Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 76, Number 3, 2008

210 IN THIS ISSUE

212

“It Was Very Warm and Smelt Very Bad”:Warm Springs and the First Bath House in Salt Lake City

By Darrell E.Jones and W.Randall Dixon

227 Sex,Subalterns,and Steptoe:Army Behavior,Mormon Rage,and Utah War Anxieties By William P.MacKinnon

247 Slouching Towards Slaterville:Joseph Morris’s Wide Swath in Weber County By Val Holley

265 Back to Business:Marriner Eccles and the Effect of Public Service on Private Enterprise By Stephen S.Francis

281 Diploma Nursing at Salt Lake CityReligious Based Hospitals By Jessie Embry 300

INMEMORIAM:William Mulder 1915-2008 303 BOOK REVIEWS

B.Carmon Hardy,ed. Doing the Works of Abraham:Mormon Polygamy Its origins,practice,and demise Reviewed by Martha Sonntag Bradley Jedediah S.Rogers,ed. In the President’s Office:The Diaries of L.John Nuttall,1879-1892

Reviewed by Ronald O. Barney

Michael K.Winder. Presidents and Prophets:The Story of America’s Presidents and the LDSChurch Reviewed by Kenneth W.Godfrey Marian Wardle. Minerva Teichert:Pageants in Paint Reviewed by Peter Munk Robert C.Steensma. Wallace Stegner’s Salt Lake City Reviewed by AllanW. Smart 311 BOOK NOTICES

In a recent publication entitled, A Letter to America ,David Boren,a former United States Senator and now President of the University of Oklahoma,warns Americans that “…we are in grave danger of declining as a nation.”But he is also hopeful because,“…we Americans are natural problem solvers….”He goes on to urge Americans to take action to encourage bipartisanship among our politicians,support grassroots democracy by campaign finance reform,address challenges to our economic well-being including renewing the nation’s infrastructure and halting the erosion of the middle-class,fostering a sense of community,and building partnerships with other nations.This,he concludes,can only be done through the knowledge and respect that come from an understanding of our history.In his eloquent words,“For each of us,it is our life story that gives us our identity.What we have experienced—our personal histories— define us.If you were to lose your personal story,you would lose your personhood.The same is true for our national story.If we forget it,we lose our vision,our identity,our national soul….”

David Boren’s words apply to our state story as well as they reaffirm one important purpose of the Utah Historical Quarterly .The five articles that follow illustrate the breadth and diversity of Utah’s story and offer understanding as to what makes us Utahns.

When the vanguard exploring party of Mormon pioneers arrived in the Great Salt Lake Valley on July 22,1847,they encountered a number of thermal springs at the northern end of the valley.Four days later Brigham Young and other leaders visited the springs where several enjoyed a “…very pleasant and beneficial”bath.Our first article for this issue recounts the early history and development of the warm springs for bathing and recre-

ONTHECOVER: Agroup of Civilian Conservation Corps enrollees and leaders pose for this photograph at the entrance to Dixie National Forest in southern Utah. UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY. ABOVE: These Civilian Conservation Corps enrollees from the Ferron Camp in Emery County are on their way to Joe’s Valley for summer conservation work during the late 1930s. UTAHSTATEHISTORICALSOCIETY.

ation.If the sulphurous smell was offensive to many,at least the water temperature of approximately 100 degrees was nearly ideal.The springs and the facilities built nearby were well-known to several generations of Utahns.

When Edward Jenner Steptoe and the more than three hundred men under his command arrived in Salt Lake City on August 31,1854, Mormons braced themselves for increased hostilities with these latest representatives of the federal government.Steptoe was sent west from Fort Leavenworth with orders to escort soldiers and animals to the Pacific Coast for garrison duty,assist in the apprehension of those responsible for the massacre of John W.Gunnison and members of his party the previous year, and locate a better route from the Salt Lake Valley to California.Before Steptoe completed these assignments,a fourth was proposed—his replacing Brigham Young as Utah Territorial Governor.Our second article examines the behavior of Steptoe’s soldiers during their sojourn in Salt Lake City,the Mormon response,and how both influenced attitudes and events three years later during the Utah War.

Joseph Morris arrived in the Utah Territory in 1853,a year before the Steptoe Expedition.While Steptoe represented an outside threat to the Mormon Kingdom,the threat from Morris and his followers was internal. By 1862 Morris had won a substantial number of followers to his cause— particularly disaffected Mormons from Slaterville and Marriott—settlements located a few miles northwest of Ogden.The ensuing “Morrisite War”and the fate of the followers of Joseph Morris offer an important perspective on the turbulence,disharmony,and violence that occurred in Utah at the same time the United States was engaged in the horrors of civil war.

Marriner Eccles,a twentieth century citizen of Ogden,was chairman of the board of governors of the Federal Reserve System from 1934 to 1948 and one of the most influential leaders of Franklin D.Roosevelt’s New Deal.Before his years of public service at the national level,Eccles was a successful businessman and banker.Our fourth article contrasts the way Eccles conducted his business affairs before his call to Washington,D.C., with those years after his return to Utah.

The health and well-being of citizens depends on the quality of health care they receive.Essential to an effective care system are well-trained nurses.Our last article describes the nature of nurses’training at three religious-based hospitals in Salt Lake City—LDS,Holy Cross,and St.Mark’s from the 1890s to the 1970s.As the hospitals expanded,practices were refined,and training became more sophisticated,the dedication of those who passed through the training programs remained high as humanitarian service was the motivating force for generations of nurses trained in Utah.

Each of the five articles in this issue represents a part of our state’s story and helps us,in the words of David Boren,to understand “…our vision,our identity,our…soul.”

Within a few miles north of downtown Salt Lake City,several thermal springs flow from the base of the nearby Wasatch Mountains.Shortly after the arrival of the Mormons to the Great Salt Lake Valley in 1847,one of these springs soon to be known as the Warm Springs,would be used for bathing.In subsequent years,several different bathhouses would be constructed for the thousands of people who came to bathe in the mineral waters and where many learned to swim in the swimming pools that later were built nearby.This paper will provide a brief history of the uses and development of the Warm Springs and the first bath house.

Long before the arrival of the Mormons to the Great Salt Lake Valley,Shoshoni Indians undoubtedly used these thermal springs for a variety of purposes.Brigham Young recalled that as many as “three hundred Indians periodically camped at their Warm Springs

A.J.Russell,official photographer of the Union Pacific Railroad, took this photograph about 1869. He was likely photographing the Bath House built in 1865 and perhaps the roof of theTabernacle shown in the far distance.The original Bath House is the long light-colored structure near the right side of the photo.

Darrell E.Jones is a retired United States Naval officer and a retired civil engineer.He currently serves as a volunteer research assistant at the LDS Museum of Church History and Art. W.Randall Dixon has a longtime interest in Salt Lake City history and works as an archivist for the Church History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

“It Was Very Warm and Smelt Very Bad”:Warm Springs and the First Bath House in Salt Lake City

traditional camp.”1 John Nebeker later wrote about events in the winter of 1847-48,when “a great number of Indians came to the Warm Springs suffering from measles.It was a new disease to them,and they didn’t know how to cure it.”2 The healing qualities of the warm mineral water became one of the major reasons for future visitors to claim the springs cured almost any malady known to man.

The first known white men to have likely visited the thermal springs were fur trappers who were in the area as early as the 1820s.The first known written description of the springs came at the hand of Edwin Bryant who along with co-leader William Russell led a small Californiabound emigrant group,which followed the newly blazed Hastings Cutoff to the California trail in the summer of 1846.The route they followed took them down Weber Canyon and to the south shore of the Great Salt Lake.3 Near the present-day sand and gravel quarries,Bryant recorded on July 30, 1846,“there is a basin of water some three or four miles in circumference, surrounded by a smooth sandy beach.”Continuing his account:

Turning the point of the mountain,we came to seven warm springs,so strongly impregnated with sulphur as to have left a deposit of this mineral in some places several feet in depth.These springs gush out near the foot of a high precipice,composed of conglomerate rock and a bluish sandstone.The precipice seems to have been uplifted by some subterraneous convulsion.The temperature of the water in the basins was about 90º.The water of most of them was bitter and nauseous.4

In this and other early written records it is often difficult to identify which of the several springs the writers were referring to.Only when the water temperature was noted can the spring be positively identified. 5 The temperature at the Hot Springs was generally recorded at about 120 degrees,while the temperature at the Warm Springs was at about 100 degrees,the latter preferred by bathers. 6 One,perhaps exaggerated

1 Deseret News,April 15,1871.Mary Ellen Kimball,upon arriving in the Salt Lake Valley in the fall of 1847,wrote “Indians were camped near the Hot Springs north of the Fort.Solomon F.Kimball quoting Sarah’s diary,“Our Pioneer Boys,” Improvement Era 11 (August 1908):734.

2 John Nebeker,“Early Justice in Utah,” Utah Historical Quarterly 3 (July 1930):87.See also Hubert Howe Bancroft’s History of Utah:1540-1887 (San Francisco:The History Company,1890),278.In describing the same circumstance,Bancroft recorded,“although they [Indians] tried to deal with it by bathing in the warm springs ...large numbers of them died.”

3 In 1846,Lansford Hastings promoted a shorter trail to California,which left the Oregon Trail at Fort Bridger in Wyoming,continued southwest to the south end of the Great Salt Lake,across the salt desert of present day Utah,thence across Nevada and the Sierra Nevada Mountains.Several companies of emigrants accepted Hastings’route that year,including the ill-fated Donner Party.The Mormon emigration of 1847 followed this trail into the Salt Lake Valley.

4 J.Roderic Korns and Dale L.Morgan,ed., West from Fort Bridger:The Pioneering of the Immigrant Trails across Utah 1846-1850,revised and updated by Will Bagley and Harold Schindler (Logan:Utah State University Press,1994),80.This body of water was later known as Hot Springs Lake,remnants of which can still be found in the vicinity of I-15 and Beck Street north of Salt Lake City.

5 The two springs soon began to be identified with the plural and capitalized Warm Springs and Hot Springs.

6 Joseph T.Kingsbury,“Mineral Springs,” Contributor 4 (October 1882):58-60.Kingsbury found that the highest temperature measured at the hot spring was 126º,whereas the temperature at the warm spring varied from 98º to 104º during a six month period.

experience,vividly indicates the difference.William Chandless,a wealthy English traveler and writer,while visiting Salt Lake City in 1855,reported that at the hottest spring,“a Gentile,taking this for the warm spring where people used to bathe,said ‘Well,I can bathe wherever the d—-d Mormons can,’and jumping in,was scalded to death.”Chandless visited the Warm Springs and wrote of it:“The water is conveyed through pipes to supply warm baths,and such baths,despite their rude construction and the occasional broken bottles in them,as are not to be enjoyed everywhere.”7

When the first company of Mormon emigrants arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in July 1847,it did not take long for them to discover the thermal springs near the site chosen for their city,nor did it take them long to come to understand the therapeutic value the springs offered.On July 22,Erastus Snow and seven others while exploring the north end of the valley visited the thermal springs.Snow later recorded,“our little exploring company took down the valley a few miles towards the Salt Lake,bearing a little west of north,and struck a salt marsh fed by numerous warm springs that came out of the base of the mountains on the east.”The party lacked a thermometer but Snow found the water at the hottest spring “about right for scalding hogs”and decided that “the springs are the greatest facilities for a steam doctor I ever saw.”He noted that “a stone,in the center of the stream before the aperture in the rocks,seemed to say,this is the seat for the patient.”He tried sitting on the rock,“but [I] had little desire to remain long upon it.”He concluded that “these springs are very strongly impregnated with salt and sulphur and some of them with copperas [sic] and other ingredients.”8

Four days later,on July 26,a party consisting of Brigham Young,Heber C.Kimball,Willard Richards,George A.Smith,Wilford Woodruff,Ezra T. Benson,Albert Carrington,and William Clayton explored the country north of the future city site,and visited both the Hot and Warm Springs. Clayton’s description of the Hot Springs clearly indicates why it did not become nearly as popular as the Warm Springs:

There is a rock at the mouth of the spring where a person can stand and see inside. Standing on this rock with your face near the mouth of the spring a strong warm sulphurous air is felt to come in gusts out of the rock and it is so hot that it requires only a few minutes to start the perspiration.On putting my hand in the spring,I was startled with the heat and found I could not bear to hold my hand in five seconds.It is as hot as the hottest dish water ever used for dishes.9

7 William Chandless, A Visit to Salt Lake;being A Journey Across the Plains and a Residence in the Mormon Settlements at Utah (Ann Arbor:Xerox University Microfilms,1975),223.The “hot spring”that became the second most popular of the thermal springs was for many years known as Beck’s Hot Springs after John Beck,a wealthy mine owner,who built the first bathhouse there.It was located approximately two miles north of the warm spring,about where Beck Street joins I-15.

8 Erastus Snow Journal,July 22,1847,as quoted in Andrew Karl Larson, Erastus Snow:The Life of a Missionary and Pioneer for the Early Mormon Church (Salt Lake City:University of Utah Press,1971),162. This description fits the hottest of the springs,which soon became known as the “Hot Springs.”

9 Clayton Family Association, William Clayton’s Journal:A Daily Record of the Journey of the Original Company of “Mormon”Pioneers from Nauvoo,Illinois,to the Valley of the Great Salt Lake (Salt Lake City: Deseret News,1921),323.

Heber C.Kimball reported that “Elders Richards,Benson and myself bathed in the warm springs.We found it very pleasant and refreshing.”10 Clayton recorded that Richards and Benson were already bathing when Kimball arrived.“Although wet with perspiration,he took off his clothes and plunged in and found the effects very pleasant and beneficial.” Although Clayton did not bathe on that occasion,his opinion of the thermal water was not as glowing as Kimball’s.He then added “the smell arising from it [the water] is truly nauseating and sickly,though generally supposed to be in no way unhealthy.”11

Thomas Bullock recorded on the same day (presumably after Richards had bathed in the Warm Springs) that “Dr.Richards recommended me to go ...to the hot Mineral Spring to bathe for the benefit of my health.”It was clear that these earliest visitors were as interested in the healing power of the Warm Springs as they were about its cleansing or refreshing benefits. Bullock first went to the Hot Springs,which he referred to as the “largest” of the mineral springs.Confirming what others had reported,he wrote “the water was so very hot that I was unable to bear my fingers in four or five seconds.”He then went to the Warm Springs (which he described as “hot”) and bathed in it.His only comment was “it was very warm & smelt very bad.”12 Later in the fall of 1847,Bullock in a letter to the church’s publication in England,the Millennial Star, confirmed the salutary benefits of time spent in the warm springs.“[E]very person who was sick that bathed in it recovered…those who once bathe[ed] there want to go again.”13

Bullock initiated some of the first improvements to the Warm Springs. After first bathing there on July 26,he recorded the next day that “Jackson Shupe & T.Bullock cleaned out the Spring this evening.”14 Six days later, more extensive improvements were made by Bullock and others:

T.Bullock with Jackson Shupe & Dimic Huntington take 2 Spades & 1 Hoe to make a good job of “Bullock’s warm bathing spring”—tear down the embankment-dig it deeper-before I had scarce made “the pillow,”when W[illard] Richards,W[ilford] Woodruff & G[eorge].A.Smith came up—W.R.Went “to bed,”while we continued to dig the bath deeper & make a Stone embankment-when we damd it up—all bathed & were satisfied with the improvement.15

He later noted that the spring was “a beautiful warm sulphur spring, which I dug out and made a most beautiful bathing place.The brethren were pleased to name it after me,on account of my labor.”16 His name never stuck to the Warm Springs,however.

10

Orson F.Whitney, Life of Heber C.Kimball (Salt Lake City:Kimball Family,1888),378.

11 Clayton Family Association, William Clayton’s Journal,324

12 Will Bagley,ed., The Pioneer Camp of the Saints:the 1846 and 1847 Mormon Trail Journals of Thomas Bullock (Spokane:The Arthur H.Clark Company,1997),238 .

13

Thomas Bullock to Orson Spencer,January 4,1848,in The Millennial Star 10 (April 15,1848):8,118.

14 Bagley,ed., Pioneer Camp of the Saints,240.

15 Ibid.,247.

16 Thomas Bullock to Franklin D.Richards,in Millennial Star 10:2,30.William Clayton also referred to the spring as “Bullock’s bathing place.”See Clayton Family Association,Clayton’s Journal,340.

As the popularity of the Warm Springs increased,numerous comments were made concerning the medicinal and relaxing results from bathing in the water.Robert Bliss,a Mormon Battalion veteran returning from California,wrote,“Today visited the Warm Springs and bathed,which was a great relief to me after traveling in the dust so long.The water is just warm enough to bathe in;it seems at first too warm to be immersed in but after the body is wet and the first sensation is over,it is delightful.”17 Others were equally delighted with their bathing experiences in the Warm Springs.William Clayton,who first saw the Warm Springs on July 26,waited eight days before actually bathing.He found “the effects very refreshing and beneficial.” 18 Patty Bartlett Sessions visited the Warm Springs on September 27,1847,just three days after arrival in the valley,and noted that “it is a splended place.”19 John Bennion said,“It is the best place I ever saw for bathing and is said to be very good for health.”20 Daniel Spencer noted that the water was “as warm as common dish water.”21

John Taylor,a member of the second company of emigrants to the Great Salt Lake Valley,noted sufficient water flowing from the springs to power a mill.

There are an abundance of springs,among those we have close to the city a warm spring,which is impregnated with sulphur and other minerals possessing great medicinal properties,and flowing in sufficient quantities to turn a mill.A saw mill is now being erected near its mouth,leaving the spring for bathing purposes;besides this there is a hot spring about three miles north,which throws out a great volume of boiling water.22

The sawmill Taylor noted was built by brothers Archibald and Robert Gardner.Archibald wrote that “due to the water being warm there was not sufficient power to turn the wheel [although] three boards were turned out.”23 Robert Gardner remembered a more realistic reason for the failure of the mill than water temperature.“We had been used to running mills in Canada with heavy streams and a low head of a fall say from 2 to 8 feet, and we thought a very little water would do,but we had too little there [at the spring] and we could not make lumber.”24

Road weary travelers to California welcomed a refreshing bath at the Warm Springs.William Johnston was one such visitor in June 1849.“The

17 Robert Stanton Bliss Diary,August 1846-January 1848,Church History Library,Family and Church History Department,The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,Hereafter the LDS Church History Library.This is the first instance we have found that Warm Springs is capitalized and the plural is used.

18 Clayton Family Association, Clayton’s Journal,340.

19 Donna Toland Smart,ed., Mormon Midwife:The 1846-1888 Diaries of Patty Bartlett Sessions (Logan: Utah State University Press,1997),100.

20 Letter dated March 5,1848,from John Bennion to his sister Hannah,in Harden Bennion, The Bennion Family of Utah,2nd ed.(Salt Lake City:[Bennion Family Association],1981),1:32-35.

21 Daniel Spencer to Brother Grove,October 5,1848,LDS Church History Library.

22 Millennial Star,10:21,325..

23 See Delila Gardner Hughes, The Life of Archibald Gardner (West Jordan:The Archibald Gardner Family Genealogical Association,1939),42

24 Robert Gardner, Robert Gardner:Utah Pioneer 1847;written by himself,January 7,1884 (Salt Lake City:G.Gardner,1934).

rock basin into which the spring empties had been hollowed out to a size sufficient to allow a dozen or more persons to bathe at one time.A cloud of vapor hung continually over the pool.”While there he “met several men and children bathing,and learned that they visited it with great frequency. The Mormons,we were told,have great faith in the efficacy of the spring for healing,and as a panacea for diseases in general.”He noted that a bathing schedule had been posted at the Warm Springs.The Church,he wrote,“governs matters secular as well as spiritual,on Tuesdays and Fridays women only are allowed to bathe here and the men on the other days of the week.”He also commented on a feeling not shared by other bathers when “for about an hour after coming out felt a sickening sensation,not an unusual effect,I was told,but one which can be avoided by bathing before sunrise or after sunset.”25

Another visitor to the Warm Springs in 1848 Mary Ellen Kimball described how the water “proceeds from the base of an exceeding high mountain,through an aperture about eighteen inches in diameter,and of that heat that it requires us to go into it by degrees.”26

John Hudson,one of the thousands who headed for the gold fields of California in 1849,but instead remained in the valley,wrote of the Warm Springs:“The water is strong of sulphur and is said to be healthful.When you first get in the water it is uncomfortable warm,but after a minute or two it is delightful.”He was a bit skeptical of the healing properties of the spring when two of his companions who were ailing were given a bath: “We laid them on the edge of the pool,their heads on a pillow of pebbles covered with a blanket.We rubbed them down and then left them to soak. They both expressed themselves as feeling much better.I believe they did, but I could not help suspecting that a part of the satisfaction expressed was to make us feel better for our trouble.”The Warm Springs,he continued, flows “very strong and forms a pool about twenty feet square and fifteen inches deep.The water is clear as crystal.The bottom is covered with pebble stones of a delightful greenish hue ”27

Thomas Bullock conducted an extensive survey of the source of the spring water in December 1849.“[I] went up to the Warm Spring—into the hole until I came to two branches about 30 or 40 feet from the entrance.” 28 William Kelly described “the stream as it gushed from the

25 Wm.G.Johnston, Overland to California (Oakland:Biobooks,1948),122-23.

26 Quoted in Littell’s Living Age 21 (April,May,June,1849),165.

27 Brigham D.Madsen,ed., A Forty Niner in Utah:Letters and Journal of John Hudson (Salt Lake City: Tanner Trust Fund and University of Utah Library,1981),83-85.

28 Thomas Bullock,Historian’s Office Journal,December 2,1849,LDS Church History Library.Cited hereafter as Historian’s Office Journal.We found no evidence that anyone could actually enter into the mountain at the warm spring.William Clayton,in his original journal entry,described the hot spring opening:“there is a hole about four foot wide and half a yard high from the top to the surface of the water.”See William Clayton Journal,holograph,July 26,1847,LDS Church History Library.George D. Smith,ed., An Intimate Chronicle:the Journals of William Clayton (Salt Lake City:Signature Books in association with Smith Research Associates,1993) erroneously copied Clayton’s journal entry to read “a yard high.”Could Bullock have actually entered the hot spring instead of the warm spring?

hill-side in a thick volume.”29 Another writer found “an immense rush of water,forming large pools by the side of the road and smoking as if ready to boil;and the ground coated with the salts with which the water is impregnated.”30 A later writer recalled that the stream was “as large as a man’s thigh.”31

From these and many other early accounts of bathing in the warm spring, it appears health,relaxation,and cleanliness,in descending order,were reasons for entering the water.For well over the next century,at least two of these factors,health and relaxation,continued to draw people to the Warm Springs.

Frequent bathing for cleanliness was not a widespread habit for most people in the middle of the nineteenth century.Although one writer has stated that “by the 1830s bathing was probably universal among wealthy, cultivated urban families,increasingly common among the aspiring uppermiddling in cities,accepted by a steadily growing number of families in rural center villages,and still fairly rare in the countryside,”it is likely that the early residents in the Salt Lake Valley would fit into the latter category.32 Indoor plumbing did not become common until later in the nineteenth century,so bathing facilities in homes consisted of stove-heated water (or maybe cold water) in a portable tub on the kitchen floor,in which several members of the household may have used the same water for the “Saturday night bath.”33 Public bathing facilities,such as the Warm Springs and later the Bath House,were,therefore,quite popular wherever found.

There is little mention in diaries and journals about what,if anything, early bathers at the warm springs wore when they entered the water.Some privacy was provided when bathing schedules were posted for men and women who bathed on different days of the week.William Clayton noted that Willard Richards “took off his clothes and plunged in.”34 The only other person to discuss the subject was Margaret Clawson who later recalled:“The banks of the pool was our dressing rooms,without any kind of shelter.We have gone in winter in a sleigh,and dressed in the same old room,with snow on the ground.Oh,my,didn’t we dress quickly.Anyway, we had bare ground to stand on,as the steam melted the snow quite a little distance around the spring.”35

On February 17,1849,the High Council of Salt Lake City appointed

29 William Kelly, Excursion to California over the Prairie,Rocky Mountains,and Great Sierra Nevada;with a Stroll Through the Diggings and Ranches of that Country (London:Chapman and Hall,1851),227.

30 Mrs.B.G.Ferris, The Mormons at Home;With some Incidents of Travel from Missouri to California,1852-3. In a Series of Letters (New York City:Dix & Edwards,1856),118-20.

31 Albert D.Richardson, Beyond the Mississippi:From the Great River to the Great Ocean.Life and Adventure on the Prairies,Mountains,and Pacific Coast (Hartford:American Publishing Company,1867),346.

32 Jack Larkin,“Baths,Brush Heads,Beards,and Two-Pronged Forks:An Unconventional Look at the Details of Everyday History,” Old Sturbridge Visitor,(Summer 1997):6-7.

33 See Patricia Lauber, What You Never Knew About Tubs,Toilets,& Showers (New York:Simon & Schuster Books,2001),and Richard L.and Claudia L.Bushman,“The Early History of Cleanliness in America,” The Journal of American History 74 (March 1988):1213-38.

34 Clayton Family Association, Clayton’s Journal,324.

35 “Rambling Reminiscences of Margaret Gay Judd Clawson Talking of ‘Those Days,’”typescript, microfilm,40,LDS Church History Library.

Brigham Young a committee of one to erect a public bathhouse at the Warm Springs.36 Six days previous to this announcement,James Hendricks had been called as the bishop of the Salt Lake Nineteenth Ward.Its boundaries included the Warm Springs.Apparently,acting as proprietor of the bathhouse was part of his duties as bishop.He and his family later lived in a small house adjacent to the bathhouse,and helped with the construction of the house and the bathhouse.37 The bathhouse was one of several construction projects undertaken as a “Public Works”project of the church.38

On July 1,1850,the Deseret News announced that “THE BATH HOUSE is now open for the accommodation of gentlemen.” 39 It is unknown if this indicated that women were not yet accepted at the Bath House.The Bath House was built approximately four-tenths of a mile south of the actual spring,about where present-day Reed Avenue intersects with 300 West Street.The Bath House was dedicated on November 27, 1850,with what the Deseret News described as “the festival of consecrating the baths for the healing of the sick,and to open the house for the benefit of the public.” 41 Carriages soon began operating between the Warm Springs and various locations in the city.42 In addition to warm sulphur water carried from the spring in log pipes,fresh water was brought in a ditch to the Bath House from City Creek Canyon.Brigham Young was quoted as saying,“The Bath House,near the Warm Springs,is now completed,and will,it is confidently believed,‘ere long,become a source of revenue to the state.”43

The Bath House soon became the location for many social events.

36 Journal History,February 17,1849,1.The following day,Hosea Stout recorded that “a law is passed to erect a bathing house at the Warm Springs.”Juanita Brooks,ed., On the Mormon Frontier:The Diary of Hosea Stout,1848-1862,(Salt Lake City:University of Utah Press,1964),343.

37 Daughters of Utah Pioneers,“Firm in the Faith,” Our Pioneer Heritage 20 (1977),267-78.This is an edited version of Drusilla Doris Hendrick’s journal.Cited hereafter as Hendricks Journal.

38 As the fledgling community in the Salt Lake Valley grew,it was essential that cooperative effort by many accomplished those tasks which individuals could not complete alone.For instance,planting of crops,digging canals and ditches,building boweries,etc.,were done as community efforts.As time went on,Brigham Young,in order to provide work for the hundreds and then thousands of new arrivals in the valley,organized a Public Works Department,which within a few short years constructed among others,a wall around the Temple Block,the Council House,the Old Tabernacle,and the Bathhouse.See Leonard J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom:An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints,1830-1900 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,1958),54-55,108-12.

39 From this time on,the first bathhouse and all those that followed were noted as The Bath House.

40 Deseret News,January 11,1851,188.It was reported that Brigham Young addressed those present “stating that the house was built by the public funds,but it would have to be supported from the avails of the baths.”The newspaper editorialized that “we suppose that those who visit the house,should do it in the spirit of prayer,giving thanks unto the Lord for all things,with their liberal offerings of gold and silver, for the support of the house.”

41 Fourth General Epistle of the Church,dated September 27,1850,in James R.Clark,ed., Messages of the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,1833-1964,(Salt Lake City:Bookcraft, 1965-1971),2:56.This reference refers to “visitants”to the “Baths.”

42 Journal History,October 24,1850,1.Fresh,cold water was apparently for culinary purposes in the Bath House and adjoining buildings.

43 Brigham Young,in governor’s message to the legislature,December 2,1850.Quoted in Deseret News, January 11,1851,186.

Deseret News March 22,1851.

Thomas Bullock reported that on Christmas Day 1850,a “ball at the Bath House continued all night till 7 am of the 26th.”44 The first of many marriages performed in the Bath House was that of James Gemmell and Elizabeth Hendricks (daughter of the proprietor) on December 27,1850. 45 New Year’s Day 1851,there was a “large party at the Bath House.”46 The Bath House was also used as a meeting hall for the Nineteenth Ward until December 1852,when meetings were shifted to a newly built school house.47

Apparently there was a small log house for the proprietor and a larger adobe building that housed the bathing facilities with a room where parties, weddings,and other gatherings were held.Water from the spring to the wooden bathing tubs was conveyed in wooden pipes.48 On March 22,1851, proprietor James Hendricks placed an advertisement in the Deseret News, defining the “terms for privilege of the Baths.”Hendricks’wife,Drusilla Doris Hendricks,wrote that the bath house “contained twelve rooms,six on each side and a large room in front.”49 Visitor,Jean Rio Baker,however,only noted that the bath house “contains eight commodious baths.”50 Hendricks indicated that there was a “large room in front.”This obviously refers to the room in which social events described above were held.

44 Historian’s Office Journal,December 25,1850,32.

45 Family Group Sheet,LDSFamily History Library.

46 Journal History,January 1,1851,1.

47

“Nineteenth Ward,Salt Lake Stake,Historical Record,”LDS Church History Library .

48 See also Jedediah M.Grant,“Three Letters to the New York Herald,March 9,1852,”in Gene A. Sessions,ed., Mormon Thunder:a Documentary History of Jedediah Morgan Grant (Champaign:University of Illinois Press,1982),323.Andrew J.Russell was the official photographer for construction of the Union Pacific Railroad,1867-69.As part of his photographic history,he made a number of images of scenes in and around Salt Lake City.In photographing the Warm Springs Bath House about 1869,his camera captured the image of the original bath house in the background.There are several early sketches of the buildings.Before the common use of aerial photographs,artists made “bird’s eye view”sketches.“Bird’s Eye View of Salt Lake City,Utah Territory,1870”,drawn by Augustus Koch;“Salt Lake City,1875,”E.S. Glover,LDS Church History Library.

