Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 44, Number 3, 1976

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY EDITORIAL STAFF MELVIN T. SMITH,

Editor

STANFORD J. LAYTON, Managing

Editor

MmrAM B. MURPHY, Assistant Editor

ADVISORY BOARD OF EDITORS THOMAS G. ALEXANDER, Provo, 1977

M R S . INEZ S. COOPER, Cedar City, 1978 S. GEORGE ELLSWORTH, Logan, G L E N M. LEONARD, Bountiful,

1978 1976

DAvrD E. MrLLER, Salt Lake City, 1976 LAMAR PETERSEN, Salt Lake City, 1977 RICHARD W. SADLER, Ogden, 1976

HAROLD SCHINDLER, Salt Lake City, 1978 JEROME STOFFEL, Logan,

1977

Utah Historical Quarterly was established in 1928 to publish articles, documents, and reviews contributing to knowledge of Utah's history. The Quarterly is published by the Utah State Historical Society, 603 East South Temple, Salt Lake City, Utah 84102. Phone (801) 533-5755.

Members of the Society receive the Quarterly and the bimonthly Newsletter upon payment of the annual dues; for details see inside back cover.

Single copies, $2.00.

Materials for publication should be submitted in duplicate accompanied by return postage and should be typed double-spaced with footnotes at the end.

Additional information on requirements is available from the managing editor. The Society assumes no responsibility for statements of fact or opinion by contributors.

The Quarterly is indexed in Book Review Index to Social Science Periodicals, America: History and Life, and Abstracts of Popular Culture.

Second class postage is paid at Salt Lake City, Utah.

ISSN 0042-143X

HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Contents SUMMER 1 9 7 6 / V O L U M E 44 / NUMBER 3

IN T H I S ISSUE

203

THE LIBERAL SHALL BE BLESSED: SARAH M. KIMBALL

C.

MULVAY

205

THE WOMAN'S EXPONENT: FORTY-TWO YEARS OF SPEAKING FOR WOMEN . . . .

SHERILYN Cox

BENNION

222

LEONARD

240

FAE DECKER DIX

261

STEPHEN W. JULIEN

297

MARY L E E SPENCE

286

JILL

T R U M A N LEONARD: PIONEER M O R M O N FARMER NEVER CHANGE A SONG

GLEN

M.

T H E UTAH STATE SUPREME C O U R T AND ITS JUSTICES, 1896-1976

T H E FREMONTS AND UTAH BOOK REVIEWS

303

BOOK NOTICES

310

RECENT ARTICLES

312

THE COVER Many summers ago Saltair drew thousands of visitors to bathe in Great Salt Lake, picnic, dance, ride the roller coaster, attend political rallies, and enjoy moments of quiet contemplation. For several generations of Utahns the resort remains a treasured memory. This unusual, haunting view of Saltair is from the Utah State Historical Society collections. © Copyright 1976 Utah State Historical Society

A N N I E CLARK T A N N E R . A

Biography

of Ezra Thompson

.

EUGENE E. CAMPBELL

303

.

ALEJANDRA A. AVILA

304

A N N HINCKLEY

305

MIRIAM B. M U R P H Y

306

STANLEY R. DAVISON

307

C H A R L E S S. PETERSON

308

Clark

VICENTE V. MAYER, JR.

A Hispanic

Utah:

History

.

N E L S O N B. W A D S W O R T H .

.

Through

Camera Eyes F R A N K A. B E C K W I T H . Indian

in Person and in Historical

Joe

Background:

Perspective

into Piute Life

Books reviewed

CLARK C. S P E N C E .

Territorial

Politics and

Government

in Montana,

1864-89

JAY J. WAGONER. Early Prehistory

.

Arizona:

to Civil War

OLIVER J E N S E N . The

.

.

American

Heritage History of Railroads in America

S T E P H E N L. CARR

309

1926 Utah State Supreme Court: Justices Frick, Cherry, Gideon, Straup, and

Thurman.

In this issue Agreeing that biography is an exceptionally interesting approach to history, the editorial staff of the Utah State Historical Society joined with the Salt Lake Tribune and the Utah Bicentennial Commission last year in sponsoring a historical writings contest that offered cash awards for the best articles dealing with people in Utah history. Of the fourteen award-winning manuscripts, three were published in the recent winter issue of Utah Historical Quarterly and three more are presented here. Others will undoubtedly be published in future issues.

As anticipated by the sponsoring agencies, the many contest entries illustrate that a society takes its tone and complexion as much from the people in modest walks of life as from those who hold wealth or fame. T h e six articles chosen for publication in this issue reflect that theme.

T h e first two pieces reinforce the growing awareness, born of a flurry of research in recent years, that the cultural and intellectual fabric of nineteenthcentury Utah was woven largely by women. T h e succeeding two articles focus on individual men, different in temperament but alike in their dedication to basic values. They are both representatives of the mass of Utahns who are not well remembered beyond their immediate families but whose collective impact on the historical record has been profound indeed.

T h e final pair of articles highlight people whose names are more familiar to the broad public. Although the thirty justices of Utah's supreme court have been generally neglected by biographers, the prosopography offered here should encourage additional studies. The John C. Fremonts, on the other hand, have held an enduring fascination for historians. Understandably so. Everything about the career of the famous pathmarker was interesting, including the moment it brushed across the Utah l a n d s c a p e . . . .

The Liberal Shall be Blessed: Sarah M. Kimball BY

JILL

C.

MULVAY

on the wooden seat and sat as always arrowstraight, wisps of white hair straying from her tight top knot. This was 1883 and certainly not the first time Sarah had taken the train; she had made trips north of Salt Lake City for Relief Society matters, south to St. George for temple work, and west to California to visit her brother, Farley Granger. But this was to be a trip east, back east to Nauvoo and Kirtland, and to New York—almost a retracing of the route that had brought her to Utah years earlier.1 Thirty-two years earlier to be exact, 1851. She had come to the Salt Lake Valley a young mother with two sons; her husband, Hiram, had joined her later. Now three sons were grown; the youngest, twenty-nine-year-old Franklin D., was traveling with her. Hiram had been dead for twenty years.

Sarah's adopted daughter, Elizabeth, was likely at the depot, and perhaps Eliza R. Snow was there. Sarah and Eliza had been together in the first Female Relief Society at Nauvoo and had been close friends ever since. Now Eliza was general president of the Relief Society and Sarah was her secretary. Sarah need not worry about the record-keeping during her extended leave; there would be few conferences and little traveling for the Relief Society officers that summer. Certainly some Fifteenth Ward sisters were at the depot. Sarah had been their Relief Society president for twenty-five years, "longer than any president living," she boasted, and she would serve another fifteen. She was a J A R A H KIMBALL SETTLED

Miss Mulvay is a historical associate in the Historical Department, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This paper was awarded first prize in the 1976 U t a h Bicentennial Biographies Contest, professional class, jointly sponsored by the U t a h State Historical Society, the U t a h American Revolution Bicentennial Commission, and the Salt Lake Tribune.

1 See "Editorial Notes," Woman's Exponent, August 15, 1883.

Exponent,

July 1, 1883; "Notes and News,"

Woman's

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judicious administrator who had always delegated responsibilities, so she could comfortably leave the hall, the granary, and the poor of the Fifteenth Ward with the assurance that all would be cared for. Goodbyes and baggage were probably limited: Sarah Kimball was a woman careful with words and means.

A phrenologist once said that if Mrs. Kimball were "seated in a railway carriage with parties on one hand discussing fashions, and politics to be heard on the other, she would turn to the discussion of politics." 2 She may have rattled the way back to New York in political discussion with her son Frank who, unable to share his mother's allegiance to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, shared her enthusiasm for local and national politics. In the 1870s Sarah had served as a member of the territorial committee of the People's party and she was a member of the constitutional convention that drew up Utah's unavailing petition for statehood in 1882. In 1891 she would head the Utah Woman Suffrage Association and travel to Washington, D.C, as Utah's delegate to the NWSA. Frank Kimball was later to manage the campaign of Utah's first state governor, Heber M. Wells, and then to run for several public offices on his own, always without success.

On the train in 1883 the Kimballs probably found extended time for political caucusing and ample subject matter. A series of attempts at more stringent antipolygamy legislation had resulted in passage of the Edmunds Act in 1882. Thousands of Mormons were already feeling the sting of disfranchisement, and within three years anti-Mormon abuses under the Edmunds law would become so intolerable that Sarah Kimball would head a women's committee petitioning Congress against outrages inflicted upon Utah women by federal deputies.

The conversation between mother and son was undoubtedly lively, but there must have been considerable space for reflection in that long stretch from Salt Lake City, Utah, to Phelps, New York. Probably Sarah's thoughts moved with the train toward Phelps, toward family beginnings.

With the dedication of the St. George Temple in 1877 Sarah had committed herself to searching her own lineage, and from the trip to Phelps would come the names and dates necessary to complete the temple work for her kindred dead.

Sixty-five-year-old Sarah Kimball, with her head full of family, church, and politics, is representative of her generation of Mormon 2 Augusta Joyce Crocheron, Representative Women of Deseret (Salt Lake City, 1884), p. 28. This collection of essays contains an autobiographical sketch by Sarah M. Kimball.

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women, a sisterhood eager to make their influence felt in a wide sphere.

Whatever restrictions they may have felt from the priesthood-dominated LDS church structure, Sarah and women like her found room within that system for a broad scope of activity and expression. From her New England roots to her fruitful years in Salt Lake City, Sarah Kimball evolved as a woman—shaped by but also shaping women's rights and responsibilities within the LDS church and the Utah community.

Sarah Melissa Granger was born December 29, 1818, in Phelps, Ontario County, New York, a small town midway in the near twenty miles betwen Palmyra and Seneca Falls—a fortuitously appropriate beginning for a woman so committed to the gospel restored by Joseph Smith, Jr., and the principle of the equality of the sexes. She was one of eight children of Lydia Dibble and Oliver Granger and grew up as part of an even larger extended family. Sarah's grandfather Pierce Granger had arrived in Phelps in 1789 with his brother Elihu. The two young men barely out of their teens had erected a small log house and prepared the land for planting, readying the tiny settlement to which their father and stepmother moved the following spring.3 Sarah never knew her great-grandmother Sarah Pierce for whom she was named, but well into her own old age she remembered her greatgrandfather Elisha Granger "leaning upon his staff, bowed by the weight of many years." She always pictured him trying to lead sinners to repentance. His son Pierce was a licensed Methodist preacher. Under Pierce Granger's direction a schoolhouse had been built in Phelps, and Sunday classes gathered to hear sermons from Seneca Lake circuit preachers.

Later he had furnished the site and part of the materials for the first meetinghouse in Phelps.4 His wife, Clarissa Trumbull Granger, was five years his senior. She married at age twenty-six and bore nine Granger children, the last just three years before her death in 1813. Oliver Granger, the second of seven sons, married Lydia Dibble in the month following his mother's death. 5 Young Sarah Melissa was part of the second generation of Grangers born in Phelps. Her family was prominent—her father Oliver served for 3

Helen Post Ridley, When

Phelps

Was Young

(Phelps, N . Y . : Echo, 1939), p. 106.

4

This meetinghouse was completed just a few years before the Methodist Genessee conference gathered there in July 1819. T h e stirrings of that conference prompted young Joseph Smith, Jr., to his religious search in nearby Palmyra. See Milton V. Backman, Jr., "Awakenings in the Burned-over District: New Light on the Historical Setting of the First Vision," Brigham Young University Studies 9 (1969) : 3 0 1 - 2 0 .

5 Family group sheet for Pierce Granger, Genealogical Archives, C h u r c h of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City.

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some time as Ontario County sheriff—but they were restless, and late in the 1820s they began to scatter, some to faraway Michigan and others north a few miles to Sodus, Wayne County, New York. It was in Sodus that Oliver Granger was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Like his father, Oliver had been a licensed exhorter for the Methodist church, and shortly after his baptism when he was ordained a Mormon elder by Brigham and Joseph Young he devoted his time to active missionary work. In 1833 he moved his family to Kirtland, Ohio, to gather with the Saints.6 Sarah was barely fifteen years old when the family arrived in Kirtland. By this time she, too, had doubtless been baptized a Latter-day Saint, and what a city was Kirtland for an inquisitive young mind! The Saints were publishing their own newspaper, first the Evening and Morning Star and later the Messenger and Advocate, filled with explications of the doctrines and revelations of Joseph Smith. Sarah was interested in what she read and discussed religion with her father. At his suggestion or upon her own request she attended the School of the Prophets, an irregular gathering of the priesthood-bearing elders to study the gospel and gospel-related topics. In later years she proudly reminded her sisters that she had attended the school, perhaps to underscore the importance she placed upon doctrinal study among LDS women.7 Emmeline B. Wells, Woman's Exponent editor, remembered Sarah Kimball as a "deep religious thinker, and reasoner, and a student of the Bible, Book of Mormon and other Latter-day Saint books of a similar kind." Sarah grew fond of the sermons and writings of Parley P. and Orson Pratt, apostle brothers whose works sometimes tended toward doctrinal intricacies and speculation. Wells further commented that Sarah was "an advanced thinker . . . fond of diving into the unknown, or soaring upward to sublime heights. . . . In her writings she was abstruse and inclined to be mystical, and yet she was so strong-minded, and wellbalanced that she would never be the least likely to go beyond her depth." 8 Actually she saw little beyond her depth or that of her sisters.

"Does all knowledge come through the Spirit of the Lord?" seventyfive-year-old Sarah posed as a discussion question for her Relief Society " O b i t u a r y for Oliver Granger taken from the "Journal History," August 25, 1843. T h e "Journal History" is a scrapbook collection of newspaper clippings and relevant diary and journal excerpts surveying the history of the L D S church kept in the Archives Division, Historical Department, C h u r c h of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, hereinafter cited as L D S Archives.

7 See Fifteenth Ward, Riverside Stake, Relief Society minutes, 1874-94, vol. 5, April 11, 1894, manuscript, L D S Archives. In direct quotes from these minutes and others, spelling and punctuation have been standardized.

8 Emmeline B. Wells, "L.D.S. Women of the Past," Woman's Exponent, J u n e 1908.

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sisters. "Our Sixth Sense, or the Sense of Spiritual Understanding," she titled an address she gave in 1895 in Washington, D . C , at the Triennial Council of Women, an address in which she saw women "received into communion with the Infinite Father and Mother" and permitted to enter hallowed mansions to attend the school of the Prophets, and, by advancing steps to reach the school of the Gods, where they learn the processes by which worlds are organized . . . the uses for which worlds are called into existence; the m a n n e r in which they are controlled, a n d the laws of progression by which all beings and animate things are perfected, and glorified in their respective spheres. 9

Some nineteenth-century women may have been content with the piety proffered them by religion, but in Kirtland Sarah had grasped an intellectual and spiritual challenge that excited her throughout her life.

For Sarah, Granger family memories would always center in Kirtland where the Grangers lived for almost ten years. From there Oliver Granger set off on several missions for the church to Ohio and New York.

There he served on the church's high council, and when Kirtland collapsed financially Joseph Smith designated Oliver his fiscal agent with responsibility for settling a substantial debt. Though Oliver attempted to move his family from Kirtland to Far West, Missouri, late in 1838, anti-Mormon mobs forced him back. The Grangers joined the Saints in Nauvoo for a year, but the Prophet Joseph sent them back to Ohio so Oliver could exchange remaining land there for land further west.10 Sarah's 1840 return to Kirtland was short-lived. Her twenty-first year had been spent in Nauvoo where her intelligence and charm had attracted the attention of thirty-four-year-old Hiram S. Kimball, a prosperous non-Mormon merchant. Hiram and Sarah were married in Kirtland with her parents' blessing in September 1840, and the newlyweds made their home in Nauvoo. There Hiram was making handsome profits selling everything the growing city was buying: land, lumber, and bricks. His holdings in livestock, merchandise, and real estate made him one of the wealthiest men in the city, and one of the most prominent.

He was as conspicuous in city politics as he was in business, and was well respected by the LDS church hierarchy, even though he was not a Latter-day Saint until 1843.11 9 Sarah M. Kimball, "Our Sixth Sense, or the Sense of Spiritual Understanding," Woman's Exponent, April 15, 1895.

10 Obituary for Oliver Granger; "Journal History," October 18, 1840.

"Jenson dates Hiram's baptism July 20, 1843. Andrew Jenson, Latter-day Saint Biographical Encyclopedia, 4 vols. (Salt Lake City, 1901-36), 2:372. At the end of 1844 Hiram received a patriarchal blessing, an ordinance usually reserved for church members. Patriarchal Blessings, vol. 9, December 25, 1844, manuscript, LDS Archives.

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Sarah M. Kimball became an affluent young matron whose home, often the site for social and religious gatherings of church leaders and their wives, was remembered for its elegance long after the city of Nauvoo faded. Hiram's prosperity must have delighted his young bride, but she was at times frustrated that she as wife owned nothing. Later in life she confessed that she had not wanted to ask her nonmember husband for funds to contribute to the church for the building of the Nauvoo Temple. When she bore their first son, she asked his father if she owned half of the boy. When Hiram said yes, she inquired as to the boy's worth, posing $1,000 as a reasonable estimate, and Hiram agreed. Sarah declared she was contributing her half to the church. When Hiram related this conversation to Joseph Smith, the prophet told him he had "the privilege of paying [the church] $500 and retaining possession, or receiving $500 and giving possession." Mr. Kimball paid the church in land, but Mrs. Kimball maintained that the contribution was hers.12 It was in Nauvoo that Sarah Kimball developed the concern for Mormon women that would characterize her life. In 1842, when her seamstress offered to make shirts for Nauvoo Temple workers if Mrs. Kimball would provide the material, Sarah suggested that other women might similarly like to pool means and efforts. She then set about organizing a "Ladies Society." After their first gathering, the group asked Eliza R. Snow to write their constitution which was submitted to Joseph Smith who responded: "Tell the sisters their offering is accepted of the Lord, and He has something better for them than a written constitution."

On March 17, 1842, Joseph Smith organized the Female Relief Society of Nauvoo, the name and officers being selected by the eighteen women present, and he explained that "the Church was never perfectly organized until the women were thus organized." 13 Sarah Kimball attended that first meeting and the weekly meetings that continued in Nauvoo until just before Joseph Smith's martyrdom in 1844. By that time some 1,200 women were involved. These sisters shared their feelings about the restored gospel, sewed clothing for the poor and the temple workers, visited troubled and needy Saints, and at one point petitioned the governor of Illinois "for protection from illegal suits pending against the Prophet Joseph Smith." 14 Early meetings were frequently 12

Crocheron, Women of Deseret, pp. 25-26.

Ibid., pp. 26-27.

"Joseph Smith, Jr., History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, ed.

Brigham H. Roberts, 7 vols. (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1902-32), 5:140-41.

13

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211

addressed by Joseph Smith; Sarah, later counseling Relief Societies in Utah, would quote him profusely regarding Relief Societies' obligation to improve property and conduct business and woman's obligation to gain intelligence.

One phrase especially did Sarah accept as prophetic: She heard Joseph Smith declare in 1842 that he was turning the key in behalf of woman "in the name of the Lord," and that knowledge and intelligence would flow down from that time henceforth. And in her lifetime she saw women given significant educational, economic, political, and religious opportunities and responsibilities. Sarah, by her own definition a "woman's rights woman," traced the suffrage movement itself to this "turning of the key," asserting that "the sure foundations of the suffrage cause were deeply and permanently laid on the 17th of March, 1842." 15 Just six months before her death in 1898, as Sarah addressed her sisters in the Fifteenth Ward Relief Society, she surveyed the property buying and building, silk manufacture, grain storage, cooperative mercantiles, publications, medical study, and political activity in which Mormon women had become involved, as well as the gains of American women generally and "spoke of the breadth of meaning contained in the statement made by the Prophet Joseph Smith T now turn the key for women.' " 16 For over fifty years that statement colored Sarah Kimball's perception of woman's changing sphere.

Hiram and Sarah Kimball did not leave Nauvoo with the main body of the Saints in 1846. Apparently Hiram's business interests kept him traveling in the East and required stationing his family in Nauvoo.

Though a number of Saints remained in Illinois, Sarah was anxious to join her friends in the West. " O Sister Hyde," she wrote in 1848 to one close friend who had journeyed west as far as Council Bluffs, Iowa, how I wish you could visit m e during my husband's absence. I shall feel verry lonesome indeed. I sometimes flatter myself t h a t I shall see you all next spring. M r . K talks of haveing m e take the children & m o t h e r & go on next spring & leave h i m to close his business & follow. I d o n t w a n t to leave h i m but shall d o as he thinks best. 17

Ultimately this was the plan the Kimballs followed, but not until 1851.

That spring business complications detained Hiram in New York City, and according to Sarah by that time he "had become financially much 15

Woman Suffrage Leaflet (Salt Lake City, January 1892), p. 3.

Relief Society Minutes, 1874-94, vol. 5, June 9, 1898.

17 Kimball to Marinda Hyde, January 2, 1848, holograph, LDS Archives.

16

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embarrassed." She with her two sons and widowed mother journeyed by wagon to the Salt Lake Valley where she exchanged the traveling outfit for a small comfortable home. Hiram Kimball arrived a year later "financially ruined and broken in health." 18 To support the family, Sarah began teaching school in Salt Lake City's Fourteenth Ward. Franklin D. was born in April 1854, and by June Sarah had resumed teaching, not, however, without opposition.

Emmeline B. Wells indicated that Sarah taught "under very trying circumstances, and while thus engaged in teaching she became even more than ever convinced of the need of changed conditions for women engaged in work that came in competition with men, and determined to push the matter to the utmost." It is clear that Sarah was not hired to teach in the ward school. When her private students became too numerous for her own sitting room, she asked her husband and sons to haul timber from the canyons and build her a schoolroom.19 By 1857 Hiram Kimball was again prospering in business. Fifteenth Ward records indicate that he was able to purchase more shares for building the ward storehouse than any other man in his ward.20 Sarah's life became increasingly centered in ward activities when in February 1857 she was named president of the Fifteenth Ward Relief Society, a position she held until her death. At Brigham Young's suggestion ward Relief Societies had been reorganized in the early 1850s, but their activities were cut short by the Utah War and the subsequent move south in 1858. The local organizations were not fully revived until the end of 1867.

During that ten-year interim Sarah's life changed dramatically. Her mother, Lydia Dibble Granger, died after having lived with the Kimballs for twenty years. Hiram was killed in a steamship explosion while traveling to the Sandwich Islands as a missionary. Sarah adopted a young daughter, Elizabeth; and the oldest Kimball son married. When Brigham Young called upon bishops to reorganize Relief Societies in their wards, Sarah M. Kimball eagerly assumed her position. She was forty-nine years old, committed to service in the LDS church and to the burgeoning movement for woman's rights. The last thirty years of her 18

Crocheron, Women of Deseret, p. 27.

Emmeline B. Wells, "President Sarah M. Kimball," Woman's Exponent, December 15, 1898; Sarah M. Kimball's remarks, "Weber Stake of Zion," Woman's Exponent, June 1, 1879.

20 Fifteenth Ward, Riverside Stake, Historical Record, 1849-59, May 15, 1857, manuscript, LDS Archives; see also Leonard J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900 (1958; reprint ed., Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1968), p. 164.

19

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life would be public rather than private years during which her work with the Fifteenth Ward Relief Society would make her realize the value of her own strong opinions and administrative talents and motivate her to prod other women to likewise discover their personal resources and make their influence felt.

"Mrs. Sarah M. Kimball was essentially an organizer," wrote Susa Young Gates in describing Relief Society beginnings in Utah. And so she was. Almost immediately "Presidentess" Kimball drew up a description of the duties of Relief Society officers, a listing slightly revised by Eliza R. Snow and used by her in organizing Relief Societies throughout the territory. The organization included a presidentess, two counselors, a secretary, and a treasurer; a council of teachers with a presidentess and a secretary whose responsibility was visiting the sisters in the ward, caring for the needy and collecting donations; deaconesses to prepare the meeting place; messengers to run errands; superintendents of work to provide for the handwork; a board of apprizers to assess donations; and a commission merchantess to sell or exchange what the society received or made.21 In Salt Lake City's Fifteenth Ward that organization was quickly put to work with tremendous success. In reporting on the society's first year of activity Sarah Kimball told President Brigham Young and Eliza R. Snow that the poor, the sick, and the sorrowful had been looked after "so far as we had the means and power to relieve and comfort them."

"We soon found an increasing treasury fund which it became our duty to put to usury," Sarah proudly informed her superiors. That money was invested in a small lot 2/2-by-3 rods on which the society planned to build a hall, the first Relief Society hall in the church.22 The laying of the cornerstone for this hall in November 1868 was no small occasion, at least for Sarah Kimball who was provided with a silver trowel and mallet and an assembly of Fifteenth Ward men and women with whom to share her vision of woman's work. Her speech was carefully recorded: I appear before you on this interesting occasion on behalf of the Female Relief Society to express thanks to the Almighty God that the wheels of progress have been permitted to run until they have brought us to a more extended field of useful labor for female minds and hands.

With feelings of humility and gratitude I stand upon this consecrated rock, and contemplate the anticipated result of the completion of this 21 Fifteenth Ward, Riverside Stake, Relief Society Minutes, 1868-73, vol. 1, loose sheet titled "Duty of Officers of F. R. Society Written by S M Kimball, revised by E R Snow," manuscript, LDS Archives.

22 Report by Sarah M. Kimball to President Young and Sister Snow, loose sheet in Relief Society Minutes, 1874—94, vol. 5,

Fifteenth Ward Relief Society Hall where hand-made items were sold to help fund the group's varied programs. Utah State Historical Society collections. unpretending edifice (which I will here call " O u r S t o r e " ) , the upper story of which will be dedicated to art and science; the lower story to commerce or trade. I view this as a stepping stone to similar enterprises on a grander scale. 23

In fact Sarah's vision was accurate: by 1888 Mormon Relief Societies owned land and buildings valued at $95,000; and by the turn of the century Relief Society halls had been constructed throughout Utah, Idaho, and Arizona, and in Canada and Mexico.24 In 1895 when Anna Howard Shaw and Susan B. Anthony visited Utah, Sarah Kimball, then Utah honorary vice-president of the National American Woman's Suffrage Association, reminisced about reading Anthony's feminist articles in the Revolution in the 1860s. She explained that at that time she "would not have dared to say the bold, grand things that Miss Anthony said, . . . and as time rolled on we were very careful." 25 When the Fifteenth Ward hall was under construction in 1868— 23 Account of the laying of the cornerstone for the Fifteenth Ward Relief Society Hall taken from Woman's Exponent, June 15, 1885.

24 See "The Women of Utah Represented at the International Council of Women, Washington, D.C," Woman's Exponent, April 1, 1888; also History of the Relief Society, 1842-1966 (Salt Lake City: General Board of Relief Society, 1966), p. 104.

25 "Conference N.A.W.S.A. . . . May 13 and 14, 1895" Woman's Exponent, August 15, 1895.

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69, Mrs. Kimball encountered some opposition and attempted to negotiate with the brethren in the ward for the women's increased activities.

"We know there is strong prejudice existing in the minds of many against female organizations, and we regret to acknowledge there is cause for this prejudice," she said, indicating that she did not subscribe to the feelings of the women calling "for a place in the senate and all public offices and responsibilities, neglecting her first and highest duty, that of making home happy." In essence, Mrs. Kimball promised that she and her sisters would assume only such powers as were delegated to them by the ward's priesthood leaders, but these powers the women must assume or be doomed with the "unprofitable servant." "In relation to the storehouse being erected," she added, "the echo has reached our ears that the society wished the brethren to do all the work, and for them to have the credit of it. We do not know where the sound originated, but we wish to inform all present that it is entirely a mistake." 26 In the years that followed, the woolen cloth, carpet rags, spools of cotton, baby stockings, crewel and braid, dried fruits, valentines, buttons, shoes and moccasins made by Fifteenth Ward members and sold on a commission basis by the sisters in their store helped pay for the building.

