Peter Crawley, A Descriptive Bibliography of the Mormon Church, Volume Two, 1848–1852 (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center Brigham Young University, 2005), 68–153.

400 CORDON, Alfred. [Handbill advertising four lectures, January 14, 21, and 28, and February 4, 1849, in the Guy Street Hall, Leamington. Leamington? 1849]

Alfred Cordon was living in Burlington, Iowa, when Orson Hyde called him in July 1848 to return to his native England as a missionary (see item 97). On October 1 he arrived in Liverpool and six days later succeeded Thomas Smith as president of the Warwickshire Conference. For almost two years he would labor in this capacity, until released to return to America in September 1850.¹

In Leamington, on Monday evening, January 8, 1849, Cordon met with some of the local elders, and here

it was deemed wisdom in order to stir up the minds of the people to investigation that we have some Bills printed and placard the Town, notifying the people that a course of Lectures would be delivered in the Guy Street Hall, The first Lecture to be delivered on Sunday Evening Jan 14 on The absolute necessity of the Priesthood. 2nd Jan 21st The Gathering of Israel Gog a Magog on Jan 28 The materiallity of the Ressurrection and on Feb 4 On Water Baptism.

Delivering the four lectures as scheduled, Cordon noted in his journal that they were well attended and the audience was attentive, but none came forward for baptism.² This January 1849 handbill is the first of eight bills he mentions in his journal, none of which are located (see items 401, 414, 422, 423, 457, 501, 510).

401 CORDON, Alfred. [Handbill advertising a conference at Coventry, February 11, 1849. Coventry? 1849]

The day after he delivered his fourth lecture in the Guy Street chapel (see the preceding item), Alfred Cordon went to Rugby and then to Coventry, where he “made arrangements for the publishing of Bills for this place” advertising a conference to be held on Sunday, February 11. Five hundred and seventy members attended this conference. “There was a good spirit that prevailed over the meeting,” Cordon wrote in his journal. “Peace and good order was in our midst the saints from a distance rejoiced in the things of the Kingdom.” Two days later they held “another crowded meeting,” when one person was baptized.¹

402 The Frontier Guardian. Kanesville: February 7, 1849–February 20, 1852.

4 v. (80 nos. in [320] pp.) 56 cm.

On October 15, 1848, Orson Hyde returned to Council Bluffs—renamed Kanesville the preceding April in honor of Thomas L. Kane—having purchased a press and type in Cincinnati with $800 borrowed in Washington, D.C. During November he set up his press with the help of Oliver Cowdery—who had come to Kanesville that October and had been rebaptized in November—expecting to begin the Frontier Guardian that month (see item 371). But family illness kept his printer, John Gooch, in St. Louis over the winter, and not until February 7, 1849, was Hyde able to issue the first number.¹ During the next three years he published the Guardian every other week, until selling the paper in February 1852. For sixteen months it was the Church’s only periodical in America.²

Four months after he issued the first number, Hyde wrote optimistically about his newspaper:

My press now nearly or quite supports itself. The Gold diggers have helped me much in this matter by sending back so many papers to their friends. Though it does not yet afford me much of any profit, yet it is such a satisfaction and pleasure to wield such an engine as the press. I like the business; and though we have some little confusion and bustle, I am pleased with this situation, and the Guardian is beginning to get into the upper circles, and begins to hold and exert an influence that I trust will be beneficial to the Church. It is my constant and daily prayer. My whole life, soul and body, day and night, are employed to make this paper have a good influence, and thus far my labors have been blest.³

Initially a subscription cost $2 per year, but beginning with the third volume it was dropped to $1—a clear indication that the Guardian was one of the few Mormon newspapers to achieve some degree of financial stability. At the time Hyde sold it in 1852, the paper had “between thirteen and fourteen hundred subscribers.”⁴

Each issue of the Guardian has four pages, in six columns, with none of the pages numbered. A complete file consists of eighty numbers in four volumes, the first three volumes in twenty-six numbers, the fourth in two numbers. For the first two volumes, February 7, 1849, to January 22, 1851, the paper appeared every other Wednesday without a lapse. With the first number of volume 3, it changed to Friday, and for the rest of its run, February 7, 1851, to February 20, 1852, it issued every other Friday, again with no lapses.⁵ The masthead of the paper was also changed with the first number of volume 3, a typeset masthead replaced with “an engraved fancy head.”⁶

Orson Hyde is listed as editor and proprietor for the duration of the paper. Beginning with the ninth number (May 30, 1849), John Gooch Jr. is listed as the printer, although he had been the printer from the outset (see items 232, 268).⁷ In the twenty-second number (November 28, 1849), Hyde introduced Daniel Mackintosh, who was to “superintend the business transactions of the office, and contribute by his talents to make the Guardian more interesting,” and it is clear that Mackintosh played a major role from that point on. Indeed, during two periods when Hyde visited Salt Lake City, July–November 1850 and June–November 1851, he and Gooch bore the full responsibility for the paper.⁸

Born in Scotland, August 12, 1820, Daniel Mackintosh joined the Church in 1841, came to Nauvoo about 1845, and made the trek to Utah in 1852. Settling in Salt Lake City, he worked as one of Brigham Young’s clerks and served a term as territorial treasurer; during 1857–58 he labored as a missionary in Boston. A month after his fortieth birthday he died in Salt Lake City, September 15, 1860. His daughter Agnes married Brigham Young’s son Mahonri M. Young and was the mother of the artist Mahonri Mackintosh Young.⁹

In his salutatory in the first number, Orson Hyde made it clear that the Guardian would promote the interests of the Church. With regard to political issues, he continued, “it is not our present design to interfere to any great extent. Still, when duty calls us to raise our voice upon this subject, we know our constitutional rights and privileges, and we dare to assert them.” By the third number, however, the paper was celebrating Zachary Taylor’s election; in the thirteenth it ran a “Union Ticket” of candidates for county offices in the August 1849 election; and by the fifty-second it could boldly declare, “In politics we are decidedly whig”—a departure from the earlier Democratic leanings of the Mormons, but consistent with the agreement made in March 1848 (see items 18, 148, 182, 211, 361).¹⁰

Like the other Mormon papers before it, the Guardian printed local news, agricultural advice, poetry and fiction, articles and national news from other newspapers, lists of letters at the post office, legal notices, local advertisements, and editorials on various issues facing the Saints. It ran communications from the authorities in Salt Lake City, including the first six general epistles of the First Presidency, as well as reports of the conferences in Iowa and Utah. It reprinted articles from the Times and Seasons, the Millennial Star, and, beginning in 1850, from the Deseret News. Most numbers included advice to emigrants, news from the plains, or lists of individuals or companies going to California. Between August 7 and October 2, 1850, it reprinted Thomas L. Kane’s The Mormons (Philadelphia, 1850). Upon returning from his second visit to the Salt Lake Valley, Hyde ran an editorial and a letter from the First Presidency in the Guardian of November 14, 1851, directing the Saints in Iowa to come to the Valley in the spring. And in the last number (February 20, 1852) he announced that he had sold the Guardian to Jacob Dawson, a non-Mormon and an attorney from Fremont County, Iowa, formerly connected with the Pittsburgh Gazette, and included a prospectus for the paper’s successor, the Frontier Guardian and Iowa Sentinel.¹¹

Flake-Draper 3477. CtY, MH, UPB, USlC.

403 WAUGH, George Peden. A poetic P.S. to a letter, dated Edinburgh, June 29th, 1841. [Four lines of verse, signed Geo. D. Watt] Replied to from Dundee, June 30th, 1841, by Geo. Peden Waugh, and revised by the author at Edinburgh, 15th March, 1849. [Edinburgh? 1849?]

Broadside 20.5 x 13 cm. Ornamental border.

The only located copy of this broadside is pasted into a book of pamphlets once owned by George Peden Waugh, which also has an autobiographical sketch and another poem in his holograph on the front and back endsheets. Father Waugh, as he was familiarly known, was born in East Kilbride, Lanarkshire, Scotland, February 11, 1789. When he was ten years old, his father, a soldier, enlisted him in the Royal Artillery as a drummer, and until 1823 Waugh served in the Royal Artillery, when he retired with a military pension. On August 26, 1840, in Edinburgh, Orson Pratt baptized him into the Church. For a number of years he served as the clerk of the Edinburgh and Dundee Conferences (see items 491, 537), and in 1853 he sailed for America, reaching the Great Salt Lake Valley that September. Eight months later he left the Valley for a mission in Ontario, Canada; then, at the conclusion of this mission, he went back to England and returned to America on the Horizon as an officer of the company. Along with most of the Horizon’s emigrants, Waugh crossed the plains with the Martin handcart company, and on November 29, 1856, one day before the company reached Salt Lake City, he died on the trail.¹

George D. Watt, the first Mormon convert in Great Britain (see items 262, 640), was assigned to missionary service in Edinburgh in July 1840 and eventually presided over the Church there before immigrating to Nauvoo in 1842. During this period he seems to have developed a close friendship with George Peden Waugh. Watt returned to Great Britain in June 1846, assumed the leadership of the Church in Scotland upon his arrival, became president of the Staffordshire Conference the following March, and then presided over the Preston Conference from August 1847 until he left for America in January 1851.² Early in 1849 he traveled in Scotland and undoubtedly visited his old friend.³ This likely prompted Waugh’s Poetic P.S.

Watt’s four-line poem—“Pray, Brother Waugh, remember well, / How dark and blind are Adam’s sons; / To them the gospel plainly tell, / But let alone the Heads and Horns!”—is at the top of the broadside, followed by Waugh’s poem in five 6-line stanzas. In this poem Waugh speaks of the apostasy of the primitive church, the imminence of the Second Advent, and the call to the Saints to proclaim the gospel in preparation for Christ’s coming. Its first stanza: “Twas Gentile heathens fraught / With rage against God’s truth, / Who forged base lies and taught / Vain dogmas unto youth; / Dare I, to shun man’s frown, conceal / What Holy Prophets do reveal?”

Flake-Draper 9661a. UPB.

404 Report of the Glasgow quarterly conference, held in the Mechanics’ Institution, Canning Street, Calton, Glasgow, March 24 and 25, 1849. [Signed at end:] Eli B. Kelsey, President. Walter Thompson [sic], Clerk. [Glasgow? 1849?]

8 pp. 21.5 cm.

This is the first of nine located reports from the Glasgow Conference (see items 421, 455, 495, 544, 650, 706), the first of two issued under Eli B. Kelsey’s presidency.¹ It includes a table giving the statistics for twenty-six branches in the conference (p. [2]) and a report of the meetings on March 24 and 25, 1849 (p. [3]–8), including instructions to the local leaders by Orson Pratt and E. B. Kelsey—who at one point chastised the branch leaders for not keeping their accounts current with the conference’s book agent.

Born in Scioto County, Ohio, October 27, 1819, Eli B. Kelsey was teaching school in Kentucky when he joined the Church there in 1843. In the spring of 1844 he moved to Nauvoo and then to Council Bluffs in 1847, where he was called to go to England. He arrived in the British Mission in August 1848 and was immediately assigned to preside over the Glasgow Conference. During the summer of 1849 he went to America to visit his family and then returned to England in January 1850. After editing the Millennial Star for a few months, he was called to succeed Alfred Cordon as president of the Warwickshire Conference in September 1850 (see item 511), and at the beginning of the year assumed the presidency of the London Conference, serving until he sailed for America in December 1851 (see items 545, 575, 580, 620, 635). The following year he led a company of Mormon immigrants to Utah. Kelsey settled in Salt Lake City and over the next thirty years engaged in a number of business ventures, including mining and real estate. In 1869 he aligned himself with the Godbeite dissenters and was excommunicated. But he was also a polygamist, and in spite of his separation from the Church, he maintained his polygamous family and was a target of the antipolygamy crusade at the time of his death in Salt Lake City, March 27, 1885. Both the Deseret Evening News and Salt Lake Daily Herald ran long obituaries, the Herald commenting: “We wish that all men in Utah were as good, as true, as honest, as progressive, and as fair as the late Eli B. Kelsey.”²

Walter Thomson, the conference clerk, was born in Glasgow, August 10, 1825, converted to Mormonism in 1841, and labored in the conference until he immigrated to Utah in 1851. For five he years in lived in Salt Lake City, and then he moved to Ogden, where he served as county clerk, country treasurer, city councilor, alderman, and president of the Ogden Publishing Company. He died in Ogden, June 11, 1877.³

Flake-Draper 1918. MH, UHi, UPB, USlC, UU.

405 FLANIGAN, James Henry. Reply to a sheet entitled “The Result of Two Meetings Between the L.D. Saints and Primitive Methodists,” at Gravely, Cambridgeshire. [2 lines] By J. H. Flanigan, L.D.S. [Caption title] [Dated at end:] Bedford, March 1st, 1849. [Northhampton, 1849]

8 pp. 21 cm.

James H. Flanigan had been president of the Bedfordshire Conference about seven weeks when he came to Gravely on February 22, 1849, and discovered that the Saints there were disturbed by a David Collins, who professed to be a Mormon and had arranged a debate with the primitive Methodists that evening (see item 390).¹ Flanigan denounced Collins as an impostor and inserted himself into what he described as “a disagreeable debate.” He attended a second session on the 23rd, again speaking in defense of the Church, and a few days later challenged the leader of the primitive Methodists to a public debate on March 4. Rather than accept the challenge, the Methodists issued a tract “of four small pages” that gave their version of the meetings and attacked certain Mormon beliefs—no copy of which is extant. Flanigan responded with Reply to a Sheet, which he “wrote” in Cambridge on April 3. On April 11 he came to Northampton and the following day arranged to have it printed there. Nine days later he “got 300 of [his] Replies for 25 Shillings.”²

In the first three pages of Reply to a Sheet, Flanigan discusses his encounters with the primitive Methodists, whom he refers to as the “Ranters,” and then responds to the attack on the Church, defending, in particular, the Mormon concepts of present-day revelation and miracles. He includes a copy of a note to a Mr. Atwell, the leader of the primitive Methodists, inviting him to debate on March 4, the questions being whether Mormonism and “Ranting Methodism” were consistent with the Bible. This note is followed by the comment, “The day arrived, but the silence and absence of the decamped gentleman, proved his nonplus and discomfiture.” Flanigan then inserts a notice that Joseph Bays, of Chatteris, had issued a tract declaring that the Mormons deny the power of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and adds, “After such a notorious, abominable, and barefaced falsehood, at the outstart of his spurious and deceptive tract, to prejudice and imbitter the public mind, can this deceiver be believed though he speak the truth? Verily not.”³

The most interesting feature of Reply to a Sheet is the “Fourteen Articles of Faith” at the end. A modification of Joseph Smith’s thirteen Articles of Faith, first published in the Times and Seasons of March 1, 1841 (see item 199), Flanigan’s articles incorporate significant textual changes in all but the first, second, third, and sixth of the original ones. The most important changes are the addition of “5th. The Lord’s Supper” to the list of ordinances in the fourth article and the inclusion of a new article following the tenth: “We believe in the literal resurrection of the body, and that the dead in Christ will rise first, and that the rest of the dead live not again until the thousand years are expired.” The original twelfth article begins “We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers,” and Flanigan adds “queens” after “kings”—an understandable modification inasmuch as he was laboring in Victoria’s realm. Reply to a Sheet concludes with the hymn “Adieu to Honor, Wealth, and Fame,” first printed in the Adams hymnal (item 289). At the end it is dated at Bedford, March 1st, 1849, probably the date of Flanigan’s note to Atwell.

Flake-Draper 3375. CtY, MH, UPB, USlC, UU.

406 PRATT, Orson. Reply to a pamphlet printed at Glasgow, with the approbation of clergymen of different denominations, entitled “Remarks on Mormonism.” By Orson Pratt, one of the twelve apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. [Caption title] [At end:] 15, Wilton Street, Liverpool, April 30th, 1849. [At foot of p. 16:] R. James, Printer, 39, South Castle Street. [Liverpool, 1849] [First word, line 5 from bottom, p. 1:] pleted.

16 pp. 21.5 cm.

407 PRATT, Orson. Reply to a pamphlet printed at Glasgow, with the “approbation of clergymen of different denominations,” entitled “Remarks on Mormonism.” By Orson Pratt, one of the twelve apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. [Caption title] [At end:] 15, Wilton Street, Liverpool, April 30th, 1849. [At foot of p. 16:] R. James, Printer, 39 B, South Castle Street, Liverpool. [1849?] [First word, line 5 from bottom, p. 1:] my.

16 pp. 21.5 cm.

408 PRATT, Orson. Reply to a pamphlet printed at Glasgow, with the “approbation of clergymen of different denominations.” [sic] entitled “Remarks on Mormonism.” By Orson Pratt, one of the twelve apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. [Caption title] [At end:] 15, Wilton Street, Liverpool, April 30th, 1849. [At foot of p. 16:] R. James, Printer, 39 B, South Castle Street, Liverpool. [1849?] [First word, line 5 from bottom, p. 1:] to.

16 pp. 21.5 cm.

Reply to a Pamphlet, the seventh of Orson Pratt’s sixteen 1848–51 tracts, was first published serially in the Millennial Star, March 15–May 1, 1849. In the Star of April 15, Orson asked the book agents to state “by letter” how many copies of the article in pamphlet form they would want, as he intended to conclude the article in the next number and soon after take down the type. “Let there be no delay,” he continued, “as we shall only publish about the number ordered.” Two weeks later the Star announced that Reply to a Pamphlet had just been published and was for sale at 10s. per hundred, £4 10s. per thousand.¹ Item 406 was printed from the Star setting and consequently is the first edition. A copy at the Brigham Young University Lee Library has “Thomas Ord’s Book. May 2nd 1849” inscribed at the top.

Items 407 and 408 both bear Richard James’s colophon with the street number 39 B. James used this form of his address in the Millennial Star of December 1, 1848–April 15, 1849, and August 1–September 1, 1849; in three 1848 imprints; and in two other 1849 imprints.² One might infer, therefore, that items 407 and 408 were printed in 1849, probably in the late summer. Since the edition of Reply to a Pamphlet in the first O. Pratt’s Works (item 551) is item 408, one might guess it is the third edition.

Between April 21 and May 12, 1849, the Millennial Star office filled orders for slightly more than 8,100 copies of Reply to a Pamphlet. No additional copies were distributed until September 17, 1849, and from that date to December 21, 1850, the office sold almost 1,100 more. An inventory of December 21, 1850, shows 4,161 still remaining in the office.³ Since it is clear that the numbers recorded in the European Mission financial records for Orson Pratt’s Great First Cause do not include those copies bound in O. Pratt’s Works that he took to America (see item 543), it is likely that the numbers above also do not include those copies of Reply to a Pamphlet that he bound in O. Pratt’s Works. One might guess, therefore, that Reply to a Pamphlet was initially published in an edition of about 8,000, and its subsequent runs totaled between 8,000 and 10,000 copies. The tract was reprinted in four installments in the Frontier Guardian, August 8 to September 19, 1849.

As its title indicates, Orson Pratt wrote Reply to a Pamphlet in response to an anonymous piece Remarks on Mormonism, Occasioned by the Question of Orson Pratt, a Mormon Apostle, “Was Joseph Smith Sent of God?” [2 lines] Printed, with the Approbation of Clergyman of Different Denominations, for a Committee of Working Men at the Forth Iron Works [Glasgow: Printed by Bell and Bain, 1848], which, in turn, was prompted by Orson’s Divine Authority (item 367). William Gibson went to Dunfermline in November 1848 to lecture against Remarks on Mormonism and learned there that the author of the tract was Joseph N. Paton, a Swedenborgian lay preacher in Dunfermline with whom he had once debated (see item 391). Gibson sent this information to Orson Pratt, who used Paton’s name, with some degree of tentativeness, in his response.⁴

Filled with invective (e.g., “Mormonism is a gross, a stupid, and an unphilosophical fraud”) and not a forceful polemic, Remarks on Mormonism would not have drawn a reply from Orson Pratt had it not advertised itself as a response to one of his works. Plowing old ground, it mentions the Spaulding-Rigdon theory of the origin of the Book of Mormon; quotes from the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Divine Authority to enumerate what it sees as inconsistencies and contradictions with the Bible; attacks the Mormon concepts of the New Jerusalem and Aaronic Priesthood; and argues at length that Isaiah 29 and Ezekiel 37 have no bearing on the Book of Mormon and that Revelation 14:6­ does not refer to the appearance of the angel to Joseph Smith.

Orson’s Reply to a Pamphlet is largely a point-by-point response and for the most part avoids an exchange of epithets even as it comments on Paton’s lapses in logic or misreadings of Divine Authority. When Paton, for example, declares that “it is one of the established laws of optics, that no mortal eye can, by any possibility, see a spirit” (p. 4), Orson constrains himself to calling Paton sarcastically a “sage philosopher” and asks, “Will this very wise author be so kind as to inform the public by whom this ‘law of optics’ was discovered, and by what process of reason and demonstration it became an ‘established law?’” Reply to a Pamphlet has more than a page in defense of the belief that the Aaronic Priesthood is everlasting and its reestablishment on earth is predicted in the scriptures, and more than four pages in support of the Mormon interpretation of Isaiah 29, Ezekiel 37, and Revelation 14:6. For a refutation of the Spaulding-Rigdon theory, it refers the reader to Parley Pratt’s Reply to C. S. Bush (item 80) and John Taylor’s Answer to the Rev. Robert Heys (item 84).

Item 406: Flake-Draper 6537. NN, UPB, USlC, UU. Item 407: Flake-Draper 6537a. NN, UPB, USlC, UU. Item 408: Flake-Draper 6537b. CSmH, CtY, CU-B, MH, NjP, NN, UPB, USlC, UU.

409 DAVIS, John Silvanus. Ymddyddan rhwng y parchedig a’r bachgenyn. [A dialogue between the reverend and the boy.] [Signed at end:] J. Davis. [At foot below rule:] J. Davis, Argraffydd, Georgetown, Merthyr. [J. Davis, Printer, Georgetown, Merthyr.] [1849]

Broadside 17 x 11 cm.

Flake-Draper 2722zd. Dennis 24. CSmH, CU-B, MH, NjP, UPB [3 of 4 variants], USlC, WsN.

410 DAVIS, John Silvanus. Can pregethwr. Gan awdwr yr “Ymddyddan Rhwng y Parchedig a’r Bachgenyn.” [Song of a preacher. By the author of “Dialogue Between the Reverend and the Boy.”] [Merthyr Tydfil: Printed by John Davis, 1849]

Broadside 17 x 11 cm. Text in two columns, ornamental border.

Flake-Draper 2722a. Dennis 25. MH, NjP, USlC.

411 DAVIS, John Silvanus. Profwch bob peth. [Caption title] [Prove all things.] [At foot of p. 4:] J. Davis, Argraffydd, Georgetown, Merthyr-Tydfil. [J. Davis, Printer, Georgetown, Merthyr Tydfil.] [1849]

4 pp. 17 cm.

Flake-Draper 2722t. Dennis 26. CU-B, MH, NjP, UPB, USlC, WsN.

412 SYLVESTER, James. “I am going away to Zion!” Tune—“Jeanet and Jeonot.” [At end:] Sheffield, May 4th, 1849. James Sylvester. [Sheffield? 1849?]

Broadside 16 x 9 cm. Ornamental border.

James Sylvester, born near Sheffield, Yorkshire, December 4, 1815, joined the Church in 1842 and led the Sheffield branch for a time before sailing for America on January 29, 1849. In 1852 he came to Utah and settled in Springville the following year. About nine years later he moved to southern Utah, and in 1867 he resettled what is now Pintura, Washington County, after it had been abandoned by the original settlers. He died in Pintura on May 19, 1888.¹

On September 24, 1848, Sylvester asked to be released from the presidency of the Sheffield branch so he could prepare to immigrate to Utah.² One might guess that he composed “I Am Going Away to Zion!” about this time. In three 8-line verses, it announces his intention to gather to Zion, a “land of Freedom,” where “there’s plenty in basket and store” and “all are equal.” Its first four lines: “With my sheaves upon my back, and my sickle by my side, / I am going away to Zion to join the ready Bride; / With my blessings on my head, and the song that’s in my heart, / I’ll bid adieu to Babylon, for you and I must part.” Since the broadside is dated thirteen and a half weeks after Sylvester sailed for America, the line Sheffield, May 4th, 1849 undoubtedly refers to the place and date the song was published. Who published it is not known. Sylvester’s name is actually printed, in a different font, on a rectangular slip of the same paper as the broadside, 1 x 2.5 cm., pasted on the broadside at the bottom right. One might guess that the publisher recognized the need to identify the author after the piece had been struck off. The only located copy is pasted on the inside front cover of John Freeman’s “Collection of Songs,” now in the LDS Church Archives.

USlC.

413 PRATT, Orson. Was Joseph Smith sent of God? Written by Orson Pratt: one of the twelve apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, in Liverpool, England.—1848. [Caption title] [Boston? 1849?]

16 pp. 21.5 cm.

Following the caption title, this pamphlet has a preface signed by Wilford Woodruff which explains that Orson Pratt had published Divine Authority, or the Question, was Joseph Smith Sent of God? in England, where it had proved to be a successful missionary tract, and that Woodruff had had some success with it himself, inducing him to reprint it in the United States (see items 367–70). The reprinted text of Divine Authority occupies pp. [2]–16, and a letter from John Hyde Sr. to Orson Pratt, dated at London, November 13, 1848, fills the bottom half of the last page. Written five days after he joined the Church and first published in the Millennial Star of December 1, 1848, this letter speaks of Hyde’s conversion and expresses his gratitude to Pratt for his tract and to John Banks for his friendship.¹

Wilford Woodruff left Council Bluffs with his family on June 21, 1848, en route to his mission to the eastern United States, and on August 12 they arrived in Boston. Here, on the other side of the Charles River in Cambridgeport, they would make their home for the next twenty months.²

On Saturday, May 5, 1849, Woodruff took a car from New Haven to Boston and arrived at his Cambridgeport home that evening after a month of traveling through Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. Two days later he mailed a copy of “Orson Pratts Pamphlet of Answer was Joseph Smith Called of God” to James Mellen and one other person, and during the next four days he mailed out at least twenty-three more; on June 1 he sent 125 copies to Jacob Gibson.³ It is possible, of course, that Woodruff published item 413 earlier in 1849 and neglected to mention it in his journal, but it seems more likely that he picked up the first copies from the printer about the time he began sending them out, perhaps when he stopped in Boston on May 5 on his way home.

