In This Issue

Americans take great pride in being a nation of immigrants. Except for the indigenous peoples, we are all descended from immigrants who crossed the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans during some per od of time leaving native lands of rich culture, firmly grounded traditions, and ancient languages to seek a different life and establish a new home in far off America.

The subject of our first article for 2006, Daniel Bonelli, was just such an immigrant and his story is representative of the thousands of immigrants to Utah and millions of immig rants to the United States during the nineteenth century. After joining The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1854, he left the verdant fields and meadows of his native Switzerland and, after arriving in Utah in 1860, spent the next forty-three years carving out an existence and leaving a legacy in the un familiar rocks and deserts of southwestern Utah and southeastern Nevada. A man of many talents and strong conviction. Bonelli exemplified an ability to keep the delicate balance between individual and community. His story is one worth reading and remembering.

George August Sheets was born in 1864, four years after Daniel Bonelli arrived in Utah. His life in urban Salt Lake City with the municipal police department offers an interesting contrast with that of the immigrant pioneer Daniel Bonelli. George Sheets was no stranger to the struggle between the Liberal and People’s Party for political control of Utah, nor the spoils of office, vice, crime, scandal, corruption, and hostility that were found in Salt Lake City at the beginning of the twentieth century. As we shall read, Sheets’ professional career was interwoven into this difficult time in Utah’s capital city.

For twenty-first century Utahns who live at a time when music is available almost anywhere at anytime at the push of a button or the turn of a dial, it is difficult to appreciate the important role town bands and local orchestras filled providing entertainment to their nineteenth century ancestor s. Our third article recounts the story of Alfred Mar shall Fox and the Lehi Brass Band. Founded in 1871, the band was a viable cultural force in the community life for two decades.

Our final article highlights the photographer Arthur Rothstein. In March 1940 Rothstein, an employee of the United States Department of Agriculture’s Farm Security Administration Historical Section, crossed into Utah from Wyoming and traveled west through Summit, Salt Lake, and Tooele Counties to Wendover on the Utah-Nevada border. The black and white photographs that he took of Utah during the late winter some sixty-six year s ago offer a valuable visual record of Utah near the end of its first century of settlement.

This issue considers the lives and accomplishments of four individuals— Daniel Bonelli, George A. Sheets, Alfred Marshall Fox, and Arthur Rothstein. Each one used his time, talents, and skills in vastly different ways. Nevertheless their stories remind us that our individual efforts are no less important today.