49 Hendricks Journal,267.

50 Emma Nielsen Mortensen, Two Mormon Pioneers:History of Alva Benson;Diary of Jean Rio Baker (Hyrum:Downs Printing,1986),192.Thomas Bullock gave some indication of the size of the tubs when he wrote that he “and Brigham Young bathed in the same tub,and W.McBride bathed in the other [tub] in the same room.”Historian’s Office Journal,December 21,1850,31.

The Bath House soon became the main site for large social gatherings in Salt Lake Valley,including a grand military ball given by Professor Ballo and his band in December 1851. Perhaps the second marriage at the Bath House was that of Rachel Woolley to Joseph M.Simmons in December as well. 51 On March 31,1852,Lorenzo Brown recorded:“PM went to a picnic party at the Bath House.Three dancing schools were present.It went off in tolerable order.” At least everything was “tolerable”until Brown “caught a chap pilfering my eatables.”52

A mere two years after the dedication of the Bath House,it began falling into disrepair.Mrs.B.G.Ferris, wife of Benjamin G.Ferris, Secretary of the Territory,paid a visit to the “bathing-house”in November 1852,and found it “very much dilapidated—the doors from their hinges,and the tubs leaking—and it was even difficult to secure the necessary privacy.”Ferris also wrote that it was “originally intended for a hotel.”53 It is strange that only two years after dedication,the Bath House was in such terrible condition.The decline was probably the result of the Hendricks family moving from the premises sometime in 1852.54

Broadside,May 2,1853.

A year later during the winter of 1852-53,Colonel J.C.Little,who had recently taken charge of the Bath House replacing the original proprietor James Hendricks,converted the Bath House into a hotel.In May 1853, Little took out an advertisement in the Deseret News, and distributed a

51 Journal History,December 12,1851,1;Diary of Rachel Woolley,in Kate B.Carter,comp., Heart Throbs of the West (Salt Lake City:Daughters of Utah Pioneers),11,165.

52 Diary of Lorenzo Brown,March 31,1852,typescript,LDS Church History Library.

53 Ferris, Mormons at Home,121.

54 Hendricks Journal,267-8.

handbill proclaiming “New Arrangements at the United States Hotel.”55

The historical record is unclear but apparently Little added a new bathing feature to the hotel as well.Thomas Bullock noted on several occasions in the summer of 1854 “shower baths”at the hotel and that they were “new,” perhaps indicating that they were not completed at the time the hotel was otherwise ready 56

Oliver B.Huntington,an employee at this establishment in 1853-54, described the hotel as being “very large and respectable…and had the only license for retailing liquor in the city.There was also a very extensive bathing operation in connexion with the hotel.”57

Apparently the hotel was not successful and within a short time it was converted to another purpose.In the fall of 1855,the First Presidency of the LDS Church on a trip to Cache County passed the Bath House and discovered that it was now the A.H.Raleigh and Golding Tannery.Dining and entertainment were discontinued,but “warm and cold baths”were still being advertised.The account also noted “that the pump logs leading from the warm springs to the Bath House were very much out of repair,as illustrated by the frequent jets of water seen spouting up several feet into the air.”58 Within another three years the Bath House was nearly deserted.A visitor in June 1858 reported:

The water from the warm springs,… is conducted by pipes to a little adobe,once used for a bath house.The building is entirely out of repair,and of course deserted.The wooden tubs and water pipes have shared in the dilapidation,but we contrived to patch the holes with plugs and shreds of cloth and at last to enjoy the most luxurious bath of which a Mohammedan ever dreamed.59

Another visitor wrote that the bath house “like all else here at this time, has been broken up and left in ruins.”60

The Salt Lake City Council was obviously aware of the condition of the Bath House in July 1859,when they granted John Tobin use of the Warm Springs,including erecting a new Bath House.61 It was soon reported:

Our old friend,John Tobin,proprietor of the Warm Spring baths,offers gratis the use of the same,to emigrants intending to be permanent settlers,on their arrival here.We would recommend to all such,to avail themselves of this kind offer,and enjoy the

55 Deseret News,May 2,1853.

56 See Historian’s Office Journal entries June 13,1854,30;June 22,1854,34;,and July 5,1854,37.

57 “Diary and Reminiscence of Oliver B.Huntington,”April 2,1853,typescript,LDS Church History Library,83.

58 Journal History October 20,1855,1.In March 1855,Alonzo Hazelton Raleigh and Robert Golding entered into a partnership to tan and manufacture leather,boots,shoes,and other leather items.In July 1860,Raleigh sold out his interest to Golding,who continued to operate the business for a short time.See Alonzo Raleigh,Journal,March 6,1855,99,and July 28,1860,246.

59 Letter from an anonymous writer to the editor dated June 24,1858, New York Weekly Tribune,August 7,1858,reprinted in The Church News,August 22,1981,5.

60 Letter from William Simonston to the editor,dated June 26,1858,in New York Times.August 3,1858.

61 Salt Lake City Council Minutes,July 7:48,July 15:52,and July 22,1859:56,microfilm,LDS Church History Library.

benefits of the Warm Springs Bath this season; excellent for cleansing the dust and alkali of their long road from the eastern states 62

Apparently Tobin did not do much about erecting the new bath house.When English traveler and writer Richard Burton visited Salt Lake City in 1860,he wrote of the dilapidated facility:

The building which was previously known asWasatch Springs Plunge and until the fall of 2006 as the Children’s Museum of Utah.

We passed a large tumbledown tenement which has seen many vicissitudes.It began life as a bath-house and bathing place,to which the white sulphury waters of the Warm Springs,issuing from below Ensign Peak,were brought in pine-log pipes.It contained also a ballroom,two parlours for clubs and supper-parties,and a double kitchen.It afterwards became a hotel and public-house for emigrants ...and now it has subsided into a tannery of low degree.63

There are likely several reasons why the Bath House declined so rapidly after having been as popular earlier.James Hendricks,the first proprietor of the Bath House and bishop of his ward (a position which occupied considerable time),may thus have been affected in his ability to properly manage the operations of the Bath House.As a hotel,it probably failed as Burton noted,because the emigrants “soon learned to prefer more central quarters.”64 A third reason for failure may have been because of the tannery established nearby.The smell from a tannery was notorious for being obnoxious and certainly could have negatively impacted visitors.

For the next four years little was done to improve the condition of the Bath House,although several petitioners to the City Council offered to do

62 The Mountaineer,(Salt Lake City ) September 3,1859,6.

63 Richard Burton, The City of the Saints and Across the Rocky Mountains to California,ed.Fawn Brodie (New York City:Alfred A.Knopf,1963),236-37.Burton recorded that the hotel was planned as a stopping place for emigrants to California and Oregon,but failed because the emigrants found suitable quarters in central Salt Lake City.

64 Ibid,137.

so.65 The proposals offered were not acceptable and in November 1864,the city fathers determined that the city would have to take the responsibility of making the much needed improvements at the Warm Springs.During the next decade a new Bath House and other facilities were constructed approximately two-tenths of a mile north of the original Bath House, about at the site of the water fountain in the current Warm Springs Park.

In 1875,the City Council decided that it no longer wanted direct control of the Bath House,and for the next four decades,the Bath House and associated features were operated under various leases.The third bath house, known as the White Sulphur Baths,was constructed in 1891 by the lessees Henry Barnes and Edward Byrne.66 Salt Lake City resumed control of the Warm Springs in 1916 and in 1921-22 yet another building was constructed nearby by Salt Lake City.For the next decade or more the new bathing facility operated by the city’s parks department was known as Warm Springs Municipal Baths.In 1932 the facility underwent another name change: Wasatch Warm Springs Plunge.In 1947,the use of warm spring water was discontinued,and culinary water was used until the building was closed in 1976.The building became the Children’s Museum of Utah in 1981.

In addition to the Warm Springs and its various bath houses,water from the thermal springs was also used by at least four other establishments in the area.Beck’s Hot Springs,located about two miles north of Warm Springs, was developed by mining magnate John Beck;Wasatka Springs,located across the street from Warm Springs;and two different Salt Lake Sanitariums located in downtown Salt Lake City,existed for many years using water piped from the various thermal springs for uses similar to the Warm Springs.67

So what happened to the original run down,dilapidated first Bath House,located several hundred yards south of the old Children’s Museum building on Beck Street? Although the date of razing the original bathing facilities is unknown,at least a portion of the building was converted to a residence.68 Walter Eli Wilcox,an employee of Brigham Young,and Wilcox’s

65 See Salt Lake City Council Minutes,November 10,1863,164;March 24,237;April 5,239,243;and November 1,1864),333.

66 Salt Lake Herald April 15,and May 14,1891.Also Salt Lake City Council minutes January 20,1891.

67 Beck’s Hot Springs existed from the 1880s until 1950,when the building was destroyed by fire. Wasatka Springs began as a bottling works in the 1890s,added bathing facilities in the 1920s,and closed in the 1940s.The first Salt Lake Sanitarium (also known as the Natatorium) was erected in 1889 on the west side of West Temple,between Main and Second South Streets.Thermal water was piped from one of the warm springs and blended with salt water from the marshes northwest of the city.The sanitarium was discontinued at this site about 1893.The building was later used for a brief period as the National Guard armory,before being demolished for the terminal of the Bamberger Railroad in1913.Abravanel Hall now occupies the site.Under the name Salt Lake Sanitarium Baths,a new building was erected on the north side of Third South between Main and West Temple Streets in 1893.“The San”as it was known,remained in business until 1919.A portion of the building was used as a hotel for a few years,and then demolished for other commercial buildings.

68 It is unclear whether these living accommodations were part of the bath house,or a separate building.Drusilla Hendricks noted that when they moved to the Warm Springs,“We built a log house first, then a large adobe,then the bathhouse.”Hendricks Journal,267.

The largest of the warm springs as it appears at the present time.

family lived in the converted residence from 1866 to 1876.69 Sometime during this tenyear period,ownership of the original building had passed to Brigham Young as Trustee-in Trust for the Church,and in January 1876 Young asked Wilcox to “find some other residence at your early convenience.I am desirous of devoting my house in which you reside to educational purposes,”explained Young.70 It is not known if the building was ever used for educational purposes but after Young’s death in 1877,the block on which the Bath House was located was subdivided for residential development.71 A street,which became Reed Avenue,was laid out where the Bath House had been,thus ending the existence of the facilities which for years held such a prominent place in the hearts of many residents and visitors who had enjoyed not only the bathing,but many other social events there.

Time,construction ofVictory Road to the east above the Warm Springs, and other developments have significantly altered the area.A paved walkway leads from the former Children’s Museum about two-hundred yards

69 Salt Lake City Directories of 1867,1869,and 1874,and United States Federal Census,1870 (Salt Lake City,Nineteenth Ward),707:48.

70 Brigham Young to Walter Wilcox,Brigham Young Letter Book,January 15,1876,LDS Church History Library.When the Bath House was built as a public works project in 1850,it was obviously Church property.It is unclear whether the building which was used as a residence in the 1870s was part of the Bath House or was a separate building as recorded in Drusilla Hendricks Reminiscence.It is also unclear if Brigham Young came into possession of the residence as Trustee in Trust of the Church,or as an individual.

71 Old Bath House property plat ca 1887.Trustee-in-Trust,Real Estate Memorandum,1872-1883, Church History Library.

north to what remains of the spring.It is a far cry from what the early visitors must have seen.The smell and temperature are the same,but the flow is quite small compared to earlier descriptions,certainly those that recorded the flow could run a saw mill.Salt Lake City and local citizen groups have restored what is now known as Warm Springs and the surrounding wetlands,and installed walkways and interpretive panels which tell some of the history,ecology,and geology of the springs.Bathing is no longer permitted, although there are reports that homeless individuals are occasionally seen bathing there.72 Perhaps this is a fitting epithet for what served for just over a century as one of the most popular locations for bathing and swimming in the Salt Lake City area.Although it “was very warm and smelt very bad,”many still have fond memories of the Warm Springs,and the last incarnation of the Bath House.

72

On June 9,2005,a transient was found dead in the Warm Springs pool. Salt Lake Tribune,June 10, 2005.

Sex,Subalterns,and Steptoe:Army Behavior, Mormon Rage,and Utah War Anxieties

“I would rather lie in their path ten or twenty years,thereby blocking up their way than let them enter our peaceful city,or settlements with the train of Hell which follows after and is already in their midst.”

– Lieut.Gen.Daniel H.Wells (Echo Canyon) to BrighamYoung (Salt Lake City),November 21,1857

With the Utah War’s sesquicentennial commemoration now under way,this is an opportune time to re-examine that conflict’s

This Utah war sketch from Harper’s Weekly,May 22,1858,offers one interpretation of how federal soldiers were received in Salt Lake City. FROMAUTHOR’SCOLLECTION.

William P.MacKinnon is an independent historian and management consultant from Santa Barbara, California,and an Honorary Life Member of the Utah State Historical Society.The first volume of his two-part documentary history of the Utah War (At Sword’s Point) was publishing in 2008 by the Arthur H. Clark Co.,an imprint of the University of Oklahoma Press.This article is an adaptation of a paper presented at the 2006 annual meetings of the Mormon History Association and Utah State Historical Society.The author thanks the Quarterly’s anonymous readers,Patricia H.MacKinnon,and Ardis E.Parshall for their helpful comments and support.Copyright 2008 by William P.MacKinnon.

complex origins,prosecution,and impact.The purpose of this article is to shed light on the ways in which the social conduct of the U.S.Army’s Steptoe Expedition of 1854-1855 created a civil affairs atmosphere so poisonous that it aggravated deteriorating Mormon-federal relations while stiffening Brigham Young’s resolve to bar the U.S.Army from Utah.The misadventures of the Steptoe Expedition did not cause the Utah War.However,they added mightily to the Mormons’anxiety over their treatment by the U.S. government in general and the U.S.Army in particular.Once Mormon-federal relations reached the flash point during the spring of 1857,this wholly avoidable incident played a now-obscure role in the tragedy that followed.

When Capt.and Brevet Lieut.Col.Edward Jenner Steptoe arrived in Salt Lake City on August 31,1854,with about 325 men and more than 800 animals,his was the fourth and largest army detachment to visit Utah since the Mormon arrival.Each of three earlier detachments had generated small-scale but nonetheless unsettling incidents in the arena that the army today calls “civil affairs.”

The first case involved a three-day visit to Salt Lake City during August 1849 by 1st Lieut.Robert M.Morris and a small detachment of soldiers and civilian packers en route to California.During their stay there was allegedly a melée involving Morris’s men and town constables over a Mormon woman.Nine years later,in the middle of the subsequent Utah War,Apostle George A.Smith characterized what happened as a rape attempt.1 In the second incident,during March 1850,2nd Lieut.George W. Howland,an officer assigned to the Stansbury Expedition’s survey of the Great Salt Lake,departed Utah via Oregon Territory and California with a former plural wife of Brigham Young’s First Counselor Heber C.Kimball.2 The third incident,during the winter of 1853-1854,touched Brigham Young’s own family when a member of the ill-fated Gunnison Expedition, Sgt.John Tobin,struck up an awkward social relationship with Alice Young, one of the governor’s daughters.After his army discharge Tobin instead married Sarah Jane Rich,a daughter of Apostle Charles C.Rich later abandoned by Tobin.Historians have until recently mistakenly attributed the subsequent assassination attempt against Tobin to his earlier interest in Alice Young.3 None of these incidents were reported to army headquarters by

1 E.Cecil McGavin, U.S.Soldiers Invade Utah (Boston:Meador Publishing Co.,1937),236.Lieut. Morris’s silence about this affair in his diary and report to the War Department has led historian Will Bagley to challenge the veracity of George A.Smith’s later description of such an incident.Interestingly, Salt Lake City Mayor Jedediah M.Grant described a brawl in town involving army troops during December 1854 as Utah’s “first disturbance of the public peace.”Will Bagley to William P.MacKinnon, email of January 9,2007.Jedediah M.Grant to Edward Jenner Steptoe,December 26,1854,Brigham Young Collection,Church History Library,Family and Church History Department,The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.Hereafter,LDS Church History Library.

2 Brigham D.Madsen,ed., Exploring the Great Salt Lake:The Stansbury Expedition of 1849-50 (Salt Lake City:University of Utah Press,1989),268-70.

3 For further clarification see Ardis E.Parshall,“‘Pursue,Retake & Punish’:The 1857 Santa Clara Ambush,” Utah Historical Quarterly 73 (Winter 2005):64-86.

either the commanders involved or by territorial governor Brigham Young. The Steptoe Expedition was ordered west from Fort Leavenworth during the summer of 1854 without adequate preparation.The detachment lacked an understanding of the need for firm,vigilant leadership sensitive to Mormon apprehensions,although President Franklin Pierce later commented that “...he had lectured both him [Steptoe] & Judge Kenney [sic] in relation to these matters several times before their departure...” for Utah.4

Since the visit by the Stansbury Expedition of 1849-1850,Congress had formed Utah Territory and sanctioned President Millard Fillmore’s appointment of Brigham Young to a four-year term as its governor,superintendent of Indian Affairs,and militia commander.Notwithstanding this arrangement,Mormon-federal relations rapidly grew more complex and negative in multiple ways for various reasons.Suffice it to say that the pinch points of this deteriorating relationship had grown to encompass virtually every aspect of the territorial-general government interface:postal service, the court system,the evenhandedness of criminal justice,Indian relations, disposition of public lands,the expenditure of congressional appropriations, and—above all else—the quality of federal appointees to territorial offices. Aggravating these conflicts were such other issues as accusations of Mormon disloyalty,the varying treatment of transcontinental emigrants, Brigham Young’s sometimes inflammatory rhetoric,and the Latter-day Saints’public disclosure of the religious principle of plural marriage (polygamy) in August 1852.

At the heart of much of this tension was a fundamental disagreement over the appropriateness of a Mormon attempt to establish Utah as an autocratic theocracy in anticipation of the Second Coming of Christ.This thrust took place in the midst of an American political system that viewed Utah as a territorial ward of Congress intended to function under republican principles of government.5

Why,then,were Steptoe and a detachment of U.S.Army troops in Utah during 1854-1855? During April and May 1854,Secretary of War Jefferson Davis and the army issued a series of orders directing Steptoe to do three things:deliver a large number of veteran artillerymen,raw dragoon recruits, and eight hundred horses and mules to army garrisons on the Pacific Coast;aid Utah’s civil authorities in some unspecified way in the apprehension of the Indians responsible for the October 1853 massacre of Capt. John W.Gunnison’s topographical engineering party along the Sevier River;and determine a better route from the Salt Lake Valley to California. In recognition of the scope of his expedition,the army assigned Steptoe to

4 Pierce’s admonition is described in John Taylor (New York) to Brigham Young,April 11,1855, Brigham Young Collection,LDS Church History Library.

5 For a summary of these conflicts,see David L.Bigler,“A Lion in the Path:Genesis of the Utah War, 1857-1858,” Utah Historical Quarterly 76 (Winter 2008):4-21.

this command in his brevet rank of lieutenant colonel rather than in his regular grade of captain.Contrary to the belief of some historians,Steptoe was not sent west to replace Brigham Young as governor,although throughout the summer and fall of 1854 President Pierce wrestled with the question of whether or not to reappoint Young as his four-year term expired.6

What Brigham Young knew of Col.Steptoe’s orders and when is unclear.On May 12,Utah’s territorial delegate in Congress,John M. Bernhisel,had alerted Governor Young that Steptoe was coming,but he described the colonel’s mission vaguely and incompletely.Delegate Bernhisel,the War Department,and Steptoe himself expected that the expedition’s stay in Salt Lake City would be relatively brief before pushing on for California,but by the time Steptoe reached Fort Kearny the jaded condition of his animals forced him to signal Washington that wintering in Utah might be necessary.7

With Steptoe’s arrival in Salt Lake City on August 31,the governor first realized that his command—nine officers as well as about 175 enlisted men and 150 civilian camp followers—intended to winter over.8 Two weeks later 2nd Lieut.LaRhett L.Livingston,West Point class of 1853,shed light on the matter of mission in writing to his father in the Adirondack hamlet of Lewis,New York.

The principal object in our wintering here is to avenge the death of Capt.Gunnison, killed by the Indians last fall or winter....However,it is to be done in a peculiar way and I hope to God it may be successful.We are to keep dark [silent] until a fit opportunity for making prisoners [as hostages] or getting the real perpetrators of the deed.We are in fact sailing under sealed orders so as to further our purposes.9 What Lieut.Livingston revealed with this news was that Steptoe had not yet fully briefed Superintendent of Indian Affairs Brigham Young about his mission,a communications if not diplomatic lapse that must have generated tension in the governor’s office given the deep suspicions that greeted the far smaller Stansbury Expedition upon its 1849 unannounced arrival.

6 For the lobbying efforts on Brigham Young’s behalf with President Franklin Pierce,see Brigham Young to Franklin Pierce,March 30,1853,John M.Bernhisel to Franklin Pierce and John M.Bernhisel to Brigham Young,August 8,1854,Thomas L.Kane to Franklin Pierce,September 3,1854,and John M. Bernhisel to Brigham Young,September 8;November 14,17,18;December 14,1854,all in Brigham Young Collection,LDS Church History Library.

7 John M.Bernhisel to Brigham Young,May 12,1854, ibid;and Brevet Lt.Col.Edward J.Steptoe to Col.Samuel Cooper,June 27,1854,Dale L.Morgan research notes (“War Dept.– Steptoe Letters”), Madeline R.McQuown Collection,Marriott Library,University of Utah,Salt Lake City.

8 The roster for Steptoe’s detachment has never been published.The expedition’s officers came from a mixture of four regiments and staff departments.From the Third U.S.Artillery there were Capt.and Brevet Lieut.Colonel Edward J.Steptoe;1st Lieut and Brevet Maj.John F.Reynolds;Capt.Rufus Ingalls;2nd Lieut.Sylvester Mowry;2nd Lieut.LaRhett L.Livingston;2nd Lieut.John G.Chandler;and 2nd Lieut. Robert O.Tyler,as well as 2nd Lieut.Benjamin Allston,First Dragoons,and Asst.Surgeon Horace R. Wirtz,Medical Department.Edward J.Steptoe to Brigham Young,December 27,1854, ibid

9 LaRhett L.Livingston to James G.Livingston,September 16,1854,LaRhett L.Livingston Letters, Beinecke Library,Yale University.

SEX, SUBALTERNS, ANDSTEPTOE

Almost immediately after reaching Utah,Col.Steptoe and a large portion of his detachment marched south from Salt Lake City to make a show of force among the Indians suspected of responsibility for the death of John W.Gunnison and his men.An unfortunate by-product of this trek was that it left supervision of that portion of Steptoe’s command remaining in Salt Lake City largely to a cadre of young second lieutenants unburdened by demanding duty.These recently commissioned officers promptly surveyed the city’s social scene with mixed reactions.On September 16,1854,Lieut.Livingston commented to his father,“As to the inhabitants,[I] have not learned anything of them yet.”10 But his brother officer,2nd Lieut.Sylvester Mowry,was more active,wide-ranging,and soon disruptive in both his observations and plans.

Mowry,West Point class of 1852,described his new surroundings and activities in a series of letters written to Edward Joshua (“Ned”) Bicknall,a fellow townsman of Providence,Rhode Island.Bicknall was a thirty-fiveyear-old married man fourteen years older than bachelor Mowry,and was employed as general manager of C.C.Mowry,the family’s commission house. 11 Indications are that Bicknall served in the role of Mowry’s long-distance,non-judgmental mentor,confidante,and financial advisor. Mowry,in turn,provided a flow of off-color letters to liven up what was the probably otherwise unexciting routine of a Rhode Island businessman of the Victorian era.

In his September 17,1854 letter,Mowry gave Bicknall his first impressions of Mormon society,most of which focused on polygamy and his own social plans.Describing Heber C.Kimball’s Sunday admonitions to both troops and Mormon women about the perils of fraternization,Mowry commented pungently,“The whole looked very much as if he and Brigham were afraid we were going to f—k our way through the town. Perhaps we shall.”Fatefully,Mowry then reported that in less than a month

10 Ibid.

11 For a brief biographical sketch of Ned Bicknall (sometimes “Bicknell”),see Thomas Williams Bicknell, History and Genealogy of the Bicknell Family (Providence,R.I.,1913),74-77.

he had drawn a bead on a member of Governor Young’s own extended family,Mary J.Ayers Young,the twenty-year-old English-born wife of Joseph A.Young:“Brigham’s daughter in law is the prettiest woman I have seen yet.Her husband is on a mission and she is as hot a thing as you could wish.I am going to make the attempt and if I succeed and don’t get my head blown off by being caught shall esteem myself some.”12 Having stated his own intentions,Mowry then turned to a critical description of polygamy,noting:“There are a great many disaffected persons here.Many women who rebel against the plurality wife system.Brigham’s daughter among others.She says Salt Lake City needs only to be roofed in to be the biggest whore house in the world.”13

On a more serious tone,Mowry reported favorably to Bicknall that “The people here are social,gay and like every thing like parties.There are to be three dancing parties this week.Good music and pretty dancers.... Many pretty women well dressed on occasion give a charming air to all their assemblies at the Tabernacle or Chamber ...”He then closed by venting his frustrations,“...if it were not for their damnable system of espionage – better than that of the old Inquisition or Napoleon’s police— we could get along well.They are jealous lecherous and revengeful in all that concerns women I believe.It will require tact and shrewdness on the part of woman and man to conduct an intrigue successful[l]y,but I think it can be done....”14

Months later First Counselor Heber C.Kimball described this scene acerbically to his missionary-son William:“Last fall,after Col.Steptoe with his command came in here,with Judge [John F.] Kinney,Mr.[U.S.Attorney Jacob] Hol[e]man,and many others of the poor devils,we treated them as gentlemen should be treated and invited them to our parties and habitations and feasted them and tried to make something of them.While doing this,they began to play with some of the skitty wits,alias whores.”15 The swift result was cautionary warnings to women during Sunday services and a gradual,selective implementation of the familiar Mormon practice for dealing with unwanted visitors—shunning or leaving them “severely alone.”

12 Sylvester Mowry to Edward J.Bicknall,September 17,1854,typed transcription in Stanley S.Ivins Papers,Utah State Historical Society,Salt Lake City.Expurgated excerpts from this and other Mowry letters have been published in William Mulder and A.Russell Mortensen,eds., Among the Mormons:Historic Accounts by Contemporary Observers (New York:Alfred A.Knopf,1958),272-78.As Mowry reported it, Joseph A.Young had been called to the British Mission because he had “...raised hell so he was sent off to arrest the scandal of his debaucheries....”

13 Based on the context,Mowry probably meant to attribute this remark to Brigham Young’s daughterin-law (presumably Mary J.Ayers Young) rather than to a “daughter”whom some historians have mistakenly assumed was Alice Young.This provocative sentence became semi-famous after its first publication in Irving Wallace’s biography of a disaffected Brigham Young spouse, The Twenty-Seventh Wife (New York: Simon and Schuster,1961),15.Without attributing the thought to any individual,Lieut.Livingston repeated the “whorehouse”perception of Mormon society in different language to his father in LaRhett L.Livingston to James G.Livingston,October 27,1854,LaRhett Livingston Letters,Beinecke Library.

14 Ibid.

15 Heber C.Kimball to William Kimball,May 29,1855,Journal History,LDS Church History Library.

SEX, SUBALTERNS, ANDSTEPTOE

On October 27,Lieut.Livingston provided a description of such shunning while unwittingly shedding light on army behavior that helped to reinforce it:“The [enlisted] men are very troublesome in the City and I don’t know as we will ever get them straight.I have been on a court [martial] this morning to try six cases of drunkenness and it is a thing that is recurring all the time.”16 Livingston had good cause for his lamentation as indicated by the records of Privates Michael T.Hoey and Francis McEneny. Hoey had been court-martialed three times,twice during the last ten days of September,for a variety of offenses including drunkenness,disorderly conduct,and leaving his sentry post.McEneny was languishing under arrest in solitary confinement and was considered a confirmed drunkard and “at best a nuisance to the company.”17

How,then,did Mormon leaders view Steptoe and his men? During the fall of 1854,they seem to have drawn a distinction between Col.Steptoe and all others.For example,Thomas Ellerbeck’s comments on December 1 reflected this ambivalence when—unaware of Mary J.Ayers Young’s growing notoriety—he wrote to her husband in England,“Col.Steptoe…is quite gentlemanly in his deportment,anxious that his men should conduct themselves with propriety,not making themselves an annoyance to the good citizens of Salt Lake;he wishes the Mayor,in consequence of their appearing drunk so much in the streets to assist him in his endeavors to debar them from liquor.”18

On December 21,Heber C.Kimball described the $400,000 that the Steptoe Expedition was pumping into Utah’s economy and commented that Steptoe “...is quite a gentleman and a friend,as also are some of his subordinates....It was getting to be a little hellish [here],but it is getting to be more heavenly now.”19 In later years bogus accounts surfaced that on Christmas day 1854 Brigham Young had entrapped Steptoe in a compromising situation involving Mary J.Ayers Young and another Mormon woman.There is no evidence that the incident occurred or that Governor Young ever merchandised such a story.20 To the contrary,Young consistently described the colonel privately and publicly as a “gentleman.”On December 28,1854,three days after the alleged entrapment incident,

16 LaRhett L.Livingston to James G.Livingston,October 27,1854,LaRhett L.Livingston Letters, Beinecke Library.

17 2nd Lieut.Sylvester Mowry (Salt Lake City) to Asst.Adj.Gen.E.D.Townsend (Benecia,Calif.), November 19,1854,Records of the Department of the Pacific,Letters Received (1854-1858),text courtesy of Mr.Val Holley,Washington,D.C.Mowry sought authorization to discharge these two privates.

18 Thomas Ellerbeck to Joseph A.Young,December 1,1854,Brigham Young Collection LDS Church History Library.Ellerbeck was one of Brigham Young’s clerk-bookkeepers.His note to Young’s son was in the form of a postscript added to the father’s letter of the same date.

19 Heber C.Kimball to William Kimball,December 21,1854, Millennial Star (Liverpool),17 (April 21, 1855):250-53.

20 For the most even-handed summary of the historiography of this alleged episode,see B.H.Roberts, A Comprehensive History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Century I,6 vols.(Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press,1930) 4:184 note 5.See also Nels Anderson, Desert Saints:The Mormon Frontier in Utah (Chicago:University of Chicago Press,1966),147-48 and 163 note 15.

