Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 51, Number 1, 1983 by Utah Historical Society

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UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY (ISSN 0042-143X) EDITORIAL

STAFF

MELVIN T . SMITH, Editor

STANEORDJ. LAYTON.

Managing Editor

MIRIAM B. MURPHY, Associate Editor

ADVISORY BOARD OF EDITORS KENNETH L. CANNON u.Salt Lake City, 1983 INEZ S. COOPER, Cedar City, 1984 S. GEORGE ELLSWORTH, Logan, 1984

PETER L. GOSS, Soft Lake City, 1985 GLEN M. LEONARD, Farmington,

1985

LAMAR PETERSEN, Salt Lake City, 1983 RICHARD W. SADLER, Ogden, 1985

HAROLD SCHINDLER, Salt Lake City, 1984 GENE A. SESSIONS, Bountiful,

1983

Utah Historical Quarterly w a s e s t a b l i s h e d in 1 9 2 8 to p u b l i s h articles, d o c u m e n t s , a n d r e v i e w s c o n tributing to knowledge of Utah's history. T h e Quarterly is p u b l i s h e d h y t h e U t a h S t a t e H i s t o r i cal Society, 3 0 0 R i o G r a n d e , Salt L a k e City, U t a h 8 4 1 0 1 . P h o n e (801) 5 3 3 - 6 0 2 4 f o r m e m b e r s h i p a n d publications information. M e m b e r s o f t h e Society r e c e i v e t h e Quarterly, Beehive History, a n d t h e b i m o n t h l y Newsletter u p o n p a y m e n t of t h e a n n u a l d u e s ; for details s e e i n s i d e back c o v e r . M a t e r i a l s f o r p u b l i c a t i o n s h o u l d b e s u b m i t t e d in d u p l i c a t e a c c o m p a n i e d by r e t u r n p o s t a g e a n d s h o u l d b e t y p e d d o u b l e - s p a c e with f o o t n o t e s a t the end. Additional information on requirem e n t s is available f r o m t h e m a n a g i n g e d i t o r . T h e Society a s s u m e s n o r e s p o n s i b i l i t y f o r statem e n t s o f fact o r o p i n i o n by c o n t r i b u t o r s . T h e Quarterly is i n d e x e d in Book Review Index to Social Science Periodicals, America: History and Life, Combined Retrospective Index to the Book Reviews in Scholarly Journals, 1886-1974, a n d Abstracts of Popular Culture. This publication has been funded with the assistance of a grant from the Department of the Interior, National Park Service, u n d e r provisions of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966. Second class postage is paid at Salt Lake City, Utah.

HISTORICAL

QUARTERLY

Contents WINTER 1983/VOLUME 51/NUMBER 1

IN T H I S ISSUE

T H E COLONY GUARD: T O CALIFORNIA I N ' 4 9

MADSEN

LECHEMINANT

BRIGHAM

A CRISIS A V E R T E D ? G E N E R A L H A R N E Y A N D T H E C H A N G E IN C O M M A N D O F T H E U T A H E X P E D I T I O N . . WILFORD HILL

S A L T LAKE C I T Y T H R O U G H A G E R M A N S EYES: A V I S I T BY T H E O D O R K I R C H H O F F IN 1867 edited and translated by FREDERIC TRAUTMANN

ALAN P. MACFARLANE

" M E L A N C H O L Y NEWS": U T A H ' S F I R S T F A T A L PASSENGER T R A I N COLLISION

U T A H WAR I N D U S T R Y D U R I N G W O R L D WAR II: A H U M A N I M P A C T ANALYSIS THOMAS G.

ALEXANDER

BOOK REVIEWS

BOOK NOTICES

101

THE COVER Capt. Albert Tracy made this drawing of Camp Scott from the southeast on January 5, 1858. Winter weather pinned Johnston's Army in southwestern Wyoming, somefivemiles above Fort Bridger. The troops did not see the Salt Lake Valley until early summer, after Gov. Alfred Cumming's negotiations with Brigham Young. Tracy's Utah War journal and his drawings were published as volume 13 of Utah Historical Quarterly by arrangement with the New York Public Library.

Quicksand and Cactus: A Memoir of the

JUANITA BROOKS.

Southern Mormon Frontier

. MELVIN T . SMITH

A. CONETAH. A History of the Northern Ute People.

FRED

KATHRYN L. MACKAY a n d FLOYD A. O ' N E I L , e d s . .

GARY L. T O M

C. STEWART. Indians of the Great Basin: A Critical

OMER

Bibliography

. . . .

CATHERINES. FOWLER

Books reviewed C. POULSEN. The Pure Experience of Order: Essays on the Symbolic in the Folk Material Culture of Western America

RICHARD

OLSEN

MICHAEL E. CHRISTENSEN

STEVEN

LAVINA FIELDING ANDERSON, e d .

Chesterfield: Mormon in Idaho

Outpost

KENNETH W. GODFREY, AUDREY M. GODFREY, a n d JILL MULVAY DERR. Women's

Voices: An Untold History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900

VALEEN T . AVERY

EDWARD A. GEARY

100

DON D. WALKER. Clio's Cowboys: Studies in the Historiography of the Cattle Trade

. . .

HBSHU Fff

In this issue Utah has been and remains a destination for many, just as it has always been a stop on the way to somewhere else for a variety of travelers and transients. Those "marching through" rather than staying affected the course of history, too, sometimes in profound ways. The first article brings to light a rare document detailing the elaborate preparations of the Colony Guard to travel from New York to the California gold fields. Of all the forty-niners to pass through Utah, this was surely one of the most colorful and interesting groups. Despite meticulous preparation, however, these gentlemen, faced with the rigors of the trail, became, like many before and after them, rough stones rasping against one another. Salt Lake City offered such groups a place to reorganize. Other temporary residents of Utah were the soldiers in Johnston's Army. Their approach to /ion greatly affected Mormon behavior until an accommodation satisfactory to both sides was reached. Had the impetuous William S. Harney, rather than Johnston, led the troops, the outcome might not have been peaceful. This article is followed by an 1867 account of a German traveler and travel writer who produced a vivid portrait of Salt Lake City in its twentieth year (as pictured above), a town in the bloom of spring and full of building and farming activity as well as endless speculation on Brigham Young's wealth and wives. Two years later, some immigrants to Utah and through passengers on the new transcontinental railroad became Utah's first passenger train fatalities. This tragic story is brightened somewhat by the flavor it gives of the journalistic style of the period, a style almost as sensational and inaccurate as that of some present-day tabloids. Perhaps no temporary residents have affected Utah as deeply as those who came to the state as a result of the massive military and industrial build-up during World War 11. The final article in this issue examines their impact more in human terms than in dollars, man-hours, and tons. The social dislocation attendant upon rapid growth â&#x20AC;&#x201D; so clearly evident in this instance â&#x20AC;&#x201D; should forewarn today's community leaders that large developments require careful planning to avoid unwanted social problems.

New Yorkers eagerly devoured news of the California gold fields, and many like the Colony Guard made plans to cross the continent in search of wealth.

California News, 1850, William Sidney Mount (1807-68), oil on canvas, 21 Vi x 20!4, the Museums at Stony Brook, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Ward Melville, 1955.

The Colony Guard: To California in '49 BY BRIGHAM D. MADSEN

1980 THE SPECIAL COLLECTIONS division of the University of Utah's Marriott Library acquired twelve letters and fourteen sketches produced by a young Englishman named John Hudson who had left his home in Birmingham, England, in August 1848 to become the agent for an uncle's import business in New York City. Hudson, an artist and the second son of a well-to-do, middle-class English family, had a good education and an eye for the picturesque and interesting in the sights and scenes of the New World. His letters describing the New York City area and his later travels from there across the plains to Salt Lake City as a member of the Colony Guard, a gold-hunting expedition destined for the new mines in California, constitute a refreshing look at conditions in America during the 1849 gold rush. T h e letters and a journal kept by Hudson when he worked as the artist for the Capt. Howard Stansbury exploration and survey of the Great Salt Lake in 1850 were published in April 1982 by the University of Utah as number eleven of the series Utah, the Mormons, and the West: Brigham D. Madsen, ed.,A Forty-niner in Utah: Letters and Journal of John Hudson (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Library, Tanner Trust Fund, 1982), 227 pp. I N MAY

As described in A Forty-niner in Utah, Hudson's attempt to establish an agency for his uncle's business in New York failed due to an economic downturn, and the lure of gold on the American River in California led him to join the Colony Guard, a group of twenty-five young gentlemen who banded together to seek their fortunes in the new diggings. T h e adventurers adopted a printed constitution outlining the duties and the expected benefits of the company before departing New York City for the West in March 1849. In several letters dated from March to October of that year Hudson describes for his family in England the preparations for his transcontinental journey and the actual travel from New York by way of Philadelphia, and by steamboat down the Ohio River to St. Louis, and then up the Dr. Madsen is professor of history at the University of Utah.

Utah Historical Quarterly

Missouri to Kansas Landing which became the jumping-off place for his wagon trip across the plains. He indicated in one letter that he was keeping a journal describing his experiences on the trip, but the diary has evidently been lost, leaving us with only the brief descriptions in his letters of his travels to the West. That, at least, was the state of affairs during the writing and publication of A Forty-niner in Utah and before one of those strange happenstances that occasionally occur during the research for a book. About ten days before the volume was scheduled to appear for sale in the bookstores as a finished product, the editor gave a talk to the Andrew Jenson Club, sponsored by the LDS church's Historical Department, an informal group that meets monthly in a luncheon session to discuss historical subjects of interest to the members. My subject was the forthcoming book on the letters and journal of J o h n Hudson. After the meeting, Richard Jensen, one of the LDS historians present, informed me that he had recently come across a document in the LDS archives that had. some connection with the Colony Guard. Immediately following up on his suggestion, I discovered to my amazement that in a large leather-bound account book of the obvious vintage of about 1849, the first thirty-one pages were devoted to the minutes of the meetings of the Colony Guard from January 17, 1849, to the last entry dated "Prairie," May 10, 1849. T h e document was catalogued as part of the records of the Perpetual Emigration Fund of the LDS church because most of the remaining pages in the book had been utilized to keep the financial accounts of the fund established by Brigham Young to help new converts to the church emigrate to Salt Lake City. T h e journal had evidently been carried across the plains by the Colony Guard and had then been left in Salt Lake City as excess baggage as the gold hunters hurried on to California. A prudent and thrifty Mormon official had apparently come into possession of the book and had wisely decided to accept this manna from heaven to help keep his records. T h r o u g h a trade negotiated by the librarians at the LDS archives and the University of Utah, the original Colony Guard's minutes now are a part of the John Hudson Papers at the Marriott Library while the Perpetual Emigration Fund records repose in the LDS library. T h e leather-bound book is thinner by thirty-one pages, but both the librarians and the editor are convinced that this operation would have had the sanction of Solomon.

To California in '49

Convinced that the minutes of the Colony G u a r d should be published as a special account of the travels of a g o l d - h u n t i n g company of 1849, the editor offered it to the Utah Historical Quarterly. T h e d o c u m e n t is presented h e r e as o n e of those lost treasures of history that can now be a d d e d to o u r western heritage. JANUARY 17TH. 1849.

Minutes of Meeting of the Colony Guards at 154 Greenwich St. New York On motion Mr. Saml. R. Fanshaw 1 was called to the chair and Thos. L. Parker 2 Secretary. Reports of Committees being called for, Dr. McNulty3 stated that the Printing Committee had not had time to transact. The Constitution was read for the benefit of those that had not heard it before. 4 Motioned by Mr. Peeler5 that Monday evening of each week be appointed as the regular meeting Night of the Company Motioned by Dr. McNulty that a Committee be appointed to ascertain the safest and most practicable mode of depositing the funds. On motion the Company adjourned till the following Monday. THOS. L. PARKER JR. SEC PRO-TEM JANUARY 22ND.

1849.

On motion Mr S. R. Fanshaw was called to the chair and Mr Washburn 6 appointed Secretary Dr. McNulty presented the Constitution as prepared by the Committee which was read and on motion received, the Committee was discharged On motion the Constitution was read and adopted by Sections with the following amendments. over 1 Samuel R. Fanshaw is listed as an artist with an office at 1 Cortlandt St. and a home in Chester in Daggett's New York City Directory, 1840-1850 (New York, 1849), p. 149. 2 Thomas L. Parker, Jr., was a ship chandler (a dealer in supplies for ships) with an office at 272 South and a home at 247 Henry St. Daggett's, p. 328. 3 Dr. John McNulty, who was elected as captain of the Colony Guard, was a physician with an office at 154 Greenwich St. Daggett's, p. 269. 4 The "Constitution of the Colony Guard" is a unique document because it is one of the very few of the many constitutions and agreements drawn up by the numerous gold-hunting companies of 1849 that took formal shape and was printed. The copy in the collection of Hudson papers at the Marriott Library is only one of two known to exist. This twelve-page pamphlet is included in the appendix to A Forty-niner in Utah, pp. 198-208. The Constitution has a preamble and thirteen articles, although Articles VI, VII, and XI were, for some reason, eliminated from the final printed copy. The document delineates that there would be officers, a captain, two lieutenants, four sergeants, a surgeon, a judge, a secretary, a treasurer, a chaplain, and a key member, the last to control the small safe in which the traveling funds were kept. The duties of the officers and members were carefully outlined, the final disposition of the company was described when the group should reach California, and careful instructions were included to ensure that the Sabbath should be properly observed and that the Christian nature of the company be maintained. 5 Noah Peelor is not listed in Daggett's. 6 H . A. Washburn is not listed in Daggett's.

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JANUARY 22ND. CONTINUED

In Sec. 9. Art. 3, after the word priviledge in the first line insert "of Course" and "right o f In Art. 6 in the first line after the word Company insert Accumulated in any manner in the 4th. line after the words "from the" insert "arrival at the mines" in the 7th line after the word "him" insert "up to the time of the first general distribution" — In Art. 8 in the 2nd. line after the words "from the" insert "the arrival at the mines" — with these alterations — the Constitution was adopted unanimously. On motion the Committee on the Constitution was reappointed and a Committee on Printing composed of the following gentlemen Dr. Glynnes, 7 Dr. McNulty, Mr. McKay8 and Mr. Cheney 9 On motion a Committee of Seven was appointed to make out a list of estimates for the different articles needed by this association — T h e following gentlemen were appointed to serve S. Hoes, 10 T. F. Bank, 11 N. Pelham, 12 N. Peelor, D. W. Bucklin, 13 S. K. Fanshaw and T. L. Parker. On motion the meeting adjourned to meet on Wednesday Evening at 7 O.clock H. A. WASHBURN SECRETARY

JANUARY 2 9 T H .

1849

Mr. S. R. Fanshaw in the chair — T. L. Parker Secretary — Minutes read and approved Report of Printing Committee accepted and bill ordered to be paid by assessment. Report of Committee on Estimates read and accepted with the following amendments — T h e number of Red Flannel Shirts raised from 100 to 150 the Hicory shirts 14 from 50 to 100 and 35 bbls. instead of 45 bbls. of navy beef were substituted Report of Committee on Enquiry was called for and H. A. Washburn called upon Dr McNulty for the same - He stated that Mess. Spofford and Tileston 48 South St. a house of undoubted responsibility had agreed to take the agency 10 - would receive the deposites of the Members and give a 7

Dr. James A. Glynne is not listed in Daggett's. McKay's first name is not included and there is no way to determine if he is listed in Doggett's. 9 A Labon C. Cheney is listed by Doggett's as residing at 34 Commerce St., but because no first name is given, there is no certainty that this is the correct individual. 10 T h e Reverend Schuyler Hoes of 140 Nassau St. with a home in Newark is the only S. Hoes listed by Doggett's. It is not possible to determine if he is the correct one, Doggett's, 1848, p. 201. n T . F. Bank is not listed in Doggett's. 12 Nathaniel Pelham is not listed in Doggett's. 13 Daniel W. Bucklin is not listed in Doggett's. 14 Hickory cloth was a stout cotton fabric, often twilled and striped, used for shirts or trousers. 15 Doggett's lists Spofford, Tileston 8c Company as being commercial merchants, located at 48 South St. Paul Spofford and Thomas Tileston, originally from Massachusetts, had operated a Boston-New York packet line of schooners since 1821 and a line of packet ships in the coastal and Caribbean trades since 1829. In 1848 they organized the Dramatic-Patriotic Line of transatlantic sailing packets and evidently became involved in running vessels around Cape Horn to the California 8

To California in '49

Receipt for the same and transact such other business as the Company might direct - the Report accepted. Dr. McNulty moved that a Committee to receive signatures to the Constitution be appointed, motion carried and Mess. Winans1'' Hudson 17 McNulty Burrill 18 and Parker were appointed to act as said Committee Notice was then given that the Constitution would be in readiness the following day at 12 O.clock and the Committee would be in attendance to receive the signatures from that time til the 15th. of February. over JANUARY 29TH. CONTINUED

On motion by Dr. McNulty Mess. Cheney Robinson19 8c Hudson were appointed to obtain and empowered to hire a room for the future meetings of the Company On motion the meeting adjourned till Monday Evening Feb. 5th. at whatever place the Committee should appoint. THOS. L. PARKER JR.

SEC. PRO. TEM. FEBRUARY 5TH 1849.

Meeting called to order by S. R. Fanshaw chairman — Report of Committee to furnish room called for — Mr. Cheney stated that they had obtained the room formerly used by Dr. McNulty, and it would be for the future the general headquarters of the Company Report accepted. Dr. McNulty stated that he had an interview with James Roach of Albany who represented a company of men of that place who had chosen a Sea route and bought about $400. worth of Provissions Lead 8c Powder — they proposed that if the Colony Guards would accept them and their goods at the prices they paid for for them they would join the Company whereupon it was moved they be accepted and the Secretary notify them of the same = Carried 20 Proposed by Dr. McNulty that the Secretary call the Roll and ask each person the following Questions - If he has the money on hand? 21 — Can he get it by Feb. 15th.? — By the 20th? — By first of March? If at all? gold fields. The firm served as a banking institution as part of its commercial interests. Doggett's, p. 396; William Armstrong Fairburn, Merchant Sail (Center Lovell, Me.: Fairburn Marine Educational Foundation, 1945-55), 2:1184-85. l6 John C. Winans is not listed in Daggett's although a John Winans, comedian, is listed, 1848, p. 445. Perhaps there was a comedian along with the Colony Guard, an element of humor all could have used as the troubles of the trail began to affect the travelers. 17 This is the first mention of John Hudson, who is not listed in Daggett's. 18 Charles D. Burrill is not listed in Doggett's. 19 William J. Robinson is included in Doggett's as a cabinetmaker, located at 104 Madison St., p. 359. 20 The sea route could have been either around Cape Horn or to Panama and across the isthmus to another ship that would carry the emigrants to San Francisco. Evidently this proposal for a joint venture by the two groups was not consummated. 21 The Colony Guard had agreed that each should deposit $400 in the company treasury in order to be accepted as a member.

Utah Historical

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FEBRUARY STH CONTINUED

To the first question 5 persons ans. Yea " _ second " 16 _ " " _ third 3 " _ " " _ fourth 1 _ " " _ fifth 1 _ " Mr. Winans requested a list of the members be made out with their Trades and Professions affixed — it was accordingly made out and read to the meeting The following persons volunteered to act as a Committee to be in attendance at the Office of the Colony Guards, and correspond with persons to obtain every information for the Company Mess. Van Ranst22 Hudson Parker Burrill Rourke2'5 Glynne and Hayes24 Dr. McNulty resigned his office as Treasurer Pro. Tern, and Dr. Glynne appointed instead. An extra assessment was imposed on the members to defray the incidental expenses of the Company The meeting adjourned till next Thursday Evening Feb Sth. THOS. L. PARKER SEC. PRO. TEM. FEBRUARY 13TH.

1849

Meeting called to order by Saml. R. Fanshaw as chairman On motion it was resolved to give increased publicity to the proceedings of the Colony Guards through the Daily Papers over FEBRUARY 13TH. Continued A suitable advertisement was determined upon to appear 3 days in the Herald and the following 3 Days in the Tribune. 2 1 Proposed by Mr. Cheney that the Company purchase such articles as Beads Cheap Handkercheifs Blankets Silver trinkets and so forth to use for traficking with the Indians — Motion by C. D. Burrill that an appropri22

James Van Ranst is listed in Doggett's as a shoemaker with a home at 667 Water St., p. 430. There were eventually two Rourkes included as members: William Rourke, a boilermaker with a home at 40 Avenue B, and John Rourke, a carman, with a residence at 346 Madison St., listed in Doggett's, 1848, p. 352, while the 1849 Doggett's lists two different Rourke's with the same names — William Rourke. a printer at 314M> Bowery, and John Rourke, a laborer with a home at 54 Grovesneur St., p. 364. There is no way of determining which ones went to California with the Colony Guard. 24 Without a first name, it is not possible to identify this Hayes from among a number listed in Doggett's. 25 T h e advertisement appeared in the New York 'Tribune of February 17, 1849, as follows: "Colony Guard — Overland Route, via St. Louis, Independence, South Pass, and Fort Hall to California. Terms of membership, $400, which includes provisions sufficient to supply the company for the entire distance and twelve months after arrival at the mines. T o each member is furnished mining implements, clothing, arms and ammunition amply sufficient for the use of the company during its existence. T h e Colony Guard is organized for 17 months, or for a longer period, at the option of the members. Experienced guides will be procured, one a member of the company. A physician accompanies the expedition. References required. Yor further particulars, apply at the office, 154 Greenwich st." 23

To California in '49

ation be made for buying Spy Glass, Scales and Weights to be taken across the Country — Laid upon the Table. Moved that Flour be sent round the Horn and Carried2*' — Also 10 or 15 galls, of Oil and 3 Lanterns Also a Solar Lamp 27 the above resolution was carried. Dr. J. S. Burrill made a motion that an assessment be made to defray the expense for Room and Boy's wages An assessment of 60'/2 cts was accordingly made and paid by the following persons Mess. Jones 28 Hendell29 Griff 0 Robinson Glynne W.31 and J. Rourke Peelor Conklin 32 Hays Sands" Hudson Winans Cheney Fowler34 Patterson 35 Fanshaw and Lud1

3 fi

low The meeting tendered thanks to Mr. Parker on his resignation of Secretary for his assiduity in promoting the interests of the Company, Mr. John Hudson was appointed instead Dr. Glynne resigned as Treasurer which was accepted and a vote of thanks offered by the Company - C. D. Burrill was appointed Treasurer instead Meeting adjourned till Thursday evening T. L. PARKER SEC. PRO. TEM. FEBRUARY 19TH

1849.

S. R. Fanshaw chairman — Minutes of the last meeting read by J. Hudson Secretary and approved. Moved and carried that the Company meet on Monday and Thursday evenings — C. D. Burrill moved that the 2nd. Clause in the Constitution be reconsidered Carried J. Hudson proposed as a substitution in place of the 2nd. Article. "The members of this Company shall be those that have deposited $400 in Bank to the credit of the Colony Guards 8c shall have signed the Constitution." T h e Colony Guard shall be composed of all those that have signed the Constitution by the first of March after which time the list shall be closed. The Committee shall be empowered to purchase the Articles provided for the members of the Company for the Number that have become 26 27

Ibis is the first indication that the company intended to send supplies by sea to San Francisco. An Argand lamp has a tubular wick that admits a current of air inside and outside of the

flame. 28

II is impossible to identify this particular Jones. Jacob Hendel is not listed in Daggett's. 30 John Griff is not listed in Daggett's. 31 W. Glynne is not listed in Doggett's. 32 Charles A. Conkling is not listed in Daggett's. 33 William Sands, a silversmith, of 104 King St., was probably a welcome addition to the company which expected that his expert knowledge would help in the extraction of precious metals from the California mines. Doggett's, p. 369. 34 M. H. Fowler is not listed in Daggett's. 35 A James A. Patterson is listed by Doggett's as a merchant of fancygoods at 203 Avenue 6, with a home at the same address, p. 330. He could have been the man included in the Colony Guard. 36 Levi M. Ludlow is not listed in Doggett's. 29

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members according to the above regulations. Also if before the 1st. of March there should be 25 signatures the Finance Committee shall be elected and empowered to commence their purchases T h e above was unanimously carried — Moved that 12 Colts Revolving Pistols be ordered at $35. 37 each Carried & N. Pelham instructed to deliver the order over Moved that a Committee be appointed to examine arms Also T h e following gentlemen volunteered to examine Estimates Viz. For Clothing C. Burrill — Hardware J. Hudson — Provissions J. Winans — Meeting Adjourned till Thursday evening 22nd. February J O H N HUDSON SEC. PRO. TEM. FEBRUARY 22ND.

1849.

Saml. R. Fanshaw chairman Minutes of last meeting read and approved Moved by Dr. McNulty that the members of the Colony Guard be notified of a meeting on Saturday evening convened for the Election of Officers and that only those who have signed the Constitution be entitled to vote, this motion seconded by Mr. Peelor and carried T h e following Committee was appointed to examine Gold Washers 38 Mess. McNulty Robinson and Griff. Dr. McNulty moved that Serjeant Allsop 39 be considered as a member furnishing him with Mules Provissions and Revolver on consideration of his services of orderly Serjeant until arrival at California when a further arrangement shall be entered into Meeting adjourned till Saturday eve. for the Election of Officers J O H N HUDSON S E C PRO. TEM.

FEBRUARY 2 4 T H .

1849.

Mr. J o h n Hudson was appointed Chairman and Wm. Rourke Secretary. Proposed that those persons morally sure of being one of the Colony 37

As indicated in subsequent minutes, this motion inaugurated a long and frustrating process of attempting to buy a number of Colt revolvers from the Samuel Colt factory at Hartford, Conn., established in 1848. T h e 1849 gold rush proved a bonanza to Colt as orders flowed in from gold-rush parties wanting to arm themselves for the dangers of the Overland Trail. Charles Edward Chapel, Guns of the Old West (New York: Coward-McCann, 1961), pp. 154-55. 38 T h e New York newspapers carried extensive ads for every kind of article that might possibly be used by the argonauts of 1849, and chief among them were the absolutely necessary gold finders such as Bruce's Hydro-Centrifugal, Chrysolyte, or California Gold-Finder, gold washers, and, of course, gold weighers. T h e craze to get to the California mines was so great that one New York pedagogue advertised in the New York Tribune of February 15, 1849, "To Parents who are leaving for California. — Those who have children and are desirous of securing them a good home during their absence are hereby notified that a limited number will be received by a gentleman into his family, and be educated in his family school — . . . " Tuition was only $300 per annum. Madsen, A Forty-niner in Utah, p. 32. 39 J o h n C. Allsop is not listed in Doggett's, but apparently about this time in their plans the tenderfoot members of the Colony Guard thought it wise to obtain the help of a soldier who understood trail and camping conditions.

To California in '49

Guard may have the priviledge of voting and that the voters be all eligible to office. Dr. McNulty proposed that the Constitution reading "No member holding two offices at the same time" be repealed this was seconded and carried 40 Moved and carried that the Officers be elected by Ballot T h e following officers were Elected For Captain John McNulty First Lieutenant M. H. Fowler Second do James Glynne Orderly Sergeant J ° h n C. Allsop Surgeon John McNulty Judge S. R. Fanshaw Secretary Wm. Sands Treasurer J ° h n Hudson Chaplain J ° h n Hudson Key Member Wm. Rourke Chairman

Finance Committee Saml. S. Abbott41 Chas. D. Burrill Noah Peelor M. H. Fowler

Members of the Colony Guards John McNulty John Hudson Wm. Rourke John Rourke Levi M. Ludlow Noah Peelor Wm. Sands Wm. J. Robinson James A. Van Ranst John-Grift Chas. A. Conkling M. H. Fowler Nathaniel Pelham Saml. S. Abbott Chas. D. Burrill San4-.-R-.--Fa«-s4*aw John C. Winans 42 Edward Coker 43 40 Quite evidently this proposal was adopted to permit John Hudson to hold both the office of treasurer and that of chaplain. 41 Samuel S. Abbott is not listed in Doggett's. 42 See the minutes of April 21, 1849, for an explanation as to why Fanshaw's name is crossed out and John C. Winans is added. 43

Edward Coker is not listed in Doggett's.

