Tag Archives: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Boards: A-Book-Part-You-Never-Think-About-But-Is-Super-Important-Anyway

30 Thursday Aug 2018

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Judge a book by it’s cover all you want. That cover just keeps on doing what it does best: protecting the book’s text. Covers allows a book to continue to convey information by taking the wear and tear of everyday use. Through the years different materials have been used to cover books.


Coptic Binding
Uncatalogued

Wood. Early books were most commonly covered with wooden boards. Rare Books has several manuscripts with Coptic bindings. These books are well-used, with uncovered wooden boards that are polished by handling, but they are often broken and then repaired with linen thread. The wood is sometimes cut similarly to modern lumber, in a straight line across the log. In the picture below you can see the curve of the tree’s growth rings. Wood is porous and expands and contracts as it takes on or loses moisture from the air. It will expand unevenly around that natural curve, warping and sometimes even cracking the board. The strongest wood boards are cut in a very different way.

Imagine you are looking down on the round end of a log. If you cut this log radially from the center as if it was a pie, two useful things happen. First, boards cut like this (called a quarter cut) resist warping because the grain of the wood is running straight up your board, instead of curving through it. Looking at the boards from the top you see little to none of the curve of the tree’s rings. This board will warp very little as humidity changes. Second, there is a structural feature in wood called the medullary ray. These rays go through the wood from the core out to the bark. They are perpendicular to the main grain of the wood, forming a remarkably durable natural plywood. Many Coptic boards break because they are made with wood that does not have prominent medullary rays.

In the above image, notice the faint curve of the grain near the middle of the left board.

In the image below, we can see the medullary rays and the tree’s grain weaving together. The lighter lines are medullary rays, the darker lines are the tree’s grain creating a strong internal structure.


Handmade book
by Jonathan Sandberg from raw materials
at Jim Croft’s “Old Ways of Making Books” workshop


He kaine diatheke
Paris: [Antoine Augereau for] Simon de Colines, [29 November or 22 December] 1534
BS1965 1534

Pasteboard. All this picky woodwork added complications to the bookmaking process. When bookmakers discovered that they could just paste together paper proofs, misprints, or offcuts to make functional boards, it became common practice to do just that. This has made for interesting discoveries as modern conservators re-bind historical books and find that their boards are made of interesting or rare texts.


Deseret News
By Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Volume 6. March 1856-March 1866
Uncatalogued

Waterleaf. Around the mid-sixteenth century, very soon after pasteboard began to be used, another technique for making boards was developed. If you are familiar with historical papermaking, or you’ve seen our recent paper exhibition, Paper is Fundamental, you know that paper was made by drawing suspended fibers out of a vat of water on a screen, which was then rolled onto a stack of felts. Paper makers found that if they took these raw, wet pieces of paper and compressed them together, it formed a variant of pasteboard that was less likely to separate between pages, or delaminate. Pictured here is a bound volume of the Deseret News from 1856. The very worn board is beginning to delaminate which gives us a great view of individual “pages.” Because the board is never printed on directly and almost always covered, papermakers could include fiber that would normally be unacceptable for papermaking. Here you see small pieces of cloth and thread. Historical bookmaker Jim Croft calls this kind of board “barf board” because of the jumble of reject fibers that go into its production.


The Peril of the Times Displayed
Samuel Willard
Boston : Printed by B Green & J Allen sold by Benjamin Eliot 1700
BX7233 W4292 P47 1700

Scaleboard. The first paper mill in Colonial America wasn’t established until 1690. Rather than using expensive, imported book boards, bookbinders often used thin scales of wood in their place. These scaleboards, originally called scabbards, were much too brittle for the task of protecting a book, but when covered in paper or leather they made perfectly usable covers. This book was printed in Boston in the year 1700. The leather is now peeling away, allowing us to look at the wood scale beneath. The end grain of the board is visible at the fore-edge and spine of the book, instead of the traditional head and tail. It may be quarter-cut, the end grain shows only a slight curve. The board is a little warped, but the book has been through a lot, and scaleboard wasn’t expected to do the same heavy structural work as early wooden book boards were.

~Contributed by Jonathan Sandberg, Rare Books Assistant, with photographs by Scott Beadles, Rare Books Specialist

On Jon’s Desk: A Look at Pioneer Heritage through Missouri Mormon Redress Documents

24 Tuesday Jul 2018

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Missouri Executive Order Number 44:

Headquarters of the Militia,

City of Jefferson, Oct. 27, 1838.

