Franklin D.
Richards
Franklin D. Richards's Presidential Address of 1898
INTRODUCTION
J L E S S T H A N T H R E E W E E K S after his appointment as president, and with scarcely more than one week's notice from the program committee, Franklin D. Richards delivered the address printed below on January 17, 1898, at the first Annual Meeting of the newly organized "State Historical Society of Utah." T h e speakers committee — consisting of John T. Caine, Henry W. Lawrence, and Robert C. Lund — had been appointed January 8 to arrange the program. In addition to Richards, they engaged Dr. Ellen B. Ferguson to explore the philosophical question of " T h e T r u e Mission of History" and Joseph T. Kingsbury to extol the virtuous accomplishments of " T h e U t a h Pioneers." T h e meeting was billed as a public musical and literary program, with a vocal solo by Nellie Holliday, although its official purpose was to meet the Society's constitutional requirement for an annual business meeting each third Monday of January. The seventy-six-year-old Richards and the entire
