, tales of adventure, novels, and works of poetry and humor. How did The Mormons happen to be written, and how did Dr. Mackay happen to write it? The first explanation goes back to September 1830, six months after the organization of what later became The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, when Orson Pratt was converted to Mormonism. Upon meeting Joseph Smith a short time after his baptism at the age of nineteen, Pratt was called, by special revelation (now published as Sec. 34 of the Mormon Doctrine and Covenants) to preach the Gospel of Restored Christianity. Five years later, at the age of twenty-four, he was ordained an apostle and served as a missionary in New England, the Middle Atlantic States, Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, and Canada, before going to the British Isles in 1840. There he published the sixteen-page pamphlet Remarkable Visions, which presented for the first time, in effective literary form, the story of Joseph Smith. This persuasive delineation of what would be referred to in the religious literature of today as "the Mormon myth" 8 was to be quoted and requoted hundreds of times in books and journals in contemporary Europe and America. And it was from this pamphlet that Joseph Smith drew much of the wording for the statement that has served ever since as the "Articles of Faith" of the L.D.S. Church. After a year of service in England and Scotland, Elder Pratt returned to participate in the building of Nauvoo, Illinois, and was one of the thousands of Mormon citizens who were driven from that city in 1846. The versatile apostle then became a frontiersman and crossed the Great Plains with the advance company of pioneers in 1847. He, with Erastus Snow, was the first of that body to enter the Great Salt Lake Valley. Returning the same year to church headquarters in Winter Quarters, Nebraska, Pratt was appointed president of all the branches of the church in the British Isles. Within two years of his return there (i.e., by 1851), 8 As used professionally " m y t h " is a collective belief, not scientifically provable, which supports the activities a n d functions of a particular group or society.

Charles Mackay

this foremost nineteenth-century Mormon intellectual had built Mormon membership in Britain from 18,000 to 31,000 and had chartered and fitted out some twenty ships loaded with Saints whose destination was Utah. 4 In addition to his energetic preaching in all leading population centers and his efficient administration of the branches, missionaries, and emigration offices, Pratt also edited The Latter-day Saints' Millennial Star (Liverpool), increasing its circulation from 4,000 to 23,000. He also wrote more than a score of philosophic and literary pamphlets on Mormon faith and doctrine -â&#x20AC;&#x201D; pamphlets which were circulated by the tens of thousands in contemporary Britain. The tract societies of the British Mormon Mission which Elder Pratt organized, wrote Edward Tullidge, were "not equalled in all Christendom for their thorough working and missionary results." 5 Written with "subtlety and skill," 6 Pratt's tracts gave Mormonism a status among British and European intellectuals which it has never since enjoyed. Suddenly, it would seem, every British journal found it necessary to notice the new American church and to publish accounts of its founding and to review its literature. The wholesale conversions, the large emigration, and the startling tracts and sermons created a need for an independent history which would outline the facts and assess the significance and truth of the Mormon story. In the years preceding the entry of Mormon missionaries into England, the conditions which produced the Industrial Revolution led to an unprecedented build-up of population in London, Lancashire, Liverpool, and Birmingham. From 1800 to 1830 the population of London had risen from 865,000 to 1,500,000. By 1850 another million had been added. There was unhealthful overcrowding, loss of privacy and dignity, and wholesale starvation of soul, mind, and body. In London alone "there were said to arise every morning one hundred thousand persons, young and old, male and female, adults and infants, who knew 4 Andrew Tenson, Latter-day Saint Biographical Encyclopedia (4 vols., Salt Lake City, 1901-1936), I, 89. s Edward W. Tullidge, The History of Salt Lake City and Its Founders (Salt Lake City, 1886), Biographical Appendix, 32â&#x20AC;&#x201D;33. The apostate-journalist, Thomas Stenhouse, who was converted during this period, wrote: "The greatest dispensation of spiritual power experienced in the Mormon Church fell upon the British Saints during the Presidency of the apostle Orson Pratt, from 1848 to 1851 . . . . his better education and eminent ability as a writer and reasoner have [equipped him for this task] . . . his pen furnished the first logical arguments in favour of Mormonism, and his influence spread like a consuming fire among the Saints throughout the Old World. He spread abroad the new faith, and, armed as they were with his arguments, they scoured the country and invited discussion wherever they went . . . . Mormonism in England, Scotland, and Wales, was a grand triumph, and was fast ripening for a vigorous campaign in continental Europe." The Rocky Mountain Saints: A Full and Complete History of the Mormons. . . . (New York, 1872), 9-10. 6 The phrase was used in "History and Ideas of the Mormons," Westminster Review, LIX (January, 1853), 118.

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not how to procure the sustenance of the day." 7 Nevertheless, Victorian England was not insensitive to the social blight; there were countless suggestions for reform. In 1848, the same year that Pratt was appointed to head the British Mormon Mission and also the same year that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels issued The Communist Manifesto, W. Hepworth Dixon, a rising journalist and later editor of The Athenaeum, urged that British literary figures give more attention to the condition of the workingman. 8 A year later Henry Mayhew, a poet, playwright, cofounder of Punch, and biographer-novelist-journalist, proposed to the proprietors of The Morning Chronicle the sponsorship of a comprehensive and definitive series of articles on "Labour and the Poor" in London and the British Isles generally. The inquiry would be costly â&#x20AC;&#x201D; would be more vast than any ever attempted by a newspaper â&#x20AC;&#x201D; but The Chronicle was eager to preserve its preeminent position in the face of mounting competition from The Times and Daily News and resolved to undertake it. Under Mayhew's direction London's leading journalists were mobilized, and during the months and years which followed hundreds of articles appeared which described in exhaustive and informative detail the vast underworld of "the miserable, the degraded, and the virtuous poor" of Britain. 9 By means of statistical surveys, sociological investigations, and dispassionate literary portraits, Mayhew plumbed to its depths "the dark ocean of poverty or semi-poverty" and examined the means, "ignoble and commendable, furtive and above-board," by which rag sellers, tinmen, prostitutes, costermongers, chimney blacks, and thieves scraped a precarious livelihood.10 It was, wrote Charles Mackay, "as if a mighty microscope were applied to the festers, social sores, and diseases of humanity; . . . as if some unparalleled photographic apparatus was brought to portray fresh from life the very minds, rather than the bodies, of the people." x l Hundreds of articles and several books were the product of this enterprise, but perhaps its most influential result was the support it gave to Charles Dickens, a former Chronicle reporter, in the realistic re-creation of the lives of these cheerful but unfortunate people in such unforgettable social novels as Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby, which 7

Mackay, Forty Years, I I , 151-52. Article on "William H e p w o r t h D i x o n " in Dictionary of National Biography (London, 1908),1033-35. 8 Mackay, Forty Years, I I , 152. 10 " I n t r o d u c t i o n , " to H e n r y Mayhew, Mayhew's London: Being Selections from "London Labour and the London Poor," ed., Peter Quennell (London, 1 9 4 9 ) , 18. Mayhew's book was first published in 1851. 11 Mackay, Forty Years, I I , 152. 8

Charles

Mackay

_ ~^^^^^0^m^ÂĽ^

General Joseph Smith reviewing the Nauvoo

Legion.

were written before the study, and Bleak House, Little Dorrit, and Our Mutual Friend, which were written afterward. Strangely enough, participation in these studies and investigations was the immediate factor which caused Charles Mackay to write The Mormons. The only son of George Mackay, a captain in the Royal Artillery, Charles was born in Perth, Scotland, in 1814. He was descended from the famous Mackay clan, who had been expelled by the Duke of Sutherland from their ancestral home in northern Scotland, and who had since been forced by circumstances to "emigrate to the ends of the earth." 1 2 With the death of his mother when he was still an infant. 12 Ibid., I, 4 0 1 . T h e same circumstances may have been influential in the 1859 migration to far-away U t a h of David M c K a y , father of David O. M c K a y , president of T h e C h u r c h of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since 1951.

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Charles demonstrated literary capacities at an early age. When a promised cadetship in India failed to materialize, he served for two years as secretary to an aged British iron manufacturer in France and Belgium, and at the age of eighteen went to England to seek a literary career. Impressed with his poetry, the publisher of The Morning Chronicle offered him an assistant editorship in 1835. After nine years of arduous activity (i.e., in 1844), Mackay resigned from The Chronicle to serve as editor of the Argus in Glasgow. He remained in Scotland for three years, during which he was awarded the Honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Glasgow. He returned to London in 1847 and became associated with the newly founded Illustrated London News, and later became its editor. In addition to his editorial and reportorial duties in Scotland and England, Mackay wrote thirteen books before undertaking The Mormons. Eight of these were books of poetry and five were works in prose. The latter included histories of London and of the Thames, and a widely reprinted work (still available, both in hardcover and paperback) Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions (3 vols., London, 1841). From his associations and participation in public affairs, it is clear that Dr. Mackay was a major journalist and literary figure in the British Isles — a person of influence and stature — although, to be sure, not in the same class with, let us say, Wordsworth and Tennyson. 13 In his literary autobiography Dr. Mackay, who had not visited the United States by this time, explained the circumstances which led him to write The Mormons. Henry Mayhew, he wrote, reserved to himself the study of the poor in London, and Mackay was asked "to enquire into the condition of the people in the two important towns of Liverpool and Birmingham." In Liverpool, from whence flowed the main stream of British emigration to America, Mackay wrote, there was one rill that helped to swell the emigrational river, that trickled at its own wanton will, unknown and unnoticed, or if occasionally noticed, despised as of no account, that by mere accident attracted my attention as the representative of the Morning Chronicle. On calling at the office of a great firm, by the agency of whose ... fast-sailing packets... many thousands of people were conveyed across the Atlantic, I was informed that on the following day a party of Mormons were to take their departure for New Orleans. On expressing my wish to go on board and see the party off . . . it was arranged that one of the clerks of the firm should accompany me on board the following day, and introduce me to the captain. This was 13 Biographies of Charles Mackay may be found in the Dictionary of National Biography; Encyclopedia Britannic a (11th ed.) ; Stanley J. Kunitz, ed., British Authors of the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1 9 3 6 ) , 402—3; in various literary histories of E n g l a n d a n d Scotland; a n d in Mackay's two books of reminiscences: Forty Years, a n d Through the Long Day, or, Memorials of a Literary Life during Half a Century (2 vols., L o n d o n , 1 8 8 7 ) .

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done, and the captain in his turn introduced me to some of the principal Mormons, who were elders of the congregation, and had charge of the passengers. I learned from one of them that so far back as 1840 the disciples of Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, . . . had established some sort of emigrational agency in Liverpool, having correspondents in all the great centres of industry in England and Scotland. During the year 1849 about 2,500 emigrants from Wales, the North of England, and Glasgow, had sailed from Liverpool for New Orleans, to join the Latter Day Saints . . . in the territory of Utah, where these semi-Mahometan, semi-Judaic Christians had established themselves on their expulsion from Nauvoo, and that since 1840 the total emigration in connection with the sect had amounted to about 14,000 souls. The English Mormon agents, not alarmed at publicity, but, on the contrary, courting it, with a hope of increasing the volume of emigration to the territory . . . placed at my disposal a whole barrow-load of tracts, magazines, and periodicals, published by the Mormons both in England and America. By the aid of these I was enabled, in a series of three letters in the Morning Chronicle to place before the public, for the first time, a true and impartial history of the origin and progress of the new superstition, or imposture, which had its birth in the brain of the ignorant, but nevertheless clever and ambitious Joseph Smith. 14 The letters excited very great attention. The information conveyed was not only new to the British public, but surprising; and, being afterwards supplemented by a large accession of fresh and authentic materials, was republished in April, 1852 [June, 1851]. This volume first made the religious world acquainted with the so-called religion which had taken root in the New World, and was drawing from Great Britain many stalwart men . . . ,15

The three letters, totaling approximately 25,000 words, represented the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth letters in The Chronicle which dealt with "Labour and the Poor" in Liverpool. The first letter (July 29, 1850) set forth the founding of the Mormon church and its novel beliefs. The second (August 5, 1850) outlined the growth of the sect in the face of "vindictive" animosity and persecution. The third (August 12, 1850) described the last months of the Prophet Joseph Smith, the migration to the Salt Lake Valley, and the founding of the State of Deseret. The only "new" information conveyed by the articles was the inclusion of a statement prepared by the manager of a shipping line, which described the organization of Mormon emigration from Britain. One of the reasons for the amazement which greeted the publication of these letters was Mackay's uncritical repetition of inflated figures on "Mackay's interpretation of Joseph Smith, as given on pages 164-65 of the 1851 edition, is remarkably similar to that of Fawn M. Brodie in her prize-winning biography, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith the Mormon Prophet (New York, 1946). 15 Mackay, Forty Years, II, 154-56. His 1851 "Preface" stated: "As far as he [the author] is aware, it is the first time that anything which can be called a history of this new religion and its founder has been offered to the public, either in this country, or in the cradle of the Mormons â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the United States of America."

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church membership and wealth. Mormonism, he asserted, had now become a major movement, with nearly 300,000 members; its emigration from Britain, which averaged 2,500 per year, was supported by a nest egg of three-and-a-half tons of California gold! The expanded 326-page octavo volume which followed in 1851 has the patchwork quality of a compilation turned out by an editor insistent that both Mormons and anti-Mormons tell their stories in their own words. Since about nine-tenths of the book consists of quotations, strung together rather loosely with a tissue of commentary, it might have been

Charles Mackay

more appropriately titled, The Mormons and Their History: A Book of Readings. All the quotations are acknowledged. Its principal difference from previous chronicles is that it incorporates in the same volume both the Mormon documents and the non-Mormon affidavits. Not a history in the sense of a synthesis narrative or interpretation, it served to illustrate the almost irreconcilable character of the evidence.16 Mackay's objective, as he says in his "Preface," is to present "the history of Joseph Smith, a great impostor, or a great visionary, — perhaps both — but in either case one of the most remarkable persons who has appeared on the stage of the world in modern times." As with the three articles in The Chronicle which it incorporates, the single unique contribution of The Mormons is the four-page statement describing Mormon emigration procedures (pp. 250-54). The other contribution — and this we should neither ignore nor minimize — is Mackay's recognition that there were two sides to the Mormon story and that both deserved to be read in juxtaposition. For the earlier period of Mormonism, Dr. Mackay weaves in quotations from the works of Joseph Smith, Orson Pratt, and official periodicals, on the Mormon side, with quotations found in the E. D. Howe Mormonism Unvailed (Painesville, Ohio, 1834) and John C. Bennett's History of the Saints (Boston, 1842). Nearly all of Thomas L. Kane's lecture on The Mormons (Philadelphia, 1850) and some of the general epistles of the First Presidency of the church are reproduced for the later period of Mormon history, but there are sufficient comments and questions of a hostile nature to balance the favorable image which these project. Dr. Mackay was doubtful of the rumors of Mormon polygamy, which was not publicly confirmed by the time he wrote, and was impressed by the industry, frugality, and morality of the Saints.17 Although he equates Mormonism with fanaticism, and regards Joseph Smith as a conscious impostor in the early years, Mackay is cautiously complimentary of Mormon leadership and accomplishments in Nauvoo, 3S Mackay recognized the enormous gulf between L.D.S. "official" history a n d a n t i - M o r m o n history by stating both and refraining from further analysis. Bancroft found the two points of view at odds and resolved t h e m by placing the M o r m o n account in the text a n d the anti-views in the footnotes. This dichotomous a p p r o a c h has characterized m a n y treatments. 17 I n the "Preface" to the fourth edition (London, 1 8 5 6 ) , M a c k a y states: "Polygamy, which the Mormons a t t e m p t e d to deny, or explained by the euphemism of the 'Spiritual Wife Doctrine,' has now been unblushingly avowed; and this practice, which has become the most distinctive, as it is the most odious characteristic of the sect, has received more notice in this edition t h a n was bestowed u p o n it in the original publication." This edition replaces the last c h a p t e r of the original edition, which was largely on doctrine, with a new c h a p t e r on geography, reports of travelers, social life, etc. T h e r e are extensive excerpts from J o h n Williams Gunnison, The Mormons, or Latter-day Saints, in the Valley of the Great Salt Lake . . . (Philadelphia, 1 8 5 2 ) , Mrs. Benjamin G. Ferris, The Mormons at Home . . . (New York, 1 8 5 6 ) , a n d from New York newspapers.

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during the Great Trek, and during the early years in the Salt Lake Valley. In appraising the significance of the Mormons, Mackay concluded: Whatever the world may say of the Mormons, the Mormons may say of themselves, that they have succeeded in establishing the third political system that has grown out of Christianity. The Pope, the Queen of England, and Brigham Young, are alike heads of States and of Churches: and, what is perhaps as remarkable a fact, the only State Church in America is that which has been founded by Joseph Smith . . . . Their past history has been a singular one. Their future history promises to be even more remarkable. 18

The official Mormon reaction to the book was one of cautious delight at the gratuitous publicity. The book had obtained "great popularity with the upper circles," reported Franklin D. Richards, head of the British Mormon Mission, and the appearance of reviews of the book in "most of the leading Journals throughout the empire . . . caused the hearing of us to break forth on the right and left everywhere." But, on the other hand, This wide spreading notoriety caused the preachers to lecture against us and stir up lewd, foulmouthed men to go lecturing through the country with the most filthy absurdities and abominable lies, taking care to clothe them with a semblance of truth which overthrew many who had not faith . . . .19

As President Richards indicated, The Mormons received excellent reviews in the leading journals of Britain. The Athenaeum, foremost literary weekly, devoted two columns to the book, calling it "the first attempt to tell in a connected way the story of the Mormons . . . curious and profitable reading." 20 In a four-page review in his weekly, Household Words, Charles Dickens found it "a well drawn-up volume" which describes the most "strangely important" event in a century of sectarian history. To Dickens the book revealed the paradoxical character of Mormonism. On the one hand the religion engendered "immense practical industry"; on the other hand the faith was a "pitiable superstitious 18 Charles Mackay, The Mormons: Or Latter-Day Saints. With Memoirs of the Life and Death of Joseph Smith, the "American Mahomet" (London, 1851), 326. "Letter from Franklin D. Richards in Liverpool to Brigham Young, February 24, 1852, and copied into the "Journal History" (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Historian's Library, Salt Lake City), for that date. The letter also appears in Brigham Young, "Manuscript History" (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Historian's Library), April 1, 1852, noting Brigham Young's receipt of 4he letter. The first notice of the book in the Mormon press is in an editorial by Apostle John Taylor in The Mormon (New York), September 20, 1856, p. 2: "We never expect from any writer on Mormonism justice and impartiality, . . . but we have ever regarded his [Mackay's] work as tolerably fair, and as good as a man with prejudices against us. writing for the public pence, was likely to produce." 20 The Athenaeum, Number 1242, August 16, 1851, p. 874.