M i l HI WH

, f i l l III II*ÂŤ

An 1849 bird's-eye view of New York, looking south from Union Square, drawn and lithographed by C. Bachman. f. Clarence Davies Collection, Museum of the City of Neiv York.

Wm. H. Shearman 44 Jacob Hendel Daniel W. Bucklin James A. Patterson C. Theodore Jacobus 45 W. S. Ball4* Alanson Riker 47 James A. Glynne 48 FEBRUARY 2 6 T H .

1849

At a meeting of the Colony Guard the regularly elected Chairman and Secretary filled their offices. The Roll was called and the Estimates for each man read before the meeting it was then proposed & carried, that each man find his own knives and forks. 44 William H. Shearman was the son of J. H. Shearman, a friend of John Hudson's father, Benjamin, and the family with whom Hudson boarded in New York City. A long letter from J. H. Shearman to Benjamin Hudson is in. i Forty-niner in I tali, including Shearman's description of the gold excitement and the amount of treasure being taken out of the California mines: "The amounts of gold are increasingly wonderful. . . . One man out there, has sent his father a barrel full of gold dust home, as a New Year's present, reserving his cargo to bring with him." And the very religious elder Shearman added, "I think good people ought to go. I am not for letting the wicked have Everything in the World." Madsen, A Forty-niner in Utah, pp. 30-31. 45 C. Theodore Jacobus is not listed in Daggett's. 46 There is a William S. Ball "(col'd) hairdresser, Ninth C Av. 4" listed mDoggett's, but it cannot be ascertained if he is the individual included in the minutes, p. 36. 47 Alanson Riker is not listed in Doggett's. 48 For the list of members of the Colony Guard who finally left with the company, see footnote under the minutes of March 14, 1849.

To California in '49

Moved by Sergeant Allsop and Seconded by that the Company travel in two messes instead of three and correct the Estimates accordingly. Also that they take 2 tents instead of 3 — Carried Suggested that that the Company use the water-tight waggon in place of a Boat. Also that the following articles in the Estimates be abolished Iron Chest, Blacksmith Bellows, and Beef intended for Shipping — Carried Moved and carried that Mr. Colt be requested to furnish the required number of Revolvers by the first of April and that one of the Members remain to forward them Moved by Mr. C. D. Burrill that $1.75 be the limit for a Knife — carried Moved by Mr. Burrill seconded by Mr. Hudson that 9J4 lbs. be the minimum weight for Rifles — Carried T h e following gentlemen were appointed Committee of Arms viz. Messrs McNulty Glynne and Allsop. over FEBRUARY 2 6 T H . 1849.

CONTINUED

Moved by Mr. Burrill that the Government Over Coat with cape be substituted for the one first Considered also that 2 hickory shirts be allowed each man, both propositions carried. Moved by Mr. Burrill seconded by Dr. McNulty that 4 dollars be apropriated for one pair Mackinaw Blankets for each man carried Moved by Mr Ludlow that the Finance Committee procure Cider instead of Vinegar for Shipping — carried Also moved and carried that wheels already tired be shipped instead of taking Barrows & that 2 Kegs of Cut Nails with 1 Keg of Wrought be sent. Moved and Carried that 40 mules be purchased by Mess. Abbott 8c Pelham also 3 Baggage Waggons with Harness, 49 Also that they purchase necessaries for the Company beyond St. Louis according to the Colony Guards instructions. Moved by Dr. McNulty that $ 1000. be given Messrs Abbott 8c Pelham to make purchases It was decided to order from Mr. Dickenson 2 Pea Jackes 2 Pants and one over coat as agreed upon 50 Proposed and carried that an Advertisment be put in the Herald and that the Finance Committee purchase Books for the Company 51 — T h e meeting then adjourned till next Thursday Evening 49

In his long letter of October 6, 1849, postmarked City of the Great Salt Lake Rocky Mountains, which is concerned with a brief description of the journey across the plains and his arrval in Salt Lake City, Hudson explains that the company finally settled on four wagons, each drawn by eight mules "& in addition we rode upon these combinations of all that is stupid spiteful & obstinate . . .," Madsen, A Forty-niner in Utah, pp. 63-65. 50 This is probably the James S. Dickenson who is listed by Daggett's as being a merchant at 140 Pearl St., with a home at 102 West 13th St., p. 127. 51 No doubt one of the books purchased at this time is the one presently held by the LDS Archives and from which these minutes have been extracted.

Utah Historical

Quarterly

W M SANDS SECRETARY, THURSDAY MARCH 1ST. 1849.

T h e meeting called to order by Captain McNulty — Minutes of last meeting read and accepted with corrections concerning nails it should have read 2 Kegs assorted cut nails and 25 lbs. wrought. S. R. Fanshaw and E. Cocker signed the Constitution to the great satisfaction of the Company Moved by E. Cocker seconded by Capt. Mc. Nulty that Screws, Screw drivers, and hinges be classed with the estimate of Locks 8c Keys — Carried Moved by Mr. Fanshaw and seconded by Mr. Coker that 1 adze be added to the Estimates — Carried T h e list of Estimates was then read and corrected Mr. Abbott reported of the Finance Committee having bought Knives Glazed Caps 52 and made an agreement for Rifles for the Company Mr. Peelor then stated that the above Committee had purchased provissions and saved nearly $125. according to the estimates — T h e Treasurer than reported the Expenses of the Colony Guards thus far. Moved and carried that the expense of the Captain's going to Hartford to negociate for Revolvers, come out of the general fund of the Company Suggested by C. D. Burrill that the already taxed members for $1.50 do not require the same refunded also that all who over MARCH 1ST. 1849.

CONTINUED

joined the company afterwards invest the same amount— Motion made 8c carried. Moved by Mr. Burrill seconded by Mr. Fowler that an additional $500 be given to Mess. Abbott & Pelham to facilitate their purchases for the Company making the amount given them $3000. Carried. Moved by Mr. Coker, seconded by Mr. Hendell that each member may take an extra pair of pants, vest, cravats, pocket hdkfs, and 2 Extra Shirts if so inclined — Carried. An Estimate of the Articles, each man's required to carry across the country was read — Moved by Mr. Peelor seconded by Mr. Hendell that the Captain, First and Second Lieutenant wear some distinguishing mark of Costume in the way of band on shoulder. Mr. Hudson moved that the Captain also wear a sash — both propositions carried. 53 T h e Treasurer then offered an amendment to the 2nd. Article of the Constitution, to be given to Mess. Spofford Tileston & Co. T h e meeting was adjourned till the following Saturday Evening W M . SANDS SECRETARY >2

" Probably blasting caps. See footnote under April 21,1849, minutes for a midwestern traveler's disgust with the dress and mannerisms of the Colony Guard members. 53

To California in '49 SATURDAY EVENING MARCH 3D.

17 1849

Minutes of last meeting read and accepted — Moved by Mr. Fowler seconded by Mr. Coker that each member take with him two towels on the Route — Carried Moved by Mr. Hudson seconded by Mr. Fowler that a correct estimate of the articles on the Route for each individual be made out and that the weight do not exceed 4 pounds of said Estimate — Carried Mr. Wm. H. Sherman then signed the Constitution of the Colony Guards and was cordially received by the Members. Mr. Peelor in behalf of the Finance Committee reported the Articles purchased for the Company since the last meeting including some additional articles not before considered but thought very necessary by the Committee, the articles were approved of by the Company Proposed and carried that the Bark Horatio be chosen for the first Shipment of the Company. 54 The meeting then adjourned till the following Monday Evening at 7 XA o clock WM. SANDS SECRETARY

MONDAY EVENING MARCH 5TH. 1849

Roll called — Minutes of last meeting read and accepted — A distribution of clothing was made as far as practicable. It was decided to keep the Red Flannel Shirts purchased from Wakemans 55 Mr. Patterson was proposed as a Member voted for by Ballot without a dissenting voice. The purchases since last meeting were considered by the Company among which was a fine Gold Washer for $65.56 T h e Treasurer then reported having disbursed 3,931 dollars for the benefit of the Colony Guards. 54 Evidently the Horatio was owned by Spofford, Tileston 8c Company and was being loaded for a trip around the Horn to San Francisco. T h e New York papers of the time ran a daily column entitled "Marine Journal" under which four different kinds of vessels were listed as "cleared" or "arrived." T h e most common type in the American Merchant Marine was the schooner, a fore-and-aft-rigged vessel of two masts and of from 75 to 150 tons. Next in size came the brig, a two-masted square-rigged vessel ranging from 150 to 250 tons. T h e bark, a minor type often included with full-rigged ships, was three-masted, having her foremast and mainmast square-rigged and her mizzenmast fore-and-aftrigged, with a weight of from 275 to 350 tons. The largest vessel was the full-rigged ship of three masts, all square-rigged and in weight ranging from slightly under 1,000 tons to as large as 2,000 tons. T h e bark Horatio was apparently built about 1833 and for the first ten years was commanded by Capt. William Howland who sailed her on the New York to China run. As late as 1842 the Horatio was still making voyages to China. At the time the Colony Guard was shipping goods on the vessel, it was skippered by a Captain Boutelle. Robert Greenhalgh, The Rise of New York Port (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1961), pp. 306-7; Arthur H. Clark, The Clipper Ship Era (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1910), pp. 141, 162; New York Tribune, March 10, 1849. When A Forty-niner in Utah was being prepared for publication, it was not known that the Colony Guard had intended to send goods by ship around South America. T h e minutes reveal that fact for the first time. T h e bark Horatio finally cleared New York harbor for San Francisco on March 10, 1849. 55 Doggett's lists the firm of Wakemans & Dawes as merchants for "shirts, collars, stocks, underclothing, etc. 76 Maiden lane," p. 435.

Utah Historical

Quarterly

Sand Spectacles were then considered as an individual article and Mr. Sherman d e p u t e d to make a r r a n g e m e n t s for them â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Proposed by Mr. Coker that T a p s and Dye 5b be taken as part of the necessaries Motion made and Carried. T h e Meeting was adjourned till the following Friday Evening at 7 O.clock W M . SANDS SECRETARY MARCH 5 T H . 1849. N E W YORK

Invoice of Goods from Doremus & Nixon in bale to be Shipped for I n d e p e n d e n c e via St. Louis. 57 Marked Colony Guard 1 O n e Bale

20 Pr. Blankets 80 Pr. Socks 2 lbs. T h r e a d !4 T h o u s . Needles 1 Ps. C r a s h 8 % Gro. Buttons

N E W YORK MARCH 5 T H

1849

Invoice of Goods from Doremus 8c Nixon in Case Shipped on board Bark Horatio for San Francisco. Marked Colony Guard 160 Pr. Socks 3 lbs. T h r e a d Blk 5 % T h o u s . Needles 4 Ps. Crash O n e Case 1 lA Gro. Buttons MARCH 5 T H

Invoice of Mds. from Seaman 8c Bowne 59 Shipped on board the Bark Horatio from San Francisco Marked Colony G u a r d â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 9 Barrels Beans 56 Experienced travelers on the Overland Trail probably would not have considered taps and dies, cutting and shaping tools, as necessary articles for wagons already overloaded. 57 Doremus 8c Nixon, dry goods merchants, with a store at 39 Nassau on the corner of Liberty St. opposite the post office (Doggett's, p. 132), offered a typical advertisement for the perusal of California travelers, as posted in the New York Tribune, February 14, 1849: "California Outfit. T h e Subscribers have for sale a very extensive assortment of Dry Goods, suitable for persons going to California, such as White Mackinaw Blankets, weighing 5 to 10 lbs., colored do.do. scarlet, blue, green, d r a b , moose, mixed. White Blankets, for ships' berths. White and colored C o u n t e r p a n e s for ships' berths. Cotton and Linen Sheets and Pillow-cases, m a d e up. Table Linen and Towels. T o g e t h e r with a general assortment of Dry Goods, expressly suited to the California trade. Doremus & Nixon." 58 Crash was a coarse, heavy linen fabric, often rough in texture, used for towels, s u m m e r suits, draperies, table linens, etc. 59 Seaman 8c Bowne are listed as dealing in fruit at 165 West St., Doggett's, 1848, p. 363.

To California in '49

19 MARCH 5TH

Invoice of Mdz. from Miles & Gillman 60 Shipped on board the Bark Horatio for San Francisco. Marked Colony Guards — 1 Roll Leather MARCH 6TH.

Invoice of Mdz from Otis 8c Woodward 01 Shipped on board of the Bark Horatio for San Francisco Marked Colony Guard — 1 Keg Lead MARCH 6.

Invoice of Mdz. from Allen 8c Paxton 02 Shipped on board Bark Horatio for San Francisco Marked Colony Guard — 10 bbls. Rich. City Mills03 S. Fine Flour MARCH 6.

Invoice of Mdz. from Rufus Park 04 Shipped on board Bark Horatio for San Francisco Marked Colony Guards 3 bbls. Cider 1 Keg Ginger NEW YORK MARCH 6 —

1849.

Invoice of Goods from Wetmore 8c Co.0:> Shipped on board Bark Horatio for San Francisco Marked 12 Bars Iron C.G. 5 Bundles Iron 3 Crowbars 1 Bar. Steel 1 Vise 1 Case Goods 2 Cask Nails 1 Box Axes 2 Bundle Shovels

Doggett's lists "Miles and Gilman, hides and leather, 35 Spruce," Doggett's, p. 296. Otis 8c Woodward were grocers at 78 Front St. Doggett's, p. 325. ,i2 Allen 8c Paxson were commercial merchants at 134 Front St. Doggett's, p. 26. 63 Doggett's does not list these mills. H4 Rufus Park was a grocer at 67 Dey St., with a home at 113 Tenth St. Doggett's, p. 328. 65 Doggett's lists this firm as "Wetmore 8c Co. hardware, bar iron, steel, cut nails, etc. 79 and 81 Vesey," p. 448. 61

Utah Historical

Quarterly

MARCH 6.

Invoice of Mdz. from Victor Bishop 00 Shipped on board Bark Horatio for San Francisco. Marked Colony Guard — 2 Cases containing 1 Gold washer 1. 8c 2. MARCH 6.

Invoice of Mdz. from Ephre Treadwell's Son07 Shipped on Bark Horatio for San Francisco. Marked Colony Guards — 6 hhds. Navy Bread MARCH 6.

Invoice of Mdz. from J. S. Beams 8c Co. 08 Shipped on board Bark Horatio for San Francisco Marked 2 bbls. Sugar Colony Guards 2 bags Coffee 2 bbls. Rice 1 box Soap V2 chest Soucheng Tea MARCH 6. 1849.

NEW YORK

Invoice of Goods from Miller 8c Parsons 09 Shipped on board Bark Horatio for San Franciso. Marked Colony Guards - One barrel - Fruit MARCH 6.

Invoice of Mdz. from J. H. Ransen & Co. 70 Shipped on board Bark Horatio for San Francisco. Marked Colony Guards — 2 Cases — Boots MARCH 7.

Invoice of Goods from Wetmore 8c Co. Shipped on board Bark Horatio for San Francisco Marked C G 1 Bellows 3 Ps. Sheet Iron 1 Bundle Dye 66

Victor Bishop dealt in precious stones at 23 Maiden Lane. Doggett's, p. 51. Ephraim Treadwell's son was a baker at 275 Washington St. Doggett's, p. 421. W8 James S. Beams 8c Co. were grocers at 265 Washington St. Doggett's, p. 43. 69 Miller 8c Parsons sold fruits at 181 Washington St. Doggett's, p. 298. 70 J. H. Ransom & Co. carried boots for sale at 32 Cortlandt St. Doggett's, p. 347. 67

To California

in '49

FRIDAY EVENING MARCH 9 T H .

1849.

After the reading of the minutes of last evening the Invoices of Shipments for San Francisco were read to the Company. T h e T r e a s u r e r then Reported the Financial accounts. Capt. McNulty proposed the Company travel in the 2nd. class Cars to Philadelphia. 71 Motion made and carried Chas. A. Conkling was elected by Ballot as substitute for J o h n Griffby Unanimous vote Wm. S. Ball was then proposed as a member by the Captain — voted for by ballot and accepted. Mr. Conkling then erased J o h n Griffs name on the Constitution and substituted his own — T h e meeting was adjourned till Monday evening 7 O clock. W M . SANDS SECRETARY MONDAY EVENING MARCH 1 2 T H .

1849

Roll called — Minute of last meeting read and accepted with the a m e n d m e n t of Charles A. Conkling joining the Company "in place" of J o h n Griff instead of going as Mr. Griffs substitute. Motion was made by Mr. Hudson a m e n d e d Mr. Burrill seconded by Mr. Fanshaw that a Telegraphic communication be given to Mr. Colt requesting a punctual fullfillment of his contract concerning Revolvers with an additional 3. Resolved that if the Pistols are not delivered by the 26th. to telegraph to Mr. Colt for the reason of the delay and also FRIDAY EVENING MARCH 9 T H . CONTINUED

telegraph the answer to St Louis informing the Company and wait for further instructions Mr Fanshaw was deputed to transact the above. Sample Rifles from Blunt 8c Simms were inspected by the Company and objected to on account of being too light in weight. 72 Motion was made and carried in favor of useing hair triggers Rifles Proposed by Mr Fanshaw and seconded by Mr. Peelor that a Committee of 3 be appointed to purchase the best Rifle for 15 dollars for the use of the Company. T h e Captain appointed Serjeant Allsop Mr. Bucklin and Mr. Robinson to act. 71 T h e party could have traveled either by the Camden and Amboy Rail-Road to Philadelphia, wit h two scheduled trains a day, or by the New-Jersey Rail-Road, which dispatched three trains a day. If the g r o u p chose the former railway, the seven-hour trip would have cost three dollars each although the second-class cars did not include rocking chairs furnished the deluxe passenger cars. Ezekial Porter Belden, New-York: Past, Present, and Future; Comprising a History of the City . . . (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1849), p. 72; John F. Stover, American Railroads (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), p p . 18, 33. 72 This firm was listed on page 54 of Doggett's and carried an advertisement in the appendix which read, in part, "Guns, Pistols, Rifles, Six Barrel Pistol . . . Manufactory, Importers and Manufacturers of Guns, Pistols, and Rifles. . . ."

Utah Historical

T h e meeting was then adjourned till the following Evening —

Quarterly Wednesday WM. SANDS SECRETARY

WEDNESDAY EVENING MARCH 14TH.

T h e minutes of last meeting were read and amended by adding the Captain on the Committee for purchasing the Rifles — T h e Captain then reported that the United States Rifles were the most judicious they could procure and that they had purchased them with some extra articles necessary with the armes T h e purchases were approved of by the Company. 73 Motion was then made by the J u d g e seconded by Mr. Hendel and amended by the Captain that the members that do not start at the time ordered and WEDNESDAY EVENING MARCH 14TH. CONTINUED

appointed be expected to pay their own expenses to Independence Carried unanimously. Mess. Hendell Shearman Fanshaw Ball Winans and Titus 74 volunteered to do the packing for the overland route after which the Meeting adjourned sine die 75 W M SANDS SECRETARY

SATURDAY EVENING MARCH 2 4 T H . 1849.

Meeting called to order by the Captain in the Pilot's Room on board the Steamboat Hindoo 70 73 T h e New York Tribune of February 13, 1849, carried the following advertisement for these weapons: "For California. United States Rifles of the Latest Model Wm. H. Smith 8c Co. 4 Maiden-lane, have just received from the celebrated manufactory of Robbins 8c Lawrence a lot of the latest model U.S. Rifles, a perfect article. They are compact, well balanced, with fine polished, blue steel freed locks, and will bear the most rigid inspection, being constructed throughout on scientific principles. They are acknowledged to be the best article of the kind ever produced, and may be relied upon to shoot accurately 300 yards. . . . most admirably adapted for the service required in California." 74

T h e r e are several men with the name of Titus listed in Doggett's. T h e Colony Guard left New York City for the West on March 16, 1849, as noted in the March 18 issue of the New York Tribune: "The Colony Guard, a company organized in the city, under the command of John McNulty, M.D., took their departure on Friday morning, in the seven o'clock train, for Philadelphia, on their route to California, via St. Louis, Independence, and South Pass. This Company is composed of twenty-five picked men, well armed, and provisioned, dressed in the United States Army uniform. T h e principle on which they are organized is perfect equality, the captain no better than the private, except in his official capacity. They are high principled and moral men. They hold sacred individual rights, and will recognize the Sabbath and the rites belonging to it. T h e company is composed of the following members: — "John McNulty, captain; N. H. Fowler, 1st lieutenant; James Glynn 2d do.; Wm. S. Ball, C. D. Burrill, D. W. Bucklin, Charles Conklin, Edward Coker, S. R. Fanshaw, J. Hendal, J. Hudson, C. T. Jacobius, N. Pellor, W. J. Robinson, J. Rouke, W. Rouke, A. Riker. W. S. Sands, W. H. Sherman, Vanrance, Abbot, Pelham, J. Patterson, Ludlow, Alsop, privates." 76 T h e only description of the journey from New York City to Kansas is contained in John Hudson's long letter of April 7, 1849, and dated "Kansas Missouri," as included in A Forty-niner in Utah, pp. 46-59. After reaching Philadelphia, the Colony Guard then took the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Railroad to the latter city and from there by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad to the end of that line at Cumberland, Md., 178 miles away. From here the gold-seekers mounted the 75

To California

in '49

After reading the minutes of the last meeting Mr. Wm. Rourke was renominated and elected as Key Member T h e Treasurer then reported the account of the finances of the Company —the disbursments for travelling and necessaries of the Company had been so much more than anticipated that it was thought advisable to draw the balance of the funds in the keeping of Spofford 8c Tileston and to abandon the second shipment of provisions to San Francisco — Moved by Mr. Coker and seconded by Mr. Hendel that the Treasurer send an order from Cincinnati 77 to Spofford Tileston 8c Co. for the balance of Money belonging to the Colony Guards — Carried A gold test purchased by Mr. Ludlow was discussed and thought necessary for the Company who agreed to pay T e n Dollars being the price paid for it by Mr. Ludlow It was also agreed to buy a Spy Glass from Mr. Burrill at the price the Captain of the Hindoo should assess and that the Glass be for the use of the Company. T h e Meeting was then adjourned — W M SANDS - SECRETARY WYANDOTT IND SUB AGENCY

APRIL 11TH

1849

T o the Colony Guards You are hereby permitted to buy for reasonable consideration of any person belonging to Wyandott Nation of Indians any property which they may wish to Dispose of, this to be in force for the term of thirty days and no longer. YOURS M O S T RESPECTFULLY RICHARD H E W I T T IND SUB AGENT FOR WYANDOTTS 7 8 stagecoaches of the National Road Stage Company for a wagon trip of seventy-two miles across the Appalachian Mountains to Brownsville, Pa., where they boarded a small steamboat for a thirty-mile trip down the Monongahela River to Pittsburgh and a transfer to the Hindoo which would take them down the Ohio to St. Louis. 77 Cincinnati was a major steamboat stop on the Ohio. For Hudson's interesting and picturesque account of his river journey to St. Louis and by the Alice, a smaller boat, up the Missouri to Kansas, the reader is referred to A Forty-niner in Utah, pages noted above. T h e rather flashy and uncommon dress and mannerisms of the New York tenderfeet drew from one midwestern fellow passenger aboard the Missouri River steamboat a blast of contempt and derision. Joseph Waring Berrien of Belleville, 111., confided to his diary, after observing a flock of pelicans and wild geese: "Talking of Geese reminds me that we have a large quantity of them on board and those of the greenest kind. T h e r e is a party of New Yorkers on board dressed in uniform of Blue Cassimere, armed with Government Rifles Bowie Knives and Colts Revolvers who are the most lackadaisycal Milk and Waterish fellows I ever saw. they are in fact to use the words of M. Morrison, as green as a pumpkin vine From their appearance one would suppose they had never seen more of the world than can be seen from behind the counter of a paltry Dry-Goods or T h r e a d and Needle Store and their ridiculous affectation of Military Style and Etiquette joined to their egregious vanity, Hoggishness of Manners and evident high estimation of themselves to the exclusion of all others exposes them to the ridicule of all and almost tempts me to deny my Country. It is my private opinion that before they arrive at their destination they will be perfectly acquainted with the 'Elephant.'" T e d Hinckley and Caryl Hinckley, eds., "Overland from St. Louis to the California Gold Field in 1849: T h e Diary of Joseph Waring Berrien," Indiana Magazine of History 56 (1960):277-81; Louise Barry, The Beginning of the West (Topeka: Kansas State Historical Society, 1972), p. 837. 78 This single sheet was inserted in the pages of the Minute Book. About 700 Wyandots moved from Upper Sandusky, O., in the summer of 1843 to settle on land that is presently the site of Kansas

Utah Historical

Quarterly

KANSAS SATURDAY EVENING APRIL 21 -

1849

After the reading of the Minutes and calling the Roll the Constitution with its amendments were read. J o h n C. Winans then signed the Constitution in place of Saml. R. Fanshaw â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Mr. Winans then stated that the agreement between Mr. Fanshaw and himself was that they share equally the benefits of one Member of the Company and that the Treasurer send an order to Mr. Fanshaw reading thusT h e Treasurer of the Colony Guard will pay to the order of Saml. R. Fanshaw half the profits of my share at the expiration of the One Year after the arrival at the Mines. Moved by Mr. Hudson and seconded by Mr. Bucklin that Levi M. Ludlow fill the office of Key Member for the following Month Moved and seconded that the Article in the Constitution requesting an immediate election in case of a vacancy in office be suspended pro-tem. the Meeting then adjourned. W M . SANDS SECRETARY PRAIRIE SATURDAY EVENING APRIL 28.

1849

After the usual preliminaries of the meeting the Captain made some well timed remarks respecting the Company's being all together and well with the hope that they may long remain so. Moved by Mr. Patterson Sec. by Mr. Winans that Mr. W7m. J. Robinson be elected to fill the vacancy of Judge, expected to be filled by Mr. Fanshaw and the article in the Constitution concerning elections by ballot was suspended and Mr. Robinson elected Judge of the Colony Guard unanimously by acclamation. over SATURDAY, APRIL 2 8 T H - CONTINUED

A lively discussion concerning the Members doing their share of necessary work then followed and elicited a few side-wipes and unpleasant retorts. T h e Captain made a motion that any member who felt an inclination have the priviledge of taking an average Mule and the Companies Armes & Clothes and leaving the Company this motion was seconded by Mr. Abbott and carried unanimously 79 City, Mo. T h e Delaware Indians finally sold the Wyandots thirty-nine sections of land in the fork of the Missouri and Kansas rivers to which the Wyandots moved in 1844, wanting to be near the civilized portion of that country. They established comfortable homes, set up their own government and engaged in successful business activities at Kansas Landing, which finally became Kansas City. They operated a ferry across the Kansas and sold and bartered for goods. On J u n e 6, 1845, Dr. Richard Hewitt moved from Jackson County, Mo., to take the place of Jonathan Phillips as the head of the Wyandot Subagency and continued in the post until July 15, 1849. Hewitt had as helpers a blacksmith. Charles Graham, and an assistant blacksmith, Ira Hunter. William E. Connelley,/! Standard History of Kansas and Kansans (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Co., 1918), pp. 249, 257, 299; Barry, The Beginningofthe West, pp. 493, 499, 500, 550, 569, 792, 880. 79 Perhaps the most significant aspect of the Colony Guard Minutes is the abrupt and sharp change from all the sweetness and light that characterized the early operations of these "high

To California

in '49

Resolution was then carried that the Members apprise the Captain or officer in command in case he leaves the camp on Private business T h e Treasurer then gave the Meeting a statement of his Cash act. T h e Meeting adjourned till next Monday EveningW M SANDS SECRETARY

These

MONDAY EVENING APRIL 3 0 T H .

1849

After the reading of last meetings minutes the Company's finances were considered and a motion carried that 25 dollars be given to the finance committee in order to purchase some necessaries there being nothing else of importance the Meeting adjourned. W M SANDS SECRETARY PRAIRIE THURSDAY MORNING MAY 10 - 1849 T h e Meeting was convened by the Captain who related some conversation of the previous evening between two of the Members tending to the disparagement of the Company and the Captain who accused Mr. Robinson of having talked of and treated him disrespectfully also questioning the Captains integrity by his having private designs on the company to further his own interests - As the accused was the J u d g e his resignation was tendered and accepted â&#x20AC;&#x201D; THURSDAY MAY 10.

