Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 77, Number 3, 2009

202 IN THIS ISSUE

204 Julius F.Taylor and the Broad Ax of Salt Lake City

By Michael S.Sweeney

222 Old Lamps for New:The Failed Campaign to Bring Electric Street Lighting to Salt Lake City By Judson Callaway and Su Richards

242 Sisters of Ogden’s Mount Benedict Monastery By Kathryn L.MacKay

260 Regulator Johnson,the Man Behind the Legend By Charles L.Keller

275

BOOK REVIEWS

William Thomas Allison and Susan J.Matt,eds. Dreams,Myths,and Reality:Utah and the American West Reviewed by Brandon Johnson Fanny Stenhouse.Linda Wilcox DeSimone,ed. Exposé of Polygamy: A Lady’s Life among the Mormons Reviewed by Gary James Bergera Jesse G.Petersen. A Route for the Overland Stage:James H.Simpson’s 1859 Trail Across the Great Basin Reviewed by Jay A. Aldous Gordon Morris Bakken. The Mining Law of 1872:Past,Politics,and Prospects

Reviewed by William T. Parry

Will Bagley. Always a Cowboy:Judge Wilson McCarthy and the Rescue of the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad Reviewed by Charles S. Peterson Laurie F.Maffly-Kipp and Reid L.Nielson,eds. Proclamation to the People:Nineteenth-Century Mormonism and the Pacific Basin Frontier Reviewed by M. Guy Bishop W.Dean Frischknecht. Old Deseret Live Stock Company: A Stockman’s Memoir

Reviewed Richard H. Jackson

Duane A.Smith. Rocky Mountain Heartland:Colorado,Montana,and Wyoming in the Twentieth Century Reviewed by AnnChambers Noble Reginald Horsman. Feast or Famine:Food and Drink in American Westward Expansion

Reviewed by Patricia AnnOwens Donald G.Godfrey and Rebecca S.Martineau-McCarty,eds. An Uncommon Common Pioneer:The Journals of James Henry Martineau, 1829-1918

Reviewed by J. Kyle Nielsen

Freedom of the press is one of the cornerstones of American democracy. The challenges of publishing newspapers in a rapidly changing technological world,coupled with reduced staff and fewer pages,the reduction in coverage by contemporary newspapers appears to threaten this pillar of freedom. And so too is our history.A glance at the sources recorded in the footnotes of the articles in this as well as in most past issues of the Utah Historical Quarterly reveal that newspapers are a valuable source of information.Indeed,many articles may not have been written without the information found in past issues of newspapers available in libraries and increasingly on-line.At a time when digitization initiatives are making back issues of newspapers more accessible to researchers that same technology presents challenges to the continuation of these important instruments of democracy and sources of history.

The Broad Ax, a Salt Lake City newspaper edited by African American Julius F. Taylor,is an important example of how newspapers are an irreplaceable source for history.As our first article demonstrates,the pages of the newspaper published from 1895 to 1899 provides a valuable history of Salt Lake City and its African American community at the end of the nineteenth century that otherwise would not be available.When Taylor left Salt Lake City for Chicago where he continued publishing the Broad Ax in that city for another decade,Utah lost a priceless resource for recording its history.

INTHISISSUE

ONTHECOVER: Sisters Estelle Nordick, left, and Mary Margaret Clifford, right, with newborn infants at the St. Benedict’s Hospital in Ogden. MOUNTBENEDICTMONASTERY.

(ABOVE): Panorama of Alta. UTAHSTATEHISTORICALSOCIETY.

While access to morning newspapers is taken for granted,even more so is illumination of our streets,stores,offices,buildings,and homes by electricity.As our second article reveals,this was not always the case.Before electricity lit up the night skies of Salt Lake City,an unsuccessful campaign was waged to replace a gas lighting system that had appeared as a harbinger of progress when it replaced the individual flickering candles,torches,and lanterns and the prevalent darkness of the past.The article records how late nineteenth century political and business leaders responded to what some perceived of as a threat while others saw it as a golden opportunity of new technology.

Our third article chronicles the contribution of a dedicated group of Catholic nuns,the Sisters of Mount Benedict Monastery,in providing much needed health care to Ogden and the Weber County area,beginning in the 1940s and continuing to the present.

Utahns and visitors from all over the world have first encountered Regulator Johnson as the name for a popular expert ski run at the Snowbird Ski Resort in Little Cottonwood Canyon east of Salt Lake City.Until now the origin of the name has been forgotten,if,in fact,it was ever known.Nineteen-year-old John S. Johnson immigrated to the United States from his native Norway in 1863 and by 1870 was living at the mining town of Alta.He spent the rest of his life prospecting and mining in Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons.The story of how he became known as Regulator Johnson and his tragic life is the subject for our final article for this Summer issue.All four articles remind us that dedicated writers with access to useable sources can open doors to our understanding of the past.

Julius F.Taylor and the Broad Ax of Salt Lake City

BYMICHAELS. SWEENEY

Seldom has a newspaper editor been so much of an outsider.Julius F. Taylor,who single-handedly produced the four-page,tabloid weekly The Broad Ax from 1895 to 1899 in Salt Lake City before moving the paper to Chicago,was a minority voice in a multitude of ways. He was an iconoclastic Democrat in a state known for its conservative traditions and respect for authority.He was a self-described “heathen”in a land where religion was one of life’s main organizing principles — a non-believer in Mormon territory.Furthermore,his black skin not only made him a second-class citizen of the United States in the segregationist era of the Supreme Court’s segregationist Plessy v.Ferguson ruling,but also ensured he would have to fight particularly hard for status in his territory and state.The numbers were stacked against him:the1890 census counted only 588 African Americans in Utah.Many of them scrambled to make a living as porters,cooks,waiters,barbers,and in other low-prestige jobs, making the expense of a newspaper subscription a disproportionately large percentage of income.The vast majority,like African Americans throughout the United States,supported the Republican Party

The first issue of the Broad Ax, August 31,1895.

Michael S.Sweeney is a professor of journalism and communication at Utah State University

because of its role in ending slavery and securing a constitutional amendment protecting the right to vote. 1 Furthermore,The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,whose members settled the Salt Lake Valley in 1847,denied the priesthood to black-skinned people from its early days until 1978.2 The laws of Utah also undermined black claims to equality. The state made marriage between blacks and whites illegal,while allowing such unions between whites and Native Americans. 3 A sharp-tongued, Democratic,atheistic,African American editor in Utah in the 1890s stood out as an anomaly.

The wonder of the Broad Ax is not that it was founded,but that it stayed afloat for four years and helped make Taylor’s voice heard in Utah and national politics.It would be an exaggeration to say that Taylor thrived in Utah,for he made little profit from his paper.However,his political and social commentary on the equality of all people and the rights of labor sparked debate in Salt Lake City and won him public speaking engagements,earned him office in the Utah Press Association,won him friends in the hierarchy of the Mormon church,and even brought him to the attention of 1896 presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan,whom he admired greatly.

This paper is a historical examination of the founding and survival of the Broad Ax,as well as an analysis of dominant themes during the four years of its publication in Utah.It relies on the complete series,available on microfilm at the Marriott Library at the University of Utah,as well as contemporary issues of the church-owned Deseret News ,which printed the Broad Ax under contract and occasionally commented on its contents.Copies of the Broad Ax published in Chicago after 1899 also were examined for changes in content after Taylor left Utah.Hindering research to flesh out the story of Taylor and the Broad Ax is the apparent lack of a personal archive by this remarkably outspoken editor.

Existing scholarship on the Broad Ax in Utah focuses on the oddity and struggles of a black-owned paper in a state with a tiny African American population.Armistead S.Pride and Clint C.Wilson II devote less than a page to Taylor’s paper in their 1997 history of the black press in America. They characterized it as “fearless and outspoken”on behalf of “the common people,”and noted the paper’s early emphasis on (white) politics and civic affairs.4 However,they understate the paper’s status as a paper for

1 Ronald G.Coleman,“Blacks In Utah History:An Unknown Legacy,”in Helen Z.Papanikolas, The Peoples of Utah (Salt Lake City:Utah State Historical Society,1976),133.

2 The church’s reason for the ban on blacks in the priesthood was given in a statement by LDS President David O.McKay in 1969.He said the ban existed “for reasons which we believe are known to God,but which he has not made fully known to man.”See Marcus H.Martins, Blacks & the Mormon Priesthood:Setting the Record Straight (Orem:Millennial Press,2007),9.

3 Coleman,“Blacks in Utah History,”121.

4 Armistead S.Pride and Clint C.Wilson II, A History of the Black Press (Washington,D.C.:Howard University Press,1997),108.

A newspaper stand at theWalker Building in Salt Lake City, October 30,1916.

people of color.Its columns often lectured black and white Utahns on reasons to switch from the party of Lincoln to the party of Jefferson;it reviewed books and scholarly articles on race relations and commented on racial prejudice in Utah;and it editorialized on the need to follow up the end of physical slavery with the end of workingclass labor slavery.Other scholarship on the Broad Ax focuses on its operations in Chicago.Historian Allan H. Spear describes Taylor as an “anticlerical”economic radical and opponent of the moderating influences of Booker T.Washington on race relations,but his study of the turn-of-thecentury Chicago ghetto examines Taylor’s newspaper briefly,and only after it had moved operations from Salt Lake City. 5 Similarly,Henry Lewis Suggs’history of black papers in midwestern states focuses only on Taylor’s career in the Midwest.6 Roland E.Wolseley’s broad history of black papers in the United States virtually ignores Taylor’s paper,describing it merely as financially weak.7

None of the above publications offers details on Taylor’s early life or the founding of his paper in Utah.Although Taylor expressed distaste for autobiographical writings by journalists,he described the highlights of his life for Utah readers in response to accusations he was a “carpet bagger.”Of the family into which he was born,he related nearly nothing.He was born of “lowly origin,”the son of a slave,in Virginia in 1854,and lived in Philadelphia for twelve years before moving to St.Paul,Minnesota,in 1878,and Fargo,North Dakota,in 1879.There he met and married his

5 Allan H.Spear, Black Chicago:The Making of a Negro Ghetto,1890-1920 (Chicago:University of Chicago Press,1967),82-83,114.

6 Henry Lewis Suggs,ed., The Black Press in the Middle West,1865-1985 (Westport,Conn.:Greenwood Press,1996),21-23.

7 Roland E.Wolseley, The Black Press,U.S.A. (Ames:Iowa State University Press,1990),65.

wife,A.Emogene Taylor,an artist.He also became friends with A.W.Edwards,editor of the Fargo Daily Forum and Republican ,who took an interest in developing Taylor’s political sympathies and journalistic skills.Edwards used his political connections to get Taylor appointed as one of the first black grand jurors west of the Mississippi River (in Fargo, in 1885) and landed Taylor an audience with President Grover Cleveland in 1888.The Taylors,apparently childless,moved in 1889 to Chicago,where Emogene studied at the Art Institute,and from there to Salt Lake City,where they arrived on June 30,1895. The arid,clean landscape of the Great Basin had been prescribed for Emogene’s ill health.8

BroadAxsubscription information.

Of his education,Taylor said little,but his published essays on race and politics are liberally sprinkled with quotations from the Old and New Testaments,as well as references to Buddhist,Muslim,Hindu and Jewish teachings.He also quoted at length from the speeches of Abraham Lincoln, albeit in efforts to demonstrate to black Republicans the ambivalence Lincoln felt about freedom for African Americans in the 1850s and the early months of the Civil War.If Taylor had received little or no formal schooling as a slave child,as was the norm,it is evident that he embraced many difficult books once his education began in earnest.He quoted not only from works of abstract philosophy,but also used these quotations in clever and colorful ways in his columns analyzing current events and politics.Clearly he had an agile mind and enjoyed demonstrating his wit and wisdom.

Taylor published his first edition of Broad Ax on August 31,1895,the day that Salt Lake County Democrats met to nominate legislative candidates. The paper’s appearance led the Deseret News to comment on the “novel distinction”of its black editor and his unusual support for the Democratic Party,as well as the paper’s “crisp and clean”appearance.It also quoted the Broad Ax on the need for political independence:“As long as the colored people align themselves with any political party for no other reason than for a prejudice or a sentiment,so long they show to the world they are not as broadminded and intelligent a class of people as they ought to be.”9

The Broad Ax was one of a number of black newspapers published in Utah in the 1890s.Its black Republican counterpart was the Utah Plain Dealer,published in Salt Lake City by William W.Taylor,no relation to

8

“Five Hours With Hon.Moses Thatcher,”September 28,1895;“The Tenderfoot’s Apology,”October 5,1895;“To the Ladies of Salt Lake,”October 5,1895;“Kind Words,”November 2,1895;and “The Awakening of Art,”November 17,1900.All are in the Broad Ax.Unless otherwise noted,all newspaper articles referenced below appeared in that paper.

9

“The Latest Journalistic Candidate,” Deseret Evening News, August 31,1895.

Julius.Two other black papers were the Democratic Headlight,published by J. Gordon McPherson in 1899,and the Tri City Oracle, published by Pastor James W.Washington of Salt Lake City’s Calvary Baptist Church for a few years. The Plain Dealer outlasted its competitors,publishing from 1895 until 1909,a decade after the Broad Ax relocated to Chicago.10

The Broad Ax appeared under a “flag,”or top of the front page,that portrayed an ax buried in a log lengthwise and the motto,“Hew to the Line.”Taylor borrowed the newspaper’s name and ax cartoon from a mainly black Democratic newspaper of nearly the same name, The Broad Axe of St. Paul,Minnesota.It began publishing in 1891,when Taylor lived in Chicago,and lasted as a biweekly until 1903.No evidence could be found to determine whether Taylor had any official connection with the St.Paul paper published by A.L.Graves,who held a similar Democratic political philosophy.11 Some published scholarship about Taylor’s Broad Ax,including Pride and Wilson’s book,confuse the Salt Lake City and St.Paul newspapers.

Inside his first edition,Taylor introduced features that would continue for the rest of the newspaper’s existence in Utah.A collection of “Chips” — one-paragraph quips and observations,mostly about politics — dominated page two.Taylor’s credo topped the second-class mail permit: “The Broad Ax will promulgate and at all times uphold the true principles of Democracy,but farmers,Catholics,Protestants,Knights of Labor, Infidels,Mormons,Republicans,Priests,or anyone else can have their say so long as their language is proper and responsibility is fixed.The Broad Ax is a newspaper whose platform is broad enough for all.”Taylor promoted only one specific candidate in the first issue,for state treasurer,but beginning in the following week published the complete slate of Democratic Party candidates atop the front page.

Taylor knew he would face a struggle to make a profit.Utah had a population of more than two-hundred thousand whites and never more than a few hundred blacks in the 1890s.12 The 1896 arrival at Fort Douglas, located east of downtown Salt Lake City,of six hundred blacks — soldiers, wives and children — added to the potential subscription base,but only temporarily,as the “Buffalo Soldiers”of the Twenty-Fourth Infantry were transferred after three years to northern Idaho to deal with civil disturbances.13 Compounding the difficulties of a small base of black readers were many overt and covert pressures on the content of the Broad Ax.Taylor needed to attract money from subscriptions and advertisers despite advocating both a political philosophy foreign to his primary audience of black,

10 Coleman,“Blacks in Utah History,”134.

11 Microfilm of the St.Paul Broad Axe is available at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago.

12 U.S.Department of Commerce,Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States,1898 (Washington:Government Printing Office,1899),19.

13 Quintard Taylor, In Search of the Racial Frontier:African Americans in the American West,1528-1990 (New York:W.W.Norton & Co.,1998),184.

A

cart,September 2,1909.

Republican Utahns,and his non-endorsement of the religious culture of his secondary,white Democratic audience.Taylor’s dilemma was to engage readers and stir them up enough to have them challenge their long-held beliefs,without angering them to the point of ignoring or boycotting the paper.

Taylor was willing to run his operation at a minimal profit or even a temporary loss in order to promote the Democratic Party,drawing in lean times on his wife’s art instruction classes to raise income.He received no money from the state Democratic Committee,relying instead on circulation and advertising. 14 A year’s subscription to the Broad Ax cost two dollars,but receipts from circulation were slow and uncertain in arriving. While he reported that one thousand people read the first issue of the Broad Ax, fewer than 100 subscribers could be signed up in the first few weeks.15 The city at the time had hardly any black Democrats,and Taylor named only one,a popular barber.Many readers initially were drawn to the paper as a curiosity.16

Taylor gave away copies to every African American male in Salt Lake

14

“The Salt Lake Bee,”July 30,1898.

15 “Chips,”September 7,1895;and “Looking Backward,”August 22,1896.

16 “M.B.McGee and the Broad Ax,”September 18,1897.

SaltLakeTribunenewspaper

SHIPLER COLLECTION, UTAHSTATEHISTORICALSOCIETY

City and to many whites throughout Utah to help raise interest.17 He regularly traveled throughout Utah to sign up readers statewide,but he still faced the problem of having them make good on their subscription debts after they had agreed to purchase a few months’or a year’s worth of the paper.(He advertised for a bill collector in the spring of 1896 and occasionally printed blurbs belittling those who had failed to make good on their debts.)18 Advertising for the Mormon-run Z.C.M.I.general store,a grocer,and a clothing store occupied about a third of the four-page tabloid’s first issue.Reflecting his financial difficulties,later issues of the Broad Ax often featured small advertisements for legal services,liquor stores, and patent medicines,and a relatively small number of large display advertisements.

Taylor mostly avoided straight news reporting,leaving that to the mainstream papers.Instead,he filled his pages with reasoned political commentary,reprints from other newspapers and Eastern black newspapers in particular,and insults aimed at political and personal opponents.Four themes dominate the four years of publication:support for the “free silver” branch of the Democratic Party,especially as championed by William Jennings Bryan;party allegiances based on rational choice,as opposed to parties dominated by political or religious bosses who took voting blocs for granted;tolerance in race relations,coupled with gradual steps toward true racial equality (a position closer to the ideology of Booker T.Washington than Taylor later would espouse);and finally,tolerance among all religious faiths.

These themes helped the Broad Ax gain a voice in Utah politics,but eventually contributed to Taylor’s decision to leave the state,driven by his ambition to increase his work on behalf of Bryan and his disappointment at the state’s white,Mormon dominance of politics,which he could not crack.

Taylor’s first issue declared him to be a proponent of inflating the nation’s currency by moving from the gold standard to a “bimetallic”foundation for paper currency.This proposal,shared by farmers,miners,and debtors hurt by the depression of the mid-1890s,was popular with many Utahns because it would stimulate the state’s mining industry.Often referred to as the “free silver”movement,it would ensure that each dollar in circulation would be backed by a dollar’s worth of gold or silver with the silver-gold ratio set at sixteen to one.19 Conservative Democrats,the latter including President Cleveland,and most Republicans opposed bimetallism as inflationary.The issue split the national political parties in 1896 with the Republicans nominating William McKinley,a supporter of the gold standard,and the Democrats rallying behind the bimetallic William Jennings Bryan.In Utah,the 1890s marked a political and religious tipping

17 “To Our Readers and Friends,”November 9,1895. 18 “Wanted,”May 30,1896;and “Nota Bene,”February 5,1899. 19 “Salutatory,”August 31,1895.

point,as the state gradually shifted from the Democratic to the Republican Party,and the church moved from communal economics toward a greater emphasis on free enterprise and individualism.While McKinley won the national election,Bryan took more than 82 percent of the Utah vote.Four years later,in 1900,a shift in popular support put Utah in McKinley’s winning column of electoral votes.20

Taylor fought to keep the Democratic Party strong in Utah.“Money power”had imposed a new form of slavery on laborers,Taylor wrote in the Broad Ax’s second month.“The Republican party ...has become the willing tool of capitalists,who have become the owners of toiling millions of white and black men,and have expanded their wealth and influence until they are absolute in their power,both in the financial and political arena.... Let us kill the tiger of financial rapacity.”21

Taylor said he became the nation’s first editor to call for the election of Bryan as president,initially as the leader of an “American Silver Ticket”and later on the Democratic Party slate.A full year before the 1896 election,he asked readers what they thought of Bryan as president or as vice president.22 Bryan thanked Taylor with a letter published in the Broad Ax in December 1895.23

20 David B.Griffiths,“Far Western Populism:The Case of Utah,1893–1900,” Utah Historical Quarterly 37 (Fall 1969):396-97;and Frank H.Jonas and Garth N.Jones,“Utah Presidential Elections,1896-1952,” Utah Historical Quarterly 24 (October 1956):289-91.

21 “We Still Have Slavery,”September 21,1895.

22 “Chips,”November 9,1895.Later that month,Taylor also proposed that Bryan would make a good vice presidential candidate on a ticket with Senator John Morgan of Alabama.

23 “The Broad Ax in the East and West,”December 14,1895.

ZCMI on Main Street in Salt Lake City ran ads in the BroadAx.

Taylor favored a free silver platform because he believed it would benefit the working class whom he considered to be his readers.He favored its champion,Bryan, because of his personal qualities.In June 1896,during the week of Bryan’s winning the Democratic nomination,Taylor described the Nebraskan as “an ideal American,in the prime and vigor of life,an eloquent and persistent defender of the cause of silver.”The adoption of a free silver platform was a victory in the battle between “the people and the politicians;between patriotism and partisanism;between the earnest cry of the millions of oppressed Americans and the hoarse roar of the vultures of Lombard and Wall streets.”24 Upon meeting Bryan in 1897,when the defeated candidate visited Salt Lake City,Taylor rhapsodized that he was “one of the greatest men on this continent,”due to his “Democratic simplicity”and “plain matter of fact way.”25

Of particular interest to Taylor during the 1896 campaign was Bryan’s letter of acceptance of the nomination,which he reprinted in the Broad Ax. Bryan’s assertion that “all men,being created equal,are entitled to equal consideration at the hands of the Government”touched a chord.Taylor’s political philosophy reasoned that citizens who were vulnerable to the

24

“The Great Convention,”July 11,1896.Bryan would carry Utah in the 1896 general election,64,367 to 13,448.

25 “William Jennings Bryan,”July 24,1896.