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delusion." "What the Mormons do," he wrote, "seems to be excellent; what they say, is mostly nonsense." 21 In a twenty-page review article of the Mackay book and other Mormon literature, the prestigious Westminster Review called The Mormons "a pleasing work," and concluded: "For our own part, we are glad to see any signs of a fresh religious life in America, or in Christendom, and welcome this sect to the company of the Methodists and Anabaptists, the Protestants and the Catholics, and wish them all God speed." 22 Some ten years later, Sir Richard Burton summed up the meaning of the book quite accurately: This little compilation, dealing with facts rather than theories, borrows from the polemics of both parties, and displays the calmness of judgment which results from studying the subject at a distance; though Gentile, it is somewhat in favor with Mormons because it shows some desire to speak the truth. 2 3

Across the Channel two of France's foremost interpreters of England and America used copious extracts from the book in writing extended histories and commentaries on the Mormons. One of these was Prosper Merimee, author of some of France's finest nouvelles including the story on which the opera Carmen was based, who wrote a fifty-six-page review in Le Moniteur Universel (March-April, 1853), which was later published as the lead article in hisMelanges Historiques et Litter aires (Paris, 1855). Merimee, who was mildly skeptical of all religions, found many things to admire in the Mormon story and felt the religious enthusiasm would gradually be tempered by the "practical sense" which was characteristic of Americans. He speculated that the Mormons might develop into a new society unique in history. The other review was by Alfred Maury, author of Croyances et Legendes de VAntiquite and other works, who concluded in an article in the September 1853 issue of Revue des deux mondes that the Mormons were faced with the choice of remaining a sect of a few thousand members with peculiar ways and beliefs, or developing into a nation-state of major proportions, wedged in between Mexico and the United States, with potentialities of major significance. 21 "In the Name of the Prophet â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Smith!" Household Words, I I I (July 19, 1851), 38589. Dickens published three other "Mormon pieces" in his weekly, All the Year Round. _ They were: "Brother Bertrand, Mormon Missionary," IX (March 14, 1863), 68-72, a review of Louis A. Bertrand, Memoires d'un Mormon (Paris, 1862); "The Uncommercial Traveller," IX (July 4, 1863), 444-59, a description of Mormon emigrants about to sail on The Amazon; and "Among the Mormons," X (November 7, 1863), 247-52, a_ wholly-imaginary and basically derogatory description of Mormons in St. Louis, Missouri, poised for departure to the Rocky Mountain Zion. Dickens had not been in St. Louis since 1842, and did not know his "frontier" Mormons very well. 22 The Westminster Review, LIX (January, 1853), 120. 23 Richard F. Burton, The City of the Saints, and Across the Rocky Mountains to California (New York, 1862), 204, fn. 6.

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The French reception was so warm that Amedee Pichot, popular translator of the works of Scott, Shakespeare, and other English writers, translated and somewhat abbreviated The Mormons, added some comments of his own based on reading Stansbury and Gunnison, and issued a volume in the National Railroad Library series.24 The same tactic was followed in Germany where Theodor Olshausen, German statesman and publicist, published Geschichte der Mormonen oder Jungsten-TagesHeilingen in Nordamerika (Gottingen, 1856), which relies heavily on the Mackay volume. Neither of these writers acknowledges his heavy debt to Charles Mackay. In the United States where Mormonism did not have the exotic interest which appealed to Europeans, the reviews are not quite so friendly. In response to the articles in The Chronicle in which Dr. Mackay had said, "The growth of Mohammedanism, rapid as it was, is not to be compared with the rise and growth of Mormonism," the editor of The Eclectic Magazine, W. H. Bidwell, replied: "Mr. Mackay is somewhat mistaken." 25 Whereas British and Continental writers had ascribed the rise of Mormonism to the ignorance and materialism of the American frontier,26 W. J. A. Bradford, in The Christian Examiner, attributed Mormonism's growth to the credulity, ignorance, and earnestness of the Englishmen who made up a large proportion of its converts. "It is certain that Mormonism has always attracted more attention abroad than it has received in our immediate community," he wrote. "In our neighborhood it has been regarded either as too shallow a cheat, or too monstrous a delusion, to deserve a deliberate treatment." 27 The most favorable article was in Harper's, which reprinted no less than eighteen of the forty illustrations in The Mormons and emphasized the "indomitable perseverance and surprising energy" of the Mormons, and the "system, order, and political wisdom" that marked their movement. In Utah "a nation has been born." The Mormons constituted "the vital elements of a powerful mountain nation, in the heart of our continent, and in the direct pathway from the Atlantic to the Pacific States." 28 As in France and Germany, there was also an "American translation" by that peripatetic writer of scissors-and-paste histories, Samuel Mosheim 24

Amedee Pichot, Les Mormons (Paris, 1854). "The Mormons in England," The Eclectic Magazine, XXI (October, 1850), 218. 26 A British reviewer wrote: "America probably is the only country of Christendom where Mormonism could fairly get on its legs, and essay a walk." Westminster Review, LIX, 118. 27 W. J. A. Bradford, "The Origin and Fate of Mormonism," The Christian Examiner, LIII (September, 1852), 201-2. 28 "The Mormons," Harper's New Monthly Magazine, VI (April, 1853), 605-22.

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Schmucker. Using Mackay as a basis, and adding comments of his own based on Stansbury, Gunnison, and other writers, Schmucker published a fat work under the title The Religious, Social, and Political History of the Mormons, or Latter-day Saints . . ., edited with important additions by Samuel M. Smucker [sic] (New York, 1856, 1858, 1860, 1881 ). 2 9 One reason for the popularity of The Mormons was its anonymity; one might reproduce it in extenso without attribution. 30 A more important factor was the art work. The high quality of the illustrations is demonstrated by the frequency with which they have been subsequently reproduced. The article in Harper's which reproduced eighteen of the illustrations seems to hold the record, although B. G. Ferris' Utah and the 29 John Taylor blasted Schmucker for his "cool, unblushing impudence" in attaching his name to a book, nine-tenths of which had appeared five years before in England. Taylor suggested that a new word be coined: "Smucking" â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the act of appropriating "the labors of another and better man to slide in . . . chapters that contain the most confused, contradictory black-guardism that could be thrown together at haphazard." "Anti-Mormon Book Speculation," The Mormon, September 20, 1856, p. 2. Mormon officials brought this plagiarism to the attention of one of the writers of Bancroft's History of Utah, who commented: "What it is that Mr. Smucker edits, and to what he makes additions, does not appear, but the student with this book and that of Mackay's before him soon discovers that the former is taken almost verbatim from the latter, and without a word of credit. Smucker evidently worked at so much a day for the publishers, who desired something by that name to sell. Considering the circumstances, the work is fairly done; the saints are abused with moderation and decorum, and the publishers probably made money out of it." Hubert H. Bancroft, History of Utah, 1540-1886 (San Francisco, 1889), 466 fn. 54. 30 The International Copyright Convention was not adopted until 1891.

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Mormons . . . (New York, 1854) used twelve of them, and "Maria Ward" (possibly Ferris' wife) used three in Female Life Among the Mormons . .. (New York, 1856). To mention only one recent use, the "Mormon History" issue of Dialogue used six illustrations from The Mormons?1 At least six of the sketches from which engravings were made were drawn by Frederick Piercy, who later became famous for his illustrations in Route From Liverpool to Great Salt Lake Valley,... (Liverpool, 1855) .32 The youthful Piercy (only twenty-one in 1851) made the drawings of Orson Pratt and of the ceremonies of baptism and of confirmation from life, and was unquestionably the eminent Mormon artist to whom Dr. Mackay referred in his "Preface." 33 The fact that The Mormons was published annoymously has created difficult problems for librarians and bibliographers. Dr. Mackay's reasons for omitting his name as author seem obvious enough. He was not really an author but a compiler. To a man of his artistic reputation and sensitivity it would have seemed presumptuous to have issued the book under his own name. As librarians and bibliographers hunted for a name under which to list the book, they chanced upon the mention in the "Preface" that The Mormons was an outgrowth of Henry Mayhew's study of "Labour and the Poor." Many therefore listed Mayhew as the author, or apparent author, and in many great libraries, even today, the book is listed in this manner. Even the writer of Mayhew's biography in the Dictionary of National Biography incorrectly lists The Mormons as one of the many products of Mayhew's pen. Perhaps observing some contemporary confusion on this point, the publisher of the 1856 or fourth edition inserted on the title page the legend, "Edited by Charles Mackay." This only magnified the confusion as librarians predictably solved this problem of authorship by listing Mayhew as the author and adding the notation that Mackay had edited the fourth edition. The Library of 31 "Reappraisals of M o r m o n History," Dialogue: Journal of Mormon Thought, I ( A u t u m n , 1 9 6 6 ) , 23â&#x20AC;&#x201D;140. O n e of the illustrations, which M a c k a y labeled "Joseph Smith Preaching in the Wilderness," is labeled by Dialogue as "Brigham Y o u n g P r e a c h i n g in the Wilderness." J2 Mrs. Brodie does not mention this in her biography a n d introduction of Mr. Piercy in the 1962 H a r v a r d reprint of Route from Liverpool. T h e portrait of Orson P r a t t in Mackay's book is taken from an 1849 drawing by "Fred Piercy" a t t a c h e d t o the cover of A Series of Pamphlets, by Orson P r a t t (Liverpool, 1851). This sketch of the remarkable apostle exhibits Piercy's ability to portray a person of undoubted intelligence, energy, a n d spirituality. 33 T h e British Mission, L o n d o n Conference, Record of M e m b e r s , L.D.S. C h u r c h Historian's Library a n d Archives, shows that Piercy was baptized a M o r m o n on M a r c h 23, 1848, a n d became a m e m b e r of Theobald's R o a d Branch. H e was subsequently ordained a teacher a n d a n elder. H e " e m i g r a t e d " to the Salt Lake Valley February 2 1 , 1853, r e t u r n e d the next year to E n g l a n d , was disappointed with Brigham Young's decision to soft-pedal Route from Liverpool, a n d was finally " c u t off" from the M o r m o n church on M a r c h 6, 1857. See folders on Piercy, J a m e s Linforth, and Orson Pratt, Manuscript Section, L.D.S. C h u r c h Historian's Library a n d Archives, Salt L a k e City.

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Congress handles the book this way even today, and most other libraries have followed this pattern. The writer has observed in one distinguished library that different copies of the same work are listed and shelved twice — once under Mayhew, and once under Mackay. One may find a similar treatment in bibliographies. To take the most prestigious example, in his History of Utah, Bancroft lists the book four times, as follows: Mackay (Chas), The Mormons, or Latter-day Saints. London, 1851; London, 1852; Auburn, N.Y., 1853; London, 1854. London, 2 vols. n. impr. Mayhew ( H . ) , The Mormons. London, 1851, 1852. Mormons ( T h e ) . London, 1851, 1852. The Mormons or Latter-day Saints, with Memoirs of the Life of Joseph Smith, the American Mahomet. London ( ).

In his footnotes, Bancroft sometimes lists Mackay, The Mormons, and sometimes Mayhew, The Mormons; and in some instances lists both, as well as the Pichot, Olshausen, and Schmucker volumes — all as authorities on a given point — not seeming to recognize (or not wishing to concede) that all devolve upon Mackay's book which, in turn, is a compilation of documents all but one of which were published previously.34 While Dr. Mackay's The Mormons may be properly regarded as the first of its kind, its importance could easily be exaggerated. There followed in 1852 the publication of Gunnison's excellent history and geography which, though published under the same title as Mackay's book, seems to have been based primarily on his own observations and studies and is, in reality, a superior and more informative volume. Later works in the same vein, attempting as did Mackay to present a narrative and analysis which balanced the widely circulated anti-Mormon view with the Mormon position, included Stenhouse's Rocky Mountain Saints, William Alexander Linn's The Story of the Mormons . . . (New York, 1902), and, in our day, Ray B. West's Kingdom of the Saints . . . (New York, 1957). Charles Mackay set a praiseworthy pattern of structural impartiality. His was not an interpretative synthesis, as was, say Nels Anderson's Desert Saints (Chicago, 1942). Nor did it present the "facts" of Mormon society as these were determined by personal observation, as "' Despite this, Bancroft has a footnote (p. 466 fn. 54) which attributes the work to M a c k a y and appraises it as "written with marked ability, a n d in a spirit of exceeding fairness, though taking decidedly a n a n t i - M o r m o n view." But he then concedes too m u c h , as he goes on to say: " I t is a work full of valuable information, m u c h of it of an original character a n d nowhere else existing." Examples of recent writers who list Mackay, The Mormons a n d also Mayhew, The Mormons, without seeming to recognize t h a t they are the same book a r e : H a r r y Beardsley, Joseph Smith and His Mormon Empire (Boston a n d N e w York, 1931) ; a n d A n d r e w Love Neff, History of Utah, 1847 to 1869, ed., Leland H a r g r a v e Creer (Salt Lake City, 1 9 4 0 ) .

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did Lieutenant Gunnison. Neither could Dr. Mackay refrain from occasionally presenting his own point of view, which was hardly objective. But at least he included the pro- and anti-Mormon views within the covers of one book and thus elevated the writing of Mormon history to a new plateau. Finally, by simply interesting himself in Mormonism he demonstrated that the topic was worthy of the attention of British and Continental intellectuals, and he thus opened up a new era in Mormon literature. 35

"5 As for the subsequent career of D r . Mackay, he continued with the Illustrated London News during the 1850's, publishing therein, a m o n g other things, the lyrics for some eighty or more p o p u l a r English songs â&#x20AC;&#x201D; songs which came to be sung in every p a r t of the world. H e m a d e an eight-mcnth lecture tour of the U n i t e d States a n d C a n a d a in 1857-58, and wrote a book, Life and Liberty in America (2 vols., L o n d o n , 1 8 5 9 ) , which contains a chapter on the Mormons. H e started two periodicals (The London Review a n d Robin Goodfellow), and served as an American correspondent for The Times during the Civil W a r . H e continued to write industriously, edited volumes of poetry a n d music, m a d e excursions into Celtic philology, and wrote long books of reminiscences. It should perhaps also be mentioned t h a t shortly after completing The Mormons, though married a n d with four children, he fell in love with a widow, Mrs. Ellen Mills, nee K i r t l a n d , a n d fathered a b a b y girl, Mary. U p o n the d e a t h of Mrs. M a c k a y in 1859, he married Mrs. Mills and a d o p t e d his daughter, now six years old, without, however, acknowledging his parenthood. This d a u g h t e r became, in her own right, a writer of note. U n d e r the pen n a m e " M a r i e Corelli," she wrote more t h a n a dozen popular novels and, indeed, became the best-selling novelist in Britain. She died in 1924 without any public knowledge of her own true origin or of her famous father's indiscretion. See the biography of " M a r y M a c k a y " in Dictionary of National Biography; Bertha Vyver, Memoirs of Marie Corelli ( L o n d o n , 1930) ; George Bullock, Marie Corelli: The Life and Death of a Best-Seller (London, 1 9 4 0 ) ; a n d Eileen Bigland, Marie Corelli: The Woman and the Legend (London, 1953).

Father Bonaventure Keller, O.M.C. (1845-1877) Catholic priest at Camp Floyd, Utah

The Hesitant Beginnings of the Catholic Church in Utah BY JEROME STOFFEL

N 1776 AN expedition of Catholic priests and laymen penetrated to the heart of the Great Basin with an eye to mission settlements as well as an overland route. Yet, nearly a century would elapse before it was clearly evident that the Catholic church had come to stay. In the late summer of 1871 a small adobe structure in Salt Lake City, previously remodeled to become the first Catholic chapel in present-day Utah, was torn down to be replaced by the Church of St. Mary Magdalene. The ninety-five years of hesitation were finally at an end. The years were hesitant, but they were far from empty. Years rich in the deeds of the little man, his hidden treasures are both the delight of the historian and the source of his frustrations. Many of these almost forgotten ones were Catholic — men and women living out the life-span gift from their Creator without benefit of biographer or personal diary. Catholic laymen, the good and the bad, participated in almost every phase in the making of the West. It was they who first proclaimed the name of Jesus Christ within the Great Basin, they who introduced Christian teachings by word and custom to its natives, they who matched Christian names to Utah's rivers, valleys, and mountains. They were among the trappers, the surveyors, the roadmakers, the cowboys, the freighters, the men gored by the oxen, the children stolen in slavery, and the women lonely in the anguish of childbirth. They rode the Pony Express, manned the lonely way station, strung the telegraph line, mapped the desert, fed and bedded the traveler, soldiered the trail, prospected, mined, and smelted ore, and built the railroad. The named and the nameless, Catholic laymen helped weave the brilliant tapestry of Utah's history — forgotten traders trodding the Spanish Trail and marking their faith on its physical features, Iroquois families pausing for Sunday devotions along the tributaries of the Bear, unnamed trappers humorously recalling the law of Friday abstinence while verging on starvation — these are some of the threads. Others mark the exploits of the known and the remembered — Thomas Fitzpatrick, the Robidouxs and the Sublettes, Denis Julien, Etienne Provost up from Taos; the Martin Murphy clan down from Soda Springs; and Kit Carson, Pat Connor, the Creightons, the Conways, and Ed Toohy. Like a thousand tiny polarized particles of iron, each an infinitesimal magnet, these were the men and women whose hopes and anxieties, Monsignor Stoffel, priest of the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City, is pastor of St. T h o m a s Aquinas Parish, Logan, U t a h , a n d also director of the N e w m a n Association at U t a h State U n i versity.

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dreams a n d discouragements slowly pointed the church to the places of Catholic settlement and the fulfillment of its promises. T h e problem for the Catholic bishops, responsible both to the native a n d to the wandering intruder, lay in discerning and then reading correctly the accumulating force a n d its direction. T o complicate t h e problem there were the factors of a n extreme scarcity of clergy, an unclear geography, and last but not least, the political a n d economic complexities of Europe's intrigues, the i m m i g r a n t and his poverty, the mild a n d sometimes not-so-mild persecutions in the cause of Nativism, a n d even the not inconsiderable stresses of anti-Mormonism. T o reconstruct the story of Catholic beginnings, then, one must t u r n to the bishops who m a d e the decisions a n d especially to the priests w h o were b o t h their eyes and their hands. I n t h e history of the Catholic c h u r c h beginnings in U t a h , scarcely a dozen priests m a r k the hesitant p a t h , a n d only a few stand out from t h e shadows with any clarity. 1 T H E S P A N I S H - M E X I C A N PERIOD OF SOVEREIGNTY

At the beginning two lamps m a r k the start of a n otherwise obscure pathway, the Franciscan Fathers Silvestre Velez de Escalante a n d Atanasio Dominguez. After t h a t t h e p a t h is m a r k e d by no cleric until the days of U t a h ' s settlement nearly three-quarters of a century later. I t is the period of the explorer and the traveler. I t is also the period of unclear geography and international conflicts of interests. T h e present State of U t a h comprises not only the Great Basin but a considerable p a r t of the Colorado River drainage. Together, these two areas represent most of U t a h . O n the other hand, because of a n arbitrary boundary established by the Nootka Sound Convention of 1790, the complicated drainages of the u p p e r Green River, the Bear River, a n d the tributaries of the Snake River, m a d e for some complex territorial claims on the p a r t of the United States, Spain, a n d Great Britain. T h e complexities of the claims and the resulting confusion are often reflected 1 S u m m a r y histories of the Catholic c h u r c h in U t a h are few: D e a n Harris, The Catholic Church in Utah 1776—1909 (Salt Lake City, 1909) ; Louis J. Fries, One Hundred and Fifty Years of Catholicity in Utah (Salt Lake City, 1926) ; a n d R o b e r t Joseph Dwyer, The Gentile Comes to Utah: A Study in Religious and Social Conflict (1862-1890) (Washington, D.C., 1 9 4 1 ) . Correcting some of the inaccuracies contained in the first two a n d fleshing out the environment, Dwyer has become the guideline to further research, a d d i n g new details a n d m a k i n g the history more informative in an article, "Pioneer Bishop: L a w r e n c e Scanlan, 1843—1915," Utah Historical Quarterly, X X (April, 1 9 5 2 ) , 135—58. A small trickle of specialized studies, principally university dissertations, gives promise of some definitive biography which will bring some unity to the still scattered resources. Until then, the long overdue stories of the pioneer nuns a n d colorful lay Catholics will mostly remain untold. Yet it is a n extremely rich m o t h e r lode if preliminary surveys are any indication.