Mary Jane AyersYoung,wife of Joseph A.Young and object of Lieut.Mowry’s attentions. Photograph probably from the 1860s.

Apostle George A.Smith “...visited Col.Steptoe,& had a good half hours chat with him on the Russian [Crimean] War Engineering &c The Col remarked on leaving it was the happiest chit chat he had had in a Long time.”21 Even in the midst of the most upsetting period of the civil affairs imbroglio that later developed,Apostle Orson Hyde commented to Brigham Young that “Col S appears like a gentleman,”but he added the important qualifier that “some of his officers cannot bear a justly minted rebuke for their corruption and lisentious [sic] practices.”22 Perhaps the most colorful testimony on Steptoe’s conduct came from the expedition’s principal libertine,Lieut.Mowry,who commented that,“Everybody has got one”—meaning female companions— “except the Colonel and Major.”23

And so as year-end 1854 approached,there was great ambivalence in Salt Lake City,with Mormon leaders attempting to be sociable to Steptoe and his officers while severely restricting un-chaperoned army access to Mormon girls and women.

On December 27,Lieut.Livingston wrote to inform his father that he had spent Christmas day not festively but in rough-and-tumble riot control duty: ...On Christmas day the Citizens & soldiers came in collision & the consequence was a general riot in the streets.This probably all grew out of some difficulties two or three days previous at the Theater.We had a row there in which I got my face scratched & hand lamed in trying to quell the disturbance ...Some shots were find [fired] on both sides but no one hurt by that means.The stones & clubs did better execution.If the thing occurs again the Col.says he will move us all into the field again at a distance

21

Historian’s Office Journal,entry for December 28,1854,LDS Church History Library.

22 Orson Hyde to Brigham Young,June 19,1855,Brigham Young Collection,LDS Church History Library.

23 Sylvester Mowry to Edward J.Bicknall,April 27,1855,typed transcription,Ivins Papers,Utah State Historical Society.The “major”was Brevet Maj.John F.Reynolds.

SEX, SUBALTERNS, ANDSTEPTOE

from the City....Very freindly [sic] feeling exist between the Army Officers & Civil officers,and it is only some rowdies about town & drunken soldiers that give us trouble.The Governor ordered out the Nauvoo Legion & will keep them organized as a Police till after New Year ... 24

While LaRhett Livingston updated his father,his brother officer provided Ned Bicknall with his version of year-end activities in Salt Lake City.After describing the Christmas day brawl,Lieut.Mowry moved on to consider optimistically more genteel pursuits:“...We have every reason to believe that the authorities and the well judging part of the community are favorably disposed towards us and have done and will do every thing in their power to make our stay pleasant – except in the case of admitting us quickly to the society of their women.In this they are inflexible and perhaps wisely so for gallantry and polygamy are congenial associates.”25

After informing Bicknall that Chief Justice Kinney had honored Steptoe and his officers at an affair on December 26 and that the governor was also hosting a party on New Year’s Day,he reported the status of his pursuit of Mary

J.Ayers Young:

I wrote you about my being in love with the Gov’s daughter in law ...and that her husband was on a mission.The affair went on quietly but swimmingly for several weeks.I met her privately ...and I was just about to congratulate myself on my victory when Brigham found it out.A damned infamous report was circulated in the city that I had been “caught in the act”by several persons.Here was hell.[She] was at home – not allowed to go out,frightened nearly to death and this cursed story in everybody’s mouth.I had only one course to pursue.I could not trace the story to its source so I resolved to go to Brigham and tell him the story was an infamous lie.Well I called on him – had a long talk in private,which I will tell you sometime and succeeded in getting [her] very gracefully out of the scrape

With this intrigue as background,Mowry then lamented that he was a marked man and described Mormon attempts to counter his advances: Meanwhile my reputation is ruined among the females or rather among those who have the care of the females.They think me dangerous and I can’t get a woman to look at me scarcely except in the ballroom.They will walk or ride perhaps with another officer but the old people although they treat me with much politeness advise the young ladies not to go with me anywhere.26

On December 30,the day before Sylvester Mowry wrote to Ned Bicknall,more than forty leading citizens of Salt Lake City’s non-Mormon community,including Col.Steptoe and all of his officers,signed a petition to President Pierce that tracked a similar one just adopted by Utah’s legislative assembly.Both petitions urged Brigham Young’s reappointment as governor on grounds that he was the man best qualified for the position.It

24

LaRhett L.Livingston to James G.Livingston,December 27,1854,LaRhett L.Livingston Letters, Beinecke Library.

25 Sylvester Mowry to Edward J.Bicknall,December 31,1854,typed transcription,Ivins Papers,Utah State Historical Society.

26 Ibid.

was a strange turn of events,for among the signers were some of Young’s most severe critics.27

Ever after Mormon leaders and some historians have pointed to this petition as proof positive of Governor Young’s effectiveness,loyalty,and broad local support across religious lines.Why did the officers of the Steptoe Expedition and even Young’s critics sign it? Multiple reasons have been advanced,but perhaps they signed as a mere courtesy,recognizing that the governor would be their host at a lavish party the following day.Four months later Steptoe had severe misgivings about his participation,repented,and privately told President Pierce,“You will probably remind me that I wrote differently once & recommended the reappointment of Govr Young: It is true,but I was not so well informed then as now,and have already explained to you why that recommendation was made.”28

Unknown to anyone in Utah,two weeks before this petition circulated President Pierce had nominated Steptoe to be Utah’s governor,and the Senate had confirmed his appointment on December 21.Why Steptoe? Young himself had written to Pierce shortly after his March 1853 inauguration to note that no non-Mormon,non-resident would accept a federal appointment in Utah,an assertion that prompted Young to then self-nominate for his own reappointment.Among Pierce’s alternatives to Young, Steptoe was not an obvious or early gubernatorial prospect.Delegate Bernhisel later told Brigham Young,“I suppose the appointment will be entirely unexpected to Colonel Steptoe,and I have reason to believe that the President had never thought of appointing him until he received the letter from him [probably in November 1854] in which he spoke in flattering terms of you and the people of our Alpine home.”Also influential,in Pierce’s view,was the November receipt of an October 1 letter written by Utah Chief Justice John F.Kinney advocating Young’s replacement by Steptoe.Once Pierce decided to replace Young and Steptoe came to his mind as a possible governor,what probably came into play was the apparently close bond between the two men.They had served together during the Mexican War,Pierce as commander of a New England volunteer brigade and Steptoe as a subaltern.More importantly,Steptoe had helped Pierce mightily during his 1852 presidential campaign by refuting a damaging story that Pierce had shown cowardice when provoked by a drunken officer during a card game in Mexico City.29

27

On the eve of the Utah War,Utah Territorial Delegate John M.Bernhisel repeatedly used this petition with President James Buchanan to argue on behalf of Brigham Young’s retention as governor.The document was first published during the war in Deseret News,September 2,1857,264/2-3.

28 Edward J.Steptoe to Franklin Pierce,April 25,1855,quoted in David H.Miller,“Brigham Young, Edward J.Steptoe,and the 1854-55 Gubernatorial Controversy,”unpublished paper,Utah State Historical Society annual meeting,September 1978,11.Copy in author’s possession courtesy of Professor Miller.

29

Brigham Young to Franklin Pierce,March 30,1853,Brigham Young Collection,LDS Church History Library;John F.Kinney to Franklin Pierce,October 1,1854,Morgan Research notes,McQuown Collection,Marriott Library,University of Utah;Peter A.Wallner, Franklin Pierce:New Hampshire’s Favorite Son (Concord,N.H.:Plaidswede Publishing,2004),223-25.

On February 7,1855,Lieut.Livingston noted that press reports from California carried unofficial news of Col.Steptoe’s selection:“It was received by us with some rejoicing,for being on the spot,we can see & appreciate the fun.Whether he will accept it or not I do not know.Whether or no it seems to us like a conquest over this overbearing people,& no doubt they will take it very hard.”Livingston added:“We form a part of the subject of their discourse,nearly every Sunday & they have gone so far as to tell all their females,that if they went with us,they should be cut off from the Church & eternally d—d.”Filled with optimism,Livingston added, “Under the present State of affairs they will haul down a little & make an exception in favor of the Army Officers at least.”30 With news of Steptoe’s gubernatorial appointment circulating unofficially,Young was sometimes philosophical rather than bitter and seemed to become more cordial in his relations with the colonel.31 His often-blunt counselors Heber C.Kimball and Jedediah M.Grant declined to follow suit.President Kimball proudly described their outspoken behavior to his absent son William: Sometime in February,Brother Grant and myself were at [Sunday] meeting,Brother Brigham being unwell,was not present.I got up to speak,the Holy Ghost fell upon me and I spake as I was moved upon and exposed their wickedness and abominable corruptions in our midst,and they all took an offence.Judge Kinney,Mr.Hol[e]man,the officers in command,with all the soldiery.Brother Jeddy backed me.It was quite an earthquake for them.... 32

As winter wore on and the Steptoe Expedition made plans to depart Utah for California,the most serious civil affairs complexities changed character.They shifted from matters of public drunkenness,brawls, inappropriate male-female contacts at elegant suppers,and disrupted street promenades to the even more volatile issue of how many women would flee from their families and from Utah with the troops.During the months of April and May 1855,this issue unfolded with a large number of married as well as single women—perhaps as many as one hundred—leaving Utah for California under the army’s protection.Here was the 1850 case of Lieut. Howland,writ large with a commensurate explosion on the part of embarrassed and enraged Mormon leaders.

On April 27,Lieut.Mowry reported to Ned Bicknall how this dynamic played out in Brigham Young’s own family.Mowry wrote not from Salt Lake City but from an army bivouac in Rush Valley,the isolated winter livestock range to which Col.Steptoe had banished him for his own protection.There Mowry consoled himself with the company of not Young’s daughter-in-law but Amanda Matilda Tanner,a fourteen-year-old who,with two of her sisters,would soon leave for California:

30 LaRhett L.Livingston to James G.Livingston,February 7,1855,LaRhett L.Livingston Letters, Beinecke Library.

31 For a good summary of Brigham Young’s changing views of the governorship during this period,see Leonard J.Arrington, Brigham Young:American Moses (New York:Alfred A.Knopf,1985),246-48.

32 Heber C.Kimball to William Kimball,May 29,1855,Journal History,LDS Church History Library.

[Mrs.] Young I had to give up.Brigham sent me word that if I took her away he would have me killed before I could get out of the Territory.He is a man of his word in little matters of this sort and I concluded I had better not do it,although I went back to the city purposely to get her.We wrote each other affectionate notes.She swears she will run away and join me in California – and so it ends for the present if not for ever. You have no idea what excitement has been created about [her] and myself.Everybody talks about it.Colonel Steptoe sent me an order not to come to the City again and privately sent me word that it would not be safe as Brigham was raving mad about it. Some damned scoundrel had written to him that [she] was going with me and that I had come after her.[She] knew it would be unsafe and at the last moment told me so and said she would wait.I am afraid I should have been fool enough to have tried to carry her off if she had said “go”and it would have ended in her being brought back and my “hair being raised.”Better as it is.... 33

Mowry then described the social activities of his brother officers:“More than half of the women want to leave with us or with somebody. Everybody has got one except the Colonel [Steptoe] and Major [Reynolds].The Doctor [Assistant Surgeon Horace R.Wirtz] has got three [—] mother and two daughters.The mother cooks for him and the daughters sleep with him...”

He continued with an account of an imbroglio involving the expedition’s quartermaster,Rufus Ingalls,and thirteen-year-old Rachel Nowell, an embroilment so egregious that it nearly involved gunplay and did spill into Salt Lake City’s courts:

One of our party Captain Ingalls has been indicted and is now being tried in the City for abducting a pretty little girl – but it is damned absurd.She wanted to go.Her brother drew a six shooter on the Captain and your friend the subscriber stepped in front of it until Ingalls could get out the way.There was some talk about my coolness,saving his life &c &c but I knew damned well that he would not shoot me – and I didn’t believe he would shoot at all.Nor did he....34

Thus exited the Steptoe Expedition,with its commander still undecided about his gubernatorial commission and vowing to make up his mind once he got to California.During the late spring and summer of 1855,Steptoe’s letters to President Pierce were so ambiguous and conflicted that Pierce ultimately had to conclude that beneath the Hamlet-like musings Steptoe was telling him “no.”Rather than run the risk of further political embarrassment by presenting the Senate with a new nominee,Pierce took no further action on Utah’s governorship.35 This mechanism had the effect of

33

Sylvester Mowry to Edward J.Bicknall,April 27,1855,typed transcription in Ivins Papers,Utah State Historical Society.In 2007 the original of this letter and another of Mowry’s “Dear Ned”notes was acquired by the Marriott Library,University of Utah.Mary J.Ayers Young remained in Salt Lake City and was reunited with Joseph A.Young in 1856 when he returned from the British Mission just in time to take part in the rescue of the Willie and Martin handcart companies.After his death she married Louis Demotte Bunce,moved to California,and died at age eighty-seven near Los Angeles in 1921.For an interesting interview with her about her views of the Utah War and Mountain Meadows massacre,see “Brigham Young’s Home a Dove Cote,Says Wife of Son,” Los Angeles Herald,April 11,1919.

34

Sylvester Mowry to Edward J.Bicknall,April 27,1855,Ivins Papers,Utah State Historical Society.

35 John M.Bernhisel (Washington) to Brigham Young,December 18,1855,Brigham Young Collection, LDS Church History Library.

SEX, SUBALTERNS, ANDSTEPTOE

continuing Young in office until a successor was sworn,which Steptoe had not been.Pierce’s inactivity,in effect,left the issue for his successor,James Buchanan,to address anew in 1857.36

When the Steptoe Expedition departed Utah for California in May 1855,Heber C.Kimball shed light on the identity of a few of what he called “skitty wits,alias whores”who accompanied the army: Col.Steptoe ...sent a part of his command south,while he went with part north.He took some of our “silly women”in his command viz.,Mrs.Wheelock,Mrs.Broomhead and her other daughter,Miss Stayner,Miss Z.Potter,with several others,and then several went south with the other portion of the troops;one of Thos.Tanner’s daughters, making three of his daughters gone to California,one of whom only lived three days after arriving in California.Emily Frost went with the soldiers north,starting for California;went as far as Boxelder,and then turned back to the city,giving as her reason for so doing,“they were too hard for her.”37

Miss Stayner was twenty-two year old Elizabeth Stayner of Guernsey,in the English Channel Islands.She had immigrated to Utah in 1853,arriving two years before her parents and other members of her family.What followed her departure from Utah has the flavor of a Victorian morality play with Brigham Young – despite his earlier rage – playing a role that he frequently displayed in individual cases of transgression by hapless parishioners,that of the pastoral rescuer.On February 26,1856,Miss Stayner’s father informed Young that “I have had several letters from her of late [from San Francisco],in which she expresses a wish to return here to see her Parents.”He asked for Young’s help “in recovering our (at present) lost child.”The governor responded to this plea by writing immediately to Miss Stayner,encouraging her to make her way to Carson Valley from San Francisco where she could place herself under the protection of Orson Hyde.He then charged Apostle Hyde with furnishing “a way for her to return to her much afflicted parents.”38 Notwithstanding this arrangement, Elizabeth Stayner remained in California,married Lumen Wadhams in 1857,and disappeared from historical notice after 1860 at which time she was raising a family in San Francisco.

Even in Ireland,Mormon missionaries like James Ferguson followed with alarm the social and moral impact of the Steptoe Expedition,including its disruptive departure for California.Ferguson’s biographer,notes that

36 In 1951 Dale L.Morgan offered the following reasons why Steptoe declined the governorship.“He was an officer in a career service,from which he would have had to resign to accept the governorship. That governorship would continue only during the pleasure of the President,and Pierce’s term was already half run.Politically speaking,if his ambitions were political,a territorial governorship was a dead end;historically such appointments were employed for paying political debts,and no man with a future,or ambitions to have one,was eager to take on such a job….”Dale L.Morgan to Madeline R.McQuown, September 11,1951,McQuown Collection,Marriott Library,University of Utah.

37 Heber C.Kimball to William Kimball,May 29,1855,Journal History,LDS Church History Library.

38 Thomas Stayner to Brigham Young,February 26,1856;Brigham Young to Elizabeth Stayner,March 1,1856;and Brigham Young to Orson Hyde,March 3,1856,all in Brigham Young Collection,LDS Church History Library.

“Upon learning that a friend’s wife had left the territory with Lt.Col. Edward Steptoe’s soldiers,he surmised that she had been ‘seduced,no doubt by those hell hounds ...Their very look is a basilisk’s39 that devours and kills,and the air they breathe is poisonous.Oh,my Jane,won’t you teach my little ones to hate them and walk and talk with none but those that God allows.’”40

With all of their concern about the army’s behavior and disruptive departure,what Mormon leaders probably did not realize was the intensity of Colonel Steptoe’s own anxiety over the collapse of Mormon-military relations.Once out of Salt Lake City and en route to California,Steptoe confessed to the army’s adjutant general in Washington,“I am highly gratified at being able so early to leave this city for the growing ill-feeling of the inhabitants towards the troops was fully reciprocated by the latter—gave me constant uneasiness.A street riot some 4 mo ago in which more than 100 men on each side were engaged.I have not felt assured of quiet for a single moment.”41

Left behind in Salt Lake City was Steptoe’s undoubtedly nervous quartermaster,Capt.Rufus Ingalls.After several days of legal maneuvering and the payment of an enormous legal fee,Ingalls wriggled out of the charge of attempting to abduct Miss Nowell.In the process he rendered an abject written apology to the girl’s mother in which he commented,“...your daughter returns to you as pure in every respect as when she left the City.”42 Free of his legal entanglements,Ingalls immediately left Salt Lake City on the northern route and caught up with Steptoe’s command outside Carson Valley,as did coincidentally Apostle Orson Hyde.There—in Steptoe’s camp —Ingalls slapped Hyde and drew a revolver on him in retaliation for comments the apostle had made in Salt Lake City over the Rachel Nowell affair.Only the colonel’s intervention prevented bloodshed.43

The civil affairs havoc created by the Steptoe Expedition during 18541855 had multiple by-products,including perhaps the onset of the Mormon Reformation in 1856.Most importantly,it was a watershed that prompted a reappraisal by Brigham Young of Utah’s relationship with the central government.The result was his aggressive,outspoken rejection of what he considered the most objectionable (colonial) aspects of the American territorial system.44 Perhaps,most ominously,the deteriorating

39 A mythological reptile whose gaze was spellbinding and whose breath was fatal.

40 Will Bagley, “A Bright,Rising Star”:A Brief Life and a Letter of James Ferguson ... (Spokane:The Arthur H.Clark Co.,2000),17.Ferguson – soon to be the Nauvoo Legion’s adjutant general – was writing to his Utah wife,Jane R.Ferguson.

41 Steptoe to Cooper,April 25,1855.Morgan research notes,McQuown Collection,Marriot Library, University of Utah.

42 Capt.Rufus Ingalls to Nancy F.H.Butterfield,April 17,1855,Brigham Young Collection,LDS Church History Library.

43 Orson Hyde to Brigham Young,June 19,1855, ibid

44 One manifestation of this reappraisal was Brigham Young’s extraordinary day-long,two-part discourse of February 18,1855,aptly titled “The Constitution and Government of the United States –

SEX, SUBALTERNS, ANDSTEPTOE

relationship with Washington brought with it a determination by Young to bar U.S.troops from re-entering Utah because of their inevitable proximity to Mormon women.

By the time Col.Steptoe’s detachment had left the Salt Lake Valley for California in the spring of 1855,this attitude about the army had gelled in Young’s mind,although he expected the federal government to try to garrison Utah soon,perhaps as early as that fall.Later in September Young was still so enraged that he told two visiting Europeans that Judge Kinney had “...aided the troops of Colonel Steptoe in carrying off women belonging to the Saints.In this forcible abduction the conduct of the American officers,he said,was considered so abominable,that were they to return to the Salt Lake,war would immediately be declared against them;or if fresh troops were to come,the inhabitants would hold no communication with them,either in the way of social intercourse or trade.”45 The Brooklyn Daily Eagle’s editor found Mormon rage over the conduct of Steptoe’s troops to be amusing rather than the harbinger of future conflict that it was:

The Mormon Imposter Brigham Young,complains very bitterly of the troops who were quartered at Utah last winter.It appears that they created quite a rebellion among the women,and when they left for California,carried off a number with them. Brigham vows vengeance an death to all who shall in future make any such demonstration towards his female flock.The President had better send a regiment out there with instructions to court the women.It would very soon break up that nest.Get the women away and the men would not stay long.46

This prospective prohibition on any further U.S.Army presence in Utah was a highly provocative position for a federally sworn American territorial governor.Nonetheless,it was the stance that Governor Young chose beginning in the summer of 1855.It is interesting that Young chose to channel his views on this matter primarily through months of volcanic Sunday discourses rather than to lodge a vigorous formal protest over troop misconduct with Secretary of War Jefferson Davis.On other serious matters,including sexual misconduct,Young had complained to Washington in the past and would continue to do so in the future.But with respect to the Steptoe Expedition,he was officially silent.

The closest thing to a Mormon protest over the conduct of Steptoe’s detachment was a detailed and largely accurate recitation of what had taken place during the winter of 1854-1855 that appeared in the church’s

Rights and Policy of the Latter-day Saints,” Journal of Discourses,2:170-78.Later published in pamphlet form,this sermon is now a collector’s item.See copy in Collection of Western Americana,Beinecke Library,Yale University.

45 See Brigham Young to John Taylor,July 25,1855,Taylor Family Collection,Marriott Library, University of Utah;Jules Remy and Julius Brenchley, A Journey to Great-Salt-Lake City,2 vols.(London:W. Jeffs,1861) I:206-7.For speculation by Steptoe as to a future army garrison for Utah,see Edward Steptoe (New York) to Elias Blackburn (Provo),November 3,1855,Brigham Young Collection,LDS Church History Library.The broader context for this issue is discussed in MacKinnon, At Sword’s Point,Part 1:A Documentary History of the Utah War to 1858 (Norman:The Arthur H.Clark Co.,2008),49-52.

46 Editorial, Brooklyn Daily Eagle (New York),September 12,1855.

Manhattan newspaper.On July 14,1855, The Mormon published a long pseudonymous letter written in Salt Lake City on April 29 by “C.D.”“C.D.”was probably a Mormon insider,if not leader,rather than an itinerant non-Mormon New Yorker who just happened to have wintered over in Salt Lake City.47 For all of its verve,“C.D.’s”letter was, nonetheless,an obscure compilation of disruptive behavior published in an infrequently read newspaper;it was no substitute for a direct presentation of a territorial governor’s views to the War Department.

Perhaps the governor kept his own counsel in the Steptoe matter because he was embarrassed as well as enraged that his own family was involved.Compounding these emotions was the sensitivity over the tenuous nature of his gubernatorial continuance as well as perhaps his awareness of Eastern disapproval of Mormon marriage practices if not sexual behavior.Because Brigham Young did not protest to Washington about what he considered to be army misconduct in Salt Lake City,the War Department remained oblivious to the reception awaiting the next military detachment sent to Utah.

In the short run,this lack of insight by Washington officials precluded a judicious assessment of the biases inherent in the highly anti-Mormon reports sent up the chain of command by both Lieut.Mowry and Capt. Ingalls from California in 1855.That both officers had axes to grind through such reports—along with some astute observations—was lost on senior leaders in Washington.48 Longer term,it also meant that President Buchanan,Secretary of War Floyd,and General Winfield Scott initiated the Utah Expedition two years later without any clear understanding of Brigham Young’s probable reaction to the unannounced approach

47 “C.D.”(Salt Lake City) to the Editor (New York),April 29,1855,“Salt Lake Correspondence,” The Mormon,July 14,1855,3/3-5.

48 See Capt.Rufus Ingalls to Brevet Maj.Gen.Thomas S.Jesup,August 25,1855 in David A.White, comp., News of the Plains and Rockies 1803-1865,vol.5 Later Explorers,1847-1865 (Spokane:Arthur H. Clark Co.,1998),288-301;Lynn R.Bailey,“Lt.Sylvester Mowry’s Report on His March in 1855 from Salt Lake City to Fort Tejon,” Arizona and the West 7 (Winter 1965):329-46.

SEX, SUBALTERNS, ANDSTEPTOE

of twenty-five hundred troops and several times as many civilian camp followers.Small wonder then,that Secretary of War Floyd grew queasy after he had launched the Utah Expedition in July 1857.He sent a confidential agent to the expedition’s commander in Kansas to ask such fundamental but un-probed questions as,“What is likely to be the reception the troops will meet with in Utah?”49

The Utah Expedition’s initial commander,Brevet Brig.Gen.William S. Harney,understood the volatility of such a situation.Having earlier fathered an illegitimate daughter while on duty in isolated Wisconsin Territory and in the process of conceiving another while stationed at Fort Leavenworth during 1857,he urged the War Department to delay the push into Utah until the spring of 1858.Harney did so partly because “...the close proximity of our men to the Mormon women that a winter’s residence in Utah would necessitate,could only be injurious to discipline and might be productive of disaster.”50

As Elder Samuel W.Richards traveled eastward across the plains in August 1857 on a mission to brief Thomas L.Kane in Philadelphia and then the leaders of the British Mission in Liverpool on Mormon war plans, he passed through the U.S.Army garrison at Fort Kearny,Nebraska Territory.There he encountered behavior among the troops ordered to Utah that confirmed Brigham Young’s worst apprehensions:

The soldiers were in very high glee at the idea of wintering sumptuously in Utah, where,as the [Irish] Paddy said,“the women are as thick as blackberries,”and it was a great wonder to them what Brigham Young would say to them with his wives parading the streets of Great Salt Lake City.Every dirty,foul-mouthed Dutchman [German] and Irishman,of which many of the troops were composed,fully expected some “Mormon”woman would jump into his arms upon his arrival in Utah ...the information we received at this point was of the most interesting character to such as have families in Utah....51

Such undisciplined barracks and campfire talk of rape,plunder,and lynchings—promptly reported to Brigham Young by multiple agents in addition to Elder Richards—all but guaranteed significant Mormon anxiety and a stiffening of Mormon resistance during the summer of 1857. Here was a dynamic as costly and tragic as it was avoidable. With the approach of an army expedition more than twenty times the size of Col.Steptoe’s detachment,Brigham Young feared not only a repetition of social adventures among Mormon women by individual officers but

49 Secretary of War John B.Floyd to Maj.Ben McCulloch,July 8,1857,Records of the Secretary of War,Letters Sent,Record Group 107,National Archives,Washington.

50 The circumstances surrounding the birth of Harney’s illegitimate daughters are discussed in George Rollie Adams, General William S.Harney:Prince of Dragoons (Lincoln:University of Nebraska Press,2001), 36;John D.Rutledge to William P.MacKinnon,email,February 13,2003;“My Relationship to General Harney,”http:// homepage.mac.com/ wieganbr/Harneyrelationship.html (accessed March 26,2002). William S.Harney (Fort Leavenworth) to John B.Floyd,June 7,1857,Records of Adjt.Gen.’s Office, Letters Received,Record Group 94,National Archives,Washington.

51 Samuel W.Richards (Liverpool) to Orson Pratt,October 4,1857,“Latest from Utah,” Millennial Star (Liverpool),Vol.19 no.42 (October 17,1857):668-71.

the potentially uncontrolled depredations of large bodies of enlisted men and teamsters,the campfollowers whom Chief Justice Eckels described to a U.S.Senator as “St.Louis wharf rats.”Although Young’s concerns may have been extreme,they were not groundless.

But it was the camp followers more than the troops whom Brigham Young dreaded.After spending nearly a week with the governor in Salt Lake City during early September 1857,U.S.Army Capt.Stewart Van Vliet reported to the War Department that Young “...had no objection to the troops themselves entering the Territory;but if they allowed them to do so, it would be opening the door for the entrance of the rabble from the frontiers,who would,as in former times,persecute and annoy them.”52 On September 15,1857,the day after Captain Van Vliet left Salt Lake City to return to Fort Leavenworth,Young took formal action to bar the U.S.Army from Utah.In a proclamation that described the Utah Expedition and its camp followers as “a hostile force ...an armed mercenary mob,”Young decreed martial law and forbade “All armed forces of every description from coming into this Territory under any pretence whatever.”Although the governor did not mention Mormon women explicitly,he partially justified his decree in terms of “Our duty to ourselves—to our families....”53

As the fall wore on and the Utah Expedition approached Fort Bridger— the point beyond which Brigham Young and Lieut.Gen.Daniel H.Wells authorized the use of lethal force against the army—Wells described their adversary:

We trust therefore if it comes to a crisis to give a good account of it,but withal our trust is in the Lord of Hosts. ...[The brethren] seem to feel well[,] only a little chagrined at the slow movement of the enemy,but I feel that this is all right.I would rather lie in their path ten or twenty years,thereby blocking up their way than let them enter our peaceful city,or settlements with the train of Hell which follows after and is already in their midst.54

With the Utah Expedition snowed in for the winter at Fort Bridger, Nauvoo Legion Major Seth M.Blair sought help from his old comrade-inarms from the Texas Revolution,U.S.Senator Sam Houston.To Houston, Blair sent a long,florid letter on December 1 constituting a litany of Mormon complaints about the U.S.Government and its army.Among them was anxiety over the safety of Mormon women:

...we are cur sed,as dogs we are to be hung! our wives ravished by the mercenary soldiers under the stars and stripes,our daughters seduced by the United States officers ...The truth,we believe,is this—to carry out a filibustering spirit – [the government is] holding out as a reward to the United States soldiers,alias a Dutch,Irish,Portugese, Frank [German] immigration,the privilege of satiating their fiendish natures on our inoffensive and innocent wives and daughters ... 55

52

Capt.Stewart Van Vliet (Washington) to Secretary of War John B.Floyd,November 20,1857,U.S., Secretary of War, Report of the Secretary of War,35th Cong.,1st Sess.,1857-58,Senate Ex.Doc.11,38.