Soldiers of the 24th Infantry parade in Salt Lake City.The all Black 24th Infantry was stationed at Fort Douglas at the same time the Broad Ax was published.

abuses of their governments and fellow citizens merely because they had an “unequal start in the race of life,”should be protected by the power of law. This theme reappeared in Taylor’s support for Cuban independence,as he viewed the island’s native population as second-class citizens of Spain,and in his calls for civil service reform to eliminate sinecures beyond the reach of government or citizen oversight.26 It also surfaced in the construction of his arguments against lynching.Several times during his stay in Utah, Taylor’s paper printed the national statistics on lynching,pointing out that while the preponderance of victims were black,he condemned it “under any circumstances”[emphasis in the original].“[I]t is not less wrong when perpetrated upon a white man in a Northern State than when it is resorted to by a Southern community upon a Negro rapist or murderer.”27 The lynchings of blacks in Utah had ended before statehood,but they continued throughout much of the South.28 Taylor,an officer in the Western Negro Press Association,took the occasion of the group’s 1898 meeting to assert that an anti-lynching plan had been inserted into the 1896 Republican Party platform merely to appease blacks without providing any substantial enforcement.29

Taylor’s political philosophy also was evident in his demands for black representation on political committees and offices in Salt Lake City.One weapon he used in his attempt to switch black Republicans to the Democratic Party was to point out that the GOP city convention of 1895 nominated candidates of all religions and ethnic backgrounds — except African Americans.Taylor blamed both white prejudice and black meekness for this oversight.“We know a number of our race in this city,who are as well qualified in every way to fill an office,as many who are now running ...but of course they are not available,and they never will be.It takes greed,gall,and gold to get an office in the G.O.P.and these are things the colored boys of Salt Lake are short of.”30 One year later,the Democratic Party,a minority in the legislature at the time,nominated Taylor to be messenger of the state senate.The Republican majority filled the post with its own choice.However,a year later,with the Democrats in the majority, they passed over Taylor for the nomination.He fumed in the Broad Ax that Utah’s legislators “have informed the world that they do not entertain a very high regard for any member of the negro race.”In 1897,Utah’s Republican Party picked William Taylor to represent the G.O.P in a race for the Eighth District of the Utah House of Representatives.Perhaps stung by personal pride as well as his usual political animus,Julius Taylor

26 “President Bryan’s Letter,”September 19,1896.

27 “The Dreaded Lynch Law,”November 16,1895.

28 Larry R.Gerlach,“Ogden’s ‘Horrible Tragedy’:The Lynching of George Segal,” Utah Historical Quarterly 49 (Spring 1981):157–59.

29 Ronald Coleman,“Utah’s African American Community and Politics,1890-1910,” Beehive History 19 (1993):8.

30 “The Colored Boys and the G.O.P.,”October 19,1895.

fought his rival’s unsuccessful candidacy,saying he was not qualified to run.31

Julius Taylor’s push for black representation in local and state government appeared to be more of an effort to sour relations between Utah’s African Americans and the Republican Party than a firebrand’s call for political upheaval.The political and racial times were against him,and his view of the improvement of race relations was more moderate than he let on.He expressed admiration for Booker T.Washington’s Tuskegee plan emphasizing black education,self-improvement and practical self-reliance,announcing in the Broad Ax that he was sending ten to fifteen copies of every paper to the Tuskegee Institute.Later,after he left Utah in disappointment,his opinion of Washington worsened.Taylor would move away from moderation in racial matters while Washington became more involved in Republican Party politics.Taylor referred to Washington in the first decade of the twentiethcentury as “the greatest white man’s ‘Nigger’in the world”and “the Great Beggar of Tuskegee.”32

Taylor reached out to working-class black Republicans and workingclass and middle-class whites of all parties;he reserved his insults mainly for Utah’s black leaders in the Grand Old Party.Pride and Wilson have noted that the editors of the Broad Ax and Plain Dealer routinely said unpleasant things of each other without noting the origin of the personal issues in dispute.33 Both apparently welcomed the fight.Julius Taylor stoked the fires of discord by embarrassing his counterpart.Two weeks after the Broad Ax began publication,Salt Lake City’s Lincoln Club of black Republicans considered a motion to censure the Broad Ax.Julius Taylor reported that during debate on the question,which ultimately was defeated,William Taylor refused to go on record opposing the motion against a fellow black journalist.The Broad Ax said he kept silent out of fear of losing his party-supported editor’s job,and called his paper the “Double Dealer.”34

The two editors traded insults regularly after that.At one point,William referred to his counterpart as “a yelping cur,”with Julius responding by prominently reprinting a notice that William was being sued for failing to repay a debt of five hundred dollars.35 William Taylor was more than a footnote in his role as editor and Republican adversary to Julius Taylor. Despite the Broad Ax’s suggestions that he was a Republican lackey,William Taylor outspokenly championed civil rights for black Utahns during his legislative campaign.He said that his goal,if elected,was to ensure that blacks could “go anywhere,so long as they pay their money and act like gentlemen and ladies in [Salt Lake City] — in restaurants,in the hotels,in the theatres and so forth.”Evidence of the disapproval of racial equality by

31 Coleman,“Utah’s African American Community and Politics.”

32 “A Good Work,”May 23,1896;and Spear, Black Chicago,82-83.

33 Pride and Wilson, A History of the Black Press,108.

34 “The Ku Klux in Salt Lake,”September 14,1896. 35 “Bomb No.2,”March 6,1897.

many whites in Salt Lake City can be found in the Salt Lake Tribune,which complained to the War Department at that time about the stationing of black soldiers at nearby Fort Douglas.Still, William Taylor must have been an effective speaker and campaigner;his losing effort garnered more than six thousand votes,many more than could have been cast by Utah’s black population.36

In other dealings with African Americans,and on the issue of race relations,the Utah editions of the Broad Ax were less confrontational than Julius Taylor’s personal fight with his rival.Taylor expressed admiration for social settings in which the races could mix,and he boasted of friendships with white political and religious leaders.He viewed American blacks as a “progressive race”and cheered an 1895 speech by Louisville newspaper publisher Henry Watterson calling for an end to the hateful prejudices of the Civil War. Shed of wartime passions,African Americans could rationally choose political candidates in their best interest and shape their future lives independent of political bosses,he believed.37 Like Washington,Taylor viewed ignorance as the greatest threat to his race.Taylor urged in a Salt Lake City speech that all laboring people should read and educate themselves as a first step toward forging the united effort and united purpose that would secure their rights.38 Whites also should educate themselves about America’s black citizens by reading black papers,he said.39

Taylor was not militant in seeking equal rights immediately.He wrote that white Utah residents generally were “honest,kind hearted and generous.”However,the fact that many business owners and restaurateurs refused to serve non-whites did not stir him toward provocative action.Julius Taylor argued that it would be proper for all white restaurants to admit black patrons,but instead of calling for a change in laws or social mores,he compromised by asking whites-only establishments merely to post signs announcing their policies.The embarrassment of crossing a color line apparently had stung his pride,as well as that of other blacks in Salt Lake

36 See Taylor, In Search of the Racial Frontier, 176;and Allan Kent Powell,ed., Utah History Encyclopedia (Salt Lake City:University of Utah Press,1994),158.

37 “Which Will You Choose?”September 28,1896.

38 “Address of J.F.Taylor,”October 25,1895.

39 “Negro Journalism,”February 2,1901.

BookerT.Washington.

City.When he was accused by another paper of “contemptuously”trying to “inflict”himself on white people by demanding entrance to white-only establishments,Taylor replied only that he had been raised to exhibit good manners in mixed company,and therefore chose to withdraw.40

Taylor also advocated a tolerance of all religions,within limits.Surely this theme in the Broad Ax was partly due to the expediency of attracting advertisements from Mormon-owned businesses and money from Mormon subscribers,and avoiding conflict with the Mormon-owned paper whose presses printed his publication.Taylor’s explanation of his ethics portrays him as a humanist and deontologist,in accord with his support for the rule of law.For example,his chief objection to the Bible,he said,was that it condemned all honest and upright men and women who denied its infallibility;one could do good things and not be a Christian, and Christianity did not guarantee goodness.41

He expressed intolerance for intolerance.Not being a believer in any established church,Taylor could even-handedly deal with all faiths.42 For example,although Taylor was not an apologist for Mormons,he assaulted the Utah Presbyterian Church’s decision to call for a halt to all fellowship with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.The Presbytery’s announcementmade in 1896 that Mormons were hypocrites,liars and unChristian,struck Taylor as grossly overstated or untrue.But instead of giving a defense of the virtues of his Mormon friends,he struck back by focusing on the Presbyterian articles of faith that he found narrow-minded or restrictive of humanity’s potential,including the doctrine of predestination.43

Taylor expressed a personal admiration for Wilford Woodruff,president of the LDS church,and for the many Mormon bishops who welcomed him into their homes.He found kind words for the Book of Mormon,which he said would cause non-Mormons to liberalize their opinions about the misunderstood settlers of Utah.44 However,he challenged the hierarchy of the LDS church whenever it attempted to mobilize political action,even arguing against statehood for Utah — which Mormons had been seeking for nearly fifty years and which had been granted in January 1896 — so long as the church could dominate secular affairs.45 Such religious meddling in temporal matters was parallel to the blind allegiance of classes and races to political parties,contrary to the kind of rational,free choice he championed.

Taylor’s paper had at least two major conflicts with the LDS church.The first occurred as a result of the church’s General Conference in April 1896. Some of the speakers at the conference urged a closer linking of church and state than Taylor thought appropriate.The church’s First Presidency,

40

“The Colored Line in Salt Lake City,”June 18,1898;and “The Salt Lake Bee,”July 20,1898.

41

“The Bible and Morality,”February 18,1899.

42

“Down in SanPete Valley,”February 19,1898.

43

“Religious Intolerance Run Mad,”May 2,1896.

44 “J.A.Evans,”May 2,1896.

45 “A Crisis in Utah,”October 19,1895.

apostles,and other leaders issued a joint statement that said any church official considering a race for public office should “apply to the proper authorities and learn from them whether he can,consistently with the obligations already entered into with the Church upon assuming his office, take upon himself the added duties and labors and responsibility of the new position.”46 In separate remarks,Elder Abraham H.Cannon said that only good,noble and virtuous men should hold office.Although he did not describe how these men would be recognized for their qualifications,he pointed out the consistent benefits of having church leaders directing worldly affairs.47 Taylor considered the church position “harmful”and “unAmerican,”and likened the conference’s manifesto to the Roman Catholic belief in the pope’s power,in speaking on behalf of the church,to make infallible decisions.If a church could dictate who could and could not be a political candidate,he said,it could “dictate how and for whom he should vote,”leading to ecclesiastical domination.He closed:“If we are to live under the dictation of any church,then we say,tear down the stars and stripes;surrender our self-government,and let the sable banner of superstition and oppression wave in triumph.”He called on Mormons to solve their own problem.48

The second conflict occurred in the spring of 1899,when Taylor attacked the Bible on the front page of the Broad Ax. Taylor began by questioning the divine origins of Jesus,and then responded to a call by black ministers in Salt Lake City for days of prayer over white-on-black violence throughout the nation,including the rise of lynching.He said that while he respected people who believed in prayer,he found it “unfruitful”and less effective than self-reliant action. 49 That touched off a published debate between the Deseret News and the Broad Ax over the wisdom of the Bible. Taylor declared that religious scholars such as his critics at the News had made the Bible into a fetish of worship,finding their justification of polygamy,damnation,baptism and election on every page.He then confessed that his years of study of the Bible had been wasted.The News readily agreed in an editorial ridiculing Taylor’s “alleged learning.”50

The Broad Ax contained many other episodes of Taylor’s needling the LDS church and its followers for actions he considered undemocratic,such as the removal of onetime Democratic Party senatorial candidate Moses Thatcher from church office in 1896 for being “out of harmony”with his fellow apostles,and the distribution of a pamphlet in 1897 that said the Mormon church was the voice of God in all things.51

46

“To the Saints,” Deseret Evening News, April 6,1896.

47

“Elder Abraham H.Cannon,” Deseret Evening News,April 6,1896.

48

“The Manifesto,”April 18,1896;and “The Crisis Is Here,”April 25,1896.

49

“Is That All?” Deseret Evening News, May 13,1899;and “Prayers,”May 23,1899.

50 “A Book Idol,”May 30,1899;and “Is That All?” Deseret Evening News May 30,1899

51 “Deposing of Moses Thatcher,”November 28,1896;and “Revised Gospel concerning Church and State,”September 18,1897.

Taylor disliked the News,as official organ of the church,for taking any stand that would imply church pressure on a political body or on an individual to vote in a certain way.He could not reconcile the News’ First Amendment right to publish opinion with the separation of church and state as spelled out in the U.S.and Utah constitutions.In a twist of logic,he would have preferred the News to be silent on political issues — curious, because he touted the rationality of voters to identify their interests in a marketplace of ideas,yet he wished to keep some ideas out of circulation. Taylor should have known the impracticality of his message.A minority voice calling for self-censorship by the majority had little impact.

A break in civil relations between the church and Broad Ax may have occurred in June 1899,Taylor’s last month in the state,and helped precipitate his departure.In that month,Taylor urged readers to peruse a vehemently and humorously anti-Mormon periodical, Lucifer’s Lantern Letters in issues No.5 and 6 were “well worth reading by all who have never had the opportunity of doing so ere this,”he said. 52 To openly advocate that Utah readers seek out the publications of the enemy would have antagonized the church,which printed the Broad Ax.Taylor knew this and evidently did not care.

52 “Lucifer’s Lantern,”June 6,1899.For a study of the anti-Mormon themes in Lucifer’s Lantern,see Kaylene D.Nelsen,“A.T.Schroeder and ‘Lucifer’s Lantern:’His Views on Mormonism,”presented to the Southwest Symposium of the Southwest Education Council for Journalism and Mass Communication, November 1997.

Soldiers of the 9th Calvary arrived at Fort Douglas in 1899, the year the BroadAxceased publication.

When compared with his attacks on LDS church positions,Taylor’s common expressions of admiration for most church members must be called into question.Did he,in effect,censor his own statements about the LDS church in Utah before 1899,when he criticized what he considered to be political excesses of church leadership? It is an intriguing question that can only be answered by examining the contents of the Broad Ax after Taylor returned to Chicago,and no longer felt the economic and political influence of Utah’s dominant culture.There,in the early issues of the Chicago Broad Ax,Taylor let his true feelings be known.In a front-page article on August 12,1899,Taylor ran a laudatory review of the anti-Mormon book The False Star, by L.D.Gash,a former Gentile resident of Provo who had relocated in 1898 to Chicago.

There are many of the Latter-[d]ay Saints who are generous,honest and liberal,if their ecclesiastical masters would allow them to be so,”Taylor quoted the book as saying.But the great majority are so obedient that their file leaders have only to say, “Kneel,”and they kneel – “bob up serenely,”and they bob.But the better element would like to act free in all matters;but the stream cannot rise higher than its source –the priesthood.Occasionally a member attempts to rise far above this source but the inevitable power of the priesthood forces him back to his cringing,frowning serfdom or undermines him and wrecks him financially.Speaking for himself,Taylor added, “While we have many warm friends among the [M]ormon people ...no honest saint can truthfully deny but what the above quotation contains more than a grain of truth.”

Later in the same article,Taylor wrote of his distaste for the mixing of politics and religion in Utah,which he considered unconstitutional:

Some may not understand why the author has entitled his work The False Star. He does so upon the ground that the leaders of the [M]ormon church have violated and broken the main pledge they entered into with the Federal Government at the time Utah was admitted into the sisterhood of states.Therefore it is a false star,and it should not occupy a position along with the other stars which are placed on the emblem of American liberty and independence.53

Taylor not only endorsed the book in his newspaper,he also distributed it at greatly reduced cost as a premium to new Broad Ax subscribers.

Taylor also subtly indicated his public change of heart about Mormons. After moving to Chicago,he changed his published description of the paper in its Page 2 mailing permit to delete “Mormons”from the list of groups whose views were welcome in the pages of the Broad Ax 54

In July 1899,Taylor and his wife moved to Chicago and began publishing the Broad Ax in a new environment.The disputes with the News and the LDS church probably played a key role in Taylor’s decision to leave,as they highlighted the importance of religion among potential newspaper supporters and readers.But financial,career,and political decisions contributed to the move as well.None can say for certain what the strongest reasons for the move may be.In a column of comment by other

53

“The False Star,”August 12,1899.

54 “The Broad Ax,”March 3,1900.

newspapers about the relocation,the Pueblo (Colo.) Tribune said Taylor moved to a larger stage in order to contribute more to Bryan’s 1900 presidential campaign. 55 Taylor’s republishing the item gives it his tacit endorsement, and the move would make sense considering his adoration of Bryan.However, negative pressures as well as positive inducements had been at work.Despite winning a handful of recruits, Taylor did little to alter the political alignment of the majority of African Americans in Utah.If he was accurate in his estimate of five hundred blacks living in Salt Lake City,then his boast of having lined up two black women to speak on Bryan’s behalf and finding seven black men to work for the Democratic Party in the 1896 election was only a minor victory.In addition,racial intolerance galled him,and he likely felt that he would have had more social opportunities in a big city with a larger black population.

On the positive side,Taylor had made advances in circulation and prestige for his paper between 1895 and 1899.He had been an officer in the Utah Press Association and was a member of the Western Negro Press Association.He had been invited to give speeches to church,women’s,and political clubs in Salt Lake City and counted some of the Mormon church’s top officials as his friends.He even had hosted a mixed-race banquet for more than two hundred people to coincide with the 1898 election. 56 But he still had been unable to establish the Broad Ax as comfortably profitable.As much as he might feel accepted in certain social and political circles,his paper had reached its maximum circulation and influence.He claimed a circulation of about one thousand,but many of his readers did not pay,and he struggled to break even.57 Some black readers

55

“Press Comments,”August 12,1899.

56 “Omaha and Chicago,”September 3,1898;and “The Broad Ax Banquet and Reception,”November 5,1898.

57 “Looking Backward,”August 22,1896.

William Jennings Bryan.

could ill afford a subscription,being mainly ex-slaves,servants and adventurers.58 He had difficulties in attracting advertising,too.Display ads for the Mormon-run Z.C.M.I.department store disappeared after the early issues, and after Taylor stated his objections to the Bible and to church influence on politics,it was not likely that such ads would return.About a third of the paper usually was devoted to advertising,but ads in the later editions,as noted,lacked large retail concerns.Non-paying house ads for the Broad Ax and Emogene Taylor’s art studio also appeared regularly.

In the end,Taylor’s admiration for individual members of the Mormon church could not offset his apprehension about the role of the church in political and social life.Right or wrong,he perceived the church as meddling in public affairs and limiting the kind of open debate on political issues that he advocated.Taylor’s souring on minority journalism in Utah, along with the failure of his beloved Bryan at the polls in three elections help explain the shift in his voice,from moderation,jocularity and careful argument,to the more caustic,jaded view found in the later Chicago editions of the Broad Ax.In Chicago,Taylor practiced “preacher-baiting” and character assassination,and continued to push for economic reform.59 His paper thrived there for three decades.In a big city with a more heterogeneous population,Taylor’s voice found a surer footing.It found more tolerance than it had in Utah,even as it shifted away from the advocacy of tolerance itself.

58 Pride and Wilson, A History of the Black Press,108.

59 Spear, Black Chicago,82.

Old Lamps for New: The Failed Campaign to Bring Electric Street Lighting to Salt Lake City

ByJUDSONCALLAWAYAND SURICHARDS

The future visited Zion on the 10th and 11th of August,1880.On that particular Wednesday and Thursday,William Washington Cole’s world-touring “Circus,Menagerie,Aquarium and Congress of Living Wonders”encamped on Salt Lake City’s Washington Square to exhibit its inventory of marvels to the enthusiastic crowds which gathered from every ward of the city and from the rural communities beyond.Traveling shows were well known to Utahns,thanks to the territory’s new rail connections;but Mr.Cole brought something new to the mountain metropolis—“the sun-eclipsing electric light.”1 Sun eclipsing or not,the electric light—or more correctly the electric arc light—made its American debut four years earlier at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia,when a rudimentary arc lamp and dynamo designed by American inventor Moses G.Farmer and manufactured by William Wallace,a brass and copper founder in Ansonia,Connecticut, excited modest interest among exposition visitors.The light’s impact on the public imagination,however,was nothing compared to that of

Judson Callaway and Su Richards are co-authors of “Electricity for Everything:The Progress Company and the Electrification of Rural Salt Lake County”which was published in the Summer 2002 issue of the Utah Historical Quarterly. They have contributed to several community history projects for Murray City. The authors wish to express their appreciation to the Rocky Mountain Power Co.for its cooperation in the preparation of this article.They also wish to thank Sian M.Jones for careful review of our draft and her helpful suggestions for its improvement.

1

For the visit of Cole’s circus,see Deseret Evening News, August 9 and 10,1880, Salt Lake Daily Tribune, August 11,1880, Salt Lake Daily Herald, August 11,1880.See also M.B.Leavitt, Fifty Years in Theatrical Management (New York:Broadway Publishing Co.,1912),18-139.

Charles Francis Brush.

Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone or George Henry Corliss’gargantuan steam engine.In America,the light’s commercial prospects were anything but promising.Not so in Europe,where Pavel Nikolayevich Yablochkov (Anglicized as Paul Nicholas Jablochkoff),an enterprising Russian expatriate inventor living in Paris,had devised an arc lamp suitable for commercial applications.Dubbed the “Jablochkoff Candle,”each lamp consisted of parallel carbon rods that when charged with electricity formed an incandescent “arc”at their tips.For the electricity,Yablochkov turned to Zénobe Théophile Gramme,a fellow expatriate,whose forte was designing high performance dynamos.By the time Cole pitched his big top on Washington Square,Yablochkov and Gramme were illuminating streets,public squares, dockyards,and theaters in Paris,London,and other European cities.Masters of the electric light in Europe,Yablochkov and his financial backers made preparations to send their new lamps across the Atlantic.2

Electric lighting in America lagged behind its European counterpart until, in the nation’s centennial year,Charles Francis Brush,a young iron merchant turned electrical engineer,patented a dynamo superior to the celebrated Gramme machines.Then,in 1877,Brush designed an arc lamp which was more reliable,efficient,and economical than the Jablochkoff Candle and produced a better quality light in greater quantity.Aided by the generous patronage of the Telegraph Supply Company of Cleveland,Ohio,the young inventor designed increasingly sophisticated dynamos and lamps,which became hugely profitable additions to the company’s product line.By the time Cole exhibited his Brush dynamo and arc lamps in Salt Lake City,the Telegraph Supply Company (re-christened the Brush Electric Company) was the largest manufacturer of electric lighting apparatus in the world.3

Meanwhile,back in Salt Lake City,Cole’s circus and its electric light had left behind a vision of the future the city would not forget and which some of its residents would seek to realize.One witness,a reporter for the Deseret Evening News ,recordedhis per sonal testimony to the new illuminator. “[T]he electric light is a novelty,emitting a soft and brilliant luster like magnified moon-light,and causing the ordinary [gas] lamps to look yellow

2 For electric lighting in Europe,including the work of Zénobe Théophile Gramme and Paul Nicholas Jablochkoff see Émile Alglave and Jean Boulard, The Electric Light:Its History,Production,and Applications, English trans.,Thomas O’Connor Sloane (New York:D.Appleton & Co.,1884),bk.II-V passim; for Moses G.Farmer and William Wallace see Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin, Edison:His Life and Inventions (Cambridge,MA:Barnes & Noble Publishing,Inc.,2005),148-498;and Robert Conot, Thomas A.Edison:A Streak of Luck (Cambridge,MA:Da Capo Press,Inc.,1979),123.Thomas Edison consulted William Wallace before beginning work on incandescent lighting and used a Wallace-Farmer dynamo at his Menlo Park,New Jersey,laboratory.