1849

Charles A. Conkling was Nominated and regularly elected by ballot to fill the vacancy of this office of J u d g e of the Colony Guard the following Members were drawn as Jurors to try the charges against Wm. J. Robinson Viz. D. W. Bucklin. C. D. Burrill. S. S. Abbott. J. A. Van Ranst. N. Pelham. A Riker N. Peelor. J. A. Glynne W. L. Ball. L. M. Ludlow J. Rourke. J. A. Patterson. Mr. Bucklin was sworn as witness for the plaintiff and related some conversation between Mr. Robinson & Mr. Coker asserting their beleif [,s?c] that the Company must disband and otherwise agreeing with part of the accusation. Mess. Pellor and Abbott were next sworn in and corroborated the Statement made by Mr. Bucklin. Edward Coker was then sworn in to relate the conversation referred to between himself and Mr. Robinson Mr. Coker allowed that they did say principled and moral men" to the recriminations and frustrations that everyday life on the Overland Trail brought them. By the time the gold-digger companies reached Salt Lake City or Fort Laramie and Fort Hall, if not earlier, many of them split up to go their separate ways to California. Some eager travelers were irritated by their more slowly moving comrades or just developed such personal animosities that it was impossible to continue with the company. Hosea Stout has left us in his diary some excellent descriptions of the litigation the emigrants pursued at the City of the Saints as they dissolved their sacred contracts and divided their possessions for the final trek to the gold fields. Juanita Brooks, ed., On the Mormon Frontier: The Diary of Hosea Stout (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press and Utah State Historical Society, 1964), vol. 2.

Utah Historical

Quarterly

the company would separate and talked of the Medicine Chest having cost $300 and the Captain having it at the disposition of the Company's stock. Mr. Riker was sworn and said he had frequently heard the accused assert that he did not care a dam for what the Captain said and when at Liberty Mr. Robinson neglected branding the Mules, thinking it unnecessary although urged by Mr. Riker to have it done. 80 Mr Pelham was next called for as evidence and said that Mr. Robinson thought the Captain had too much power also that the accused had electioneered and figured for the office of J u d g e that he had talked of leaving the Company at times spoken well of the Captain at others disrespectfully THURSDAY MAY 10.

1849

Mr. Hendel was sworn and affirmed that he urged Mr Robinson to brand the Mules at Liberty but Mr. Robinson did not do so. Mr. Robinson then chose Mr. Patterson as a witness who said that the accused had electioneered for b e i n g j u d g e and that in case he could get the Captaincy he would correct some of the features of the Company abolishing the drilling that Mr. Robinson and himself were both opposed to branding the Mules on Sunday also that the accused often spoke well of the Captain but had heard when in New York that Dr. McNulty was a little rascal. Mr. Peelor questioned Mr. Patterson regarding Mr. Robinson's views when in California, but elicited nothing. Mr. Robinson then questioned Mr. Patterson about thier [sic] conversations with Mr. Pelham but the only new evidence was the probability of the Captains superintending the Melting of Gold in California Mr. Pelham was cross examined and said that during the accused figuring he had stated of doing away with the Sunday Service and therby gaining the good will of some of the non-professional T h e J u d g e then called on the accused who said he had nothing further to state in his behalf T h e Captain made a few remarks requesting the Jury to not consider the matter personally that from the things Mr. Robinson had said he did not like to travel with such a man and he certainly heard the accused say that the party must seperate [sic] Mr. Robinson said that he had uniformly spoken well of the Captain and only otherwise when in an excited or provoked mood. Mr. Fowler was proposed by Mr. Peelor and Mr. Peelor proposed Mr. Fowler as First Lieutenant but as Mr. Peelor decidedly declined Mr. Fowler was elected. Mr. Glynne was nominated and elected as Second Lieutenant. Mr. Hendell was elected for Sergeant. Mr. Glynne moved that a vote of thanks be tendered to Mr. Hudson for his satisfactory Treasuryship Mr. Peelor was proposed as Treasurer and elected. Chas. A. Conkling was unanimously elected as J u d g e Dr. McNulty as Surgeon. Mr. Ball was 80 Liberty, Mo., a minor outfitting point for western travelers, was located about twelve miles north of the Missouri River and just opposite Independence which lay south of the river.

To California in '49

elected as Substitute for Mr. Peelor in the finance Committee the balance of the Committee remained unaltered. Mr Hudson was retained as Chaplain Mr Wm. Rourke was elected as Key Member. Mr Conkling proposed the propriety of rations being given out for the balance of the Journey, the Company agreed to try % lb of Bread stuffs per day The meeting was adjourned pro. tem. WM. SANDS SECRETARY

Wm Aloysius

21 years Hazel Eyes Brown Hair Dark Complection - 5 ft. 8 in high - Cooper Geo. W. Herman 23 years Hazel Eyes Brown Hair - Ruddy Com. 5 ft. 6 in. high - Farmer Wm. Hystop 24 years. Blue Eyes Brown Hair Fair Com 6 ft. 1 in high - from Edingburg - Printer Asa Young 21 years Blue Eyes Brown Hair - Fair Com 5 ft. 7 lA in high - Labourer These Men left Fort Laramie 19th. July with Rifle Dragoon Saddles and Bridles and four Government Horses One large Bay. One large chesnut sorrel, One Bay and a stout built Iron Grey all branded on the left fore shoulder thus ^ E R - Also a small letter F in the left fore hoof 1 T h e May 10 entry was the last of the r e c o r d e d minutes of the meetings of the Colony G u a r d , probably because so m a n y of t h e m became seriously ill with cholera that the chief concern became to get the party to Salt Lake City a n d possible help instead of following the original plan to travel by way of Fort Hall. After a short stay in Salt Lake Valley about ten of the healthy m e m b e r s of the c o m p a n y continued across the Nevada deserts u n d e r the leadership of J o h n McNulty a n d apparently arrived at the diggings without any unc o m m o n suffering. T h e o t h e r travelers, thirteen in n u m b e r a n d with the exception of J o h n H u d s o n , regained their health sufficiently to join a caravan 81

Maj. Winslow F. Sanderson with five officers and fifty-eight enlisted men of Company E, Mounted Riflemen, had reached Fort Laramie on June 16, 1849, prepared to use it as a base from which his troops could give protection to overland emigrant parties. He purchased the fort for the government and endeavored to improve the discipline of his troops who, according to visitor Maj. Osborne Cross, were "raw recruits â&#x20AC;&#x201D; some, not speaking the English language, [and] were not capable of taking care of one horse, much less a team of six mules." But from this single sheet tucked between the pages of the Colony Guard Minute Book, quite evidently at least four of the soldiers could handle animals well enough to have deserted with four of the government horses. Passing travelers were apparently given the handbills in the hopes the deserters could be found and returned to Fort Laramie. Raymond W. Settle, ed., The March of the Mounted Riflemen (Glendale, Calif.: Arthur H. Clark Co., 1940), pp. 98-100; Major Osborne Cross, March of the Regiment of Mounted Riflemen to Oregon in 1849 (Fairfield, Wash.: Ye Galleon Press, 1967), pp. 38-39; LeRoy R. Hafen and Francis Marion Young, Fort Laramie and the Pageant of the West, 1834-1890 (Glendale, Calif.: Arthur H. Clark Co., 1938), pp. 138-43.

Utah Historical Quarterly

of 107 wagons u n d e r the guidance of a Mormon frontiersman, Jefferson Hunt, who started from the Utah settlements on October 2 to take the southern route to Los Angeles. At a point near Mountain Meadow in southern Utah, a portion of the company split off to take a "shortcut" to California u n d e r the leadership of a man named O. K. Smith. Meeting almost impassable mountains and canyons, most returned to the main trail to follow H u n t and reached Los Angeles without too much difficulty. Five of these were former Colony Guard members: C. D. Burrill, W. S. Sands, W. H. Shearman, J. Hendel, and D. W. Bucklin. Edward C. Coker chose to go with the Smith group, part of which finally traversed the area known since then as Death Valley.82 T h e only other member of the Colony Guard whose fate has been recorded as he journeyed to California was William Robinson. Independent as ever, he followed O. K. Smith, finally traveling through Panamint Valley and after suffering intensely from lack of water, reached a spring in Antelope Valley where, on about February 1, 1850, he was brought "into camp in an exhausted condition . . . and, when he drank too much water, died." 83 As for J o h n Hudson whose letters to his family in Birmingham, England, have left us a rich description of life in frontier Utah, he was nursed back to health and strength by a countryman, W. W. Major, a convert to Mormonism. Hudson then spent the winter of 1849-50 as the school teacher at Fort Utah, now Provo, Utah, but then a log stockade built for security from Indian attacks. In late February young Hudson finished his pedagogical duties just in time to participate in a sanguinary two-day battle with the local tribe of Ute Indians. Returning then to Salt Lake City he was hired by Capt. Howard Stansbury as the artist member of the expedition that explored and surveyed the Great Salt Lake during the spring and early summer of 1850. Hudson's journal, along with those of Stansbury, Lt. J o h n W. Gunnison, and Albert Carrington, constitutes one of the very interesting reports of western exploration by a government party. T h e sketches of scenes around Great Salt Lake that appeared in the official Stansbury report were by Hudson, who also left fourteen heretofore unpublished drawings in the collection 82 Coker's short reminiscence of the trip has been published in William L. Manly, Death I 'alley in '49 (San Jose, Calif.: Pacific T r e e and Vine Co., 1894), p. 140. 83 Madsen, A Forty-niner in Utah, pp. 69-70, gives the known information about the fate of Robinson and the other twenty-two Colony Guard men who went on to California.

To California in '49

that was sent to his family in Birmingham. The fourteen sketches have been reproduced in A Forty-niner in Utah. After the stint with Stansbury, Hudson hired out as the secretary for one of the Mormon justices of the peace for a summer of litigation involving contentious gold emigrants who wished to end their trail contracts and divide their possessions before continuing their journey to California. Sometime during his year among the Mormons, Hudson joined the Saints' church although he did not reveal the fact to his relatives in England. In September 1850 he was "called" by Brigham Young as part of a group of one hundred men and families to help strengthen a new settlement in Sanpete Valley, over a hundred miles south of Salt Lake City. In December he contracted pneumonia while residing at Sanpete and died on the fourteenth of that month. Two of the Mormon officials at Sanpete wrote his father the distressing news, and apparently his old friend W. W. Major carried Hudson's last effects, including the fourteen sketches of western scenes, to the family in Birmingham when he went on a proselyting mission to England two years after Hudson's death. Hudson was buried in an unmarked grave in Manti, Utah, a victim of the physical debilitation he had suffered from cholera during his trip across the plains. Although the recently discovered minutes of the meetings of the Colony Guard should have been a part of the book, A Forty-niner in Utah, it was a historian's fate to discover the existence of the document only after the book was already in print. But then, one can take the Pollyanna view that except for a chance talk before a group of LDS historians, the minutes might never have been brought to light at all. They are a significant contribution to the history of western travel during the gold rush and especially of a unique group of New York "gentlemen" who, as the Colony Guard, sought their fortunes in the golden mines of California.

William Set by Harney. National Archives.

A Crisis Averted? General Harney and the Change in Command of the Utah Expedition BY W I L F O R D H I L L L E C H E M I N A N T

1857 THE U N I T E D STATES ARMY assigned the command of its Utah Expedition to Gen. William Selby Harney who promptly announced that to solve the Utah problem "he would capture Brigham Young and the twelve apostles and execute them in a summary manner and winter in the temple of the Latter-day Saints." 1 He was I N MAY

Dr. LeCheminant is a physician in Bountiful, Utah. 1 Logan U. Reavis, The Life and Military Services of General William Selby Harney (St. Louis, 1878), pp. 276-77.

General Harney

well known as a tough and experienced Indian fighter. Two years earlier the public had labeled him "squaw killer" after his regiment massacred a village of Sioux Indians near Ash Hollow. This dubious exploit was one of many controversial incidents in Harney's long military career. His proponents defended him as an exemplary soldier with a flare for gallantry, while to his enemies he was an impulsive officer with an inclination for provoking disputes. Such was the reputation of Harney, the man who briefly held the Utah command twice yet never saw Utah as a military authority. On August 29,1857, his Utah command was given to Col. Albert Sidney Johnston and the expedition became known as Johnston's Army. T h e n for a few weeks the next spring Harney held the command of the newly formed Department of Utah and was over Johnston. He was two weeks en route to Utah when the government learned peace had been established with the Mormons and reassigned Harney to Oregon. T h e army's advance to Utah and its subsequent occupation of the territory might have been significantly different under General Harney than it was under Colonel Johnston. T o help one conjecture how Harney might have behaved differently from Johnston, a sketch of the actual Utah Expedition is presented and then an account of the Mormon reaction to Harney's threat. This is followed by a view of Harney and his character as revealed through the impressions of contemporaries and by his role in a number of controversies. A theme common to these disputes is Harney's propensity to disregard orders for what he deemed more important goals. In contrast, Johnston, a quiet, strong-willed man demonstrated during his Utah command a patient compliance to government instructions, including those contrary to his own ideas and opinions. It is on this point, conformity to orders, that one might imagine differences of consequence between Harney and Johnston in directing the Utah Expedition and the impact upon Utah and the Mormons. On first taking command in 1857 Harney realized the late season posed the danger of trapping his forces in the mountain snows that winter. While Harney was organizing his troops at Fort Leavenworth, an officer wrote, "Now as to Utah. General Harney is opposed to going, strongly so. He has written on that it is impossible to move from here with an army this season with any possible advantages, and it is the general impression here that we will not

Utah Historical Quarterly

go." 2 General-in-Chief Winfield Scott, a long-time antagonist of Harney, recalled that "General Harney, its first commander, threw cold water upon the Utah Expedition at the outset. Those u n d e r him were infected by discouragement and desertions and tendered resignations followed." 3 Harney and his Fifth Infantry regiment were called as a part of the forces for Utah from the swamps of Florida where they had been tracking Seminole Indians. They had sustained debilitating wounds and illness and were openly disgruntled when ordered to make the trek to the distant Rockies. Some 200 men deserted and several of Harney's officers resigned. It was even suspected that Harney himself arranged with Kansas Gov. Robert J. Walker to persuade President Buchanan to keep him and his dragoons in Kansas to quell the civil strife there. 4 When Colonel Johnston actively assumed command on September 11, the advanced units committed by Harney were already near Fort Laramie. Johnston also realized the season was late, but he hurried to join his soldiers with the intent of being in Salt Lake Valley before the onset of severe weather. In mid-October he found his command scattered across the high Wyoming plains, struggling with the snow and bitter cold. Johnston did an extraordinary job in gathering his desperate soldiers together and creating winter quarters at Camp Scott. H u n d r e d s of army cattle and horses died in the cold, but Johnston lost only one man, not to the weather but to tetanus. By spring his men had not only survived on limited rations but were in fit condition. 5 T h e r e is no evidence that Johnston had any preconceived antagonism for the Mormons or their institutions. However, as he gathered his troops at Camp Scott he soon looked upon the Mormons as insurgents and as an enemy who needed to be soundly defeated and punished. He disagreed with Gov. Alfred Cumming's policy of conciliation, yet he patiently waited through the spring before entering the valley and thereby allowed peaceful resolution to many of the government's differences with the Mormons. During 2

The Utah Expedition, 1857-1858; Letters of Captain Jesse A. Gave, ed. Otis G. Hammond (Concord: New Hampshire Historical Society, 1928), p. 7. 3 Gen. Winfield Scott to Secretary of War J o h n B. Floyd, October 30, 1858, Records of the Headquarters of the Army, vol. 9-7, Letters Sent, 1857-59, p. 432, National Archives, Washington, D.C. 4

Norman F. Furniss, The Mormon Conflict, 1850-1859 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960),

p. 101. 5 Charles P. Roland, Albert Sidney Johnston, Soldier of Three Republics (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964), p. 189-200.

General Harney

Albert Sidney Johnston National Archives.

his nearly two years at Camp Floyd he essentially confined himself to the desolate surroundings of the camp; he never went to Salt Lake City. He made every effort to restrain his troops from disturbing the rights of Utah citizens. His "rigid protection of Mormon life and property belied his feelings toward Mormon waysâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a loathing which increased with time and proximity."" During the army's second year in Utah Brigham Young noted, "The army is still quietly concentrated in Camp Floyd obviously more to the benefit and gratification of the people of Utah than to itself or the public at large." 7 Harney seemed to have had no strong feelings against the Mormons. Reavis, his biographer, claims that had Harney executed church leaders, "he would not have done so because of any personal concern about the Mormon religion, for that was a matter of indifference to him." 8 Knowledge of this would not have placated the Mormons during the summer of 1857 as they prepared for a confrontation with Harney. They undoubtedly conjectured about their future under the man whose reputation they perceived largely through his brutal victory at Ash Hollow. President Buchanan was quite successful in keeping secret from the Mormons his intention to send a military force to Utah. It was not until July 23,1857, during a three-day celebration of the Mormons' tenth anniversary in the territory that A. O. Smoot and Judson Stoddard arrived from St. Louis to report to Brigham Young that troops had probably already started for Utah on July 15 and that the 6 7 8

Ibid., p. 222. Ibid., p. 219. Reavis, William Selby Harney, p. 277.

Utah Historical Quarterly

Mormon mail contract had been cancelled by the government. They had seen preparations for the expedition at Fort Leavenworth early in July and brought with them New York and St. Louis newspapers in which details of the expedition plan were printed. 9 Mormons in England knew of Harney and the Utah Expedition well before those in Utah, according to Asa Calkin, a missionary at the church's headquarters in Liverpool. On J u n e 17, five weeks before Smoot and Stoddard reached Utah, his journal reads, "It seems a settled thing that an army is to be sent against the Citizens of Utah, commanded by the blood thirsty coward Gen'l Harney who immortalized his name by the Indian massacre at Ash Hollow in September, 1855." Two weeks later, July 3, Calkin noted, " T h e civil war in Kansas is assuming a serious impact. Slavery and anti-slavery is making quite a stir sufficient for the moment to turn attention from the 'Mormons.' Harney is ordered to employ the whole of the Utah Army to preserve the peace in Kansas." The Millennial Star, a Mormon weekly published in England, does not mention the expedition until August 15.1" Brigham Young's several letters in early August reveal his knowledge of the government's plans for Utah and of Harney's threat to execute Mormon leaders. One such letter stated, "The government has at last hit upon the long sought for plan to extinguish 'Mormonism.'" Young listed the president's appointees to territorial offices and identified them as coming from the ranks of the Mormons' "most bitter enemies." He continued: T h e n there are 2500 regulars coming with them as a bodyguard to execute their commands, to sustain them in their exalted positions. . . . T h e mission of these War Dogs is, of course, peaceful as the saintly squaw killer, General Harney, is supposed commandant of the expedition; and the current report is that he has committed himself on the peace side by openly avowing that he felt no hostility to the settlers of Utah further than myself and about 39 others and all those who believe as we do. A Jubilee is to be declared, means and protection are to be afforded to all who wish to return to the states. In fact, the Mormons are going (?) to be christianized, civilized and victimized by the highminded (?) officers of Uncle Sam's regulars. T o offset this there is a strong probability that the troops will not reach further than Laramie this fall, and still stronger probability that they will not get here.

9 Young to Cannon, August 4, 1857, Outgoing Correspondence, Brigham Young Papers, LDS Church Library Archives, Salt Lake City. 10

Asa Calkin Journal, LDS Church Library Archives; Millennial Star 19 (1875):526.

General Harney

T o church leaders in the Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islands Young wrote: Tis reported that amongst the officers it is a query whether they will hang me with or without a trial. T h e idea prevails generally amongst the editors that the object of the expedition is to kill Mormonism partly by hanging the authorities, here, and partly by working upon the fears of the masses.

In another letter he said, "We have been tried and condemned without a voice in the matter, but there is a 'catching before the hanging' as they may find, to their cost."11 T h e Mormon people were as much aware of Harney's reputation as was Brigham Young. They added to one of their favorite songs this verse: Old squaw killer Harney is on his way T h e Mormons for to slay Now, if he comes, the truth I'll tell O u r boys will drive him down to hell.

Most of the general's background was probably unknown to the anxious Mormons. William Selby Harney was born in Tennessee on August 22,1800. He and his family were friends of Andrew Jackson and strong supporters of Jackson's Democratic party. In February 1818, while seventeen years old, he enlisted in the army and received a second lieutenant's commission. His first experience with the Plains Indians was in 1825 as part of Gen. Henry Atkinson's expedition to the upper Missouri River. As a young officer he campaigned against Jean Lafitte, the pirate, in the bayous of Louisiana. He fought in the Black Hawk War and in several Seminole campaigns and was cited for bravery in the war with Mexico.13 During the Black Hawk War twenty-nine-year-old Captain Harney became friends with two younger officers, Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis. Nearly fifty years later, 1878, Davis described Harney: "At that period of his life he was physically the finest specimen of a man I ever saw . . . tall, straight, muscular, broadchested, and gaunt-waisted. . . . He would run faster than a white man, further than an Indian and in both show that man was or11 Young to Cannon, August 4, 1857; Young to Hamblin, August 4, 1857; Young to Smith, Richards, and Partridge, August 4, 1857; Young to Wright, September 4, 1857; Outgoing Correspondence, Brigham Young Papers. 12 J. P. Dunn, Jr., Massacres of the Mountains (New York, 1886), p. 251. 13 Eugene Bandel, Frontier Life in the Army, ed. Ralph Bieber (Glendale, Calif.: Arthur H. Clark Co., 1932), p. 83 n.

Utah Historical Quarterly

ganized to be master of the beast." Davis recalled how Harney had run down one of his fleet hunting dogs and flogged it for disturbing the company garden at Fort Winnebago. He remembered Harney "as a bold horseman, fond of the chase, a good boatsman and skillful in the use of the spear as a fisherman. Neither drinking or gaming, he . . . is no doubt indebted to this abstinence for much of the vigor he has possessed to his present advanced age." 14 Harney lived to be nearly eighty-nine years old. T h e year of the Ash Hollow massacre Harney, fifty-five years old, was described: His form was that of the ideal soldier; six feet four in height, as straight and erect as any Sioux chief that ever lived; brusque in manner; rough in mould and mien, as in voice; proud of his name and his honest titles to distinction; harsh of speech and in no way fastidious about his choice of adjectives to emphasize his commands or displeasure. He was yet so tender of heart, after all, that even a wronged Army mule could arouse in him the most practical sympathy. 15

Harney's character sometimes failed to match his physical perfection. At the beginning of the Mexican War he and his second dragoon regiment were assigned to Texas. In October 1846, without orders and contrary to instructions, Harney carried out a brief invasion of Mexico and occupied the town of Presidio. He encountered no resistance and wanted to go on to Monterrey, but his fellow officers convinced him to return to Texas. This venture greatly depleted badly needed supplies, and because Harney so delayed his return Gen. J o h n E. Wool placed him under arrest until he was back at headquarters. From then on Harney refused to shake hands with General Wool.1H Friction between Winfield Scott and Harney existed for much of their careers and probably stemmed from a derogatory remark Harney had made about Scott at the time of the Black Hawk War. Early in General Scott's advance to Mexico City he expressed concern over Colonel Harney's dependability and directed that Harney turn over the command of six of the eight companies in his regiment to Maj. Edwin V. Sumner. Harney responded with a letter of compliance and a request for an explanation. When he did not receive an answer to his satisfaction, he wrote Scott's headquarters: 14

Reavis, William Selby Harney, p. iv. Bandel, Frontier Life in the Army. 16 Reavis, William Selby Harney, p. 154; K.Jack Bauer, The Mexican War, 1846-1848 (New York: Macmillan Co., 1974), p. 146 n. 15

General Harney

If General Scott does not deem me capable of discharging my appropriate duties he may arrest me, but he shall not unresistingly degrade me. It is painful to be driven to this alternative. . . . As long as I am a colonel I shall claim the command of my regiment, it is a right which I hold by my commission and the laws of the land, and no authority short of the President of the United States can legally deprive me of it. In adopting this course, I feel that I am not only defending my own, but the rights of every officer of the army. . . . It is well known by your presence with the army that an important expedition against the enemy is at hand, and my desire to participate in it will not allow me to await redress by an appeal to a higher authority.

Gen. William J. Worth arrested Harney for court-martial. T h e court found him guilty of disobedience of orders and innocent of insubordinate conduct. He was "reprimanded in orders," an unusually light sentence. General Scott personally forgave Harney, remitted his sentence, and later allowed Harney to lead his entire regiment in the campaign. 17 Three and a half months later, on April 18, 1847, Harney had his greatest moment of glory and for it he was decorated. He led his men in a charge up a steep, rocky, 700-foot hillside at Cerro Gordo to take the fortified ridge manned by Santa Anna and his veteran soldiers. After the charge Scott was so moved by Harney's heroism that he embraced him. Gen. G. T. Beauregard described the scene more than thirty years later: I had the honor, while quite young, of making the acquaintance of General Harney, just before the Battle of Cerro Gordo when Captain R. E. Lee and myself . . . met him at General Scott's headquarters to explain to him the topography of the country. . . . I remember distinctly the quiet and officer-like manner in which General Harney received our information and the facility with which he seemed to understand all we had to say on the matter. . . . T h e next morning when the attack commenced, it was truly exhilarating to see him charging, sword in hand, along the steep slope of that high hill, his tall manly figure towering above the gallant officers and men who surrounded him. It was a sight never to be forgotten! He was one of the first inside the enemy's works, unhurt and ready to attack the other positions on our right still held by the Mexicans. . . . From the battle to the end of the war General Harney became the favorite of all the young officers of the army, whom he always treated with that kindness and urbanity of manners which distinguish him to this day. l7

Reavis, William Selby Harney, pp. 166-71; Charles W. Elliott, Winfield Scott, the Soldier and the Man (New York: Macmillan Co., 1937), pp. 449-50. 1K Reavis, William Selby Harney, p. vii.

Utah Historical Quarterly

T h e United States Army in Mexico had a serious problem with desertion. Over 9,000 men deserted during the war. Many joined a Mexican foreign legion and fought against their former comrades. T h e Mexicans encouraged this with offers of land and other inducements. Some of these appeals may have used the Catholic religion of America's Irish soldiers. One group of deserters was known as Mexico's St. Patrick's (San Patrico) Battalion. However, desertions were most often provoked by the rigid discipline and overly harsh punishment for minor offenses. T h e execution of twenty-nine deserters after the capture of Chapultepec Castle was directed by Colonel Harney. He announced a delay in the execution until the condemned men could see the American flag replace the Mexican flag over the castle. This brought a cheer from them for they had believed the stronghold would not be taken. From a nearby hospital another soldier, Charles Hamilton, watched and described the prisoners standing "in wagons with their hands tied behind them, their feet tied together and a rope around the neck of each attached to the beam above. For two long hours the poor fellows stood together, but as the American flag was seen to rise to the peak of the flagstaff of the castle, the word was given, the teams started and the 29 deserters paid the penalty of their treason with their lives."19 T h e Ash Hollow massacre in which General Harney acquired the derisive name "squaw killer" was an important battle in the early stages of the Sioux Wars. These wars, a series of battles between the Plains Indians and the army, included George A. Custer's defeat at the Little Bighorn and lasted until the Battle of Wounded Knee in 1890. It all started in August 1854 when 1,500 Sioux and Cheyenne Indians were peacefully camped a few miles southeast of Fort Laramie alongside the Oregon Trail. They were awaiting annual gifts from the government as established by the Horse Creek Treaty of 1851, a treaty designed to maintain peace among the Indians and to protect emigrant traffic from Indian depredations. On August 18, 1854, a Mormon wagon company of Danish emigrants passed the Indian camps. A lame cow lagged behind the company's herd and was killed by an Indian and shared with his friends. T h e same day the loss of the cow was reported to officers at Fort Laramie by the Mormons and also by Chief Conquering Bear 19 Elliott, Winfield Scott, pp. 545-46 n., 555-56; Charles Winston Smith and Charles Judah. Chronicles of the Gringo (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1968), p. 437.