These funds combined with what the sisters collected in monthly donations were extensive enough to furnish the hall; purchase shares for the ward organ; build a granary and stock it with grain; contribute to funds for Perpetual Emigration, the Salt Lake and Logan temples, and the Deseret Hospital; provide a carpet for the ward meetinghouse; and purchase a knitting machine and set up a tailoring establishment within the ward. Such contributions would have been typical of Relief Societies throughout the church that also provided food, clothing, and quilts for the poor, and temple and burial garments for church members in the 1870s and 1880s.27 In addition, Fifteenth Ward sisters engaged in some less typical Relief Society activities: sending assistance to those who suffered in the Chicago fire, mailing the Woman's Exponent to English sisters too poor to subscribe, beginning a ward kindergarten and financing the teacher's professional training as well as paying tuition for poor children, founding a ward library, and sponsoring quarterly parties for the ward's widowed and aged. These were profitable servants putting their delegated powers to usury. x

Report by Sarah M. Kimball to President Young and Sister Snow.

See Leonard J. Arrington, "The Economic Role of Pioneer Mormon Women," Western Humanities Review 9 (1955): 145-64.

27

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Remarkably complete minutes of Fifteenth Ward Relief Society meetings are extant for the years between 1867 and Sarah Kimball's death in 1898. They reveal something of her concerns and expertise as a leader. Sarah, "who had been both rich and poor, [who] had moved in all grades of society, had always seen much good and intelligence in woman." She was constantly striving to help her sisters exercise their minds. A few months after the hall was dedicated and the sisters were settling down to regular meetings, Sister Kimball said she "wished the sisters to come to the society meetings prepared to entertain each other with reading, speaking, or singing, and not spend all the time in work."

This they did, the society gathering to sew carpet rags and quilts while members took turns reading from the scriptures, Parley P. Pratt's Key to Theology, and some contemporary books and periodicals such as Woman and Her Era and the Phrenological Journal.28 Mrs. Kimball attempted to vary the curriculum, placing heavy stress on the study of physiology in 1872-73. She told her sisters that "human bodies were not forlorn, disagreeable objects, and should not be subjected to the causes that would make them such." Accordingly, she preached dress reform, declaring that "tight lacing was a sin against humanity." 29 She did not limit her scope of concern to her own ward but suggested the setting up of physiology classes among the Relief Society and Young Ladies MIA organizations throughout the church.

In 1881 the Fifteenth Ward society attempted to center weekly discussions on basic gospel principles, and Sarah became frustrated when attendance dropped off. On April 14, 1881, the secretary recorded: Pres. S. M. Kimball said that we were eternal beings and that there was a germ within us that was eternal. Said the glory of God was His intelligence and that our glory hereafter was our intelligence. Said we came together to learn our responsibilities to ourselves to God and to all the world. Said if these meetings were not interesting to the sisters we would return to work again.

They returned to work and for some time "the ever faithful basket of carpet rags was brought forth and distributed among the sisters." But not indefinitely. By 1884 the sisters were taking turns presiding and designating topics for discussion such as the Word of Wisdom, prayer, the Constitution, and the Atonement.30 29 29

Relief Society Minutes, 1868-73, vol. 1, passim.

Minutes of Retrenchment Meeting, February 12, 1873, in Woman's Exponent,

1873.

80

Relief Society Minutes, 1874-94, vol. 5, April 14, 1881, September 1884.

March 1,

Sarah M. Kimball

217

Sarah Kimball later maintained this same emphasis on woman's education in her work with the Utah Woman Suffrage Association. As soon as she was elected in 1890, she suggested that each woman read over the Constitution six times and that county chapters take up the study of municipal government. "This would lead to our advancement and the enlargement of our capacities," she said. Fifteen hundred members of the UWSA participated in classes in civil government during 1890-91, forming mock legislative assemblies to help women understand the billpassing process. Woman, said Mrs. Kimball, must "intelligently assert her selfhood in a manner that will enable her to labor more effectively for the general good of humanity." 31 Convinced that each woman should have a sense of self, President Sarah Kimball delegated significant responsibilities to the Fifteenth Ward sisters and did not intrude upon such assignments. Elizabeth Duncanson was president of the Relief Society's teachers quorum or visiting committee for almost as long as Sarah was Relief Society president. This committee held separate weekly meetings and kept separate minutes. Sarah was usually present, but did not take charge. When Brigham Young encouraged home manufacture among LDS women, Sarah Kimball designated six women to oversee everything the ward sisters were producing, from feather brushes to temple clothing. She was interested in developing leadership skills in women besides herself, and her efficient administration in the Fifteenth Ward left her free to pursue other political and church activities.

And she served as a first-rate example of confident, capable womanhood. Emmeline B. Wells recalled that Sarah's ideas were independent and original and that "in public measures her plans were wrell-matured before she presented them, and therefore the more convincing." Wells added that Sarah's "decidedly positive manner" was construed by some as aggressive, but others appreciated her straightforwardness. When her Relief Society considered building a granary in 1876, Mrs. Kimball approached the ward bishopric and spelled out three alternatives. A brother had proffered space in one of his buildings. The Relief Society could sell stock subscriptions and purchase the vacant lot behind their store. Or, if the ward would help in the construction of a fireproof granary and stock it with 350 bushels of wheat, Sarah would donate some of her own land, in the ward for the site. A decision was not reached immediately, but 31

1891.

Report of Utah W.S.A. at 1891 N.A.W.S.A. convention, in Woman's Exponent, April 1,

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Sarah's preparation raised the pertinent issues and one of the brethren present noted that "he was always pleased with a plain statement of facts such as had been presented by Sister Kimball." 32 Though Sarah Kimball indicated that she was somewhat reluctant to express her views on the equality of the sexes as early as Susan B. Anthony did, she apparently lost all hesitation as soon as it was clear that there was a place within the Latter-day Saint scheme for a woman's rights advocate. Sister Kimball was never one to go against the brethren, but when the territorial legislature granted the right of suffrage to Utah women in 1870, Sarah affirmed "that she had waited patiently a long time and now that we were granted the right of suffrage, she would openly declare herself a woman's rights woman." s In the years that followed, Sarah's oft-expressed opinions on woman's equality gained her a reputation for being strong-minded. "She was a woman one liked to talk with even if one could not always coincide with her views, and one was pretty sure to learn something by conversation with her," recollected one associate. "Even if one was worsted in an argument, she was certainly well worth listening to, and excellent in debate." 34 Writing to the Deseret News editor to disagree with his comments about woman's right to hold public office, admonishing Relief Society sisters to honor women as well as the brethren, petitioning the governor to appoint women as university regents, or telling younger women that maternity meant schooling the child in "social, moral and political purity and majesty," Sarah Kimball "never hesitated in giving her opinion upon equality of the sexes." And no one who knew her doubted the strength of her convictions.

Although remembered by Utahns as the state's pioneer suffragist, Sarah M. Kimball waged her most ardent campaign for woman's rights during the 1870s and 1880s when Utah women were exercising their elective franchise. She geared her efforts at awakening women to their responsibilities and possibilities. The real struggle for suffrage came after 1887 when the Edmunds-Tucker Act disfranchised Utah women. During the urgent campaign of the 1890s aging Sarah Kimball was not as active in organizing local suffrage auxiliaries and communicating with national suffrage leaders as were younger proponents of woman's suffrage, most notably Emily S. Richards. But Sarah's endorsement of the goals and pro:!2 Fifteenth Ward, Riverside Stake, Relief Society Minutes, 1876, vol. 6, November 23, 1870, manuscript, LDS Archives.

33 Relief Society Minutes, 1868-73, vol. 1, February 19, 1870.

34 Wells, "L.D.S. Women of the Past," p. 2.

•w

•

^s/$

•••V

^ni***!^

Sarah M. Kimball, standing right-center holding handkerchief, participated in national woman suffrage groups such as the one above that met in Utah.

Courtesy LDS church.

grams of the local movement was unwavering; and her sanction, as one of the older generation and an established advocate of woman's advancement, undoubtedly helped to garner support for the cause.35 By choice, it seems, Mrs. Kimball refused to allow her involvement with public weal to usurp her vital concern for individual men and women. Perhaps it was this concern that kept her so occupied with her work in the Fifteenth Ward. Though she was active in territorial politics and suffrage activities and served with the general Relief Society presidency and board for almost twenty years, much of her life continued to center in her own ward where as Relief Society president she was called upon to administer to the wants of the needy. The ward bishop, Robert T. Brown, praised her for her "heart full to overflowing with love and kindness to [her] fellow creatures," and Fifteenth Ward minutes reveal 35 An assessment of the activities of Utah's suffrage leaders in the 1890s is " T h e Vote Reclaimed in U t a h , " in Beverly Beeton, "Woman Suffrage in the American West, 1869-1896" (Ph.D. diss., University of Utah, 1976).

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her as a leader sensitive to the personal problems of the brothers and sisters in the "ward family": Sister Kimball felt that Sister R u t h had a claim on us. Said she was a great sufferer in her feeling, and if we can comfort her in our prayers it would be a great blessing to her and us. Also spoke of Sister Ann. Said her case was to be [considered]. Said she was one of us. She did not know what was best to do for her. Also spoke of Father Andrews. Said he had grown old amongst us. She thought he had a claim on us as a ward. She thought the sisters had earned a blessing in what they do. She thought the people responded good in giving. She felt to say God bless the people, God bless the poor, God bless the society. 36

And even when the sick and poor were cared for there were other needs to attend to. "This year I am happy in believing that the needy poor in our city are supplied with a reasonable abundance of fuel, food and raiment," Sarah wrote church leader John Taylor one Christmas.

"But there are other hungers besides that for food," she continued, "and the question is, Shall we take cognisance to these other legitimate hungers and try to supply the requisite nutriment that we may have joy in witnessing the best developments of our home talents?" She was writing in regard to a young woman who hungered for "musical advantages," asking the church leader to help finance study for one who had unselfishly shared her musical talents with church members.37 Sarah showed an awareness of individual needs as women related to one another in groups. When she sensed that disagreements in Relief Society discussions were alienating some members she pleaded with the sisters to recognize that "when we grow old we get very sensitive," reminding them that "we should govern our sensitiveness with judgment."

She thought sisters "tried and wounded each others feelings, but not knowingly," and should work to cultivate good feelings toward each other. It would seem the Relief Society sisters celebrated their successes in this area since the secretary once proudly recorded: "The wool was picked without the merits or demerits of neighbors being discussed."

Sarah Kimball celebrated her seventy-fifth birthday by sponsoring a special dinner for the widows and aged women in her ward. "The ladies came and went in carriages at her expense," the Woman's Ex36

Fifteenth Ward, Riverside Stake, Relief Society Minutes, 1873-83, vol. 4, March 7, 1868, manuscript, LDS Archives.

37 Kimball to Taylor, December 30, 1879, holograph, John Taylor Incoming Correspondence, LDS Archives.

38 Relief Society Minutes, 1874-94, vol. 5, November 18, 1887, and Relief Society minutes, 1868-73, vol. 1, May 28, 1868.

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ponent reported. Whenever personal support was needed Sarah Kimball seemed willing to give it. She constantly admonished her sisters to pray for their leaders, be they men or women leading the church, the state, or the nation.

During 1897-98 Sarah attended her Relief Society meetings less frequently. Her health declined rapidly, and not infrequently the society officers met with Sarah in her home. At one of the last meetings she was able to get out to attend, plans for a new Relief Society hall were discussed and President Sarah M. Kimball announced that "she desired to give the funeral sermon of our old hall." She reviewed the history of the hall and the Fifteenth Ward society, "and the work of progress intellectually as well as attending to the wants of the poor and needy." 39 She was proud of the society of sisters in her ward, a society that many said "prospered beyond any branch in Zion." In Salt Lake City's Fifteenth Ward she had seen in microcosm the effects of Joseph Smith's "turning of the key" and the subsequent "extended field of useful labor for female minds and hands."

Sarah Melissa Granger Kimball died December 1, 1898, on the eve of her eightieth birthday. "What an amount of interesting history you have helped to make," George Q. Cannon had scribbled to Sarah in her book of autographs in 1892. "Now you stand venerable in appearance, your head silvered, if not by age, at least by the trials you have endured, in an important station and as a representative woman among your sex." 40 Because her life encompassed a broad spectrum of Mormon women's concerns and activities—from family to theology, from commission stores to politics, from the needs of the poor in her ward to the rights of women—Sarah Kimball is representative of her generation of Mormon women. If she was exceptional it was not because her options were significantly different but because her own strong-mindedness and charity made her exercise of those options exceptional, and often exemplary. "The liberal shall be blessed," she had told her sisters at one Relief Society meeting, and that statement seems a fitting tribute to her ideology and works.

39 Fifteenth Ward, Riverside Stake, Relief Society Minutes, 1893-99, vol. 8, September 1, 1898, manuscript, LDS Archives. '"Cannon to Kimball, September 21, 1892, Sarah M. Kimball Autograph Book, 1850-98, photocopy of manuscript, LDS Archives.

WOMAN'S EXPONENT The Rights of the Women of Zion, and the Rights of the Women of all Nation*.

VOL. 22.

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH, APRIL I, 1894.

CONTENTS: Woman Suffrage Column—Shall Utah Become A State Without Woman Suffrage—L. L. Dalton.

A Woman's Assembly. To The Pioneers—Mary Ellen Kimball. . Woman's National Press Excursion. Why Women Want The Municipal Ballot-F. M. A. U. W. P. C.-Gladys Woodmansee. R. S. Reports. Ladies' Semi-monthly Meeting—Lydia D. Alder. Miscellaneous.

Notes And News. In Memoriam. Obituaries., Funeral Reforms.

But there'll be something missing; When the summer comes again, Some golden links most precious, Have been torn from out life's chain; Tho' summer comes with beauty, Wealth, and plenty in her train, Her power can ne'er restore, These lost links from out life's chain, She will bring buds and flowers, But we'll listen all in vain,

EDITORIAL.—The

No.

toiled, hoped, prayed but wept not, c never be persuaded, that you and yc daughters are not equally concerned in that pertains to this hard-won home, eqi heirs to the grand estate.

'All men know it is not in us to boa but we do not deny that our record of t past gives us room to boast of eve requisite to honest, useful citizenship; a we kv»V w : * v - " ' « " » to our husbar MT claims be 1 iLJored. wb

Editorial Notes.

The Woman's Exponent: Forty-two Years of Speaking for Women

BY SHERILYN COX BENNION

. HE WOMAN'S EXPONENT, founded in Salt Lake City in 1872 by and for women of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was one of the earliest periodicals for women in the United States. In the West two papers in San Francisco and one in Oregon preceded it, but only the New Northwest of Portland survived for any length of time. Never owned or officially sponsored by the church, the Exponent grew out of the same sort of impulse that fostered most of the other early church publications:

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individuals saw a need for a medium through which ideas and information might be exchanged and moved to meet that need. Of course, no official magazines existed to offer competition, and the early periodicals had the approval and support of the church hierarchy; general authorities speaking at Relief Society conferences regularly urged the sisters to subscribe to the Exponent, and its first editor was reluctant to assume her post until Brigham Young called her to it as a mission.

Although the Exponent served as a forum where women could express differing views on subjects like the extent to which they should become involved in activities outside their homes and where Eliza R. Snow could publish theological treatises and be chastised only after the fact, it remained loyal to church leaders and policies. A traveling author quoted it in his book to illustrate the point that Mormon women actually did not want to be rescued from polygamy and made sure his readers understood that such defenses of the practice were not written under duress: It is of no use for "Mormon-eaters" to say that this is written "under direction," and that the women who write in this way are prompted by authority. Nor would they say it if they knew personally the women who write thus. 1

Only once was a general authority questioned in the paper, and that was done indirectly when the Exponent reprinted an article from a Denver magazine explaining that B. H. Roberts had been elected to Congress by Utah Democrats in spite of the women's vote, since he did not support suffrage. Lula Greene Richards, the first editor of the Exponent, sent quotations from the article in a letter to the only other editor, Emmeline B. Wells, who also happened to be a founding member of the Utah Republican party, with thanks from the women of Utah for "the fair-minded and sensible way" in which the Denver author had analyzed "the present embarrassing situation we are placed in by the election of B. H. Roberts to Congress." 2 Susa Y. Gates wrote that the Exponent was "conservative, true to truth, pure and exalted in tone, . . . a safe, sound, faithful exponent of woman's place in the world." 3 This makes the paper sound considerably Dr. Bennion is assistant professor of journalism at Humboldt State University, Areata, California.

1 Phil Robinson, Sinners and Saints (Boston, 1883), p. 107.

2 L. L. Greene Richards, "Thanks," "Woman's Exponent, February 1, 1899.

3 Susa Young Gates, "The Woman's Exponent," p. 23, undated typescript, Archives Division, Historical Department, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City.

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more staid and bland than it really was, but the description is basically accurate. Emmeline proudly proclaimed in an editorial published toward the end of the Exponent's life that whatever criticism may be made, one thing must be said if truth is told, it has always stood for the principles of right and never pandered to the vitiated tastes and frivolities of modern society, or entered into any arguments that would lead to controversy adverse to the best interests of the community in which it is circulated. . . .4

The Exponent had several purposes, announced at its inception and adhered to throughout its forty-two-year career. It would discuss all subjects interesting and valuable to women, report Relief Society meetings and other matters connected with the workings of that organization, encourage both new and established women writers, and provide an outlet for their work. Finally, it would furnish to the world an accurate view of the grossly misrepresented women of Utah.

To a large extent the Exponent fulfilled these purposes. It reported not only Relief Society affairs but those of a multitude of enterprises organized by Relief Society leaders, plus developments in the Young Ladies' Mutual Improvement Association, the Primary, and numerous other women's groups. It spearheaded the drives to encourage Mormon women to collect and store grain and to develop a home silk industry. Its office served as Relief Society headquarters for many years.

The influence of the Exponent among Relief Society members extended beyond those who actually subscribed, because excerpts from it frequently were read and discussed in local meetings. Minutes of the Oakley Second Ward Relief Society for 1902 illustrate this use of the paper. On February 6, the stake Relief Society president read "a peice from the exponent entitled Greeting to Relief Societies. Sister Sophia Elison then bore her testimony. . . . Sister Leonora Severe then read a peice from the exponent entitled official announcement." 5 The editors continually invited readers—and hearers—of the paper to contribute to it, and women from throughout the territory, and sometimes beyond, responded. The Exponent also encouraged members of local Relief Societies and Young Ladies' Mutual Improvement Associations to start their own papers and published excerpts from those that were sent in.

These readers' contributions were responsible for much of the tone of the paper, although they undoubtedly followed the lead of the editors 4 6

"Helpful Suggestions," Woman's Exponent, May 1905.

"Oakley 2nd Ward Relief Society Minutes, 1901-1905," pp. 10-13, LDS Archives.

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in the type of writing they submitted. In letters, poetry, articles, and fiction they expressed their humor, sentimentality, and religious and social convictions—sometimes simultaneously. To be sure, the humor that today's reader sees in many Exponent items was not intended by their authors. "Inez" was very serious when she warned that W i t h m a n y young ladies, waltzing has become almost like an intoxicating beverage to an habitual drinker. T o o m u c h dancing of any sort in their early years is likely to make t h e m frail, weakly women all their lives, a n d doubtless shorten their days a n d retard their usefullness. 6

But "Aunt Jerusha" intended her readers to smile when they read her story, related in an unidentifiable dialect, of attending with her fashionable nieces a modern cooking school where she was amazed to find pupils relying on a new-fangled gadget she certainly never would have used—a cookbook.7 Serial novels were short on humor but long on sentimentality and religious conviction. Heroines were born Mormons, converted to Mormonism, or the ancestors of Mormons. One, Jane Bland, experienced an unusual number of vicissitudes, even considering that they were spread out over fifty-seven episodes. "True to her nature," she endured each "trying ordeal with the greatest heroism, after the first severe nervous shock." 8 Another heroine reached the height of printed passion, Exponent-style, when her intended "drew her toward him, looked into her eyes, and, as if satisfied with what he found there, folded her in his arms and kissed her tenderly." 9 Even with its varied content, the Exponent could not, of course, discuss all subjects of interest to women, but it made a valiant effort in that direction. As for giving the world an honest view of Mormon women, it certainly tried, although most of the world ignored it. Emmeline did see to it that copies were distributed at national and international meetings of suffrage and other women's groups and at world's fairs held during its lifetime, and she frequently told readers that they did not realize "what a power in the hands of women of this Church a newspaper is." 10 Some individuals outside the church changed their minds about Mormon women as a result of reading it. Emily Scott, a non' Inez, "Health and Dancing," Woman's Exponent, May 1, 1878.

"Aunt Jerusha," Woman's Exponent, January 1, 1888.

8 "In Rural England," Woman's Exponent, September 1 and 15, 1895.

8 Clio, "A Heart of Gold," Woman's Exponent, September 1, 1897.

10 "Our Little Paper," Woman's Exponent, May 15, 1886.

7

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member from the Midwest, wrote the editor that this had happened in her case, and she continued to contribute to the paper for several years.

The Exponent office was a stopping place for "hundreds of tourists" who came each year "to inquire concerning the 'peculiar people' and especially the 'Mormon' women." " A recent thesis by Gail Farr Casterline suggests that the Exponent did less to change the opinions of Mormons held by outsiders than it did to cultivate a positive Louisa Lula Greene Richards. image of Mormon women in their own minds at a time when they were threatened by negative perceptions of their religious beliefs, moral standards, intelligence, and even their appearance. 12 Exponent editors and contributors were women of talent and independence. They recognized that they and their readers were involved in significant activities and were capable of carrying them through. They defended their beliefs with dignity and diplomacy. Edward W. Tullidge was correct in wTiting that they produced a periodical "fully up to the standard of American journalism." " However, credit for the impetus that got the paper started, as well as for its name, must go to a man—Edward L. Sloan, editor of the Salt Lake Herald. He formulated the idea, found the editor, and furnished not only instruction but facilities for printing the paper.

The editor he found was Louisa Lula Greene, a grandniece of Brigham Young, whose family lived in Smithfield, Utah. She had begun her journalistic career in 1869 as editor of the "Smithfield Sunday School Gazette," a two-column, hand-written paper distributed after Sunday School each week to those who would "come to Sabbath School, keep 11

"A H a p p y New Year," Woman's

Exponent,

January 1, 1888.

12

Gail Farr Casterline, " 'In the Toils' or 'Onward for Zion': Images of the Mormon Woman, 1852-1890" (M.A. thesis, U t a h State University, 1974), p. 94.

13

Edward W. Tullidge, The Women of Mormondom

(New York, 1877), p. 52.

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227

order and pay attention." 14 Her literary efforts received wider distribution after several poems she wrote were published in Sloan's Herald.

Then Lula received a letter from Sloan asking if she would be interested in editing a paper for Mormon women. She later wrote that he first had contemplated giving her work on the Herald, but, since other staff members did not agree with that plan, he conceived the idea of the women's paper.15 Lula was reluctant, pleading inexperience, but Sloan persisted, so she wrote Eliza R. Snow, the "Captain of Zion's womanly hosts," 16 to find out what Eliza thought about the suggestion and also what Brigham Young's reaction was. Lula explained that, if President Young approved of her embanking upon such an enterprise, she would like him to "appoint the duties of that calling" as a mission. Eliza wrote back that both she and the president "heartily sanctioned the undertaking" and that he "would gladly appoint me the mission and bless me in it," Lula reported. He agreed after inquiring about Lula's capabilities for such an undertaking and being assured that what she lacked in education she could learn and that she was "staunch." 1T According to Susa Y. Gates, President Young also suggested that provision be made for the education of girl typesetters. He wanted even the printer's helper to be a girl, although she was not to be called a "devil." 18 From the fall of 1871 until June 1, 1872, when the first number of the Woman's Exponent appeared, Eliza and Lula corresponded several times about the paper, discussing possible printers, methods of financing it, proper subscription price, the necessity of keeping careful records of subscribers and the types of content that would be appropriate. Eliza established the rule of sending all Relief Society minutes to the Exponent and also gave her opinion that "it will be no detriment to you to write a few stories more particularly if they are good ones and I should presume that you would write no others." 19 A method of financing mentioned nowhere else was noted by a great-granddaughter of Emmeline B. Wells, who wrote that interested women incorporated and bought stock at ten dollars per share.20 14

"Smithfield Sunday School Gazette," October 3 1 , 1869, L D S Archives.

15

Richards to Zina S. Whitney, J a n u a r y 20, 1893, L D S Archives.

16

Gates, " W o m a n ' s Exponent," p. 1.

17

Richards to Whitney.

18

Gates, " W o m a n ' s Exponent," p. 2.

19

Snow to Greene, November 16, 1871, L D S Archives.

20

J a n e C a n n o n King, Biography of Emmeline B. Wells for Daughters of U t a h Pioneers, p. 4, L D S Archives.

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Lula moved to Salt Lake to begin her editorship, staying with her uncle, Lorenzo D. Young, and using his parlor as an office until the fall of 1872, when Sloan had a small office constructed near the Herald building wdiere Lula lived with her aunt, Persis Richards. They used the back room as living quarters and the front as public office. The first issues of the Exponent were printed at the Herald plant. Campbell and Patterson, book sellers, served as general agents. They subtracted a bit more from the feminine aura of the paper by advertising in the Herald for "twenty active, intelligent boys to sell the Woman's Exponent." 21 Target date for the first number was the beginning of April, to coincide with general conference, but delays in shipments of type and paper postponed its issuance until June 1, 1872. That June 1 was also Brigham Young's birthday was a happy coincidence but no more than that.

In the meantime, a prospectus explaining the aims of the publication and soliciting subscriptions for it was prepared and sent to the presidents of all Relief Society organizations in the church. Sloan probably used part of its contents in an advertisement April 9 that did get out in time to appeal to the general conference crowds and stated that the Exponent would aim to discuss "every subject interesting and valuable to women. It will contain a brief and graphic summary of current news, local and general; household hints, educational matters, articles on health and dress, correspondence, editorials on leading topics of interest suitable to its columns, and miscellaneous reading," as well as reports of the Female Relief Societies of Utah. It would "endeavor to defend the right, inculcate sound principles and disseminate useful knowledge." 22 The next day, Sloan followed the ad with an article pointing out that, at two dollars a year, the paper was bound to be a bargain. He also predicted that, since women of Deseret already enjoyed suffrage, there would be little need for the Exponent to make "a specialty of that pet subject with most woman's papers," 23 an assumption that showed that, in spite of his aid and influence, Sloan was not completely familiar with Lula's concerns.

The first number set the pattern, in both format and contents, for the entire life of the paper. It was three-column quarto (10 x 13/ 2 inches), eight pages long. "L. L. Greene" was listed as editor. The first page consisted of "News and Views," a miscellaneous collection of notes about 21

"Wanted," Salt Lake Daily Herald, June 6, 1872.

"Woman's Exponent," Salt Lake Daily Herald, April 9, 1872.

23 "The New Woman's Journal," Salt Lake Daily Herald, April 10, 1872.

22

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almost everything: women, religion, fashion, politics, unusual events.

Two continuing interests were keynoted in the following two paragraphs: Great outcry is raised against the much marrying of the Latter-day Saints. T h e tendency of the age is to disregard marriage altogether, but there seems no indication of a desire to have the race die out.

Reverend James Freeman Clark claims "that if it is an advantage to vote, women ought to have it; if a disadvantage men ought not to be obliged to bear it alone." Speaking from experience we feel safe in affirming that the Reverend gentleman is right, and we hope for a time when this immunity may be universally enjoyed by our pure-minded and lightloving sisters. We don't presume that those belonging to the opposite class care anything about it.

Defenses of polygamy were published regularly until that practice was discontinued by order of President Wilford Woodruff in 1890, and the fight for suffrage was carried on for the entire forty-two years of the paper's existence. Other continuing themes were the necessity of education for women, the value of home industries, and the question of woman's proper place in the world.