3 Charles F.Brush,“The Arc Lamp,” The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine Vol.LXX (May 1905): 110-18,and “Some Reminiscences of Early Electric Lighting,” Journal of the Franklin Institute Vol.206 Issue 1 (July 1928):3-15;Harold C.Passer, The Electrical Manufacturers 1875-1900:A Study in Competition, Entrepreneurship,Technical Change,and Economic Growth 1875-1900 (Harvard University Press,1953),4-21; and Harry J.Eisenman III,“Charles F.Brush:Pioneer Innovator in Electrical Technology”(Ph.D.diss.,Case Institute of Technology,1967),31-76,93-120.

and foggy as if beaming through smoke.”4 A week later,on August 8, 1880,the Western Mining Gazetteer reported General Patrick Edward Connor,proprietor of the Great Basin Smelter,had “ordered the necessary machinery and will light his reduction works at Stockton,Utah,with the electric light.”5 The Salt Lake Daily Tribune took up the story on August 24 informing its readers that Mr.F.C.Phillips,representing the Brush Electric Company, had arrived from Cleveland to install electric lights at General Connor’s works in Tooele County as well as at the Old Jordan smelter in Salt Lake County.The Tribune also shared with its readers Phillips’vision of Salt Lake City’s streets illuminated by electric lamps more brilliant and efficient than the gas lamps then in use.His plan was “to build a tower,costing about $1,000 and on top to place four [electric arc] lights,each having 2,000 candle power.”This,Phillips claimed,would light the entire city and “...at the distance of half a mile ...make the finest print legible.Its beauty would be great and its cheapness certain.The machine,motive power,tower,etc., could be built for $4,000 ...and expenses of maintaining the lights,including pay for engineer,fuel for the engine,etc.,will not be more than $2,500 a year.”6

Mr.Phillips did not remain long in Utah.When the Tribune reported on September 3 that a trainload of distinguished guests had visited Stockton to see General Connor’s new lamps in operation,Phillips was not mentioned; instead,Charles Conrad Ruthrauff,former city editor of the Cleveland Sunday Morning Voice, represented the Brush Company.In short order,the Brush company’s new man in Utah set in motion a vigorous campaign to make Phillips’vision a working reality.7

4 Deseret Evening News, August 11,1880.

5 “Editorial Notes,” Western Mining Gazetteer, August 18,1880.The authors are indebted to Professor Brigham D.Madsen for bringing this primary source to our attention.See also Salt Lake Tribune, February 8,1887.

6 Salt Lake Tribune, August 24,1880.

7 Salt Lake Tribune, September 3,1880.For Ruthrauff’s newspaper career see Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, Case Western Reserve University at http://ech.cwr u.edu/ech-cg i/ar ticle.pl?idCSS and http://ech.cwr u.edu/ech-cg i/ar ticle.pl?idS1/2;and Mary Ruthrauff Hoover, History of the Ruthrauffs, 1560-1925 (Kansas City:Smith-Grieves Co.,1925),169-76.

GeorgeWashington Stockly.

AUTHOR’SCOLLECTION

Electric lighting was introduced to Utah by three remarkable Clevelanders.The most directly associated with the territory,and the only one known to have personally been present was Charles C.Ruthrauff;the others were the inventor Charles F.Brush and his patron George Washington Stockly,vice president and general manager of the Telegraph Supply Company.Brush’s technological contributions have been mentioned,but his inventive genius might have counted for little without the financial backing of George Stockly.Stockly underwrote Brush’s early experiments.When Brush’s inventions were ready for the market,Stockly turned them over to a corps of aggressive marketers—among them Charles Ruthrauff—for commercial exploitation.

Brush lamps and dynamos went on sale in 1877 and,in January 1878, the inventor traveled to Cincinnati to install the company’s first lighting system at the office-residence of Landon Longworth,a prominent physician.At 4,000 candle power,Brush’s lone lamp blazed as brightly above the waters of the Ohio as five of Yablochkov’s candles above the waters of the Seine,making Dr.Longworth the owner of the world’s most powerful porch light.More substantial deals followed,including one with Philadelphia dry goods magnate John Wanamaker,who purchased five dynamos and twenty arc lamps to illuminate the display windows of “Wanamaker’s Grand Depot”on Market Street.8

The first Brush systems were small direct current dynamos able to “burn”up to four lamps in separate circuits.Similar to GrammeYablochkov and Wallace-Farmer systems,they worked well if a few lamps were required (as at the Connor smelter),but were less satisfactory when several lamps were needed (as at the Wanamaker department store).Unlike his rivals,Brush understood the advantage of operating multiple lamps in a single circuit and made it his business to devise the necessary technology.In 1878,Brush completed work on his model No.6 dynamo,a more sophisticated machine capable of burning six lamps in a single circuit.It was the first use of the “series”circuit and a fundamental advance in electric lighting technology.In series circuits,the current passes through each lamp in the system,the total voltage required is equal to the sum of the voltages required by each lamp (that is,six 50-volt lamps require 300 volts;sixteen 50-volt lamps require 800 volts;forty 50-volt lamps require 2,000 volts)— hence the need for more powerful dynamos.Series circuits also require lamps which,if extinguished (either intentionally or by accident),will not interrupt the circuit and shut down the entire system like a bad bulb in a string of Christmas tree lights.The inventor solved this problem by equipping his lamps with a cut-out mechanism which automatically shunted

8 For relative luminosity of Charles F.Brush’s and Pavel Niolayevich Yablochkov’s lamps see “Electric Light.The Brush Dynamo-Electric Machine and Electric Lamps,”promotional brochure by the Telegraph Supply Company,Cleveland,Ohio,p.4,also Charles F.Brush,“The Arc Lamp,and Some Reminiscences,” George Gorwitz,ed., A Century of Progress:The General Electric Story 1876-1978,Vol.1,The Edison Era 1876-1892 (Schenectady,NY:General Electric Co.,Inc.,1981),14.

current around extinguished lamps.Finally,Brush developed a regulator which automatically adjusted current strength to accommodate changes in load (for example the number of lamps in operation).Here was the technology necessary to distribute electric light to multiple consumers from a central generating station.When Brush’s No.7 dynamo,a sixteen-lamp series circuit machine,entered the market in 1879,central station lighting became possible in quantity.Then,as Ruthrauff was ratcheting up his electric lighting campaign in Zion,Brush completed work on the No.8 dynamo,a behemoth able to power forty lamps in a single series circuit.9

Despite Ruthrauff’s best efforts,Salt Lake City was not the first city illuminated by a central electric lighting station.In San Francisco,William Kerr,president of the San Francisco Telegraph Supply Company,and an equally energetic agent,represented the Brush company.San Franciscans were already acquainted with electric lighting,thanks to Joseph M.Neri,a Jesuit priest and professor of physics at St.Ignatius College.The city was also one of the few in America where Jablochkoff Candles were in regular use.Two of the alien lamps were in service outside the offices of the city’s Chronicle newspaper,whose editor,Charles de Young,had brought them and a Gramme dynamo from Paris in 1878,hoping to promote the Franco-Russian lighting system in America.10

Another technology-minded San Franciscan was George H.Roe,who acquired a Wallace-Farmer dynamo and arc lamp as a debt settlement,but failed to find any profitable use for the equipment.Roe tried building a dynamo of his own,but that,too,failed.Still unwilling to give up on electric lighting,he joined with other local businessmen and,on June 30, 1879,incorporated the California Electric Light Company.Meanwhile, Kerr organized an electric lighting demonstration at Mechanics’Pavilion using Brush equipment and installed Brush dynamos in the Palace Hotel and at the Union Iron Works.He also secured from George Stockly an exclusive license to sell Brush equipment in California,Nevada,Oregon, and the Washington Territory.He then launched a Ruthrauff-like marketing campaign along the Pacific Slope.In San Francisco,Kerr and Roe came together to outfit the California Electric Light Company with a Brush No. 7 dynamo,a four-lamp,multi-circuit machine,and several automatic cut-out lamps.When the company’s plant at Fourth and Market streets commenced operation in September,Kerr and Roe conferred upon San Francisco the distinction of being the first city in the world with central station electric lighting.11

9 Eisenman,“Charles F.Brush,”31-71.

10 For details of Joseph M.Neri’s work see “Experiment With Electric Light,” San Francisco Alta, April 10,1874,reprinted in New York Times, April 19,1874.For a general account of electric lighting in San Francisco in the 1870s see Charles M.Coleman, P.G.and E.of California:The Centennial Story of Pacific Gas and Electric Company 1852-1952 (New York:McGraw-Hill Book Co.,Inc.,1952),51-71.

11 “The Electric Light in San Francisco,”December 26,1878,reprinted in New York Times, January 11, 1879,and Coleman, P.G.and E., 55.

Brush“two-lamp”dynamo, probably a model No.3 and similar to the ones sold to General Connor and used for the electric lighting demonstrations at ZCMI and the Horn smelter. Note the double-commutator and double pair of binding posts at left.

Charles F.Brush created the technology that made electric arc lighting commercially practical,George W.Stockly marketed that technology,and Charles C.Ruthrauff delivered it to Utah.A young man of twentyseven when he joined Stockly’s corps of electric light drummers,Ruthrauff superintended an electric light demonstration at Connor’s Great Basin smelter on September 2,1880, and then conducted a similar demonstration in the heart of Salt Lake City.That demonstration took place on September 11 at the Main Street store of the Zions Co-operative Mercantile Institution,more usually called “the Co-op”or simply “ZCMI.”12 At the time he was arranging the ZCMI demonstration,Ruthrauff was also negotiating with Marcus Daly,mine manager for the Walker brothers who owned the Alice silver mine in Butte,Montana Territory,and it was the mine’s surface workings than manager Daly hoped to illuminate with Brush arc lamps.13 By the end of 1880,Ruthrauff had sold a second plant to General Connor and arranged to install systems at the Horn,Germania, Old Jordan,and Morgan smelters in Salt Lake County,as well as at the Horn silver mine at Frisco in Beaver County.14 However,selling “isolated” lighting plants was not Ruthrauff’s only—or even his most important—

12 For details of the ZCMI lighting demonstration see Salt Lake Tribune. and Salt Lake Herald, September 12,1880,and Deseret Evening News, September 13,1880.

13 For details of the Brush plant purchased by Marcus Daly for the Walker brothers,see Salt Lake Tribune, September 12,1880,and January 1,1881;Cecil H.Kirk,” AHistory of Montana Power,Vol.1,32, Montana Historical Society.

14 For electric lighting at the Germania,Old Jordan,and Morgan smelters see the Salt Lake Tribune, August 24,November 22 and December 23,1880.

GEORGE B. PRESCOTT: THE SPEAKING TELEPHONE, ELECTRIC LIGHT AND OTHER RECENT ELECTRICAL INVENTIONS, (D. APPLETON & CO., 1879), 443.

ambition,for he promptly set about kindling on the shores of the Great Salt Lake the same electric fire Roe and Kerr had successfully ignited beside the Golden Gate.Ruthrauff set himself the task of illuminating Zion,not just with electric light,but with electric light from a central station.

It is not known how or when Ruthrauff conceived such a revolutionary concept.The San Francisco company may have been his inspiration,or he may have hit upon the idea independently,encouraged by the readiness of the Walker brothers and other Utah capitalists to embrace electric lighting. Regardless,it was well developed by the time of the ZCMI demonstration. Given the expense and effort needed to mount even a one-night electric light demonstration,it is unlikely Ruthrauff’s chief objective was simply to advertise his isolated lighting plants.Timing and location—Saturday night in the business district—suggests that the city’s merchants,not the territory’s mining and smelter magnates,were his intended audience.Ruthrauff’s choice of venue also hints at an effort to garner “grassroots”support for arc lighting.Organized by Brigham Young in the late 1860s,ZCMI was the premier Mormon “home enterprise”and symbolized the Latter-day Saints’ phobic determination to keep their economic destiny out of the hands of “strangers.”The endorsement—albeit passive—implied by the electric light’s association with the Co-op might allay local suspicion and,in any event,could do his plans no harm.

Ruthrauff may also have been looking for endorsement by association when he struck a deal with Charles W.Penrose,the new editor of the Deseret Evening News,to borrow the steam engine which ran the paper’s presses.15 The printing plant was located on the northeast corner of East (Main) and South Temple streets,from which point temporary wires were strung on telegraph poles to temporary lamps set up across the street at ZCMI.Details of the agreement between the agent and the editor are not known,but even if it was strictly a cash-and-carry arrangement,Ruthrauff could expect to gain a measure of good will by association with “Our Grandmother,”as the stridently anti-Mormon Tribune frequently styled the premier journal of the Latter-day Saints.16

Subsequent events,however,demonstrated that editor Penrose’s sympathy for the new lighting technology was more apparent than real.On the morning of September 12,the Salt Lake Daily Tribune and the Salt Lake

15 The year 1880 was pivotal for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Mormon community as a whole.During the summer,the Deseret News Company was organized to manage the Deseret Evening News (founded in 1850) and affiliated publications;Charles W.Penrose,formerly of the Ogden Junction ,assumed the duties of editor.At about the same time,John Taylor,President of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles,became the LDS church’s president,succeeding Brigham Young who had died in 1877.Taylor,in turn,was succeeded as head of the Quorum of Twelve by Apostle Wilford Woodruff.To serve as his councilors in the First Presidency,John Taylor chose George Q.Cannon and Joseph F.Smith.

16 During the 1870s and ‘80s,the Tribune referred to the Deseret Evening News and the semi-weekly Deseret News as “Our Grandmother,”“Grandmother,”or “Granny,”and always in a context implying neither affection or respect.

Daily Herald,bitter rivals on almost every other issue,each declared the ZCMI exhibition a triumph.The Deseret Evening News offered a more restrained assessment,emphasizing (where the Tribune and Herald only noted) the tendency of the electric light to flicker.The Evening News acknowledged Ruthrauff’s explanation that the borrowed steam engine was to blame,but offered its own theory:“Instead of being caused by the motive power,such as a steam engine ....the unsteady light is said to be due to the action of the carbon pencils as they move toward each other to be gradually consumed by the electric current.This unsteady movement,which causes the flickering,is said to be inseparable to the burning of the pencils.”17

The Deseret Evening News had a point.Reciprocating steam engines of the day could not maintain the uniform speed needed to produce uniform voltage.Small variations in speed,which did not affect conventional machinery,caused the voltage of dynamos to fluctuate and lamps to flicker. It was a defect inherent in all electric lighting systems at the time and differed from the flickering caused by the irregular movement of lamp carbons.Brush minimized that problem with a regulator which automatically adjusted the carbons,but there was little the inventor could do to control engine speed.Even Brush lamps were susceptible to current fluctuation. Gas lamps suffered from a similar defect,albeit for different reasons,but the Evening News chose not to mention that and asserted repeatedly the flicker phenomenon made arc light inherently inferior to gaslight.18

On the evening of Tuesday,September 14,following the ZCMI demonstration,the Salt Lake City Council,received a formal proposal from the Brush agent to illuminate Zion’s business district and adjoining neighborhoods in the same fashion as Phillips’proposal.The proposal appeared the next morning in the Tribune and the Herald.The Tribune,never in doubt as to what the city council should and should not do,favored its readers with an editorial preface:

The following proposition has been submitted to the Mayor and City Council and will be read with interest by our business men.That this city should be supplied with the electric light ....none will deny.It remains to be seen what action the City Council takes.The proposition is a fair one,as no money shall be looked for unless satisfaction is given.

There is another matter that should be taken into consideration by the City Council.At present all they [sic] citizens are taxed for gas whether the[y] reside within the limits of the gas lamps or not.The electric light would shine for all and make it pleasant for those who now reside far beyond the light they pay for.19

That afternoon the Evening News reported “[a] proposition was made to the city council last evening for illuminating the city for five years by the

17

Deseret Evening News, September 13,1880, Salt Lake Tribune, and Salt Lake Herald, September 12,1880.

18 Deseret Evening New,September 12,1880.

19 Salt Lake Tribune, September 15,1880.See also Minute No.128,Salt Lake City Council Minute Book 1,September 14,1880,138,Utah State Archives,series 82755.Hereinafter as S.L.City Council Minute.See also Salt Lake Tribune and Salt Lake Herald, September 15,1880.

electric light at a cost considerably less than that of gas,”assuring readers the proposition would “receive due consideration ...and while the good points of the new light are accorded their full value... proper regard will doubtless be paid to existing contracts and agreements,according to their letter and spirit ...[emphasis added]. 20 Although not explicitly stated,“existing contracts and agreements”referred to the city’s street lighting contract with the Salt Lake City Gas Company.

What Ruthrauff was suggesting was nothing if not audacious.In exchange for the five-year contract mentioned by the Evening News,and an annual remuneration of six thousand dollars,Ruthrauff promised to organize a company and illuminate the city’s streets:

...for a diameter of one mile and a quarter,with the corner of Main and First South streets as a center.This area we will contract to illuminate so that the light at the farthest limit from the centeral [sic] tower shall have an intensity of one of the present street lights at a distance of 100 feet,and the aggregate illumination of this area shall be four times as great by actual test as that afforded by the present lighting.The light is guaranteed to increase from the outside limit to the tower so that the intensity of the light at a distance of one block from the tower shall be equal in intensity to a 12-candle power gas light distant seven feet.21

This he and his associates would do if the council granted them “permission to erect an ornamental iron tower with a base about six feet [square] and 200 feet high,at some point at the intersection of Main and First South streets,so as not,however,to interfere with the present street car tracks...”Ruthrauff also asked his company be given “all the privileges now enjoyed by the gas company,in so far as stoppages by reason of accidents are concerned,and binding ourselves to protect the city in the case of failure to the same extent now guaranteed by the gas company.”22

As for the actual contract between the proposed electric lighting company and the city,Ruthrauff explained that he and his unnamed associates “expect to light the city under such contract by the gas schedule now in use,”adding “[i]f the city will furnish us,daily,water power sufficient to run a ten-horse power motor,we will deduct $800 from the above estimate.” Conceding “there will be occasional shadows of trees and houses,”the man from the Forest City assured the council “even with the shadows,the electric light will be such as to enable people to more safely and conveniently get about than by the present use of gas;”the light “is such as to admit of the safe carrying on of ordinary traffic as far out from the central tower as a distance of over two miles.”Ruthrauff also promised his lighting company would post an “ample”performance bond and ask no payment “until after the formal acceptance of the light by the city council

20 Deseret Evening News, September 15,1880.

21 S.L.City Council Minute No.128,Minute Book 1,140-41, Salt Lake Tribune, and Salt Lake Herald, September 15,1880.

22 Ibid.

23 Ibid.

in accordance with the above proposition.”23

Arc lamps and electrical apparatus manufactured by the Telegraph Supply Co.(later the Brush Electric Co.),of Cleveland, Ohio.Lamp No.1 (extreme left) is a double-carbon lamp intended for street lighting and other extended-use purposes.An automatic cut-out device made it possible for several lamps to operate in a single series circuit.No.6 is a current regulator which permitted individual lamps to be switched on and off without adjusting the dynamo.Referred to as“Dials,”regulators were used with the Brush No.6,7 and 8 model dynamos and were essential to central station electric lighting.

The city council referred Ruthrauff’s proposal to its standing committee on improvements,which invited the Brush agent to meet with its members,Alderman Henry Dinwoodey and Councilors Joseph F.Smith and Thomas E.Taylor (son of LDS church president John Taylor),to explain his plan in detail.The meeting took place the day following when,the Tribune reported,“Mr. Ruthrauff...placed before [the committee] sufficient evidence upon which to base a favorable report.It soon became apparent that the Council would not accept the [electric lighting] proposition unless the gas company was taken care of.”24 This condition could not have pleased Ruthrauff,but it could hardly have surprised him.Across the country,gas companies were rising in opposition to the emerging electrical lighting industry,marshaling their considerable financial and political muscle to quash the new technology in its infancy.Ruthrauff would expect as much in any city with

24 Salt Lake Tribune, September 29,1880.The regular committee members were Alderman Henry Dinwoodey,chairman,and Council members Thomas E.Taylor and Jacob Weiler.Joseph F.Smith was associated with the committee due to the absence of Council member Weiler.

BRUSH ELECTRIC COMPANY, PUBLISHED IN THE MANUFACTURER AND BUILDER, JANUARY 1881

an established gas lighting company,and especially in Salt Lake City,where the municipal government was one of the gas company’s principal stockholders.As one arc light critic observed,the city’s gas investment was not just a valuable asset worthy of protection,the dividends it paid were a dependable source of revenue;representing,in effect,a substantial rebate on the city’s hefty gas bill. 25 Even if the committee and the council were disposed to favor Ruthrauff’s proposal,they would have been poor civil servants had they ignored the financial interests of the city vis-à-vis the gas company.

The special relationship between the city and the gas company was an obstacle to Ruthrauff’s plans,but one he approached with confidence and cunning.From the outset,he tried to minimize the threat arc lighting posed to gas interests,insisting gas and arc lighting were not only compatible but complementary.Articulating an argument that became the standard electric lighting message,Ruthrauff dismissed arc lighting as a potential competitor with gas in illuminating homes,offices,and commercial and industrial establishments of moderate size,which in the aggregate constituted the most lucrative segment of the lighting market.He claimed,instead,that only in the less valuable realm of large-space and outdoor illumination were arc lamps superior to gas lamps.26 Such reassurance might persuade those with no financial stake in the gaslight industry,but it did little to assuage the fears of gas company executives and their stockholders. Ruthrauff,former journalist that he was,could “spin”his proposals with great dexterity,but he was too good a marketer to rely on artful words alone—even his own—and so looked for other means to secure the city fathers’approval.

His next move was to attack the gas company’s credibility with the public in general and the city council in particular.After meeting with the city’s improvement committee,Ruthrauff went to the gas company’s directors with an offer he likely hoped they would refuse:he would sell the gas company the necessary apparatus so that it could itself illuminate the city’s streets.(It was Deseret Evening News editor Penrose,after all,who suggested electric lighting was a service “home talent”should provide.) Here,Ruthrauff anticipated a common Mormon objection to “foreign” entrepreneurs like himself,that enterprises promoted by “strangers” deprived Utahns—or,at any rate, Mormon Utahns—of their “inheritance,” which siphoned scarce cash from the territory and hindered the “upbuilding of Zion.”Artfully,the Brush agent turned the xenophobic tables by shifting the onus of providing the benefits of the new illuminating technology onto

25

Salt Lake Council Minute No.149,October 26,1880,Minute Book I,162-4.

26 Salt Lake Tribune, September 12,1880,wherein Ruthrauff is cited by name:“Regarding the use of the electric light for other than the illumination of large spaces,Mr.Ruthrauff says it is a question of the remove future.Its adoption can in no way affect gas companies except for street lighting,and in this field it is simply unapproachable.”See Charles Brush,“Arc Light.”

the shoulders of the “home”illuminating company.It was a bold maneuver that could be easily defeated by simply accepting the offer.But, even if the gas men accepted his offer,it did not necessarily threaten the Brush agent’s plan for a central electric light station—on the contrary,it would be a compelling demonstration of the electric light’s utility.