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in the uncertainties as to ecclesiastical responsibility for Utah even as late as 1868. This uncertainty must be kept in mind as the story unfolds. The Catholic story begins when all of Utah was deemed part of the vast Spanish Empire. Vested with extraordinary jurisdiction in church matters, the Franciscan missionaries of New Spain also were endowed with quasi-civil authority over the natives to protect them from conquistadorial ambitions. So it was that, in the eighteenth century exploration of the Spanish borderlands, the padres marched with the soldiers in search for new colonial outposts favorable to the dignity and future civilization of the Indian as well as the political security of New Spain. The result was the mission village or community which flourished in the last part of the eighteenth century in upper California. Utah was envisioned as a potential part of that system by a man such as Escalante, resident missionary in the Pueblo of Zuni, as well as by his religious superior, Dominguez. Hence, it is not at all surprising that, as a result of a preliminary survey to the west in 1775 by Escalante, the expedition of 1776 should penetrate so far into the present State of Utah not only in search of an overland route to California but also to determine the feasibility of future mission settlements in the land of the Yutas to serve both spiritual and temporal needs.2 The journey itself is well known, but for our purposes, it is also important to note that the promises of the friars to return among the Indians were not empty. They intended to return. Only the sanction of Madrid and Mexico City was needed to establish mission settlements in the San Juan basin and near the shores of Utah Lake. Miera y Pacheco, cartographer and seasoned soldier, on his return made an eloquent plea for such a plan in a letter to the King of Spain. 3 But it was not to be, principally because, in the very same year, Juan Bautista de Anza led an expedition from Sonora across the Colorado near Yuma to found the new mission which became San Francisco. The practicability of this route seemingly was assured even though the outpost established in 1779 near Yuma was overrun shortly thereafter by hostile natives. 4 With this as a beginning, the dream of a Utah mission weakened and then dissolved in the changing political climate which saw Spanish Louisiana retaken by Napoleon through the secret Treaty of San Idelfonso in 1801 and then sold to the independent nation rising to the east 2 H e r b e r t E. Bolton, Pageant in the Wilderness: The Story of the Escalante the Interior Basin, 1776, . . ., Utah Historical Quarterly, X V I I I ( 1 9 5 0 ) , 1-8. 3 Ibid., 243ff. *Ibid.^ 126ff.

Expedition

Catholic Church in Utah

in 1803. The crumbling power of Spain finally collapsed under the impact of Mexican independence, and with it, the magnificent religious institution, the mission, disappeared into history, victim of the anticlerical and the plundering in the name of secularization. The Indians were dispersed, subjected to a new kind of poverty, and their faith destroyed by the perverse example of the new ruling class. Utah's promised civilization was buried in the rubble.

DIXON PAPER COMPANY (FARRELL R. C O L L E T T , A R T I S T )

The first white men known to penetrate Utah's borders was the expedition two Franciscan priests, Dominguez and Escalante in 1776.

headed

Yet, in spite of all this, there are hints that the natives of Utah were not entirely forgotten. William Kittson in his journal notes the encounter in 1825 with Ute Indians wearing silver and brass crosses.5 One also cannot help but wonder if certain later Indian names are not corruptions of baptismal names. Santaquin sounds suspiciously like a contraction of San Tomas Aquinas. Is it possible that San Pitch or San Pete are derived from San Pedro? Or even an outside chance that Wakara (Walker) might be a derivative of Joachin? In the early 1800's Catholics were approaching Utah from another quarter, moving west through Canada and thence south with Hudson's 5 David E. Miller, ed., "Peter Skene Ogden's Journal of His Expedition to Utah, 1825," Utah Historical Quarterly, XX (April, 1952), 179 fn.76.

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Bay and Northwest Fur companies into Oregon, Idaho, and western Montana. With them came that remarkable phenomenon, the Christian Iroquois responsible for introducing Catholic prayers and teachings to the tribes of the Northwest. These created the desire which eventually brought priests from far-off Quebec and St. Louis. At least once, this influence lightly touched Utah in the Snake River Expedition of 1825 under Peter Skene Ogden, but with no observable effects as yet identified. This period of the trappers and the trail blazers which opened into Utah after the Mexican Revolution brought many Catholic names from the north, the east, and the south. To our knowledge, however, no priest came into what is present-day Utah unless perhaps Father Pierre Jean deSmet. There is the possibility that this remarkable traveler may have walked briefly upon Utah soil as his group and the Bartleson-Bidwell party passed down out of the hills north of Woodruff to the valley of the Bear River. Because of his extensive knowledge of the Great Basin and especially because of a reference to his visit with Brigham Young in 1846, it has been assumed that he had firsthand knowledge of the valleys of northern Utah. 6 It seems unlikely that deSmet did, at least previous to the Mormon settlement in 1847 since, in accounting for his travels in the West from 1841 to 1846, there appears to have been no opportunity for a journey south of the Oregon Trail. Moreover, it is unlikely that he would have journeyed to a territory under neither the jurisdiction of 6 Harris, Catholic Church in Utah, 269fl\, quotes extensively from a letter of deSmet written to his nephew in M a r c h of 1851. D e S m e t also describes the Great Basin in a n o t h e r letter written in St. Louis, J a n u a r y 19, 1858 (Pierre J e a n deSmet, Western Missions and Missionaries: A Series of Letters by Rev. P. J. DeSmet . . . [New York, 1859], 394ff.). T o one who is familiar with the terrain, deSmet's descriptions suggest a second-hand knowledge of the Great Basin. I n the letter in M a r c h 1851, he seems to place Salt L a k e City in Box Elder County. I n the letter written in 1858, h e would a p p e a r to be relying u p o n a m a p of t h a t day for his description. Yet, in both, he seems to imply a first-hand knowledge, even appearing to make such a claim: " I n 1841, I travelled m u c h of this valley . . . ." H o w can this be reconciled with the fact t h a t in 1841 he passed along the Bear River to Soda Springs, thence northwest to the Pbrtneuf and Fort H a l l ? First, it must be kept in m i n d t h a t deSmet was an extremely curious m a n g a t h e r i n g to himself facts from anyone with w h o m he came into conversation. And he was a romanticist in love with the West. H e wrote letters in profusion, a n d m a d e t h e m interesting. I n most, it would seem he h a d an eye for what today we call the public image, for the very success of his work a n d of those who depended u p o n h i m required the continued assistance of m a n y benefactors. As Dwyer has so ably p u t it: " H e was not wholly exempt from the p e n c h a n t to d r a w a long bow w h e n it came to describing his m o u n t a i n experiences." (Dwyer, "Lawrence Scanlan," UHO X X , 141.) . V6,

However, it is also true t h a t deSmet did travel in "the valley" of the G r e a t Basin in 1841, for the Bear River is a part of the basin. I t is the opinion of this writer t h a t deSmet believed to his dying day that, bidding adieu to the Bartleson-Bidwell p a r t y as they t u r n e d south to follow the Bear River, he was looking u p o n the entrance to that " n o r t h e r n valley" later to be settled by the Mormons. I t is to be recalled t h a t the Bartleson-Bidwell party suffered from some such misinformation, believing that when they passed into the flats n e a r present-day Corinne, they were moving down the northwest bay of the G r e a t Salt Lake. They, of course, discovered the error, but if deSmet shared the same error, he m a y never have recognized how far he h a d really been from the Valley of the Great Salt L a k e in 1841.

Catholic Church in Utah

Bishop Blanchet of Oregon nor Bishop Miege of Indian Territories of the United States. Utah in those years was Mexican territory and at the same time jurisdictionally under the Bishop of Durango in Old Mexico. The Mormons came to Utah in 1847 and by the right of prescription, assumed ownership of its fertile valleys and mountain slopes. In 1848 civil jurisdiction over this land of the Utes was wrested from Mexico. In a short interlude which followed, bearing witness to the last moments in the death of an empire and the agonizing birth of another, the Catholic church paused, not with regret, but as if to decently bury the dead and then in the best way possible to salvage whatever good remained of a dispoiled heritage. The once brilliant hope of a Junipero Serra in California and an Escalante in Utah were now quite unreal in the midst of the economic and moral wreckage marked by the Santa Fe slave trade, the decaying missions, and the avarice and greed of a gold rush. T H E PERIOD OF SETTLEMENT

In 1850 the new American territory of California was cut away ecclesiastically and erected into the Diocese of Monterey (in California). It would seem that Utah west of the Colorado River was included. 7 At the same time a new Diocese of Santa Fe was created out of territories once belonging to the ancient Diocese of Durango, its area to include all those lands north of the new international boundary and east of the Colorado. Within three years, however, the Diocese of Monterey was again divided, being split by an east-west line approximately at the 37th parallel drawn to the Colorado River. South of the line was the new Diocese of Monterey extending south to the Mexican border. Extending north to Oregon Territory at the 42nd parallel and east to the "Colorado River" ' It appears that by 1840 that part of the Great Basin lying to the west of the Colorado River was deemed part of the jurisdiction of "the Californias," possibly by reason of the western part of the Spanish Trail. According to Francis J. Weber, "The Development of Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction in the Californias," Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia, L X X V (June, 1964), 93ff., by a Papal Bull in 1779, the Diocese of Sonora was created to include the two Californias. Apparently at this time, the area of Santa Fe and north remained under the jurisdiction of the Diocese of Durango (Old Mexico). In 1840 the Diocese of the two Californias was separated from Sonora and placed directly under the jurisdiction of the Archdiocese of Mexico City. After the war with Mexico in 1848, a readjustment became necessary this time, the coastal Diocese of Monterey and the inland Diocese of Santa Fe were separated because of international boundary changes. In 1850 the Diocese of Upper California was separated from that to the south, and at the same time, the Diocese of Santa Fe was created from the territories of the Diocese of Durango lying north of the new boundary. Apparently at this time, the coastal Diocese of Monterey and the inland Diocese of Santa Fe were separated by the Colorado, an assumption seemingly borne out by the 1853 realignment. It seems unlikely that Utah was ever under the jurisdiction of St. Louis, although it is possible that, theoretically, the tribal lands of the Ute nation lying east of the Colorado River may have been considered part of the jurisdiction of Bishop Miege, vicar bishop of Indian Territories until the establishment of the Vicariate of Colorado-Utah in 1868.

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was the new Archdiocese of San Francisco. Thus, in 1853, the settled part of Utah definitely became the responsibility of that remarkable Catholic prelate, Joseph Sadoc Alemany, first Archbishop of San Francisco. But Utah was still far removed from the centers of administration â&#x20AC;&#x201D; San Francisco for the lands lying west of the Colorado and Santa Fe for the lands to the east. The problem of distance remained for a long time to plague the formation of the Catholic church in Utah, aided and abetted by the confusion of the term "Colorado River" which, in the beginning, seems to have signified the main channel but later the whole drainage basin. FATHER BONAVENTURE KELLER

A growing national concern with the Mormon settlement and its territorial claims, the publication of a revelation on celestial marriage and the accompanying "polygamy question," and stories of tribal unrest among the Indians allegedly promoted by Mormon zealots helped bring on what history knows as the Utah War. Almost as an oversight, it brought what may well be the first non-Mormon minister of religion into settled Utah. The man was a Catholic priest. In 1857 the Utah Expeditionary Force was assembled and moved west to confront the Mormons. Clever harrassment by the Mormons forced the army to winter near Fort Bridger and delayed the entry of the troops into the Salt Lake Valley until the summer of 1858. In the spring of the same year, another complement of troops was assembled to march west from Fort Leavenworth under General W. S. Harney to reinforce the government position. In May 1858 Father deSmet was commissioned a chaplain and assigned to accompany the troops. However, news of the Steptoe Massacre in the Northwest brought a radical change of plans for this second contingent. Harney was recalled and, accompanied by deSmet, sailed from the East Coast by way of Panama to San Francisco and from thence to the country of Oregon. Again the famous Jesuit missionary almost, but not quite, reached Utah. By November 1858 the troops already in Utah and reinforced by elements of the second contingent were garrisoned in a new camp. Approximately three thousand troops and an equal number of civilians in official and unofficial capacities made of Camp Floyd a post of no mean dimensions and no little problems. Without a chaplain of any kind, the Post Council, therefore, petitioned the War Department to provide one. In a letter dated January 25, 1859, they asked for a Catholic chaplain to be named by Archbishop Kenrick of Baltimore, requiring

Catholic Church in Utah

only that he was to be a "native-born American." 8 A s a result, but not as stipulated, there came to Utah sometime in April 1859 perhaps the first priest ever to assemble a congregation in Utah. Yet the man has long remained a mystery, glamorous in the obscurity of two entries in the diary of John Wolcott Phelps, an officer then stationed at C a m p Floyd. Reflecting a rather prevalent Nativist antipathy to things Catholic, the diarist noted in an entry dated June 5, 1859, the action of the Post Council on the previous day in which its three members had selected a Catholic priest then at Georgetown, District of Columbia, as chaplain for the Camp. T o his diary Phelps confided his disgust at the choice, possibly reflecting the feelings of other officers also. T h e Irish and German troops who comprised a considerable part of the C a m p strength were in good measure both Catholics and emigrants, and therefore doubly the object of Nativist feelings. O n Friday June 10 Phelps noted the presence of "a Catholic priest in camp, the first clergyman of any denomination, I believe who has arrived in the valley." Perhaps because of his strong feelings, he did not see fit to identify the man, nor did he in a later entry, noting only the presence of a "Catholic priest in his robes" at the funeral of a Dragoon. 9 8 It was the "Post Council of Administration" which was made responsible for obtaining a chaplain. Pursuant to Special Orders (No. 16, January 24, 1859), the Council met on January 25. The proceedings as recorded were as follows: "Camp Floyd U . T . January 25, 1859 "The Council met pursuant to the above order, Present all members and resolved, That as there were no applications for the position of Chaplin [sic] for this Post, and as the members of the Council knew of no person, suitable for that position, who would desire to receive the appointment, they request the Commanding Officer of the Post, to communicate with ArchBishop Kendrick [Francis Patrick Kenrick] of the Roman Catholic Church at Baltimore, Maryland, and to request him to furnish to the Secretary of War, the name of some suitable American born Priest for the appointment of Chaplain for this post. "Resolved that the pay of the Chaplain of this Post shall be sixty dollars per month. "There being no further business before the Council, it was adjourned 'sine die.' "(Signed) J. Lynde Major 7 Infantry Member and Recorder "(Signed) P. Morrison Lieut Col 7th Res. Infantry" This letter is found in "Post Letters-Camp Floyd," TE-27, 0501.4 (microfilm, Utah State Archives, Salt Lake City). 9 John Wolcott Phelps, Diary and Scrapbook, May 24, 1859 through October 24, 1859 (microfilm, Utah State Historical Society, Salt Lake City). The two entries are as follows: "June 10 "There is a Catholic priest in camp, the first clergyman of any denomination, I believe, who has arrived in the valley. He ought to quarrel with the Mormons heartily since the creed of both is absolute, unquestioning faith in the head of their respective churches." "July 19 "A Dragoon was buried yesterday and in the procession walked a Catholic priest in his robes. He has held service in the theatre for the last three or four Sundays." The degree to which Phelps' expression of Nativism reflected Camp attitude and affected Keller's acceptance in the community of Camp Floyd is not presently known, but it was a factor and may even have been a very troublesome problem inasmuch as many of the enlisted men were Irish or German emigrants. In his June 5 diary entry, Phelps notes with considerable irritation that, in the Post Council meeting of that day, two of the three officers justified their selection of a Catholic priest (Clarke) on the basis that "the majority of the command, being foreigners, are Catholics. While they do not know this, it is no valid reason even if it were true."

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Two nameless entries by a hardly favorable witness! To this interesting puzzle we now have some answers. Within the past year the man has been identified even to acquiring a brief biography compiled forty years ago as well as a photograph. 10 Curiously, his sojourn in Utah seemed unknown to his biographer. However, a further lead just previous to publication has added certitude as to his trip to Utah and some important details not yet fully understood. As we have reconstructed it, the story is as follows. Father Bonaventure Keller, O.M.C., is the man. He, too, like Escalante and Dominguez was a Franciscan priest, but of a different branch known in the period of our history as the Order of Minors Conventual and more familiarly as "the Black Franciscans," a reference to the black rather than brown clerical habit. Leonard Keller, son of Anthony and Mary Keller, was born in Unterweigertshofen, Upper Bavaria, on November 2, 1822. Beginning his novitiate in Rome in 1842, he took the religious name of Bonaventure, We are indebted to Phelps for this glimpse of the powerful forces of Nativism which h a d affected so many American communities in the preceeding years. U n d o u b t e d l y the m a n himself h a d strong personal feelings in the m a t t e r as evidenced by his diary entry of J a n u a r y 26, 1859, after the Post Council decision of the 2 4 t h : " T h e Council of Administration of this post have decided to leave the selection of a C h a p l a i n to the ArchBishop of Baltimore, provided t h a t he selects a native born A m e r i c a n priest. " N o w when the M o r t a r a case in Italy is p r o d u c i n g the greatest scandal to the Catholic C h u r c h , the robes of the Catholic priest are for the first time seen in our own halls of Congress, a n d a n American army selects a Catholic for its c h a p l a i n ! " H o w many of the American-born officers a n d enlisted m e n shared these feelings? Perhaps many, for the decades of the forties a n d the fifties h a d witnessed vicious diatribes against the Papacy, a n d mob actions a n d m u c h violence against American Catholic communities. I t was difficult for a n honest m a n to discern the t r u t h in the midst of p a r a n o i c messiahs a n d crusaders intent u p o n a new Reformation. T h e year 1842 h a d seen the rise of the A P A (American Protestant Association) in Philadelphia, a n d by M a y 1844 the riots in the same city h a d culminated in a night of terror a n d the b u r n i n g of two Catholic churches by r a m p a g i n g mobs. I n 1853 the severe difficulties of trusteeism a n d c h u r c h administration b r o u g h t Monsignor G a e t a n o Bedini to the U n i t e d States as Papal Nuncio a n d gave Nativism a n o t h e r champion in the bitter ex-priest, Alessandro Gavazzi. I n the words of R a y Allen Billington, "the years which followed 1853 were years of almost constant turbulence a n d disorder; m o b rule replaced the soft-spoken words a n d 'Christian spirit' so stressed by nativists. This rioting did m u c h to make the restless elements of the lower fringe of society feel their importance in the anti-Catholic crusade." (The Protestant Crusade, 1800â&#x20AC;&#x201D;1860: A Study of the Origins of American Nativism [Chicago, 1964], 303.) M e n such as J o h n S. Orr, the "Angel Gabriel," could soon boast of Catholic churches b u r n e d to the ground in Maine, New H a m p s h i r e , Massachusetts, a n d New Y o r k ; a n d to feed the flames in a m u c h different way, certain fierce politically-minded G e r m a n emigrants began to b a n d together with intent to change the government of the U n i t e d States itself. T h e fires of the fifties so constantly refueled would b u r n a long time. T h e M o r t a r a incident was fresh in memory w h e n Phelps sat down on t h a t cold J a n u a r y night to pen his thoughts. Not so m a n y months before, in the Italian city of Bologna, a n ancient civil a n d canon law was invoked to transfer the custody of a baptized Jewish child from his parents to the care of a convent. T h e incident, although almost universally u n s u p p o r t e d by the Catholic press, was grist for the Nativist mill a n d quickly became a cause celebre. I n the loneliness of C a m p Floyd it must have provided m a n y a lively dispute. T h e odds were hardly favorable for the m a n w h o came as Christianity's representative to C a m p Floyd t h a t J u n e day 1859. H e was a priest, a G e r m a n , an emigrant, a n d he was from Philadelphia! H e himself must have been a formidable m a n , a n d he must have h a d strong friends in high places to have remained as long as he did. 10 T h e biography a n d picture are contained in a souvenir book, Diamond Jubilee Memoir of St. Alphonsus' Church, 1853-1928 (Philadelphia, [1928]), 5 8 - 6 1 .