Flake-Draper 6458. CU-B, MoInRC.

414 TOONE, John. [Handbill advertising a conference in Leamington on May 27, 1849, and a Tea meeting on May 28. Leamington? 1849]

John Toone’s bill is the third unlocated handbill mentioned by Alfred Cordon in his journal (see item 400):

Saturday May 5th 1849 I returned to Leamington, and visited Elder Toone, found that he had got some bills published announcing that a Conferance would be held in Leamington on the 27th inst. and that a Tea meeting would be held on the 28th and kindly soliciting the attendance of the public.

Toone issued this handbill about a month after his conversion to Mormonism. Born in Birmingham, Warwickshire, April 10, 1813, he was baptized into the Church on April 3, 1849, and called to be president of the Leamington branch sixteen days later. He immigrated to Utah in 1852, settling first in Salt Lake City and then in Morgan County. In 1854 he returned to his native land as a missionary, presided over the Lands End Conference, and then crossed the plains in 1856 with the Martin handcart company. Thirteen years later he went again to England and served for a time as the president of the Warwickshire Conference. He died in Morgan County, August 31, 1893.¹

On May 27 the conference convened in Leamington as advertised. Among a number of items of business, Cordon was sustained as the general book agent for the Warwickshire Conference. The following afternoon at 5 p.m. about 140 sat down to tea in the Guy Street hall, “and every thing passed of[f] very well.”²

415 The book of Mormon: an account written by the hand of Mormon, upon plates taken from the plates of Nephi. [18 lines] Translated by Joseph Smith, Jun. Second European edition. Liverpool: Published by Orson Pratt, 15, Wilton Street. 1849.

xii[1]–563[1] pp. 14 cm.

The first European edition of the Book of Mormon (item 98) had been in print almost eight years when the Millennial Star of December 15, 1848, noted that all copies had been sold and a new edition would appear in May, “perhaps sooner.” Two months later the Star announced that Orson Pratt was then in the process of having 5,000 copies each of the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants printed and bound, and on May 15, 1849, it advertised the new edition of the Book of Mormon, “now ready for sale.” Copies bound in sheep were offered at a retail price of 3s. each, the final reduced price of the previous edition. The European Mission financial records indicate that Richard James charged £186 17s. 6d. for printing the books, and Thomas Fazakerley charged £111 7s. 6d. for binding 5,000 in sheep. A few, however, were bound in morocco. Eighty-six such copies remained in the mission’s inventory along with 1,893 in sheep when F. D. Richards assumed the responsibility for the mission office on December 16, 1850. Nine months later the books in sheep had all been sold.¹

The 1849 Book of Mormon collates: a half title with the verso blank (pp. [i–ii]); the title page (p. [iii]), with Entered at Stationers’ Hall on the verso; the testimonies of the three and eight witnesses (p. [v]), with the verso blank; index (pp. [vii]–xii); the main text (pp. [1]–563), with Liverpool: Printed by Richard James, 39, South Castle Street on the verso of p. 563. Reprinting the 1841 edition, Orson Pratt added a half title, included the testimonies of the three and eight witnesses on one page, and moved the index—now headed Contents—to the front of the book. He also made some textual changes but, inexplicably, did not incorporate most of the changes made by Joseph Smith in the 1840 Nauvoo edition, including those in what are now 1 Nephi 20:1 and 2 Nephi 30:6 (see item 83). Indeed, of the forty-four changes in the 1840 edition listed by J. R. Holland and S. R. Larson, excluding new typographical errors, only three were introduced by Orson Pratt in the 1849 edition.² Yet he initiated at least fifteen other textual changes and corrected the punctuation of the text on the title page.³

The book’s bindings include: black blind-stamped sheep with a circular pattern within an ornamental border on the covers and decorated panels and gilt title on the backstrip; black blind-stamped sheep with an arabesque consisting of concentric circles inside a square with inner rounded corners and two semicircles at the top and bottom, all within an ornamental border, and blind-stamped decorative panels and gilt title on the backstrip; black blind-stamped sheep with a wide ornamental border and arabesque on the covers and blind-stamped decorative panels and gilt title on the backstrip; black or brown morocco with wide gilt ornamental borders on the covers, gilt-decorated panels and gilt title between raised bands on the backstrip, gilt edges, and colored coated endsheets.

Flake-Draper 600. CSmH, CU-B, ICHi, MH, MoInRC, NjP, NN, UHi, UPB, USlC, UU.

416 DAVIS, John Silvanus. Hanes ymfudiad y Saint i Galifornia; yn gynnwysedig mewn dau lythyr o New Orleans, America, un oddiwrth Capt. D. Jones, a’r llal oddiwrth Mr. Thos. Jeremy, (gynt o Lanybydder), at olygydd Udgorn Seion. Merthyr-Tydfil: Argraffwyd ac ar werth gan J. Davis, Georgetown; ar werth hefyd gan y Saint yn gyffredinol, a llawer o lyfrwerthwyr, trwy y Deau a’r Gogledd. 1849. [In border at bottom:] Pris dwy geiniog. [An account of the Saints’ emigration to California; contained in two letters from New Orleans, America, one from Capt. D. Jones, and the other from Mr. Thos. Jeremy, (originally from Llanybydder), to the editor of Zion’s Trumpet. Merthyr Tydfil: Printed and for sale by J. Davis, Georgetown; and for sale also by the Saints generally, and many booksellers throughout the South and the North. 1849. Price twopence.]

iv[5]–24 pp. 17 cm. Double ruled border on title page.

Flake-Draper 4475. Dennis 27. CU-B, MH, NjP, UPB, USl, USlC, WsN.

417 [Frontier Guardian Extra, May 28, 1849. Kanesville, 1849]

This unlocated extra was rushed off the press to put in print the “First General Epistle of the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, from the Great Salt Lake Valley, to the Saints scattered throughout the Earth.” The epistle itself was immediately reprinted in the regular issue of the Frontier Guardian of May 30, in the New York Herald of June 22, the New York Weekly Herald of June 30, and Millennial Star of August 1; extracts were printed in the St. Louis Missouri Republican for June 8. John S. Davis republished it in Welsh (item 433), its only printing in a separate pamphlet.

Signed at the end by Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, and Willard Richards, and not dated, the epistle gives general news of the Valley, reports the sustaining of Young, Kimball, and Richards as the First Presidency at the April 1848 general conference in Kanesville, and notes that they had returned to Great Salt Lake City in September and October. It mentions that several members of the Mormon Battalion had come to the Valley with a sufficient amount of gold dust “to make money plenty in this place for all ordinary purposes” and that Kirtland Safety Society bank notes, “re-signed,” had been put in circulation as gold-backed notes.¹ It refers to Lyman Wight’s An Address by Way of an Abridged Account and Journal of My Life from February 1844 up to April 1848, with an Appeal to the Latter Day Saints and reports that he had been disfellowshipped and that Charles C. Rich, Lorenzo Snow, Erastus Snow, and Franklin D. Richards had been called into the Twelve on February 12, 1849, to fill the vacancies caused by the reorganization of the First Presidency and Wight’s dismissal (see items 345, 346, 362). “The inhabitants of this Valley . . . have organized a temporary government,” it continues, “to exist during its necessity, or until we can obtain a charter for a Territorial Government, a petition for which, is already in progress.” Those unable to immigrate to the Valley that season, it counsels, should remain in Pottawattamie County until they can make the overland trek.

The epistle was in print nineteen hours after the manuscript copy reached Kanesville. In a letter to Willard Richards of June 1, 1849, Orson Hyde reported:

On Sunday [May 27], at one o’clock P.M. the mail arrived from the Valley, and on Monday morning at eight o’clock, our extra, containing the epistle and general news was out and on the way to Saint Joseph and to Saint Louis. You may judge whether we worked. The whole western world was standing tip toe to get the news by the Salt Lake express. They were not kept long in suspense till they got it. I presume the epistle was set up and printed in less time than brother Bullock copied it. However, I will not boast; but we can do up some things here mighty quick considering.²

Under the heading From Our Extra of Monday, May 28. 42 days from Salt Lake City—in about four and a half columns of the six-column page—the Guardian of May 30, 1849, reprints the epistle after a report about the California emigration, some editorial comments, and a note that Dr. Burnhyson (i.e., Bernhisel) will carry a petition to Congress for a territorial government in the Great Basin. The Missouri Republican of June 8, 1849, makes it clear that the extra also included this preliminary text, and the comment in Hyde’s letter that it contained “general news” suggests that the extra probably filled up one side of a half sheet.

418 STENHOUSE, Thomas Brown Holmes. Truth is mighty and must prevail. Read & reflect! Revelation, nature, and reason, testify that the works of God are plain, powerful, and harmonious. Who then is the author of the mysterious, weak, and discordant systems of modern religion? Let ministers answer! [2 lines] The inhabitants of Southampton are respectfully invited to attend a course of four lectures, to be delivered in Redwards’s Commercial School Room, Chandos Street, Orchard Lane, by T. B. H. Stenhouse, elder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commencing Sunday evening, June 3rd, 1849, and continued the following Sunday evenings. [11 lines] The above lectures to commence at half-past 6 o’clock. All objections if sent in writing to 27, James Street, will be replied to on the succeeding Sunday mornings, at 11 o'clock. N.B.—Lectures on various subjects are delivered in the same room every Sunday at 11 o’clock in the forenoon, and at half-past 6 in the evening, also on Thursday evenings at half-past 7. [Enclosed in a box:] On account of the Prophet and Patriarch Joseph & Hyrum Smith having fallen martyrs for their holy religion on the 27th June, 1844, a review of their lives and death will be given in the same place on Wednesday, June 27th, 1849, commencing at half-past 7. All lovers of truth are respectfully invited to attend. [At foot, right:] [Devenish, Printer. [Southampton, 1849]

Broadside 45.5 x 29 cm.

Thomas B. H. Stenhouse, born near Edinburgh, February 21, 1824, joined the Church in 1845, began his missionary career a year later, and served as the presiding elder in Herefordshire before being called to introduce Mormonism in Southampton in January 1848. When the Southampton Conference was formed in January 1850, he was appointed president, and a month later he married Fanny Warn and then left with Lorenzo Snow for Italy in June. Transferred to Switzerland in November 1850, he was joined there by Fanny, who taught him French and helped him publish Le Réflecteur (see items 558–59). In December 1854 the Stenhouses returned to England and sailed for America the following year. For three and a half years he remained in New York, assisting with the Mormon, occasionally writing for the New York Herald, and, during the last year, presiding over the Church in the eastern states; then in 1859 he gathered to Utah, having established himself as one of the Church’s most capable young men. Four years later he became the assistant editor of the Deseret News, and in 1864 he founded the Salt Lake Daily Telegraph. But by the end of the decade his and Fanny’s loyalty to Brigham Young had begun to ebb, and with her in the lead they were drawn into the Godbeite schism; in 1870 T. B. H. withdrew from the Church. Two years later Fanny published her Exposé of Polygamy in Utah: A Lady’s Life Among the Mormons, republished many times in an altered and expanded version under the title “Tell It All,” and in 1873 T. B. H. published the Rocky Mountain Saints, a book reflecting his Godbeite orientation, still the first important narrative history of Mormonism. Subsequently they moved to San Francisco, where T. B. H. Stenhouse died on March 7, 1882. Fanny died in Los Angeles in 1904.¹

Stenhouse began his labors in Southampton on January 14, 1848. Fifty-five days passed before he baptized his first convert, but by April 28 he had baptized seventeen. When the Southampton Conference was created out of the London Conference on January 5, 1850, it included about 140 members, and when Stenhouse departed for Italy five months later, it numbered 166.²

Issued about sixteen months after he arrived in Southampton, Stenhouse’s handbill Truth Is Mighty and Must Prevail advertised four lectures on the following subjects: “What superior claims have the Latter-day Saints of being in possession of the pure gospel of Jesus Christ, above all other denominations?”; “What reasons have we for believing the Church of Latter-day Saints more perfect, and their Administrations more legal in the sight of God than all others?”; “Will the ‘Kingdom of God’ be established on the earth in this generation?”; and “What evidence is there for the people of this age to believe that Joseph Smith was a Prophet of God?” Its title was borrowed, with a bit more certainty, by Thomas Day in a Rugby handbill a few months later and by John Jaques in 1851 (items 440, 633).

Flake-Draper 8402. CtY.

419 BELL, James Ferguson. A letter to the Rev. Mr. Osborne [sic], minister of Darlington Street Chapel, Wolverhampton. By James Bell, an elder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. [Caption title] [At foot of p. 4:] Hinde, Printer, Snowhill. [Wolverhampton? 1849]

4 pp. 20.5 cm.

420 BELL, James Ferguson. A reply to the objections of the Rev. Mr. Osborne [sic], minister of Darlington Street Chapel, Wolverhampton. By J. Bell, an elder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Being the substance of a sermon delivered in the Saints’ room, St. James’s Square. [Caption title] [At foot of p. 8:] Hinde, Printer, Snowhill. [Wolverhampton? 1849]

8 pp. 20.5 cm.

Born in Birmingham, Warwickshire, April 19, 1827, James F. Bell converted to Mormonism in Birmingham in 1847, began his missionary career the following year in Lichfield, and transferred to Wolverhampton in January 1849. By mid-November he had added about one hundred new members to the Wolverhamton branch. At the end of 1850 he assumed the presidency of the Staffordshire Conference, where he served until departing for Malta in January 1853 (see item 578). Later that year he succeeded Thomas Obray as president of the mission and continued his labors in Malta until released to immigrate to America; on March 31, 1855, he and his family sailed from Liverpool. Two months later they arrived at Mormon Grove, near Atchison, Kansas, and there on June 8, 1855, James F. Bell died of cholera, six days after the death of his wife, survived only by an infant son.¹

Bell published his two tracts Letter to Osborne and Reply to Osborne in response to sermons by James Osborn (not Osborne), the Wesleyan Methodist minister in Wolverhampton, which, in turn, were prompted by Bell’s success in Wolverhampton during the summer of 1849.² Letter to Osborne is the more deferential of the two, and undoubtedly the earlier. Dated at the beginning, Wolverhampton, June 1849, it opens politely with a reference to Osborn’s piety and comments that “Good men may be mistaken.” It then lists thirty-seven rhetorical questions, with biblical references in footnotes, the last question asking, “Since there is so great a resemblance between our church and that of former days, are not the honest among men bound to join us?” Bell reports in his autobiography that he published it in 1,500 copies.³ It was reprinted in the Millennial Star of December 15, 1849, and from the Star in the Frontier Guardian of March 20, 1850. The thirty-seven questions, translated into French, were included in T. B. H. Stenhouse’s Le Réflecteur of February 1853.

Reply to Osborne reports “the substance of a sermon” Bell delivered in response to a discourse given earlier the same day by Osborn which attacked the Mormon view of baptism. Bell and others from the Wolverhampton branch attended Osborn’s discourse, which Bell recorded in shorthand, and after the meeting they announced to the congregation that Bell would speak in reply that evening. A woman in Osborn’s congregation was particularly impressed with Bell’s response and offered to help pay for printing it in pamphlet form. Bell obtained Orson Pratt’s permission and published the tract in “about 1,000” copies, which were “sold or distributed chiefly in that neighborhood.” A number of copies were given to the woman, “which she sent among the gentry.”⁴

In Reply to Osborne Bell gives a point-by-point rebuttal, with biblical citations in footnotes, arguing in particular against infant baptism and baptism by sprinkling. He demonstrates his erudition by quoting Origen and Irenaeus and strikes a more critical tone than in his Letter to Osborne, referring, for example, to Osborn’s “absurd theory” and to “his argument, (if it may be called one).” The last page has a list of publications, including “Soon to be Published . . . Absurdities of Immaterialism [and] Reply to Palmers’ Internal Evidence Against the Book of Mormon.” Absurdities of Immaterialism was advertised as just published in the Star of August 1, 1849. J. H. Flanigan sent the manuscript of Mormonism Triumphant! to Orson Pratt on July 13, and the pamphlet was advertised as just published in the Star of August 15 (see items 428–29, 431). One might infer, therefore, that Reply to Osborne was printed in July or August. It too was reprinted in the Star, in the issue of November 1, 1849, and from the Star in the Frontier Guardian of March 6, 1850.

Item 419: Flake-Draper 390. MH, USlC. Item 420: Flake-Draper 391. MH, USlC.

421 Report of the Glasgow quarterly conference, held in the Merchants’ Hall, Hutchison Street, Glasgow, June 24th, 1849. President, Eli B. Kelsey. Clerk, Walter Thompson [sic]. [At foot of p. 8:] R. James, Printer, 39, South Castle Street, Liverpool. [1849?]

8 pp. 21.5 cm.

This is the second of nine located Glasgow Conference reports, the second issued under Eli B. Kelsey’s presidency (see item 404). It includes a report of the meetings on Saturday, June 23, and Sunday, June 24, 1849, together with Kelsey’s discourse and a table of statistics for twenty-five branches (p. [2]). At the beginning of the report is a financial statement showing that the book agent owed £96 12s. to the Millennial Star office and had in hand £30 in cash, £64 6s. 8d. in books and pamphlets, and £5 13s. 8d. in receivables from the various branches. On July 10 the Star office sent the conference 325 copies of the report, probably the entire edition.¹

Flake-Draper 1919. UHi, UPB, USlC, UU.

422 [Handbill advertising a camp meeting at Grey Friars Green, Coventry, July 15, 1849. Coventry? 1849]

Under the date, Sunday, July 15, 1849, Alfred Cordon records the following in his journal:

I was very sick, yet I went to Coventry, to hold a Camp Meeting. when I got there I found that the Corporation of the place had prohibited us from holding our Meeting on Grey Friars Green, and had sent the chief constable to gather up and to destroy our Bills, in order to prevent us from laying the truth before the people, but however we were determined to preach and we moved our Cart up to another open space, which was outside the limits of the Town. a great many of the rabble of the Town assembled together and was determined to prevent us from holding our meeting, but there was a few that seemed determined to listen. the Afternoon’s meeting went of[f] well, a great many came to hear, and were very attentive. I was so feeble that I had to call for the brethren to administer to me. they did so—and blessed me in the name of the Lord. In the Evening we had about 2,000 persons present, who were as silent as death. I preached to them in the Afternoon, and Evening, and was quite well I rejoiced in the mercy of the Lord, and was satisfied that a good impression was made upon the minds of the people. I retired to rest well satisfied.¹

The unlocated handbill mentioned above was probably published by William Broadhead, the presiding elder in Coventry, who traveled and preached with Cordon (see items 423, 458). Born in Coventry, June 28, 1806, Broadhead was baptized into the Church by Thomas Day in 1844 and served as clerk of the Warwickshire Conference as well as president of the Coventry branch, before sailing for America in 1851. Two years later he crossed the plains to Utah, settling first in Salt Lake City and then in Nephi, where he died on January 1, 1872.²

423 CORDON, Alfred. [Handbill advertising five lectures in the Crown Yard, Nuneaton, by Alfred Cordon, William Broadhead, and William Jeffs. Coleshill? 1849]

Four days after the affair at Grey Friars Green (see the preceding item), Alfred Cordon went to Coleshill and

preached in the evening to an attentive congregation in the open air. I staid at Mr. McGregor’s for the night. I got 150 bills printed for Nuneaton notifying the inhabitants that a course of five Lectures would be delivered in the Crown Yard, two of them by Elder Broadhead, two by myself and one by Elder Jeffs.

Cordon preached at Nuneaton on Sunday, August 12—to a congregation diminished in number by a violent thunderstorm—and on Sunday August 26. One might guess, therefore, that Broadhead and Jeffs lectured on July 29, August 5, and August 19.¹

William Jeffs was born in Banbury, Oxfordshire, July 28, 1824, joined the Church in 1847, and labored as a local missionary in the Warwickshire Conference during Cordon’s presidency. In 1851 he married Emma Summers in Warwickshire, and in 1862 he and his family sailed for America. That September, en route to Utah, he died near Laramie, Wyoming.²

424 DAVIS, John Silvanus. Casgliad o hymnau newyddion ynghyd ag odlau ysbrydol, at wasanaeth Saint y Dyddiau Diweddaf. Merthyr-Tydfil: Argraffwyd ac ar werth gan J. Davis, yn Georgetown. 1849. [Collection of new hymns together with spiritual verses, for the use of the Latter-day Saints. Merthyr Tydfil: Printed and for sale by J. Davis, Georgetown. 1849.]

viii[1–104] pp. 10.5 cm.

Flake-Draper 1871. Dennis 28. NjP, UPB, USlC, WsN.

425 HOLT, James. L’evangile. [Caption title] [At foot of p. 2:] Printed by John Davis, Georgetown, Merthyr-Tydvil, Wales. [1849].

2 pp. 17 cm.

L’Evangile is the first Mormon work in French. It is a translation of an article in the Millennial Star for November 1, 1845, entitled “The Gospel,” signed at the end James Holt. Several James Holts were in the Church about this time, complicating the identification of the author, but he is undoubtedly the James Holt who was born in Tottington, Lancashire, January 9, 1824, and baptized into the Church at Tottington, September 18, 1841. Active as a local missionary, this Holt sailed for America with his family in September 1850 and crossed the plains the following year, settling first in Salt Lake City and then in Davis County. He died in Salt Lake City, October 25, 1856, seven and a half weeks before the birth of his sixth child.¹

William Howells, of Aberdare, Wales, was the first Latter-day Saint missionary in France and the publisher of L’Evangile. A lay Baptist preacher for several years, he joined the Church in 1847, and on August 14, 1848, at the general conference in Manchester, was called to carry to the Mormon message across the English Channel. Beginning in July 1849, he made four trips to France, organizing the first branch of the Church there at Boulogne-sur-Mer on April 6, 1850, and accompanying John Taylor and Curtis E. Bolton to Paris that July (see items 500, 514–15, 517). On March 4, 1851, he sailed with his family to America, in charge of a company of emigrating Saints (see item 561). Eight months later, at Kanesville, he died of typhus fever, November 21, 1851, two months and three days after his thirty-fifth birthday.²

L’Evangile is an essentially faithful translation of Holt’s article in the Millennial Star—but omitting the sentence infant sprinkling is therefore unnecessary and unscriptural in the first paragraph and the phrase those people that turn the world upside down are come among you; attend the preachings of that sect everywhere spoken against in the last, and omitting any indication of authorship. Who the translator was is not known. The language suggests it was not a native speaker, and it was certainly not Howells, who did not speak French.³ Opening with the question and answer, “What is the Gospel? It is the power of God unto eternal salvation,” L’Evangile lists Mormonism’s first principles—belief in God, repentance, baptism by immersion, and the laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost—and remarks that it is improper to baptize infants, that the ordinances must be administered by someone with authority, and that this authority now rests with “l’Eglise de Jesus Christ, aux saints des derniers jours.” Biblical proof texts accompany each statement. Its concluding lines, “for the day of vengeance and burning is at hand. Therefore, remember, O reader, and perish not!” were taken from the concluding lines of Orson Pratt’s Interesting Account of Several Remarkable Visions (items 82, 109–10, 147; cf. D&C 85:3, Mosiah 4:30).

Howells, a man of means, apparently underwrote the publication L’Evangile, which was printed by John Davis in Merthyr Tydfil and was out of press by the time Howells first left for France in July 1849.⁴ He had been converted by reading one of Dan Jones’s Welsh tracts, and this undoubtedly moved him to use tracts as his principal proselytizing tool.⁵ Moreover, they enabled him to make some contact with the French, whom otherwise he would have had to ignore. During his first three trips, to Le Havre, St. Malo, and Boulogne-sur-Mer, he visited mostly English families and attempted to sell them copies of Orson Pratt’s tracts, Spencer’s Letters, and the Voice of Warning. To the French he handed out copies of L’Evangile without charge. “They are desirous of having tracts,” he reported in one of his letters, “but will not give a sou for a dozen.” In Le Havre alone, he wrote, he distributed over a thousand tracts in less than one month. On his second trip he paused on the Isle of Jersey in August 1849 and left four hundred copies of L’Evangile with William C. Dunbar for use among the French-speaking population there.⁶

Flake-Draper 3209. Dennis 29. UPB, USlC.

426 HOLT, James. The gospel. [N.p., n.d.]

Broadside 19 x 12.5 cm.

This too is a separate printing of James Holt’s article in the Millennial Star of November 1, 1845, but in English—also without any indication of authorship (see the preceding item). Its text is the same as that in the Star, except for a number of changes in punctuation, one change in capitalization, several modifications in the forms of the biblical citations, and the correction of Acts viii, 26–29 to Acts viii, 36–39 in the eighteenth line of text. The last five lines are in smaller type than the rest of the text. The characteristic form of the citations, as well as the correction of the Acts citation, suggest that the broadside was reprinted from the Star. The broadside seems unrelated to L’Evangile since it includes the phrases which L’Evangile omits, and L’Evangile corrects the Acts citation to Acts viii, 35–39. When, where, why, or by whom it was published is not known.

USlC

427 DAVIS, John Silvanus. Y doniau ysbrydol yn mrawdlys y gelyn; yn cynnwys sylwadau ar ysgrifau “Sylwedydd o’r Gogledd,” yn Seren Gomer (o Hydref, 1848, hyd Chwefror, 1849), ynghylch y “doniau ysbrydol.” Gan olygydd “Udgorn Seion.” Merthyr-Tydfil: Argraffwyd ac ar werth gan J. Davis, Georgetown; ar werth hefyd gan y Saint yn gyffredinol, a llawer o lyfrwerthwyr, trwy y Deau a’r Gogledd. 1849. [Pris 2g. [The spiritual gifts in the court of the enemy; containing observations on the writings of the “Observer from the North,” in Star of Gomer (from October, 1848, until February, 1849), concerning the “spiritual gifts.” By the editor of “Zion’s Trumpet.” Merthyr Tydfil: Printed and for sale by J. Davis, Georgetown; and for sale also by the Saints generally, and many booksellers throughout the South and the North. 1849. [Price 2d.]

24 pp. 17 cm.

Flake-Draper 2980. Dennis 30. CU-B, MH, NjP, UPB, USlC, WsCS, WsN.

428 PRATT, Orson. Absurdities of immaterialism; or, a reply to T. W. P. Taylder's pamphlet, entitled, “The Materialism of the Mormons or Latter-day Saints, Examined and Exposed.” By Orson Pratt, one of the twelve apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. [Caption title] [At end:] 15, Wilton Street, Liverpool, July 31, 1849. [At foot of p. 32:] R. James, South Castle Street, Liverpool. [1849] [First word, last line, p. 1:] materiality.