53 Proclamation of Gov.Brigham Young,September 15,1857, ibid.,32-33.

54 Daniel H.Wells (Echo Canyon) to Brigham Young,November 21,1857,Brigham Young Collection, LDS Church History Library.

SEX, SUBALTERNS, ANDSTEPTOE

Two days after Major Blair wrote to Senator Houston,an American Mormon serving in the British Mission,wrote pseudonymously as “B”to address the same subject.He predicted “scenes of rapine and plunder”as U.S.troops sought to “...ravish with impunity our wives and daughters, scattering pollution,disease,moral degradation and death in their train....”56

And so the lessons in leadership and civil affairs sensitivities that should have flowed from the earlier Steptoe Expedition went unlearned with lamentable consequences during the early stages of the Utah War.It was a conflict during which Capt.Rufus Ingalls gratuitously offered from his post on the Columbia River a long memorandum setting forth the most effective route by which to invade Utah Territory from the Pacific Coast.He did so asserting that he was no friend of the Mormons and that he had no desire to return to Utah Territory.There is no sign that anyone in the army’s hierarchy in San Francisco or Washington during the Utah War had the perspective to view Ingalls’suggestions as anything other than the selfless,professional inputs of an energetic,self-starting army quartermaster.57

Memory of the affronts and embarrassments associated with the Steptoe Expedition troubled Brigham Young even three years later in the midst of the Utah War.On April 16,1858,as Young implemented the move south of the Latter-day Saints and contemplated his pending negotiations with Utah’s new governor,Alfred Cumming,and Thomas L.Kane,he took time to visit the Church Historian’s office.There he recited a recent dream,a nightmare that featured Col.Albert Sidney Johnston,whom he had never met,as well as his old nemesis Lieut.Sylvester Mowry,who was not even in the army or Utah at that point.It was a dream in which Johnston and Mowry fired five or six shots at Young after Mowry asserted “...its my privilege to kill Brigham Young.”58

Notwithstanding his desire to avoid the place,Rufus Ingalls did indeed return to Utah.He did so in 1866 as a major general and the army’s deputy

55 Seth M.Blair (Salt Lake City) to Sam Houston (Washington),December 1,1857,“The Mormon Question,” New YorkHerald,March 2,1858,1/4-5.

56 Letter from “B”(Southampton,England),December 3,1857,“A Mormon Letter.An American Mormon on a Mission in England Feels Bad – Is Ready for a Fight or a Life in the Mountains,a la Nimrod ...Interesting Intelligence About Utah and the Mormons,” New York Herald,January 24,1858, 1/4-6,2/1-6.

57 Capt.Rufus Ingalls (Fort Vancouver,Washington Territory),memorandum for Lieut.Col.Thomas Swords (San Francisco),December 29,1857,Collection of Western Americana,Beinecke Library,Yale University.

58 Entry for April 16,1858,Historian’s Office Journal,1844-1997,LDS Church History Library. Sylvester Mowry died in London in 1871 and was buried in Providence,Rhode Island,after a colorful post-army career as a developer of a silver mine,as a prime mover in the early 1860s movement to carve the Arizona district out of western New Mexico Territory,as a Confederate sympathizer during the Civil War,and as a rake in San Francisco social circles.Historian B.Sacks,who dubbed Mowry a “flamboyant voluptuary,”summed up his career and character in “Sylvester Mowry:Artilleryman,Libertine, Entrepreneur,” The American West ,1 (Summer 1964):14-24,79.Col.Steptoe,while in Washington Territory in 1858,suffered one of the army’s most disastrous defeats of the Indian war campaigns,retired with damaged reputation in November 1861,and died in July 1865.

quartermaster general,having been sent there by his former West Point roommate Gen.Ulysses S.Grant.Ingalls’assignment was to assess a conflict between Gen.Patrick Connor and one of his quartermaster officers at Fort Douglas.Because Ingalls came out in opposition to Connor,Brigham Young’s bitter enemy,there are signs that he had several cordial meetings with President Young during that visit.In his report,Ingalls,understandably, ignored his own past contribution to federal-Mormon controversy,yet made the amazing comment that “many vile,false and malignant things had been reported to the nation about the Mormons.”Even more surprising was President Young’s 1866 assurance to Ingalls,“I shall be pleased to hear from you ...and shall be happy also to see you here again....”59 It is tempting to consider how much of Rufus Ingalls’decisions and behavior on this trip to Utah were rooted in an embarrassed recollection that eleven years earlier he had written to the irate mother of a thirteen-year-old Mormon girl,“I beg to pledge you in my word of honor ...that your daughter returns to you as pure in every respect as when she left the City.” 60 Significantly,as Young and Ingalls met in 1866,that tell-tale letter rested not in the private possessions of Rachel Nowell’s family but rather in Brigham Young’s office files.

59 Brigham D.Madsen, Glory Hunter:A Biography of Patrick Edward Connor (Salt Lake City:University of Utah Press,1990),164-65;Brigham Young to Rufus Ingalls,September 28,1866,Brigham Young Collection,LDS Church History Library.Interestingly,as Young’s son,Willard,entered West Point in 1871, the father asked Gen.Ingalls to serve as a sort of mentor.After Willard graduated and was commissioned, Brigham Young continued to believe that “...Gen’l Ingalls’kindly feelings and interest will be of great benefit and encouragement to Willard in his future course in our nation’s army.”Young to Ingalls,May 20, 1871,and Young to Ben Holladay,July 27,1875,Brigham Young Collection,LDSChurch History Library. Ingalls died a bachelor in 1893.Rachel Nowell’s fate after 1855 is unknown.

60 Rufus Ingalls to Nancy F.H.Butterfield,April 17,1855,Collection of Western Americana,Beinecke Library,Yale University.

Slouching Towards Slaterville:Joseph Morris’s Wide Swath in Weber County

And what rough beast,its hour come round at last,Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

– William Butler Yeats,“The Second Coming”

Early in the summer of 1861,on the cusp of the American Civil War,the Utah correspondent of the New York Times announced that a “new prophet,”Joseph Morris,was claiming spiritual empowerment “far beyond the attainment of the original [Mormon founder Joseph] Smith or of the living Brigham [Young].”Morris prophesied “the early destruction,by ‘judgments,’of the incorrigible portion of the Mormon community,” after which he and his followers would inter-

Former Slaterville residents and Morrisites Agnes Cowan Bull (seated,far left) andWilliam Field Bull (white beard) with eleven of their twelve children,Mottsville, Nevada,c.1889.

Val Holley,a law librarian in Washington,D.C.,is a sixth-generation native of Slaterville.

vene and occupy Salt Lake City.A steady stream of converts,called Morrisites,could be seen driving their wagons,herds,and flocks to Morris’s headquarters,the old Kington Fort at South Weber,Davis County.With the newly-formed Confederate States of America in mind,the Times correspondent apprehended that “secession must be infectious.”1

Reports of the Morrisites’unusual beliefs animated the Times’ dispatches from Utah.They consecrated their wagons,animals,and food to be shared equally among themselves,making Kington Fort “a tolerably good place for the poor.”Because they were sure that the Second Coming of Christ was imminent and that the spoils of Salt Lake City would fall into their hands,they planted no crops.Most ominously,they maintained a supply of firearms in anticipation of being attacked by the Mormons.2

Conflicts between the Morrisites and their neighbors and local law officers led ultimately to the “Morrisite War”in June 1862.A cannon-bearing militia marched to Kington Fort to enforce judicial writs previously ignored by Morris and his advisers.After three days of siege and exchange of gunfire,in which Morris,a few of his followers,and two militiamen were killed,the Morrisites surrendered and their able-bodied men were taken to Salt Lake City as prisoners.At their March 1863 trial,seven Morrisite defendants were convicted of murder while the rest were fined for armed resistance to the law,but three days later the non-Mormon governor,Stephen Harding,acting on a petition from Utah’s non-Mormon citizens,pardoned them all.3 Soon after,the majority of the Morrisites quit Utah for Carson Valley,Nevada,or Soda Springs,Idaho.

While the Morrisite War has long fascinated Utah history buffs,many aspects of the Morrisite experience remain obscure.The site of Morris’s first success as a spiritual leader,Slaterville in Weber County,was always overshadowed by the events at Kington Fort,but it merits a closer look because it spawned the highest concentration of Morrisite converts in Utah territory.Moreover,a smaller but equally cohesive cluster of Morrisites in the neighboring town of Marriott had been completely forgotten until now.Thanks to the digitization of nineteenth-century newspaper collections,much enlightenment on Morris and his followers in Slaterville and Marriott has resurfaced.This article focuses on the individual identities, histories,and motivations of these forgotten persons as a means of understanding what made the Morrisite movement possible.4

1 New York Times,July 16,August 16,1861.I am persuaded,from genealogical records and contemporary references to founder Robert Kington in the Deseret News,that Kington,not Kingston,was the fort’s correct name.

2 New York Times,June 25,July 7,1862.

3 Stephen Harding’s only stated rationale was “divers good causes me thereto moving.”See Deseret News,April 1,1863.

4 C.LeRoy Anderson, Joseph Morris and the Saga of the Morrisites (Logan:Utah State University Press, 1988) is the definitive study of Joseph Morris and the Morrisites.See also G.M.Howard,“Men,Motives, and Misunderstandings:A New Look at the Morrisite War of 1862,” Utah Historical Quarterly 44 (1976):

Joseph Morris,an English convert to Mormonism,was destined to become Utah’s gadfly-in-chief from the moment he set foot in the territory in 1853.His obsession with spiritual conundrums alienated his associates and crippled his capacity to support himself.Living nomadically in Ephraim,American Fork,Provo,and Salt Lake City,he tried to convince fellow Mormons that their church had gone astray,which kept him in constant trouble with local Mormon leaders.Frustrated at their rejection, Morris began writing to Brigham Young,accusing him of greed and corruption and claiming divine authority to rescue the church.Young apparently read Morris’s letters and penciled comments such as “He’s weak minded”in the margins.Perhaps Young had been told of Morris’s injuries in coal mine explosions as a teenager in England,which Morris’s brother claimed left him “visionary and flighty in his mind ever after.”5

While Morris never recorded the date or reason for his move to Slaterville,he may have sensed that,like Yeats’rough beast,“its hour come round at last,”his prophetic career would kindle in Weber County. According to an account in Tullidge’s Quarterly Magazine,he boarded with Thomas Virgo,one of Slaterville’s earliest settlers,whose home was on the south side of present-day Pioneer Road in the 2500 block,“for about a period of two years.”Virgo was also English and about six years younger than Morris.

The parallels between Virgo and Morris are,to say the least,uncanny. Virgo,another injured veteran of the English coal mines,“became very restless and noisy and troublesome to his neighbors,at times a religious maniac.[Virgo’s] influences seemed to affect Morris,[who] grew very indolent and indisposed to labor.”Morris,in turn,began telling people in Slaterville and Marriott that he was a revelator and had been “raised up to represent Moses for the seventh time.”6

When harvest season arrived,Morris’s revelations suddenly multiplied rapidly,perhaps a harbinger of the Morrisite trait of eschewing farming in favor of prayer and cogitation.While he had recorded only three revelations previously,twenty-two more would come between August 17 and November 13,1860.The first of these called Brigham Young and his counselors the “rebellious shepherds of my flock”and said they “turned a deaf ear”to God’s will,prompting “the cries of my people [to] come up into my

112-32;David Bigler, Forgotten Kingdom (Logan:Utah State University Press,1998),208-17;Gordon Q. Jones, Pioneer Forts in Davis County,Utah (private printing,1998).H.Orvil Holley,“History and Effect of Apostasy on a Small Mormon Community”(M.A.thesis,Brigham Young University,1966),was the first study of the Morrisites in Slaterville,but it did not examine individual Morrisites or the links between them.

5 Anderson, Joseph Morris,14;George Morris,“Autobiography,”Harold B.Lee Library,Brigham Young University,122.

6 “History of Weber County,” Tullidge’s Quarterly Magazine 2 (1883):622.The Tullidge’s account,never before cited in Morrisite studies,mistakenly attributed this narrative of Morris and Virgo to the town of Lynne,not Slaterville.Thomas and Ann Virgo were counted in the 1860 census but Joseph Morris was not. Their location is given in Jerome Wheeler, History of Slaterville (private printing,1978),34.

ears for redress.”7 If Morris disseminated it among the locals,it could have resonated with any who questioned Young’s authority and leadership.

Another Slaterville revelation called for Brigham Young to abdicate the presidency of the Mormon church and serve as first counselor to Morris, and for John Banks,a renowned missionary and orator,to become Morris’s second counselor.Reinforcing this notion was the appearance of the Great Comet of 1860 on the northwestern horizon early in the summer,which Morris interpreted as “the seventh star spoken of by John the Revelator, representing the seventh angel that has come forth.”Morris believed himself to be the seventh angel and the comet a sign of his imminent ascension as head of the church.8

The breakthrough in Morris’s crusade came one day as he mowed hay with a farmer called Father Jones.Morris asked,“Do you know who I am?”Jones answered,“Yes,I do know that you are a prophet of God,for the spirit has told me so.”Jones’s testimony reinforced Morris’s dogged convictions.Mother Jones,the farmer’s wife,did not at first approve of Morris’s teachings,but she liked him and helped him to avoid the enemies who were “constantly on his track.”9

Beginning with Father Jones,Morris made significant inroads among the people.“Several otherwise good men,”noted Tullidge’s,“yielded to this influence of darkness,and became followers of Morris.”10 They were clustered in Slaterville’s west end along present-day Pioneer Road and in northwestern Marriott along present-day 700 South Street.No mysterious common thread among them has been found to explain their collective alacrity for Morris.A few pairs of these Morrisite families were related,while others had sailed to America on the same ships or crossed the plains in the same companies,but otherwise,few knew each other before moving to Slaterville or Marriott.The majority were English-speaking immigrants,although the most obvious connection between the clusters was Italian Piedmontese siblings,Slaterville’s Catherine Cardon Byrne and Marriott’s John Cardon.11

Once the groundswell for Morris became apparent to local Mormon officials,they no longer welcomed his presence. Tullidge’s reported, “R[obert] E.Baird [a local captain in the territorial militia],under the direction of [Slaterville Branch] President Thomas Richardson,advised

7 Joseph Morris, The Spirit Prevails:Containing the Revelations,Articles,and Letters Written by Joseph Morris (San Francisco:George S.Dove and Company,1886),16.

8 Ibid.,19.

9 Ibid.,3-4.It is not clear whether “Father Jones”was Slaterville’s William Jones or Marriott’s John E. Jones (later a Morrisite apostle).

10

“History of Weber County,” Tullidge’s Quarterly Magazine, 622.No known source suggests the extent to which Morris participated in Slaterville Branch meetings and business (if at all) or describes the specifics of Morris’s interactions with Slaterville people.We learn only that “he had made some warm friends.”See John R.Eardley, Gems of Inspiration:A Collection of Sublime Thoughts by Modern Prophets (San Francisco:Joseph A.Dove,Printer,1899),15.

11 The Cardon siblings were great-aunt and great-uncle to Utah first lady Lucybeth Cardon Rampton (1914-2004).

[Morris],for the peace and good order of the people, to leave the settlement.”

Morris at first ignored the edict,but his nonchalance made Mother Jones nervous and she nagged him until he packed his belongings into a small bundle and departed.Interestingly, Morris never mentioned Baird or Richardson in connection with his expulsion from Slaterville. Writing to Brigham Young on November 20,1860,he charged that “Chancy [ sic ] West has driven me away from the place which I was staying at and now I have no place to go.”12

Chauncey Walker West of Ogden was the Mormon presiding bishop of Weber County,responsible for managing its tithing office.Bishop West maintained a most active oversight among the county’s congregations.With Weber Stake president Lorin Farr,he had supervised Slaterville’s organization as a branch of the church on September 10,1858.His immersion in the minutiae of stake business—blessing babies,performing marriages,brokering divorces—is clear from frequent references to him in diaries and minutes.Authorized biographies emphasize West’s reputation for “unbounded”hospitality and as “friend of the poor.”13

Former Morrisite apostle John Cook,who continued to live in Utah after the Morrisite War,visits daughter Rebecca Cook Park, granddaughter Maragaretta Park Dressler (standing),and greatgrandson Fred Dressler of Mottsville,Nevada,c.1903.

But when it came to dissenters in general and Morrisites in particular,

12 Morris, The Spirit Prevails,4;Morris to Young quoted in Anderson, Joseph Morris,52.

13 Edwin Ward Smout Journal,September 10,1858,July 15,1860,Huntington Library,San Marino, California; Deseret News,November 17,1860;Richard W.Sadler and Richard C.Roberts, Weber County’s History (Ogden:Weber County Commission,2000),152;Franklin L.West, Chauncey W.West,Pioneer, Churchman (Salt Lake City:Publishers Press,1965),24-25;Edward W.Tullidge, Tullidge’s Histories,(Vol.II) Containing the History of All the Northern,Eastern and Western Counties of Utah;Also the Counties of Southern Idaho.With a Biographical Appendix of Representative Men and Founders of the Cities and Counties;Also a Commercial Supplement,Historical (Salt Lake City:Juvenile Instructor Press,1889),Biographical Appendix 67.

West’s policy was zero tolerance.During their time at Kington Fort,the Morrisites appealed to West,Ogden’s acting justice of the peace,to intervene against ruffians’frequent stealing of their cattle,but West said he could not help them because “there was no law for apostates.”In 1863,West would excommunicate a North Ogden man who had allowed a Morrisite in his home for half an hour.West declared,“[Brigham Young’s] counsel at conference was to cut off all who harbored these damned scamps in their houses.”14

Presumably,West felt strongly that Morris must go.He and Morris might well have collided but for the unforeseen intervention of an act of God.As related in an 1867 letter from “An Old Mormon”to Salt Lake City’s Union Vedette,Morris “was driven from [Slaterville] by his persecutors,who were after him with their guns;but a heavy hurricane caused them to seek shelter, and he made his escape.”15 According to the Deseret News,a “terrible storm” of thirty-six hours’duration struck northern Utah beginning the night of November 15,1860,forcing West to abandon all previous engagements.An Ogden correspondent wrote that the storm nearly destroyed that city’s tithing office,but “thro’the timely exertion of Bishop West,”who directed the securing of its roof with a strong cable rope,the building was saved.16

Trudging unscathed towards Salt Lake City,Morris encountered John Cook of South Weber,Davis County.Cook regarded Morris’s claims favorably and suggested that his brother Richard,bishop of the South Weber Ward,might also be receptive.The Cook brothers offered Morris the security and comfort to which he felt entitled,freeing him from the need to importune Brigham Young and facilitating his altered plan to establish his own church in lieu of ruling the Mormons.In South Weber,Morris quickly attracted at least sixteen followers.

While the “Morris problem”in Weber County had been handled locally, Morris’s success in Davis County,entailing the spiritual abduction of a bishop,genuinely alarmed the Mormon general authorities in Salt Lake City.Two apostles,Wilford Woodruff and John Taylor,notified Bishop Cook that they would “regulate”his ward on Monday,February 11,1861.From a previous appointment in Ogden,Woodruff and Taylor were chauffeured to South Weber by Chauncey West in his horse-drawn sleigh.17

14 Eardley, Gems of Inspiration,19; History of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints,6 vols.(Independence:Herald House,1896),3:371.Adulation for West was not universal.Ebenezer Clawson Richardson,a Mormon pioneer of Weber County,filed a motion to prevent West from testifying in an 1860 horse-stealing case because “the people over which he presides as Bishop is morrally and religiously bound to acknowledge his bishop C.W.West’s word as law and gospel,there for the parties now arrainged do not feel safe to go to tryal [sic] under these auspices.”See Dale L.Morgan, History of Ogden (Ogden: Ogden City Commission,1940),45-46.

15 Union Vedette,July 14,1867.

16 Deseret News,November 28,1860.

17 Susan Staker,ed., Waiting for World’s End:The Diaries of Wilford Woodruff (Salt Lake City:Signature Books,1993),259;Sadler and Roberts, Weber County’s History,149.That Brigham Young himself was mon-

The apostles had somehow collected abundant and intimate intelligence on Morris before the meeting,noting that he had been excommunicated twice for adultery and had spent the previous year with the wife of a “crazy”man.Woodruff admonished Morris that he was neither a prophet of God nor the seventh angel.“I told Morris,”wrote Woodruff,“that when the 7th Angel Came to Earth he would not spend the first year of his Mission with a woman whose Husband was Crazy & Commit Adultery with Her … Morris Denyed of Being with that woman.”18

The only adult male categorized as insane in the 1860 census of Weber or Davis counties was Thomas Virgo.Most likely Virgo’s wife,Ann,was the woman to whom Woodruff referred.

Morris’s sixteen South Weber adherents were summarily excommunicated at the meeting’s conclusion,many of them polygamous Cook brothers and their multiple wives.Three months had elapsed since Morris’s ouster from Slaterville,where his sympathizers were apparently enjoying temporary forbearance.But no sooner did news of the South Weber meeting reach Slaterville than the branch conducted its first three excommunications. Overall,at least twenty-nine Slaterville Morrisites would be cut off in monthly Sunday sessions through June,followed by three more in September.For Marriott,excommunication records have not been found, but at least six Marriott families and one married man would unite with the Morrisites at Kington Fort.19

Among those excommunicated in Slaterville were Charlotte Dinwoodey Lee,great-aunt of future Mormon apostle Henry Dinwoodey Moyle,and her husband Andrew;Peter Lamb McCue,a former bishop of the Salt Lake

itoring the developments is indicated in the New York Times of July 16,1861:“Brigham considered it expedient to have a long string of the names of the [Morrisite] backsliders read over in the public meeting Sunday.”

18 Staker, Waiting for World’s End,260.

19 Record of Members,Slaterville Ward,LDS Church History Library and Archives,Salt Lake City, Utah.(Hereinafter cited as LDS Church History Library.) “[Morrisite] Roll of Membership”(San Francisco:George S.Dove and Company,1886),Library of Congress.

The Marriott Morrisites were Joseph and Esther Astle,Charles and Jane Higham,William and Ann Hill,John E.and Mary Jones,William J.and Ann Jones,and John and Mary Petrie.John Cardon was a Morrisite but his wife,Anna Furrer Cardon,a doctor,testified in 1879 that she had never been a Morrisite.She went to Kington Fort on the final day of the Morrisite War to tend to the wounded.See Ogden Junction,February 26,1879.

The Slaterville Morrisites and dates of excommunication were February 17,1861:William Magee, Jabez Harris,Clarissa Taylor;March 31,1861:Moses Byrne,Catherine Cardon Byrne,James Cowan Sr., William Jones,Rhoda White Jones,and her children William and Hannah White,Winter Hastings,Mary Hastings;April 28,1861:Peter Lamb McCue,Mary McCue,Peter McCue Jr.,Andrew Lee,Charlotte Dinwoodey Lee,Richard Alvy,Sarah Alvy,Sarah McKeachie Magee,Janet Cowan,Sarah White Harris; May 19,1861:William Harris,Mary Ann Baker Bateman;June 9,1861:William Field Bull,Mary Bull, Agnes Cowan Bull,James Cowan Jr.,Priscilla Slater Cowan;September 15,1861:Jens Christian Sorrenson,Mary Sorrenson,Anna Sorrenson.Robert Cowan and Ann Beus Byrne,plural wife of Moses Byrne,were not on the Slaterville Branch’s excommunication list but were on the Morrisite roll of membership.

First Ward,and his wife Mary;and William Magee,a former counselor to McCue,and his wife Sarah.McCue had earlier been president of the Mormon conference in Glasgow,Scotland.20 The Magees were passengers on the ill-fated steamboat Saluda,which exploded while ferrying Mormon immigrants from St.Louis to Kanesville,Iowa,in 1852;both were injured, Sarah seriously so.21

McCue and Magee were not the only Slaterville Morrisites with solid records as faithful Mormons.In 1857 William Field Bull joined seventy other missionaries called to pull handcarts from Utah to the Missouri River to refute negative perception of handcart immigration;from there he continued to Canada to proselytize.Bull,McCue,and James Cowan Jr.used their Mormon priesthood authority to bless babies in the year preceding their excommunications.William Harris blessed his infant daughter, Hannah Rosa,on February 7,1861,only three months before his excommunication.22

In Marriott,the Morrisites included William J.Jones,whose eventual rebellion and imprisonment at Kington Fort were the catalyst for the Morrisite War,and his wife Ann;and John Cardon,who would build Ogden’s first wool carding mill and one of its first molasses mills.23

Some Slaterville and Marriott followers joined Morris at Kington Fort even before the formal organization of his new church on April 6,1861. Among the first six members baptized,confirmed,and ordained that day was Slaterville’s Moses Byrne.Three other Slaterville men,William Magee, Andrew Lee,and William White,were also baptized that day.Marriott’s John E.Jones and Slaterville’s James Cowan Sr.would become Morrisite apostles.In June,William Harris was called as bishop and instructor to the Aaronic priesthood.After both Marriott’s Joseph Astle and Slaterville’s William Jones died in the spring of 1862,Morris produced a consoling revelation explaining that the two men were needed in the spirit world to report on the progress of Morris’s earthly mission.24

When the Morrisite army organized in the spring of 1862,John E.Jones and Andrew Lee became company captains.A few Slaterville and Marriott men,however,appear neither in the army rolls nor in the list of prisoners taken after the Morrisite War.They and their families had already left

20 Andrew Jenson,Manuscript History of the Salt Lake First Ward,LDS Church History Library.In 1845 Wilford Woodruff found the Glasgow conference “in a most encouraging and prosperous condition, under the presidency of our beloved brother Peter Mc.Cue.”See Millennial Star 5 (1845):182.

21 Roberta Childers, Magee Station and the Churchill Chronicles (Reno:Jamison Station Press,1985),1214.Sarah McKeachie was a widow when the Saluda exploded and did not marry Magee until 1853. Magee’s sister Mary and her husband John Mather of Salt Lake City also became Morrisites.

22 Deseret News,June 17,1893;May 2,1896;Slaterville Ward Record of Members,LDS Church History Library.

23 Sadler and Roberts, Weber County’s History,80,110.

24 Richard Young,“The Morrisite War,”Contributor 11 (1890):281.Young misidentified Moses Byrne as “Nathan”and Andrew Lee as “Arthur.”The Harris,Astle,and Jones revelations are in Morris, The Spirit Prevails,101-102;503-505.

Kington Fort,whether out of disillusionment with failed prognostications of the Second Coming or impatience with uncomfortable living conditions.The bolters included the Cowans and Bulls,who were related;the Byrnes and John Cardon,also related;and the Harrises.25

Former Morrisite apostle and Marriott resident John E.Jones with his seven children and an unidentified grandchild,Inyo County,California,c.1878.

The most ominous absence from the army rolls is Marriott’s William J. Jones,who wanted to quit Kington Fort and reclaim the oxen and wagon he had consecrated.But the Morrisite hierarchy denied Jones’s request. After he resorted to subterfuge to seize his property,he and two confederates were captured,shackled,and jailed.26 Territorial Chief Justice John F. Kinney issued a writ of habeas corpus to gain the prisoners’release,but the Morrisite leaders ignored it.Acting governor Frank Fuller then ordered the militia to South Weber to arrest Morris and the other obstinate leaders, triggering the Morrisite War.

25 The Cowans’son John was born March 7,1862,at South Weber.They must have left Kington Fort between that date and the formation of the Morrisite army in the spring.

26 For William J.Jones’s own narrative,see John Banks,“A Document History of the Morrisites” (Thesis,University of Utah,1909),32-39.

age,c.1872.

Among the Morrisite men taken prisoner after the war were eleven from Slaterville and Marriott:Richard Alvy,Charles Higham, William H.Hill,John E.Jones,Andrew Lee, Peter Lamb McCue,Peter McCue Jr.,William Magee,John Petrie,Jens Christian Sorrenson, and William White.Slaterville’s Winter Hastings,who was not arrested but testified for the defense at the March 1863 trial,may have surrendered before the war’s end.27

The ultimate question of what motivated the Morrisites intrigued scholar C.LeRoy Anderson,who asked why they would “forsake their relatively secure life among the Mormons and join a group of outcasts in a ramshackle fort?”28 No document revealing a Weber County Morrisite’s rationale was known to exist until the recent discovery of a remarkable letter in the Birmingham (England) Daily Post of January 17,1863.

The letter was written late in 1862,a few months before the March

27 Deseret News,June 25,1862;April 1,1863.

28 Anderson, Joseph Morris,73.

1863 trial of the Morrisite men.Its anonymous author was one of twenty absentee defendants who had slipped quietly out of Utah soon after their June 1862 arraignment.29 It was published in several British Isles newspapers and the Brooklyn (New York) Eagle of February 6,1863.The author was “a convert to Mormonism,who left the neighborhood of Bristol some ten years ago to join the company of [Latter-day] Saints in Utah.”After a synopsis of the Morrisite War,the author concluded,

Well,we were taken prisoners of war,received a mock examination,and ordered to appear next March to undergo another examination.But a great many will not be there;I shall not,for one.Well,they robbed me of all my means,but I managed to raise three yoke of cattle and a wagon,and now I am safe in California, away from the — Mormons.30

Of the twenty missing defendants,the only one to hail from “the neighborhood of Bristol”was William H.Hill,whose home in Utah had been Marriott.Hill,with wife Ann,sons William and Eleazer,and daughters Elizabeth and Ellen,immigrated to America in 1853 on the ship International and crossed the plains the same year in the Cyrus Wheelock company. “During my stay in the country,”Hill wrote,“I made considerable property. I had eleven cows and other young stock,a pair of mules,and horses and sheep,and plenty of wheat and a good farm.”At Kington Fort,Hill’s sons were musicians in the Morrisite army.Although the sons apparently left Kington Fort before the war,Hill remained to the bitter end,writing, “We fought them until our ammunition was all spent,after which we surrendered,when they rushed in upon us after we had hoisted a flag of truce.”31

Hill achieved agricultural prowess despite deep and private reservations over his decision to come to Utah with his family.

One day in Salt Lake convinced me that the Mormons were not what they were represented to be.I soon found out that the wisest plan was to say nothing,for fear of having my throat cut,which hundreds have had for speaking too freely … I and my neighbors used to meet of a night,and talk of the doings of the Mormons and their dark deeds. We wished that something might take place to bring about a better state of things.32

There was not only general antipathy to top Mormon leaders in Hill’s letter but specific resentment towards an unnamed Mormon emissary with an apparent Weber County connection.

There is a man in London,sent there to gather the poor’s money,to build a temple … Well,the man who is sent to London is a great cattle thief in Utah.When I first knew him,he had neither cow nor horse,and only one wife.Now he has seven wives,and

29 The Deseret News of March 18,1863,listed the absentees,some of whom left “by freight teams.”See Eardley, Gems of Inspiration,31.

30 Birmingham (England) Daily Post,January 17,1863.The letter also appeared in the Caledonian Mercury (Edinburgh,Scotland),January 17,1863;and the Glasgow (Scotland) Herald,January 19,1863,which said it reprinted the letter from the Manchester Guardian

31 Ibid.Originally,the letter was “writ[ten] to a friend.”Whether publication was intended is unknown. Hill’s sons were not listed as prisoners or defendants.