Gen. John B. Clark:

Sir: Since the order of this morning to you, directing you to cause four hundred mounted men to be raised within your division, I have received by Amos Reese, Esq., of Ray county, and Wiley C. Williams, Esq., one of my aids [sic], information of the most appalling character, which entirely changes the face of things, and places the Mormons in the attitude of an open and avowed defiance of the laws, and of having made war upon the people of this state. Your orders are, therefore, to hasten your operation with all possible speed. The Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the state if necessary for the public peace – their outrages are beyond all description. If you can increase your force, you are authorized to do so to any extent you may consider necessary. I have just issued orders to Maj. Gen. Willock, of Marion county, to raise five hundred men, and to march them to the northern part of Daviess, and there unite with Gen. Doniphan, of Clay, who has been ordered with five hundred men to proceed to the same point for the purpose of intercepting the retreat of the Mormons to the north. They have been directed to communicate with you by express, you can also communicate with them if you find it necessary. Instead therefore of proceeding as at first directed to reinstate the citizens of Daviess in their homes, you will proceed immediately to Richmond and then operate against the Mormons. Brig. Gen. Parks of Ray, has been ordered to have four hundred of his brigade in readiness to join you at Richmond. The whole force will be placed under your command.

I am very respectfully,

yr obt st [your obedient servant],

W. Boggs,

Commander-in-Chief

Missouri Mormon Redress Documents

1838 – 1841

When, as a young man in his teens, Joseph Smith, Jr. announced he had received a vision in which he met God the Father and Jesus Christ, it did not sit well with many of those who heard the news. From that time forward Smith experienced strong opposition to his religious beliefs and endeavors. He persisted, and at the age of 24 (in 1830) he founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. From its humble origins in western New York this church grew, never quite able to escape opposition and its consequential persecution due to the nature of the Church’s origin and its differences in doctrine from other Christian denominations.

Most people in Utah are familiar with the pioneer heritage members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (often referred to as Mormons or LDS) share and their propensity for celebration of Pioneer Day (July 24th) because of it. A celebration of the day Brigham Young (Joseph Smith, Jr.’s successor and second president of the LDS church) reached the Salt Lake valley via horse-drawn wagon in 1847, Pioneer Day is a reminder to those belonging to the LDS church of the rewards which result from enduring persecution through faith. Emerging from Emigration Canyon and stopping on top of a hill, the enfeebled Brigham Young, sick with Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, viewed the valley from the back of the wagon he was riding in and proclaimed, “It is enough. It is the right place. Drive on.” Young’s statement referred to a vision the leader had previously experienced about the place where the Latter-day Saints would settle and “make the desert blossom like a rose,” and where they would build their State of Deseret. As the wagon train descended into the valley the words “this is the place” spread throughout it, the joyous hope rising that, after almost two decades of conflict with neighbors wherever they went, they would finally find a reprieve from religious intolerance – the original American dream, one might argue.

In 1831, amidst rising opposition and persecution in New York, Joseph Smith and his followers relocated to Kirtland, Ohio. Soon thereafter, some having gone even farther west to proselytize (although unsuccessfully) amongst Native American Indian tribes, a group of Smith’s followers established an outpost in Jackson County, Missouri. Smith planned to move the Church’s headquarters there, but before he could other Missouri settlers (not of the LDS faith) expelled the Mormons from the county. The Missouri Mormons relocated to the north in Davies and Caldwell Counties and the Kirtland Mormons enjoyed some prosperity, until in 1838 when a financial scandal involving the failure of the Kirtland Safety Society led to the relocation of a large number of the Mormons living in Kirtland to Far West, Missouri. This increase in Mormon population led to additional tension, developing into a series of violent conflicts with their neighbors (sometimes called the 1838 Mormon War). Believing the Mormons to be in open rebellion, Governor Lilburn W. Boggs (sixth Governor of Missouri from 1836 to 1840) issued Missouri Executive Order Number 44, commonly called the “Extermination Order” because in it he wrote, “The Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the state if necessary for the public peace…” The Missouri militia followed Governor Boggs’ order, and the Mormons were brutally expelled from the state, losing the property they had legally purchased without any recompense.

Having been driven from Missouri, the Mormons relocated to Illinois, where they converted swamp land along the banks of the Mississippi River (which no one else wanted at the time) into a thriving town. They named it Nauvoo. With a strong militia (the Nauvoo Legion, commanded by Joseph Smith) and the fastest growing population in the state due to Mormon proselytization in Europe, done primarily in England at the time, Nauvoo became a major political concern for those in the state not belonging to the LDS faith. Once again conflict arose. In June of 1844, Joseph and his brother Hyrum, along with a few other LDS leaders, were held for treason in the jail at Carthage, Illinois. On June 27th a group of armed men stormed the jail and murdered Joseph and Hyrum Smith. For the next two years a succession struggle occurred within the LDS membership while tension continued to build between the Mormons and their neighbors. After a more negotiated settlement than had occurred in Missouri took place, Brigham Young led (over a frozen Mississippi River) those who would follow him west, first to Winter Quarters, Nebraska and then to the Great Salt Lake valley.

