Peter Crawley, A Descriptive Bibliography of the Mormon Church, Volume Two, 1848–1852 (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center Brigham Young University, 2005), 153–238.

500 TAYLOR, John, and Curtis Edwin Bolton. [Large handbill advertising three meetings a week at 21 Rue Monsigny. Boulogne-sur-Mer, 1850]

On June 18, 1850, John Taylor, Curtis E. Bolton, and William Howells took a steamer across the Strait of Dover and arrived at Boulogne-sur-Mer that afternoon. Taylor, Bolton, and John Pack had been called as missionaries to France at the October 1849 general conference; Howells had earlier made three trips to France, organizing a branch of the Church in Boulogne on April 6 (see item 425). Of the four missionaries, only Bolton spoke French, having learned the language when he and his brother lived in France during the early 1830s.¹

The following day, Bolton went in search of a hall for public preaching, and Howells visited George Viett and his wife, whom he had baptized during his first trip to Boulogne. On June 25 they found a large hall “near the theatre,” and that day Taylor and Bolton worked on two articles for the Boulogne Interpreter, a weekly newspaper published in both English and French. In the evening they were joined by Frederick Piercy and Arthur Stayner from London, and the next evening by John Pack; on the 28th Piercy and Stayner departed for Paris.²

Under the date Monday, July 1, Bolton records in his diary:

Monday morning we had some large handbills struck off, giving notice of our meetings three times a week, and had them posted up about town. Held a public meeting this evening in a hall No. 21 Rue Monsigny. There were about thirty present. The Elders present were, Taylor, Bolton, Pack, Howell, and Viette. Sang “The Spirit of God Like a Fire is Burning.” Bro. Pack opened with prayer. Bro. Bolton read the second chapter of Acts. Brother Taylor preached. Bro. Bolton dismissed. A man named James Robertson (preacher on his own hook or independent) backed by a man named Gregory (brother in law to Brother Major, portrait painter) and a Baptist preacher named Cater (a deformed bowlegged dominutive fowl spirit) wanted to disturb the meeting. Bro. Taylor silenced him. They followed us home, were very impudent.³

Howells had rented the hall on June 26, but a delay in receiving permission to preach from the mayor forced Bolton to cancel a newspaper ad for their first meeting—necessitating the issuing of the unlocated handbill. Taylor and Bolton continued to hold meetings in the hall and in Taylor’s room until July 19, when they left for Paris (see item 517). But after the “three-nights’ public discussion,” July 11–13 (see items 514–15), no more than two or three attended their meetings. “Mormonism,” Bolton confided to his diary, “is dead here.”⁴

501 [Handbill advertising three lectures in the Peoples Hall, Bedworth, by Alfred Cordon on July 15, 1850, by John Toone on July 22, and by Cordon on July 29. Bedworth? 1850]

Alfred Cordon and John Jaques went to Coventry on Sunday, July 14, 1850, and the next afternoon they arrived in Bedworth.¹ “The Temperance Society kindly allowed us to Lecture in the Peoples Hall Bedworth,” Cordon reports in his journal,

for this and the two following Monday evenings. We got some bills printed notifying the people that on Monday July 15th I would deliver a Lecture upon The second Coming of Jesus Christ, His per[s]onal reign on earth, and First Resurrection &c. On Monday 22nd by Elder J Toone Subject, The Church of Christ as it was, its Apostacy, and necessity of a New dispensation being given to man. And on Monday 29th by myself Subject The re-organization of the Church, and the qualifications necessary to become a Member of the same.

That evening Jaques conducted the meeting and Cordon spoke for an hour and a half to an attentive audience. Two weeks later he returned to Bedworth to fill his appointment. “The Hall was crowded to excess,” he writes, and “many questions were asked and answered which seemed to give general satisfaction.”²

502 [Eagle ornament] Deseret pic-nic. [Ornament] The company of Mr. [ruled underline] and ladies, is solicited to attend a party to be given at the new store room of Messrs. J. & E. Reese, on the evening of the 25th. inst., at 6 o’clock, P.M. Great Salt Lake City, July 18th, 1850.

Broadside 20 x 16 cm. On blue lined paper.

Item 502 is known in two variants, differing only in the word ladies, which is given as lady in some copies—a feature one would expect only in a Utah invitation. A copy of the single-partner invitation addressed to Hiram B. Clawson—who would marry his first wife in October and not take a second until 1852—is in the Clawson papers in the University of Utah Marriott Library, and multiple-spouse invitations to Brigham Young and George A. Smith are in the LDS Church Archives.

The Reese brothers, John and Enoch, were the third pair of merchants to set up shop in Great Salt Lake City—following the “Gentile” merchants Livingston & Kinkead and Holladay & Warner. John Reese, born in Oneida County, New York, October 15, 1808, moved with his family to New York City when he was fourteen years old and eventually served fourteen years in the state militia, reaching the rank of colonel. In 1849 he left New York with $30,000 in goods, intending to go to California, but upon meeting his brother Enoch, a Mormon, in Missouri, he changed his plans and accompanied his brother to Salt Lake City. That winter he returned to New York and purchased a second stock worth $20,000, which he brought to Salt Lake City the following summer.¹

Enoch Reese was born in Oneida County, New York, May 25, 1813, converted to Mormonism in 1842, and moved to Nauvoo two years later. One of Utah’s prominent merchants, he served on the Salt Lake City Council and in the territorial legislature. In 1857 he left for a mission in Wales, making the eastward journey with the missionary handcart company. He died in Salt Lake City, July 20, 1876.²

In July 1850 Enoch opened the store at about 125 South Main, the second such establishment on the street, and on August 10 began running an ad in the Deseret News offering “a variety of stone ware.” On September 25 the new stock arrived from the East, and three days later the brothers announced in the News: “Just arrived. And will be ready for sale on Monday September 30th. J & E Reese’s Train of Dry Goods, Groceries, Hardware, China, Stoves, Boots & shoes, Toys and Fancy Articles.” A note preceding this ad referred the reader to their “Advertisement and handbills.” No copy of such a handbill is located; undoubtedly it enumerated the “Dry Goods, Groceries, Hardware,” etc. that would be available on the 30th. For the next twenty-three months, J. & E. Reese regularly advertised in the News, until August 21, 1852, when it advised its customers that it was closing out its stock at “greatly reduced prices.” On November 6 this ad appeared for the last time.³

John Reese left Salt Lake City in the spring of 1851 with thirteen wagons of goods, bound for the Carson Valley. For seven years he ran a trading post there, called Mormon Station, before returning to the Salt Lake Valley in 1859. During his later years he engaged in mining and “other speculations,” causing him to lose “the bulk of his fortune.” He died in Salt Lake City, April 20, 1888; his funeral was held at St. Mark’s Cathedral.⁴

Flake-Draper 2811f. Saunders 21. USlC, UU.

503 [Handbill advertising a tea meeting on July 30, 1850, celebrating Orson Pratt’s return to England. Liverpool? 1850]

The only reference to this unlocated handbill is in a letter of July 24, 1850, from Eli B. Kelsey and James Linforth to John S. Davis: “Bro Kelsey & I have concluded to send you a bill of our coming tea meeting and we should feel highly honoured by the visit of Presdt Phillips and Elders Davis & Evans.”¹ Alfred Cordon notes in his journal that he received a note from Liverpool on July 29 telling him of Orson Pratt’s return to England and inviting him to a “Tea Meeting” in Pratt’s honor on the 30th.² Orson had arrived in Liverpool on July 17 after a four-month trip to America, and on July 30 about one thousand, according to Cordon, gathered at the “hall of science” in Liverpool to celebrate his return. Glaud Rodger, the president of the Liverpool Conference, conducted the meeting. George D. Watt, Orson Pratt, Franklin D. Richards, James W. Cummings, Cyrus H. Wheelock, Cordon, William Gibson, George Halliday, James H. Flanigan, and John S. Davis addressed the gathering. Crandall Dunn estimated that four hundred sat down for tea and cake. Cordon estimated six hundred and wrote, “a better conducted meeting I never saw.”³

504 DAVIS, John Silvanus. Tystiolaeth y sant. [Testimony of the saint.] [At end:] Merthyr, Mehefin 28, 1850. J. Davis. [Merthyr, June 28, 1850. J. Davis.] [At foot below wavy rule:] J. Davis, Argraffydd, Merthyr. [J. Davis, Printer, Merthyr.] [1850]

Broadside 17 x 10.5 cm.

Flake-Draper 2722za. Dennis 44. CU-B, MH, NjP, UPB, USlC, WsN.

505 DAVIS, John Silvanus. Dyddiau Noah. Gan J. Davis, Merthyr. [The days of Noah. By J. Davis, Merthyr.] [At foot of p. 4:] John Davis, Argraffydd, Merthyr-Tydfil. [John Davis, Printer, Merthyr Tydfil.] [1850]

4 pp. 17 cm.

Flake-Draper 2722i. Dennis 45. CU-B, MH, NjP, UPB, USlC, WsN, WsS.

506 DAVIS, John Silvanus. Ymddyddanion. [Caption title] [Conversations.] [At foot of p. 4:] Argraffwyd gan J. Davis, Georgetown, Merthyr-Tydfil. [Printed by J. Davis, Georgetown, Merthyr Tydfil.] [1850] [First word, last line, p. 1:] tystia.

4 pp. 17 cm.

Recently discovered, this appears to be an earlier edition of Dennis 46 (the next item). The setting of the first part, Buddioldeb Beiblau i’r Paganiad, is the same as the setting of this text in Udgorn Seion for June 1850, so the tract was probably struck off about this time. That it is indeed earlier than Dennis 46 is suggested by the handful of minor textual differences between the two.

Flake-Draper 2722zf. UPB.

507 DAVIS, John Silvanus. Ymddyddanion. [Caption title] [Conversations.] [At foot of p. 4:] Argraffwyd gan J. Davis, Georgetown, Merthyr-Tydfil. [Printed by J. Davis, Georgetown, Merthyr Tydfil.] [1850?] [First word, last line, p. 1:] y.

4 pp. 17 cm.

Flake-Draper 2722zg. Dennis 46. CtY, CU-B, MH, NjP, UPB, USlC, WsN.

508 [Frontier Guarding Extra, August 5, 1850. Kanesville, 1850]

This extra would seem to be one of the documents pertaining to the contested election between Daniel F. Miller and William Thompson (see items 467, 513). No copy is located, but it is referred to in A. W. Babbitt’s broadside To the Citizens of Pottawotamie County, Iowa: “During my late visit among you, a libellous letter over the signature of Daniel F. Miller, was published in the Frontier Guardian, EXTRA, and as many know, all contradiction or explanation was denied me through that organ, until the election was over.” And in the third paragraph: “Please state whether you were present on the occasion referred to in Daniel F. Miller’s letter to the Frontier Guardian, and published in their Extra of the 5th of August.” Exactly what Miller wrote in his letter that so upset Babbitt is not revealed in To the Citizens of Pottawotamie County, Iowa.¹

509 [Lines. N.p.? 1850?]

Nothing is known about this piece except what is learned from the following editorial comment in the Millennial Star of August 15, 1850:

There has recently appeared above the intellectual horizon of the Latter-day Saints, wandering among the “Stars” of their firmament, a certain meteoric production, called by some poetry; by others better acquainted than we are with its claim to that title, it is pronounced neither poetry, verse, nor prose; indeed its author does not call it by either of those names, but “LINES.” Such meteoric productions are calculated to injure the sight of careful intelligent observers, unless they are prepared with glasses adapted to the occasion, insomuch that they sometimes turn away in disgust, especially if their first observation of our heavenly truths is directed towards that object. If it were created of correct matter, and organized upon true principles of natural science, it would not produce so disastrous effects upon its beholders, but would serve to strengthen the vision, elevate the understanding of the observer, and commend the general principles of the society to which its author belongs.

Moreover, nearly one fourth part of the elements of its organization was composed by another gentleman, which is the most scientific and truthful in its appearance, yet no credit is awarded: this, to say the least, is quite uncourteous on the part of an author. On the whole, we do not believe the church of God will be subserved by the circulation of such publications, but that the intelligent of any society in Great Britain would feel disgraced thereby; and we wish the author, with all others concerned therein, to prevent any further circulation thereof.

The editorial—undoubtedly written by Orson Pratt, then president of the British Mission—goes on to “counsel” that, except for “Bills of Meetings, lists of the standard works of the Church which [the branches and conferences] may have on hand for sale, and conference minutes,” any manuscript containing the “doctrines or sentiments of the Latter-day Saints” that is intended for publication should first be sent to the British Mission presidency for approval.

510 TOONE, John. [Handbill advertising a lecture by Eli B. Kelsey on Tuesday evening, August 20, 1850. Leamington? 1850]

Alfred Cordon returned to Leamington on Friday, August 16, 1850, “much weary with travelling.” “I received a note from Elder E Kelsy,” he writes in his journal,

stating that he would be in Leamington on Monday and would preach on Tuesday Evening. Elder Toone had published some Bills announcing the arrival of Elder K. and soliciting their attendance at the Lecture on Tuesday evening.

Eli B. Kelsey had just been called to succeed Cordon as the president of the Warwickshire Conference and would formally assume the conference presidency on September 1 (see the next item). That month Cordon would return to the United States.¹

511 Report of the Warwickshire conference, held in the Latter Day Saints’ hall, Guy Street, Leamington Spa, Sunday, September 1, 1850. [Caption title] [Signed at end:] Alfred Cordon, President. John Toone, John Freeman, Secretaries. [At foot of p. 10:] J. W. Brierly, Printer, Regent Street, Leamington. [1850?]

10 pp. 21 cm.

At the afternoon session of the meetings summarized in this pamphlet—the only located report from the Warwickshire Conference—Eli B. Kelsey was sustained as the conference president, succeeding Alfred Cordon, who had served since October 1848 (see item 400). The report has a table of statistics for twenty-one branches on the first page, followed by the minutes of three sessions on Sunday, September 1, 1850, which include John Toone’s tribute to Cordon and reports of Cordon’s and Kelsey’s discourses. At the evening session, Kelsey proposed establishing book clubs so the members could purchase Church books in installments, a proposal he would repeat in London four months later (see item 545). A postscript at the bottom of p. 10 states that the report will be sold for 2d. each, “which is only sufficient to cover the expense of printing,” and “every Elder, Priest, Teacher, and Deacon” is expected to buy a copy, with the members taking the remainder. Cordon notes in his journal that he and Kelsey spent Thursday, September 5, in preparing the minutes for the press.¹

John Freeman, who assisted Toone at these meetings, had served as the conference clerk during the preceding three years. Born in London, January 28, 1807, he joined the Church in 1844 and immediately began to labor as a local missionary, eventually presiding over the branches at Alcester and Stratford-on-Avon. Of his history subsequent to 1857 nothing is known, although it would appear that he remained in England.²

Flake-Draper 1956. UPB, USlC.

512 Frontier Guardian Extra. By Orson Hyde. Kanesville, Iowa, Saturday morning, September 14, 1850. Volume II.—Number 17. Arrival of the U.S. mail with highly important news from Deseret. [At head of first column:] Important news. Arrival of the mail from Salt Lake. Dates to August 3d, 1850. [Kanesville, 1850]

Broadside 55.5 x 40 cm. Text in six columns.

The mail from the Salt Lake Valley reached Kanesville on the evening of September 12, 1850, and this extra was rushed into print to bring the latest word from Utah to the Kanesville Saints. Opening with a letter from the First Presidency giving news of the Valley, it includes reports of Indian hostilities, a communication from Howard Stansbury, various Utah news items, an ordinance on revenues passed by the legislature of the provisional state of Deseret, reports of two Sunday worship services in Salt Lake City, a few fillers from other newspapers, and half a column of advertisements. Most of these were taken from the July issues of the Deseret News.

All the items in the first four and a quarter columns of the extra, as well as the first five items in the sixth column, were reprinted in the regular issue of the Frontier Guardian for September 18, 1850, in each instance from the same setting. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self Reliance” in the fifth column was reprinted on the first page of the Guardian for October 2. The first and sixth ads were taken from the Guardian of September 4; the rest of the ads were reprinted in the Guardian of September 18. It seems that only the three-line filler reporting the attempted suicide of Dr. Oliver Dresser, at the bottom of the fifth column, was not inserted in a regular issue of the paper.

USlC.

513 Rally to the polls! Freemen of Pottawatamie [sic] County!! Tuesday, September 24, 1850. [Eagle vignette] [At end:] Frontier Guardian Office, Kanesville, Sept. 23, 1850. [Kanesville, 1850]

Broadside 33 x 25.5 cm.

Rally to the Polls! marks the end of the contested election between Daniel F. Miller and William Thompson for the seat in the U.S. House of Representatives from Iowa’s first congressional district (see items 467, 508). It was issued to rally the Mormon voters for the special election on September 24 and, referring to “the circumstance of the stolen poll books,” strongly endorses Miller. Running parallel with the Miller-Thompson contest was the dispute between Almon W. Babbitt and Orson Hyde, which began at the time Hyde was preparing to acquire the Frontier Guardian press (see item 371). Babbitt, a Democrat, supported Thompson and in August 1850 issued a broadside To the Citizens of Pottawotamie County, Iowa in which he complained about a letter from Miller in the Frontier Guardian extra of August 5 and alleged that Miller was “very far from being friendly to the Mormons.” To support this allegation he referred to “certificates now in the hands of Phineas Young.”¹ Thompson too had charged Miller with being an anti-Mormon and had also used Young as his source. In response, Rally to the Polls! reprints a letter from Phineas Young suggesting Miller was a Mormon, and comments, “O! consistency where hast thou fled!”

Flake-Draper 6813. USlC.

514 TAYLOR, John. Three nights’ public discussion between the Revds. C. W. Cleeve, James Robertson, and Philip Cater, and Elder John Taylor, of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, at Boulogne-Sur-Mer, France. Chairman, Rev. K. Groves, M.A., assisted by Charles Townley, LL.D., and Mr. Luddy. Also a reply to the Rev. K. Groves, M.A., & Charles Townley, LL.D. Price eightpence each. Liverpool: Published by John Taylor, and for sale by O. Pratt, at 15, Wilton Street, and by agents throughout Great Britain and in Boulogne. 1850.

[i–ii][1]–49 pp., folding plate. 21 cm. Green or yellow printed wrappers.

515 TAYLOR, John. Three nights’ public discussion between the Revds. C. W. Cleeve, James Robertson, and Philip Cater, and Elder John Taylor, of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, at Boulogne-Sur-Mer, France. Chairman, Rev. K. Groves, M.A., assisted by Charles Townley, LL.D., and Mr. Luddy. Also a reply to the Rev. K. Groves, M.A., & Charles Townley, LL.D. Price eightpence each. Liverpool: Published by John Taylor, and for sale by F. D. Richards, at 15, Wilton Street, and by agents throughout Great Britain and in Boulogne. 1850. [1851?]

[i–ii][1]–49 pp., folding plate. 21 cm.

Three days after the July 1 lecture, John Taylor, Curtis E. Bolton, John Pack, and William Howells received a letter from James Robertson and Philip Cater—the ministers who had followed them home after the lecture—and a third clergyman, Charles W. Cleeve, challenging them to a public debate (see item 500). The following day Bolton sent the clerics a note accepting the challenge, and on July 6 they all met and agreed on the topics and rules.¹ Robertson was an independent Protestant minister, who described himself as “a stranger in Boulogne.”² Cater was the Baptist minister in Boulogne, Cleeve the Church of England chaplain at Vevey, Switzerland. A second Anglican cleric, William Kynaston Groves, minister of the Lower British Church in Boulogne, was to serve as the chairman of the debate and would participate in the discussion on the third night.³

The debate was held on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings, July 11–13, at the “Concert Hall ‘Rue Montsigny.’” The topics for discussion were: (1) “the late Joseph Smith: his public and pretended religious career”; (2) “the Book of Mormon: is it a revelation from God?”; and (3) “are the ministers of [the Latter-day Saints] sent of God by direct appointment?” A half-franc was charged for admission, with any surplus after expenses to be divided equally between the mayor and the English consul for the benefit of the poor.⁴

Three Nights’ Public Discussion reports the three sessions of the debate. Taylor, Bolton, Pack, and Howells attended the sessions, and each participated at some point, but Taylor was the principal spokesman for the Mormon side. On the first night, C. W. Cleeve began by reading extracts from the books of Henry Caswall, John C. Bennett, J. B. Turner, and others, which established the direction of the discussions (see items 156–57, 199, and 431 note 3). Taylor replied that he had lived with Joseph Smith and knew him to be virtuous and high-minded, and repudiated Caswall’s story of showing Smith a Greek Psalter. Robertson asked Taylor to explain Bennett’s claims about spiritual wifery, and Taylor responded by reading the section on marriage from the Doctrine and Covenants, including “we declare that we believe that one man should have one wife.” Cater referred to the Spaulding story (see item 77) and declared that the canon of scripture was closed. Taylor, in reply, listed a number of books mentioned in the Bible but not included in it (see items 80, 87).

Although the topic for the second night was the validity of the Book of Mormon, Cleeve “resumed the discussion on the same subject as that of the previous night,” and Taylor continued his attack on Bennett and Caswall and asserted that his, Bolton’s, and Pack’s testimony of Joseph Smith should be as convincing as the evangelists’ testimony of Jesus. He spoke of his conversion and of the testimonies of the three and eight witnesses—which are included in the pamphlet—and talked about Joseph Smith’s murder and his own wounds at Carthage jail. Bolton read a letter of George Halliday reporting a miraculous healing from the Millennial Star of December 15, 1849, and a long account from a visitor to Salt Lake City in the New-York Daily Tribune of October 8, 1849, reprinted in the Liverpool Mercury. He and Pack stated that they had been well acquainted with Joseph Smith and knew him to be a virtuous man.⁵

On the third night, the chairman, Kynaston Groves, apparently in an attempt to move the discussion to the question, asked Taylor if the Mormons were sent by divine appointment, and Taylor replied in the affirmative and then questioned the authority of the Protestant clerics. Cleeve read a long extract from Orson Pratt’s Kingdom of God, Part I, which is printed in the pamphlet. He then handed Taylor three sentences in various languages and asked which was Greek, testing Taylor’s account of his encounter with Henry Caswall. When Taylor picked one, Cleeve announced it was Japanese, and an argument ensued between Groves, Cleeve, and two men in the audience over whether there were Greek letters in the sentence. Howells arose and told of examples of miraculous gifts. Taylor then continued on the authority of the Protestant clergy, and, thinking Cleeve was a Methodist, compared the Methodist and Baptist doctrines. Picking up a point from the first session, Groves asserted that the lost biblical books were not wanted and the scriptures were complete without them. Taylor responded to the assertions of Groves and then included an excerpt from Thomas L. Kane’s The Mormons defending the character of the Mormon people, taken from the St. Louis Missouri Republican. At the end (pp. 44–49), Three Nights’ Public Discussion adds a number of documents pertaining to some of the points touched upon during the debate, including John Haven’s 1839 letter (see item 77) and an excerpt from Truman Smith’s Speech of Mr. Smith . . . Delivered in the Senate of the United States, July 8, 1850 (Washington, 1850).⁶

Bolton was less happy about the debate than Three Nights’ Public Discussion would suggest. The first session, he wrote in his diary, “was conducted tolerable fair,” but the topic for the second was the Book of Mormon and “they never once touched it.” He was more discouraged by the third session. “Although the question of this evening should have been the Doctrines and authority of the opposite party,” he recorded, “yet they continued dinging at the old song and Bro. Taylor answering them. . . . I feel in my own bosom that we were most signally defeated.”⁷

On July 19 Taylor, Bolton, and Howells moved to Paris and met Frederick Piercy and Arthur Stayner, who had arrived three weeks earlier (see item 517). During the next seven weeks, Taylor and Bolton worked on a report of the Boulogne debate. Bolton had taken notes at the sessions, and the French-English newspaper Boulogne Interpreter of July 18 had reported the discussions, from which the speeches of the clerics were taken. Piercy drew Taylor’s likeness, which was to be included with the report, and then left for London on September l. Five days later Taylor went to England “to finish his pamphlet.” The Millennial Star of September 15 advertised Three Nights’ Public Discussion at “£2 10s. per hundred, or 8d. retail,” and on the 20th Taylor returned to Paris, “having published his pamphlet.” On September 27 the Millennial Star office began distributing it. Two and a half months later the Star alerted its agents that they could continue their orders for it because “a second edition [would] soon be ready for sale,” and on January 1, 1851, it noted that the second edition would be available in two weeks.⁸

Three Nights’ Public Discussion is a complicated book. It is made up of a title page with Liverpool: Printed by R. James, South Castle Street on the verso (pp. [i–ii]), followed by three 16-page signatures and a final leaf (p. 49). Pasted in at the end is a folding plate, approximately 41.5 x 25 cm., titled Fac-Simile of the Brass Plates Recently Taken from a Mound in the Vicinity of Kinderhook, Pike County, Illinois, which is a reprint—omitting some text and using different cuts for the facsimiles—of the Nauvoo broadside A Brief Account of the Discovery of the Brass Plates Recently Taken from a Mound in the Vicinity of Kinderhook, Pike County, Illinois (items 180–81). A portrait of Taylor, drawn by Frederick Piercy, is inserted in some, but not all, copies as a frontispiece. Some copies were issued in a green or yellow wrapper, the title page reprinted from a different setting on the front within an ornamental border with the added line Printed by R. James, 39, South Castle Street above the date, the rest of the wrapper plain.⁹

The title page occurs in four “states”: (1) with O. Pratt in the third-from-last line and the colon after Liverpool aligned above the left edge of the N in JOHN; (2) with O. Pratt in the third-from-last line and the colon after Liverpool centered above the N in JOHN; (3) with O. Pratt replaced by F. D. Richards and the colon after Liverpool aligned above the left edge of the N in JOHN; and (4) with O. Pratt replaced by F. D. Richards and the colon after Liverpool centered above the N in JOHN. Since Richards succeeded Pratt as the president of the British Mission at the beginning of the year, states 3 and 4 are associated with the second printing.

The first signature (pp. [1]­–16) is known in two “states”: (1) with the as the last word, sixth line of text, p. [1], and with a signature mark A at the bottom right of p. [1]; and (2) with of as the last word, sixth line of text, p. [1], and no signature mark on p. [1]. The entire signature in state 2 is a different setting from state 1.

The second signature (pp. 17–32) is known in three “states”: (1) with all as the last word, fifth line of text, p. 17; (2) with nations as the last word, fifth line of text, p. 17, and ought the last word, tenth line of text, p. 17; and (3) with nations as the last word, fifth line of text, p. 17, and to the last word, tenth line of text, p. 17. In state 2, pp. 17–18, 20–25, 28–29, 32 are reset, while the other pages of this signature are the same setting as state 1. The setting of state 3 differs at each page from both state 1 and state 2.