General Harney

who was anxious that his tribe not lose their government annuity. He brought a horse as restitution for the slain cow. T h e next day John L. Grattan, a rash twenty-four-year-old lieutenant, just a year out of West Point, led a volunteer force of twenty-nine soldiers with two cannon to arrest the cow killer. His interpreter, Lucien Auguste, was drunk and belligerent toward the Indians. In the heart of the Indian camp Grattan negotiated through the drunk Auguste but was unable to peacefully take the cowkiller. Witnesses at the Bordeaux Trading Post 300 yards away saw the soldiers fire their muskets and the cannon, after which they were immediately attacked by hundreds of braves who until then had remained hidden in the nearby brush. T h e soldiers were killed and Grattan's body, next to the cannon, contained twenty-four arrows. T h e rampaging Indians then looted the Gratiot Trading Post of the undistributed government gifts.10 T h e Grattan massacre became a national issue. Testimony before congressional committees argued that the Indians were not at fault and should not be punished. However, Jefferson Davis, secretary of war, convinced Congress to outfit a regiment for the purpose of "chastizing the Indians." T o command the regiment General Harney was recalled from a leave he had recently earned for again subduing the Seminole Indians in Florida. In late August 1855, as General Harney and 600 troops left Fort Kearney to engage the perpetrators of the Grattan massacre, the Indian agent at F^ort Laramie, Thomas S. Twiss, sent runners to instruct friendly Indians to move south of the North Platte River and expel all hostiles from their camps. 21 Harney followed the Platte River and arrived at Ash Hollow September 2, 1855. Little T h u n d e r and his band of Brule Sioux had ignored Twiss's warning and were camped six miles north of the Platte on Blue Water Creek. At 2:00 A.M. the next morning the troops were awakened. Harney's instructions were heavily laced with profanity. At 3:00 A.M. Col. Philip St. George Cooke led four mounted dragoon companies to positions behind the village. At 4:30 Harney moved five companies of infantry up the creek. T h e Indians struck camp and began to move out. Little T h u n d e r appeared with a 20 Lloyd E. McCann, "The Grattan Massacre,"Nebraska History 37( 1956): 1-25; LeRoy Hafen and Francis M. Young, Fort Laramie and the Pageant of the West, 1834-1890 (Glendale, Calif.: Arthur H. Clark Co., 1938), pp. 221-26. 21 Millennial Star 17 (1855):701-2, 727-28; Hafen and Young, Fort Laramie, p. 239.

Utah Historical Quarterly

white flag and pled for his people, proclaiming his friendship for the whites. T h e parley lasted almost an hour. Harney later described the meeting to Congress: I stated the causes of the dissatisfaction which the government felt towards the Brules and closed the interview by telling him that his people had depredated upon and insulted our citizens whilst moving quietly through our country; that they had massacred our troops under most aggravated circumstances, and that now the day of retribution had come; that I did not wish to harm him, personally, as he professed to be a friend of the whites; but that he must either deliver up the young men whom he acknowledged he could not control, or they must suffer the consequences of their past misconduct and take the chances of a battle.

Little T h u n d e r was unable to deliver up his "guilty warriors" and returned to warn his people of Harney's decision. 22 T h e infantry with long-range Minie rifles advanced against the arrows and outmoded flintlock guns of the Indians, forcing them toward the waiting cavalry. An infantryman wrote: I never saw a more beautiful thing in my life. When the infantry saw the dragoons coming down in such beautiful style, they gave a yell which resounded far and wide. T h e Indians threw away everything they had in the world. . . . We, of necessity, killed a great many women and children. We took 40 women and children prisoners, a good many horses, buffalo meat enough to supply a whole company for some time. I do not suppose the Indians in this country ever had such a perfect clearing out as upon this occasion. They will have cause to remember General Harney for some time.2'5

Colonel Cooke reported, "There was much slaughter in the pursuit which extended from five to eight miles. . . . In the pursuit, women, if recognized were generally passed by my men, but that in some cases certainly these women discharged arrows at them." Harney's report tallied 86 Indians killed, 5 wounded, and about 70 women and children captured. Harney's casualties were 4 killed, 4 severely wounded, 3 slightly wounded, and 1 missing. Items from the Gratiot Post and from a murdered mail party were found with the Indians. Later, at Fort Laramie, Harney received Sioux chiefs, who where u n d e r the protection of Twiss, and sternly demanded that their only hope for peace was to surrender the murderers of the mail party, return stolen property, and stop their depredations. Two 22 23

241-42.

U.S., Congress, Senate, Sen. Ex. Doc. 1, pt. 1, pp. 49-51, 34th Cong., 1st sess. (1855-56). Daily Missouri Republican, September 27, 1855, cited in Hafen and Young, Fort Laramie, pp.

General Harney

incriminated braves surrendered and were taken to Fort Leavenworth to be hanged but were later pardoned. 2 ' Col. Edwin V. Sumner, a protege of Winfield Scott and much at odds with Harney since the Mexican War, was to follow Harney by a week to support him in the Indian campaign, but for unexplained reasons he returned to Fort Leavenworth for the winter. Harney denounced Sumner for cowardice and desertion and demanded his court-martial. This was denied by the Wrar Department. During the time between Harney's two Utah commands he was involved in two more courts-martial of Sumner. At the first one, in November 1857, Sumner objected to Harney as a member of the court claiming he was strongly prejudiced against him. In being excused from the court, Harney insulted Sumner by explaining, "I did prefer charges against him (Sumner), nearly two years ago, for 'disobedience of orders' and conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. . . . As to the prejudice I entertain towards him, I can only say that I never have had any, or very little respect for him as a soldier." Sumner was acquitted but then pursued Harney with messages which seemed to challenge Harney to a duel. Because dueling was against army regulations, Harney again preferred charges against Sumner. This court-martial in March 1858 also acquitted Sumner. Because of these court appearances Harney saw little action in Kansas after he was relieved of his first Utah command. 25 In April 1858 the War Department created the Department of Utah under Gen. Persifor F. Smith with Harney as second in command and both over Johnston in Utah. Smith died on May 7. Government records indicate that Harney's attempt in May 1858 to assume command of the military forces in and destined for Utah was repudiated by the War Department for overstepping his authority. Nevertheless, Harney did hold Department of Utah command until assigned to Oregon on J u n e 28, 1858.2,! At this time the unsettled boundary between Washington Territory and Canada left the control of San J u a n Island near Puget Sound in question. A conflict arose on the island between a handful of American settlers and the Hudson's Bay Company. An American 24

U.S., Congress, Senate, Sen. Ex. Doc. 58, pp. 1 -4, 34th Cong., 3d sess. (1856-57); see also Sen. Ex. Doc. 1. 25 Reavis, William Selby Harney, p. 249; New York Times, October 21, November 20, 1857, February 15, 16, March 2, 13, 1858. 2,; Robert H. Gruber, Navy and Old Army Branch Military Archives Division, National Archives, to author, April 9, 1982.

Utah Historical Quarterly

shot a pig belonging to an Englishman, and British authorities sought to bring the American to trial at Victoria for the offense. T h e Americans petitioned for protection from the British and also claimed marauding Indians had killed a few settlers. Some blamed company officials for urging Indians to frighten Americans from the island. Harney at Fort Vancouver received the request and, encouraged by Gov. Isaac I. Stevens of Washington Territory, dispatched a company of soldiers. T h e British governor protested and proclaimed British sovereignty of the island. A British warship was at hand and confronted the entrenched American soldiers. Fortunately, the British officer refrained from landing his marines, and each side awaited instructions from its government. 27 Ambitious motives were attributed to Harney by his possession of San J u a n Island which is just ten miles from the coast of Vancouver Island. He had earlier stirred the Oregon legislature with a speech that, in tune with Manifest Destiny, looked upon Vancouver Island as a potential American acquisition and a step toward ultimately annexing British Columbia west of the Rockies. In this speech he proclaimed that, "Vancouver Island is as important to the Pacific states as Cuba is to those on the Atlantic." Another reason given for Harney's occupation of the island was that, in concert with government officials in the Northwest, Harney saw a chance of averting America's imminent Civil War by uniting the feuding North and South against a common foreign enemy, Great Britain. 28 President Buchanan reprimanded Harney for nearly involving the country in a war with Britain and sent seventy-three-year-old Winfield Scott on a 7,000-mile sea voyage by way of Panama to Oregon where within two weeks the diplomatic Scott resolved the issue peacefully. Both sides were to occupy the island with a military detachment of 100 men at opposite ends of the island until the two countries could peacefully resolve the b o u n d a r y dispute. On November 15, 1859, just before Scott left for New York, he wrote Harney strongly suggesting he accept the command at St. Louis, anticipating that the British would insist on Harney's removal. Harney declined Scott's suggestion, and in January he explained the events to the legislature of Washington Territory which formally "Alfred T u n e m , "Dispute over San J u a n Island's Boundary," Washington Historical Quarterly 23 (1932): 136-37, 196-204, 286-90; New York Times, January 2, 1860; Reavis, William Selby Harney, pp. 28 Richard W. Van Alstyne, " I n t e r n a t i o n a l Rivalries," Oregon Historical (1945):212-13; T u n e m , "Dispute over San Juan Island's Boundary," p. 197 n.

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expressed its full support and commended him for his actions. Then, on April 10, 1860, Harney acted contrary to Scott's agreement with the British by changing the commander of the American detachment on the island. He also openly argued that Congress had intended to include San Juan Island in the territory of Washington. For these actions Jefferson Davis sent a letter of censure to Harney which he made public and explicitly instructed him to abide by Scott's agreement with the British.29 A vehement condemnation of Harney was made by George Ihrie in 1860. Ihrie and H. V. DeHart were junior officers who aroused the displeasure of Harney in July 1859 when they reported he had furloughed soldiers to work on his personal home and farm near Fort Vancouver, Oregon. DeHart was arrested and possibly Ihrie also. After resigning from the army, Ihrie presented to the War Department documents to clear his name and to a Harney letter of 1859 that had maligned his character responded: "He [Harney] goes on to state to you his own opinion of me, and thus to offer his character against mine. I am, therefore, justifiable in reminding you that his character, particularly in the army, is anything but enviable, being notorious for profanity, brutality, incompetency, peculation, recklessness, insubordination, tyranny and mendacity." Ihrie then resurrected a murder charge against Harney from 1834 for which Harney had been tried and acquitted. He claimed Harney had starved a slave girl to a state of emaciation and then beaten her to death. He produced the St. Louis County grand jury indictment against Harney which charged "that William S. Harney . . . not having the fear of God before his eyes, but being moved and seduced by the instigation of the devil . . . upon one Hannah, a slave, . . . did make an assault, . . . with a certain cowhide of the value of twenty-five cents" on June 26, 1834, causing injuries which led to her death the next day. Concerning Harney's acquittal, Ihrie commented, "Considering his position in the army, the lubricating influences of the oil of gold, the experience of his lawyers and the long time that elapsed (nine months) before a trial could be had, the result could hardly have been otherwise."' Ihrie further claimed that the records of the Criminal Court of St. Louis County contained several indictments against Harney for assault and battery. 30 29 Elliott, Winfield Scott, pp. 665-70; Reavis, William Selby Harney, p. 345; Tunem, "Dispute over San Juan Island's Boundary," pp. 286-88; New York Times, October 31, 1860. 30 Official Correspondence of Brig. Gen. W. S. Harney and 1st Lt. George Ihrie with the U.S. War Department, pp. 1-16, microfiche, Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City.

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While Scott was in Oregon to resolve the dispute with England, he suggested to Harney that he "take credit for a generous act" and release DeHart from prison. Harney argued strongly against this and forced Scott to order DeHart's release. Then Harney appealed directly to the adjutant general at Washington requesting that the president hear the issue. T h e secretary of war responded that Harney had not explained the charge of the enlisted men working on his personal farm. Scott advised the secretary that in his opinion DeHart was arrested for vengeance and not discipline and concluded his comment: In dismissing this nauseating subject I beg permission to add that the highest obligations of my station compel me to suggest a doubt whether it be safe in respect to our foreign relations, or just to the gallant officers and men in the Oregon Department to leave them longer, at so great a distance, subject to the ignorance, passion and caprice of the present headquarters of that department.

In November 1860 Harney returned to St. Louis to command the Department of the West. Shortly after the Civil War broke out the next spring Harney started for Washington, but his train was stopped at Harper's Ferry by Confederate soldiers. He was taken as the first prisoner of the war to Richmond, Virginia, where he was invited to take a Confederate command. He declined and was released to continue on to Washington. He held his St. Louis command only until the end of May when political advisers to Lincoln's secretary of war brought about his release. In so doing, one of them, Montgomery Blair, wrote, As to Harney, his public course, viewed from this point, seems reasonable enough. . . . I think it possible, that, if Harney had about him some resolute, sensible men, he would be all right all the time. It is only because he falls into the hands of our opponents that he is dangerous, his intention being good but his judgment being weak.

Some suspected him of being a Southern sympathizer. He did not receive another command in the Union Army and was not militarily active in the Civil War.32 In February 1888 a correspondent described a gathering in honor of Harney, then eighty-seven years old: On the wide gallery of his handsome residence in this cheery suburb of New Orleans in the warm sunshine . . . sat nearly all yesterday morning 31 Reavis, William Selby Harney, pp. 300-303; Robert Carlton Clark, "Military History of Oregon, 1849-1859," Oregon Historical Quarterly 36 (1935): 52-53. 32 Reavis, William Selby Harney, pp. 350-77.

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General William S. Harney. Many of his neighbors called upon him, bringing congratulations. . . . for he celebrated the 70th anniversary of his appointment as an officer in the United States Army. T h e old soldier was pleased with the attention paid him and called his wife to exhibit to visitors the musty bundle of parchments (promotion orders) which he had received from time to time as he advanced in rank. . . . General Harney's tall soldierly figure and snow-white hair are among the familiar sights. . . . In the last year General Harney has become quite feeble in mind. Although his health is good . . . it is sad to see him as he sits in the sun, with all the great deeds of his life forgotten, caring for nothing but the sunlight on the water or the birds singing in the trees.

When Harney died fifteen months later his obituary noted that he was the oldest officer of the United States Army. 33 Each phase of the Utah Expedition required the leadership of a patient man â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the winter quarters at Camp Scott and the long wait there through the spring, the isolation at Camp Floyd, and the firm control of soldiers to prevent conflict with wary Mormons expecting government persecution. Johnston succeeded at this assignment remarkably well. It seems that Harney would have acted differently. T h e risk of impulsive and combative leadership, had Harney retained the command, would have threatened the expedition with the possibility of turbulent confrontations between Harney and the Mormons and ensuing casualties and scars. By almost any measure it would seem that the Mormons, Utah, the army, and the country were fortunate that the colorful and controversial William S. Harney was relieved of his command of the Utah Expedition and replaced by Albert Sidney Johnston. 33

New York Times, February 15, 1888, May 10, 1889.

Salt Lake City through a German's Eyes: A Visit by Theodor Kirchhoff in 1867 EDITED AND TRANSLATED BY FREDERIC TRAUTMANN

This view of Salt Lake City looking south, presenting the back of the Beehive and Lion houses, actually postdates Kirchhoff \s visit by several years. The dark-roofed Gardo House was not begun until 1873. USHS collections.

1 HEODOR KIRCHHOFF (1828-99) was a German whose desire for adventure was exceeded only by his love of America. He fought as a lieutenant in every major battle of the Revolution of 1848, then sailed to America in 1851. He played the piano in St. Louis and washed dishes in Davenport. He was a postmaster, a bookkeeper, a paperhanger, a photographer, and an innkeeper while traveling as much as possible. In 1854 he followed the Mississippi from Minnesota to Louisiana. In 1863 he began writing about his travels. By 1869, having been to New York, Panama, California, Oregon, Idaho, and nearly everywhere in between, he had seen a lot but thought he had written about it far too little. He settled in San Francisco, started a profitable jewelry and optical business, and was Dr. Trautmann is associate professor of speech, Temple University, Pennsylvania.

Salt Lake City

soon able to d e v o t e himself to w r i t i n g a b o u t travel in p o e m s , essays, n e w s p a p e r articles, a n d b o o k s . H e w r o t e in G e r m a n b u t a b o u t A m e r i c a , w h o s e l a n g u a g e , g e o g raphy, a n d culture he had learned better than most native-born A m e r i c a n s l e a r n t h e m . A m e r i c a was h o m e to h i m : h e was h a p p y n o w h e r e else after h e h a d s e e n A m e r i c a ; h e r e t u r n e d to G e r m a n y o n c e , t h i n k i n g h e m i g h t stay, b u t soon c a m e back to A m e r i c a , home. His works w e r e widely r e v i e w e d a n d widely r e a d in A m e r i c a a n d E u r o p e . T o G e r m a n r e a d e r s in b o t h places h e i n t r o d u c e d a n d m a d e familiar t h e G r e a t Plains, t h e Rocky M o u n t a i n s , t h e gold fields, M a m m o t h Cave, Salt L a k e City, a n d o t h e r exotic places. H e was eyes a n d ears, a n d p e r h a p s t h e i m p e t u s to travel, to two g e n e r a t i o n s o n two c o n t i n e n t s . 1 T o d a y , t h a n k s to h i m , we can k n o w w h a t a visit to Salt L a k e City was like to a professional tourist, a n experie-nced traveler, a n d a p r a c t i c e d travel w r i t e r . Below is his a c c o u n t , in t r a n s l a t i o n , of his two-day stay in May of 1867. 2 T h e morning sun of May 8, 1867, shone clear and golden through the windows of my bedroom in the city of the "saints" and woke me after a short but refreshing sleep. I soon made my toilet. After an excellent breakfast I took up my alpenstock (I never travel without that Swiss companion) and strolled into the sun-swept streets of this New Jerusalem. Indeed, the Latter Day Saints have a charming place here on the banks of the Great Salt Lake, a true oasis in the endless alkali desert! My first walk through wide and clean streets was enough to make me an admirer of this city. Rows of green acacias and Canadian poplars alternated in shading the 20-foot-wide sidewalk. Running water m u r m u r e d beside it. Pleasant private homes stood among flowers and orchards. In every direction countless peach trees, in full bloom, spread a reddish resplendence that was agreeably varied by blossoms â&#x20AC;&#x201D; in white and other colors â&#x20AC;&#x201D; of many cherry, apple, pear, and other fruit trees. Above the city of flowers the sky was an azure dome supported, so to speak, by shining, snow-capped peaks of the handsome Wasatch Range. After the dreadful trek over prairie and desert, this idyllic city looked to me like an enchanting paradise. T h e houses, mostly of adobe, were almost all painted in bright colors. T h e gardens were enclosed with high walls of mortared fieldstone, above which those fruit trees rose in that full-bloom splendor. On East Temple Street, 132-feet wide and the city's main thoroughfare, the buildings had a look of municipal elegance. 1

Allgemeine Deutsche Biographic, s.v. "Kirchhoff, Theodor." From Reisebilder und Skizzen aus Amerika [Stories and Sketches of Travel in America], 2 vols. (Altona: Schliiter, and New York: Steiger, 1875), 1:119-34. This book has not been published in English. Ellipses indicate deletions of irrelevant or very general statements that seem based on secondary sources. KirchhofFs four footnotes have likewise been deleted. 2

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Looking northwest from the rear of the Salt Lake Theatre and showing the Wells home, Council House, and Tabernacle, this Charles R. Savage photograph is dated 1869. USHS collections. At the north end of the street I saw to the left a high fieldstone wall and, above it, a large roof that resembled the back of a giant turtle: the roof of the world-famous Mormon Tabernacle. I went unhindered through an open gate to a construction site, to get a better look at the strange building. One of the workers, a Norwegian whom I met at the little overseer's shack by the gate, offered to be my guide. With thanks I accepted this friendly offer. Near us on the spacious grounds was the foundation for tomorrow's grand Mormon Temple. Huge blocks of hewn granite, here in profusion, clearly proved Mormon earnestness about erecting the magnificent church that I saw in blueprint in the overseer's shack. Plans call for a length of I86V2 feet; width of 99; six spires, each 225 feet high and solid granite; in a mixture of old and new styles, with that of Queen Elizabeth's time predominating. Still, whether the Mormons would be able to finish such a massive work seemed to me very problematical. Behind the embryo-temple was the new Tabernacle, done but for the front, which was still open, and the interior decoration. T h e Tabernacle is all wood, except the forty-six square pillars of red sandstone, each sixteen feet high and four feet thick. They support the steeply sloped roof, which projects out like a verandah. T h e Tabernacle is 250 feet long, 150 wide, and 80 high, with two flagpoles that rise another 65. This structure, seating 12,000, is definitely not beautiful; and the peculiar roof, without prototype (to my knowledge) among any architecture in the world, has anything but a

Salt Lake City

classical shape. However, by virtue of construction, acoustics are extraordinary: a word whispered on the rostrum is audible anywhere in the large auditorium. T h e colossal organ cost $70,000. Thanks to my guide I was allowed on the holy turtle-roof. From its height I enjoyed a magnificent view of the city, spread out below me like a flower garden. On both Temple and Tabernacle only Mormons are employed as workmen. They take their pay mostly in produce. Large sums are being collected, chiefly in England, for the building of the Temple; but Brigham Young, an exceptionally good manager, looks out for his own interests and keeps the cash. He pays construction workers — masons, stonecutters, etc. — the equivalent in carrots, potatoes, flour, bacon, goats, and chickens, of which he always has a big supply, as they come to him in tithes. Beside the new Tabernacle was the old one. It looked like a big barn and for a long time had not met the needs of the rapidly growing Mormon community. In the summer, religious services are held in the so-called Bowery, a place furnished with rows of wooden benches and roofed with wooden lattice that, to give protection from the sun, supports green shrubs and vines. T h e Bowery and the old Tabernacle each seat 3,000. Nearby is the Endowment House, where priests are ordained and marriages performed. After the Tabernacle the thing most worth a visitor's seeing is the seat of the "president," as the Mormons usually call Brigham Young. His residence, called the Prophet's Block, on East Temple Street diagonally across from the Tabernacle, comprises about twenty acres enclosed by a fortress-like wall twelve feet high. T h e main entrance is at the south side through Eagle Gate, which takes its name from a large eagle carved in stone and spreading its wings over a beehive, the Mormon coat of arms. In the square enclosed by the wall are orchards, vineyards, and vegetable gardens, as well as various buildings, such as the tithing office and the two-story Deseret store, where there is a print shop. Scattered about are also a number of workshops for craftsmen — shoemakers, joiners, smiths, etc. — and other small buildings where the president's workers live. And there are some herds of animals: Mormon tithes temporarily kept here until Brigham Young transfers them to islands in the Great Salt Lake "for the church" (i.e., for his personal fortune!). 3 One of the most imposing structures in Prophet's Block stands beside Eagle Gate: the Beehive House, so called because a number of representations of beehives are displayed on it. T h e honeybee (called Deseret in the Mormon dictionary) is the symbol of the Latter Day Saints, and this building was erected in its honor. Mormons always call Utah "Deseret" (land of the honeybee), and the "State of Deseret" is their official Canaan. Yet I have seldom seen bees in Utah Territory. T h e Beehive House is two 3 Much speculation centered on Brigham Young's wealth and the extent to which church monies were mingled with his private funds. An insigbtful treatment of the subject is Leonard J. Arrington, " T h e Settlement of Brigham Young's Estate, 1877-1879," Pacific Historical Review 21 (1952):l-20.

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stories of adobe, from the outside an elegant structure covered with white plaster. It is supposed to have cost $65,000. On the roof is an observatory in the shape of a beehive. Mary Ann Angell, Brigham Young's first wife, once lived here. 4 Later she had to make way for the lovely Amelia [Folsom], who is now queen bee among Brigham's several lesser wives. O t h e r b u i l d i n g s w o r t h m e n t i o n i n g in P r o p h e t ' s Block: t h e schoolhouse where the prophet's children, some fifty, are educated; the library; and a white edifice called, like the President's home in Washington, the White House. In it lives Mrs. Young Number One, the prophet's first legitimate wife.5 T h e visitor's attention is drawn, among all buildings in Prophet's Block, most to Brigham Young's own house. A stone lion, certainly not sculpted by Thorvaldsen, 1 ' stands at the door and gives the building its name: the Lion House â&#x20AC;&#x201D; though better known as the Harem. It is of wood, long, and of two stories plus a basement. On the front is a row of bay windows, each marking (according to what people say) the apartment of a wife of the prophet. Nobody knows the exact number of the prophet's wives, except perhaps the prophet himself. In spite of my most zealous inquiries about his family life, I learned nothing certain about that interesting statistic. Guesses ranged from eighteen to sixty-seven. 7 Since the U.S. Congress passed the law against polygamy in the territories, Mormons keep the number of their wives secret. Although the grand jury in Salt Lake City has been required, under oath sworn before Federal judges, to assemble evidence of polygamy in Utah, the evidence has not been assembled. Nobody doubts widespread polygamy here, but President Young's power and influence are enough to practically nullify efforts of the United States government. T h e inside of the Harem remained terra incognita for me, unfortunately. I had to be satisfied with looking at the prophet's home from the outside and imagining its elegant interior. Now and then I moved slightly one of the white gardenias along the row of bay windows and perhaps brought the critical gaze of one of the Mesdames Young, through a curtain, at the impudent Gentile slipping suspiciously past the house of the prophet. (All people of other persuasions, whether Jew, Christian, or pagan, are called Gentile.) All sorts of lies are told about the Harem: secret passages, double walls, treasure vaults, and (one I hold to be sheer calumny) secret rooms where refractory wives are disciplined by the hand of the prophet himself. 4 T h e first was Miriam Works (1806-32), married to Young before they became Mormons. Mary Ann Angell was the second. She occupied the White House. 5 Mary Ann Angell, as Brigham's first living wife, would have been viewed by non-Mormons as his legitimate (rechtmdssige) wife. 6 Albert Bertal Thorvaldsen (1770-1844), Danish sculptor, designed the Lion of Lucerne in 1819, a famous memorial to the loyalty of the Swiss Guard in the French Revolution. 7 Twenty-seven is a commonly accepted count of Brigham Young's wives. However, Jeff ery O Johnson, "Living with the Principle: Brigham Young's Households," lecture, October 13, 1982, Salt Lake City, in response to a question said fifty-five women were sealed to Young, although some of these may not have been wives in a traditional sense.

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Brigham Young's office communicates directly with the Lion House. In the office he receives visitors and does his daily business. It's easy to meet him; he is in no way hostile to strangers. Unfortunately I did not meet him. When I was there, he was on a tour of the Territory. Reliable sources told me that the Young family's domestic life is not at all what might be expected in a harem. When friends of the president come to visit, there is seldom any woman in the parlor but one of his three favorites: Emeline, Lucy, or Clara. 8 T h e tone of the gathering is nothing but polite. When there are no visitors, the women busy themselves with various domestic tasks. T h e house is organized like a boarding house for single women, except that here the women are all married. Each Mrs. Young has her own attractive room or a private apartment where she is sovereign. T h e entire family, large and small, assemble to pray and eat. T h e keys to the house, and supervision of kitchen and cellar, rotate among wives. T h e house has sewing machines, spinning wheels, dyeing tubs, etc., to be used by each wife as she wishes. Private instruction in music, dancing, and French is provided. Often there is great merrymaking, for Brigham Young is anything but a sobersides. Amateur theater fills many an idle hour, and those wives good at acting sometimes take parts in the municipal theater of Salt Lake City. Some of the wives are even poets. Among them, Eliza Snow has distinguished herself as author of inspired hymns. I used as best I could my short time in Great Salt Lake City to familiarize myself with it and environs. It is usually called simply Salt Lake City or, by the Mormons, / i o n or New Jerusalem. . . . In the spring the shining peaks of the Wasatch and Oquirrh Mountains, which enclose the city and its green valley, are snow-covered and majestically beautiful. Snow disappears entirely from the mountains in summer, except the highest peaks. T h e city's outward appearance is about the same in every part. Streets are very wide. Water runs next to sidewalks shaded with rows of green trees. Most houses have orchards around them. T h e population was estimated at 15,000 when I visited. Of them, except two or three companies of U.S. troops at Camp Douglas four miles east, Gentiles numbered 400 at most. Mormons and Gentiles were on bad terms then. Brigham "in the name of God" had forbidden believers to have anything to do with "damned Gentiles." Since this prohibition applied mostly to business, it amounted nearly to Gentile expulsion. Consequently, business practically stopped; and gold, silver, and paper money grew very scarce. Poverty was rife among the working class, though someone passing through would scarcely suspect it. I was told that many families went for weeks without meat on the table. Salt Lake City is Utah's center of trade, serving the Territory's settled part, a stretch 50 miles wide east and west, and 700 long north and south, from Idaho to Arizona." Salt Lake City is also trade center for the sur8 T h e wives referred to appear to be Emeline Free, either Lucy Ann Decker or Lucy Bigelow, and Clara Decker. 9 This 50-by-700-mile area represent s the core of Mormon settlement and not the dimensions of Utah Territory.