In San Francisco,the California Electric Light Company was prospering,not by illuminating the city’s streets,but by peddling its ethereal wares to stores,hotels,and saloons.In any event,on September 21, Thomas W.Ellerbeck,superintendent of the gas company,met with his board of directors who agreed to refuse Ruthrauff’s offer.27

A week later,Ruthrauff went back to the city council with a new proposal.The technical details were more-or-less the same as in the September 14 proposition,the important change being the financial arrangements. Before,$30,000 had been the price asked for five year’s lighting service.Now the price was $25,000,with $17,500 for the electric company and $7,500 to buy-out the gas company’s street lighting contract.In the wake of the company’s refusal to provide electric street lighting,Ruthrauff offered to step into the breach and provide the service on terms both generous to the city and magnanimous to the obstreperous gas merchants.28

Stockly’s man in Utah had regained the initiative,for the moment. A suggestion that the revised proposal was finding support on both sides of Zion’s religious divide came on October 12,when William H.Hooper,a prominent Mormon banker and former Territorial Delegate to Congress, and 155 Gentile and Mormon businessmen petitioned the city council in favor of the revised proposal.29 Less encouraging,however,was escalating criticism from editor Penrose and the Deseret Evening News

On September 14,the day Ruthrauff made his first proposal,the Evening

27 Kate B.Carter,comp.,“Development of Lighting Systems in Utah,”in Heart Throbs of the West (Salt Lake City:Daughters of Utah Pioneers,1944) V:458.

28 S.L.City Council Minute No.133,September 28,1880,Minute Book 1,147-48;and Salt Lake Tribune,Salt Lake Herald,and Deseret Evening News,September 29,1880 There is an error in the recorded version of the amended proposal.The correct five-year cost payment to Ruthrauff’s company was $17,500,not $17,000.

29 S.L.City Council Minute No.144,October 12,1880,Minute Book,1,155-56,and Salt Lake Tribune, and Salt Lake Herald, October 13,1880.

Councilor Joseph F.Smith, associated with Salt Lake City Council’s Committee on Improvements.

UNIVERSITYOFUTAH, JWILLARDMARRIOTTLIBRARYSPECIALCOLLECTIONS

News published “The New Illuminator,”in which the writer philosophized: “[T]ime and thought and perseverance ...will some day develop ...the hidden forces and latent effulgence of the electric element [for] ...the benefit and progress of the children of men . ...[but] the hour and the day have not yet come.”The article went on,offering assurance that: At present,gas holds its own as the most reliable,equitable,easily divisible,regulatable [sic],controllable and extinguishable,economical and reliable general illuminator that has come into use.In the cities where its latest and chief rival [electricity] has made the greatest excitement,it still keeps its place,unshaken by realities or anticipations.For special purposes the electric light is probably its superior ...But for general public and private purposes gas is yet the popular luminous agent and is likely to continue so for some time to come.

The article appeared again on September 29,this time in the semi-weekly Deseret News.The Deseret News Company routinely recycled articles from its daily to its semi-weekly edition,so it may have been coincidence that “The New Illuminator”was revisited the day after Ruthrauff presented his revised proposal to the city council.30

Two weeks later,editor Penrose stated his position with even greater force:“The agent for the Brush light,”he warned,“has made new propositions to the city council.He is also endeavoring to make contracts in other places for illuminating cities by the electric light [a reference to Ruthrauff’s activities in Ogden,Utah].His enterprise is commendable and his propositions are plausible.But there is no reason why there should be any rush to grasp at the offers made by the representative of one method of using the new illuminator.”The editor continued,“The lighting of cities by electricity is yet an experiment.Improvements on existing methods are certain to be made.And there are several processes already for the manipulation of electric light,each claiming to be the best.”The critique closed with a Latin injunction “...don’t go ahead til [sic] you are certain you are right, and when you do make a change be sure to get the best to be had. Festina lente [hasten slowly] is a good motto in matters of public importance.”31

If Ruthrauff had responded in milder vein or,better still,ignored the article altogether,his cause might have been better served.Instead,taken by surprise and reacting in haste,the Brush agent fired off an untactful rebuttal with the ill-chosen title:“A Bundle of False Assertions in the Deseret News.”This appeared in the Tribune and the Herald on October 2.A copy also went to the Evening News,which printed a terse notice,“The agent of the Brush Electric Light in this city comes out this morning in a communication,the heading of which charges the News with making a bundle of false assertions.We will have no controversy with that gentleman,but we must deny the fact that we have been guilty of making false statements.”32

30 Deseret Evening News, September 14,1880,and Deseret News (semi-weekly),September 29,1880.

31 Deseret Evening News, September 30,1880.

32 Salt Lake Tribune, and Salt Lake Herald, October 2,1880, Deseret Evening News, October 2,1880.

Salt Lake City’s EastTemple (Main) and First South Street c.1880,where C.C.Ruthrauff proposed erecting a 200-foot arc light tower.

Penrose did not take the matter up again until “More Light—‘Hasten Slowly’” appeared in the Evening News on October 19. “There is no need to rush,”he argued. “Suspicion is naturally aroused when an effort is made to hurry any one into a contract without due consideration and careful investigation.Take time over this project.Find out for a fact how it succeeds,if at all,in other cities.Popular petitioning is all right,but the popular mind is apt to run a little ahead of discretion sometimes [reference to the Hooper petition].Wise heads will think deliberately,and wise public officials will follow the Latin proverb that we quoted in our former article,which in plain English is, hasten slowly!”33

The journalistic sparring resumed two days later when Ruthrauff’s reply to “More Light”appeared in the Evening News.Penrose was not mollified by its more temperate tone,replying in the same edition with “A ‘Brush’ With A Machine Agent,”deriding his adversary’s “rash and reckless assertions”and his “unfair and pettifogging manner”—language usually reserved for troublesome apostates and impudent federal officials.The editor followed with “Siemens or Brush”published on October 23 and “Is The Electric Light Dangerous”a day later:The former asserting the Brush

33

Deseret Evening News, October 19,1880.

system had demonstrated no clear superiority over its competitors;the latter suggesting arc lights were inherently dangerous,threatening their users with electrocution or incineration.The more prudent course was to avoid all arc lighting systems and await the development of Thomas Edison’s low voltage incandescent lamp.

Neither the techno-babble from the Deseret Press,nor the Mormonbashing from the Tribune ,encouraged Ruthrauff in his campaign—well might he have prayed for strength to overcome his foes and patience to endure his “friends.”Still,many stalwart Mormons had signed the Hooper petition.Ruthrauff,moreover,had heeded the improvement committee’s admonition to “take care”of the gas company by revising his proposal to include a dollar-for-dollar buy-out of the company’s street lighting contract while,at the same time,reducing the cost to the city.Given that his proposal already included a performance bond and a satisfaction-before-payment clause,Ruthrauff had reason to be confident it would be accepted.

Reason,that is,until October 18,when LDS church President John Taylor issued a manifesto opposing Ruthrauff’s proposal.The manifesto opened with the rhetorical question:“Why should there be such haste in trying a thing that is only an experiment,”then cited five reasons to reject the lighting proposal:

We are now being well supplied with gas as well appointed and of as good a quality as they have in other cities.

The Gas Company would be prepared to furnish an Electric Machine at as low rates as this stranger [Ruthrauff] can,if it is proven a success.If it is not a success we don’t want it.

No authentic reports have been obtained from any source of its feasability [sic] to light a city,although they have been applied for.

The City is interested in the Gas Works to the amount of $78,000—The Church to the amount of $82,000,and private citizens to the amount of $89,100 making in all a sum of $250,000.

Are we to allow this large and successful enterprise to be interrupted,injured and perhaps distroyed [sic] on the bare word of a stranger?

Taylor then fleshed out his objections,saying:

I am informed that all the power which this man [Ruthrauff] claims is that of selling the machines.The Gas Company can buy them as well as he,they are in [the] [m]arket for sale.If the electric light should prove a success ...[t]wo hundred and fifty thousand dollars of our own citizens at the behest of a stranger,would be jeopardized or destroyed,and why should he be given a charter and a franchise to perform a labor that the Gas Company are both able and willing to do so soon as evidence can be furnished of its being a success ...?

Are our own interests,our own Citizens and our home enterprises to be entirely ignored and are we to throw our lighting ...into the hands of strangers and enemies, and place ourselves in the power of every adventurer.

It is not clear for whom the manifesto was intended—the Tribune suggested the bishops of the city’s ecclesiastical wards—but what is clear, however,is that the head of the LDS church opposed electric lighting in

Salt Lake City if it was controlled by an outsider and threatened the local gaslight interests.34

One week later,on October 26,the day the improvement committee was to report back to the council,the council received a second petition, this one taking issue with Hooper and his co-signers and remonstrating against the Ruthrauff proposal.It was signed by Wilford Woodruff and 715 others,560 more than had signed Hooper’s petition.Woodruff was the new President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles,a council second in authority only to President Taylor and his councilors George Q.Cannon and Joseph F.Smith.The petition represented far more than the collective opposition of its signatories;it was a formal demand that the city council enact the Taylor manifesto.

The petitioners dismissed the proffered $36,000 saving on the city’s light bill,claiming somewhat disingenuously that “no reliable information can be obtained”regarding the Brush system’s performance in other cities.They went on to observe that “there are several systems of producing electric light”and suggested “common prudence”dictated that “before the [Salt Lake City] corporation shall grant exclusive privileges to any one of these systems [viz,the Brush system],the [other systems] should be investigated so that the best may be selected.”The petitioners went on to declare:“[w]e understand the gas company has expressed its willingness to thoroughly test these various systems,and ...to obtain an electric machine or machines of the best and most approved pattern and furnish the city with the electric light at as low rates as have been already proposed...”35 This “understanding”was dubious at best.If superintendent Ellerbeck and his directors had any such intention,they would not have treated the Brush agent’s offer in such cavalier fashion.

After reminding the council of the troubled introduction of gas lighting to the city in 1872-73,the petitioners warned:

It ought to be known that the city owns stock in the gas company ...to the amount of $78,700.From this stock is derived an income of $7,800 per annum.The difference between this amount and the amount the city pays the gas company per annum ($12,210) is $4,340 ....if $4,000 per annum were paid [to Ruthrauff’s company] it would be $340 less than the amount now paid to the gas company, in addition to the dividend derived from the gas stock which the city itself owns [emphasis added].36

The relationship between city and company was spelled out in a franchise granted by the city council in 1872,and a contractual agreement made between the parties the same year.By the agreement,the gas company was required to supply the city with gas for illuminating streets and city-owned

34 “Memoranda of Prest.John Taylor in regard to the Electric Light in Salt Lake City and of the action of the City Council pertaining thereto”John Taylor family papers,MS 50,Box 2A,Fd.35,454-5,Special Collections,Marriott Library,University of Utah.

35 Salt Lake City Council Minute No.149.

36 Ibid.Whether due to an error in calculating or in typesetting,the dollar figure contained in the Woodruff petition is incorrect:$12,210 - $7,800 = $4,410,not $4,340.

buildings within a thirty-six square block gas lighting district for a period of ten years;for its part,the city agreed to purchase gas exclusively from the gas company.If it reneged on the agreement,the city risked a breach of contract suit and the forced payment of the “several thousands of dollars” warned of by the Woodruff petitioners.What the petitioners chose not to mention was,of course,the $7,500 buy-out Ruthrauff’s revised proposal allotted to the gas company.37

Eager as the petitioners were to avoid litigation between city and company,they were even more eager to avoid competition between gas and electric lighting.“Already,”the petitioners warned,“we hear of steps being taken to secure the patronage of stores and hotels for the electric light,and that it is in contemplation to ask for the exclusive right,in addition to lighting the city,of laying wires to supply them.Let this be done,and of what value will the gas stock of the city be,or what will be the amount of its dividends from that source?”In the minds of the petitioners,stock value and municipal revenue were not all that electric lighting threatened. “Should such an unwise policy be adopted ...the people who use gas in their private residences would be compelled to fall back upon coal oil lamps for their lights .... and the gas company would of necessity be compelled to stop its manufacture,for the best of all reasons—it would not pay.”38

The steps being taken,which so alarmed President Woodruff and his friends,were the inaugural efforts to organize Ruthrauff’s central station electric lighting company.Ultimately,what the petitioners feared most—as did President Taylor—was not that Ruthrauff’s electric lighting project would be an expensive failure,but that it would be a costly success.Costly, that is,for the large segment of the city’s population—most of whom were Latter-day Saints—who would benefit little from the new electric light,but would suffer much if the new lamps caused abandonment of the old.In the interest of all who felt threatened by the new lighting technology,Woodruff and his fellow petitioners echoed the Taylor manifesto,saying:“the claims of our own citizens and the builders up of our home enterprises,should not be entirely ignored,and that we should not throw our lighting ...into the hands of strangers and those who are not identified with our city and territory.”39 The question of new lamps versus old had been thrashed out ad nauseam in the pages of the Deseret Evening News but in this brief statement, Woodruff’s petition framed the social issue of old technology versus new with greater cogency than the News had achieved in a month of frenzied propagandizing.The advocates pro and con had spoken,the decision lay now with the city fathers.

The decision came quickly.On motion by Alderman Alonzo H.

37 Ibid.,see also Revised Ordinances and Resolutions of the City Council of Salt Lake City, 99-104.

38 Salt Lake City Council Minute No.149,Book I,162-4.

39 Ibid.

Raleigh,the Woodruff petition was referred to the committee on improvements for consideration along with Ruthrauff’s first and second proposals and the Hooper petition. Then,in almost the same breath,the committee was called upon for its report.It was terse and to the point:

Zions Co-operative Mercantile Institution,scene of C.C. Ruthrauff’s electric light demonstration in September 1880.Note gas street lamps on street corners and in front of the“Co-op.”

While [your committee] feel that our present means of lighting the streets with gas consumes a larger percentage of the city’s revenue than the benefits to the citizens would seem to justify,and would be glad to see introduced a better means of lighting the city and at less cost,with these feelings we have carefully considered Mr.Ruthrauff’s proposition, but in view of all the circumstances we would recommend that the further consideration of changing from gas to electric light be postponed for one year,or until such time as the City Council shall be able to obtain such information concerning its adaptability for street lighting as will enable them to act understandingly. We would further recommend that the Mayor be instructed to ascertain and report to this council whether the present cost of lighting the city cannot be reduced.

Very respectfully, H.Dinwoodey

Jos.F.Smith

T.E.Taylor

Committee on Improvements

The city fathers had heard all they needed to hear and,on motion of Alderman Elijah F.Sheets,the report was accepted and its recommendations adopted.40

For all intents and purposes,Charles Ruthrauff’s campaign to illuminate

40 Salt Lake City Council Minutes,Report of Committee on Improvements,Minute Book I,166,and “City Council,” Salt Lake Herald, October 27,1880.

the streets of Salt Lake City had failed.The city council delayed for three years the committee’s recommendation to “obtain such information concerning its [electricity] adaptability for street lighting ...”In 1883 the city council approved electric street lighting,but on a limited and experimental basis.41 Phillips’vision of an electric light tower soaring above the streets of Zion would not be realized.For the present,the old gas lamps would continue to glimmer—“yellow and foggy as if beaming through smoke”—unchallenged by the new Brush arc lamps.Meanwhile,the Deseret Evening News beamed with satisfaction that the city fathers had heeded its advice to “hasten slowly;”but editor Penrose could not claim the council had closed the door on electric lighting—even when furnished by “strangers”from Cleveland,Ohio.As for superintendent Ellerbeck and the gas company,they could hardly take comfort in the report’s conclusion that “lighting the streets with gas consumes a larger percentage of the city’s revenue than the benefits to the citizens would seem to justify”or,for that matter,regard the committee’s wish to “see introduced a better means of lighting the city and at less cost”as anything but an official warning that better things were expected of the company in the future.The committee’s words might even be read as a rebuke to the home illuminating company for not taking the lead in bringing the new electric lamps to Zion. Predictably,the Tribune lashed the city fathers for toadying to ecclesiastical prejudice against a progressive Gentile “stranger”and the best interests of the community.

As for the Gentile in question,if Charles Ruthrauff harbored any such resentment,he kept it to himself,at least until he moved on to Denver to promotea central station lighting company in the Queen City.In an interview with Denver’s Rocky Mountain News in 1881, he confided:“There is one argument that our opponents [in Denver]…have not yet adduced.It was sprung upon us in Salt Lake city [sic]… [by] the editor to the organ of the [LDS] priesthood.It was that the electric current had been known to kill people….I think that editorial secured me the five year contract with Ogden…as it capped the climax of that foolish and ignorant question.”42 There was still the matter of a central electrical generating station for Salt Lake City,like the one in San Francisco—and the one soon to be running in New York City.The success of his plans for Zion depended,not upon the patronage of the city council or on the Deseret Evening News good opinion,but upon the confidence of local capital and the good will of local consumers.Personal bitterness does not sweeten the market—and Ruthrauff was the Brush company’s marketer among the Mormons.

41 Salt Lake City Minute No.16,January 23,1883,Minute Book J,544;Committee Report,February 20,1883,Minute Book J,599;Minute No.31 and Committee Report,Minute Book J,February 27,1883.

42 Rocky Mountain News, February 10,1881.Whether or not the Brush company’s Rocky Mountain marketer was genuinely resentful,or merely offering an excuse for failing to persuade the Salt Lake City Saints to abandon their old lamps for his new ones,is a matter of conjecture.See Rocky Mountain News, February 10,1881.

On October 27,1880,the evening following the council session,the Brush agent sponsored yet another electric light demonstration,this time at the Horn smelter a few miles south of Salt Lake City.Attending were Salt Lake City Mayor Feramorz Little,Alderman Henry Dinwoodey,and Councilor Thomas E.Taylor.The atmosphere was cordial and Ruthrauff the perfect corporate host.Even the Deseret EveningNews seemed mildly impressed.43 Neither Gentile Stranger nor Latter-day Saint,it seems,had given or received the final word on changing Zion’s old lamps for new.

43 Deseret Evening News,October 28,1880,also Salt Lake Tribune,and Salt Lake Herald,October 28, 1880.

Sisters of Ogden’s Mount Benedict Monastery

ByKATHRYNL. MACKAY

The American West is very religiously diverse,and it has the greatest percentage of people unaffiliated with a particular religion.Utah is the exception with the largest percentage of people affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) or Mormons.The state also has the lowest percentage of people who are unaffiliated with a particular church.The most prominent religion in the rest of the West is Catholicism.The Catholic Church has made a significant contribution

Kathryn L.MacKay is professor of history at Weber State University.

Sisters Mary Margaret Clifford and Estelle Nordick at the 1946 opening of St.Benedict’s Hospital.

in the West through the establishment of hospitals operated by several orders of sisters.St.Benedict’s Hospital in Ogden was one owned and operated by Benedictine Sisters.The community of sisters presents an unique study of inter-religious relations and the influence a small religious community can have on a dominant faith.The history of this community also demonstrates the changing experiences of religious women in post World War IIAmerican West.1

Mount Benedict Monastery is one of twenty-six Benedictine monasteries of women currently existing west of the Mississippi River.2 Benedictines follow the Rule of St.Benedict,written by Benedict of Nursia who founded the abbey of Monte Cassino in Italy around 529.The Rule is a guide for persons living consecrated lives in autonomous communities.St.Benedict’s Rule is summed up in the current motto of the Benedictine Confederation: “peace”[pax] and the traditional “pray and work”[ora et labora]. 3 Benedictine sisters in the United States are not “enclosed nuns,”but are rather “active nuns,”involved in a variety of public efforts to promote social justice,peace,education,and sustainable communities.They often define themselves as following the example of St.Benedict who “taught the nobility of any and all work when done for the love of Christ.”4

What became Mount Benedict Monastery was established in the 1940s to support the work of the Catholic sisters’endeavors to improve health care in northern Utah by founding St.Benedict’s Hospital in Ogden.This community of women religious was part of the largest health care network then in the United States.The network was developed during the latter half of the nineteenth century,and by 1917 Catholic hospitals accounted

1 See Ferenc Morton Szasz, Religion in the American West (Tucson:University of Arizona Press,2000); Clifford Grammich,“Many Faiths of Many Regions:Continuities and Changes Among Religious Adherents Across U.S.Counties,” Working Paper 211 (RAND Labor and Population,December 2004) in http://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WR211/ (Accessed May 30,2008); U.S.Religious Landscape Survey (Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life,2008),in http://relig ions.pewfor um.org/repor ts (Accessed May 30,2008).

2 See: Benedictines in the United States,Saint Leo Abbey,2004,http://www.saintleoabbey.org/benedictinelinks.htm (Accessed May 10,2008).There are fifty Benedictine priories (convents) in the United States which trace their origins from the first Benedictine convent established in St.Mary’s,Pennsylvania, in 1852.The founding nuns came from St.Walburg (Walburg’s) Abbey in Eichstatt,Bavaria,at the invitation of Father Boniface Wimmer,O.S.B.,to teach the children of the German immigrants.

Other sisters went from St.Walburg’s to St.Cloud,Minnesota,in 1857,moving to St.Joseph in 1863. In addition to establishing their community,which became St.Benedict’s Monastery,they also founded Saint Benedict’s Academy in 1878,which evolved into the College of Saint Benedict in 1913.The sisters established homes for the elderly and six hospitals,including the St.Cloud Hospital.

In time,eleven “daughter”monasteries were founded by members of St.Benedict’s Monastery,four in other countries.They form the St Benedict Federation,which includes Mount Benedict in Ogden.See Ann Kessler, Benedictine Men & Women of Courage:Roots and History (Yankton,SD:Sacred Heart Monastery, 1996) in http://sacredf aith.org/benedictine.aspx

3 See Timothy Fry,O.S.B.translator, RB 1980:The Rule of St.Benedict (Collegeville,MN:Liturgical Press,1981); The Order of Saint Benedict in http://www.osb.org/

4 See Sister Mary Margaret,O.S.B.,“On the Occasion of the Hundredth Anniversary of our Benedictine Convent,”unpublished pamphlet,1957,Mount Benedict Archives,Mount Benedict Monastery,Ogden.

for half of the American health care system.5 The women religious who came to Ogden understood themselves to be informed by personal callings and institutional agendas,by skilled practice and evangelizing activities,by pragmatic,vocation-driven work,and by deeply religious expression.