32 pp. 21.5 cm.

429 PRATT, Orson. Absurdities of immaterialism, or, a reply to T. W. P. Taylder's pamphlet, entitled, “The Materialism of the Mormons or Latter-day Saints, Examined and Exposed.” By Orson Pratt, one of the twelve apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. [Caption title] [At end:] 15, Wilton Street, Liverpool, July 31st, 1849. [At foot of p. 32:] R. James, Printer, 39, South Castle Street, Liverpool. [1850?] [First word, last line, p. 1:] follows:—.

32 pp. 21.5 cm.

Absurdities of Immaterialism is the eighth tract Orson Pratt issued during his 1848–51 British mission and, like his Reply to a Pamphlet (item 406–8), was written in response to an attack on one of his earlier works. The first thirty pages of text were published serially in the Millennial Star, May 15–October 15, 1849, with most of the last two pages in the Star of August 1. During May, June, and July, the Star advertised it as “soon to be published,” and in its issue of August 1 it reported that the tract was “just published” and for sale at 4d. each, £1 per hundred, and £9 per thousand.¹ Item 428 was printed from the Star setting and is therefore the first edition. Since item 429 occurs in the first O. Pratt’s Works (item 551), it was printed no later than January 1851, and as the Millennial Star office had 13,261 copies of Absurdities of Immaterialism in its inventory on December 21, 1850, it was undoubtedly printed before then.²

Between July 24, 1849, and December 21, 1850, the Millennial Star office filled orders for slightly more than 5,000 copies of the tract. Since it is clear that the numbers recorded in the European Mission financial records for Orson Pratt’s Great First Cause do not include those copies bound in O. Pratt’s Works that he took to America (see item 543), it is likely that the numbers above also do not include those copies of Absurdities of Immaterialism that he had bound in O. Pratt’s Works. Moreover, the European Mission financial records, under the date May 6, 1851, have the entry: “Orson Pratt To amnt paid Fazakerley for stitching 12961 Absurdities of Immam. 12986 New Jerusalem (see Invoice May 6th 51) 6.9.9.”—probably a reference to those tracts printed for the British Mission office.³ One might guess, therefore, that the first edition of Absurdities of Immaterialism comprised about 5,000 copies and the second between 16,000 and 18,000 copies.

As its title indicates, Orson Pratt composed the tract in response to Timothy William Potter Taylder’s The Materialism of the Mormons, or Latter Day Saints, Examined and Exposed (Woolwich: Printed by E. Jones, 1849), which, in turn, was prompted by Orson’s Kingdom of God, Part I (items 373–76). Taylder would go on to publish The Mormon’s Own Book six years later, which includes a reprint of The Materialism of the Mormons and a few comments on Absurdities of Immaterialism in a “short Appendix.”⁴

Although his tract was directed specifically against Mormon materialism, what seems to have been Taylder’s underlying concern was the determinism of such materialists as Pierre Simon Laplace and Thomas Hobbes.⁵ His tract is divided into three sections: “The Philosophy of the Mormons is Irrational”; “The Materialism of the Mormons is not only Unscriptural but Anti-Scriptural”; and “This Mormo-Materialism is Anti-scriptural.” Quoting St. Augustine, John Locke, the Anglican bishop Joseph Butler (1692–1752), George Berkeley (1685–1753), René Descartes, the chemist Joseph Priestly (1733–1804), Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802), and others, Taylder contends in the first section that immaterial substances exist—in particular the human mind. In the second and third sections, he argues that the view of the Father and Son as material beings occupying space and time denies the infinity of God the Father and God the Son and the omnipotence and omnipresence of God, constitutes Tritheism, and contradicts John 4:24 and Luke 24:39 that “God is a Spirit” and “a spirit hath not flesh and bones.” At the end of the tract he attacks Orson Pratt’s view of the Holy Spirit as consisting of an infinite number of intelligent atoms extending throughout all space.

In his response Orson quotes his own set of authorities, including Butler, Priestly, Isaac Newton, and especially the Scottish philosopher Thomas Brown (1778–1820), whom he uses as a foil. The philosophical side of his tract, of course, is based on a Newtonian view of the physical world, which makes some of his arguments less compelling today. He begins the tract with his definition of immaterial substance and contends that such a substance “must posses NO properties or qualities in common with matter.” The mind, he continues, is material, and thought, hope, joy, and memory are states of the mind. He then argues that “an immaterial substance can have no existence” and that “the immaterialist is a religious Atheist.” He notes that the mind “has a relation to space” inasmuch as it is located in the body, has a relation to duration inasmuch as it remembers, and is susceptible of being moved from place to place, and therefore is material since it has some properties in common with material substances. Agreeing with Thomas Brown that a system of particles cannot possess a property that the individual components of the system do not possess, he concludes that the human spirit “must be composed of an immense number of particles, each of which is susceptible of almost an infinite variety of thoughts, emotions, and feelings.”

To Taylder’s charge that Mormon materialism is unscriptural, Orson replies that a fleshy body and a spiritual body, although both material, are composed of “entirely different kinds of matter, as much so as iron and oxygen”—made clear by Jesus’s statements in John 4:24 and Luke 24:39 (see, e.g., D&C 131:7). Before his incarnation Christ possessed a spiritual body, not a body of flesh and bone. Spiritual bodies are elastic, Orson continues, because they expand as a person grows from infancy to adulthood. That God is infinite and omnipresent, he “freely” admits, for the Holy Spirit—which “is called God in the scriptures” and “is infinitely perfect and wise, and good, and powerful, as well as the Father and Son”—is “everywhere, substantially and virtually.” The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, “are one; not one in substance, but one in wisdom, power, glory, and goodness”—as demonstrated, Orson asserts, by the account of Jesus praying that all his disciples might be one, as he and his Father are one. “Each atom of the Holy Spirit is intelligent, and like all other matter has solidity, form, and size,” and “each acts in the most perfect union with all the rest,” these innumerable atoms forming “one Holy Spirit in the same sense that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are considered one God.” And when God says, “I fill heaven and earth,” Orson writes, “he has reference to his Holy Spirit, a part of which fills heaven, and another part fills the earth.”

Kingdom of God, Part I notes “there is no such thing as moral image,” and Taylder brands this statement unscriptural, denying the moral perfection of God, to which Orson replies that “there cannot be any such thing as moral image independently of an essence or substance to which it belongs,” that “a property without a substance or being to which it appertains in inconceivable.” To Taylder’s assertion that Mormonism “denies the personality of each person in the Trinity, making each to be only a part of the Godhead,” Orson responds at some length, at one point writing that, although the Father possesses infinite wisdom and knowledge, “the Son is necessary to reconcile fallen man to the Father: the Holy Spirit is necessary to sanctify and purify the affections of men, and also to dwell in them as a teacher of truth. . . . The Father and Son govern the immensity of creation, not by their own actual presence, but by the actual presence of the Spirit. The union of the three does not give any additional wisdom and knowledge to either, but by the union, they are able to carry on certain works which could not be carried on by one singly.” Absurdities of Immaterial concludes with Orson Pratt’s answers to a series of questions from a Catholic cleric about the Mormon belief in an anthropomorphic God—a text not strictly a part of his reply to Taylder, taken from the Millennial Star of August 1, 1849.

Item 428: Flake-Draper 6446. NN, UPB, USlC, UU. Item 429: Flake-Draper 6446a. CSmH, CtY, CU-B, MH, NjP, NN, UPB, USlC, UU.

430 PRATT, Orson. No. 15, Wilton Street, Out of Saint Anne Street, Liverpool, Aug. [8th] 1849. Dear [Bro.] I have chartered the large, new, and splendid ship “James Pennell” to sail with a load of Saints from Liverpool to New Orleans on the 1st day of September, 1849. The passengers whose [First 6 lines] [Signed at end:] Orson Pratt. [Liverpool? 1849]

Broadsheet 25.5 x 20 cm.

The Mormon emigration had been reinstated for about a year and a half (see item 324) when Orson Pratt sent this broadsheet to the conference and branch presidents to advertise the sailing of the emigrant ship James Pennell and to gather the names of those planning to sail on her.¹ Written in manuscript is the day “8th” in the date and “Bro.” in the salutation. The middle half of the recto is left blank, providing space for the names of those seeking passage. The printed text gives instructions for checking their baggage and obtaining their tickets. It lists the provisions each will receive on the voyage and notes that excess provisions will be distributed to assist them up the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. Fares are £3 15s. for adults, £3 5s. for children under fourteen years, infants under one year, gratis. The broadsheet instructs the passengers to furnish their own beds, bedding, cooking utensils, and provision boxes, and notes that a committee of three “will be appointed to preserve cleanliness and good order during the voyage.” “Acknowledge the receipt of this letter by return post,” it concludes, “that we may know that you have been notified,” and in a manuscript addendum, “otherwise your berths may be filled with other passengers.”

One other such broadsheet is located, for the 1856 sailing of the ship Horizon. A number of entries in the European Mission financial records, however, suggest that circulars of this kind were issued for most, if not all, of the Mormon emigrant ships (see items 452, 561, 759).² Like those mentioned in the financial records, item 430 was probably printed in about 100 copies.

The James Pennell sailed from Liverpool on September 2, 1849, with a company of 236 Latter-day Saints, led by Thomas H. Clark. Fifty days later it arrived at New Orleans. All survived the voyage except three infants who had been weaned just before they were brought on board the ship. “I think it would be well to inform the Saints not to wean their children just as they come,” Clark wrote to Orson Pratt, “for if they do, they will be likely to lose them before they get across.”³

Flake-Draper 6449b. USlC.

431 FLANIGAN, James Henry. Mormonism triumphant! Truth vindicated, lies refuted, the Devil mad, and priestcraft in danger!!! By J. H. Flanigan, elder in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Being a reply to Palmer’s internal evidence against the Book of Mormon. [3 lines] Liverpool: Printed by R. James, 39, South Castle Street. 1849

32 pp. 21.5 cm.

On May 2, 1849, James H. Flanigan went to Chatteris to assist Thomas Smith in his discussions with William Palmer, the Baptist minister there, who had lectured against the Saints and had written two anti-Mormon tracts, Mormonism Briefly Examined (London: Briscoe, Printer, 1849?) and The External Evidences of the Book of Mormon, Examined (London: Briscoe, Printer, 1849?).¹ Seven weeks later he came to Bedford and tarried for a week while he composed a response to Palmer’s tracts. He worked on his response again in Cambridge during the week of July 1, finished it on the 13th, and sent it to Orson Pratt for publication. The Millennial Star advertised Mormonism Triumphant! as “Just Published” in its issue of August 15, and on September 22 Flanigan received a bundle of the tracts in Bedford. For the rest of the year the Star ran an ad for Mormonism Triumphant!, “same price as the ‘Absurdities of Immaterialism’”—4d. each, £1 per hundred, £9 per thousand. Flanigan reports in his diary that it was printed in an edition of 6,000 at a cost of £32, and that Orson Pratt gave him £18 and 500 copies for the rights to the edition.²

Mormonism Triumphant! actually replies to Palmer’s first tract, Mormonism Briefly Examined. Using the line of reasoning that began with Alexander Campbell’s Delusions (1832), Palmer argues that the Book of Mormon cannot be a divinely inspired book because of what he sees as faulty language, internal inconsistencies, and doctrinal errors. He opens with the assertion that Mormon is a Greek word meaning “bugbear” or “hobgoblin,” repeats the Spaulding-Rigdon theory of the origin of the Book of Mormon, and mentions Henry Caswall’s story of presenting a Greek Psalter to Joseph Smith.³ Mormonism Triumphant! essentially gives a point-by-point response. To refute the Spaulding-Rigdon theory, it quotes Parley Pratt’s account of his introducing Sidney Rigdon to Mormonism in Mormonism Unveiled: Zion’s Watchman Unmasked (items 44–48, 146), and Rigdon’s letter of May 27, 1839, in Parley’s Reply to C. S. Bush (item 80). It includes a defense of the concept of an anthropomorphic God, reviews the prophecies concerning the restoration of Israel, and attacks the practice of infant baptism. At the end it reprints Orson Pratt’s “Dialogue Between Tradition, Reason, and Scriptus,” first printed in Prophetic Almanac for 1845 (item 229) and reprinted in Parley’s Dialogue Between Josh. Smith & the Devil (items 292–93). The tract concludes with Flanigan’s Fourteen Articles of Faith. The version here is identical to that in Reply to a Sheet (item 405), except for three changes in punctuation and a change in capitalization. Only twice does Mormonism Triumphant! mention Palmer’s second tract, dismissing it as “an unhallowed bundle of nonsense, lies, and abuse” (pp. 5 and 28).

Mormonism Triumphant! exists in two states: (1) without a footnote at the bottom of p. 13, and (2) with a footnote at the bottom of p. 13. The headings of the two columns of quotations, in the seventh line from the bottom of p. 13, are also different: in state 1 they read Present Translation and Translation 240 Years Old, while in state 2 they read King James’s Present Translation and Translation 264 Years Old*. Further, in state 2, the phrase and “Mormos;” is added to the footnote on p. 4, two footnotes have been added at the bottom of p. 15, and, to accommodate these additions, the text has been shifted on pp. 14­–21 but not reset. Since the modifications in state 2 appear to be improvements, it is probably the later state.⁴ Both states give Richard James’s address as 39 B, South Castle Street in the colophon.

Flake-Draper 3374. CSmH, CtY, CU-B, ICN, MH, MoInRC, NjP, NN, UHi, ULA, UPB, USlC, UU.

432 DAVIS, John Silvanus. Bedydd. [Caption title] [Baptism.] [At foot of p. 12:] J. Davis, Argraffydd, Merthyr-Tydfil. [J. Davis, Printer, Merthyr Tydfil.] [1849]

12 pp. 17 cm.

Flake-Draper 2721d. Dennis 31. CU-B, MH, NjP, UPB, USlC, WsN.

433 Yr epistol cyffredinol cyntaf oddiwrth Brif Lywyddiaeth Eglwys Iesu Grist o Saint y Dyddiau Diweddaf, o Ddyffryn y Llyn Halen Fawr, at y Saint gwasgaredig ar hyd y ddaear,— [Caption title] [The first general epistle from the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, from the Great Salt Lake Valley, to the Saints scattered across the earth.] [At foot of p. 12:] John Davis, Argraffydd, Merthyr-Tydfil. [John Davis, Printer, Merthyr Tydfil.] [1849]

12 pp. 17 cm.

Flake-Draper 1666. Dennis 32. CtY, CSmH, MH, NjP, UPB, USlC, WsN, WsS.

434 A collection of sacred hymns, for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in Europe. Selected by Brigham Young, Parley P. Pratt, and John Taylor. Eighth edition. Liverpool: Published and sold by Orson Pratt, 15, Wilton Street, Soho Street; and sold by the agents throughout England. 1849.

352 pp. 10 cm.

The 1849 hymnal collates: title page (p. [1]), with Liverpool: Printed by Richard James, 39 B, South Castle Street on the verso; preface to 1840 edition (p. [3]); preface to the eighth edition, signed by Orson Pratt and dated at Liverpool, July 30, 1849 (p. [4]); the texts of 283 numbered hymns (pp. [5]–342); and an index of first lines (pp. [343]–352). Orson Pratt’s preface states that “no alterations or additions” had been made, that the hymns were arranged, “in all respects,” as in the previous edition (item 392). Its bindings include black or brown blind-stamped sheep with an arabesque within an ornamental border on the covers, blind-stamped decorative panels and gilt title on the backstrip; brown blind-stamped sheep with a rectangular arabesque surrounded by a mosaic pattern on each cover, blind-stamped decorative panels and gilt title on the backstrip; and black hard-grained morocco with wide gilt ornamental borders on the covers, four panels between raised bands with gilt decorations and gilt title on the backstrip, gilt edges, and rose-colored endsheets decorated in gold.

The book was published in an edition of 10,000 and advertised as “now ready” in the Millennial Star of September 1, 1849. On October 8 the mission office paid Mr. Fazakerley £125 for binding the edition, and on the 31st it paid Richard James £120 for printing it. Copies in sheep were offered at a retail price of 1s. 6d. each, the same as the earlier editions (see items 252, 340, 364, 392). In December 1850, when F. D. Richards succeeded Orson Pratt as mission president, 1,220 copies in sheep remained in the mission office together with thirty-three copies in morocco. By May 1851 the book was out of print, and a new edition was in press (item 604).¹

Flake-Draper 1766. CSmH, CtY, UPB, USlC, USlD.

435 Constitution of the state of Deseret, with the journal of the convention which formed it, and the proceedings of the legislature consequent thereon. Kanesville, Published by Orson Hyde, 1849.

16 pp. 23 cm.

Five weeks after they entered the Great Salt Lake Valley, Brigham Young and seven other members of the Twelve began the return trip to Winter Quarters, and on September 5, 1847, they met a westbound Mormon company in which John Smith, Joseph Smith’s uncle, was traveling.¹ The following day the apostles met with the officers of the companies and nominated a presidency and high council for the Valley: John Smith, president, with Charles C. Rich and John Young as his counselors; Henry G. Sherwood, Thomas Grover, Levi Jackman, John Murdock, Daniel Spencer, Lewis Abbott, Ira Eldredge, Edson Whipple, Shadrach Roundy, John Vance, Willard Snow, and Abraham O. Smoot for the high council. Four weeks later, at a conference in the Valley, these officers were formally sustained along with John Van Cott as the marshal.

During the following year the governance of the pioneer colony rested with this presidency and high council, and two apostles, Parley P. Pratt and John Taylor, who had remained in the Valley. When Brigham Young returned to Great Salt Lake City in September 1848, the municipal responsibilities passed from the high council to the Council of Fifty, and for another year the Council of Fifty met weekly at Heber C. Kimball’s or W. W. Phelps’s house and directed the affairs of the community (see items 201, 275, 345, 476). John D. Lee’s diary makes it clear that the apostles were far and away the most influential members of the Council, especially Brigham Young, whose presence dominated the meetings.

From the beginning of the Utah colony, however, the Mormons expected to be part of the United States. The December 1847 General Epistle from the Council of the Twelve Apostles, for example, remarked: “We anticipate, as soon as circumstances will permit, to petetion for a territorial government in the Great Basin.” A year later they took the first step. On December 9, 1848, the Council of Fifty voted to petition Congress for territorial status, appointed a committee to gather signatures, and proposed an initial slate of officers. Here the Council discussed its chief concern as the Mormons moved toward a more formal government: to be governed by their own. And here it gave the territory a uniquely Mormon name, taken from the second chapter of Ether in the Book of Mormon: Deseret. The next day Thomas Bullock began gathering signatures for the petition, and on the 11th Willard Richards dictated the text of a petition to Bullock. Two days later Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, Richards, Bullock, and several others read over the memorials of other states and settled on the one dictated by Richards. The Council of Fifty reviewed it on the 16th and again on January 6, when John M. Bernhisel was appointed to take it to Washington, and on March 4 it nominated a final slate of officers: Brigham Young, governor; Willard Richards, secretary of state; Heber C. Kimball, chief judge; Newel K. Whitney and John Taylor, associate judges; Horace S. Eldredge, marshal; Daniel H. Wells, attorney general; Albert Carrington, assessor and collector; Newel K. Whitney, treasurer; and Joseph L. Heywood, supervisor of roads. This slate was voted upon at a general “election” on March 12, with 674 in favor of the ticket and none opposed. Seven weeks later Young, Kimball, and Richards attached their autographs to the petition, twenty-two feet long, with 2,270 signatures. Proposed for the new territory was an immense area including all of what is now Utah and Nevada, most of Arizona, three-quarters of New Mexico, two-thirds of Colorado, half of Wyoming, and a third of California, including a strip of Pacific coast near San Diego. Bullock handed the petition to Bernhisel on May 3, and Willard Richards blessed him “in the name of Israel’s God.” The next day he left for Washington.

Then on July 1, 1849, Almon W. Babbitt arrived in Great Salt Lake City with the eastern mail. At this point there seems to have been a clear shift in the thinking of the Church leaders toward statehood rather than territorial status. Why this occurred is not clear. Babbitt appears to have influenced their decision to apply for statehood, particularly since he was appointed Deseret’s delegate to Congress despite his political conflicts with Orson Hyde (see items 371, 513). Between July 1 and July 19 the constitution of the State of Deseret and a new memorial were drafted, and beginning on July 19 the First Presidency wrote a series of letters to Orson Hyde and Oliver Cowdery in Kanesville, Nathaniel H. Felt in St. Louis, Wilford Woodruff in Boston, and Thomas L. Kane in Philadelphia, announcing their intention to seek the admission of Deseret into the Union as a sovereign state. On the 27th Babbitt started east with a manuscript copy of the constitution and memorial—to be printed by Orson Hyde in Kanesville.

Constitution of the State of Deseret, however, tells a different story. It opens with a notice dated at Great Salt Lake City, February 1, 1849, signed “Many Citizens,” announcing a convention to be held in Great Salt Lake City on March 5 “for the purpose of taking into consideration the propriety of organizing a Territorial or State Government,” and then prints the minutes of two sessions of this convention on March 5 and 8, followed by the text of the constitution. Next it gives the minutes of two further sessions of the convention on March 9 and 10, at which the constitution was adopted, followed by detailed minutes of the opening sessions of the House of Representatives and Senate, July 2–9, at which a memorial to Congress for statehood was drafted and accepted. Concluding the pamphlet is the memorial asking for the admission of Deseret into the Union “on an equal footing with other States.” A resolution at the end directs that Constitution of the State of Deseret be printed in 2,000 copies.

Certain inconsistencies are apparent in Constitution of the State of Deseret. The constitution itself stipulates that a general election for state officers and members of the legislature be held on May 7, 1849, whereas an election was in fact held on March 12, and there is no record of one on May 7. Further, the constitution provides for the office of lieutenant governor, and Constitution of the State of Deseret reports that Brigham Young had been elected governor; Heber C. Kimball, lieutenant governor; Willard Richards, secretary of state; William Clayton, auditor of public accounts; and Joseph L. Heywood, treasurer—a different slate than was elected on March 12. No legislators were elected on March 12, yet Constitution of the State of Deseret lists thirty members of the House and fourteen of the Senate. How these were selected is not explained.

No contemporary diary has been found that mentions the March constitutional convention or the July session of the legislature, including those of Thomas Bullock and Daniel Spencer, both supposed to have been major participants. The diaries of Bullock, Isaac C. Haight, Joel H. Johnson, John Murdock, and Hosea Stout make it clear that the first session of the legislature convened on December 8, not July 2. And Franklin D. Richards’s journal indicates that the constitution was drafted during the two weeks preceding July 19, not between March 5 and 8.

Why the fiction of the March convention and the July legislative session? The simple answer is that Congress would not have considered an application for statehood that had not been produced by a constituent convention and ratified by popular vote. Time was also a factor. If the decision to press for statehood was reached after July 1, then only five months remained for the traditional procedure of calling a constituent convention, drafting a constitution, holding a ratifying election, and getting the petition to Washington before Congress convened in December. To the Mormons, this must have seemed irrelevant as well: when the First Presidency was sustained at Winter Quarters in December 1847 and again in Salt Lake City in October 1848, the will of the people was expressed that these men govern—in whatever manner they deemed suitable; any other expression of this kind was superfluous. On the other hand, they must have feared that any suggestion of a departure from traditional procedures would jeopardize their application. In this light, then, Constitution of the State of Deseret was as much a public relations piece as an application for statehood, a document designed to show that the traditional American political processes were alive and well in Deseret.

Although the federal constitution was the ultimate prototype, there is little doubt that the constitution of Deseret was derived from the Iowa constitution of 1846. Fifty-seven of the sixty-seven sections were taken from the Iowa constitution, in most cases word for word. Eight articles comprise the primary text. Article I divides the powers of government between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches, and Articles II­–IV outline the structure, limits, organization, and procedures of these branches. Article V deals with elections, setting “the first Monday of May next,” May 7, 1849, as the first election for state officers and legislators and the ratification of the constitution. Article VI provides for a militia of “all able bodied, white, male citizens, between the ages of eighteen and forty-five years.” Article VII outlines the process for amending the constitution, and Article VIII enumerates the traditional freedoms, including the rights of religious worship, free speech, trial by jury, protection from unreasonable search and seizure, prohibition of bills of attainder and ex post facto laws, etc. No reference is made to slavery, nor does the constitution provide for the remuneration of legislators or state officers, except the governor. The area proposed for the State of Deseret in the preamble was a bit smaller than that in the territorial petition but still included virtually all of what is now Utah and Nevada, most of Arizona, parts of New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, and Oregon, and a third of California including a stretch of the Pacific coast near San Diego.

Almon W. Babbitt reached Kanesville on September 3, 1849. Constitution of the State of Deseret was undoubtedly printed soon after, for it was summarized in the New York Weekly Herald of October 13. Bernhisel arrived in Washington on November 30, Babbitt the next day. Two days later the Thirty-first Congress convened its first session. On December 27 Stephen A. Douglas presented Deseret’s memorial to the Senate, and on January 28, 1850, after two earlier unsuccessful attempts, Linn Boyd of Kentucky presented it to the House, which referred it to the Committee on Territories (see items 454, 459). But succession was in the air, and the hopes of two or three thousand Mormons isolated in the Great Basin were of little concern to a congress battling to keep the Union from disintegrating. Although Bernhisel would lobby tirelessly in her behalf, the fate of Deseret was determined by the flood of events culminating in the Compromise of 1850.

Slavery was the central problem, more particularly its extension into the new region acquired as a result of the Mexican War, and six issues confronted an almost equally divided Congress: statehood for California; statehood or territorial status for Deseret and New Mexico; a dispute over the western boundary of Texas—a slave state; the abolition of slavery in Washington, D.C.; and the demand from southern congressmen for a stricter fugitive slave law. On January 29 Henry Clay delivered his great speech in the Senate, which would ultimately form the basis of the compromise. Clay proposed admitting California as a free state, granting territorial status for Deseret and New Mexico with no conditions regarding slavery, reducing of the area of Texas while paying off her debt, allowing slavery in Washington, D.C., but forbidding the salve trade there, and strengthening the fugitive slave law. For the next five months Congress struggled with these questions—while the three giants, Clay, Webster, and Calhoun, walked the Senate stage together for the last time. A break in the impasse came on July 9 with the death of Zachary Taylor, who had remained firm in his opposition to Clay’s proposal, and the ascension of Millard Fillmore, whose administration supported it. In September Fillmore signed five bills embodying the compromise, the bill creating Utah Territory on September 9.