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r o u n d i n g mining region: Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Arizona, and Nevada. Thanks to Brigham Young's magnificent achievement with irrigation, the Mormon's strip ofland (originally only a miserable alkali desert) has become the region's breadbasket. By all calculations, in time, Salt Lake City shall be the most important city between the Missouri and the Sierra Nevada. Agriculturally, the land of the Mormons is a splendid oasis in the Great American Desert. Many mountain peaks and their slowly melting snows supply energetic Mormons all water needed for irrigation. T h e r e is running water here [in the city] all year round. Without adequate water the land would be worthless. Where water fails, dry winds and no rain in summer draw all moisture from the loamy soil and destroy plants. Mountain streams, to be used for irrigation, are "tapped" in their upper reaches and directed by many canals to the fields. Such enterprises, too costly for most individuals, are usually the work of companies or municipal corporations; and the water is equably distributed. T h u s is Salt Lake City supplied, and every homeowner can water his garden as needed. As a rule, once a week suffices. By dividing land to be watered in seven parts, and watering one a day, the toil is significantly reduced. T h e r e are comparatively few Germans in / i o n . Seeing no German newspaper, I asked a bookseller why, unlike every other city of this size in America, there wasn't one here. He said the Germans here are very pious and little concerned with reading newspapers. Asa fitting end to my first day in New Jerusalem, I decided to go to the theater in the evening. On the bill were the melodrama The Bride of Lammermoor,1" with ballet and vocal music, followed by a comedy. Many times I had heard wonderful things about the Mormon Theater: not even the new Berlin Opera could match it. My expectations were at their peak when I entered the lobby and elbowed my way through groups of broadshouldered Mormon lords and their many wives, to the box office. I had been told repeatedly that the prophet, the theater's sole owner, gave the Mormons the privilege of paying in flour, beets, and carrots, but Gentiles must pay in greenbacks. So, having watched closely, I speak from experience: at the box office no carrots were accepted." I bought a ticket for $1.50 and took a seat in the first balcony. This theater was not as nice as the Berlin Opera but, a little dirt ignored, was very respectable. For general lighting, instead of a chandelier, a row of lamps on the balustrade circled the theater. T h e auditorium was very simple, with bare benches, as if the prophet wanted to intensify the republican tastes of his followers even in the temple of Thalia. T h e house was full. Its well-mannered behavior could have served as a model for many an audience in theaters in big eastern cities. T h e parquet was reserved for Mormons. Gentiles were admitted only to the balconies. Private boxes near 10 Probably the play by Thomas J o h n Dibdin (1771-1841), based on the novel of the same name by Sir Walter Scott. It was first produced in Surrey, England, in 1819. " T h a t is, everybody seemed to pay cash. However, drafts on the Mormon storehouse for produce circulated as money in everyday transactions.

Salt Lake City

the stage were for the highest Mormon priests and the president, as well as their sizeable families. In one box I saw two of Brigham's wives. Their faces and forms were in no way lovely, convincing me that the prophet (as I'd often heard) had little taste in choosing his harem. T o me his taste seemed to incline more to sturdy bodies than spirit and charm. Indeed, every woman I saw in the theater had a stupid and ordinary face. I couldn't discover a halfway attractive one among them. One of the boxes was empty for, as I've said, Brigham Young was away on a trip. Two parquet benches were reserved for his children. Beside them, on the center aisle, sat Mama Young Number One. the president's first wife, in a special chair, an imposing matron with a good-natured face.12 Men and women sat together sociably in the parquet, women and children far outnumbering men, as would be expected. The actors, mostly Mormons, did credit to dramatic art. Some rose above the ordinary in their power of port rayal. T h e person next to me told me that the leading lady belonged to "the president's family." T h e sets, painted by Norwegian and Swedish artists, were excellent; and costumes left nothing to be desired. I was shocked, though, that some of the musicians in the orchestra kept their hats on when playing, a democratic custom I could not approve. In short, it took little imagination to transport oneself from Salt Lake City to a theater on the Bowery in New York or the Metropolitan Theater in San Francisco. I had a very agreeable evening. Surrounded by the "elite of the saints" I had plenty of interesting material to study through my opera glasses. I spent part of my second day diligently studying Mormonism and the institution of polygamy, and part walking in the city and idyllic environs. Toward evening I went to the warm sulphur springs, half an hour north, where excellent baths have been built. Water from the springs, suitably 12

An apt description of Mary Ann Angell.

The Salt Lake Theatre on the northwest corner of First South and State streets much as Kirchhoff must have seen it. USHS collections.

'Hill

Kirchhoff's "buses" to the warm springs bath house icere probably mule cars as shown in this 186S photograph. USHS collections.

cooled from their 102Â°, is piped into a roofed pool, around which are simple bathrooms with tubs: exquisite refreshment for residents of Salt Lake City and dust-covered travelers. All day, buses regularly leave the city for the baths. After a refreshing swim, and before sundown, I climbed nearby Ensign Peak, 400 feet above the city, to get a view of the city and surroundings. 13 From that height the panorama was magnificent. Mormons often come here and gaze over the Great Salt Lake and its shores that were once a desert â&#x20AC;&#x201D; they look into the past, so to speak, and compare Now with Then â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and it is understandable why they think they are God's chosen. In a few years they have transformed their new homeland from a miserable desert to a luxuriant garden. Salt Lake City lay spread out at my feet and enclosed by green fields and pastures. With countless peach trees blossoming in bright red, and with white houses partly hidden among them, the picture was that of summerhouses in a colorful rose-garden. And the wide streets, running among the trees in long lines and crossing each other at right angles, looked like the garden's graveled paths. T h e Tabernacle's roof was strange, rising above the city. I've already compared it to the shell of a primeval turtle. I could also liken it to an ocean liner turned upside down or, even more aptly, to a giant butcher's cauldron, overturned, after use by a Norse god of slaughter to carry a snack of a dozen roasted aurochs to 13

Ensign Peak at 5,414 feet is more than 1,000 feet above Salt Lake City's 4,366 feet.

Salt Lake City

T h o r and Freya in Valhalla. T o the right of the city the J o r d a n had overflowed its banks in several places as it wound sinuously through emerald-green fields. T o the northwest the glittering salt lake stretched to the horizon. T h e 7,200-foot peak on Antelope Island was mirrored in the lake, as were other, snow-covered mountains far to the north. 14 Salt Lake City lay in a broad, level area. T o the left, green fields, crossed by a network of brimming canals, stretched from the mountains to the J o r d a n . A few miles away in that direction were white tents of Camp Douglas on a green meadow, keeping watch over the holy city. But most beautiful of all in this panorama were snow-covered mountains that broadly framed the fertile plain. On the left: the Wasatch, whose highest points are the Twin Peaks, 1 1,600 feet above sea level. On the right: the Oquirrh, lower but also covered with snow, northern foothills r u n n i n g to the lake. Rising 7,000 to 8,000 feet above the lake, the Wasatch looked very Swiss, with jagged, snow-capped peaks jutting powerfully into blue sky. T h e sun sank in a golden globe into weaves of the lake, and they appeared to glow with joy. T h e mountains suddenly flamed into full blaze. Nature seemed to be painting in indelible colors a picture on the mind of the visitor, on my mind, a picture of a magnificent desert oasis. 14

Antelope Peak's elevation is 6,198 feet.

Engine no. 84, pictured above, was identical to no. 83, the engine involved in the fatal crash. UP records show that no. 83 was sold but give no date. Union Pacific Railroad Museum Collection, Omaha.

Melancholy News": Utah's First Fatal Passenger Train Collision BY A L A N P. M A C F A R L A N E

had enjoyed superb autumn weather that October of 1869. Salt Lake City and other population centers along the Wasatch Range were burgeoning with the arrival of trainload after trainload of immigrants from EuroU T A H TERRITORY AND THE MOUNTAIN WEST 1

Dr. Macfarlane is a physician practicing internal medicine in Salt Lake City. T h e Deseret Evening News, November 3, 1869, p. 2, in one of its rare references to weather in those days, unashamedly extolled: "We have had another splendid Fall season, the weather thus far having been remarkably fine and mild and admitting of out-door work being prosecuted to the best possible advantage. There is probably no other country in the world, in this latitude, that enjoys a finer climate during the autumn than we have in Utah." 1

"Melancholy News"

pean shores following the completion of the transcontinental railroad on May 10, 1869, at Promontory, Utah. Many were on special immigrant trains carrying the myriad British and other European converts to the Latter-day Saint faith disgorging at eastern seaports. On June 25, 1869, "The first company of Latter Day Saint immigrants who came all the way from the Missouri River by rail arrived in Ogden by Union Pacific Railroad in charge of Elias Morris." 2 By late October nearly 2,000 Saints in six different immigrant companies had detrained at Ogden and moved out from there to communities in various parts of the Mountain West.3 Almost all arrived safely after enduring the, by then, relatively minor privations of overcrowded ocean steamer and still somewhat primitive rail travel,4 the whole journey from Great Britain to Ogden being completed in about three weeks.5 No longer did immigrants face the hardships of several weeks of North Atlantic sailing, followed by tedious river boat or jouncing, dusty covered-wagon transportation, nor the supremely taxing handcart pulling of a mere one or two decades earlier. Technology and the vigorous westward surge of the vital young nation had finally made migration to and beyond the Rocky Mountains almost comfortable. For some of the rail immigrants that first year, however, arrival in /ion was less than auspicious and was, in fact, tragic as they became involved in Utah's first fatal passenger train collision. The Deseret Evening News of Tuesday, October 26, 1869, carried a list of the names of 288 Saints who had sailed from the English port of Liverpool on October 6 aboard the steamer SS Minnesota, shepherded by Elder James Needham who was returning home 2 Quoted in Kate B. Carter, comp., Our Pioneer Heritage, 19 vols. (Salt Lake City: Daughters of Utah Pioneers, 1958-76), 8:362. 3 Ibid. 4 The passenger cars assigned to the immigrant trains were crude and comfortless, not out of harmony with the poverty of the occupants. They were little more than wooden boxes mounted on iron chassis. Robert Louis Stevenson, the famous Scottish author, made the overland journey on an immigrant train in 1879 in order to taste the flavor of the experience. The Railroaders (New York: Time-Life Books, 1973), describes his adventure: "Once aboard, Stevenson got his first look at the interior of a Western American railroad car — 'that long narrow wooden box, like a flat-roofed Noah's ark.' At one end of the car a wood-burning iron stove stood enthroned; an enclosed space at the other was reserved for a toilet, referred to as the 'convenience' or 'retiring room.' Between these amenities ran two long rows of wooden seats on either side of a narrow aisle. ('The benches are too short for anything but a small child,' Stevenson noted apprehensively.) For feeble illumination at night — and posing a constant threat of cremation — small oil lamps glimmered at intervals along the walls." An alternate arrangement was wooden benches running lengthwise along the sides of the car, the center filled with luggage of all descriptions. Wecanbesure that such was the mode of accommodation on the Mormon immigrant trains that first year of 1869. 5 Carter, Our Pioneer Heritage, 8:362.

Utah Historical Quarterly

from an LDS mission. This party was even then crossing the high plains of Wyoming, due in Ogden early in the afternoon the next day. Most were from the British Isles, with a few from Scandinavian countries. It was a historic day in Salt Lake City of another dimension, as the next page of the newspaper presented an announcement of the excommunication from the LDS church of the Godbeite apostates, William S. Godbe, E. L. T. Harrison, and Eli B. Kelsey, who had so exasperated Brigham Young and other church leaders by their open and strident opposition to Mormon economic, political, and other secular policies and activities. Wednesday, October 27, 1869, was no doubt a fair and lovely day in Salt Lake City. That morning President Brigham Young, the pain of the Godbeite heresy now relatively dulled, and probably taking advantage of the propitious weather, had left with a large party for Sanpete County in central Utah, planning to hold meetings at settlements along the way and return to Salt Lake City in ten days." Late that afternoon those church leaders remaining in the city, as well as businessmen, craftsmen, laborers, and farmers in town for marketing, picked up their Deseret Evening News at the newspaper office on the corner of South Temple and Main Street or at their home door stoops7 and read the following on the third page in the Local and Other Matters section: MELANCHOLY NEWS.â&#x20AC;&#x201D; By telegram received this afternoon from Elder James Needham, dated at Evanston, the other side of Bear River, we learn that a collision between the train on which were the emigrants whose names we published yesterday, and another, had just occurred, by which three persons were killed. Further particulars are not given. Immediate steps were taken, on the reception of the telegram, to send surgical skill to their aid. Dr's Anderson and Richards started immediately for the scene of the accident/ 'â&#x20AC;˘Deseret Evening News, October 26, 1869, under Local and Other Matters noted: "Tomorrow morning President Brigham Young, accompanied by President George A. Smith and Elders O. Pratt, W. Woodruff, J. F. Smith, Joseph Young, sen., H. S. Eldredge, A. M. Musser, and others will leave for San Pete county, holding meetings at several settlements on the way. They will probably be absent from the city until the 6th proximo." 7 J. Cecil Alter, ÂŁar/j! Utah Journalism (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society, 1938), p. 281, quoted the Deseret Evening News of September 21, 1864: "City subscribers can have their papers delivered for an additional 500 for the term, provided enough wish it to employ a carrier." The plan was further elaborated on pp. 298-99: "As the chief design in publishing the News is to benefit the people, we had thought of delivering their papers to all city subscribers without extra charge. But our city occupies so much ground and the dwellings are so scattered and remote from the sidewalks that this plan would at present prove too burdensome. . . . We have concluded to try a plan between that and the old practice of everyone's calling or sending for his paper It is this: to deliver at an earlyhour all the papers to the stores, offices, officials and other places and persons within a handy distance from the office." It is not known if this plan went into operation. 8 The doctors were probably Dr. Washington Franklin Anderson, a well-educated non-Mormon physician who became Brigham Young's fast friend but who never adopted Mormonism (he was not

"Melancholy News"

The next day, October 28, the Deseret Evening News reported this further amplification of the details of the wreck, again in the Local and Other Matters section: PARTICULARS OF THE ACCIDENT ON THE LINE. â&#x20AC;&#x201D; From a gentleman who arrived in this city by stage last evening, we glean the following in relation to the accident at Evanston, yesterday. Our informant was on an express train traveling westward, about two miles this side of Evanston yesterday morning between 10 and 11 o'clock when the fore wheels of the locomotive ran off the track. Signals were made to the emigrant train, which was known to be behind; but they were not perceived until the two trains were within half a mile of each other. The grade of the road in that locality is about sixty-five feet to the mile, and, although the engineer of the emigrant train as soon as he observed the obstruction on the line reversed the wheels of his engine, he was unable to check the progress of the train so as to prevent a collision. When the wheels of the express train ran off the line, engine No. 83, which was on a side track immediately rendered what assistance it could; the engine being attached to the rear of the express train, in order, if possible, to get it on the line again. The engineer of this locomotive seeing the emigrants train approaching at a speed that could not be checked, detached his engine from the back of the express train and opened the throttle, heroically set off to meet the emigrant train, in order to break the shock. This he accomplished to some extent, his engine being severely damaged by the collision. Had it not been for this act of daring it is presumed that the accident would have been of much greater magnitude. As it was, there were three killed and two badly wounded. One of the killed was on the express train.

The names of the killed and wounded are as follows: Killed, David Shields, Jun., Philip Dell and Joseph Thomas [Rees]." Slightly injured: James Hill and David Shields, Sen.; also Mary Bell whose collar bone is broken.

On Saturday, October 30, 1869, the Deseret Evening News printed this dispatch from Chicago: An Omaha special says that a man named John Tustin, whose family was aboard the passenger train, was killed in the collision at Evanston the other day; also Miss Percy Young, a lady passenger, was severely cut only a highly regarded physician but became prominent in civic affairs in Salt Lake City as well) and Dr. Levi Richards, a Thomsonian herbal physician who was not by this time engaged actively in medical practice but "freely gave advice to those who came to him for consultation." See Ralph T. Richards, Of Medicine, Hospitals, and Doctors (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1953), and Helen R. Gardner, "Levi Richards, 1799-1876: Some of His Ancestors and Descendants," 1973, a privately produced work, a copy of which is in the LDS Church Library Archives, Salt Lake City. 9 In Wales, Henry Thomas Rees, the father of Joseph Thomas Rees, preferred to use his mother's family name of Thomas as his last name rather than his father's last name of Rees and so listed his family as Thomas on the passenger manifest. Three daughters who emigrated to Utah earlier, Johanna and Martha in 1863 and Elizabeth in 1868, began use of the last name of Rees in Utah. After the rest of the family arrived in 1869 they also used the name of Rees.

Utah Historical Quarterly

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Fom/ Service map section showing the Echo Canyon trackage of the Union Pacific. The crash occurred below Wahsatch on the upper tracks which in their snaky course follow almost precisely the original line. in the head. It says the engineer of the "Mormon" emigrant train disregarded the signal which was properly placed to stop him. Three "Mormons" were killed and five wounded.

Not much enlightenment but further confusion was provided on October 30 by the Denver Rocky Mountain News in a small paragraph on page 1: COLLISION ON THE U. P. ROAD.

A special western bound passenger train on the U. P. railroad ran off the track, Thursday [actually Wednesday] near Evanston station. An emigrant train loaded with Mormons ran into the rear passenger car, disregarding a signal which had been placed to stop it. Three Mormons were killed and five wounded. A passenger named John Fustin [sic] whose family was on board the train, was killed instantly. Miss Percy Young, a lady passenger, was severely cut in the head. The entire blame rests on the engineer and conductor of the emigrant train who were promptly discharged.

"Melancholy News"

In his personal journal Thomas Ashment, Sr., would thus remember the event: "The cars met in collision and 1 man in our company was killed, and a few more on our side got hurt. One person on the other side was also killed. I saw his wife weeping for her loved one."10 Ashment may not have observed or remembered the whole scene. Another immigrant passenger, J. David Pugh, recorded somewhat more accurately that "3 of our brothern were killed in an instant and several others hurted but not fatal."11 Several California newspapers as well as one in Elko, Nevada,12 carried detailed and colorful accounts of the accident that help to fill in the picture of the circumstances, though in other ways further confused the overall scene. One new point that emerged in these accounts was that the site of the accident was not at Evanston but some miles away, across the Utah-Wyoming border at or southwest of Wahsatch, Utah. Other details helped to place the scene more accurately, such as that it occurred on a grade of sixty-five feet to the mile which is found only in the upper reaches of Echo Canyon southwest of Wahsatch; 13 that a "coal engine" was only a short distance away from the derailed express engine, on a sidetrack that would probably have been at Wahsatch where there was a siding and a Y-spur for turning and refueling the extra engines used to haul trains eastward up the heavy grade to the top of Echo Canyon where Wahsatch Station was strategically located (otherwise the line was single track in those days);14 that the engineer of the immigrant train first saw the stalled express when it was only half a mile ahead, indicating that it was on a section of the rail line having substantial short-range visual obstruction of the line ahead, a topographic condition occurring in upper Echo Canyon but not east of Wahsatch Station. The current north track of the double-track Union Pacific line follows almost precisely the original line of 1868-69, ,5 and just past Wahsatch the grade down Echo Canyon begins to descend at "'Quoted in Carter, Our Pioneer Heritage, 8:420-21. " J o u r n a l of J. David Pugh, microfilm #f 243, item 2, LDS Church Library Archives. 12 These included the Elko Independent, October 30, 1869; in Sacramento, the Daily Bee, November 1, 1869, Daily Union and State Capitol Reporter, both October 30, 1869; and in San Francisco, the Evening Bulletin, October 28, 1869, Daily Morning Call and Times, both October 30, 1869. All these newspapers are available on microfilm at the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. 13 See the USGS quadrangles for Evanston, Wyoming, and Wahsatch, Utah, 1968, for the topography. 14 See chief engineer G. M. Dodge's map of the 10th Hundred Miles, UPRR, map 14, tube 58, Div. F, RG 49, National Archives, Washington, D.C.; also the UP's map of the original Evanston to Ogden line, Union Pacific Railroad Museum Collection, Omaha, Neb. 15 Ibid.

Utah Historical Quarterly

Section of the UP route through Echo Canyon illustrates narrowness of the canyon and the difficulty of seeing far ahead. Charles W. Carter Glass Negative Collection, LDS Church Library Archives.

the specified sixty-five feet to the mile."; The circumstances described in "PARTICULARS OF THE ACCIDENT. . ." suggest that not only was vision limited for the engineer of the emigrant train by the curves, bluffs, and walls of the deep railroad cuts of that canyonside, until the stalled express train came suddenly into view half a mile ahead, but also that the steep downward grade encouraged increased speed that added significant momentum to the speeding train and, shortly, an ominous challenge to the unwary engineer and the primitive braking system of a train of that early vintage.17 In one 16

USGS quadrangles for Evanston and Wahsatch. Carter, Our Pioneer Heritage, 8:365-66, describes "The Hotel Train of 1870" and indicates that the crew included four brakemen and that "the train was handled by hand brakes." Dee Brown, in Hear That Lonesome Whistle Blow (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1977), p. 175, stated: "The first transcontinental trains were braked by hand, requiring brakemen to work on the tops of the cars in all weather." The Westinghouse airbrake, operated by the engineer for the whole train, was patented in 1869, but its revolutionary effect on train safety was some years in coming. 17

"Melancholy News"

family victimized by the accident, oral tradition and brief biographical sketches of three members (father, brother, and sister of the dead Joseph Thomas) indicate that the scene was in Echo Canyon." Perhaps the most authoritative newspaper account appeared in the San Francisco Daily Morning Call on Saturday, October 30, 1869. Although the story is rich in details, it is somewhat flawed in its credibility by a tendency toward editorial hyperbole and an impression one gains that the reporter was vague about the geography and facilities in the area of the accident. With that reservation, the story is here given verbatim, in the quaint format sometimes used in those days: COLLISION ON THE UNION PACIFIC RAILROAD

Five Passengers Killed — A Number Wounded — How the Collision Occurred On Thursday morning [sic] between nine and ten oclock, a collision occurred on the Union Pacific Railroad, six miles from Wahsatch Station, which is situated eight hundred and six miles from Sacramento, by which five persons lost their lives, and a number were wounded. From a gentleman, one of the passengers on the train who arrived in this city last night, we obtained the following account: T H E COLLISION.

At the time mentioned, a first-class passenger train, consisting of locomotive, baggage-car, and five passenger-cars filled with passengers, was westward-bound. After turning a curve, on approaching Wahsatch, the locomotive jumped the track and brought the train to a standstill. Immediately after the accident, a messenger was sent a short distance to the rear, to get a locomotive which was on a side-track, to back the train so that the regular locomotive might be replaced on the track. Pending this operation, the conductor of the train sent to the rear a red flag — the signal of danger — which was placed alongside of the track about two hundred yards from where the train was at a standstill, to warn T H E EMIGRANT TRAIN

Which was expected every moment. The first-class train was backed, and the spare locomotive run down the track a short distance. This had scarcely been done before the emigrant train was heard coming along at full speed. It consisted of the locomotive, "caboose", and four passenger cars. From the manner in which the train came it was evident that the engineer had paid no attention to the warning signal, for he 18 Biographical sketches of Henry Thomas Rees and his daughter Amelia Rees Williams Webster and son Hyrum Thomas Rees, in the author's possession. In these sketches, Echo Canyon is called Ogden Canyon. A similar biographical sketch of an older sister of Joseph, Elizabeth Rees Prothero, says that Joseph was standing on the platform of the car, taking in the sights, at the moment of the accident and was crushed and killed instantly. Elizabeth came to Utah a year earlier and so was not on the train.

Utah Historical Quarterly kept right on, and it became evident to the passengers who had stepped off the train, that a collision was inevitable. Their surmises were correct, for in a few minutes T H E CRASH CAME.

The emigrant train came on, and the locomotive ran into the spare locomotive, driving it with force against the rear passenger car of the first-class train, running it upon the second car. The rear car was smashed into splinters and Mr. John Tusten, of Petaluma, who was with his family on the car, returning home, was struck by some of the timbers and crushed beneath them, and when he was extricated it was discovered that he was dead. A Miss Percy was severely wounded, having received a deep cut on the head. The emigrant train fared worse. The first passenger car, by the force of the collision, ran into the "caboose", completely "telescoping". Four emigrants, whose names are not given, were instantly killed, and about fifteen or twenty wounded, some of them seriously. Shortly after the collision, a special train came from Wahsatch Station, bringing several physicians, who attended to the wounded. [A train bringing physicians would have had to come upcanyon from Ogden, since there were probably no physicians in Wahsatch or Evanston, and it could not possibly have arrived very soon.] All care and attention was paid to them. T H E ENGINEER T o BLAME.

The whole blame rests, beyond a doubt, on the engineer, William Kelly. It is said that if he had been attending to his business, he would have seen the red signal at least half a mile before he reached it, as his train was coming up grade. [This statement is at variance with the other evidence that the trains were headed downhill.] He was waited upon by a number of passengers, among them Mr. James W. Coffroth, of Sacramento, who questioned him as to whether he did not see the signal, and the only response he made was that Mr. C. could "go to hâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;1, as it was none of his business." The passengers expressed their indignation and made preparations to give Kelly a dose of Lynch law, but better counsels prevailed, and he was let alone. A dispatch from Omaha in another column announces that "Kelly, the engineer was promptly discharged." Our informant endeavored to send a dispatch to this city giving full details but he was unable to do so, as the Telegraph Company, refused to send his message as he had prepared it. It is presumed that this was done to prevent the public from knowing the extent of the damage.

The Sacramento Daily Bee, in its commentary on the accident on Monday, November 1, 1869, further castigated the embattled, defensive, and friendless William Kelly: T H E RAILROAD ACCIDENT. â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

There can be no doubt that the late fearful calamity on the Union Pacific Railroad was caused by the reckless conduct, if not the fiendish malice of the engineer on the emigrant train. When, after the massacre, a committee waited upon the engineer and respectfully asked for his version of the matter and why he disre-

"Melancholy News"

garded the signals so plainly given, he insultingly replied that he would not have cared if they had all been killed.

The Sacramento State Capitol Reporter editorialized on Saturday, October 30: "It is stated that the conductor and engineer were promptly discharged. We think it should have been, were promptly arrested and held to answer for the crime of murder." So far as is known, of the 288 Saints who sailed from Liverpool on the SSMinnesota, all were aboard the immigrant train except one small boy who had died on the ship and was buried at sea.1H The names of the Mormon collision victims were on the passenger list â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Philip Dell, thirty-five years of age, from Swansea, Wales, and traveling alone, while David Shields, Jr., sixteen years of age from Paisley, Scotland, and Joseph Thomas, eighteen, from Crumlin, Wales, were members of family groups. Joseph Thomas, granduncle of the author, was traveling with his parents as well as an older sister and a younger brother and sister. Family tradition holds that he was standing on the platform of the passenger car at the moment of the collision. Later that day the bodies of Joseph Thomas, David Shields, Jr., and Philip Dell were interred at Ogden City Cemetery. 20 The exact location of the graves has been lost. Two California newspaper accounts state that five people were killed, but it has not been possible to identify anyone else than Dell, Shields, Thomas, and Tustin. The larger death toll is probably another inaccuracy among the confused details reported in the numerous newspaper accounts. Among the injured on the immigrant train was Mary Bell Wilson, a Scottish convert from Kilmarnock ("among the first to accept the Gospel in Scotland") and niece of the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, who had disowned her when shejoined the Mormons. Her husband, Benjamin, and two older sons had emigrated to Utah a year previously to prepare a home. Mary Bell [for as such she was listed on the passenger manifest] sailed with her three youngest sons. Her relatives, out of bitterness at her becoming a Mormon, declined even to say goodbye. The youngest son, Andrew, died on the ship of an undisclosed illness and was buried at sea. Mary Bell, in the Deseret Evening News account, was said to have sustained a "broken collarbone." However, later reports indicate that she was 19 Carter, Our Pioneer Heritage, 8:389-90, quoting a sketch of Mary Bell Wilson by her grandson David B. Wilson. 20 Sexton's records, Ogden City Cemetery.