Catholic Church in Utah

and in the following year made his profession at the Convent of the Holy Apostles in Rome. O n August 7, 1845, he was ordained a priest at Wuerzburg, Bavaria. Eventually he became Superior at both Oggersheim and Schoenau. I n response to a plea by Bishop Odin of Galveston, Texas, for priests to serve the German immigrants within his diocese, Keller was made Superior of a newly established American mission in 1852. Accompanied by Fathers Leopold Bonaventure Maria Moczygemba and Anthony Mueller, another unnamed priest, and a laybrother, Keller sailed from Havre on July 6, 1852. Upon arrival in Texas, the group took charge of four parishes there. Due to poor health, Keller left Texas in 1854 to serve first in the Diocese of Cincinnati, and later in Brooklyn (then Williamsburg). Responding to an appeal from Bishop Neumann of Philadelphia, Keller took charge of St. Alphonsus Church in that city, becoming its first Franciscan pastor. The church, still in use today, became his charge in February 1858. One year later, on February 2, 1859, Father Leopold Moczygemba, then "Commissary General" of the Order in the United States and therefore Keller's superior, paid an official call at the Mon-

D I X O N PAPER C O M P A N Y (FARRELL R. COLLETT, ARTIST)

In order to visit the scattered members a great deal of time traveling from town ards, was uncomfortable and miserable, was luxurious compared to other modes

of the Catholic church in Utah, priests spent to town. Stagecoach travel, by modern standbut to the passengers who rode the coaches it of transportation.

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astery of St. Alphonsus, and within a month had appointed another pastor to replace Keller. It is here that the Utah story of Keller begins. He, together with another of the original band, Father Anthony Mueller, set out sometime the latter part of February for California with the purpose in mind of establishing a monastery there to serve the German immigrants. It seems unlikely that the letter to Archbishop Kenrick from Camp Floyd, dispatched on January 25 could have reached Baltimore or Philadelphia before their leaving, but it is possible that later correspondence influenced the decisions which were yet to be made. At the present time we can only conjecture on their route, but likely it was by ship to Panama, then across the Isthmus, and again by ship to San Francisco. The overland route by mail wagon was hardly practical in the spring of 1859 since heavy snows in the Rockies delayed the mails even for weeks.11 In California Keller and Mueller were welcomed by Archbishop Alemany whose decision had been communicated too late to have reached them before they left Philadelphia. No agreement was reached, and the two began their return journey, this time by the overland route, perhaps by way of Santa Barbara to Salt Lake City. Arriving in April in the City of the Saints, possibly with the first wagon train from California that year on April 19, Keller was taken sick and unable to continue. Remaining to recuperate but exhausted of funds, the man paid a visit to Camp Floyd where he was welcomed by the Catholics and urged to stay. With the permission of the commanding general of the Utah forces, Albert Sidney Johnston, he remained until October, offering Sunday Masses in the Post theatre, and baptizing, marrying, and burying the dead. 12 We may suppose that he also con11 Valley Tan (Salt Lake City), February 1, notes the present scheduled rate to be thirtyeight days, and planned to be reduced by April to thirty days, carried on a semi-weekly basis. The January 25 issue noted that the President's special message was carried across the central route (Hockaday & Company)_ from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Salt Lake in eleven days, and from Salt Lake City to Placerville in another six days and fourteen hours, making a total from St. Joseph to California of seventeen days and fourteen hours. The southern route carried by the Butterfield Line with the same special preparations took nineteen days and eleven hours from St. Joseph to California. In 1859, some time after February 10, the snow grew very heavy, necessitating the closing of the mail coaches to any passenger travel. By March 20 the mail from the East was three weeks late. From California, it was arriving on time, and on April 19, the first wagon trains from California arrived to begin the new season. 12 Recent correspondence with the present Minister Provincial of the Order reveals the existence of a book of records of baptisms and marriages for Camp Floyd, Utah Territory, kept by Keller, but its present whereabouts is unknown. Information, however, shows that "according to this register Fr. Keller was in Utah from March or April, 1859 until October, 1859, during which time he had 26 baptisms and 3 marriages."

Catholic Church in Utah

ducted a school, a duty expected of chaplains, 13 although he was never commissioned a chaplain for the Post, possibly because he was not, as specified in the conditions originally imposed by the Post Council, a "native born American." Even the problem of rations, therefore, necessitated a special order of the commanding general. 14 Although Keller spoke English and although he received the necessary authorization from Archbishop Alemany whose jurisdiction extended to Utah, 15 it would seem that the foreign-born priest was never fully accepted as a brother-in-arms. Several bits of information suggest this. Keller was surely in the camp by the first week of June, yet, on June 5 the Post Council convened again to obtain a chaplain, ignoring Keller and recommending to the War Department a Father James Clarke then teaching at Georgetown College in Washington, D.C. 16 Possibly it was 13 In response to a letter of April 4, 1859, from Reverend E. L. Mills, Covington, Indiana, "requesting information in regard to the appointment of Chaplains in the Army, if a vacancy at the Post and if there still existed a necessity for missionary labor among the people of the Territory &c," Lieutenant Clarence E. Bennett, adjutant 10th Infantry, noted among other things that the person selected was to officiate as chaplain and "perform the duties of Schoolmaster," that the "Council of Administration has recommended that a Roman Catholic Priest be appointed Chaplain for this Post, recommending his salary to be 60 dollars per month with four Rations per day, Quarters and Fuel." "Post Letters-Camp Floyd," TE-27, 0501.4. As a matter of interest, the response is dated May 16; i.e., forty-two days after the request was penned. Also there is a note that a copy of the same tenor was sent to Reverand A. Jones Rochester, New York. 14 The order is as follows: "Headquarters Department of Utah Camp Floyd, U.T. Aug 11th 1859 "299 "Clark Henry F. Captain Commissary of Subsistence Camp Floyd, U.T. Sir: "I am directed by the Commanding General to inform you that the ReW Father Keller, Subsistence Department, to the amount of one ration . . for his Catholic missionary, and on duty as such at this post, has permission to purchase stores from the own use. "I am Sir, very respectfully Your obedient servant W. A. Mehle 1st Lieut: 5th Infantry Actg. Asst. Adjt. Gen'l" ("Post Letters-Camp Floyd," TE-27, 0501.4.) 15 There is no question of his authorization, but there was apparently the oversight of providing him with a written document. Two entries in the daybook of Alemany (Archdiocesan Archives, San Francisco) show that the question had arisen. On the same day Alemany responded to a "Major F. E. Hunt, paymaster, Camp Floyd, Utah Ter.," to a "Sergeant Lawrence Murphy" also at Camp Floyd, and to Father Keller. To Hunt and Murphy, Alemany's summary of his letter read: "Fr. Keller is not suspended but empowered by us whose diocese extends to Rocky Mountains." Summarizing his letter to Keller, Alemany noted: "Rev. Bon Keller I enclose copy of facfulties] thought you had them for journey and confr." Both notations are dated October 28 indicating that Keller was still at Camp Floyd. 1G The communication reads: "Head Quarters, Camp Floyd, U.T. June 7, 1859 "The ReW James Clarke Georgetown, D.Ca.

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Keller who suggested the name. Clarke turned it down for reasons unknown, and on August 27 the Council again met and this time proffered the chaplaincy to a Father Garesche in St. Louis. Again Keller was passed over.17 In the meantime conflicting stories found their way back to Keller's Superior, Father Moczygemba, and to Archbishop Alemany, and these resulted in Keller being recalled by his own Superior over the protest of the Archbishop of San Francisco. Keller left sometime in October, but it was not until December 2 that he was officially relieved of his appointment by Archbishop Alemany, who, shortly thereafter appointed a Father Louis Riviercio in his place. 18 The latter seems never to have arrived to take up his duties, possibly because by the time the passes over the Sierras were open, Camp Floyd was already disintegrating under the pressures of the coming Civil War. Keller was a dedicated man, forthright in decisions and seemingly quite outspoken. Are these the qualities which made him the object of controversy in a lonely, often miserable outpost removed from other settlements, plagued by a motley crowd of drifters, deserters, and camp followers. It was in many ways a severe camp kept disciplined by the sheer will of a truly great general and some remarkable subordinates. It was a camp with hatred for the government policies that had caused it to be and with much dislike for its civilian neighbors. Were these the factors? Or was it simply the question of Nativism in one of its violent moods? As yet we do not know, but one thing is clear: Father Bona"Sir: "I am directed by Brevet Col. Charles F. Smith, 10th Infantry, Commanding this Post, to inform you that you were yesterday selected by the Council of Administration as Chaplain for this Post; the rate of compensation fixed by the Council to be at $60 per month (subject to the approval of the Secretary of War), with four rations per day (equivalent to $36 per month) with quarters and fuel. "You are requested to give an early answer to this, signifying your acceptance or nonacceptance of the situation. Should you accept you will please report in person to the Commanding officer at the earliest period. You will find herewith extracts from the Laws of Congress and from the General Regulations for the Army in relation to Chaplains. (By going to the office of the Adjutant General of the Army in Washington you will be enabled to obtain the fullest information on all points connected with the appointment and duties of Chaplain in the Army) "There are at the Post about 3,000 men. "I am RevJ Sir, Very Respectfully Your Obed't Servant Clarence E. Bennett 2nd Lt. and Adj't 10th Infy Post Adjutant" ("Post Letters-Camp Floyd," TE-27, 0501.4.) Enclosed with the letter were copies of the "4th Article of War" and "Regulations for the Army," paragraphs 201, 1167, and 1201. " T h e fact that the Special Orders of June 4, 1859 ("Post Letters-Camp Floyd," TE-27, 0501.4), reconvening the Post Council were accompanied by "applications from two persons for the situation" of chaplain, strongly suggest that Keller may have submitted the names of both Clarke and Garesche since neither man accepted the position. Inasmuch as he was on the scene, it is possible he was authorized to do so by the Archbishop of Baltimore. 18 Alemany Daybook, December 28, 1859.

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venture Keller was neither fool nor weakling. R e t u r n i n g to the East, he left his m a r k in Utica, N e w York, a n d Louisville, Kentucky, a n d in the first Provincial C h a p t e r of his religious order in 1872 was elected to the office of Provincial and, confirmed in t h a t office by apostolic rescript, guided t h e destinies of his Province until his death, April 5, 1877. F A T H E R J E A N BATISTE RAVERDY

Keller moved on, a n d it was five years before another Catholic priest c a m e to U t a h . I n 1861, while civil w a r was spreading u p o n t h e land, a n e w ecclesiastical jurisdiction was created to meet t h e needs of n o r t h e r n California, t h e goldfield towns of the Sierras, a n d t h e n e w c a m p s on t h e east slopes in Nevada. Bishop Eugene O'Connell of t h e n e w Vicariate of Marysville assumed responsibility for all t h e territory n o r t h of the 39th parallel east to " t h e eastern boundary of N e v a d a , " a boundary twice changed in succeeding years. Not clear in the turmoil of t h e Civil W a r was the responsibility for U t a h . Reflecting this confusion, t h e venerable Bishop Miege, vicar bishop for the once vast a n d somewhat nebulous Vicariate of I n d i a n Territory, deemed U t a h somehow his responsibility until the situation was clarified. I n 1860 two priests of the Diocese of S a n t a F e h a d been sent to t h e "Pike's P e a k " region following t h e gold rush there in 1859, Fathers Joseph P. Machebeuf a n d J e a n Batiste Raverdy. T h e i r parish was huge, yet Bishop Miege urged a visit to U t a h where there were a few Catholics, principally with the California Volunteers at C a m p Douglas w h o were sent to U t a h to protect t h e overland route and to contain the Indians. It was this suggestion, it would seem, which p r o m p t e d F a t h e r R a v e r d y to embark on the journey which brought h i m to C a m p Douglas in September 1864. T h e r e he remained for a few days, offering Mass, instructing children a n d baptizing them, a n d blessing t h e graves of t h e soldiers. H e t h e n moved on to the goldfields of Bannock a n d Virginia City, M o n t a n a Territory, a n d afterwards, perhaps by river boat down the Missouri, he returned to Denver. 1 9 FATHER

EDWARD

KELLY

Spain h a d come to U t a h in the persons of Escalante a n d Dominguez. Germany was represented next in Keller. France was represented by Raverdy. N o w it was t h e t u r n of the Irish. " A c c o r d i n g to H e n r y W. Casper, History of the Catholic Church in Nebraska . . . (Milwaukee, 1 9 6 0 ) , 216 fn.29, this m a y have been Raverdy's second visit to M o n t a n a , t h e first visit possibly having occurred in 1862. If so, he is likely to have traveled by way of Salt L a k e City on t h a t occasion also, b u t there would have been little t o have stayed his journey. T h e T h i r d California Volunteers did not arrive until late in October, a n d previous to their coming no identifiable Catholic community existed in the City of the Saints.

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In the fall of 1865, the Civil War was over when Father Edward Kelly of the Vicariate of Marysville in California was sent to the Reese River area of Nevada, the scene of new mines. At first pastor of Austin, he set about to construct a church. Responding to a sick call in Salt Lake City (three days travel time to the east), he arrived in the City of the Saints the latter part of May; remained to offer Masses at Camp Douglas, the city itself, and Stockton; and baptized a dozen children. Impressed by the Catholic communities, small in numbers but long in enthusiasm, and receiving the approval of Bishop O'Cormell, Father Kelly arranged for the purchase of a piece of land on Second East near First South in Salt Lake City, and then departed the latter part of June for Austin to await his replacement there. In August he made a quick trip to Marysville, California, gathered his belongings, and returned to Utah in September as its first Catholic pastor. Title to the property purchased in his absence was in doubt and he appealed directly to Brigham Young for a decision. The settlement was in his favor, but apparently the very fact he willingly submitted to a judgment by Brigham Young cooled the ardor of those who had hoped to find in him a champion of the forces of anti-Mormonism. His dream of church and school became the less pretentious reality of a small adobe building on the new property remodeled as a home for the teaching nuns he hoped to bring to Utah. However, in October of the same year, the Catholic bishops of the United States met to clarify the Catholic position doctrinally and socially in the aftermath of the Civil War. And, by rearrangement of territorial responsibilities, particularly in the West, they hoped to provide more effective use of their scarce clergy. In the plans, approved in Rome the following year, Utah was removed from the jurisdiction of the Vicariate of Marysville and joined together with Colorado in the new Vicariate of Colorado-Utah. The pioneer "Pike's Peak" priest, Father Machebeuf, became its new vicar bishop in August of 1868. The decision made in October 1866 was reflected in the withdrawal of Father Kelly; he remained only long enough to offer the first Christmas Mass in Salt Lake City. The property was left in the charge of John McGrath rent-free until all indebtedness had been discharged. 20 20 Kelly made an accounting publicly in the Union Vedette (Salt Lake City), December 8, 1866: "REV. FATHER KELLY'S REPORT.-Agreeable to his promise, Father Kelly requests us to publish the following statement of the receipts and disbursements of the Church funds which he has collected since his arrival here on the [?] of last September, to December 7:

Catholic Church in Utah

BISHOP J O S E P H P. M A C H E B E U F

More than a year was to elapse before the changes were fully effected, and in that period no name appears except that of Father William Kelly, appointed by Bishop O'Gormon of Omaha to a strange kind of parish, accommodated to the new railroad and extending from Sydney, Nebraska, "to Wasatch Canyon, Utah Territory." 21 It is possible that that intrepid missionary, Father Toussaint Mesplie, then a priest in the Vicariate of Idaho Territory, had also paid an occasional visit. His affection for Utah and its scattered Catholic charges long remained with him. 22 In November 1868 after completing visits to all other parts of his new vicariate, Bishop Machebeuf set out for Utah. He caught the stage for Cheyenne, rode a regular passenger train to Laramie, and then climbed aboard a work-train to the end-of-the-line in Green River. Continuing by stage, he arrived in Salt Lake City Sunday morning, November . . . subcriptions received to this date — amount paid for house and lot . . . . — to the enlargement of house for teachers' residence . . . . — cash borrowed from Mr. McGrath to make first payment on the property . . . . — expenses of recording, transfer of deeds, collection, etc . . . Balance due Mr. McGrath . . . .

$2,889.60 2,300.00 494.18 300.00 48.60 253.18

3,142.78 3,142.78 Father Kelly feels that sense of justice as well as gratitude for Mr. Harry [?] McGrath's kindness and liberality — in assisting him to purchase the property and to make the aforesaid addition to the house intended for the sisters residence — demand that he [Mr. McGrath] should be paid the balance which is still due him. For the purpose, then of liquidating the just debt, Mr. McGrath is hereby authorized to retain possession of said house and property not only until the arrival of Father Kelly's successor, but until such time as he [Mr. McGrath] will have received an equivalent for the aforesaid indebtedness at a monthly rental of $30. Father Kelly again returns sincere thanks to the inhabitants of Salt Lake City and vicinity for their kindness and prays that God may reward them for their liberality." 21 Casper, Catholic Church in Nebraska, 107fF. According to W. J. Howlett in his Life of the Right Reverend Joseph P. Machebeuf, D.D. (Pueblo, Colorado, 1908), 352, Machebeuf, returning from his visit to Salt Lake City, met Father William Kelly on the train to Cheyenne. Kelly is identified as a priest "of the Vicariate of Nebraska, who was visiting the men along the railroad and whose duties had formerly taken him on several occasions as far as Salt Lake City." 22 Mesplie's remarkable story is yet not pieced together as far as we know. He was born in Belpoche, France, March 17, 1824, and was ordained May 25, 1850, serving as a diocesan priest under Archbishop F. N. Blanchet of Oregon City. By 1853 we find him among the Indians at the Dalles. In 1863 he and Father A. Z. Poulin were sent to the Boise Basin where it is said over twenty-five thousand miners had gathered in the Idaho gold rush. There the two priests were responsible for four little chapels at Idaho City, Placerville, Centerville, and Pioneer as well as a little school at Idaho City. On March 3, 1868, the Vicariate of Idaho Territory was established, and by January 1869 the new Vicar Bishop Louis Lootens arrived, taking up residence at Granite Creek and using the new church built there by Mesplie. The vicariate, like that of Montana, was premature, the mining boom collapsed, and within a few years the bishop resigned. Mesplie remained, working among the few white settlers and military garrisons, and as missionary to the Indians, especially among the Snakes. From 1868 on Mesplie seems to have been a kind of missionary-at-Iarge, roaming the interior basins of southern Idaho and northern Utah, and for a few years, serving as a chaplain to the army. He died November 10, 1895, in Grass Valley, California, leaving behind a fabulous story yet to be reconstructed.

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20, a n d was escorted to C a m p Douglas by Colonel P. E. Connor. T h e r e he offered Mass, instructed a n d baptized, visited the small community in the city, and confirmed. H e remained until December 10 a n d then returned to Denver. A n unexpected and very cold b a t h in the middle of the winter by reason of a n overturned stagecoach m a d e the Bear River crossing a memorable experience to him. Priests were extremely scarce in his vast vicariate, b u t before going to Europe in search of others to help, Machebeuf succeeded in attracting a young priest from M a r q u e t t e , Michigan. T o him the bishop entrusted the Catholics in U t a h Territory. T h e bishop left for E u r o p e in M a y 1869, just before the completion of the transcontinental railroad at Promontory. Possibly the n e w priest, F a t h e r H o n o r e Bourion, did not arrive in U t a h until after the event, possibly not until J u n e or July, perhaps not until early fall. His stay was not long. Completely unimpressed with the situation, particularly with Corinne's tents a n d adobe a n d frame cabins, he stayed b u t six weeks a n d then returned East in disgust. His complaints, reported to Bishop Machebeuf w h e n t h e latter returned from Europe in December, reflect the twin problems which were to plague the church in U t a h for m a n y years; i.e., a transient Catholic population scattered far and wide and frequently quite poor. I n 1869 the communities were very small, money scarce, a n d prices h i g h : $2.00 for a meal, the same or m o r e for a bed, even when the guest supplied his own bedding. T h e picture was grim. I n the six weeks Bourion spent "exceeding 365 [dollars] a n d received in O g d o n [sic] a n d all railroad stations $20 for m e a n d $95 for the building of a c h u r c h . " 23 Yet, to this m a n , it would seem, belongs the honor of offering Mass for the first time in O g d e n and Corinne. FATHER J O H N

FOLEY

Corinne now became the focal point of attention, not only because it expected to become " t h e Gentile Capital of U t a h , " but because many of its citizens were extremely vociferous a n d wildly anxious to build a new Chicago or St. Louis on the banks of the Bear River. Railroads were projected northeast to Deadwood, n o r t h to the M o n t a n a goldfields, and northwest to the Dalles a n d P o r t l a n d ; and, in opposition to Brigham's U t a h Central, a marvelous steamer to sail the Great Salt Lake to the 23 Information from Archdiocesan Archives, Denver. T h a t Bourion should have found things so bad is not surprising. T h e s u m m e r of 1869 in northern U t a h saw a great shortage of money, railroad laborers left without jobs, long overdue wages, a n d the evils of a boom a n d land speculation. Cf. L e o n a r d J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900 ( H a r v a r d , 1 9 5 8 ) , 265ff.