Bernhisel had had a series of conversations in March with Stephen A. Douglas, chairman of the Senate committee on territories, when he learned that Douglas disliked the name Deseret and was insisting on Utah, that Congress would substantially reduce its boundaries, and that any petition from the Mormons or lack of one made little difference since Congress was determined to organize the region as a territory.² To his question about the prospect for territorial officers, Douglas had replied that there was little chance a member of the First Presidency or the Twelve would be appointed. But Douglas underestimated the skill and tenacity of John M. Bernhisel. On September 10, the day after Millard Filmore signed the Utah bill, Bernhisel began to lobby the president over territorial officers. Ten days later Filmore announced his decision: Brigham Young, governor; Broughton D. Harris of Vermont, secretary; Joseph Buffington of Pennsylvania, chief justice; Zerubbable Snow, a Mormon, and Perry C. Brocchus of Alabama, associate justices; Seth M. Blair, a Mormon, U.S. attorney; and Joseph L. Heywood, a Mormon, U.S. marshal.³

In the mean time, the first true legislative session of the provisional state of Deseret opened on December 8, 1849, and on December 2, 1850, the second annual session commenced—seven weeks after the news of the creation of Utah Territory reached Salt Lake City. Nine months later, on September 22, 1851, five weeks after the last of the new territorial appointees arrived in Utah, Brigham Young, convened the first territorial legislature (see items 475, 534, 596–97, 610, 611–12).

Flake-Draper 2784a. CSmH, CtY, CU-B, DLC, ICN, MH, UPB, USlC, USlD.

436 PRATT, Orson. New Jerusalem; or, the fulfilment of modern prophecy. By Orson Pratt, one of the twelve apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. [Caption title] [At head of title at right:] [No. 7. [At end:] 15, Wilton Street, Liverpool, October 1, 1849. [At foot of p. 24:] R. James, South Castle Street, Liverpool. [1849] [First word, line 3 from bottom, p. 1:] hour.

24 pp. 21.5 cm.

437 PRATT, Orson. New Jerusalem; or, the fulfilment of modern prophecy. By Orson Pratt, one of the twelve apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. [Caption title] [At head of title at right:] [No. 7. [At end:] 15, Wilton Street, Liverpool, October 1, 1849. [At foot of p. 24:] R. James, Printer, 39, South Castle Street, Liverpool. [1850?] [First word, line 3 from bottom, p. 1:] shalt.

24 pp. 21.5 cm.

438 PRATT, Orson. New Jerusalem; or, the fulfilment of modern prophecy. By Orson Pratt, one of the twelve apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. [Caption title] [At head of title at right:] [No. 7. [At end:] 15, Wilton Street, Liverpool, October 1, 1849. [At foot of p. 24:] R. James, Printer, 39, South Castle Street, Liverpool. [1850?] [First word, line 3 from bottom, p. 1:] and.

24 pp. 21.5 cm.

New Jerusalem is the ninth tract Orson Pratt published during his 1848–51 mission, its text introduced in the Millennial Star of June 1, 1849, and included as a ten-part article, June 1–July 15 and August 15–November 1. The Star of July 1 began running an ad that it would soon be printed in pamphlet form and announced in its issue of October 1 that the tract was out of press.¹ Item 436 is printed from the Star setting and is therefore the first edition. Items 437 and 438 have the same typesetting for pp. 5–12, 17–24, and different settings for pp. 1–4, 13–16, and consequently were struck off about the same time. Since item 437 occurs in the first O. Pratt’s Works (item 551), it was printed no later than January 1851.

Between September 29, 1849, and December 21, 1850, the Millennial Star office distributed about 3,600 copies of New Jerusalem, and the inventory of the latter date shows 13,641 remaining in the office.² Since it is clear that the numbers recorded in the European Mission financial records for Orson Pratt’s Great First Cause do not include those copies bound in O. Pratt’s Works that he took to America (see item 543), it is likely that the numbers above also do not include those copies of New Jerusalem that he had bound in O. Pratt’s Works. Moreover, under the date May 6, 1851, the European Mission financial records have the entry: “Orson Pratt To amnt paid Fazakerley for stitching 12961 Absurdities of Immam. 12986 New Jerusalem (see Invoice May 6th 51) 6.9.9.”³ This probably refers to those tracts printed for the Millennial Star office, so one might guess that the first edition of New Jerusalem comprised about 4,000 copies, and subsequent runs, probably including both items 437 and 438, numbered between 16,000 and 18,000 copies.

Even though it was chronologically the ninth tract, Orson Pratt clearly intended New Jerusalem to be part of a series, just following his Remarkable Visions—hence the number 7 at the head of the caption title. Indeed he bound the pamphlet in O. Pratt’s Works preceded by Divine Authority, the four parts of Kingdom of God, and Remarkable Visions (see items 367–70, 373–86, 393–94) and labeled this group of tracts “First Series” in the table of contents.

Like Divine Authority, New Jerusalem takes its theme from an anonymous letter quoted at the beginning of the tract. This letter asks Orson Pratt to explain the apparent contradiction between the revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants dealing with the establishment of Zion in Jackson County, Missouri, and the expulsion of the Latter-day Saints from that state. Orson begins his response by quoting Moses 7:60–62 (from The Evening and the Morning Star of August 1832), Ether 13:1–12, 3 Nephi 20:22, 3 Nephi 21:22–25, and Revelation 3:12 to demonstrate that “a holy city called Zion or New Jerusalem” is to be built on the American continent by the elect of God preparatory to the Second Advent, and then outlines the Church’s settlement of Jackson and summarizes those revelations that designate Independence as Zion’s location (e.g., D&C 28:9; 42:62; 45:65­–66; 57:1–3). And here he quotes D&C 58:1–5 that the Saints would enjoy the blessing of Zion only after passing through “much tribulation.” Next he quotes a series of revelations (e.g., D&C 58:50–53; 58:21–22; 63:24–31) directing the Saints to purchase the land for Zion according to law. These he follows with a series of quotations from the Doctrine and Covenants (e.g., D&C 64:34–36; 68:31–35; 84:54–59, 76; 90:34–37; 98:13–17) and two letters, the first from Joseph Smith, January 11, 1833, the second from Orson Hyde and Hyrum Smith, January 14, 1833 (both in the Times and Seasons of December 1, 1844), which warn that Zion would be lost if its inhabitants did not repent of their discord and contention. He then recounts the expulsion from Jackson and includes the memorial to Congress of December 21, 1843, reprinted from the Prophetic Almanac for 1845 (item 229). Orson refers to the settlement of Nauvoo and the migration of the Saints to the Great Basin, which, he argues, was in fulfillment of the prophecy in 3 Nephi 16:8–12, and concludes his tract with a list of features that distinguish Zion from Jerusalem.

Item 436: Flake-Draper 6513. NN, UPB, USlC, UU. Item 437: Flake-Draper 6513a. CSmH, CtY, CU-B, MH, NjP, NN, UPB, USlC, UU. Item 438: Flake-Draper 6513b. UPB.

439 Second general epistle of the presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints from the Great Salt Lake Valley, to the Saints scattered throughout the earth, greeting: [Caption title] [At end of text:] Great Salt Lake City, Print. Oct. 20th. 1849. Brigham H. Young, Printer.

10 pp. 26.5 cm.

Second General Epistle is the first “book” printed in the Great Basin—a fact recorded in manuscript along the right margin of the first page of a copy at the LDS Church: “This is the first sheet ever printed in the Great Salt Lake Valley. since the days of the Nephites: October 20th 1849. Attest, Willard Richards. Gen. Ch^ch Recorder.” W. W. Phelps, sent east by the Twelve in the spring of 1847, had purchased a Ramage Philadelphia press in Boston that August with funds advanced by Alexander Badlam and had it shipped to Council Bluffs, where, crated, it remained until James Graham left with it in May 1849 and joined Howard Egan’s train en route to Utah. Three months later Egan brought it into Great Salt Lake City, and in September Brigham H. Young unpacked and sorted the type. The following month he struck off Second General Epistle. Exactly where the press was located when Young first put it to use is not known.¹

The pamphlet includes the epistle (pp. [1]–5), signed at the end by Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, and Willard Richards, and dated at “Great Salt Lake City, Deseret,” October 12, 1849; a letter from Young, Kimball, and Richards to Orson Hyde, October 16, 1849 (pp. 6–7); and the minutes of the general conference at Great Salt Lake City, October 6–7, 1849, signed at the end by Thomas Bullock, clerk of the conference (pp. 7–10).² It is made up of an eight-page signature with an additional leaf (pp. 9–10) pasted on at the spine.

The second such communication from the First Presidency (see item 417), the epistle gives the news of the Valley and summarizes the actions of the general conference. It mentions that the Nauvoo Legion had been reorganized (see items 625, 672–74, 726) and that a place of worship—the new Bowery—had been finished, “100 by 60 feet, with brick walls, where we assemble with the Saints from Sabbath to Sabbath, and almost every evening in the week.” It reports that the Saints in the Valley had adopted a provisional government for a new state—Deseret—with a constitution and officers, and anticipated being admitted into the Union at the upcoming session of Congress (see item 435). “Thousands of emigrants from the States to the Gold Mines have passed through our city this season,” it continues, “leaving large quantities of domestic clothing, waggons &c., in exchange for horses and mules, which exchange has been a mutual blessing to both parties.” It notes that “fourteen or fifteen of the brethren” had arrived from the California gold mines, some with gold of their own, but “the valley of the Sacramento is an unhealthy place,” it declares, “and the Saints can be better employed in raising grain, and building houses in this vicinity, than in digging for gold.” “The true use of gold,” it suggests, “is for paving streets, covering houses and making culinary dishes.” It notes that towns will be established at Brownsville—later named Ogden—and in the Utah Valley, and that “from 50 to 100 families” will leave for the Sandpitch Valley in a few days. The epistle reports the founding of a “perpetual Fund for the purpose of helping the poor saints to emigrate to this place” and the appointment of Edward Hunter as general agent and superintendent of the fund, and it lists those who had been called on missions: Addison Pratt, James S. Brown, and Hiram H. Blackwell to the Society Islands; C. C. Rich and Amasa Lyman to California; John Taylor, Curtis E. Bolton, and John Pack to France; Lorenzo Snow and Joseph Toronto to Italy; Erastus Snow and Peter O. Hansen to Denmark; Franklin D. Richards, John S. Higbee, George B. Wallace, Job Smith, Jacob Gates, and others to England; and John E. Forsgren to Sweden. Parley P. Pratt’s mission to the Pacific islands, it mentions, would be deferred until spring. “We want men,” it declares, “brethren come, from the States, from the nations come! and help us build, and grow, until we can say enough, the valleys of Ephraim are full.”

The letter to Hyde, the presiding elder in Kanesville, speaks mainly about the administration of the “Perpetual Emigrating Fund” and Edward Hunter’s upcoming trip to Kanesville with money to aid the immigrating Saints. “When the saints thus helped arrive here,” it states, “they will give their obligation to the Church to refund to the amount of what they have received, as soon as their circumstances will permit; and labour will be furnished to such as wish, on the public works, and good pay; and as fast as they can procure the necessaries of life, and a surplus, that surplus will be applied to liquidating their debt, and therby increasing the Perpetual Fund.”

At a meeting in the Bowery on Sunday, September 9, 1849, Brigham Young proposed that a perpetual fund be established to assist the poor in immigrating to Utah, and a committee consisting of Willard Snow, John D. Lee, Lorenzo Snow, Franklin D. Richards, and John S. Fullmer was appointed to collect money for the fund. This proposal was ratified at the general conference on October 6, when Edward Hunter was designated to carry the money to Kanesville. A year later the Perpetual Emigrating Fund Company was formally incorporated by the legislature of the provisional state of Deseret. As the letter from Young, Kimball, and Richards to Hyde quoted above indicates, the theory behind the company was that it would loan money to the poor to assist them to come to Utah, and they, in turn, would repay these loans, either by direct cash or in-kind payments or by labor on the Public Works, and over the next three decades it assisted between forty and fifty thousand Latter-day Saints to gather to Zion—making it, according to Leonard J. Arrington, the “most important single [economic] enterprise undertaken by the Mormons in the nineteenth century.” The repayment of the loans, however, proved to be a problem throughout the company’s life (see item 751).³

The full text of Second General Epistle was reprinted in the Frontier Guardian of December 26, 1849, and from the Guardian in the Millennial Star of April 15, 1850—which complained about not receiving a copy of the original pamphlet “through the carelessness, neglect, or dishonesty, we know not which, of some post-master in the United States.”⁴ The St. Louis Daily Missouri Republican of December 28, 1849, acknowledged the receipt of the pamphlet and summarized its contents. In addition to those located in institutional collections, one other copy is in private hands.

Flake-Draper 1677. Saunders 6. CtY, NjP, USlC.

440 Truth is mighty and will prevail. It is intended to lay before the public [the six following Lectures, The first to commence] on [Wednesday Octr 31st] 18 [49], the following principles in connection with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints:—1st.—The fall of man and the atonement made by Christ: 2nd.—The principles of the gospel as preached by the apostles: 3rd.—The setting up of the Kingdom of God in the last days as predicted by the prophets: 4th.—The second coming of Christ and the first resurrection: 5th.—The personal reign of Christ upon the earth a thousand years: 6th.—The second resurrection and the winding up scene of all things, as spoken of in the Scriptures: With various other principles in connection with the above-named church will be delivered by [Elder T. Day] All sincere enquirers after truth are therefore earnestly invited to attend the above mentioned lectures. Service to commence in the [Evening at half past 7 Oclock at the Saints Lecture room Queen street Rugby] “He that judgeth a matter before he heareth is not wise.” [At foot:] Sharp, Printer, &c., Market Place, Rugby. [1849]

Broadside 39 x 26 cm.

The words in the first five pairs of brackets in the entry above are handwritten in the handbill in blank spaces left for such details. This piece—recently discovered among some of Thomas Day’s papers in the Brigham Young University Lee Library—was undoubtedly published by Thomas Day, who was the presiding elder in Rugby and, subsequent to November 1848, Alfred Cordon’s counselor in the presidency of the Warwickshire Conference (see item 338). If indeed Day delivered these lectures on successive Wednesdays, then he gave his last lecture two and a half months before sailing for America in charge of a company of Mormon emigrants (see item 452).¹

Flake-Draper 9027c. UPB.

441 LINDSAY, Agnes Yullo. Farewell hymn. Dedicated to President William Gibson, on his being called to leave the Edinburgh Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. By Sister Agnes Yullo Lindsay. Tune—Janette and Jeanot. [Dated at end:] Dundee, Oct. 31, 1849. [Dundee? 1849?]

Broadside 21.5 x 13.5 cm. Ornamental border.

This broadside contains a song in eight 4-line verses, which bids a loving farewell to William Gibson, who was about to leave the Edinburgh Conference to assume the leadership of the Manchester Conference (see item 372). Its first verse: “And art thou to leave us, dear brother, and go / To a new home and kindred? Oh! must it be so? / Though a kindlier welcome awaiting may be, / Still we cannot think yet of parting with thee.” It is known in two states, one printed in gold on white paper, the other in black on white paper.

Agnes Y. Lindsay was born in Ketens, Angus County, Scotland, August 19, 1807. She converted to Mormonism in Dundee in 1848, during Gibson’s term as president of the Edinburgh Conference, which included the Dundee branch. Two years later she sailed for America and in 1852 made the trek to Utah, where she married Archibald Scroggie. She died in Salt Lake City, July 25, 1893.¹

Flake-Draper 4937a. UPB, USlC.

442 The book of doctrine & covenants, of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; selected from the revelations of God. By Joseph Smith, president. Second European edition. Liverpool; Orson Pratt, 15, Wilton Street. 1849.

xxiii[1]–336 pp. 15.5 cm.

The first European edition of the Doctrine and Covenants (item 265) had been in print more than three and a half years when Orson Pratt announced in the Millennial Star of February 15, 1849, that he was preparing to reprint the book in an edition of 5,000. Ten weeks later the Star reported that the Doctrine and Covenants was out of print and soon would be reprinted, but not until November 15 did it advertise the new edition as “now ready.” Undoubtedly a lack of funds contributed to this delay, for in his announcement of February 15 Pratt mentioned that the publication of the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and some other pieces would put the British Mission £800 to £1000 in debt to the printer and binder. The European Mission financial records indicate that Richard James’s and Thomas Fazakerley’s charges for printing and binding the Doctrine and Covenants were £127 and £65, respectively. When Franklin D. Richards replaced Orson Pratt as mission president in December 1850, 2,403 copies in cloth remained in the mission office along with sixty-five in morocco. Five months later Richards remarked in the Star that the book was “nearly out of print,” and in April 1852 the Star noted that the edition was exhausted except for copies in morocco and that a new stereotyped edition was then in press (item 718).¹ Books in cloth were advertised at a retail price of 2s. 6d. per copy, the same as the reduced price of the first European edition (see item 265).²

The second European edition is virtually a page-by-page reprint of the first—except that Thomas Ward’s preface in the first is replaced with an erratum leaf and a chronological index in the second. Indeed, the alphabetical indexes in the two books are identical. The 1849 edition collates: a half title with the verso blank (pp. [i–ii]); the title page (p. [iii]), with Entered at Stationers’ Hall and Liverpool: Printed by R. James, 39, South Castle Street on the verso; Erratum (p. [v]), with the verso blank; index to the Lectures on Faith and chronological index (pp. [vii]–x); alphabetical index (pp. [xi]–xxiii), with the verso of p. xxiii blank; the Lectures on Faith (pp. [1]–64); and 111 sections numbered with roman numerals (pp. [65]–336). This edition incorporates at least forty-seven changes from the 1845 Liverpool edition, none of real significance. These include eight additions or deletions of a single word, usually an article or preposition—three reversed or changed in 1852 (see item 718);³ twelve spelling changes, most made to conform with the British spelling;⁴ eight changes in capitalization—including I am to I AM in what is now 67:10;⁵ seven changes of one word to two, as firstborn to first born;⁶ ten one-word changes—five reversed in 1852;⁷ the change of will I to I will in 33:13; and the change of last February to February 1844 in 135:6.

Original bindings include: brown or green blind-stamped ribbed cloth with an arabesque within an ornamental border on the covers, blind-stamped bands and gilt title on the backstrip; brown or black grained morocco with a wide gilt ornamental border on the covers, gilt-decorated panels and gilt title between raised bands on the backstrip, gilt edges, and colored or patterned endsheets. The LDS Church has Crandall Dunn’s copy, bound in brown morocco with wavy patterned endsheets.

Flake-Draper 2865. CSmH, NN, NjP, UPB, USlC, UU.

443 RAMSEY, Ralph, and William Pattenson. [The Gospel | as taught by Jesus Christ and his apostles | The | Latter Day Saints | intend to preach in Mr | Chapman’s new School Room | Winlaton, commencing on | Sunday, November 25th 1849 | at the hours of half-past 10 in the morning and 6 in the evenings | All are invited | “Prove all things hold fast that which is good.” | J. Barlow printer—2 Nelson St Newcastle] [1849]

Broadside?

Ralph Ramsey was born near Ryton, Durham County, England, January 22, 1824, moved with his family at age fifteen to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and apprenticed there as a wood turner and carver—a trade he would follow for the rest of his life. After working in London for two years, he returned to Newcastle in 1848 and in July 1849 was baptized into the Church and ordained a priest in September. The following month, he records in his journal, “I was appointed along with Elder William Pattenson on a mission to Winlaton, where we succeeded in getting a school room of a Mr Chapman for one shilling per week, which we opened on the 25 of November 1849.” At this point in his journal he replicates a “Coppy of the bill” he and Pattenson used to advertise their preaching—given in the entry above. “We continued preaching as circumstances permited,” he writes, and “had several good congregations.”¹

In 1856 Ramsey left England for America and made the overland crossing with the second handcart company that summer. Settling first in Salt Lake City, he and his family moved to Richfield in 1872 and then to northern Arizona. A polygamist, he took his family to Mexico for a time to escape the antipolygamy crusade and then returned to Arizona in 1887. He died in Snowflake, January 25, 1905. Among his many wood carvings that adorned Utah’s houses and Church buildings were the eagle that surmounted the Eagle Gate for more than a hundred years and the pattern for the oxen in the Salt Lake Temple baptistry.² Of William Pattenson, nothing is known.

444 Report of the Sheffield quarterly conference, held in the Hall of Science, Rockingham Street, Sheffield, December 23d, 1849. President. Crandell Dunn. Clerks Walter Savage & J. S. [sic] Lees. [At foot of p. 8:] T. Potter, Printer, Barker Pool, Sheffield. [1849?]

8 pp. 21.5 cm.

Item 444 is the first of five located Sheffield Conference reports, the only one issued during Dunn’s presidency (see items 353, 488, 532, 582).¹ Following a table on p. [2] giving the statistics for twenty-seven branches in the conference, it summarizes the meetings held just prior to Dunn’s departure for Edinburgh, at which James W. Cummings, the new conference president, was introduced. In his speech Dunn enumerates the numbers of books and pamphlets that had been sold in the conference during his presidency, including 18,261 copies of the Millennial Star, 991 hymnals, 177 copies of the Book of Mormon, 151 of the Doctrine and Covenants, 379 of the Voice of Warning, and 208 hardback copies of Spencer’s Letters. The report shows £91 3s. 4p. owing the Millennial Star office, with books and cash on hand and money owing from the branches amounting to £86 17s. 3½p., leaving the book agent in debt £4 6s. ½p. Dunn notes in his diary that he compiled the minutes of these meetings between December 25 and 28 and took the manuscript to the printer on the 28th.²

Walter S. Savage, one of the conference clerks, was born in Sheffield, May 11, 1832, joined the Church in 1847, and was ordained an elder on January 5, 1850 (see item 471). Eight months later he left England for America and crossed the plains to Utah in 1852. Settling first in Salt Lake City, he was living in Springville with his wife and two children at the time of the 1856 census, but what became of him thereafter is not known.³

Samuel J. Lees, the other clerk, was born in Yorkshire, June 8, 1825, converted to Mormonism in 1841, labored as a local missionary on the Isle of Man and in the Sheffield Conference, and sailed for America with Crandall Dunn and James W. Cummings in 1851. For five years he remained in St. Louis, serving there as a conference clerk and a bishop, and then made the overland journey to Utah in 1856 and settled in Salt Lake City. Subsequently he was cut off from the Church for apostasy.⁴

Flake-Draper 1949. CtY, ICN, UPB, USlC.

445 JONES, Noah R. Cwyn yr ymfudwr, a’i ddau anerchiad. [Caption title] [Lament of the emigrant, and his two greetings.] [At foot of p. 4:] Argraffwyd gan John Davis, Georgetown, Merthyr-Tydfil. [Printed by John Davis, Georgetown, Merthyr Tydfil.] [1849?]

4 pp. 18 cm.

Flake-Draper 4493b. Dennis 33. CSmH.

446 Cofres-lyfr o aelodau Eglwys Iesu Grist, a elwir Saint y Dyddiau Diweddaf, [2 lines] o dan lywyddiaeth Cymru. [2 lines] Merthyr-Tydfil: Cyhoeddwyd, argraffwyd, golygwyd, ac ar werth gan John David, Nantygwenith, Georgetown. M,DCCC,XLIX. [Register of the members of the Church of Jesus Christ, known as the Latter-day Saints, under the presidency of Wales. Merthyr Tydfil: Published, printed, edited and for sale by John Davis, Nantygwenith, Georgetown. MDCCCXLIX.]

92l. 23.5 x 38.5 cm.

Dennis 34. USlC.

447 FLANIGAN, James Henry, and Thomas Smith. Truth revealed “to the law and to the testimony.” The inhabitants of [blank space] and its vicinity are respectfully informed that a course of lectures will be delivered (d.v.) in the [blank space] Elder T. Smith late of Royal Leamington Spa, and Elder J. H. Flanigan late from the Camp of Israel, North America. The lectures will commence on Sunday evening, [blank space] 1849, and will be continued on each following Sunday evening, commencing at [blank space] The object of these lectures is to lay before the public the principles and doctrines of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day-Saints, and knowing it to be the work of God, would persuade all men to come and hear for themselves, and then judge. The following will be the subjects of the lectures:— [16 lines] [N.p., 1849?]

Broadside 38.5 x 25.5 cm.

The concluding sixteen lines of item 447 list the following twelve topics making up the “course of lectures”: (1) “The necessity and object of present Revelation,” (2) “Modern systems of Christianity compared with the New Testament, shewing an Apostasy,” (3) “The restoration of the Everlasting Gospel by an Holy Angel,” (4) “The History and Character of Joseph Smith, with the Rise and Progress of the Church of Latter-Day-Saints,” (5) “The Book of Mormon, what it is—Its utility and coming forth. Historical and Scriptural evidence examined to prove it true and consistent with the Bible,” (6) “The atonement of Christ—free salvation. Infant Baptism, and Calvanism, erroneous,” (7) “The plan of Salvation as preached by the Apostles,” (8) “Water Baptism, the laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost, and the miraculous gifts of the Spirit, essential to Salvation,” (9) “The Kingdom of God, its organization and unchangeableness,” (10) “The Restoration of Israel,” (11) “The second Advent of the Messiah, and destruction of the wicked,” and (12) “The first Resurrection and glorious Millennium.”

Where or exactly when Smith and Flanigan issued this handbill is not known. Flanigan does not mention it in his diary, nor does he suggest a time when it might have been printed. He records that Smith came to Gravely in March 1849 to help him respond to the primitive Methodists and traveled with him a few days (see item 405), that he assisted Smith in his public discussions with the Rev. William Palmer in Chatteris that May (see item 431), and that the two of them traveled and preached together in November. He also notes that on Wednesday, May 15, 1850, in Birmingham, he spoke on “‘Eternal Judgement rewards & punishments’! It being the Last of a course of 12 Lectures,” suggesting that he and Smith may have offered the lectures more than once.¹

Flake-Draper 9027d. USlC.

448 GLEDHILL, James. A Mormons [sic] song with its introduction, composed by Br. James Gledhill, dedicated to the Manchester Conference. [Manchester? 1849?]

Broadside 22.5 x 18.5 cm. Text in two columns, ornamental border.