The third signature (pp. 33–48) is known in two “states,” distinguished by the words shall and In in lines 16 and 17 of the text, p. 33: (1) with the I in In aligned below the a in shall; (2) with the I in In aligned below the first l in shall. The entire signature in state 2 is a different setting from state 1.

Page 49 is also known in two “states,” with different settings, distinguished by United and 1850 in lines 30 and 31 of the text: (1) with the U in United centered between the 8 and 5 in 1850; and (2) with the U in United centered between the 1 and 8 in 1850. Each version of p. 49 has at the foot: R. James, Printer, 39, South Castle Street, Liverpool.

The frontispiece occurs in two states: with and without a ruled border surrounding the image of John Taylor. The state without the border has Fred. Piercy at the bottom edge of Taylor’s image, while Piercy’s name does not appear on the state with border. Which is the earlier is not known.

All of the located copies of Three Nights’ Public Discussion with F. D. Richards on the title page have the first, second, and third signatures in states 2, 3, and 2, respectively. One might infer, therefore, that these are the signatures of the second edition. Each state of p. 49 occurs with all four title pages, so it is not apparent which state of p. 49 is the earlier. Among thirty copies examined with the O. Pratt title page, ten different arrangements of the various states occurred, and some parts of the first printing were used in a few combinations with parts of the second printing.¹⁰

The European Mission financial records show that mission office began distributing Three Nights’ Public Discussion on September 27 and sent out about 3,100 during September and October. These records bear the notation “all sold” on October 24, although two orders totaling 77 copies were filled a few days later. On October 9 the office credited John Taylor for 4,000 copies and then charged 54 back to him. What fraction this was of the first edition is not known. The financial records further state that the second edition numbered 7,000 copies and was printed at a cost of £64, of which 3,000 were issued without wrappers and frontispiece.¹¹ In January 1851 Orson Pratt produced the bound volume O. Pratt’s Works, which contains his sixteen 1848–51 pamphlets, Taylor’s Three Nights’ Public Discussion, and William Gibson’s Report of Three Nights’ Public Discussion, and it is in this book that Taylor’s report is usually found (see items 551­–53).

Item 514: Flake-Draper 8849. CSmH, CtY, CU-B, ICN, MH, MoInRC, NjP, NN, ULA, UPB, USlC, UU. Item 515: Flake-Draper 8849a. CSmH, MH, NN, NjP, UPB, USlC, UU.

516 SNOW, Erastus. En sandheds-røst. Til de oprigtige af hjertet. [l line] Oversat fra det Engelske af P. O. Hansen. [Caption title] [Signed on p. 16:] Kjøbenhavn. Norgesgade 196, 3die Bagsal. E. Snow. [At foot of p. 16:] Trykt hos F. E. Bording. [Copenhagen, 1850]

16 pp. 21 cm.

Erastus Snow, George Parker Dykes, and John E. Forsgren, reached Copenhagen on Friday, June 14, 1850, and were met at the wharf by Peter O. Hansen, who had arrived five weeks earlier (see item 485). On Sunday, the 16th, the four missionaries attended a meeting of a Baptist congregation led by Peter C. Mönster. This congregation had befriended Hansen and would immediately become the focus of their proselytizing efforts. Two months later, on Monday, August 12, Snow baptized eight men and seven women, and during the week Dykes baptized eleven more, most of these new converts coming from Mönster’s flock. By August 20 they had converted thirty-four, and on September 15 Snow organized the Copenhagen branch with about fifty members and Dykes as the president.¹

These early successes characterized the Mormon missionary effort in Scandinavia—which would be matched by no other nineteenth century European mission other than the British. When Erastus Snow left Copenhagen for America on March 4, 1852, over seven hundred had been baptized, and the Church in Denmark numbered six hundred, with a few in Norway, Sweden, and Iceland, and forty-five Scandinavian converts had departed for Utah.²

Near the end of September 1850, Snow published his first Danish tract, the second of the Scandinavian Mission, En Sandheds-Røst (A Voice of Truth). He seems to have composed it earlier that month, with Peter O. Hansen immediately translating it into Danish. F. E. Bording printed it in an edition of 2000.³ Its selling price, printed at the foot of p. 16, was 5 rigsdaler (about $2.50) per hundred, or 8 skilling (4¢) each. Revised, it would be reprinted more than twenty times in Danish before the end of the century and a number of times in Swedish and remain a popular missionary tool into the twentieth century (see item 769).

Only the first edition of En Sandheds-Røst lists Hansen as the translator. It opens with an outline of Joseph Smith’s early history including his first vision, the appearance of the angel, and the translation of the Book of Mormon (pp. 1–3).⁴ Seven “Articles of Faith” are inserted at this point, the seventh divided into five parts (pp. 3–4). These are followed by “On Marriage,” which asserts that marriage is ordained of God, those whose spouses die are free to marry again, and Church members are obliged to comply with the marriage laws of the land; “On Public Officers,” which essentially is a summary of what is now D&C 134; and “On Divinity,” which notes that the “Father’s person is spirit, glory and power; the Son’s person is bodily, made like a man’s; and the Holy Ghost is the mind of the Father and the Son, and extends itself to all their acts, to witness of the Father and the Son” (pp. 4–5).

In mid-September Erastus Snow directed George Parker Dykes to draft a concise declaration of faith to be used in formally organizing the Copenhagen branch, and on the 18th Dykes presented this document to the Minister of Public Instruction and had it approved. A week or so later Snow incorporated some part of Dykes’s document in En Sandheds-Røst. “Articles of Faith,” “On Marriage,” “On Public Officers,” and perhaps “On Divinity” undoubtedly comprise the part Snow used.⁵

Coming next in the tract are six topics headed “The Fall and the Atonement” (pp. 6–9); “Faith” (pp. 9–10); “Repentance?” (p. 10); “Baptism” (pp. 10–13); “On the Sprinkling of Children,” which argues against infant baptism (p. 14); and “Priesthood” (pp. 14–15). At the end is a “Postscript” which declares the scriptures make it clear that the tribes of Israel will be gathered to the Holy Land and Christ will come in great glory to reign on earth for a thousand years, with many signs foreshadowing his coming.

En Sandheds-Røst appears to be the first Mormon piece printed by Frederick E. Bording, who had just begun his printing business and was brought to Peter Hansen’s attention by Ane Cathrine Kofoed, Hansen’s future bride and a distant relative of Bording’s wife. Like Richard James in Liverpool, although not a Church member, Bording did most of the Church’s printing in Scandinavia until his death on February 3, 1884, at age sixty-six; thereafter his heirs continued to print Church works into the twentieth century.⁶

Flake-Draper 8169. CSmH, CtY, UPB, USlC.

517 TAYLOR, John. Aux amis de la vérité religieuse. Récit abrégé du commencement, des progrès, de l’établissement, des persécutions, de la foi et de la doctrine de l’Église de Jésus-Christ des Saints des Derniers Jours. Par John Taylor, elder, venant de la Ville du Grand Lac Salé, État de Deseret. Haute-Californie. Paris, Imprimerie de Marc Ducloux et Compagnie, Rue Saint-Benoit, 7. 1850.

16 pp. 20.5 cm.

John Taylor, Curtis E. Bolton, and William Howells left Boulogne-sur-Mer on Friday morning, July 19, 1850, and reached Paris that afternoon, meeting Frederick Piercy and Arthur Stayner, who had arrived three weeks earlier (see items 500, 514–15). The next day they took possession of some rooms, but the “rascally manner” of the landlady caused them to move after a day or so to No. 7, rue de Tournon—which, with one hiatus, would serve as the Paris headquarters for a number of years.¹ Piercy and Stayner would return to England early in September, Howells near the end of the month.² John Pack, who had remained in Boulogne, would labor in Calais and the Channel Islands and then sail from Liverpool for America in January 1852.³ Taylor would go to Germany in October 1851 and leave France for the last time two months later.⁴ Curtis E. Bolton would persevere in France until December 1852, eventually baptizing thirty-one in Paris and thirteen in Le Havre, while publishing a series of tracts (items 517, 566, 712, 713, 747), a periodical (item 576), and the Book of Mormon in French (item 656).⁵

Under the date October 1, 1850, Bolton reports in his diary:

Bro. Taylor left this second time for England. He had written a pamphlet and Mr. Peclard and I had translated it into French entitled “Aux Amis? de la Verite” and left me to see to the printing and I was to forward one or two to him but I could not on account of the stupid Post Office arrangements with England.

On October 18 he notes that he “forwarded 300 pamphlets ‘Amis de la Verite’ to Bro. Taylor at Jersey Island.”⁶ From Bolton’s diary entry six months later that he had “another 500 of the pamphlet ‘Aux Amis’ struck off, which cost me 25 francs or 4/5 of a sous (a cent) apiece,” one might infer that the first impression of the tract also comprised 500 copies.⁷ These two impressions and an 1852 third impression all have the same typesetting, and since Bolton indicates that the third impression was struck off from stereotype plates, it seems likely that all three were printed from the same plates (see items 566, 712).

Exactly when John Taylor composed it is not known. It may have been in mid-July, in Boulogne, when Bolton wrote that “Bro. Taylor [is] writing I copying and translating, Peclard helping.”⁸ Mr. Peclard was an independent Protestant minister from Le Havre, who had been introduced to Mormonism by William Howells the year before and had met Taylor and Bolton in London. He would remain friendly with them for more than two years but never join the Church—although Bolton would baptize several of his Le Havre congregation.⁹

An expansion of Taylor’s June 25 letter to the Boulogne Interpreter (see item 500), Aux Amis de la Vérité Religieuse (To Friends of Religious Truth) was patterned after Orson Pratt’s Remarkable Visions, parts of which appear to have been translated directly.¹⁰ The tract opens by announcing Taylor’s arrival in France with Pack, Bolton, and Howells, and asserts that their objective was not political but to preach the word of Jesus Christ—an expected disclaimer given the political turmoil that gripped Paris following the revolution of 1848 and election of Louis Napoleon. Next it gives a brief history of the birth of Mormonism, including Joseph Smith’s first vision and the appearance of the angel in 1823, followed by a summary of the Book of Mormon, with a note that the book was then being translated into French. It mentions the organization of the Church, which it states took place in Manchester, Ontario County—an indication that Taylor used the uncorrected version of Remarkable Visions (item 393)—outlines the Mormons’ experiences in Missouri and Illinois, and summarizes their progress in Utah. Like Remarkable Visions, it concludes with a series of statements of belief, which is a modification of the one at the end of Orson’s tract.

Flake-Draper 8810a. ICN, NNC.

518 DAVIS, John Silvanus. Cyfarwyddiadau i’r ymfudwyr tua Dinas y Llyn Halen, mewn llythyr oddiwrth Wm. Morgan, Kanesville, Iowa, at yr Henuriaid W. Phillips a J. Davis, Merthyr; yn yr hwn y cynnwysir llythyr oddiwrth yr Apostolion Benson a Smith, ynghyd a Chapt. D. Jones. 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. [Directions to emigrants to Salt Lake City, in a letter from Wm. Morgan, Kanesville, Iowa, to Elders W. Phillips and J. Davis, Merthyr; also contained in a letter from Apostles Benson and Smith, and Capt. D. Jones. 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 5513. Dennis 47. MH, NjP, UPB, USlC, WsCS.

519 JONES, Dan. Tri llythyr oddiwrth Capt. D. Jones, ac un oddiwrth Mrs. Lewis (o Gydweli), o Ddinas y Llyn Halen. [Caption title] [Three letters from Capt. D. Jones, and one from Mrs. Lewis (of Kidwelly), from Salt Lake City.] [At foot of p. 8:] John Davis, Argraffydd, Merthyr-Tydfil. [John Davis, Printer, Merthyr Tydfil] [1850]

8 pp. 17 cm.

Flake-Draper 4481. Dennis 48. MH, NjP, UPB, USlC, WsS.

520 [Handbills, ephemera, and other pieces printed at the Deseret News print shop. Salt Lake City, 1850–51]

From its inception, the Deseret News advertised for job work, and since it was the only print shop in town, it produced a considerable volume of ephemeral pieces—only a few of which have survived. The manuscript “Account of Job Printing done in the News Office,” in the LDS Church Archives, lists almost five dozen pieces printed at the Salt Lake shop between October 7, 1850, and September 24, 1851, and because it illuminates the activities of the shop, this document is reproduced in full, as follows:¹

1850

Oct. 7 Hand Bills “Threshing Wheat” B. Young, E. T. Benson

& G. Garner $ 8.00

“ 16 Auction Bills Little & Decker (Paid) 5.00

Nov 4 Bills for Parent School. S. W. Richards. 5.00

“ 5 Bills for Public Works D. H Wells 6.00

5 “ Grand Concert W. Pitt Capt. 8.00

11 Tailoring Bills A. H. Davenport (Paid) 5.00

“ 11 New Store Bills W. Woodruff 10.00

23 Festival Tickets J. Hendricks 4.00

Dec. 9 Rules & Standing Committees of Both Houses

State of Deseret 10.00

“ “ Daguerreotype Bills M. Cannon 10.00

Bills for Sale of Farm F. A. Hammond Paid J. Cain 4.50

“ 21 Grand Exhibition Bills Paid 12.00

28 Governors Message 100 copies State of Deseret 12.00

1851

Jan 14 H. S. Eldredge 200 labels for “Library” 2.50

“ “ State of Deseret 14½ quires blank @ 1.50 per qr. 21.75

16 Bills for Negro Minstrels (Paid A. C. B.) 5.00

“ Joseph Young Dr.

Blanks for $5 Stock in Seventies Hall 5.00

“ do for $25 Stock in do do 4.00

“ do Licenses for Seventies 3 grs. 3.50

Feb 1 Grand Exhibition Bills & Tickets Paid 18.60

[date scratched out] State of Deseret Oct^r 1^st

To Printing 80 pages Laws 250 copies 280.00

March 4 J & E. Reese Labels (Clocks Warranted) 2.50

Second Edition do do 1.25

“ G. Gibbons & Co. Bakery Bills 5.00

6 J. Hendricks Blanks for Bath Tickets 8 quires 12.00

8 W. Richards Wolf Scalp Certificates 5.00

April 1 Concert Bills W. Pitt (Paid) 9.00

“ 8 Weber Trading Co. Bills 12.00

“ 9 Packard & Clark Auction Bills (debited) 10.00

March 29 President Young Horse Bills 10.00

Apl 12 L. H. Roundy Horse Bills Paid $5 10.00

May 13 J & E. Reese Bills for Prints &c 5.00

20 W. Richards Tabernacle Subscription List 3.00

June 2 S. Mulliner Tanning Bills 7.00

“ 10 Post Master California Mail Notice 3.50

“ 10 Grand Concert 2 Bills W. Pitt 16.00

“ 16 Tithing Office Blank Orders 16 Quires 12.00

“ 24 Blacksmiths Bill of Prices T. Tanner 6.00

July 10 Territory of Utah J L. Heywood Marshall

Election Notice Blanks 6.00

“ 12 S. M. Blair Blanks Applications for Land

Warrants &c 8.00

14 do do Second Edition 8.00

Aug. 18 Livingston & Kinkead Blank for Land Warrant Applications 8.00

July 18 Territory of Utah Blanks for Non resident

Commissioners 8.00

Aug. 1 McVicar & OLaughlan Shingles Bills 6.00

Aug 18 Livingston & Kinkead Land Warrant Bills 8.00

“ 28 Dustin Amy Brass & Copper Bills 2.50

“ 29 R. S. Phelps Store Bills Paid 10.00

“ “ T. S. Williams Land Warrant Bills 8.00

Sep. 2 W. T. Cleaver Stove Bills 2.50

“ 5 T. S. Williams Store Bills 10.00

do do Second Edition 4.00

“ 5 O. H. Cogswell Store Bills Paid 30.00

“ 6 E. Tompkinson Earthenware Bills 3.00

“ 10 O. Hyde Bills for Plows Paid 4.00

12 W. Richards “Card” 4.00

“ 18 Territory of Utah Gov Proclamation 10.00

“ 24 W. Blakey & Co. Store Bills 10.00

________

$718.10

Only six of these pieces are located: the November 5 “Grand Concert” bill; the December 9 “Rules & Standing Committees of Both Houses”; the December 28 “Governors Message”; the January 16 Seventies Hall $25 stock certificate; the February “State of Deseret . . . 80 pages Laws”; and the September 18 “Gov Proclamation.” All of these, except the stock certificate, are discussed elsewhere in this volume (items 527, 535, 534, 613, 610), along with: the November 4 “Bills for Parent School” (item 479); the November 23 “Festival Tickets” and March 6 “Blanks for Bath Tickets” (item 531); the December 21 and February 1 “Grand Exhibition” bills and the April 1 and June 10 concert bills (items 527, 588); the May 20 “Tabernacle Subscription List” (item 686); the July 10 “Election Notice Blanks” (item 596); and the September 12 “Richards ‘Card’” (item 624).²

Some of the others are associated with ads in the first volume of the Deseret News: the October 7 “Hand Bills ‘Threshing Wheat’” (p. 287); the November 11 “New Store Bills” (p. 158); the December 9 “Daguerreotype Bills” (p. 174); the March 4 “J & E. Reese Labels” (p. 151); the March 4 “Gibbons & Co. Bakery Bills” (p. 223); the May 13 “J & E. Reese Bills for Prints” (p. 263); the June 2 “Mulliner Tanning Bills” (p. 279); the July 12 “Blair Blanks Applications” and the August 18 “Livingston & Kinkead Land Warrant Bills” (p. 310); and the September 5 “Cogswell Store Bills” (p. 295).

“Account of Job Printing done in the News Office” has some curious omissions: W. W. Phelps’s Deseret Almanac for 1851 (item 550), the Cain-Brower Mormon Way-Bill (item 562), the two broadsides Songs for the 24th July (items 591–92), the fifth sheet of List of Recorded Brands (item 464), and the small broadside Union Ticket (item 597). Perhaps the Deseret Almanac and Mormon Way-Bill were not included because the print shop took a financial interest in the pieces rather than charge the publishers for printing them. Songs for the 24th July may have been omitted because the shop did not charge the Church—its owner—for printing done in its behalf. Why the brand sheet and Union Ticket were not listed is a mystery.

The first entry in the document is dated about a month and a half after the print shop was moved from the Mint to the Council House. Located across the street from the Mint on the southwest corner of South Temple and Main streets, the Council House served as shop’s home for fourteen months, until it was relocated in the Deseret Store on the northeast corner of South Temple and Main.³

521 PRATT, Orson. Divine authenticity of the Book of Mormon. By Orson Pratt, one of the twelve apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. [Liverpool: Printed by R. James, 1850–51]

6 parts, 96 pp. 21.5 cm.

522 PRATT, Orson. Divine authenticity of the Book of Mormon. By Orson Pratt, one of the twelve apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. [Caption title] [At foot of p. 16:] Liverpool: S. W. Richards, 15, Wilton Street. 1852. Printed by R. James, 39, South Castle Street. [At head of title, right:] [No. 1.

16 pp. 21.5 cm.

Divine Authenticity is a six-part series, published by Orson Pratt at the end of his term as president of the British Mission. The first four parts are chronologically the tenth through thirteenth pieces in his 1848–51 group of pamphlets; the fifth and sixth parts together with Great First Cause (item 543) are the last three of his 1848–51 pamphlets. Each part has the caption title: Divine authenticity of the Book of Mormon. By Orson Pratt, one of the twelve apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The number of each part is at the head of the title at the right, all in the same form—for example, [No. 1. Each part is in sixteen pages, the whole continuously paginated. The first edition of part 1 has the colophon: Liverpool: Printed by R. James, 39, South Castle Street. Part 2 has the same colophon, while the other four parts have the colophon: R. James, Printer, 39, South Castle Street, Liverpool. The six parts are each dated at the end, following the address 15, Wilton Street, Liverpool, and these dates are, respectively: October 15, November 1, December 1, and December 15, 1850; January 7 and January 15, 1851. Orson Pratt included the six parts in his volume O. Pratt’s Works (items 551–53), identified as “Second Series” in the table of contents, and it is in this form that the pamphlets are usually found today.

As far as it is known, parts 2–6 were published in just one edition. Part 1 occurs in two editions, the second (item 522) distinguished from the first by Liverpool: S. W. Richards, 15, Wilton Street. 1852 at the foot of p. 16. The first edition of part 1 occurs in two variants, which are typographically identical except for the last word on p. [1]: the or th. Part 6 also occurs in two variants, differing only in the presence of absence of the date January 15th, 1851 at the end.

The Millennial Star of September 1, 1850, noted that a “Series of Pamphlets, by O. Pratt, upon the ‘Divine Authenticity of the Book of Mormon,’ will shortly appear,” and one month later the Star announced that the first two numbers would be sent out with the October 15 issue of the magazine.¹ The European Mission financial records indicate that orders for parts 1 through 6 were first filled on October 4, October 24, November 20, December 6, January 16, and January 31, respectively. Some copies of part 6 were certainly out before January 31, since Orson Pratt sailed for America on February 2 with thirty-five crates of O. Pratt’s Works. The mission records also show that by December 21, 1850, the mission office had distributed the first four parts in about 6,300; 6,100; 5,700; and 5,900 copies, respectively, and on that date had on hand 10,519; 16,712; 16,356; and 17,918 copies. Moreover, the records list parts 5 and 6 in 23,000 each on December 21—which probably represents orders placed for these two parts but not yet delivered.² Since the numbers recorded in the financial records for Great First Cause clearly do not include those copies that Orson Pratt had bound in O. Pratt’s Works and took to America (see item 543), it is likely that the numbers above for the various parts of Divine Authenticity also do not include those bound in O. Pratt’s Works.

The second edition of part 1 was published about two years after the first and advertised in the Star of November 13, 1852. It was printed in 6,000 copies at a cost of £12 6s., undoubtedly because part 1 had initially been printed in a smaller edition than the others.³ The Brigham Young University Lee Library has a copy of part 5 in a printed blue stiff paper wrapper issued by the Shropshire Conference. An empty wrapper issued by the Bradford Conference in the Harvard University Houghton Library has the price of Divine Authenticity in the catalogue on the back: each part, 2d. a copy.⁴

The overall theme of Divine Authenticity is the need for present-day revelation, the Book of Mormon being one important aspect of God’s revealed word to the modern world. Some of it, particularly the last three parts, overlaps with Orson Pratt’s earlier pamphlets, especially his Remarkable Visions, Divine Authority, and Reply to a Pamphlet (items 393–94, 367–70, 406–8). The first half of part 1 contends that the scriptures do not preclude a revelation such as the Book of Mormon, arguing, for example, that Revelation 22:18–19 applies only to the book of Revelation, not to the whole Bible. The second half maintains that it is unreasonable to think that God would speak to men anciently but decline to do so in modern times, and part 2 argues at length that continued revelation is “indispensably necessary” for the governance of God’s church on the earth. Part 3 points out that the Bible neglects to answer a number of important questions about church practice and therefore cannot be considered a sufficient guide. The Catholic Church has substituted tradition for revelation and has had “no regular succession of the orders of the priesthood,” it continues, and is consequently an apostate church along with “her daughters the Protestants.” Quoting from Joseph Smith’s personal “History,” part 4 discusses the events surrounding the founding the Church—the visit of the angel in 1823, the acquisition of the gold plates and the testimonies of Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris, the first vision, the restoration of the priesthood, the miracle with Newel Knight, and Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon’s vision of the Savior in February 1832 (now D&C 76). Part 5 contends that God’s work is always confirmed by miracles, and as evidence that the Latter-day Saints possess His priesthood, it includes twenty-six letters and statements from various British Mormons—reprinted from the Millennial Star—attesting to incidents of miraculous healing. Expanding on the discussions in Divine Authority and Reply to a Pamphlet, part 6 uses the book of Revelation, Daniel 2, Isaiah 29, Genesis 48–49, Deuteronomy 33, Ezekiel 37, and the 85th Psalm to argue that the Bible predicts the appearance of the Book of Mormon.

Item 521: Flake-Draper 6452. CSmH, CtY, CU-B, MH, NjP, NN, UPB, USlC, UU. Item 522: Flake-Draper 6452a. NN, UPB, USlC, UU.

523 GIBSON, William. [Handbill challenging Woodville Woodman to a public debate and specifying the subjects and terms of the debate. Manchester? 1850]

524 [Handbill advertising a debate in Bolton between William Gibson and Woodville Woodman, October 24 and 31, and November 7, 1850. Manchester? 1850]

525 GIBSON, William. Report of three nights’ public discussion in Bolton, between William Gibson, H.P., presiding elder of the Manchester Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the Rev. Woodville Woodman, minister of the New Jerusalem Church. Reported by G. D. Watt. Liverpool: Published by Franklin D. Richards, 15, Wilton Street, and for sale by agents throughout Great Britain and Ireland. 1851.

[i–ii][1]–46 pp. 21 cm. Blue printed wrappers.

William Gibson had been president of the Manchester Conference for almost a year when he participated in the debate in Bolton with Woodville Woodman, the minister of the Swedenborgian New Jerusalem Church in Kersley (see item 372).¹ Woodman was a well-known religious debater in the Manchester area, and in April 1850 he openly challenged the Mormons to a public discussion, which was accepted by one of the local leaders—in William Gibson’s name, without his knowledge or approval. With some annoyance, Gibson wrote to Orson Pratt for advice and then accepted the challenge and commenced negotiating with Woodman over the topics and format. That summer he left Manchester to visit his former field of labor in Scotland, and Woodman “published a tract saying that [Gibson] had fled & would not discuss with him”—no copy of which is known.² As soon as he learned of this, Gibson returned to Manchester and discovered that there was to be a “grand Tea Party” to be held in Woodman’s chapel in a few days. “I immediately drew out a Bill,” he writes in his journal,

wherein I stated in plain terms the Subjects & Manner in which I had offered to meet him & on which terms I was willing to meet him still & left it to his friends & the Public to judge of how much honour & applause he was worthy if he did not accept them this I had presented in good sized Bills & got quite a number posted up in Manchester & vicinity while several hundred I had neatly folded & got two of the brethren to dress themselves & go on the night of the Tea Party & stand on each side of the entrance gate & hand one to each Person who went in this had the desired effect.