32 Ibid.

claims other men’s property.The time the soldiers came to Utah,some four years ago, this man played a prominent part,with the title of General.I was a ragamuffin soldier at that time.There were some men came in from California,with a large sum of money, to gamble with the soldiers.These men were taken prisoners,examined by the General, their money taken from them,their throats cut,and their bodies floated down the Jordan river.33

William H.Hill and Joseph Morris,it turned out,had a nemesis in common.The “man in London”and General was Chauncey West,serving in 1862 as European mission president.Hill was in the Weber County militia under West’s command,marshaled in 1857 to prevent the U.S. Army’s Utah Expedition from entering the territory through Echo Canyon,and may even have been his neighbor when West first moved to the county in 1855.The ill-fated “men from California”were six gamblers, later called the “Aiken party,”who expected to rendezvous with the army in Utah but were arrested as spies by the militia.Hill’s accusing West of cattle thievery could have stemmed from the perception that West had tolerated the stealing of Morrisites’cattle,or from an 1857 rumor,later printed in the New York Times, that West had goaded the Snake Indians in Weber Valley to steal emigrant trains’cattle.34

As a window into the mind of a Morrisite,the Hill letter may be most significant for what it did not say.Hill praised Richard Cook and John Banks,“able speakers as ever stood before an audience,”but oddly failed to mention Joseph Morris except as collateral damage in the Morrisite War. While Hill did say “a man from Manchester in England,arose,and represented himself to be Brigham Young’s superior … which proved a good opportunity for myself and others to back him up,”he did not think to identify the man as Morris.35 Nor did he cite the seventh angel,the Second Coming,consecrated property,or any other distinct Morrisite concept.

Hill’s indifference to Morris and his theology shows that his chief concerns about life in Utah were not doctrinal but political.Indeed,rather than leaping into uncharted doctrinal waters,the Morrisites were retaining Mormon practices in baptism,confirmation,ordination,greater and lesser priesthoods,divine authority,canonical works,church hierarchy,and even the same date,April 6,of organizing their church.Their objections boiled down to who their governmental leaders should be.

33 Ibid.

34 New York Times,February 4,1858.West was made Brigadier-General on March 2,1858.In 1862 West had five wives,not seven.The bodies of two Aiken party men were dumped not in the Jordan River but in deep springs in Juab County.

Although Hill’s letter was not published in Utah,its existence was known.The journal of William Ajax, a Welsh immigrant to Utah,for May 3,1863,notes:“Wrote a letter for bro.James Lewis to his father-inlaw,containing the account of the attack on the Morrisites in June last,and refutations to certain charges made lately in a certain anonymous letter that has recently appeared through the majority of the British papers.”See http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/upbover:@field(DOCID+ @lit(dia558317)) (Accessed September 6,2006).Any Mormon in the British Isles or Brooklyn could have seen it and alerted the Utah church.

35 Joseph Morris was a native of Burwardsley,Cheshire,but may have once resided in Manchester.

In fact,there had been no means for Utahns so inclined to form a loyal opposition.The New York Times described the dilemma when Utah’s legislature convened late in 1861, observing on one hand much diversity and “vigorous antagonistic talk”among the individual lawmakers,but on the other hand,when it came to action,“these naturally discordant elements have the faculty of unanimity to a surprising degree,almost amounting,at times, to fusion – there being,apparently,not the shadow of an ‘opposition.’”36

In the years immediately preceding Morris’s rise,there had been desultory attempts at a two-party system.The territorial election of August 1858 saw the first votes ever recorded in Salt Lake City for non-Mormon candidates, and the citizens of Green River County (now in Wyoming) elected a nonMormon representative.The following year,a “Gentile convention”at Camp Floyd fielded a slate of candidates for territorial offices.But these pluralistic stirrings,which in any case stood no chance of success,had no connection to Weber County.Thus the new order heralded by Joseph Morris would have appealed to Hill and his neighbors who “wished that something might take place to bring about a better state of things.”37

The Morrisites’saddest fate is our unawareness of who they were,which

36 New York Times,January 3,1862.

37 New York Times,September 6,1858; Valley Tan,August 3,1859.Another useful exposition of Morrisite grievances is the deposition of Abraham Taylor of Salt Lake City in “George R.Maxwell vs.George Q. Cannon,”House of Representatives Miscellaneous Document No.49,43rd Congress,1st Session (1873),20.

is inconsistent with Utah’s tradition of exhaustive human inventory. Historians alphabetize,annotate,and catalog significant sets of persons, whether the Mormon Battalion,future Civil War generals in the Utah Expedition,or plural wives of Brigham Young.Yet the rank-and-file Morrisites’names cannot be found in any readily available historical source, and their lives are not chronicled.

Oral tradition holds that Mormon leaders cursed the Morrisites unto the fourth generation.38 Certainly Brigham Young’s public remarks showed his anger at their affront to his leadership.Speaking in the Salt Lake bowery two weeks after the Morrisite War,Young lambasted the Morrisites’folly and wickedness and proscribed commerce and social intercourse with them.They would be barred from “com[ing] into the congregation of the [Latter-day] Saints,”and Mormon elders could not baptize them.“Let them alone,”Young exhorted,“and let them wait a thousand years and then see what chance [there] will be for them.”39

Mormon treatments of the Kington Fort saga regarded the Morrisites not as individuals but as a degraded underclass.Historian Richard W.Young cited their “obviously enfeebled intellects.”Orson F.Whitney decried their “constant menace”to neighbors and ridiculed as “brilliant”their notions of resistance to the law.B.H.Roberts called them a “deluded people,”having a “fanatical and implacable element.”40

The truth is that each Morrisite,before defecting to Kington Fort,had incurred the same persecution and hardships in service to the Mormon cause as other Utah pioneers,and many future Morrisite men had shivered and starved alongside their fellow militiamen in defending Echo Canyon against the U.S.Army’s Utah Expedition.They sailed on the same ships and crossed the plains in the same companies as the men who discharged cannons and rifles at them.These considerations surprised territorial chief justice John F.Kinney,who told the Morrisite prisoners at their arraignment,“I have been misinformed about you men.You were represented to me as a banditti of low,degraded men – robbers and thieves; but I see before me a class of intelligent men.”41

Ironically,many Morrisites were complicit in their own annalistic disappearance.Although some continued to practice the Morrisite faith,most would feel embarrassment over aligning themselves with Joseph Morris. Very few Morrisites of Marriott and Slaterville ever discussed that portion of their past with their descendants.

Slaterville’s James Cowan Jr.and his wife Priscilla are an apt example.Just

38 Jones, Pioneer Forts in Davis County,31.

39 A.Karl Larson and Katharine Miles Larson,eds., Diary of Charles Lowell Walker,2 vols.,(Logan:Utah State University Press,1980),1:232,cited in Anderson, Joseph Morris,248.

40 Young,“The Morrisite War,”471;Orson F.Whitney, History of Utah,4 vols.(Salt Lake City:George Q.Cannon and Sons,1890-1904),2:51;B.H.Roberts, A Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,6 vols.(Salt Lake City:Church Deseret News Press,1930),5:52.

41 Morris, The Spirit Prevails,8.

weeks after arriving in Utah,James joined apostle Orson Hyde’s 1853 colonizing mission to Fort Supply in present-day Wyoming.He was in the rescue party to the snowbound Martin and Willie handcart companies late in 1856.In 1857 he married Priscilla,whose father,Richard Slater,served in the Mormon Battalion and was Slaterville’s eponymous settler.Later that year James served under Chauncey West in the Echo Canyon campaign. Early in 1860,when several families from Slaterville were called to colonize Franklin in Cache Valley,the Cowans and their two small children pulled up stakes and headed north.42

As Pioneer Day approached,the Cowans and two other families set out for Slaterville to celebrate the holiday with relatives.Near Smithfield on July 23,1860,a group of Indians attacked them,killing one man and shooting James in the chest;the bullet shattered some of his ribs and lodged against his spine.As he recuperated in Smithfield,the pain was so intense that he had to stamp his feet on the ground for relief.Finally a man using a butcher knife gouged out the bullet.The courageous Priscilla collected James’s rib fragments as they were extracted.Within a year of the attack,the Cowans moved to Kington Fort.43

Ultimately,the Cowans recited all of their history to their twelve children with the exception of their Morrisite phase,which they edited out. Their eldest daughter,Annie,did not recall it in her detailed oral history of her parents’pioneer experiences,and their youngest daughter,Nellie,said she never heard of the Morrisites and had no idea why her brother had been born at South Weber in March 1862.44

By the beginning of the twentieth century,in fact,no institutional memory remained in Slaterville or Marriott of the Morrisite excitement. Slaterville’s only known pioneer diarist,Edwin W.Smout,first counselor to branch president Thomas Richardson and thus privy to conversations on the town’s Morrisite situation,wrote nothing about it.No hint of it occurs in The History of Slaterville,whose author,Jerome Wheeler (1883-1963),was aware of the Virgos (his grandparents purchased the Virgo property in 1861) and possessed an otherwise comprehensive sense of the town’s past.

If there was a curse on the Morrisites,the remarkable Park family was apparently immune to it.The Parks never lived in Weber County,but after moving to Carson Valley,Nevada,intermarried with Slaterville’s McCue and Bull families and Marriott’s Hill family.Four generations later,the Parks were among the wealthiest families of Nevada,owning the Park Cattle Company in Douglas County,which in turn owns the land on Lake

42

Deseret News,December 1,1853; Ogden Standard-Examiner,August 19,1934.

43 Deseret News,Aug.1,1860; Ogden Standard-Examiner,August 19,1934.The man who operated on Cowan was Sylvanus Collett,who stood trial for the Aiken murders in 1878.

44 Holley,“History and Effects of Apostasy,”29.Jean Rio Baker and her sons,early Slaterville settlers, also withheld their Utah experiences from their descendants.See Sally Denton, Faith and Betrayal (New York:Knopf,2005),166,168,178.

Tahoe’s south shore beneath the Horizon Casino Resort,MontBleu Resort Casino and Spa,and Harvey’s Lake Tahoe parking garage.45

In 2001,the Nevada legislature passed a resolution honoring the late W. Brooks Park,founder of the Park Cattle Company and great-grandson of Slaterville Morrisites Peter and Mary McCue.Regrettably,the resolution suffered from the Morrisite amnesia.It stated that W.Brooks Park’s grandparents,Unity McCue and David Brooks Park,“journeyed from Canada to Nevada,arriving in Mottsville in 1863 … and began ranching in the valley …”The legislature,relying on family-supplied history,knew nothing of the Parks’decade-long sojourn in Utah between its Canada and Nevada years.46

Only a few Slaterville and Marriott Morrisite families would remain in Utah.The Cowan families and Mary Ann Baker Bateman returned to their Slaterville farms;John Cardon resumed farming in Marriott.William J.and Ann Jones stayed in South Weber;their descendants preserved a cannonball fired during the Morrisite War that landed in Ann’s lap.Andrew and Charlotte Dinwoodey Lee went to Camp Douglas,where the U.S.Army offered protection and employment to Morrisites.Andrew died before the March 1863 Morrisite trial;Charlotte then married Charles Cooney,a soldier.Three weeks after giving birth to Charles Cooney Jr.,she died of a broken blood vessel.47

In addition to the McCues,several Weber County refugees settled in western Nevada,including Slaterville’s Magees,Bulls,Whites,Harrises,and Alvys;and from Marriott,the Hills and Petries.Few are known to have continued in the Morrisite faith.John Petrie,who became a miner and settled his family in Virginia City,tried with limited success to establish a Morrisite congregation in San Francisco in 1874.Rhoda Jones,whose husband had died at Kington Fort,resumed her earlier surname,White,and in 1870 was running a boarding house for Chinese laborers in Ormsby County.In 1877 she was baptized into a local Morrisite splinter group.By 1880 she had retired to Dayton,Lyon County,Nevada,living next to her son-in-law and daughter,William and Sarah Harris,as she had in Slaterville.Her son William White,a farmer,was rearing his family in Carson Valley.48

William H.Hill,anonymous author of the Birmingham Daily Post letter, fled to California with other recalcitrant Morrisite defendants in 1862.He

45 Las Vegas Review-Journal,January 28,2000.

46 Senate Concurrent Resolution No.44,File No.89 (Nevada Legislature 2001).Unity McCue was born in Utah and never lived in Canada.

47 Holley,“History and Effects of Apostasy,”29; Union Vedette,March 14,1865;April 6,1865; Ogden Standard,March 29,1907.Jeremiah and Mary Ann Baker Bateman later moved to Contra Costa County, California,to live with niece Jean Rio Baker.The Joneses’daughter Margaret married Joseph Higham,son of Marriott Morrisites Charles and Jane Higham.The Lees left behind five children;their sons soon went to work for Dinwoodey Furniture.Two Slaterville persons excommunicated on February 17,1861,Jabez Harris and Clarissa Taylor,apparently never moved to Kington Fort.Both married and remained in Utah.

48 George S.Dove and James Dove, A Voice from the West (San Francisco:Church of the Firstborn,1879), 14-15;James Dove, A Few Items in the History of the Morrisites (San Francisco:Church of the Firstborn, 1892),4-5.

may have been the William Hill in Grass Valley Township,Nevada County, in the 1870 census.A Morrisite apostle reported that Hill died in Carson Valley (no date given).49 Hill’s sons remained in Utah a few years but eventually moved to Carson Valley,where his son Eleazer and his granddaughter Mary Elizabeth married siblings of David Brooks Park.

The William Magee family built and operated a hay station and bar for teamsters in Churchill County,Nevada,along the “emigrant road”to Carson City.According to a local historian,the Magees’descendants “would never acknowledge that their parents or grandparents had been Mormons … They may not have been aware of the connection,particularly if earlier generations kept an imposed silence.”50

Two families from Marriott relocated to Idaho.Charles and Jane Higham established a farm in Eagle Rock (now Idaho Falls).Esther Astle,who emerged from Kington Fort as a widow,married a Camp Douglas soldier, Enoch Coberly;they and her six children were among the first settlers of Soda Springs.Esther was soon reported to be one of the “prettiest dancers and most graceful partners”at a local cotillion.Along with many who found Soda Springs too cold for farming,they soon moved to Deer Lodge, Montana.51

Moses Byrne,although one of the first six baptized Morrisites,was “shortly after cast off.”He moved his family by Catherine Cardon Byrne to Piedmont,Wyoming,in 1862,where he became railroad stationmaster and later built five coke ovens to supply fuel for railroad passenger cars.He maintained his other family by Anne Beus Byrne in Ogden.52

The polygamous Sorrensons,the only Danish Morrisites from Slaterville,went their separate ways after Kington Fort.Mary Sorrenson married a man named Smith and moved to Spring City,Utah.Jens Christian and Anna Sorrenson and their children relocated to San Francisco,California,also claimed John E.and Mary Jones of Marriott, who settled permanently in Round Valley,Inyo County,after a few years in Jack Valley,Nevada.Jones had briefly soldiered on as a Morrisite apostle in Nevada but soon withdrew from what little remained of the movement.53

Winter and Mary Hastings and their family,who had lived but briefly in Slaterville before Kington Fort,relocated furthest from Utah to Springfield, Illinois,where Winter was a state committeeman for a “grand camp meeting”of midwestern spiritualists in the summer of 1875.54

Thomas Virgo,landlord to Joseph Morris in Slaterville,died in 1861. Ann Virgo may have moved to Plain City,Slaterville’s neighbor to the west,

49 Dove, A Few Items,20.

50 Childers, Magee Station,12,41.

51 Union Vedette,March 10,1864.

52

Young, Morrisite War ,281; An Enduring Legacy ,12 vols.(Salt Lake City:Daughters of the Utah Pioneers,1978),11:295-96.

53 Anderson, Joseph Morris,190-191.

54 Religio-Philosophical Journal 10 (1875):124-25.

where pioneers recalled a Mrs.Virgo who peddled vegetables in Ogden.55

Chauncey West died of consumption at forty-two,his open-air drills during the Echo Canyon campaign and a chronic cold contracted in Europe having taken their toll.The Deseret News reckoned West’s demise would “excite the sympathy of many thousands.”He was given the equivalent of a state funeral,delayed two hours to accommodate a trainload of dignitaries representing the territorial militia.56

While the Slaterville and Marriott Morrisites were the earliest to embrace Joseph Morris,there is little evidence that his theology drew them to him;instead he provided cover for a political alternative to Brigham Young.Although the New York Times’ comment that “secession must be infectious”was made archly,there was truth in it.The people of Utah were well aware of the grave political differences that provoked the South’s withdrawal from the United States regardless of probable dire consequences, which suggested to Morris’s followers that they were not without choices.

Chief justice Kinney’s recognition of the Morrisites as “a class of intelligent men”serves as a call to restore their good names.If we do not agree with their secession,we must at least acknowledge their legitimacy as pioneers and that they worked as hard as their Mormon neighbors to tame Utah’s aridity and make it “blossom as a rose.”Their individual histories are no less interesting than those of other Utah pioneers.Surely Utah would have been richer for the contributions the Morrisites and their descendants might have made to its progress and fortunes.

55 Daughters of the Utah Pioneers,“Plain City History,”http://www.plaincityutah.org/bodily/ utah_pioneers.htm (Accessed December 11,2006.)

56 Jean RioBaker Diary,November 24,1869,Utah State Historical Society; Tullidge’s Histories , Biographical Appendix 65; Deseret Weekly News,January 12,January 19,1870.

Back to Business: Marriner Eccles and the Effect of Public Service on Private Enterprise

In his later years,as he reflected on his acceptance as the Assistant Secretary of the U.S.Treasury in 1934,Marriner S.Eccles observed,“I think most American businessmen have gone through a similar kind of self-examination on being offered a public post.Despite their materialism and their drumfire criticism of all politicians and bureaucrats,governmental service has an attraction for a great many of them....Let them get a taste of the position and the flavor remains with them forever.Most other things afterward seem flat or jaded.”1 Eccles’s sense that few things measured up to his glory days in Washington,D.C.was evident throughout his later business career.

Marriner Eccles in front of the First Security Bank Building near the intersection of 400 South and Main Street in Salt Lake City.

Stephen S.Francis is an assistant professor of history at Weber State University.The author would like to thank Rebecca Andersen and Kathleen Broeder,who served as research assistants,as well as the Utah International Fellowship Program that supported this research.The author is also indebted to Dr.Susan Matt for her support and assistance and Stewart Library.

1 Marriner S.Eccles, Beckoning Frontiers:Public and Personal Recollections,ed.Sidney Hyman (New York: Alfred A.Knopf,1951),140.

Many historians and economists have examined the abilities,talents,and genius of Marriner S.Eccles.2 He created one of the first bank holding companies in the country;pioneered what came to be known as Keynesian economics even before Keynes;oversaw the overhaul of the Federal Reserve System;and managed Amalgamated Sugar Company,Sego Milk Company,and Utah Construction Company.3 Most of the research focuses in particular on his exceptional abilities in running the Federal Reserve Board,and justifiably so,for this was his greatest achievement.Few,however,have investigated how his government service affected his managerial skills and style.What seems clear from studying Eccles’s later managerial style is that while a business career made him well prepared for government service,ultimately his government service made it hard for him to return to the private sector.

Marriner Eccles’s Mormon background shaped his views and character. Some historians have argued that his ideas about government intervention in the economy came from his Mormon background.Mormonism celebrated the idea of group support of the individual,and the Mormon church had a centralized planning authority over the economy in Utah.4

Ultimately,however,it was not the collectivism of Mormonism,but rather the isolationism that resulted from the Mormon practice of polygamy that influenced Marriner’s outlook.His grandfather’s family, William Eccles,was sent by church leaders to the harsh environment of Ogden Valley,and there they suffered many hardships,but Marriner’s father, David Eccles,because of his family’s urban roots in Scotland,looked beyond a meager agricultural family economy to an economy based on active commerce,specifically lumber.5

David Eccles heeded the call of church authorities to take a second wife and from that union,Marriner,the oldest child,was born in 1890.His father’s values of individualism and self-reliance were deeply impressed upon him.During the 1910s and 1920s,Eccles followed the business ideology of his father until the Great Depression hit which caused Marriner to

2 See Arthur E.Burns and Donald S.Watson, Government Spending and Economic Expansion (New York: Da Capo Press,1972),William Greider, Secrets of the Temple:How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country (New York:Simon and Schuster,1989),Allan H.Meltzer, A History of the Federal Reserve,vol.1, 1913-1951 (Chicago:University of Chicago Press,2003),Sandra J.Weldin,“A.P.Giannini,Marriner Stoddard Eccles, and the Changing Landscape of American Banking,(Ph.D.diss.,University of North Texas,2000).

3 Keynesian economics are the ideas of British economist John Maynard Keynes,who proposed that economic depression cannot be fixed by the unemployed going back to work merely for lower wages,but rather economic depression needed to be fixed by government deficit spending,either through public projects or industry subsidies,to stimulate the market thus putting people back to work and ultimately reviving the economy.

4 Dean L.May, From New Deal to New Economics:The Liberal Response to the Recession (New York: Garland Publishing,1981),40.Marriner Eccles did not agree with this interpretation,but rather criticized the Mormon church for promoting the migration of Mormon converts to Utah,and then leaving them alone.See Eccles, Beckoning Frontier,8-15.

5 Leonard J.Arrington, David Eccles:Pioneer Western Industrialist (Logan:Utah State University Press, 1975),25-39,83-95.

formulate new economic ideas to solve the national economic crisis.These newly developed ideas were contrary to his father’s earlier economic philosophy.Eccles’s biographer,Sidney Hyman,claimed that Marriner,later in his life,felt as if he had committed patricide,because he repudiated his father’s economic beliefs.6 However,in many ways,Marriner was a true son to his father’s convictions of individual responsibility and hard work,and his career showed the influence of his Mormon upbringing.

The son of Ellen Stoddard Eccles,David’s second wife,Marriner rarely saw his father,and was removed from intimate contact with a paternal figure.The family lived in Baker,Oregon,in order to evade anti-polygamy laws,and to oversee the Eccles lumber operations.Baker was far removed from his father who continued to live with his first wife in Ogden.As the oldest child in the second household,Marriner accepted the responsibility to care for his family’s economic welfare.He had been exposed to the lumber industry at a young age,and was left by his father to learn the business without his father’s constant supervision.David Eccles believed that through hard work and ambition anyone could prosper,and would not need to rely on the support of others.7 Marriner,having learned these traits from his father,believed that he did not need help but through his own abilities he could succeed.It was this isolation and early responsibility for his mother and siblings that affected his economicviews.Even when his family returned to Logan in 1907,they remained isolated and separated from David.As a consequence,Marriner continued to look after the welfare of his mother and siblings,and he began to manage the family’s wealth.8 It was left to Marriner to solve the problems of his mother and her family. After his father’s death in 1912,Marriner assumed more closely the management of all of his family’s financial affairs.Now in his early twenties,Marriner had developed a strong self-confidence and faith in his own attitudes and vision.Marriner’s self-confidence frequently led him to clash with his elder half-brothers over their management of their father’s businesses,and he was often offended by their refusal to heed his counsel.At one meeting with his half brother David,concerning the poorly managed Oregon Lumber Company,Marriner proposed to buy David’s share or sell his own share of the stock in the company.David responded that Marriner was a “damned nuisance ...and he didn’t want him to cause any more trouble.” 9 After this,Marriner took great satisfaction in analyzing the

6 Sidney Hyman,interview by author,July 18,2006,Ogden,Utah,tape recording,Utah International Collection,Stewart Library,Weber State University,Ogden,Utah.

7 Eccles, Beckoning Frontiers,15-16.Arrington, David Eccles,23,43.

8 The separation and isolation of the Ellen Stoddard Eccles family and David’s second family was even more pronounced than many other polygamist families.Leonard Arrington noted that David Eccles and Ellen Stoddard Eccles went to great lengths to hide their marriage not only from outsiders but from other family members as well.Marriner undoubtedly must have felt that separation and isolation.See,Arrington, David Eccles,65-66,99-100.

9 Eccles, Beckoning Frontiers,46.

lumber company,gaining the support of the company’s board of directors for his own plan for the struggling company,and returning to his brother David with his own demands.Marriner recalled,“I had returned not to receive an ultimatum but to serve one.He would have to buy out the interests I represented or he and his managers would have to resign immediately to be replaced by men of our own choice.”10 David recognized that Marriner had the support of the board of directors and sold his shares in the company to his brother.This episode demonstrates Marriner’s active intervention in the family’s business,and his willingness to discuss and work with others in order to implement his views.

During the 1920s,Eccles,through his business acumen,increased the worth of the Eccles Investment Company,a holding company,created to manage his assets and those of his siblings.He assumed control of the Oregon Lumber Company and also acquired interest in the Amalgamated Sugar Company,Utah Construction,and the Sego Milk Company.Marriner explained how he used his direct hands-on approach to acquire Sego Milk. Thirty-three percent of the company stock was held by Annie B.Rackliffe of Los Angeles.Marriner went to Los Angeles and asked to meet Rackliffe’s brother-in-law,who managed her assets,in his hotel room,where he proposed buying her stock.Mr.Rackliffe said he would need a day to think it over,and Marriner said that he didn’t need a day,that the offer was a good one,and that he would be leaving tomorrow.Rackliffe then said that he would need a lawyer to draw up a contract;Marriner quickly replied that they wouldn’t need a lawyer,that they could put the transaction in plain English themselves,which they did.11 This was a power move by Eccles,and an example of his personal involvement and intimate interest in his businesses.He left no details to be taken care of by others.For Marriner this personal and direct involvement in the management of his companies provided him with the opportunities to further the development of his enterprises. He not only created the policies,but implemented them.

Marriner’s direct hands-on approach in developing and managing his businesses was clearly evident prior to his years of public service beginning in the 1930s.It was Marriner who created First Security Corporation,a bank holding company,and it was Marriner who sat on the boards of Utah Construction Company and Amalgamated Sugar Company as well as serving as the sugar company’s vice-president and treasurer. 12 Marriner personally surveyed,evaluated and reported on the progress being made

10 Ibid.,47.

11 Sidney Hyman, Marriner S.Eccles:Private Entrepreneur and Public Servant (Stanford:Graduate School of Business Stanford University,1976),50-51.See also,Eccles, Beckoning Frontiers,42-44.There is a discrepancy between the two accounts,specifically the spelling of Rackliffe’s name.Annie Rackliffe’s brother-inlaw’s first name is not given in any of the accounts.

12 In April he was worried about sugar production.In June,he detailed the use of mortgage bonds,and in November he reported on his trip to the East to secure credit.Board of Directors Minutes,April 20,1932, June 22,November 16,1932,and January 18,1933,Amalgamated Sugar Company Archives,Boise,Idaho.

by Utah Construction Company to the board of directors. 13 This was a man intimately involved with the procedures,policies,and financial health of his companies.

The stock market crash and the Great Depression which followed changed Eccles’s life forever,as well as his management style.When there occurred a run on his bank in Ogden following the stock market crash, Eccles told his bank employees to examine carefully all signatures on the checks being cashed and then to pay them in small bills,counting them out slowly.At one point,when the bank was close to running out of cash,an armored truck from the Federal Reserve Bank in Salt Lake City arrived. Marriner,realizing the need to calm his customers,leapt on to a marble counter and told the people that there would be enough money for all to make withdrawals,and that the bank would stay open until all had had a chance to make withdrawals or deposits.This seemed to calm the crowd. The next day he told his employees to open early and pay the customers as quickly as possible,so that people coming into the bank would see no lines and feel at ease about the stability of the bank.14 Through quick decisive action and personal intervention,Eccles prevented what would have been

13 “Minutes of the Board of Directors,”June 6,1932,MS 100,box 1b,fd 4 1/1.4,Utah International Collection,Stewart Library,Weber State University,Ogden,Utah.

14 Eccles, Beckoning Frontiers,57-62.

financial ruin for his bank.Not only did he save his banks in Ogden and Salt Lake City,but he took over the Deseret National Bank,and saved other banks in Salt Lake City.15 It was his quick mind and decisive action that resulted in not one of his depositors losing a dime.

The direct impact the Great Depression had on his banks caused Eccles to ponder the larger systemic problems of the national economy.He soon came to the conclusion that massive public spending was necessary to pump money back into the economic system,which would then put more people to work.This increased spending power of many individuals would further stimulate the economy and increase production.His quick thinking had saved his banking business,but he soon realized that quick economic action at local levels was not enough to solve the larger national issues.One needed to fix the larger problems rather than implement stopgap solutions on a local level.

This thinking caused him to move away from per sonal intervention in small issues towards systemic renovations in economic theory.He presented these ideas in an impromptu speech at the University of Utah in February 1933.Later that year,he went to Washington,D.C.where he presented the same ideas to the Senate Finance Committee.A year later,President Roosevelt asked him to become an Assistant to the Secretary of the Treasury,and within a few months Roosevelt named him Governor of the Federal Reserve System.Reflecting on his move into the public sphere, Marriner stated,“...a later career in the government service,took its toll in an innocent quarter it never should have touched,but nevertheless did.”16 Eccles believed that his role as manager of his family’s wealth and as manager of his country’s wealth robbed him of his youth and innocence, both on a personal and business level,but that service molded him into the manager he would become.

As head of the Federal Reserve Board,Eccles could not manage that agency like one of his companies;it was too large an entity to micro-manage and he began delegating responsibilities to others.Because Eccles was now living in Washington,D.C.,he also adopted this same management practice with his companies in Utah.At the time,there was no legal requirement for Eccles to remove himself from all his business pursuits;but as chairman of the board of governors of the Federal Reserve System,Eccles was barred from running his First Security Corporation,because it was a bank holding company.He left that responsibility to his brother George.Nevertheless,Marriner maintained a fairly strong hold on the Eccles Investment Company,which had large stock holdings in First Security.During his trips to Utah Marriner attended board meetings,took care of business,and discussed policies with the different companies’board members.

15 Ibid.,58-70.

16 Eccles, Beckoning Frontiers,39.

In Washington at the Federal Reserve Board,Eccles soon realized that he needed highly qualified and educated men working for him to implement the ideas he had brought from Utah.He often prided himself that his macro-economic ideas came not from his limited formal education but from personal observation and experience.17 However,Eccles did rely heavily on men with academic training to help him manage his responsibilities, and to articulate his ideas to others in Washington.He never openly admitted this fact,but his reliance on these men ran throughout his career.As he quickly learned in Washington,a lack of education hampered the ability to express ideas and manage such a large federal system.