James Gledhill, who referred to himself as “The Curious Being,” was born in Oldham, Lancashire, February 5, 1807, joined the Church at Oldham in 1842, and subsequently presided over the branch there. He immigrated to Utah in 1864, settled in Provo, and moved to Gunnison seventeen years later, where he died, February 12, 1889. His obituary in the Deseret Evening News remarks that he was a noted fireside speaker, a man of “eccentric ways.”¹

Gledhill’s song is in four 4-line verses, with seventeen choruses. It deals with the people and conditions in the Manchester Conference, specifically mentioning Richard Cook, the conference president, Daniel Hall, William Stott, James Whitehead, and William Brierly, president of the Shay branch.² Its fourth chorus tells about “a man in our branch that’s a curious being!”—without doubt Gledhill himself.

Cook served as president of the Manchester Conference from about April 1848 until January 1850, when he was released to gather to Utah. Since A Mormons Song speaks in the present tense about the leadership of the conference, it was undoubtedly composed no earlier than 1848 and no later than 1849.³ Why it was published is not known. Perhaps it was struck off for one of the Manchester conferences; perhaps it was produced by The Curious Being just for his own pleasure. The only located copy is in private hands.

Flake-Draper 3598a.

449 Important from the Great Salt Lake. Progress of the Mormon settlement, from the New York “Weekly Herald,” of Oct. 13, 1849. [At foot:] Printed by John Grant, Woolwich, for Thomas Bradshaw, Elder, Charlton Vale. [London, 1849?]

Broadside 50.5 x 38 cm. Text in five columns.

Thomas Bradshaw was born in Manchester, December 2, 1822, joined the Church in 1840, and became well known in the British Mission through his labors as a traveling missionary. During 1849–50 he presided over the branch at Woolwich, and in 1851 he and his family sailed for America; nine years later they crossed the plains to Utah. For twenty-four years he lived in Wellsville, where he taught school and served a term as justice of the peace. He died in Wellsville, November 22, 1885.¹

Bradshaw undoubtedly published Important from the Great Salt Lake to advertise the New York Weekly Herald’s favorable report of the Mormons’ progress in the Great Salt Lake Valley. Its title, as well as its text, came from the Weekly Herald of October 13, 1849. The first two columns summarize the fictional March constitutional convention and July enabling legislative session and give a brief outline of the memorial to Congress, as reported in the 1849 Constitution of the State of Deseret, which was the source for the Herald’s article (see item 435). This is followed by an unsigned letter from Salt Lake City of July 17, 1849, reprinted in the Herald from the Newark, New Jersey Advertiser of October 8, occupying essentially the third column, which describes Great Salt Lake City and the surrounding region, reports the costs of some of the services, and talks about a Mormon Sunday meeting. The remaining two columns contain three editorial articles, “The Valley of the Great Salt Lake—the New Jerusalem of the Mormons,” “The Wonderful News from the Far West and the Pacific Coast—Movements in California and the Great Sale Lake Country—Progress of the Gold Diggers and of the Dirt Diggers,” and “The New State of Deseret—Wonderful Triumphs of our Free Institutions,” which discuss the Mormon settlement and the developments in California. These articles make the point that Great Salt Lake City is an important “half-way station” on the road to California, and the last one concludes: “The Mormons, while they do so well, should be protected and encouraged. The lands which they have located should be confirmed to them by Congress, and all other necessary measures passed to promote the prosperity of the new State. Success to trade! Success to the Saints and the New Jerusalem!”

Flake-Draper 4210b. UPB.

450 NASH, Isaac B.? [We’ll see Joseph and Hyrum. N.p, 1849?]

Dennis D.

451 SMITH, Thomas. Calumny refuted and the truth defended, being a reply to a tract, written by W. Frost, entitled a “Dialogue between a Latter Day Saint & a Methodist.” By Thomas Smith. [Caption title] [At foot of p. 12:] P. Otty, Printer, Orford Hill. [Norwich, 1849?]

12 pp. 18.5 cm.

Thomas Smith had been leading the missionary effort in Norwich for more than two years when he wrote Calumny Refuted—probably the fourth tract he published during his stay there (see items 332, 333, 397). As its title indicates, he composed it in response to W. Frost’s Dialogue Between a Latter Day Saint and a Methodist, in which Some of the Errors of that Strange People Are Exposed (Aylsham: Printed by C. Clements, 1849?). Dated at Banningham, April 1849, Frost’s tract opens with a comparison of the Mormon and Methodist concepts of the Trinity but is mainly occupied with an argument that baptism is not essential for salvation.¹ It may have been prompted by “Dialogue Between Doctor Wiseman and Elder Peterson” in the Millennial Star of January 15, 1849, which defends the Mormon doctrine of the necessity of baptism.

Smith undoubtedly took his title from John Taylor’s earlier pamphlet (items 85–86). His Calumny Refuted breaks into two parts. The first (pp. 1–5) replies to Frost’s representation of the Mormon doctrine of the Trinity and defends the concept of a material, anthropomorphic God; here Calumny Refuted quotes a few lines from an article by Orson Pratt in the Millennial Star of August 1, 1849, pp. 235–36. The second part (pp. 5–12) argues that baptism by immersion is indeed necessary for salvation and for the remission of sin.

Flake-Draper 8097. MH.

452 [Ship circulars. Liverpool, 1849?–50]

Under the date March 5, 1850, the European Mission financial records have the following two entries: “To Cash paid Mr. James, Printing acct. . . . 80 circulars ‘J. Bradlee’ 0.4.0” and “By 230 Ship circulars viz Argo 100 J. Bradlee 80 Heartley 50.”¹ One might infer that these refer to unlocated circulars similar to the one Orson Pratt issued for the ship James Pennell the preceding August (item 430).

The Argo sailed from Liverpool on January 10, 1850, with 402 Mormon emigrants under the direction of Jeter Clinton and arrived at New Orleans on March 8. The Josiah Bradlee left on February 17 with 263 Saints led by Thomas Day and reached New Orleans on April 18. And the Hartley sailed on March 2 with 109 under David Cook’s presidency and arrived at New Orleans on May 2.²

453 DAVIS, John Silvanus. Sylwadau ar yr hyn sydd o ran, a’r hyn sydd berffaith. [5 lines] Gan J. Davis, Merthyr. Merthyr-Tydfil: Argraffwyd, cyhoeddwyd, ac ar werth gan J. Davis, Nantygwenith, Georgetown. 1850. [Pris 1½ g. [Observations on that which is in part, and that which is perfect. By J. Davis, Merthyr. Merthyr Tydfil: Printed, published and for sale by J. Davis, Nantygwenith, Georgetown. 1850. Price 1½d.]

16 pp. 17 cm.

Flake-Draper 2722w. Dennis 35. CU-B, MH, NjP, UPB, USlC, WsCS.

454 Memorial of the members of the legislative council of the provisional government of Deseret, praying for admission into the Union as a state, or for a territorial government. December 27, 1849. Ordered to be printed. [Caption title] [At head of title:] 31st Congress, 1st Session. [Senate.] Miscellaneous, No. 10. [Washington: Printed by Wm. M. Belt, 1850?]

14 pp. 22.5 cm.

On December 27, 1849, Stephen A. Douglas presented the constitution of the provisional state of Deseret and memorial to the Senate—as an application for either statehood or territorial status—and on January 22, 1850, they were referred to the Committee on Territories (see item 435).¹ The resulting Senate edition of the constitution and memorial—the first as a U.S. government document—is textually the same as the Kanesville Constitution of the State of Deseret and the House edition (items 435, 459), except that it includes the memorial to Congress twice, at the beginning and at the end.

Flake-Draper 2780h. UPB, USlC, UU.

455 Report of the Glasgow quarterly conference, held in the Mechanics’ Institution, Canning St., Calton. 1st January, 1850. President, Harrison Burgess. Clerk, Walter Thompson [sic]. [Glasgow? 1850?]

8 pp. 21.5 cm.

The third of nine located Glasgow Conference reports (see items 404, 421) and the only one issued while Harrison Burgess was the conference president, this pamphlet summarizes the meetings on Monday, December 31, 1849, and Tuesday, January 1, during which Joseph Clements succeeded Burgess as conference president. A table on p. [2] shows the statistics for twenty-five branches, and the accounting at the end indicates that the book agent owed the Millennial Star office £101 5s. and had in hand £21 in cash, £53 2s. 8½d. in books and pamphlets, and £37 12s. 5d. in receivables from the branches.

Harrison Burgess succeeded Eli B. Kelsey as president of the Glasgow Conference when Kelsey returned to America in the summer of 1849. Born in Washington County, New York, September 3, 1814, Burgess converted to Mormonism in 1832, marched with Zion’s Camp two years later, and joined the First Quorum of Seventy at the time of its organization. He arrived in England in September 1848 and labored in the British Mission until January 1850, when he was released to return to America. That summer he made the overland trek to Utah and the following January was appointed to the Salt Lake City council, on which he served for about ten years. In 1862 he moved to southern Utah and settled in Pine Valley, where he acted for a time as the bishop. He died in Pine Valley, February 10, 1883.¹

Flake-Draper 1920. MH, UPB, USlC, UU.

456 SMITH, Thomas. Who is the liar? [Caption title] [At end:] Thomas Smith, elder in the Church of Jesus Christ, of Latter-day Saints, Northampton. [Northampton? 1850?]

[2] pp. 23 cm.

This Thomas Smith is the Thomas Smith of Leamington (see items 138, 338, 351, 390, 431, 447), who had been laboring for about a year as a traveling elder in the region around Bedford and Northampton. His Who is the Liar? is a response to John Bowes’s tract Mormonism Exposed (London: E. Ward, 1849?) (see item 350). And his comments—“In order to prove my statements made at Northampton in December 1849, and to clear myself, I have taken the following list of lies from Mr. Bowes’s Book,” and “Mr. Smith offered to bring living witnesses to disprove Mr. Bowes’s false statements, and was then, and [is] now, willing to meet Mr. Bowes on the principles of Mormonism”—suggest that he and Bowes had had an encounter in Northampton in December 1849 that prompted him to write the response.¹ Prompting him further, no doubt, was the appearance of one of his letters in Bowes’s tract.²

While Mormonism Exposed makes a broad attack on doctrines of the Church and the character of its leaders, Who is the Liar? focuses mainly on relatively minor factual errors. It is printed on one side of a sheet (23 x 27.8 cm.), folded to make four unnumbered pages with the text on the second and third pages, and the first and last pages blank. It breaks into three parts, the first two in double columns, the third in a single column. The first part consists of twenty numbered “Lies” in Mormonism Exposed with corresponding “refutations.” The twelfth “lie,” for example, is: “J. Smith taught a system of polygamy,” with the refutation consisting of quotations from the Doctrine and Covenants including “We believe that one man should have one wife.” The second part, headed “Mr. Bowes is a False Teacher,” lists seven numbered doctrinal statements in Mormonism Exposed with corresponding biblical citations pointing to what Smith sees as the correct doctrines. The third part identifies certain passages in the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants that Bowes either misread or misquoted. The concluding paragraph begins, “The public are informed, that most of John Bowes’s objections are replied to in a book entitled, ‘Mormonism Triumphant’”—a too generous assessment of the breadth of Flanigan’s pamphlet (item 431).

A slightly modified version of Who is the Liar? is in the Millennial Star of January 15, 1850. Whether this is earlier or later than the tract is not certain, but it appears to be later, suggesting that Who is the Liar? was published about the first of the year.

Flake-Draper 8098. USlC.

457 TOONE, John. [Handbill notifying the public that two lectures would be delivered in Leamington, by A. Cordon on Sunday, January 13, 1850, and by J. Toone on Sunday, January 20. Leamington? 1850]

When Alfred Cordon returned to Leamington from preaching in Black Horse Lane on January 11, 1850, he discovered that John Toone had published a handbill advertising two lectures in Leamington, the first to be delivered by Cordon on Sunday, January 13, “On the Literal Gathering of the twelve Tribes of Israel,” and the second to be delivered by Toone himself on Sunday, January 20, “upon the first principles of the gospel.” Cordon further notes in his journal that the handbill included the following text at the bottom:

The Public are respectfully entreted to attend. And for as much as the different denominations of professing Christians are crying out delusion! delusion!! or at least allowing other Ministers from a distance to do so, The Latter Day Saints take this opportunity of publickly inviting all men of whatever class or character to come to there Preaching Room and try their principles by the only true standard,—The Bible They lay themselves open for discussion; and particularly invite those Gentlemen of the different denominations who are called Leaders of the Church—or Ministers of the Gospel. They will, with all cheerfulness, allow any one to prove to us wherein we err; and in case of conviction, they will gladly and publicly acknowledge it, and adopt any means to further the purposes which are revealed in the Word of God;—For verily and truly the Lord hath said that in the last days he would set up a Kingdom and it shall be done. “Let God be true, though every man a liar.” They publickly acknowledge the ordnance of Baptism for the remission of sins, and laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost, and anointing with Oil in the name of the name of the Lord for the restoring of the Sick.

On Sunday evening, as advertised, Cordon lectured to a crowded room, undoubtedly in the Guy Street chapel, and “shewed that not only Judah that was dispersed amongst the nations; but also the outcasts of Israel would be brought from the ends of the earth and that the seed of Joseph—the ten thousands of Ephraim and the thousands of Manassah would be the Agents used to bring about this gathering dispensation.” Two members of the audience made comments after his discourse, one of them asking Cordon to perform a miracle.¹

458 Re-opening of Ebenezar Chapel, Pennington Street, Rugby. The inhabitants of Rugby and its vicinity, are respectfully informed that the Latter-day Saints meet for public worship, in Ebenezar Chapel, Rugby, and are requested to attend a course of four lectures which will be delivered as follows; Lecture 1st, on Sunday evening, January 13th, by Elder S. Parks, of Long Buckby. Lecture 2nd, on Sunday evening, January 20th, by Elder T. Day, of Rugby. Lecture 3rd, by [sic] on Sunday evening, January 27th, by Elder A. Cordon, missionary from the Camp of Israel, U.S.A. Lecture 4th, on Sunday evening, February 3rd by Elder W. Broadhead, of Coventry. Public worship every Lord’s Day, at eleven o’clock in the morning three in the afternoon, and six in the evening. N.B. No collection. Books and pamphlets can be obtained at the close of the meeting. T. A. Marrs, Bookseller, &c., Earl-street, Coventry. [1850]

Broadside 38 x 25.5 cm.

Recently discovered among the Thomas Day papers in the Brigham Young University Lee Library, this broadside was undoubtedly published by Day or William Broadhead, the presiding elder in Coventry, to advertise Mormon preaching in the Ebenezar Chapel, which the Rugby branch had just opened. Day claims in his journal that earlier he had applied to the minister for the use of the chapel but was refused.¹ “The spirit of prophecy came upon me,” he continues:

I bore a strong and faithful testimony to the gospel and told him that, inasmuch as he refused to permit the use of his chapel to a servant of the Lord, his future course should be downward, and he should be deserted by his congregation. The fulfill-ment of this prediction began immediately, his congregation gradually left, and in a short time he was compelled to leave Rugby for want of employment. After he was broken up, his chapel, called Ebenezar Chapel, was deserted, and we rented and used it then for some time.

Under the date January 1, 1850, Alfred Cordon records in his journal:

I went up to Rugby, they had taken a Chapel and were to open it that day by holding in it a Tea Meeting. It was quite a commodious place with a baptismal font under the pulpit. It was buillt by Mr. Matthews who was connected with the Rev R Aitkin There was but few attended the weather was very cold, in the Evening we occupied the time with speaking Elder Day and myself addressed the Meeting.

There seems to have been some adjustment of the speaking schedule advertised in the broadside, for Cordon preached in Newbold on Avon on January 27.² Thomas Day sailed for America on February 17, four weeks after his scheduled lecture.³

Samuel Parkes (not Parks), the first lecturer advertised in the broadside, was born in Doncaster, Yorkshire, February 12, 1808, married Sarah Conway of Doncaster in 1831, and was baptized into the Church in Sheffield on January 11, 1848. Six months later Sarah was baptized in the Warwickshire Conference by Thomas Day, and on August 30, 1849, Cordon ordained Parkes an elder. Parkes served as the conference book agent in Bedfordshire in 1853, and in 1855 he and his family immigrated to Utah and settled in the Salt Lake City Thirteenth Ward. Beyond this nothing is known about him.⁴

Flake-Draper 6867a. UPB.

459 Deseret. Constitution of the state of Deseret, with the journal of the convention which formed it, and the proceedings of the legislature consequent thereon. January 28, 1850. Referred to the Committee on the Territories, and ordered to be printed. [Caption title] [At head of title:] 31st Congress, 1st Session. [Ho. of Reps.] Miscellaneous, No. 18. [Washington: Printed by Wm. M. Belt, 1850]

12 pp. 22.5 cm.

The House edition of Constitution of the State of Deseret is textually the same as the Kanesville edition and differs from the Senate edition only in that it includes the memorial once at the end (see items 435, 454). On January 3, 1850, Linn Boyd of Kentucky asked the unanimous consent of the House of Representatives that the Deseret constitution and memorial for statehood be referred to the Committee on the Territories and Almon W. Babbitt’s memorial for a seat in the House be referred to the Committee on Elections (see item 477), but Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia objected, so the memorials were not introduced. Twenty days later Boyd asked the unanimous consent of the House that the two memorials be referred to the Committee on Elections, again with Stephens objecting. Finally on January 28 Boyd presented the constitution to the House, which referred it to the Committee on Territories.¹

Flake-Draper 2784. UPB, USlC, UU.

460 PRATT, Parley Parker? What is “Mormonism?” [Signed at end:] Liverpool. Glaud Rodger. [At foot below rule:] Printed by J. Sadler, 16, Moorfields, Liverpool. [1850?] [Last word, first line of text:] prin-.

Broadside 21 x 13 cm.

461 PRATT, Parley Parker? What do the Latter-day Saints believe; or, what is “Mormonism?” [Signed at end:] Liverpool. Glaud Rodger. [At foot below rule:] Printed by J. Sadler, 16, Moorfields, Liverpool. [1850?] [Last word, first line of text:] following.

Broadside 22 x 13.5 cm.

Items 460 and 461 are different editions, although, except for the first three lines, the main texts are line-for-line the same. The only located copy of item 460 is closely trimmed at the top, so it is not possible to determine whether it originally had the first line, What do the Latter-day Saints Believe; or, in its title.¹ Commas added in the first line of the seventh paragraph and third line from the bottom in item 461, a comma deleted in the sixth line from the bottom, and ½ in the fifth line from the bottom replaced by half in item 461, suggest that item 460 is the earlier edition.

Parley P. Pratt is undoubtedly the author, even though both are signed at the end by Glaud Rodger. The text, with the title What is “Mormonism”?, was first printed in the Prophet for April 5, 1845, where it is dated April 6, 1845, and signed by Pratt and Samuel Brannan, as presiding elders in the eastern states and in New York, respectively. It was reprinted in each issue of the Prophet thereafter, and in the second, third, and fifth issues of the New-York Messenger. In the last two issues of the Prophet and in the Messenger, Brannan’s name is replaced by that of William H. Miles, who succeeded Brannan as presiding elder in New York. It was again reprinted in the Millennial Star of June 15, 1845, signed by Pratt and Brannan, from which the broadsides were taken. Apart from a few changes in capitalization and punctuation, the texts in the broadsides are the same as those in the Prophet and the Star—except for That added to the sixth line of text, three added biblical references, the phrase the Jews and remnants of Israel in the fourteenth paragraph which is shortened to Israel in the broadsides, and the reference Mil. Star, Vol. VI, page 4 added at the end.

The text opens with the declaration that “there can be but one true system of doctrine and religious worship,” which was revealed at the beginning of the world but corrupted over the ages, and restored again “by the voice of God, by the ministry of angels, and by visions, and revelations from the Lord.” Then follows the familiar message of faith, repentance, baptism by immersion, the receipt of the Holy Spirit “by the laying on of the hands of the apostles and elders of this last dispensation of mercy to man,” and the necessity to live virtuously and gather with Israel. At the end are the Mormon meeting times in Liverpool, at the Music Hall, Bold Street, the Temperance Hall, Bond Street, and 145, Mill Street.

One might guess that these broadsides were published by Glaud Rodger soon after he assumed the presidency of the Liverpool Conference in January 1850. Born in Lanarkshire, Scotland, July 23, 1820, Rodger joined the Church there in 1842 and began serving full time as a missionary in the Sheffield Conference two years later. He presided over the Liverpool Conference until the end of 1851 and then sailed for America the following February, crossing the plains to Utah that summer. But life in Utah alienated him, and in 1854 he moved to California, where, ten years later, he joined the Reorganization and began his career as an RLDS missionary. With C. W. Wandell he left for Australia in 1873, returned to America in 1879, and was chosen senior president of the seventies in 1880. He died in Elko, Nevada, August 3, 1884.²

Item 460: Flake-Draper 6712. CtY. Item 461: Flake-Draper 6712a. UPB.

462 To the general assembly of the state of Deseret. [Caption title] [Dated at end:] Great Salt Lake City, Feb. 8, 1850. [Salt Lake City, 1850]

4 pp. 21 cm.

To the General Assembly of the State of Deseret appears to be the third piece to issue from the Salt Lake press—following within a few days the first eight pages of Constitution of the State of Deseret and preceding the first sheet of List of Recorded Brands and, one might guess, the Young-Eagar Emigrant’s Guide and Ordinances Passed by the Legislative Council of Great Salt Lake City (see items 439, 464, 466, 475, 476). It was printed in the Mint, a small adobe building on South Temple between what is now the Church Administration Building at 47 East and the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, where John Kay made gold coins and the press was housed for at least seven months before being moved to the Council House in August 1850.¹

Who submitted this petition or exactly what prompted it is not known. Dated twenty days before the legislature of the provisional state incorporated the University of the State of Deseret, it “earnestly” solicits the legislature to incorporate a university, “which may have branches in all parts of the State, where they may be needed, and that said institution may provide means, for furnishing well qualified teachers, and books of the most approved kind . . . for instruction in all arts, sciences, and professions” (see item 479).² In its opening lines it refers to the problems involved in bringing people from different nations together, criticizes the existing colleges for catering only to the rich, and expresses the desire that “our posterity should be learned, every one of them, so that the learned professions may be destroyed from their midst, and each be his own lawyer, priest, and doctor, so that they may not be imposed upon by the few learned, who may come among us by chance or design.” It further asserts that it is the “proper time” to reform the English language, particularly by making spelling consistent with pronunciation—a harbinger of the Deseret alphabet.

The comments on reforming English spelling reflect a broader reform movement that had long persisted in England and America. Spelling reform was first advanced in America by Benjamin Franklin and championed by Noah Webster with his Dissertations on the English Language: with Notes, Historical and Critical, to which is Added, by way of Appendix, an Essay on a Reformed Mode of Spelling, with Dr. Franklin’s Arguments on that Subject (Boston, 1789). At mid-nineteenth century the principal reformers in England were Isaac Pitman and Alexander J. Ellis, and in America Isaac Pitman’s brother Benn promoted the cause, issuing his First Phonetic Reader in Cincinnati in 1855. A year earlier, the Mormons had produced their own phonetic alphabet, the Deseret alphabet, and would go on to publish two primers in it in 1868 as well as part of the Book of Mormon and the full book in 1869.

Flake-Draper 2781. Saunders 10. CtY, UPB, USlC.

463 FLANIGAN, James Henry. [Placard advertising a lecture in reply to the Rev. Benjamin Wilmore, February 11, 1850. West Bromwich? 1850]

James H. Flanigan had been presiding over the Birmingham Conference for about three weeks when he came to West Bromwich on January 22, 1850, and found the town posted with handbills advertising an anti-Mormon lecture that evening by Benjamin Willmore, the curate of the Anglican Holy Trinity Church there.¹ Flanigan attended the lecture and, when he was not allowed to respond, spoke up at the close and announced that his reply would be forthcoming. The next day he wrote to Willmore and asked for the liberty to deliver his response in his “School Rooms,” apparently without success. On Sunday, February 10, he and Cyrus H. Wheelock preached in West Bromwich that afternoon and evening. The following evening, he reports in his diary,

according to anouncement by play Carding [placarding] the town I delivered a Lecture in Reply to the Revd. B Wilmore’s Lecture against the Saints & Joseph we had a Complete time—good order—good large audience first rate music & the R[ev.] Wilmore was present, to here & see himself get the best wipeing off he ever had before.

Three days later he wrote out his reply and sent it to the Birmingham Journal, but whether the Journal published it is not known. His involvement with Willmore, however, did not end at this point. On March 11, in Dudley, he again responded to him in a public lecture, and on the 26th he attended another of his anti-Mormon sermons in Birmingham and delivered a public response the following evening.²

464 List of recorded brands. [Caption title] [Salt Lake City, 1850?]

20 pp. 27 cm.

Item 464 appears to be the first brand book printed in America.¹ It consists of five sheets, each approximately 27 x 39 cm., each folded to make four pages about 27 x 19.5 cm. The pages are continuously numbered [1]–20; only the first page bears the caption title List of Recorded Brands. The text is in ten columns separated by vertical rules, headed from left to right: Brand, Length of Letter Inches, Breadth of Brand Inches, Place of Brand, Date of Record, Owner’s Name, Place of Residence, Ward, Lot, and Block. On pp. 8 and 20 the headings Ward and Block are interchanged, but the data is not. The first entry is for Willard Richards: WR, ⅞, 1½, Left Horn/Horses Hoof, Dec. 29, 1849, Willard Richards, G. S. L. City, 14, 7, 76. Brigham Young’s is the eighteenth: Y, 4⅛, 3⅛, Left Hip, Jan. 3, 1850, Brigham Young, G. S. L. City, 18, 3, 89.

The first 4-page sheet (pp. [1]–4) has 99 brands and two sheep marks identified at the end, the recording dates ranging from December 29, 1849, to February 11, 1850, not strictly in chronological order. The second sheet (pp. 5–8) has 99 brands and three marks, the dates from December 31, 1849, to March 18, 1850, with an errata at the bottom of p. 8 correcting Willard Snow’s entry on p. [1]. The third sheet (pp. 9–12) includes 100 brands and three marks, March 18 to May 27, 1850; the fourth (pp. 13–16), 100 brands and three marks, May 28 to August 16, 1850; and the fifth (pp. 17–20), 103 brands and one mark, August 16 to November 4, 1850. The fifth sheet is on heavier, coarser paper than the first four.