The debate was scheduled for successive Thursday evenings, October 24, 31, and November 7, 1850, in the largest hall in Bolton—picked because it was easily accessible by railway. It was advertised with a printed handbill—also not located—which undoubtedly listed the topics for the three nights: (1) “What is God? Is He an Immaterial Being, possessing neither Passions nor any Properties of Matter?” (2) “The Godhead: Are the Father and the Son two distinct and separate persons, as much so as any Father and Son on earth?” (3) “The true nature of the signs promised to follow faith, in Mark, xvi. 17, 18. Are the terms there used, such as tongues, serpents, devils, &c., to be understood in the literal sense?” Woodman took the affirmative on the first night, Gibson the affirmative on the second and third.³

During the first session, Woodman asserted that the Latter-day Saints “hold that anything that is material exists, and what is immaterial is nothing at all, and cannot exist,” and then argued that love, hatred, and joy exist but are not material objects. Gibson, echoing Orson Pratt’s Absurdities of Immaterialism, countered that love, hatred, etc., can not exist “independent of substance” and then quoted from a letter of Woodman’s that he believed God “possesses both substance and form” and “his divine person has parts as well as a body,” and from Emanuel Swedenborg’s The True Christian Religion that “both substance and form may be predicated or affirmed of God.”

At the beginning of the second session, Gibson read from a New Jerusalem tract that the church worships “a divine and infinite man . . . the ‘Father’ being the soul, and ‘the Son’ the body of that Divine Man, who is named Jesus Christ, and the operation thence proceeding being the Holy Ghost”—with which Woodman essentially agreed—and then quoted a series of biblical passages to demonstrate that the Father and Son are distinct beings. In the third session Woodman argued that the terms used to describe the spiritual gifts—“cast out devils, speak with new tongues, take up serpents”—should be understood metaphorically, while Gibson used Mark, 1 Corinthians, and the book of Acts to show that the spiritual gifts were literally experienced by the apostles and their followers.

Although the rules stipulated that the debate was not to be reported or published, both participants had reporters there, George D. Watt stenographically recording the discussions for Gibson.⁴ When he discovered on the third night that Woodman was planning to give two lectures following the debate, Gibson declared himself “no longer bound by that rule by which it was agreed that the discussion was not to be printed,” and during November he prepared Watt’s report for the press. The Millennial Star of December 15 noted that it had received the report and would publish “a few thousand for the benefit of the public,” and in its issue of January 1, 1851—which appeared late—it advertised “Gibson’s Discussion” as ready for sale.⁵ That month Orson Pratt produced the bound volume O. Pratt’s Works, which contains his sixteen 1848–51 pamphlets, John Taylor’s Three Nights’ Public Discussion, and Gibson’s Report of Three Nights’ Public Discussion, and it is in such a book that Gibson’s report is usually found (see items 551–53). Individual copies of the pamphlet were offered at 6d. each in England and at 25¢ in America.⁶

Report of Three Nights’ Public Discussion was issued in a blue wrapper, the title page reprinted on the front—with no apostrophe after Nights. The inside front wrapper has the Subjects of Discussions for the three nights, and the back wrapper is plain.⁷ The pamphlet is known in three states, distinguished as follows: (1) first word, next-to-the-last line, p. [1]: darkness; (2) first word, next-to-the-last line, p. [1]: ness, and first word of text, p. 46: and; (3) first word, next-to-the-last line, p. [1]: ness, and first word of text, p. 46: declares. In state 2, pp. [1]–2, 15–16, 19–20, and 29–30 are a different setting from state 1; the other pages are the same setting. In state 3, pp. 35–36 and 45–46 are reset; the rest of the pages are the setting of state 2. All states have the colophon R. James, Printer, 39, South Castle Street, Liverpool at the foot of p. 46.⁸ The European Mission financial records indicate that Report of Three Nights’ Public Discussion was printed in an edition of 15,000, at a cost of £85 10s., probably in two runs of 8,000 and 7,000.⁹

Item 525: Flake-Draper 3561. CSmH, CtY, CU-B, ICN, MH, NjP, NN, UPB, USlC, UU.

526 FLANIGAN, James Henry. [Handbill. Birmingham? 1850]

Noting in his diary that he had remained in Birmingham on Tuesday, October 29, 1850, James H. Flanigan went to a fellowship meeting that evening, and “attended to getting out Some Bills & Tract Couvers &c.” the next day. One week later, in the evening, he “met a large Company of Saints to Couver Tracts at the School Rooms over the Chapel [on] Livery Street.”¹

One infers from these entries that Flanigan had a set of wrappers printed for the tracts to be distributed in the Birmingham Conference. He had met with some of the elders on Monday evening, October 14, and had organized a “Tract Committy to get up voluntery subscriptions to pay for Tracts & circulate them through Birm[ingham].” The following week he had visited several branches to initiate the tract circulation and had ordered 10,000 of Orson Pratt’s tracts, and by October 28 the Tract Committee had raised “some £9” to pay for this effort.² His diary suggests that, having obtained the wrappers from the printer, he assembled a number of branch members at the Livery Street chapel on November 6 to stitch them onto the pamphlets. One might guess that the unlocated handbill he had printed along with the tract covers repeated an advertisement of Latter-day Saint meeting times and locations included on the wrappers and was used in conjunction with the tract circulation.

527 Grand concert. A grand concert will be held in the Bowery, on Saturday evening, the 9th inst., when a variety of new and amusing pieces will be performed, which are as follows: Programme. [25 lines] Doors opened at 5 1-2, and performance will commence at 6 1-2 O’clock precisely. Tickets, 25 cents—can be had at the Tithing Office, and of the members of the Band. W. Pitt, Capt. November 5th, 1850. [Salt Lake City, 1850]

Broadside 45.5 x 21 cm.

William Pitt arrived in Great Salt Lake City in Edward Hunter’s company on October 13, 1850. Traveling with him was another member of his Nauvoo band, Jacob F. Hutchinson (see item 259).¹ Most of the other members of the Nauvoo band had already arrived in Utah and had reorganized the band and begun to perform (see items 498–99). Item 527 shows that Pitt assumed the leadership of the reorganized band within a week or two after reaching Salt Lake City and immediately scheduled a public performance—undoubtedly his first in the Valley. An advertisement for the concert in the Deseret News of November 2, signed by Pitt and dated October 30, noted that the proceeds would “be applied to liquidating the debts on the carriage, paying for musical instruments, &c.” (see items 498–99).²

The Deseret News shop charged Pitt $8 for printing the bill, suggesting that it was issued in approximately 100 copies.³ Among the pieces advertised in it are several numbers by the band, two violin solos and a flute solo by Pitt himself, some “comic” songs, and a song or reading by Hiram B. Clawson, “Yankee Story.” During intermission there was to be a drum solo by Edward P. Duzette!

Pitt had another “Concert” bill printed about April 1, 1851, at a cost of $9—no copy of which is known. Undoubtedly this was for “a Concert of Vocal and Instrumental Music, together with other exhibitions, in the Bowery, on Saturday evening, the 5th of April,” as advertised in the News of March 22. This ad went on to say that “the proceeds [would] be applied in liquidation of the debts for instruments, music paper, &c., procured by the Band, and for military purposes.” Tickets were 25¢ each.⁴

Flake-Draper 3662e. Saunders 27. USlC.

528 BERNHISEL, John Milton. To the authors, editors and publishers of the United States:— [At head of first column] [At end:] John M. Bernhisel. New-York, Nov. 12th. 1850. [New York? 1850]

Broadside 25 x 19.5 cm. In two columns, on grayish off-white paper.

529 BERNHISEL, John Milton. To the authors, editors and publishers of the United States:— [At end:] John M. Bernhisel. New-York, November 12th, 1850. [New York? 1850?]

Broadside 25.5 x 20 cm. In a single column, on blue paper.

Once the indefatigable Bernhisel had learned of President Fillmore’s choice of officers for Utah Territory, he turned his attention to a library for the new territory and obtained the president’s appointment as the agent to select and purchase the books. The fourteenth section of the organic act had appropriated $5,000 “to be expended by and under the direction of the said Governor of the Territory of Utah, in the purchase of a library, to be kept at the seat of government,” and Bernhisel went after the money.¹ “I endeavored to procure an additional appropriation of five thousand dollars for that object, but failed,” he wrote to Brigham Young from New York on November 9, 1850.

I then made an effort to obtain two thousand five hundred dollars to defray the expenses of transporting the library to its destination. This, too, was refused. Finally, I made application to have five thousand dollars of the appropriation of the twenty thousand dollars for public buildings transferred to the library fund. The Committee declined doing this at present, but promised if we would reserve that amount of the building fund that they would transfer it hereafter. At the approaching session of Congress I shall renew my efforts to procure another appropriation. Having received the appointment to purchase the library, I shall endeavor to discharge the duties of it faithfully and conscientiously, for I feel the responsibility of them. I shall ransack all the principal book store of Philadelphia, New York, and perhaps of Boston; examine public libraries and the catalogues thereof, consult literary and scientific men, in short, I shall spare no labor, physical nor mental, in selecting and purchasing the books. I am preparing a circular which I design to address to authors, editors, and publishers in the United States, requesting them to present gratuitously copies of their works to the library for the Territory of Utah. This I propose to print not only in circular form, but also in some of the daily and other journals. The Hon. George Briggs, a Representative in Congress from this city, has kindly offered to frank the circulars, and consented to receive donation of books by mail or otherwise. I shall forward you a copy of the circular, when printed.²

Three days later Bernhisel issued his circular. Subsequently Congress provided the $5,000, and for several months Bernhisel labored to assemble the library. The Frontier Guardian of March 7, 1851, for example, ran a piece from the New York Picayune that “this amiable and excellent gentlemen” was in the city “making purchases at auction and elsewhere, wherever he can expend the appropriation to the best advantage. He also receives donations of books or other publications from authors, publishers and others.” The Fifth General Epistle, April 7, 1851, reported that some of the “papers and pamphlets” had reached the Valley, and by the time the first territorial legislature convened that September the bulk of the books had arrived in Salt Lake City (see item 741).³

One copy of item 528 at the LDS Church is printed on a single sheet of grayish off-white paper (25 x 38.7 cm.), folded to make four unnumbered pages with the text on the first page. This copy bears a handwritten address on the fourth page with a November New York postmark, franked “Geo Briggs M C,” and Bernhisel’s handwritten note on the bottom of the first page: “Be pleased to send also a copy of your catalogue to the Hon Mr. Briggs J M. B.” Item 529 is printed on a single blue sheet (25.2 x 39.5 cm.), folded to make four unnumbered pages with the text on the first page. Generally it is textually the same as item 528 but shows a number of minor improvements, including the insertion of the street address of George Briggs. It seems clear, therefore, that item 528 is the earlier.⁴

To the Authors, Editors and Publishers opens with the assertion that education is the birthright of every American and that a library is vital for the prosperity of a territory cut off from the eastern depositories of learning. It asks authors and publishers to donate their books and newspapers to the territorial library and forward them to the Hon. George Briggs in New York. “The autograph of the Author or Donor will increase the value of his gift,” it concludes, “and convey to the reader of a succeeding generation a pleasing memento of the man to whom he may be indebted.” It was reprinted in the Frontier Guardian of December 25, 1850, and in the Deseret News of May 3, 1851, in both instances from item 528.

John M. Bernhisel was born in Pennsylvania, June 23, 1799, graduated in medicine from the University of Pennsylvania, and joined the Church sometime before 1841, when he was called to preside over the branch in New York. Two years later he moved to Nauvoo, where he was taken into the Council of Fifty, and in 1848 he made the trek to Utah. After lobbying Congress and the president over the establishment of Utah Territory (see item 435), he was elected the territory’s delegate to Congress, serving five terms, 1851–59 and 1861–63. He died in Salt Lake City, September 28, 1881.⁵

Item 528: Flake-Draper 440a. MWA, USlC. Item 529: Flake-Draper 440. CSmH, CtY, MWA, NjP, UPB, USlC, UU.

530 LITTLE, Jesse Carter. [Circular of Elder J. C. Little, to the Saints scattered throughout the Eastern states. Peterborough? 1850?]

No copy of item 530 is located, and it is not certain that it was separately printed. What is known about it comes from the Frontier Guardian of November 13, 1850, which notes, “Our friend J. C. Little, of Peterboro N.H., has issued a circular to the Saints under his charge in the East, which will be found in another column.” On the same page, in three-quarters of a column, the Guardian prints what seems to be excerpts from Little’s circular under the heading Circular of Elder J. C. Little, to the Saints Scattered throughout the Eastern States. Extracts. Included under this heading are: a letter of Brigham Young to Little asking him to come to the Valley; a letter of Wilford Woodruff, dated at Cambridgeport, Mass., April 3, 1850, appointing Little the presiding elder “through the Eastern States and British Provinces,” while adding, “I do not want this appointment to detain you one hour after you can close up your labors and gather with the Saints in the Valley”; and Little’s statement that he will leave Boston for Salt Lake City the first of April next, urging the Eastern Saints to prepare to go with him. If indeed it was separately printed, item 530 was Little’s fourth such circular (see items 304, 306, 313).

In spite of his announcement, Little did not reach the Salt Lake Valley in 1851. After pausing in Kanesville for about a year, he and his family arrived in Salt Lake City on October 12, 1852, with the Allen Weeks ox train.¹

531 Festival. [Ornament] Mr. [blank space] The honor of your company is respectfully solicited at a supper party, at the Bath House, near the Warm Spring, on Wednesday, the 27th inst., at 2 O’clock, P.M. Supper will be served at 5 O’clock, precisely. Price, $3, pr. couple. Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, Willard Richards, Presidents. G. S. L. City, Nov. 22, 1850.

Broadside 16.5 x 9.5 cm.

The only located copy of this invitation—addressed to Mrs. John Taylor, whose husband was in France at the time—is on a sheet 16.4 x 19.3 cm., folded to make four pages, with print only on the first page and a handwritten address on the fourth.

The Warm Spring Bath House, located near the southeast corner of what is now Third West and Reed Avenue, between Seventh and Eighth North, was about a third of a mile south of a natural warm spring. It was one of the early public works projects, inaugurated by the Council of Fifty on February 17, 1849, and constructed with tithing funds at a cost of $6,600.¹ The Deseret News of July 13, 1850, announced that it was open “for the accommodation of gentlemen,” and on November 27 “the First Presidency, a number of the Apostles and other leading men” formally opened it with a festival at which Heber C. Kimball offered the dedicatory prayer. Four months later, James Hendricks, the manager, advertised it in the News, noting that printed tickets were ready for sale, at the following prices, per quarter: a single person, 50¢; families of two to four person, $1; five to eight persons, $2; eight to sixteen, $3; and families of sixteen to twenty-four, $3.50. Patrons were to furnish their own towels.²

Jean Rio Griffiths Baker visited the bathhouse in October 1851 and recorded the following description:

A narrow stream from the spring has been conveyed to a bathing house very near, which contains eight baths into which the warm water is continually flowing. There is also a large room used for dancing and some smaller rooms used for refreshment.³

During its first year or two, it was popular spot for parties and weddings (see item 651). In 1853 Jesse C. Little opened a hotel on the premises, but by 1855 the bathhouse had been converted into a tannery. In the mid-1860s a new bathing complex was built on the block immediately to the north, which was in use until 1922, when it was destroyed by a fire.⁴

Flake-Draper 3332a. Saunders 28. USlC.

532 Report of the Sheffield conference, of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, held in the Hall of Science, Rockingham-St., Sheffield, November 24th, 1850. President. J, [sic] W. Cummings. Secretaries. H. J. Hudson. S. J. Lees. Sheffield: Stephen New, Printer, Market-Place and Waingate. 1850.

12 pp. 21.5 cm.

This is the third of five located Sheffield Conference reports, the second under James W. Cummings’s presidency (see items 444, 488). It summarizes three sessions held on November 24, 1850, six weeks before Cummings sailed for America. Following a table on p. [2] with the statistics of thirty-two branches, it reports the speeches at these meetings, including the comments of Lewis Robbins, Cummings’s successor, Cummings’s farewell remarks, and John V. Long’s tribute to Cummings. A financial statement on p. 4 shows that the conference owed the Millennial Star office £132 12s. 6½d., with cash and books on hand and receivables in the same amount.

Henry J. Hudson, who joined S. J. Lees as a secretary for this conference, was born in London, November 28, 1822, baptized into the Church in 1848, and came to America in 1851. Locating first in Alton, Illinois, he moved to Genoa, Nebraska, in 1857, and then to Columbus six years later, where he lived until his death in 1903. For the last thirty-eight years of his life he was an active member of the RLDS Church, and in Nebraska he served as a justice of the peace, county clerk, member of the state legislature, county commissioner, and county judge.¹

Flake-Draper 1951. ICN, MH, UPB, USlC, UU.

533 CAMPBELL, Robert Lang. Notice. Mr. Robert Campbell, a Latter-day Saint missionary, from Eastern Upper California, North America, will deliver a course of lectures on the fulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ, as restored to earth in these days, in its ancient purity, accompanied with all its privileges and blessings; also, set forth the prophecies which are yet to be fulfilled, as spoken by holy men of old, who were moved upon by the Holy Ghost. In the Loudoun Hall, Boat Vennel, every Sabbath-day, at eleven a.m., and six p.m. Also, on each Wednesday night, commencing at eight o’clock, when all classes are respectfully invited to attend and hear for themselves. A wise man will hear a matter and then judge. “Doth our law judge any man before it hear him,” John vii. 51. On Wednesday evenings, pamphlets, explanatory of our faith will be exposed for sale; also, any books published by the Latter-day Saints can be had, if ordered. Ayr, 25th Nov., 1850. [At foot:] Printed by Thomas M. Gemmell, at the Ayr Advertiser Office [Ayr, 1850]

Broadside 28.5 x 22 cm.

Born in Kilbarchan, Renfrewshire, Scotland, January 21, 1825, Robert L. Campbell converted to Mormonism in 1842, immigrated to Nauvoo three years later, and made the trek to Utah in 1848. At the April 1850 general conference he was called to a mission in Great Britain, and on September 2 he reached Liverpool and was immediately assigned to labor in the Glasgow Conference. Twelve weeks later he published the broadside above to advertise his presence in Ayr, a coastal city twenty-five miles south of his birthplace. In September 1851 he took the presidency of the Glasgow Conference and the following February assumed the pastoral responsibility for the Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Dundee conferences (see items 650, 698, 728). Returning to Utah in 1854, he served as a clerk in the Church Historian’s Office, as chief clerk of the territorial House of Representatives, and beginning in 1864 as territorial superintendent of common schools. He died in Salt Lake City, April 11, 1874.¹

Flake-Draper 1123a. USlC.

534 YOUNG, Brigham. Governor’s message; Deseret, December 2, 1850. To the senators and representatives of the state of Deseret. [Caption title] [Signed at end:] Brigham Young. [Salt Lake City, 1850?]

3 pp. 21 cm. Text in two columns.

The Deseret News of December 14, 1850, reports the opening of the second annual session of the legislature of the provisional state of Deseret in one sentence, noting that the General Assembly met on Monday, December 2, “in the Representatives Hall, organized, received the Governor’s Message, continued its sitting four days, and adjourned to the first Monday in January.” In what form the governor’s message was “received” is not clear; Hosea Stout’s diary, for example, does not mention it.¹ “Account of Job Printing done in the News Office” lists the message under the date December 28 and indicates that it was printed in 100 copies at a cost of $12.² The message was reprinted in the Deseret News of January 11, 1851, from the pamphlet setting.

Brigham Young begins his message with a reference to the creation of Utah Territory, remarking that the provisional government will continue to function until it is formally superseded by a territorial government.³ Then he moves to other issues. He asserts, for example, that it is preferable to levy a tax than incur a debt and reports that the regents of the University of Deseret have established schools in various parts of the area without any expense to the university. He mentions two expeditions against the Indians and states that no time or expense has been spared in an effort to conciliate them; still he recommends a more thorough organization of the militia in order to protect the settlements from Indian attacks. He asks “capitalists of this state” to invest in various kinds of manufacturing and particularly endorses the production of sugar and iron ore, and, observing that “from this city, a railroad will more probably be constructed to Iron county, as also continuously to Southern California, terminating at San Diego,” he urges the legislature to encourage the building of a railroad in any way it can.

Flake-Draper 2791. Saunders 29. CtY, UPB, USlC.

535 Rules and regulations for the governing of both houses of the general assembly of the state of Deseret, when in joint session; and for each respective house, when in separate session. Adopted by the Senate and House of Representatives, December 2, 1850. [Caption title] [Salt Lake City, 1850]

3 pp. 24.5 cm.

Rules and Regulations contains fourteen numbered rules governing the function of the two houses for the second annual session of the provisional legislature, followed by a list of the joint standing committees. These rules were adopted and the committees appointed on the opening day of the legislature’s second session, December 2, 1850. Rules and Regulations was struck off after December 4, when Wilford Woodruff and Charles C. Rich—who are listed on p. 2—replaced Newel K. Whitney and Cornelius P. Lott in the Senate, most likely by December 9, when it was listed in “Account of Job Printing done in the News Office.” The Deseret News charged $10 for printing it, and a comparison of this cost with that for the governor’s message (preceding item) suggests that it was issued in about 80 copies.¹

Several of the rules deal with absent or disorderly members. Rules 3, 4, and 5, for example, stipulate that any legislator not present at the roll call would be subject to a fine of 50 cents, one dollar if absent thirty minutes after the roll call, and two dollars if still absent after one hour. These rules, according to Hosea Stout’s diary, were actually adopted early in the legislature’s first session, on January 9, 1850.²

Saunders 30. DLC, USlC.

536 To whom it may concern. We, the several branches of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints composing the Manchester Conference, in conference assembled, at the Carpenters’ Hall, Manchester, England, on the 8th of December, 1850, do hereby tender to our much-beloved President William Gibson, high priest, this letter of recommendation, and while we deeply regret losing the benefit of his [First 7 lines] [Signed at end:] Cyrus H. Whellock [sic], President of Manchester Conference. James Walker, President of Manchester Branch. James Johnson, Clerk. Samuel Hawthornthwaite. [Manchester? 1850?]

Broadside 29.5 x 19.5 cm. Ornamental border. On vellum.

The only located copy of this piece is pasted on p. 256 of William Gibson’s Journal No. 3, in the LDS Church Archives. Gibson had served as president of the Manchester Conference for about a year when he was succeeded by Cyrus H. Wheelock at the December 8 conference (see items 372, 441, 523–25). And as was customary in the British Mission during this period, the conference presented him with this tribute. “We testify,” it reads, “that his labours amongst us have been unceasing, his counsel wise and judicious, while his conduct, both as a man of God and an officer in the Church of Christ, has been upright, honourable and pure.” A month after the conference, Gibson sailed for America, in charge of a company of emigrants.¹

Nothing is known about James Walker and James Johnson except that Walker joined the Church in 1841 and apparently was still active in the Manchester Branch in 1857.² Samuel Hawthornthwaite later distinguished himself by writing the anti-Mormon book Mr. Hawthornthwaite’s Adventures Among the Mormons, as an Elder During Eight Years.³ Why his name is on the tribute is not known. Perhaps he was the one who drafted it (see item 605).

Flake-Draper 9723a. USlC.

537 Report of the Edinburgh conference, (from June 9th to December 8th, 1850.) held in Whitefield Chapel, High Street. C. Dunn, President. G. P. Waugh, Clerk. [Caption title] [Edinburgh? 1850?]

2[2] pp. 21 cm.

Second of three located Edinburgh Conference reports (see items 491, 728), this report was issued about a month before Dunn left England to return to America.¹ It gives brief summaries of two sessions on Sunday, December 8, 1850, at which the Aberdeen, Arbroath, Dundee, Inverness, and Perth branches were organized as the new Dundee Conference, and James Marsden was sustained as the president of the Edinburgh Conference (see item 703). At the conclusion it was “Agreed, by the Presidents, that 500 copies of this Report be printed, and sold at half-penny per copy.” George Peden Waugh’s poetic address, dated December 1850, is included on p. [3] (see item 403), and a table on p. [4] gives the statistics of twenty-one branches. A financial report at the side of this table shows that the conference owed the Millennial Star office about £39 and was owed about £23 by the branches.

Flake-Draper 1916. UPB, USlC.

538 [Demy placards for the Stars. Liverpool, 1850]

539 [List of works. Liverpool, 1850]

Under the date December 16, 1850, the European Mission financial records have the following two entries: “To printing . . . 500 Demy placards for the Stars for Nos 19, 20, 21, 22, 23 600 [ditto] No. 24” . . . 7.15.0.”; and “To printing 500 Demy pds (Lists of Works) 1.5.0.”¹ Some hint as to what these were may be provided by the Millennial Star of July 15, 1851, which advertised a “new Catalogue of Works” and remarked:

We have also considered it advisable to issue a number of small hand-bills, describing the Millennial Star, and giving a list of the works as contained on the larger catalogue. It is designed to supply each agent with a quantity, that he may present one to unbelievers when purchasing our works. By this means more general information will be given respecting them; and we have no doubt the sale will be materially increased thereby, and consequently many be brought to a knowledge of the Truth, who otherwise might have remained in ignorance of the principles and doctrines of our Holy Faith for a much longer period.²

One might guess, therefore, that the “Demy placards for the Stars” were handbills advertising the magazine and a few others books, possibly slightly different for each issue. Further entries in the financial records indicate that Richard James printed about 600 or 700 such bills for most, if not all, of the numbers of the Star during 1851 and continued this practice in 1852 and subsequent years.³ The entry “500 Demy p[lacar]ds (Lists of Works)” undoubtedly refers to a broadside catalogue of publications (see items 589, 678).

540 Grand concert of vocal and instrumental music. By the St. Louis Brass Band, D. Ballo,—Leader. On New Year’s eve, Tuesday, December 31st, in the Music Hall. Programme. [51 lines in two columns] The Kanesville Elocution Club have kindly volunteered their services on the above occasion. Admittance 50 cents, gentleman and lady 75 cents. Children half price. Tickets can be procured at the Guardian Office, and at the door. Doors open at 6 o’clock—Curtain rises at half past 6 o’clock. Kanesville, Dec. 28, 1850. [At foot:] Frontier Guardian—Print—Kanesville, Iowa. [1850]

Broadside 52.5 x 29 cm.

Dominico Ballo was born in Sicily, March 21, 1805, immigrated to New York as a young man, and served for twenty-two years as a musician with the U.S. military, including four years at West Point. In 1847 he converted to Mormonism in St. Louis and that fall organized the St. Louis Brass Band among the Church members there and came with his band to Council Bluffs. Four years later he made the trek to Utah. Soon after arriving in Salt Lake City, he organized Ballo’s Band—with seven B-flat clarinets, one E-flat clarinet (which Ballo played), two piccolos, four cornets, one ophicleide, three bass horns, one trombone, and drums—and on May 29, 1852, he and his band performed their first public concert. For the next nine years Ballo’s was the most popular band in the territory, until his sudden death on Sunday, June 9, 1861.¹

Item 540 advertised a concert in the Kanesville Music Hall, which was promoted in the Frontier Guardian of December 25, 1850, and reviewed two weeks later. Commenting that the program “went off in fine style,” the Guardian chastised its readers for their lack of attendance and urged them to support the band in a series of concerts to be given in the various branches. “Mr. Ballo, the leader, is one of the best Musicians that the country affords,” this article continues. “Patronize them and thereby aid them towards getting to the Mountains.”