Marriner began to rely on academically trained managers in his companies in Utah.For instance,his brother George,who had received a business degree from Columbia University,ran First Security Corporation during Marriner’s absence.Their nephew,Spencer Eccles,who would later become president of First Security,also attended Columbia,and Marriner sent his son,Campbell,to the Wharton School of Business.Eccles hired H.A. Benning who attended the Rochester,New York,Business Institute,to run Amalgamated Sugar,and H.A.’s son,A.E.Benning,later ran the company after attending Yale University.In 1951,Eccles employed Ed Littlefield,a graduate of Stanford,to head Utah Construction.And as much as Marriner claimed to have never read any books on economics written by university professors,he heavily relied on Lauchlin Currie,a Harvard Ph.D.,to help him in Washington.18 In the end,Eccles realized that he needed the support of formally educated men,and this realization was the greatest benefit his companies received from his years in Washington.

As head of the Federal Reserve,Eccles found himself lacking the political skills necessary to maneuver in this political world.This became apparent as he tried to make various innovations in the Federal Reserve and needed President Roosevelt to back his initiatives.As Governor and later Chairman of the Federal Reserve,Eccles fought hard for changes in monetary as well as fiscal policy.In his attempts to convince Roosevelt of his ideas,he was consistently challenged by equally strong-willed Henry Morgenthau,the Secretary of the Treasury.Marriner also attempted to centralize authority for the Federal Reserve Board but faced combative regional heads of the Federal Reserve Banks.From his experiences in Utah heading his businesses and his strong will,Eccles believed he held the answers to many of the national banking problems.He believed others should realize those truths,even if presented in a somewhat abrasive style. This approach often rubbed his associates the wrong way.

Lauchlin Currie,his assistant researcher at the Federal Reserve Board, aided Eccles in crafting his ideas so that they would be more easily accepted.Currie,impressed with Eccles’s mind and his grasp of complex 17 Ibid.,132. 18 Ibid.

economic ideas,recalled of his boss that “Although a fluent talker,he had some difficulty in expressing himself forcibly and coherently in writing.His mind was so active that one thing would suggest another,and this a third, and there was always a danger that the original point would get lost in the shuffle.”19 Currie learned to work with Eccles,and deal with his foibles,and in the end he believed they worked together splendidly.Currie stated that, “[Eccles] would doubtless be astonished if someone told him that he was not the easiest man in the world to work with or under.I had to smile— though ruefully—in reading his stories of his difficulty in getting over a point to the President,as I experienced exactly the same difficulties with him,”but he added,“these criticisms however,are minor.I both admired and was personally very fond of Eccles.”20

Eccles relied on Currie both for explanations of complex economic concepts,and for his ability to work with other members of Roosevelt’s administration.He also relied on Currie to make his own ideas understandable to the President.Currie crafted most of the memos sent to Roosevelt, and he crafted many of Eccles’s speeches and statements.Currie explained:

So most of my memoranda were short,simply worded,and action-oriented and were passed personally to [Eccles],usually unsigned and even undated,which may explain in part both their character and the relative lack of memoranda by me in the official archives.Some of my most influential work left no record at all,as it took place in the preparation of speeches and statements by Eccles.While I enjoyed writing,he much preferred talking,and it was in the interminable discussions that accompanied the preparation of each speech and statement and that often lasted late into the night,with revised drafts to be prepared the following morning for other and successive sessions, that I most influenced his thinking,and he mine.21

In many ways,Eccles was successful because of Currie’s involvement and ability to work with government insiders.Eccles didn’t mind Currie’s relationship with other officials,particularly since Currie made sure that he made Eccles aware of all his discussions.22 Eccles relied heavily on Currie’s abilities.With a large staff working for him in Washington,Eccles no longer needed to be personally active in the presentation and implementation of ideas.This reliance on others became a mainstay in managing his companies when he returned to Utah.

Even with Currie’s efforts to smooth the relationship between his boss and Treasury Secretary Morgenthau,they remained at odds with each other.In 1936,there was an influx of gold into the Federal Reserve Banks, creating the potential for inflation.Morgenthau was livid that Eccles had increased Federal Reserve Bank requirements for gold reserves by 50 percent to offset inflation without notifying Treasury.Morgenthau called

19 Lauchlin Currie,“Lauchlin Currie’s Memoirs,Chapter III:The New Deal,” Journal of Economic Studies 31,no.3/4 (2004):203.

20 Ibid.,203-204.

21 Lauchlin Currie,“Comments and Observations,” History of Political Economy 10 (Winter 1978):543.

22 Currie,“Memoirs,”209.

Eccles and railed against his actions.Eccles claimed that Morgenthau had been out of town,and that President Roosevelt had given his approval.Morgenthau was not pleased and wrote in his diary,“I certainly put the fear of God into him and doubt if he will pull off another fast one.” 23 To soothe the troubled waters, Lauchlin Currie told Eccles,“Make overtures to the Secretary.Tell him you ...do not question his authority,ability or disinterestedness in connection with monetary control.”Currie added,“I know that you put ideas and objectives above personalities... .Since the contribution you can make rests in the final analysis on the degree of cooperation you can obtain from the Secretary,I think you will be prepared to make real sacrifices for the sake of your wider objectives.”24 Eccles eventually heeded Currie’s advice.Later that year,he was vehemently fighting with Morgenthau once again over raising the reserve requirements because of the influx of gold when the two decided to take the issue to Roosevelt.In the morning,Roosevelt first met with Morgenthau to hear his side of the issue.Later in the afternoon both Eccles and Morgenthau met with Roosevelt.Eccles presented Morgenthau’s ideas, as if the two were in complete agreement.Later,Morgenthau told his staff, “In my whole experience I have never seen anything like it,and the thing that frightens me ...is that a man can so completely reverse himself.”25 Unfortunately,the rapprochement did not last long.

In 1939,a nationally syndicated political column,the “Capital Parade,” detailed the animosity between the two.Eccles felt obligated to write to Morgenthau to explain that he was only trying to be a teller of truth.“As you know and as I have long emphasized,I want to cooperate always with you as long as I am here.That does not mean that we are always going to see eye to eye and I have never imagined for a moment that you wanted anything other than my honest opinion ...whether it happened to be the

23 Quoted in John Morton Blum, From the Morgenthau Diaries:Years of Crisis 1928-1938 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,1959),357.

24 Lauchlin Currie,Washington,D.C.,to Marriner S.Eccles,Washington,D.C.,December 12,1936, MS 178,box 43,fd 1,Marriner S.Eccles Papers,Marriott Library,University of Utah,Salt Lake City, Utah.

25 Quoted in Blum, Morgenthau Diaries,365.

same as your own or not.Certainly this cannot be fairly represented as meaning there is a clash between us.”26 Eccles believed that any discussion of an idea was good,and that feelings should stay out of deliberations. He truly did not take criticism personally and assumed that others would not either.

Morgenthau was not the only one whom Eccles upset.Currie claimed that some of Eccles’s policies died because of his inability to work with congressional leaders.27 Sam Carpenter,the secretary of the Federal Reserve Board during Eccles’s tenure,recalled,“because he was not a politician,he didn’t think like a politician,he thought of getting things done,and I think that’s one of the things that got in his way when he was working on the Banking Act of ’35.He thought if he came up with the right ideas,everybody would say,‘come on,let’s do it.’And he didn’t think of it in the sense of getting a thing done politically.”Carpenter continued,“Marriner’s biggest problem was himself ...he was abrasive in the extent that he knew what to do and the other people resented his pushing and saying,‘come on, now,let’s do this.’”28

Even Roosevelt attempted to rein him in.In December 1935 the President wrote Eccles:“I have read your press statement for November 22nd and I think it is entirely sound.We must remember,however,that there is real danger in any statement relating,even remotely to actual stock market operations.This is where Coolidge,Mellon and Hoover got into such trouble.A word to the wise!”29 Roosevelt later wrote Eccles’s assistant, “Have you arranged for Jimmy Cromwell to have a good long talk with Governor Eccles? Tell Eccles to listen to his ideas and treat him very nicely even if he does not agree with him.”30

It was Eccles’s goal to strengthen the power of the Federal Reserve Board at the expense of the Treasury,the Federal Reserve Banks,and the Federal Advisory Council.He often took a strong arm approach to getting that power,and alienated many who stood in his way.In May 1940, Rudolph M.Evans of the Tenth District of the Federal Advisory Council, told the Board that he wanted the Council’s written disagreement over Federal Reserve Board policies put into the Board’s annual report.Eccles responded:“It was his judgment that the Council could do nothing that would do more to injure the position of the Council and the banking

26 Marriner S.Eccles,Washington,D.C.,to Henry Morgenthau,Washington,D.C.,June 23 1939,MS 178,box 10,fd 1,Marriner S.Eccles Papers,.

27 Michael A.Whitehouse,“The Board Celebrates a Golden Anniversary,” Interest Bearing Notes (Fall 1985):6.

28 Sam Carpenter,interview by Gwen Gittens and Everett Cooley,1981,transcript,MS 1787,box 246, fd 8,Marriner S.Eccles Papers.

29 Franklin D.Roosevelt,“Memorandum,”December 3,1936,MS 178,Box 2,fd 11,Marriner S.Eccles Papers.

30 Franklin D.Roosevelt,“Memorandum,”July 2,1936,MS 178,box 2,fd 12,Marriner S.Eccles Papers.

system as a whole than to issue the above statement.”31 The matter did not die;in October of 1940,the Federal Advisory Council once again wanted their statement in the annual report,and Eccles replied,“that the Board felt that the position taken in the statement was unwarranted in so far as it implied criticism of the Board in connection with the matters over which the Board has little or no authority.”32 Eccles was not about to let the Advisory Council formulate policies for the Board.According to Eccles they were what their name implied:advisory.He dismissed the ideas of the Advisory Council,and resisted any attempts at reconciliation with council members.He firmly believed he was right and that the council should follow his direction.Eccles’s move was an attempt to strengthen the position of the Federal Reserve Board in relation to the Advisory Council,but by creating animosity between himself and the council members through his heavy-handed managerial style,Eccles damaged the cooperative workings of these government agencies,which ultimately led to his isolation in the federal monetary system.

Marriner continued his efforts to limit the power of the Advisory Council.In February 1942,the Advisory Councilwanted the governors of the Reserve Board to discuss all of its positions on upcoming economic legislation with the Advisory Council.Eccles claimed that the Advisory Council and the presidents of the Federal Reserve Branches comprised too large a group to consult with on every piece of legislation. 33 Federal Reserve Governor M.S.Szymczak disagreed,and thought that these other agencies should be included in discussions.Eccles understood that while it would be a good idea to include the groups it just might not be practical, and stressed that he was not trying to create an independent central bank.34 However in later actions,Ecclesoften dictated policy to the Reserve Presidents and the Advisory Council.According to Sam Carpenter, “Marriner would meet with [the Federal Advisory Council] and he’d tell them what he thought ought to be done.They didn’t get much of a chance to advise the Board,and he’d tell ‘em what they ought to have in the way of legislation.”35 Even when other Council members disagreed with him, Eccles would keep them quiet as well.Carpenter explained,“It was closer to a one-man board than any other time that I was there.The point is ... Marriner would go home and do his thinking and come down and tell the Board what ought to be done.”36 While Council members opposed Eccles’s

31 Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System with the Federal Advisory Council,“Minutes,” Washington,D.C.,May 21,1940,741,http://fraser.stlouisfed.org (accessed June 15,2006).

32 Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System with the Federal Advisory Council,“Minutes,” Washington,D.C.,October 7,1940,1296,http://fraser.stlouisfed.org (accessed June 15,2006).

33 Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System with the Presidents of the Federal Reserve Banks,“Minutes,”Washington,D.C.,February 3,1942,176,http://fraser.stlouisfed.org (accessed June 15, 2006).

34 Ibid.

35 Sam Carpenter,interview.

36 Ibid.

actions and methods,Eccles usually still carried the point.37

How did Eccles’s government years affect his business holdings in Utah? It allowed his managers to work without his daily oversight,but still allowed for his input.As he dealt with issues of national and international importance,Marriner Eccles thoroughly enjoyed his new position,and this seems to have diminished his interest in the operations of his own companies.Gone were the days of saving a bank by standing on a countertop and telling people not to worry about their deposits.He now was interested in the bank account of the United States.Eccles saw economics on a macrocosmic level,and he left the microcosmic to others.He relied heavily on his brother George to keep him abreast of many of the ventures in Utah.At Amalgamated Sugar,where Marriner Eccles was still President but often absent,George attended directors meetings under the category of “others present,”having no official position within the company.George ran First Security Corp.and kept Marriner apprised of events there as well.Some U. S.Senators argued that this was a conflict of interest,but it appears that Marriner gave no inside information to George.In fact,their relationship seems to have hurt First Security because Marriner was now interested in national monetary issues,rather than what was best for his own bank.For instance,Eccles was against the Federal Reserve’s backing of all government bonds at a pegged rate,but the Treasury demanded that the Reserve back the bonds at the pegged rate.This situation made it possible for banks to buy bonds from the Treasury and sell them to the Reserve at better rates, and thereby make a sizeable profit.Because he knew Marriner was against this practice,George refused to do this,even though it would have meant a profit for First Security.38

Management delegation was carried over into his other businesses as well.When Marriner returned to Utah he hired Ed Littlefield,who held a MBA degree from Stanford University,as financial vice-president of Utah Construction.He permitted Littlefield to reorganize the management structure of Utah Construction.Littlefield’s decision freed Allen Christensen,general manager and president of the company,from the minutiae of the company which then permitted Christensen to do the things he did best.39 Littlefield then took care of management details,and to a certain degree kept Eccles and Christensen out of the loop.This arrangement did not seem to bother Eccles,as long as Littlefield succeeded.

37 Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System with members of the Executive Committee of the Federal Advisory Council,“Minutes,”Washington,D.C.,April 9,1942,671-86,http://fraser.stlouisfed.org (accessed June 15,2006).

38 Sidney Hyman, Challenge and Response:The First Security Corporation First Fifty Years,1928-1978 (Salt Lake City:Graduate School of Business,University of Utah,1978),192-95.See also George S.Eccles, The Politics of Banking,ed.Sidney Hyman (Salt Lake City:Graduate School of Business,University of Utah, 1982),111-13.

39 Edmund Littlefield,“A Pattern for Progress,”August 20,1954,MS 100,box 2a,fd 9 28/1.15,Utah International Collection,Stewart Library,Weber State University,Ogden Utah.

While divorcing himself from the daily management of Utah Construction,Marriner was not so distant in his involvement with Amalgamated Sugar Company.In one crucial decision in 1969,the board of directors seriously debated the sugar company becoming involved in the cattle feeding business.Marriner in a management meeting argued that such a venture would be unprofitable for the sugar company. 40

Eccles gave general economic reasons for not entering into the cattle feeding business,but he did not use his knowledge of other companies’ experiences.One of the main reasons companies have people on their boards of directors who sit on other boards,is that the individuals can share knowledge from their experiences with other corporations,but Eccles did not argue his point by using insights gained from interaction with other companies.Utah Construction had previously run cattle operations,and had stopped when they realized they were not profitable;however,Eccles made no allusions to those issues to the Amalgamated Sugar Board of Directors when they discussed their cattle feeding venture.Also,Utah Construction reorganized their corporate structure in the late 1950s,and Amalgamated Sugar did not do so until 1967,and there is no evidence that Eccles used his experience of Utah Construction’s reorganization to help in Amalgamated Sugar’s.This insight could have helped the Amalgamated Sugar Company,but Eccles,who had balked at any cooperation of different agencies in Washington,because he believed that input from other agencies were mere attempts at undermining his power and authority,did not give advice from his experiences working with other companies even though he controlled them.His years in Washington affected the way he did business back in Utah,and in this case not for the betterment of his businesses.It appears that Washington changed him,because before he went to Washington,Eccles believed that the interaction of diverse businesses helped each business do better.41

In the years before he went to Washington,Marriner Eccles showed through his business practices that he saw his various businesses as connected and mutually beneficial to each other.In the years after his return from the East,it was clear that he viewed his companies as separate entities that bore no relation to each other.For instance,he argued heatedly with George Eccles about getting a prime rate loan from First Security for Utah Construction,and said he would go to another bank if necessary.42 This interaction occurred during a board meeting of Utah Construction, and Marriner supported Utah Construction’s position against his own bank.This shows integrity on Marriner’s part,but also demonstrates his

40

Amalgamated Sugar Board of Directors,“Minutes,”May 22,1969,Amalgamated Sugar Company Archives,Boise,Idaho.

41 Eccles, Beckoning Frontiers,48-49.

42 Gene A.Sessions and Sterling D.Sessions, Utah International:A Biography of a Business,(Ogden:Weber State University,2002),245-46.

conception of his corporations as separate and autonomous entities.He had been more involved in banking during the 1920s and supported measures that would benefit the bank,believing banks to be at the center of economic growth and stability;however,his years in Washington had led Eccles to change this view.During his years in Washington,he came to believe that banks existed to stimulate economic growth.They were means to an end,not an end in themselves.Consequently,he supported what was best for Utah Construction,and would go to whatever bank that would give him the best interest rate.George Eccles still held the idea that whatever was best for First Security should be done,but in Marriner’s view it was more important to support Utah Construction and therefore benefit the industrial economy as a whole.

Eccles continued to view his companies as separate entities and did not take a consistent or unified approach to their management.Another example came in 1951 when Ed Littlefield told Marriner that he would take the job of vice president at Utah Construction if he could root out nepotism.Eccles acquiesced,believing it to be a good idea.Littlefield limited nepotism in Utah Construction,but he later complained that First Security Corp.was rife with nepotism.43 Apparently what Eccles thought was good for Utah Construction did not necessarily apply to his other companies.Again,it appears that Eccles did not care about the details of corporate structure.In Washington,Eccles did not enjoy dealing with staff issues and squabbles;he demanded people produce the results he wanted.44 If Littlefield accomplished the larger goals,Eccles did not care how they were achieved.

Eccles did not bring lessons learned from other companies to the various corporations’board meetings,nor did he encourage his directors of boards to do so.When discussing his time on the board of First Security Corporation,Ed Littlefield claimed that the directors gave little input into the running of the corporation.

The role of director was a pretty passive one.They had most of the big names in the Utah-Idaho area on the board.I was one of the few directors that ever spoke up about anything.The Eccles didn’t want a lot of friendly advice from their directors.They wanted the directors to go on and do what the Eccles family had in mind.It was pretty much of a two-man show.45

Eccles’s biographer,Sidney Hyman claimed that it was his fierce honesty that kept him from sitting on the boards of corporations of which he was not a major stock holder.46 However,it seems more likely that Eccles would not bring much to these other corporations.He was unlikely to share lessons he had learned from his business ventures,and it also seems unlikely

43 Edmund Littlefield,“As I Remember,”(photocopy),150,Utah International Collection.

44 Currie,“Memoirs,”203-204.

45 Littlefield,“As I Remember,”150.

46 Hyman, Marriner S.Eccles,378.

47 First Security Corporation,“Annual Reports,”photocopy,1967,p.2.

he would want to give input where he could not be certain that his policies would be followed.While in Washington,he rarely met with government agencies that he could not control;rather,he enacted his policies and let those agencies deal with the fallout.

From his service in Washington,Eccles gained a taste for national policies and national politics.He found coming back to Utah and running his businesses unfulfilling,and it is therefore not surprising that in 1952,a year after his return to Utah,he ran for the Republican senatorial nomination. Because he had spent all of his public service under Democratic presidents, Eccles had to convince many that he was a Republican.He opposed the incumbent Republican senator,Arthur W.Watkins,and the Republican primary went in Watkins’s favor.After this defeat,Marriner never sought publicoffice again,but this flirtation with electoral politics suggests that Eccles wanted something more than his businesses could offer.

Since he could not hold public office again,Marriner turned to another means to voice his grand views on national politics and the economy.He used First Security Corporation’s annual reports as the vehicle.These annual reports were his bully pulpit.In these messages,one would never know that he was addressing stockholders.After the discussion of the strength of the company,the letters would then veer off into critiques of government policies,what the Federal Reserve board should do,and later a clear denunciation of the Vietnam War.In the bank’s 1967 annual report,Eccles wrote: “The most important issue before the country today is our involvement in Vietnam.It affects every facet of our lives and our relationship to the rest of the world.Considering the financial and monetary aspects of our involvement,it is primarily responsible for our large budgetary deficit,which is causing inflation.It is mainly responsible for the large and increasing deficiency in our balance of payments.”47 Eccles changed few minds with his annual reports,but he may have found some satisfaction for himself.

Ultimately Eccles found it difficult to return to the private sector,and in 48

some ways his companies suffered because of his lack of interest.Public servants,after their service,often enter into the private sector and sit on companies’boards.The assumption is that their knowledge and public service aid in the corporate world.Marriner Eccles is an example of the difficulties and pitfalls in that transition.Perhaps,government service is not the means to better corporate leadership.Eccles continued to have good ideas after his return from Washington,but his zest for hands-on business leadership had diminished.He distrusted working with different agencies in Washington, because he believed they did not have the best interests of the country in mind;instead they wanted to increase their own power.Eccles brought that distrust back to Utah,and would not allow his board members to enact policies that might have benefited all of the companies Eccles managed.He had a much larger staff in Washington which took care of policy and staffing details;and upon returning to his Utah companies,he allowed them to run without the close scrutiny he had exhibited prior to his Washington service.He had felt the thrill of a national pulpit where he spoke to millions,and his Utah companies could not replace that excitement.The days of speaking from the top of a bank counter and calming his customers were over.The business world had truly become in his words,“flat or jaded.”48

Diploma Nursing at Salt Lake City Religious Based Hospitals

When Anna Elizabeth Coulson graduated from Juab High School in the early 1930s,she had few real employment opportunities in her home town of Nephi.Deep into the Great Depression,she like many others lacked the financial means to attend college.As a young girl she later recalled someone told her that she had the hands of a nurse and that set her course.Her first experience was working as a home nurse for a year before deciding she wanted more training.The nearest hospitals that offered nurses’training were the LDS,Holy Cross,and St.Mark’s in Salt Lake City.Since she belonged to the Mormon church,her first choice was the LDS Hospital then owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.There she met with a supervisor who told her that more than half of the admitted students would fail the program.She also

Nurses at the W.H.Groves Latterday Saints Hospital in Salt Lake City.

visited the Holy Cross Hospital where a Catholic Sister explained that if they admitted a young woman they expected her to graduate.1 Coulson successfully completed the Holy Cross Hospital’s nurses’diploma training program.Hospital nursing diploma training programs were the primary method by which nurses were trained during much of the twentieth century.

This article will focus on women student nursing training experiences at the three religious based hospitals in Salt Lake City—St.Mark’s,Holy Cross,and LDS—their work at the hospitals,and their relationships with instructors and their classmates.This paper draws on histories compiled by the training school alumni organizations.and oral histories gathered by the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies,Brigham Young University.2

Churches established the first hospitals and the first nurses’training programs in Salt Lake City.In 1872 the Episcopal Church opened St.Mark’s Hospital at 500 East and 600 South.Seven years later,the hospital moved to a fifteen-bed facility at 272 South 500 East and then to its location between 700 and 800 North on 200 West (today’s 300 West) in 1893.Many of the small hospital’s earliest patients were victims of mining accidents and typhoid fever.To help meet the shortage of nurses,the hospital opened a training school in 1893 and during its best years graduated from twenty to thirty students each year.St.Mark’s hospital nurses’training school operated continuously until 1970,graduating a total of 980 students from the program.3

In 1875 the Sisters of the Holy Cross opened Holy Cross Hospital in Salt Lake City and expanded into a new building six years later.Catholic Bishop Lawrence Scanlan had asked Sisters of the Holy Cross to come Utah to provide medical care to a growing number of Catholics,many of whom worked in the dangerous hard rock and coal mines in the territory. In 1901 the Sisters opened a school of nursing in connection with the hospital for the same reason that St.Mark’s did—there were not enough nurses to staff the hospital.Holy Cross Hospital continued to offer a training program until 1973.4

Between 1901 and 1973 Holy Cross graduated 1,056 nurses.The beginning classes were very small,ranging from one to sixteen students and by the 1920s and 1930s the average graduating class of nurses was twenty

1 Anna Elizabeth Coulson Embry is my mother.Anna Embry,interviewed by Jessie Embry,March 2, 1982,13,LDS Family Oral History Program collection,Charles Redd Center for Western Studies,L.Tom Perry Special Collections,Harold B.Lee Library,Brigham Young University,Provo,Utah.

2 The histories include Lottie Felkner, The St.Mark’s Hospital School of Nursing Story (1970); History of Holy Cross Hospital School of Nursing (1973); History of Dr.W.H.Groves LDS Hospital School of Nursing, 1905-1955,and Evelyn Plewe Jorgensen, Dr.W.H.Groves Latter Day Saints Hospital School of Nursing:A History 1905-1955 (1991).Copies of these books and other archival records are at the Utah State Historical Society,Special Collections,Westminster College;L.Tom Perry Special Collections,Harold B. Lee Library,Brigham Young University;and Special Collections,Marriott Library,University of Utah.

3 Felkner, St Mark’s

4 Marilyn C.Howe, The Early Holy Cross Hospital and Salt Lake Valley (Salt Lake City:np,1975),19.

although only fourteen students graduated in 1935 and eleven in 1936. Enrollment increased in the 1940s;the largest graduating classes were fifty in 1944,fifty-seven in 1946,and fifty-eight in two classes in 1947.During the 1950s,enrollment began a general decline until 1973 when the final class of twenty graduated.5

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints also established several hospitals in the state to provide medical care.The first was the Relief Society,the women’s auxiliary of the church,which started the Deseret Hospital in 1882,but closed in 1896 for financial reasons.Nine years later the LDS church opened the W.H.Grover LDS Hospital along with a school of nursing with money donated by W.H.Grover,a Salt Lake City dentist.LDS Hospital offered nurses’training until Brigham Young University created a School of Nursing in 1955.During those years LDS graduated 1,343 students.Like St.Mark’s and Holy Cross,class size varied,a typical year between twenty and thirty nursing students graduating from the training programs.6

The three Salt Lake City religious hospitals followed a national trend at religious and secular hospitals by offering nurses’training classes.Nurse historian Barbra Mann Wall explained Catholic hospital training programs grew in the late nineteenth century as the church-owned hospitals could no longer rely solely on the assistance of sister-nurses and a few paid employees. “By the turn of the 20th century,nuns felt compelled to open their hospitals for training of both sisters and secular women.”7 In 1880 there were only fifteen hospital-based training programs in the United States;thirteen years later there were 225 programs.In 1900 the number increased to 432, and three decades later there were more than two thousand programs.8

With so many hospitals offering training,hospital administrators,nurses, teachers,and students realized the need to standardize education and training.In 1913 the University of the State of New York offered accreditation for hospital teaching programs.To receive accreditation,a hospital nurses teaching program had to provide at least fifty beds,serve thirty patients a day,students had to have received a high school education or equivalent, and the nursing prorgrams had to provide training in medical,surgical, obstetrical,pediatrics,diet,and contagious disease nursing.9

Over the years nursing organizations also accredited hospitalprograms. But the process was not automatic;programs had to meet established

5 History of Holy Cross.There were exceptions to the general decline in enrollment.For example,fortytwo students graduated in 1964.

6 Jorgensen, Dr.W.H.Groves

7 Barbra Mann Wall,“’Definite Lines of Influence:’Catholic Sisters and Nurses Training Schools,18001920,” Nursing Research 59 (September/October 2001):315.

8 Sandra Hawkes Noall,“A History of Nursing Education in Utah”(PhD diss.,University of Utah, 1969),29;Kay Kittrell Chitty, Professional Nursing:Concepts & Challenges,3rd ed.(Philadelphia:W B. Saunders Co.,2001),37.

9 Felkner, St.Mark’s,26-28.

standards.St Mark’s nursing program first tried for accreditation in 1938 but was denied because the nurses’home was overcrowded,there was only one poorly lighted class room,and the university course work was not satisfactory.To become an accredited nursing program St.Mark’s Hospital needed to provide the nursing students with better housing,improved classroom facilities,a vacation,and reduced work hours.10 These improvements required additional money and hospital administrators appealed to church members for financial assistance.“If we could get more support for a modern school,comparable to the regular help given by the St Mark’s Charity Association to the hospital service,we might be sure of maintaining our reputation for graduating nurses who can compete with the best in any state,”was the appeal.11 St.Mark’s was not accredited until the 1960s.

Accreditation helped hospitals to attract students but it was not essential. For a number of years,the three Salt Lake City religious supported nurse training hospitals were highly regarded.A national study in 1949 rated 1,156 nursing schools and the LDS,St Mark’s and Salt Lake County Hospitals ranked in the top 25 percentile and the Holy Cross and the newly organized University of Utah nursing programs in the middle 50 percentile.12

Nurses’training programs at all three of the Salt Lake City church based hospitals helped local girls receive hands-on training.They were similar to the apprentice programs where other young men and women gained their training working with skilled craftsmen.The hospitals kept the nursing programs small providing individual attention to the trainees and the hospitals lacked sufficient financial resources to provide large dorms for their student nurses.While students worked closely with trained nurses,the students provided essential inexpensive staffing services for the hospitals.

By mid-century a fundamental question was raised by the nursing profession:should nursing students be “trained”or “educated”? LDS Hospital student Evelyn Jorgensen believed that the term “training”was demeaning. “You train animals;you educate people.We were trained,”she recalled.In her assessment,the students were taught skills but lacked the book learning. During her training she and other student nurses were required to manage floors of patients and provide services that,according to Jorgensen,were beyond their knowledge.When there was an acute shortage of nurses during World War II,Jorgensen concluded that as a student nurse,“I hate to use the word exploited,but because of the situation,we were given an inordinate amount of work.”13

10 1938 Accreditation Letter,St.Mark’s Papers,Box 1,Folder 2,Archives,Govale Library,Westminster College,Salt Lake City,Utah.(Hereinafter referred to as Westminster College Archives.)

11 Ibid.

12 St.Mark’s,Box 1,Folder 2,Westminster College Archives.

13 Evelyn Jorgensen oral history,interviewed by Ashley Sanders,Nurses Training Oral History Project, Charles Redd Center for Western Studies,L.Tom Perry Special Collections,Harold B.Lee Library, Brigham Young University,Provo,Utah,September 19,2006,3.(All other oral histories cited are part of this collection.)

The Bishop Abel Leonard Nurses Home near St.Mark’s Hospital housed nursing students trained at the Hospital.