Page 2 featured the first part of a history by Eliza R. Snow of "The Female Relief Society," a report on its activities from the Relief Society in Ogden, and a brief essay on "Personal Development" titled "There Is No Excellence without Labor," read by "M. A. F. J." to the Salt Lake Retrenchment Society. It also offered one of the wise or witty fillers that the Exponent used regularly to take up bits of space at the ends of columns. One was a definition of the dinner horn, a glorious instrument capable of accomplishing wonders with children who seemed to have hearing problems.

Page 3 contained two poems, unsigned, on themes that were to prove Exponent favorites, "Remember Thy Mother" and "Rearing of Children"; short articles urging wives to cultivate cheerful dispositions and all readers to avoid the mistake of relying on first impressions; a quotation from a speech on the power of the press; and a column of "Household Hints."

The fourth page contained more fillers, noting President Young's birthday and a new tonic extracted from sausages by an ingenious Yankee doctor, and also more news notes, in a column headed "Splinters," which must have been culled from other papers. Virtually all newspapers of the period used such "exchanges" regularly, and the first numbers of the Exponent relied heavily on them. Their number decreased as more original contributions and reports of church women's organizations were received.

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Page 4 was also the editorial page, and the editor used it to support statehood for Utah and to explain the goals of the new publication. In "Salutatory," Lula noted the large list of names already on the subscription book as evidence "that such a journal was demanded by the circumstances and the times," explained the delay in publication, and expressed the hope that subsequent numbers would appear regularly on the first and fifteenth of each month.

More articles and columns of news, humor, and information occupied pages 5, 6, and 7. An article on "Woman's Rights and Wrongs," by "E," offered a preview of content to come by supporting the rights of women —but with certain reservations: There are many rights which woman should possess yet of which she is denied by custom and by statute law, but more especially by the former. She should have the right to live, and to live purely, and not be compelled by the force of custom and fortuitous circumstances to seek a living death that the physical body may be sustained. And to secure her this right, she should have access to every avenue of employment for which she has physical and mental capacity.

She should have equal pay and suffrage, and she should not be held "more responsible than man—if as much—for sexual crime."

But when women seek to essay the role of revolutionists instead of reformers, when they set up one sex as of necessity antagonistic to the other, when they claim for women not liberty but license to set at defiance wholesome social regulations and nature's laws, then they are endeavoring to compass a wrong beside which the ordinary wrongs of the sex sink into comparative insignificance.

The last page carried a few short items and advertisements for Weed sewing machines, H. Dinwoodey's furniture store, a dentist, Mrs. Wilkinson's Bazar of Fashion, J. E. Johnson pharmaceutical products, and the Exponent. The last, probably a duplicate of the announcement circulated earlier, pointed out that women in Utah, being engaged "in the practical solution of some of the greatest social and moral problems of the age," had attracted the attention of the entire civilized world and that, since they had been "grossly misrepresented through the press," they needed an opportunity to reply. And "who are so able to speak for the women of Utah as the women of Utah themselves?" Thus, the first number demonstrated that the purpose of the paper was not only to allow Mormon women to "help each other by the diffusion of knowledge and information," another quotation from the ad, but to express their point of view to the world.

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The ad went on to request presidents and secretaries of Relief Societies throughout the territory to send reports of their meetings and other matters of interest, noting that Eliza R. Snow, president of the entire Female Relief Societies, cordially approved of the journal and would be a contributor to it. Bishops, as well as Relief Society officers, were urged to "interest themselves in getting up clubs" to recruit subscribers; clubs would receive ten copies for the price of nine. Payment was expected to be strictly in advance, although, judging from the paper's continuing pleas for payment of overdue subscription bills, this expectation was never met.

This first number received a warm welcome from Mormon publications, like the Deseret News and the Millennial Star, and from those friendly to the church, like the Salt Lake Herald. A comment indicating that the general public reception may have been somewhat less enthusiastic appeared nine years later in Tullidge's Quarterly Magazine: At the onset, the Woman's Exponent was looked upon by the public generally as a very u n i m p o r t a n t affair and treated by some of the kindliest disposed brethren as a woman's whim,—harmless to be sure, a n d therefore to be tolerated for "their'' dear sakes.

However, Tullidge went on to say that it "now wields more real power in our politics than all of the newspapers in Utah put together," that it was not only the representative of fifty thousand women at home, but could call a million women of America to the aid of its cause.24 Tullidge was prone to lavish praise and lofty exaggeration, but he was correct in claiming that the Exponent grew to be a force among Mormon women.

That it did become such a force was due in large part to the ability and dedication of its two editors. Louisa Lula Greene was born on April 8, 1849, in Kanesville, Iowa, the eighth of the thirteen children of Evan M. and Susan Kent Greene, both of whose mothers were sisters of Brigham Young. By the time she was twenty-two years old, Lula had edited the "Smithfield Sunday School Gazette," attended a private school in Salt Lake City, and helped organize a Young Ladies' Cooperative Retrenchment Association in Smithfield. When Eliza R. Snow sent her instructions on how to set up the association, a few sentences in the letter indicated that Lula felt some concern over being still unmarried: T o be sure, while u n m a r r i e d , one cannot be fulfilling the requisition of maternity, but let m e ask Is it not as i m p o r t a n t that those already born, 24

"Emmeline B. Wells," Tullidge's Quarterly Magazine 1 (January 1881) : 252.

232

Utah Historical Quarterly should be cultivated and prepared for use in the kingdom of God; as that others should be born? If left to me to decide, I should say, that of the two, the cultivation is of the most consequence. H o w many mothers give birth to children who themselves are altogether unqualified to perform the duties of mothers? And yet, for Zion's sake, those children must be cultivated. 2 5

One year after she became Exponent editor, however, Lula did get married—to Levi W. Richards. Her name on the masthead, which had been changed from L. L. Greene to Louisa L. Greene after she received letters addressed to Mr. L. L. Greene, or Dear Sir, became L. Greene Richards, then Lula Greene Richards. After another year, Lula had a baby daughter.

By 1877 she decided she needed more time to devote to her family.

Since she had asked for and been given the editorship as a mission, she wrote Brigham Young to ask for a release. He complied, and all that remained was to explain her resignation to Exponent readers, which she did in an editorial: . . . during the years of my life which may be properly devoted to the rearing of a family, I will give my special attention to that most important branch of " H o m e Industry." Not that my interest in the public weal is diminishing, or that I think the best season of a woman's life should be completely absorbed in her domestic duties. But every reflecting mother, and every true philanthropist, can see the happy medium between being selfishly home bound, and foolishly public spirited. 26

Although Lula no longer sat in the editorial chair, she continued to be a frequent contributor to the Exponent, "in cases of necessity carrying much of its responsibilities," as she wrote in the margin of Susa Y. Gates's history of the paper.27 She also traveled with other leading women of the church to visit and organize Relief Societies, Young Ladies' Retrenchment Associations and, later, Primaries, serving on the general board of the Primary Association from 1892 to 1917. She contributed to the publications of these organizations, as well, becoming closely associated with the Juvenile Instructor and conducting a column, "Our Little Folks," for it.

In 1904 a collection of Lula's poetry titled Branches That Run over the Wall was published. The title came from the first work included, an Snow to Greene, April 23, 1871, LDS Archives.

"Valedictory," Woman's Exponent, Exponent, August 1, 1877. Lula's first child died in November 1876, her ir second in July 1877.

27 Gates, "Woman's Exponent," p. 14.

26

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epic based on the Book of Mormon. The following year marked the centennial of Joseph Smith's birth, and in a contest for the best poems honoring him, sponsored by the Deseret Sunday School Union, Lula won all three of the prizes. She also wrote several hymn texts and verses for the childrens' song books published by the church.

She was active as an officer in the auxiliary organizations of her own ward, and from its dedication in 1893 until 1934, she was an officiator in the Salt Lake Temple. In the meantime she bore seven children. Three daughters died in childhood; four sons survived. Lula lived to be ninetyfive years old, dying in 1944.

The other Exponent editor was Emmeline Blanche Woodward Harris Whitney Wells. She was born in Petersham, Massachusetts, on February 29, 1828, a date that added a certain element of novelty once every four years to the reports of birthday tributes and surprise parties that were a staple of the Exponent during her thirty-eight years as editor.

Her parents were David and Deiadama Hare Woodward. At fifteen years of age, she married James Harvey Harris, a son of the local LDS branch president, and soon moved to Nauvoo. Her husband's parents left the church—and Nauvoo—soon after, although they could not persuade Emmeline and James to accompany them. However, after a baby boy was born to Emmeline in September 1844 and died a month later, James, too, left Nauvoo. Emmeline never saw him again.

In 1845 she became the second wife of Presiding Bishop Newel K. Whitney. At both Nauvoo and Winter Quarters, where they went early in 1846, Emmeline taught school. She also became a fast friend of Whitney's first wife, Elizabeth Ann, and the two traveled together across the plains to Salt Lake in 1848. By 1850, when Whitney died, Emmeline had two daughters. She again taught school in 1852 and, on October 10 of that year, married Daniel H. Wells.

From 1866, when Brigham Young directed that Relief Societies be organized, she assisted Eliza R. Snow in that task. She also sang in the Tabernacle Choir and was one of the first to cast a ballot after Utah women were given the vote in 1870, running unsuccessfully for the legislature a year later.

Her literary hopes, born at age four when she wrote her first verses,28 were not forgotten, however. When her husband asked her what her dearest ambition was, according to an article in the Relief Society Magazine, she replied immediately, "I would like to be the editor of a maga28

"Early Settler of State Dead," Salt Lake Tribune, April 26, 1921.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

zine." 29 In November 1873 she made the first step toward that goal when her article, "Take Care of the Boys," was published in the Exponent under the pseudonym Blanche Beechwood. In it she advised that mothers pay close attention to the rearing of their sons as well as their daughters. From that time on, she wrote poetry, editorials, Christmas essays, articles, and news notes and in December 1875 became coeditor.

As Lula pointed out in her letter to Brigham Young, Emmeline was her logical successor. She became sole editor in August 1877 when she was forty-nine years old. In 1899 she began listing herself as editor and publisher.

By the time she became editor, Emmeline had borne three more daughters, but the youngest was fifteen, old enough to assist in the Exponent office along with her two sisters, and Emmeline found time to get involved in many activities besides the editorship. All her interests were reflected in the paper, though. In fact, it became more and more a chronicle of the groups with which she was affiliated, including the Relief Society and many of the projects connected with it: the wheat storage program inaugurated by Brigham Young in 1876, the Deseret Hospital, and the Woman's Cooperative Store. She was a member of the Relief Society general board from 1888 until 1910, when she became general president, a post she held until a few weeks before her death.

An officer of the Utah and National Woman's Suffrage Associations and the Woman's National and International Councils, she also was chairman of the Utah Woman's Republican League and regent of the Utah Society of Daughters of the Revolution. She founded the Utah Woman's Press Club and was vice-president for Utah of the National Woman's Press Association. She also founded a women's literary group called the Reapers' Club.

Emmeline, like Lula, published a collection of poetry, Musings and Memories, which appeared in 1896. She also wrote hymns, the most familiar being "Our Mountain Home So Dear." These contributions to the world of letters were recognized in 1912 when Brigham Young University bestowed upon her the honorary degree of Doctor of Literature.

That same year another honor came when she was selected to unveil the Seagull Monument on Temple Square in Salt Lake City. She died in April 1921 at the age of ninety-three.

The editors had similar ideas about what the paper should be, and during its forty-two years many things about the Exponent remained 29

"Emmeline B. Wells," Relief Society Magazine

7 (March 1920) : 136.

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the same: its goals, the themes running through it, its format—with a few etchings and photographs in the final years being the only innovation. Others changed: its business arrangements, its editorial advisers and assistants, some features of its content. The office moved several times, until both the Exponent and the Relief S o c i e t y were quartered in the Bishop's Building at 40 North Main Street in 1909

Emmeline

B. Wells.

Little information about business arrangements can be found. In December 1873 composition and press work were moved from the Herald to the Deseret News, "where the type setting will, hereafter, be done by Young Ladies." 30 Girls made up the paper, as well, so that in 1893 the paper could boast that "all our work is done by women except the press work." 31 Campbell and Patterson lasted as agents for two years. Then, their firm went bankrupt and James Dwyer, another bookseller, was named agent. The subscription price remained at two dollars a year, with discounts for clubs, until 1889 when it was reduced to one dollar in an effort to entice more subscribers.

Pleas for additional subscribers and promises of expansion or improvement in appearance were regular features of the Exponent. Premiums, such as a handsomely framed engraving of Brigham Young or a portrait of Lucy Mack Smith, did not seem to help much. Sometimes Emmeline even resorted to scolding: It seems remarkably strange that the very women whose influence should be used to uphold and maintain the paper, should realize its importance so little as to think because times are hard and there is a depression 30 81

Woman's Exponent, December 1, 1873.

"Woman Journalism in Utah," Woman's Exponent, September 1, 1893.

236

Utah Historical Quarterly in the money market and the value of silver is low, that they cannot afford to take a paper at a dollar a year, which would not average the amount of one third of a cent a day the year round. . . . To make flimsy excuses such as are often sent in letters to this office is childish.32

How many subscribers there actually were is a mystery. The Exponent may have represented fifty thousand Utah women as Tullidge's 32

"The Woman's Exponent," Woman's Exponent, July 1 and 15, 1893.

*X'<** **&:'/#]

Women with aprons, standing on the right, may have been the "young ladies" who set the type and made up the Woman's Exponent when the paper was printed by the Deseret News, South Temple and Main Street, in the 1870s. Utah State Historical Society collections.

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Quarterly Magazine claimed,33 but it certainly never came close to having that number of subscribers. In 1881 it printed a statistical report from Relief Society general conference that listed, from the stakes reporting, 12,444 officers and members and 754 Exponent subscribers; but several stakes were not represented in the report. 34 If the ratio remained the same this would indicate around twenty-four hundred subscribers in 1898 when an editorial stated, "With the Relief Society of 30,000 women if one tenth of the number would take the paper and pay cash down it could be carried safely, yet that has been looked for, hoped for, and waited for in vain." 35 The earliest listing for the Exponent in a national directory of periodicals credited it with a circulation of between 500 and 1,000 in 1885.36 Later figures, admittedly estimates, peaked at 700 in 1902 and dropped to 500 in 1909.37 The Pacific States Newspaper Directory for 1888 lists a circulation of 4,000, from which the only safe conclusion may be that errors of fact or typesetting are not a twentieth-century invention.38 Even before the turn of the century, combined numbers (two or more issues in one) testified to financial problems. For example, a paper appearing in January would be labeled Numbers 13 and 14 for January 1 and 15 but still contain only the regular eight pages, or one summer and one holiday number would substitute for the three of four ordinarily issued during those seasons. The final volume, extending from September 1912 to February 1914 contained only fourteen numbers.

These later issues still offered basically the same sort of content, although Emmeline did change the subtitle, which began in 1879 as "A Word fitly Spoken is like Apples of Gold in Pictures of Silver," to "The Rights of the Women of Zion, and the Rights of the Women of all Nations." This ran from November 1, 1879, until 1897 when the right of Utah women to vote was restored and the subtitle became "The Ballot in the Hands of the Women of Utah should be a Power to better the Home, the State and the Nation." Finally, with the last volume, the legend under the paper's name was "The Organ of the Latter-day Saints' Woman's Relief Society."

3:1

"Emmeline B. Wells."

34

"Relief Society R e p o r t , " Woman's

Exponent,

November 1, 1881.

35

"A Christmas T h o u g h t , " Woman's

Exponent,

December 15, 1898.

3,5

George P. Rowell, American

37

Newspaper

N. W. Ayer and Sons, American pp. 850, 887.

38

Palmer and Rey, Pacific States

Directory

Newspaper Newspaper

Annual Directory

(New York, 1885), p. 579.

(Philadelphia

1902 and

1909)

(San Francisco, 1888), p. 154,

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Utah Historical

Quarterly

Featured poetry was moved from inside the paper to the front page but continued to focus on nature, motherhood, children, friendship, church leaders, and, occasionally, topics of the times, like polygamy or Prohibition. Articles, like the columns of short items, were miscellaneous in subject, but the most popular topic was women. If the numbers of articles about women's rights, women's place, and women's organizations are combined, they make up at least half of the total. Household hints appeared regularly during the first few years but were used only rarely later on.

As was the case with articles, editorials about women's place led the list of topics. The Exponent supportedâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;consistently and at lengthâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the woman suffrage movement. This was not a radical cause for Mormon women, since they either had the vote or were fighting to regain it during the years the Exponent was published. Other frequent subjects were self-improvement, problems and goals of the paper, and the Mormon question. The paper supported Prohibition in its later years. Editorial tributes to leaders of the church and of the women's organizations in which the paper was interested were common.

The Exponent defended polygamy in its poetry, fiction, and biography, as well as in editorials and articles. Sometimes fiction and biography were difficult to distinguish, since they were written in a similar style. Both also appeared in serial form. Closely related to biography, obituaries came to occupy a large share of the Exponent's space. Church leaders, Relief Society officers from throughout the church, United States presidents, prominent literary figures, a pope, and relatives of editors, all were eulogized.

Lesson helps were published when standard courses of study began to be adopted by Relief Societies around 1900. They became more frequent until 1914 when they were issued as a separate Relief Society Bulletin, edited by Susa Y. Gates. From the Bulletin came the Relief Society Magazineâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and the end of the Exponent.

Years before it succumbed, the Exponent had evolved into Emmeline's personal property. She announced in April 1912 at the Relief Society general conference that she had decided to give it as a present to the Relief Society but requested that she be retained as editor and her daughter, Annie Wells Cannon, as assistant editor, a position Annie had held since 1905. In the process, the paper would become a magazine.

However, Emmeline announced to the Relief Society general board in January 1914 that she intended to discontinue the paper completely.

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She had desired the privilege of giving the good will of her paper and the name to the Society, she had also desired that her name be used as editor of the Relief Society organ. These privileges had been denied her, and she had given up the paper, the name of the paper, and the idea of having her name used as editor. 39

Later that year the board heard that a Relief Society magazine would begin with the year 1915, as advised by the First Presidency, that it would be called the Relief Society Magazine, and that Susa Y. Gates would be editor.40 The final number of the Exponent contained no explanation for its cessation, although Emmeline listed what she considered its major contributions in a "Heartfelt Farewell": assisting those who needed assistance in many lines; providing a medium through which many successful writers first appeared in print; standing for high ideals in home, state, and church; proclaiming the worth and just claims of women; teaching Latter-day Saints; having a positive influence in the mission field; and serving as the organ of the Relief Society.41 Emmeline also wrote the front-page poem for the final number.

Perhaps by accident it was a very uncharacteristic work for this writer who usually found her topics in the beauties of nature, her cozy New England childhood, or the inspiration of great lives. On the other hand, then eighty-six years old, she may well have intended it as the poignant farewell it became: SORROW AND TEARS

Out of my sorrow and mourning, Out of its grief and its pain; Its sighing and sobbing, and moaning, The deepest, and wildest refrain Swells forth with a melody pleading For the heart that is stricken and bleeding.

Regrets for past promises waiting, And prophecies yet unfulfill'd; The tears and the voice that is waiting, The strength of strong passions distill'd; The agony past self-containing, The grief that o'ermasters restraining.

39 "Relief Society General Board Minutes," vol. 3, 1911-12, p. 85, microfilm, LDS Archives.

140 Ibid., pp. 86, 136.

41 "Heartfelt Farewell," Woman's Exponent, February 1914,

finding himself seated at the head of the table at Brigham Young's gala Christmas party in 1856 was not so much an honor as an opportunity. Leonard's carefully worded letter of three weeks earlier asking the Mormon leader's permission to marry both a second

.TOR TRUMAN LEONARD,

Truman Leonard: Pioneer Mormon Farmer

241

and a third wife had gone unanswered. President Young had advised Leonard four years earlier that upon fulfilling his proselytizing mission to India he should implement the newly announced principle of plurality in his life. Reluctant at first, the faithful elder had had long months of loneliness to consider the Mormon doctrine; then, on his journey home with the Ellsworth and McArthur handcart companies, fortune had blessed him with the acquaintanceship of two young English girls.

Truman Leonard grasped the opportunity during the conversation of Christmas evening to remind President Young of his promise to the missionaries called in August 1852. "If one plural wife was sanctioned, would two be agreeable?" "Yes, of course," Young responded. "Take two or three."

Truman Leonard's commitment to Mormonism almost always led him to accept the counsel of his priesthood leaders. He married those two young women, plucking one of them right out of Brigham Young's own kitchen, and took them home to Farmington, where Ortentia, his wife of ten years, accepted them, though with some misgivings, into her two-room adobe cabin.

Though he was slightly more married than the average Latter-day Saint of his day, in many ways Truman Leonard was a typical Utah Mormon. Both of his plural wives were taken during the flurry of marrying stirred up by the Mormon Reformation, just before James Buchanan's armed expedition arrived in the supposedly rebellious territory. Like many of his neighbors, Leonard participated in the Utah War. At other times he served his community in response to priesthood calls in a variety of civic duties, from county selectman to chairman of a July 4 extravaganza. A missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints four times during his seventy-seven years, and a home missionary and seventies president in between, he was one of those religious exiles from Nauvoo who managed to mingle a zeal for salvation with hard work on a small but productive Utah farm. And through it all he struggled with the humanness of being determined, even obstinate at times, while developing a reputation for unbounded generosity.

Why Truman Leonard chose in 1850 to live iia Davis County has not been recorded; but whatever the reasons that took him north from Dr. Leonard is a senior historical associate in the Historical Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This paper was awarded honorable mention in the 1976 Utah Bicentennial Biographies Contest, professional class, jointly sponsored by the Utah State Historical Society, the Utah American Revolution Bicentennial Commission, and the Salt Lake Tribune.

Opposite: Truman Leonard. Photographs courtesy of the Leonard family.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

Salt Lake City along the narrow, sloping Wasatch Mountain foothills, he did find himself among compatriots. Within a year of his arrival, census takers for the federal government counted eighty residents of Farmington, Truman Leonard included, who listed New York State as the place of their birth. That was a full 47 percent of the town's adult population.

Most of the other family heads were Illinois or Ohio natives, and many of the western New Yorkers had accepted Mormonism in one of those midwestern states. The percentage of New Yorkers in Farmington was double that of the territory as a whole, but even in Utah itself no other state claimed a larger share of native sons. Furthermore, 78 percent of Farmington's workers listed farming as their livelihood. In this, too, Truman Leonard fit the common mold of early Utah. 1 Thus, though Leonard is virtually unknown in Utah history, his life can illustrate the contribution to his community of a typical man, belonging to an uncommon but dominant religion, living in a representative nineteenth-century Utah Mormon towTi. Truman Leonard first heard of Mormonism as a young man. His father had left Massachusetts in 1811 and moved to Ontario County, New York, where, like so many other New Englanders, he sought a new life of economic opportunity in the new West. At Middlesex, among the Finger Lakes, the family was only a few miles from the center of early Mormon activities. Stories of a gold bible, discovered in a hillside by one Joseph Smith, Jr., spread by word of mouth throughout the district.

Excerpts of the translated record soon appeared in Obediah Dogberry's Palmyra Reflector in 1830 and then the book itself was offered at doorsteps in the hands of earnest missionaries. Truman, who was born at Middlesex on September 17, 1820, once visited Hill Cumorah out of curiosity for a personal inspection of the landmark.2 But the new religion did not catch up with the Leonards in New York. Truman's father, Truman Leonard, Sr., sold his improved 148acre farm for $4,221 and moved on to Chatham, in Medina County, Ohio, where he started over again on a 396-acre spread. That was in 1 Compiled and calculated from U.S., Bureau of the Census, "Seventh Census Population Schedules: 1850," microfilm of MS, Special Collections, Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City.

2 A brief biographical sketch of Truman Leonard, Jr., by a grandson, Frank J. Earl, "Fifth Mormon to Circumnavigate the Globe," The Pioneer 15 ( M a y - J u n e 1968) : 12-13, provides a useful overview of his life. Also helpful in the preparation of this paper have been the historical and genealogical researches of Earl, Margaret L. Moon, Mary L. Onstott, and the late Luverne L. Hinman. T r u m a n Leonard kept diaries of most of his missions after the first, but wrote little of his life otherwise. Typescripts of seven of his surviving diaries were prepared in 1969-70 by Brigham Young University for deposit in the library there. The originals remain with the family. The visit to Cumorah is reported in Davis County Clipper, November 26, 1897.

Truman Leonard: Pioneer Mormon Farmer

243

1835. Young Truman was fifteen years old and it would be another eight years before his investigations and the visit of Noah Packard, an itinerant Latter-day Saint preacher, would lead him to accept baptism. Packard's proselytizing apparently attracted the interest first of Harvey Edwards, husband of one of Truman Leonard's older sisters. Truman was baptized in the Black River on March 25, 1843, followed quickly by a younger brother, John, over whom Truman assumed a self-appointed guardianship from that time on. In the ensuing months, others of the family followed these three into the Mormon church. Eventually Truman's father, probably his mother, and five or six of the other eleven children became members.3 A growing number of believers in Chatham soon created the need for a regular church organization. Therefore, a small branch was formed in September 1843, with Truman Leonard, Jr., as presiding elder. Then, only four months later, he answered a missionary call to Ohio and New York and left the branch presidency to his father. During this critical year for Mormonism, Joseph Smith was moving toward a national campaign for the United States presidency. Truman may have joined the dozens who mingled proselytizing with politicking that spring and early summer of 1844. The prophet's murder in late June ended the quest for political authority, and in the flurry of uncertainty that followed, several Latter-day Saints were claiming the right to religious leadership. In succeeding years, Truman's oldest brother, Ebenezer, followed James J. Strang to Beaver Island. Several others of the family remained in Chatham, Ohio, where both parents died in 1846. About this time the little branch voted to disband and move en masse to Nauvoo, but apparently none of the Leonards joined Truman and John who had already tied their fortunes to the leadership of Brigham Young.4 On July 11, 1844, at the close of Truman's eastern mission, he and his young brother arrived in Nauvoo. For the next two years, Truman worked on the Mormon temple. He was a registered voter in Nauvoo, and in January 1845 became a Master Mason in the Nauvoo Lodge. The wiry young man, then in his mid-twenties and standing five foot nine inches tall, gained a reputation for hard work and caught the attention of the new Mormon prophet.

3 Mary L. Onstott, "Historical Sketch of T r u m a n Leonard, Sr. ( 1 7 8 4 - 1 8 4 6 ) , " TL: Newsletter of the Truman Leonard Family Association, no. 6 (July 1975), p. 2; Noah Packard, A Synopsis of the Life and Travels of Noah Packard, Born: 1796 (n.p., n.d.), pp. 3-4, 7-8.

4 Glen M. Leonard, "New Records Reveal Chatham Branch Activity," TL: Newsletter, no. 6 (July 1975), p. 7; and Minutes of the Chatham Branch, MS, Western Americana Collection, Beinecke Library, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

An anecdote told by his descendants reflects the energetic determination with which Truman Leonard approached his task as laborer. As the temple walls rose skyward, workers used the construction derricks as personnel hoists. Each morning they hauled themselves upward to their work stations, and at noontime or evening rode the swinging ropes down.