Utah Historical Quarterly

"badly crushed" and "received the most serious internal injuries, being in a critical condition, but she was in the hands of kind friends who rendered every necessary attention, and strong hopes were entertained of her ultimate recovery."21 She did indeed recover after being nursed by friends in Ogden. 22 Mary Thomas [Rees], twenty-one years of age, sister of the dead Joseph, sustained unspecified injuries not reported by the newspapers. Her health was seriously impaired by the accident. According to family tradition, the injuries led directly to her death nearly two years later on October 5, 1871. The mother of the family, Elizabeth, lost an eye in the accident. This maimed and sorrowing family group was met in Ogden by a daughter who had emigrated previously, Johanna, with her husband, Richard Palmer, and after the burial of Joseph were taken to the Palmer home in Cedar City, Utah, where they continued to be shaken and dispirited for a long time after. The father, Henry Thomas Rees, never adjusted to the new country or circumstances and died a broken man eight and a half years later. The mother, Elizabeth, died twenty years and one day after the accident.23 David Shields, a weaver from Paisley, Scotland, was on the immigrant train with his wife and six children, David Jr., the accident victim, being the eldest at sixteen. The father had his ankle "badly crushed." Following the accident they lived for a time in the West Jordan area of Salt Lake Valley where another son was born, named David no doubt to memorialize the dead elder brother. Then the family moved to Green River, Wyoming, where two more children were born in 1873 and 1874. David Sr. and his wife, Janet Munn, died and were buried at Green River, she at fifty-four years of age and he at fifty-nine.24 It is not known what effect the accident may have had on their relatively early demise. Still another California account gives the names of several more people on the express train who were hurt, but not severely. . . . Mrs. James W. Coffroth and child, of Sacramento; Asa P. Andrews, of Sacramento; George K. Gluyas and 21

Salt Lake City Semi-Weekly Telegraph, October 30, 1869. Carter, Our Pioneer Heritage, 8:389-90. 23 Related to the author by his uncle, the late William Rees Palmer of Cedar City, a historian of southern Utah (and former member of the Board of State History) and a grandson of Henry Thomas and Elizabeth Powell Rees. 24 Salt Lake City Semi-Weekly Telegraph, October 30, 1869; and family group sheet of David Shields and Janet Munn Shields, submitted by their youngest son, Armstrong Munn Shields of Pocatello, Ida., in July 1944, LDS Church Genealogical Library. 22

"Melancholy News"

Minnie Gluyas, of San Francisco; Mrs. E. A Horton, of New York; Miss Maggie Walters, of DeWitt, Iowa; Mrs. F. H. Chessman, of Boston; Lieutenant Commander Alfred Hopkins, U.S. Navy. . . . It is complained that the Union Pacific railroad company did not show that diligence in having the wounded and the bodies of the killed cared for that might reasonably have been expected.

John Tustin, forty-five years of age at his death, was an eminent citizen of the Petaluma area north of San Francisco. The Petaluma Journal and Argus described him as "an old resident of Petaluma and the inventor of the Union Reaper, the Tustin Windmill, Tustin's Gang Plow, and several other inventions." 26 With his family he was returning from the East on the express passenger train at the time of the accident. Although the newspaper accounts previously cited give a fairly detailed description of the accident scene, it remained for the Vallejo Weekly Chronicle to abandon all journalistic restraint and taste in providing the following gripping, astonishing view of the moments on the stalled express train just before the crash and the final seconds in the existence of the luckless Tustin as well as a vivid picture of the appalling circumstances of his violent end: A party of seven were standing on the platform, when one of them chanced to lean out and look to the rear, when he saw the engine of the immigrant train just coming round the curve. He cried, "Look, look!" and "Jump!", at the same moment jumping himself and rolling down the embankment. Five of the others all leaped down on both sides of the train, but Mr. Tustin, an elderly man [at forty-five?], was less active in getting off. He had swung about one half of his body off beyond the line of the cars, holding onto the [platform] rail with his left hand and was already in the act of letting go, when two cars came together, catchingjust one half of his body between them, and of course crushing it into a mere mangled mass of flesh and fractured bone. Here his body remained for 3 hours before it could be extricated, while his unhappy widow (who was slightly wounded) was compelled to remain in the train, in knowledge of the horrible event. Of course, Mr. Tustin's death was instantaneous, [and] we may mention, as instancing how shockingly he was mangled, that when his body was released, his heart was found to have been forced completely out of the cavity of his body. Mr. T. was a prominent citizen of Petaluma, an old resident, and well known through all that section of country. It is said he had his life insured for $12,000 in the Accident Insurance Company.

Sacramento Daily Union, October 30, 1869. October 30, 1869. U.S. Patent Office Reports, vol. 1, 1861, shows that John Tustin, Petaluma, Calif., was granted patent no. 2715 for a reaping machine on November 12, 1861; vol. 1 for 1869 indicates that he was granted patent no. 86608 for a gang plow on February 2, 1869. Public Search Room, Patent and Trademark Office, U.S. Department of Commerce, Alexandria, Va. 27 November 6, 1869. 26

Utah Historical Quarterly

Tustin's body (or what remained of it) was sent to Petaluma, where the Petaluma Journal and Argus reported: "His remains arrived in the city on Saturday noon, last, and the funeral took place on the following day from the residence of his sister, Mrs. Barbara Ann Lewis. Mr. Tustin's life was insured for six thousand dollars in Hartford Accidental Insurance Co."28 The reporting of such anatomical gore would not be countenanced in most twentieth-century newspapers, but it adds vividly to our perceptions of the accident; and the public recitation of his insurance benefits, whether $6,000, $12,000, or even the sum of these two reported amounts, must have given any possible creditors considerable comfort and hope, which may be one reason for the discontinuance of that particular journalistic practice. The author had hoped and expected that some details of the accident could be obtained from operational records of the Union Pacific Railroad, but, unfortunately, they have not been preserved. There are only some executive records from that era which contain no reference to the event.29 Several California newspapers, ardent proponents of their own Central Pacific Railroad in the hotly contested and just-cooling race between it and the Union Pacific in the rush to Promontory Summit that had ended five and a half months earlier, were not slow to shower criticism on the Union Pacific for its supposed carelessness in the maintenance of a faulty switch that reportedly caused the express train to derail, as well as to allege that the UP was negligent in caring for the victims. Given the remoteness of the accident site and the sparse population of that Utah-Wyoming border area, the company probably did the best that was possible for the victims and, if judged by medical outcomes, did quite well, since there were no deaths other than those four instantly killed in the crash. T. B. H. Stenhouse, in his Salt Lake City Semi-Weekly Telegraph, clarified the matter of medical aid by reporting that Drs. Anderson and Richards had started in the afternoon, as soon as the information was received in the city, but surgical aid had been in attendance before they could arrive. . . . Sister Wilson [Mary Bell], who -* November 6, 1869. Tustin was interred in the family plot of his sister, Mrs. Lewis, in what is now the Cypress Hill Memorial Gardens which has absorbed the original Petaluma Cemetery. The grave marker erroneously gives the year of his death as 1868. This information courtesy of the Parent Funeral Home, Petaluma. 29 Letter from Barry B. Combs, director of public relations, Union Pacific Railroad Company, December 1, 1978.

"Melancholy News"

Emigrant cars under construction in 1868. Union Pacific Railroad Museum Collection, Omaha. received the most serious internal injuries, was in a critical condition. . . . She was dispatched to Ogden immediately.'

Moreover, as noted earlier, three of the dead were buried later on the day of the accident in the Ogden cemetery. Evidently the Union Pacific officials did mobilize effective help quite rapidly. At the time, however, no one came publicly to the defense of the UP. At this point history seemed to ring down the curtain on the accident, but it was raised again for a reprise nearly four years later when on October 16, 1873, Henry Thomas [Rees] filed suit in the Third Judicial Court of Utah Territory for $30,000 in damages from the Union Pacific Railroad for the death of his minor son, Joseph Thomas, due to the railroad's negligence.31 The brief of his 311

October 30, November 1, 1869. Utah Territory, Records of the Third District Court, case # 10l7'/ 2 , Utah State Archives, Salt Lake City. 31

Utah Historical Quarterly

attorney, J. C. Hemingway, stated that, as a result of the negligent accident, Joseph was wounded, bruised, and mangled, of which wounds and bruises the said Joseph Thomas then and there languished and languishing did die. . . . That by the death of said son who was then in the nineteenth year of his age, and a blacksmith by trade, this plantiff [Henry Thomas] has suffered great damage by reason of the loss of the services of his said son and servant . . . and has suffered great anguish and distress of body and mind, insomuch that he believes himself to be permanently impaired in his mind and memory and nervous system, and that said injuries will continue to afflict him during the remainder of his days.

Thomas lost in the trial court (it is not known if it was a trial by jury or by judge alone). He appealed to the Territorial Supreme Court which upheld the trial court's decision on the basis of a hoary rule of common law, going far back to the origins of English common law, that if a victim of negligence died his case died with him and no one else could sue for the consequences of his injury and death. The Supreme Court cited a number of controlling cases and said That the death of a person caused by another does not give rise to a cause of action in any one, is a settled doctrine of the Common Law. . . . "In a Civil Court the death of a human being cannot be complained of as an injury," and this doctrine has ever since then been uniformly followed.

It would be several decades before court decisions would begin to swing the other way and state legislatures would start to enact laws recognizing the right of survivors of negligence victims to sue, not only for their own emotional and other deprivations but also for the pain and suffering of the victim prior to death as well as expenses connected with the injury and death. On the same date of October 16, 1873, both Henry and his wife, Elizabeth Thomas, entered suit against the railroad for $20,000 damages due to the loss of vision in her right eye in the accident.34 In its own way, her situation was nearly as poignant as the violent death of her teenage son. For many years prior to the accident, the attorney's brief stated, she had been totally blind in her left eye but, 32

Ibid. Utah Reports, vol. 1: Reports oj Cases Determined in the Supreme Court of the Territory of Utah from the Organization of the Territory, up to and Including the June Term, 1876, pp. 232-35, University of Utah Law Library, Salt Lake City. T h e common law cited is from the old English case of Baker v. Bolton. 33

Records of the Third District Court, case #1017M>.

"Melancholy News"

having good vision in the right eye, could function normally as a housewife. In the accident she was struck by fragments of the wreck . . . on her head and other parts of her body, causing the blood to flow from her nose and mouth in great quantity, and greatly injuring and permanently impairing the sight and vision of her right eye insomuch that she has ever since said injury, and in consequence thereof, been unable to attend to the duties of her household as before said injury she could; and has been rendered wholly and utterly incapable of sewing, cutting out, and making up garments and clothing for her family. . . . [Moreover,] she constantly suffers much pain and great discomfort and distress of body and mind every day she lives. '

The Third District Court upheld the contention of the attorneys for the Union Pacific, Hempstead and Kirkpatrick, that Henry Thomas should not properly have been a plaintiff with his wife ("misjoinder of parties"), and that the action was filed long past the two-year statute of limitations. Thomas appealed this case also to the Territorial Supreme Court which, in its June 1875 term, ruled that a four-year statute of limitations applied to Elizabeth Thomas's case. The railroad, in the meantime, had dropped its contention that Henry Thomas was not an eligible plaintiff. Chief Justice James B. McKean and Justices Jacob S. Boreman and Philip H. Emerson reversed the Third District Court's ruling in favor of the railroad and remanded the case for further proceedings. 3 " There is no record of a retrial, but on October 24, 1875, a stipulation was filed by attorneys for the two sides stating that "the cause of action in said entitled case be and the same is entirely satisfied in full,"37 indicating an out-of-court settlement by the railroad. The amount of the award is not recorded in either judicial records or records of the Thomas [Rees] family. No indication has been found that any other victims of the accident took the Union Pacific to court. 35 Ibid. â&#x201E;˘Utah Reports, 1:184-85, 235-36. " R e c o r d s of the Third District Court, case #10l7'/2.

Post-World War II activity at Defense Depot Ogden. USHS collection}

Utah War Industry during World War II: A Human Impact Analysis BY THOMAS G. ALEXANDER

â&#x20AC;˘SCHOLARS HAVE EXAMINED UTAH WAR INDUSTRY in

a number of ways. Some have looked at the economic impact of the industry. Others have explored the response of Utahns to the establishment of war industry. Some have detailed the reasons for the location of war Dr. Alexander is professor of history and director of the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University. The author appreciates a grant from the Utah Endowment for the Humanities and the Utah Centennial Foundation which assisted in the preparation of this study.

Utah War Industry

industry in Utah, while others have listed the characteristics of that industry. 1 One of the major problems with the previous studies is that they have either tended to look at a single dimension â&#x20AC;&#x201D; most usually economic â&#x20AC;&#x201D; or they have been fragmented. Thus, there have been a large number of studies of individual installations, studies of single problems like housing, and economic impact analyses of the entire industry. These studies are valuable, but they do not always view the entire picture with the perspective necessary to understand the total impact of war industry on the people of the state. The tendency toward fragmentation is reinforced by the way in which statistical data are reported. Whether from convenience, from a system of economic analysis, or from ideology, statisticians generally separate employment data into public and private sectors.2 Some of the best analysis has recombined the data, but the method of reporting is unfortunate since it provides a fragmented picture. This is so since the work of manufacturing, storage, shipping, and repair done during World War II at the Clearfield Naval Supply Depot, Tooele Army Depot, and Defense Depot Ogden was much more like operations at the Geneva Steel plant, the Utah Oil Refining Company, and the Kalunite, Inc., plant than the command, training, and garrison functions carried on at Fort Douglas, Kearns 1 For studies of the various defense installations see Leonard J. Arrington and Thomas G. Alexander, "World's Largest Military Reserve: Wendover Air Force Base, 1941-63," Utah Historical Quarterly 31 (1963): 324-35; idem, "They Kept 'Em Rolling: The Tooele Army Depot, 1942-1962," ibid. (1963): 3-25; idem, "Supply Hub of the West: Defense Depot Ogden, 1941-1964," ibid. 32(1964): 99-121; idem, "Sentinels on the Desert: The Dugway Proving Ground (1942-1963) and Deseret Chemical Depot (1942-1955)," ibid. (1964): 32-43; Thomas G. Alexander, "Ogden's 'Arsenal of Democracy,' 1920-1955," ibid. 33 (1965): 237-47; Leonard [. Arrington and Thomas G. Alexander, "The U.S. Army Overlooks Salt Lake Valley: Fort Douglas, 1862-1965," ibid. 33 (1965): 326-50; idem and Eugene A. Erb, Jr., "Utah's Biggest Business: Ogden Air Materiel Area at Hill Air Force Base, 1938-1965," ibid. (1965): 9-33; Thomas G. Alexander, "Brief Histories of Three Federal Military Installations in Utah: Kearns Army Air Base, Hurricane Mesa, and Green River Test Complex," ibid. (1966): 121-37; Thomas G. Alexander and Leonard J. Arrington, "Utah's Small Arms Ammunition Plant during World War II," Pacific Historical Review 34 (1965): 185-96; Leonard J. Arrington and Archer L. Durham, "Anchors Aweigh in Utah: The U.S. Naval Supply Depot at Clearfield, 19421962," Utah Historical Quarterly 31 (1963): 110-126; James B. Allen, "Crisis on the Home Front: The Federal Government and Utah's Defense Housing in World War II," Pacific Historical Review 38(1969): 407-28; Thomas G. Alexander, "Ogden: A Federal Colony in Utah," Utah Historical Quarterly 47 (1979): 290-309; Leonard J. Arrington and Anthony T. Guff, Federally-Einanced Industrial Plants Constructed in Utah during World War II (Logan, Ut.: Utah State University Press, 1969); Leonard J. Arrington and George Jensen, The Defense Industry of Utah (Logan, Ut.: Department of Economics, Utah State University, 1965); James L. Clayton, "An Unhallowed Gathering: The Impact of Defense Spending on Utah's Population Growth, 1940-64," Utah Historical Quarterly 34 (1966): 227-42; Lyman Clarence Pedersen, Jr., "History of Fort Douglas, Utah" (Ph.D. diss., Brigham Young University, 1967); and Helen Rice, History of Ogden Air Materiel Area: Hill Air Farce Base, Utah, 1934-1960, 2 vols, (n.p., 1963). 2 See, for example, "Personal Income in Utah Counties," Utah Economic and Business Review 40 (October 1980): 4-17.

Utah Historical Quarterly

Army Air Base, or Wendover Air Force Base. In each of the former cases, the end was the same: the manufacture, supply, and repair of war materiel, generally by civilian employees. In the latter cases, the principal function had to do with the servicing of military personnel. The situation at Ogden Air Logistics command at Hill Air Force Base is not so clearly defined, since both manufacture, maintenance, and supply, and garrison, training, and command functions were performed there. At Hill, however, civilian employment exceeded military employment by a large factor. Even during the peak of World War II it was never less than two and a half to one. 3 Because of the differences in function noted above, for the purposes of this study a somewhat unconventional nomenclature will be used. War installations will be viewed not as private or public ventures but will be examined by function. Those whose principal functions were command, stationing, and training of military personnel will be called garrisons. Those whose principal functions were manufacture, maintenance, storage, testing, or shipping of war materiel will be considered plants. This categorization will allow a clearer view of the impact of war industry on Utah. The categories will also make it easier to examine questions such as the stability of employment and social patterns and the extended relationship between war industry and the Utah community. To begin with, the enormous economic impact of war industry in Utah has been understood for a long time. The work of Leonard Arrington, James Clayton, and others has demonstrated quite beyond question that employment in war industry in Utah is now and has been since World War II sufficiently higher than the national average to be considered a basic industry. 4 In 1945, at the end of World War II, 27.7 percent of civilian personal income in Utah came from direct governmental employment â&#x20AC;&#x201D; most of it from defenserelated operations."' By 1978 that figure had declined to 20.3 percent, but even then it constituted a significant proportion, surpassing every other major sector including manufacturing (16.86 percent), services (14.4 percent), construction (8.69 percent), mining 3

Arrington, Alexander, and Erb, "Utah's Biggest Business," p. 28. LeonardJ. Arrington, The Changing Economic Structure of the Mountain West, 1850-1950 (Logan, Ut.: Utah State University Press, 1963), p. 63; Clayton, "An Unhallowed Gathering," pp. 240-42; idem., "Defense Expenditures in Utah" (paper presented at the Utah Military History Symposium, Salt Lake City, August 15, 1981). 5 Phillip R. Kunz and Merlin B. Brinkerhoff. Utah in Numbers: Comparisons, Trends, and Descriptions (Provo, Ut.: Brigham Young University Press, 1969), p. 33. 4

Utah War Industry

(5.12 percent), and agriculture (1.93 percent). In some counties with particularly large defense installations that figure was much higher. In 1978, 57 percent of personal income in Tooele County, where Tooele Army Depot is located, came from federal civilian and military employment. In Davis County with Hill Air Force Base, 47 percent of personal income came from government. In Box Elder County, 44 percent of personal income came from manufacturing, the bulk of which Thiokol's plant generated. 6 In 1980 the federal government spent $897.2 million on defense in Utah. That year, the nation allocated 24.6 percent of the $528.7 billion national budget to defense. In the United States as a whole, the largest proportion of the budget, 33.2 percent, was spent on income security. In Utah, however, 29 percent of federal expenditures went for defense and 27.4 percent for income security â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a reversal of the national pattern. Beyond this, if one disregards the distinction between governmental and private employment, while the percentage of Utah's personal income attributable to federal expenditures has declined in the past ten years, the national government still contributed 28.4 percent in 1980.7 All of this continues a trend that had its beginning in World War II. The reasons for the establishment of plants and garrisons during the war have been documented elsewhere and are well known. The need for installations at what was then a secure distance from the West Coast and the nation's northern and southern borders but nevertheless convenient to rail and auto transportation and population centers was the main reason for the development of the military complex on the Wasatch and Oquirrh fronts. The availability of large areas of uninhabited land for gunnery and bombing practice and for testing helped dictate the location of Wendover Air Force Base and Dugway Proving Grounds. The availability of raw materials and transportation facilities was decisive in the location of other plants in Utah. 8 The response of the people to the establishment of the various garrisons and plants depended in large part on the interests of those involved. For instance, considerable opposition developed to the attempt to locate the Naval Supply Depot at Clearfield and the ""Personal Income in Utah Counties," pp. 13-14. 7 "Federal Outlays in Utah â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 1980," Utah Foundation Research Briefs, no. 81-9, June 1, 1! pp. 1-4. "This overview is based on the sources listed in note 1.

Utah Historical Quarterly

Defense Depot near Odgen. In both cases the plants took exceptionally valuable farm land from production. Opposition centered in the farm community and its allies in the packing industry. At first, political leaders tried to get the Navy and War departments to establish the plants elsewhere, but when that proved impossible and, in the case of Clearfield at least, when the Navy decided not to establish the plant in Utah at all, political, civic, and religious leaders changed their positions, backed the plant, and lobbied heavily with the federal government for its establishment. Among those active in support of the plant were Sens. Elbert D. Thomas and Abe Murdock, Gov. Herbert B. Maw, and David O. McKay of the LDS church's First Presidency." Even though there was some opposition to the location of the two plants, the only major opposition that seems to have developed against a garrison arose in the case of Wendover Air Force Base. This dissent centered largely in the livestock industry where a hundred outfits with an annual income of about $1.5 million were excluded from the 1.56 million acre military reservation.1" In contrast to the opposition at Wendover, Ogden, and Clearfield, Utahns actively courted several of the plants and garriH Alexander, "Ogden: A Federal Colony in Utah," pp. 304-8; Abe Murdock to C. B. Baldwin, January 17, 1941, Abraham Murdock Papers, Manuscripts Department, Brigham Young University '(hereinafter cited as Murdock Papers); J. O. Walker to Murdock, March 12, 1941, ibid.; Murdock to Harvey F. Cahill, November 28, 1942; Cahill to Murdock, November 24, 1942; Ben Moreell to Murdock, December 2, 1942, and undated memorandum in re his activities in connection with the Clearfield Naval Supply Depot, ibid.; Arrington and Alexander, "Supply Hub of the West," p. 102. 10 Arrington and Alexander, "World's Largest Military Reserve," p. 326.

Construction work at Hill Air Force Base. USHS collections.

W-Jflftj**? ..j*fc^- â&#x20AC;˘'â&#x20AC;˘

Utah War Industry

sons. The papers of Sen. Abe Murdock, for instance, are crammed with telegrams, letters, exhibits, and other data designed to attract the 1,500-bed Bushnell General Hospital to cities located anywhere from Washington to Cache counties.11 The requirements of the surgeon general's office, however, limited the selection. The government needed a place for the hospital convenient to rail transportation but away from mining, heavy manufacturing, smelters, and concentrations of war materiel. In addition, the grade of half of the site could not exceed a 3 percent slope, water and other utilities had to be available, and the government expected the city to donate the land for the facility.12 Sen. Elbert D. Thomas coordinated efforts to secure the location, and the surgeon general's office finally selected Brigham City. Local groups lobbied for other installations as well. For instance, the Odgen Chamber of Commerce and Senator Thomas lobbied rather vigorously for Hill Air Force Base. There was little opposition to its location because in pre-Weber Basin Reclamation Project days, the bench on which it was constructed was not valuable farm land.13 Some of the lobbying had little effect on the development of particular plants. Senator Murdock, for instance, had a longstanding interest in the development of the mineral industries of Utah. He was personally close to the officers of Aluminum, Inc., of Cleveland, Ohio, which proposed to produce aluminum from the alunite deposits near Marysvale, Utah. In correspondence with various officials in the executive department, Murdock lobbied for federal support for the company and for Ralph W. Moffat who had developed a process for producing alumina (A1203) from alunite, a substance less pure than the bauxite from which alumina was ordinarily separated. Eventually, the company did receive a commitment of $775,000 from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, but shortly thereafter the government downgraded aluminum from its critical status and in January 1944 the RFC cancelled its loan commitment. 14 11 See numerous documents in Murdock Papers; Murdock to mayors of Brigham City, Nephi, Milford, Beaver, St. George, Manti, and Richfield, and county commissioners of Cache County, December 29, 1941, ibid. 12 Murdock to Morgan County Commissioners, December 23, 1941, and undated memo on the requirements for the hospital, Murdock Papers. 13 Alexander, "Ogden: A Federal Colony in Utah," pp. 300-304. 14 See correspondence in Murdock Papers, especially Murdock to Thomas E. Monks, August 28, 1944; J. R. Thoenen, "Alunite Resources of the United States," U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Mines, R.I. 3561, February 1941, p. 6, copy in Murdock Papers.

Utah Historical Quarterly

On the other hand, a company competing with Aluminum, Inc., did receive a federal contract to operate an alumina plant in Salt Lake City. Kalunite, Inc., a company largely financed by the Olin interests of East Alton, Illinois, secured a contract to operate a $5.4 million Defense Plant Corporation plant in Salt Lake City using a process similar to Moffat's in the reduction of alunite from Marysvale. The Kalunite plant was largely unsuccessful in producing alumina of the same quality as that which other companies recovered from bauxite. 15 In some instances competitors already established in Utah saw the federally constructed plants as interlopers competing with private enterprise already capable of serving the market. The Defense Plant Corporation's Lehi refractories plant is a case in point. After the federal government announced that the plant would be constructed, J. S. Stephenson, executive secretary of the Utah Manufacturers Association, wrote to Senator Murdock complaining that two brick companies already existed in Utah and arguing that they could easily supply the refractories needed by the Geneva Steel Company. 10 One of the companies, Interstate Brick Company, produced mostly building brick rather than refractories, but the management of Utah Fire Clay Company of Salt Lake had the capacity to manufacture the needed brick and was upset with the Defense Plant Corporation's decision. Murdock tried to get the DPC officials to change their minds but could not, and the government constructed a plant which Gladden, McBean and Company operated during the war.17 The initial impact of these plants and garrisons on the people of Utah was salutary. T h e addition of a bomb loading plant constructed between 1935 and 1938 at the existing Ogden Arsenal helped provide employment in depression-ridden Weber and Davis counties. Construction on the earliest of the World War II plants, Hill Air Force Base, began in 1938, and this, too, provided a shot in the arm for Weber and Davis counties. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941 employment and the availability of materials changed drastically; the new 15 Arrington and Guff, Federally-Financed Industrial Plants, pp. 30-32; Thoenen, Alunite, p. 22; T. Odon Matthews to Murdock, September 12 and 14, 1941; and Thurman Arnold to Murdock, February 3, 1943, Murdock Papers. 16 J. S. Stephenson to Murdock, April 6, 1942, Murdock Papers. 17 H. R. Waldo to Murdock, July 4, 1942; John W. Snyder to E. G. Bennett, June 27, 1942; Murdock to R. C Allen, July 10, 1942; Marriner S. Eccles to Edgar S. Hills, July 23, 1942, ibid.; Arrington and Cluff, Federally-Financed Industrial Plants, p. 71.

Utah War Industry

plants and garrisons became a burden on an already overtaxed economy. The situation at the Geneva Steel plant near Orem was typical. Actual construction of the $200 million plant took place between November 1941 and December 1944. After the war began, the scarcity of labor and materials adversely affected the costs of construction. Since the demand for workers and servicemen escalated, wage rates rose and worker productivity declined as marginal workers entered the labor force. U.S. Steel's subcontractors paid high premiums for overtime work, they had to import workers from long distances, and they were forced to construct barracks and commissaries for the employees. At its peak, 7,000 employees worked on constructing the plant, and this number compounded the shortage of engineers, construction supervisors, and skilled workmen. The contractors had to procure most of the machinery and equipment used in construction at premium rates east of the Mississippi since they were unavailable in the Mountain West. The great demand pushed the cost of structural steel to abnormally high levels; a federally dictated freeze on the purchase of steel, which lasted for several months, increased expenses. After the war an engineering firm hired to appraise the value of the plant at Geneva, the limestone quarries at Payson, and the coal mines in Carbon County estimated that the facilities, which had cost $203.6 million to construct, could have been built for $144.4 million, a theoretical savings of 29 percent. 18 The social impact of the introduction of these new plants and garrisons into Utah was enormous. The war industries employed nearly 52,000 in Utah by 1942, and Wasatch and Oquirrh front cities like Provo, Salt Lake City, Ogden, and Tooele grew rapidly.19 The consumer price index (1947-49 = 100) increased from 62.9 in 1941 to 83.4 in 1946.20 Skyrocketing housing costs reflected this trend as owners commanded a premium for the small number of units available. The federal government constructed housing projects in three locations in Odgen, three in northern Davis County, and one in Tooele County. In addition, federal officials opened trailer parks in Salt Lake, Utah, Davis, Weber, and Tooele counties. In all, the 18 Arthur G. McKee and Co., "Report on the Iron and Steel Properties of Defense Plant Corporation at Geneva, Utah known as Plancor 301 for Reconstruction Finance Corporation," 2 vols, consisting of three parts (Cleveland, O., n.d., ca. 1946), copy in Murdock Papers. (Hereinafter cited as McKee Report.) 19 Clayton, "Unhallowed Gathering," p. 231. 20 U.S., Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1957 (Washington: GPO, 1960), p. 125.