Redress for the events that occurred in Missouri in 1838 was not made until 1976 when Missouri Governor Christopher S. “Kit” Bond rescinded the “Extermination Order” and offered an official apology on behalf of the state of Missouri. Speaking at an event in 2010 he said, “”We cannot change history, but we certainly ought to be able to learn from it and where possible acknowledge past mistakes. That was what motivated me to rescind the extermination order in 1976.” While the recension of the law that made it legal to kill Mormons in Missouri until 1976 was undoubtedly a move in the right direction, and the sentiment that learning from past mistakes is a good one, it is also good that there is a day to contemplate the events that led to the building of a strength of character encompassing a group of people who never gave up on the original American dream. Perhaps knowing that they had finally arrived at a place where they could follow it was all the redress they really needed. It must have felt amazing to be in that dusty wagon train descending into the Great Salt Lake valley on July 24, 1847 and hearing the words, “this is the place.”

~ Contributed by Jon Bingham, Rare Books Curator

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Jon’s Desk: Pictures of an Inland Sea – Every Book a Treasure

29 Friday Sep 2017

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“Across the distance there comes a change. The horizon is melted away; the mountains are all blurred. Distant chains appear to part and to become peaked islands. The sky seems water; the water, sky. Soon substance and shadow are indistinguishable. In plainer words, it is the beginning of a noonday mirage.”

– From Chapter III “Sea Horizons,” Pictures of an Inland Sea, page 39

Title page of Portraits of an Inland SeaTitle: Pictures of an Inland Sea

Author: Alfred Lambourne

Published: Boston: Samuel E. Cassion, 1895

Call Number: xPS3523 A44 P53 1895

First edition

An entire month has escaped me. It seems to have fallen into a crevasse. It was mid-August and then suddenly here we are at the end of September. I looked at the calendar today and realized it has been a month since I wrote and published the last On Jon’s Desk post. Subsequently, having no idea whatsoever as to what I should write my next post on, I began scanning my desk to see what books I may find. That is when I found an amazing book. It just goes to show that every book is a treasure, waiting to be found. This book was on my desk because I needed to follow up on a question posed by someone who came to Special Collections to read it and was then waiting to be returned to its place on the shelf. Little did I know that this amazing book, only a few feet away from me this whole time, is such a gem. I had no previous knowledge of the author or this work. I am very happy that I now do. Here is what I found.

Portrait of Alfred LambourneAlfred Lambourne was born in Chieveley, Berkshire (on the River Lambourn), England, on the second of February, 1850. Alfred manifested artistic talent while young and his parents (William and Martha) encouraged him in the pursuit of this interest. During the 1860s, Alfred’s family converted to Mormonism and subsequently immigrated to the United States, residing in St. Louis, Missouri for a time before completing its journey to Utah. Alfred arrived in Salt Lake City at the age of sixteen (having kept a sketch book of scenery along the way from Missouri to Utah) and upon arriving in Salt Lake City began painting set scenery for the Salt Lake Theatre. In 1871, he accompanied Brigham Young (then President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and former Governor of Utah Territory) to Zion Canyon, where he made the first known sketches of that area. During his mid-life, Alfred traveled not only throughout the West but also across the continental United States painting many natural settings and geologic features he visited. In his later life he concentrated on writing, sometimes illustrating his books. He wrote fourteen works in total before he died in Salt Lake City on the sixth of June, 1926.

Page twenty-three from Portraits of an Inland SeaWhen most of us think of the Great Salt Lake, we think of a stinky place with lots of bugs. Alfred was enthralled by the Great Salt Lake, referring to the body of water as an “inland sea.” It was a source of adventure and joy for him and his preferred place for solitude. It also acted as a source of artistic inspiration for him. His relationship with the lake spanned decades and resulted in a body of beautiful works, of which this book, Pictures of an Inland Sea, is one. He sketched and painted the lake from multiple vantage points. At the same time, his paintings focused on his favorite aspects of the lake: travel by boat, soaring birds, and of course the ever-changing water, sky, and atmospheric phenomena of the lake.