Most nurses’organizations agreed with Jorgensen’s assessment that student nurses needed a liberal arts education and more classes rather than training through work.As a result,nurses’programs began moving from hospitals to colleges and universities.However,the switch came slowly.The Teachers College in New York led out in this direction hiring its first nursing professor in 1907;Yale opened its school of nursing in 1924.14 At first hospitals offered a combined nursing diploma and college degree program. In 1931,for example,Holy Cross Hospital students could take a five year nursing program by working with St.Mary’s of the Wasatch,a Salt Lake City Catholic college.15 The diploma students took some of their science classes at the college.The five-year program included more liberal arts classes and allowed the students to earn a bachelor’s degree.The University of Utah opened a nursing program in the School of Education in 1942.LDS, St.Mark’s,and Salt Lake County Hospital arranged to send their students to the university’s nursing program shortly after it was created.Six years later in 1948 the University of Utah established a College of Nursing.16 After St.Mary’s of the Wasatch closed in 1959,Holy Cross students also took general education classes at the University of Utah.17

With the increased availability of university programs,hospital

14 Chitty, Professional Nursing,36.

15 History of Holy Cross,14;Tomiye Ishimatsu,“A Study of the Baccalaureate and Diploma Curricula in Nursing”(MS Thesis,University of Utah,1964),4.

16 Ishimatsu,“Diploma Curricula in Nursing,”4-5.

17 Ibid.,4-5;Noall,“A History of Nursing Education,,”68.

administrators began to question the diploma training and considered going to a four year bachelor’s program.In the 1940s Episcopal Bishop Arthur W. Moulton said St.Mark’s should wait to see what administrators of other nurse training hospitals decided.One reason for the possible change was that the University of Utah wanted to have the hospitals work with its new College of Nursing.However,when university administrators offered to create the “St.Mark’s Division of University of Utah College of Nursing,”hospital administrators refused fearing a “loss of autonomy.”Instead they decided to work with Presbyterian owned Westminster College in Salt Lake City to offer a three year registered nurse program with an associate degree and a five year program for a bachelor’s degree.In 1949 St.Mark’s administrators reported that the new program at Westminster “seems to be very satisfactory.”18

A 1951 Utah Nurse article about the University of Utah’s College of Nursing praised St.Mark’s and Holy Cross “for continuing to produce in as large numbers as possible good three year graduates to meet community needs.”At the same time the author of the article thanked LDS and Salt Lake County hospitals for having “faith in the long range benefits of better nursing education [to make] sacrifices to spearhead the efforts to bring professionals to truly professional status.”19 With this assessment,however, the joint University of Utah and LDS program was discontinued a short time later.At the LDS church’s Brigham Young University a School of Nursing was instituted in 1955,and three years later the LDS Hospital Training Program became a part of that nursing school’s program.20

The St.Mark’s School of Nursing was accredited in June 1967.However, recruiting students for its diploma programs continued to be a struggle. Most nursing students wanted a college degree,and the diploma programs now competed with those offering college credit and an associate degree. Graduating students from the two different programs generally received the same pay.On August 15,1968,the directors of St.Mark’s nursing program voted to end the diploma program with the last class to graduate in 1970.21

The Holy Cross Hospital closed its diploma school three years later.22 Father David C.Goddard reflected on the Holy Cross School of Nursing: “[While] we close the book and place it now upon the shelf,”the nurses who graduated “spread out in ever-widening influence over the years like rings from a pebble....Through your lives,dear graduates,in your service to the sick,as in the lives and service of all Holy Cross graduates of every past year,the love and dedication of the Sisters of Holy Cross and the love of Christ ...will never ...end.”23

18 Felkner, St.Mark’s, 91-92,94-95;St Mark’s Papers,Westminster College Archives.

19 “University of Utah College of Nursing,” Utah Nurse,June-July 1951:19.

20 Noall,“A History of Nursing Education,”29;Chitty, Professional Nursing, 37.

21 Felkner, St.Mark’s,140-42.

22 Barbara Springer,“Last of Area’s Diploma Schools,Holy Cross Nursing Facility Graduates Final Class June 3,” Salt Lake Tribune,May 26,1973.

23 Address by Father David C.Goddard,Holy Cross Scrapbook,Utah State Historical Society.

The closing of the Salt Lake City nursing diploma programs followed a national trend.In 1960 there were about eight hundred diploma programs, two decades later there were only three hundred diploma programs and by 1997 there were only one hundred remaining.24 This type of programs declined as increasing numbers of schools of nursing were established in colleges and universities across the country.Hospital programs could no longer afford to pay for training,were no longer or easily accredited,which made it difficult to attract students,and more complex treatment methods required more education.25

Who were the women who came to the Salt Lake City hospitals to be trained as nurses and what do they recall about their experience?26 One common characteristic was that most came from Utah.For example,the 1947 graduating class at LDS had thirty-four students with twenty-two from Utah,eight from Idaho,and the rest from a scattering of states.The 1953 class had twenty-two students with twelve from Utah,and the 1954 class had twenty graduates with sixteen from Utah.In 1956,twenty-seven students graduated from St.Mark’s,and twenty-three were from Utah.But each year was unique.The 1957 graduating class also had twenty-seven students,but only sixteen were from Utah.27

Students at all three schools also came from similar economic backgrounds.Some Utah students were from Salt Lake City,but more were from Carbon County and areas in Salt Lake County outside of the city.Marilyn Howe who attended in the 1950s explained that “a good portion”of her Holy Cross class came “from probably middle class or lower class farming rural people.”28 But religion did not determine where students went.Until 1966 hospitals could request religious affiliation on the application forms, but it was not a determining factor for whether the person was admitted. Nearly two-thirds of the students at Holy Cross were not Catholic.29

In selecting a hospital program to attend,young women considered the school’s reputation,graduates’and others’reports,location,religion,and personal impressions.Many students from Carbon County,for example, came to Holy Cross because they were Catholic.Others from the county who were not Catholic also went to Holy Cross because most nurses at the local hospital had trained there.

Clara Brennan,a Catholic who grew up in the suburbs of Salt Lake City, went to Holy Cross for religion,but was “surprised at the number of LDS

24 Noall,“A History of Nursing Education ,”29;Chitty, Professional Nursing, 37.

25 Chitty, Professional Nursing,38.

26 The Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University conducted oral history interviews with thirty-three women who were trained at Holy Cross and six at LDS.In addition,St. Mark’s hospital archives at Westminster College provided valuable information.

27 These numbers come from the Salt Lake Tribune accounts of the training school graduations July 8, 1947;August 23,1953;August 22,1954;September 2,1956;and June 18,1957.

28 Marilyn Howe oral history,interviewed by Angela Swenson,January 27,2006,3.

29 Holy Cross Records,Salt Lake City Diocese Catholic Archives,Salt Lake City,Utah.

students that came to Holy Cross Hospital for nursing.”My “impression was that they knew Holy Cross had a good school of nursing.”30 In the 1930s Mormon Helen Stevens said,“I surveyed all the schools in Utah and found out that Holy Cross was the best school.”31 In 1939 Shirley Paxman, a Mormon,decided to leave BYU and train as a nurse.An uncle told her that Holy Cross was the best place to go.32 In the late 1960s Teri Weidman, also a Mormon,recalled that the doctors in Cache Valley told her friend that the best nursing degree was at Holy Cross.33

For Mormon Janice Evans who as an orphan was raised by relatives in Glenwood in Sevier County,Holy Cross was her best option following graduating from high school in the 1950s.A local family doctor in the county helped her complete “papers so I could get a scholarship.My dream was to go to BYU and go to LDS Hospital,but that didn’t work out.[The doctor] knew people at Holy Cross Hospital.He was instrumental in getting a scholarship that paid for my entire nursing training.”34

Bessie Witt’s selection of Holy Cross’s nursing program was most unusual.She had recently became engaged to a missionary and feared that if she went to Brigham Young University,which had just established its nursing program with the LDS Hospital,she would find herself dating other men. She chose Holy Cross because she would be in a situation surrounded by women and because a hospital administrator in Nephi was Catholic and had high praise for Holy Cross.Witt recalled having a good experience when she went to visit Moreau Hall,the nurses’home at Holy Cross.“My first introduction there was totally warm.The head nun came forward and talked to my mother and me [She] welcomed us in.”35

Religious affiliation was important in choosing the several different nurses’training programs.Edith Gerrard,for one,wanted to be around other Mormon students.And,she later recalled,the “Ensign Ward which was catty-corner to the LDS Hospital,”which was very convenient.She further explained the LDS Hospital nursing director “impressed me.”Like many others who trained during World War II,she joined the government’s Cadet program which paid and helped eliminate her financial concerns.36

In the mid-twentieth century,St.Mark’s and Holy Cross advertised for nursing students.A 1967-1968 St.Mark’s pamphlet explained,“Since its beginning many students have received a professional education in the care of the sick,and graduates of St.Mark’s Hospital School of Nursing are practicing in all fields of nursing.”It also stressed,“Salt Lake City is a center

30

Clara Brennan oral history,interviewed by Ryan Riberia,February 2,2006,5.

31 Helen Stevens oral history,interviewed by Angela Swenson,February 7,2006,1.

32

Shirley Paxman oral history,interviewed by Angela Swenson,September 3,2006,2.

33

Teri Weidman oral history,interviewed by Ryan Riberia,September 29,2005,2.

34

Janice Evans oral history,interviewed by Angela Swenson,February 20,2006,1.

35

Bessie Witt oral history,interviewed by Ryan Ribeira,February 2,2006,2.

36

Edith Gerrard oral history,interviewed by Ashley Sanders,October 10,2005,2.

of great scenic beauty and historic interest.”37

These nurses’schools applications asked questions about the applicants’health, schooling,and religion.St. Mark’s students also required a report from a doctor and one from a clergyman. 38 Interviews were an important part of the application process to make sure that the young women were serious about nursing and had the qualities that would make a good nurse.When Joyce Taylor applied at LDS Hospital in the 1940s she had to also be admitted to the University of Utah.Both Lona Booth (class of 1957),and Terri Weidman (class of 1969) had interviews at Holy Cross.39

The sisters at Holy Cross interviewed applicant Shirlynn Campbell,a Mormon,and her mother.“The nun interviewed me.The nuns were a little new to me,but they were very nice.”The sister asked Campbell’s mother about her personality,and her mother replied,“Whatever she decides to do,she’s so determined to she’ll do it.”Four other American Fork High School students applied at Holy Cross,and only Campbell and one other were accepted.“The one who really wanted to go wasn’t accepted. They just told her they didn’t think she’d be a good nurse.”Campbell added that “the one that wanted to be a nurse really bad went to Weber State and became a nurse.She worked for awhile and then quit nursing. The nun was really right when she said she wouldn’t be good in nursing.”40

Once admitted nearly all the interviewees agreed with Edith Gerrard that they were “pretty scared and frightened.”She continued,“We were all apprehensive.The standards were very high.The rules were high.The academic standards were high.We knew that we had to meet all of those or

37 St Mark’s Pamphlet,Utah State Historical Society,21-22.

38 “St.Mark’s Hospital training school for nurses:rules,”PAM 8980,Utah State Historical Society Library.

39 Joyce Taylor oral history,interviewed by Ashley Sanders,September 19,2005,1 and Joyce Taylor Scrapbook,used by permission;Lona Booth oral history,interviewed by James Dalrymple,July 14,2005,1; Weidman interview,1-2.

40 Shirlynn Campbell oral history,interviewed by Ryan Riberia,February 2,2006,1-2,5.

we were washed out.”Gerrard,a Mormon,decided to enroll at the LDS nurses’school where she was comfortable with the religion.For Marilyn Howe,a Mormon who went to Holy Cross in 1951,there was the added concern of associating with the Catholic faith.“My folks left me on the front door of the dorm and drove away. That scared me half to death.There were nuns,and I didn’t know anything about nuns.”41

The nurses’schools dealt with such fears by assigning a mentor to each new nursing student.Faye Burns,a Lutheran from Cedar City,went to Holy Cross in 1951.Her big sister from the second year class “wrote me a letter before I came.... She said she was looking forward to meeting me.” Marsha Pack who came to Holy Cross in 1965 had a second year student and a senior assigned to her.I “had a big sister and a grandmother....The first few days we got to meet them and ask them questions.”42

At first students at all three hospitals lived in homes near the hospitals or in the hospitals.In 1906 St.Mark’s built a nurses’home in memory of Episcopal Bishop Abel Leonard who had worked hard to improve the living conditions for the student nurses.The new home had room for thirty-five nurses and a gym.In 1945 the hospital completed a new wing on the nurses’home in hopes of receiving accreditation and attracting more students.43

Because the living conditions in the LDS Hospital were not adequate,a nurses home was built in 1906.In the new home,most rooms had two beds.There was a dining room and a classroom in the basement.However, the home was not large enough for all the students and cottages were constructed to house those in the senior class.Other students lived some distance from the hospital.Audrey McBride,who attended LDS in the 1940s,spent her first six months at the Beehive Annex downtown.She rode a bus to the hospital.44

The Holy Cross students lived in houses near the hospital.Marjorie McQuillan,a student during the 1940s,lived in the dorms at St.Mary’s of the Wasatch for six months.Then she moved to the two dormitories in the hospital.For the first nine months,the students were on probation.At the end of that period they were formally accepted into the training program during the capping ceremony.As official students,they were now allowed to wear nurses’caps.After receiving her cap,McQuillan moved into nurses’homes.Holy Cross “had four homes that the nurses lived in.Our class lived in two different homes.Ours was 1206 South First.We called it ‘twelve-oh-hole.’”45

41 Gerrard interview,1;Howe interview,1

42 Faye Burns oral history,interviewed by Angela Swenson,January 9,2006,8-9;Marsha Pack oral history,interviewed by Ryan Ribeira,October 11,2005,2.LDS Hospital also had a big sister program that started in 1927.Jorgensen, Dr.W.H.Groves, 102.

43 St.Mark’s Records,Box 1,Folder 2,Westminster College Archives.

44 Audrey McBride oral history,interviewed by Ashley Sander,November 25,2005,2;Joyce Taylor, scrapbook,copies in possession of author;Gerrard interview,2-3.

45 Marjorie McQuillan oral history,interviewed by Angela Swenson,January 27,2006,4.

Holy Cross administrators wanted a place where all the students and the sisters could live rather than having them scattered into houses near the hospital or in crowded accommodations in the hospital.In the late 1940s the hospital raised money and constructed a nurses’home,Moreau Hall,on First South across from the hospital.46 Holy Cross student Ruby Hayes started in 1951 and recalled,“Moreau Hall had just been completed.We were the first class to spend the entire three years there.”The nurses lived there until the school closed in 1973.The four-story building was modern, and the students enjoyed their experiences there.Each floor housed a class. The Holy Cross Sisters lived on the fourth floor.Usually the women had a separate room which included a sink.There was one large bathroom between two wings on each floor.47

For student nurses living at Moreau Hall there were strict rules they had to follow.Lights had to be out at ten p.m.,and a nun walked the halls to make sure everyone obeyed.Janice Evans said they sometimes put a rug by the door so the sister could not see the lights.If they were visiting in other rooms,they could hear the sister’s wood beads and that was a signal to whisper.The nuns inspected the rooms every week and left a card showing if the sink was clean,room picked up,and bed made.Everyone had to eat in the cafeteria and no food was allowed in the rooms.48

Since the students lived together,they grew very close.Like most students in dorms,they played pranks.Marilyn J.Howe remembered the teachers were very strict.“Once in a while somebody would try to play games ...but most of us...just took out our hostilities later on each other by pulling dirty tricks in the dorms.”One prank was knocking on a door and throwing a wet rag at the person who answered.Once the director came up,knocked,and got hit with the rag.“It undid her flute [on her headdress] which cost her hours of re-starching.She was not happy,and so we were grounded for awhile.”49 Others were typical college dorm tricks such as short sheeting beds,putting plastic under the toilet seat,or sugar in the bed.

According to nurse historian Kay Kittrell Chitty,the principal method of teaching classes at the diploma programs was the “modified apprenticeship model.”According to an LDS Hospital history,that meant that the classes had a “minimum of class work and a great deal of practical experience.”50 Doctors gave lectures;nursing instructors supervised clinical training.The courses matched the hospital units that the students worked in.This was

46 Felkner, St.Mark’s, 21-22;Evelyn Jorgensen,comp., Pictorial History of the Latter Day Saints Hospital School of Nursing,1905-1955 (Salt Lake City:Latter Day Saint Hospital Nurses Alumni Association,2002); “When,As,and If,Utah,”Pamphlet 18718,Utah State Historical Society.

47 Ruby Hayes oral history,interviewed by Angela Swenson,November 3,2005,2.Most other interviews give the same information about the student dorms.

48 Janice Evans’comments reflect what nearly all the Holy Cross students said.Evans interview,3.

49 Howe interview,3.

50 Chitty, Professional Nursing,37-38;Jorgensen, Dr.W.H.Groves, 45.

expected since the hospitals started the programs not only to train nurses but to help staff their floors.

Over the years the hospitals developed their own curricula.At Holy Cross,for instance,students took religion classes their first and second years,two quarters of psychology the first year,anatomy-physiology, chemistry and microbiology,nursing principles,and nutrition and ethics all during the first year.Medical-surgical nursing classes were two years long, psychiatric nursing was the second year,and third year nursing classes were devoted to children,obstetrics and tuberculosis.51

Holy Cross nuns taught the classes at St.Mary’s,while Sister nurses,lay nurses,and doctors taught the classes at the hospital.Ruby Hayes recalled the Sisters at St.Mary’s “were wonderful teachers.We had a Sister,Ann Josephine,who was a cute little nun with a great swooping limp.She was a very brilliant woman who taught us anatomy and physiology.We had another nun,Sister Emily Anne,who taught us English.She was from back east.She was a very regal looking person.She was straight forward and a little rigid.Sister Clara Assasi taught chemistry.I think she put the holy fear into all of us.”Carol Imhoff also recalled a chemistry teacher who “had something against Dial soap.”When a student left some on her desk,the nun “came in and started teaching the lesson.She picked up the soap,went over,raised a window,and tossed it like a football out the window,never saying a thing.”52

After St.Mary’s closed,the Holy Cross students attended classes in Moreau Hall.The first class was “nursing arts.”Fay Burns remembered, “That was the introduction to nursing ...and all the good stuff that you have to learn first before you touch a patient.”In the second and third years Mary Jo Cannarella explained,“Many of the lectures were given by medical doctors.Our curriculum was on a medical model.”After the freshman year “where we learned the art and science of nursing,”the students took “medsurg,pediatrics,or any of that,”and “we were taught by doctors who were in that specialty....We went through disease by disease,the medical and the surgical conditions and interventions for those conditions and diseases. We also learned the drugs that were associated with treating those conditions.”53

Ruby Hayes remembered not all the classes at Moreau Hall were nursing.One sister wanted the students to be “well rounded.”Besides bringing in cultural groups,she brought in an Arthur Murray instructor.“Here was this school of nursing that was all girls.We were dancing with each other and learning the tango,waltz and the rumba.I have to admit,never in my

51 Holy Cross School of Nursing brochure,Box 3,Folder 9,Utah State Historical Society.

52 Carol Imhoff oral history,interviewed by Ryan Ribeira,October 22,2005,3;Hayes interview,3; Evans interview,4.

53 Burns oral history,2;Mary Jo Cannarella oral history,interviewed by Angela Swenson,November 2, 2005,4.

timid little life had I ever sluffed a class.But dancing was beyond my two left feet.”Hayes signed in at the front door,danced to the back door,and then slipped out and up the stairs to her room.“Consequently I have never learned to dance.”54

Graduates of the Holy Cross Hospital Nursing Program march past the Judge Memorial Building.

Carol Imhoff took a charm class her senior year because “Sister Raphael ...wanted us to learn how to decently apply make-up and be polite Her thesis always was,‘You’re the first person that a patient sees in the morning.You can make or break his day depending on how you look and how you act when you walk into that room.If you ...look decent and if you smile,he will have a far better day than if you come in a disheveled mess and act grumpy.’”55

In the 1940s LDS,St.Mark’s,and Salt Lake CountyHospital sent their students to the University of Utah for the first six months.Edith Gerrard had attended the university for a year,“so I had some experience.But some of the new nursing students hadn’t ever been to the university.For them it was very difficult.”They took “very academic classes,anatomy,physiology, chemistry,and all the basic,very difficult classes.Two-thirds of the girls ‘washed out’academically or by choice because it was very difficult.”56

After completing the university courses,LDS students took classes at the hospital.Maxine Cope recalled that initially graduates who had done well “did most of the teaching.[Later] the doctors just galore came in.Every

54 Hayes interview,4.

55 Imhoff interview,7.

56 Gerrard interview,2.

time we had any kind of a lecture,which was practically all the time,there were more doctors lecturing than anything else.”57 Betty Jo Reiser also recalled University of Utah professors teaching classes.“At the Hospital we were taught nursing practices,the history of nursing and medicine,and medical and surgical practices.”They worked on a “mannequin dummy called “Mrs.Chase.”58

If classes were important,hands-on work by the students was an essential part of their training.As 1970s Holy Cross student Teri Weidman explained, “We started right out doing some nursing skills.They told us,‘You’re here to be a nurse so we will get on with the job.’”Some responsibilities did not seem much like nursing.Many interviewees recalled waking patients up, getting them ready for the day,and giving backrubs at night.According to Holy Cross student Mary Jo Cannarella,it was a lot of “Certified Nurses Aide type of work which included catherization,changing dressings,and caring for various kinds of tubes.”59 LDS student Betty Jo Reiser recalled, “Sometimes we felt we were maids,not nurses.We had to dust the rooms and take out dead flowers.”60

One of the first things the students learned was how to make a bed— and the beds had to be perfect.With no fitted sheets,the bottom sheet was tucked in all around with square corners.The top sheet also required square corners at the bottom.Janice Evans remembered,“We actually had to make the bottom sheet fit tight enough so the instructor could flip a coin on the bed and it had to flip off.”Edith Gerrard at LDS also recalled that “beds had to be made exactly to perfection.As we did our square corners,we thought we had accomplished a lot.”One student did not get her bed made correctly because “one of the roller wheels on the bed was askew She was not ‘kicked out’but reprimanded.”61

After the first year,the students took on more responsibility.They went directly from their classes to the hospital where they practiced what they had just learned.Betty Jo Reiser recalled that they did not do anything on a patient though until they had demonstrated proficiency in specific procedures.One doctor asked a student to do a procedure,and when she told him she had not passed it off,he said,‘For Heaven’s Sake,what do those instructors do? Teach you how to close doors?’”62

The students had many duties.They worked regular shifts,often from 11:00 p.m.to 7:00 a.m.,or 3:00 a.m.to 11:00 a.m.Mary Jo Cannarella explained night shift was hard.After working all night,they still had to go

57 Maxine Cope oral history,interviewed by Lisa Christensen Gee,June 22,2005,2.

58 Betty Jo Reiser oral history,interviewed by Ashley Sanders,October 19,2005,6.

59 Helen Bland oral history,interviewed by Angela Swenson,February 26,2006,2-3;Cannarella interview,3.

60 Reiser interview,6.

61 Evans interview,7;Gerrard interview,3.

62 Reiser interview,6.

to class.“I can remember trying to take notes in lecture and the handwriting slanting down the page and going off the page because I was actually falling asleep while I was taking notes.”Sometimes she had to decide if she wanted to eat or sleep.The answer “depended on if we needed the calories or the sleep.”63

The students rotated to each area of the hospital.Helen Bland explained, “We worked on pediatrics with the children and on the medical and surgical nursing floors.”They worked on a men’s floor and the women’s medical floor.“For our nutrition training we worked in the hospital kitchen.”These rotations were the same when Mildred Wood Nyland trained at LDS Hospital in the 1930s.She especially remembered her time in the kitchen. She tried to make cherry pies starting “right after breakfast.”She tried to make a “good pie”but “it was an insufferable pace.”Finally the pies went out for dinner.“When the trays came back,every one of them had cherry pie with one bite out of it.”64

These Salt Lake City hospitals were unable to provide training in some areas needed to obtain a license.Consequently,students at Holy Cross went to Pueblo,Colorado,to the state mental hospital for training in mental health procedures and to the Glockner Penrose Hospital in Colorado Springs for communicable diseases.At other times they went to the hospital in Gooding,Idaho,and the Salt Lake City Shriner’s Hospital.Experience in working with mental health patients was difficult.Ruby Hayes recalled: “We were allowed to work in some of the different treatment areas.They still did cold wet sheet and insulin therapy.It sounds so terrible in this day and age since medications have taken over.I can remember wrapping these poor patients in cold wet sheets and just having them shiver.”65

In the 1920s LDS students went to Primary Children’s Hospital for children care and only went on a field trip to the Utah State Mental Hospital in Provo.66 In the 1960s St Mark’s students did rotations for psychiatric nursing at the University of Utah and for children’s care at Neighborhood House,Rotary Center,and at Primary Children’s Hospital.

Those who trained at hospitals frequently commented about how much nursing duties and procedures have changed over the years.They had to sharpen and sterilize needles.Bed pans were reused and had to be sterilized.There were no throw away items and so syringes,gloves,and all the instruments in surgery also had to be cleaned and sterilized.Marjorie McQuillan explained that during World War II they had to be very careful with linen and other items.“Everything was scarce.We really had to pull together.”Edith Gerrard added that not all instructions were followed

63 Cannarella interview,5.

64 Bland interview,3;Mildred Wood Nyland oral history,interviewed by Angela Swenson,October 8, 2005,2.

65 Ruby Hayes interview,5.

66 Jorgensen, Dr.W.H.Groves ,49.

during the war because there was such a shortage of nurses.“We did the best we could.”For example,it was impossible to give forty-five minute baths and get to everyone.67

Night shifts were hard but sometimes fun because there was more free time.Sometimes,nursing students made fudge when things were slow. Marjorie McQuillan recalled that they used the cocoa and Karo in the units and sometimes stole sugar from the doctors’dining room.One time they left the fudge cooking in a double boiler and forgot about it.“By the time we got back it was just charred.”They gave the pan to the janitor who “deep-sixed it in the garbage.”However,the nun in charge noticed. According to McQuillan,she was “a pain,”and threatened that “Case reports will not be signed until the top of the double boiler is returned.”So the students bought a new one out of the fifteen dollar a month allowance they received.68

Holy Cross student Lona Booth echoed the sentiments of many students about the long hours and hard work.“We felt like slave labor because we were staffing the hospital.As a senior I would be a charge nurse and a team leader.”But like most other diploma nurse graduates,she continued, “Looking back on it,we got invaluable experience,experience that the students don’t get nowadays.”69 The students appreciated the hands-on training where they learned a principle in the classroom in the morning and practiced on patients in the afternoon.

Religion was important at the three church operated hospitals in Salt Lake City as it was elsewhere across the United States.Nurse historian Barbra Wall explained that at Catholic hospitals,“What made sisters’classes different was their emphasis on Catholic religious traditions.This included teaching the necessity of baptism and the sanctity of life in every developmental stage.”As one Holy Cross graduate explained,“There was a close tie ...between the sisters and the nurses,which tended to put our nursing standards on a high plane.”70

Several of the nurses interviewed explained that the religious aspects helped them focus more on the individual patients rather than money. Carol Imhoff concluded,“It’s probably why the Catholic hospital went broke,but the patient was the most important thing.”Evelyn Jorgensen agreed and said that at LDS Hospital,“Patients came first!”71 In contrast to this emphasis,Janice Evans,a retired nurse,felt that in recent years the emphasis on patient care had changed.“My husband and my daughter have been in the hospital a lot in the last few years.I just shudder because the room was messy.”She complained that the nurses just checked the

67 McQuillan interview,6;Gerrard interview,3.

68 McQuillan interview,6.

69 Booth interview,2-3.

70 Wall,“Catholic Sisters and Nurses Training Schools,”317-18.

71 Imhoff interview,16;Jorgensen interview,6.

equipment.“They did not ever try to make the patient comfortable.”72

St.Mark’s demanded more religious attendance from Episcopalian members.In 1943 the hospital’s supervisor notes explained,“There will be communion next Sunday.Try to have all Episcopalian girls on duty in the morning so they can attend the communion services.”But all students were required to attend some religious service.The same supervisor asked everyone at the hospital to be at chapel on Tuesday if they were home.73

While most students at the LDS Hospital were Mormons those who were not,in the words of Mildred Wood Nyland,“managed to live through it.”Nyland attended school in the 1930s and remembered having Saturday and Sunday off.“Saturday was the day we washed our undies and got ready for the coming week.Sunday we went to church because it was a church institution.”74

Evelyn Jorgensen,who trained at the LDS Hospital during World War II, remembered that she had one day off.“It was supposed to be Sunday,but we were usually working on Sunday.”If they did get Sunday off,the students went to the Ensign Ward for meetings.But she added,“We had devotional every morning.The superintendent of nurses was always in charge of that.It would just be a spiritual thought that would be taught by somebody,a song and a prayer,and then off we’d go.It was just a half hour thing long,but it was daily.”75

Holy Cross students also participated in religious services.LDS student Alice Smith Aylett entered the school in 1923 and graduated in 1926.Her roommates were Catholic,so they “had to get up a half hour before I did to go to Mass.”But that was not the only religious responsibility.Aylett recalled,“We would march into the chapel every morning after breakfast with Sister Elena and say prayers,which was nice and good for us.”All the

72 Evans interview,4.

73 St Mark’s Minutes,April 1943,Westminster College Archives.

74 Nyland interview,1,4.

75 Jorgensen interview,6.

student nurses were required to attend midnight Mass on Christmas eve or work for a Catholic so she could go.Aylett recalled,“I went to Mass the first year,but after that I relieved.”76

While it was awkward and uncomfortable for some Mormon nursing students to be educated at Holy Cross Hospital,there were others who appreciated the exposure to new religious traditions.Shirley Paxman described the positive impact of her experience at Holy Cross.“Going to Holy Cross and St.Mary’s made me very ecumenical,and I spent my life being ecumenical because I learned so much about other religions.That opened up dimensions to religion and spirituality to me that I’ve never had in my Mormon upbring.”She enjoyed learning about the role of Mary,the Mother of Jesus.She “learned what reverence in a sacred place means.”She continued,“I was introduced to the Christian calendar.Mormons don’t observe the Christian calendar.I learned what Ash Wednesday was,I learned what Lent was,and I learned what Advent was.I learned all those magnificent religious holidays that are observed by the Christian community all over the world.”She especially enjoyed the Holy Cross Hospital chapel and worked to establish one in the Intermountain Healthcare Hospital in Provo.77

Graduation had a strong religious focus.The Holy Cross students and graduates walked from the hospital to the Cathedral of the Madeleine where following a mass for graduating nurses,the students received their diploma and were invited to kiss the bishop’s ring.For those nursing graduates who were not Catholics this was an awkward moment.LDS Hospital held graduation at Kingsbury Hall or the Union Building at the University of Utah where the Presiding Bishop of the LDS church,the general authority in charge of the hospital,spoke at graduation.78

Today none of the three hospitals are owned or operated by religious institutions.Holy Cross Hospital (now Salt Lake Regional Hospital) and St. Mark’s Hospital are owned by nation-wide megahospital chains.The LDS Hospital is part of the Intermountain Healthcare system,which was created by the LDS church that divested its ownership and operation of all of its medical facilities.None of the three former religious supported hospitals have their own nurse training programs.As a result,they like other hospitals face a shortage of nurses.Although hospitals have not reintroduced student training,they do work closely with colleges and universities to increase the number of graduates.