Utah Historical Quarterly

rÂť7

In 1943 more than a thousand housing units were constructed at Tooele Army Depot to accommodate large work force. Development, called TOD Park, included a grade school. USHS collections.

federal government provided some 6,000 new housing units, and private investors constructed an additional 8,000 in Utah. Many of the privately constructed units were financed through Federal Housing Administration loans. In sum, it is estimated that the federal government spent between $18 and $20 million on housing in Utah during World War II.21 The pressure for housing and inflating costs for food, clothing, and other necessities were only a few of the sources of tension created by wartime conditions. Older citizens viewed the inhabitants of new federal h o u s i n g projects like Bonneville Park and Washington Terrace in Odgen as interlopers, and longtime residents of the community tended to perceive the occupants as obnoxious and the houses as eyesores in an otherwise model city. There was a tendency to attribute higher rates of crime to the newcomers. In 21

p. 35.

Allen, "Crisis on the Home Front," p. 427 and passim: Arrington and Jensen, Defense Industry,

Utah War Industry

Odgen, for instance, numerous stories attached to the so-called Washington Terrace gang. In addition, many families took in employees of the new plants as boarders and family life was often disrupted as a result. Although no stigma was attached to civilian employment at the garrisons or plants, citizens of the towns in which the garrisons were located feared the influx of unmarried and oversexed young servicemen who came into the town on leave. In Odgen, the airmen at Hill Field were often referred to as "flyboys," and parents were often reluctant to allow their daughters to date the young men out of fear of a possible "love-them-and-leave-them" attitude. Parents were also concerned about the different social standards of young men from outside the community, the prospects of marriage outside the predominant LDS religion, and perhaps even the possiblity of miscegenation. In addition, the notorious Twenty-fifth or Two-bit Street flourished with its brothels and bars.22 All these impressions are difficult to quantify, but social statistics reveal a great deal more about the impact of war industry on Utah. Particularly significant is that although auto theft and larceny rates tended to rise progressively higher both in Utah and the United States during the war, they were much higher in Utah. Divorce rates also climbed both in the Beehive State and the nation, but they were likewise consistently higher in Utah. Burglary rates tended to be higher in Utah than in the United States as a whole, and they increased somewhat during the war. Rates for murder reveal little except that Utah tended to be either lower or close to the rates for the nation as a whole. Although rates for aggravated assault were lower in Utah than in the nation as a whole, they increased dramatically.23 These criminal and social statistics must be seen against the rapid rise in population in those areas directly affected by war industry. Although Salt Lake County added more people (63,272) between 1940 and 1950 than any other county in the state, its rate of growth (29.9 percent) was lower than other Wasatch and Oquirrh front communities in Davis (95.6 percent), Tooele (60.3 percent), Weber (46.9 percent), and Utah (42.7 percent) counties.24 22 The preceding generalizations about conditions in Ogden are based on the author's own observations growing up in the city during World War II. 23 Statistical information is taken from the Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1941-1950, and Kunz and Brinkerhoff, Utah in Numbers, p. 137; see Tables 1 and 2. 24 Kunz and Brinkerhoff, Utah in Numbers, p. 8.

Utah Historical Quarterly

A study of Salt Lake County made after the war revealed some of the local impact of these changes. The Salt Lake County Welfare Department reported an increased number of unmarried girls with babies who applied for assistance. The State Bureau of Services to Children and the Salt Lake City Police Department reported an increase in sex offenses referred to juvenile court, and the State Industrial School at Ogden reported an increase in commitments for sexual delinquency. The consensus of those in the community connected with welfare, law enforcement, and religious, school, and community resource groups was that juvenile delinquency had increased because of inadequate physical and emotional support at home, too much easy money, great emotional stress, responsibilities from suddenly acquired jobs with relatively high wages, and lack of home training and supervision. Even an increase in the number of child care centers in Salt Lake County did not solve the problem. 25 TABLE 1 DIVORCE RATE FOR UTAH AND UNITED STATES, 1938-49 Years

1938 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949

Divorce Rate per 1,000 population Utah

United States

2.4 2.4 2.7 2.5 2.6 3.4 3.4 4.6 5.5 3.8 3.2 3.1

1.9 1.9 2.0 2.2 2.4 2.6 2.9 3.6 4.3 3.4 2.8 2.5

S o u r c e : Statistical Abstract of the United States a n d K u n z a n d Brinkerhoff, Utah in

Numbers.

The causes of divorce in Salt Lake County changed from the depression before the war to the wartime itself and again to the postwar period. Studies indicated that before the war, economic pressure and lack of preparation for marriage tended to be the most 25 Louise Browning, "The Effects of War on Children and Family Life in Metropolitan Salt Lake," (M.S. thesis, University of Utah, 1949), pp. 15-16, 36, 54, and 58.

Utah War Industry

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Utah Historical Quarterly

prevalent reasons for divorce. During the war the most important causes reported were hasty marriage, wartime separation, infidelity, increased economic independence of the woman, and emotional immaturity. Following the war the principal causes of divorce were reported as economic stress, postwar adjustment, emotional immaturity, infidelity, and hasty marriages. 2 " All of these statistics and impressions taken together suggest a causal connection that needs further exploration. The rising divorce and sexual offense rates seem to have resulted in large part from stresses caused by rapidly changing living and social conditions and exacerbated by parents being away from each other and from home either in the service or on the job. Auto theft tends to be a crime of juveniles and young adults, and its increase suggests that social stress, rapid population growth, and lack of parental and community supervision provided the opportunity for this type of criminal activity. Since larceny is "taking of property without force or fraud," 2K

Ibidâ&#x20AC;&#x17E; pp. 37-47.

TABLE 3 ESTIMATED EMPLOYMENT, LABOR FORCE,

AND UNEMPLOYMENT IN UTAH, 1930-47

Year

Labor Force

Private and Norm. Public

1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947

170,000 171,000 171,500 172,000 173,000 174,265 175,500 177,000 178,000 179,000 181,244 197,500 226,500 233,700 211,000 212,000 231,000 241,000

161,288 135,000 110,000 116,000 122,000 127,812 135,000 143.000 140,000 144,500 148,886 178,500 216,000 230,500 208,000 206,000 216,000 233,000

Public Emerg.

13,000 20,000 29,730 30,000 20,000 22,000 19,000 13,975 11,000 4,500 200

Unemployed

Percentage Unemployed

8,712 36,000 61,500 43,000 31,000 16,723 10,500 14,000 16,000 15,500 18,383 8,000 6,000 3,000 3,000 6,000 18,000 8,000

5.1 21.1 35.9 25.0 17.9 9.5 6.0 7.9 9.0 8.7 10.1 4.1 2.6 1.3 1,1 2.8 7.8 3.3

Source: UEBR, Measures of Economic Changes in Utah, 1847-1947.

Utah War Industry

as in shoplifting, pickpocketing, thefts from autos, and bicycle thefts, the same sort of social dislocation and lack of parental and community supervision probably opened the opportunity for this type of crime as well. The statistics for aggravated assault suggest increasing tensions leading to violence.27 Presently available evidence indicates that postwar reconversion was not as difficult as the wartime build-up had been. By 1947 the number of employees in defense-related jobs had declined to 13,700 or about 27 percent of the peak wartime employment. The impact of the loss of jobs in the defense industry was cushioned somewhat as a number of businesses transformed themselves successfully from war plants to plants servicing the private economy.28 Perhaps the optimum conversion took place at the Geneva Steel plant in Orem. During the war virtually the entire effort of Geneva Steel was devoted to the production of steel and its manufacture into plates and shapes for the Pacific Coast wartime shipbuilding industry. Employment at the plant peaked at approximately 4,200 in January 1945.29 After V-J Day in August 1945, however, questions arose about the future of the plant. The contract of United States Steel with the Defense Plant Corporation provided for termination ninety days after the cessation of hostilities. In early 1945, USS expressed some interest in acquiring the plant, but by August it had announced the expansion of its Pittsburg, California, plant and seemed uninterested in the Orem facility. However, Kaiser Steel Company, already supplying its Fontana, California, plant with coal from Carbon County, and Colorado Fuel and Iron of Pueblo both expressed some interest in the plant.3" On December 17, 1945, the Surplus Property Division of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which had control of the plant, issued a request for proposals for acquisition of the plant. In April 1946 Henry J. Kaiser wrote to the president of the War Assets Administration publicly declining to bid, in part because of the 27 For a discussion of these crimes and some of their sources see: Charles H. McCaghy, Deviant Behavior: Crime, Conflict, and Interest Croups (New York: Macmillan, 1976), pp. 154-62. 28 T h e statistical information is from Clayton, "Unhallowed Gathering," p. 231. Clayton, however, reports no civilian employment outside the defense installations themselves in 1947, which seems unlikely, since this would mean no civilian suppliers at all of goods and services at the installations. 29 Arrington and Guff, Federally-Financed Industrial Plants, p. 43; Benjamin F. Fairless to F. B. Gregory, May 1, 1946, Murdock Papers. 30 Surplus Property Administration, "Report to Congress on Disposal of Government Iron and Steel Plants and Facilities," (n.p., October 8, 1945), p. 17, ibid.

Utah Historical Quarterly

rather large RFC loan on the Fontana plant his company was attempting to pay off'.31 On May 1, 1946, however, Benjamin F. Fairless for USS bid $47.5 million for the plant and its inventories and agreed to spend $18.6 million for the construction of a hot-rolled coils plant at Geneva and $25 million at Pittsburg, California, to make the operations compatible. 32 The WAA received five additional bids for the plant. Only the Colorado Fuel and Iron bid approached the USS proposal. After the bids were opened, CFI attempted to submit a supplemental proposal of $40 million for the plant exclusive of inventory, $2 million of which was to be paid in cash and $38 million secured by a mortgage to run for thirty years at 3 percent. These terms did not seem as generous as those of USS, and, of course, they were made after bidding had closed.33 In 1945 the RFC had asked the Arthur G. McKee Company, an engineering firm of Cleveland, Ohio, to prepare a statement of the value of the Geneva plant. A study of that document sheds considerable light on the value of the asset USS purchased. If McKee's figures are correct, USS secured a plant with a replacement value of approximately $144.4 million for an expenditure of $47.5 million, or about 33 percent of the appraised value.34 One should understand, however, that USS purchased assets and liabilities. The major advantage of the plant was that it was the only modern and fully integrated plant for the production of largesized pipe, hot-rolled strip, and tin plate in the entire western area. It had access to cheap raw materials, and its products were "amongst the most profitable ones that are made in the iron and steel industry." McKee estimated that as long as the Geneva plant could operate at 70 percent or more of capacity USS would profit from its operation.35 On the other hand, USS faced some severe difficulties. Because of its location in the Wasatch oasis, it did not have a large surrounding market like Kaiser's Fontana plant or USS's Pittsburg, California, facility. Water transportation of steel, coal, and iron ore were impossible from the Geneva site. The plant faced some other problems not generally known to Utahns. Most of the Utah coal was not 31

Henry J. Kaiser to President, WAA, April 24, 1946, ibid. Fairless to Gregory, May 1, 1946, ibid. 33 Deseret News, May 24, 1946, clipping; E. Perry Holder to E. B. Gregory, June 12, 1946, ibid. 32

34 35

McKee Report, 1:17. Ibid., 2:62.

Utah War Industry

The Geneva Steel plant near Orem was purchased by U.S. Steel after World War II. USHS collections.

of metallurgical quality. Coal from Sunnyside and Castle Gate produced coke of good quality but somewhat high in volatile and oxygen content, thus producing less coke per unit of coal than eastern coals. USS had reduced the volatile content by mixing the Utah coal with imported coal, but this made the coke more expensive. Some questions also existed about the quality of the iron ore available for the plant. It was, however, generally known that the limestone and dolomite obtained near Payson was of excellent quality both for the blast furnace producing pig iron and for the open-hearth furnaces used in producing steel. Another potential problem USS would face was the steel industry's basing point system which set the price of steel at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, plus shipping costs. Nevertheless, producers sold steel at a lower price than that quoted and purchasers could expect that, with the development of an integrated steel industry in the West and recent Supreme Court decisions challenging

Utah Historical Quarterly

the basing point system, USS might change its pricing structure in the future.3fi The conversion of the Geneva Steel plant was not unusual. Both the Utah Oil Refining Company plant in north Salt Lake City and the Lehi Refractories plant were sold as surplus property to the private sector for use in the same way companies had used them during the 37

war. In some cases the WAA sold plants or garrisons for conversion to other purposes. WAA sold the Remington Arms plant (or Utah Ordnance plant), which had served during the war for the production of small arms ammunition, to a group of Salt Lake City businessmen for use as a storage and commercial center. T h e EitelMcCullough radio tube plant in Salt Lake City was sold to the state for use by the Utah State Road Commission. In each case the properties were sold at a fraction of their appraised value.38 Other plants or garrisons that have been sold since World War II include the Kalunite plant, Kearns Army Air Base, and the Clearfield Naval Supply Depot. In some cases the federal government retained the installations but put them to different uses. T h e Deseret Chemical Depot in Rush Valley south of Tooele became part of the Tooele Army Depot. Wendover Air Force Base was used for a time by the Utah Air National Guard, for testing by the air force and other Defense Department agencies, and as a site for some private experimentation with electricity. In 1977 the runways and part of the airport facilities were transferred to the city of Wendover. Most of the installation, however, is now under the jurisdiction of Hill Air Force Base. The former bombing ranges and other facilities are used for testing by the air force in the considerably expanded role the air force has given to Hill in recent years.3i' T h e Ogden Arsenal, like Wendover Air Force Base, became a part of Hill Air Force Base. Bushnell General Hospital was transferred to the Bureau of Indian Affairs and became the Intermountain Indian School. 3,1 Ibid., 2:14-15, 34-40, and 62; undated memo, ca. 1941, entitled "Brief Summary of Work Being Done in the State of Utah by the Bureau of Mines," Murdock Papers. 37

Arrington and Cluff, Federally-Financed Industrial Plants, pp. 55 and 60.

Alexander and Arrington, "Utah's Small Arms Ammunition Plant," p. 195; Arrington and Cluff, Federally-Financed Industrial Plants, p. 63. 39 The information on the disposition of Wendover Air Force Base comes from a telephone interview with Ernie Piper of the Real Estate Division, Ogden Air Materiel Area, Hill Air Force Base, August 3, 1981.

Utah War Industry

Many of the installations continue to operate and several have received expanded functions since World War II. Perhaps the best example is Hill Air Force Base. Every other installation that performed a garrison function has either been closed (as in the case of Kearns Army Air Base), adapted for different functions (as in the case of Wendover Air Force Base), or considerably scaled down and threatened with closure (as in the case of Fort Douglas). Hill Air Force Base has changed to meet the air force's needs as new weapons systems such as the F-16s and F-4s have come into use. It remains today as the mainstay of the economy of Davis and Weber counties. Other remaining installations are largely in the category of plants. These include Tooele Army Depot and Defense Depot Ogden which continue the repair, storage, and shipping of war materiel and Dugway Proving Grounds which continues the development, testing, and storage of chemical warfare materiel. Beyond these, a number of plants have been developed in Utah that add to the state's defense industry. Among the most important at present are undoubtedly the Hercules Powder Company in Salt Lake County, the Thiokol Chemical Corporation in Box Elder County, Sperry Utah Company of Salt Lake City, Marquardt Corporation in Ogden, and Litton, Inc., all of which are involved in missile production.40 In retrospect, it is possible to analyze the impact of war industry on Utah citizens during World War II and to draw some conclusions that might help in understanding the current situation. The infusion of capital and contracts lifted Utah's economy from the depths of the depression, reversed the outmigration that had characterized the state's population since 1910, provided a manufacturing, construction, and service industry for the economy, supplied a stable market for Utah's coal industry, and led to full employment. Most important, unlike the situation after World War I, most of the enterprises established in Utah were not dismantled and did not become obsolete. They remained as mainstays of the economy, were converted to other uses that allowed their continued productivity, or were expanded during the Korean War. After 1945, contrary to the situation after 1918, Utah was not burdened with an unsustainable

Clayton, "Defense Expenditures in Utah," p. 3.

Utah Historical Quarterly

expansion and excessive industrial capacity that could not pay interest and dividends and provide employment in peacetime. 41 It is important to note also that the most stable and long-lasting results of the World War II expansion were the plants rather than the garrisons. While the Defense Department has liquidated or turned to other uses the principal garrisons, Kearns Army Air Base, Wendover Air Force Base, and Fort Douglas, the most important plants like Utah Oil Refining Company, Geneva Steel, Defense Depot Ogden, Tooele Army Depot, and Dugway Proving Grounds have remained or expanded, especially since the Korean War. Others like the Remington Arms plant, the Clearfield Naval Supply Depot, and the Eitel-McCullough radio tube plant were turned to other uses. T h e mainstay of Utah's war industry, Hill Air Force Base, a combination plant and garrison, has provided more employment in its plant function. Furthermore, the war plants have provided a base for the more recent expansion of companies like Thiokol and Hercules. The other side of the coin, however, was the disastrous social impact of the rapid growth associated with the war. The immediate results noted above, particularly the higher rates for divorce, auto theft, larceny, and aggravated assault declined somewhat in the postwar period but remained at levels higher than before the war. These social statistics suggest that rapid economic expansion and accelerated population growth can result in a high degree of instability and unsettling social change, disrupting family life, and unleashing antisocial and criminal tendencies. 42 The experience of World War II ought to provide some instruction for the present time. In the first place, if new industries are introduced into the state and those businesses remain relatively stable, one can expect continued economic prosperity. At the same time, if the economy expands at an inordinately rapid pace as it did during World War II, one can expect higher divorce rates, family instability, and accelerated antisocial and criminal behavior. Recent sociological research supports the contention of this study that inordinately rapid growth creates conditions conducive to 41 For the situation following World War I see Thomas G. Alexander, "The Economic Consequences of the War: Utah and the Depression of the Early 1920s," in Leonard J. Arrington and Thomas G. Alexander, A Dependent Commonwealth: Utah's Economy from Statehood to the Great Depression, ed. Dean L. May (Provo, Ut.: Brigham Young University Press, 1974), pp. 57-89. 42 Towns in Wyoming like Rock Springs, faced over the past few years with an unprecedented oil boom, have experienced similar problems.

Utah War Industry

the development of antisocial behavior. A study completed in England, for instance, demonstrated that length of residence in the community explains better than any other variable the existence of social and kinship bonds and sentiment supportive of the community. The study concluded that neither population size, density, social class, nor age structure explained attachment of interest in the community as well as length of residence. Similar studies completed on recent boom towns of the American West seem to confirm this finding.43 In other words, rapidity of growth rather than the absolute size of the community is more important in determining the development of institutions to control antisocial behavior. Time, above all, is necessary for the development of subcultural patterns within the city to support institutions like churches, clubs, and personal and kinship connections, all of which can militate against family instability, criminal behavior, and unsettling social change. This does not mean that criminal and other disruptive activity will not increase as a city grows. Subcultures supporting such alternative life-styles will undoubtedly grow just as other subcultures do. What it does mean, however, is that the formal and informal institutions that manage and minimize such activity will be more apt to develop under conditions of relatively slow growth than under conditions of inordinately rapid growth.44 In recent years, at least two groups of people have taken differing positions on the question of economic growth. A group who style themselves "conservatives" tend to favor rapid and largely unregulated economic growth but also say they are profamily. A second group of people who call themselves "conservationists" oppose economic growth and in family matters often call themselves prochoice. They seem convinced that their policy would produce a more satisfying life-style.45 The study of World War II in Utah suggests that neither group is promoting a program consistent with the achievement of its objec43 John D. Kasarda and Morris Janowitz, "Community Attachment in Mass Society," American Sociological Review 39 (1974): 328-39, see especially pp. 336-38; Stan L. Albrecht, "Paradoxes of Western Energy Development: Socio-cultural Factors," (paper presented at the Charles Redd Center lecture series, January 19, 1982). 44 The view taken here is consistent with subcultural theory as outlined in Claude S. Fischer, "Toward a Subcultural Theory of Urbanism," American Journal of Sociology 80 (1975): 1319-41, if Fischer's theory is viewed in the context of rapid change as suggested by the Kasarda-Janowitz study cited above. 45 For a discussion of the point of view of these groups see Joel Garreau, The Nine Nations of North America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981), p. 306 and passim.

Utah Historical Quarterly

tives. The type of unrestrained economic growth the conservatives tend to support runs the risk of family instability, rising divorce rates, and increased crime, all of which they profess to deplore. With no growth of the sort the conservationists tend to favor, some degree of social stability might be achieved, but unemployment and declining living standards would also undoubtedly result as they did during the economic stagnation preceding World War II. The most reasonable solution seems to be a controlled rate of economic growth, rapid enough to provide the jobs necessary for those seeking employment but slow enough to avoid excessive social dislocation. Whether this is possible in Utah today given the pressures for energy development, additional recreational facilities, and other potentially disruptive forces, is unclear. If the experience of World War II provides any guidelines, however, Utah must try to avoid the extremes of stagnation or inordinately rapid expansion for the good of the family, the economy, and society.

Book Reviews Quicksand and Cactus: A Memoir of the Southern Mormon Frontier. By JUANITA BROOKS. (Salt Lake City a n d Chicago: H o w e B r o t h e r s , 1982. Xxxvi + 342 p p . $19.95.) T h i s is a n exceptional book. Not because it is s u p e r i o r literature or excellent history, t h o u g h it has each of those qualities in it, b u t r a t h e r because it is J u a n i t a ' s candid s h a r i n g with us h e r truly r e m a r k a b l e life. O n e can find faults with this book. Its c h a p t e r s a r e u n e v e n , a n d it misses p a r t s of h e r life. It e n d s too soon. B u t it was not i n t e n d e d to be those things. Family m e m b e r s a r e to be c o m m e n d e d for b r i n g i n g r e a d e r s a very special story. Quicksand and Cactus is a n eclectic work c o n t a i n i n g twenty-one c h a p t e r s written before 1946, with t h e balance taking final form by 1978. T h e editors have d o n e a g o o d j o b in p u t t i n g t h e parts into o n e whole work. Charles S. Peterson's i n t r o d u c t i o n does m u c h to give historical c o n t e x t b o t h to h e r w r i t i n g a n d to t h o s e p e o p l e w h o influenced h e r scholarship. B a s i c a l l y t h i s is a b o o k a b o u t p i o n e e r life in Bunkerville, N e v a d a , from t h e o l d e s t d a u g h t e r of firstgeneration Mormon pioneers. T h e story unfolds t h e details of daily living in a harshly beautiful a n d d e m a n d i n g d e s e r t c o m m u n i t y at t h e b e g i n n i n g of the twentieth c e n t u r y . J u a n i t a p r o v e s to b e an u n u s u a l l y k e e n o b s e r v e r . Blessed with a r e m a r k a b l e m e m o r y , she recalls t h e details of school picnics, adult conversations a n d work, a n d h e r own cow h e r d i n g , p o n y r i d i n g , a n d multiple childhood chores. Ever m o d e s t a n d self-effacing, she tells h e r own story delightfully.

H e r a u t o b i o g r a p h y is divided into two parts: h e r g r o w i n g u p a n d h e r r e a c h i n g o u t into t h e g r e a t wide wonderful world b e y o n d Bunkerville â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a world that was b o t h physical a n d intellectual, a world that led h e r to Dixie Academy, Brigham Young University, a n d eventually C o l u m b i a University. She recalls for r e a d e r s h e r teenage d r e a m : So sitting astride my dappled pony, my bonnet on my shoulders, my braids undone, I studied this out and determined that I would see some of the world beyond the desert, that I would go to a college or a university or whatever it was that one went to in order to learn of books, and how to talk like books. I wotdd not wait for life to come to me; I would go out to meet it (p. 169). She did go out, b u t J u a n i t a never left h e r p e o p l e n o r their values. Family loyalties, h a r d work, faith, a n d int e g r i t y r e m a i n e d with h e r . " H e n " Leavitt, w h o influenced h e r so greatly, m u s t have b e e n especially p r o u d of this d a u g h t e r . She r e c o u n t s h e r feelings w h e n h e r precious p o n y Selah was stolen, a n d h e r father's advice: As soon as Pa came home, I started blaming myself. "I knew that I should bring Selah home last night . . . , but I remembered that you had said to leave her there.. . . If I'd brought her home. . . . Pa let me talk myself out, and then said kindly, "My girl, I think you should follow your hunches â&#x20AC;&#x201D; that is,

94 if you have a strong feeling you should pay attention to it, whether it goes against my counsel or anyone else's. . . (p. 174). T h e book covers only the first thirty-five years of her life, happy, growing, challenging, tragic years. Her marriage to Ernest Pulsipher, the birth of their son, and the painful death of Ernest and of innocence constitute one of the most poignant parts of the book: With the sunset it was finished â&#x20AC;&#x201D; on January 8, 1921. What followed is a blur in my memory. Somehow one lives through these crises, walking in a daze through crowds that come, all eager to be of some assistance, sitting through the meeting with its songs and talk-talk, hearing the sound of earth being shoveled into the open grave. It all blends in the memory as a

Utah Historical Quarterly drama in which I was a spectator rather than a part of the cast (p. 243). Here the reader sees so clearly her fragile stamina and incredible courage. Her marriage to Will Brooks was an important strength for the developing scholar. The account of the courtship is delightful. This book helps us understand the later and better known author and historian, Juanita Brooks. It also provides readers with a rare review of life in transition, a personal life, yes, but also a generation and a people: from pioneer to space age, as unique a time in history as is the subject of this book, Juanita Leavitt Pulsipher Brooks.

MELVIN T. SMITH

Utah State Historical Society

A History of the Northern Ute People. By FRED A. CONETAH. Edited by KATHRYN L. MACKAY and FLOYD A. O'NEIL. (Fort Duchesne, Ut.: Uintah-Ouray Ute Tribe, 1982. Xii + 163 pp. $10.95.) In light of the fact that I have read many volumes of documented historical publications by non-Indian writers, it was a delight to read A History of the Northern Ute People because this book was written to establish research and to set the record straight in many instances. I am thoroughly impressed by the frankness and choice of words of the late Fred A. Conetah. This is not to say that non-Indian historical writing and research is not widely read and appreciated. I sometimes have to refer to this little description about prejudice: "Did you know that prejudice is a wonderful time-saver? You can form opinions without bothering to obtain facts." The early writers who were trained in the European context tended to apply those forms to describe the Indian living in his natural habitat.

Conetah intended "to arouse the minds of the young and old so that this book should not be the end but rather a base upon which to continue to study the history of the Ute People." As a full-blooded Paiute, I have "often missed the history of my own people and the recognition of my great leaders." Conetah has been careful to give the I n d i a n point of view on many documented accounts "to stress the importance of Ute culture, beliefs and heritage." But because of certain restrictions and respect, he just touched on the importance of "Indian Religion, Herbs and Healing." The comparison between the mythological and historical is evident as the author writes about the implications in describing the Sun Dance from its beginning to the present.