Generally, but not precisely, the brands are printed in the same order as they appear in William Clayton’s manuscript registry.² Some, which were symbols rather than letters or numbers, were omitted from the first sheet but picked up in the second. One might guess that it took the printers a month or two to devise type facsimiles of these brands. There are a few differences between the printed and manuscript records. The latest entry in the first sheet, for example, for Gilbert Morse (p. 3), is actually dated January 19 in the manuscript registry, not February 11, but the entry for John Heward, three entries above Morse’s, dated February 8, is the same in the manuscript.

The sheets themselves appear to have been printed in 1850, for the copies of the first four at the LDS Church and the second, third, fourth, and fifth at Brigham Young University bear the name of Newel K. Whitney, who died on September 23, 1850.³ The “Historian’s Office Journal” for Monday, February 11, 1850—the date of the latest brand on the first sheet—reports that “B. H. Young & H. Whitney [were] setting up form for recorded brands.” And the entries for that week indicate that Young and Whitney worked on the “Brand Records” on February 13 and 14, Thomas Bullock corrected the proof on February 15, and Young was “printing the Brand records” on February 16. Further, the journal for March 21—three days after the date of the latest entry on the second sheet—notes that “the Printers [were] setting up record of brands & laws.”⁴

On December 29, 1849—the date of the first entry in item 464—the Council of Fifty passed an ordinance creating an office of marks and brands and appointing William Clayton the recorder (see item 476). The seventh section of this ordinance stipulated: “It shall be the duty of the Recorder, to furnish a printed copy free of charge, of all Marks, Brands, and record of Brands, to every individual applying for the same, and having a certificate of record, as speedily as possible after the entry of one hundred Brands, also to repeat the same on the completion of the entry of every succeeding hundred.”⁵ It seems clear, therefore, that the first two sheets of item 464 were struck off immediately after the first and second hundred brands were recorded, and one might guess that the others were printed when the total number of brands reached a multiple of one hundred.

The first Utah territorial legislature established a territorial office of marks and brands on March 1, 1852, continuing Clayton as recorder, and a month later the Deseret News ran the following notice:

Brand sheets. All persons interested are hereby notified that the printed copies of the 1st, 2d, 3d, 4th, 5th, and 6th hundreds of recorded brands are now ready for delivery at the Tithing Office. Those entitled to the sheets will do well to call for them soon. All copies remaining on hand after the 1st of July, 1852, will be sold to any person desiring them. County Recorders will be furnished with a copy of all recorded Brands, when the General Recorder is notified of their name and address. Wm. Clayton, Recorder.⁶

Whether this refers to just a sixth sheet to accompany item 464 or involves a new edition of item 464 is not known; neither a copy of such a sixth sheet nor an 1852 second edition is located. One might note that the last entry on the fifth sheet appears in Clayton’s manuscript registry as brand no. 513, and brand no. 613 in the registry is dated February 23, 1852, so the sixth sheet referred to in the News would seem to have been printed no more than five and a half weeks after the next one hundred brands were recorded.⁷ Notations in the back of Clayton’s manuscript registry suggest that a seventh, eighth, and ninth sheet were printed and distributed—but like the sixth sheet, none of these are located.⁸ A 39-page-edition with the title Book of One Thousand Marks and Brands, Alphabetically Arranged was published in 1855.

Saunders 9. NjP, UPB, USlC, UU[p. 5–8].

465 FLANIGAN, James Henry. [Handbill advertising lectures. Birmingham? 1850]

Flanigan only briefly mentions this unlocated handbill in his diary, under the date February 23, 1850: “Saturday got 500 Bills out for Lectures Started for Dudly.” On Sunday, the 24th, and again on Monday evening, the 25th, he preached in Dudley, and one might guess that the handbill advertised these lectures. Flanigan had been in Birmingham during the week preceding February 23, so he undoubtedly had it printed there.¹

466 YOUNG, Brigham Hamilton, and John Eagar. Emigrant’s guide: being a table of distances, showing the springs, creeks, rivers, mountains, hills, and all other notable places, from Great Salt Lake City to San Franc1sco [sic]. Second edition. By B. H. Young and J. Eagar. [Caption title] [Salt Lake City? 1850?]

8 pp. 14.5 cm. Plain blue stiff paper cover.

Although the Young-Eagar Emigrant’s Guide was the first printed Mormon guidebook to the California gold mines, it was not the first such guidebook. That honor falls to Ira J. Willis’s handwritten “Best Guide to the Gold Mines.” A member of the Mormon Battalion, Willis was working for John Sutter when gold was discovered and did some prospecting himself before coming to Utah in the summer of 1848 with a group of discharged Battalion members who cut a new road across the Sierra Nevada—a trip chronicled by Henry W. Bigler, the recorder of the discovery of gold on January 24, 1848.¹ Willis seems to have taken notes of this trip and then used them as the basis for his guide, which reversed his eastward route: from Salt Lake City north around the Great Salt Lake, across the Weber River, the Bear and Malad rivers to Deep Creek, and then Cassia Creek to Cathedral Rocks at the south edge of City of the Rocks on the old Fort Hall road; then southwest on the old road to a branch of the Humboldt River (called Mary’s River in “Best Guide”) and down the Humboldt to its sink, across the Forty-mile Desert to the Truckee River; south, picking up the road established by the Battalion party, to the Carson River (called the Salmon Trout) and along the Carson to Red Lake, across Carson Pass to the Sacramento Valley. His “Best Guide to the Gold Mines,” sometimes in four handwritten pages, sometimes in five, undoubtedly copied and recopied by many others, was sold to the Forty-niners in Salt Lake City and along the trial for 50¢ or $1. Bennett C. Clark used it, as did William T. Coleman and Elisha D. Perkins; Sarah Royce purchased a copy and identified it by title and author.² James Mason Hutchings had a copy, and although he did not mention it in the diary of his overland trip, he preserved it with the diary, and it is now the only located original—in the Yosemite National Park Museum.³ J. Goldsborough Bruff bought one at City of the Rocks and transcribed it into his journal with some disparaging remarks. The Bruff transcription, however, begins at City of the Rocks, differs in its distances at two points from the Hutchings copy, and turns left to the Carson River at the Humboldt sink, whereas the Hutchings copy crosses the Forty-mile Desert to the Truckee River and then turns left to the Carson.⁴ One might infer that the copiers of “Best Guide” incorporated new information about the trail as they learned of it.

The Young-Eagar guide was published by two printers, certainly to capitalize on the heavy traffic to the California mines. Brigham H. Young, the son of Phineas Young, Brigham Young’s older brother, was born in Tompkins County, New York, January 3, 1824, and came to the Salt Lake Valley in the fall of 1847. In January 1849 he set the type and printed the gold-backed paper currency on Truman O. Angell’s little press—the first typesetting in the Valley. He printed the Second General Epistle and the early issues of the Deseret News and was the first Utah territorial printer, 1851–52 (see items 439, 494, 714, 738, 741). As expected of a nephew of Brigham Young, he went as a missionary to England in 1857, returning the following year when the missionaries were called back because of the Utah Expedition. During the next decade he brought several wagon trains of goods to Utah and suffered a heavy loss in 1864 when his train was attacked by Indians. He died in Alameda, California, June 5, 1898.⁵

John Eagar was born in Cayuga County, New York, July 13, 1823, joined the Church in 1844, and sailed on the Brooklyn to California with Sam Brannan and the New York Saints. In San Francisco he was a printer and Brannan’s clerk, and, for a time, associate editor of the California Star. He came to Utah in the summer of 1848 with the group of Battalion members that included Ira J. Willis—thereby sharing Willis’s firsthand knowledge of the trail—and settled in Salt Lake City. By 1853 he had moved to Manti, where he was the notary public for San Pete County, county recorder, and, during the last year of his life, the probate judge. He died in Manti on March 3, 1864.⁶

Young and Eagar’s Emigrant’s Guide covers the same route to the Humboldt sink as the Hutchings copy of “Best Guide” and then follows the route of the Bruff transcription from the sink to the Sacramento Valley. There are some differences in the distances, its notes on the terrain and camp conditions are fuller than those of “Best Guide,” and it breaks the more than 200-mile stretch along the Humboldt into thirteen segments rather than nine. But at four points it uses wording very similar to that of “Best Guide,” suggesting that “Best Guide” was the point of departure for the Young-Eagar book.

The only located copy of the Young-Eagar guide is designated second edition, and, so far as it is known, there is no record of a first. One might conjecture that the designation second edition refers to Willis’s “Best Guide” as the first edition and the only printing of the Young-Eagar book is the so-called “second edition.”

It is mentioned by at least two 1850 overland travelers. Silas Newcomb purchased a copy in Salt Lake City on July 17 and disparaged it two weeks later as not to “be depended upon.”⁷ And Franklin Langworthy was certainly referring to the Young-Eagar book when, on May 5, in Kanesville, he wrote:

In various ways, the Mormons are making petty speculations by trading with the emigrants. Every traveler is made to believe that a Mormon “guide book” and a pair of goggles are indispensable requisites upon the road. The guide book is a pamphlet of five or six leaves, and might have cost the proprietor three cents per copy. Thousands of these are sold, at prices ranging from fifty cents to two dollars each; and the goggles, in still greater numbers, are sold at fifty cents per pair, and neither of these articles were of the least service in crossing the plains.⁸

If the Young-Eagar book was selling in Kanesville early in May 1850, it must have been printed—in Salt Lake City—no later than March 1850, and, of course, no earlier than October 1849.

Flake-Draper 10077. Saunders 17. CtY.

467 [Frontier Guardian Extra, March 13, 1850. Kanesville, 1850]

This unlocated extra appears to be the first of a series of pieces pertaining to the contested election for the seat in the U.S. House of Representatives from Iowa’s first congressional district (see items 508, 513). In the August 1848 election, Daniel F. Miller, a Whig, opposed the incumbent William Thompson, a Democrat, for the first district seat. Pottawattamie County had not been organized at this point, so the residents there applied to Monroe County for township status for Kanesville and Mount Pisgah, allowing them to vote as residents of Monroe. The Mormon vote in Kanesville went solidly to Miller, 493 to 30. This margin would have given him the election, but the clerk of Monroe County, a Democrat, refused to receive the Kanesville votes, and Thompson was declared the winner. Exacerbating the issue, the Kanesville poll books disappeared just after they had been delivered to the Monroe County clerk, eventually turning up in the possession of Thompson’s attorney.¹

Miller challenged Thompson’s right to the seat in December 1849, at the opening of the Thirty-first Congress—which would enact the Compromise of 1850 including territorial status for Utah. The House divided almost equally between Whigs and Democrats, so a contested seat was an important issue for both parties. Miller claimed that he had been unlawfully deprived of the votes that would have given him the election; Thompson contended that, at the time of the election, Kanesville was not a proper precinct of Monroe County and the Mormons did not satisfy the residence requirements to vote. On January 23, 1850, the House voted to take testimony and collect documents bearing on the issue, and that June it took up the question and debated it for four days, before voting on the 29th to vacate the seat. Two months later the governor of Iowa called a special election for September 24. Pottawattamie County had been formally organized since September 1848, so the votes of the Mormons there were no longer in dispute. Miller carried the special election by 257 votes and in December took his seat in the House.²

The Frontier Guardian extra of March 13, 1850, was undoubtedly prompted by the discovery of the missing Kanesville poll books twenty-two days earlier in the possession of Thompson’s attorney, Charles Mason of Keokuk.³ An excerpt from the extra giving its date—mainly an editorial comment from the Burlington Hawk-Eye of February 28 on what it believed to be the criminal theft of the poll books—was reprinted in the Guardian of March 20 and reprinted again in 31st Congress, 1st Session, House Miscellaneous Document 47, pp. 121–22. The Guardian of March 20 also noted that some had complained that the extra would inhibit the investigation, but, it continued, “We speak it plainly,—the sober reflecting people here consider themselves outraged by the course taken with their votes.”

468 HALLIDAY, George, and George Kendall. [Handbill advertising four lectures in Sherborne, March and April? 1850. Sherborne? 1850]

Immediately after assuming the presidency of the South Conference in January 1850, George Halliday began to tour the conference and visit the Saints in the various branches. On Thursday, March 7, 1850, he left Bristol for Bruton, about twenty-two miles to the south, where he stayed a few days and preached on Sunday and Tuesday. He walked to Sherborne, about twelve miles south of Bruton, on Wednesday, March 13, remained there “a few days,” and went to Bradford Abbas, where he preached on Sunday and Wednesday. “I then left Bradford,” he writes in his diary,

and went again to Sherborne where we had put out bills to say that I would deliver a lecture on “The Soul of Man” and that was done just to get the people together and then after I had delivered my lecture Brother Kendall was going to give three more lectures and I had a good time at Sherborne and I think there will be a good work done there by and by.¹

George Halliday and George Kendall were successful local missionaries. Born in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, April 17, 1823, Halliday was baptized into the Church by his brother John in 1844 and called to preside over the Bristol branch in January 1848. Succeeding his brother as president of the South Conference, he served in this capacity for three years, immigrated to Utah in 1853, and settled in Salt Lake City. He returned to England as a missionary, 1860–64, and soon after this mission moved to Utah County, where he was a member of the territorial legislature and the bishop in Santaquin and American Fork. In 1888–89 he spent seventy-five days in the Utah penitentiary for polygamy. He died in Santaquin, May 17, 1900.²

Kendall was born in Lancashire, January 17, 1819, converted to Mormonism in 1844, and led the branches in Bristol and Bridport before being called to preside over the Dorsetshire Conference when it was organized in May 1850. Fifteen months later he was appointed president of the Derbyshire Conference, where he labored until sailing for America in January 1853. Settling in Nephi, he served in the Utah territorial legislature and on the high council. He too was arrested for unlawful cohabitation but escaped with only a fine. He died in Nephi, March 14, 1891.³

469 FLANIGAN, James Henry? Invitation. All persons are respectfully invited to attend the Latter Day Saints’ meetings, to examine their publications, and to investigate their faith and doctrines. [Caption title] [7 quotations following the caption title] [N.p., n.d.]

[3] pp. 18.5 cm.

470 FLANIGAN, James Henry? Invitation. All persons are respectfully invited to attend the Latter Day Saints’ meetings, to examine their publications, and to investigate their faith and doctrines. [Caption title] [8 quotations following the caption title] [N.p., n.d.]

[3] pp. 15.5 cm.

The texts of both items 469 and 470 consist of a sequence of quotations followed by James H. Flanigan’s Fourteen Articles of Faith under the heading Parallel Scripture References to prove the Latter Day Saints Faith and Doctrines (see items 405, 431). Each article of faith, except the twelfth and thirteenth, is accompanied by a set of biblical citations bearing on that article. The last line on p. [3] is Latter Day Saints’ preaching places, with space left to write in meeting locations.

Items 469 and 470 are textually the same, except for the following differences. Item 469 has seven quotations following the caption title, while item 470 has eight. The sixth quotation in item 469, “Hear both sides of a question, before judging,” attributed to Solomon, is listed eighth in item 470, slightly modified, where it is attributed to “The united voice of common sense, reason, and revelation.” The seventh quotation, “Prove all things, hold fast the good,” attributed to Paul in item 469, is corrected in item 470 to read “hold fast that which is good,” with the citation to 1 Thessalonians 5:21. The quotation “He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is a folly and shame unto him,” with the citation to Proverbs 18:13, is added in item 470 as the sixth. The phrase to prove the Latter Day Saints Faith in item 469 is corrected in item 470 to read to prove the Latter Day Saints’ Faith. One biblical citation is added to each of the lists of citations accompanying the second and seventh articles in item 470, and one citation accompanying the tenth article and two accompanying the eleventh are changed in item 470. The text of the Fourteen Articles of Faith in item 469 is identical to that in Mormonism Triumphant! (item 431), except for three changes in punctuation. The text of the articles in item 470 is identical to that in item 469, except for the capitalization of B in bible in the eighth article, and one punctuation change and the change of to to for in the fourteenth. All of these differences suggest that item 469 is the earlier edition. Whether it is indeed the first edition is not known.

It would appear that the first edition of this tract was published by James H. Flanigan in Birmingham in March 1850. Under the date March 25, he records in his diary: “Monday in Birm[ingham] geting out some ‘Invitations.’” And under March 30: “Saturday attended the printing of 12,000 Invitations.”¹ Nine months later, twenty-six days before his death, he wrote:

3d [January 1851] Friday Elder [James H.] H[art] & myself wrote out a Bill for a course of 13 Lectures In the principle Towns in the Conference. We also recvd the New Years “Millennial Stars” from L[iver]pool. . . . We Inclosed 22 coppies of the Stars & 22 coppies of Invitations to 22 different Ministers of all Sects in Birm[ingham] & Sent them through the Post Office.

It is likely that item 470—indeed perhaps item 469 as well—was published after Flanigan’s death by someone else. The Southampton Conference, for example, reported in December 1851 that 3,125 copies of Invitation had been circulated in the conference.² Two later editions and a number of variations are also extant (see items 471, 615, 644–47, 648, 719), so it is clear that Invitation quickly became a popular and broadly circulated proselytizing piece.

Flake-Draper 1891b. Item 469: UU. Item 470: UPB.

471 WHITELEY, James, and Walter S. Savage. Scripture references, to substantiate the doctrines advocated by the Latter-day Saints. [Caption title] [Signed on p. [2]:] James Whiteley. Walter Savage. [At foot of p. [2]:] T. Potter, Printer, Prior Court, High Street, Sheffield. [1850?]

[2] pp. 19 cm.

This curious little tract is a sheet 19 x 25.2 cm., folded to make two leaves, with the recto of the first leaf blank, p. [1] of the text on the verso of the first leaf, p. [2] of the text on the recto of the second leaf, and the verso of the second leaf blank—the same format as Thomas Smith’s Who Is the Liar? (item 456). It is entirely possible that it was originally distributed as an unfolded sheet. The caption title above is on p. [1], followed by biblical proof-texts gathered under seven headings: “Baptism,” “Laying on Hands for the Gift of the Holy Ghost,” “The Holy Spirit and Power of Godliness,” “Christ’s Second Coming,” “On the Millennial,” “Necessity of the Gospel Being Revealed in the Last Days,” and, at the top of p. [2], “Healing of the Sick.” These citations appear to have been taken from the London edition of Moses Martin’s Treatise on the Fulness of the Everlasting Gospel (item 316), with some additions and many omissions. The rest of p. [2] contains James H. Flanigan’s Fourteen Articles of Faith, as in his Reply to a Sheet or his Mormonism Triumphant! (items 405, 431), except for two trivial word-changes and a handful of changes in capitalization and punctuation.

James Whiteley was born in Sheffield, March 16, 1818, and seems to have spent his time in the Church in the Sheffield branch. Baptized in December 1846, he was ordained a priest on January 5, 1850, and an elder on June 10, 1852. Twenty months later he was cut off for apostasy.¹ Since Walter S. Savage, Whiteley’s fellow branch member, was ordained an elder on the same day Whiteley was ordained a priest (see item 444), one might guess that soon after their January 1850 ordinations, they went out as local missionaries and, as part of this effort, published this tract together as a proselytizing tool—perhaps prompted by the appearance of Flanigan’s Invitation (see the preceding items). Undoubtedly they published it before Savage left for America that September.

Flake-Draper 1952c. UPB.

472 DAVIS, John Silvanus. Athrawiaeth iachus. [Caption title] [Sound doctrine.] [At foot of p. 4:] John Davis, Argraffydd, Merthyr-Tydfil. [John Davis, Printer, Merthyr Tydfil] [1850]

4 pp. 17 cm.

Flake-Draper 2721c. Dennis 36. CU-B, MH, NjP, UPB, USlC, WsN, WsS.

473 DAVIS, John Silvanus. Pregethu i’r ysbrydion yn ngharchar, a bedyddio dros y meirw. [12 lines] Gan John Davis, Merthyr. Merthyr-Tydfil: Argraffwyd ac ar werth gan J. Davis, Georgetown; ar werth hefyd gan y Saint yn gyffredinol, a llawer o lyfrwerthwyr, trwy y Deau a’r Gogledd. 1850. [Preaching to the spirits in prison, and baptism for the dead. By John Davis, Merthyr. Merthyr Tydfil: Printed and for sale by J. Davis, Georgetown; and for sale also by the Saints generally, and many booksellers throughout the South and the North. 1850.]

8 pp. 17 cm.

Recently discovered, this piece is the 1850 edition of Dennis 37 (next item), with almost all of its text printed from the setting of the corresponding text in the Udgorn Seion for March 1850, pp. 61­–66.

Flake-Draper 2722r. USlC.

474 DAVIS, John Silvanus. Pregethu i’r ysbrydion yn ngharchar, a bedyddio dros y meirw. [12 lines] Gan John Davis, Merthyr. Merthyr-Tydfil: Argraffwyd ac ar werth gan J. Davis, Georgetown; ar werth hefyd gan y Saint yn gyffredinol, a llawer o lyfrwerthwyr, trwy y Deau a’r Gogledd. 1851. [Preaching to the spirits in prison, and baptism for the dead. By John Davis, Merthyr. Merthyr Tydfil: Printed and for sale by J. Davis, Georgetown; and for sale also by the Saints generally, and many booksellers throughout the South and the North. 1851.]

8 pp. 17 cm.

Flake-Draper 2722s. Dennis 37. CU-B, MH, NjP, UPB, USlC, WsN, WsS.

475 Constitution of the state of Deseret. [Caption title] [Salt Lake City, 1850]

34 pp. 24 cm.

The Salt Lake City Constitution of the State of Deseret consists of the text of the constitution (see item 435) including the preamble (pp. 1–8), followed by: “Ordinance Regulating Elections. Passed by the General Assembly, November 12, 1849” (pp. 9–12); “An Ordinance, Organizing the Nauvoo Legion. Passed by the Legislative Council, March 9, 1849” together with the report “To the President and Legislative Council” (pp. 12–15); and then fourteen ordinances passed by the legislature of the provisional state of Deseret between December 8, 1849—the day the legislature first convened—and March 28, 1850.¹ The book is made up of four 8-page signatures with the final leaf (pp. 33–34) pasted on at the spine.

“Ordinance Regulating Elections . . . November 12, 1849,” is a perplexing item. The opening sentence of its text explicitly states that it was the action of “the General Assembly of the State of Deseret,” which did not convene until December 8. Moreover, Hosea Stout reports that “a committee to draft a law concerning elections” was appointed by the legislature on January 5, 1850, and that the election law passed on February 12.²

“An Ordinance, Organizing the Nauvoo Legion . . . March 9, 1849,” reports the action of the Council of Fifty on March 3, appointing Amasa Lyman, Charles C. Rich, and Daniel H. Wells to organize “all the male inhabitants of the valley of the Great Salt Lake, who are able bodied men, over fourteen, and under seventy-five years of age, into different companies, the whole to form an entire Military Organization of the people, under the name of the Nauvoo Legion.” This is followed by the report from Rich and Wells, dated May 26, 1849, giving the organization adopted in a public ceremony on April 28 and the names of the officers, including Wells as commanding major general (see item 625).³

The first of the fourteen ordinances is “An Ordinance Regulating the Militia of the State of Deseret” (pp. 15–17), passed by the provisional legislature on December 8, 1849, which, among its several provisions, changed the age of militia service to between eighteen and forty-five years. The last is “An Ordinance Prohibiting the Sale of Arms, Ammunition, or Spirituous Liquors to the Indians” (p. 34), passed March 28, 1850.

None of the ordinances are included in the 1851 Ordinances Passed by the General Assembly of the State of Deseret (item 613), but five are reprinted in the 1853 Acts and Resolutions, Passed at the Second Annual Session of the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Utah and in the 1855 Acts, Resolutions and Memorials, Passed at the Several Annual Sessions of the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Utah—those providing for road commissioners; incorporating the University of the State of Deseret; establishing county recorders; creating a surveyor general; and prohibiting the sale of arms or liquor to the Indians.⁴ In both the 1853 Acts and Resolutions and the 1855 Acts, Resolutions and Memorials, changes occur in the reprinted ordinances; in the 1855 reprint, for example, those providing for road commissioners and a surveyor general change the term of the state officer from four years to two. On September 27, 1851, the first Utah territorial legislature passed a joint resolution legalizing the acts of the provisional legislature as territorial statutes and on October 1 appointed Hosea Stout, David Fullmer, and Phineas Richards from the House and Daniel H. Wells and Orson Spencer from the Council to “revise and classify” the laws of Deseret.⁵ Sixteen months later, the second territorial legislature in a joint resolution directed the Code Commissioners “to prepare, and revise the laws of the Provisional State of Deseret, so as to render them compatible with more recent enactments; and that the same be published with, or as an addenda, to the acts and doings of the present session of this Legislature.”⁶ In January 1855 the fourth legislature ordered that the printed laws of that session include the actions of the former sessions and authorized Evan M. Greene to publish the compilation with the assistance of “such clerks as shall be necessary to aid him therein.”⁷ So these Deseret statutes went through as many as three revisions before appearing in the 1855 Acts, Resolutions and Memorials.

Under the date January 22, 1850, the “Journal History” records that “Brigham H. Young moved the printing press into the office, Thomas Bullock assisting.” Two days later, it notes, “Thomas Bullock spent the day at the mint where he dictated a portion of the Constitution of the State of Deseret, while Brigham H. Young put the same into type,” and on the 26th, “Brigham H. Young continues setting type on the constitution.”⁸ Samuel W. Richards remarks in his diary that on February 6 he “saw the Constitution of the State of Deseret which had just come from the Press,” and for February 7 the “Journal History” reports that Brigham Young, Willard Richards, George A. Smith, and others revised “some of the laws recently introduced into the General Assembly,” while Thomas Bullock “prepared a copy of the Constitution for each of the Senators and members of the House.” It further states that on February 16, Horace K. Whitney set in type the “criminal laws,” which Brigham H. Young printed on the 18th; on March 4 he set “the Election Law” in type; on the 15th “the election law and militia law were printed”; and on March 21 “the printers were busy setting in type the record of brands and laws.”⁹

This suggests that the first eight-page signature containing just the constitution was struck off first early in February 1850 and distributed to the members of the provisional legislature. Then, probably in March and perhaps April, the additional signatures were printed, making up the 34-page book Constitution of the State of Deseret. The criminal code, which Brigham H. Young printed on February 18, undoubtedly was not included because the legislature was still debating it and would not pass it until January 1851.¹⁰ One might conjecture that it was intended to continue to add laws to the book and eventually add a general title page—but was never carried out.