The Music Hall, erected by Orson Hyde on what was then Hyde Street, southeast of the intersection of Hyde and Main, had been finished a year earlier.² “This building is now completed at an expense of about three hundred and fifty dollars,” the Guardian of December 26, 1849, noted. “The church has the use of it on Sundays and Sunday evenings; and also one evening during the week on their own terms. It was built at individual expense. Every person can pay to the proprietor whatever he or she may think proper.”

Flake-Draper 3662f. UU.

541 JONES, Margaret. Can newydd, o ganmoliaeth i lywyddiaeth Eglwys Iesu Grist o Saint y Dyddiau Diweddaf. Cyfansoddwyd a chyhoeddwyd, trwy ganiatâd, gan Margaret Jones, Georgetown, (sef, Eos Cymru Newydd.) [Caption title] [A new song, of praise to the presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Composed and published, with permission, by Margaret Jones, Georgetown, (that is, New Wales’s Nightingale.)] [At foot of p. 4:] Argraffwyd gan J. Davis, Merthyr. [Printed by J. Davis, Merthyr.] [1850?]

4 pp. 17 cm.

Flake-Draper 4491. Dennis 49. UPB.

542 The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was organized on the 6th day of April, 1830, with six members, in North America. [14 lines followed by a table] The number of Saints in the British Isles, June, 1850, twenty seven thousand eight hundred and sixty three. The number of Saints in the world, about three hundred thousand. [At foot:] J. B. Franklin, Type, Etc., 5, Northampton Street, King’s Cross. [London, 1850?]

Broadside 20.5 x 13.5 cm.

The only located copy of this piece is bound with a group of London Conference reports in the nineteenth volume of the Eli H. Peirce Mormon pamphlets in the Harvard University Houghton Library. Following the opening lines given in the entry above, it has a very brief, slightly inaccurate, account of the introduction of Mormonism in England and then in London, followed by a table showing the statistics for the London Conference as of December 1845, December 1846, June 1847, February 1848, and December 1848. These statistics were undoubtedly taken from the Millennial Star, with some mistakes. The figure 27,863 for the membership of the Church in the British Isles came from the June 1850 half-yearly report in the Star of July 1.¹ The estimate of the Church’s worldwide population was high, of course, by a factor of five or six.

J. B. Franklin, the printer, was baptized into the Church on July 16, 1850. During 1851 his address was 5, Northampton St., King’s Cross; in 1852 it was 17, Prince’s Road, Norland Square, Notting Hill, and then Whetstone, Middlesex.² So the broadside would seem to have been struck off no later than 1851. Indeed, it was likely printed before the December 1850 half-yearly report appeared in the Star of January 1, 1851.³ Who published it or why it was published is not known. Perhaps Franklin issued it himself to advertise his services to his new religious associates.

John Benjamin Franklin printed at least six other pieces for the London Conference (items 579, 619, 635, 636, 703, 761). Born in London, May 6, 1826, he assumed the leadership of the Whetstone branch in June 1852, but in April 1853 the Millennial Star warned its readers that he had been visiting various conferences and obtaining money under false pretenses, and that year he was cut off from the Church. About 1858 he published the first of a series of anti-Mormon tracts in which he professed to have spent a year in Salt Lake City and to have managed the Deseret News print shop—claims that are certainly false.⁴

Flake-Draper 1888. MH.

543 PRATT, Orson. Great first cause, or the self-moving forces of the universe. By Orson Pratt, A.M. [Caption title] [At end:] Wilton Street, Liverpool, Jan. 1, 1851. [At foot of p. 16:] R. James, Printer, 39, South Castle Street, Liverpool. [1851]

16 pp. 21.5 cm.

Great First Cause, issued during the month prior to his departure for America, is among the last three pieces in Orson Pratt’s 1848–51 series of pamphlets (see items 367–70, 373–86, 393–94, 406–8, 428–29, 436–38, 521–22). Unlike the others, its publication is not reported in the Millennial Star, and as far as it is known, it was printed in just one edition in English. The European Mission financial records list 13,000 copies in its inventory of December 21, 1850, which probably represents an order that had been placed but not yet delivered. Since Orson included Great First Cause in his bound volume O. Pratt’s Works, the tract was certainly struck off before he sailed for America on February 2, 1851, with thirty-five crates of O. Pratt’s Works (see item 551). The Millennial Star office sold more than 10,800 copies of Great First Cause between February 1, 1851, when it filled the first order, and May 1, 1852, when it had 2,839 remaining on hand, so the 13,000 listed in the December 1850 inventory quite clearly did not include those bound in O. Pratt’s Works that Orson took with him to America.¹ The tract’s first four pages of main text are reprinted, from a different setting, in the Star of February 1, 1851, under the heading, Extract from a work recently published by Orson Pratt, A.M., entitled “Great First Cause, or the Self-moving Forces of the Universe.” That year John Davis issued a Welsh translation (item 564).

Great First Cause is the only pamphlet of the period that adds Orson’s 1841 University of Nauvoo A.M. degree after his name and does not identify him as one of the Twelve—a signal that he intended this tract to be more than a routine polemic. In it he advanced his metaphysical speculations beyond those in his Kingdom of God, Part I and Absurdities of Immaterialism—to a point where Brigham Young was no longer comfortable. Arranged in seventeen numbered parts, the tract opens with the assertion that “endless duration and a boundless space, are necessary truths which cannot possibly be conceived to be otherwise than they are”—a statement not accepted in modern physics—and proceeds to argue that the substances in the universe were not created out of nothing but “organized out of pre-existing elements.” Matter, it continues, is “that which occupies space,” and the amount of space in the universe occupied by matter “remains unchangably the same.” Since matter is constantly changing and inert matter cannot originate force, it contends, “some Force must have been eternal,” and all other forces in the universe “must be the effect of this eternal Force.”

A key idea is enunciated in part 8—an idea that departs from Newtonian as well as modern physics: “A particle of matter, existing separate from all other substances, cannot exercise its force externally to its own surface; it cannot attract nor repel surrounding particles, nor produce the least effect upon them in any way; it can only act upon its own parts, and upon its own self as a whole to produce motion, or a change of motion.” This idea leads to Orson’s concept of self-moving matter. Since all matter “appears to be highly active” and a particle of matter cannot exercise a force external to itself, “all the materials of the universe . . . exhibit actions which in all cases are produced by self-moving forces.” The theory of self-moving matter, the tract asserts, “will required the Great First Cause itself to consist of conscious, intelligent, self-moving particles, called the Holy Spirit, which prescribe laws for their own action, as well as laws for the action of all other intelligent materials.” Moreover, the materials of the universe “must either act themselves, being intelligent and possessed of a self-moving power, or, if unintelligent, they must be acted upon by the contact of intelligent materials; in the latter case the intelligent materials must be, at least, equal in quantity to the unintelligent, and must be as extensively dispersed.” Further, “all these self-moving materials must be possessed of a high degree of intelligence in order to obey with such perfect and undeviating exactness the innumerable laws which obtain in the universe.”

After these intelligent particles had gained experience and knowledge, the tract continues, “the next thing . . . would be for one portion to form itself into an immense number of atoms of the same size and form, and for another portion to form itself into a vast number of atoms of another size and form, and in this way all the elementary atoms of nature could be formed out of the same substance.” “Thus might the elements of spirit, light, heat, electricity, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and of all other substances” originate from “one elementary simple substance, possessing a living self-moving force, with intelligence sufficient to govern it in all its infinitude of combinations and operations.”

The final, seventeenth part opens with the following two sentences:

All the organizations of worlds, of minerals, of vegetables, of animals, of men, of angels, of spirits, and of the spiritual personages of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, must, if organized at all, have been the result of the self combinations and unions of the pre-existent, intelligent, powerful, and eternal particles of substance. These eternal Forces and Powers are the Great First Cause of all things and events that have had a beginning.

“Whether [God’s] person be eternal or not,” the tract concludes, “His substance, with all its infinite capacities of wisdom, knowledge, goodness, and power, must be eternal. It is this substance which is the Great First Cause; it is this substance which governs and controls all organization by wise and judicious laws. Parts of this most glorious substance now exist in the form of personages; parts exist in an unorganized capacity, mingling more or less with all other things, forming a world here, and an animalcule yonder, governing a universe, and yet taking notice of the lowest orders of being, and imparting life and happiness to all.”

Great First Cause was not well received by Brigham Young. Nine years after it appeared, the First Presidency published a letter in the Deseret News of July 25, 1860, which specifically identified the first two sentences of part 17 quoted above as objectionable—along with certain passages from Orson’s magazine the Seer. Five years later, in the Deseret News of August 23, 1865, and Millennial Star of October 21, 1865, Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, and all of the Twelve except Orson Pratt again published a letter condemning Great First Cause, the Seer, Orson’s article on the Holy Spirit in the Star of October 15 and November 1, 1850, and his 1856 tract The Holy Spirit. “Where these objectionable works, or parts of works, are bound in volumes,” this letter directed, “they should be cut out and destroyed.”² But from the surviving copies of O. Pratt’s Works, it would seem that this injunction was seldom followed. Indeed, in the mid-1870s the Deseret News was still advertising O. Pratt’s Works for sale.³

Flake-Draper 6493. CSmH, CtY, CU-B, MH, NjP, NN, UPB, USlC, UU.

544 Report of the Glasgow quarterly conference, of the Church of Jesus Christ, of Latter-day Saints, held in the Mechanics’ Hall, Canning Street, Calton, Glasgow, on 1st January, 1851. Glasgow: Printed by J. and J. Taylor, 56 Trongate. [Signed at end:] Joseph Clements, President. Walter Thompson [sic] and Wm. M’Ghie, Secretaries. [1851?]

8 pp. 21 cm.

The fifth of nine located Glasgow Conference reports, this report is the second issued by Joseph Clements during his term as conference president (see items 404, 495). Following the familiar format, it has a table on p. [2] giving the statistics of twenty-eight branches and minutes of the meetings on January 1, 1851 (pp. 3–8). The accounting at the end shows £103 13s. 6d. owing the Millennial Star office, with £34 17s. 8d. in cash and £26 11s. 11d. in books and pamphlets in hand, and £42 3s. 11d. owed by the various branches.

William McGhie—who joined Walter Thomson as a clerk for these meetings a few days before Thomson left for America—was born in Scotland, April 12, 1811, converted to Mormonism at age thirty-two, and eventually presided over the Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Derbyshire conferences (see items 732–33). Immigrating to Utah in 1854, he settled in Mill Creek, where he died on May 17, 1866.¹

Flake-Draper 1922. MH, UPB.

545 Half-yearly report of the London conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, held in the city of London, Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 30th and Dec. 1st, 1850. Elder Thomas Margetts, President, Elder George Bentley, Secretary. Also, a report of the proceedings of a meeting of the priesthood of the London Conference, held in the hall of the Whitechapel Branch, London, Sabbath the 5th day of January, 1851. Elder Eli B. Kelsey, President, Elder Thos. C. Armstrong, Secretary. [At foot of p. 20:] J. Teulon, Printer, 57, Cheapside. [London, 1851?]

20 pp. 21.5 cm. Ruled border on title page.

Item 545 is an important report from the London Conference, the second of ten extant London reports (see item 490). It summarizes a meeting on Saturday evening, November 30, 1850, in the Saints’ chapel at 16, Aldenham Street, Somers Town, and three meetings on Sunday, December 1, in the Druids’ Hall, Turnagain Lane, Skinner Street, Snow Hill. During the Sunday morning session Thomas Margetts was sustained as conference president until the end of the year, and Eli B. Kelsey was sustained as Margetts’s successor (see item 404). Tables on pp. [2]–[3] give the statistics for fifty-four branches in the conference. The brief financial statement on p. 5 shows that the conference owed the Liverpool office £93 18s. 8½d and was owed £65 4s. 4d. by the branches. A “note of commendation” to Margetts, signed by twenty-two of the branch presidents and composed by George Bentley and John Hyde Sr.—who also reported some of the speeches—is on p. [11] surrounded by a border.

Pages [12]–20 contain the minutes of three sessions on January 5, 1851, conducted by E. B. Kelsey and George B. Wallace. Among a number of administrative measures, Kelsey proposed the establishment of “a central depot for the sale of our publications, to be called the Latter-day Saints’ Book and Millennial Star depot for the London conference,” and the formation in each branch of “a tract society, for the purpose of purchasing tracts for gratuitous distribution among the people by loan, from house to house,” both of which were unanimously approved. He also called William Cook to be the general book agent, who was to run the London book depot from his home and shop at 35, Jewin Street.¹ Further, he suggested that each branch form a “book club” into which the members could pay weekly installments toward the purchase of Church books (see item 511). A note at the end reads, “This Report will be sold at 3½d. per copy, which is barely sufficient to defray the expenses of Printing, etc.; they are divided among the branches, in proportion to their numbers, and it is therefore expected that the branches will take the whole number sent them.”

Described by Kelsey as a “front shop, situated on a corner, with two large show windows,” five-minutes walk from the booksellers on Paternoster Row, the London book depot at 35, Jewin Street would quickly become a significant point of distribution for LDS books and pamphlets to other British conferences and foreign branches. By the first of October, the British Mission had leased the Jewin Street premises and had purchased the fixtures and improvements Cook had made there, and over the next seven years its address was included on the title pages of many of the books published by the British Mission (see, e.g., items 604, 618–19, 677, 679–80, 688, 718, 725, 736, 746).²

Thomas Columbus Armstrong, who succeeded George Bentley as conference secretary, was born in Liverpool in September 1817 and joined the Church in London in February 1850. By October 1, 1851, he had replaced William Cook as the London Conference general book agent, and he served in this capacity until he and his family sailed for America in April 1854 (see items 580, 619, 620, 635, 679–80, 703). For more than forty years he lived in Salt Lake City, where he died on November 28, 1900.³

Flake-Draper 1933. MH, UPB, USlC.

546 DYKES, George Parker. [Scriptural references. Aalborg? 1851]

547 DYKES, George Parker. Troes-artikler i Jesu Christi Kirke af Sidste-Dages Hellige i Danmark. [Caption title] [Dated and signed at end:] Den 25de Februar 1851. G. P. Dykes. [At foot of p. [4]:] Trykt i Aalborg hos Carl Bech. [1851?]

[4] pp. 21 cm.

548 DYKES, George Parker. [Chronological table showing the age of the world and proving that the Savior’s second coming is near. Aalborg? 1851]

George Parker Dykes, born in St. Clair County, Illinois, December 24, 1814, joined the Church in the mid-1830s, lived with the Saints in Missouri and Illinois, and marched with the Mormon Battalion as first lieutenant of Company D and adjutant to the battalion. Upon his discharge, he returned to Council Bluffs, where he was called as a missionary to Europe, and for two and a half years he labored in England, Copenhagen, Aalborg, Schleswig, and Hamburg (see items 569–72, 632, 694). Following his European mission, he came to Utah in 1853 but left the territory the following year and in 1863 aligned himself with the RLDS Church and began to proselytize in its behalf in California and Nevada. By the end of the decade he had separated from the Reorganization, and in 1875 he returned to Salt Lake City, reaffirming his allegiance to the Utah church. He died at Zenos, Maricopa County, Arizona, February 25, 1888.¹

Dykes arrived in Liverpool with Eli B. Kelsey on January 19, 1850, and was immediately assigned to the Bradford Conference. But he had worked as a missionary in the Norwegian settlement in La Salle County, Illinois, during 1842–43, giving him some familiarity with their language and customs, so he was a natural choice to accompany Erastus Snow to Scandinavia.² On June 14, 1850, he, Snow, and John E. Forsgren reached Copenhagen, and for the next four months he labored there—the last month as presiding elder of the Copenhagen branch—before leaving for Aalborg on October 8. Dykes’s time in Aalborg extended to six months, and on May 4, 1851, he reported his efforts there to Franklin D. Richards:

This is a short history of my labours in Jÿlland [Jutland], where I remained for six months, and three days, during which time the Lord enabled me to establish a church there, consisting of one elder, three teachers, one deacon, ninety-one baptized, and two cut off. I also had published 1000 tracts, including our faith, which I circulated gratis, 1000 scriptural references, and 800 chronological tables, showing the age of the world in which we live, and proving that our Saviour’s second coming is near. I also circulated about 200 tracts, that brother Snow sent me from Copenhagen.³

On November 30, 1850, in Aalborg, Dykes began to write a “reference or scripture guide for the saints,” suggested, one might assume, by Lorenzo D. Barnes’s References (items 115–16, 136–37, 152, 397) or Benjamin Winchester’s Synopsis of the Holy Scriptures (item 155). Over the next six weeks he continued to work on it, finishing on January 13, when he took it to the printer. Eight days later, he records, “I waited till 12 for the refferences to be printed & then I started for Hals.”⁴ Although it was printed in an edition of 1,000, no copy is located; only what is undoubtedly a later edition is extant (item 572). Dykes notes in his May 4 letter to Richards that the Baptists and Swedenborigans jointly published a tract in response to his scriptural references, which he used against them in a public discussion.⁵

Dykes’s Troes-Artikler (Articles of Faith) had its origin in Copenhagen in mid-September 1850 when Erastus Snow directed him to draft a concise declaration of faith to be used in formally organizing the Copenhagen branch, and on September 18 Dykes presented these “Articles of Faith” to the Minister of Public Instruction and had them approved. A week or so later Snow incorporated them in his En Sandheds-Røst (item 516).⁶ Dykes seems to have begun working on the expanded version on February 18, 1851, when he noted in his journal, “I began to write a little tract for to print.” He “continued the same” the next day, took it to the printer on February 20, and on Tuesday, February 25—the date at the end of Troes-Artikler—corrected “our Articles of Faith that I was having printed.” At the end of March he preached to a large gathering and afterwards “gave out many of our articles of faith, as I had had 1000 printed.”⁷

Troes-Artikler consists of sixteen numbered statements of belief, with the seventh divided into five numbered parts, followed by three paragraphs headed Om Øvrigheder (On Public Officers) and a concluding comment. Each article is accompanied by a series of biblical references in support of the statement. The first seven articles are the same as those in En Sandheds-Røst, except for a few changes in parts 4 and 5 of the seventh article and many additional scriptural references; “Om Øvrigheder” is also the same as in En Sandheds-Røst. In the second and subsequent editions of En Sandheds-Røst the entire sixteen articles are included at the end, exactly as in the second edition of Troes-Artikler (item 570), but signed by Erastus Snow.

On Tuesday, February 4, 1851, Dykes spent the day “writing a chronology of the world.” He worked on it a week later and again on the 13th with the help of a Brother Peterson, and on March 9 he finished it “with a little alterations.”⁸ Exactly when it was printed is not known, but it must have been before April 14, when he left Aalborg for Schleswig.⁹ No copy is located, but a later edition exists, a broadside published by Andrew Jenson in 1874 and printed in Aalborg at “Bechske Bogtrykkeri.” Headed Chronologisk Tabel veb G. Parker Dykes, this broadside has its main text in twenty-eight columns, preceded by three lines after the title which explain that the chronology allows the reader to quickly understand the 6,000 years of biblical history—without doing the considerable reading Dykes has done in the works of Luther, Bishop Usher, Josephus, and others, but especially the Bible—demonstrating that the Second Advent is near. An abbreviated version of Chronologisk Tabel is included as the “Calendar” in his Bibelske Henviisninger (item 572).¹⁰

Item 547: Flake-Draper 3078. USlC.

549 Lines suggested on the death of Mrs. Elizabeth P. Crombie, formerly of Boston, Massachusetts. Who died July 20th, 1850, at 10 o'clock, P.M., aged thirty-eight years. [Kanesville, 1851?]

Broadside 25 x 9.5 cm. Ornamental border, on blue paper.

This broadside contains a poem entitled “I Miss Thee, Mother,” which laments the death of the writer’s mother.¹ The text of the poem, in twelve 4-line verses, is printed from the same setting in the Frontier Guardian of January 22, 1851, so the broadside must have been struck off at the Guardian shop about that time. The first verse: “I Miss thee, my mother! Thy image is still, / The deepest impressed on my heart, / And the tablet, so faithful in death must be chill, / Ere a line of that image depart.” The only known copy is pasted into the Frederick G. Williams account book in the LDS Church Archives.

Elizabeth Pope Phillips Crombie was born in Boston, August 18, 1804—making her forty-five years old at the time of her death, not thirty-eight. She married John Crombie in 1826 and bore him four children, including two sons, William B. Crombie, born in 1829, and John Henry Crombie, born in Maine, January 1, 1832. Elizabeth joined the Church in 1845 and came to Council Bluffs with her two sons in 1848. John was baptized into the Church in 1849, immigrated to Utah about two years later, and was called on a mission to the Hawaiian Islands in 1857 but seems not to have gone; thereafter there is no record of him.²

The 1850 Iowa census shows only Elizabeth and John living in Pottawattamie County, and her obituary in the Frontier Guardian of August 7, 1850, includes a poem with the line, “Thy sons will meet thee, in a better clime.” One might guess, therefore, that the broadside poem was written by John Henry Crombie.

Flake-Draper 4941. USlC.

550 PHELPS, William Wines. Deseret almanac, for the year of our Lord 1851: the third after leap year, and, after the 6th of April, the 22d year of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints; and the first of the last half century of this dispensation. [Vignette] Calculated for latitude 40˚ 45’ and longitude 111˚ 26’—Great Salt Lake City: accompanied with notable events, etc. Compiled by W. W. Phelps. G. S. L. City, Deseret: Printed by W. Richards. [1851] [At head of title:] [Copy right secured.] | No. 1.

[16] pp. 15 cm. On orangish tan paper.

The ubiquitous W. W. Phelps had his hand in some publishing venture in each of Mormonism’s first four decades. In Utah his principal undertaking of this kind was a series of almanacs, which he issued between 1851 and 1865 (see items 657, 762).¹ His first, the Deseret Almanac for 1851, actually made its appearance after the beginning of the year. The Deseret News of January 25, 1851, announced that the almanac was in press and would be ready the following week, cautioning its readers that “the edition will be small, and early applications alone can ensure the getting of a copy.” Two weeks later the News noted that the almanac was out of press and for sale at the post office. Wilford Woodruff obtained one on January 29, probably the copy at the LDS Church that has his name on the front page.²

Deseret Almanac for 1851 exists in two states—each surviving in a single copy—differing only in the last page. State (a) has, after the chronology of Mormon history, the line Gen. Joseph Smith Martyred in Carthage Jail followed by an oval profile portrait of Joseph Smith; state (b) has “A Fable” after the chronology, followed by the names and birthdays of the First Presidency and the Twelve within a box—omitting the birthdays of Erastus Snow and Lorenzo Snow. The portrait of Joseph Smith, signed “R.C,” seems to have been printed from the same wood engraving used for the portrait in Phelps’s Nauvoo book the Voice of Truth (item 271). Which state is the earlier is not known, but one might guess it is state (a), the one at the Church bearing Woodruff’s name. Both states are printed on orangish tan paper. A fabric loop is attached at the upper left corner of the Woodruff copy for hanging the almanac on a peg. None of the pages are numbered.

The two pages after the title page give descriptions the eclipses of the sun and moon to occur in 1851—taken from the Nautical Almanac—followed by an explanation of the calendars and Phelps’s poem, “The Center of the Heavens.”³ Each of the next twelve pages has a monthly calendar which shows the phases of the moon; the rising, southing, and setting of the sun; and the southing of the moon and some of the planets. These calendars also include a few world dates, some dates of Mormon interest, and aphorisms and bits of advice. “The most of the arbitrary characters,” the almanac explains, “as well as the [astrological] signs and wonders, are omitted as useless.” Filling in below the calendars is a brief chronology of Mormon history, which, in each state, is concluded on the back page. The vignette in the center of the title page consists of a compass inside a square with the phrase God and time for all around the perimeter of the compass. In spite of the notation on the title page, it is doubtful that Phelps obtained a copyright for the book.⁴

Flake-Draper 6344. Saunders 31. USlC[a, b].

551 PRATT, Orson. A series of pamphlets, by Orson Pratt, one of the twelve apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, with portrait. To which is appended a discussion held in Bolton, between Elder William Gibson, president of the Saints in the Manchester Conference, and the Rev. Mr. Woodman. Also a discussion held in France, between Elder John Taylor, one of the twelve apostles, and three reverend gentlemen of different orders, containing a facsimile of writings engraved on six metallic plates, taken out of an ancient mound in the state of Illinois, in the year 1843. Liverpool: Printed by R. James, 39, South Castle Street. 1851.

18 parts. 21 cm.

552 PRATT, Orson. A series of pamphlets by Orson Pratt, one of the twelve apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. With portrait. To which is appended a discussion held in Bolton, between Elder William Gibson, president of the Saints in the Manchester Conference, and the Rev. Mr. Woodman. Also a discussion held in France, between Elder John Taylor, one of the twelve apostles, and three reverend gentlemen of different orders, containing a facsimile of writings engraved on six metallic plates taken out of an ancient mound in the state of Illinois, in the year 1843. Liverpool: Published by Franklin D. Richards. 1851.

18 parts. 21 cm.

553 PRATT, Orson. A series of pamphlets by Orson Pratt, one of the twelve apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. With portrait. To which is appended a discussion held in Bolton, between Elder William Gibson, president of the Saints in the Manchester Conference, and the Rev. Mr. Woodman. Also a discussion held in France, between Elder John Taylor, one of the twelve apostles, and three reverend gentlemen of different orders, containing a facsimile of writings engraved on six metallic plates taken out of an ancient mound in the state of Illinois, in the year 1843. Liverpool: Published by Franklin D. Richards. 1852.

18 parts. 21 cm.