Much of the history of these highly educated women and the influence they have had in the area has been preserved in a number of oral interviews.These personal narratives express the sisters’understanding of their work and the lore which serve to define and confirm their community as well as enlightening us of the Catholic Church’s involvement in formal health care in Utah.And the interviews include stories,which by their repetition serve to position this Catholic enclave in Mormon Utah.6

Catholic health care in Utah began in 1875 when the Sisters of the Holy Cross from St.Mary’s Convent in Notre Dame,Indiana,opened a hospital in Salt Lake City.A year later the Sisters of the Holy Cross established St.John’s Hospital to serve the miners at Silver Reef in southwestern Utah. After St.John’s Hospital closed in 1885,the sisters operated St.Lawrence Hospital in Ogden for a short time (1887-1888) to care for employees of the Union Pacific Railroad and,eventually,the workers of the Southern Pacific Railroad.(Japanese working on the Southern Pacific Railroad received medical care at a segregated hospital established in 1905.) Union Pacific provided the building,medicine,and surgical supplies,and five dollars a week for each of its workers who was cared for.In return the sisters provided nursing care,food,cleaning,and maintenance of the property.The Sisters of the Holy Cross also served as educators at the Sacred Heart Academy,which was opened in Ogden in 1878.7

5 Sioban Nelsen, Say Little,Do Much,Nurses,Nuns and Hospitals in the Nineteenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,2001),151.By 1920,90,000 American women religious,belonging to 300 different congregations,served in 50 women’s colleges,500 hospitals,and 6,000 parochial schools attended by 1.7 million school children.See Carol K.Coburn and Martha Smith, Spirited Lives:How Nuns Shaped Catholic Culture and American Life ,1836-1920 (Chapel Hill and London:University of North Carolina Press,1999),2;and M.Ursula Stepsis and Dolores Liptak,eds. Pioneer Healers:The History of Women Religious in American Health Care (New York:Crossroad,1989.)

6 In 1960,Father Colman Barry,the historian for the Benedictine St.John’s University,Minnesota, interviewed five of the sisters who came to Utah in 1946;he called them “pioneers.”In 1980,Robert Giacovelli,who was then the director of the St.Benedict’s Foundation,which had been established in 1975 to raise funds for hospital modernization,interviewed fourteen of the nineteen sisters who had been in the hospital at its opening.In 2003,this author and a student,Kathryn Burnside,with funds secured from Weber State University,interviewed twenty-seven of the 129 Benedictine sisters who had spent some time in Ogden.The above interviews were all done at the motherhouse in St.Joseph,Minnesota. Archivists there have been for several years conducting oral interviews of the members.An additional twenty interviews of the Mount Benedict Monastery sisters and of some physicians,nurses,and staff who had worked at the hospital were conducted by this author in 2004 and 2005 with support from the Utah State Historical Society and the Utah Humanities Council.Transcripts of the above interviews are available at the Mount Benedict Archives.

7 See:Sisters of the Holy Cross, Holy Cross Ministries http://www.holycrossministr ies.org/Histor y/Histor y.html (Accessed May 10,2008);Bernice Maher Mooney and Msgr.J.Terrence Fitzgerald, Salt of the Earth:The History of the Catholic Church in Utah 1776-2007, 3rd ed.(Salt Lake City:University of Utah Press,2008),88.The Union Pacific Railroad Company had converted one of their buildings into a hospital in 1883 and hired physicians to work out of that facility.See:Richard Roberts and Richard

From the 1890s to the end of 1910,professional health care in Ogden was available at several facilities.

The Union Pacific Hospital continued to provide hospital care in Ogden until the General Hospital was organized by a group of physicians in 1896.They then took over the medical care of railroad employees.

A “City Hospital”existed in the 1890s,and for a short time (1896-1897),a county hospital operated in the basement of the court house.In 1899 a hospital was built at the State School for the Deaf and Blind.Japanese working on the Southern Pacific Railroad received medical care at a segregated hospital established in 1905.An emergency hospital was also built by the Harriman railroad system at the Union depot in 1906.8

There was an attempt to establish another hospital managed by Catholic sisters in 1909;however,that effort stalled when in 1909 Annie Taylor, widow of Thomas D.Dee,and their children announced they would build a hospital in Ogden as his memorial in the Ogden community.Dee (1844-1905) was a prominent Ogden entrepreneur,promoter,and LDS leader who had helped establish the very successful Utah Construction Company.Patients from the Ogden General Hospital were transferred to the Dee Hospital in December 1910.Five years later the financially troubled hospital was taken over by The Church of Jesus Christ

Sadler, History of Weber County (Salt Lake City:Utah State Historical Society and Weber County Commission,1997),217.See also:Christopher J.Kauffman, Ministry and Meaning,A Religious History of Catholic Health Care in the United States (New York:The Crossroad Publishing Company,1995),113.

8 Ogden Standard Examiner “Died at the City Hospital,”December 30,1890,“Financial Statement of Ogden City,”August 31,1892,“Ogden Medical and Surgical Hospital,”November 21,1896,“The County Hospital,”January 7,1897,“The Old Railroad Hospital,”December 3,1898,“Splendid Hospital Building,” December 9,1899,“Hospital in Ogden for Japs,”April 12,1905,“A Hospital for this City,”October 3, 1905,“Temporary R.R.Hospital,”December 24,1906.These newspaper articles are also found at http://www.lib.utah.edu/dig ital/unews/ose.html

Benedictine Sisters gathered around a piano for entertainment.

The sisters enjoyed hiking in the canyons close to the hospital.

of Latter-day Saints.9

By the 1940s with the outbreak of World War II,the Dee Hospital was inadequate to serve patient needs of a growing population in the greater Ogden area when the United States War Department expanded several military installations including the Ogden Air Depot in 1939,which later became Hill Air Force Base in 1945. 10 By 1943 more than 22,000 military and civilian workers were employed at the Ogden Air Depot and a large majority of them came from outside the state.Two years earlier the War Department built a seventy-five bed health care facility for those working at the Ogden Air Depot and other nearby military instillations.

After the war both civilian and military personnel at the base were greatly reduced, but the number of workers—both civilian and military—grew steadily as the Cold War intensified.By the 1970s,the base was Utah’s largest single employer.11

A survey of Weber County’s medical needs by the Federal Bureau of Public Health was conducted in 1940 which reported that the availability of 1.9 hospital beds per one thousand persons was far below the national average of four hospital beds.The next year the War Department announced it would support building a new hospital rather than expanding the existing Dee Hospital. Lacking all of the necessary financial resources for a new civilian hospital, the Weber County Commission,the Weber Medical Association,and the Ogden Chamber of Commerce asked Monsignor Wilfrid J.Giroux,pastor of St.Joseph’s Catholic Church to locate a group of Catholic sisters who would build and manage a new hospital in Ogden.Giroux’s first effort in 1942 was to invite the Sisters of St.Francis of Denver.His invitation was refused when the Federal Works Agency declared that the best it could offer in support of the project was to fund the building of a one-story

9 Intermountain Health Care,“Hospital History,”http://inter mountainhealthcare.org/xp/public/mckaydee/aboutus/histor y/ (Accessed June 5,2008).In 1963 the hospital was re-named McKay-Dee in honor of David O.McKay,then president of the LDS church.The LDS church continued to operate the hospital until 1976 when it divested itself of its fifteen hospitals which became part of Intermountain Health Care.

10 Helen Rice, History of Ogden Air Materiel Area,Hill Air Force Base,Utah,1934-1960,Volume I (Air Force Logistics Command,1963),14-15.The Depot Hospital was reduced to dispensary-type operation in January 1946 with the conclusion of the war.

11 See J.Whitney Hanks, Hill Air Force Base,Impact on Utah’s Economy (Salt Lake City:Bureau of Economic and Business Research,University of Utah,1974).

temporary building.However,the Sisters of St.Benedict of St.Joseph, Minnesota,expressed a willingness to come to Ogden to build,staff,and operate a hospital.12

Once again,there was to be a Catholic hospital in Ogden.And,just as Catholic involvement in health care in nineteenth century Utah was linked to the expansion of railroads and mining which attracted non-Mormons to the territory,so Catholic involvement in the twentieth century was linked to an expansion of military facilities in the state which brought in another influx of non-Mormons.

The story of Giroux’s success in convincing the Benedictine Sisters to come to Ogden is often told by them.The earliest recorded version is by Sister Estelle Nordick,one of the first sisters who came to Ogden.She served as the purchasing agent for St.Benedict’s hospital.

When the Franciscans withdrew,Monsignor Giroux took the Catholic Directory and scanned the list of names of religious orders of women.He went through the A’s and the B’s until he found listed a Benedictine convent with over 1,200 sisters.He said to himself,“If they have 1,200 sisters and do manage hospitals,they can spare some for this Mormon territory”’He wrote to mother Rosamond Pratschner,O.S.B.,of St. Benedict’s Priory,St.Joseph,Minnesota,asking if her community would be interested. Mother Rosamond has since said that at the time she had no intention of coming west, but she did write that the project sounded interesting.A week later the front doorbell rang at St.Benedict’s Convent and there stood Monsignor Giroux who said;“I came to get my sisters.”

Sister Mary Margaret Clifford,administrator of the hospital,added: “Many people ask us how we ever got into Ogden since Catholics are in such a minority.Well,I tell them,the choice was either a government hospital or the sisters;so they chose what they thought was the lesser of two evils.”13

Bishop Duane Hunt of the Diocese of Salt Lake was also very enthusiastic about the possibilities for the new hospital.He wrote Mother Rosamond that “a Catholic hospital is the finest missionary agency which the church can have.”The sisters understood it as an “adventure into a state not yet penetrated ...to any great extent by Catholics,...just the aspect that appealed to the missionary zeal of the majority of the sisters.”14

Wartime shortages delayed construction.However,funds of $929,000

12 See Monsignor W.J.Giroux,Radio Address,KLO,June 25,1945,Mount Benedict Archives.

13 “A Benedictine Apostolate Among the Mormons,” The American Benedictine Review 11(1960):255268.This article was based on a series of interview conducted July 20,1960,by Father Coleman Barry with Sisters Herena Mueller,Margaret Clifford,Estelle Nordick,Edicta Zierden,and Mary Gerald Maiers, who were among the first nineteen sisters who established the hospital and the convent.A transcript of the interview is available at Mount Benedict Archives.Sister Estelle repeated the story in her unpublished manuscript,“St.Benedict’s Hospital,Ogden,Utah,Becomes a Reality,”1977,Mount Benedict Archives. Sister Myron McGinley told the story to Robert Giacovelli in 1980;she added:“We were a big,strong community;so the nurses and all were anxious to go out,and the climate was so beautiful and the families were so good to us.”Sister Myron McGinley,interviewed by Robert Giacovelli,1980.Transcript available at Mount Benedict Archives.

14 Quoted in M.Grace McDonald,O.S.B., With Lamps Burning (St.Joseph,MN:Saint Benedict’s Priory Press,1957),174.

SisterVictorine with a polio patient,1950.

were raised from the Federal Works Agency; $28,000 came from members of St.Joseph Parish, $25,000 from the National Board for Infantile Paralysis,$20,000 from Ogden Community Chest, and the balance of the $1.5 million needed to landscape the hospital and buy new equipment was provided by the Sisters of St.Benedict. The site was blessed, ground broken,and Benedictine medals were placed in the concrete footings and foundationin August 1944.The hospital was located at the top of 30th Street only about a mile from the Dee Hospital,a location requested by area physicians so that they could conveniently work at both hospitals.Sister Myron McGinley recalled that before the decision was made to locate their hospital in Ogden rather than in Roy nearer the air force base,she was sent to look at the area.She determined that a downtown location was too noisy and encouraged Monsignor Giroux to find property “on the hill,”even though some in the community “didn’t think anybody would go that far to a hospital.”15 The first building completed at the new location was the nurses’residence.High Mass was celebrated July 11,1945.The organ used for the music was borrowed from the Italian soldiers’prison camp near by.16

15 Sister Ortude Nester,Notes,July 19,1944 - October 12,1945;Monsignor W.J.Giroux,Radio Address,KLO,June 25,1945,Mount Benedict Archives.According to Sister Mary Margaret,sixty-four local doctors joined the hospital staff and the sisters hired their own radiologist and pathologist.(Only one of the doctors,Frances Conroy,was Catholic.) Transcript of KLO interview with Benedictine Sisters, September,10,1946, Mount Benedict Archives.

Sister Myron and Monsignor Giroux were also responsible for establishing a Trappist Monastery in Huntsville,east of Ogden.Sister Myron’s brother Gerard who was a Trappist in Kentucky wrote his sister asking about making a new foundation.She quickly wrote to him and “told him all about Utah… Frederick Dunn,the abbot from Kentucky,came out.He would always stay at the hospital.”However, Sister Myron’s brother never did come to Utah,but was sent to establish a community in New York.

Over the years relations between the Trappists and the sisters continued to be very close.The sisters did laundry for the brothers,and the Trappists supplied the sisters with fresh produce.See Myron McGinley interview by Robert Giacovelli,1980,Mount Benedict Archives.See also Gerard McGinley, A Trappist Writes Home:Letters of Abbot Gerard McGinley (Milwaukee:Bruce Publishing Co.,1960.)

16 McDonald, With Lamps Burning,174.

One year later,on September 18,some seven thousand visitors toured the completed hospital.That day,Mark Lewis of Ogden radio station KLO toured the hospital and interviewed various sisters and lay nurses.His broadcast clearly informed the public about the modernity of the facilities and the professional training of the staff.Lewis seemed genuinely surprised at the high level of education of the sisters,some holding degrees from Marquette University,St.Louis University and elsewhere.Lewis in his interview asked Sister Myron if there was any special reason so many of the sisters were trained at St.Louis University.“Yes,”was her pert reply,“St. Louis has one of the finest medical schools in the country.”17

Sister Benora Gaida described the work between the completion of construction in May and the opening of the hospital in September as:“... hard work,...terribly hard work.We did everything from scraping all the windows,washing the windows,cleaning the bath rooms,putting up beds, and putting on mattresses and springs and everything.”Sister Estelle Nordick explained that construction workers “laid the tile,and we went up and scrubbed,on hands and knees,during the hot summer,no air conditioning....The men on construction couldn’t believe it...long skirts,you know,...all dressed up in black.”“We even made linens for the operating room,”recalled Sister Elizabeth Slaughter.Sister Herena Mueller described evenings when the ladies of St.Joseph’s parish would join the sisters in sewing “we made drapes,and drapes,and drapes.”In fact,the local Catholic community rallied to help complete the hospital.Sister Herena noted:“St.Joseph’s was very gracious in offering all their young people to help us.”18

Benedictine Sisters have long been part of a tradition of educated women,and also part of a long history of women’s leadership in Catholic organizations.They have held voting power in the Catholic Hospital Association (CHA) since it was organized in 1915.CHA’s purpose is to

17 Transcript of KLO interview with Benedictine Sisters,September 10,1945,Mount Benedict Archives.St.Louis University was founded as an Academy by the Society of Jesus in 1818,making it the oldest university west of the Mississippi.The medical department was established in 1836,graduating its first M.D.in 1839.However,in response to anti-Catholic sentiments,the medical department was separated from the university and not until 1903 was another medical school incorporated.See http://www.slu.edu.(accessed January 20,2009).

Although nurses were trained at St.Louis,women were not admitted to the M.D.program until 1948. Official papal permission for sisters to study medicine had been granted in 1936.Most sisters trained as nurses rather than as physicians,which would have challenged religious and cultural assumptions about women’s roles.See Martha R.Clevenger,“From Lay Practitioner to Doctor of Medicine:Woman Physicians in St.Louis,1860-1920,” Gateway Heritage,8 (Winter1987-1988),reprinted by the Bernard Becker Medical Library,2004,http://beckerexhibits.wustl.edu/mowihsp/ar ticles/practitioner.htm (Accessed July 2,2008).Also Bernadette McCauley, Who Shall Take Care of Our Sick? Roman Catholic Sisters and the Development of Catholic Hospitals in New York City (Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005).

18 Sister Elizabeth Slaughter interview by Sister Etienne Flaherty April 13,1989,transcript St.Benedict Convent Archives,St.Joseph,Minnesota.Sisters Benora Gaida,Estelle Nordick,Herena Mueller interviews by Robert Giacovelli,1980,

promote “scientific efficiency and economy in hospital management.” 19 Sisters in hospitals work directly in the various areas of medical care as well as hospital administrators and business managers.These were not stereotypic passive religious women,but skilled,assertive entrepreneurs in the medical marketplace.The success of Ogden’s St Benedict’s Hospital was founded on sisters who were highly trained and skilled in a well-equipped facility,and selfless in the care of their patients.20

St.Benedict’s Hospital,which opened in 1946,was an up-to-date hospital with a central oxygen distribution system,central food serving,germicidal lamps,radiant heating floors,and air exchange throughout the corridors.It had the only isolation ward in northern Utah,which was filled to capacity with patients from Idaho,Wyoming,and Utah during the polio crisis of 1946-1949.The area’s first orthopedic surgeon joined the staff in 1946.A psychiatric unit was opened in 1949 and renovated in the 1960s to care for alcohol and chemical dependent patients (ACT).The first social service department in a private Utah hospital was created in 1950;an out-patient clinic for low-income patients operated from 1949 to 1966.The hospital’s modern facilities enabled doctors to perform there the first exsanguination in Utah in 1949.The next year,the first oxygen “Cascade”system in the area was installed.21

The presence of such a modern facility impacted the other hospital in Ogden.According to Sister Estelle Nordick,Mrs.Lucille Taylor,Director of the Dee Hospital School of Nursing,advised Sister Mary Margaret not to open all the services at St.Benedict’s because she felt sure the sisters would be forced to close the hospital within a month.22

Sister Elizabeth Slaughter recalled that some Mormons were “...very

19 Quoted in Barbara Mann Wall, Unlikely Entrepreneurs,Catholic Sisters and the Hospital Marketplace, 1856-1925 (Columbus:Ohio State University Press,2005),173.

20 The list of Benedictine Sisters and their assignments suggests the range of education they possessed and the many skills needed to manage a hospital and sustain their own community.Of the eighteen sisters on the hospital staff at its opening six had RN degrees and three of those also had bachelor’s degrees. Three others had BS degrees and two of those had Masters.Sister Herena Mueller was superior of the religious community and director of the x-ray department;Sister Mary Margaret Clifford was in administration of the hospital;Sister Ortude Nester was the purchasing agent before illness forced her to leave before the opening;Sister Estelle Nordick also served as purchasing agent;Sister Edicta Zierden was the surgical supervisor,Sister Mary Jude Meyer served as the medical supervisor;Sister Benora Gaida,was the medical technologist as was Sister Laetitia Griep.Samuel Slaughter was a nurse anesthetist.Sister Davora Thielen was the hospital’s business office manager;Sister Floretta Schoemer was the religious superior; Sister Vestina Bursken was the baker;Sister Edwardelle Schroeder was a nurse;Sister Philomine Lutgen was the food manager;Sister Daria Duerr served as the medical record librarian;Sister Myron McGinley replaced Sister Electa Thompson as secretary;Sister LaRose Schwartz worked in the laundry;and Sister Amos Marie Dickson was the hospital’s dietitian.The sisters also had their own seamstress,Sister Frederica Hens,worked with the complicated habits they wore at that time.See “Dedication of St.Benedict’s Hospital,Ogden,Utah,September 18,1946,”souvenir booklet,Mount Benedict Archives.See also Sister Estelle Nordick,“St Benedict’s Hospital,Ogden,”15.

21 See Sister Estelle Nordick,“St.Benedict’s Hospital.”See also scrapbooks available at Mount Benedict Archives.

22 Sister Nordick,“St.Benedict’s Hospital,”20.

disturbed to think that Catholics were coming in to take over.Because they had a whole wing in their hospital they couldn’t open. They didn’t have the personnel to manage.They couldn’t understand how we could come and start a hospital and have people.”

Sister Keith Eickhoff was more circumspect:“I found the Mormons as clannish in Utah as the Catholics were in Minnesota.Mormons seemed protective of their territory and took good care of their own people.We called their elders when requested by patients and tried to meet their spiritual needs.”23

Sister Mary Margaret suspected that Mormons were being advised in their church meetings to go to their own church-supported hospital. 24 Even as St.Benedict’s was about to open,Sister Estelle Nordick remembered that during June 1945,a petition was carried house to house in Ogden requesting that federal aid for the Catholic hospital be cut off.She also remembered that Monsignor Giroux flew to Washington,D.C.to plead the hospital’s cause. 25

St.Benedict’s did open and by 1951 Dee Hospital was,itself,in precarious financial conditions.Kenneth E.Knapp was hired as Dee’s new administrator and invited community service organizations to lease space in the building. He consolidated departments and reduced personnel improving the hospital’s financial condition.A year later in April 1952,the Board of Trustees approved a ten-year modernization program.In 1958,plans to build a new hospital were announced.26

Both hospitals operated schools of nursing.The Dee Hospital’s nursing school began in 1910 and during its forty-five years,720 students became nurses.27 In 1953 the Dee Hospital School of Nursing developed a twoyear nursing course based at Weber State College and two years later

23

Sister Elizabeth Slaughter interview by Elienne Flaherty April 13,1989;Sister Keith Eickhoff, recorded statement July 6,1996,St.Benedict’s Convent Archives,St.Joseph,Minnesota.

24

“A Benedictine Apostolate Among the Mormons,”transcript,10.

25

Sister Estelle Nordick,“St Benedict’s Hospital,”11.

26 The new hospital at 3900 Harrison Boulevard did not open until 1966.“McKay-Dee Hospital History,”chapter 3.

27 Helen H.Farr,“Thomas D.Dee Memorial Hospital School of Nursing Alumni Association Roster, 1913-19-55,”MS 41,Special Collections,Stewart Library,Weber State University.

Sister Estelle in the hospital greenhouse,c.1950.

Sister Berno capping a graduate from St.Benedict’s School of Nursing,1951.

graduated its last class of nurses.The St.Benedict’s School of Nursing opened in April 1947 offering a three-year hospital based training program.The nurses’building offered living accommodations for 110 students;most graduating classes were between thirteen and twenty-five graduates.By the 1960s,the sisters deemed it impractical to continue their school and in 1966 St.Benedict’s School of Nursing became the center of operations of the Weber State College Practical Nurse program.The last class at St.Benedict’s graduated in 1968.During the nineteen years of the school’s existence 605 students were enrolled of whom 357 graduated.28

Very early on there was a great deal of professional cooperation between the staffs of the two hospitals.Sister Ortude and Monsignor Giroux consulted many times with Dee Hospital staff regarding equipment and furnishings.However,there were tensions between the sisters and local Mormons.Stories about Mormon reactions to the nuns are told often by the sisters–stories by which they defined their differences from the Mormons even as they shared mutual misunderstandings of tenets of faith. Sister Benora Gaida remembered that,“Sister Mary Margaret and Sister Estelle used to go downtown and the people would just turn around in the street and gawk at them.”Sister Estelle recalled,“people would peek out of doors at us,...and the children would say,‘Here they come;here they come,’and run for dear life.”“Actually they [Mormon male staff] pitied us because we were nuns,”Sister Herena noted,“since we were not married, we were not ever going to have children,and for that reason we could not possibly hope to attain eternal happiness.Because they felt bad for us (evidently they liked us),some of the men sealed us to themselves... a mystical marriage in the temple,or a spiritual marriage.”29

There were other Catholic sisters in Ogden as well.Sisters of the Holy

28

Sister Estelle Nordick,“St.Benedict’s Hospital,”259.