List of sketches in Portraits of an Inland SeaPictures of an Inland Sea is a transcendentalist work that provides both factual information on the lake from a nineteenth century vantage point and images of divinity sketched out for us by Alfred both visually and textually. This book is a treasure because through it we are drawn into a world of natural phenomenon that he could see and with this work interprets for us. So next time you catch an unsatisfactory whiff of the Great Salt Lake and fail to appreciate its fascinating existence, just look to Alfred and his sketches and you may find it just a little easier to appreciate our inland sea.

~ Contributed by Jon Bingham, Rare Books Curator

 

Twilight of Marshes Sketch from Portraits of an Inland Sea

 

 

 

On Jon’s Desk: The “S” Book, 1928 – Fast Times at LDS College

29 Tuesday Aug 2017

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“Ever beautiful and stately, the L.D.S. campus appears as remote and unconquerable as a medieval fortress to the unsophisticated young entrant. He stares with a mixture of awe and emotion at the green, quiet lawn and the old, grand buildings; he is sure that he will never feel at ease in those halls so full of dignity and learning. But when the years draw to a close and the student is graduating, he stands and gazes with a new emotion at the buildings that are now dear to him. The feeling of awe has vanished and in its place there is deep and sincere love for that campus with its weather-beaten buildings and its student-trodden halls.”

– From the “About the Campus” in The “S” Book, 1928

 

 

 

 

 

 

Title: The “S” Book, 1928

Published by the Students of the Latter-day Saints College at Salt Lake City, Utah

Printed by the Paragon Printing Company, Salt Lake City, Utah

Engravings by The Salt Lake Engraving Company

Editor in Chief: Richard Bennett

Business Manager: Jack Jones

It’s that time of year again. The time that many people dread, but some few, perhaps, may secretly look forward to. The start of a new school year. Each August institutions of learning reopen, and many return to their halls, some kicking and screaming the entire way there (and not necessarily all of them students). I would hazard a bet that it was no different ninety years ago for those attending the Latter-day Saints College in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Despite the once-felt pain of starting those many school years, most of us bought the so called “yearbooks,” which we find ourselves, against our better judgement, pulling from a box or off a dusty shelf to peruse every few years. They sure bring back memories, don’t they? Whether they bring back good memories or bad, they do provide a record of the past. As terrible as some of those school pictures are or as silly as some of the end-of-year signings can be, yearbooks often become very interesting historical records. Take, for example, a 1928 yearbook (The “S” Book) from LDS College bought by Grace Louise Cannon. This book has some interesting aspects which should make us happy Grace didn’t do what most of us are tempted to do when looking at our own yearbooks, namely, commit them to the landfill.

LDS College, sometimes called LDS High School, was a secondary school located in Salt Lake City, Utah operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The school was closely associated with Latter-day Saints’ University, the last vestiges of which are now LDS Business College. Both trace their beginnings to the Salt Lake Stake Academy, which started in 1886. The LDS High School name was adopted in 1927. In 1931, LDS High School was closed, leaving about 1,000 students to attend public high schools, most notably the newly built South High, which opened in the fall of the same year. The closure was a late example of a process of closing most LDS run secondary schools in Utah.

Grace was a senior the year (1928) this “S” Book was compiled and she had some very interesting classmates: Gordon B. Hinckley and Rulon T. Jeffs. Gordon B. Hinckley went on to become the 15th president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, serving in that position from March 1995 until his death in January 2008. Rulon T. Jeffs, on the other hand, became President of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), a Mormon fundamentalist organization based in Colorado City, Arizona, from 1986 until his death in 2002. The FLDS Church is one of the largest Mormon fundamentalist denominations and one of the largest organizations in the United States whose members practice polygamy. It emerged in the early 20th century when its founding members left The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The split occurred largely because of the LDS Church’s suspension of the practice of polygamy and its decision to excommunicate its members who chose to continue the practice.

Who would have guessed that the concurrent leaders (1995 – 2002) of these two opposing organizations were once high school classmates?

After attending LDS College (High School) with Hinckley and Jeffs, Grace went on to study at the University of Utah. She graduated in 1935 and was married to J. Quayle Ward in September of that year by David O. McKay, then second counselor in the First Presidency of the LDS Church. She became a school teacher in Granite School District (where she taught for sixteen years), raised five children, and died in July of 1997 at the age of 86. She undoubtedly achieved many great accomplishments. As arbitrary as it may sound, I would rank her saving this 1928 “S” Book as one of them.