Items 551–53 each collect Orson Pratt’s sixteen 1848–51 pamphlets, in the following order: Divine Authority (items 367–70), the Kingdom of God in four parts (items 373–86), Remarkable Visions (items 393–94) and New Jerusalem (items 436–38)—these seven tracts identified as the “First Series” in the table of contents; then Divine Authenticity of the Book of Mormon in six parts (items 521–22)—identified as the “Second Series”; and then Reply to a Pamphlet Printed in Glasgow (items 406–8), Absurdities of Immaterialism (items 428–29), and Great First Cause (item 543), followed by William Gibson’s Report of Three Nights’ Public Discussion (item 525) and John Taylor’s Three Nights’ Public Discussion (items 514–15)—identified as the “Third Series.” At the front is a four-page sheet containing the title page (p. [i]), with the verso blank, and a table of contents (pp. [iii]–iv). The book is routinely bound with a frontispiece of a steel engraving of Orson Pratt by Frederick Piercy, dated 1849—which the Millennial Star office began selling separately in January 1850.¹ And at the back of the book is the folded sheet Fac-Simile of the Brass Plates Recently Taken from a Mound in the Vicinity of Kinderhook, Pike County, Illinois, which was issued with Taylor’s Three Nights’ Public Discussion.

Many copies of item 551 have survived in a characteristic binding of three-quarter brown sheep with marbled paper covered boards, the backstrip with blind stamped decorative panels and a gilt binder’s title O. Pratt’s Works &c. Of thirteen copies examined with this binding, all had the identical editions of the various Pratt pamphlets. None had any of the editions printed subsequent to 1851, indeed none contained copies of Kingdom of God, Parts II or III, advertised by F. D. Richards in November 1851.² The sheet containing the title page and table of contents of item 551, however, exists in two “states,” distinguished by the title pages as follows: (a) with the A in the first occurrence of the phrase A Discussion above the word Bolton, and (b) with the A in the first occurrence of the phrase A Discussion above the word Between.³ These two “states” are textually identical but printed from different settings. Which is the earlier is not known.

Franklin D. Richards, who succeeded Orson Pratt as president of the British Mission in December 1850, ran a notice in the Star of April 1, 1851, regarding this collection of pamphlets:

Frequent applications are made for a title page and index for binding with the entire series of Elder Pratt’s pamphlets, including also Taylor’s and Gibson’s discussions in many instances. These works, when bound together, form a volume of a very convenient size for the library, and embody a vast amount of intelligence and arguments in support and defence of our most Holy Faith. Believing that many of the Saints in different parts of the kingdom would be glad to obtain a title page and index, we have concluded to publish them in the order in which they were arranged by Elder Pratt, previous to his departure. As many will, doubtless, wish to bind Elder Pratt's works who will be unable to obtain Gibson's discussion, on account of the small edition of that work printed, we design publishing a title page and index to suit such also, embracing only Elder Pratt's works. They may be had for 3s. 6d. per hundred, and ½d. per copy. Portraits of Elder Pratt may also be had on thin paper of superior quality, taken from steel engraving, for binding, as a frontispiece to the book, for 25s. per hundred by agents, and 4d. per copy, retail.

Moreover, the Star of January 15, 1852, noted: “The Title Page and Index to O. Pratt’s Works, and Gibson’s and Taylor’s Discussion is reprinted. If the Book Agents will renew their orders, they can now be supplied. We have still a supply of O. Pratt’s portraits on hand for binding with them.”⁴

Richards’s reference in his April notice quoted above to “the order in which they were arranged by Elder Pratt, previous to his departure” suggests that Orson Pratt had earlier collected his pamphlets in a bound book. The European Mission financial records bear this out. Under the date March 14, 1851, they record, “Thomas Fazakerley Binding 6 vols. Pratt’s Works 0.16.0,” and under March 24, “Binding 1 vol. O Pratt’s pamphlets Clf & gilt 0.2.8.” Under March 19, “Orson Pratt By Amount received from Wm. Pitt, Strand St as debenture upon 35 Cases printed books, (O. Pratt’s Works) shipped on board the ‘Ellen Maria’ 37.6.11.” And under June 17, “100 O. Pratt’s works &c ½ Cf & Lettd @ ¼ 6.13.4” and “Binding for Orson Pratt . . . To Amt paid to Thos. Fazakerley on his order 238.10.6.”⁵

Since Orson sailed from Liverpool on the Ellen Maria on February 2, 1851, one might infer from the March 19 and June 17 entries that those copies of O. Pratt’s Works in the characteristic three-quarter sheep with marbled paper boards and the R. James title page were bound by him in January 1851, just prior to his departure, and most of them—in thirty-five cases—taken with him to America.⁶ If the entry “Binding for Orson Pratt . . . 238.10.6” applies to those copies of O. Pratt’s Works shipped on the Ellen Maria, and if his unit cost was 1s. 4d. each, the same as that for binding the one hundred copies, then he had approximately 3,600 copies bound. If the unit cost was less, certainly a possibility for a large order for what appears to have been an inexpensive binding, then he may have had as many as 5,000 copies bound—under any circumstances a number consistent with thirty-five cases of books.⁷ In 1854, in Washington, D.C., he advertised the book for $1.50 a copy, and twenty years later the Deseret News was still advertising it at the same price.⁸

The mission financial records also show that three weeks after Franklin D. Richards ran his notice in the April 1, 1851, issue of the Star, the mission office began distributing the title page and index—without doubt those for item 552—and by the end of May had sent out about 4,200 copies. On May 1, 1852, three and a half months after the Star reported that the title page and index had been reprinted, the office had 3,800 copies in its inventory—undoubtedly those for item 553. The financial records indicate that the mission office sent out one or two copies of the bound book O. Pratt’s Works from time to time, probably as orders were received, and its inventory of May 1, 1852, shows seven copies on hand.⁹ One might guess that most of the books with the F. D. Richards title pages were bound by individuals for themselves. It is not uncommon to find such a copy that includes other tracts in addition to those of Pratt, Gibson, and Taylor. No version of the title page is known “embracing only Elder Pratt’s works,” and one might assume that Richards did not pursue this alternative.

O. Pratt’s Works was an influential book. Its tracts were published at a time when the British Mission was producing many converts, most of whom learned the tenets of Mormonism from Orson’s pamphlets. When LDS book publishing ceased with the onset of the Utah War, those books in print continued to exert their influence for another generation, especially O. Pratt’s Works, which survived in a large number of copies and is still a “common” rare book. Near the end of the century, part of it—Divine Authority, the Kingdom of God, and Divine Authenticity of the Book of Mormon—was reprinted three times, in 1884, 1891, and 1899, under the title A Series of Pamphlets on the Doctrines of the Gospel, with the binder’s title Orson Pratt’s Works. Great First Cause, of course, was officially condemned by the First Presidency and the Twelve in 1865, and the Saints were enjoined to remove it from their copies of O. Pratt’s Works, but the surviving books indicate that this was seldom done. The Harvard copy of item 551, which has been rebound, was given to the library by Brigham Young in 1853, and the copy once owned by Jesse A. Gove, one of the officers with the Utah Expedition, is in the Brigham Young University Lee Library.

Item 551: Flake-Draper 6542a. CSmH, CtY, CU-B, MH, MWA, MoInRC, NjP, UHi, ULA, UPB, USlC, UU. Item 552: Flake-Draper 6542. CU-B, ICN, NN, UPB, USlC, UU. Item 553: Flake-Draper 6543. UPB, USlC, UU.

554 RICHARDS, John. Duw mawr y sectariaid. [Great God of the sectarians.] [At end:] John Richareds. [At foot below rule:] J. Davis, Argraffydd, Georgetown, Merthyr-Tydfil. [J. Davis, Printer, Georgetown, Merthyr Tydfil.] [1851]

Broadside 17 x 10.5 cm.

Flake-Draper 7244. Dennis 50. MH, USlC, WsN.

555 TAYLOR, John. Father, son, & daughter. A trio. By John Taylor. [At foot insider border:] J. Davis, Printer, Merthyr. [1851?].

Broadside 17 x 11 cm. Double ruled border.

Flake-Draper 8835. Dennis 51. MH, USlC, WsN.

556 TAYLOR, John. Y tad, y mab, a’r ferch. [O Saesneg yr Apostol John Taylor, o Ffrainc.] [Father, son, and daughter. [From English of Apostle John Taylor, of France.]] [At foot below rule:] Argraffwyd gan J. Davis, Georgetown, Merthyr-Tydfil. [Printed by J. Davis, Georgetown, Merthyr Tydfil.] [1851]

Broadside 17 x 11 cm.

Flake-Draper 8836. Dennis 52. CU-B, MH, UPB, USlC, WsN.

557 LEBARON, Alonzo. A short extract, containing a chapter or two from the history or journal of Elder Alonzo Le Baron. [8 lines] Leamington: Printed by J. W. Brierly, 22, Regent Street. 1851.

12 pp. 19 cm.

Born in Genesee County, New York, November 18, 1818, Alonzo LeBaron converted to Mormonism in 1836, lived with the Saints in Ohio and northern Missouri, and led Joseph Smith’s 1844 political campaign in South Carolina. Early in 1850 he left his home in Kanesville with a group of missionaries and arrived in Liverpool on April 8 with Peter O. Hansen, Joseph Toronto, John S. Higbee, Jacob Gates, and Job Smith. A few days later he was sent to labor in the Warwickshire Conference under Alfred Cordon—an assignment that proved troublesome for Cordon. Subsequently LeBaron married a woman in the conference and was disfellowshipped, but by 1854 he had settled in Utah County and was functioning as one of the presidents of the Twenty-first Quorum of Seventy. In the early 1860s he drew away from the Church and over the next quarter century published a number of pieces, under various pseudonyms, in which he ventilated his grievances. He died in Salt Lake City in January 1891.¹

LeBaron’s A Short Extract opens with an excerpt of a letter from him to Orson Pratt and Franklin D. Richards (p. [3]), dated at Banbury, December 10, 1850, asking them to read his manuscript autobiography, which apparently accompanied the letter. This, he notes, had “been written at different intervals, while travelling from place to place, endeavouring to preach the Gospel; in a very poor state of health, and exposed to much cold and other inconveniences,” and, he emphasizes at the end, “is no exaggeration of truth.”

The main text (pp. [5]–12), headed History of Alonzo Le Baron, appears to be an excerpt from this autobiography. Arranged in two chapters, the first summarizes his early life, his conversion, and his initial contact with the Saints in Kirtland. It concludes with a long footnote in which he describes his introduction to Joseph Smith’s family and claims to have boarded at various times with Joseph’s brothers and sisters—most of whose names he misspells. The second chapter gives an account of the surrender of the Mormons at Adam-ondi-Ahman in November 1838—which he says he witnessed—with an emphasis on the cruelty of the Missouri militia.

John Jaques indicates in his journal that LeBaron’s Warwickshire marriage took place at Stratford-on-Avon on December 23, 1850.² One might conjecture, therefore, that LeBaron published A Short Extract to improve his standing with the local Saints after he had been disfellowshipped—a conjecture supported by the four quotations on the title page, the second of which is, “Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.”

Flake-Draper 4832. USlC.

558 SNOW, Lorenzo. La voix de Joseph écrite et recueillie par Lorenzo Snow, ministre de l’evangile de la Cité du Grand Sall-Lake [sic] dans l’Etat de Deseret (Haute-Californie) dans l’Amérique du Nord. [Vignette] Turin Imprimerie Ferrero et Franco 1851.

90 pp. 19 cm.

559 SNOW, Lorenzo. Exposition des premiers principes de la doctrine de l’Eglise de Jesus Christ des Saints des Derniers Jours par Lorenzo Snow ministre de l’évangile venant de la Cité du Grand Lac Salé Haute-Californie Etats-Unis d’Amérique [7 lines] Turin, 1851 Imprimerie Louis Arnaldi.

16 pp. 21 cm.

Lorenzo Snow had been one of the Twelve for eight months when he and Joseph Toronto, a native of the Isle of Sardinia, were called at the October 1849 general conference to introduce Mormonism into Italy, and that month he left Salt Lake City and arrived in Liverpool on April 19, 1850. Pausing in England for two months, he departed for Italy on June 15 in company with Toronto and T. B. H. Stenhouse, reaching Genoa on the 25th.¹

In England, Snow had learned of the Waldenses, a heretical Christian sect that had arisen in southern France at the end of the twelfth century. During the thirteenth century the Waldenses had moved away from the chief population centers into the Piedmont valleys in the northwestern corner of what is now modern Italy to escape persecution, and in the sixteenth century had merged with the general movement of the Reformation, aligning themselves with the Swiss and German reformers. By the early nineteenth century they had attracted the attention of the Protestant countries, especially England, which sent considerable financial help, allowing them, for instance, to build a college at Torre Pellice. Certain parallels between the Mormons and Waldenses were apparent to Lorenzo Snow, and drawn to this Protestant enclave, he sent Stenhouse and Toronto to Piedmont on July 1 and joined them there three weeks later. The Waldensian valleys in what was then part of the Sardinian kingdom would be the focus of his Italian missionary effort.²

Snow and his fellow missionaries first located in Torre Pellice, which he identified as “La Tour, in the valley of Lucerne,” the “principal town in the Protestant vallies,” situated “about thirty miles [southwest] from the city of Turin.” They did not rush to proclaim their message, he explained, but “endeavoured to prepare the minds of the people for its reception, as much, perhaps, by signs as by the few words of their language which we had acquired. I also proceeded to write and compile a work for general circulation. This I entitled the ‘VOICE OF JOSEPH.’” After a fruitless effort to find a translator in Piedmont, he sent the manuscript to England, “where, through the kindness of Elder Orson Pratt, it was translated by a professor from the University of Paris.”³ On November 4 he informed F. D. Richards that he would soon have the Voice of Joseph “in extensive circulation in the French language, which is the most generally understood among the ‘Vaudois’ or Waldenses,” and four weeks later he wrote to Richards: “I shall circulate the ‘Voice of Joseph’ here, and in the Swiss Cantons; and also another work, which I am getting translated through the politeness of the French mission.”⁴

About the first of the year Snow started on his return to England, pausing in Turin en route to Switzerland. On January 25, 1851, in Turin, he began a letter to Orson Hyde, and twelve days later, in Geneva, he finished this letter, explaining:

You may form some idea of the difficulties which have beset my efforts to publish, when I tell you that “The Voice of Joseph” is now circulating in Italy, with a woodcut of a CATHOLIC NUN, ANCHOR, LAMP, and CROSS on the title page, and on the last, Noah’s Ark, the Dove, and the Olive. With this work, and “The Ancient Gospel Restored,” in my trunk, pockets, and hat I crossed the Alps, in the midst of a storm of snow, scarcely knowing whether I was dead or alive.

One infers that Snow published items 558 and 559 in January or early February 1851, while he was in Turin.⁵

Item 559 is a French translation of Lorenzo Snow’s Only Way to be Saved—the first edition outside of America of what would become the most widely published of all the nineteenth century Mormon tracts (see items 129, 250–51, 638, 639, 682, 683, 739). Item 558 is essentially a history of the Church, with a summary of its basic tenets at the end.⁶ The first two-fifths of the pamphlet comprise a translation of the first eleven and a half pages of Orson Pratt’s Remarkable Visions (item 393). This is followed by an outline of the Church’s early history, with the description of Jackson County taken from the “History of Joseph Smith.”⁷ Next the pamphlet reprints the “American Exiles’ Memorial to Congress”—the memorial of December 21, 1843, printed in the Prophetic Almanac for 1845 (item 229) and Orson Pratt’s New Jerusalem (items 436–38). It then recounts the settlement of Nauvoo, the murder of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, the evacuation of Illinois, and the founding of Great Salt Lake City, and at this point it includes two excerpts from the General Epistle from the Council of the Twelve Apostles (items 346) and an excerpt from Parley Pratt’s letter of September 5, 1848, in the Millennial Star of January 15, 1849, describing life in the Salt Lake Valley. Concluding the historical outline, it summarizes the missionary work around the world and mentions some of the Church’s publications. A sketch of Mormonism’s basic doctrines follows the historical narrative, and a postscript at the end reports that “l’organisation politique” had been established in Utah with Brigham Young as governor and—erroneously—that Congress had granted $150,000 for the construction of a state house and public library. The title page of La Voix de Joseph bears a vignette, 2.6 x 2.8 cm., of a seated robed figure—which Lorenzo Snow identified as a Catholic nun—holding a lamp in her right hand and a large cross against her shoulder with her left, with an anchor at her left side. But the back page does not contain images of “Noah’s Ark, the Dove, and the Olive”—as mentioned in Snow’s letter quoted above. One might guess, therefore, that the pamphlet was issued in a printed wrapper with these images on the back wrapper.

Joseph Toronto left “to visit his father’s family in Sicily” about the first of August 1850, and on September 18 Jabez Woodard joined Snow and Stenhouse in Piedmont. The following day, on a mountain outside Torre Pellice, they organized the Church in Italy with four members—Snow, Stenhouse, Woodard, and Toronto. Five and a half more weeks passed before they baptized their first convert. Snow sent Stenhouse to Switzerland near the end of November, and put the responsibility for Italy in Woodard’s hands when he left for England. By the end of February 1851 Woodard had baptized twelve more, and by mid-May the local members numbered twenty-one. Soon after, Toronto returned to Piedmont, and when Woodard wrote to Snow on August 1, they had increased the Piedmont branch by ten members.⁸

Stenhouse began his Swiss mission in Geneva—the “Protestant Rome”—where he circulated Lorenzo Snow’s two French tracts extensively. At one point, for example, he attended an anti-Mormon lecture by the Methodist minister Emile Guers and handed out copies of Exposition des Premiers Principes to the congregation. In the spring of 1851 he visited Southampton and returned to Geneva with his wife Fanny—a native of St. Helier, Jersey, who was fluent in French—and by that summer there were Mormon congregations in Geneva and Lausanne. The following spring he published another edition of Exposition des Premiers Principes (item 684) in Geneva and in January 1853 launched a second French periodical, Le Réflecteur. When Daniel Tyler succeeded him as mission president on October 1, 1854, about three hundred had been baptized in Switzerland since the beginning of the mission, and there were branches in Geneva, Lausanne, Basel, Zurich, and Neuchâtel.⁹

These efforts brought the inevitable counterattacks, and Woodard reported in his August 1, 1851, letter that “a tract of forty-six pages had been issued against us in Switzerland, and a plentiful supply has arrived here; there is the Spaulding story and nothing else, except the common cant of sectarianism, and some quotations from ‘The Voice of Joseph’ and ‘The only way to be saved’”—a reference to Louis Favez’s Lettre sur les Mormons de la Californie (Vevey, 1851).¹⁰ Snow’s tracts were attacked again two years later by Emile Guers in his L’Irvingisme et le Mormonisme (Geneva, 1853) and the year following by William John Conybeare in his Mormonism: Reprinted from the Edinburgh Review, No. CCII. for April 1854 (London, 1854). Stenhouse, in turn, defended his mentor, responding to Favez and Guers in his Les Mormons (Saints des Derniers-Jours) et Leurs Ennemis (Lausanne, 1854).

Item 558: Flake-Draper 8251a. NjP, USlC. Item 559: Flake-Draper 8239a. UPB, USlC.

560 HARMON, Appleton Milo. [Handbill advertising a course of lectures in Carlisle beginning February 9, 1851. Carlisle? 1851]

Appleton Milo Harmon is best known for constructing the odometer used on the pioneer trek to the Salt Lake Valley (see item 354). Born in Erie County, Pennsylvania, May 29, 1820, he moved with his parents to Kirtland, Ohio, in 1837, Springfield, Illinois, the following year, and to Nauvoo in 1840, where he served in the police and helped destroy the Nauvoo Expositor press (see item 223). In February 1846 he left Nauvoo for the Iowa camps and in 1847 traveled with the pioneer company as far as the upper crossing of the Platte, where he remained to help operate the ferry; the following year he reached the Valley. At the April 1850 general conference he was called on a mission to England, and that September he arrived in Liverpool and assumed the presidency of the newly formed Carlisle Conference in October. Thirteen months later he was appointed pastor over the Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Hull, and Carlisle conferences, which position he held until released to return to Utah in January 1853. In 1862 he and his family were called to southern Utah, and for ten years he lived in Toquerville before moving north to Holden, where he died on February 26, 1877.¹

Immediately after he was appointed president of the Carlisle Conference, Harmon visited the five branches in the conference, finding each in a depressed state with only a few active members and little “prospect of an increase.”² On January 28, 1851, he

got some handbills printed announceing a course of lectures to Commence on the ninth of February. also Stateing whare our books could be obtained. I gave notice to the Branches that we should hold a conference on the 9th also.

The conference convened in Carlisle on Sunday, February 9, at 10 a.m., as scheduled. After “a little business,” Harmon “commenced and delivered the first of a course of lectures, according to announcement on the hand bills above mentioned.” That evening he gave the second lecture to over fifty persons, the largest congregation he had yet seen, but too small, he felt, “for the pains which had been taken to circulate the news.” During the next three weeks he continued his lectures, three on each Sunday and one on each Wednesday evening. “The people became Neglegent about attending,” he reported, “the examples of the Saints ware not verry good. A few however received my testimony and ware baptised.”³

Item 560 is the first of ten handbills that Harmon mentions in his diary, all unlocated (see items 584, 586, 607–9, 622–23, 663, 737).

561 [Circular for the ship Olympus. Liverpool, 1851]

Under the date March 29, 1851, in a list of payments to the printer Richard James, the European Mission financial records have the following two entries: “80 Circulars, Ship Olympus 0.7.0,” and “30 Circulars (extra) ‘Olympus’ 0.2.6.”¹ One might infer that James struck off 110 circulars for the ship Olympus similar to the one Orson Pratt issued for the James Pennell in 1849 (see items 430, 452, 759). The Olympus sailed from Liverpool on March 4, 1851, with 245 emigrating Latter-day Saints under the direction of William Howells (see item 425), and reached New Orleans about April 27. Thomas Smith of Leamington (see items 138, 338, 351, 390, 431, 447) and Thomas Bradshaw (see item 449) were also officers of the company. During the voyage, according to Howells’s report, fifty of the non-Mormon passengers were baptized into the Church.²

562 CAIN, Joseph, and Arieh Coats Brower. Mormon way-bill, to the gold mines, from the Pacific Springs, by the northern & southern routes, viz. Fort Hall, Salt Lake, and Los Angelos [sic], including Sublet’s [sic], Hudspeth’s, and the various cut-off’s [sic]; also—from Los Angelos [sic] to St. Francisco, by coast route, with the distances to the different rivers in California;—together with important information to emigrants; by Joseph Cain & Arieh C. Brower. G. S. L. City, Deseret; W. Richards, Printer: 1851. [At head of title:] [Copy right secured.]

38[2] pp. 16 cm. On colored paper.

Like its predecessor (item 466), the Mormon Way-Bill was also published by a pair of printers. Joseph Cain, born in Douglas, Isle of Man, November 5, 1822, converted to Mormonism in 1841 and immigrated three years later to Nauvoo, where he worked in the Times and Seasons print shop. He returned to England as a missionary in 1846 and crossed the plains the following year with the Edward Hunter company. In the fall of 1849 he traveled from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles with the James M. Flake-Charles C. Rich-George Q. Cannon company, keeping the journal of the trip, and returned to Utah a year later with Amasa Lyman and published a summary of this journey in the Deseret News of October 5, 1850. Once settled in Salt Lake City, he worked for the News, writing for the paper under the penname “Homer,” and was the Utah territorial printer, 1854–55, as well as the city postmaster. He died in Salt Lake City of “consumption,” April 20, 1857.¹

Arieh C. Brower worked with Cain in the Times and Seasons office and at the Deseret News, where he was the shop foreman, and in 1853–54 served as the territorial printer. Born in Phelps, Ontario County, New York, January 13, 1817, he too joined the Church in 1841, made the overland crossing in 1847 with the Edward Hunter company, and went to California in 1849. In 1854 he settled in Grantsville, Tooele County, and in the mid-1860s moved to Richmond, Cache County, where he filled a term as mayor; during 1869–70 he labored as a missionary in Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. He died near Oakley, Idaho, June 25, 1884, while visiting his grandson.²

Four weeks after it ran Joseph Cain’s account of his return trip from California to Utah, the Deseret News noted that “Emigrants, to the mines, by the southern route” could obtain way bills of the route from Cain, who had “taken notes by the way.” It further advised: “For the benefit of emigrants we will say that it is not safe for you to attempt the southern route without written instructions, unless you have a pilot, on account of the deserts, diverging tracks, &c., &c.”³ One might infer that the demand for handwritten descriptions of the route prompted Cain to produce his printed guide. The News first advertised Mormon Way-Bill on January 25, 1851. Copies would be sent east at the first opportunity to be sold to the westward emigrants, this ad promised, and those merchants wishing to purchase advertisements in it could do so during the next seven days. Four weeks later the News announced that Mormon Way-Bill was out of press and for sale at the Post Office at $1 per copy, 70¢ to wholesale buyers.⁴ The News of July 10, 1852, carried a card by the merchants J. and E. Reese, which advised overland travelers that the route along the Carson River was preferable to that by way of the Truckee and mentioned, “The Mormon Way Bill which can be had at the different stores and boarding houses in this city, also at the Post Office, will show the best and most practicable route.”⁵

Mormon Way-Bill exists in two states, one consisting of thirty-two pages in two sixteen-page signatures, the other of forty pages in two sixteen-page signatures and an eight-page signature. The two states are typographically identical for the first thirty-two pages. In the forty-page version, pp. 33–38 include descriptions of Oregon Route, from Pacific Springs to Oregon City—the caption on p. 33—“Route for Pack Trains from John Day’s River to Oregon City,” and “Route to Fort Hall, via Great Salt Lake City.” Page [39] is blank, and p. [40] bears only the note: “This Way Bill is printed on colored paper, being the most durable, and will not wear out by being creased or carried in the pocket.” The Oregon routes (pp. 33–38) follow eight pages of advertisements (pp. 25–32) and are not mentioned on the title page. Moreover, in both of the located copies, the final eight pages are printed on different paper than the first thirty-two pages. It seems clear, therefore, that the eight-page signature was printed sometime later and attached to certain copies of the thirty-two-page state. All of the located copies are printed on a thin, tracing-type paper. The first two signatures of the Yale copy are an orangish tan color, the third signature a greenish tan; the first two signatures of the Newberry copy are orangish tan, the third tan. The Bancroft and Daughters copies are on orangish tan paper.⁶

The way-bill begins (p. [3]) at Pacific Springs, about five miles west of South Pass, fifteen miles east of the junction of the Fort Hall and Salt Lake roads, and follows the Mormon trail past Fort Bridger down Echo Canyon to the Weber River—the route of William Clayton’s Emigrants’ Guide (item 354). At this point it offers two roads to Salt Lake City: the “Left Hand Road” through Three Mile and Parleys canyons, the “Golden Pass” opened by Parley Pratt as a toll road and advertised in the Deseret News of June 29, 1850; and the “Right Hand Road” through East and Emigration canyons, essentially that described in Clayton’s Guide.⁷ It then continues the “Right Hand Road” from Salt Lake City through Ogden to the Bear and Malad rivers and Cassia Creek to the junction of the Fort Hall road at City of the Rocks—the route of the Young-Eagar book (item 466). Here, in what must have been confusing to the overland traveler, Mormon Way-Bill jumps back to the “junction of Salt Lake and Ft. Hall roads,” the point twenty miles west of South Pass, and describes Sublette’s—spelled Sublet’s—Cutoff, which turns west to Big Sandy and Green River to Ham’s Fork and the Bear River; then it directs the traveler along the Bear on the old Fort Hall road to Soda Springs, where it picks up Hudspeth’s Cutoff, which goes west to the old Fort Hall road at Cassia Creek, and then sends him southwest on the old road to City of the Rocks. Again Mormon Way-Bill takes a second backward jump to Soda Springs and describes the old Fort Hall route: north from Soda Springs to Fort Hall and then southwest to Cassia Creek and City of the Rocks. Having given the traveler three different paths to City of the Rocks, it directs him to Sacramento by way of the Humboldt and Carson rivers—the route of the Young-Eagar guide, which Cain traversed in the opposite direction when he returned to Salt Lake City in 1850.⁸

Next Mormon Way-Bill gives two pages of directions to the northern and southern mining areas (pp. 16–18). It then describes “Route to Los Angelos”: south from Salt Lake City through Provo, Fillmore, and southern Utah to Las Vegas, across Cajon Pass to the San Gabriel Mission and Los Angeles; and “Coast Route,” which directs the traveler from Los Angeles to San Francisco. This is followed by more than two pages of “Advice to Emigrants” (pp. 22–25), and almost eight pages of advertisements by sixteen Salt Lake firms and an ad from Seth M. Blair offering a “splendid residence” for sale.