Book Reviews and Notices This quote, "Life is best lived looking forward but best u n d e r s t o o d looking backward," adequately describes the value of A History of the Northern Ute People. It has been written to make the "savage" not so savage and the "primitive" not so primitive. In this day of rediscovery of the myth and symbol of the American Indian, it gives all people a prick of the conscience not only to study what the American Indian has to teach all for our minds but also to open our hearts. The book is highlighted by many photographs and maps. Its reading level is right for students at the seventh grade and up. If it were to be used in the classroom, I would rec-

95 ommend Anne M. Smith's Ethnography of the Northern Utes, or some of the other bibliographies, as a supplement. The book also relates to my favorite quote of "When the old songs die, great dreams are forgotten; when the dreams are forgotten there is no more g r e a t n e s s . " As Fred A. C o n e t a h stated, "My intention was never to back down on the duty placed upon me by those people who had trust in me." What a fitting tribute to his dream, that maybe in the future the greatness of a people will not be forgotten. GARY L. TOM

Southern Utah State College

Indians of the Great Basin: A Critical Bibliography. By OMER C. STEWART. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982. Xii + 138 pp. Paper, $5.95.) Bibliographies are among the most valuable and welcomed additions to the literature on any region, and this brief bibliography by Stewart is no exception. The major value of the work lies not only in the listing it contains but also in the bibliographic essay that precedes it. In this essay, Stewart basically gives a history of research in the region, including prehistory, the ethnology of various tribal groups (Utes, Southern Paiutes, Shoshonis, Northern Paiutes, and Washos), linguistics, and ethnohistory. He also discusses in a separate section work on petroglyphs and pictographs, or "rock art" as they are now more popularly called. In "miscellaneous publications," he adds data on contemporary tribal newspapers, anthologies, and the leading journals and monograph series for the region. The bibliographic essay takes up roughly one-half of the volume. The remaining pages list 364 sources on the region. These are arranged alphabetically but with separate sections for the beginner and for those wishing to have a basic library. Items suitable

for the secondary school reader are also starred. Although in an abbreviated work such as this, one could point to various omissions, it would be unfair to do so given the work's purpose. The bibliography is meant to be a guide to major sources, not an exhaustive treatment. If the nonspecialist were to master all of the materials contained herein, he/she would indeed have a good basic g r a s p of the major culture-historical features of the region. An individual would also understand in large measure how that culture-history was derived and some of the problems encountered along the way. Given that Stewart himself has been so deeply involved in the development of Great Basin anthropology, even the specialist will find much of interest in his view of its history. One additional value of this volume is that it at least partially updates C. S. Fowler's bibliography on the region, now fifteen years old. A few points of criticism are in order, however. Stewart's treatment of early prehistory is somewhat con-

96 fusing. He spends more time on "Folsom" than is warranted for the area and less on "Clovis" than is required. He sometimes confuses occurrences of these two early point types in Basin archaeological sites. Readers should refer to discussions of this matter in textbooks on North American prehistory. They should also refer to these sources for more t h o r o u g h treatment of the Desert Archaic, both as a c u l t u r e type and t r a d i t i o n . Stewart's discussion here is also confusing, and readers will need additional help in correctly placing Great Basin sites within this tradition. Lastly,

Utah Historical Quarterly although a minor error, it is stated on p. vii that C. S. Fowler's bibliography on the region contains "over one thousand titles" when it actually contains over seven thousand titles. On the whole, however, Stewart is to be commended for wading through much of the esoterica on this region and providing us with a useful, historically based overview of the key resources and problemsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;as well as an appropriate bibliographic listing.

CATHERINE S. FOWLER

University of Nevada, Reno

The Pure Experience of Order: Essays on the Symbolic in the Folk Material Culture of Western America. By RICHARD C. POULSEN. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. X + 172 pp. $19.95.) Dr. Poulsen presents in this publication a series of essays on the state of folklore studies in America. Declaring what he believes to be a long-overdue corrective of the purely historical documentary approach to material culture, he makes a strong plea for its symbolic analysis. T h e strength of Poulsen's plea, however, is only apparent. He writes about folklorists and historians as if they had never heard of meaning, as if they were interested solely in lining up facts or measuring artifacts. However accurate such an indictment might have been in the past, the current issues of the leading periodicals of these two disciplines demonstrate that respected social scientists, including historians and folklorists, are concerned with a wide range of human issues in society across time and space. Consequently, we must evaluate this book not for advocating the symbolic analysis of material culture per se but for the kind of symbolic analysis it advocates. Three major problems prevent me from recommending this book. The first has to do with Poulsen's theory of

symbolsim. Although his discussion of symbolism does not produce a systematic theory, his basic perspective could be summarized as: morphological similarity indicates symbolic identity. That is, if symbols have similar forms, they have similar meanings. Although the form of material culture may certainly affect its meaning, Poulsen's radical formalism contains no inherent recognition of the socialhistorical-environmental context of the artifacts or practices under consideration. As an anthropologist and historian, I cannot help but think there is more to meaning than form; consequently I cannot give up my knowledge of the architectural traditions, cultural boundaries, subsistence patterns, and religious iconography which Poulsen analyzes to accept his radical understanding of them. To justify his radical formalism, Poulsen makes a rousing criticism of the p r o m i n e n c e historians and folklorists have given to chronology in their respective analyses. While recognizing the limitations of any radical historicism, I feel it equally naive to adopt an excessively antihistorical

Book Reviews and Notices perspective of culture and society. By substituting one theoretical extreme for another, Poulsen commits the logical fallacy of the excluded middle. He assumes a mutually exclusive relationship between chronology and morphology when none exists. It is possible, for example, to consider historical consciousness as one of many elements in the symbolism of material culture. If chronology is as central to the consciousness of Western civilization as the author suggests, then to ignore the historical context of material culture is to greatly limit the significance of an artifact for those who made, used, or otherwise appreciated it. By trying to "purify" his symbolism, Poulsen unfortunately rejects precisely that which could have made the symbolic analyses of the material culture of western America all the more meaningful. A third major problem with these essays is their lack of theoretical consistency. Although Poulsen derives much of his perspective from two of the leading formal symbologists, Claude Levi-Strauss and Mircea Eliade, he also makes repeated refer-

97 ence to the psychological symbolism of Freud and J u n g and the cultural symbolism of Geertz and Douglas. I fail to see how he has integrated these diverse and often contradictory theories into a unified theoretical perspective. Furthermore, while most of his essays are unashamedly antihistorical, at least one depends upon historical analysis. Finally, at one point (p. 46) Poulsen claims, "The ultimate meaning of symbols can only be established by the group or culture that shares and understands them," yet not once does he elaborate the cultural context of a symbol. With so many uncertain sounds, I find it impossible to follow the trumpet. In the end, I can only conclude that Dr. Poulsen's essays are both personal and polemical. They suggest one possible approach to the symbolism of material culture, but the approach is neither well formulated nor consistently and believably applied. I only hope that other scholars with similar interests can do better. STEVEN L. OLSEN

Salt Lake City

Chesterfield: Mormon Outpost in Idaho. Edited by LAVINA FIELDING ANDERSON. (Bancroft, Id.: Chesterfield Foundation, Inc., 1982. Viii + 91 pp. $14.95.) When I was growing up in Soda Springs, I knew lots of history. I knew that it was the third-oldest town in the state, that Brigham Young had once had a cabin there, that travelers on the Oregon Trail looked forward to its "Beer Springs," and pioneer had to have Mormon in front of it to be complete. But the only visual reminder of that history in my mind was the monument shaped like the state of Idaho that stood on the main corner of town. With these words, Craig Call, secretary of the Chesterfield Foundation,

describes his educational beginnings in history. T h r o u g h o u t his school years, as Call explains in the introduction to Chesterpeld: Mormon Outpost in Idaho, his history classes never covered any of the "rich local heritage" of his home town. "Why," he wondered, "were we so proud of having the third oldest town in Idaho and yet so determined to make every building and feature of the city look like the third newest?" The question remained as he grew older. As a result of this sense of bei ng "cheated" out of a knowledge of his local history, Call gradually be-

98 came involved in historic preservation. After years of restoring old houses and creating historic districts in Utah (now his home) he went back to Idaho where his mother took him to Chesterfield, just twenty-five miles from his birthplace. There Call saw a "nineteenth century village â&#x20AC;&#x201D; without a gas station or a motel in sight." The discovery was followed by some dreaming, then planning and some financial help from individuals and the Idaho Historical Society that resulted in the creation of the Chesterfield Foundation â&#x20AC;&#x201D; organized for the purpose of restoring the community of Chesterfield to its nineteenthcentury beginnings. This book, the first of several volumes with which the foundation plans to tell the story of this community, was prepared for the purpose of setting the background by giving the c o m m u n i t y ' s history. Though gaps do indeed exist, the book provides a fine overall treatment of the community's past. It is an edited volume with prominent historians treating various subjects in which they have expertise. Ross Peterson, author of Idaho's bicentennial history, gives the historical overview; Leonard Arrington and Richard Jensen give an excellent treatment of the economic trends of Chesterfield; Lawrence Coates deals with the Indian-white relations; Davis Bitton covers everyday life; Merle Wells, author oiAntiMormonism in Idaho 1872-1892, describes the Mormon-gentile conflict; and architectural historian Paul And e r s o n graphically describes the physical setting of Chesterfield in his chapter, "An Idaho Version of the City of Zion." Besides his introduction, Craig Call also adds a photographic essay. All c h a p t e r s are well written, though some are more pertinent than others. Ross Peterson's historical overview is excellent and sets the stage

Utah Historical Quarterly for the more detailed chapters to follow. Particularly valuable information is provided by Arrington and Jensen who describe the three main periods of Chesterfield's economic life. The first period, settlement and expansion, 1882-1919, is succeeded by the years of depression and contraction, 1920-39, concluded by the modern period of mechanization and improvement of 1940-80. Therein they show that Chesterfield reflected in microcosm the agricultural trends of the nation as a. whole, thus giving further evidence that the Mormon experience was not as unique as often is presumed. Davis Bitton's description of everday life is especially significant for the interpretive aspect of Chesterfield's restoration. Gross national products, net incomes, and balances of trade by themselves interest few people. Only when these terms are interpreted through the daily lives of families and individuals do they carry any meaning. I also enjoyed Paul Anderson's chapter on Chesterfield's modification of the City of Zion plan. His introduction is a fine, concise explanation of how a dream (or vision) had to be altered, because of environmental realities, in order to be followed. I am, however, disappointed that the archaeological research received no treatment. Surely some interesting information was gathered and conclusions drawn from the survey. As one who has been involved in historic preservation full-time for several years, I congratulate the Chesterfield Foundation for a fine beginning volume and more importantly for their creative and ambitious undertaking in restoration. I wish them the very best.

MICHAEL E. CHRISTENSEN

Utah Division of Parks and Recreation

Book Reviews and Notices

Women's Voices: An Untold History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900. By KENNETH W. GODFREY, AUDREY M. GODFREY, and JILL MULVAY DERR. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1982. Viii + 448 pp. $9.95.) Long absent from the pages of Mormon history, women's voices as heard in this book add significantly to the saga of western expansion. All too often the women have ridden through western history nameless, faceless, and formless. The cultural bias that states that traditional "women's work" is not worthy of note clouds their experiences as effectively as a theatrical scrim, and not until a woman competed successfully in masculine endeavors did her name generally become known. This volume is intrinsically valuable for it accepts women's own perceptions of what was important to them and illustrates how they found time and opportunity to accomplish their goals. While it shows how completely women's lives were dominated by the demands of housekeeping and nurturing, it also illustrates the importance of friends and social contacts in the frontier society. Many of these women found acceptable solutions for depression, loneliness, grief, and frustration and carried on with their lives and their work. Careful study of this volume illuminates both the similarities and the differences in the lives of Mormon women and their contemporaries in dealing with these problems. Twenty-five excerpts of varying length preceded by introductory historical essays make up the body of the book. Though limited by the reasonable demands of publication (I wanted more of many of the journals), the authors have included accounts spanning the length of Mormon women's experiences from early conversions in the 1830s and '40s to suffrage and statehood. The writings reproduced in the work are skillfully edited, and the notes are extremely helpful in keeping straight the myriad names so

casually referred to in these accounts. Just the same, I lost myself several times in the p l e t h o r a of family nicknames used by the authors. The solution seemed to be to ignore themâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;until I abruptly discovered that a woman referred to a relationship with a husband that is quite crucialâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and began sorting them out again. T h e names of some of the diarists are familiar to Utah historians, but by far the most of them are obscure women who are nonetheless important for the detail they have given. Fame is eliminated as a precursor here; one reads through the volume with an increasing awareness that these u n s u n g heroines s u p p o r t e d policy and affirmed programs that would not have been effected without their approval. But where is the dissenting voice in this history of the Latter-day Saints? Were there no women who questioned, challenged, a r g u e d , protested, and asserted themselves in the face of the deprivation and hardship they and their children faced as the result of the decisions made in which they had no part? Of the 250 accounts perused by the authors, did not one woman bemoan her lot a little? In the acknowledgments the authors state, "We believe [these women] represent the very best of Mormonism and womanhood." Does this mean that women whose personalities differ from the uniformity expressed here are not examples of womanhood and Mormonism? As my Montana pioneer Mormon grandmother would have stated it: Pshaw! This fine book is replete with examples of courage, faith, love, devotion, and adaptability, but neither Mormonism nor women have a corner on those qualities. What this all comes down to is that the material

100 in the book, such as the acknowledgments and conclusions that are addressed to the reader, limits the scope of what the documents themselves say. I insist that interrupting work on a book to serve as mission president for the Mormon church has no more relevance than interrupting work to fill a teaching assignment in a university â&#x20AC;&#x201D; except among Mormons, who,

Utah Historical Quarterly as readers, are assured on the very first page that this book will provoke no controversy and raise no doubtful issues. But enough. It's a fine book, and a second volume would certainly have its place.

VALEEN T. AVERY

Northern Arizona University

Clio's Cowboys: Studies in the Historiography of the Cattle Trade. By DON D. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1981. Xxii 4- 210 pp. $13.95.) Don Walker has been distilling his views on western American literature and history for many years, and four of the essays in this book have appeared before in journals or collections. Clio's Cowboys is not merely a collection of occasional essays, however, but a unified work of historiographical criticism based on the author's conviction of "the close relationship, if not unity, of history and literature." The book has two related theses: that western American historiography has been more heavily influenced than it is willing to admit by the romantic ideology of heroic frontier freedom and independence and that western fiction has suffered both from the same ideological pressures and from the tendency to judge it by the standards of historical accuracy alone rather than by literary standards. Walker begins by examining several "scriptural" works of range history and concludes that they fail to present the concrete human reality of cowboys and cattlemen. He characterizes Joseph G. McCoy's Historic Sketches of the Cattle Trade as "history structured as heroic biography and heroic moral drama." Theodore Roosevelt's r a n c h i n g sketches, a c c o r d i n g to Walker, were primarily a vehicle for his mythic vision of "bigness and

WALKER.

emptiness" challenging "the persevering wilderness hero." When Walker turns to the influential works of professional historians such as Ernest S. Osgood, Edward Everett Dale, and Walter Prescott Webb, he finds them also subject to ideological and rhetorical pressures that undercut their ostensible objectivity. Walker remarks, "The irony comes in the fact that historians â&#x20AC;&#x201D; some of them at least â&#x20AC;&#x201D; while seeking to dispel the romance of the range found in fiction, contributed more to that romance than did some of the writers of fiction." In the central essay of the book, "Freedom and Individualism on the Range: Ideological Images of the Cowboy and Cattlemen," Walker analyzes the dominating ideology and concludes that if historians are to escape its distorting effects they need, first, "a better anthropology" that will enable them to deal more coherently with concrete human facts. Second, they need "new historical sociologies" that allow them to see that society stretched thin is not necessarily society atomized. Finally, historians need "new ideologies, or better still no ideologies, if freedom from ideology is indeed possible." History, Wralker insists, "must be radical in the sense that it insists on going back to a

Book Reviews and Notices

101

maximum concreteness, being willing, if necessary, to throw aside some of the conceptual baggage it has gathered so far." In the essays that follow this central statement, Walker attempts to define "the fence line" between history and fiction. He suggests that historians can learn from fiction writers that in order to understand the historical moment we must do more than gather and organize facts. We must "let our imagination hover over that m o m e n t , exploring relationships, critically trying out possible patterns of meaning, not with the intention of making something up but with the hope of understanding what in an essential way is already there." He also argues for a more sophisticated theory of

cowboy fiction that will enable it to do justice to its materials. Not all readers will agree with Walker's assessment of the classics of range history. Some will be uneasy with his suggestions of crossfertilization of history with some techniques of fiction. Clio's Cowboys does not pretend to be a definitive treatment of its subject, as is made clear by the title of the last chapter, "A Notice Left at the Gate Still Open." Walker's arguments are tentative and suggestive but also well thought out and well expressed, and his book, as a result, makes stimulating reading.

EDWARD A. GEARY

Brigham Young University

Book Notices The City and the Saloon: Denver, 18581916. By THOMAS J. NOEL. (Lincoln:

University of Nebraska Press, 1982. Xvi + 148 pp. $16.50.) Denver's saloons and their predecessors â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the wayside inns and roadhousesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;offered shelter, food and drink, news, and companionship. Church services, city council meetings, and union rallies were held in taverns, which often doubled as clubs, hospitals, museums, banks, and other community institutions. Saloons also provided places for immigrants to gather and feel at home and for fledgling businessmen to get a foot on the entrepreneurial ladder.

'' 7

7--7N. v>y/ yyn>

However, the sickening excesses tolerated in some taverns and notorious political corruption bankrolled by saloonkeepers and other liquor interests brought cries for reform that led to statewide prohibition in 1916, four years before the Eighteenth Amendment took effect. This is superb social history, well written and extensively documented. Days of Our Fathers. By DELILAH ABBOTT. (Salt Lake City: Author, 1981. Viii + 247 pp. Paper, $7.95.) This historical novel details the life of Archibald Gardner, the mill builder, one of those sturdy figures who

102 helped to develop Utah Territory working quietly and competently in the wings while others dominated center stage. The Gardner saga unfolds against a background of historical events such as the arrival of Johnston's Army, the polygamy raids, etc. Mrs. Abbott plies her craft well and does not balk at depicting the dissatisfactions of Gardner's youngest wife, whom he marries in her fifteenth year, and his great passion for Liz, a woman he wins but cannot keep. The story rings true and gives an overlooked man his due. The Shoulders on Which We Stand. Edited by DEMONT H. HOWELL. (Fairview and Ephraim, Ut.: Fairview Museum of History and Art and Snow College, 1982. 60 pp.) With funding from the Utah Endowment for the Humanities, the Fairview Museum and Snow College have brought together scenes and artifacts of Sanpete County life. Dozens of photographs show everything from looms and lights to stoves and sacrament sets with accompanying text. Rescue of the 1856 Handcart Companies. By REBECCA CORNWALL and LEONARD

J. ARRINGTON. (Provo, Ut.: Brigham Young University Press, 1981. 60 pp. Paper, $4.95.) Most students of Utah history are familiar with the disaster that overtook two of the 1856 handcart companies headed for Utah when an early winter storm devastated their ranks. This welcome monograph tells almost as harrowing a story of the dramatic rescue effort mounted from Salt Lake City, a story of courage, endurance, and suspense, as men and supplies headed east not knowing what they would find or where. Trolley Square. By COLLEEN MOORE PETERS. (Salt Lake City: Author, 1982.

Utah Historical Quarterly 16 pp. Paper, $2.00.) If Trolley Square and its eclectic offerings fascinate you, this illustrated booklet will answer many of your questions. Arthur Redman Wilfley: Miner, Inventor, and Entrepreneur. By JAY E. NIEBUR. (Denver: Colorado Historical Society, 1982. X + 245 p p . Paper, $8.95.) The Wilfley table and the Wilfley pump, the two most successful inventions of their creator, affected mining operations everywhere. Mills at Park City and Lark were Wilfley customers. The use of these machines in Utah and a Utah lawsuit over patent infringements receive more than passing mention. The book makes an important contribution to the history of mining technology. Eureka and Its Resources. By LAMBERT MOLINELLI. (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1982. Vii + 136 pp. Paper, $6.00.) The fourth title in the University of Nevada's Vintage Nevada Series, Eureka makes available to present-day readers a reprint of Molinelli's 1879 tract on the rising town. Although written as a promotional piece to attract new residents and investors, the book is more than puffery for the author's real estate business; it is one of the few histories of this important Nevada mining district. A foreword by state geologist John Shilling sets the work in context. Guide to Records in the National Archives of the United States Relating to American Indians. Compiled by EDWARD E. HILL. (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Record Service, 1981. Xiii + 467 p. $13.00.) Most of the records relate to Indians in tribes involved in some way

Book Reviexvs and Notices with U.S. military operations or with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The guide makes r e c o r d s , including photographic and cartographic items, more accessible and better known to researchers. A fifty-four-page index facilitates use of this important research tool. Divergent Paths of the Restoration: A History of the Latter Day Saint Movement. By STEVEN L. SHIELDS. 3d ed.

rev. (Bountiful, Ut.: Restoration Research, 1982. 282 pp. $12.95.) Originally issued in 1975, this book has been revised and expanded in the interim as the author pursued his research in this field, discovering previously unknown groups or finding additional data on known groups and individuals. Anyone interested in Mormonism's schismatic tendency will find Divergent Paths full of information on more than 100 churches, organizations, and individuals — fascinating groups like the United Outcasts of Israel and Watchmen on the Towers of Latter Day Israel and intriguing people like the LeBarons and the "translated" Annalee Skarin. The doctrinal range is wide, from the expected plural marriage and communal living to more bizarre notions like the abolition of menstruation. A Guide to Manuscript Collections. Compiled by ELLEN ARGUIMBAU and DORIS MITTERLING. Edited by JOHN

A. BRENNAN. (Boulder: Western History Collection, University of Colorado, 1982. Xii + 143 p p . Paper, $5.50.) Researchers will find this indexed guide helpful in assessing the 564 collections described for their potential relevance to a given topic. Desert Ride and Other Poems. By LOWRY NELSON. (Provo, Ut.: Press Publishing, 1982. X + 127 pp. $7.95.

103 Born in 1893, Lowry Nelson is widely know as a sociologist and retired University of Minnesota professor with an impressive list of publications, including The Mormon Village. This book contains in addition to the poems an eighteen-page autobioraphical sketch and a seven-page bibliography. The Salt Lake City Post Office (18491869). By L E S W H A L L . (Salt Lake City: Crabtree Press, 1982. 202 pp. Paper, $5.00.) In the early years mail delivery was erratic, expensive, and a continual source of complaint. This detailed study of twenty sometimes exasperating years of the Salt Lake City Post Office gives readers a wealth of information on postmasters; mail contractors; disputes and disruptions; schedules, routes, and expenses; and the local and national circumstances that affected mail delivery. Tucson: The Life and Times of an American City. By C. L. SONNICHSEN.

(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982. Xiv + 369 pp. $29.95.) As one of the Sunbelt giants, Tucson is well worth studying. Its evolution from a dusty pueblo to a modern metropolis is fascinating. Historian Sonnichsen has p r o d u c e d a very readable book distilling the city's history into a brightly written overview — full of diverse flavors and well illustrated—that looks beyond history to probe the problems Tucson, despite its insulation, shares with many American cities: rapid growth, crime, limited resources — especially water, etc. When the last well runs dry, the people will remember they are living in a desert, he quotes "Arizona's foremost p r o p h e t of d o o m , " Ed Abbey, as warning.

Utah Historical Quarterly

104 Contributions to the Prehistory of Southeastern Utah. By PAUL R. NICKENS, KEVIN D. LAND, and

BLACK, JAMES M. COPESTEVEN M. HORVATH, JR.

(Salt Lake City: Bureau of Land Management, 1982. 306 pp. Paper.) Volume 13 in the BLM's Cultural Resources Series, this work contains two separate reports, "A Summary of the Prehistory of Southeastern Utah" and "An Archaeological Survey of the Central Lisbon Valley Study Tract in the Moab District, San Juan County, Utah." Students, professionals, and lay readers will find Nickens's summary prehistory of immediate utility and interest. A History of Banking in Arizona. By LARRY SCHWEIKART. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1982. X + 253 p p . Cloth, $16.50; p a p e r , $9.50.) Professor Schweikart traces Arizona banking from the days when bags of gold were sometimes hidden in wastebaskets through panics, d e pressions, and crime waves to the present. In the Shadow of Fremont: Edward Kern and the Art of Exploration, 1845-1860.

By ROBERT V. HINE. 2d ed. (Norm a n : University of O k l a h o m a , 1982. Xxi + 180 pp. $18.95.) Considered a minor classic in the history of westward expansion, this work (originally titled Edward Kern and American Expansion) has been updated with a new preface, additional maps and illustrations, and a revised bibliographic essay. It remains immensely readable. A Bibliographic Guide to the Study of Western American Literature. By RICHARD W.

ETULAIN. (Lincoln:

University of Nebraska Press, 1982. Xvii + 317 pp. $22.50.) Since the 1960s there has been a growing interest in western American literature. Despite this increased attention, Etulain maintains that the field is still "ripe with possibilities for literary critics and historians." Researchers with such a bent will find the 5,030 entries in this volume of great assistance. This work updates, enlarges, and reorganizes Western American Literature: A Bibliography of Interpretive Books and Articles and emphasizes recent publications through 1981. More than 350 writers are included in Etulain's list.

STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT, AND CIRCULATION

The Utah Historical Quarterly (ISSN 0042-143X) is published quarterly by the Utah State Historical Society, 300 Rio Grande, Salt Lake City, Utah 84101. The editor is Melvin T. Smith and the managing editor is Stanford J. Layton with offices at the same address as the publisher. The magazine is owned by the Utah State Historical Society, and no individual or company owns or holds any bonds, mortgages, or other securities of the Society or its magazine. The purposes, function, and nonprofit status of this organization and the exempt status for federal income tax purposes have not changed during the preceding twelve months. The following figures are the average number of copies of each issue during the preceding twelve months: 3,843 copies printed; no paid circulation; 3,024 mail subscriptions; 3,024 total paid circulation; 300 free distribution (including samples) by mail, carrier, or other means; 3,324 total distribution; 519 inventory for office use, leftover, unaccounted, spoiled after printing; total 3,843. The following figures are the actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 3,782 copies printed; no paid circulation; 3,174 mail subscriptions; 3,174 total paid circulation; 185 free distribution (including samples) by mail, carrier, or other means; 3,359 total distribution; 423 inventory for office use, leftover, unaccounted, spoiled after printing; total 3,782.

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY Department of Community and Economic Development Division of State History

BOARD OF STATE HISTORY MILTON C. ABRAMS, Logan, 1985

Chairman ELIZABETH MONTAGUE, Salt Lake City, 1983 Vice-chairman MELVIN T. SMITH, Salt Lake City Secretary THOMAS G. ALEXANDER, Provo, 1983 J. ELDON DORMAN. Price, 1985 ELIZABETH GRIFFITH, Ogden, 1985

WAYNE K. HINTON, Cedar City, 1985 THERON LUKE, Provo, 1983

DAVID S. MONSON, Lieutenant Governor/

Secretary of State, Ex officio WILLIAM D. OWENS, Salt Lake City, 1983 HELEN /.. PAPANIKOLAS. Salt Lake City, 1985 ANAND A. YANG, Salt Lake City, 1985

ADMINISTRATION MELVIN T. SMITH. Director

STANFORD J. LMTON, Managing Editor JAY M. HAYMOND, Librarian

DAVID B. MADSEN, State Archaeologist A. KENT POWELL, Historic Preservation Research WILSON G. MARTIN.Historic Preservation Development JOHN M. BOURNE, Museum Services

The Utah State Historical Society was organized in 1897 by public-spirited Utahns to collect, preserve, and publish Utah and related history. Today, under state sponsorship, the Society fulfills its obligations by publishing the Utah Historical Quarterly and other historical materials; collecting historic Utah artifacts; locating, documenting, and preserving historic and prehistoric buildings and sites; and maintaining a specialized research library. Donations and gifts to the Society's programs, museum, or its library are encouraged, for only through such means can it live up to its responsibility of preserving the record of Utah s past.

MEMBERSHIP Membership in the Utah State Historical Society isopen to all individuals and institutions interested in Utah history. Membership applications and change of address notices should be sent to the membership secretary. Annual dues are: individual, $10.00; institutions, $15.00; student and senior citizen (age sixty-five or over), $7.50; contributing, $15.00; sustaining, $25.00; patron, $50.00; business, $100.00; life member, $150.00. Your interest and support are most welcome.

Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 51, Number 1, 1983

Articles inside

The Colony Guard: To California in '49

A Crisis Averted: General Harney and the Change in Command of the Utah Expecition

Salt Lake City through a German's Eyes: A Visit by Theodor Kirchhoff in 1867

"Melancholy News": Utah's First Fatal Passenger Train Collision

Utah War Industry during World War II: A Human Impact Analysis