So as tempting as it may be to commit your yearbooks to the landfill, think of Grace and how her yearbook has helped to make us a little more aware of obscure historical fact, and just hold onto them. Who knows what they’ll tell us in ninety years.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

~ Contributed by Jon Bingham, Rare Books Curator

On Jon’s Desk: Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah, A Celebration of Heritage on Pioneer Day

24 Monday Jul 2017

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F825-E78-1913-SpineCover

Photograph by Scott Beadles

“The greatest inheritance of man is a posterity; the greatest inheritance of a posterity is a Christian Ancestry – that these greatest inheritances may live in record, this volume is issued.”

– From the Title Page of Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah

Title: Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah

Author: Frank Esshom

Published: Salt Lake City, Utah: Utah Pioneers Book Publishing Company, 1913

Call Number: F825 E78 1913

First Edition

 

Happy Pioneer Day! What better way is there to celebrate Pioneer Day than to look at some photographs and biographies of the Utah pioneers themselves? Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah makes it easy to get an idea of who these pioneers were. Compiled by Frank Esshom over the course of six years, Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah is a collection of 6,482 photographs and biographies published in an edition of 5,000 copies in 1913. In the preface, speaking on reasons why he is proud of the work, the author wrote, “… it will live as a memorial to those men whose deeds were rapidly being forgotten. The story of the leaders has been told repeatedly, but that of the rank and file, the ones who did the actual pioneering and building has not been told before. This will cause them to live on perpetually, and each succeeding generation will know their labors; their deeds will increase in miraculousness; their valor will be more greatly appreciated; their heroisms stand out unprecedented, showing the quality of the men who dared to turn their faces toward an unknown desert and to build homes, and an empire.” (page 11)

Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah is organized into three sections. The first section contains the photographs of the men profiled. The second section is comprised of their biographies, arranged alphabetically by the earliest male head of household by that name, followed by entries for his male descendants. The biographical entries typically list vital information, date of arrival in Utah, marriages and children, LDS church office held, occupation, and other information of interest. The third section includes a chronological history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the ancestry of Joseph Smith, Junior.

The two primary faults in this collection of biographies are that some of the records contain inaccuracies (no source data is included) and that there were approximately 70,000 pioneers – meaning this work contains only about ten percent of them. Many of those were, of course, women, who probably lost husbands or fathers along the way. Many stories of the “rank and file” who actually did most of the pioneering and building did, even after this book’s publication, go untold.

But let’s not be too hard on Esshom’s work. Despite its lack of completeness, what was gathered and published was actually quite extraordinary under the constraints of the time it was compiled. Describing the process used to gather the information for this book the author wrote,

“After a year of gathering material and data in Salt Lake City, a year was spent in Weber and Utah counties in the same quest. Then a thorough search was started, as a beginning to the end; the Bishop of every ward from Yellowstone National Park and Upper Oregon on the north and northwest to Vernal, Emery and St. George on the south and southeast in Utah, was visited. … [the bishop] gratuitously furnished the author with the names of the Pioneers who had died in his ward, and the names of their representative male descendants, also the names of the Pioneers who were living in his ward and the names of their representative male descendants. … After this organization was perfected, the author, assisted by a corps of solicitors visited each house in every ward in all of the stakes in the territory above mentioned, where a Pioneer or the descendant of a Pioneer lived as given by the Bishop of the ward, or could be secured from inquiry, and gathered the portraits and genealogies as complete as it was possible to so do, and arranged for the information unobtainable at that time to be sent to him. The gathering of this data, which could be acquired in no other manner, probably required more than fifty thousand calls, the assistance of every photographer in the territory, [and] the traveling of thousands of miles, which was made over every kind of roads in all kinds of weather, and by every mode of conveyance.” (page 11)

It is no wonder the preface for Francis Marion Lyman points out that, “In nineteen hundred and eight, after a year’s labor gathering data for the Pioneers’ history, the vastness of the undertaking dawned upon its promoters and depressed them to almost stupidness.” (page 6)

It’s a miracle we have what we have in this one volume of Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah. So grab your favorite cast iron cooking device, fry some flatbread, and discuss your pioneer heritage with the family on this Pioneer Day. Then come check out Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah and see how close Frank Esshom got with the records of your pioneer ancestors. It’s fun for every pioneer-heritaged family.