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mines of O p h i r and to the commerce of Stockton a n d Lake Point. Churches and schools were p a r t of this plan, and Catholics were urged to build the n e w " C a t h e d r a l of the West." I t was into this maelstrom of ideas and wild speculations t h a t F a t h e r J o h n Foley stepped w h e n he climbed off the train from Denver in September 1870. 24 Naturally it was expected t h a t he would center his activities in the metropolis of Corinne. Lots were already available depending upon his plans. Already the Methodist Episcopal c h u r c h could boast a fine n e w brick structure, the Episcopal church was planning enlargement to its adobe school a n d temporary church, and t h e Presbyterians were constructing theirs. Q u i t e naturally, U t a h ' s first Catholic c h u r c h would join the rest. But Foley did not agree, a n d by December he h a d moved to Salt Lake. Perhaps the diet of anti-Mormonism in Corinne was a little too rich for his blood. I n Salt Lake City he remodeled the little building on Second East into a chapel of sorts, a n d thereafter served Corinne as a mission. But the spirit of Corinne was yet unsinkable. N e w warehouses to store the freight to M o n t a n a were abuilding; the new lake steamer, not Brigham's " U n c e r t a i n R a i l r o a d , " would freight the ores from the south; a n d Congress was still debating the relative merits of places like H a r r i s ville for the railroad terminals. I n the eyes of the "Corinnethians" t h e future was still rosy. So, it is not surprising to find the ubiquitous F a t h e r Mesplie, on his way from C a m p Douglas to Fort H a l l in D e c e m b e r 1870, pausing in Corinne to announce t h a t the Catholics would soon erect a school there forty by one h u n d r e d feet and three stories high. 2 5 T h e school was never built, nor can we even discover the property on w h i c h it was to stand. F A T H E R PATRICK

WALSH

F a t h e r Foley remained until the end of M a y 1871. Perhaps he h a d been to Corinne to witness the m u c h heralded launching of t h e City of Corinne and saw it settle most ungraciously into the m u d of the river 24 Daily Utah Reporter ( C o r i n n e ) , September 23, 1870, a n n o u n c e d : "Rev. J. V Foley, of the Catholic church, from Denver, has been sent hither by his bishop, a n d arrived in the city last evening H e will at once take steps for the erection of a chapel a t the corner of Colorado a n d Sixth streets, on the lots formerly donated to the Catholics of this city for c h u r c h purposes. F a t h e r Foley will hold services next Sunday m o r n i n g in H a r r y Creighton's building, at which time he will make known his intentions a n d the means at his c o m m a n d to commence the erection of a church We welcome the reverend gentleman to our city, and wish h i m success in the i m p o r t a n t work he has undertaken. This will be the fourth church in^ Corinne, a n d the people are justly p r o u d of their a d v a n c e m e n t in b o t h religion a n d education." 25

Ibid., December 12, 1870.

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bank. 26 Was he wise enough to read this harbinger of the future? Perhaps not! Those who had come to know Corinne in the boisterous years of 1870 and 1871 could still envision Corinne, not Ogden, as gateway to the North and West. But it did not matter what Father Foley judged to be its future, for a decision made in Rome at the request of Bishop Machebeuf to be relieved of the responsibility for Utah resulted in Foley's recall. Archbishop Alemany of San Francisco had again accepted the responsibility, and with a few more priests now at his disposal, quickly moved toward the establishment of a parish in Utah. Father Patrick Walsh was sent, apparently with instructions to erect a church. Detraining in Corinne on a June day, he would have witnessed the bustle of the numerous freighting outfits departing or returning from the North, steamers upon the river, ore cars upon the sidings, the Alger Reduction Smelter waiting to smelt the ores, and the magnificent beauty of the Wasatch front to the east and the horizons of distant mountains to the south with green marsh lands to frame the picture. Corinne still in the bloom of youth, dreamed of greatness. Father Walsh could not help but be impressed. The community was small but ambitious and not afraid of the odds. The Catholics were waiting with a welcome and with plans. A meeting with some of the prominent citizens resulted in a committee appointed to solicit pledges for a church and school. Two days later they could report nearly $2,500 in pledges and talk of a church costing $20,000.27 On a recently published map of the city, even the location for the new Catholic church was indicated. 28 But in the judgment of others, Corinne must wait its turn. Walsh moved on to Salt Lake City and set plans in motion for a new church to replace the temporary chapel there. To Henry Monheim of Corinne went the contract for designing and constructing the edifice, and before the year was out Archbishop Alemany traveled to Utah to dedicate the new church to St. Mary Magdalene and personally assure the Catholics in Utah that the church had come to stay.29 The days of hesitation were over. 26

Corinne Daily Journal, M a y 24, 1871. Corinne Reporter, J u n e 20, 1871, describing the meeting also identifies the members of the committee: Ed Conway, General J. J. Heffernan, J o h n Kupfer, H e n r y M o n h e i m , T h o m a s Cassin, Lewis Silver, M . D e M a r , Charles D u c h i n e a u a n d J o h n Creighton. T h e S a t u r d a y issue of J u n e 24 of the Corinne Daily Journal takes note of the success of the drive with subscriptions a m o u n t i n g to $2,475. 28 Weekly Corinne Reporter, M a y 27, 1871. 29 Salt Lake Daily Herald, N o v e m b e r 26, 1871. 27

Catholic

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St. Mary Magdalene, first Catholic church in Utah, was located on the west side of Second East between South Temple and First South streets, approximately where Social Hall Avenue terminates. Erected in 1871 St. Mary Magdalene was abandoned in December of 1907 when construction on the Cathedral of the Madeleine had progressed sufficiently to allow the congregation to move into the basement of the new edifice.

â&#x20AC;˘B U T A H STATE H I S T O R I C A L SOCIETY

F A T H E R PATRICK

DOWLING

Now it was Corinne's turn. Possibly at the suggestion of F a t h e r Walsh, Archbishop Alemany paused in Corinne on Wednesday morning, November 29, 1871, offered Mass in the opera house a n d met with its Catholics. Apparently impressed, he returned to San Francisco and shortly thereafter appointed a priest for Corinne. 3 0 F a t h e r Patrick Dowling came in J a n u a r y as Corinne's first pastor. I t is not yet clear w h a t the extent of his parish was, b u t seemingly he was responsible for the little communities lying along the railroad, principally O g d e n a n d Kelton. Newspaper accounts speak of the "Catholic c h u r c h " in Corinne, but no site or building can be so identified, a n d we can only guess t h a t it might have been the little building acquired by Ed Conway behind the Central Hotel and known as "Fitch's schoolhouse." 31 But in spite of the hustle and bustle, the cracks were fast appearing in Corinne's foundations. I n August 1871 Brigham Young h a d broken 30 T h e exact day of Dowling's arrival has not yet been ascertained. Evidence indicates he came the first week of J a n u a r y 1872, a c c o m p a n i e d by a n already famous m a n , V i c a r General J a m e s Croke of the Archdiocese of San Francisco. T h e latter h a d once been nominated to be the first vicar bishop of the Vicariate of Marysville, a responsibility given instead to Bishop Eugene O'Connell. ( J o h n Bernard McGloin, California's First Archbishop [New York, 1966], 174.) Clearly Dowling h a d arrived by the first of F e b r u a r y as the February 3 issue of the Corinne Daily Reporter n o t e d : "Catholic C h u r c h services to-morrow a t 11 a.m. P. J. Dowling, pastor." 31 Dowling's presence is duly noted in the pages of the Corinne Daily Reporter t h r o u g h the spring of 1872, including w h a t is perhaps the first H i g h Mass to be sung in Corinne on Palm Sunday, M a r c h 24. Curiously, although no Catholic church building is known to have existed, the announcements frequently refer to "the Catholic c h u r c h , " leading us to suspect t h a t the " c h u r c h " so referred to was a building temporarily turned over to the use of the Catholics until such time as they should build. T h e fact t h a t it is given no saint's n a m e would seem to support this theory.

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ground for the Utah Northern Railroad, and though Corinne's merchants were trying hard to outdistance him with a "Utah, Idaho and Montana Railroad," the backing simply was not available. The handwriting was on the wall for those who could read it. Some of the other churches had already lost their pastors, and finally Dowling was reassigned in June 1872 to Salt Lake City to assist Walsh with the increasing demands from the many mining and smelter communities coming into their own.32 Occasionally Dowling returned to Corinne, and then in August for the last time, pausing to attend a farewell dinner and receive a handsome gift watch from a community which had grown to love him, he moved on to California. 33 Much like a postscript to the story, Father Mesplie, visiting in Corinne in February 1873 and perhaps at the urging of some of those who shared his dreams, turned his eyes elsewhere in one last effort to save Corinne. Possibly feeling that the railroad towns deserved a better break, he turned to the one man who was extremely conscious of their needs, Bishop O'Gormon of Nebraska, and urged with great emotion the creation of a Vicar-Apostolic of Utah and Montana. 34 Why Montana is not clear. But it was not be be. A year later Father Lawrence Scanlan came to Utah as replacement for Father Walsh, stayed to become the Vicar-Apostolic of Utah established in 1886, and in 1891 became the first bishop of the newly created Diocese of Salt Lake, embracing the Territory of Utah and the eastern two-thirds of the State of Nevada. One hundred and fifteen years after the dreams and hopes of Escalante, the Catholic church in Utah had finally come of age.

32 Dowling's pastorate was r a t h e r brief. O n J u n e 29 or 30 he was assigned to Salt L a k e City temporarily, either to assist Walsh or to relieve him for a few weeks. {Corinne Daily Reporter, J u n e 29, 1872.) T h e end of August he left U t a h for good. Corinne a t this time h a d a population of approximately 1,000, Salt L a k e City 19,000. 33 Corinne Daily Reporter, August 30, 3 1 , 1872. 34 Carper, Catholic Church in Nebraska, 224.

SAINTS, SINNERS AND SCRIBES •

•

A Look at the Mormons in Fiction BY N E A L L A M B E R T

in mind, I have been reading and rereading a number of Mormon stories and novels. Of course, I long ago gave up the idea of reading every story and novel about the Saints. That is a task of years, not months. But as I think back over my selected samplings of the last few months, one salient fact impresses itself deeper and deeper in my mind: as a subject for significant, serious fiction, Mormons and Mormonism offer almost insurmountable literary difficulties. This idea is of course not new, but the causes which lie behind it are often forgotten. Let me suggest to you what I see as the main difficulties inherent in the subject. In the first place (as the bulk of Mormon fiction proves), the popular notions about what a Mormon is has not lent itself to great literature. Polygamy, secret rites, blood atonement, priestly orders â&#x20AC;&#x201D; all such have made the Mormon slip easily into a stereotype for slick fiction and gross comedy. In the second place, the fantastic nature of Mormon history and the Mormon's account of his own personal experience form terrible difficulties. Any writer who tries to render the epic of the Mormon movement must, in a sense, be able to redo in fiction what God has already done in history; and that is pretty heavy competition for any writer. But further (and this may be most difficult of all) the writer must also be able to redo what God has done in individual hearts; and as all will agree, the elusive, private, and subjective nature of the religious experience makes it one of the most difficult to grasp with words and render for public observation. These then are the difficulties as I see them. But let us look at the literature itself, for it is, of course, the best evidence of the validity of these notions. ITH THIS PAPER

Just how easily Mormons have fallen into stereotyped subjects is evidenced in the popular imagination's view of Mormons as literary comics and villains. Indeed for the first hundred years of Mormon history this was almost the only view. The Saints had hardly got the dust of migration out of their quilts and blankets before people back East were reading such pieces as this one from Harper's Weekly called "My Wife's Tempter." 1 A suspicious husband overhears his wife talking to a mysterious friend. Utah.

Dr. Lambert is an assistant professor of English at Brigham Young University, Provo, 1

.795-96.

Fitz-James O'Brian, "My Wife's Tempter," Harper's Weekly, I (December 12, 1857),

Mormons in Fiction

I threw myself flat on the grass, and so glided silently into the copse until I was completely within ear-shot. This was what I heard. My wife was sobbing. "So soon — SO' soon-— oh! Hammond, give me a little time." "I can not, Elsie. My chief orders me to join him. You must prepare to accompany me . . . ." "Ah! my husband, my husband!" sobbed the unhappy woman. "You have no husband, woman," cried Brake, harshly. "I promised Dayton not to speak to you as long as you were his wife, but the vow was annuled before it was made. Your husband in God yet awaits you. You will yet be blessed with the true spouse."

After this, Elsie leaves. Now, recognizing that the villain is at last alone, the husband approaches the unsuspecting seducer: I rose and stepped silently into- the open space in which he stood. His back was toward me. His arms were lifted high over his head with an exultant gesture, and I could see his profile as it slightly turned toward me, illuminated with a smile of scornful triumph.

The husband grabs the villain and threatens him with his life until finally the stranger confesses, "I am a Mormon." After this revelation the story concludes on a tearful note with the husband putting his wife out of the house: "This is no longer your home. You have deceived me. You are a Mormon. I know all. You have become a convert to that apostle of Hell, Brigham Young, and you can not live with me. I love you still, Elsie, dearly — but — you must go and live with your father . . . ." I live in the same village with my wife, and yet am a widower. She is very penitent, they say; yet I can not bring myself to believe that any one who has allowed the Mormon poison to enter their veins can ever be cured. People say that we will come together again, but I know better. Mine is not the first hearth that Mormonism has rendered desolate.

There were indeed many desolate literary hearths in these years. Not only Gentile but Mormon hearths as well. And when the Mormon antagonist was not sly, dark, and seductive, he was usually fat, boorish, and uncouth. Consider for instance this polygamous husband, Elder Bungrod, from an Overland Monthly story of 1895.2 He was "squat bodied, sluggish, gross. . . . [He] had a flat toad-like look as he sat lazily drooping forward with elbows on his knees and occasionally turning a pair of small reddish eyes about the landscape." When he saw his wives shirking at their chores, "a dark scowl wrinkled his grizzled animal face, and he got up and made his way toward the house, pouting as he went and crushing the clods and potato vines under his heavily booted feet." 2

Alvah Milton Kerr, "American Dead Sea Fruit," The Overland Monthly, XXV (February, 1895),189-95.

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As always in these stories there is a fair and as-yet-unsullied maiden, either a new or a prospective wife who has not yet been won over. (The lecherous advances of the Mormon and hairbreadth escape of the heroine form the traditional climaxes of the formula Mormon novel.) In this case, Elder Bungrod hungrily approaches his new wife: "Don't be skeered, little un; don't yeh be skeered; and nobody won't hurt yeh," said the Elder, advancing, arms extended out with a maudlin expression of countenance. The young girl flattened herself against the wall with a look of dismay and horror in her eyes, and when his hands touched her she cried out wildly, and, slipping from him, flew with swift feet out the door and down into the fields. With a stifled curse, Bungrod kicked the chairs out of his way and tramped after her. His heavy face had a greenish, congested cast, and his small eyes looked red and evil.

In this story the escape consists of a night long boat chase the length of the Great Salt Lake, and the young heroine is saved from the evils and immorality of Mormonism by the chivalric gentleman of the railroad construction camp at Corinne. This stereotype of pursued and pursuer has changed very little over the years. As late as the 1930's the same formula was being worked again and again. Listen for instance to what happens when a Mormon guardian tells his fair young charge about their coming wedding: "What's your first name?" "Doris," said the girl wonderingly. . . . "I told them not to worry none. That you wasn't to become a charge on the town. I told him all about it and made all the arrangements." "What arrangements? What for?" demanded Doris sharply. "To take you to the Endowment House next Monday. This is Wednesday. You've got lots o' time. I'm going to marry you." "You. . .! You. . .! You unspeakable beast. . .!" Words failed her. She was conscious of Lecky reaching out for her; of his failing to seize her because she pushed a heavy table in front of him. Then she fled to her room and slammed the door on her pursuer. "I kin wait. . ." he said and laughed raucously. She could hear his hateful voice through the heavy door chuckling as though at a good joke. "I kin wait. . . An' you're worth waitin fer. I'll tame you yit. . . ." The heavy front door of the house slammed noisily and Doris Upchurch sank down in silent terror on her bed. 3

This was written in 1933. Of course, the arch villains of the stereotype are Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. Their representation runs the full spectrum from 3

George B. Rodney, The Mormon Trail (New York, 1933), 149.

Mormons in Fiction

drunken bumkin to mysterious seducer. One poor fictional convert has this introduction to his prophet: The gait of this person was heavy and slouching, his hands were large and thick, his eyes grey and unsteady in their gaze, and his face and general physiognomy coarse and unmeaning. He wore a grey coat, with unbrushed boots, and a white hat enveloped with a piece of black crepe. O n one of his fingers was a massive gold ring, the only thing which seemed to distinguish him particularly from many of the rough backwoodsmen whom I had already met with. To my utter surprise, and, I must add, to my extreme disappointment, Elder Smart made known to us that this individual was none other than the great prophet, Joseph Smith.

Later on, the same person discovers Joseph alone in the woods: I saw Joseph Smith himself lying alone on the grass, with a whiskey bottle by his side, and decidedly far gone in a state of intoxication. He was talking and laughing, and evidently congratulating himself, in a soliloquy on the success of his devices. . . . "The saints are a pack of fools; but I am a prophet, a profitable prophet. . . . I am a greater man than Moses, hurrah, hip, hip, hip, hurrah." 4

At the other end of the spectrum is the dark villain who leads his initiates into the Pavillion of Vision or Tabernacle of Inspiration where scenes such as the following take place: There was a slight motion of the entranced form, the hanging canopy opened, and a golden ray fell upon and illuminated the lips of the Prophet. A smile played over his hitherto moveless features, the lips parted, and in a low, soft voice he spoke: "And the spirit said, Lo! and as I looked, the thick clouds parted, and before me ran the beautiful river of life. . . . Come! the spirit and the Bride say come. . . . " A rustle of the white robe, the gleam of a white foot, the glance of white arms, and she sank on her knees by his side, murmuring, "My Prophet and my Lord." And the thick folds of the drapery, like enfolding noiseless night, fell with mute darkness about them. 5

Of course no catalogue of Mormon villains would be complete without the Danites â&#x20AC;&#x201D; that fictional band of enforcers who sees that the wishes of the Priesthood, or the Holy Four, or some bishop, or Brigham (depending on which piece you are reading) are carried out. Hundreds of victims are strewn through the pages of Mormon fiction, wayward members and antagonistic non-members alike who were either "bloodatoned" by such lone Danites as Bill Hickman and Porter Rockwell or who were "saved" by some local band. 4

Robert Richards, The California Crusoe; or, The Lost Treasure Found. A Tale of Mormonism (New York, 1854), 84. s Albert Gallatin Riddle, The Portrait; A Romance of the Cuyahoga Valley (Boston, 1874), 98.