A game developed among the young men to see which of them could reach the hoist first and thus touch down ahead of the others. Truman, swift of foot, often edged out the other roof-top racers in the dash for the elevator. On one occasion, outdone by his fun-loving companions, he surprised them all by leaping from the roof of the temple as the derrick was swinging toward the pickup point. Grabbing the rope in midair, he was successful in winning that night's race to the supper table. Another version of the story has the impetuous young man falling from the temple walls and breaking several bones that were then healed by an administration of the elders. Whatever the consequences of his zeal, Truman Leonard apparently did earn a promise from Brigham Young that when the temple was opened for ordinances the first marriage performed would be that of Truman Leonard and Ortentia White. On January 1, 1846, Elder Heber C. Kimball performed the marriage and then, as a memento of the solemn occasion, handed the twenty-year-old, New York-born bride a photograph of himself and a lock of his hair.5 The temple, only partially completed, was not yet formally dedicated, and although most church authorities and a majority of the Saints fled from the threatened city early that year, Truman and Ortentia stayed on to help put finishing touches on the sacred monument to Joseph Smith's threatened empire. According to a report preserved by Ortentia's children, Truman helped install the angel atop the completed temple's spire. Then, when Hancock County citizens attacked Nauvoo, he joined the Spartan band in defending their Zion city. For five days, while Ortentia wondered at his fate, Truman manned a powder plot for the rag-tag militia. There were injuries and deaths on both sides. Truman escaped unharmed, but performed the sorrowful task of removing the bodies of William Anderson and his fifteen-year-old son from the battlefield and then of prying out the bullets so their bodies could be washed and clothed for burial.6 5 The story has been told to the author by Margaret L. Moon, the late Luverne L. Hinman, and others; and the alternate version is in Gertrude Earl Hansen West, "Ortentia White Leonard," mimeographed biographical sketch prepared for family members, n.d., copy in possession of the author. e West, "Ortentia White Leonard," p. 1; and Notes on an Interview with Truman Leonard, Jr., Cardston, Alberta, October 19, 1894, on a printed form titled Biographical Encyclopaedia.

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The Battle of Nauvoo ended the Mormon stay in Illinois, and the Leonards were among those forced to flee in September 1846. Crossing the Mississippi, they joined the sick and unwilling exiles in the trek to Winter Quarters. The journey was especially hard on Ortentia, who was pregnant with their first child. The couple reached the Mormon camps along the Missouri in late fall before the birth November 4 of Ezra Newton Leonard, who died and was buried the same day. For three, nearly four years, Truman and Ortentia remained in the Council Bluffs area.

Many of Brigham Young's ablest teamsters had joined the Mormon Battalion. Consequently, Truman's talents as a handler of livestock and skill as a builder were valuable assets. The interlude also allowed him to acquire a few possessions of his OWTIâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;oxen and a wagon, cattle, and the supplies they would need for the trek to the Great Basin.

Before Truman and Ortentia set out from Kanesville in June 1850, they had rejoiced in the birth of a second son whom they named Truman Milton. But just two days before their departure the eight-month-old boy died of the dreaded "black canker" and was buried in an unmarked grave.

Joseph Young, presiding church officer in Nauvoo after Brigham Young's departure, headed the wagon company. He was thus acquainted with Truman Leonard, who had worked for him at the temple. As the procession moved out across the plains, it soon became apparent that too many families had been enrolled for convenient supervision. Elder Young reorganized the party and placed Truman Leonard in charge of one of the sections. The twenty-seven-wagon group arrived at its destination in early October.7 Then began the period of Truman Leonard's greatest usefulness to his church and community. The decade of the 1850s would see him involved in a variety of religious, civic, and cultural duties. Thirty years of age in 1850, he had proven himself through a half-dozen years of faithful church service and through a demonstrated facility for practical things. His file leaders would see to it that his willing hands were engaged in helping to build the kingdom at home and abroad.

It is possible that an advertisement in the newly founded Deseret News turned Truman Leonard's attention toward the fertile farmlands T h e interview collected information for Andrew Jenson's encyclopaedia of Mormon biography, and the form is filed in the Archives of the Historical Department, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City (cited hereinafter as LDS Archives). The notes will be cited hereinafter as T r u m a n Leonard interview, October 19, 1894.

7 "Journal History of the Church," August 28, 1850, LDS Archives, containing a letter from Joseph Young to the First Presidency; and T r u m a n Leonard interview, October 19, 1894,

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of central Davis County. Willard Richards was building a sawmill four miles up North Cottonwood Canyon. He needed men skilled in the building trades and laborers to get out timber and build roads and bridges. After Leonard had provided a small cabin on a farmsite a mile and a half further north, he probably worked much of the time through the winter in the canyon.8 Already the settlers of 1848 and 1849 had appropriated much of the land along the bigger streams. They were calling their scattered community alternately Miller's Settlement and North Cottonwood, but after 1852 it became Farmington. Truman staked a claim, approved by Bishop Joseph L. Robinson, to at least fifty acres stretching in a narrow strip from the mountains westward. Within the first year he cleared and put under cultivation ten acres of the best land. His principal crops were wheat and potatoes, with a few garden vegetables added as he found time to care for them. The first harvest brought in a reported 160 bushels of wheat and 200 bushels of Irish potatoes; and that same year he realized a surplus of 25 pounds of butter. That he had not arrived in Utah completely without resources is demonstrated in his claim to twenty-nine head of livestock, including five milch cows, eighteen working oxen, two other "cattle," and four horses.^ It was the oxen that gave him the greatest pride of ownership. Truman Leonard enjoyed the animals as some men enjoyed a good riding horse, and his neighbors soon came to recognize his stable of working oxen as among the finest in the community.

His efforts toward a moderately comfortable life were interrupted after only two years by the call to full-time missionary service in India.

He and eight others whose names were read from the pulpit at the special August 1852 general conference spent nearly two and one-half years in the Hindoostan Mission with little to show for their efforts, plus another eighteen months getting there and back.

The call to India interrupted an important opportunity for community service. In 1851 he had been assigned by the bishop to help organize the North Cottonwood Ward into school districts. Soon afterward he was named a selectman from the central district of Davis County and sat with the first county court in March 1852. His service fell at a significant time in county history. With Judge Joseph Holbrook and selectman Daniel Carter, he helped divide the county into electoral pre8 Deseret News, August 24 and September 28, 1850; Milton D. Hammond, "A Journal Kept by Milton D. Hammond, with a Short Sketch of My Life Previous to Date of Journal, 1856-1858," p. 3, mimeographed, copy at Marriott Library, University of Utah.

8

Recorded in Bureau of the Census, "Seventh Census Population Schedules:

1850."

Truman Leonard: Pioneer Mormon Tarmer

247

cincts and school and highway districts, appointed watermasters, and in many other ways took actions that established precedents for local government. At the regular election in August 1852 he was named to a second term on the court but resigned the position a few weeks later to answer the missionary calling.10 Truman had two months to get his affairs in order. He left his farm under the charge of his twenty-one-year-old and still-single brother John, sold some of his livestock to help finance the journey and sustain his wife, and obtained a promise from the local priesthood that Ortentia's needs would be cared for. She had lost another baby by now, an experience that would be repeated four more times, but earlier that year she had borne a healthy girl, one of three girls who would live to maturity.

Helen Mar was six months old when her father loaded a wagon and headed for Los Angeles to begin a globe-encircling missionary tour.

Because of the season, the Asian missionaries reached San Francisco's international port by the circuitous route through Las Vegas Meadows and Los Angeles. In southern California they sold their fifteen wagons and forty-six horses and mules for cash, purchased passage on a coastal boat, and sent the surplus funds to their families. At San Francisco they collected enough from church members and others to pay their fares of $200 each. An eighty-eight-day sea voyage aboard the clipper ship Monsoon brought them to Calcutta, on India's east coast. They were welcomed there May 1, 1853, by the family of British army officer Matthew McCune. Already converts to Mormonism, the McCunes were able to assist the elders, and on one occasion nursed an ailing Truman Leonard back to full health.11 Leonard spent his first seven months in an area not far from Calcutta, at Chinsura. Then he joined Elder Amos Milton Musser for a month-long voyage around the subcontinent's southern cape to Bombay.

Consultations with other missionaries led them to a field of labor further up the coast at Karachi (now part of Pakistan) where they remainedâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; sometimes together, sometimes aloneâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;for the next year and a half.

Never totally optimistic in his regular reports to mission headquarters in Liverpool, England, Elder Leonard determined in his last letter to his supervisor, Elder Franklin D. Richards, "to tell things as they 10

William Robb Purrington, " T h e History of South Davis County from 1847-1870" (M.S. thesis, University of Utah, 1959), pp. 82-84.

11

Earl, "Fifth Mormon to Navigate the Globe," pp. 12-13.

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are" and corroborate the discouraging reports of his coworkers in other parts of India. All whom he had contacted, he said, had "refrained from obeying the Gospel; they heeded it not sufficiently, they regarded too lightly the day of their visitation, they remain out of the kingdom, and know not its sweets." Furthermore, he was convinced that the "judgments of an offended God" were about to be poured out upon the land, and he cited civil disturbances in the upper provinces as signs of the impending calamity.12 Having cleared his conscience of further obligation to "India's sons," he sought passage for Liverpool, but having depended upon the goodness of his hosts for so longâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and living destitute often of basic necessitiesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; he found it doubly difficult to raise the necessary fare. He and his companions finally arranged with the captain of a sailing ship to work their passage homeward. At Liverpool Truman joined the Enoch Train, a ship loaded with British converts. He was shortly assigned by Mormon organizers on board to preside over the ship's fifth ecclesiastical ward.

His homeward-bound preaching revived his own dampened spirits, for his shipboard audience was not only captive but receptive.

From their landing port at Boston, the ship's Mormon emigrants moved by rail to Iowa City, where Leonard assisted in the preparation of handcarts. When the group was organized for travel, he was appointed captain of the first of two divisions of Daniel D. McArthur's company.

Equipped with twelve yoke of oxen, four wagons, and forty-eight carts, plus five beef cattle and a dozen cows, the company of 222 people left Iowa City June 11 and after two weeks at Florence, Nebraska, for final repairs, headed out on the plains July 24, 1856.13 The trek of the first handcart companies, well known in the annals of Mormon migration, included much routine and little excitement. Only three special incidents seemed important enough for McArthur to note in his official report to Brigham Young. Two of them concerned emergencies involving older women, and in both cases Truman Leonard was on the scene to give aid.

On August 16, nine days beyond Fort Kearney, while crossing a sandy hillock, fifty-nine-year-old Mary Bathgate, a leader in the walk12 Latter-day Saints' Millennial Star 18 (November 1 8 5 5 ) : 4 5 - 4 6 . The mission history is told in R. Lanier Britsch, " T h e Latter-day Saint Mission to India. 1851-1856," Brigham Young University Studies 12 (Spring 1972) : 2 6 2 - 7 7 ; and in Britsch's "A History of the Missionary Activity of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in India, 1849-1856" (M.A. thesis, Brigham Young University, 1964).

13 J o h n D. T. McAllister, Diary, May 23, June 3, 1856, typescript, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, U t a h .

Truman Leonard: Pioneer Mormon Farmer

249

ing brigade which was normally strung out ahead of the carts and wagons, was bitten on the ankle by a rattlesnake. Upon learning of the accident, Captains McArthur and Leonard ran the half-mile to her side. Truman opened the wound with his pen-knife and sucked out the poison. Then he helped her into his wagon, and after a two-hour rest, the company commenced its journey. But as the heavily laden wagon started to move, the victim's close friend, Isabella Park, stepped up to inquire of her condition. The driver failed to see "Mother" Park, and she was knocked down, the front wheels of the heavy wagon passing over her hips.

Leonard, seeing her fall, pulled her away just short of the hind wheel, which passed over both ankles. The softness of the soil had saved her from broken bones, but bruised, she joined her former walking partner in the wagon for a few days. Neither woman had ridden at all before that time, and as the oldest in the company the two had prided themselves on their accomplishment. Mrs. Bathgate, in fact, good naturedly sought witnesses that she was being placed in the wagon not of her own choice but at the bidding of the reptile! Before they reached Salt Lake Valley, both women were again out marching at the head of the company.14 The two young British women who would soon become plural wives of Truman Leonard were members of the Ellsworth party which had left Iowa City just ahead of the McArthur camp. Until they reached Florence, the two groups traveled in a common movement. Minutes reveal that Truman Leonard appeared frequently as a speaker or giver of prayers at Ellsworth camp meetings. The two companies sometimes made contact west of Florence, too, giving him opportunities to get acquainted with travelers in both groups. Besides, he had sailed the Atlantic with Margaret Bourne, who was accompanied by her parents, and Mary Ann Meadows, who had left her family behind in England. In later years Truman confided to Brigham Young that he had courted neither of these young ladies to exceed three hours each. Formal courting began only after his welcome reunion with Ortentia. 15 The two companies of handcarts reached Salt Lake Valley on the forenoon of Friday, September 26. William Pitt's brass band, dozens of city residents, and a representation of officialdom headed by Brigham 14 McArthur's report is published in LeRoy R. Hafen and Ann W. Hafen, Handcarts to Zion- The Story of a Unique Western Migration, 1856-1860, The Far West and Rockies Historical Series, vol. 14 (Glendale, Calif.: The Arthur H. Clark Company, 1960), pp. 214-17.

Another version of the story is in Lydia D. Alder, "The First Handcart Company," Improvement Era 12 (July 1909): 720-23.

15 Hafen and Hafen, Handcarts to Zion, pp. 58, 64, 200-202; Truman Leonard to Brigham Young, April 8, 1859, LDS Archives.

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Young were on hand at the canyon mouth to greet the pioneers. After a surprise but welcome melon bust, an impressive procession down South Temple Street escorted them to the public square. They reached the immigrant campground at sunset, heard an official welcome by President Young, and then, as they had done a hundred times since leaving Iowa City, the weary trekkers pitched their tents for the night.16 On the following day, Ortentia arrived from Farmington, and after a night with friends in the city, the reunited couple returned home. Truman had left his wife and new daughter in a small log cabin on the farm, two miles north of Farmington. Wandering Indian bands often frequented the area, looking for food or seeking wild game. On one of their visits after Truman's departure, Ortentia had been so frightened by an intruding Indian man that Bishop Gideon Brownell decided to move her into the newly settled townsite. The local priesthood had helped Ortentia build a two-room adobe home at the far northeast corner of the city plat. To this comfortable cabin Truman returned in 1856.17 In between visits with friends and relatives and speaking engagements at ward meetings in Salt Lake City and Farmington, the weary missionary pitched in to help his brother with the wheat harvest on their farms and again settled into an agrarian life.18 Within two months he had obtained Ortentia's approval to marry polygamously. On December 5 he sent his friend Daniel Miller to the city with a letter and an invitation. The letter was the one asking Brigham Young's permission to take a third wife along with a second one; the invitation brought Margaret Bourne to Farmington on an official visit. For the next few weeks Truman busied himself with his farmwork â&#x20AC;&#x201D;killing a beef, fixing fences, gathering wood from the canyon, and repairing his farm toolsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;while awaiting the official reply that did not come. And then when the returned missionaries gathered at the president's new Lion House for the Christmas Day party, he asked the question in person. On January 5 Truman obtained approval from Margaret's parents and from Margaret; contacted Brigham Young and formally proposed to the young woman, Mary Ann Meadows, who was gainfully employed in the president's kitchen; and then, having received Mary Ann's acceptance and having bought a new dress for Ortentia, he scheduled a double wedding at the Endowment House for the following day.19 16

Deseret News, October 1, 1856.

West, "Ortentia White Leonard," p. 2.

18 Thomas S. Smith, Journal, March 8, 1857, MS, LDS Archives.

19 T r u m a n Leonard to Brigham Young, December 5, 1856, MS, LDS Archives; Deseret News, December 31, 1856.

17

Truman Leonard: Pioneer Mormon

Ortentia White

Margaret Bourne

Mary Ann Meadows

Leonard.

Leonard.

Leonard.

Farmer

251

Margaret, having been the first courted, firmly insisted on being the first married, and it was so agreed. Mary Ann, as her posterity explain it, though last in marriage, received a compensating blessing, for she was mother to seven children, all of whom lived to maturity, while Margaret, for reasons only fate could determine, endured a long life of childlessness.

During Truman Leonard's extended absence from his farm, the bishop had found other settlers needing soil to till and had divided the Leonard homestead with them. Truman's brother had already received a portion of the original claim and half interest in part of the remaining land as an enticement to remain with Truman in a cooperating farming arrangement.

The bishop's realignment in 1855 left Trumanâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and everyone else in townâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; with a farm of about twenty acres, a parcel his descendants have continued to farm as their inheritance in Zion.20 Nearly destitute after four years away, Truman immediately began the process of rebuilding his economic resources. He spent the winter preparing for the season ahead. He visited the local lumber mills and blacksmith shops for materials, built himself a harrow, and constructed others for neighbors in exchange for goods needed to sustain his family. Plowing began early in the spring, followed by the sowing of his wheat and

20 Gideon Brownell to Brigham Young, March 21, 1855, and Leonard to Young, April 8, 1859, LDS Archives.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

potatoes. Then came the long summer months of furrowing, hoeing, and irrigating before the harvest rewarded his labors. His enterprise paid dividends; by the second year he was forecasting a one-thousand-bushel grain harvest.21 By 1860 his herds included at least 116 sheep. That was the number lost in a fire of November 17. The disaster was caused by the east wind that, from the first days of settlement, had been testing the security of Farmington's buildings. It had not taken long for early residents to learn that a carelessly laid roof required emergency reinforcement when the gray wind cloud formed along the eastern mountains. Molasses barrels or discarded millstones worked well as weights, and logging chains helped tie down flimsy housetops. But little could be done to prevent the scattering of sparks from a wood-burning fireplace. In that early, predawn windstorm of 1860 a spark from a chimney twenty rods away landed in Truman Leonard's straw stack. The resulting blaze destroyed the straw, several tons of hay, a mule, and the 116 sheep. It then spread across a wide lane to the home of Andrew Quigley. As the family fled into the cold night, their log home burned to the ground.22 It would have been typical of Truman Leonard to respond to the disaster stoically, seeing it perhaps as a trial of faith, a means of divine testing. In the 1860s and succeeding decades friend and foe alike would sometimes seem at odds with him, but for the first years after his mission the challenges were mingled with a fervent activity in defensive warfare.

In September 1854, during his absence in India, Truman had been appointed senior president of the Fifty-sixth Quorum of Seventy. This was his principal ecclesiastical position in the Latter-day Saint church, and it became a lifelong stewardship, a symbol of his commitment to proselytizing, which was the special assignment of the seventy. Perhaps because of this office and no doubt because of his recent service in the foreign mission field, Leonard was given charge of the Mormon Reformation in Farmington. In its broader aspects, the movement to encourage the Saints to live their religion with greater earnestness had gotten its start just before his return from India. Only days before the first handcarts reached Salt Lake Valley, hundreds were being rebaptized in the mill ponds of Kaysville and Farmington as a sign of rededication.

Truman and Ortentia had been rebaptized in 1851 but submitted them21 A typical farm season can be reconstructed from the journals of Milton D. Hammond (see note 8 ) , and Joseph L. Robinson, "Autobiography and Journal, 1819-1892," MS, LDS Archives.

22

"Journal History," November 16, 1860; Deseret News, November 23, 1864.

Truman Leonard: Pioneer Mormon Farmer

253

selves to another immersion while attending the October general conference.23 Thus recommitted he picked as counselors in the home missionary calling Joseph France and Thomas Grover and then began energetically extending the call to repentance to his neighbors. Some took offense at his prying catechizing. One family left town for California. Here and there young farmers admitted to branding livestock which had "wandered" into their possession from a neighbor's farmyard. Leonard told a gathering of priesthood bearers he intended to pursue the goal of pruning the Lord's vineyard whatever the personal feelings of his friends, for he earnestly believed that the good life lay in righteousness and that that was obtainable only by cutting out sin wherever it was found. Five unrepentant souls were excommunicated as a step toward repentance; and most of them found their way back into the fold through counseling and increased works of faithfulness. The reformation, though shortlived, left lasting images in Farmington; and while the generation of the 1850s lived, Truman Leonard and his associates resurrected the term whenever they saw the need to enliven their followers in the work of the kingdom.24 Meanwhile, practical matters enlisted a share of Truman Leonard's energies. In 1857 he helped count votes at the August election. In that same election he was named to the post of county selectman that he had abandoned for his mission. This time he served three years. Then, for a year after that, he worked as road supervisor for the Farmington district.

In 1857 and again three years later, he performed the duties of watermaster for Shepard Creek, a stream that once bore his own last name and that still watered his farm.25 In the spring of 1857, Truman Leonard was invited to join the Deseret Brass Band, a local organization with a rapidly rising reputation in the territory. He accepted a position in the percussion section and began attending practices to prepare for the town's annual Independence Day celebration. A member of the arrangements committee, he gave the signal to discharge a responding blast from the militia's cannon to launch the clay's activities. Then he joined with the band in serenading Bishop John W. Hess with the national anthem. All of this happened 23 F a r m i n g t o n W a r d Record, 1 8 5 1 - 6 5 , Book A, p p . 64â&#x20AC;&#x201D;65, microfilm, L D S Genealogical Society; Deseret News, September 24, 1856.

24 " J o u r n a l History," November 2 1 , 1856, and M a r c h 5, 1857; a n d the story of the reformation in Farmington is in Glen M . Leonard, "A History of Farmington, U t a h , to 1890" (M.A. thesis, University of U t a h , 1966), p p . 5 3 - 5 9 .

25 Davis County, C o u r t Minutes, vol. 1, p p . 48, 69, 8 1 , 8 5 - 8 6 , a n d 99, M S , Davis County Clerk's Office, Farmington, U t a h .

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at four o'clock in the morning. Next, the band performed for a halfdozen sleepy-eyed dignitaries at their homes and enjoyed a sumptuous breakfast at Thomas Grover's large house. At 8 o'clock the town's residents who had been so resoundingly awakened by the predawn ceremonies gathered at the Farmington parade ground. There the militiaâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; both cavalry and infantryâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;exhibited its marching prowess, and the band performed again to inaugurate a day of speechmaking, picnicking, dancing, and festive tomfoolery.26 Three weeks later a more serious mood settled over Farmington.

Word had arrived of the approach of United States military forces under the command of Col. Albert Sidney Johnston. The Utah Expedition was marching west to quell a reported insurrection among the Saints. Truman Leonard's first involvement in the Utah War came in late September when the Farmington band escorted a spirited county infantry detachment to Echo Canyon. Early in October the band played at the Deseret State Fair, and in November Truman picked up his drum again to accompany another segment of Col. Philemon C. Merrill's Davis County regiment to the canyon. The band marched to Salt Lake City for orders, arriving November 10. There Brigham Young instructed bandmaster William Glover to dismiss all but four of the musicians. Truman was one of the four to join with the regiment's drum and bugle corps for continued duty. He was also assigned forage master duties for the encampment and remained at his post, struggling against frostbitten feet, until early December.27 Returning home, he discovered that in his absence his brother John, not yet twenty-six, had died after a short illness. The sorrowing survivor helped resolve the affairs of his brother, who had married just a year earlier; but before they could be entirely settled, political developments led to a decision to abandon the northern settlements in preparation for the invasion of Johnston's army. In mid-January Farmington residents affirmed their support for Brigham Young's evacuation policy and approved resolutions condemning President James Buchanan's decision to send the Utah Expedition.28 These actions were taken at a public meeting in the upstairs assembly room of the new Davis County Courthouse. On the steps of the same 28

Deseret News, August 20, 1856; "Journal History," July 4, 1857.

Band minutes, in Kate B. Carter, ed., Heart Throbs of the West, 12 vols. (Salt Lake City: Daughters of U t a h Pioneers, 1939-51), 4 : 1 3 7 ; "Journal History," October 3, 1857; Truman Leonard interview, October 19, 1894; Robinson, "Autobiography and Journal," December 3, 1857.

28 T r u m a n Leonard, Diary, January 24, 1893; Deseret News, January 27, 1858.

27

Truman Leonard: Pioneer Mormon Farmer

255

Old Leonard barn and addition are still in use by family members in Farmington.

'MJniffik

building three months later, the mood of the citizenry was one of patriotic bravado. Alfred Cumming, recently appointed to replace Brigham Young as territorial governor, was being escorted to Salt Lake City. Because heavy snows had blocked the more direct route through Emigration Canyon, the party followed an alternate road down Weber Canyon. A mounted, uniformed guard from Farmington met them at the mouth of the canyon, while Truman Leonard and the Deseret Band waited patiently at the courthouse.

Cumming finally arrived some time after midnight and was pleasantly surprised when the local musicians struck up a fervent rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner." He spent the night in Farmington and on the following evening the band rejoined him for an official welcome to Salt Lake City. Again the band serenaded the new official, playing for him the national anthem, "Hail Columbia," and "Yankee Doodle."

Cumming interpreted this show of patriotism as genuine and unfeigned; but one non-Mormon immigrant, who said he witnessed the band's welcome, reported that after Cumming was out of earshot the musicians disobeyed instructions and vented some of their resentment by playing the Mormon "Doodah," a tune whose words lambasted the new appointee. Truman Leonard shared that feeling of resentment, and he believed it was the wise Mormon who laid up a store of arms and ammunition in preparation for the threatened invasion.29 When Truman left Farmington in May, during the general evacuation of the ward to Juab County, he took with him special guests who had 29

"Journal History," April 15, 1858, containing a Deseret News report; Hammond, "Journal," May 2-5, 1858; Robinson, "Autobiography and Journal," May 18, 23, 1858,

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Utah Historical

Quarterly

been wintering in the town. They were Matthew McCune and his family who had so generously looked after the missionaries in India. McCune had arrived with the immigration trains in September 1857. The McCunes remained in Nephi after the displaced settlers returned to their homes in Farmington early in July.30 Truman Leonard once more settled into the life of a Mormon farmer. The next fifteen years saw few interruptions to this routine. He kept busy in his civic responsibilities with the county court and community roads, served as a juryman later in the 1860s, and continued his home missionary work in the capacity of an acting teacher, which required him to visit homes in the ward monthly. Most fast days he faithfully carried in an offering of flour or other foodstuffs for deposit in the bishop's storehouse. In 1865, with many in the community, he donated five dollars to a public works project to help improve the canyon road. Four years later he pledged twenty-five dollars when the ward teachers asked for funds for the immigrating poor. Truman was known to have taken a special concern for widows. When he saw a need, he quietly filled it by bringing in an extra load of wood or sharing a pail of flour. Those who knew him best, said one obituary years later, knew him as a big-hearted man, "generous to a fault." 31 His hard-headedness and occasional flare of temper did sometimes get the man into trouble. Therefore, the same teachers' meeting that heard his reports about families in the district he visited, sometimes arbitrated the disagreements of Truman Leonard and his neighbors. At question were such things as property lines, water rights, and livestock.

On one occasion a man built a home on benchland Leonard claimed, and the bishop ruled in favor of the builder. In 1865 Truman persistently disagreed with arrangements made for the cooperative herding of sheep.

Two years later he was awarded damages when another herd trampled his crops. Another time he was reprimanded for flooding the street with irrigation water.32 In the late 1870s he was called in before the teachers and charged with mistreating his horses. Truman explained that the animals had been 30 Andrew Jenson, Latter-day Saint Biographical Salt Lake City: Western Epics, 1971), 3 : 1 6 1 .

Encyclopedia,

4 vols. ( 1 9 0 1 : reprint.

11 Davis County, Court Minutes, vol. 1, pp. 121, 163-64; Robinson, "Autobiography and Journal," March 1, 1858; Minutes of the Ward Teachers Meeting of the Farmington Ward, August 27, 1865, September 29. 1867, and April 25, 1869, MS, LDS Archives; and Deseret Evening News, November 22, 1897.

32 Minutes of the Ward Teachers Meeting, M a r c h 18, 1865, August 30 30. 1869.

1868 and May

Truman and Ortentia Leonard's rock house in Farmington represents building skills of nineteenth-century settlers. The home is listed on the Utah State Register of Historic Sites.

balking, "and being impetuous [he] had done too much, was sorry . . . and would try and profit by the lesson." His mentors then proceeded to advise that kindness, rather than beating, was the preferred cure for balky horses; and since the offender had agreed to do better with his teams, the offense would be overlooked. Although the incident ended with an apparent resolution, Truman was offended that the charge had been carried to the quorum for consideration in the first place. Feelings over the matter lingered for several years.33 Truman Leonard and his wives did not let these minor problems stand in the way of continued service to the church they had so faithfully defended for so many years. In the early 1860s Farmington completed construction of a beautiful rock meetinghouse. Truman's contribution, his tithe of labor, was to haul lime from Weber Canyon for the mortar and to bring timber from the canyon. In that same decade he apparently began construction of a new rock home for Ortentia alongside the old Ibid., September 15, 1878, and February 15, 1880.