~ Contributed by Jon Bingham, Rare Books Curator

We recommend — Saints at Devil’s Gate: Landscapes along the Mormon Trail

21 Wednesday Dec 2016

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siantscover

“For aren’t we all on a journey that tries our faith, tests our courage, makes us vulnerable, and at times defeats us and blisters our soul?”
— Laura Allred Hurtado

Saints at Devil’s Gate: Landscapes along the Mormon Trail
Laura Allred Hurtado and Byron C. Andreasen
Salt Lake City, UT: The Church Historian’s Office Press, 2016

Catalog to accompany an exhibition of the same name at the Church History Museum in Salt Lake City. The exhibition is free and open to the public and runs through August 2017. An online exhibit is also available at history.lds.org.

ps3537-t316-g36-1964-cover

“…if courage and endurance make a story, if human kindness and helpfulness and brotherly love in the midst of raw horror are worth recording, this…is one of the great tales of the West and of America.”
— Wallace Stegner, quoted in the Curator’s Essay.

e166-p65-titlee166-p65-kanesville

Route from Liverpool to Great Salt Lake Valley Illustrated with Steel Engravings and Wood Cuts from Sketches…
Frederick Hawkins Piercy (1839-1891)
Liverpool: F. D. Richards; London: Latter-Day Saints’ Book Depot, 1854
First edition
E166 P65

“Frederick Piercy was the eighth of nine children born in Portsea, Hampshire, England. He joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on March 23, 1848, and a year later, he married Angelina Hawkins, also a convert. When Piercy was twenty and his wife was expecting their first child, he left for a short mission to Paris, France. In addition to proselytizing, he produced artwork and can be considered a predecessor to the Paris art missionaries who came years later.

“Piercy was an artist know for portraiture and landscapes, and he exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts and at the Suffolk Street Gallery of the Society of British Artists in London prior to leaving for the Salt Lake Valley. In 1853, then twenty-three years old, Piercy left England aboard the emigrant ship Jersey, which was headed for New Orleans. He and James Linforth, an editor for the Mormon newspaper Millennial Star, published a collection of engravings and woodcuts made from Piercy’s drawings, paintings, and journals in the book Route from Liverpool to Great Salt Lake Valley. Instead of remaining in Utah like many others, Piercy returned to England shortly after his trip. By April 1857, after refusing to return to the Salt Lake Valley at the behest of both Brigham Young and Orson Pratt, Piercy and his wife left the Mormon faith.”
— Laura Allred Hurtado

e166-p65-slce166-p65-gsl

moon
— New Beginnings, John Burton, 2016 oil on canvas, from Saints at Devil’s Gate

“I never shall forget the last day we traveled, and arrived in the Valley… When my eyes rested on the beautiful entrancing sight — the Valley; Oh! how my heart swelled within me, I could have laughed and cried, such a comingling [sic] of emotions I cannot describe…No doubt our valley looks astonishingly beautiful to the strangers who come here now, but it cannot evoke the same emotions as it did to us, poor weary tired, worn out, ragged travelers.” — Ann Agatha Walker Pratt

“Behind us now are the heart aches and many thousands of silent tears that fell on the long unknown trail.” — Mary Pugh Scott
–from Saints at Devil’s Gate

On Jon’s Desk: A gift from Ed Firmage raises questions

24 Sunday Jul 2016

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front board

front board

title page

title page

Title: Life of Brigham Young; or, Utah and Her Founders
Author: Edward W. Tullidge
Published: New York, (s.n.), 1876

Pages: 458 with 81 additional pages comprising a supplement containing biographical sketches of other prominent Utah leaders (Contains Errata slip: “Biographical sketches of the late Willard Richards, Joseph A. Young, and others, not received by the printer in time for this issue will be inserted in subsequent editions.”)

Bound in ornamental gilt stamped purple cloth. Blind stamped borders; blind stamped title on rear cover; coated end papers.

Signed, presentation copy: “Presented to G. Henry Snell by Brigham Young [signed], Salt Lake City, U.T., October 16th, 1876”

inscription

inscription

Includes an engraving of Brigham Young by H.R. Hall & Sons (of New York)

Brigham Young portrait

Brigham Young portrait

A gift from Ed Firmage (University of Utah Professor Emeritus) to the Rare Books Department raises intriguing questions. In the front of this well preserved copy of the Life of Brigham Young; or, Utah and Her Founders, published in 1876, is a calligraphic inscription wherein Brigham Young presents this copy to G. Henry Snell. According to an obituary, George Henry Snell was a successful business man in the Salt Lake City area during the latter half of the 19th century. Born in St. Louis, he moved to the Salt Lake Valley as a young child. Mr. Snell operated the Utah Soap Company and was one of the original stockholders in the Saltair Beach Resort. He suffered from a heart condition that resulted in an early death at fifty years of age. What is not known is the nature of the relationship between Henry Snell and Brigham Young, the then President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and, as the memoir shows, one of the most powerful men in the American West at the time.