29 See:“A Benedictine Apostolate Among the Mormons,”transcript.Sister Estelle Nordick,interview by Robert Giacovelli,1980.This suggested practice was one of several misunderstandings.Sealings or marriages to living people other than to spouses are not a Mormon practice.

Cross had operated Sacred Heart Academy from 1878 to 1937,and staffed St.Joseph High School from 1875 to 1979.In fact,the Benedictine sisters lived with the Holy Cross sisters at the Sacred Heart building on 25th Street,which became their “provincial house,”until the nurses’residence was built and the Benedictine sisters moved there.However,the Benedictine sisters were more visible in the community particularly after the hospital opened.Over the years they cared for thousands of people at the hospital and additional thousands of others who came to the hospital to visit patients.In addition the sisters held parenting classes and worked closely with community volunteers.The vast majority of those persons hold fond memories of the care the sisters gave them.One example provides us with such memories.Colleen Whitley remembered as a child being stricken with polio.“I had polio and spent two weeks in St. Benedict’s hospital,then went back for follow-ups and physical therapy for another year.I love and adore those good sisters.I am walking around today because several of them pulled me through.”30

The Benedictine sisters were also the only community of religious to daily recite liturgical offices,the Catholic system of public worship,which often attracted lay members.The sisters worked hard to create a friendly atmosphere in the hospital.The sisters organized Christmas parties for the doctors,interns,and their children.Doctors also enjoyed periodic breakfasts prepared by the sisters and there were staff picnics.Sister Anne Malerich remembers “the place as a joyful place.The employees were upbeat and the sisters were too.I remember it as a happy place to be.”Sister Rebecca Schmidt’s analysis was that “we had to get to know the people and they had to get to know us.So,I think that’s one of the things that contributed to the sense of community....And they learned to know us as people.And they learned to know us as dedicated people.I think they appreciated that very much.”Sister Giovanni Bienick declared:“I had eleven wonderful years in Utah.The people were so nice.We enjoyed them.They were nice to us and we were nice to them.”31

The sisters were heirs to generations of anti-Catholic sentiments in the United States.Just three years after St.Benedict’s opened another wave of anti-Catholicism was provoked by various publications,some were bestsellers.For example,Paul Blanshard in his American Freedom and Catholic Power,was harshly critical of the Catholic Church’s involvement in public life,reserving some of his most negative commentary for the church’s involvement in medicine,particularly in relation to the care of pregnant women who might need therapeutic abortions to save their lives.32

30

Colleen Whitley email to Kent Powell,August 20,2008,in possession of author.

31 Sister Anne Malerich interview by Kathryn Burnside,September 27,2003;Sister Rebecca Schmidt, interview by Kathryn L.MacKay,September 27,2003;Sister Giovanni Bienick,interview by Kathryn Burnside,September 17,2003,Mount Benedict Archives.

32 For a study of Catholic health care and abortion see Kathleen M.Joyce,“The Evil of Abortion and the Greater Good of Faith:Negotiating Catholic Survival in the Twentieth-Century American Health Care System,” Religion and American Culture:A Journal of Interpretation,12 (Spring 2002) 91-92.

Mormons had their own views about the Catholic Church.A popular book in the 1960s was Mormon Doctrine written by Bruce R.McConkie.He characterized the Catholic Church as the “great and abominable,”church.His book was revised in 1966, which eliminated this statement.From the perspective of the Benedictine Sisters,it was their management or ownership of other hospitals in other parts of Utah that caused the most animosity.In March 1960,the Sevier Valley Hospital and nursing home in Richfield was put up for sale by its owner Dan Manning.He had offered the property to the LDS church but at the time they were not interested in acquiring another small hospital.Manning then contacted Bishop Joseph Lennox Federal who first offered the property to the Sisters of the Holy Cross.After they declined to acquire the hospital and nursing home,the Sisters of St.Benedict agreed to take on the project.Bishop Federal was hopeful that the Catholic Church would then have a foothold in southern Utah.They renamed the hospital St.Michael’s,and Sister Arles Silbernick agreed to become the administrator of the hospital and superior of the community.33

Sister Arles recalled that members of the Richfield community “used to drive up and down by the convent and shout,‘Get out of here,you old devils.’”Sister Arles mused:“It seems strange that the highest Mormon authorities,not only in Richfield but throughout Utah and Idaho were still very concerned and worked up about less than a half dozen Catholic Benedictine nuns who came to Richfield to minister to sick and aged

33 In 1959 Bishop Federal had approached the sisters about taking over operations of a hospital in Price,Utah,where the church had a large parish,Notre Dame de Lourdes.The sisters were enthusiastic about the project.However,the Carbon Country commissioners took control of the hospital.See Estelle Nordick,“St.Benedict’s Hospital,”27-28,and Sister Benora Gaida,interview by Robert Giacovelli,1980.

Sister Mary Patrick at the 1974 groundbreaking for the new St. Benedict’s.

Mormons.”34 Under pressure the sisters sold the hospital to the LDS church after only three years of operations.The sisters’work in Richfield did not go unnoticed or unappreciated however.The editors of the Richfield Reaper after the sisters left Richfield wrote:“It is doubtful that anyone can deny the Sisters have done a marvelous job in providing the finest medical care and service possible in a hospital the size of St.Michael’s.They had been cooperative in the community and lived up to their name and reputation as ‘angels of mercy.’The community owes them a debt of gratitude.”35

By the 1970s,the Benedictine Sisters in Ogden needed a new or remodeled hospital and a medical arts building.However,the hospital’s location lacked sufficient acreage for an additional building.A new site was found in Washington Terrace,just south of Ogden.The new hospital completed in 1977 was modern,efficient,and well-staffed.However,the presence of the sisters was reduced.Like Catholic orders elsewhere,the motherhouse struggled to provide enough sisters for its many ministries.A lay admi-nistrator, Robert Eisleben,was hired to oversee the new hospital.

The first St.Benedict’s Hospital,which opened in 1946,occurred at a time of greater participation of women joining religious orders.During the peak years of the 1950s,the financial and managerial innovations of Catholic sisters made it possible for them to own and manage one out of every five hospital beds in the United States.In 1968 there were 179,974 sisters in various orders,an all-time high.However,in the late 1960s the number of Catholic women who entered orders began to decline.The number of men entering the priesthood also began to decline.Reasons for that decline are beyond the scope of this paper.However,the decline affected all orders in the United States,including the Benedictines.36

Despite the decline in their numbers,sisters still worked at St.Benedict’s Hospital as trained medical professionals.Good health care was more than medicine and surgery.They remained religious women.In fact,during the 1970s,the sisters considered establishing a dependent priory.After studying the matter and following a tradition among Benedictines,the Utah sisters applied in January 1980 to the Council of St.Benedict’s Convent in St. Joseph,Minnesota,for dependent status.For thirty-five years,the ministry in Utah,which had expanded from health care to teaching in high schools and working in the diocesan pastoral center,was considered a mission of

34 Sister Arles Silbernick,interviewed by Kathryn L.MacKay,September 20,2003,Mount Benedict Archives.

35 Richfield Reaper,January 3,1963,quoted in Evin Rademacher,O.S.B.,Emmanuel Renner,O.S.B., Olivia Forster,O.S.B.,and Carol Berg, With Hearts Expanded,Transformations in the Lives of Benedictine Women,St.Joseph Minnesota,1957 to 2000 (St.Cloud,MN:North Star Press of St.Cloud,Inc.,2000),252.

36 John J.Fialka, Sisters,Catholic Nuns and the Making of America,(New York,St.Martin’s Press,2003),3. The Catholic Health Association reported in January 2008 that Catholic facilities still count for more than one-fifth of all hospital admissions in the United States,even though there are no longer any Catholic hospitals in the western states of Hawaii,New Mexico,Utah,and Wyoming.“Catholic Health Care in the United States,“ CHA,January 2008,http://www.chausa.org, (Accessed July 5,2008).

A pylon marked the entrance to the New St.Benedict’s Hospital.

the motherhouse community.Sixteen sisters residing in Utah signed the covenant agreement with the full realization that they would,at some time in the future,make a request to become an independent,autonomous monastery.37 The independent monastery became a reality on August 21, 1994,with eleven founding members.

In the intervening years,the sisters continued Catholic health care in northern Utah by forming in 1982 St.Benedict’s Health System,a holding company,which provided coordination of services to seven separately incorporated subsidiaries.This arrangement proved to be a financial and management hardship making it difficult to economically sustain the hospital.The new St.Benedict’s Hospital continued to be regarded as one of the best in the region.Additional health services including the Val A. Browning Cancer Treatment Center,the Willard L.Eccles Eye Center,the Eccles Critical Care Unit,a neonatal intensive care unit,and a Women’s and Children’s Center were added as successful fund drives were completed. However,these new services placed increasing financial and managerial challenges for the sisters.

In 1986,hoping to at least keep a Catholic hospital open in Ogden,the Sisters of St.Benedict negotiated a joint sponsorship with the Holy Cross Health System,which would operate the hospital as part of the Holy Cross Health System.The Benedictine sisters remained on the hospital board and retained their jobs at their hospital.Thinking that they had protected the Catholic character of their hospital,it was emotionally wrenching for them when in October 1993 the Sisters of the Holy Cross announced that they were selling all of the Holy Cross Health Care facilities in Utah to a secular hospital corporation,Health Trust Inc.After a great deal of controversy,the

37 The sixteen sisters who signed the document were:Sisters Arles Silbernick,Jacquelyn Dubay,Jeanette Klassen,Keith Eickhoff,Martina Schindler,and Norita Lanners all of whom eventually returned to Minnesota.Sisters Marjane Martens and Maxine Kaiser left the order.Sisters Francis Forster,Danile Knight,Jean Gibson,Judine Suter,Luke Hoschette,Mary Zenzen,Stephanie Mongeon,and Virgene Marx remained in Utah.Sisters of St.Benedict’s Convent Missioned in Utah,“Dependent Priory Planning Study,”January 1980,Mount Benedict Archives.

sale was completed in September 1994. Within another year,St.Benedict’s became the Columbia Ogden Regional Medical Center,a non-Catholic,for-profit,and proprietary hospital.38

The selling of health-care facilities was repeated across the country as many religious denominations relinquished their roles in health care,thereby eroding the “ecclesiastical”context of hospitals.The relinquishment of ownership and management of religious-based hospitals occurred in Utah as well.The Episcopal Diocese,owner of St.Mark’s Hospital,which was opened in Salt Lake City in 1872,sold the hospital to Hospital Corporation of America in 1988.The LDS church,owner of several community-based hospitals divested its hospitals to the newly formed Intermountain Health Care,a non-profit corporation established in the 1970s.The ethos of social justice which distinguished these religious institutions gave way to an ethos of business.For Catholic sistersthis meant even more,it was about identity and purpose.Who were they if they were not care-givers? What was their calling now? How could the Benedictines continue to follow the rule of St.Benedict emblazoned on the pylon in front of the hospital:“To care for the sick as though they were Christ themselves”?

38 With the emergence of for-profit health-care corporations in the 1970s,the health care environment has become increasingly regulated and competitive,forcing many hospital closures and mergers.For example,the number of Catholic hospitals decreased from 640 in 1990 to 601 in 1999.Kenneth R.White, “Hospitals Sponsored by the Roman Catholic Church:Separate,Equal,and Distinct?” The Milbank Quarterly,78 (Spring 2000):213-239; JSTOR,http://www.jstor.org/stable/3350451

Benedictine Sisters on the occasion of Sister Francis’ golden jubilee,1986.

Founding members of Mount Benedict Monastery,1994.Back row,from left to right:Sisters Virgene,Marilyn,Iris,Stephanie, Jeremia,Francis,Mary,Jean. Front row,left to right:Sisters Luke,Danile,Judine.

The answer to these questions for the Sisters of St.Benedict was to sustain their work to make Ogden a healthy community–spiritually and physically–by remaining actively involved in that community.The sisters had gone ahead with the work to establish an autonomous priory.Of the sixteen original signers of the 1980 covenant agreement,eleven ultimately requested independence.Sister Luke Hoschette explained:“[T]here continued to be need for sisters to give service to the church in Utah.With the decreasing number of active sisters in the Motherhouse community,the future of the Benedictine Utah Apostolate rest[ed] in the sinking of its roots in the local church.”39

Seven of the sisters who remained in Utah had family ties in Minnesota. However,as Sister Stephanie Mongeon explained:“We believed that we were being called to establish a permanent presence here.And we did everything we could to become financially stable,with good spiritual

39

Sister Luke Hoschette,“Monastery Tales,Mount Benedict Priory,Ogden,Utah,” The American Monastic Newsletter 25 (February 1995):10.The eleven sisters included Sister Iris Beckwith who worked as a nurse in the hospital;she had joined the community in 1986.Sister Francis Forster was retired.Sister Jean Gibson who had earned a degree from the hospital x-ray school and a Ph.D.in physics was in the xray department.Sister Luke Hoschette with an MBA from Notre Dame University was the hospital administrator in the 1960s and returned from Minnesota to work in hospital administration.Sister Jeremia Januschka had worked as a teacher and then as a trainer for deacons in the dioceses.Sister Danile Knight worked in the hospital pharmacy and in 1988 was appointed director of the Lady of the Mountains Retreat Center,located near St Joseph High School.Sister Marilyn Mark was trained in music and worked in various capacities in the diocese.Sister Virgene Marx worked in pastoral care in the hospital.Sister Stephanie Mongeon had worked as a dietician in the hospital but had moved into administration.Sister Judine Suter worked for the hospital ACT program,and Sister Mary Zenzen was a pediatric nurse.

growth,and with many efforts to increase membership.”Sister Judine Suter added professional development reasons for remaining:

I was born and raised and went to school in such a Catholic atmosphere.And to come here where I was a minority,it was quite a shock to my system.But by 1980,I was feeling pretty much at home here.So I wanted to be a missionary here and continue.And I always wanted to do something for the desperate.I had begun to work with those who were dependent on drugs and alcohol [the ACT unit].This was taking care of the most desperate.They needed more than food and shelter.They needed something much deeper.And so,I thought,this is just right....It was a privilege to work with the “challenging.”40

With funds saved from their salaries and proceeds from the sale of the hospital,the sisters built a new and spacious accommodation for themselves as well as offices and meeting space for the St.Benedict’s Foundation and a chapel where they continued their daily recital of liturigical prayers as they had done since the 1940s.41 Some sisters worked at the hospital even after it was sold and their salaries continued to sustain the community as a whole.42 Other sisters now volunteered at the hospital,doing all they could to provide the same kind of care to patients for which the Benedictines were known.

St.Benedict’s Foundation which had been established in the 1970s to support health care through the hospital now funded projects that related to women,children,and families in crisis,scholarships at Weber State University,and expanded pastoral services.The mission statement explains that the “Foundation,sponsored by the Sisters of St.Benedict,strives to enrich and nurture families in Northern Utah by supporting programs that create hope for the future.”43

It is their hope for the future that continues to sustain the sisters of Mount Benedict Monastery.When independent status was granted the community in 1994,there were eleven sisters.Three sisters have since died and the young woman who became part of the community for a few years recently left before taking her final vows.However,the sisters believe that their presence in Utah has made a difference.As Sister Luke explains:“We believe that we can be a viable witness and bring a sense of stability which is a unique Benedictine charisma,for as long as God wants....We believe if we live out the spirit of St.Benedict,our witness will be a dynamic force to vitalize the lives and works of men and women in Utah.”44

40 Sister Stephanie Mongeon interview by Kathryn MacKay,October 10,2004.Sister Judine Suter interview by Kathryn L.MacKay,November 9,2004.Mount Benedict Archives.

41 The sisters had built their first convent in 1965 on the campus of the old St.Benedict’s Hospital.In 1976,the sisters moved into two residences built near the site of the new St.Benedict’s Hospital.Between 1989 and 1991 six sisters returned to Minnesota,so the sisters offered one of the residences to the hospital. The apartment was renamed Christopher Inn and it became a guest house for families of patients.

42 Catholic sisters who worked in education and other activities usually received only a stipend and no retirement for that work.However,sisters who worked in health care earned compensatory salaries and benefits.Sister Luke Horschette,interview notes by Kathryn L.MacKay,July 7,2008.

43 See:St.Benedict Foundation,”Mission Statement,”http://www.mbm utah.org/StBenedictsFoundation.htm (Accessed July 9,2008).

44 Sister Luke Herschette,“The Changing Monastic Landscape,Mount Benedict Monastary,” The American Monastic Newsletter 30 (February 2001) 3.

Regulator Johnson, the Man Behind the Legend

ByCHARLESL. KELLER

Big Cottonwood Canyon is a major drainage on the west slopes of the Wasatch Mountains,the mouth of the canyon being about twelve miles southeast from downtown Salt Lake City.About six miles up that canyon is Mineral Fork,a tributary flowing in from the south.High in the southwest corner of the bowl at the head of Mineral Fork,at an elevation of over ten thousand feet above sea level,is found the remains of a mine known as the Regulator Johnson.That name became well known as a result of it appearing on the United States Geological Survey Dromedary Peak topographical map.It gained greater popularity when the Snowbird Ski Resort in Little Cottonwood Canyon,about a mile south of the mine,used the name for one of its expert ski runs.Many hikers have gone up Mineral Fork and climbed the endless switchbacks on the road to the mine and many skiers from all over the world know of,or have skied the Regulator Johnson run.The name has become somewhat legendary,as has the man behind it,in spite of the fact that no one seems to know much about him,if indeed he ever did exist.

Actually,he did.His name was John S. Johnson,one of many Scandinavians who

The mining town of Alta.

Charles L.Keller is a writer-historian living in Salt Lake City.He is currently working on a history of mines and mining personalities in the Wasatch Mountains.His earlier Wasatch Mountain history, The Lady in the Ore Bucket, was published in 2001 by The University of Utah Press.

immigrated into Utah in the second half of the nineteenth century.He was a member of a smaller group that drifted into the territory’s mining camps, in this case Alta,at the head of Little Cottonwood Canyon.Most of them were destined to spend their lives at hard labor,never achieving much beyond their daily existence.All dreamed of the riches and fame that would accompany a major strike,but only a few were destined to rise above the masses to achieve a modicum of success,to own mines and form their own mining companies.John S.Johnson was one of those who,in spite of repeated hardships and tragedies,managed to fare a little better than his fellow immigrants.

Johnson immigrated to the United States from his native Norway in 1863 at the age of nineteen and was living at Alta in 1870,the first important mining season in that mining district.1 Whether he had mining experience before coming to Alta is not known,but his name appeared on at least four claims that first year.2 The problem with identifying his claims at this late date is that during his first three years in the mining camp he signed his name as John Johnson,a very common name that he shared with a number of other miners.He may have recognized this problem himself because in 1873 he began to sign his name as John S.Johnson or J.S. Johnson,a practice he continued for the rest of his life.

During the first few years,his activities can be traced by the men who shared his claims,one of them being John Olson,a Swede who teamed with Johnson for over thirty years. 3 Of the four claims that first year, Johnson soon sold his share in three of them.The fourth was the Regulator,located high on the north slope above Grizzly Gulch and paralleling the Grizzly claim,which had been established only four months earlier,and was already making a name for itself.Johnson and Olson kept this claim and began working it.In May of 1871 they filed a claim on Johnson No.2,a doglegged plot located on the east side of and overlapping the Regulator.The No.2 was appended to differentiate it from an earlier Johnson claim recorded by a different man with the same last name.4 While Johnson continued prospecting,filing claims and working in other mines, he became well known as the owner and operator of the Regulator and Johnson mines.It was,perhaps,inevitable that he would become known as

1 The United States Census for 1870,Little Cottonwood Canyon census district,places Johnson in Alta on September 16,1870.The United States Census of Salt Lake City for 1910 and recorded on April 21 indicates he immigrated from Norway in 1863 and was a naturalized citizen.

2 Darlington claim,Little Cottonwood Mining District (hereafter LCMD) Book A,p.81,June 30, 1870;Montezuma claim,LCMD Book A,p.83,July 2,1870;Rock Island claim,LCMD Book A,p.89,July 20,1870;Regulator claim,LCMD Book A,p.100,August 9,1870.Mining recorder books are held in the Salt Lake County Recorder archives.

3 John Olson was involved with John S.Johnson on at least six claims from 1870 to 1872.In 1879 he moved to the Big Cottonwood Mining District where he lived at or near Argenta.He later became known as a recluse prospector and died alone in his cabin on November 2,1915.He was buried in an unmarked grave in Mt.Olivet cemetery.

4 Johnson No.2 claim,LCMD Book A,p.252,May 30,1871.

“Regulator”Johnson among his fellow Alta residents,a name that outlived him and still is known today.While the Regulator mine was not one of Alta’s major ore producers,it was consistent in shipping small lots for nearly thirty years.

Meanwhile,Johnson appeared in the news for other reasons:in June 1879,while working in the Evergreen mine,he was removing a faulty powder charge when it exploded,breaking his leg and mutilating his hands and one side of his face,his left eye reported being blown from its socket. He was brought into the city for hospital care and was left with scars and disfigurement that he carried for the rest of his life.He was thirty-five years old at the time.Years later,two Big Cottonwood Canyon residents remembered “his face had been disfigured,and parts of his hands had been blown off by an explosion.He always wore kid gloves,dressed in black,and wore a gold watch chain.”It was further reported he was left with a defect in one eye and had lost two fingers on each hand.His “left limb,”presumably his leg,was out of shape.5

It is not known how long Johnson was in the hospital or what he did after he was released.What is known is that about this same time,most likely before his accident,he acquired a bride,Louisa M.,a young woman fifteen years his junior,and moved into a house on Second South Street between Sixth and Seventh East in Salt Lake City.They bought the house in March of 1881,with the deed being in Louisa’s name only.6 During his recuperation he may have worked for a time as a saddler;the 1879-80 Utah Gazetteer lists a Johnson with that occupation at the same Second South street location. 7 In June 1883,nearly four years to the day after his Evergreen mine accident,a fire destroyed the barn next to his home but left the house intact.8

Meanwhile two brothers,O.J.and Cornelius,arrived in Utah and while living at Alta were involved in deadly avalanches.In March 1884 repeated snowstorms had increased the snow depth at Alta to record levels and as small avalanches began to come down,residents became increasingly nervous.On Friday evening,March 7,some of them decided to seek shelter and safety in the Bay City tunnel below the Emma mine.Eleven people left the village and climbed to the tunnel where they joined the

5 The Evergreen mine accident was reported in Salt Lake Tribune,June 15,1879,and Salt Lake Herald, June 15,1879.The recollection is in Josie H.Reenders and Lois M.Recore,“Growing Up in Big Cottonwood Canyon,” Beehive History 19 (1993).Further information comes from testimony in John S. Johnson vs Regina Johnson,#6561 (3d District Court,1904).Utah State Archives.