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Utah Historical

Quarterly

one on the city lot, and a rock duplex on the farm for Margaret and Mary Ann.34 Ortentia, especially, during these years was active in church and civic affairs. She bore six children during the decade ending in 1867, but only the last two, Clara and Hattie, survived childhood. This relative lack of responsibilities at home freed her to participate in public affairs.

For forty years her clear alto voice was heard in the ward choir, and for a number of seasons she joined in a popular quartet that sang at ward functions. Continuing the home industry she had commenced during Truman's mission, she took in sewing. With seven other women, she organized sewing classes and established a dressmaking business. A church calling recognized this talent when she and three other Farmington ladies were asked to drape the caskets and lay out the dead. When the Relief Society was organized in Farmington in May 1868, she and Margaret became visiting teachers, and Ortentia was soon appointed presiding teacher over the twenty-three-member staff. The following year she was gone three months visiting relatives in the East, traveling both ways on the newly completed transcontinental railroad. After her return she served for more than twenty years in the ward Relief Society presidency, including a long term as president. Truman's other two wives are less visible in surviving records. Perhaps living away from the center of town lessened their involvement; and Mary Ann, at least, was kept busy raising the seven children born to her between 1858 and 1874.35 In 1871 Truman made his first visit to the States since the handcart migration. The occasion was an official short-term mission for the church.

Like so many other missionaries to the United States during this period, he spent most of his time seeking out relatives living in Ohio. This mission was followed by a similar one in 1874. Again he contacted surviving uncles, aunts, and cousins; visited with available brothers and sisters; gathered genealogical information; and preached Mormonism to hospitable, but disinterested, kinsfolk.

In the 1880s the polygamy raids forced him into hiding. Several of his neighbors in Farmington were tried and found guilty of cohabitation under the hated federal legislation. A number of other local polygamists of Truman Leonard's generation escaped harassment, according to Joseph 34 T h o m a s S. Smith, a supervisor of the meetinghouse construction project, recorded contributions in the first pages of his 1855 diary and the last several pages of his 1855-64 diary. T h e Leonard rock home has been dated by its present owner: interview with Harry Pledger, Farmington, April 2, 1972.

33 Minutes of the Relief Society of the Farmington Ward. June 3, and August 26, 1868: Davis County Clipper, August 26, 1898, M a r c h 19, 1892; Deseret Evening News, December 30, 1878; West, " O r t e n t i a White Leonard," pp. 3-4.

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L. Robinson, through the grace of a kind God who called them home. 36 Truman, in good health for his sixty-six years, decided in 1886 to go into a safer exile. Placing the care of his property in other hands, he went first to Logan where he and Ortentia spent many hours in the temple performing proxy ordinances for dead ancestors. Then, after another year of hiding, he gathered up fourteen head of cattle and followed them on horseback to Canada.

Margaret later joined him at Cardston, bringing with her one of Mary Ann's daughters, Amy, who had chosen the childless Margaret as a surrogate mother. For six years Truman and this part of his family remained in Alberta province. He worked a small farm, presided over the mass quorum of priesthood, and grew to like the situation so well that even after Wilford Woodruff's Manifesto quieted political conditions in Utah Territory he lingered on. Margaret journeyed to Salt Lake City in 1893 to attend the dedication of the Salt Lake Temple, and the following year Truman said goodbye to his adopted land of refuge and traveled home by train. He arrived in December 1894 and helped his oldest son, George, prepare for a mission to Samoa. Truman's light brown hair was now graying, his frame carrying less than the usual 165 pounds.

But friends who welcomed him detected no change in the determined spirit that looked upon them through those characteristic, hazel-gray eyes.37 On New Year's Day in 1896, while Utah awaited the culmination of a half-century struggle toward statehood, Truman and Ortentia celebrated their golden wedding anniversary. Crippled by a back injury several years earlier, Ortentia was now continuing her sewing on a special lap board. Their daughter Clara, active in the local suffrage organization, teaching school, and serving as treasurer for the Primary, had through her schoolteaching income helped put finishing touches on the long incomplete rock home. Engaged to be married, she was awaiting the return of her fiance from the German mission.38 Then in August 1897 Clara died suddenly from an unexplained illness. A sorrowing father joined this favored daughter in death four months later. Suffering from pneumonia and heart disease, Truman told the family on November 20, "Put out the light. . . . This has been a hard day, but I am going to 36 Andrew Jenson, comp., "Farmington Ward, Davis County, Utah," pp. 20-23, MS, LDS Archives; Robinson, "Autobiography and Journal," September 26, 1886.

37 West, "Ortentia White Leonard," pp. 3-4; Truman Leonard interview, October 19, 1894. :8 Farmington Ward, Primary Association Minute Book, March 29, 1879, MS, LDS Archives; West, "Ortentia White Leonard," p. 3.

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rest." 39 Ortentia lived nine months after Truman's death and Mary Ann fourteen months beyond that. Their simple coffins were placed in the two remaining burial plots between Truman and Clara. Margaret was laid to rest at the foot of her husband in 1904.

The imposing granite monument erected by grateful descendants on the Leonard burial plot in Farmington's hillside cemetery stands bigger than life over the simple sandstone gravemarkers that identify the resting places of Truman Leonard and his three wives. Perhaps in its impressive size the tombstone exhibits some of Truman Leonard's own determination to persist, through east winds and blizzards, even the attacks of mobs when necessary. Had the man it honors had his say he would no doubt have chosen one less pretentious, one more in keeping with the frugal pioneer times which characterized his life. But his generation of practical Mormons was dying as Utah entered a new age, and Truman Leonard had been one of many typical Utah farmers who had prepared the way for that change.

39

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Never Change a Song

BY F A E D E C K E R DIX

little U t a h town called Parowan, the mother colony of southern Utah. Father's family had been among the first stalwarts to arrive in the beautiful valley of the Little Salt Lake, and, on his mother's side, they were "converters" from far back. So, father, too, was a converter filled with the missionary spirit and the everlasting zeal to pass it on. H e would look at a m a n a block away and declare he could V J U R FAMILY LIVED IN A

,

262

Utah Historical Quarterly

"tell by his walk he's no Mormon." And that settled that man, in my father's opinion.

He was a huge man, my father, carrying the burden of a huge name — Mahonri Moriancumer — which plagued him much as it became the target of many schoolyard taunts in childhood. He, consequently, hated nicknames and never allowed us to call each other little pet names in the home. Whatever he named us that was it — at least at home.

But, withal, he was a kindly man, respectful of women (especially mother), and of his church and country. And, while I remember him as stern and towering, he had also a heart as tender as spring grass when it came to counseling us children in our iniquities, or caring for us in illness, or teaching us to pray in family circle night and morning. We each had our turn.

I remember how his voice rang through the chapel on testimony Sundays as he fervently recalled his missionary experiences in Pennsylvania. They called him the "walking Bible" back there, and he loved the appellation. For years I thought he alone had converted all of Pennsylvania to Mormonism. He sang in the choir, too, and it was the choir that got us into all that trouble about a favorite Mormon hymn — "O Ye Mountains High," Elder Charles W. Penrose's stirring contribution to the spirit of a new kingdom.

If only Professor George H. Durham, our respected choir leader, had not gone back to Boston to study at the conservatory. Or, if he had not stopped by Salt Lake City on the way home that summer of 1919 and met with the church music committee. Or, if only father had not been so set in the first place on keeping alive the spirit of the embattled Mormon pioneer. My sister and I thought of all these things after the episode was over. But it was only an exercise in regret. Professor Durham (our generation always called him that except, maybe, on Sundays when everybody was Brother) did stop by Salt Lake City en route home from his New England studies. And he learned something of great import: Certain of the old Mormon hymns, those of a "quarrelsome nature" would be dropped from the next hymn book.1 Some others would be altered to comply with a new sense of brotherhood, as the time had come Mrs. Dix, a native of Parowan and presently a resident of Salt Lake City, is a former program director for the Division of Continuing Education, University of Utah. This paper was awarded grand prize in the 1976 Utah Bicentennial Biographies Contest, amateur class, jointly sponsored by the Utah State Historical Society, the Utah American Revolution Bicentennial Commission, and the Salt Lake Tribune.

1 The next hymn book was published in 1927. Compiled by the church music committee, it was titled simply Latter-day Saint Hymns, and printed at Zion Printing and Publishing Company (Independence, Missouri).

Never Change a Song

263

to show we lived at peace, and not in the persecuted memories of the past.

In deference to Professor Durham, and to his outstanding musicianship, the interim choir director always turned the choir to him whenever he returned to our town to visit. He came before them this time with his usual ease and distinction and presented the new plan. He said that the years had gone over our heads and we were then far enough away from the mob terror of Illinois and Missouri to stop singing about them in our church gatherings.

Mahonri Moriancumer Decker.

And, he said, the first song to be looked at was the beloved, " O Ye Mountains High." Some of the words had to be softened, and we would learn the new lines immediately, and sing them always from then on.

Father came home in a great huff that night. The Durhams never offended him. They were his good neighbors. He considered them highly talented. He even said they were the town aristocrats.

"But, George is off his burr this time," he lamented and plainly added that he would not go along with such "desecration of our hymns."

"But, papa, it's the church committee â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the music people in Salt Lake, not Brother Durham," my younger sister ventured. (She was the daring one.)

"Music committee nothing," he scoffed. "And, don't you let me hear you upholding them." Blanche was quickly silenced. His voice raised as his hand came down on the table â&#x20AC;&#x201D; "It's the spirit of the day," he shouted. "And, when they get to tampering with our hymns, the last days are upon us!"

He hit the table again and ranted again. Mother rocked quietly in her chair by the north window and crocheted a little faster. We children went about our evening reading trying not to let on we'd heard. None of us argued with father.

"Forget Nauvoo?" he thundered. "Forget Missouri? Why, they'd still run us off the face of the earth if they could. But they'd better not

264

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try. Just let them try." (I wondered if they knew we still existed out here so far away.)

"Besides," he kept on, "I know what Brother Penrose meant when he wrote that hymn. He meant we should always defend Zion. And don't you forget it! He didn't mean we should sit back like a bunch of good-for-nothings and change his words."

But choir practice night came again, and there they were practicing the new words. I was among them by then for Professor Durham had invited a group of us just turning thirteen to sing in one of the numbers.

It would be good training for full choir membership later. We were proud of this honor even though we were only to sing one number, and even though our thin voices could not hold up to the maturity of the experienced members.

It was exciting to hear them practicing "O Ye Mountains High," 2 their strong, clear tones blending in triumphal declaration: O, ye mountains high where the clear blue sky Arches over the vales of the free; Where the pure breezes blow, And the clear streamlets flow, H o w I've longed to your bosom to flee!

It was the third verse that made the trouble. Someone "up North" (meaning Salt Lake City) said this one must be changed. The original lines as written by Elder Penrose,3 forthright editor of the early-day Deseret Evening News, read: In thy m o u n t a i n retreat God will strengthen thy feet; O n the necks of thy foes T h o u shalt tread!

The more kindly words were to say: Without fear of thy foes thou shalt tread.

But, farther down in the hymn, verse four proclaimed: T h y deliverance is nigh, T h y oppressors shall die, And the Gentiles shall bow ' N e a t h thy rod.

Gentiles meant anyone not a Mormon. So these last words were changed to 2 See Hymn 338, Latter-day Saints Hymns. This edition is often referred to as "the green hymnal," according to Dr. Lowell M. Durham of the University of Utah music faculty.

3 See the 1889 Psalmody, and the Sunday School Song Book, 1909.

Never Change a Song

265

And thy land shall be freedom's abode.

But father just couldn't bear any of this. He argued it out with anyone who would listen, although that didn't mean any of the choir members. He said we still had foes and they should be afraid of us.

"Freedom's abode! What does that mean?" he would storm. And, I felt he really would rather have "the Gentiles bow 'neath our rod."

But the next Sunday came and we were all in our places including father seated on the tenor row. I looked down from the junior choir row at my mother and younger brothers and sisters seated in the congregation. Mother looked patient and sweet-faced, the blue plumes on her hat riffling lightly above her blue eyes. The children were prim and neat with their ribbons tied and their faces sober.

We were in a new chapel and proud to be there. The sun sent amber shafts across the audience from the stained-glass windows, making everyone appear quietly rapturous.

Brother Durham came down the aisle shortly before the meeting began. He was a stately man with a striking profile, a soldier's bearing, and holding the complete confidence of a whole community — except, for just this one day, perhaps, my father whose faith hung faltering in this idol.

The organ played, and the choir was on its feet singing gloriously.

Prayer was said, the sacrament passed, and the long sermons begun. Then it was time for the closing song. The piano and the organ were joined in duet swelling to a flourish as the choir burst into the strains of " O Ye Mountains High, Where the clear blue sky—" They sang the soaring first and second verses and waited for the interlude.

As we approached the new lines of the third verse, I gradually recognized other words coming from behind me — coming from the tenor row — words in my father's straightforward tenor. He may not have had a good voice, but he had a loud one! And, he was going loud and clear against the whole choir. Intensely he sang the old words to the old hymn while the choir obediently sang the new words. They held onto the last note, and he came in with, And the Gentiles shall bow 'Neath thy rod.

Somehow they all got through at once. The music sank to a close.

Someone gave a benediction. And, I was overwhelmed with adolescent agony. I glanced down at mother. Her eyes were lowered, and the blue

266*

Utah Historical

Quarterly

plumes shadowed her face. My sister, Blanche, sitting next to her, looked like a tower of wrath for so small a girl. She was glaring straight at father, I felt sure, for she was the brave one among us. I knew she intended taking a stand when we reached home, and this for me was scary.

The choir stayed for practice, but not me. I don't know if any of them said anything to father. I didn't want to know. I slipped out a side vestibule and scurried across "the square" toward home. Perhaps father just forgot himself, I kept thinking. It would be easy to do. I would try not to care so much. Nothing seemed funny to me then as it does now in retrospect.

The rest of the family arrived home almost together. Mother went up the porch steps and into the parlor. She removed her hat and laid it on the piano. It slipped to the keyboard making a tiny chime as a hatpin touched the keys. She walked down the hall to her bedroom and closed the door.

Father stalked home an hour later. He looked determined, even oddly satisfied. My older brother started to smile, but quickly wiped it off by putting the back of his hand to his mouth as father walked through the house and out to the orchard.

Blanche and I had changed from our Sunday dresses. We took a small brass bucket from the kitchen and carried it to the raspberry patch where we were going to pick berries for supper. Out there she exploded: "What is wrong with papa? He shouldn't do that to us! I can't stand it!"

"It's nothing," I consoled. "Not really. Maybe he just forgot."

"Forgot! What do you mean 'forgot'?"

"Oh, I don't know. I don't know any reason."

"Well, I'm humiliated." (Blanche always used big words for her age.) "I'm really humiliated, and I'm going to do something about it."

"There's simply nothing to do," I said. "We ought to just forget today."

"Well, I won't! I'll do something." She waited awhile and then declared: "Starting next Sunday I'll always take the sacrament with my left hand. That's what I'll do."

And starting the next Sunday, she did just that. I was terrified for fear father would catch her. He never did. And, if he ever had, he wouldn't have connected it with his personal loyalty to the old words of an old hymn.

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BY S T E P H E N W. JULIEN t7ta/i »S7a££ Supreme Court chambers, State Capitol. Utah State Historical Society collections.

material has been published on the men who have served on the Utah State Supreme Court since statehood, nothing has been written about them collectively. And few as individuals have been given the attention they deserve. This is surprising considering their power and influence and the high esteem in which they are held.

. A L T H O U G H SOME BIOGRAPHICAL

Mr. Julien is a doctoral student in history at the University of Utah.

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268

Utah Historical

James A. Miner

George W. Bartch

Quarterly

Charles S. Zane

As a beginning step in Utah judicial history, this paper will outline the organization of the supreme court, analyze data on the background of the justices, and examine the political factors affecting appointments to the state's highest bench. 1 The Utah State Supreme Court officially came into being on January 4, 1896. The state constitution ratified the previous November provided for three supreme court justices, a chief justice, and two associate justices.

Their term of office was set at six years. In order to prevent three new and inexperienced persons from coming up for election at any given time, it was provided that the first three justices elected to the court were to serve three, five, or seven years depending on the outcome of a lottery. The justice drawing the shortest term was to be chief justice. The person having the next shortest time was always to succeed to that office.

By this process each member of the court would be chief justice the last two years of his term. 2 The legislature was given the power to increase the number of justices from three to five after 1905. It exercised that option in 1917 1 Few state supreme courts have been studied in detail, and only in recent years have they been studied at all. I n 1969 Robert A. Heiberg published "Social Backgrounds of the Minnesota Supreme C o u r t Justices: 1 8 5 8 - 1 9 6 8 , " in Minnesota Law Review 53 ( 1 9 6 9 ) : 901 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 37. His methodology closely followed that of J o h n R. Schmidhauser in " T h e Justices of the Supreme C o u r t : A Collective Portrait," Midwest Journal of Political Science 3 ( 1 9 5 9 ) : 1-57.

Heiberg followed Schmidhauser's outline to compare the Minnesota Supreme Court justices to those of the United States Supreme Court. T h e same informational categories have been used to organize d a t a collected on U t a h ' s supreme court justices, although no comparison will be m a d e between the U t a h and the United States courts. For another state court study, see Emmett W. Bashful, The Florida Supreme Court: A Study in Judicial Selection (Tallahassee: Florida State University, 1958).

2

U t a h State Constitution, art. V I I I , sec. 2.

269

Utah State Supreme Court Justices

Robert

N.

Baskin

William

M.

McCarty

Daniel N.

Straup

by providing for two additional supreme court justices. Their terms of service were set for eight and ten years, and in the future the normal length of service was to be ten years. Exceptions were made in the case of the three individuals already on the court. They remained under the six-year provision. So did Justice A. J. Weber who replaced Joseph E. Frick on the court in January 1919. By this process one justice would go before the voters every two years.3 Before statehood, members of the territorial supreme court were appointed by the president of the United States. The new state constitution specified that all supreme court justices were to be elected by the people at large on a partisan basis. However, the governor was empowered to fill vacancies on the court created by the death or resignation of one of the justices. The person so appointed was to hold office until the next general election.4 From the beginning the political nature of the state's highest judicial office had been disturbing to many people. This was particularly true because a good judge might be swept out of office simply as a result of a political landslide. Also, the uncertain tenure of the office seemed to discourage many qualified lawyers from seeking the position. Finally, in 1951, the state legislature created the so-called headless ballot on which candidates for the supreme court were to run on a nonpartisan basis.

Names of the candidates were to appear on the ballot without any indica3 4

State of Utah, Laws of the State of Utah (1917), chap. 54.

Utah State Constitution, art. VIII, sec. 2.

Utah Historical Quarterly

270

Joseph E. Frick

E. E. Corfman

A. J. Weber

tion of party affiliation. Candidates were prohibited from contributing to any political party or organization or holding political office.5 The headless ballot did not solve the problems of electing justices.

It cost the incumbent a considerable amount of money to run each time his term expired and political considerations continued to be an important factor in determining who sat on the supreme court. To correct many of the ills inherent in the headless ballot system, the Utah State Legislature, with the aid of the Utah State Bar Association and the Utah Legislative Council, passed a law in 1967 based on the so-called Missouri plan. The act established a bipartisan nominating commission composed of seven members, two to be appointed by the governor, two by the bar association and one each by the Utah State House of Representatives and Senate. The current chief justice of the supreme court was designated as the seventh member.

This commission is responsible for selecting qualified candidates for the supreme court. When a vacancy occurs on the court, the commission must choose three persons worthy of the position. Their names are submitted to the governor who must appoint one of them as the new justice.

The selection is to be based strictly on merit rather than party affiliation.

If the appointee is filling a vacancy created by death, resignation, retirement, or other cause, then his term expires at the next general election. The person chosen at the next general election holds the office until the expiration of the term of the judge he has succeeded. At that "State of Utah, Laws of the State of Utah (1951), chap. 38, sees 1, 3, and interview with Judge J. Robert Bullock, Fourth Judicial District, Provo, November 19, 1975.

Utah State Supreme Court Justices

Samuel R.

Thurman

Valentine

271

Gideon

James W. Cherry

time the justice must go before the voters to see if he should be retained in office. Unlike the Missouri plan, the Utah law allows any attorney who desires to do so to run against the incumbent, in which case the name of each candidate appears on the ballot. If the incumbent is unopposed, his name must still be placed on the ballot so that the voters may mark yes if he should be retained in office and no if he should not. If a majority responds negatively, then the office is vacant and the nominating process described above is initiated. 6 In 1969 the legislature went a step further by passing a Judicial Qualification Act. It provided for a seven-member Judicial Qualification Commission made up of members from the house and senate judiciary committees and the Board of Commissioners of the Utah State Bar Association. The commission was empowered to recommended the "removal, suspension, censure, reprimand or retirement" of any supreme court or district court justice. Such recommendations were to be submitted to the supreme court which was given the sole power to determine if a judge should be retained. No supreme court justice was allowed to participate in proceedings "involving his own removal or retirement."

Grounds for removal included "willful misconduct in office," conviction of a felony, "persistent failure to perform his duties," and the "habitual use of alcohol or drugs" to the detriment of his judicial obligations.7 In 6 State of Utah, Laws of the State of Utah (1967), chap. 35, sees. 2, 7, 8, and Bullock interview.

7 State of Utah, Laws of the State of Utah (1969), chap. 123, sec. 1, and interview with Gordon A. Madsen, attorney and member of the 1969 state legislature, Salt Lake City, November 24, 1975.

272

Utah Historical

Elias Hansen

William H. Folland

Ephraim

Quarterly

Hanson

a separate law the legislature established a mandatory retirement age of seventy-two for supreme court justices and seventy for all other judges.

Judges elected or appointed before the passage of the law were exempt.8 The importance of politics in the history of the Utah State Supreme Court is revealed in Chart I.9 Between 1895 and 1916 most Americans voted Republican. But the Wilson reelection of 1916 demolished the Re8 Laws of the State of Utah ( 1 9 6 9 ) , chap. 122, sec. 1, and Madsen interview. The 1969 legislature also raised the salary of supreme court justices to $20,000 a year and increased retirement benefits. Subsequent legislation increased salaries to $30,000 and again strengthened the retirement benefits. According to Mr. Madsen, salaries paid supreme court justices in U t a h before the 1969 upgrading ranked fiftieth in the nation, and retirement benefits were very poor as well.

9 Biographical material on the justices has been compiled from the following sources: History of the Bench and Bar of Utah (Salt Lake City: Interstate Press. 1 9 1 3 ) ; Portrait, Genealogical, and Biographical Record of the State of Utah and Biographical Record of Salt Lake City and Vicinity both (Chicago: National Historical Record Co., 1 9 0 2 ) ; censuses for 1840 through 1920; Cyclopedia of American Biography; Dictionary of American Biography, 1936 ed., s. v. "Zane, Charles S."; State of U t a h , Report of Cases Decided in the Supreme Court of the State of Utah, 1st Series, 123 vols., 31:vii-xiv, 47 :xxiii-xxv, 52:xxiii-xxv, 53 :xviii-xxix, 67:xxv-xxxi, 69:xix, xxv-xxxv, 100:xvii-xxii, xxvii-xxxviii, 106:xv-xxi, 109:xv-xxii, 111: xv-xxxvii, 116:xvii-xxii, 2d Series, 31 vols., 8:xi-xxii, 9:xi-xviii, l l : x i - x i v , 18:v-ix, 1 9 : v - v i i ; Salt Lake Tribune. May 23, 26, 1907, August 27. 30, 1918. December 20, 1918, August 9. 1925, February 18, 1927, February 3, 1950. February 8, 1952, April 12, 1959, September 5. 1966, August 29. 1970: Deseret News. May 22, 1907, March 16, 1927; Noble Warrum, History of Utah since Statehood, 4 vols. (Chicago: S. J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1919), 2:160-63, 575, 1012, 1034; History of Lee County, Iowa (Chicago, 1914). p. 216; J. C. Schwarz, Who's Who in Law, 1937 (New York: Author, 1937), pp. 3 9 8 - 9 9 : Who's Who in America, 1974-75, s.v. "Crockett, J. Allan," "Ellett, Albert Hayden," "Henriod, Frederick Henri," "Callister, Edward Richard, Jr.," "Tuckett. Robert L e R o y " ; interviews with F. Henri Henriod, J. Allan Crockett, E. R. Callister, A. H. Ellett, and Richard J. Maughan, all Salt Lake City, November 5, 1975, Blanche Hoxie, C. W. Wilkins, Robert L. Tuckett. all Salt Lake City, November 6, 1975, Don Mack Dalton, Pleasant Grove, November 6, 1975, Edward J. McDonough and Mrs. Lester A. Wade, both Salt Lake City, November 7, 1975, Lucille Buehner, James H. Wolfe, Jr., Mrs. Martin M. Larson, and George W. Latimer, all Salt Lake City, November 10, 1975, Mary Moslander Roberts, Salt Lake City, November 11, 1975, R u t h Smith, Heber City, November 11, 1975, Patricia Noall, Clarence M. Beck, Wilma Straup, Rosalind Dustin, Harold F. Folland, all Salt Lake City, November 12,

Utah State Supreme

273

Court Justices

j 4 0 0 ^ ^

David W.

Moffat

James H. Wolfe

Martin M. Larson

publican grip.10 Utah elected a Democrat, Simon Bamberger, as governor, and the Utah State Supreme Court got its first Democratic jurist, E. E. Corf man, in twelve years. Another Democrat, A. J. Weber, was elected to the court two years later.

The Democratic collapse of 1920 and the Republican ascendancy over the next dozen years brought all Republicans to the supreme court.

But the Great Depression and the election of Roosevelt in 1932 ended the Republican era and led to drastic alterations in the makeup of the court. It was not until 1946 that another Republican candidate won an election.

Since 1952 candidates for the Utah State Supreme Court have been elected on a nonpartisan basis. But politics still plays a role. As Chart I indicates, all but one of the individuals who have run against an incumbent have been members of the opposing party. Furthermore, the appointive power given the governor has remained an important political tool: every justice appointed to the supreme court since 1952 has been of

1975, D. Howe Moffat, Salt Lake City, November 13, 1975, Elliott Pratt and Ralph M. Worthen, both Salt Lake City, November 14, 1975, Seymour Christensen, Ephraim, November 14, 1975,' Betty Ottenstein, San Carlos, California, December 17, 1975, Lasca Gideon, Farmington, Missouri, December 18, 1975, David McBride, Hillsboro, Ohio, December 18, 1975.

10 There was, of course, a Republican president only until 1912, but Wilson's victory in that year came as a result of the split in the Republican party rather than a surge in Democratic party popularity. The state's first three governorsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Heber M. Wells, John C. Cutler, and William Spryâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;were Republican. Democrat Simon Bamberger was elected governor in 1916.

Utah's other governors and their terms are: Charles R. Mabey ( R ) , 1921-25; George H. Dern (D) 1925-33; Henry H. Blood (D), 1933-41; Herbert B. Maw ( D ) , 1941-49; J. Bracken Lee (R), 1949-57; George D.Clyde ( R ) , 1957-65; Calvin L. Rampton ( D ) , 1965-77.

Utah Historical Quarterly

274

Roger I.

McDonough

Eugene E. Pratt

Lester A. Wade

the same party as the governor. Perhaps the legislation passed in recent years will alter this pattern.11 T H E JUSTICES

Political considerations affecting the membership of the supreme court seem relatively easy to understand. Less clear are the effects of nonpolitical factors in determining who will serve in the state's highest judicial office. Although no conclusions will be drawn from the data compiled in Chart II, some general observations can be made.