For much of the trip from Salt Lake City to Williams’s Ranch (now Chino, California), the Flake-Rich-Cannon company traveled within a few days of Jefferson Hunt’s company, but attempted the disastrous “Walker Cutoff,” while Hunt and seven wagons stayed with the Spanish trail. Hunt’s company had an odometer to measure the distances, and Hiram H. Blackwell, who traveled with Hunt, compiled a brief day-by-day summary of the trip with distances and a few words about the camps. C. C. Rich sent a copy of Blackwell’s summary to Brigham Young in a letter of August 13, 1850, which referred Young to Joseph Cain for details of the trip, “as he has a journel of the rout.”⁹ Mormon Way-Bill’s “Route to Los Angelos” and “Coast Route” are essentially excerpts of the Blackwell summary, with some differences occurring in the stretch from the Rio Virgin through Las Vegas to Resting Springs.

Like Clayton’s Guide, Mormon Way-Bill was also complimented by being plagiarized. Randolph B. Marcy’s The Prairie Traveler (New York, 1859), for example, borrowed, without credit, its descriptions of Sublette’s and Hudspeth’s cutoffs and the route from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles.¹⁰ But apparently there was no copyright infringement, for it appears that Cain and Brower never formally obtained one even though Copy right secured is printed at the head of the title page.¹¹

Flake-Draper 1067. Saunders 32, 34. CtY[40p.], CU-B[32p.], ICN[40p.], USlD[32p.].

563 Report of the Bradford quarterly conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, held in Bradford, March 9, 1851. Bradford: Printed by J. M. Jowett, Tyrrel Street. 1851. [Signed at end:] Elder Robert O. Menzies, President. Elder Jonathan Midgley, Clerk.

8 pp. 23 cm.

All six of the located quarterly reports from the Bradford Conference were issued during the presidency of Robert O. Menzies, who was called to preside over the conference in October 1850 and served there until he left to assume the presidency of the Preston Conference in January 1853 (see items 331, 581, 629, 660, 692, 723).¹ Item 563, the first Bradford report, summarizes three meetings on Sunday, March 9, 1851, in the Mormon meeting room, Butterworth’s Buildings, Sun Bridge, Bradford. A table on p. [3] gives the statistics for nineteen branches in the conference, and a brief financial statement on pp. 4–5 shows that the conference owed the Liverpool office £45 16s. 8½d. During the afternoon session, Menzies proposed “a monster collection” to be made by a day of fast each month to liquidate this debt and to purchase a supply of tracts for distribution in the conference. But in spite of this proposal, the next four quarterly reports each show an increase in the book debt. A resolution at the November 1851 conference suggests that this report was printed in 300 copies.²

Jonathan Midgley, the conference clerk, was born in Yorkshire, February 28, 1822, joined the Church in September 1845, and labored as a traveling missionary and branch president in the Bradford Conference until he was called to preside over the Manchester Conference in May 1852 (see item 754). Immigrating to Utah in 1853, he settled in Nephi and served several terms in the territorial legislature as the representative from Juab County. In 1869 he moved to Wales, San Pete County, where he taught school and was the postmaster. He died in Wales, February 2, 1899.³

Flake-Draper 1905. UPB, USlC, UU.

564 PRATT, Orson. Yr achos mawr cyntaf, neu alluoedd hunan-symudawl y bydyssawd. Wedi ei gyfieithu allan o Saesneg Orson Pratt, A.C. [Caption title] [The great first cause, or the self-moving forces of the universe. Translated from English Orson Pratt, A.M.] [At foot of p. 28:] J. Davis, Argraffydd, Merthyr-Tydfil. [J. Davis, Printer, Merthyr Tydfil.] [1851]

28 pp. 17 cm.

Flake-Draper 6494. Dennis 53. MH, UPB, USlC, WsB. WsN.

565 [Danish hymnal. Copenhagen, 1851]

No copy of the first Mormon hymnal in Danish is located, and what is known about it mainly comes from Erastus Snow’s journal:

About the first of April [1851] I published a small work containing a translation of the Articles & Cov. of the church viz. Sect. 2d Doc. & Cov. and several extracts of other revelations on the doctrine & government of the church and containing also a small collection of from 20 to 30 Hymns in part translated from our English Hymbook. These were received by the Saints with great joy & mostly sung in tunes used in Zion.¹

One other piece of information is supplied by Andrew Jenson, who claimed that the book contained twenty-eight hymns.²

Soon after coming to Denmark, Peter O. Hansen translated several sections of the Doctrine and Covenants, including section 2 (now D&C 20), so the revelations in the hymnbook were probably his translations. Some of the translated hymns were his as well; others likely came from local converts. Erastus Snow reports in a letter of November 21, 1850, for example, that Miss Matthiesen, a new convert who worked for a time on the Danish Book of Mormon, had also translated some of the Mormon hymns “into Danish poetry” (see item 574).³ Snow remarks in his “Summary of the Danish Mission” that he had published “three small editions of Hymns makeing 2,500 copies in all,” so one might guess that he issued the first book in about 500 copies.⁴

566 TAYLOR, John. Aux amis de la vérité religieuse. Récit abrégé du commencement, des progrès, de l’établissement, des persécutions, de la foi et de la doctrine de l’Église de Jésus-Christ des Saints des Derniers Jours. Par John Taylor, elder, venant de la Ville du Grand Lac Salé, État de Déseret. Haute-Californie. Paris, Imprimerie de Marc Ducloux et Compagnie, Rue Saint-Benoit, 7. 1851.

16 pp. 21 cm.

On April 10, 1851, Curtis E. Bolton recorded in his diary that he had “another 500 of the pamphlet ‘Aux Amis’ struck off, which cost me 25 francs or 4/5 of a sous (a cent) apiece.”¹ This impression was certainly printed from stereotype plates, since its setting is the same as that of the first impression (item 517) and third impression (item 712)—which was made from plates with an obvious correction on the title page. In addition to the change of date, one other correction appears on the title page of the 1851 impression: Deseret is changed to Déseret. Further, on p. 7, line 12 from the bottom, par is corrected to pour, and on p. 15, line 12 from the bottom, du is corrected to des.

Flake-Draper 8811. NN, USlC, UU.

567 THOMAS, Jonathan J. Dwy gan. Gan Jonathan J. Thomas, (Nathan Ddu o Lywel.) [Caption title] [Two songs. By Jonathan J. Thomas, (Black Nathan from Lywel.)] [At foot of p. 4:] J. Davis, Argraffydd, Georgetown, Merthyr. [J. Davis, Printer, Georgetown, Merthyr.] [1851]

4 pp. 17 cm.

Flake-Draper 8908. Dennis 54. UPB, USlC, WsN.

568 DAVIS, John Silvanus. Traethawd ar wyrthiau, yn darlunio pa beth ydynt, eu dyben, y pryd eu cyflawnir, a’u safonolrwydd i brofi dwyfoldeb crefydd. [2 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. [Treatise on miracles, describing what they are, their purpose, when they are effected, and their basis for proving the divinity of religion. 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.]

12 pp. 17 cm.

Flake-Draper 2722y. Dennis 55. CSmH, CU-B, MH, UPB, USlC, WsN.

569 DYKES, George Parker. Glaubens-artikel in der Kirche Jesu Christi der Heiligen der Letzten Tage. [Caption title] [Signed at end:] G. P. Dykes. [Copenhagen? 1851?]

[4] pp. 21 cm.

570 DYKES, George Parker. Troes-artikler i Jesu Christi Kirke af Sidste-Dages Hellige i Danmark. [Caption title] [Dated and signed at end:] Den 25de Februar 1851. G. P. Dykes. [At foot of p. [4]:] Trykt hos F. E. Bording. [Copenhagen, 1851?]

[4] pp. 20 cm.

571 DYKES, George Parker. Mindeblad efter Ældste George Parker Dykes til Jesu Christi Kirke af Sidste Dages Hellige i Aalborg. [Caption title] [Dated and signed at end:] Aalborg, den 24de April 1851, Slotsgade Nr. 530. Eders ydmyge og lydige Tjener G. Parker Dykes. [Copenhagen? 1851?]

[4] pp. 21 cm.

572 DYKES, George Parker? Bibelske henviisninger, betræffende lærdomme om det evige evangelium og præstedømme, den nye og evige pagt og Guds folks forsamling i de sidste dage med meget mere. [At foot of verso:] Udgivne af J. H. Christensen. (Betales efter eget Behag.) Trykt hos Behrends Enke. [Copenhagen? 1851?]

Broadsheet 21 x 18.5 cm. Text in two columns.

G. P. Dykes and Sarah Jensen, wife of Hans Peter Jensen, the president of the Aalborg branch, left Aalborg on April 14, 1851, and arrived two days later in Schleswig, the home of Sarah’s family, where they would proselytize for the next three weeks, primarily among her relatives. In response to a letter from Erastus Snow asking him to come to Copenhagen, Dykes left Schleswig on May 7 and reached Copenhagen on the 9th, where he remained until departing for Aalborg on May 17, en route to Schleswig, Hamburg, and London.¹ During this eight-day stay in Copenhagen, he reports,

I had a thousand tracts printed in the German language, for my future labors in Schleswig. I also revised & prepared for publication a scriptural refference to prove the Latter-day work to have 1500 copies stamped off.

He further notes that when he left Copenhagen for Aalborg and Schleswig, he “embraced this opportunity to circulate many tracts that [he] had published, so that they were scattered in the most of the towns from Aalborg to Schleswig.”²

Glaubens-Artikel is without doubt the tract “printed in the German language” in 1,000 copies, which Dykes mentions in the entry quoted above. It is a translation of Troes-Artikel, retaining the biblical reference Es. 66, 20. 21 in the eleventh article in the Aalborg edition (item 547), but eliminating the reference Luc. 12, 47. 48 in the sixth article. Glaubens-Artikel contains a number of grammatical errors and seems to have been written by a nonnative speaker, so it was probably translated by Dykes himself, likely with the help of Sarah Jensen.³

Dykes’s Glaubens-Artikel, the Copenhagen edition of his Troes-Artikler (item 570), and his Mindeblad (item 571), as well as the tract De Sande Vidners Liv og Lærdomme (item 573), have similar formats, suggesting that they were all printed by F. E. Bording about the same time. One might guess, therefore, that Dykes had item 570 printed during his stay in Copenhagen. On the other hand, Troes-Artikler is included in the list of publications at the end of the second edition of F. J. Hahn’s 1852 Et Par Ord om Mormonerne (item 765), so it is possible that item 570 was struck off late that year along with the reprints of several other Danish tracts (see items 767, 768, 769).

Item 570 is textually identical to the Aalborg edition of Troes-Artikler, except for the change of Vi troe to At vi troe at the beginning of part 2 of the seventh article; the change of muligt to mueligt in article 7, part 2; the change of at to og in article 7, part 5; the change of Cap. to Kap. in article 7, part 5, and article 9; the correction of rendset to renset in article 14; and the deletion of the biblical references noted above in the sixth and eleventh articles. The sixteen articles are faithfully reprinted at the end of the second edition of En Sandheds-Røst (item 769)—but with Dykes’s name replaced by Erastus Snow’s.

In the opening sentence of Mindeblad (A Printed Reminder), Dykes asks that, inasmuch as he was about to bid farewell to the Saints in Aalborg, he be allowed to say a few words that might be remembered after he had gone.⁴ Declaring that the great and terrible day of the Lord is near and summarizing the events accompanying the Second Advent, he urges the Saints to love one another, give heed to the counsel of their leaders, follow the Savior’s spirit of meekness and give offence to no person, and keep themselves clean in spirit and person. Since it is dated April 24, 1851—the ninth day Dykes was in Schleswig—one might conjecture that he composed Mindeblad upon receiving the letter from Erastus Snow directing him to come to Copenhagen and had it printed during his eight-day stay in Copenhagen so he could distribute it when he passed through Aalborg en route to Schleswig, Hamburg, and London.

Item 572 is undoubtedly the “scriptural refference to prove the Latter-day work” that Dykes “revised & prepared” to have printed in 1,500 copies. It does not explicitly identify itself as a Latter-day Saint tract, but the line “Christ’s Church re-established year 1830” appearing twice in the calendar makes it clear that it is a Mormon piece, and the line “Since Christ’s birth 1851” in the calendar suggests that it was published in 1851. Moreover, it is highly unlikely that two different scriptural references were produced in the Scandinavian Mission during the first year or two. One might infer that Dykes arranged with Julius Herman (or Herman Julius) Christensen to publish this second edition of his references (see item 546) and, perhaps, to also underwrite the cost. The parenthetical comment Betales efter eget Behag (Pay at your own discretion) suggests it was distributed gratis. Christensen was a member of the Copenhagen branch at the time Dykes was in Copenhagen and twenty months later would be John E. Forsgren’s counselor in the presidency of the company of 297 Scandinavian Saints that sailed for America on the Forest Monarch.⁵

Patterned after Lorenzo D. Barnes’s References (items 115–16, 136–37, 152, 397), Bibelske Henviisninger (Biblical References) gives about three hundred biblical citations, arranged under twenty-three numbered headings, the seventeenth with seven subheadings. The last half of the verso contains a “Calendar” listing some of the principal biblical events with the respective times from the Luther, Calvin, “English,” and “Danish” Bibles, intended to show that over six thousand years had elapsed since the creation of the earth and the Second Advent was near. One might guess that this calendar was an abbreviated version of Dykes’s unlocated “chronology of the world” (item 548).

Item 569: Flake-Draper 3079a. CtY, UPB, USlC. Item 570: Flake-Draper 3079. USlC. Item 571: Flake-Draper 3068. USlC. Item 572: Flake-Draper 469. USlC.

573 De sande vidners liv og lærdomme i Jesu Christi Kirke af Sidste Dages Hellige. [A foot of p. 8:] Udgivet af Sidste Dages Hellige i Jesu Christi Kirke. Trykt hos F. E. Bording. [Copenhagen, 1851?]

8 pp. 19 cm.

The colophon of De Sande Vidners Liv og Lærdomme (The True Witnesses’ Life and Teachings) states that it was published by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but who actually composed it or exactly when it was published is not known.¹ Its format is similar to those of G. P. Dykes’s Glaubens-Artikel, the Copenhagen edition of his Troes-Artikler, and his Mindeblad (items 569–71), suggesting that the four pieces were printed about the same time. It was likely one of the “seven different tracts and pamphlets of different sizes from 4 to 24 pages octavo amounting to about 10,700 copies” that Erastus Snow reported he issued, so one might guess that it was published in an edition of about 1,000.²

Opening with a reference to many false reports in circulation about the Latter-day Saints, De Sande Vidners Liv og Lærdomme asks that the Church be allowed to present to the public the main differences between it and the traditional Christian churches. The tract asserts that the Saints believe in the Old and New Testaments in their entirety and take them literally, that the Book of Mormon was brought forth by revelation according to Isaiah’s prophecy (see, e.g., items 38, 95, 133, 134, 195, 521–22), and that God has established a new and everlasting covenant. It summarizes the events to accompany the Second Advent and then contrasts the primitive church with modern Christendom, arguing that God’s church must follow the New Testament pattern. The Latter-day Saints do indeed follow this pattern, it declares, and it closes by admonishing its readers to “wake up!” and repent, be baptized for the remission of sins, and prepare for the great day of the Lord.

Flake-Draper 7521d. USlC.

574 Mormons bog. En beretning, skreven ved Mormons haand paa tavler, efter Nephis tavler. [19 lines] Oversat paa Engelsk fra grundtexten af Joseph Smith den yngre. Kjøbenhavn. Udgivet og forlagt af Erastus Snow. Trykt i F. E. Bordings Bogtrykkeri. 1851.

[i–viii][1]–568 pp. 15.5 cm.

The first foreign language edition of the Book of Mormon had its beginning in Nauvoo in 1845, when Peter O. Hansen commenced a translation of the book into Danish (see item 485). Five years later, three days after he had arrived in Copenhagen, Erastus Snow loaned Hansen’s manuscript and a copy of the Book of Mormon in English to the Baptist minister, Peter C. Mönster, who judged the translation to be “very imperfect,” and that September Snow directed Hansen to revise it. Subsequently he engaged a new Danish convert, a Miss Matthiesen, a teacher of French, German, and English, to correct the translation, but when Hansen complained that she was making the language too modern, Snow decided to collaborate himself with Hansen in revising the manuscript. Hansen claims in his autobiography that he spent five months on the translation in Nauvoo and seven months on it with Snow—suggesting that he and Snow began working together in November 1850.¹

Snow had spent most of October in England, where he had borrowed £200 from the Millennial Star office and had obtained a promise of donations totaling £70 from two British elders, and before the end of the year he contracted with F. E. Bording to print 3,000 copies of the Book of Mormon for 1,000 rigsdaler (about £100). To assist with the proofreading, he hired a Mr. Monrad, “an experienced proofreader and editor of a Copenhagen periodical.” Early in January 1851 the first sheet came off the press, and as the book was printed, Snow issued it a sheet at a time to about two hundred subscribers. By February 14 Bording had struck off 168 pages. Snow and Hansen continued to correct the translation, and on May 20 they finished their revision. Two days later Bording printed the last sheet, and on May 24 Snow left for England with a few bound copies of the new book. An inventory dated March 1, 1852, shows 2,203 copies in the Scandinavian Mission office, 1,800 copies in sheets, 393 “plain bound” copies, and 10 in gilt decorated bindings. At this point the mission still owed the Millennial Star office £110 12d. 11d. Four months earlier it had sent the Liverpool office 200 copies in sheets and had received a £20 credit.² In England the book bound in sheep was advertised for 4s. a copy and in America for $1.25.³

The title page of Mormons Bog exists in two states: (1) with Ødelæggelse in line 11, and (2) with Udlæggelse in line 11. Moreover, in lines 6 and 7, the phrase og Lamaniter- | nes Handele in state 1 appears as og Lamaniter- | nesHandeler in state 2. Peter O. Hansen writes in his autobiography that just after the book had been printed, when Erastus Snow was absent,

Bro. Malling came and showed me a strange misprint or typographical mistake on the title page where, instead of reading ‘come forth to the interpretation thereof’ [Udlæggelse] it read, ‘to the destruction thereof’ [Ødelæggelse]. . . . I hurried to the printer and ordered him to print other title leaves. The bad ones I used for wrapping paper.⁴

The setting of the title page in the second state is that of the first state, corrected, with some slight rearranging of the type in the two paragraphs of text, while the remaining pages in the gathering, pp. [ii]–[viii], are the same setting, so the type for this gathering must have still been up when Hansen discovered the mistake. Copies of the book in the first state are located at the Huntington Library, Brigham Young University, and LDS Church. The Church has a second copy in which a small rectangular slip of paper bearing Ud has been pasted over the letters Øde. A fifth book in the first state is in private hands.

Mormons Bog collates: title page, with the verso blank (pp. [i–ii]); preface, signed by Erastus Snow and dated Kjøbenhavn, i Mai 1851 (pp. [iii]–[vi]); testimony of the three witnesses (p. [vii]); testimony of the eight witnesses (p. [viii]); and the main text (pp. [1]–568). Its contemporary bindings include: three-quarter brown leather with blue, green, gray, or brown marbled paper-covered boards, gilt bands or decorations and gilt title on the backstrip, plain, colored, or patterned endsheets; black or brown polished leather with a gilt ruled or ornamental border on the covers, gilt-decorated backstrip with gilt title, gilt or speckled edges, and plain or coated endsheets; what appears to be a British binding of green blind-stamped sheep with an ornamental border and arabesque on the covers, blind-stamped bands and gilt title on the backstrip, and green or blue coated endsheets; and black pebbled cloth with ornamental gilt bands and gilt title on the backstrip. The LDS Church has a copy in brown polished leather with Deres Majestæt Enkedronning Caroline Amalie in gilt on the front cover—prepared for presentation to the dowager Queen Caroline of Denmark, who, according to a note in the book, refused to accept it. Franklin D. Richards’s copy, at Brigham Young University, is in what seems to be a contemporary British binding of purple sheep with a gilt and blind-stamped ornamental border on the covers, gilt-decorated panels and gilt title between raised bands on the backstrip, and gilt edges. The Harvard copy was a gift from Brigham Young through Orson Pratt, March 15, 1854.

Flake-Draper 705. CLU-C, CSmH, CtY, CU-B, MH, NjP, NN, UPB, USlC, UU.

575 KELSEY, Eli Brazee. The semi-half-yearly circular of the president of the London Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, to the presidents of branches and priesthood generally. London: Printed by W. Aubrey, 25, Brandon Street, Walworth. 1851. [Signed at end:] Eli B. Kelsey.

8 pp. 21.5 cm.

Since this circular announces the half-yearly conference to be held on May 31 and June 1, 1851, and mentions the visiting authorities expected to attend (see item 580), Eli B. Kelsey undoubtedly issued it in May, about four months after he had assumed the presidency of the London Conference (see items 404, 545). In it he requests each branch president to send the names of the skilled tradesmen in his branch, together with the names and ages of their families and the amounts they can contribute toward immigrating to Utah. He gives detailed instructions on how to distribute tracts, mentioning, in particular, Orson Pratt's Divine Authority, Kingdom of God, Remarkable Visions, and Divine Authenticity of the Book of Mormon (items 367–70, 373–86, 393–94, 521–22). At one point he refers to “numbering the tract covers”—an indication that the London Conference had printed a set of wrappers for these pamphlets. He urges the branches to contribute to the fund to purchase tracts for gratis distribution, cautions the branch presidents not to borrow from any of the various church funds for their own use, and reminds them that they are obligated to pay for all copies of the Millennial Star they receive from the conference book agent.

Flake-Draper 1937. CtY, UPB, USlC.

576 Étoile du Déséret Organe de l’Église de Jésus-Christ des Saints-des-Derniers-Jours. Paris: May 1851–April 1852.

12 nos. 191[1] pp. 24 cm.

By mid-February 1851, John Taylor had concluded to extend his European mission another year, and by mid-March he had decided to publish a French-language periodical as part of his missionary effort.¹ In May, he and Curtis E. Bolton spoke with various governmental officials in an attempt to obtain a license to preach publicly in France—which was denied on July 14—and Bolton contacted a number of printers in regard to the Book of Mormon and French periodical, settling on Marc Ducloux, who had twice printed Taylor’s Aux Amis de la Vérité Religieuse (items 517, 566) and would eventually become Bolton’s close friend. During the week of May 19, Bolton translated several pieces for the paper and on the 27th gave the material to Ducloux. Two days later he received copies of the first number of Étoile du Déséret at his room and sent them “every where to our friends.”²

A complete file of Étoile du Déséret (Star of Deseret) consists of twelve monthly issues, dated May 1851–April 1852, each in sixteen pages, the whole continuously paginated, each issue numbered on the front page at the bottom right. Numbers 1–10 have at the end: Paris. Edité et publié par John Taylor, 37, rue de Paradis-Poissonnière, with the address changed to 7, rue de Tournon in the last two numbers. Bolton moved from 7, rue de Tournon to 37, rue de Paradis-Poissonnière about the end of May 1851, when Taylor left Paris, and then moved back to 7, rue de Tournon ten months later.³ At the foot of the back page, each issue bears the imprint Paris.—Imp. de Marc Ducloux et Comp., rue Saint-Benoît, 7, followed by the date of that issue. The first ten numbers have the price just above this imprint: Prix: 25 centimes. In the titles of the first three, Déséret is spelled Déseret.

A comment by John Taylor indicates that some of the contents of Étoile du Déséret were stereotyped, and this is supported by the fact that several of its articles were published in pamphlet form from stereotype plates with the Étoile setting (see items 713, 747).⁴

Although Taylor is listed as editor and publisher, Curtis E. Bolton managed virtually every aspect of the paper and translated a number of the pieces for it. In this he was helped by Louis A. Bertrand and Lazare Augé—whom Bertrand had sent to Bolton in March 1851 to correct the translation of the Book of Mormon.⁵ Described by Bolton as an “elderly gentlemen,” a “learned Frenchman” not connected with the Church, the author of several works, and a disciple of the philosopher “Vronski,” Augé was born in Auxerre, France, in 1798, died in 1874, and was the author of at least fifteen works on politics and philosophy, four dealing with the Polish mathematician and philosopher Józef Maria Hoené-Wronski.⁶

Bertrand, whose given name was Jean François Elie Flandin, was born in Bouches-du-Rhône, France, January 8, 1808. As a young man he traveled widely, spending several years in America—where he was naturalized a U.S. citizen—and in the later 1840s aligned himself with the French communist Étienne Cabet. It was probably at this time that he assumed the name Louis Alphonse Bertrand. He was an editor of Cabet’s newspaper Le Populaire when John Taylor baptized him into the Church on December 1, 1850. One year later, when Taylor appointed Bolton president of the French Mission, Bertrand was called to be the first counselor in the mission presidency as well as president of the Paris Conference (see item 747). After Bolton returned to America, he served as a counselor to Bolton’s successor, A. L. Lamoreaux, laboring for two years on the Isle of Jersey. In 1855 he immigrated to Utah and then returned to France four years later to preside over the French Mission, 1859–64. During this mission he published his Mémoires d’un Mormon (Paris, 1862). He died in Salt Lake City, March 21, 1875.⁷

Given the political turmoil in Paris at the time, one might wonder if Bertrand’s and Augé’s communist connections increased the government’s suspicion of the Mormons and affected its decision not to grant a license for public preaching. Bolton describes the coup d’état of December 2, 1851, in his journal and reports that he and Bertrand left Paris for two days, as “there was danger for Bro. Bertrand for he was some years ago one of the head men of the revolutionary party of red republications, connected with Cabets communist newspaper,” having been “imprisoned 3 months in 1848, merely for his opinions.” Bolton further notes that John Taylor conducted the conference on December 20 at which he and Bertrand were called to the mission presidency in secret “in consequence of the extreme jealousy of the Police on account of the unsettled state of Political affairs” and that three members of the police inquired about Bertrand on the 27th.⁸

Four names appear in the Étoile as an author or a translator: John Taylor, Curtis E. Bolton, Louis A. Bertrand, and Alphonse Dupont. The name Alphonse Dupont is without doubt a pseudonym for Bertrand. It does not occur in Bolton’s diary—which certainly would have been the case had Dupont been an actual person who wrote for the Étoile—and Dupont’s serial article “La Voix de Joseph” was published in a separate pamphlet under Bertrand’s name (see item 747).