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One of the most famous treatments, and at the same time one that is true to the type, is that of Arthur Conan Doyle's in A Study in Scarlet: Its invisibility, and the mystery which was attached to it, made this organization doubly terrible. It apeared to- be omniscient and omnipotent, and yet was neither seen nor heard. The man who held out against the Church vanished away, and none knew whither he had gone or what had befallen him. His wife and his children awaited him at home, but no father ever returned to tell them how he had fared at the hands of his secret judges. A rash word or a hasty act was followed by annihilation, and yet none knew what the nature might be of this terrible power which was suspended over them. No wonder that men went about in fear and trembling, and that even in the heart of the wilderness they dared not whisper the doubts which oppressed them. 6

Many a young heroine has fled with her Gentile rescuer while the Danites were in hot pursuit. But this band often did more in the story than act as priesthood police force. Again I refer to our Sherlock Holmes story. At first this vague and terrible power was exercised only upon the recalcitrants who, having embraced the Mormon faith, wished afterwards to pervert or to abandon it. Soon, however, it took a wider range. The supply of adult women was running short, and polygamy without a female population on which to draw was a barren doctrine indeed. Strange rumours began to be bandied about â&#x20AC;&#x201D; rumours of murdered immigrants and rifled camps in regions where Indians had never been seen. Fresh women appeared in the harems of the Elders â&#x20AC;&#x201D; women who pined and wept, and bore upon their faces the traces of an unextinguishable horror. Belated wanderers upon the mountains spoke of gangs of armed men, masked, stealthy, and noiseless, who flitted by them in the darkness. These tales and rumours took substance and shape, and were corroborated and recorroborated, until they resolved themselves into a definite name. To this day, in the lonely ranches of the West, the name of the Danite Band, or the Avenging Angels, is a sinister and an ill-omened one. 7

Certain events in Mormon history have given writers ample opportunity to show the Saints as literary villains. The Utah War and particularly the Mountain Meadows Massacre have fit in well with this stereotype. Jack London, for instance in his account of the Fancher train, portrays the Mormons as unwilling even to help a dying baby. The boy narrator reports the mother's pleas: "It may save the baby's life," she said. "And they've got cow's milk. I saw fresh cows with my own eyes. Go on, please, Laban. It won't hurt you to try. They can only refuse. But they won't. Tell them it's for a 6 7

A[rthur] Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet (Garden City, New York, 1930), 96-97. Ibid., 97.

Mormons in Fiction

baby, a wee little baby. Mormon women have mother's hearts. They couldn't refuse a cup of milk for a wee little baby." And Laban tried. But as he told father afterward, he did not get to see any Mormon women. He saw only the Mormon men, who turned him away.8

Even as late as 1958 the fictional leader of the attack on the Fancher train is a typical uncomplicated and scar-faced villain in close contact with Brigham: "Here it is, Josh — I want those redskins in a fighting frame of mind! And so I got to send them a man they know is a real war chief! That's you!" Brigham pointed his finger at Josh and smiled confidently into the man's damaged face. . . . Josh's eyes flared in fierce agreement, his wolf grin spread his tangled beard. Brigham continued, "Port tells me you're the most famous white warrior amongst the tribes •— that they've even got a name for you — what is it now?" Josh was immensely gratified at how his notoriety had reached Brigham's ears. "Takuskanskan," he said, "means — sort of thunder god of battle." Brigham's strong, square hand came down hard on his desk, emphasizing his point. "That's exactly what I mean, Josh!" 9

But while many writers have made much of the Mormon as literary villain others have exploited the popular image of the Saints for comic material of the first rank. William Comstock, Bill Nye, Artemus Ward, and almost everyone associated with frontier humor has had many laughs from what has become stock Mormon material: Destroying Angels, the Book of Mormon, missionaries, and especially polygamy. Stories about the size of a Mormon's bed or his blankets, his nursery or his house have been standard. Certainly in this treatment of Mormons, no one achieved greater heights than Mark Twain. He tells how, on his journey to Salt Lake, he liked to sit and listen to these Gentiles talk about polygamy; and how some portly old frog of an elder, or a bishop, marries a girl — likes her, marries her s i s ter — likes her, marries another sister — likes her, takes another — likes her, marries her mother — likes her, marries her father, grandfather, great grandfather, and then comes back hungry and asks for more. 10

And again: Our stay in Salt Lake City amounted to only two days, and therefore we had no time to make the customary inquisition into the workings of polygamy and get up the usual statistics and deductions preparatory to calling the attention of the nation at large once more to the matter. I had 8

Jack L o n d o n , The Star Rover (New York, 1915), 129. Amelia Bean, The Fancher Train ( G a r d e n City, New York, 1 9 5 8 ) , 122. 10 M a r k Twain, Roughing It (New York, 1 9 5 9 ) , 102.

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the will to do it. With the gushing self-sufficiency of youth I was feverish to plunge in headlong and achieve a great reform here â&#x20AC;&#x201D; until I saw the Mormon women. Then I was touched. My heart was wiser than my head. It warmed toward these poor, ungainly, and pathetically "homely" creatures, and as I turned to hide the generous moisture in my eyes, I said, "No â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the man that marries one of them had done an act of Christian charity which entitles him to the kindly applause of mankind, not their harsh censure â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and the man that marries sixty of them has done a deed of open-handed generosity so sublime that the nations should stand uncovered in his presence and worship in silence." "

A second reading of this and much of Mark Twain's humor about the Mormons shows an unusual perceptiveness and an unusual point of view. For he not only makes delightful use of Mormon materials, he places his own fictional personae, the I, the Mark Twain of Roughing It, in a position which suggests that the common culture of the East had a false notion of the Mormons. In this last example, for instance, the basic attitude of the narrator is that of the genteel easterner. That is, when he first comes to Utah he is full of naive enthusiasm and ready to "get up the usual statistics . . . to rush headlong . . . to achieve a great reform." But the actual experience of seeing the Mormons deflates this enthusiasm for reform even though that actual experience is given a comic turn. But even this humorous conclusion suggests that there is a genuine difference between the popular idea of the Mormon and the Saint himself. This same kind of complexity infuses the bishop of the Gila Valley in one of Owen Wister's stories. The man is ultimately a villain who rules the valley as a benevolent despot, flaunting the government, law, and the courts with a will. But he is saved from the stereotype by a new dimension which Wister pointedly gives him. Listen for instance to this brief sermon which Wister's narrator hears the bishop give : "Don't empty your swill in the door-yard, but feed it to your hogs" he was saying; and any one who knows how plainly a man is revealed in his voice could have felt instantly as I did, that here was undoubtedly a leader of men. "Rotten meat, rotten corn, spoiled milk, the truck that thoughtless folks throw away should be used. Their usefulness has not ceased because they're rotten. That's the error of the ignorant, who' know not that nothing is meant to be wasted in this world. The ignorant stay poor because they break the law of the Lord. Waste not, want not. . . . Swill is bad for us, but it is good for swine. Waste it by the threshold it becomes deadly, and a curse falls upon the house. The mother and children are sick because she has broken a law of the Lord. Do> not let me see this sin when I come among you in the valley. Fifty yards behind each house, with clean air 11

Ibid., 101.

Mormons in Fiction

between, let m e see the well-fed swine receiving each day, as was i n t e n d e d , t h e g a r b a g e left by m a n . A n d let m e see flowers in t h e door-yard, a n d stout, blooming children. W e will sing the twenty-ninth h y m n . " 12

Anyone familiar with Mormon practice will recognize the combination of spiritual authority and practical advice that are sometimes associated with actual Mormon preaching. Indeed the dominant notion associated with Wister's bishop is not his nine wives and fifty-nine children, true as such things are to the stereotype. Instead Wister focuses on the interesting and compelling personality of the man himself. The interesting thing here is that both Mark Twain and Owen Wister were writing after seeing Mormons in the flesh. They were in a sense responding to human beings and not to a stereotype. It is this sense of the human beings involved that has come more and more to the front in recent times. Trying to avoid the literary morasses and pitfalls into which their predecessors have fallen, more and more writers have turned to particular Mormon families and people. And there is much to commend in the vividness and detail of books like Sam Taylor's Family Kingdom. But while such books may be true to the historical episode they portray, there still remains the fascinating and fantastic whole history which begins on a hill in frontier New York and rolls and builds with Biblical intensity through Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, and finally to the sagebrush and rim-rock of the Great Basin; there is still the epic zeal that gave such magnificent force to a whole people; there is still the compelling charisma of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. To render any of this is indeed a tantalizing literary challenge. And with varying degrees of success, several scribes have tried it. Perhaps the most noted attempt to grasp and render this whole grand sweep is Vardis Fisher's Children of God: An American Epic. As the subtitle suggests, Fisher has taken the first seven decades of the Mormon church as his subject: from the visions and revelations of the boy Joseph Smith through the era of Brigham Young and down finally to the 1880's and the days of the Manifesto. Many have hailed the book as one of the best treatments yet of these remarkable years. But while there is much about the book that is to be praised, there are, I think, some serious fictional problems. Bernard DeVoto has already warned writers away from this enticing material because of the problems involved. He called his own Mormon 12

Owen Wister, "A Pilgrim on the Gila," Red Men and White (New York, 1928), 280-81.

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novel, "The best book I am never going to write." 13 Back in 1938 he said of his ambitions, I will c o n t e n t myself with less aspiring failures, leaving to m o r e stubborn m e n the crash t h a t any m a n must m a k e w h o tries to* compose fiction out of Joseph Smith, a n d the M o r m o n people. . . . W h a t scenes could any novelist invent t h a t would not be dim, farcical, a n d grotesque beside the daily fare of any m a n w h o lived in N a u v o o , w h e r e Joseph walked a r m in a r m w i t h principalities a n d powers? W h a t d r a m a could any merely m o r t a l story-teller construct t h a t would n o t be a n idle nursery play for children, c o m p a r e d to the one t h a t is w r i t t e n in o u r o w n annals, whose first c h a p t e r opens on the Hill C u m o r a h with a n e w Bible engraved on sheets of gold? 14

DeVoto's point is well taken; a point that we can perhaps better appreciate if we try to imagine what kind of work the novel would have to be that would adequately render the migration of Biblical Israel with its Moses, its Joshua, its pillar of fire, its Sinai, and its revelation of universal forces. The epic proportion of the Mormon story itself is without a doubt one of the most formidable problems for any writer who treats that story directly. How, for instance, could one ever render in fiction the experience of confrontation with God. It seems to me that any direct attempt cannot help but fail. Any such effort must run the danger of sounding like a Cecil B. deMille script with fade-ins, fade-outs, up-music, and downmusic. This is one of the problems of Fisher's Children of God: In spite of the sincerity of the author's effort I cannot shake off the feeling that the author-director is sometimes standing just offstage giving cues to the light man and the musicians. One of the obvious difficulties in rendering any religious experience is the fact that such an experience is by its very nature extraordinary, outside the pale of usual human experience. But the writer sometimes forgets this fact, so that his portrayals of the religious experience are neither convincing nor adequate as such. Not only must the writer keep this fact in his mind but he must make it a part of his style of writing. Consider for instance, this sentence from Children of God: "In one of these nights, after an hour of anguished prayer, he fell asleep and saw a vision." 15 Certainly no one would take issue with the sequence of events here, but what is disturbing is Fisher's manner in treating these events: ". . . he fell asleep and saw a vision." The very style of the passage equates 13

Bernard DeVoto, "Easy Chair," Harpers Magazine, CLXXVII (October, 1938), 560. Ibid. 15 Vardis Fisher, Children of God: An American Epic (New York, 1939), 15.

Mormons in Fiction

the two events, and the fact of the vision becomes no more or no less important than the daily physical function of going to sleep. If this were the only instance of its kind, we too might simply nod and go on. But such stylistic disproportions are a persistent problem in too much of the writing about the Mormons. But there is another and perhaps a more important dimension to this problem that the modern writer must consider: Literature, by its very nature deals in experiences that have significance for all men. But Mormons are a self-proclaimed peculiar people. Thus on the one hand we have an art form striving for universals, while on the other hand we have a religion and a people who are characterized by their differences from the rest of mankind. The tendency has been for the differences to get in the way of the universals, for the sensational to crowd out the significant. Several writers have avoided this literary problem by coming away from the era of polygamy and persecutions and setting their novels closer to modern times. They have chosen to deal with the difficulties of Mormons of the third and fourth generations. These writers' concern is with close-mindedness and hypocritical practice, with institutionalized notions that have become separated from basic human needs. One of the best of these is Blanche Cannon's Nothing Ever Happens Sunday Morning. One chapter of this novel tells of the attachment of the smalltown girl to a day laborer who has a mysterious background and who reads Whitman, Milton, and Wordsworth. These known qualities are quite disturbing to the ladies of the Relief Society quilting bee. But the young girl accepts the man for what he is, and in so doing tries to reconcile him to her culture. "Yes. Jonathan, in a town like this people think there's something wrong if you don't go to church. And if they think there's something wrong they don't want to have you here. . . ." "I see. You've heard somebody talking." "It's not true," she said in a choked voice. "I know it's not true â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the thing they say about you. But they believe it. Can't you see, Jonathan, if you'll go to church a few times, it won't matter what books you read, or even what you think in your own mind? They wouldn't understand about those things, anyway. But if they saw you at church they'd forget what they believed about you, and soon they'd think you were just like everybody else." "God forbid!" 16 16

Blanche Cannon, Nothing Ever Happens Sunday Morning (New York, 1948), 84.

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But while these are interesting human problems they are not peculiar to Mormon culture nor to small towns in Utah. They are not "Mormon" problems as such. But there still lies before us the problem of writing about the historical Mormon; the problem of getting at universals through the clutter of peculiarities. There have been, I think, at least two noteworthy achievements in this regard which may suggest for us an answer to our problem. These are Maurine Whipple's Giant Joshua, and Virginia Sorensen's A Little Lower Than the Angels. Either novel would serve us well, but let us look today at a few passages from the latter book. Consider for instance the thoughts the central figure, Mercy Baker, has as she contemplates the new doctrine of polygamy, For Joseph, spiritual perhaps. Perhaps! But to these other men with their hard sunburned faces and their blunt manly desires, no longer enamored of the spreading bodies of their wives, how would it be for them? She faced it, flinching. Simon, suddenly in the night he could be different from what he was all day, an earth-colored man in an earth-colored field, clucking to his horses, or urging his oxen. But in the night a creature reaching and desiring. They were all like that, she knew it deeply. And it was something that belonged to you alone, knowing so much of one man and saying to yourself at meeting or during a polka or anywhere, looking at him: "He is mine and I know him as nobody else knows him." 17

This is, it seems to me, getting at polygamy not in terms of a fascinating peculiarity but in terms of a basic and fundamental human problem: the nature of love. This is not so much a judgment of polygamy as it is a rendering of it in terms of basic human needs. Again the Mormon notion of continuing life begins to take on a genuine human echo as Mercy's own family takes on a symbolic significance in their quiet evenings together. It was pure peace, pure. It was a peace distilled from one blood. Nowhere else in the world was there a similar peace or a purer one. It had to be made of those who belonged together through the firm right of blood and bones. First the father and mother, brought together by love and the highest desire, and then the children, one by one taking their places, one by one as the years passed filling another and another chair, taking their places in the cradles and trundles and cots, taking their places one by one at the table. In every child the father and mother were together again, every child was a seal on them. The Gospel was clear in its blessing upon the family. The first family was God's, and it had grown like this, one by one, until it covered the world, and those who had gone home to God filled His world, Kolob, the Great Star. Each man, then, who achieved glory through this endless 17

Virginia Sorensen, A Little

Lower

Than

the Angels

(New York, 1 9 4 2 ) , 113â&#x20AC;&#x201D;14.

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process of growing in his children was God over those children, and would chastise them and bless them worlds without end. 18

But perhaps the most remarkable thing about Virginia Sorensen's book is her ability to render, to explore, and to give vital form to the continuing tension between the practical facts of life and the ideal notions of religion, between this world and the other world. For this is, after all, one of the central problems of religion. The account of Mercy's baptism is a good example. As she wades into the cold Mississippi, her mind is shifting rapidly from memories of her dead father, to the importance of her act, and back to the drab scene around her: She floundered on lifting her feet quickly, one after the other, and spreading her legs wildly, like a duck in the mud, to seek firmer hold. She saw that the carefully whitened clothes were muddied and ugly, and she felt ridiculous, floundering through the water. She could hear Father laughing over that old story â&#x20AC;&#x201D; "And they went out on the river because this boy came running into town to tell how there were a flock of ghosts out behind the dam, and when they got there, it was a bunch of Mormons baptizing each other in their night-shirts!" She tried to catch hold of the idea, the depth of idea that declared a man was purified and dedicated by the holy water upon his flesh. But this muddy water with a fish-smell in it sullied the idea and it escaped her while she struggled to hold it. When she came up to Joseph she found the footing firm where he stood, she could feel the ridges of hard sand through her stockings. "If you don't keep moving," he said, "you sink clear in." 19

The success of this passage lies not in the subject matter alone, but in the way that the subject matter is rendered. For the floundering in the water finally becomes a symbol of Mercy's own floundering in her efforts to find the zealous dedication that she senses all around. And her final reaching for the prophet as an act of attempted faith is subverted by the discovery that even the ground on which he stands, though it seems firm, is not sure. It is such treatments as this that make the book the success that it is. But A Little Lower Than the Angels was published in 1942. That was twenty-five years ago. What about the years since? What about the years ahead? Why hasn't more been written like this or even better? And where is our "Great Mormon Novel," that so many call for? The main reason for this dearth of quality in Mormon fiction lies first of all, as I have tried to point out, in the material itself. But there is another 18 19

Ibid., 124-25. Ibid., 58-59.

Utah Historical

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pressing reason for the short list of good fiction, and that is the quality of the talent that the writer brings to this material. If there is within the Mormon experience an adequate and compelling definition of man, if there are underneath Mormonism's peculiar institutions fundamental human values, then there is the possibility that some writer may, through his genius, discover some way of freeing these from the popular notions in which they are bound. One could not blame any writer for leaving this stuff for less troublesome material. But whoever it is that finally makes great books out of the Mormon experience, he will have to be a writer of great stature. Perhaps, as Blanche Cannon so aptly suggested, what it will take is a Hawthorne from Heber or a Faulkner from Fillmore. No one less can do the job.

"Well, it'd be no news to me. I know Mormons. I've seen their women's strange love an' patience an' sacrifice an' silence an' what I call madness for their idea of God. An' over against that I've seen the tricks of the men. They work hand in hand, all together, an' in the dark. No man can hold out against them, unless he takes to packin' guns. For Mormons are slow to kill. That's the only good I ever seen in their religion. Venters, take this from me, these Mormons ain't just right in their minds. Else could a Mormon marry one woman when he already had a wife, an' call it duty?" [Riders of the Purple Sage, by Zane Grey [New York: Grosset &Dunlap])

The Episcopal Church in Utah: SEVEN BISHOPS AND ONE HUNDRED YEARS BY JAMES W. BELESS, JR.

T M H E EPISCOPAL CHURCH prides itself on its involvement in the community. The past one hundred-year history of the church in Utah is local proof positive of that community interest and participation. The Episcopal church is, as its name implies, a religious body led and administered by bishops. The church's story in Utah, thus, for convenience, may be considered by examining the events and personalities involved during each of the seven consecutive episcopates with jurisdiction over the state since 1867. Let us now examine that history by looking at the characters both clergy and lay who have played major roles, retelling the salient events in the life of the church, and comparing the part the church has played in the community as it has evolved over the past one hundred years. Mr. Beless, practicing attorney in Salt Lake City, is chancellor and chairman of Council of Advice, Episcopal District of Utah and senior warden of All Saints Episcopal Church. Mr. Robert McCrea, of the Utah Department of Development Services, copied the photographs of the Bishops of Utah, on display in St. Mark's Cathedral.