Many factors contributed to bringing the families of Utah's supreme court justices to America. The ancestors of some were part of the Puritan migration of the seventeenth century. Others were members of the European migratory movements coming in the latter decades of the nineteenth century. Still others came as a result of their conversion to Mormonism. But all were of western European stock. There is no indication that any ancestor was part of the southern or eastern European migrations to this country. At least twenty-two justices traced their lineage to the British Isles. Seven had German ancestors and five were of Scandinavian descent. The only other country represented is France.

All the members of the supreme court were born in America. Most were from very small communities. Sixteen justices began life in an area 11 As Chart I indicates. A. H. Ellett was the last supreme court justice to be appointed (1967). Electoral data in Chart I were compiled from State of Utah, Secretary of State, Bienvial Report of the Secretary of State of the State of Utah, for the years 1896-1956. For the period since 1956, one must go to the individual reports of the secretary of state or to State of Utah, Secretary of State, Abstract of Returns of the General Election Held in the State of Utah, for the years 1956-74. Party affiliations were learned from interviews with Douglas Thomsen, probate clerk for Salt Lake County, Salt Lake City, November 25, 1975; Serge B. Gudmundson, St. George, December 8, 1975; Harold N. Wilkinson, Salt Lake City. November 25. 1975.

275

Utah State Supreme Court Justices

Abe W. Turner

George W. Latimer

J. Allan Crockett

having less than a thousand people. Ten were born in settlements ranging from one to ten thousand inhabitants. Only four justices were from a town with a population of more than ten thousand.

Eleven of the first twelve justices serving on the supreme court were born outside the western states. But since 1926 sixteen of the eighteen justices have had Utah as their birthplace. In sum, seventeen members of the court have been born in Utah, six in the Midwest, four in the East, and three in the South. No western state other than Utah is represented.

All the justices practiced law in either Salt Lake City, Ogden, or Provo before coming to the court. Eighteen had practiced for many years in Salt Lake City. Justices Charles S. Zane and Daniel N. Straup had been lawyers in the cities of Springfield, Illinois, and South Bend, Indiana, respectively, before coming to Utah. So, all the justices had at least some exposure to practicing law in what may be called an urban area before coming to the court. However, none of them practiced law for any length of time in a large metropolis.

The fathers of over half of the supreme court justices were farmers.

That is not unusual considering the rural environment that prevailed in nineteenth-century America. Often that was the only occupation available. Only five of the fathers were professional men and only three of the five were attorneys. On the whole the evidence indicates that most of our justices were self-made men. The path to the supreme court was probably not a smooth one for many of them.

The religious affiliation of the justices exhibits characteristics unique to Utah. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has long been

Utah Historical

276

F. Henri

Henriod

George W.

Worthen

Quarterly

E. R. Callister, Jr.

a dominant influence in the community. Therefore, one is not surprised to find that one-half of the justices have been Latter-day Saints. But the dominance of Mormons on the court did not begin until 1926. Prior to that time only one of the first twelve justices had been of the Mormon faith. A possible explanation is that early church leaders discouraged their members from studying law. Brigham Young had a particularly low opinion of the legal profession.12 Not until non-Mormons became a political force and the polygamy problem a burning issue did many Mormons begin to study law. The data reflect this change. Since 1926 fourteen of the eighteen justices have been Latter-day Saints. Other churches in the community have hardly been represented at all. Of course, no one knows how committed the justices are to their religion.

One sees but the bare outlines.

One's status in society often helps determine how much schooling he receives and where he gets it. Given the nineteenth-century small 12 In a discourse delivered in the Salt Lake T a b e r n a c l e , February 24, 1856, Brigham Young said lawyers were " m e n who loved corruption, contention, a n d broils, a n d who seek to m a k e them, I curse you in the n a m e of the Lord Jesus C h r i s t ; I curse you, and the fruits of your lands shall be smitten with mildew, your children shall sicken a n d die, your cattle shall waste away, a n d I pray God to root you out from the society of the Saints." Fortunately, Young's a t t i t u d e t o w a r d lawyers had softened a little by 1 8 7 3 : " I have a few things to lay before the Conference, one of which isâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and I think my b r e t h r e n will agree with me t h a t this is wise a n d practicableâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;for from one to five thousand of o u r young a n d middle-aged men to t u r n their attention to the study of law. I would not speak lightly in the least of law, we are sustained by i t ; b u t w h a t is called the practice of law is not always in administration of justice. a n d would not be so considered in m a n y courts. H o w m a n y lawyers are there who spend their time from m o r n i n g till night in thinking a n d p l a n n i n g how they can get u p a lawsuit against this or t h a t m a n , a n d get his property into their possession? M e n of this class are land sharks, a n d they are no better t h a n highway robbers, for their practice is to deceive a n d take a d v a n t a g e of all they can. I do not say t h a t this is the law, b u t this is the practice of some of its professors."

Journal of Discourses, 26 vols. ( 1 8 5 6 ; reprint ed., Los Angeles: G a r t n e r Printing a n d Litho Co., Inc., 1 9 5 6 ) , 3 : 2 4 0 ; 1 6 : 9 .

Utah State Supreme Court Justices

R. L. Tuckett

A. H. Ellett

277

Richard J. Maughan

town or rural background of many of the justices, one expects to find that many of them had gaps in their education. Seven of the justices never attended a university or academy before studying law. Six more never received a formal degree. Only Justice George W. Bartch had a masters' degree. Most of those fortunate enough to receive at least some formal undergraduate training attended a school close to home. Those institutions were normally small in size and influence. Only three of the justices attended schools outside their native state. Fifteen of the justices were students in universities and/or academies within the state of Utah.

Ten were enrolled at the University of Utah and six at church-related schools established by the Mormons.

The legal education of the justices is impressive, although one still finds gaps in some of the members' legal training. Three of the justices learned law on their own. Four others picked it up while working in a law office. Thus, seven of thirty justices never went to law school. Elias Hansen, Roger I. McDonough, and Valentine Gideon attended a law school but did not graduate. Every justice coming to the supreme court since 1940 has earned a formal law degree. This has been a natural consequence of states raising the requirements for practicing law within their borders.

Twelve different law schools are represented by the justices of the Utah State Supreme Court. Some schools are among the most prestigious in the United States: Harvard, Michigan, Stanford, California, the University of Chicago, and the University of Pennsylvania. Six justices have attended the University of Utah Law School. The geographical diversity

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Utah Historical Quarterly

of the schools is also impressive and has no doubt helped to broaden the outlook of the court.

One would expect that most supreme court justices would have had some previous governmental and/or judicial experience, since the serious candidate must make himself known to either the governor or the electorate. The highest governmental position held by most justices has been the office of city or county attorney. Sixteen justices fit into this category.

One justice, Robert N. Baskin, came into prominence as the mayor of Salt Lake City. Five justices were known, at least in part, for positions they held on the territorial, state, or federal level. Two served as assistant United States attorneys, two others as attorney general and assistant attorney general for Utah, and one as a member of the Utah State Constitutional Convention. Only eight of the justices had no previous governmental experience.

Most of the justices had some previous judicial experience before reaching the supreme court. The first three members of the court were former territorial justices. Fourteen others were Utah district court judges. On the other hand, thirteen had no previous judicial experience.

The importance of having worked with the government or as an inferior court justice before coming to the supreme court is another debatable question. Most would argue that previous judicial experience is a good thing, but it is not universally believed that all members of a supreme court must be former justices. Many think that those outside the court system provide the best sources for new approaches to legal problems.

Experience in a governmental post such as that of a county attorney seems to be a less critical factor.13 The Utah State Supreme Court began by having three former territorial justices as its members. From 1905 to 1926 only one member of the court had had any previous judicial experience. Then, from 1926 to 1946 all but one member of the bench were former justices of the district courts. For the past twenty years there has been a greater balance. Four have been former justices and four have not. Currently the balance is three to two in favor of judicial experience.

In summary, it is clear that the supreme court justices have had similar backgrounds. All had western European ancestors, all were born in America, nearly all were from small communities, and most were from apparent humble parentage. Their nonlegal education was generally

13

See Heiberg's comments, "Minnesota Supreme Court," p. 926.

Utah State Supreme

Court

279

Justices

restricted to college near home. Although some escaped their native environment by attending law school in another state, most returned to their home town to practice law. Those who eventually went elsewhere journeyed west rather than east. Not one justice, it appears, ever practiced law in a large city or outside the West or Midwest before serving on the supreme court. And finally, most of the justices began their public careers by serving as a city or county attorney. It was normally in that position that they became known to the governor or the people.

A distinction may be drawn between those justices serving on the supreme court to 1926 and those coming later. All but one of the earlier members of the court were outsiders. They grew up in states other than Utah and were non-Mormon or even anti-Mormon. They generally had a minimum of legal training and little, if any, judicial experience. Those coming to the court after 1926 have, as a rule, been born and reared in Utah, been members of the Mormon faith, had a better legal education and more judicial experience.

It is also clear that politics has generally dictated who should and should not sit on the supreme court. Those persons who have been members of the right party at the right time and who have known the right people are the ones who have made it. But their stay in office has been determined by political forces beyond their control. A presidential election or an economic depression has been far more instrumental in deciding their future than their record on the bench. The creation of a nonpartisan ballot in 1951 and the judicial legislation passed in recent years may have the effect of taking politics out of the Utah State Supreme Court and of providing the court with even more qualified candidates.

CHART I ELECTORAL DATA AFFECTING THE OFFICE OF JUSTICE OF THE UTAH STATE SUPREME COURT

W I N N I N G CANDIDATE AND PARTY AFFILIATION

James A. Miner (R) George W. Bartch (R) Charles S. Zane (R) Robert N. Baskin (D) (Zane defeated.)

PRESIDENTIAL V O T E IN U T A H

(R)

(D)

PARTY OF PRESIDENTIAL WINNER

PARTY OF UTAH GOVERNOR

R

280

YEAR

WINNING CANDIDATE AND PARTY AFFILIATION

1900

George W. Bartch (R)

1902

William M. McCarty (R) (Miner did not run.)

1904

Daniel N. Straup (R) (Baskin did not run.)

1906

Joseph E. Frick (R) (Bartch resigned that October and Frick appointed.)

1908

William M. McCarty (R)

1910

Daniel N. Straup (R)

1912

Joseph E. Frick (R)

1914

William M. McCarty (R)

1916

E. E. Corfman (D) (Straup defeated.)

1918

A. J. Weber (D) (Frick defeated.)

Samuel R. Thurman (D) (Appointed in 1917 when court increased to five members.)

Valentine Gideon (D) (Appointed in 1917 when court increased to five members.)

1920

Joseph E. Frick (R) (Appointed in 1919 to fill vacancy created by death of Justice McCarty.)

1922

James W. Cherry (R) (Corfman defeated.)

1924

Daniel N. Straup (R) (Weber defeated.)

1926

Elias Hansen (R) (Gideon did not run.)

1928

William H. Folland (R)

1930

Ephraim Hanson (R) (Appointed in 1927 to fill vacancy created by death of Justice Frick.)

Utah Historical Quarterly PRESIDE NTIAL VOTE IN UTAH

(R)

(D)

PARTY OF PRESIDENTIAL WINNER

47,000

45,000

R

R

55,000

36,000

R

R

56,000

40,000

R

R

42,000

37,000

D

R

57,000

80,000

D

D

81,555

56,639

R

R

77,327

47,001

R

R

94,618

80,985

R

D

Utah State Supreme Court Justices

YEAR

W I N N I N G CANDIDATE AND PARTY AFFILIATION

1932

David W. Moffat (D) (Cherry did not run.)

1934

James H. Wolfe (D) (Straup defeated.)

1936

Martin M. Larson (D) (Hansen defeated.)

1938

Roger I. McDonough (D)

1940

Eugene E. Pratt (Hanson did not run.)

1942

David W. Moffat (D)

1944

James H. Wolfe (D) Lester A. Wade (R) (Appointed in 1944 to fill vacancy created by death of Justice Moffat.

Previously been appointed judge pro tern during the absence of Justice Pratt who was in the service.)* Abe W. Turner (D) (Appointed in 1944 judge pro tern during absence of Justice Pratt.)

1946

George W. Latimer (R) (Larson defeated.)

1948

Roger I. McDonough (D)

1950

J. Allan Crockett (D) (Pratt did not run.)

1952 2

Lester A. Wade (R) (Defeated George M. Worthen [D].)

F. Henri Henriod (R) (Appointed in 1951 to fill vacancy created by resignation of Justice Latimer. 3 Defeated Joseph G. Jeppson [D].)

1

281

PRESIDENTIAL V O T E IN U T A H

(R)

(D)

PARTY OF PRESIDENTIAL WINNER

PARTY O F UTAH GOVERNOR

84,795

116,750

D

D

64,555

150,246

D

D

93,155

154,277

D

D

97,891

150,088

D

D

124,402

149,151

D

R

194,190

135,364

R

R

Justice Pratt was serving as a member of the Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals.

1

Justices of the supreme court ran on a nonpartisan basis after 1951.

3

Judge Latimer resigned to become a member of the U. S. Court of Military Appeals.

282

YEAR

Utah Historical Quarterly

WINNING CANDIDATE AND PARTY AFFILIATION

1954

George M. Worthen (R) (Appointed in 1954 to fill vacancy created by retirement of Justice Wolfe.

Defeated Delbert M. Draper [D].)

1956

F. Henri Henriod (Unopposed.)

1958

Roger I. McDonough (D) (Unopposed.)

1960

J. Allan Crockett (D) (Unopposed.)

1962

Lester A. Wade (R) (Unopposed.)

1964

E. R. Callister, Jr. (R) (Defeated Serge B. Gudmundson [D].)4

1966

F. Henri Henriod (R) (Unopposed.)

R. L. Tuckett (D) (Appointed in 1966 to fill vacancy created by death of Justice Wade. Tuckett defeated Harold N. Wilkinson [R].)

1968

A. H. Ellett (D) (Appointed in 1967 to fill vacancy created by death of Justice McDonough.

Unopposed in 1968.)

1970

J. Allan Crockett (D) (Unopposed.)

1972

R. L. Tuckett (D) (Unopposed.)

1974

Richard J. Maughan (D) (Defeated Callister [R].)

RN

PRESIDENTIAL VOTE IN UTAH

PARTY OF PRESIDENTIAL WINNER

PARTY OF UTAH GOVERNOR

:R)

(D)

215,631

118,364

R

R

205,361

169,248

D

R

181,785

219,628

D

D

238,728

156,665

R

D

323,643

126,284

R

D

* Gudmundson was not a strong Democrat. It is clear that party politics did not play a role in this particular election.

Utah State Supreme Court Justices

283

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The Fremonts and Utah

BY MARY LEE SPENCE

L HERE is A FREMONT legend. For some it gleams as brightly as burnished gold; for others it is incredibly tarnished and scruffy. Writers like Allen Nevins have defended and extolled the explorer; others, including Ogden-born Bernard DeVoto, have roasted him with all the sarcastic adjectives they could summon to their pens. But in all this one point is clear: nobody ignores the man.

John Charles Fremont was born in 1813 and died in 1890, the date Frederick Jackson Turner took to denote the end of the American frontier; thus Fremont's career paralleled the great nineteenth-century period of expansion. His was a multi-faceted calling: his most monumental success came as an explorer in the Westâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;not in his role as senator from California, Civil War general, presidential aspirant, territorial governor of Arizona, or most certainly not as a businessman. Five times he led men across the Plains and Rockies under conditions of hardship and privation, and through his narratives publicized the West to a nation hungry to know. And aiding his long public career was his wife, the charming and spirited daughter of Missouri's dreadnought senator, influential Thomas Hart Benton. A beautiful and talented girl, Jessie Benton Fremont had inherited her father's concern for power and prestige and learned to write with remarkable ability. Together, she and John Charles made a truly dashing pair, a rarity in American history.

But to emphasize the fortunate marriage connection is in no way to underestimate Fremont's abilities. He had audacity, courage, and a quick mind that had absorbed a great deal of knowledge in the fields of natural history, geography, and surveying. His maps, which were constructed with the assistance of the skillful German topographer, Charles Preuss, were used by thousands of immigrants on their travels to Oregon and California. His reports contained original material on ethnology, and in some cases he was the first to notice particular Indian tribes and give careful descriptions of their characteristics and appearance. He was Ms. Spence is assistant professor and academic counselor, Department of History, University of Illinois, and coeditor of The Expeditions of John Charles Fremont.

288

Utah Historical Quarterly

the first to describe and explain so succinctly the great climatic difference between the east and west sides of the Cascade Mountains. He recognized that the Oregon Country was geologically different from the other regions of the United States, partly because of the great lava flows and, partly because of the Columbia River, the mighty watercourse that tied the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific. When he saw submerged trees at one place in the Columbia he recognized that this was not the result of rising waters, but of complicated landsliding, and he was able to find the actual shear surfaces on which the shifts had occurred.

For Utah, his greatest contribution was the discovery and naming of the Great Basin as a geologic and geographic entity. Because he explored the area's perimeters, he knew that no rivers ran from it to the sea, although large streams flowed in; his perceptive analysis of this phenomenon was the first recognition of the great power of evaporation in the region. He aptly compared the Great Basin with the interior of Asia.

He also established the correct elevation of Great Salt Lake at 4,200 feet, and collected specimens of rocks, minerals, fossils, soils, and plants for eastern scientists to analyze and classify. One such botanical collection was made in the Uinta Basin, an area not again botanized until the twentieth century.

Too often one lets Fremont's later failures cloud his earlier achievements. In admitting that his character was flawed by vanity and by hunger for recognition and financial gain, one tends to forget the dedication and discipline of his work of the 1840s. The wonder is that he was able to accomplish as much as he did. An exploring expedition required organization: as leader, Fremont provided thisâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and he handled logistics, oversaw the mapping, conducted the geodetic surveying, arranged the defense, and maintained the records. Late at night he shot readings on the stars, sometimes standing waist-deep in snow, work he regarded as routine.

The purpose of this article is to touch on the expeditions that penetrated Utah and note how Jessie, the waiting wife, viewed them from afar. Fremont was absent five of their first six and a half years of wedded life. Not until 1860 could Jessie write: "I feel now as if we were a complete & compact family & really Mr. Fremont used to be only a guestâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; dearly loved & honored but not counted on for worse as well as better."

She had finally "magnetised" into home life this man to whom she once thought the gift of parental instinct had been denied.1 1 Jessie Benton Fremont to Elizabeth Blair Lee, two letters, one dated Black Point, June 2, 1860, and the other undated but probably 1856. Blair-Lee Papers, Princeton University Princeton, N.J.

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The first major expedition—the 1842 expedition—was of but five months duration and Fremont returned to Washington in time to be with his eighteen-year-old wife when she gave birth to their first child.

In fact, he assuaged her disappointment at not having produced a son by presenting her with the flag he had raised atop the peak in the Wind River chain that ultimately bore Woodrow Wilson's name. It was a special emblem: in addition to the usual thirteen stripes and twenty-six stars, it displayed an American eagle clasping arrows and an Indian peace pipe in its claws.

In 1843 after Fremont was ordered to connect up his survey with that of the naval expedition of Charles Wilkes on the Oregon coast, Jessie accompanied him as far as Saint Louis, there to await his return for fourteen long months. While she waited, she also handled his affairs, including, she said, the suppression of an order from his superior canceling the expedition because it took a mountain howitzer. Jessie's version is contradicted by the official correspondence, but this was not the only occasion on which she would use her writing skills to dramatize an event, create a myth, or try to shape the historical record for posterity/ On his way to Oregon, Fremont made a side trip to Great Salt Lake.

He entered Utah by way of the Bear River, but at Standing Rock Pass he veered away and descended to the valley of the Malad, following that stream until the Bear River reentered through a canyon gap in the mountains. Traveling between the two rivers, he continued down the valley until the two joined. He then launched his rubber boat on the Bear near the present site of Corinne, but the marshes thwarted his attempt to reach the lake using this watercourse. The whole morass, which is now the Bear River National Wildlife Refuge, he noted, "was animated with multitudes of water fowl, which appeared to be very wild—rising for the space of a mile around about at the sound of a gun, with a noise like distant thunder." He returned up the Bear River again on foot for about five miles, and then, crossing to the left bank, proceeded south through present Brigham City around Bear River Bay to the Weber River, examining Utah Hot Springs on the way. From a peninsular butte, Little Mountain (where a marker commemorates his passage), he viewed the inland sea and described it as "one of the great points of the exploration." "I am ' Donald Jackson in "The Myth of the Fremont Howitzer," Bulletin of the Missouri Historical Society 23 (1967) : 305-14, compares the accounts as given in Thomas Hart Benton's Thirty Years' View; or, A History of the Working of the American Government . . . 1820 to 1850 . . . , 2 vols. (New York, 1 8 5 4 - 5 6 ) ; Fremont's Memoirs of My Life (Chicago, 1887); Century Magazine (1891) ; and Jessie's manuscript memoirs in the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

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doubtful if the followers of Balboa felt more enthusiasm when, from the heights of the Andes, they saw for the first time the great Western ocean," he wrote. "It was certainly a magnificent object, and a noble terminus to this point of our expedition; and to travellers so long shut up among mountain ranges, a sudden view over the expanse of silent waters had in it something sublime." 3 Fremont noted several large islands that "raised their high rocky heads out of the waves" and invited further exploration. Just west of present Ogden, preparations were made. The party quickly constructed a strong corral for the animals and a fort for the men who would remain behind. They set out to repair with cloth and gum the eighteen-foot Indiarubber boat, inflated it with air, and filled three five-gallon bags with drinking water. In the evening, having feasted on yampah ("the most agreeably flavored of the roots") seasoned with a small fat duck shot by Fremont's Black servant, they discussed the "whirlpool and other mysterious dangers" that Indian and hunter's stories attributed to this "unexplored" lake, as Fremont called it, even though William H. Ashley's men had sailed around it in 1826 in skin canoes.

On the next morning, September 8, 1843, Fremont and four companions, including the later famous Kit Carson, paddled down the Weber River, and on the following day steered across the lake itself to a desolate, arid island that now bears the explorer's name, but which Fremont, his dream of fertile spots evaporated, then named Disappointment Island. Here the party spent the night. They climbed Castle Peak, and while Carson, Basil Lajeunesse, and Baptiste Bernier carved a seven-inch cross under the shelving rock, Fremont and Charles Preuss studied and charted the surrounding lake. The finished map, which was published in his Report, was the first to show the seven islands in their proper locations and the correct elevation of Great Salt Lake (4,200 feet) which he had determined at the mouth of Bear River. Next morning the six men returned to shore over waters roughened by wind and boiled down five gallons of lake water to produce fourteen pints of very white and finegrained salt. Then using the Malad again, the entire expedition turned northward to Fort Hall and the route to Oregon.

On his return to the States the next year, Fremont again entered Utah, this time from the Southwest over a portion of the Old Spanish Trail. He came past Mountain Meadow, picked up as a guide the famous 3 "A Report of the Exploring Expedition to Oregon and North California in the Years 1843-44," in Donald Jackson and Mary Lee Spence, eds., The Expeditions of John Charles Fremont, 2 vols. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970-73), 1:501.

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hunter and trapper, Joseph Reddeford Walker, in the vicinity of later Newcastle on Pinto Creek. Passing north of the Antelope Range and east to Iron Springs, he reached present Enoch at the divide between Cedar and Parowan valleys near the southern end of Little Salt Lake. He left the Spanish Trail at the site of Paragonah and continued northward, camping on May 19 north of the Beaver River. The next day he met a band of Utah Indians headed by their chief, Walker (Wakara), who, with their rifles, "were journeying slowly towards the Spanish trail to levy their usual tribute upon the great Californian caravan." Fremont exchanged a fine blanket he had obtained at Vancouver for a Mexican one and continued north to camp either on Pine Creek or at Cove Fort.

On May 21 he was on Chalk Creek at present Fillmore and the next night found him in Round or Scipio Valley. On May 23 at the site of Yuba Dam on the "fine" Sevier River, he buried Francois Badeau who had accidentally shot himself. Within two more days the party was at Utah Lake which Fremont erroneously thought was a southern spur of the Great Salt Lake and where he noted that in their eight-month circuit "of twelve degrees diameter north and south, and ten degrees east and west," they were "never out of sight of snow." From Utah Lake he passed out of Utah by way of Spanish Fork Canyon, Fort Robidoux, and Fort Davy Crockett.4 Meanwhile, as army wives have done from time immemorial, Jessie waited impatiently for her husband's return. In the early days of the expedition, occasional news and letters reached her at Saint Louis.

September was not far along when two Indians brought a letter; on December 2 eleven of the expedition returned from Fort Hall bringing a few more letters and word of the Great Salt Lake exploration. As time wore on and communications ceased completely, Jessie sought consolation from old traders and trappers who knew Oregon or the Southwest firsthand. Even though her mother thought she was "too young & too perfectly healthy to know all the miseries that attend a separation," and though she would speak of her own "elastic" spirits and even counsel "patience" to the families of men on the expedition, time grew long and each day brought a fresh disappointment. The headaches that prostrated her she attributed to the "sickness of the heart." To the mother of one of the members of the exploring party she spoke longingly of her own husband:

* Fremont recounts his 1843 exploration of the Great Salt Lake area and his 1844 crossing of U t a h in ibid., 1:483-513, 692-707. In the Utah History Atlas ([Salt Lake City]: Author, 1964), compiler David E. Miller indicates Carson's cross was seven inches in length.

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" . . . From the moment I open my eyes in the morning until I am asleep again I look for him: I hurry home from a visit and from church & the first question is 'Has he come?' " In March her little daughter of sixteen months came down with whooping cough and her mother had a recurrence of illness—all of which added to the strain. When her mother had recuperated, Jessie made plans to accompany her to Washington; but when departure time drew near she found she could not leave Saint Louis, and she confided to the mother of Theodore Talbot that she might have "to resort to some desperate remedy such as plain sewing to relieve the nervous state" into which she had fallen.5 Perhaps it was just as well that she knew little of the ordeals and vicissitudes of Fremont's travels. How might her "nervous state" have fared had she been aware that two divisions of the India-rubber boat had collapsed under the impact of waves on Great Salt Lake and that only constant use of the bellows had maintained enough air to keep the craft afloat; or that all the plants collected between Fort Hall and the San Francisco Bay had been lost by the fall of a mule from a precipice into a torrent; or that deep snow and rugged mountains had forced the abandonment of the controversial howitzer in the Sierra Nevada; or that two of the men became so deranged by extreme suffering that one wandered away from camp and the other went to swim in an icy mountain stream foaming among the rocks, as if it were summer and the water placid; or that another, who went in search of a lame mule, was killed

by Indians.6 Jessie's anxiety ended in August 1844 with the return of Fremont and his party on the steamer Iatan, and soon the little family was back in Washington where the explorer spent long hours dictating his report to his wife. This report with its description of the Great Basin—submitted to the Chief of the Bureau of Topographical Engineers on March 1, 1845, and ordered by Congress to be printed, along with his first, in an edition of 10,000 copies—secured Fremont's reputation. Its popularity astonished even Jessie, and she wrote that her author-husband was ranked with Daniel Defoe.7 Domestic and foreign trade editions quickly followed.

The public read them avidly, especially Mormon leaders in Nauvoo, 8 Jessie Benton Fremont to Adelaide Talbot, Saint Louis, September 16 and December 3, 1843, and February 1, March 3, March 24, and June 15, 1844, in Jackson and Spence.

Expeditions, 1:352-62. '"Report . . . 1843-44," and Fremont to John Torrey, September 15, 1844, in Jackson and Spence, Expeditions, 1:508, 366, 646, 689.