Flake-Draper 2783. Saunders 14. DLC, MH, ULA, UPB, USlC, UU[p. 9–34].

476 Ordinances, passed by the legislative council of Great Salt Lake City, and ordered to be printed. [Caption title] [Salt Lake City, 1850?]

4 pp. 20.5 cm.

John D. Lee’s diaries and the “Journal History” make it clear that “the legislative council of Great Salt Lake City,” referred to in the title above, was in fact the Council of Fifty, and the ten ordinances that comprise the text of item 476 were actions of the Council, passed at its Saturday meetings at W. W. Phelps’s or Heber C. Kimball’s school room between February 24 and December 29, 1849—the tenth one three weeks after the opening of the legislature of the provisional state of Deseret.¹

These ten ordinances deal with the most mundane aspects of life in a frontier city. The first (No. 36), February 24, 1849, concerns riding horses or driving cattle without leave; the second (No. 66), March 17, 1849, prohibits studhorses from running at large; the third (No. 77), April 28, 1849, requires the bishops in the various wards to provide ditches to keep water from running across the roads; the fourth (No. 113), October 20, 1849, appoints Jesse W. Crosby as Great Salt Lake City sexton; the fifth (No. 121), November 10, 1849, prohibits the dumping of rawhides or cattle parts in the public water courses; the sixth (No. 122), November 10, 1849, names an assistant supervisor of streets in eighteen of nineteen wards; the seventh (No. 125), November 24, 1849, limits sawmills to a fee of at most one-third of the lumber sawed; the eighth (No. 76), April 28, 1849, deals with the disposition of stray stock; the ninth (No. 127), November 24, 1849, stipulates that cattle left in the stray pound for more than a month will be sold and the proceeds put into the “perpetual poor emigrating fund”; and the tenth (No. 130), December 29, 1849, creates an office of marks and brands.

The tenth ordinance is printed from a different setting in the Deseret News of July 20, 1850. The version in the News is textually identical to that in item 476—including the heading An Ordinance, Creating an Office for the Recording of “Marks and Brands” on Horses, Mules, Cattle, and all other Stock. Passed by the Legislative Council, Saturday, Dec. 29, 1849. No. 130—except for a number of changes in capitalization and nine changes in punctuation. These changes improve and correct the text. It would appear, therefore, that the ordinance in the News was reprinted from item 476 and hence that item 476 was struck off before mid-July 1850. One might guess that it was issued about the same time as List of Recorded Brands (item 464) and Constitution of the State of Deseret (the preceding item).

The last three ordinances were later superceded by territorial statutes: on February 12, 1851, the legislature of Deseret established stray pounds in each county, and on March 1, 1852, the Utah territorial legislature created a territorial office of marks and brands.²

Flake-Draper 7504. Saunders 36. CtY, MH, UPB, USlC, UU.

477 Almon W. Babbitt, delegate from Deseret. April 4, 1850. Ordered that the report be committed to the Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union, made the special order of the day for the 20th [sic] April, instant, and printed. [Caption title] [At head of title:] 31st Congress, 1st Session. Rep. No. 219. Ho. of Reps. [Washington: Printed by Wm. M. Belt, 1850]

16 pp. 22.5 cm.

Chosen the delegate to Congress from the provisional state of Deseret, Almon W. Babbitt reached Washington on December 1, 1849, two days before the opening of the Thirty-first Congress—which would struggle with the issue of slavery in the new western region acquired as a result of the Mexican War and ultimately produce the Compromise of 1850, including territorial status for Utah (see item 435). Linn Boyd of Kentucky, chairman of the House Committee on the Territories, first introduced Babbitt’s memorial for a seat in the House of Representatives and Deseret’s memorial for statehood on January 3, 1850, but because the House divided almost equally between Democrats and Whigs, the seating of a new member was a critical issue, and not until several weeks later was Babbitt’s petition referred to the Committee of Elections (see item 459). On April 4 the committee chairman, William Strong of Pennsylvania, presented the committee’s report to the House, which ordered it printed and made it and a similar report for New Mexico’s delegate the special order of the day for April 29.¹

Item 477 gives the report from the Committee of Elections and includes the text of Constitution of the State of Deseret (item 435) as well as the documents pertaining to Babbitt’s petition for a seat. Recommending that the House adopt the resolution, “That it is inexpedient to admit Almon W. Babbitt, esq., to a seat in this body as a delegate from the alleged State of Deseret,” the committee justified its conclusion on the grounds that Babbitt came as the representative of a state not in the Union, that his admission would be a “quasi recognition of the legal existence of the ‘State of Deseret,’” and that the memorial indicated that the legislature of the provisional state of Deseret did not anticipate his admission until after some form of government for Deseret had been adopted by the U.S. Congress.

Over the next three months, on several occasions, the House took up the issue of seating Babbitt, finally disposing of it on July 20 by tabling the resolution. On September 14, five days after the bill organizing Utah Territory was signed into law, the question of admitting him to the House as the delegate from the new territory was raised again, and rejected on the 18th when the motion to admit him was laid on the table.² Yet a third time, on February 5, 1851, during the second session of the Thirty-first Congress, Linn Boyd reported a joint resolution to admit Babbitt to the House as the delegate from Utah Territory, claiming that “on the fifth of October [1850] the people of Utah elected Mr. Babbitt as a Delegate to represent them in this Congress.” After some debate, the resolution was referred to the Committee of Elections, where it died.³

Although the political dynamic of the Thirty-first Congress was a major factor, Babbitt’s behavior in the capital certainly affected the House’s decision not to seat him. Thomas L. Kane, for example, wrote to Brigham Young on September 24, 1850, about Babbitt’s “improper conduct” and urged Young not to return him to Washington as he had lost the confidence of both parties. “The Democrats joined with the Whigs,” Kane noted, “in the personal disrespect which was shown him in the House.” The Frontier Guardian of May 2, 1851, editorialized that Babbitt “became the willing tool of ambitious men with the understanding that he was to get his seat through the influence of those men who sent him upon this errand: But alas! they voted against the measure, as we hear, when it came to the touch stone.” And John M. Bernhisel, upon his return to Utah, confirmed Kane’s assessment, reporting to Brigham Young that “The Senators in Congress could not comprehend how the people in G. S. L. Valley came to elect such an immoral man as Babbitt for their delegate.”⁴

Flake-Draper 9115. CtY, MH, NjP, NN, UHi, ULA, UPB, USlC.

478 Third general epistle of the presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints from the Great Salt Lake Valley, to the Saints scattered throughout the earth, greeting: [Caption title] [At end:] Salt Lake, Print. [Salt Lake City, 1850]

20 pp. 23 cm.

With the appearance of Third General Epistle in the spring of 1850, the pattern of issuing general epistles was fully established (see items 417, 439), yet this would be the last one printed in a separate pamphlet because of the advent of the Deseret News in June. Occupying the first eight pages, the epistle itself is signed at the end by Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, and Willard Richards and dated at “Great Salt Lake City, Deseret, N. A., April 12, 1850.”¹ Like the earlier ones, it is mainly news of the Utah colony. It reports, for example, that in October 1849 Parley Pratt led an exploring company three hundred miles south and returned to the Salt Lake Valley in February, and that Isaac Morley took sixty families to settle the San Pete Valley. It notes that the legislature of the provisional state of Deseret, meeting in an “adjourned session” from time to time throughout the winter, had divided the region into counties and established their judicial systems, and had chartered a “State University” in Great Salt Lake City with branches in the various settlements. It comments that many had gone to the gold mines in California, a few “according to the advice, of those whose right it is to counsel the saints,” and that Amasa Lyman and Charles C. Rich would continue to preside in California. And it calls Orson Pratt and George D. Watt to leave Great Britain and come to the Valley and designates Franklin D. Richards to succeed Pratt as president of the British Mission.

Pages 9–20 contain Minutes of the General Conference, Held at Great Salt Lake City, Deseret, April 6, 1850—the caption at the head of p. 9. Signed at the end by Thomas Bullock, “Clerk of Conference,” these minutes summarize the six conference sessions, three on Saturday, April 6, two on Sunday, April 7, and one on Monday morning, April 8. They report the sermons of Parley Pratt, George A. Smith, and Brigham Young, and list those called on missions—including Robert L. Campbell, John O. Angus, Claudius V. Spencer, Isaac C. Haight, and Appleton M. Harmon. A full page is devoted to the public excommunications of Samuel Russell and Moses Martin (see items 162, 316).

The epistle was reprinted in the Frontier Guardian of June 12, 1850, the conference minutes two weeks later. It was again reprinted, from the Guardian, in the Millennial Star of August 15, 1850, and the conference minutes were included in the Star of September 1 and 15.

Flake-Draper 1679, 1404. Saunders 15–16. CtY[p. 1–8], NjP[p. 9–20], USlC.

479 SPENCER, Orson. Circular of the chancellor of the University of the State of Deseret. [At end of second column:] Done by order, and in behalf of the Board of Regents of the University of the State of Deseret. Orson Spencer, Chancellor. Great Salt Lake City, April 17, 1850. [Salt Lake City, 1850]

Broadside 22.5 x 26.5 cm. Text in two columns.

On February 28, 1850, the legislature of the provisional state of Deseret passed the bill incorporating the University of the State of Deseret, and during that day and the next it appointed Orson Spencer as chancellor and selected twelve regents. Two weeks later the chancellor and regents held their first meeting and designated a committee of three to choose, in connection with the governor, a site for university buildings and locations for primary schools. Brigham Young and Willard Richards spoke to the regents on March 20 about “the propriety of reforming the English Language, and systems of education generally,” and at this meeting Young requested each regent to write a “petition to the general assembly, for the grant of a University” (see item 462). One week later the regents met and “read reports of each individual,” and on Sunday, March 31, Young and others met at Richards’s house and heard the petitions read. The regents themselves met on April 3 and agreed that each of them would write “a proclamation to be sent abroad,” and here two petitions were heard and ordered to be printed. Several others were read and accepted on the 8th and 11th. But, as far as it is known, only Spencer’s circular was put in print.¹ One might guess that the inevitable repetition among the many pieces submitted for publication prompted the regents to settle on his as the representative expression of the group. Horace K. Whitney noted that he set the type for it on April 19, so it likely came off the press around that time.²

Circular of the Chancellor solicits aid for the founding of the university—“the child of providence and destined to live and flourish,” where instruction “will be brought to the level of the laboring classes of every grade, of every religious faith, of every political or social creed, and of every living language.” It states that “board can soon be furnished in private families speaking the mother tongue of more than twenty living languages.” It urges those of means throughout the world to contribute to the institution and identifies Orson Pratt in Liverpool, John Taylor in Paris, Lorenzo Snow in Rome, Erastus Snow in Copenhagen, and Orson Hyde in the United States to receive the donations.

The text of Circular of the Chancellor is crowded into two close columns, the first seven-eighths of the left column in larger type than the remainder of the circular. It was reprinted in the Frontier Guardian of July 24, 1850, and in the Millennial Star of October 1, 1850.

About November 4, 1850, Samuel W. Richards, one of the regents, had some “Bills for Parent School” struck off at the Deseret News print shop (see item 520). No copy of such a piece is located, but it was undoubtedly a handbill similar in content to the ad in the News of November 16 that announced the beginning of classes.³ Under the name of “Parent School,” the university opened its doors on November 11 at Mrs. John Pack’s house in the Salt Lake City Seventeenth Ward. Its objective was “to qualify teachers for the District or Ward schools, and then for a higher order of schools,” so there would be “a uniformity in the method of teaching throughout Deseret.” Cyrus Collins, “a sojourner in the Territory on his way to California,” was hired to conduct the classes under Spencer’s supervision. The second term commenced on February 17, 1851, in the Council House, with Spencer and W. W. Phelps the instructors and about forty male and female students. At this point the tuition was reduced from eight to five dollars per quarter. The third term opened on October 27 in the Thirteenth Ward schoolhouse, with Spencer, Phelps, and Orson Pratt as instructors and astronomy and mathematics added to the course of study. After the conclusion of the fourth term in the spring of 1852, the school was discontinued “owing to the immature condition of the finances of the University and the limited patronage the parent school received.” No further university classes were offered until 1867, when the regents appointed David O. Calder to reorganize the department of instruction and act as the principal.⁴

Flake-Draper 8321b. Saunders 12. USlC.

480 RICHARDS, Willard. Address. Willard Richards, Secretary of State; To the Chancellor and Regents of the University of the State of Deseret, delivered in the Bowery, at Great Salt Lake City, in presence of his Excellency, Governor Young, April 17th., 1850. [Caption title] [Salt Lake City, 1850]

12 pp. 22 cm.

Willard Richards’s Address is mainly an attack on the traditional colleges and universities, including a condemnation of teaching “dead languages”—topics that were touched upon in the petition To the General Assembly of the State of Deseret of February 8 (item 462) and by Orson Spencer in his speech at the July 24th celebration.¹ To the question “What are the dead languages good for?” Richards replies, “They are good to feast the mother of harlots.” And to “What is the use of learning?” he declares, “It is used by the few to enslave the many.” His address ends with an injunction to the regents of the University of Deseret to make education available to everyone, reform the English language, “translate all useful information to be found in dead languages to a living speech,” and provide teachers in every language so “that students may go from hence to all people, and feel at home.” “We see that a liberally endowed institution,” he concludes, “is one that is able and every way qualified, to furnish free instruction, in all languages, arts, science, and intelligence, to all men, women and children, who are looking, or have a right to look to the same, for the means of expending their physical and mental powers, until they are all qualified to act in any sphere of life.” The address was reprinted in the Frontier Guardian of November 13 and 27, 1850.

One might guess that Brigham Young’s request of the regents to write petitions in behalf of the university prompted Richards to compose his Address (see the preceding item). But exactly how or when he delivered it is unclear. Hosea Stout, one of the regents, reports in his diary that on April 17 at “5 o’clock P.M. [he] met with the Regents of the University but there was not me[m]bers enough to form a quorum,” and Samuel W. Richards, another regent, records for that date only that he was “all day at the Council House”; neither mentions a meeting in the Bowery with Brigham Young. Horace K. Whitney set the type for Address on April 18, so it was probably struck off about that time. At that moment, education seems to have been on the Church leaders’ minds; on Sunday, May 5, for example, Orson Spencer, Willard Richards, George A. Smith, and Parley P. Pratt all preached on the subject.²

Address is made up of an eight-page signature followed by a four-page signature, and is known in two states: (1) with forty-four lines on p. 1, and (2) with forty-six lines on p. 1. In (1), each text block for pp. 2–8 has forty-five lines; in (2), each text block for pp. 2­–7 has forty-seven lines, and the block for p. 8 has forty-eight lines. In both, pp. 9–12 are typographically identical, the text blocks of pp. 9–11 in forty-nine lines and p. 12 in forty-eight. The last seventeen lines on p. 8 of (2) are omitted in (1). The setting of the first seven pages of (2) was obtained from the setting of (1) simply by moving back a certain number of lines from one page to the preceding one in order to increase the number of lines on each page by two. One might guess that after the first eight pages of (1) had been set, it was realized that the address would occupy thirteen pages, whereas by increasing the size of the text block, it could be set in twelve; and this adjustment was made before the last four pages were set.

Flake-Draper 7255. Saunders 11. NjP[2], UPB[2], USlC[1, 2].

481 STENHOUSE, Thomas Brown Holmes. Victoria Assembly Rooms. The inhabitants of Southampton are respectfully informed that a public discussion on the doctrines taught by the Latter-day Saints will take place between the Rev. Enos Couch, and Elder T. B. H. Stenhouse, at the above rooms on the evenings of Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, April 29th, 30th, and May 1st, 6th, 7th, and 8th, 1850. Subjects for debate: [17 lines] Discussion to commence each evening at seven o’clock precisely, to close at ten. The following gentlemen have kindly offered to act as a committee during the whole of the debate:— [3 lines in 2 columns] The arrangements of the discussion have been mutually agreed to by both disputants. Truth is the object sought: all people are respectfully invited to attend and bring their Bibles. As the triumph of truth alone is contemplated, all tokens of approbation or disapprobation to either will not be allowed during the debate. Any person violating this rule will be immediately ejected from the room. There will be 200 reserved seats for ladies and gentlemen, who will be admitted by tickets, for the whole course, 1s. 6d. each. Tickets for a single evening 6d. each, to be obtained at the following places; viz. Mr. De Vine, Prospect Place; Mr. Cook, Bernard Street; Mr. Marshall, Printer, High Street; Mr. Cox, Bookseller, St. Mary’s Street. Admission to the remainder of the room, 2d. each evening, payable at the doors. [At foot, right:] [Cox, Printer, Southampton. [1850]

Broadside 43 x 34 cm.

T. B. H. Stenhouse had been laboring in Southampton for about twenty-eight months when he arranged to debate the “Reverend” Enos Couch—who had brought some attention to himself two weeks earlier when he lectured against Mormonism (see item 418). A report of the first session of their debate on Monday evening, April 29, 1850, appeared in the Hampshire Independent of May 4 and was reprinted in the Millennial Star of June 1. This report states that after the first meeting,

Couch’s committee withdrew their further countenance and support, and the discussions abruptly came to an end. This was announced to the public on the following morning, in a handbill containing an address from the “Rev.” Enos Couch, who expresses a wish “to set myself right with the public, and to state that Elder T. B. H. Stenhouse has acted a most honorable and gentlemanly part towards me during the whole of the proceedings,” &c., &c., followed by an epistle from “Elder” Stenhouse, in which he says “my committee are quite satisfied with Mr. Couch.”

The report expresses surprise that a committee including “such names as those of the Rev. Dr. [William] Wilson, W[illiam] Betts, Esq., the Rev. W[illiam] Orger, the Rev. J[ohn] Knowles, and the Rev. J[ohn] Trestrail, . . . one of them being not only the Rural Dean, but also brother-in-law to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Winchester,” should have supported Couch, whom it calls “a mere adventurer, of whose character, conduct, or sincerity, they knew nothing.”¹ It particularly laments the publicity the debate gave to Stenhouse, who, it complains, now “can boast of having met in discussion, in the largest hall in Southampton, in the presence of 600 or 700 of the inhabitants, an opponent of the Mormon doctrines, backed up and supported by Episcopalian and Dissenting Ministers, and that he so overpowered them in the first night’s debate, that they withdrew from the contest, and his cause was triumphant!!”

The questions for the six evenings, as advertised in the broadside, were: (1) “Has the God of Heaven body, parts, and passions?”; (2) “Was the Ordinance of Baptism in the Apostolic age administered to infants or adults: and was the mode sprinkling or immersion?”; (3) “Are the doctrines of faith, repentance, baptism for the remission of sins, and the laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost true or false?”; (4) “Were the gifts mentioned in the New Testament, viz. Speaking in Tongues, Interpretation of Tongues, Casting our Devils, Prophecy, and Healing of the Sick through the anointing of oil and the laying on of hands, to be confined to the Apostolic age, or were they to follow believers in all ages?”; (5) “Were the Old and New Testaments, commonly called the Bible, given designedly by the great God to the exclusion of further revelation? Is the Book of Mormon true or false?”; and (6) “Did the Spirits of all men exist prior to their being tabernacled in a body of flesh? Is Baptism for the dead a scriptural doctrine? Is the doctrine of the literal gathering of Israel to their own lands and the gathering of all the honest in heart out of all nations to America, true or false?”

Flake-Draper 8409. CtY.

482 DAVIS, John Silvanus. Ffordd y bywyd tragywyddol, a ddarlunir yn yr ysgrythyrau santaidd. [3 lines] Gan John Davis, Merthyr. Merthyr-Tydfil: Argraffwyd ac ar werth gan J. Davis, Georgetown; ar werth hefyd gan y Saint yn gyffredinol, a llawer o lyfrwerthwyr, trwy y Deau a’r Gogledd. 1850. [Pris 1g. [The way of eternal life, which is portrayed in the holy scriptures. By John Davis, Merthyr. Merthyr Tydfil: Printed and for sale by J. Davis, Georgetown; and for sale also by the Saints generally, and many booksellers throughout the South and the North. 1850. Price 1d.]

12 pp. 17 cm.

Flake-Draper 2722k. Dennis 38. CSmH, CU-B, MH, NjP, UPB, USlC, WsN, WsS.

483 DAVIS, John Silvanus. Ewch, a dysgwch. [Caption title] [Go, and teach.] [At foot of p. 2:] Argraffwyd gan J. Davis, Georgetown, Merthyr. [Printed by J. Davis, Georgetown, Merthyr.] [1850]

2 pp. 17 cm.

Flake-Draper 2722j. Dennis 39. CU-B, MH, NjP, UPB, USlC, WsN.

484 DAVIS, John Silvanus. Crefydd a grym. [Religion and strength.] [At foot of verso:] Argraffwyd gan John Davis, Georgetown, Merthyr-Tydfil. [Printed by John Davis, Georgetown, Merthyr Tydfil.] [1850]

Broadsheet 17 x 10.5 cm.

Flake-Draper 2722h. Dennis 40. CU-B, MH, NjP, UPB, USlC.

485 HANSEN, Peter Olson. [Small sheet or pamphlet in Danish entitled “The Gospel Revealed—A Warning to the People.” Copenhagen, 1850]

The first Mormon mission to Scandinavia commenced with the arrival of Peter O. Hansen in Copenhagen, the city of his birth, on May 11, 1850. Hansen had immigrated to America in 1843, converted to Mormonism the following year, and moved to Nauvoo in 1845—where he began a translation of the Book of Mormon into Danish. Coming to Utah in 1847, he was called at the October 1849 general conference to accompany Erastus Snow and John E. Forsgren to Scandinavia, and on April 10, 1850, he reached Liverpool, six days ahead of Snow. While Snow tarried in England and Scotland, Hansen took it upon himself to introduce the Mormon message in his native land, preceding Snow there by five weeks (see item 516). During the next four and a half years he finished his translation of the Book of Mormon and assisted in publishing it (item 574), translated hymns and parts of the Doctrine and Covenants into Danish (see items 565, 627, 667, 668), edited the Skandinaviens Stjerne (item 617), and served as the counselor to four mission presidents, Erastus Snow, John E. Forsgren, Willard Snow, and John Van Cott. Returning to Utah in 1855, he settled in San Pete County and then filled a second mission to Denmark, 1873–75, and a third, 1880–82. He died in Manti, August 9, 1895, at age seventy-seven.¹

Hansen notes in his autobiography that a few days after arriving in Copenhagen, he “wrote and had printed upwards of 300 copies of a small sheet or pamphlet entitled ‘The Gospel Revealed—A Warning to the People,’ which at least led two persons to obey the Gospel.” Andrew Jenson identifies the tract as En Advarsel til Folket. Unfortunately no copy of this first Mormon work in Danish is located.²

486 DUNN, Crandall. [Handbill advertising preaching in Cupar, May 19, 1850. Cupar? 1850]

Crandall (or Crandell) Dunn had been in the British Mission almost forty months when he left the presidency of the Sheffield Conference in January 1850 to assume the leadership of the Edinburgh Conference (see items 310, 353, 444, 491, 537). Much of his time during his first months in Edinburgh was spent in traveling about the conference visiting the Saints in the outlying branches. On Saturday, May 18, 1850, he writes in his diary, “I went to Cupar of [F]ife, and Saw Mrs. Millie and paid her £2.10 in advance for the Burgher church at Cupar. I sent the Drummer arround, and he posted the bills—I and Sister Christie cleaned the chapel out.” The next day Dunn preached to a small crowd at 11 a.m., preached again at 2 p.m. to a few more, and at six in the evening he spoke to a full chapel. “They listened with great attention to the subject of the gift of the Holy Ghost and the gospel &c,” he reported. “This was the first meeting that had been in Cupar of the Saints—the audience was well satisfied—and manifested a warm feeling toward me.” On the 20th he returned to Edinburgh.¹

487 H., J. Mormonism triumphant! [Caption title] [Signed with initials at end:] J. H. [At foot of p. 4:] D. Barker, Printer, 17 Union Street, Bury. [1850?]

4 pp. 17 cm.

While this piece has been attributed to Paul Harrison, it is clear that he was not the author of the tract but only of the letter reprinted in it. Harrison had joined the Church by 1845 and had served as a missionary in Ireland and as presiding elder in Leeds during 1845–46. In January 1850 he began to lecture against Mormonism and distribute an extract of Udney Hay Jacob’s The Peacemaker (item 165), which he published in Manchester under the title An Extract of Grand Selections from a Manuscript Entitled the Peace Maker. In his letter in item 487, addressed to William Gibson, president of the Manchester Conference, and dated April 30, 1850, he laments his separation from the Church and declares that he knows it is God’s church and “Joseph Smith was a Prophet of the Most High.” A similar letter, addressed to Orson Pratt and dated July 29, 1850, was printed in the Millennial Star of September 15. Sixteen years later the Star reported that Harrison—called the “Notorious Apostate, and Anti-Mormon lecturer”—had been sentenced to one year’s hard labor for bigamy.¹

The first two pages of item 487 contain an outline of Mormonism’s first principles, faith, repentance, baptism by immersion for the remission of sins, and the laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost, with numerous biblical proof texts. This is followed by the comment that the opponents of Mormonism use vituperation and lies in their attacks upon the Church. Harrison’s letter, occupying the last page and a half, is preceded by a remark on the awful condition of an apostate and followed by the tract’s final sentence, “Inasmuch as some people seemed to place great confidence in Paul Harrison, we hope they will now believe his testimony,” and the initials J. H. Who “J. H.” was is not known. His tract—an unpolished work, marred by several misspellings (e.g., “vitipuration,” “extacies,” “endite”)—is the second anonymous Mormon pamphlet printed in Bury, both struck off by Dennis Barker of Union Street (see item 350). It is conceivable that both were written by “J. H.”²

Flake-Draper 5557a. MH.

488 Report of the Sheffield conference, of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, held in the Hall of Science, Rockingham Street, Sheffield, May 19th, 1850. President. J. W. Cummings. Secretaries. W. S. Savage and S. J. Lees. [At foot of p. 8:] T. Potter, Printer, 4, Barker Pool, Sheffield. [1850?]

8 pp. 21.5 cm.

The second of five located Sheffield Conference reports (see item 444), this pamphlet summarizes three sessions held on May 19, 1850—about four and a half months after James W. Cummings assumed the conference presidency. It reports the speeches at these meetings, including those of John E. Forsgren, James H. Flanigan, James McNaughton, James Marsden, and George Parker Dykes, who were visiting the conference. A table on p. [2] gives the statistics for twenty-nine branches, and a brief financial statement on p. 5 shows that the conference owed the Millennial Star office £68 10s. 4½d. for books in the possession of the agent or sent to the branches.