Written by Edward W. Tullidge, this biography of Brigham Young includes memoirs concerning many of the prominent early LDS church leaders in Utah. Despite evidence Brigham Young was not opposed to this biography (the fact that he presented copies as gifts, as seen above), Tullidge was not sanctioned by the LDS church to write it. The author himself tells us his reasons for undertaking the work in the preface:

“That the matters embodied in the chapters of this book are eminently worthy an enduring record will, I think, be cheerfully conceded. Of myself let me say, if the manner in which I have handled the subject betrays my love for the Mormon people, I confess it. But it must not be forgotten that I have been, for many years, an apostate, and cannot be justly charged with a spirit of Mormon propagandism. Rather have I striven to treat the subject with an artist’s fidelity, and with the earnestness of one concerned.”

So we see that Edward Tullidge wrote his account because of his love for the Mormon people and believed the events of the time period covered in his book were “worthy an enduring record.” But he also divulged he was an apostate, or one who had left the church.

Born in England in 1829 and having been introduced to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints there in the 1840’s, Edward Tullidge immigrated to the Salt Lake valley in the early 1860’s where he became a literary critic, newspaper editor, playwright, and historian. He wrote numerous journal articles, several plays, and five books (including the Life of Brigham Young). Although still technically a member of the LDS Church at the time of writing the biography (despite the claim of being apostate in the preface), Tullidge participated in the Godbeite movement (which initially sought to reform the church by breaking Brigham Young’s hold on secular and economic matters) and then in the late 1870’s joined the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Some LDS church leaders did not approve of the biography Tullidge wrote about Brigham Young. There is evidence of this in an article published in the Millenial Star in November of 1878. The article relates an interview between President John Taylor and Edward Tullidge concerning his publishing of Life of Brigham Young and his interest in writing a biography on Joseph Smith. During the interview President Taylor inquired about the statement in the biography’s preface concerning him being an apostate and forbade Tullidge from having access to the church’s Historian’s Office.

Millenial Star

Millenial Star

Life of Brigham Young is a historical treatise dealing primarily with the socio-political developments of the Latter-day Saints from their arrival in the Salt Lake valley in the late 1840’s to the mid 1870’s when the book was published. At publication Brigham Young was seventy-five years old and still the leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but the book shows many ways in which the federal government and dissidents in the Salt Lake valley had drawn secular power away from him over the previous two decades (1850’s – 1860’s). Tullidge showcased the deep cultural issues of the time with passages such as (page 366-367):

“Governor Shaffer arrived in Utah in the latter end of March, 1870. Casting about for some object on which to expand his belligerency, he made enquiry of a prominent schismatic as to the feasibility of successfully attacking polygamy. The answer was: ‘I married my wives in good faith. They married me in good faith. They have borne me children. We have lived together for years, believing it was the will of God. The same is true of the Mormon people generally. Before I will abandon my wives as concubines, and cast off my children as bastards, I will fight the United States Government down to my boots. What would you do, Governor, in the like case?’

‘By —, I would do the same!’ [the Governor replied.]”

Tullidge also wrote of significant historical events that came to fruition under Brigham Young’s leadership such as (page 362-363):

“The next important event in the history of Utah was the laying of the last rail of the Utah Central Railroad. The completion of the Union and Central Pacific lines was a national event, affecting greatly the destiny of Utah as well as that of the entire Pacific coast; but the completion of the Utah Central was the proper local sign of radical changes. …

It was January 10th, 1870; the weather was cold; a heavy fog hung over the city of the Great Salt Lake; but the multitude assembled, and by two o’clock P.M. there is said to have been gathered around the depot block not less than fifteen thousand people. … A large steel mallet had been prepared for the occasion, made at the blacksmith’s shop of the public works of the Church. The last ‘spike’ was forged of Utah iron, … The mallet was elegantly chased, bearing on the top an engraved bee-hive (the emblem of the State of Deseret), surrounded by the inscription ‘Holiness to the Lord,’ and underneath the bee-hive were the letters U.C.R.R.; a similar ornament consecrated the spike, both intending to symbolize that Utah, with the railroad, should still be the ‘Kingdom of God.’ … The honor of driving the last spike in the first railroad built by the Mormon people, was assigned to President Young.”

The Life of Brigham Young provides a dual perspective of an important time in Utah’s history from an author who loved the Mormon people yet disagreed with some of the policies of the prominent leaders he wrote about. This perspective adds value to the historical record of the two decades following the settling of the Salt Lake Valley by the early Mormon pioneers.

Questions that the Rare Books staff will continue to research include the number of copies printed and how many of those Brigham Young gave (with the front inscription) to others. We know of one other inscribed copy (given to Eliza R. Snow, wife of Brigham Young), which is in the Kenneth and Linda Brailsford manuscript collection (Accn 2935).