6 Deeds Q:587-8,ZCMI of 13th Ward to Louisa M.Johnson,March 19,1881,Salt Lake County Recorder.The recorded sales price was $2,020 for a lot of about one-third acre.As for Louisa M.Johnson, little is known about her or when she married John S.Johnson.Unfortunately,the Salt Lake County marriage records only go back to 1887.

7 The cited person’s initials were different,but initials were often in error,and with only three Johnsons listed it would have been a strange coincidence to have another Johnson at the same address,a Johnson who never appeared in previous or subsequent directories.

8 Salt Lake Herald,June 27,1883.

Emma fireman in the boiler room,presumably to warm themselves or to have a warm drink before retiring underground.While they were there a massive avalanche came down,carrying away the Emma mine buildings and snuffing out the lives of the twelve people inside.In spite of the raging storm,rescue efforts were begun immediately.The first body recovered was that of O.J.Johnson,Regulator Johnson’s younger brother,who had been living in Alta while working in the mines there.It took a full week before all victims had been recovered and a rescue party was able to take them to the city.Johnson’s body was taken to his brother’s home,646 East Second South Street,where his funeral was held on Saturday,March 15,under the auspices of the I.O.O.F.Burial was in a newly purchased family plot at the Mount Olivet cemetery.9

Almost a year later,on Friday,February 13,1885,Alta was visited by another killer avalanche.While the one in March 1884 spared the village, this one did not.It claimed thirteen victims and left the survivors in a state of terror,fearing more slides were to follow.Again the victim’s bodies were taken to the city,and two days later another rescue effort took place to evacuate women and children.Among this small group were the wife and children of Cornelius J.Johnson,another of John S.Johnson’s brothers. Cornelius could not have been in Alta very long,for in 1882 he and his family were en route to Utah from their native Norway.10 While the entire

9 The avalanche was reported in Deseret News, Salt Lake Herald and Salt Lake Tribune on March 11,1884. Further stories of the avalanche,rescue and funeral were in Salt Lake Tribune each day from March 12 to 16, 1884.According to Mt.Olivet cemetery records,J.Johnson purchased burial plot,#58 in Section E.

10 On July 7,1882,while Cornelius and Serena Johnson were traveling across the country to Utah Territory,they paused in Iowa where their first son,Joseph J.,was born.See Joseph J.Johnson obituary in Salt Lake Tribune,November 15,1955.

The effects of a snow slide on Alta in 1885.

family survived this ordeal, there is no evidence that he returned to Alta after this event.Perhaps two horrifying avalanches in as many years encouraged Cornelius and his family to abandon that locale.They moved to Eureka where they lived for many years before returning to Salt Lake City in 1900.

In 1885,after an absence of six years following the explosion in the Evergreen Mine,Regulator Johnson returned to mining in the Wasatch Mountains.In April of 1885 he and his wife placed a mortgage on their home,presumably to finance his return.By the end of that year,he had decided where he would focus his mining efforts and purchased a share in the Silver King No.2 claim located in the upper extremities of Mineral Fork in the Big Cottonwood Mining District.This was a significant departure from his earlier activities;until this time all the mines he had owned or claimed were in Little Cottonwood Mining District,in the vicinity of Alta.With this move Johnson would go on to become the dominant force in Mineral Fork mining,almost to the exclusion of all other miners.But he was not entering untouched territory for mining had commenced in the canyon as early as 1872.

There is a prominent fissure that runs northeast and southwest from Mill D South Fork on the east to Mill B South Fork on the west,crossing the head of Mineral Fork in the process.It was this fissure and its promise of riches that stimulated the miners of 1872 and all those who followed.In all cases they improved upon the work left by their predecessors,then left their work behind because of difficulties of access and transportation.The last attempt was made in January of 1884 when Luke Frances Flood filed claims for Queen of the Hill and Silver King No.2 in Mineral Fork and Mill B South Fork,thereby introducing the Silver King name to the fissure.

Lake Blanche in Big Cottonwood Canyon.

Two years later,in January of 1886, Johnson bought a one-third interest in the Silver King No.2 claim,starting an extensive period of activity in Mineral Fork and Mill B South Fork.In July of that same year he bought the rest of the Silver King No.2,and the entire Queen of the Hill claim from Luke Flood.11 Johnson immediately filed a claim he called the Silver King No.2 Extension in the head of Mineral Fork,adjoining the Silver King No.2 on its northeast end.12 It encompassed the portal of an earlier tunnel begun in 1872 and further worked by the Imperial Mining, Milling and Smelting Company in 1880.After working these claims for two years he filed another,Louisa,extending northeast from his Silver King No.2 Extension. 13 By this time the tunnel on the Silver King No.2 Extension was approaching or had reached the end line of its claim and could now be used to exploit the new claim.In 1890 he filed for five mill sites on the east,south and southwest sides of Lake Blanche in Mill B

11 Mining Deed M:53-4,January 27,1886,Hans Clawson to John S Johnson,433-1/3 ft in Silver King No.2 claim,and Mining Deed M:117-9,July 12,1886,Luke F Flood to John S Johnson,866-2/3 ft in Silver King No.2 claim and 1125 ft in Queen of the Hills claim.Hans Clawson was a partner with Luke Flood in the Silver King No.2 claim.

12 Silver King No.2 Extension,BCMD Book D,p.550,July 26,1886.Subsequently this claim was variously called Silver King No.2 Easterly Extension,Silver King Easterly Extension and Silver King Extension,causing no end of confusion in recorded documentation.

13 Louisa,BCMD Book E,p.66,September 3,1888.This was the first of a number of occasions when Johnson would assign names honoring his wife or other women in his sphere of friends and family.

The Galena Block at 176 South State in Salt Lake City where Regulator Johnson lived for a time in a rented furnished room.

UTAHSTATEHISTORICALSOCIETY

South Fork,one for each of the claims he had been working.14 Then in 1891,he put three claims on the fissure out on lease and entered a particularly trying period,both for him and the historian trying to research his life more than a century later.

It is difficult to determine exactly what took place during the lease and the decade that followed.Part of the problem is that names used to describe the Silver King No.2 and the Silver King No.2 Extension claims in legal documents had many variations and their records became intermixed and confused.Some transactions were never recorded and can only be surmised.Also,some property transfers were made involving only a part of a claim,yet another party’s litigation involved the entire claim.What is apparent is that several years after the date of the first lease the claims became involved in a litigation through which a portion of the Silver King Extension and Louisa claims fell into the hands of two fellow miners:Erick Levin and August S.Larson.15 They,in turn,used the properties as collateral for a series of promissory notes they executed in favor of the Utah National Bank,then gave a two-year lease and bond to miners Otto Hudson,Harry Hadley and Charles Horsfall,who proceeded to work the mines in the name of the Silver King Extension Gold Mining & Milling Company.16

Meanwhile,the Utah National Bank filed suit against Johnson to recover $1,582.50 for a loan secured by a portion of the Silver King No.2 Eastern Extension and Louise claims,with the verdict going in favor of the bank.In spite of all these difficulties,Johnson joined Levin and Larson in 1899 to form the Big Cottonwood Mining & Milling Company and transferred what remained of their various partial holdings of Mineral Fork properties into that entity.17 However,Levin and Larson still had the mortgage with the Utah National Bank and when they defaulted in their payments,the bank foreclosed.A lengthy court battle ended in 1901 with the properties falling into the hands of the bank.

All this turmoil took a bitter toll on Johnson’s personal financial condition.In November 1895,after he was unable to meet the demands of his

14 Silver King Easterly Extension Mill Site,BCMD Book E,p.100;Henrietta Mill Site,BCMD Book E,p.101;Silver King Mill Site,BCMD Book E,p.102;Silver Cloud Mill Site,BCMD Book E,p.103;and Louisa Mill Site,BCMD Book E,p.102,all dated May 24,1889.The Henrietta and Silver Cloud mining claims were located in Mineral Fork in 1886,but were never exploited.Nothing ever came of the multiple mill sites.

15 The details of this litigation were filed with the Salt Lake County Recorder and entered into the abstract records,but were never recorded.The litigation itself does not appear in the Third District Court records.If it took place in a lower court,those records do not survive.

16 Mining Claims Book D,p.310-12,September 1,1896,and Book D,p.306,September 5,1896. (Mining Claims Books were kept by the County Recorder to record mining contracts and agreements; they should not be confused with the books of the mining district recorder.) For incorporation of the company,see Silver King Extension Gold Mining & Milling Co.,Salt Lake County Corporation File #1549, December 12,1896.

17 Big Cottonwood Mining & Milling Co.,Salt Lake County Corporation file #2076,August 22,1899;and Mining Deed S:74,September 16,1899.

View looking east across the bowl at the head of Mineral Fork. The Silver King fissure created the deep notch in the cliffs. The picture was taken where the fissure crosses the ridge on the west side of the bowl.

home mortgage,his Salt Lake City residence was sold in a foreclosure sale.18 However,he and his wife were not evicted,but continued to live in the house for at least another two years.Then,as if all the misfortune that befell John S.Johnson over the past years were not enough,in March of 1897 his wife,Louisa M.Johnson,died.She was but thirty-seven years of age.19 Again,the home at 646 East Second South was the scene of a funeral.Louisa was buried at Mount Olivet cemetery,joining her brotherin-law,O.J.Johnson,in the family plot.

At this point in time,with Louisa gone,there was no reason for Johnson to remain in his home.He moved out and practically disappeared for several years.He certainly went to Alta to spend time in his Regulator and Johnson mines.It was reported the Regulator had shipped three tons of ore during 1898.In 1899 he briefly appeared in the Mineral Fork scene to join Levin and Larson in the incorporation of the Big Cottonwood Mining & Milling Company,and to transfer what was left of his holdings into it.In 1900 he was living at Alta,as shown by the census records.20 That year he incorporated The Regulator Mining Company to hold and operate his Alta district mines.He was joined in this venture by William H.Child,a Salt Lake City mining broker,and George W.Bartch,Chief Justice of the Utah Supreme Court.In spite of his reticence,he did know some influential people;this was but one of a number of cases where they joined him in his

18 Salt Lake County Recorder:Deeds 4K:538-9,November 15,1895.

19 Salt Lake Tribune,March,23,1897.

20 In 1870 he had shared his Alta home with fellow Norwegians Andrew and Anna Halvorson,but now he lived alone.Ore shipments in 1898 were reported in Salt Lake Tribune,January 1,1899.For his Alta residences see United States Census,Little Cottonwood Canyon,Salt Lake County,Utah Territory,September 18,1870;and United States Census,Little Cottonwood,Town of Alta,Utah,June 20,1900.

CHARLESL. KELLER

ventures.The mines and claims transferred into the new company included the Regulator and Johnson No.2,which had been operating for thirty years;the Harrison and Fraction claims that he had located in 1891 while the Mineral Fork mines were being worked by lessees;the Monitor,located in 1897 only one month before his wife’s death;and the Harrison No.2, located in 1899.21

The first few years of the twentieth century witnessed a period of resurgence of the mining industry at Alta.The new operations were characterized by companies taking up many existing claims and operating them as a single entity.One of them,The Continental Mines and Smelting Company, a New York State corporation formed in July 1903,bought a number of mining companies and claims in Grizzly Gulch above Alta and started large scale development.One of the corporation’s purchases was that of the Regulator Mining Company.The deed transferring the properties specified a nominal one dollar,so it is not known how much Johnson actually received,but it must have been enough to allow him to make a significant change in his lifestyle.22 This was manifested by two actions:he got married again and he purchased a ten-acre plot of land on State Street south of Salt Lake City.

The marriage was another of the disasters that seemed to plague John S. Johnson.He met the woman shortly after the sale of his Regulator Mining Company.It may be unkind to imply that his newly acquired wealth attracted this woman,but the events that followed strongly suggest that was the case.After knowing her only five months,the two ran off to San Francisco and were married on March 26,1904.They returned to Salt Lake City a few days later,staying in his furnished room in the Galena Block at 176 South State Street until he rented a house at 22 Covey Court.Marital bliss lasted less than two weeks,he said,before she called him vile names and threatened his life.He further claimed that in July she threatened to kill him with a butcher knife and razor.Then in August she drove him from the house and he moved into a room at the Galena Block.He immediately placed a notice in the newspaper disclaiming responsibility for any debts contracted by his wife,Regina Johnson,and commenced divorce proceedings.The court granted the divorce on October 30,1904,and ruled the defendant was not entitled to alimony,but required Johnson to pay the court costs.23

The land purchase was a more successful venture than his marriage.He bought the ten-acre lot between State and Main Streets in April 1904,

21 The Regulator Mining Company,Salt Lake County Corporation file #3127,July 27,1900.The claims were recorded as follows:Harrison & Fraction,both in LCMD Book D,p.369,August 6,1891; Monitor,LCMD Book E,p.87,February 21,1897;Harrison No.2,LCMD Book G,p.27,March 14,1899.

22 The Continental Mines and Smelting Corporation,Utah State Division of Corporations and Commercial Code,file #4485,July 21,1903.Utah State Archives.Mining Deed U:72-3,September 23,1903, Regulator Mining Co.,et al,to Continental Mines and Smelting Corp.

23 John S.Johnson vs Regina Johnson,#6561 (3d District Court.,1904).Utah State Archives.

shortly after he and his bride returned from San Francisco. The purchase price of four thousand dollars may well have triggered the initial marital discord.He first used the land to raise grain,but several years later,at the end of 1909, he had the lot platted into 104 building lots.Two streets running east and west between State and Main streets were included in the plat to gain access to all those lots.He named the streets Louise and Cordelia,thereby introducing both names to the county’s street roster.It is not known who Cordelia might have been,but Louise was certainly a tribute to his first wife,Louisa,who used both names with equal ease.Today both street names survive,although Cordelia is still restricted to its one-block length.But Louise has grown to include several discontinuous segments,the longest being on the east side of the city in the Canyon Rim area, a mute tribute to an unknown woman.

The heavy line is the crest of the ridge between the three forks, with Mineral Fork in upper center. Mill B South Fork in lower left, and Mill D South Fork on the right. The Silver King fissure follows the center line of the four dark claims, Silver King Nos.1 to 4.

In March of 1910,he dedicated the plat as Johnson’s State Street Addition. 24 He kept two lots at the corner of Cordelia and State Streets for himself,where he built a small house which became his home for the rest of his life.While he continued his mining activities,he also listed his profession as real estate in the annual Salt Lake City directories.Once before,back in 1890,he was involved with real estate.At that time he had started a business,J.S.Johnson & Co.,which dealt in mining and real estate.He had accumulated a number of properties in the city which were the basis of his real estate activities. However,that venture ended when the properties,all heavily mortgaged,

24 Deeds 6S:363-6,April 27,1904,Lot 12,Ten Acre Plat A.Deeds 65:365-6,December 20,1909, Agreement to plat Lot 12,Block 33,Ten Acre Plat A into 104 building lots. Johnson’s State Street Addition, Subdivision Plat F-46,March 28,1910,Salt Lake County Recorder.

John S.Johnson’s claims in Mineral Fork,Mill B South Fork and Mill D South Fork in 1911.

were lost during his financial hardships of the 1890s.

Following his divorce,he returned to Alta to work two claims he had recorded in 1902 and 1903,shortly before he sold his Grizzly Gulch mines to the Continental Mines Company.They were the Christina Johnson and Last Chance,located on the north side of the divide between Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons in the extreme southeast corner of Silver Fork.The claims held enough promise that he had them surveyed for patent,then went back into Grizzly Gulch and relocated the old abandoned Victoria Tunnel,renaming it the Christina Johnson Tunnel and extended it under the divide to exploit his claims.25 By the time the patents were issued,in 1912,he was back in Mineral Fork,when he incorporated the Alta Prince Mining Company to hold the two properties.While these mines may have been worked for a while,there is no record of their having produced any significant amount of ore or being involved in acquisitions by larger mining companies.26

In January 1905,a curious event affecting Mineral Fork mining activity took place.Nothing much had happened since the litigious events of the previous decade.All claims of that period were nothing more than claims, so it was necessary to have annual work done in order to maintain ownership.Since that had not happened,all were available for relocation.In January 1905,four claims:Silver King No.1 through No.4,were filed with the Salt Lake County Recorder.27 They ran along the Silver King fissure from northeast to southwest and were,in fact,coincident with the Louisa, Silver King No.2 Extension,Silver King No.2 and Queen of the Hill claims of the 1890s.

An interesting precursor to this event was an action taken by John S. Johnson in September of 1896.While his Mineral Fork claims were being worked by lessees,or otherwise involved in litigation,he went to work in the old Queen Of The Hill mine at the southwest end of the fissure in Mill B South Fork.It had not been worked for several years so in September 1896 he relocated the claim,this time calling it the Silver King No.4,and filed it in his wife’s name.28 While it is not known what Louisa M.Johnson did in the city,it is known that she was not active on the mining scene.This is the first and only claim found in her name.It is not likely she ever saw the workings on this claim,for they were located in the most inaccessible and rugged part of Mill B South Fork.The name he chose for this claim is

25 Christina Johnson claim,BCMD Book J,p.30,July 21,1902.It is not known who Christina Johnson might have been,but this is another example of Johnson naming things after women acquaintances.Last Chance,BCMD Book I,p.519,July 7,1903.Mineral Surveys #5419,Last Thance,and #5424,Christina Johnson,both surveyed October 7-8,1905,BLM office,Salt Lake City.In the Mineral Survey and patent Last Chance is called Last Thance.Christina Johnson Tunnel,LCMD Book M,p.37,July 23,1906.

26 Alta Prince Mining Company,Salt Lake County Corporation file #7627,May 19,1915.

27 Silver King No.1,BCMD Book O,p.28;Silver King No.2,and Silver King No.3,both in BCMD Book O,p.27;Silver King No.4,BCMD Book O,p.26.All were dated January 5,1905.

28 Silver King No.4,BCMD Book F,p.446,September 14,1896.

interesting,for at this time there was no Silver King No.3,so there was no apparent reason to call it No.4.Perhaps Johnson was looking into the future, anticipating a change of names for all claims on the fissure.And in January 1905,that happened.

The other interesting point about these four claims is they were made in the name of James Chipman.Although he had mining interests in the past, this man was not a prospector;he was a banker,originally from American Fork. When Utah became a state he came to Salt Lake City where he served as the first State Treasurer.In 1898 he was selected to assume the presidency of the Utah National Bank,taking the place of Joseph M. Stoutt,who was asked to resign after some alleged irregularities.The Utah National Bank had been involved in many of the Mineral Fork mine mortgages and,after all the smoke cleared,was left holding most of the claims.The only disposition made of any of that property was in November of 1901 when the bank gave John S.Johnson a quit claim deed for 333 1/3 feet of the Silver King No.2 Extension claim.29

At that time James Chipman was still president of the bank,so the two men obviously knew each other.Chipman may have filed these claims as a proxy for Johnson,but almost two years passed before he did anything with them.In December 1906,he gave Johnson a quit claim deed for one-half interest in Silver King Nos.1,3 and 4,and 600 feet of Silver King No.2.30 The deed quoted a nominal one dollar for this transaction,so it is not known if any amount of money actually changed hands.Chipman certainly wasn’t going up into Mineral Fork to work the claims,but it appears he had a desire to hold an interest in them.Perhaps Johnson was concerned about that because several years later he obtained an option to purchase the remaining interest in the claims for one thousand dollars and agreed to

29 Mining Deed T:25,November,27,1901,Utah National Bank to John S.Johnson.

30 Mining Claims W:259-60,December 6,1906,James Chipman to John S.Johnson.

Remains of a stone cabin at the Silver King No.3 site in Mill B South Fork.

CHARLESL. KELLER

perform the requisite annual labor required by law to hold them.31

This last action seemed to spur Johnson into a frenzy of activity in Mineral Fork.In a period of less than two weeks in the late spring of 1911, he filed fourteen claims that completely covered the upper bowl of Mineral Fork and the southeastern part of Mill B South Fork.32 He then had the four Silver King claims surveyed for patent.Finally,in 1916,Chipman deeded his share of the Silver King properties over to Johnson,again for a nominal one dollar.33

Johnson immediately enlisted several Salt Lake City businessmen to join him in forming the Big Cottonwood Silver King Mining and Milling Company and transferred all his Mineral Fork holdings into it. 34 That included the four now patented Silver King claims and the fourteen other claims he made five years earlier.With that action it appears he was content to rest in his home on State Street and left the mining to men younger than his seventy- two years.Nothing further appears in the records until 1924 when he put his Mineral Fork properties out on lease and bond,giving the lessee a two-year privilege of buying all the properties for $12,500.35 But the following year,on July 11,1925,John S.Johnson,age eighty-one,passed away at the Salt Lake County Hospital.He was buried in his family plot at the Mount Olivet cemetery next to his wife,Louisa, and near his two brothers,O.J.who died in the Alta avalanche in 1884 and Cornelius,who died in 1911.36

John S.Johnson left this life without any children of his own.His closest living relatives were his sister-in-law,Serena Johnson,widow of his brother Cornelius,and her six children.The oldest of them,Mary Johnson,was appointed executor of Johnson’s estate.When she provided the court with an inventory of his estate,it was learned he died almost a pauper.While he held a large number of shares in both the Big Cottonwood Silver King Mining & Milling Company and the Alta Prince Mining Company,they

31 Mining Deed E:584-5,Agreement between James Chipman and John S.Johnson,August 20,1910.

32 The fourteen claims were:Christine Johnson,Silver King North Extension,Cordelia Numbers 1 to 3,Sunnyside,and Caladonia,all filed on June 28,1911.Also Silver King North Extension No.2,Waterfall Numbers 1 to 3,Elora and Elora Numbers 2 and 3,filed on July 8,1911,BCMD Book R,pp.77-92.

33 Mineral Survey #6110,Silver King Nos.1 & 2,August 5-8,1913.Mineral Survey 6307,Silver King Nos.3 & 4,August 25-28,1914,both in BLM office,Salt Lake City.Mining Deeds X:318-9,April 14, 1916,James Chipman & wife Selina to John S.Johnson,Silver King Nos.1 & 2.Mining Deeds W:570, April 14,1916,James Chipman to John S.Johnson,Silver King Nos.3 & 4.

34 Big Cottonwood Silver King Mining and Milling Company,Salt Lake County Corporation file #12174, September 28,1916.He was joined in this venture by realtor W.S.Rigby,lawyer H.C.Edwards and mining engineer M.M.Johnson,all well known and prominent in the Salt Lake business and mining community.