Utah Historical BISHOP DANIEL SYLVESTER T U T T L E ,

Quarterly

1867-1886

The history of the Episcopal church in Utah began with Daniel Sylvester Tuttle, first Bishop of Montana, with jurisdiction over Idaho and Utah. This strong man's policies and works set the pattern and have been the guiding star for his successors. Those following him probably found themselves in his shadow, and his sagas, both true and apocryphal, made a legendary figure of the bishop. Bishop Tuttle in his Reminiscences 1 is himself the best chronicler of his nineteen years in Utah. This autobiography has preserved the bishop's letters and sets forth a fresh, on-the-spot impression of the early Utah scene. The Bishop Tuttle story is fairly familiar, 2 but the basic facts of his episcopate in Utah bear retelling to place him and his successors in context. Bishop Tuttle was thirty years old when he was consecrated in Trinity Church at the head of Wall Street in New York City on May 1, 1867. Four days later the first Episcopal service was held in Independence Hall in Salt Lake City by the Reverend Messrs. George W. Foote and Thomas W. Haskins, the bishop's trail-breaking missionaries. The bishop arrived in Salt Lake City two months later to find the church organized around a heterogeneous congregation with three women the only confirmed Episcopalians; a mission committee which included a Roman Catholic, a Methodist, and an apostate Morman; a thriving Sunday school inherited from the Congregationalist chaplain at Camp Douglas; and a newly opened grammar school. A class of eleven awaited the bishop's confirmation. The bishop met with Brigham Young in the latter's office, and Tuttle reported that he was civilly treated, but not asked to call again. 3 From the very beginning the policy of the Episcopal church in relation to the Mormons was to neither antagonize nor directly assault Mormon theology or practice, but to plant and maintain a positive good. It sought to win the judgment, the conscience, the affection, the respect and allegiance of men, whether Gentiles, apostate Mormon, or Mormon, by putting into competition with 1

Daniel S. Tuttle, Reminiscences of a Missionary Bishop (New York, 1906). James W. Beless, Jr., "Daniel S. Tuttle, Missionary Bishop of Utah," Utah Historical Quarterly, XXVII (October, 1959), 358-78; James Thayer Addison, History of the Episcopal Church in the United States, 1789-1931 (New York, 1951), 231-34; Charles F. Rehkopf, "The Episcopate of Bishop Tuttle," Missouri Historical Society Bulletin, XVIII (April, 1962), 207-30; Raymond W. Albright, A History of the Protestant Episcopal Church (New York, 1964), 259-60; John Linton Struble, "The People's Bishop," Montana, the Magazine of Western History, VI (Winter, 1956), 20-28. s Tuttle, Reminiscences, 114. 2

Episcopal Church in Utah

Mormon doctrine and practices the faith and practice of the Church, saying not a word against the Mormons. 4

Bishop Tuttle left Salt Lake City on July 15, 1867, to spend the next two years in Virginia City, Montana, leaving the work in Utah in charge of Messrs. Foote and Haskins. He returned in November 1869 with his family and remained in charge of the church's work in Utah and Idaho until August of 1886. Construction of St. Mark's Cathedral began in 1870, and on September 3, 1871, services were held in the completed church. Church of the Good Shepherd at Ogden was completed and consecrated on February 6, 1875. Actually the first non-Mormon church building in Utah was Church of the Good Samaritan at Corinne, an adobe building completed in 1869 at a cost of $2,500 under the direction of the Reverend George Foote. Supplementing the church's religious life and building program, three principal contributions in community action and service marked Bishop Tuttle's episcopate; namely, the inception of a whole system of grammar schools, the beginning of St. Mark's Hospital, and the establishment of two cemeteries. Immediately upon their arrival in Salt Lake City, Messrs. Foote and Haskins were met with demands by both non-Mormons and Mormons for a grammar school. The two clergymen opened St. Mark's School in a rented adobe building located on the east side of Main Street between Second and Third South streets. 5 The school's curriculum was the basic "three-R's," taught by the clergy and several women volunteers in a free atmosphere that attracted students from the entire community. This early day Episcopal "Operation Headstart" was an immediate success, and it expanded within two years into two rented storerooms, then into Independence Hall, and finally in 1873 into its own frame building at about 141 East First South. As new clergy arrived in Utah, the first task of each was to start a school. The Reverend J. L. Gillogly opened the School of the Good Shepherd at Ogden in 1870 and St. Paul's School, Plain City, in 1873. The Reverend W. H. Stoy began teaching at St. John's School, Logan, in 1873. Grammar schools were conducted for short periods at Corinne and Layton. A day school for girls began operations in the basement of St. Mark's Cathedral in 1871. This merged into Rowland Hall at the present site ten years later. The first principal of Rowland Hall, Miss Lucia M. Marsh, reported in the catalogue of the school that 84 students 4 5

Ibid., 368. Ibid., 371.

Utah Historical

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were in attendance in 1881. 6 Bishop Tuttle reported in 1886 that 763 students attended Episcopal schools in Utah and that during the prior 19 years 3,186 boys and girls had attended St. Mark's School and Rowland Hall. Until the opening of mines in the canyons near Salt Lake City, the Mormon bishops' aid sufficed to care for the poor and the sick. The doctors in the valley were associated with Camp Douglas, but there were no facilities for care of the injured and homeless miners and railroad workers. In 1871 the Reverend R. M. Kirby succeeded George Foote as rector of St. Mark's Cathedral. The following year Kirby and two of his vestrymen, Major Edmund Wilkes, a mine superintendent, and Dr. John F. Hamilton, a former post surgeon, met with Bishop Tuttle and prepared to open St. Mark's Hospital, the first institution of its kind between Denver and San Francisco. A small adobe building on the northeast corner of Fifth East and Fourth South streets was first used. The demand for hospital services increased, and mine operators formed an early day "Medicare" program, to which the Emma and Miller Mining companies subscribed, and the individual miners contributed $1.00 each month to entitle them to full hospital care, such as was available. 7 During its first seven years, 2,308 patients received hospital care. The hospital moved to the northwest corner of Fifth East and Third South. This property was purchased for $4,500, and the institution was incorporated on June 4, 1879. Mr. Kirby was superintendent and treasurer until 1881, when he was succeeded by the Reverend Charles M. Armstrong, who served until 1889. Dr. Hamilton was the medical director and for a while chief of staff of one other doctor. Dr. Hamilton died in 1892, and his funeral was held at the hospital. In 1893 the hospital moved to its present location on Second West and Eighth North streets. In his Reminiscences Bishop Tuttle sharply criticized Mormon cemeteries, saying that they were forlorn places without trees, grass, or care; and as an answer Mount Olivet Cemetery was established in Salt Lake City through the initiative of the Episcopalians. In 1877 George E. Whitney, attorney and junior warden at St. Mark's Cathedral, induced the Secretary of War to grant by Act of Congress twenty acres of land 6 Bishop L e o n a r d , ed., The Episcopal Annual History and Information Book (Salt Lake City, 1901). This was a publication of short duration, which is a compilation of the Bishop of U t a h ' s various reports. T h e statistics used t h r o u g h this article were obtained from the reports of the Bishops of U t a h a n d are located in the office of the Episcopal Bishop of U t a h , Salt L a k e City. Some of these reports were published u n d e r various titles; others are in m a n u s c r i p t form. T h e r e is no uniformity of title in the reports. 7 Tuttle, Reminiscences, 396.

Episcopal Church in Utah

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from the reservation at Camp Douglas for cemetery purposes, together with water rights from Red Butte Canyon. The bishop was responsible for the provisions in the charter of the cemetery for perpetual care and for continued control by the non-Mormon churches of Utah. He commented: "Our example shamed the Mormons into taking better care of their own ground." 8 Burials were made at Mount Olivet even before the government's grant, as Bishop Tuttle reported that Emily Pearsall, an Episcopal missionary who had worked in Utah for two years, was buried there in 1872.9 In 1876 the Reverend Mr. Gillogly induced the Ogden City Council to grant two acres east of the Ogden City Cemetery for use by the Episcopalians. Mr. Gillogly reported in his diary that the existing cemetery was without fence or care. The vestry of Church of the Good Shepherd assumed responsibility for the new cemetery by appropriating church funds for fencing, planting trees, and improving the ground. Mr. Gillogly died in 1881 and was buried there. In 1886 Bishop Tuttle was forty-nine years old. He then accepted a call as Bishop of Missouri, commenting that a missionary bishop in the Ibid., 350. "Ibid., 272.

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mountains should be no older than he was then. He left Utah in his official capacity as bishop, but he was responsible for the Utah work until his successor, Abiel Leonard, was elected in January of 1888. 1888-1903 The Right Reverend Abiel Leonard was thirty-nine years old when he was consecrated Missionary Bishop of Utah. He was a Missourian, a big man, both physically and spiritually, and he followed well in the footsteps of Bishop Tuttle. His principal accomplishments were in establishing new missions and building churches, particularly in the mining communities, together with the commencement of the church's mission to the Ute Indians in the Uintah Basin. Bishop Leonard's jurisdiction included Utah and Nevada, and his first annual report reflected 535 communicants in Utah, with 4 clergy besides himself. Five Episcopal day schools were operating in Utah with 783 students studying under 23 teachers. St. Mark's Hospital reported 1,000 patients during the year, and hospital receipts left a $1,041 deficit. The 1889 report included a fervent plea for help for the St. Paul's School at Plain City. The bishop had secured as teacher a deacon who could also act as missionary. Five hundred dollars were needed to help pay for the house at Plain City, which the bishop had purchased, to apply on salary, and "to secure a missionary horse and wagon to enable him to reach some neighboring towns." In 1898 western Colorado was placed under the jurisdiction of the Missionary District of Salt Lake, together with Utah and Nevada, and for the next five years Bishop Leonard visited his isolated Episcopalians in the three-state area by train and stage. In 1902 he reported, BISHOP ABIEL LEONARD,

Last year I travelled 20,000 miles of which 12,000 were travelled in the District, and 1,000 of those miles were made by stage, and this means a great consumption of time. As a result I am away from Salt Lake threefourths of the time, and it is not unusual to be away three or four weeks at a time. A man with young children would need to become acquainted with his children after each of such trips. One of my own children, when very young, wanted to know after I returned from a long trip, "whether I would remain to lunch." 10

During his episcopate Bishop Leonard opened new churches at Provo, Springville, Layton (then known as Kay's Creek), Eureka, Park City, and Vernal. The work at Corinne was terminated in 1890, after that town went into its decline. Two new churches and a mission were 10 [Abiel Leonard,] The Salt Lake Annual, Official Journal of the Missionary Salt Lake, I (October, 1903). This is Bishop Leonard's a n n u a l report for 1902.

District

Episcopal Church in Utah

organized in Salt Lake County. St. Peter's was started in 1900 as a chapel for St. Mark's Hospital and to serve the northwest area of the city. St. John's began that year at Ninth East and Sixteenth South, where the bishop purchased a frame building for $100.00 to seat about thirty-five people. He later bought the lot. Grace Mission was established in Mill Creek in 1902. These missions were manned by layreaders for a number of years. Henry Ellis, layreader at St. Jude's, Layton, served during the entire fifteen-year lifespan of that mission. The bishop reported that Sarah Elliott, missionary at Moab, at her own expense "gathered a Sunday school of 80 pupils whom she is instructing. During the year 25 children have been baptised as a result of her prayers and wise teaching." n The bishop was particularly concerned that the church should make its services available in the new mining communities. St. Luke's, Park City, was organized in September 1888, with a ladies' guild and a Brotherhood of St. Andrew Chapter of young laymen doing yeoman spade work. The district newspaper, Church Notes, reported in July of 1889: About nine days ago a poor man was found dead on the mountains near here, having committed suicide while insane it is supposed. The members of St. Andrew's Society raised money enough to bury him and took charge of the funeral. The church service was read at Lawrence's Hall, and the young men accompanied the body to the grave. An ice cream and strawberry festival, held last week under the auspices of the St. Andrew's Society and the Guild of Willing Hands, cleared $106 for the widow and children of the poor lunatic.

St. Paul's, Salt Lake City, began as a Sunday school, meeting in the home of Mrs. W. D. Wilson on Fifth South near Second West, in January of 1879. Services were held there until October 1880, when the church building was completed at Main and Fourth South streets, the present site of the First Security Building. The funds for this chapel were donated as a memorial to Jane Mount of New York. The congregation steadily grew, and St. Paul's achieved parish status in 1890, with the Reverend Ellis Bishop as its first rector. In 1902 the annual report showed communicant strength of the three Utah parishes as follows: St. Mark's, 375; St. Paul's, 275; and the Good Shepherd in Ogden, 137. There were 916 communicants in Utah, 768 Sunday school pupils, 7 clergy, and 14 church buildings. "Abiel Leonard, "First Annual Report as Bishop of Salt Lake [January, 1899]," (typescript, Office of Episcopal Bishop of Utah, Salt Lake City).

Utah Historical

Quarterly

By 1890, due to change in politics, public schools were operating in Utah free from Mormon control and religious instruction, and the Episcopal schools closed, with the exception of Rowland Hall. The Episcopal school system had proved expensive, but necessary, to fill the vacuum in free education. Thereafter, emphasis was placed on development of Rowland Hall, where 180 girls attended in 1891, 40 of them in the music department, with boarders numbering only 10. Construction of classrooms and dormitories went on, and in 1901 the catalogue reported 55 boarders and a faculty of 11. Bishop Leonard was president of the board, and the Reverend James B. Eddie, the dean of St. Mark's Cathedral, was chaplain for the school. On June 28, 1898, the Articles of Incorporation of the Corporation of the Episcopal Church in Utah, a non-profit corporation, were filed with the Secretary of State, to create the legal entity necessary for holding title to land in the state. Seven Trustees were provided, and its first officers were Bishop Leonard, president ex-officio, the Reverend W. E. Maison, vice-president; J. H. Knaus, secretary; and John Houghton, treasurer. The corporation had a fifty-year life, which was extended by amendment. Bishop Leonard reported in his Quarterly Message of September 1893 that no work had been done to that date among the Indians of his district, but that he hoped to visit the Uintah Agency, as soon as I have a Sunday at my command. In the Government School at this latter agency is employed a communicant of the Church who has written me very enthusiastically upon the subject. Could I have a little chapel and the right kind of a missionary I am sure that much could be done.

The bishop asked, and before long his prayers were answered. He had a chapel and not one, but several dedicated missionaries among the Utes. The Uncompahgre Utes were removed from western Colorado to the Ouray-Uintah Reservation in 1887, and an Indian school was operated by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs at Randlett, then known as Leland, about four miles south of Fort Duchesne. The school was later moved north to Whiterocks, as water at Leland was bad and scarce. Early in 1894 Archdeacon Frederick W. Crook, on invitation from the post commandant and acting Indian Agent Colonel J. F. Randlett, an Episcopalian, went by stage to Fort Duchesne and at the post held the first service, which he described as follows: On Sunday, a most unique service was held in one of the large rooms. To the left sat a group of colored United States soldiers; in the center were the children of the Indian school, surrounded by bucks and squaws, with

Episcopal Church in Utah

little papooses done up in those odd babyspoons, or baskets, clad in every variety, from buckskin to the vari-colored and thin calico, such as contractors only know how to sell. Around the priest were the white employees, with a few people from the Mormon settlement, present at the agency on trade, and attracted by the novelty. Six nationalities were represented. 12

Colonel Randlett made arrangements for use by the church of a parcel of land at Leland. Bishop Leonard made pleas for funds through church publications and was successful in raising $2,500, which in 1895 built the first church and mission house. The following year Congress allocated the Indian reservations to various churches for religious and educational work. The Utes, influenced no doubt by several of their teachers, selected the Episcopal church. The first missionary to the Utes was Reverend George S. Vest, who remained at Holy Spirit, Leland, until 1898. Two missionaries, Lucy Carter and Sue Garrett, taught at the Ouray Indian School and assisted in the mission, first at Leland and Fort Duchesne, and after 1899 at St. Elizabeth's, Whiterocks, where a three-room infirmary was built next to the mission home. In 1898 Milton J. Hersey, a layreader, took charge of the work at Leland. This dedicated worker and his wife teamed to gain the confidence and friendship of the Utes. Mr. Hersey was indeed the personification of the missionary that Bishop Leonard had prayed for. Mr. Hersey was ordered a deacon in 1901 and ordained a priest in 1909. The bishop complained in his 1902 report that the Board of Missions could give him only $300.00 a year in cash for Mr. Hersey's support. A practice of the Utes was to abandon babies after the death of the mother, or to bury the child alive with the mother's body. The Herseys saved a number of these children, and at one time they had three abandoned Indian babies in their home. Bishop Leonard reported that he baptized one such child, Elizabeth Lee Yellow Crow, at Whiterocks at the time of his June visit. This coincided with the Uncompahgres' Sun Dance, which he described in detail in his next report. One loyal churchwoman at Leland was Chipeta, the wife of Uncompahgre Chief Ouray. Chipeta was reputed to have been the only Indian woman allowed to take part in tribal meetings at this time. She and Johnson, one of the participants in the Meeker Massacre at White River, Colorado, in 1879, were friends of the bishop and were supporters of the Episcopal mission. Chipeta was confirmed by the bishop. When she died in 1924, the Reverend Mr. Hersey arranged for her burial with an Episcopal funeral at her home at Montrose, Colorado. 12 The Quarterly Report, I (January, 1894). This is a newsletter that was issued by the Episcopal church.

Utah Historical

Quarterly

The Quarterly Report, edited by Bishop Leonard, contained reports of successes and failures of the various missions and parishes spread thinly over the district, along with anecdotes and stories of the church family. For example, St. Luke's, Park City, reported: Our services are bright and cheery, and even in hot weather, our morning congregations have averaged near sixty-nine. The choristers, an organization of recent date, are doing splendidly. Out of fifteen, with which number we began, only two have left us in five months. They always sing nicely; they sometimes sing beautifully.

On December 3, 1903, Bishop Leonard died of typhoid fever. His funeral was held at St. Mark's Cathedral, and he was buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery. Bishop Tuttle traveled from St. Louis to attend. Unfortunately, his train was late and he missed the funeral, but he was rushed through a snowy afternoon by streetcar to the cemetery in time to perform the committal service and closing prayers for his friend, the second Bishop of Utah. 1 3 Bishop Tuttle again directed the work of the district until a successor was appointed by the House of Bishops. BISHOP FRANKLIN SPENCER SPALDING,

1904-1914

"I am going to be a western missionary," was the career decision of Frank Spalding, Princeton Senior in 1887.14 Four years later Franklin Spencer Spalding was ordained a deacon by his father, the Episcopal Bishop of Colorado. As a rector at Erie, Pennsylvania, he gained a reputation as a man of energy, courage, and convictions. He was a rousing preacher, and a dedicated Christian social reformer. He supported Eugene Debs in 1898 and gained renown as a Labor Day speaker. When he was elected Bishop of Utah in October 1904, he met with scattered opposition because of his outspoken disfavor of ritual, vestments, and tradition in the church. The new bishop wrote to Bishop Tuttle to inquire about problems he would face in Utah and found that as his last official act Bishop Leonard had signed a $30,000 mortgage on St. Mark's Hospital and a large loan on the Episcopal residence. Finances would continue to plague Bishop Spalding during the next ten years. He early determined that whereas his predecessors had stressed self-support for the district and its congregations, as a practical matter the church in Utah had to look to the East for real support. He was troubled as to whether his prime 13 14

32.