Contributed by Jon Bingham, Rare Books Curator

Book of the Week, after a conversation with a reader — Ka buke o na berita amen a kauoha

25 Monday Apr 2016

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“A eia kekahi, i kona heluhelu ana, ua hoopihaia oia me ka Uhane o ka Haku.”

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KA BUKE O NA BERITA AMEN A KAUOHA
San Francisco, 1855
First edition

The first missionary work in Hawai’i for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints began in 1850, when Charles Rich called for the establishment of a mission on what was then known as the Sandwich Islands. Of the ten men that answered the call, five remained after several months. The first conversions came on the island of Maui on August 6, 1851. By 1854, more than four thousand native islanders had converted.

The Book of Mormon was translated into Hawaiian by Elders George Quayle Cannon, William Farrer, and Jonatana H. Napela, a Hawaiian native. It was published five years after the first Mormon missionaries arrived on the islands. Three thousand copies were printed in San Francisco, two hundred of these were bound. Nearly all of the copies were shipped to Hawai’i. Most of these were destroyed in a fire in 1868. An estimated 30 copies of the 1855 edition survive today.

 

Books of the week — T. B. H. and Fanny Stenhouse

11 Monday Apr 2016

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“There is a power in combined enlightened sentiment and sympathy before which every form of injustice and cruelty must finally go down.” – Harriett Beecher Stowe, 1874

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LES MORMONS (SAINTS DES DERNIERS-JOURS) ET LEUR…
Thomas Brown Holmes Stenhouse (1825-1882)
Lausanne: Imprimerie Larpin et Coendoz, 1854
First edition
BX8635 S74 1854

T. B. H. Stenhouse was a Scottish convert, one time missionary companion to Lorenzo Snow in Italy, and first Mission President over the Swiss Mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. While serving in this position he edited the Latter-day Saints periodical, Le Reflecteur and published Les Mormon et Leurs Ennemis, written for the purpose of defending the LDS faith against anti-Mormon arguments popular at the time. In 1855 Stenhouse and his wife, Fanny Warn, emigrated to Utah Territory and settled in Salt Lake City. Stenhouse became the editor of the Salt Lake Telegraph, a pro-Mormon newspaper. In 1862, Stenhouse took a polygamous wife. Fanny Stenhouse objected. In 1870, Thomas and Fanny Stenhouse acted on growing disaffection with the church, Thomas having become particularly uneasy with Brigham Young’s heavy hand in the daily lives of the of the Saints. Thomas and Fanny left the church and were then excommunicated. In 1873 Stenhouse wrote The Rocky Mountain Saints: A Full and Complete History of the Mormons, an expose against the church. This work became a standard for anti-Mormon attacks on Joseph Smith.

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“It was worse than civil war, worse than a war of races; it was religious hate! It was fed by fanaticism on both sides.”

THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN SAINTS…
T. B. H. Stenhouse 91825-1882)
New York: D. Appleton and company, 1873
First edition
BX8611 S76 1873

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“I had had it all fully explained to me, and I thoroughly understood the beauties of the system in the sight of the Elders…but it is miserable work to try to convince others of a thing that you yourself detest.”

A LADY’S LIFE AMONG THE MORMONS
Mrs. T. B. H. Stenhouse (1829-1904)
New York: Russell Brothers, Publishers, 1872
First edition
BX8645 S74 1872

Fanny Stenhouse wrote her own story of disenfranchisement in A Lady’s Life Among the Mormons (1872). The book was reprinted as Tell It All: A Woman’s Life in Polygamy (1874), with a preface by Harriet Beecher Stowe.

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“But darker days – days of severer trial were creeping slowly near me…Now the dark shadow of an accursed thing was looming in the distance, but approaching surely if slowly.”

TELL IT ALL: THE STORY OF A LIFE’S EXPERIENCE IN…
Mrs. T. B. H. Stenhouse (1829-1904)
Hartford, CT: A. D. Worthington, 1874
First edition
BX8645 S74 1874

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Book of the Week – Exhibition of Relics of the Prophet Joseph Smith

22 Monday Jul 2013

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Exhibition of Relics of the Prophet Joseph Smith During the L.D.S. Centennial. April 5 to 12th, 1930 at the Auerbach co., Broadway at State, Salt Lake City
Salt Lake City, UT: Auerbach Co., 1930

From the title page: “The Auerbach Company, one of the pioneer institutions of Utah, is exhibiting this unique collection on the occasion of the Centenary Anniversary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”

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