7 Jessie B. Fremont to Fremont, Washington, June 16, 1846, in Jackson and Spence, Expeditions, 2:147-51.

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whose attention was caught by an entry of September 14 describing the valleys along Bear River and some of the creeks Fremont had seen as forming a natural resting and recruiting station for travellers now, and in all time to come. The bottoms are extensive; water excellent; timber sufficient; the soil good, and well adapted to the grains and grasses suited to such an elevated region. A military post, and a civilized settlement would be of great value here; and cattle and horses would do well where grass and salt so much abound. The lake will furnish exhaustless supplies of salt. All the mountain sides here are covered with a valuable nutritious grass, called bunch grass, from the form in which it grows, which has a second growth in the fall. The beasts of the Indians were fat upon it; our own found it a good subsistence; and its quantity will sustain any amount of cattle, and make this truly a bucolic region.

Undoubtedly Fremont's report and maps were influential in the Saints' decision to settle in Salt Lake Valley.8 A few months after submitting the report, Fremont embarked on his third western expedition and came once more to Utah, entering this time by way of the White River and again picking up Joseph R. Walker.

Traveling to Utah Lake by way of Provo Canyon, the party followed the Jordan River to the Salt Lake Valley where several days were spent exploring, making astronomical observations, and sketching the geographical features of the country. Fremont rode horseback out to Antelope Island, "the water nowhere reaching above the saddle girths." "The floor of the lake," he wrote, "was a sheet of salt resembling softening ice, into which the horses' feet sunk to the fetlocks." It was there he met a weathered Ute chief who demanded and received pay for the game the whites had taken. 9 Fremont explored Skull Valley, crossed the Cedar Mountains, and blazed a trail across the Salt Lake Desert to Pilot Peak which he named.

Although he made little of it, this crossing of the desert was not always easy: in this case it was done late in the coolness of October and his party was mounted; emigrants, crossing in late summer, making fifteen miles a day with heavy-laden wagons and oxen, would suffer incredibly.

After he reached California, Fremont wrote Jessie in Washington that by the route he had explored one could ride in thirty-five days from the junction of Fountain Creek and the Arkansas River (modern Pueblo, 8

"Report . . . 1843-44," in Jackson and Spence, Expeditions, 1:516; Leonard J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958), pp. 41-44. * Fremont, Memoirs, p. 431.

â&#x20AC;˘

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Colorado) to Sutter's Fort on the Sacramento, and that wagons could follow the road easier than any other.10 Rumors that Fremont had found a more direct road to California than the established one by way of Fort Hall and the Humboldt especially interested Lansford W. Hastings who arrived at Sutter's Fort shortly after the prestigious explorer. In his already published Emigrants' Guide to Oregon and California, he had theorized that a shorter route to California might bear "west southwest" to the Salt Lake. At Sutter's he undoubtedly talked with Fremont and his men, including those of the Talbot-Walker detachment which at Mound Springs had been sent through Secret Pass in the Ruby Mountains to intersect the emigrant road at the Humboldt River, south of present-day Halleck, Nevada.

Apparently convinced that the Walker-Talbot-Fremont route was feasible, Hastings recrossed the Sierras in the spring of 1846 and worked his way east along their path until he reached Fort Bridger on Blacks Fork where he was successful in persuading a number of emigrant groups, including the Donner-Reed party, to take the desert shortcut to California.

In a real sense the infamous Hastings Cutoff was blazed by Fremont.11 Of Fremont's checkered role in the Bear Flag Revolt, the conquest of California, and his involvement in Robert F. Stockton's controversy with Stephen Watts Kearny, little needs saying except that Fremont was as often right as wrong and that Jessie stood by him loyally and attempted to use her influence at the highest levelâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;i.e., with President Polk. When her husband returned from the third expedition which had started so gloriously, he was under arrest. His subsequent trial at the Washington Arsenal for mutiny, disobedience, and conduct prejudicial to good order and military discipline was a humiliating experience. He and Benton, who acted as his legal counsel, sought on more than one occasion to use the fear and public distrust of Mormonism against Kearny and the prosecution. They insinuated that the unrest among native southern Californians after the conquest was due to the arrival of the Mormon Battalion and not to any lack of faith in the legitimacy of Fremont's government. They implanted the idea that had the commander of the Mormon Battalion, Philip St. George Cooke, found Fremont instead of a subordinate in command of the California Battalion at San Gabriel 10 Fremont to Jessie B. Fremont, Yerba Buena, January 24, 1846, in Jackson and Spence Expeditions, 2:46-48.

11 For activities of Hastings and Fremont's influence on him, see Mary N. Spence's introduction to The Emigrants' Guide to Oregon and California (New York: D a Capo Press, 1969), and Thomas F. Andrews, "Lansford W. Hastings and the Promotion of the Salt Lake Desert Cutoff: A Reappraisal," Western Historical Quarterly 4 (1973) : 133-50.

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on a particular occasion, he would have used the Mormon soldiers to "crush" the national hero and that "crush" meant to "kill." They also attempted to show that Kearny had marched Fremont home from California under the surveillance of a Mormon guard—a great indignity— as much because it was Mormon as because he was in custody! 12 Rather than tarnishing Fremont's national reputation, the courtmartial actually added to it, and the trial wrote indelibly into the public mind the fact—or fiction, as some historians would have it—that he had played a daring role in the acquisition of California. But the courtmartial did have an effect upon his character. While he was not a man to look back, lose courage, or indulge in posttrial recriminations, the wound festered and made him more determined than ever to win laurels as an explorer.

He launched a new expedition late in October 1848 to establish the feasibility of a railroad to the Pacific along the line of the thirtyeighth parallel. It terminated in disaster in the snows of the San Juans in Colorado with ten men dead from starvation and cold. There followed a lull in exploring activity as Fremont occupied himself in developing his Mariposa estate and with a brief fling at politics, when he drew the short term as one of California's first United States senators.

In 1853, when Congress appropriated money for five Pacific railroad surveys, Benton immediately wrote to Fremont, who was in Europe, suggesting that he return, and to Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, urging that Edward F. Beale and Fremont be given one of the surveys, and that Beale be permitted to begin work immediately. As soon as Fremont was able to get out of the hands of his "bail," he came home ahead of Jessie and the children with fine scientific instruments he had selected in Paris with the help of the astronomer Arago.13 Failing to land a spot at the head of one of the government surveys—John W. Gunnison was appointed to direct the one he coveted along the thirty-eighth parallel— Fremont decided upon another winter expedition at his own expense (and perhaps Benton's). He would show that winter snow was not a deterrent to such a railroad route and in the process cover himself with glory.

12

Proceedings of the Court-Martial, vol. 2, pp. 125, 1 4 2 , 2 6 0 , 2 7 4 .

Jackson and Spence, Expeditions,

Supplement to

13 Fremont had been arrested in London for nonpayment of four drafts he had drawn as governor of California upon the secretary of state for supplies furnished to the California Battalion by a British shipmaster. The American, George Peabody, an investment banker in London, bailed him out of jail.

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To this end, he recruited a party of twenty-two, including the American-born Jewish-Portuguese artist and daguerreotypist, Solomon Nunes Carvalho, whose narrative is the only source of detail about this adventure and who became one of Fremont's staunchest boosters. "I know of no other man to whom I would have trusted my life, under similar circumstances," 14 Carvalho subsequently wrote. Other members included the thirty-year-old Prussian topographer, F. W. Egloffstein; assistant engineer Oliver Fuller of Saint Louis, and W. H. Palmer as a "passenger." Although Theodore Bacon, son of a New Haven minister, was rejected because the expedition was being financed by such "slight means," 15 Fremont later softened and accepted a volunteer assistant topographer, Max Strobel, who had left Isaac Stevens's northern railroad survey and who would become a paid topographer when Egloffstein quit at Parowan. Among the twenty-two, were ten Delawares. " . . . A more noble set of Indians I never saw," wrote Carvalho, "the most of them six feet high, all mounted and armed cap-a-pie...." 1€ Except for the Indians, who joined them at the Potawattomie village, the men outfitted near Westport, Kansas. Animals purchased at exorbitant prices were branded with the Fremont " F " ; at Independence Carvalho bought two dozen India-rubber blankets, dubbed by him the most useful articles on the trip. He wrote: We placed the India-rubber side on the snow, our buffalo robes on the top of that for a bed, and covered with our blankets, with an India-rubber blanket over the whole—India-rubber side up, to turn the rain. We generally slept double, which added to our comfort, as we communicated warmth to each other, and had the advantage of two sets of coverings.

During the whole journey, exposed to the most furious snow-storms, I never slept cold, although when I have been called for guard I often found some difficulty in rising from the weight of snow resting on me.17

Supplies included luxuries as well as necessities—cocoa, Java coffee, and Alden's preserved eggs, milk and cream, the latter commodities supplied by the manufacturer who wished them tested on the expedition. But excess baggage, even luxuries, was unwelcome and before many days out the men had destroyed some of Alden's patented products. The thoughtful Carvalho, however, tucked away a tin of the eggs and one of 14 Solomon Nunes Carvalho, Incidents of Travel and Adventure in the Far West with Col. Fremont's Last Expedition . . . (New York, 1857), pp. 17-18.

"Fremont to Theodore Bacon, Washington, D.C, August 6, 1854, Copley Collection, La Jolla, Calif.

16 "Fremont's agreement with the Ten Delaware Hunters, Westport, Mo., 16 Sept. 1853," in Memorial of the Delaware Indians, U. S., Congress, Senate, Senate Document No. 16, 58th Cong., 1st sess., 1903, pp. 159-60.

17 Carvalho, Incidents, p. 25.

The Fremonts and Utah the milk and on New Year's Day, in the bitter cold of the high mountains, mixed these with water and arrowroot (provided by his wife in case of illness) to produce a tasty dessert to accompany the usual "horse soup," augmented on this special day with horse steak fried in the remnants of buffalo tallow candles.18 The expedition got underway on September 22 but Fremont became ill and turned back to Westport for medical advice; soon he returned to Saint Louis for treatment, Jessie Benton Fremont. ordering the party to wait for him Portrait by T. Buchanan Read, on the Saline fork of the Kansas courtesy Southwest Museum.

River where buffalo were plentiful.

From Washington, Jessie dashed by train to Saint Louis where the consulting homeopathic physician, Dr. Ebers, in time "soothed the pain, uprooted the inflammation" [inflammatory rheumatism], and literally got Fremont "on his legs." The good doctor, a veteran of the RussoTurkish War of 1828, even agreed to accompany the explorer west, although Jessie was reluctant to see her husband go. She wrote Elizabeth Blair Lee, her good friend, I am what your Mother called me a poor mean spirited woman & she will be the first in her heart to justify my meanness. I would rather have Mr. Fremont at the fireside taking care of himselfâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;writing out what he has done & enjoying the repose and happiness of our quiet home, than getting all the stupid laurels that ever grew. I think he has done enoughâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; but he does not. If this ends well, I shall be glad for his sake it was done for he would have always regretted it, but nothing it can ever bring can reward either of us for its cost in suffering to him & anxiety to me. 19

It was the end of October before Fremont rejoined his party, late in the season for exploring. Already Captain Gunnison and seven of his men, two of them veterans of Fremont's fourth expedition, had been murdered by Utes near Sevier Lake. By the time the Fremont party reached Bent's House thirty miles below the old fort, which had been 18

Ibid., p. 87.

"Jessie B. Fremont to Elizabeth Blair Lee, October 14, [1853], Blair-Lee Papers.

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destroyed, Fremont's health was so completely restored that the physician returned to Saint Louis. Then the expedition laid in new supplies of sugar, coffee, dried buffalo meat, robes, overshoes, and gloves and added a small buffalo-skin lodge for Fremont and a large one capable of sheltering twenty-five men. From Bent's they traveled up the Arkansas, worked their way over the Rockies and down the western slope into Utah. Part of the time they were following Gunnison's trail; but before reaching the Green, Fremont diverged from it, swung south, crossed the river near the mouth of the San Rafael, wandered through unexplored countryâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;at least as far as Circle Valley on the Sevierâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and ultimately reached Parowan in the southwest corner of the present state.

Carvalho chronicles vividly the sufferings of the little party as they doggedly pushed through the wintry wilderness, sometimes encountering raging snowstorms, sometimes temperatures thirty degrees below zero.

On one occasion, the lead mule slipped on a snowy mountain slope and tumbled head over heels, carrying fifty other mules with him several hundred feet to the bottom. Fortunately only one mule was killed, but it took a full day to recover the baggage. The crossing of the eastern fork of the Colorado River was attended with much difficulty and more danger. Along both banks the ice was about eighteen inches thick, but the middle channel, about two hundred yards wide and six feet deep, ran too swiftly to freeze. The men spread sand on the surface of the ice to prevent slipping, drove the pack animals in, and rode their own horses across, their clothes freezing stiff in the process. Carvalho wrote of "the awful plunge from the ice into the water, I never shall have the ambition to try again." The Delawares had been among the first across and built huge fires by which all dried their clothes on their persons.

On several occasions they encountered Indians, one group of which undoubtedly would have run off their horses had it not been for the party's vigilance; another band of about fifty was most threatening in their demands for red cloth, blankets, gunpowder, and knives; on the other hand, another furnished cereal in the form of grass seed.

Steadily their food supplies disappeared and could not be replenished with game on a regular basis. Once they had beaver for breakfast and porcupine for supper; a coyote furnished another meal, but Carvalho could not bring himself to partake; sometimes they collected cactus leaves, burned off the spines in the fire and ate them. Soon it became necessary to kill their horses for food. Carvalho's poor old pony, too weak to bear even a bundle of blankets, was the first sacrificed. At that point,

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Carvalho records, Fremont called the men together and exacted a solemn pledge that regardless of the extremity, they would not resort to cannibalism as some may have done on the fourth expedition. "He then threatened to shoot the first man that made or hinted at such a proposition."

As suffering became more acute, men began to lag behind. Fremont ordered all extra baggage wrapped in the large buffalo-skin covering of the great lodge (the pole had already broken), buried in the snow, and covered with brush. During that night in Circle Valley, standing almost to their waists in snow, Fremont and Carvalho made astronomical observations for hours, and the veteran explorer concluded that Parowan, the small Mormon settlement, forty rods square, in the Little Salt Lake Valley was but three days travel. But reaching it was a feat in itself, and almost at the very hour of triumphâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;near Mule Pointâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Oliver Fuller died in the saddle. Not having tools to dig a grave in the frozen ground, Fremont postponed burial until after his arrival at Parowan, whence he sent out several men to perform the duty. The Mormons opened their homes and took in the men of the expedition. Fremont stayed with the stake president, John Calvin Lazelle Smith, and his family; Carvalho with the English shoemaker, William Heap, and his family. The secretary of the territory, Almon W. Babbitt, had stopped in this walled village of a hundred families en route to Washington, by way of California, and Fremont was able not only to borrow money from him but also to send letters home.

Meanwhile, back in Washington, the long winter ground on for Jessie, who was again pregnant.

There was a distinct coolness in the air when Fremont's name was mentioned to her father, even though it had been Benton who summoned his son-in-law home from Europe in the hope of getting him a survey post. Later, Jessie attributed some of Fremont and Carvalho taking astronomical observations. Frontispiece from Carvalho's Incidents of Travel and Adventure.

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this coolness to her husband's having revoked the $1,000,000 sale of the Mariposa, that Benton, under a power of attorney, had made to Denny Sargeant in 1851.20 Family friend Montgomery Blair thought more was involved and perhaps he was right.21 Whatever it was, Jessie, too, felt the alienation of her adored father and was slow to forget the loneliness of that winter of 1853-54. To Elizabeth Blair Lee she wrote a few years later: Father shocked back & chilled all my feelings when I looked to him for sympathy the winter Fremont was in the mountains last—your father [Frank Preston Blair] saw one little proof of it in the way he told me of Babbitts news. Tears may be sweet that are shed upon the bosom of a friend whose heart grieves with yours, but tears wrung from you in solitude embittered by the want of a friend are such as I do not wish to feel burning my eyes again. 22

She brooded, her nights became sleepless, her appetite vanished, and she became convinced that Fremont and his party were starving. Then suddenly her spirits revived, a fact she ascribed to a strange psychic revelation experienced on the precise day and hour that her husband emerged from the jaws of death. Her sister and a young cousin had come to her house to spend the night and were telling her all about a wedding they had just attended. The fire in the hearth burned low and Jessie went to an adjoining room for a log. As she stooped, she felt a touch on her shoulder and heard her husband whisper her name. At once her heart grew light. Hurrying to the next room she found her sister half-fainting from the sense of a mysterious presence, and when she revived she began to scream. According to Jessie, upon Fremont's return his notebook revealed that at 11:30 P.M. Parowan time (1:53 A.M. Washington time), having just settled his men in warm quarters, he had permitted his thoughts to wander home before setting about writing notes. Jessie reiterated this story on several occasions: in the pages of Wide Awake, in the Journal of Physical Research, in her own book, Far West Sketches, and in her manuscript memoirs, now in the Bancroft Library. Sometimes she dates the arrival in Parowan as February 6, sometimes as February 9; Smith dates it February 7; and Fremont, February 8.23 20

Ibid., April 18, [1856 or 1857].

Montgomery Blair to Minna Blair, San Francisco, April 28, 1854, Blair Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 82 Jessie B. Fremont to Elizabeth Blair Lee, April 18, [1856 or 1857].

23 Before the establishment of present-day time zones, time differences were often determined by longitudinal differences, with one hour of time representing fifteen degrees of longitude.

Using the present longitudinal readings of Washington, D. C. (77° 2' 0" W) and Parowan (112° 49' 5" W) Jessie's computation of time is in error by a mere eight seconds.

21

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301

When the Mormon, Babbitt, arrived in Washington on April 11 Jessie arranged a dinner party. In her invitation to Lizzie's husband and Mr. Blair, she requested that they forget "he has lots of wives and look upon him only as I do in his last character as friend & banker to Mr. Fremont." 24

By February 21, Fremont was in shape to continue his expedition but this time without the services of Egloffstein and Carvalho, who withdrew to Salt Lake City. He was guided west for three days by Bishop Tarlton Lewis's son. John Steele, the mayor and county recorder, lamented that the explorer carried away with him twenty dollars worth of survey maps of Iron County that had been lent to him for copying.25 Fremont's route was "a little south of West," which must have taken him

by Iron Springs, across the Escalante Desert, and near present-day Panaca, Nevada. 26 By mid-April 1854 he was in San Francisco and, Montgomery Blair wrote his wife, "as fat as a buck. So much so, that his clothes seem too tight for him," and that he made "no account of his hardships." 7 Fremont did not linger long in California. Declining a public dinner tendered by the Society of California Pioneers, he took passage in the Nicaragua steamer Cortes on May 1. At Aspinwall, he caught the Northern Light, arriving in New York on May 25, 1854, about a week after Jessie had given birth to a son in Washington.28 Territorial Delegate John M. Bernhisel wrote Brigham Young that Fremont had called to thank him "for the kindness he had received from our people." 29 Although the Republican platform of 1856 asserted that "it is both the right and imperative duty of Congress to prohibit in the For the differences in date, see letter of J . C L . Smith to the editor of the Salt Lake [Deseret] News printed in National Intelligencer, M a y 17, 1854, and Fremont to Benton, Parowan, February 9, 1854, embodied in Benton to editor, National Intelligencer, April 12, 1854. O n p. 186 of the draft manuscript, " G r e a t Events during the Life of Major General J o h n C Fremont," Bancroft Library, Jessie dates his arrival in Parowan as February 9.

24 Jessie B. Fremont to F. P. Blair, [April 1854], Blair-Lee Papers. Jessie is in error in labeling Babbitt a polygamist. H e had only one wifeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Julia Ann Hills J o h n s o n â&#x20AC;&#x201D; w h o m he had married on November 23, 1833. For other details of Babbitt's life, see J a y Donald R i d d , "Almon Whiting Babbitt, M o r m o n Emissary" (M.A. thesis, University of U t a h , 1953).

35 J o h n Steele Diary, p . 26, typescript, Archives Division, Historical D e p a r t m e n t , C h u r c h of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City. x See topographical detailing on " M a p Showing Country Explored by J o h n Charles Fremont from 1841 to 1854" in his Memoirs; Daily Alta California, April 21, 1854; and National Intelligencer, J u n e 13, 1854.

" M o n t g o m e r y Blair to M i n n a Blair, San Francisco, April 18, 1854, Blair Papers.

28 29

Daily Alta California,

May 1 and 2, 1854; National

Intelligencer,

M a y 27, 1854.

Bernhisel to Brigham Young, Washington City, J u n e 14, 1854, separate catalog, folder 9, Brigham Young Papers, L D S Archives.

302

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Territories those twin relics of barbarismâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Polygamy and Slavery," 30 Fremont, the standard bearer, remained personally silent on the issue of polygamy. Given the political climate, perhaps it was as much as could be expected. Brigham Young noted that "even our friend [Stephen A.] Douglas dare not venture to enlist his influence in our cause. . . ." 31 As time wore on, Fremont's attitude mellowed even more. When Jesse N. Smith, who had gathered supplies for the bedraggled company in Parowan, came to Arizona in 1879, Fremont, as territorial governor, at once sent congratulations to Smith and appointed him notary public.32 At a San Jose Floral Affair in early May 1888, he met and reminisced with one of his old Parowanian rescuers.33 And a bit later when Kate Field, journalist, actress, and the recipient of a gold badge set with diamonds from the Loyal League in Salt Lake City, travelled to Los Angeles in 1888 to lecture on the vices and evils of Mormonism, Fremont refused to introduce her at a public meeting. "I cannot do it," he said, "The Mormons saved me and mine from death by starvation in '54." 34 30 Donald B. Johnson and Kirk H. Porter, comps., National ( U r b a n a : University of Illinois Press, 1973), p. 27.

Party Platforms,

1840-1972

31 Young to George A. Smith, J. M. Bernhisel, and John Taylor, Salt Lake City, August 30, 1856, Brigham Young Letterbook, reel 4, LDS Archives.

32

J o h n H . Krenkel ed., The Life and Times of Joseph Fish, Mormon 111., Interstate Printers a n d Publishers, 1970), p. 46.

Pioneer

(Danville,

33 For articles on the week-long event and advertisements of "excursions" to San Jose, see San Francisco Chronicle, April 20, 27, 28, 29, and May 5, 1888. T h e Fremonts, who were now residing in Los Angeles, were invited to come and were given a grand reception. An old log cabin embowered in flowers was erected for the general. T h e Fremonts' daughter mentions the meeting with the old resident of Parowan. See I. T. Martin comp., Recollections of Elizabeth Benton Fremont (New York, 1912), p. 73.

34 Lilian Whiting, Kate Martin, Recollections, p. 73.

Field: A Record

(Boston, 1899), pp. 429, 440, 443, 452, 4 5 5 ;

A Biography of Ezra Thompson Clark. By ANNIE CLARK TANNER. Utah, the Mormons, and the West Series, no. 5 (Salt Lake City: Tanner Trust Fund, University of Utah Library, 1975. Xi + 82 pp. $8.50.)

This short biography of her father

by Annie Clark Tanner is essentially a loving eulogy by a devoted daughter.

It consists of a brief background chapter followed by an account of his life in Nauvoo and Winter Quarters and his journey to Utah as a member of Heber C. Kimball's 1848 company. Chapter 3 summarizes the main events of the rest of his life, including colonizing missions in Iron County and Bear Lake, and proselytizing missions in England, Canada, eastern United States, and Oregon.

It also describes his marriages to three wives and his subsequent imprisonment and $300 fine for those polygamous relationships. The remaining chapters give more intimate details of his home life, business affairs, and philosophy of life, including religion. The final few pages include a "resolution of respect" by fellow high council members and Ezra Clark's written testimony and instructions to his family.

Mrs. Tanner's account portrays her father as being a devout Mormon, but "largely free from spiritual superstition"; an energetic and highly successful farmer and businessman; and an affectionate husband and loving father.

This is evidently a valid assessment of his general character, ability, and personality; but her descriptive statements are so overwhelmingly favorable that one wonders what he was really like.

The nearest approach to a weakness in Ezra Clark's character is described in his

being exact in business "for which he was sometimes criticized." But then the author immediately counters with the statement "however it was often said of him that his word was as good as his bond." Mrs. Tanner asserts mat his "sense of values" was so keen that "he seldom, if ever, made a mistake in his plans or suffered disadvantages in a business deal" but was "generous to a fault" in a social way.

Speaking of his family relationships, she reports that "every child found a delight in pleasing him. Everyone tried to anticipate his every wish." Apparently he was able to achieve unusual success as a polygamous husband and father, but his daughter's portrait of him is lacking in objectivity.

Mrs. Tanner's own superb autobiography, published recently under the title of A Mormon Mother, is written with such candor and insight that it is disappointing to find so little of these qualities in her biography of her father.

Perhaps the fact that it was written in 1931 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; thirty years after her father's death and almost ten years before she wrote her autobiography â&#x20AC;&#x201D; may help to explain this difference in quality. And, of course, she knew her own life and feelings far better than those of her father.

Despite this lack of objectivity, readers will find much that is interesting in this little volume. The chapter on home life with its descriptions of bob-

304 sled rides, "peach cutting" socials, molasses candy pulls, and twenty-fourth of July parades conjures images of a bygone era in which life seemed much simpler and more wholesome. But the deaths of two of his sons while on mis-

Utah Historical

Quarterly

sions and his own imprisonment for unlawful cohabitation serve as a reminder that each age has its problems as well as its pleasures.

EUGENE E. CAMPBELL

Brigham Young

University

Utah: A Hispanic History. Edited by VICENTE V. MAYER, JR. (Salt Lake City: American West Center, University of Utah, 1975. Viii + 90 pp. $6.00.)

The dynamic social and cultural upheavals of the civil rights movements have created subsequent voids when viewed from the perspective of providing minority groups equal time in the course of Utah and American history.

At a time when social studies teachers in Utah schools are in search of a viable package for said purpose, the following work has become available on the Hispano (including Mexican-American and Chicano) history of Utah.

What gives this work a uniqueness all its own is its perspective on the Hispano in Utah. For numerous are the works available concerning the history, sociology, and economics of the Spanish, Mexicans, Mexican-Americans, and Chicanos in the United States, but such works usually make small mention of Utah or fail to mention Utah altogether.

This work, on the other hand, introduces the general theme of Spanish and Mexican history in the Southwest, then proceeds to focus on Utah.

This survey covers the Spanish period and following periods up to and including the present day. Again, emphasis should be placed on the pioneering accomplishments of this work.

Rather than limit the nomenclature of this item to "book," I have used the name "package" or "work." For this item is composed of a text, workbook, teacher's supplement, and a film strip, all intended for use on the junior high school level. It should be mentioned that Richard Gomez of Granite School Dis-

trict and Robert Archuleta of Salt Lake City School District, along with this reviewer, feel that the text part of this package is scaled on a higher reading level than that of most junior high students.

There is the possibility of individual school adaptations of the text and/ or - material thereof where necessary.

The value of the work should not be diminished as a result of these methods.

The point remains that it can be used as a guide rather than a rigid text in the classroom.

The pioneering scope of this work is characterized by the mention of such little-known facts as the early Spanish mining efforts near Kamas and Cedar City in the 1840s. Moreover, trading contacts between Spanish and Utes in Utah are also mentioned. Of noteworthy praise also is the statement that the Spanish-speaking community is more of a twentieth-century phenomenon, due to the demand for labor in the United States; the first immigrants into southern Utah were people from New Mexico, and those living along the Wasatch Front traced their roots to Mexico.

Religion, as it pertains to the Spanishspeaking people of Utah, is a subject interestingly presented in the work.

Mention is made both of Mormon and Catholic establishments in Salt Lake City. A brief historical sketch is provided for both as well.

In investigating the background of the work, it was found that this partic-

Book Reviews and Notices ular item was the end result of compiled documentation housed at the Marriott Library at the University of Utah.

In efforts to introduce more varied and personal information, numerous individuals became involved in interviews with people and families who made their way into Utah. Hence, a personal aspect helped to highlight a rather obscure part of Utah history. Indeed, such an undertaking should serve to compliment the people involved in the actual interviewing, taping, and editing.