Ducloux finished the second number of the Étoile on July 7 and that day Bolton sent 200 copies to Jersey. Two weeks later he gave Ducloux the copy for the third number. On January 23, 1852, he handed him copy for the eighth and ninth numbers, and the rest of the ninth number—which should have appeared in January—on February 3. Bolton departed for England on Sunday, April 4, having left the tenth number with Bertrand the day before to be ready by Monday—more than a month after it was scheduled to appear. Two weeks later he learned that Bertrand had new employment and would no longer be able to work on the Étoile, so during the fourth week of June he engaged Augé for three days to help with the paper. He enlisted Marc Ducloux to correct the eleventh number and gave him the copy on July 12—now more than three months late. Bolton’s tour of the mission and trip to England, July 17–September 30, delayed the Étoile even further, and on December 9 a Brother Dehon helped him translate articles for the twelfth number. Nine days later he realized that there was not enough material to fill up the issue, so that night he wrote another article, handed it to Ducloux the next day, and left Paris for the last time in the evening.⁹ Bolton’s departure on December 19 ensured that the twelfth number of Étoile du Déséret would be the last.

Two problems plagued Curtis E. Bolton throughout the life of the paper: lack of funds and governmental regulations. In September 1851, for example, Ducloux held the issue of the Étoile because Bolton was unable to pay the printing bill, and after a “week of intolerable suspense,” he received 125 francs from John Taylor, one hundred of which he paid to Ducloux, liberating the Étoile even though 42 francs was still due. In April 1852, with £44 owing Ducloux for the Étoile and the Book of Mormon, Bolton went to England in an attempt to obtain funds from F. D. Richards but received only £5—leaving Bolton feeling “weary, weary, weary.” Two months later S. W. Richards sent him £25 towards the printing debt and in October another £5 17s; the next month he loaned him £15 11s. 1d. The preceding April Bolton had noted in his diary that “the ‘Etoile’ costs about 25 francs each time now more than it pays.”¹⁰

Bolton’s problems with the government were formalized on July 14, 1851, when he was denied a license to publicly preach in France. The following January he spoke with the “chief of Bureau of the minister of the interior” about the Étoile and was told he could not publish it because he was not a French citizen; he could transfer ownership of the paper to a Frenchman or call it a book to be issued in twelve parts. Bolton mentioned this to Marc Ducloux, who assured him that he was friendly with the Bureau Chief and would “make all right.” Three weeks later Ducloux reported that the State Council had been arguing for about a week over whether or not the Étoile was a newspaper. “The Press Censor says it is a newspaper,” Bolton recorded in his diary, “and advises me to put the 1 sous stamp upon it then I can sen[d] it by the post free of postage, and that I must have it stamped because its a newspaper. The post master dec[la]res it is Not a newspaper and that he won’t receive it as such, stamp or no stamp.”¹¹ Bolton does not reveal how this was resolved. Most files of the Étoile include some issues with a circular stamp in black or red ink on the front page, apparently a postage or fee stamp.¹²

A number of the articles in the Étoile are John Taylor’s. These include the text of his tract De la Nécessité de Nouvelles Révélations (item 713) in seven installments, and three serial pieces, “Du Livre de Mormon,” “Sur le Baptême,” and “Les Fils de Dieu.” Étoile du Déséret prints French translations of several pieces from the Millennial Star and Deseret News—among them the “Fifth General Epistle”—and from non-Mormon papers, including “Lettre sur la Vallée” from the New York Tribune and “Ruines dans la Californie” from the New York Herald, as well as a translation of Orson Pratt’s Divine Authority in seven parts under the title “La Voix de Joseph” by “Alphonse Dupont” (see item 747). Bolton added reports of local conferences and the progress in the mission, and five of the issues have hymns on the back page, three by Louis A. Bertrand and two by “Alphonse Dupont.” The back page of the twelfth number, p. [192], has Table des Matières des Nos 1 à 12.

The German periodical Zions Panier (item 632) took much of its contents from the Étoile, and John Taylor’s “Sur l’Organisation de l’Eglise” was reprinted in English in the Millennial Star of November 15, 1851.

Flake-Draper 3185. CSmH, CtY, NjP, UPB, USlC, UU.

577 Hymnau, wedi eu cyfansoddi a’u casglu, yn fwyaf neillduol, at wasanaeth Saint y Dyddiau Diweddaf. Ail argraffiad. Merthyr-Tydfil: Argraffwyd ac ar werth gan J. Davis, Georgetown. 1851. [Hymns, composed and collected most particularly for the use of the Latter-day Saints. Second printing. Merthyr Tydfil: Printed and for sale by J. Davis, Georgetown. 1851.]

viii[1]–56 pp. 10.5 cm.

Flake-Draper 1872. Dennis 56. UPB, USlC.

578 BELL, James Ferguson. A reply to the bare-faced falsehoods and misrepresentations of Mr. John Theobald. By J. F. Bell. [Caption title] [N.p., 1851?]

8 pp. 21.5 cm.

The title of James F. Bell’s Reply to the Bare-faced Falsehoods gets to the point about as quickly as that of any Mormon tract. Bell wrote the pamphlet in response to “Mormonism Dissected,” a tract of 32 pages, by “Mr. J. Theobald of Ockbrook, Derbyshire”—no copy of which is located.¹ His adversary, John Theobald, was a “Primitive Methodist” lay preacher who, during the 1850s, made a career of writing, lecturing, and debating against the Latter-day Saints.²

In the opening pages of Reply to the Bare-faced Falsehoods Bell criticizes Theobald’s interpretation of the name “Mormon”—also repeated in Theobald’s later tracts—and his representation of the Latter-day Saints’ view of the Bible and Book of Mormon, and he argues in support of the idea that man is created in the image of God. He then defends the character of Joseph Smith and the Latter-day Saints by quoting from the speech of John S. Reid in the Times and Seasons of June 1, 1844, and Millennial Star of April 1, 1850, from Thomas L. Kane’s The Mormons (Philadelphia, 1850), p. 85, and from Truman Smith’s Speech of Mr. Smith . . . Delivered in the Senate of the United States, July 8, 1850 (Washington, 1850).³ He contrasts Theobald’s assertion that the Mormons “have not any of the order of the Apostles of Christ” with the statement of a “Mr. Clarke, another ‘Anti-Mormon’” that “there is not an ordinance nor an order that was had in the days of the Apostles but what these people have.”⁴ And he concludes his main text with a ten-line poem beginning, “Farewell friend Theobald, your book of lies / Ruins your character among the wise.” The last two pages include a series of questions and answers headed Can I Not Be Saved Without Baptism?, taken from the Millennial Star of September 1840. A “List of Publications” is at the bottom of the last page.

This list of publications includes Orson Pratt’s series Divine Authenticity of the Book of Mormon and his Great First Cause (items 521–22, 543), and “Millennial Star, a fortnightly publication,” so Reply to the Bare-faced Falsehoods was published no earlier than 1851 and no later than April 1852. Moreover, the John S. Reid and Truman Smith quotations in James Linforth’s The Rev. C. W. Lawrence’s Replied to and Refuted (item 585) appear to have been taken from Reply to the Bare-faced Falsehoods. One might guess, therefore, that it was issued about May 1851, four months after Bell assumed the presidency of the Staffordshire Conference (see items 419–20), when the Star reported his address as “Mr. Wright’s, Albion Place, Shelton, North Staffordshire,” the same address as one of the booksellers listed at the end of the tract.⁵

Flake-Draper 390a. CtY, ICN, UHi, ULA, UPB, USlC.

579 The programme | of the | London Conference | festival, | to be held in the | Freemasons’ Hall, | Great Queen Street, | on Monday, June 2nd, 1851. | Printed by Br. J. B. Franklin, 5, Northampton St., King’s Cross. [At foot below border:] Price one penny. [London, 1851]

8 pp. 21 cm. Ornamental border on title page.

While tea parties in conjunction with the quarterly or half-yearly conferences were common in the British Mission, the London Conference festival of June 2, 1851, held after the conference’s half-yearly meeting (see next item), took this practice to a new level and served as a model for a number of other festivals held throughout the mission during the next two years (see items 587, 595, 643, 687, 697, 707, 752). The London festival, in turn, seems to have been inspired by the July 24th celebration in Salt Lake City the preceding year, which was reported in the Deseret News of July 27, August 3, and August 10, 1850, and Millennial Star of November 15.

Opening with some instructions from conference president Eli B. Kelsey, item 579 outlines the program of the festival, listing the visitors expected to attend—including John Taylor, Lorenzo Snow, Erastus Snow, Franklin D. Richards, George B. Wallace, and Levi Richards—and the various speeches, songs, choir numbers, scripture readings, “laconic phrases,” and prayers, with two breaks for refreshments. The festivities were to begin at 3:30 p.m. “precisely” with two processions composed of a band, twelve branch presidents each carrying a staff, twenty-four young ladies “appropriately dressed,” and twenty-four young men with blue scarves; then twelve fathers in Israel each carrying a staff, twelve young men each carrying the Bible and Book of Mormon, and twelve young ladies dressed in white with scarves and wreaths of roses on their heads, each carrying a bouquet of flowers. Included in the pamphlet are the words to seven songs: Parley Pratt’s, “Lo the Gentile Chain is Broken”; John Jaques’s “Oh! Say, What is Truth?”; W. W. Phelps’s “Glorious Things Are Sung of Zion”; Thomas Hastings’s “Hail to the Brightness of Zion’s Glad Morning”; John Lyon’s “We’ll Plough, and Sow, and Joyful Reap”; John Taylor’s “Go, Ye Messengers of Glory”; and James Craig’s “Let Israel’s Chosen Race Rejoice.”¹

Jacob Gates comments on the festival in his journal, noting that one thousand or more assembled and the festivities lasted until 11:30 p.m. Appleton M. Harmon reports that eleven hundred attended, the waiters were “dressed in white with wreaths of roses,” and the “whole was a rich entertainment with musick and the like and we all felt first rate.”²

The pamphlet occurs in two states. These are typographically identical except that one is printed entirely in black, while the other has the first, fourth, sixth, and eighth lines of the title page in red.³ It is one of seven pieces printed for the London Conference by John Benjamin Franklin (see items 542, 619, 635, 636, 703, 761).

Flake-Draper 1942a. CSmH, MH, UPB, USlC.

580 Half-yearly report of the London conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, held in the city of London, Saturday and Sunday, May 31st, and June lst, 1851. Elder Eli B. Kelsey, President. Elder Thos. C. Armstrong, Secretary. Visitors present: Elders, John Taylor, Lorenzo Snow, Erastus Snow, and Franklin D. Richards, of the Quorum of the Twelve. Elders, George B. Wallace, and Levi Richards counsellors [sic] to the president of the British conferences; twenty-six presidents of conferences, and various missionaries from the continent. London: Printed by W. Aubrey, 25, Brandon Street, Walworth. [Below border at right:] Price, 3½d. [1851?]

24 pp. 21.5 cm. Wavy ruled border on title page.

This is the third of ten located London Conference reports, the second of three under Eli B. Kelsey’s presidency (see items 490, 545). The meetings it summarizes—which Kelsey had advertised in his Semi-Half-Yearly Circular (item 575) and Millennial Star of May 1—involved most of the leaders in the British Mission and went beyond the usual half-yearly conference. The report includes detailed minutes of a meeting on Saturday, May 31, 1851, in the Eastern Lecture Hall, Church Lane, Whitechapel, and a meeting on Sunday morning, June 1, in the City of London Literary and Scientific Institution, Aldersgate Street. The Sunday afternoon and evening meetings were divided into nine concurrent sessions in the various Mormon meeting halls around the city and are mentioned only briefly. It also has short summaries of the festival on Monday, June 2, at the Freemason’s Hall, Great Queen Street (see the preceding item); a special conference on Tuesday, June 3, in the Eastern Lecture Hall, conducted by F. D. Richards, John Taylor, Lorenzo Snow, Erastus Snow, George B. Wallace, and Levi Richards; and a meeting of the priesthood in the Eastern Lecture Hall, Wednesday, June 4. Four tables on pp. [4]–[7] give the statistics for sixty branches as well as each branch’s name, date organized, meeting place, county, president’s name, and president’s address.

In his Sunday morning discourse Kelsey urged the branch presidents to pick book subagents who would aggressively sell the Millennial Star and other books and pamphlets. “The ‘Stars’ are not returnable,” he continued, “therefore, when a branch receives a package of ‘Stars’ from the general agent, they become indebted for the worth of them, with a promise both expressed and implied that they will be paid for without delay.” A footnote on p. 16 mentions that about twenty thousand tracts were in circulation in the conference, and thirty thousand was expected within six months. This effort and the activity of the new book depot at 35, Jewin Street are reflected in the financial report on p. 11 which shows a debt of £475 14s. 3d. to the Star office in Liverpool—a five-fold increase in six months (see item 545).

Flake-Draper 1935. MH, NjP, UHi, UPB, USlC.

581 Second report of the Bradford conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, held at Bradford, June 7 and 8, 1851. Robert O. Menzies, President. Jonathan Midgley, William Burton, Conference Secs. Bradford: Printed by J. M. Jowett, Tyrrel Street, Thornton Road End. 1851.

8 pp. 22.5 cm.

The second of six located Bradford Conference reports (see item 563), item 581 summarizes an evening session in the Saints’ meeting room, Butterworth’s Buildings, Sun Bridge, on Saturday, June 7, 1851, and three sessions on Sunday, June 8, in the same hall. The usual table on p. [2] gives the statistics and finances for eighteen branches, and the book agent’s account on p. 7 shows that the conference owed the Liverpool office £54 13s. 9½d.—indicating that Menzies’s “monster collection” proposed three months earlier had not reduced the conference’s book debt. At the Sunday afternoon session it was resolved to hold the November meetings in Leeds and then alternate the location of the quarterly meetings between Leeds and Bradford thereafter. A resolution at the November 1851 conference suggests that this report was printed in 300 copies.¹

William Walton Burton, who assisted Jonathan Midgley as conference secretary, was born in Bradford, March 23, 1833, joined the Church in 1845, and labored in the conference as a local missionary—participating in a well-publicized debate with John Theobald in January and February 1853. Coming to Utah in 1854 and settling in Ogden, he served on the city council, the high council, and as the superintendent of the Weber County schools. In 1886 he moved to Star Valley, Wyoming, where he was called to be a counselor in the stake presidency and a patriarch. He died in Ogden, June 27, 1918.²

Flake-Draper 1906. UPB, USlC.

582 Report of the Sheffield conference of the Church of Jesus Christ, of Latter-day Saints, held in the Hall of Science, Rockingham-St., Sheffield, on the eighth day of June, 1851. Lewis Robbins, President. W. S. Myers, Secretary. J. V. Long Reporter. [Caption title] [At foot of p. 12:] Stephen New, Printer, 14, Waingate, Sheffield. [1851?]

12 pp. 21 cm.

This half-yearly report, the fourth of five located Sheffield Conference reports (see items 444, 532), is the only one issued during Lewis Robbins’s presidency.¹ It gives the business and various speeches during three sessions on Sunday, June 8, 1851, including the remarks of George Parker Dykes, who was visiting the Sheffield Saints. A table on p. [4] shows the statistics for thirty-three branches in the conference, and Fred. C. Robinson’s hymn “The Saints’ Happiness in Gathering” is at the end.

The LDS Church has a copy consisting of the first eight pages with a slip (6 x 14 cm.) printed on one side, attached at the spine. This slip contains a three-line summary of the evening session, followed by Robbins’s, J. V. Long’s, and book agent John Memmott’s addresses and Stephen New’s colophon. One might guess that this slip represents an earlier proof, which was expanded with the addition of Dykes’s discourse and Robinson’s hymn, increasing the pamphlet from a little more than eight pages to twelve.

Lewis Robbins was an early Latter-day Saint. Born in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, September 8, 1811, he converted to Mormonism in 1832, marched with Zion’s Camp two years later, and joined the First Quorum of Seventy when it was organized in February 1835. Arriving in England in October 1848, he assumed the presidency of the Leicestershire and Derbyshire conferences three months later and in January 1851 succeeded Lewis Cummings as president of the Sheffield Conference. At the end of the year he was released to return to America and the following summer made the trek to Utah. In 1861 he moved to southern Utah, and on February 10, 1864, near St. George, he was killed while quarrying rock for the St. George meetinghouse.²

William S. Myers, the conference secretary and a member of the Sheffield branch, was born in Sheffield, February 17, 1814, and baptized into the Church in 1847. In November 1851 he was cut off from the Church, rebaptized about nine months later, and subsequently cut off again.³

John V. Long went on to have a substantial career as a reporter. Born in Yorkshire, September 28, 1826, he joined the Church in 1843 and served as the presiding elder in Sheffield and Gringley before assuming the presidency of the Cambridgeshire Conference in January 1852. Immigrating to Salt Lake City in 1854, he served several terms in the territorial legislature and for about ten years reported the discourses of the Church authorities. But Long was an alcoholic, and in 1866 he was excommunicated and three years later, on April 14, 1869, was found dead in an irrigation ditch near the Temple Block.⁴

Flake-Draper 1952. ICN, UPB, USlC, UU.

583 SNOW, Lorenzo. The Italian mission, by Lorenzo Snow, one of the twelve apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. [8 lines] London: Printed by W. Aubrey, Brandon Street, Walworth. 1851.

28 pp. 22 cm. Ruled border on title page.

The Italian Mission summarizes the first nine months of the Mormon missionary effort in Italy (see items 558–59), its format taken from the first such mission report, Orson Hyde’s Voice from Jerusalem (item 144). It consists of a series of letters, preceded by Contents (p. [4]) and an introduction (p. 3) in which Snow remarks that he went to Italy “to oppose ‘one who exalteth himself against all that is called God,’ and held an usurped authority over many nations.” The main text (pp. [5]–26) comprises five numbered letters from him—to his sister Eliza, dated at Southampton, June 14, 1850; to F. D. Richards, dated at Genoa, July 20; to Brigham Young, from La Tour, Vallee de Luserne, Piedmont, Italy, November 1; to F. D. Richards, from La Tour, December 2; and to Orson Hyde, dated at Turin, January 25, 1851—followed by a letter to Snow from Jabez Woodard, La Tour, February 26, 1851.¹ Two poems by his sister are at the end, “The Hero’s Reward” and “Stanza on the Presentation of the Book of Mormon to Queen Victoria.”

Snow’s letter to Brigham Young describes the organization of the Church in Italy that September and shares part of its text with his letter to Orson Pratt of November 4, 1850, in the Millennial Star of December 15, 1850. His letter to Richards of December 2 is also printed in the Star of January 15, 1851; the first half of his letter to Hyde is in the Star of April 1, 1851; and Woodard’s letter is in the Star of March 15, 1851. Eliza’s poems were published in the Star of April 1, 1846, and April 1844, respectively. The first is reprinted in the second volume of her Poems, Religious, Historical, and Political, pp. 50–52, with some changes; the second is in the first volume, pp. 89–91.

Some differences occur between the dates given in the Italian Mission and those in the Millennial Star. The pamphlet says Snow arrived in England on April 19 and reached Genoa on June 25; the Star gives these dates as April 18 and June 23.²

Lorenzo Snow returned to England during the second week of March 1851 to arrange for the publication of the Book of Mormon in Italian.³ That month he compiled the Italian Mission, probably to generate funds for the remainder of his mission. The Millennial Star of April 1 noted that the work was ready for the press and would be issued in pamphlet form, and on June 15 it announced that it was out of press and for sale at threepence each or 25s. per hundred, wholesale, three and a half pence each to branch subagents, and fourpence each, retail. The European Mission financial records show that Lorenzo sold the British Mission 2,000 copies on June 10 for £25—the same as the wholesale price it charged its book agents—and the mission paid 3s. 8d. to ship them from London. The Liverpool office began distributing them on the 13th and had sent out almost 1,500 copies by May 1, 1852, when 344 remained in its inventory.⁴ Snow undoubtedly kept some copies himself to sell in the areas of his missionary responsibility and probably sold some to the London central book depot as well. Indeed, the book agent’s account in the December 1851 half-yearly report from the London Conference shows £48 18s. 8½d. owing Snow, and if that debt was for copies of the Italian Mission and he charged the advertised wholesale price of 25s. per hundred, then the London depot bought about 4,000 copies. Moreover, on September 2 the mission office charged the Birmingham Conference for 300 copies and credited Snow for the same number at the same price, and on October 25 it credited him for 250 copies “from Merthyr pr W. Simms.”⁵ In 1854, Orson Pratt advertised the tract in America at 10¢ a copy, and three years later the Millennial Star office was still offering it at 4d.⁶

Flake-Draper 8208. CSmH, CtY, CU-B, ICN, MH, MoInRC, NjP, NN, UHi, UPB, USlC, UU.

584 [Handbill advertising a camp meeting in Chesterfield, June 29, 1851. Chesterfield? 1851]

Appleton M. Harmon took the train to Sheffield on June 26, 1851, and was met by Lewis Robbins, the president of the Sheffield Conference (see items 560, 582). During the next two days he visited the Saints there and on Sunday, June 29, went by train to Chesterfield, a city included in the Sheffield Conference. The Chesterfield branch, he reports in his diary,

had published by handbills that an out-door meeting, or a Camp meeting would be held, in a field, as the time came a congregation assembled, and with them a number of Irish, Catholick Rowdies who disturbed the meeting, and broke some forms &c and became so boisterous that Bro. Rob[b]ins could not be herd when he dismissed the meeting and gave out that I would speak at 6 P.M. the time came and a larger than usial Congregation assembled. I commenced to speak and in a few minutes the Irish commenced to kick up a nother Row. I was determined not to be broken off as soon as they saw my determination they commenced their pow wow, their hub bub, their hooting and hollowing. I raised my voice and continued my discourse with a voice deep strong and loud which continued to be herd amid the hub bub of 50 or more voices of this tumultuous rabble, they soon cooled down[.] I came of[f] victorious and spoke as long as I pleased and then dismissed the meeting, the Saints went away. The Irish continued the row, then came the tareing of coats, the knocking out of teeth, the breaking of forms etc a watchman tryed to Quill [quell] the fray but no go, he could not get through the thick crowd.¹

585 LINFORTH, James. The Rev. C. W. Lawrence's “Few Words from a Pastor to His People on the Subject of the Latter-day Saints,” replied to and refuted by James Linforth. [Caption title] [At foot of page 8:] Printed by J. Sadler, 16, Moorfields, Liverpool. [1851?]

8 pp. 22 cm.

James Linforth was an assistant editor of the Millennial Star and the book agent for the Liverpool Conference when he issued this response to Charles Washington Lawrence, the incumbent of St. Luke’s Church in Liverpool.¹ A few months earlier Linforth had published a five-part article in the Star, “Baptismal Regeneration, or the Controversy in the Church of England,” so he was undoubtedly primed to reply to Lawrence when he attacked the Saints.² The Star of July 1, 1851, ran the last two pages of The Rev. C. W. Lawrence’s Replied to and Refuted, with the comment that it “was recently published in Liverpool”—suggesting that it was printed about June 1851. The European Mission financial records for the period do not mention the tract, so Linforth must have published and distributed it himself.³

No copy of Lawrence’s tract is located, but the quotations from it in The Rev. C. W. Lawrence’s Replied to and Refuted indicate that it was mainly an attack on the claims and character of Joseph Smith. Linforth defends Joseph Smith by noting that, although he had never known him, he knew eight of the Twelve, “for the purity of whose characters and lives I can vouch—who were personally acquainted with him, had lived with him, had been imprisoned with him, and one of them shot with him at Carthage, and their testimony to me is, that he was a man of God.” He includes statements by John S. Reid, John C. Bennett, and O. H. Browning attesting to Joseph Smith’s integrity, each cited in the Times and Seasons, and summarizes the events surrounding his assassination, quoting Thomas Ford from the Times and Seasons. He suggests that the character of his followers reflects that of Joseph Smith and gives excerpts from Thomas L. Kane’s The Mormons (Philadelphia, 1850) and Truman Smith’s Speech of Mr. Smith . . . Delivered in the Senate of the United States, July 8, 1850 (Washington, 1850) praising the Mormon people. In response to Lawrence’s use of the Charles Anthon letter in E. D. Howe’s Mormonism Unvailed, he adds a long excerpt from the sixth part of Orson Pratt’s Divine Authenticity of the Book of Mormon (item 521). In the last two pages Linforth attacks Lawrence’s priestly authority and the Church of England’s practice of infant baptism. The Reid and Smith quotations appear to have been taken from James F. Bell’s Reply to the Bare-faced Falsehoods and Misrepresentations of Mr. John Theobald (item 578).

The Rev. C. W. Lawrence’s Replied to and Refuted is known in two states, differing only in the seventh from the last line of text on p. 8, which is either aligned or not aligned at the left margin.⁴

Flake-Draper 4943. CSmH, CtY, ICN, MH, UPB, USlC, UU.