Nevada State Herald ( W e l l s ) , D e c e m b e r 11, 1903. J o h n H o w a r d Melish, Franklin Spencer Spalding, Man

and Bishop

( N e w York, 1 9 1 7 ) ,

Episcopal Church in Utah

concern should be to travel through his three-state district to visit isolated churchmen or to "beg for funds in the East." During the next year Bishop Spalding traveled to every parish and mission station in the district, covering 14,000 miles by train and 1,160 by stage and wagon. By the time for his first annual report he had arrived at his own definite conclusions regarding the work to be done in Utah. He could see a deterioration in the mining camps, including Eureka and Park City, and he recommended the emphasis for the church's work in more profitable areas. He advocated a separation of the work in Utah from western Colorado and Nevada, and he felt that Utah's problems were indeed unique and required separate treatment. He despaired that at the time when the Episcopal Board of Missions was sending $1,500 annually for work in Utah, the Presbyterians were spending $80,000. In 1908 Utah was set apart as the Missionary District of Utah, and in that year the bishop defined "the Mormon problem" and advocated a very different approach to it from that of Bishops Tuttle and Leonard. Bishop Spalding was indeed a fine fund raiser, and by 1908 the appropriation for missionary work in Utah had greatly increased, as special gifts were forthcoming from New York. The bishop reported in his 1908 annual report to the Board of Missions: The religious problem in Utah, which outweighs all other problems, is Mormonism. Work among the Indians and the non-Mormon people in mining camps and farming settlements must not, of course, be neglected, but the special Utah missionary duty is to the members of the Church of Latter Day Saints, who number 260,000 out of the State population of 340,000 . . . . We must not underestimate the difficulty of converting the Mormon to what we must feel is fuller truth than he possesses.

The attention which he gave to "the Mormon problem" in his reports was primarily for eastern consumption and may indeed have contributed to his fund raising successes. Concurrently, the bishop's confrontations with Mormon dogma and practice were made locally and appeared to seriously undermine the successful peaceful coexistence policy of Bishops Tuttle and Leonard. The Salt Lake Herald of October 6, 1907, in its lead story on the L.D.S. church conference, carried a red headline, "APOSTLE MAKES ATTACK O N EPISCOPAL BISHOP." The sub-head read, "Orson F. Whitney Denounces Rt. Rev. Franklin S. Spalding's Utterances Questioning the Purity of Mormon Homes." Apostle Whitney referred to a Spalding sermon wherein the bishop had "denounced a number of the churches, among them the Methodist, the Christian Scientists, the Seventh Day Adventists and the Mormons." The

Daniel

Sylvester

Tuttle

Abiel

Leonard

Franklin

Spencer

Spalding

Paul

Whitney backlash apparently set the theme for the conference on L.D.S. morality and virtue, at the expense of good relations with the Episcopalians for some time. In 1912 the bishop published a pamphlet entitled Joseph Smith as a Translator. Here he described his research regarding the Mormon Book of Abraham. He wrote that he had furnished facsimiles of the Egyptian hieroglyphics to eight leading Egyptologists, all of whom responded and concurred that the papyri had in fact been a set of burial instructions commonly deposited in Egyptian tombs, rather than Abraham's detailed prime source for much Mormon theology, as translated by the Mormon prophet. The pamphlet apparently had a brisk sale at the Deseret Book Store, and Spalding sent complimentary copies to Mormon church officials, professors in Utah colleges and universities, and teachers in high schools. He felt that it was his business to point out what he believed intellectually and morally untrue. 15 The bishop formed a local Social Service Commission in 1913, which "made helpful investigations and suggested remedies for social and economic evils both in Salt Lake City and the State of Utah." 16 15

Ibid., 170. Franklin S. Spalding, "1913-14 Annual Report of Bishop Spalding' of Episcopal Bishop of U t a h ) . 16

'typescript, Office

Jones

Arthur W. Moulton

Stephen Cutter Clark

Richard Simpson

The organ of the commission was The Utah Survey, a monthly publication devoted half to discussion of social service problems and half to "thoughtful and courteous discussion of various phases of Mormonism." The editor was James H. Wolfe, later Utah Supreme Court justice, and himself a controversial social champion. The September 1913 issue of The Utah Survey had two articles, a review of the Joseph Smith as a Translator pamphlet, written by another Egyptologist, and a critique of the Hargrove-Husbands police fraud hearings before the Salt Lake City Commission. Three police officers were exonerated at the hearing, improperly according to the Utah Survey writer, of charges of accepting graft from Greek businessmen on West Second South Street. Frank Spalding was proud of his reputation as the "Socialist Bishop." On his road trips through the mining towns of Nevada and Utah he gave Christian sermons in small frame churches on Sundays and weekday lectures on Socialism in union halls. He tried to equate the two doctrines, retaining the social good of Marx, without resort to strife. He was a social activist, with little regard for theorists. In 1910 he took the church directly to the men at Garfield, where he established All Souls Mission and directed its vicar, the Reverend Maxwell W. Rice, to live in the bunkhouse with the smeltermen. During Lent in 1908 the bishop con-

Watson

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ducted a series of lectures to a packed house at St. Paul's, Salt Lake City, speaking on "The Church and Socialism." His mission congregations in the mining towns cheered him on, but his parishioners in the city were less than enthusiastic and even hostile.17 The Emery Memorial House near the University of Utah campus was opened late in 1913 as a dormitory for male students. The Reverend Mr. Rice was transferred there as chaplain to the twenty-three residents and thirty non-resident members of the house. A Sunday school met in the hall on Sunday afternoons for neighborhood children, and swimming classes were taught in the small pool at the house. St. John's House, Logan, under the direction of the Reverend Paul Jones, had a reading room and pool table to serve the recreational needs of the college students. The Girls' Friendly Lodge, Vernal, was the residence for girls attending Wilcox Academy (Congregationalist) and Uintah Academy (Mormon) in Uintah County. The bishop was proud of these school residences, which he felt provided a Christian homelike atmosphere for the students. With the guns opening fire in Europe in August of 1914, Bishop Spalding changed the themes of his sermons from social reform to peace. On September 24, as he crossed South Temple at E Street to mail a letter to his mother, he was struck by a speeding automobile to become one of the city's first traffic victims. On the following November 1, a memorial service for the third Bishop of Utah packed the Salt Lake Theatre. Speakers at the service were his friends the Reverend Elmer I. Goshen, Congregationalist minister in Salt Lake City, and Brigham H. Roberts, L.D.S. church historian. 18 BISHOP PAUL J O N E S ,

1914-1918

The fourth Bishop of Utah was consecrated at St. Mark's Cathedral on December 16, 1914. He was the Right Reverend Paul Jones, former vicar at St. John's, Logan, and archdeacon of the district after 1913. Highly regarded and praised by Bishop Spalding for his work among the collegians, the new bishop lacked the social zeal and secular interest of his predecessor. His achievement was the expansion of the church's mission stations and improvement of the Episcopal institutions. In his first report to the district convocation he reviewed the state of the church, noting that the $40,000 debt on the hospital was retired, there were then 12 clergymen and 7 women workers in the field, and 1,426 communicants. 17 18

Melish, Franklin Ibid., 296.

S. Spalding,

244.

Episcopal Church in Utah

He noted that the proportion of L.D.S. to Episcopalians in Utah, outside of Salt Lake City and Ogden, was 1,800 to 1, adding, "It is useless to rely simply upon preaching and teaching which falls upon deaf ears â&#x20AC;&#x201D; We must try in a sympathetic and loving way to break down the barriers which prevent an understanding of our message." He felt that the Christian service through the church institutions was the best way to open hearts. Bishop Jones's episcopal reports over the four years showed his prime interest was in placing the services of the church where the need was current and most pressing. St. John's House, the student center at Logan, was located downtown, and its small but adequate collection of books served students and townsmen alike, as there was then no city library. The Emery House was filled to capacity with college men. Of thirty-two, only two were Episcopalians, eleven were Mormons, and two were Roman Catholics. The Girls' Friendly House at Vernal was serving a need, but lacking local support, it was struggling to survive. The Sunday school at Garfield was the largest in the district, and American Smelting and Refining Company built a $15,000 stone church for the Episcopalians there. In 1917 work was started and lasted for one year among the Japanese, led by the Reverend Peter C. Aoki, who organized a Sunday school and taught English. The Women's Auxiliary was organized on a district level in 1915, and women were first elected as delegates to the annual convocation that year. Mr. Hersey investigated the use of peyote among the Utes at Whiterocks and Randlett. In February 1917 through the sponsorship of the church, the legislature amended the state narcotics law to include and control peyote. Mr. Hersey was rewarded â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the bishop gave him an automobile, and he retired his mule team. St. Paul's, Salt Lake City, sold its property on Main Street and moved to Ninth East and Third South in 1917. Bishop Tuttle preached at the Cathedral in June of that year to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the church in Utah. On paper the church's progress looked good, but Bishop Jones and the militarism of the world conflict met head on. Does the Christian religion insist on nonresistance or hold for aggressive warfare for God and the right? The bishop was an avowed pacifist, and he saw no other right. The district churchmen dissented. Bishop Jones was a member of the Christian Pacifists, a group which actively opposed the draft and called for immediate peace in Europe. His sermons during 1917 so incensed his parishioners that his Council of Advice called for his resignation. When it was not forth-

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coming, a demand was made on the House of Bishops for an investigation of Jones's activities, which were termed embarrassing and seditious. In December he tendered his resignation which was accepted the following April. Bishop Tuttle was Episcopal Presiding Bishop, and he again assumed control as acting Bishop of Utah for the fifth time. T h e Right Reverend Frank H. Touret, Bishop of Western Colorado, was given charge of the work until a successor was named. Bishop Touret was able to make only occasional contacts with Utah. H e addressed the 1919 convocation in Utah, saying that because of the disturbing controversy regarding Paul Jones, financial help from the East was not forthcoming, adding, "It will, perhaps, be some time before it is possible to restore confidence in our missionary enterprise in Utah." T h e accompanying annual report showed a slight overall, four-year gain in communicants, but a significant drop in the three parishes. "Peace at any price" had been costly to the district. BISHOP ARTHUR

MOULTON,

1920-1946

"Bishop Moulton is a man who never asks what another's creed is when help is asked," so spoke the mayor of Lawrence, Massachusetts, at a farewell reception attended by a thousand townspeople, friends, and parishioners as the newly elected fifth Bishop of U t a h prepared to leave after twenty years as rector at Lawrence. 19 The Right Reverend Arthur W. Moulton had a knack for making friends, and his record in Utah would show excellent rapport with the L.D.S. church and other denominations, good community relations, and loyalty from his own churchmen. However, the new bishop was not a good businessman, nor a fund raiser, and the district's financial problems of the next twenty years generally fulfilled Bishop Touret's prophecy. Bishop Moulton enjoyed his trips to the missions in eastern Utah, including the Ute stations. He referred often to "my Basin," and the work there seemed to have his preference. Churches were built at Roosevelt, Duchesne, and Vernal, and missionary work was done at Myton and Fort Duchesne. T h e coal camps of Carbon County were booming, and a mission was started at Kenilworth. T h e Y M C A at Helper was taken over by the Episcopalians; the building provided a chapel, reading room, and dormitory for railroaders. During the 1920's good progress was shown throughout the district. In Salt Lake City, St. Paul's new church was completed, and the bishop's 1928 annual report showed that plans 39

The Utah Trust, The Episcopal Church Paper in Utah, I (September, 1920).

Episcopal Church in Utah

were being made to move St. Mark's Hospital from its trackside location to a quieter neighborhood. Rowland Hall had achieved a fine reputation as a girls' preparatory school, but also had a growing indebtedness. T h e bishop was a welcome reconteur at dinner meetings, and he had loyal friends in L.D.S. churchmen George Albert Smith and Levi Edgar Young. The 1929 annual report showed 12 clergymen, including the bishop, active in the district, with 1,843 communicants. T h e district overpaid its quota to the Episcopal National Council, and the bishop was pleased with the service that the church's institutions were rendering to the community. Then came the Great Depression. T h e years of economic depression proved how closely the Episcopal church in Utah was tied to the vitality and growth of the areas of which it was a part. When the mines and smelters closed, railroads reduced service, farm products went begging, and finally the banks closed, the church's work seemed to almost anticipate declines and troubles in these various areas. In 1929 the girls lodge at Vernal was leased as a hospital. By 1932 Rowland Hall and the Emery House were having financial troubles. Students did not have the money for tuition, and both institutions were again heavily indebted. T h e hospital gave u p its plans to move and improve, and it entrenched in its industrial location. In 1933 the Episcopal National Council recommended closing Rowland Hall for lack of support and finances, and the school was kept open only through the heroic efforts of local patrons and alumni. T h e ingenious argument made to the National Council was that if the school did close it would lose its tax exempt status, and the resulting taxes would compound the deficit. Lack of finances and churchmen moving away caused the missions in the Uintah Basin and the mining towns to close, and clergymen doubled up on missions served. T h e Reverend Hoyt Henriques, vicar at St. John's, Salt Lake City, served at Park City and Logan on alternate Sundays. In 1933 he went to Idaho to be chaplain to the CCC camps. Archdeacon William F. Bulkley was on constant travel status, covering distant missions and visiting isolated Episcopalians. T h e Emery House finally succumbed from lack of support and was leased to Salt Lake City as a boys' club. The property was finally sold under pressure. Bishop Moulton's task in the 1930's was to spread himself and his clergy thin over the district and to hold the financial line with the institutions. In slow step with the rest of the state's sagging economy, the church came through the Great Depression lean and scarred. It received its next stimulus only as the result of the inflow of Episcopalians attached to the Armed Forces or working in the war-related industries during World W a r I I .

U T A H HERITAGE FOUNDATION

The first service in St. Mark's 1871.

U T A H STATE H I S T O R I C A L SOCIETY

Cathedral,

231 East First South,

was held September

I n 1942 the Reverend H . Baxter Liebler, former rector of a parish in Greenwich, Connecticut, traveled by pony and pack burro through the Navajo Reservation in southeast U t a h . Like the m a n who came to dinner, he stopped at Bluff, learned the language and I n d i a n customs, and with the aid of volunteer labor and funds from the East built St. Christopher's Mission to the Navajos, naming it after the guardian saint of travelers and dedicating its work to carrying on I n d i a n customs and culture in a Christian environment. T h e first sermon in the Navajo language was preached at Bluff on Christmas 1943, a n d work was then commenced by F a t h e r Liebler to translate the Book of C o m m o n Prayer into Navajo. St. Christopher's provided the first school for the Indians in the area, as the public schools at Bluff were for whites only. Some medical facilities were provided, and x-ray a n d dental clinics were set up at the mission. 20 Bishop Moulton was seventy-two years old, the m a n d a t o r y retirement age, in 1945, and his resignation became effective in September of 1946. T h e second World W a r was over, the chapter of the lean years for the district was closing, and the church prepared to a d a p t itself to the changing postwar times, responsibilities, and opportunities. 1946-1950 W h e n the Right Reverend Stephen Cutter Clark surveyed his district in J a n u a r y of 1947, it was really a renewal of old acquaintance â&#x20AC;&#x201D; BISHOP S T E P H E N CUTTER CLARK,

20 H. Baxter Liebler, "The Social and Cultural Patterns of the Navajo Indians," Utah Historical Quarterly, 30 (Fall, 1962), 298-325.

Episcopal

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in Utah

finding familiar landmarks a n d assessing the changes of thirty years. T h e newly consecrated bishop h a d begun his ministry in July 1917 as a deacon at St. Luke's, P a r k City. I n his report t h a t year, Bishop Jones h a d praised the enthusiasm and aggressive work of the Reverend M r . Clark, then age twenty-five. Stephen Clark stayed in U t a h just over a year, then accepted a call to Los Angeles, where he remained until his election as the sixth Bishop of U t a h . Bishop Clark found the Episcopal church in U t a h very changed in its component congregations a n d their locations from the time of his Park City ministry. I n 1947 the c h u r c h h a d followed the population a n d economic trends a n d h a d given u p m a n y of the unprofitable mission stations, including Park City, Eureka, a n d the U i n t a h Basin missions, with the exception of Vernal. A n e w breed of c h u r c h m e n was appearing. These laymen were the returning servicemen, their young families, a n d the postwar migrants from the East and South, who sought n e w homes in the West and lent vigor, n e w ideas, and renewed missionary zeal to t h e church. As in other times, new congregations began in growing communities around a Sunday school. I n 1947 a group of mothers from the Sugarhouse area called on t h e bishop and requested his help in organizing a Sunday school a n d mission in southeast Salt L a k e City. St. John's at N i n t h East near Sixteenth South streets h a d closed during the depression. T h e bishop gave his support to this new mission, All Saints, which began life with its church school in a garage a n d eventually moved to its present building in 1955. Another mission built a r o u n d the Sunday school began in 1949 at Dragerton, a new coal mining town. T h e I n d i a n work at Whiterocks was reopened u n d e r the guidance of the Reverend Joseph Hogben. Bishop Clark's 1950 report showed 3,017 communicants a n d 4,358 baptized persons in the district. T h e Archbishop of York visited the bishopdn 1949 and spoke in t h e Salt Lake Tabernacle. C o m m u n i t y relations were good. Bishop Clark foresaw real a n d i m m e d i a t e progress for the church, b u t illness intervened, a n d he died on November 30, 1950. BISHOP RICHARD SIMPSON W A T S O N ,

1951â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

T h e Right Reverend R i c h a r d Simpson Watson was consecrated seventh Bishop of U t a h in St. M a r k ' s C a t h e d r a l on M a y 1, 1951. T h e colorful procession of participating bishops, clergy, a n d choirs a n d the service of consecration were televised, one of the first local events of this n a t u r e to receive such full coverage. T h e new bishop, a native of Colo-

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rado, practiced law in Denver before entering the ministry and had been rector of parishes in Houston and Seattle. Bishop Watson's record of progress over the past sixteen years speaks for itself. During his episcopacy new work was begun in nine growing communities supported by postwar industry, the space program, or the military. These missions in the order of their respective establishment are at Price, Moab, Brigham City, Clearfield, Holladay, Bountiful, Granger, Tooele, and Roosevelt. Of these missions seven have new church buildings, and four have new rectories. Two missions became self-supporting parishes. All Saints, Salt Lake City, in 1959 was the fourth parish in the district and the first in Utah in sixty-eight years. St. Mary's, Provo, became the fifth parish in 1960. Two of the new missions, St. James, Holladay, and Resurrection, Bountiful, are parochial missions, having been sired and supported by All Saints and St. Mark's Cathedral respectively. St. Luke's, Park City, was reactivated. The Conference Center at the former location of the Girls' Friendly Camp at Brighton was completed by Bishop Watson and is the district camp and site for the church family's retreats and conferences. Two new wings have been completed at St. Mark's Hospital, and new property was purchased in Salt Lake County in anticipation of a future move of the entire facility. St. Mark's Boys School was established and combined into one administration and faculty, now Rowland Hall-St. Mark's School. Land, formerly a part of Fort Douglas, was acquired for an ultimate move and expansion of that institution. Of the new breed of laymen, Bishop Watson has ordained 16 men to the ministry. The district budget in 1966, money raised within the district, was almost six times greater than in 1950. Communicants in 1966 were 4,617, 1,600 more than in 1950. Baptized persons in 1966 were 8,201, an increase in 16 years of 3,843. Twenty clergy were resident in the district, with 22 organized congregations. The Episcopal church, both nationally and in Utah, has been a leader during the past decade in many ecumenical approaches, discussions, and experiments. The Utah clergy have been and are, without exception, deeply involved in practical community life and current social problems. The Episcopal church in Utah, as it enters its second century, is clearly committed to the stated policy of Bishop Daniel Tuttle; namely, that the church should stress the merits of its own cause, should seek the areas of greatest need for its ministry, and should freely offer its good services for the better life of the whole community.

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Utah State Historical Society

Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 36, Number 1, 1968

Articles inside

Utah Before the Mormons

Charles Mackay and His "True and Impartial History" of the Mormons

The Hesitant Beginnings of the Catholic Church in Utah

Saints, Sinners and Scribes: A Look at the Mormons in Fiction

The Episcopal Church in Utah: Seven Bishops and One Hundred Years