In conclusion, such topics as the effects of the 1930 depression, World War

305 II, and the civil rights movements provide a chronological continuity and viability. The numerous photographs, drawings, and maps, along with the glossary and chronology in the text, make this work a worthy supplement to general Utah history. The work was obviously well thought out and prepared, as further witnessed by the presence of an accompanying teacher's supplement and filmstrip.

ALEJANDRA A. AVILA

Salt Lake City

Through Camera Eyes. By NELSON B. WADSWORTH. (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1975. Xi + 180 pp. $10.95.)

Several years ago in Salt Lake City a group of boys, while cleaning the attic of a downtown business, amused themselves by throwing glass photo negatives from a second-story window to the bed of a truck below. This incident is only one of several stories in circulation of glass negative collections being lost, sent to a dump, burned, cleaned, or worst of all, ignored.

This book is an integral part of a crusade presently being waged by a small, but growing, group of persons intent on saving these "frozen moments of time." Wadsworth, a professor of communications active in photo journalism at Brigham Young University, has been a participant in the cause for several years. His goal in organizing this volume is to illustrate that photographs are indeed "the most reliable sources of historical documentation." To achieve his objective, he presents surviving photographs and discusses the lives of the men who took them, all Utah Mormons. It is not an exhaustive study but deals primarily with those whose works have survived to "weave a visual picture of Utah and its frontier development."

In photography, as in most developing disciplines, die early practitioners

seem, at least from a distance, to possess a color and spirit not found in this more technically competent era. The development of photography in this country was contemporary to the rise of Nauvoo, Illinois, where Lucian Foster, the first Mormon photographer, began. He took, according to Wadsworth, a daguerreotype of Joseph Smith which is the basis for most likenesses of the Mormon prophet used since. Foster, however, is a mystery. Sometime before the Mormon trek west he disappeared after having been excommunicated for "apostasy."

Another photographer, Marsena Cannon, suffered a similar fate some years later. One of the first photographers in Salt Lake Valley and a favorite of Brigham Young, Cannon became disaffected with the church and joined the Godbeites, the "New Movement" that wished to liberalize the doctrine of the church. He, too, was excommunicated and died in obscurity.

Charles R. Savage, on the other hand, appears to have been a Renaissance man. He was, for many years, the most prosperous and talented of Utah photographers. In addition to his Art Bazaar in Salt Lake, he traveled widely, via a free rail pass, to document the

306 beauty .and unique spirit of the West.

Earlier he had equipped a wagon as a darkroom and followed a Mormon train west to Salt Lake. He was also a polygamist, popular lecturer, member of the Tabernacle Choir, publisher, and the founder of Old Folks' Day. By the 1890s Savage was growing old, and the era of the pioneer photographer was coming to an end, aided by the advent of the Kodak camera. But there was one more pioneer photographer— the eccentric artist George Edward Anderson of Springville. A student of Savage, Anderson was never a commercial success. But he was the last of his kind and possessed a rare talent and dedication. He was a traveling photographer, going from one settlement to the next, providing "a service not generally available to the rural folk of Utah." After being called on an LDS mission to England, Anderson left Utah and was gone seven years, most of which time was spent compiling a comprehensive history of Mormonism in photographs, traveling "without purse or scrip" throughout the Midwest and East—an obsession that alienated him from family and friends. The Anderson negatives have survived several near catastrophes to become the most complete collection

Utah Historical Quarterly of historic Utah/Mormon images presently available.

Although the biographical and narrative material make this work invaluable, the best part are the photographs themselves. Whether a picture shows members of a Mormon wagon train, pioneers of 1847 (taken in 1897), the 1869 joining of the rails at Promontory, or a pensive, elderly C. R. Savage in his very middle-class dining room, the feeling is the same—pride in a strong, dynamic, surviving heritage. Such pride is sometimes difficult to admit for those who are closely connected with Utah history. Perhaps because it implies a lack of cherished objectivity. But these images are indeed more forceful than words. George Edward Anderson may have had such a plan in mind as he worked, "When I return all will be changed. Some of these old land marks will be obliterated. Who will see them as I see them now."

Mr. Wadsworth has done a competent, literate job. As the first major examination of Utah photographers and their work, this book fills a longstanding need in an interesting and accurate manner.

A N N HINCKLEY

Utah State Historical Society

Indian Joe in Person and in Background: Historical Perspective into Piute Life. By FRANK A. BECKWITH. (Delta, Ut.: DuWil Publishing Co., 1975. Xiv -f 207 pp.

Cloth, $10.00; paper, $8.00.)

In December 1939 Frank A. Beckwith presented a handful of friends with what he called a Christmas greeting card. It was, in fact, a book about the author's conversations and encounters with Joseph J. Pickyavit, a Kanosh Indian. This original monograph, typeset and printed in seven copies at Beckwith's Millard County Chronicle plant in Delta, was embellished with many photographs and hand-tinted drawings.

The library of the Utah State Historical Society has the copy that was given to

J. Cecil Alter, founding editor of Utah Historical Quarterly.

The book recently published by Beckwith's family contains most of the text of the monograph plus some supplemental material. It is not so lavishly illustrated as the Christmas greeting card, nor, of course, are Beckwith's penned marginal notes and afterthoughts retained. However, the flavor of the original—the essense of Beckwith's unusual and eclectic mind—is everywhere evident.

307

Book Reviews and Notices Beckwith was born in 1874 in Evanston, Wyoming, where he learned the banking business under his father's tutelage. In 1919 at age forty-five he gave up his career in banking to become editor and publisher of the Millard County Chronicle. This new occupation gave him freedom to explore a relatively pristine landscape and to follow his curious and questing intellect whereever it led. One special fascination was ancient Indian culture as evidenced in petroglyphs and artifactual remains.

To better understand Indian life, Beckwith made friends with local Paiutes, especially Pickyavit who had been born in 1892 in the Kaibab Forest.

Indian Joe is a biography of Pickyavit, but it is also autobiography, speculative psychology and anthropology, triviaâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a hodgepodge that will irritate some readers.

Yet, Beckwith was more than a dabbler ; he was a man committed to knowledge. He read the standard anthropological works of his time, he photographed hundreds of petroglyphs, and he collected and preserved countless artifacts in his Chronicle office. Beckwith believed that through his friendship with Joe Pickyavit he could come to a clearer understanding of Indian ways and also begin to unravel the meaning of petroglyphs. Joe would be his teacher. This unusual friendship remains the remarkable fact of Indian Joe. Pickyavit remembered his heritage, and much of it he and other Indians

were willing to explain patiently to Beckwith: Joe's study to become a medicine man (and his inability to master this demanding role), how to weave a water jug and seal it with pine pitch, the meaning of a trilobite necklace, how the old ones kept warm in winter, how a death sentence was carried out, games, the Sun Dance, interpretations of petroglyphs, and many other things.

The friendship was frank on both sides. Joe let it be known that certain things were "not for white man, Beckwith." Beckwith was chastised for digging up Indian graves, asked not to eat watermelon in front of thirsting Sun Dance participants, and told to stop using the expression "red man." Best of all, perhaps, was the time Joe came to tell Beckwith that he was studying the curious editor.

Not everyone will enjoy reading this somewhat disjointed book. As the late Charles Kelly observed, "Frank had one very unfortunate fault. When he became intensely interested in a subject, he seemed to take for granted that everyone else was almost as well informed as himself. Consequently . . . he would dive into the middle . . . rather than begin at the beginning and carry through." However, if one can forgive Beckwith's eccentricities and other shortcomings, Indian Joe offers some unique insights.

MIRIAM B. M U R P H Y

Utah State Historical Society

Territorial Politics and Government in Montana, 1864-89. By CLARK C. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975. X + 327 pp. $11.50.)

Usual treatments of Montana territorial history emphasize Sitting Bull and George A. Custer, but here we have a full-length volume which barely indexes the chief and mentions the general not at all, even in this, his "centennial year."

SPENCE,

The coverage stays close to the title, bringing in a different set of actors, a few already familiar but with attention properly placed on Gov. Benjamin F. Potts and his heretofore obscure associates and successors. Others besides

Utah Historical

308 officeholders are presented, such as the influential businessmen and journalists who directed much of the action.

Despite dust jacket claims for being objective and fair-minded, there is visible prejudice against the "Radical" Republicans, notably Wilbur F. Sanders and Robert Fisk, editor of the Helena Herald, with a corresponding favoritism toward Potts and his supporters. Another dust jacket mention of "wit" is sustained almost solely by abundant quotations of Fisk's sarcasm, which was often funny, always vivid, and usually well founded.

Evidence is adduced that partisan lines were so often ignored that a "no party" situation existed. The fact of weak party discipline is conceded but hardly to the extent of blotting out effective distinctions. The matter is hard to measure objectively; comparison with other times and places would provide the test.

Viewed in their political activities, these pioneers appear corrupt and grasping, and not convincingly real as we see them doing little but plotting and conspiring. The author's access to surprisingly preserved confidential memoranda has yielded this picture of unscrupulous people engaged in questionable maneuvers.

Possibly to add a humanizing touch, they are often referred to by diminutive nicknames, including some which will be novel to most readers unaccustomed to hearing of "Marc" Daly or "Tom" Power. Governor Hauser may have answered to "Sam," but "Gran" Stuart?

The work is further marred by numerous small but annoying errors. On page 5 we are told that eastern Montana was once part of Kansas, when Nebraska would have been better, and that the Jesuits arrived in the 1830s. A note on page 50 has the mouth of the Judith River one hundred miles below Fort Buford, in Dakota. When Thomas F. Meagher was drowned, as reported on page 53, he was no longer the acting governor, Green C. Smith having already returned. Page 159 sees Hauser prospecting on the Columbia River, when he went no further down the Clark Fork than present Missoula. Despite page 273, Virginia City's post office was not the first in the territory. Perhaps these flaws are not serious, but they do suggest how wise it is for visiting scholars to submit their manuscripts to local buffs who can spot slips which weaken otherwise good studies.

STANLEY R. DAVISON

Western Montana College, Dillon

Early Arizona: Prehistory to Civil War. By JAY J. Arizona Press, 1975. Xvi + 547 pp. $14.95.)

In Early Arizona, Jay Wagoner has provided a companion volume to his Arizona Territory, 1863-1912. Unlike his earlier volume, which was restricted to politics during the half-century of the territorial period, this new work ranges broadly in time and subject matter. In style it is competent and straightforward. Its organization is topical. Indeed, it is built essentially of separate blocks laid one on the other with little interpretive framework. Nevertheless, it is done with a fine command of subject

Quarterly

WAGONER.

(Tucson: University of

matter and a good touch for development that makes it a pleasing and worthwhile effort. Numerous illustrations and a bibliography divided according to chapter headings enhance the book's general usefulness.

Chapters and subtopics deal with geology, prehistory, mountain men, Spanish and Mexican periods, the Mexican War, boundary surveys and disputes, land grants, exploration, and towns and forts, as well as with government and politics. Although no chapter

309

Book Reviews and Notices is devoted to Indians, relations with Arizona's natives run through many chapters to become a major theme of the book. Wagoner depends heavily upon secondary sources, some of which date to earlier periods. This fact is sometimes apparent in the tone of "kill and plunder" that shows itself in the materials presented on Indian relations as it is in Wagoner's broader decision to deal with Indians as incidental to other themes rather than making them a focus or even a given condition around which other topics developed.

The unit character of Wagoner's organization is illustrated in the chapter on mountain men. The Santa Fe trade is introduced, then follow subsections and paragraphs on such figures as James Ohio Pattie, Jedediah Smith, Bill Williams, Pauline Weaver, and Kit Carson. The whole is concluded with a short paragraph indicating that mountain men left no lasting imprint on

Arizona. At no point is an effort made to integrate the roles of the various mountain men or to show how their Arizona activities related to larger themes. The encyclopedic effect of the work is also in evidence in the chapter dealing with towns and forts. Tubac, Tucson, Colorado City, Gila City, Fort Buchanan, Fort Defiance, and Fort Mojave reel past the reader in succession.

The book ends with a chapter on the Civil War. While one rarely thinks of the Far West in connection with the Civil War, its influence upon Arizona was great. Indeed, Arizona's establishment as a territory separate from New Mexico was accomplished in the "name of the Union" (p. 479) and was in large measure the product of fears and prospects generated by the war.

CHARLES S. PETERSON

Utah State

University

The American Heritage History of Railroads in America. By OLIVER J E N S E N . (New York: American Heritage Publishing Company, 1975. 320 pp. $29.95.)

The American Heritage Publishing Company has put out a number of books recently, capitalizing on the Bicentennial theme by relating the stories of various aspects of American life and history. Railroads have had a tremendous influence on the expansion, economy, and romance of America; this book fairly effectively summarizes these concepts as they pertain to American history.

The "Railway Age" is traced from its English origins into early American developments, utilizing line drawings of Robert Stephenson's locomotives and other well-known engines such as the DeWitt Clinton and the Best Friend of Charleston. The progress of motive power evolution and experimentation,

more noticeable in the United States than anywhere else, is well-chronicled.

The steam locomotive, which is very close to the heart of any railroad book, has been explained as to basic operation and to nomenclature, detailing the Whyte system of locomotive classification.

Yet, the book is not a dull tome of statistics and information. Practically every note of historical railroad interest known by the general public is mentioned, along with a great amount of material known basically only to historians and amateur ferroequinologists, the so-called "railroad buffs," who, in fact, generally are as learned about their subject as are the historians and much more knowledgeable than most railroad

310

Utah Historical Quarterly

employees. Among many subjects covered are the impact of telegraphy, the usage of railroads in the Civil War, and the first transcontinental line construction and financing which involved members of Congress in what could be referred to as the "Watergate of 1869."

There are discussions of the various railroad monopolies under the Vanderbilts, Gould, Harriman, etc.; railroad architecture; notable wrecks, which no decent railroad book would be without; and Utah's own Butch Cassidy. T h e really romantic image of early day railroading, great passenger trains, opulent palace cars, rod-riding hoboes, are all there—many times utilizing the classic photographs taken by Andrew J. Russell and William Henry Jackson.

There are hundreds of excellent historic photographs, bill heads, travel brochures, advertisements, etc., many in full color. Still it is not a picture book as such, either, but a broad general overview which necessarily includes all of these.

Utah possesses a prominent spot in railroad history, with the Golden Spike, Bingham Canyon, the Lucin Cutoff, mainline Union Pacific and Rio Grande, and most of these are mentioned in the text. Promontory Surnrnit is always properly referred to, never the incorrect Promontory Point.

Possibly the major criticism would be that which attends many books of a historical nature—they describe events in detail u p to more modern times then rapidly skim over the last fifty years or so. This book barely touches Amtrak, World Wars I and I I , hardly mentions the "Diesel Era" which began in the early 1940s, or the large merger systems of the Penn-Central and Burlington Northern. T h e author does, however, speculate concerning future problems in railroading—decreasing passenger travel, further bankruptcies, nationalization of all or most railroad lines.

Another complaint that some will have is that of the frequent use of humor throughout, much of which is relevant, but a lot which is not and is actually too flippant.

All considered, it is an excellent book, with a readable format, worthwhile captions, extensive bibliograhy, a roster of operating railroad museums, and a complete index. Those who desire a single volume on American railroads for their libraries will find this book suffices nicely. Jensen is well qualified to have been given this assignment. He is a railroad historian and is chairman of the board of a small railroad in Connecticut.

Black Powder and Hand Steel: Miners and Machines on the Old Western

Almost anyone interested in the history and lore of mining in the West will find Professor Young's Black Powder full of just the sort of background and detail that is both illuminating and fascinating to read.

Frontier.

By

OTIS

E.

YOUNG,

JR.

(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1976. Xii + 196 pp. $9.95.)

S T E P H E N L. CARR

Salt Lake

City

311

Book Reviews and Notices The author draws an excellent picture of the Cornish and Irish immigrants who dominated the western mines until the 1880s. Shift work is described in detail and the text laced with anecdotes. For example, although Cornish and Irish joined at Butte, Montana, in celebrating their two holidays, Saint Patrick's Day and Saint George's Day, the Cousin Jacks still resented Irish dominance in local politics. "One old Cornishman was heard to complain, 'Thee robbing H'irish, they not h'only 'ave two votes h'each on H'election Day, but the buggers vote seven years h'after they 'ave been dead, and buried.' " One of Young's major contributions is tracing the evolution of a miner's tools over hundreds of years, from hoisting bucket to mine elevator, ore car to skip, slow match to Bickford fuse. In this he had the technical assistance of Robert Lenon, a consulting mining engineer.

The difficulties of mining gold and silver and brief histories of famous lodes are examined, and the book concludes with a nostalgic look at the prospector's friendly companion, the desert canary.

Grass Valley, 1873-1976: A History of Antimony and Her People. By M. LANE WARNER. (Salt Lake City: Author [4916 Havasu Way, Hunter, Ut. 84120], 1976. V +205 pp. $11.95.)

Antimony in Garfield County and Kingston and Circleville in nearby Piute County lie in sparsely settled central Utah. The combined population of the two counties is little more than fortythree hundred. Yet the area has a history that is worth preserving.

The author describes the settlement process, the United Order at Kingston, the mining of antimony, and many aspects of town life: school, church, culture, farming and ranching, business, and leisure activities. More than half

of the text is devoted to biographies of early settlers. Appendices, photographs and maps, and a bibliography and index add to the book's usefulness.

The narrative is episodicâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a failing endemic to much local historyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;but that should not deter residents of the area from buying the book.

Boots and Shoes of the Frontier Soldier.

By SIDNEY B. BRINCKERHOFF (Tucson: Arizona Historical Society, 1976.

48 pp. $3.00.)

The California Experience:

A Literary

Odyssey. By WARREN A. BECK. (Santa

Barbara and Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith, Inc., 1976. Xxiv + 343

pp. $5.95.)

Desert

Country.

By STEVE

CROUCH.

(New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1976. 160 pp. $18.95.)

This view of the vast deserts of the southwestern United States through awesomely beautiful photography will be welcomed by many who appreciate this kind of landscape. The haunting expanses and delicate, flowery growth that cover the region are brought to life, and poetic descriptions and traces of history bring new understanding about the desert.

Desert Documentary; The Spanish Years, 1767-1821. By KIERAN M C CARTY. (Tucson: The Arizona Historical Society, 1976. 150 pp. Cloth, $9.50; paper, $5.00.)

The Anza expedition and Spanish influence in Arizona history.

The Flight and the Nest. By CAROL L Y N N PEARSON. (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1975. Xiii + 121 pp. $3.50.)

The role of Mormon women in society is viewed from a historical perspective, using the lives of Eliza R. Snow, Emmeline B. Wells, Emily Hill Woodmansee,

Utah Historical

312 Susa Young Gates, Martha Hughes Cannon, and others as examples.

Latter-day Families

Patriots: Nine Mormon and Their Revolutionary

War Heritage. By G E N E ALLRED S E S -

(Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1975. Xvi + 219 pp. $6.95.)

SIONS.

Clearly a Bicentennial publication, Dr. Sessions's book should be well received

by Mormon readers. Latter-day Patriots examines the lineages of eight men and one woman to show their early American roots. Separate chapters treat Joseph Smith, John Young, Daniel Wood, Ezra Taft Benson, Daniel H. Wells, Edward Bunker, John Brown, Christeen Golden Kimball, and Hartman Rector, Jr. Dr.

Quarterly

Sessions supplies notes and an index, as well as many photographs, for his book.

Rules and Precepts of the Jesuit Missions of Northwestern New Spain. By CHARLES W. POLZER. (Tucson: The

University of Arizona Press, 1976. X + 41 pp. $8.50.)

Saint Vibiana's Cathedral: A Centennial History. By FRANCIS J. WEBER. (LOS

Angeles: Roman Catholic Archbishop of Los Angeles, 1976. 73 pp. $5.00.)

Some California Catholic Reminiscences for the United States Bicentennial. Edited by FRANCIS J. WEBER. (Los Angeles: Knights of Columbus, 1976: I x + 1 6 6 pp. $5.00.)

BUSINESS, LABOR, AND P O L I T I C S Cardoso, Lawrence A. "Labor Emigration to the Southwest, 1916-1920: Mexican Attitudes and Policy," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 79 (April 1976) : 4 0 0 416.

Edwards, John Carver. "Herbert Hoover's Public Lands Policy: A Struggle for Control of the Western Domain," The Pacific Historian 20 (Spring 1976) : 34-35.

Kiholm, Janet "A Report of an Economic Impact Study Concerning Zion National Park" Utah Economic and Business Review 36 (February 1976) : 1-4.

McCullough, David. "Steam Road to El Dorado," American Heritage 27 (June 1976) : 54-59, 94-99. The costly Panama Railroad, completed in 1855, was used by many travelers to the West.

Murmann, John M. "War in the Mines," In Wyoming 9 (June-July 1976) : 30-36.

Unionism, company intransigence, and white-Chinese tensions led to rioting in coal camps near Rock Springs.

Walker, Henry P., ed. "Pre-railroad Transportation in the Trans-Mississippi West," Arizona and the West 18 (Spring 1976) : 53-80.

Recent

Articles

313

E X P L O R A T I O N AND W E S T E R N S E T T L E M E N T Baker, T. Lindsay. "The Survey of the Santa Fe Trail, 1825-1827," Great Plains Journal 14 (Spring 1975) : 210-34.

Gravely, William B. "Riding a Cowcatcher: Gilbert Haven Visits the Rocky Mountains in 1875," The Colorado Magazine 53 (Winter 1976) : 48-62. Methodist bishop also visited Utah.

Guice, John D. W. "Alabama Planters in the Rockies," The Colorado Magazine (Winter 1976) : 1-47. Southern settlers in Colorado in the 1870s.

53

Marston, Otis Dock. "Separation Marks: Notes on 'The Worst Rapid' in the Grand Canyon," The Journal of Arizona History 17 (Spring 1976) : 1-20.

Nelson, Elizabeth. "Land Grants During the Administration of Spanish Colonial Governor Pedro Fermin de Mendinveta," New Mexico Historical Review 51 (January 1976) : 5-18.

Serven, James E. "Wagons of the West," Arizona Highways, April 1976. pp. 34-43.

Includes information on Mormon wagon trains.

Smith, Dean. "Coronado: Magificent Failure," American (February 1976) : 4-9, 43^17.

History

Illustrated

10

Tinker, Horace. "Round Trip to the Gold Fields," American History Illustrated (April 1976) : 4-9.

11

Thorpe, Elizabeth J. "A Woman Alone Stakes a Claim," In Wyoming 9 ( J u n e July 1976) : 25-29. Emma Peterson was one of many women who took up land under the Homestead Act of 1862.

Wood, Raymund F. "East and West Meet in California in 1806," The Pacific Historian 20 (Spring 1976) : 22-23. Advancement of the Roman Catholic and Greek OrtJiodox faiths in early California.

H I S T O R I C A L M E T H O D AND S O U R C E S Gomez-Quinones, Juan, and Luis L. Arroyo. "On the State of Chicano History: Observations on Its Development, Interpretations, and Theory, 1970-1974" The Western Historical Quarterly 7 (April 1976) : 155--86.

Shipps, Jan. "Working with Historical Evidence: Projects for an Introductory History Course," The History Teacher 9 (May 1976) : 359-78.

Weinberg, Daniel E. "Viewing the Immigrant Experience in America through Fiction and Autobiographyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;with a Select Bibliography," The History Teacher 9 (May 1976) : 409-32.

MINORITIES Best, J. J. "Letters from Dakota; or Life among the Indians: Fort Berth old Agency," North Dakota History 43 (Winter 1976): 5-31. Portrait of Native American culture in late 1800s.

Lauson, Michael L. "The Navajo Indian Irrigation Project: Muddled Past, Clouded Future," The Indian Historian 9 (Winter 1976) : 19-29.

Rudd, Hynda. "Sharey Tzedick: Salt Lake's Third Jewish Congregation," States Jewish Historical Quarterly & (April 1976) : 203-8.

Western

314

Utah Historical

Quarterly

MORMONS Decoo, Wilfried. "The Image of Mormonism in French Literature: Part II," Brigham Young University Studies 16 (Winter 1976) : 265-76.

Hart, Edward L. "John Hyde, Juniorâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;An Earlier View." Brigham Young sity Studies 16 (Winter 1976) : 305-12.

Univer-

Quinn, D. Michael. "The Mormon Succession Crisis of 1844," Brigham Young University Studies 16 (Winter 1976) : 187-233.

SOCIAL AND CULTURAL Broder, Patricia. "The First Cowboy Sculptor," Persimmon Hill 6 (Spring 1976) : 48-57. Solon Borglum.

Brunvand, J. H. "The Architecture of Zion," The American West 13 (Spring 1976) : 28-36.

Mulvay, Jill C. "Eliza R. Snow and the Woman Question," Brigham Young University Studies 16 (Winter 1976) : 250-64. . "Three Mormon Women in the Cultural Arts," Sunstone: A Quarterly Journal of Mormon Experience, Scholarship, Issues, and Art 1 (Spring 1976) : 29-39. Alice Merrill Home, Alice Louise Reynolds, Florence Smith Jacobsen.

Roberts, Allen D. "Utah's Unknown Pioneer Architects," Sunstone: A Quarterly Journal of Mormon Experience, Scholarship, Issues, and Art 1 (Spring 1976) : 67-95. Obed Taylor, William Nicol Fife, William Wilson Fife, E. L. T. Harrison.

Stoeltje, Beverly J. " 'A Helpmate for Man Indeed': The Image of the Frontier Woman," Journal of American Folklore 347 (January-March, 1974) : 25-41.

Von Schmidt, Eric. "Custer, Dying Again at That Last Stand, Is in a New Painting," Smithsonian 7 (June 1976): 58-65. Research for painting throws new light on Custer's batde.

Webb, Robert L. "Banjos on Their Saddle Horns," American History Illustrated 11 (May 1976) : 10-20. An African instrument in the culture of the West.

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY D e p a r t m e n t of D e v e l o p m e n t Services Division of S t a t e History BOARD OF STATE HISTORY MILTON C. ABRAMS, Smithfield, 1977

President DELLO G. DAYTON, Ogden, 1979

Vice President MELVIN T. SMITH, Salt Lake City Secretary M R S . JUANITA BROOKS, St. George, 1977 T H E R O N L U K E , Provo, 1979

CLYDE L. MILLER, Secretary of State

Ex officio M R S . ELIZABETH MONTAGUE, Salt Lake City, 1979 M R S . MABEL J. OLIVER, Orem, 1980

M R S . HELEN Z. PAPANIKOLAS, Salt Lake City, 1977 HOWARD C. PRICE, J R . , Price, 1979 M R S . ELIZABETH SKANCHY, Midvale, 1977 RICHARD O. ULIBARRI, Roy, 1977

ADMINISTRATION MELVIN T. SMITH, Director

STANFORD J. LAYTON, Publications Coordinator JAY M. HAYMOND, Librarian DAVID B. MADSEN, Antiquities Director

The Utah State Historical Society was organized in 1897 by public-spirited Utahns to collect, preserve, and publish Utah and related history. Today, under state sponsorship, the Society fulfills its obligations by publishing the Utah Historical Quarterly and other historical materials; locating, documenting, and preserving historic and prehistoric buildings and sites; and maintaining a specialized research library. Donations and gifts to the Society's programs or its library are encouraged, for only through such means can it live up to its responsibility of preserving the record of Utah's past.

MEMBERSHIP Membership in the Utah State Historical Society is open to all individuals and institutions interested in Utah history.

Membership applications and change of address notices should be sent to the membership secretary.

Annual dues are: Institutions, $7.00; individuals, $5.00; students, $3.00. Life memberships, $100.00.

Tax-deductible donations for special projects of the Society may be made on the following membership basis: sustaining, $250.00; patron, $500.00; benefactor, $1,000.00. Your interest and support are most welcome.