Today,much of the work once assigned to student nurses at hospitals is now done by Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs),trained in nursing homes or technical schools.Utah universities and two-year colleges offer a

76 History of Holy Cross,55.

77 Paxman interview,3-4.

78 Jorgensen interview,4;all the oral histories with Holy Cross students discussed graduation.

Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN) degree that can be completed in two years or a Registered Nurse (RN) degree that can be completed in three.The University of Utah,Brigham Young University,Weber State University,and Utah State University (in connection with Weber State),and Southern Utah University offer bachelor degree programs in nursing.

During the eighty years between 1893 and 1973 that church-owned hospitals operated programs in Salt Lake City,more than three thousand women secured valuable training while earning diplomas in nursing.They went on to become the nurses in urban and rural hospitals,care facilities, and homes.Anna Elizabeth Coulson’s experience is just one example.After graduating from Holy Cross in 1937,she worked as a head surgery nurse at the Budge Hospital in Logan where she met Bertis L.Embry and they were married in 1941.During World War II,she traveled with Embry as he received naval training.She worked in hospitals across the country.After her children were raised,she resumed working as a nurse,ending her career as a public health nurse.Others,like her who trained at LDS,Holy Cross, and St.Mark’s Hospitals were a vital part of the history of health care in Utah during the twentieth century.

In Memoriam WILLIAMMULDER 1915-2008

With the passing of Professor William Mulder on March 12,2008,not only did Utah lose one of its most illustrious scholars,the international community lost one of its most ardent supporters,and students of all ages lost a mentor par excellence.Although well known nationally for his probity and straightforwardness in the writing of Utah’s and Mormonism’s emigration history,Bill Mulder also received recognition for his work with Indian and Japanese students and faculty.He was the very essence of the “peripatetic professor.”

This was,of course,all in the future.For about six years after they left Holland in 1920,his family worked in “Babylon”until they had enough resources to enable them to join their religious compatriots in Utah.Living in the vicinity of New York City opened up opportunities to view some of the world’s great art and science—all of which made a distinct impression on young William.But for this Dutch Mormon family,Utah was their ultimate goal because in Utah all their “fond hopes were centered.”Looking back one can see how migration,education and religion shaped his life and mind and foreshadowed his numerous contributions to the history of Utah and to the history of Mormonism.

As the Mulder family rooted themselves in Utah’s cultural soil,the inevitable process of assimilation and acculturation to the new environment

began.The rites de passage for many Mormon youths included graduation from high school,admission to college,service as a missionary,marriage in the LDS temple.It should not,therefore,surprise anyone that as a youth Bill Mulder bonded closely to the pattern set by the LDS church.He proved his intellectual and spiritual mettle when he graduated from LDS high school,served a mission in Holland,married in1938 and graduated from the University of Utah in 1940.From 1939 to 1943 he served on the editorial staff of the church’s official publication, The Improvement Era . Much later he used his considerable organizing ability to found and direct the Institute of American Studies and the Center for International Studies at the University of Utah.Ever popular as a classroom teacher,he was frequently found lecturing at such institutions as Brigham Young University, Duke University,and the University of California at Berkeley.

On the completion of his Master’s degree in 1947,which dealt with aspects of Scandinavian migration to the United States,Bill enrolled in Harvard University’s American Civilization Program.From this experience emerged his classic Homeward to Zion:The Mormon Migration from Scandinavia,published by the University of Minnesota Press in 1957.From it has developed Utah history courses in which ethnic literature and ethnic experience were given the attention they deserved.It is clearly evident that Bill Mulder was there at the beginning of this new movement in ethnic studies—it might even be said that he was one of the driving forces.His second book co-edited with A.Russell Mortensen, Among the Mormons: Historic Accounts of Contemporary Observers was published by Knopf in 1958 and reflects the editors’perception that the study of history should help us “see ourselves as others see us”—a theme which emerges from Professor Mulder’s extension of his work into India.

He was introduced to Indian civilization via the medium of a Fullbright lectureship in American literature at Osmania University in Hyderabad in 1957.In the same year he was honored by the University of Utah when he was chosen to deliver the 25th Annual Reynolds Lecture on the topic of “The Mormons in American History.”Clearly he was carving out his unique intellectual niche by combining his historical interests with literature.

The taproot of his widespread range of interest and writing lies in his prodigious library.He was fond of recalling Ralph Waldo Emerson’s response to an inquiry about whether he could remember everything he had read in his books.“No more,”said Emerson,“than I can remember every meal I have eaten.But they have made me.”

Although Bill’s scholarship was held in high regard by international and national organizations,he found time and energy to keep up his interest in institutions such as the Utah State Historical Society (he became a Fellow of the Utah State Historical Society in 2002),the Mormon Letters Association,and the Utah Academy of Arts and Science which catered to local needs.From his perspective,all of history is at some point local.While certain subjects may sound provincial,in Mulder’s view it is how they are

treated by the researcher that counts.To those who disparaged “local studies”he gave the sobriquet of “inverted provincialism.”

I was fortunate in having Dr.Mulder as my freshman Basic Communications instructor at the University of Utah in the spring of 1956.He was a spanking new Harvard Ph.D.with two major books in the wings—I was a twenty-five-year-old emigrant Scot with the GI Bill in hand and still in somewhat of a daze that I was actually in school again after an absence of ten years.I found his enthusiasm for the things of the mind and his precision in the use of language captivating.He introduced us to the sensitivity of Robert Frost and to the enigmatic verse of Emily Dickinson.Among his efforts to teach us literature and history as well as how to express ourselves in effective English,he read to the class what he regarded as the best short story to come out of Utah:the late L.Marsden Durhams’s,“Thus Saith the Lord:A Tail of the Underground.”His performance was first class,and by the end of the story the students had been exposed to a slice of genuine Utah social history,albeit in the context of a fictional short story.But it was much more than a humorous story—it was one way of getting us to understand that polygamy was a serious part of Utah’s history.Dr.Mulder was also modeling how teachers can promote reflective thinking in their students rather than equating education with the piling up of fact after fact.He was a superb example of such a teacher.

William Mulder brought a deep sense of intellectual curiosity,excitement and introspection to his teaching and his research.But his keen analytical acumen never ignored the need to have empathy for his students and their topics.During the defense of a dissertation dealing with the intellectual development of a prominent Utah churchman and educator,one member of the committee urged the student to include more of the later (and less rational) perspectives of the churchman in his study.Bill responded that the study was not meant to be all inclusive and that we ought to be fair and take the man at his best.He was ever a gentleman.

Dr.Mulder has freely acknowledged that “all [my] life was conditioned by the Mormon experience.”There came a time,however,when his own honesty and conscience compelled him to re-examine his commitment to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.Given the courtly manner in which he conducted his life,he made no grandstanding farewell speech denouncing LDS truth claims.He simply ceased being active in the church.Yet,in spite of this change,he never abandoned his interest in Mormon culture and history.Indeed,almost until the day he died he was active in writing,thinking and conversing about Mormon and Utah history as an interested,empathetic and objective observer—and it was always within the context of the broader American and even international experience.Bill Mulder will be sadly missed.

BOOKREVIEWS

Doing the Works of Abraham:Mormon Polygamy Its origin,practice,and demise.

Edited by B.Carmon Hardy,Vol.9 of Kingdom in the West:The Mormons and the American Frontier Series.(Norman:The Arthur H.Clark Company,2007.446 pp. Cloth,$39.95.)

AS STRANGE AS IT MIGHT SEEM,Carmon Hardy’s Doing the Works of Abraham:Mormon Polygamy Its origin,practice,and demise is as close as we’ve got to a bible on the Mormon practice of plural marriage.This invaluable volume catalogues the key primary sources illuminating the nineteenth-century practice of plural marriage among the Latter-day Saints from the inception of plurality as an idea in the prophet Joseph Smith’s mind,to its demise as a practice and the moment in the twentieth century when it became a despised doctrine for the modern day church.Hardy’s long history of scholarship in the historiography of plurality perfectly equipped him with an understanding of the currents of history that mold this story,the alternate points of view which portray its dimension, meaning and theology,and the interpretation of what this meant about the Latterday Saints themselves.The men and women who chose to believe their prophets’ instruction and adjust their lives to fit the unique parameters of this ancient but unusual family organization are brought to life in these pages through their own stories or words.

Rightly so,the book begins where Mormon polygamy began,with the prophet Joseph Smith.For Joseph “commanded patriarchal marriage in the name of God.It comported with Mormon claims that they were restoring the truths of earlier prophets and dispensations”(389).Anchoring the Latter-day experiment in an ancient order of men and women,Joseph’s unique interpretation made “sexuality a practice of the gods and,going yet further,exhorting its reproductive employment as a high road to divinity for mortals”(389).Linked to restoration to one’s potential for godhood,plurality and its sexual component opened the potentialities of heaven.

Hardy cautions the reader that many of the manuscripts were written long after the fact and are shadowed by later interpretations,emotions or experiences. Standing silently to the side as we move through the passages of the book,he proves a wise guide and mentor.At each turn,the author sets us up with historical interpretation that contextualizes the passage,helps make sense of it and reveals its importance in the course of the evolution of the doctrine’s rocky history.From time to time,Hardy references the key historical interpretations of the sources, how those who have studied them have assessed their value.

The documents range widely and express as equally broad an expanse of views and attitudes.Hardy describes the purpose of the issuance of the formal articulation of the doctrine of plural marriage as “pragmatic,”a “summation of Smith’s thought over many years.”Appearing after an initial series of plural unions,the 1843 Revelation brought it into the dogma of the church.For Carmon Hardy,

plurality continued after Smith’s death in 1844,and after moving into the west, “on a scale greater than ever before.And because of it,in part,Mormonism emerged as perhaps the most distinctive religious movement in American history”(72).

The book is divided into sections which corral the diverse primary sources into thematic but also chronological categories.The “Mormons Tell the World about Polygamy,”and “Mormons Talk to Themselves about Polygamy,”exhibit an evolution of thinking about the practice and theological underpinnings of the doctrine. Learning through their own experience with polygamy,the Mormons explained what they knew as a way of justifying and solidifying their position in the world. The chapters on the national critique of the practice are particularly enlightening and far less well known sources sketch out a picture of disgust,the perception of immorality where for the Mormons was righteous living,and an intentional marshalling of support,opposition and eventually attack.Hardy includes in his collection key pieces of legislation designed by the Federal government to put down the power of the LDS church and in particular its despised doctrine of plurality. The language of speeches like those given by men such as William Hooper pleading for compassion and respect given at the territorial legislature or by George Edmunds’legislation at the United States Congress display the wide range of ways of thinking about the practice—where some saw evidence of faith others saw sin. The gap between the two created a chasm impossible to cross.It is clear by the end of the book why plurality fell from Mormonism’s central playbook and within decades after the Manifesto of 1890 became a distasteful memory of a church struggling for mainstream acceptance and identity.

Hardy gives the reader ample evidence for why plurality is worth studying, “revising the topic,”he writes,“enlarges humane sensibility and tolerance,”saving us from “historical forgiveness”(392).But his concluding comment reveals his deep respect and appreciation of both the quirkiness of the men and women who practiced the doctrine with their lives and the intriguing history that resulted.“It gives the Latter-day Saint polygamous passage,especially those who lived it,a long overdue heraldic place on the tablet of this American Israel’s pioneer epoch,a salute to their proud religious audacity,and the determination they displayed by engaging in one of the longest campaigns of civil disobedience in American history.It is a reminiscence abundant with character and sacrifice,forever tempting our gaze”(392).

Kudos to the Arthur H.Clark Company for this remarkable series of valuable documentary histories and the meticulous editing and coaching of series editor, Will Bagley.As was true of earlier volumes in the series,this book will become a classic.B.Carmon Hardy’s Doing the Works of Abraham:Mormon Polygamy Its origin, practice,and demise should be where one begins with future studies of the Latterday Saints encounter with the doctrine of plural marriage.

In the President’s Office:The Diaries of L.John Nuttall,1879-1892 Edited by Jedediah S.Rogers.(Salt Lake City:Signature Books,2007.xl + 511 pp.Cloth,$125.)

LEONARD JOHN NUTTALL (1834-1905) remains a somewhat obscure figure in Utah/Mormon history despite having served as personal secretary to LDS Church presidents John Taylor and Wilford Woodruff.This handsome Signature Books/Smith-Pettit Foundation publication,edited by Arizona State University doctoral student Jedediah S.Rogers,is the eleventh in their series of personal accounts of prominent Latter-day Saints,and should go some to raise Nuttall’s profile and the chronicle of events he describes.While this already hefty volume covers only twelve of the twenty-eight years of Nuttall’s diaries (1876-1904),the period portrayed in this publication is,arguably,the most important of Nuttall’s diaries.Like Signature Books’other diary transcriptions,this book will be noted for making available a revealing account of insider Mormonism otherwise difficult to access by the general public.The original materials are a portion of the 3.5 linear feet of Nuttall’s papers at Brigham Young University’s L.Tom Perry Special Collections.

A native of England and immigrant to Utah in 1852,Nuttall,as noted by Rogers,was a nephew of John Taylor who converted the family to Mormonism. While the kinship connection undoubtedly influenced Nuttall’s rise to local church leadership in Kanab and eventual service to the church’s hierarchy,the diaries reveal a talented,perceptive,and faithful man.

Nuttall emphasizes some periods and events over others.While the book’s length is somewhat evenly divided between Nuttall’s service in the administrations of Taylor (1879-1887) and Woodruff (1887-1892),time segments within each administration vary considerably.During Taylor’s tenure,for example,the pages covering 1879 nearly equal in number those for 1880-1883,nothing is included from 1885,and forty pages (eight percent of the book) is devoted to just the last month of Taylor’s life in 1887.Also,coverage of Woodruff’s leadership is limited for most of two years,1888 and 1890,while Nuttall was in Washington,D.C., working on the church’s behalf.

The one-sided participant’s view of the pre-statehood struggle between Mormon leaders and non-Latter-day Saints in Utah and Washington,whose legal influence had finally tipped the balance in the latter’s favor,is the primary and most illuminating contribution of the account.Nuttall’s own involvement in polygamy forced him “underground”during “the Raid:”“This is the first public meeting I have attended of the Saints since January 1885”(458,May 10,1891). Also of interest,though not covered with the depth one might suppose,are references to the demise of official plural marriage among the Mormons.

The matters covered for a dozen years by one in Nuttall’s position are,of course,many.They range from Taylor’s rehearsals of Joseph Smith’s teachings, Mormon relations with Native Americans,headquarters’involvement in the

Logan Temple construction,church business concerns,including the chronic problems of the Bullion,Beck,and Champion mining operations.Observers of late nineteenth-century Mormonism will find Nuttall’s chronicle of Mormon leaders’struggles to maintain the church’s bearing walls,despite extreme opposition,to be important.

While the work does not bear the marks of modern documentary editing standards,something that may disappoint readers of such a consequential volume as Nuttall’s,the editor’s useful introduction helps the reader understand the diary’s context in a straightforward and accessible manner.The volume,however,would have benefited by a more comprehensive introductory biographical sketch of Nuttall and better identification of the fifty-two “Prominent Characters”who received only cursory two-line descriptions in the introduction.

Nuttall was one who knew that as he was writing he was creating an important source of history:“Many scenes have transpired...which will be written by the future Historian.I have done...a good deal towards it”(245,February 1,1888). This welcome volume proves his point.

Presidents and Prophets:The Story of America’s Presidents and the LDS Church.

By Michael K.Winder.(American Fork:Covenant Communications,Inc.,2007.428 pp. Cloth $32.95.)

MICHAEL K.WINDER,vice president of Winder Farms,University of Utah Hans Morrow Award winner,graduate of Harvard University’s John F.Kennedy School of Government executive leadership program and published author,has written a fascinating story of Latter-day Saint church leaders and their relationships with the presidents of the United States.Not only does he reveal the actual encounters Mormon church presidents,apostles and delegates to Congress had with those who led the nation,he also weaves threads of Latter-day Saint doctrine that relates to the story he tells,thus allowing him to begin his book with George Washington and other presidents who served long before The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was organized.Readers learn,for example,that the Father of our Country,Mormons believe,was foreordained before he came to earth to establish the United States of America.He was among the first to receive the ordinance of baptism for the dead as Don Carlos Smith,Joseph Smith’s brother,acted as proxy,the font being the Mississippi River.John Adams,Thomas Jefferson and James Madison also received posthumously certain ordinances and

were believed to have been raised up by God to found and lead the nation.

The first president that an LDS Church president actually met was Martin Van Buren and the Mormon account of that meeting which Winder fleshes out caused Joseph Smith to “curse Van Buren,”and tell a Quincy Whig reporter that “Van Buren was not as fit as my dog,for the chair of state...” (51).Still,John M. Bernhisel,in Salt Lake City’s Endowment House in 1876 performed a baptism on Van Buren’s behalf.Seventy-six years later other temple ordinances for Van Buren were completed.Many Mormons,if not most,are unaware of this final chapter in the story of President Van Buren and the Latter-day Saints.

The accumulation of little known events in the unfolding relationship of the president of the nation and the highest Mormon leaders will astonish even the most serious students and teachers of Latter-day Saint history.Some examples follow.Joseph Smith prophesied in May 1844 that John Tyler would not be elected the next president.Karl G.Maeser,gave piano lessons to John Tyler’s daughter for six months.Abraham Lincoln served on the grand jury that indicted men believed to have murdered Joseph Smith.Joseph F.Smith was the first church president since Joseph Smith Jr.,to visit the president in the White House (199).Woodrow Wilson was blessed by name by Heber J.Grant in the dedicatory prayer of the Hawaiian Temple (211).President Harding asked Senator and Apostle Reed Smoot to give his gravely ill wife a priesthood blessing,and President Heber J. Grant played golf with Harding when he visited Utah (221).President Calvin Coolidge,shortly before his death was blessed by Senator Smoot (225).Senator Smoot,after marrying his second wife,honeymooned for a week in the White House as the guest of President and Mrs.Hoover (233).And President Lyndon Johnson gave President David O.McKay one of the three flags that flew over the capital during the inaugural ceremonies (307).

General church officers with only a few exceptions,Winder points out,developed closer ties with Republican presidents than with their Democrat counterparts. Still,Mormon church leaders recognized that they needed some influence when a Democrat led the nation,and sought ties with leaders in both political parties.

Though this is a fascinating read,there are one or two items that should be noted.The author points out what may not be universally known that George Washington rarely attended church,and when he prayed,even in private,preferred to stand rather than kneel (7).Then Winder repeats the mythical story at Valley Forge where Washington’s men found him kneeling,praying for guidance and aid, as well as featuring the H.Bruekner painting of Washington praying on bended knee.Joseph J.Ellis in his book American Creation (2007) writes:“The image of Washington kneeling in prayer amidst the snowdrifts is a complete fabrication” (62).Winder’s source is Ezra Taft Benson’s The Great Prologue, which may reflect legend more than fact.Winder also fails to inform us that there were two others who stood proxy for Washington’s vicarious baptism before the saints left Nauvoo. (Guy M.Bishop,“What Has Become of Our Fathers?’Baptism for the Dead in Nauvoo.”Dialogue 23 (Summer 1990):85-97).

Michael K.Winder is to be commended for bringing together a plethora of interesting facts that involved LDS church leaders and presidents of the United States.Not only is this book a valuable historical narrative but it is also attractive; the pictures alone make the volume worth purchasing.It is no wonder that the author wanted those he worked with in the West Valley City government to have a copy.This book would be a valuable addition to anyone’s library,even a Church President or the President of the United States.

Minerva Teichert:Pageants in Paint. By Marian Wardle.(Provo:Brigham Young University Museum of Art,2007.xiv + 244 pp.Paper,$29.95.)

IN THE YEARS SINCE HER DEATH,the paintings of Western artist Minerva Teichert have gained substantial notoriety for their Western and Mormon themes, and distinct artistic style.In spite of this rise in popularity,however,literature highlighting the life of one of the West’s most prolific twentieth-century artists has been lacking,limited to articles written by family members for inclusion in magazines and journals,and only one published book.While these works provide adequate biographical sketches by utilizing letters,diary entries,and oral history, each has lacked the scope and expertise required to adequately describe Teichert’s art and the historical context in which it was created.

In Minerva Teichert:Pageants in Paint,Brigham Young University Museum of Art curator and Teichert granddaughter Marian Wardle uses her professional expertise to examine Teichert’s life and accomplishments in greater detail than has been yielded previously.In addition to her professional mincing of Teichert’s artwork, Wardle’s familial relation to her subject lends her credibility in dealing with the intricacies of Teichert’s character and personality.

While some would argue that this relationship to Teichert makes Wardle an inherently biased biographer,the book maintains a scholarly perspective throughout, with sources assiduously researched in order to avoid some of the “inaccuracies”she claims have been perpetuated in Teichert’s past biographies.In her “Notes on the Sources,”Wardle cements her standing as a credible biographer by pointing out that many of these “erroneous recordings of episodes”were probably “inspired by the artist herself (Teichert),whose dramatic nature was sometimes given to hyperbole” (230).Wardle’s willingness to point out one of her grandmother’s idiosyncrasies (however euphemistically) indicates she is wholly committed to a scholarly examination of Teichert’s life and career.However,even without this evidence of objectivity,the quality of the content and presentation of Pageants in Paint is enough to easily vault it past other works on Teichert and into the role of authoritative biography.

The book’s most appealing quality may be Wardle’s incorporation of diverse facts into her contextualizing of Teichert’s life,thus making Pageants in Paint engaging not only to those with express interest in Teichert,but also for those looking for insight into early twentieth century art theory and history.For example,Wardle delves into the prevalent art techniques and styles of the time in order to describe the development of Teichert’s skill while she was studying in Chicago and New York in the early 1900s.Other historical gems offered by the author include her description of Teichert’s utilization of the depression-era New Deal programs such as the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) and the Works Progress Administration (WPA),which placed many of her murals in Wyoming schools. Despite the occasional use of art verbiage that is difficult for a layman to digest, Wardle’s thorough descriptions of circumstances and events provide significant insight into the world in which Teichert lived.

Other features of the book stand out in addition to its engaging content, including forty-seven color reproductions of some of Teichert’s most famous paintings.Many of her sketches have been included as well,revealing Teichert’s raw artistic talent and showing her development throughout her prolific career. This blend of high quality prints and fascinating content makes the book suitable for serious reading,or mere coffee-table perusal.

Pageants in Paint is successful in large part due to Wardle’s ability to fully explain the intricacies of Teichert’s unique work while sacrificing none of the biographical information that characterizes other works on Teichert.Clearly the definitive biography written on the life of Minerva Teichert,Wardle’s scholarly treatment of the subject and apt characterization of her work add a significant cache of knowledge not only to those studying Teichert herself,but to those interested in the period in general.

Wallace Stegner’s Salt Lake City. By Robert C.Steensma.(Salt Lake City:The University of Utah Press,2007.x + 165 pp.Cloth,$29.95.)

WALLACE STEGNER was born rolling.He lived in the town of his birth,Lake Mills,Iowa,for only six weeks.Like a tumbleweed the family caromed from North Dakota to Washington State to Saskatchewan to Montana,finally snagging up in Salt Lake City in 1921.Stegner was twelve years old.For nearly fifteen of the next eighteen years,he lived in Salt Lake City where life continued to be unsettled.Stegner’s father was a bootlegger and operated speakeasies in the family residences which numbered at least eleven between 1921 and 1939.Stegner’s East High School days were stressful,but he later thrived at the University of Utah.He

wrote his first short story and first novel in Salt Lake City.He fell in love,was jilted,and recovered for the first time in Salt Lake City.He married and his son, Page,was born in Salt Lake City.Stegner belatedly came to realize that Salt Lake City was his hometown.

Wallace Stegner’s Salt Lake City delivers a detailed view of the man and the city during his passage through adolescence into adulthood.Author Robert C. Steensma takes a cue from Stegner’s belief in the influence of places on personality.In a gallery of photos (71 pages) plus chapters on the American West,Salt Lake City,East High School,and the University of Utah,Steensma paints the milieus of Stegner’s teenage years through his late twenties,letting the reader,for the most part,judge the environment’s impact in shaping Stegner’s character.Against this cultural background,Steensma fills in the details,connecting Salt Lake City’s landmarks and people to scenes and characters in Stegner’s works.We learn,for example,that Nola,an important character in Recapitulation ,was,in real life, Juanita Crawford,to whom Stegner was once engaged.Nola is contrasted with Holly who is based on Helen “Peg”Foster,another of Stegner’s close friends from his university days.Photos of both women are featured in the photo section.

The book also includes two autobiographical essays by Stegner,and it is here that we get a focused view of his emotional life during the Salt Lake City years.In “At Home in the Fields of the Lord,”he recalls that they were some of “the most miserable years of my life…and I am sure now,”he writes,“that off and on and for considerable periods I can hardly have been completely sane”(41).Between high school and college,Stegner grew six inches,and with growth came athletic prowess,self confidence,and friends.As a college sophomore,he earned a tennis letter sweater,and in “It Is the Love of Books I Owe Them,”Stegner writes of a chance encounter with an admiring classmate:“It was the sweater that made Harold look on me as one of the godlike ones who belonged.To tell the truth,it had the same effect on me”(73).

In Steensma’s essays,the relevance of some anecdotal material seems,to this reviewer,a stretch,and a tabular or,better still,graphic chronology of Stegner’s life,or at least the Salt Lake period,would have been helpful,as would larger type for the block quotations,but these are minor faults.

Many readers will find this book satisfying.Those who have read or are about to read The Big Rock Candy Mountain, Recapitulation, and/or The Preacher and the Slave (later retitled Joe Hill) will enjoy connecting characters and landmarks with real-life counterparts.Readers nostalgic for Salt Lake City and the University of Utah of the 1920s and 1930s will find nourishment.Historians will find the book insightful and well researched,a worthy addition to collections of books on either Stegner or Salt Lake City.

BOOKNOTICES

Baby Doe Tabor:The Madwoman in the Cabin. By Judy Nolte Temple. (Norman:University of Oklahoma Press,2007,280 pp.Cloth,$24.95.)

The story of the mysterious Baby Doe Tabor has intrigued students of the American West for nearly one hundred years.Renowned for her beauty,Baby Doe’s marriage to the silver magnate Horace Tabor made her the possessor of seemingly inexhaustible wealth as her husband’s mine prospered greatly during the boom years of the silver mining industry.However,the wealth was fleeting as the Depression of 1893 divested the Tabors’of their considerable resources,forcing them to move from their opulent Denver mansion into a cabin near the mine,situated high in the Rocky Mountains.After the death of Horace, Baby Doe remained alone in the cabin for more than thirty years,recording what she termed her “Dreams and Visions”on scraps of paper.Dismissed as the incoherent ramblings of a madwoman,the writings were never extensively studied until author Judy Nolte Temple began to piece them together.Through her analysis,Temple removes the cloak of secrecy,myth,and misinformation that surrounds Baby Doe Tabor,revealing the tragic story of a complicated and passionate woman.

Dinosaur:Four Seasons on the Green and Yampa Rivers. Text by Hal Crimmel, Photographs by Steve Gaffney.(Tucson:The University of Arizona Press,2007,96 pp. Paper,$14.95.)

The latest in the Desert Places series,author Hal Crimmel and photographer Steve Gaffney provide the reader with a thoughtful view of one of the West’s most pristine landscapes.Named for the large dinosaur fossil quarry found in its eastern Utah/western Colorado environs,Dinosaur National Monument is described by Crimmel as a “desert oasis”due to its position as a converging point for the Green and Yampa rivers.It was during whitewater expeditions on these rivers that Crimmel and Gaffney conducted much of the research for their book,allowing them to capture the interior of the monument both in word and photograph.In addition to documenting the beauty and uniqueness of Dinosaur National Monument,the authors also address conservation issues,highlighting the threats faced by national parks such as Dinosaur,and the steps that can be taken to mitigate those threats.

UTAHSTATE

HISTORICALSOCIETYFELLOWS

THOMAS G.ALEXANDER JAMES B.ALLEN LEONARD J.ARRINGTON (1917-1999) MAUREEN URSENBACH BEECHER FAWN M.BRODIE (1915-1981) JUANITA BROOKS (1898-1989) OLIVE W.BURT (1894-1981) EUGENE E.CAMPBELL (1915-1986) EVERETT L.COOLEY (1917-2006)

C.GREGORY CRAMPTON (1911-1995) S.GEORGE ELLSWORTH (1916-1997) AUSTIN E.FIFE (1909-1986) PETER L.GOSS LEROY R.HAFEN (1893-1985) JOELJANETSKI

JESSE D.JENNINGS (1909-1997) A.KARL LARSON (1899-1983) GUSTIVE O.LARSON (1897-1983) BRIGHAM D.MADSEN CAROL CORNWALL MADSEN DEAN L.MAY (1938-2003) DAVID E.MILLER (1909-1978) DALE L.MORGAN (1914-1971) WILLIAM MULDER (1915-2008) FLOYD A.O’NEIL

HELEN Z.PAPANIKOLAS (1917-2004) CHARLES S.PETERSON RICHARD W.SADLER MELVINT.SMITH WALLACE E.STEGNER (1909-1993) WILLIAM A.WILSON

HONORARYLIFEMEMBERS

DAVID BIGLER JAY M.HAYMOND FLORENCE S.JACOBSEN STANFORD J.LAYTON WILLIAM P.MACKINNON JOHN S.MCCORMICK MIRIAM B.MURPHY LAMAR PETERSEN RICHARD C.ROBERTS MELVIN T.SMITH MARTHA R.STEWART GARY TOPPING