Cummings was born in Maine, March 10, 1819, joined in the Church in Nauvoo in 1841, and began his career as a missionary the following year. At Winter Quarters he was called to England, and upon arriving at Liverpool in October 1848 he was assigned to preside over the Cheltenham Conference. Fifteen months later he assumed the presidency of the Sheffield Conference, where he labored until sailing for America in January 1851. Beginning in 1852 he served a number of terms in the Utah territorial legislature, served on the Salt Lake City council, and was Salt Lake County treasurer at the time of his death in Salt Lake City, May 19, 1883.¹

Flake-Draper 1950. ICN, MH, UPB, USlC, UU.

489 Darkuthiau ar ffydd, y rhai a draddodwyd yn wreiddiol o flaen dosparth o henuriaid, yn Kirtland, Ohio, yn America. Gan Joseph Smith. Merthyr-Tydfil: Argraffwyd ac ar werth gan J. Davis, Georgetown; ar werth hefyd gan y Saint yn gyffredinol, a llawer o lyfrwerthwyr, trwy y Deau a’r Gogledd. 1850. [Lectures on faith, which were delivered first before a class of elders, in Kirtland, Ohio, in America. By Joseph Smith. Merthyr Tydfil: Printed and for sale by J. Davis, Georgetown; and for sale also by the Saints generally, and many booksellers throughout the South and the North. 1850.]

[i–ii][1]–40 pp. 17 cm.

Flake-Draper 7282. Dennis 41. MH, NjP, UPB, USlC, WsCS, WsN.

490 Minutes of the London conferences, held at Aldenham Street & Theobald’s Road, on the 22nd and 23rd of December, 1849, and the 1st and 2nd of June, 1850. London: Printed by W [sic] Bowden, 16, Princes Street, Red Lion Square. 1850. [Signed on p. 7:] John Banks, President. Fred. Piercy, Clerk. [Signed on p. 16:] Thomas Margetts, President. George Bentley, Clerk.

16 pp. 21 cm.

Two different conferences under different presidents are reported in this pamphlet, the first of ten located London Conference reports (see items 545, 580, 635, 703, 761).¹ Pages 2–7 summarize four meetings in December 1849, one on Saturday evening, December 22, and three on Sunday, the 23rd. During the Sunday morning session, the congregation voted to sustain Thomas Margetts as president of the London Conference, succeeding John Banks (see item 355). A table on p. 3 gives the statistics for forty branches in the conference, including St. Helier, Jersey, and Southampton, which were formed during the Sunday morning meeting into separate conferences. Pages 7–16 contain the minutes of four sessions in June 1850, one on Saturday evening, June 1, three on Sunday, June 2, and include summaries of the talks by three of the Twelve, Erastus Snow, Lorenzo Snow, and Franklin D. Richards. Tables on pp. [8]–[9] give the statistics for forty-two branches.

Thomas Margetts, born in Oxfordshire, April 2, 1819, joined the Church about 1840, assumed the presidency of the Leicestershire Conference when it was formed in April 1844, and assisted Robert Martin in the presidency of the Bedford Conference during 1847–48. He served as the president of the London Conference for one year and then crossed the plains to Utah in 1851. The following spring he left his new home for a mission in Italy, returning to the Great Salt Lake Valley three and a half years later. But this mission proved difficult for Margetts, and in the summer of 1856, now disaffected, he left the Valley with his family, and on September 6, at the Platte about 125 miles west of Fort Kearney, he was killed by Indians.²

Frederick Piercy, the clerk for the December 1849 meetings, was a landscape and portrait painter, best known for his illustrations of the overland trail. Born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, January 27, 1830, he converted to Mormonism in 1848, served as the London Conference secretary during 1849, and went to France with John Taylor, Curtis E. Bolton, and Arthur Stayner the following year. In 1853, sponsored by Samuel W. Richards, the British Mission president, he made the overland trek to Utah and then returned to England—his journal of the trip west and his sketches of the principal landmarks forming the basis of the famous book Route from Liverpool to Great Salt Lake Valley. After the book appeared, however, some tension seems to have developed between him and the Church leaders, and when he declined to gather to Utah, he was excommunicated on March 6, 1857. Piercy remained in England, exhibiting his work from time to time, until his death in London, June 10, 1891.³

Little is known about George Bentley. Baptized into the Church in London, September 9, 1849, at age twenty-five, he served as the conference secretary during 1850 and was ordained an elder in June of that year. One year later he was cut off.⁴

Flake-Draper 1940d. MH, NN, UPB, USlC.

491 Report of the Edinburgh Conference, (From Jan. 6th, 1850, to June 8th and 9th, 1850), held in Whitefield Chapel, High Street. President, C. Dunn. Clerk, G. P. Waugh. [Caption title] [Edinburgh? 1850?]

6[2] pp. 21 cm.

This pamphlet is the first of three located Edinburgh Conference reports (see items 537, 728), one of two issued during Crandall (or Crandell) Dunn’s presidency, which extended from January to December 1850 (see item 486). It summarizes three meetings on Sunday, June 9, 1850, and includes a series of motions during the morning session—one that the branches quadruple their subscriptions to the Millennial Star—and a report of Dunn’s speech in the afternoon. A table on p. [7] gives the statistics for twenty-three branches in the conference, and a financial statement on p. [8] shows that the conference book agent owed the Millennial Star office approximately £35 and had about £21 in books and cash on hand and was owed about £14 by the branches.

Flake-Draper 1915. UPB, USlC.

492 DAVIS, John Silvanus. Corff Crist, new yr Eglwys. [Caption title] [The body of Christ, or the church.] [At foot of p. 12:] John Davis, Argraffydd, Merthyr-Tydfil. [John Davis, Printer, Merthyr Tydfil.] [1850] [At head of title right:] Pris 1g. [Price 1d.]

12 pp. 17 cm.

Flake-Draper 2722g. Dennis 42. CSmH, CtY, CU-B, MH, NjP, UPB, USlC, WsCS, WsN.

493 DAVIS, John Silvanus. A welcome hymn. Sung in a Conference at Merthyr-Tydfil, held on the 9th of June, 1850, while the Apostle John Taylor was present, who was about leaving, on his mission, for France. [At end:] J. D. [At foot above border:] J. Davis, Printer, Merthyr-Tydfil. [1850]

Broadside 17 x 10.5 cm. Double ruled border.

Flake-Draper 2722zb. Dennis 43. MH, NjP, USlC.

494 Deseret News. Salt Lake City: June 15, 1850–December 10, 1898.

57 v. 28, 54, 40, 30 cm.

For Brigham Young, as with his predecessor, the importance of the press lay in communicating with the Saints. “This people cannot live without intelligence,” he wrote in 1847, “for it is through obedience to that principle they are to receive their exaltation; and if the intelligence cannot be had justice has no claim on obedience, and their exaltation must be decreased.”¹ On June 15, 1850, ten months after the Ramage press was brought into the Great Salt Lake Valley (see item 439), the Church leaders began what for many years would be the principal means of providing “intelligence,” that remarkable pioneer newspaper, the Deseret News—maintaining the pattern established by The Evening and the Morning Star and Upper Missouri Advertiser in Missouri, the Messenger and Advocate and Northern Times in Ohio, the Elders’ Journal in Ohio and Missouri, and the Times and Seasons, the Wasp, and the Nauvoo Neighbor in Illinois (items 3, 4, 16, 18, 39, 60, 148, 175). But unlike the Nauvoo papers or the Kanesville Frontier Guardian, the News was entirely a Church enterprise, as it reminded its readers in its issue of March 14, 1855: “For the encouragement of subscribers it may not be amiss to state that all the profits arising from the paper, and from all the work done at the printing office flow in the same channel with the tithing, as all the material is owned by, and the whole affair is managed for the Church, and is designed to be a benefit to the Saints.”

Willard Richards, second counselor in the First Presidency, was the founding editor; Thomas Bullock, the editorial assistant and business manager; Brigham H. Young and Horace K. Whitney, the compositors and pressmen. George Hales joined the staff as a pressman shortly after the paper was begun; Arieh C. Brower and Joseph Cain would be added before the end of the year.² Richards edited the paper until his death on March 11, 1854. Seven weeks later Albert Carrington took the editorial chair, serving as editor until he was succeeded by Elias Smith in 1859, and then returned for a second term, 1863–67. Elias Smith had a brief introduction to the editorial department, November 1855–January 1856, when he substituted for Carrington during his stay in Fillmore with the territorial legislature.³

Born in Vermont, January 8, 1813, Albert Carrington graduated from Dartmouth College in 1833, taught school and studied law in Pennsylvania, converted to Mormonism in 1841, and joined the Saints in Nauvoo in 1844. One of the original 1847 pioneers, he served in the Utah territorial legislature, presided four times over the European Mission, and in 1870 was called into the Council of the Twelve. In November 1885 he was excommunicated and then baptized back into the Church in 1887, two years before his death in Salt Lake City, September 19, 1889.⁴

The early issues of the News were printed in the Mint on South Temple just east of what is now the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, until August 1850, when the print shop was moved to the Council House, located across the street on the southwest corner of South Temple and Main streets (see items 462, 520).⁵ About fourteen months later the shop was moved again, to the second and third floors of the Deseret Store, on the northeast corner of South Temple and Main—undoubtedly because it had just taken delivery of a second press, a larger “Imperial” (see item 626). It was relocated a third time in June 1854, to the north rooms of the Tithing Office on the east side of Main Street just north of the Deseret Store, and then transferred again eighteen months later back to the Council House. Still more moves were in store for these peripatetic presses, and when Brigham Young sent the Saints south in the spring of 1858 because of the Utah Expedition, he sent the presses too, one to Parowan, the other to Fillmore, where it was set up in the basement of the statehouse and used to print eighteen numbers of the News. That September the presses were returned to the Council House. Finally in March 1862 the print shop was relocated in the second and third floors of the Deseret Store, where it would rest for the remainder of the century.

A prospectus for the paper is printed in each of the first seven numbers. Unsigned and undated, it proposes “a small weekly sheet” designed to “record the passing events of our State” and “refer to the arts and sciences, embracing general education, medicine, law, divinity, domestic and political economy, and every thing that may fall under our observation, which may tend to promote the best interest, welfare, pleasure and amusement of our fellow citizens.” “The first number,” it continues, “may be expected as early in June as subscriptions will warrant—waiting the action of 300 subscribers.” Terms: six months, $2.50, “invariably in advance”; single copies, 15¢ each. “A paper that is worth printing,” it concludes,

is worth preserving; if worth preserving, it is worth binding; for this purpose we issue in pamphlet form; and if every subscriber shall preserve each copy of the “News,” and bind it at the close of the volume, their children’s children may read the doings of their fathers, which otherwise might have been forgotten; ages to come.

Each of the first thirty-nine numbers is an 8-page quarto, the page size approximately 28 x 22 cm., in three columns—these thirty-nine numbers comprising the first volume (June 15, 1850–August 19, 1851). The first number is not paginated, but starting with the second number the volume is continuously paginated [9]–312. A brief index, filling about a third of a column, is included in the last number. Subsequently, in anticipation of the paper being bound, a title page and expanded index were issued for the volume, the index headed Index to the first volume of the Deseret News, 1850–51 and paginated [313]–316. This title page reads: The | Deseret News: | published weekly: | devoted to the cause of truth | and to the | diffusion of intelligence | among the | Latter Day Saints. | Volume first: | Willard Richards, Editor and Proprietor. | Great Salt Lake City, Utah: | [1851?].⁶

Thomas Bullock records in the “Historian’s Office Journal” that “the printers” set the type for the first number on Wednesday and Thursday, June 12 and 13, and on the 14th, at 5:20 p.m., the first sheet for the first side came off the press. The “printers” began setting the second number on Thursday, June 20, he reports, and the next day he corrected the proofs. On Sunday, June 23, he came to the office at 8 a.m. and began distributing the second number before Sunday service, distributed more of them during the intermission, and continued to deliver papers that afternoon and the following day. He read the proof for the third number of Friday, June 28, and on Saturday, directed “Newspapers to Subscribers all morning.” The “Historian’s Office Journal” indicates that Bullock continued to read the proof for the paper into the fall and then apparently passed these duties to someone else, probably Joseph Cain.⁷

The first seventeen numbers (June 15–October 5, 1850) were issued weekly on Saturday without a lapse. The News for October 5, 1850, explained that lack of paper would delay the next number until October 19, and the issue for that date announced that until further notice, the paper would appear every other Saturday—which indeed was the case for nos. 18–29 (October 19, 1850–March 22, 1851). Number 30 came out three days late in order to print the “Fifth General Epistle” and is dated April 8 rather than April 5. Number 31 appeared on April 19 as scheduled, with nos. 32–38 (May 3–July 26, 1851) issuing on alternate Saturdays and no. 39 issuing on Tuesday, August 19, 1851. Two errors occur in the pagination: pages 240 and 264 are misnumbered 238 and 256, respectively. The Brigham Young copy of vol. 1, at the LDS Church, has a variant thirtieth number (April 8, 1851), bound in the volume in place of the regular twenty-ninth number (March 22, 1851). This variant number contains the text of no. 30 but is labeled vol. 1, no. 29, and dated March 22, with the same pagination as no. 29.

The concluding number of the first volume indicated that “should the News be continued, we anticipate it will be on a super-royal sheet, or twice the size of the present . . . and re-commence some time in September; but this will depend on the number of subscribers.” It further advised, “If our subscribers will each procure two new subscribers, so that we can have a list of two thousand, we anticipate that there will not need be any increase in price.” One might infer that, at this point, the News had between six and seven hundred subscribers.

On October 20, 1851, Willard Richards issued a prospectus for the second volume (item 626), and after a three-month hiatus, the first number of the second volume appeared in its new format, now a 4-page folio, approximately 54 x 40 cm., in six columns, with unnumbered pages—the format for the second, third, and fourth volumes—made possible by the acquisition of the Imperial press. Dated Saturday, November 15, 1851, it was followed by twenty-three numbers (November 29, 1851­–October 2, 1852) issued on alternate Saturdays without a lapse. The twenty-fifth number (October 16, 1852) came out late and as a consequence indicated that the next number would not be issued until Saturday, November 6. This number closed vol. 2, making a volume of twenty-six numbers (November 15, 1851­–November 6, 1852). A one-page index was printed for the volume.

A three-week interval occurred between the concluding number of vol. 2 and the opening number of vol. 3 (November 27, 1852), and the first fourteen numbers of the third volume issued every other Saturday with no lapses (November 27, 1852–May 28, 1853). The News for May 28, 1853, referring to the shortage of paper, indicated that future numbers would come out every three weeks, and the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth numbers issued on June 18, July 9, and July 30—when the editor remarked that the “absence of paper prevent our knowing when the next number of the News will be issued.” After a two-month gap, the eighteenth number appeared on October 1, carrying the notice: “Sept. 28th, 4 P.M.—Our friends will rejoice with us that a fresh supply of paper has this moment arrived. . . . Our type was mostly set for this number, some six or eight weeks since, hoping for an earlier arrival.” Numbers 19–21 were issued on alternate Saturdays (October 15–November 12), with this last number announcing that henceforth the paper would issue on Thursday. And beginning on November 24, the last five numbers of vol. 3 (nos. 22–26) came out weekly on Thursday (November 24–December 22, 1853). This volume too had a one-page index printed for it. The sixteenth number (July 9, 1853) is erroneously labeled “Saturday, July 10, 1853.”

Volume 4 is the first volume to contain fifty-two numbers—and the first to include some issues on homemade paper.⁸ Beginning on January 5, 1854, its first seven numbers were issued weekly on Thursday (January 5–February 16). The seventh number advised that thereafter the News would be put out on alternate Thursdays in order to preserve the paper stock, and the next eight numbers (nos. 8–15) were so issued (March 2–June 8). The News for March 16 is printed with black bands and reports the death of Willard Richards, and no editor is listed for the next five numbers. On June 8, Albert Carrington’s name appears for the first time as editor, although in his salutatory he notes that his duties had commenced on April 27. Also, this fifteenth number is a single sheet, as are the next four numbers (nos. 16–19), which came out on June 22, July 6, July 13, and July 20—these four on heavy, coarse, slightly gray homemade paper. The hue of these numbers prompted the editor to observe in the July 6 issue that the local paper makers could not use colored rags and urge his readers to supply all the “uncolored rags” they could. Number 20 (July 27) is in four pages on regular newsprint, but the next ten numbers (nos. 21–30), each in four pages, are on gray, coarse, homemade paper (August 3­–October 5). The thirty-first number (October 12) was issued on newsprint, in four pages, and carried the editorial comment: “We are happy in being enabled, by the arrival of our year’s supply in the Church Train, to again issue the News on white paper, for we think our industrious subscribers will now be able to read their papers by candle light.” From that point on until the end of the volume (October 12, 1854–March 8, 1855), the paper appeared weekly on Thursday, each number on newsprint in four pages (nos. 31­–52). A two-page index accompanies the fourth volume.

With vol. 5 (March 14, 1855–March 5, 1856), a format was established that, with one exception, would essentially be maintained for the next twelve volumes: each number is in 8 pages, in four columns, the page size approximately 40 x 27 cm., with fifty-two numbers making up the volume, the whole continuously paginated. In the first number the editor explained the new format:

Inasmuch as the history of Joseph Smith, and the sermons delivered in the Tabernacle first appear in print in the “News,” it has been deemed advisable to alter the form into a better shape for binding, which will doubtless please all who wish to preserve their papers.

Also established with this volume was a slightly modified name: The Deseret News. Further, the first number issued on Wednesday, March 14, 1855, and from that point on the News appeared weekly on Wednesday until December 26, 1888, but with a number of gaps, especially during the Civil War. A title page (pp. [i–ii]) and index (pp. [iii]–v) were printed for Vol. 5 and are routinely found with the bound volume.

Volume 6 (March 12, 1856–March 4, 1857) and vol. 7 (March 11, 1857–March 3, 1858) followed the format of vol. 5, but vol. 8 departed from it, a consequence of paper shortages and the move south. The first three numbers of vol. 8 (March 10–March 24, 1858) are each in 8 pages. The fourth number informed its readers that the News would be reduced to half-size in order to preserve paper, and nos. 4–52 (March 31, 1858–March 2, 1859) are each in 4 pages, except no. 46 (January 19, 1859) which was issued in 8 pages in order to run President Buchanan’s address to Congress. Eighteen numbers of vol. 8—with a change in masthead and on different paper—show Fillmore as the place of publication, nos. 9–26 (May 5–September 1, 1858). And even though the volume bears weekly dates without a gap, it is certainly the case that some issues were late.⁹

On October 8, 1865, the paper launched a semiweekly edition, which initially came out on Sunday and Wednesday, changed to Tuesday and Saturday in September 1866, and ran until 1922. It began a daily, the Deseret Evening News, on November 21, 1867, which is still being published. The weekly continued to be published in 8-page issues until February 10, 1869 (vol. 18, no. 1), then in 12-page issues until March 27, 1872 (vol. 21, no. 8), when it went to a 16-page issue. It maintained 16-page issues until it was superceded by The Deseret Weekly on Saturday, December 29, 1888. The Deseret Weekly, with a reduced page-size of about 30 x 20 cm., was published in semiannual volumes until December 10, 1898, when it was brought to a close.

Following the pattern set by its predecessors, the Deseret News printed local and national news, poetry and fiction, agricultural advice, actions of the provisional and territorial legislatures and the city councils, messages of the governors and reports from the territorial auditors, lists of letters at the post office, immigration news, legal notices, local advertisements, editorials on various issues, doctrinal articles, conference reports, and letters from missionaries. Much of its space was taken up with reports of the discourses of the Church leaders, and beginning with the first issue of vol. 2, the News resumed the serial publication of the “History of Joseph Smith,” which it picked up from the last installment in the Times and Seasons and ran until January 20, 1858 (see item 743). The seventh and eighth volumes reported on the Utah Expedition, with, expectedly, much heated editorializing by Albert Carrington.

Flake-Draper 2811d. CSmH, CtY, DLC, ICN, MH, UPB, USlC, UU.

495 Report of the Glasgow quarterly conference, held in the Mechanics’ Institution Hall, Canning St. Calton, Glasgow, June 15th and 16th, 1850. Joseph Clements, President. Walter Thomson, Clerk. [At foot of p. 8:] James Brown, Printer, 99 Blackfriars Street. [Glasgow? 1850?]

8 pp. 21 cm.

Item 495 is the fourth of nine reports known to have been issued by the Glasgow Conference (see item 404), the first of two under Joseph Clements’s presidency. It has the usual table on p. [2] giving the statistics for twenty-seven branches, followed by a summary of the meetings on June 15 and 16, 1850. A financial report at the end shows the book agent owed the Millennial Star office £102 9s. 4d., with £18 4s. 11½d. in cash and £48 in books and pamphlets on hand, and £36 4s. 4½d. owing from the branches.

Joseph Clements succeeded Harrison Burgess as president of the Glasgow Conference in January 1850 (see item 455). Born in New Jersey, September 27, 1817, he joined the Church in 1841, participated in the Nauvoo Temple, and arrived in the British Mission in September 1848. During 1849 he presided over the Macclesfield Conference and then served as president of the Glasgow Conference until he abruptly left for America in the summer of 1851. Coming to Utah in 1855, he lived in Ephraim, Minersville, and then, beginning in 1871, at Hay Springs, near Milford, Beaver County, where he died on July 15, 1880.¹

Flake-Draper 1921. MH, UPB, USlC, UU.

496 SUTHERLAND, Edward. [Placard announcing a public lecture in the Rotunda, Dublin. Dublin? 1850]

Edward Sutherland’s unlocated placard—printed soon after he arrived in Dublin to introduce Mormonism there—is mentioned in his letter to Orson Pratt of September 29, 1850, in the Millennial Star of October 15:

I arrived [in Dublin] about the middle of last June, and was much surprised to find how little seems to be known of the Church of Latter-day Saints. Seeing this to be the case, I lost no time in adopting a plan I thought likely to spread a knowledge of the principles of eternal truth; and in order to this I took a large hall in the Rotunda, and announced a public lecture, by placarding the city, which lecture was attended by many hundreds; and by this means it spread that the “Mormons” had arrived in Dublin.

Little is known of Edward Sutherland himself. Born in King’s County, Ireland, November 1, 1822, and baptized into the Church in London, July 31, 1849, he labored as a local missionary in London before being called to Dublin in June 1850. For more than two years he presided over the Church there and then served as a traveling missionary in England until released to immigrate to Utah in December 1854. The following year he crossed the plains and settled in Salt Lake City, but seems to have left no record subsequent to 1857.¹

497 DUNN, Crandall. To seekers of the kingdom of God. [Caption title] [Signed and dated at the end:] Crandell [sic] Dunn. 4 Victoria Place, foot of Carnegie Street, Edinburgh, June, 1850. [Edinburgh? 1850?]

4 pp. 21 cm.

Dunn notes in his diary that he composed To Seekers of the Kingdom of God on June 28 and 29—midway through his stay in Edinburgh, about seven months before he left Great Britain to return to America (see items 486, 491, 537).¹ A proselytizing tract intended to convince the unconverted of the validity of the Mormon message, it consists largely of biblical quotations leading to the conclusion on the fourth page that Jesus is the king of the kingdom of heaven, that apostles are the officers of the kingdom and the gospel is its laws, that this gospel is faith, repentance, baptism by immersion for the remission of sins, and the laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost, and that miraculous signs follow those who have obeyed the gospel. Nowhere does the tract mention the Latter-day Saints; one knows it is a Mormon piece only because of Dunn’s name at the end. Thus it is the reciprocal of Orson Pratt’s series the Kingdom of God (items 373–86): terse, without philosophical argument, and without reference to the Saints.

Flake-Draper 3045. CtY, MH, UPB, USlC.

498 [Handbill advertising a concert in the Bowery, Thursday evening, July 4, 1850. Tickets 25¢ each. Salt Lake City, 1850]

499 [Handbill advertising a grand concert in the Bowery, Wednesday evening, July 24, 1850. Tickets 25¢ each. Salt Lake City, 1850]

By the fall of 1849, most of those who had played in William Pitt’s Nauvoo Band had immigrated to Utah—except Pitt himself, who would not arrive in the Valley until October 1850 (see item 259).¹ Robert T. Burton, one of Pitt’s players, notes in his reminiscences that during “the winter of 1849–50 much of [his] time was occupied with the Nauvoo Brass Band also in playing the violin evenings for dancing parties,” and during this period practices were held at the house of William Clayton. In April 1850 nineteen of Pitt’s former members met at Burton’s house to reorganize the band, when they brought four others into the group and voted to build a band carriage and make uniforms for themselves. J. Anderson was chosen as temporary leader until Pitt arrived in the Valley.²

The band performed “the first Concert in the Mountains” in the Bowery on Saturday evening, June 15, 1850.³ It advertised another to be given in the Bowery on Thursday, July 4, in the Deseret News of June 29. This ad, signed by Clayton, “C.P.T.”—Captain Pro Tempore?—and dated June 28, indicated that the proceeds from the concert would go toward liquidating the expenses incurred in building the band wagon, and it concluded: “For further particulars see Bills.”⁴ No such bill, unfortunately, is located.

On July 24, in celebration of the pioneers entering the Valley, the Nauvoo Brass Band serenaded the people of Great Salt Lake City as it rode around the city in its new carriage—“9 feet wide and 29 feet long, drawn by 14 horses, suitably decorated, with their flag waving, which presented truly a most splendid appearance.” A second band, the “Martial Band,” rode around the city in two carriages.⁵ That evening the Brass Band put on a concert “attended in the Bowery by at least 1600 people,” which apparently had been advertised earlier with a handbill. No copy of this bill is located, but it is referred to “for particulars” in an advertisement for the concert, signed by William Clayton, “C.P.T.,” and dated July 10, 1850, in the Deseret News of July 13 and 20.⁶

The Brass Band advertised one other concert in the Bowery for September 21, to raise funds for the Perpetual Emigrating Fund, but cancelled it on the day it was to be given and rescheduled it for October 5, because “some of the performers [had] gone to Ogden City, on the Indian expedition.”⁷ Eight days after this October concert William Pitt arrived in the Valley and immediately assumed the leadership of the band (see item 527).

Saunders 19, 22.