586 HARMON, Appleton Milo. [Handbill advertising lectures by Appleton M. Harmon and William Budge in Whitehaven. Whitehaven? 1851]

Harmon left Liverpool on a steamer the evening of July 3, 1851, and met William Budge at Whitehaven the next morning. On Saturday, July 5, he had some handbills printed announcing a series of lectures by the two of them, the first scheduled for the following Monday. Then he went to the police station and obtained permission to preach “in the open air at the Key.” Unfortunately it rained on Monday, July 7, forcing them to cancel the meeting. Harmon went to Carlisle on July 10, returned to Whitehaven one week later, and preached at the Key on Friday the 18th, Sunday the 20th, and Monday the 21st. At each of these meetings he was opposed by a George Bird, who continued to speak out against the Mormons.¹

William Budge, twenty-three years old at this point, would go on to play a prominent role in the Church. Baptized in his native Scotland on December 31, 1848, he served as a missionary and as a counselor in the European Mission presidency, before leading an immigrant company to the Salt Lake Valley in 1860. Four years later he was called to Providence, Cache County, to serve as the bishop, and in 1870 he went to Bear Lake, Idaho, as the presiding bishop. For twenty-nine years he was the stake president in Bear Lake, interrupted by a term as president of the European Mission, 1878–80, and in 1906 he was called to preside over the Logan Temple. He died in Logan, March 18, 1919.²

587 Programme of the Latter-day Saints’ soirée, to be held in the music hall, Bold Street, on Wednesday, July 9th, 1851, [in 2 columns:] President of the Conference, Elder G. Rodger. President of the Branch, Elder J. Clements. [Caption title] [At foot of p. 4:] Printed by J. Sadler, 16, Moorfields, Liverpool. [1851]

4[1] pp. 20.5 cm.

Curiously, the third leaf of this piece is pasted on at the spine, with text on p. [5], the verso blank, and the printer’s colophon at the foot of p. 4. The piece itself gives a brief outline of a Liverpool Conference festival to be held on Wednesday, July 9, 1851, beginning at 5:30 p.m. It consists mainly of the words to twelve songs, with speeches indicated for Franklin D. Richards, John Clements, Glaud Rodger, Erastus Snow, and John Taylor. The hymns include Parley Pratt’s “Lo the Gentile Chain is Broken”; Eliza R. Snow’s “Truth Reflects Upon Our Senses”; Alexander Ross’s “The ‘Shepherds’ Have Raised Their Sweet Warning Voice”; “Rejoice, Ye Saints of God, Rejoice”; three songs by John Taylor, “The Upper California,” “Go, Ye Messengers of Glory,” and “Father, Son, and Daughter”; William Clayton’s “Come, Come, Ye Saints”; “Come, Go With Me”; W. J. Clements’s “I’m a Saint, I’m a Saint, on the Rough World Wide”; Samuel Hawthornthwaite’s “Oh, Lord! Thy People Bless”; and “Nay, Speak No Ill, a Kindly Word.” Printed at the foot of the first page is Price One Penny.

John Clements, president of the Liverpool branch, joined the Church in Liverpool in 1841 and five years later was treasurer of the committee appointed to wind up the affairs of the British and American Joint Stock Company (see item 273). Two months after the Liverpool festival, on September 9, 1851, he was cut off from the Church.¹

Flake-Draper 1930. USlC.

588 [Two handbills advertising theatrical programs in the Bowery, June 10 and June 14, 1851. Salt Lake City, 1851]

Under the date June 10, 1851, the document “Account of Job Printing done in the News Office” has the following entry: “Grand Concert 2 Bills W. Pitt 16.00.” This undoubtedly refers to two playbills—neither of which is located—advertising the programs on June 10 and June 14, which William Pitt, “Capt. & Manager,” also advertised in the Deseret News of May 31:

DESERET EXHIBITION!! The INHABITANTS of G. S. L. Valley are hereby respectfully notified, that the “DESERET AMATEUR CHOIR” will give an Exhibition in the Bowery, on Tuesday evening, the 10th of June next.—The evening’s performance will embrace the celebrated Drama, entitled, “DON CÆSAR DE BAZAN,” or the “DANCING GIRL OF MADRID;” to conclude with a Comic Farce, entitled the “DEAD SHOT.”

Also on Saturday evening, June 14, will be presented the Sentimental Play of the “STRANGER,” in five Acts. After which will be performed the Laughable Farce, entitled the “GENTLE SHEPHERD.”

Music in attendance both evenings.

Doors to be opened at 6, performance to commence at half past 7 o’clock. Admission by Tickets, 25 cents each,—for sale at the Tithing Office.

In this ad Pitt states that “no part of the proceeds [are] being applied for private uses,” and at the June 10 program he intends to make a report “of all the proceeds realized hitherto by our exhibitions, and the manner in which the funds have been expended; that all persons may fully understand that we have no selfish motives in view in our performances.” Six weeks later he ran another ad in the News announcing that the melodrama “‘Robert Macaire,’ or the ‘Two Murderers’” and the farce “Dead Shot” would be performed in the Bowery on July 23. Two earlier “Grand Exhibition Bills” are listed in “Account of Job Printing done in the News Office” under the dates December 21, 1850, and February 1, 1851, which also may have been advertisements for some of Pitt’s productions (see item 527).¹

These handbills mark the beginning of the theater in the Salt Lake Valley and identify William Pitt as the region’s first theatrical producer. Within a year his “Deseret Amateur Choir” would evolve into the Deseret Dramatic Association, which would begin to perform plays in the Salt Lake Social Hall in January 1853—including the melodrama “Robert Macaire”—and then in the famous Salt Lake Theater in 1862.

589 [Catalogue of works. Liverpool? 1851]

No copy of this catalogue is located, but a reference to it occurs in the Millennial Star of July 15, 1851:

With this number we issue a new Catalogue of Works, published by the Church, which our agents will place in as conspicuous places in their chapels and meeting houses as possible, that strangers attending may acquaint themselves with our authorized publications, and their prices.¹

The European Mission financial records, under the date July 4, 1851, include the entry: “To printing 500 demy Catalogues 1.3.6.” A subsequent entry—“To 500 Demy Broadside Catalogues 1.3.6”—in the financial records for September 9 suggests that the catalogue was reissued two months later.² One might guess that these were new versions of the “List of Works” issued the preceding December (item 539).

590 JONES, Dan. Llythyr oddiwrth Capt. D. Jones at Wm. Phillips, yn cynnwys newyddion o Seion. [Caption title] [A letter from Capt. Dan Jones to Wm. Phillips, containing news from Zion.] [At foot of p. 8:] John Davis, Argraffydd, Merthyr-Tydfil. [John Davis, Printer, Merthyr Tydfil.] [1851]

8 pp. 17 cm.

Flake-Draper 4478. Dennis 57. MH, UPB, USlC.

591 Songs for the 24th July. [Salt Lake City, 1851]

Broadside 40.5 x 28 cm. Text in four columns.

592 Songs for the 24th July, 1851. [Ornament] [Salt Lake City, 1851]

Broadside 41 x 28 cm. Text in four columns.

These broadsides were struck off for the celebration of the fourth anniversary of the Mormon pioneers’ entrance into the Great Salt Lake Valley—an event that would take on an unexpected significance by exacerbating the tensions between the Mormons and the new “Gentile” territorial appointees (see item 610). The texts of items 591 and 592 were printed from the same setting, with the columns slightly rearranged, and with 1851 and an ornament added in the title of item 592. Both contain the words to six songs: “For the Pioneers,” by Eliza R. Snow; “For the 24 Young Men,” by James Bond; “For the 24 Young Ladies,” by Eliza R. Snow; “A Life in the Desert Plains,” by W. W. Phelps; “Oh Come, Come To-Day,” by W. W. Phelps; and “The Union,” by Homer—undoubtedly Joseph Cain who used this penname when he wrote for the Deseret News and was a member of the July 24th organizing committee.¹ In the only surviving copy of item 592, the last verse of Phelps’s “A Life in the Desert Plains” is replaced with a new verse printed on a slip of paper, 2.5 x 6 cm., pasted over the old.

The Deseret News of July 26 and August 19, 1851, reports the July 24th celebration, at which the six songs were performed. Phelps’s two songs are reprinted in the News of July 26, the other four in the News of August 19, in each instance from the broadside setting. The version of “A Life in the Desert Plains” in the News is that of item 591. Eliza’s two songs are reprinted in her Poems, Religious, Historical, and Political (Liverpool, 1856), pp. 203–7.

Item 591: Flake-Draper 8277b. USlC. Item 592: Flake-Draper 8277c. USlC.

593 JAQUES, John. Exclusive salvation, by John Jaques, elder in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. [Caption title] [At end:] Published by F. D. Richards, 15, Wilton Street, Liverpool. [At foot of p. 8:] R. James, Printer, 39, South Castle Street, Liverpool. [1851]

8 pp. 21 cm.

Called as a full-time missionary by Alfred Cordon in July 1850, John Jaques labored throughout the Warwickshire Conference for the next eighteen months, until he was appointed assistant editor of the Millennial Star in January 1852 (see item 633).¹ Prior to his call as a missionary, Jaques had contributed a number of poems and articles to the Star, all, except one poem and one article, under the pseudonym Harvey Locksley Birch.² During the period of his missionary service, he wrote three more poems and six articles, now under his own name—among them his well-known hymn “Oh! Say, What Is Truth?” and “Exclusive Salvation,” the lead article in the Millennial Star of March 1, 1851.³

Five months after “Exclusive Salvation” appeared in the Star, Franklin D. Richards published it as separate pamphlet and advertised it in the magazine, “Prices, same as for ‘Kingdom of God,’ Part I”—5s. per hundred, £2 5s. per thousand, £10 per five thousand. Individual copies of the tract were offered at 1d. each.⁴ The European Mission financial records indicate that the Millennial Star office began filling orders for Exclusive Salvation on July 24, 1851, and by May 1, 1852 had sent out slightly more than 18,200 copies. An inventory of the latter date shows 150 copies still in the office, so one might infer that the tract was first published in an edition of about 18,000.⁵ A second edition was issued in 1855—distinguished from the first by the phrase Thirteenth Thousand at the head of the title, left.

The text in the tract is the same as that in the Star, except for some changes in punctuation and capitalization; four insignificant single-word changes; the deletion of six, two, and seven sentences, respectively, in the quotations from James, John, and Paul; and the deletion of fourteen sentences in Jaques’s closing appeal. The first edition is known in two states, which are typographically identical except for the change of one word in the caption title: (1) with minister following Jaques, and (2) with elder following Jaques. State 2 is the more common, and since elder had been used consistently in the other Mormon tracts during the previous three years and would be employed in the second edition of Exclusive Salvation, one might guess that it is the later state.⁶

Jaques’s point in Exclusive Salvation is that there is but one true church, and he begins by arguing that “it is utterly impossible for two opposing churches of equal authority to be one true church, or part and parcels of the true church.” Then he gives four pages of biblical examples to demonstrate that there is “one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one Priesthood, one Gospel.” And even though the tract clearly identifies itself as a Latter-day Saint work, it has only one, incidental, reference to Mormonism.

Flake-Draper 4346–47. CtY, ICN, MH, MoInRC, NN, UPB, USlC, UU.

594 DAVIS, John Silvanus. Llyfrau Saint y Dyddiau Diweddaf, ar werth gan J. Davis, Argraffydd, Georgetown, Merthyr, a chan y Saint trwy Gymru. [Books of the Latter-day Saints, for sale by J. Davis, Printer, Georgetown, Merthyr, and by the Saints throughout Wales.] [Merthyr Tydfil, 1851]

Broadsheet 17.5 x 11 cm.

Flake-Draper 2722p. Dennis 58. MH, USlC.

595 The programme of the Norwich Conference festival, to be held in Saint Andrew’s Hall, Monday, the 28th day of July, 1851. President—C. V. Spencer. Chaplin [sic]—Elder John Buckenham. Marshal of the Day—Elder John Sprigg. Superintendent of Refreshments—Elder John Harriss. [Caption title] [At foot of p. 5:] P. Otty, Printer, Corner of Orford Hill, Norwich. [1851]

5 pp. 21 cm.

The Norwich Conference festival, held on Monday, July 28, 1851, was a less elaborate version of the festival held in London the preceding month (see item 579). Opening at 3:30 p.m. with a procession of twelve fathers in Israel each with a staff, twenty-four young men each carrying the Bible and Book of Mormon, and twenty-four young ladies each dressed in white with a wreath of roses on her head and carrying a bouquet of flowers, the program consisted of thirty events including congregational hymns, musical numbers, “laconic expressions,” addresses by local members, discourses by George B. Wallace; John Spiers, president of the Bedford Conference; and Thomas Smith, former president of the Norwich Conference; and two breaks for refreshments. The printed program includes the words to seven hymns: Parley Pratt’s “Lo the Gentile Chain is Broken”; Thomas Hastings’s “Hail to the Brightness of Zion’s Glad Morning”; John Jaques’s “Softly Beams the Sacred Dawning”; John Taylor’s “Go, Ye Messengers of Glory”; “Nay, Speak No Ill, a Kindly Word”; Alexander Huish’s “Awake, Lovely Daughter of Zion, Awake”; and Samuel Hawthornthwaite’s “Oh, Lord! Thy People Bless.”

Claudius V. Spencer had been appointed Thomas Smith’s successor in February 1851. The oldest son of Daniel Spencer, he was born in West Stockbridge, Massachusetts, April 2, 1824, lived with his family in Nauvoo, and came to Utah in 1847. Arriving in the British Mission in September 1850, he presided over the Norwich Conference for almost two years, until leaving for America in January 1853. Over the next half century, he served in the Utah territorial legislature, on the Salt Lake City council, for many years as supervisor of streets, on the Salt Lake Stake high council, and as a patriarch; in 1860 he returned to England as a missionary. He died in Salt Lake City, January 5, 1910.¹ Of John Buckenham, John Sprigg, and John Harriss nothing is known beyond that Harriss was the Norwich Conference secretary during 1849–52.²

Flake-Draper 1945. USlC.

596 [Election notice blanks. Salt Lake City, 1851]

597 Utah Territory, Great Salt Lake City precinct. Union ticket. [Salt Lake City, 1851]

Broadside 21.5 x 8 cm.

These entries mark the beginning of Utah’s territorial period. Word of the creation of Utah Territory reached the Great Salt Lake Valley on October 15, 1850, and was reported in the Deseret News four days later, with the full text of the bill appearing in the News of November 30 (see items 435, 534).¹ Brigham Young took the oath of office as governor of the new territory from Daniel H. Wells, chief justice of the provisional state of Deseret, on February 3, 1851, sixty-one days before the dissolution of the provisional state, and, having been appointed census agent for Deseret, proceeded to conduct an enumeration of the territory. On July 1, as governor of Utah Territory, he issued his proclamation that announced the apportionment of the territorial legislature and called for an election of the members of the legislature on the first Monday in August.²

Young’s proclamation further stipulated that the “sheriffs of the several counties will give due notice and advertise the [election] accordingly, in three of the most public places in their counties.” About July 10, the U.S. marshal, Joseph L. Heywood, had some “Election Notice Blanks” printed at the Deseret News at a cost of $6—no copy of which is located.³ One might guess that these were broadsides carrying a notice of the election with a blank space where a specific polling place was to be written in, which Heywood distributed to the various county sheriffs.

Hosea Stout reports that at a Great Salt Lake County convention on July 26 he was among those nominated for the House of Representatives, and at the general election on Monday, August 4, he was “elected” to this position along with six councilors and twelve other representatives from the county. Item 597 gives the slate of candidates from Great Salt Lake County nominated at the July 26 convention and elected on August 4.⁴ Undoubtedly it was struck off between these two dates. It lists: for delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives, John M. Bernhisel; for councilors, Heber C. Kimball, Willard Richards, Daniel H. Wells, Jedediah M. Grant, Ezra T. Benson, and Orson Spencer; for representatives, Wilford Woodruff, David Fullmer, Daniel Spencer, Willard Snow, W. W. Phelps, Albert P. Rockwood, Nathaniel H. Felt, Edwin D. Woolley, Phineas Richards, Joseph Young, Henry G. Sherwood, Benjamin F. Johnson, and Hosea Stout. It also includes certain county officers, for example, Thomas Rhoades and Jonathan C. Wright, judges; Thomas Bullock, recorder; James Ferguson, sheriff; and George D. Grant, stray pound keeper. As in all Utah elections for years to come, this slate, selected by the Church leaders, ran unopposed.

The only known copy of item 597 is in the Brigham Young papers in the LDS Church Archives. Election returns for some of the precincts are in the same file, and those for Great Salt Lake County show that Bernhisel and each of the councilors received 490 votes, except Benson, who had 489. Of the representatives, Woodruff, Snow, Felt, Richards, Young, and Johnson had 490 votes, the rest fewer. Hosea Stout received the fewest votes, 484.

Item 596: Saunders 38. Item 597: Flake-Draper 9093h. USlC.

598 Testament y deuddeg patriarch, sef meibion Jacob. At yr hwn yr ychwanegwyd epistol Paul yr apostol at y Laodiceaid. Ac hefyd ychydig mewn perthynas I farwolaeth Paul yn Rhufain, dan Nero Cesar. A gyfieithwyd allan o’r Groeg gan y diweddar Barch. R. Grosthead, esgob Lincoln. [3 lines] Y trydydd argraffiad, wedi ei ddiwygio. Merthyr-Tydfil: Argraffwyd ac ar werth gan J. Davis. 1851. [Testament of the twelve patriarchs, the sons of Jacob. To this is added the epistle the Apostle Paul to the Laodiceans. And also something about the death of Paul in Rome, under Nero Caesar. Which was translated from the Greek by the late Rev. R. Grosthead, bishop of Lincoln. Third printing, revised. Merthyr Tydfil: Printed and for sale by J. Davis. 1851.]

74 pp. 18.5 cm.

Dennis 59.

599 The pearl of great price: being a choice selection from the revelations, translations, and narrations of Joseph Smith, first prophet, seer, and revelator to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Liverpool: Published by F. D. Richards, 15, Wilton Street. 1851.

viii[1]–56 pp. Facsims. (1 fold.) 21 cm. Printed wrappers.

Franklin D. Richards reached England for his second British mission on March 29, 1850, and was sustained at the October conference in Manchester to succeed Orson Pratt as mission president at the end of the year.¹ From the beginning of his presidency, Richards had an unusual publishing venture in mind, which he described in a letter of February 1, 1851, to his uncle, Levi Richards:

You will perhaps recollect my naming to you that I thought of issueing a collection of revelations, prophecies &c., in a tract form of a character not designed to pioneer our doctrines to the world, so much as for the use of the Elders and Saints to arm and better qualify them for their service in our great war.”

Outlining the contents, Franklin asked his uncle’s opinion of the project, remarking, “I desire that the whole thing may bear the dignity and weight of character which justly belongs to the revelations of God.”² Five and a half months later, he advertised the Pearl of Great Price—“on beautiful paper of superior quality, and on new type of a larger size than any heretofore issued from this office”—describing its contents and repeating the comment in the letter to his uncle that it was not “designed as a pioneer of our faith to unbelievers” but as a “source of much instruction and edification” for the Saints.³ The mission office began distributing the pamphlet on August 12, 1851, and by May 7, 1852, had sent out about 5,500 copies. On the latter date, the British Mission credited Franklin D. Richards for 6,416 copies at 9d. each, or £240 12s.—the standard wholesale price. What fraction of the edition this was is not known, but it would appear that the edition numbered at least 7,000.⁴ Initially the Pearl of Great Price was advertised in England at a retail price of one shilling each and in America at 30¢. By 1856 the British price had been dropped to 6d. In 1862 George Q. Cannon shipped three hundred copies to Utah along with much of the British Mission’s inventory of bound books.⁵

A second edition, revised by Orson Pratt, was published in Salt Lake City in 1878, and a third in Liverpool in 1879. The following year the Pearl of Great Price was canonized as one of the standard works of the Church. John S. Davis published it in Welsh in 1852, the first edition in a language other than English (item 731).

The 1851 Pearl of Great Price collates: half title, with the verso blank (pp. [i]­–[ii]); title page, with Liverpool: Printed by R. James, South Castle Street on the verso (pp. [iii]–[iv]); Preface, signed by Franklin D. Richards and dated at Liverpool, July 11, 1851 (pp. [v]–vi); Contents (pp. [vii]–viii); “Extracts from the Prophecy of Enoch . . . Revealed to Joseph Smith, December, 1830” (pp. [1]–7); “The Words of God, Which He Spake unto Moses . . . Revealed to Joseph Smith, June, 1830” (pp. 8–17); Facsimile No. 1 from the Book of Abraham (p. 18); “The Book of Abraham” (pp. 19–28) with a folding plate containing Facsimile No. 2 between pp. 24 and 25; Facsimile No. 3 (p. 29); “An Extract From a Translation of the Bible—Being the Twenty-fourth Chapter of Matthew, Commencing with the Last Verse of the Twenty-third Chapter” (pp. 30–32); “A Key to the Revelations of St. John. By Joseph Smith” (pp. 33–35); “A Revelation and Prophecy by the Prophet, Seer, and Revelator, Joseph Smith. Given December 25th, 1832” (p. 35); “Extracts from the History of Joseph Smith” (pp. 36–48); “From the Doctrine and Covenants of the Church” (pp. 48–55); “‘Times and Seasons,’ Vol. III, page 709” (p. 55); and John Jaques’s hymn “Oh! Say, What Is Truth?” (p. 56).

Most of what Richards chose for the Pearl of Great Price either had not been previously published or had appeared earlier in works that were unavailable to the British Saints at that point. “Extracts from the Prophecy of Enoch ” and “The Words of God, Which He Spake unto Moses” are parts of Joseph Smith’s revision of the Book of Genesis—now known as the Book of Moses.⁶ “Extracts from the Prophecy of Enoch” comprises what is now Moses 6:43–68 and 7:1–69. These two parts were first printed in The Evening and the Mormon Star of March 1833 and August 1832, respectively. “The Words of God, Which He Spake unto Moses” comprises what is now Moses 1, 2, and 3; 4:1–7, 9, 11–13a, 14–19, 22–25; 5:1­–16a, 19–23a, 32–40; and 8:13–30. Some of this had been published earlier: Moses 1 in the Times and Seasons of January 16, 1843, as part of the serial “History of Joseph Smith,” and Moses 5:1–16a and 8:13–30 in The Evening and the Morning Star of April 1833. The rest­­ had not appeared in print before. Those verses of the present Book of Moses not in the 1851 Pearl of Great Price—Moses 4:8, 10, 13b, 20–21, 26–32; 5:16b–18, 23b–31, 41–59; 6:1–42; and 8:1–12—were added in the 1878 edition. The 1878 text is essentially that of the present version, which differs at significant points from the 1851 text.⁷

The textual part of the “Book of Abraham” was first published in the Times and Seasons for March 1 and March 15, 1842, which also included Facsimiles Nos. 1 and 2, the latter on a folded sheet inserted in the March 15 issue (see item 141). Facsimile No. 3 was printed on the first page of the issue for May 16. The Millennial Star reprinted the “Book of Abraham” that July and August but included only the first facsimile, reproduced on the first page of the July issue. In the Pearl of Great Price, the second facsimile and its explanatory text are on a folded sheet approximately 28.5 x 21 cm., inserted between pp. 24 and 25. The European Mission financial records indicate that Richard James was paid £2 on May 29, 1851, “for Wood cuts for P. Gt. Price,” suggesting that James’s shop produced the cuts for the facsimiles.⁸

“An Extract From a Translation of the Bible—Being the Twenty-fourth Chapter of Matthew” was first printed in a broadside in Kirtland about 1835 (item 25). As discussed in item 25, the text of this broadside generally follows the original manuscript of Joseph Smith’s revision of the New Testament (NT 1) and differs at a number of points from the version of Matthew 24 in The Holy Scriptures (Plano, 1867), which is based on a second manuscript copy made by John Whitmer and corrected by Joseph Smith (NT 2). The version of this text in the Pearl of Great Price mainly follows NT 1 but incorporates three significant modifications written into NT 2. It would seem, therefore, that Franklin D. Richards had a personal manuscript copy of this text which he used for the Pearl of Great Price.

Neither “A Key to the Revelations of St. John”—now D&C 77—nor “A Revelation and Prophecy ”—now D&C 87—had been added to the Doctrine and Covenants when Richards included them in the Pearl of Great Price, but “A Key to the Revelations of St. John” had been published earlier in the Times and Seasons of August 1, 1844, as part of the “History of Joseph Smith.”⁹ “A Revelation and Prophecy,” Joseph Smith’s well-known prophecy on the Civil War, was put in print for the first time in the Pearl of Great Price, undoubtedly from a manuscript copy in Richards’s possession.

“Extracts from the History of Joseph Smith” comprises excerpts of that part of the “History of Joseph Smith” from his birth up to May 1829, first published in the Times and Seasons between March 15 and August 1, 1842, and reprinted in the Millennial Star between June­ 1842 and January 1843 (see item 743).¹⁰ As a footnote on pp. 46–47, Richards added an excerpt from Oliver Cowdery’s first letter to W. W. Phelps, taken from the Times and Seasons of November 1, 1840 (see item 197).

“From the Doctrine and Covenants of the Church” consists of extracts from what are now Sections 20, 107, and 27—all of which had been in the Doctrine and Covenants since 1835—arranged under nine headings. Those verses under the first three headings are, respectively, 20:71, 37, 72–74; 20:68­–69; and 20:75–79. Under the fourth heading, “The duties of the Elders, Priests, Teachers, Deacons, and Members of the Church of Christ,” are the verses 20:38–44; 107:11; and 20:45–59, 70, 80. And under the remaining five headings are 107:1–10, 12–20; 107:23, 33; 107:34–35, 93–100; 27:5–18; and 20:1–36.

“‘Times and Seasons,’ Vol. III, page 709” is the heading for what is now known as the “Articles of Faith,” first published in the Times and Seasons of March 1, 1842, at the conclusion of Joseph Smith’s letter to John Wentworth (see items 177, 199, 232). John Jaques’s hymn “Oh! Say, What Is Truth?” was first printed in the Millennial Star of August 1, 1850, reprinted in the Frontier Guardian of October 2, 1850, and included in the LDS hymnal in 1851, where it has remained (see item 593).

The 1851 Pearl of Great Price was issued in a salmon or light orangish tan wrapper with the title page reprinted from a different setting within an ornamental border on the front and a catalogue of works within a different border on the back. This catalogue lists the book itself, priced at 1s. retail; 9d. “to Conference Agents”; and 10½d. “to Book Agents” (i.e., branch subagents). The Harvard University Houghton Library has two copies of the book, given to the Harvard Library by Brigham Young in 1853 and 1864.

Flake-Draper 6166. CSmH, CtY, CU-B, ICN, MH, MoInRC, NjP, NN, ULA, UPB, USlC, UU.