35 Deeds 3W:45-6,August 15,1924,Big Cottonwood Silver King Mining & Milling Co.to Moses Paggi,Lessee,lease and option,Salt Lake County Recorder

36 Deseret News ,July 13,1925; Salt Lake Tribune ,July 13,and 15,1925.According to the Death Certificate,the cause of death was senility.The doctor who signed the certificate attended him from May 29 to July 11,implying he was in the hospital that length of time,and listed his age as “about 83.”The newspapers accepted and repeated that age,but the 1900 U.S.Census listed his birth date as April 1844, which would have made him eighty-one years old when he died.

were determined to have no market value.His meager household contents were given a value of only fifty dollars.His “small dwelling house,”which was on two building lots,and the remaining unimproved lots in the Johnson’s State Street Addition were given a total value of $5,700,but the property was mortgaged to nearly half that amount.In view of the number of heirs and the impracticability of dividing the property among them, the executor requested an order authorizing her to sell the property to best advantage at private sale,a request that was approved by the probate court.37

In the years that followed,Mary Johnson handled all transactions involving the remaining real estate in the Johnson’s State Street Addition.The final distribution was not made until May 1945,twenty years after Johnson’s death,at which time one-sixth of the remaining property,including the “worthless”mining stock,went to each of the heirs.Unfortunately,one of the brothers died shortly before the distribution;his estate gave one-fifth of his one-sixth to each of his siblings.The only other property he owned was a 1929 six cylinder Buick Coupe,one-fifth of which also went to each of his heirs. It is not known what they did with one-fifth of a sixteen year old automobile.38

In 1936,1938,and again in 1943 Mary Johnson and two of her brothers, acting as directors and trustees of the defunct Big Cottonwood Silver King Mining & Milling Company,negotiated contracts with the Wasatch Gold Mines Company for the Mineral Fork mining properties.Mary Johnson

37 Third District Court,Probate Division,Case #13444.Utah State Archives Series 1621.At the time of his death Johnson held 565,000 shares,over half of the stock issued for the Big Cottonwood Silver King Mining & Milling Company,and 760,000 shares,over three-fourths of the stock issued for the Alta Prince Mining Company.Mary Johnson,the executrix,was familiar with real estate transactions since she worked for the County Recorder as an abstractor.She used the name of Marian Johnson for all transactions relating to the John S.Johnson estate.

38 Deeds 423:307,May 9,1945,Distribution,Estate of John S.Johnson,deceased.Deeds 435:478, August 22,1945,Distribution,Estate of Carl Johnson,deceased,Salt Lake County Recorder.

Cabin remains at the Silver King No.4 site in Mill B South Fork. The Salt LakeValley is seen in the background.

CHARLESL. KELLER

signed them as President and Trustee.39 The mining stocks that had been declared worthless were not completely worthless after all.

John S.Johnson’s house at 2906 South State Street was rented to various people over the years following his death.In 1933 or 1934 Mary Johnson moved into it and remained there until her death in 1956.During that time three of her siblings lived in the house for varying lengths of time and died while in residence there.40 After being vacant for two years the house was converted to commercial use and eventually razed to make way for other construction.Then nothing remained as a reminder of Regulator Johnson,save his tombstone at Mount Olivet cemetery,the name on a United States Geological Survey map and an expert ski run at the Snowbird resort in Little Cottonwood Canyon.

39 Deeds 157:246-47,January 21,1936,Big Cottonwood Silver King Mining & Milling Co.to Wasatch Gold Mining Co.,Lease & option;Deeds 816:55,April 6,1938,Big Cottonwood Silver King Mining & Milling Co.to Wasatch Gold Mining Co.,Contract Deeds 816:62,October 25,1943,Big Cottonwood Silver King Mining & Milling Co.to Wasatch Gold Mining Co.,Contract.

40 See Salt Lake City Directories for the years 1934 through 1960.Carl Johnson was in the house briefly before his death on October 23,1940.Ethel Johnson Bates lived there briefly before her death on April 13,1947,and Joseph E.Johnson lived there from 1938 until his death on December 12,1955.

BOOKREVIEWS

Dreams,Myths,and Reality:Utah and the American West Edited by William Thomas Allison and Susan J.Matt.(Salt Lake City:Signature Books,2008.viii + 310 pp. Paper,$29.95.)

IT CAN BE DIFFICULT to review a collection of published lectures,in part because such books usually lack a single unifying thesis to give them continuity. Though the editors of Dreams,Myths,and Reality rightly suggest that their collection—the product of a lecture series established by William Critchlow at Weber State University—demonstrates “various ways to examine the driving themes of Western historiography,”one is hard-pressed to bring the volume’s disparate contents together in a satisfying review based on this theme alone (vii).Rather than try to write about the collection in an all-embracing fashion,then,I will provide readers with a sketch of the book’s contents and an assessment of what I believe are its most stimulating parts.

The lectures collected in this volume can be divided into three broad categories: social and cultural history,political and economic history,and personal memoir.In the first category belong James Ronda’s lecture,which ties together literary culture and the expedition of Lewis and Clark;William Critchlow’s presentation on James Brown,Ogden’s founder;Valeen Avery’s selection on the Utah mission of David Hyrum Smith,the last son of Mormon prophet Joseph Smith;Thomas Alexander’s piece on the relationship between nineteenth-century Mormon theology and the idea of environmental stewardship;William Mulder’s paper on Utah’s Nordic-language press;Dean May’s lecture on the mountain-to-Pacific corridor during the 1860s;and Ronald Walker’s selection on Native American women.The lectures in the political and economic history category form an equally distinguished group that includes Davis Bitton’s lecture on the financial dealings of George Q.Cannon;Leonard Arrington’s discussion on Ogden’s banking history;Jean Bickmore White’s observations on Utah’s constitution;Ross Peterson’s lecture on Stewart Udall;and Carol Madsen’s piece on Mormon suffragist Emmeline Wells.Wayne Carver’s account of playing baseball in Plain City and David Bain’s record of following in Bernard DeVoto’s literary footsteps comprise the third and final group.

While each of the lectures adds to our knowledge of Utah’s past,some are bound to be more interesting than others.For me,the most invigorating were the contributions of Thomas Alexander and Dean May—Alexander’s because it interrogates the widely-held notion that Mormonism is inherently antagonistic to environmentalism,and May’s because of the way it locates 1860s Utah in a comparative western context.

The most stimulating part of Alexander’s lecture is its interpretation of an 1844 manuscript written by Parley Pratt that recounts a dream in which the “Angel of the Prairies”appears to Pratt and shows him an immense civilization on the

American plains where there are “no overlooked pockets of squalor,no poverty, no opulence,no pollution”(98).The civilization,Pratt is told,is none other than the theocratic Zion of Mormon scripture.According to Alexander,Pratt’s understanding of the world,revealed in his dream,reinforced the idea that “people would have to learn to live in peace with the earth before they could usher in Christ’s millennial reign.Abuse of the earth and of God’s creations … had no place in the Cities of Zion”(98).Those who claim that Mormon theology is to blame for the deterioration of Utah’s natural environment,concludes Alexander, misapprehend the principles of Mormonism’s founders May’s main point—that the 1860s were a pivotal decade in the settling of the territory that lay between the Rocky Mountains and the Cascades—is equally intriguing.Pulled west by the promise of gold and pushed by the violence of the Civil War,Americans rubbed away some of the region’s rustic frontier veneer as they peopled it.Where did Utah fit in this population boom? May shows that because Utah,like Oregon,was settled earlier than other states in the region (namely Idaho,Nevada,and Montana),and for different (primarily religious) reasons,its settlements seemed to have enjoyed more permanence than those in neighboring territories.Nevertheless,argues May,later Utahns—the grandchildren of the original pioneer stock—seemed eventually to accommodate themselves to the individualistic and acquisitive values brought by the new migrants of the 1860s.

Exposé of Polygamy:A Lady’s Life among the Mormons By

Edited by

Linda Wilcox DeSimone.(Logan:Utah

State University Press,2008. viii + 198 pp.cloth,$29.95.)

WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT that what at first glance appears to be nothing more than a nineteenth-century anti-Mormon screed could be so interesting, even enlightening? Fanny Stenhouse’s autobiography proposes to tell readers of the horrors of life in Mormon polygamy.But in the place of sensation is a largely thoughtful,albeit polemical,memoir of one woman’s life under the Latter-day Saints’controversial “principle.”This is no small accomplishment for a book Stenhouse insists took less than three weeks to write.Stenhouse’s narrative proved to be so popular that a second edition followed three years later,rechristened “Tell It All”:The Story of a Life’s Experience in Mormonism. Though it draws heavily on her Exposé,“Tell It All” reaches farther and,as a result,falls more comfortably within the category of avowedly “anti-Mormon”treatises.(Both editions are now available as digital scans on Google Books.)

BRANDONJOHNSON Utah Humanities Council

Fanny Stenhouse.

Stenhouse’s tightly focused Exposé of Polygamy is not a general history of Mormonism unlike her husband’s massive Rocky Mountain Saints (1873),published one year after Exposé,nor does it pretend to track the responses of a majority,or even representative sampling of Mormon plural wives to the challenges of sharing a husband.Stenhouse guesses that she speaks for 90 percent of Mormon women —an assertion I suspect may be optimistic.No,Stenhouse’s narrative is primarily a case study of Stenhouse’s own pained reaction to the practical mechanics of the Saints’“celestial”practice.Its value lies in the quality of its writing,its considered observations and telling details,and its author’s compelling voice.It is difficult to know for certain precisely how representative Stenhouse’s experiences were of those of Mormon plural wives in general,but her account sheds important light on the experiences of plural wives whose lives in polygamy were far from positive.

At the same time,for all of Stenhouse’s helpful revelations,one quickly gets her point,and her narrative occasionally flirts dangerously with degenerating into one long whine—at least,as I read her.I do not mean to dismiss Stenhouse’s later chapters,some of which continue to offer much insight.It is simply that one realizes early on just how devastatingly painful the experience of polygamy was to her and how important it was to her to justify her rejection—not just of Mormon plural marriage,but eventually of all of Mormonism—to her readers as to herself. This need for self-justification—however understandable—ultimately prevents the book from rising and remaining above its own self-serving didacticism.Again,this is not to diminish Stenhouse’s contributions to Mormon history but merely to point out what for me were her story’s occasional limitations.

Stenhouse is an engaging,if also sometimes melodramatic,writer.Consider,for example,the following excerpts from the climactic fifteenth chapter,Stenhouse’s own inflamed account of “The Sacrifice of My Life.”Having to share her husband of fifteen years was,she stresses,“the most fearful ordeal that any woman can possibly be required to pass through ...”In fact,“the thought of doing so was even worse than death.I felt like a condemned felon in his cell,”she continues,“waiting in agony the day of his execution”(100).For Stenhouse,the act of her husband’s plural marriage represented the dissolution of their first:“our union was severed.I had given away my husband,and he no longer belonged only to me!”(101).

With this first plural marriage,the cracks in Stenhouse’s own faith began to widen.“Why did the Lord implant this love in my nature?”she laments,of her desire for monogamous marriage.“If it is wrong,He could have created me without it.Or was it for the pleasure of torturing His daughters that this was done? I could not but feel that the Lord whom I served was partial;for He allowed His sons to indulge in their love,while His daughters,who by man are considered the weaker vessels,were expected to be strong enough to crush out from their natures all love and all weakness”(102).Soon Stenhouse begins to question the origins not only of polygamy but of all of Mormonism:“To doubt one doctrine was to begin to doubt all,”she explains,“and I soon felt that my

religion was rapidly crumbling away before my eyes,and that I was losing confidence in every thing and every body.I was like a ship at sea without a compass, not knowing where to go or what to do”(105).Still,what she increasingly hoped for herself,and for her husband,was that they “be no longer a slave to others” (106).Thus,besides a critique of Mormon polygamy,Stenhouse’s narrative provides some insight into the process of the developing nature of faith.

Stenhouse’s editor for this volume,Linda Wilcox DeSimone,provides a helpful introduction and annotative endnotes.Readers interested in nineteenth-century Mormon polygamy will appreciate DeSimone for having brought Fanny Stenhouse to their attention.

GARYJAMES BERGERA

The Smith-Pettit Foundation Salt Lake City

A Route for the Overland Stage:James H.Simpson’s 1859 Trail Across the Great Basin. By Jesse G.Petersen.(Logan:Utah State University Press,2008.viii+248 pp. Paper,$24.95.)

HAVE YOU EVER DRIVEN on U.S.50 across Nevada and seen the road disappearing in the mountain range in the distance and wondered why the road entered a particular declivity in the mountains ahead? You might ask yourself how James Hervey Simpson,in 1859,located the route you are taking.Jesse Petersen has the answer.

Brevet General Albert Sydney Johnston,Commander of the Utah Expedition, concerned for his supply lines sent Captain James Simpson across the UtahNevada deserts to find a shorter central access to California.Simpson embarked on the expedition with sixty-four individuals,twelve quartermaster wagons,one ambulance,horses and mules to ride and pull the wagons,and six “commissary beeves”for food.The route Simpson located was never used to supply the Utah Expedition,but was subsequently closely approximated and used by the Pony Express,Overland Stage,Lincoln Highway,and US Highway 50.

Jesse Petersen’s interest in Simpson’s explorations came from his involvement in the Lincoln Highway Association.Petersen’s endeavor to learn more about Simpson’s route resulted in ten years of research and trail exploration consisting of thirty thousand miles of travel by SUV,and over 280 miles of walking.Petersen used GPS technology to define Simpson’s route with superior accuracy by adding his data to old and recent maps to produce this exciting book.

Petersen presents his findings in a very readable manner.His writing is clear and easily followed.It is interesting to trace Petersen’s logic in locating certain

spots that were not clear in Simpson’s writings.Petersen writes,“I am only attempting to share what I believe to be reasonable and logical conclusions about the most likely route,and the most likely locations for the campsites.These conclusions have been reached after studying Simpson’s description of the terrain, after plotting his mileage figures onto modern maps,and after making many on-site visits to the areas involved”(3).

Petersen’s manner of presenting his explorationsis interesting.The reader is taken from Simpson campsite to campsite.He quotes from Simpson’s reports regarding the expedition’s movement to the next spot and then relates background and history pertaining to that particular trail segment.For example,“A short distance north of today’s fork in the road,the Beckwith trail and Chorpenning’s mail route split away from Hastings Road,and turned west to go through Railroad Pass.A few miles farther west,these two routes split apart. Beckwith continued west,and reached the Humboldt about twenty-five miles southwest of Winnemucca”(55).Following this information,Petersen describes his personal exploration of that trail segment.Often several personal explorations were required to ascertain the most likely route.Petersen presents his conclusions and his logic behind reaching this conclusion.The presentation of this makes the reader feel he or she is part of the search.

An appendix lists the GPS coordinates for all of the camp sites and prominent features of all Petersen’s explorations.This feature is a great aid for readers who desire to confirm or explore on their own.Petersen’s new photographs are supplemented by a few photographs from the Simpson period adding to the completeness of the work.The well drawn maps are particularly helpful in coordinating the route and place of action to the text.

Route for the Overland Stage is the definitive work describing Simpson’s exploration route and when read in conjunction with Simpson’s report adds a new level of significance and understanding to this historic trail.This book could well set a new standard for the presentation of trail information.Petersen’s work is a must read for any “Trail Buff.”I recommend this volume for anyone interested in military history and exploration in the west.

The Mining Law of 1872:Past,Politics,and Prospects By Gordon Morris Bakken. (Albuquerque:University of New Mexico Press,2008.xxx + 238 pp.Cloth,$45.00.)

THE 1872 MINING LAW,controversial from its beginning,has resulted in massive transfer of public lands to private ownership,endless litigation,environmental degradation,and survived numerous attempts at revision to the present day.

JAYA. ALDOUS University of Utah

Bakken’s book concerns western American mining,the 1872 mining law,and the environmental consequences of mining.The central focus is the legal and environmental issues that have evolved from application of the 1872 Mining Law.

The initial set of laws and regulations for the United States did not deal with rights to mineral deposits.As mining,particularly in the West,became more intense with the discovery of the Comstock Lode in Nevada,the Mother Lode in California,in Butte,Montana,and elsewhere in the West,Congress realized that a systematic method for handling mining rights must be devised to replace the patchwork set of rules developed by the miners themselves.The first attempt was the Mining Law of 1866 crafted by Senator William Morris Stewart,Nevada’s first U.S.Senator,and others.A succession of mining laws was enacted from 1866 to the final version in 1872.The Mining Law of 1872 replaced earlier attempts to regularize mineral extraction on public lands and was intended to promote the development of mining resources in the United States.

The provisions of the Mining Law are described in the book section by section together with the history of mining regulations and the common law of miners that became part of the mining law.The Mining Law of 1872 provides the rules for locating and marking a mining claim on public lands.After May 10,1872,lode claims were to be 1,500 feet long along the vein,300 feet on either side of the vein for a total width of 600 feet,and the end lines must be parallel.With a claim thus located,the owner had the rights to the vein as deep as it went,even though it extended outside the claim boundaries.The law continues with rights to tunnel owners,rules for marking,surveying,recording the amount of work necessary to hold the claim,patenting,and how various disputes should be resolved.Legal difficulties soon arose with claim jumping,location markers,and rights to veins beyond claim boundaries,which were resolved in the courts.

Unrestrained environmental pollution from mining and mineral processing is a recurring theme in the book.Bakken increases our understanding of the role of mining in environmental degradation,and focuses on using the law to address environmental deterioration of property.

Bakken describes numerous attempts that have been made to revise or repeal the Mining Law.In one attempt,the comptroller general of the U.S.inventoried mining claims in 1974 and found that few were being mined,many were being used for residences,and the Mining Law of 1872 failed to encourage mineral development. But the law stood.In another attempt,the General Accounting Office found in 1989 that 17,000 acres of public land acquired as mining claims for $42,500 in turn had been sold to oil companies for $37,000,000,making a handsome profit for the mining claimant.The GAO also reported that the provision to convert mining claims to private ownership was in conflict with other natural resource policies and legislation.Environmental statutes applied to the mining industry were then passed, but no revision of the Mining Law of 1872 was enacted.States could and did regulate mining practice,but the Mining Law of 1872 stood intact.Another frontal attack on the Mining Law stalled in Congress in 1989.

Bakken focuses primarily on mining camps in Montana and concludes with a litany of environmental threats to waterways and national parks.Of the thirty-two illustrations in the book,twenty-six are of individuals and mining scenes from Montana.

The book is an indictment of Congress’failure to remedy problems with the Mining Law of 1872.

WILLIAMT. PARRY University of Utah

Always A Cowboy:Judge Wilson McCarthy and the Rescue of the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad. By Will Bagley.(Logan:Utah State University Press,2008. xii + 316 pp.Cloth,$34.95.)

WRITER WILL BAGLEY can hardly resist a good story.Although Always A Cowboy was a “work for hire”and the cowboy emphasis may be a bit romantic, this biography is an important look into the Utah experience.Since Wilson McCarthy’s death in 1956 historians have produced an effective outline of how Utah was transformed during the decades following statehood when the Mormon question was resolved.While stimulated by the Utah State Historical Society along with the state’s universities and in-state and regional presses,the work of biographers has by no means finished fleshing out that historical outline with hard hitting stories.Bagley’s work recognizes that need.

Like others of his generation McCarthy was hard working,energetic,wise, interested in the public weal and possessed of a keen personal wit that Bagley refers to as Irish charm.The luck of the Irish may also have been involved.

Not examined overtly yet apparent in Bagley’s writing was McCarthy’s capacity for being where the action was and for attracting the attention of important people.This begins to suggest itself in family relationships including marriages into the Wooley,the Rich,the Clark,and the Kimball families,all prominent on the state’s social and political registers.Important too were a host of other close associates including Gordon B.Hinckley.

Numerous other connections appear.In their Canadian land ventures the McCarthys were able to interest Utah mega developer Jesse Knight and Canadian entrepreneurs of similar clout.Timing and the Utah Colony were important in his New York sojourn when he was close to Samuel Bennion,later a Mormon Apostle.Back in Utah McCarthy quickly attracted Democratic Governor Simon Bamberger who appointed him to fill a vacancy in the state district courts.He managed banker W.W.Armstrong’s senate bid which though unsuccessful helped open banking opportunities that made him a wealthy man and left him a power in Utah politics.And so it went with his appointment to President Herbert Hoover’s

Reconstruction Finance Corporation and his railroading career when the Denver & Rio Grande Western was placed in receivership in 1935.He had been in and out of the RFC in a year but departed with keen insights and many strong friends.Moreover the timing of his twenty-year tenure (1935-1955) with the D&RGW was fortuitous.Earlier the railroad had been much troubled:mountain terrain,frontier conditions,absentee owners,and depression sapped its resources and inhibited its bottom line.Conditions changed during McCarthy’s tenure. Technology advanced,global warfare enhanced traffic,and construction of Geneva Columbia Steel in Utah Valley anchored the railroad’s Utah business.

Maintaining close connection with the McCarthy family and its public and business records,Bagley is also adept in his use of secondary works on Mormon development and the social and economic history of the Great Depression and the early Cold War era.His command of sources is especially apparent in his treatment of what might be called cultural Mormonism and on McCarthy’s experience with the D&RGW.In this latter context particularly good use is made of Nancy Taniguchi’s Necessary Fraud:Progressive Reform and Utah Coal (1996) and Robert Athearn’s Rebel of the Rockies:A History of the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad (1962).

Not surprisingly McCarthy’s biography has much relevance at this time of financial crisis.Taken altogether,it is a story most valuable for its insights into the social and cultural inner workings of twentieth century Utah as it developed in the American union of states.

CHARLESS. PETERSON St.

George

Proclamation to the People:Nineteenth-Century Mormonism and the Pacific Basin Frontier. Edited by Laurie F.Maffly-Kipp and Reid L.Nielson.(Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press,2008.xii + 330 pp.Cloth,$29.95.)

PROFESSOR R.LANIER BRITSCH,considered by many to be the foremost historian of Mormonism in the Pacific Basin,observes in the book’s foreword that “the editors pose this question of their subjects,not how the multiple encounters between Latter-day Saints and the various nations and cultures affected the indigenous peoples,but,rather,what impact these peoples had on the heart and core of Mormonism”(xii).

In a telling introduction,the editors of Proclamation to the People take on the wide vistas of nineteenth-century Mormonism and the Pacific Basin frontier.This explanation of Mormonism seeks to shed further light on the “increasingly analyzed”Pacific Basin world – the geographical world landscape from “the west coast of the United States,South America,across the Pacific Islands to New

Zealand and Australia… [as a] distinctive region with a unified history”(1).

Co-editor Laurie F.Maffly-Kipp contributes two essays,which speak to the theme of the Pacific Rim peoples’impact upon the Latter-day Saints of Utah.The first,“Looking West:Mormonism and the Pacific World,”examines the broader impact of Mormonism,the second provides an insightful glimpse into the harried life of Louisa Barnes Pratt,wife of missionary Addison Pratt,who,along with other missionary wives,spent her days overseeing the teaching of the natives and their children.

A companion article to this study of Louisa Pratt is the subsequent essay by Carol Cornwall Madsen on “Mormon Missionary Wives in Polynesia.”Two months after their arrival in the Great Salt Lake Valley in 1848,Jonathan and Caroline Barnes Crosby were called to serve a mission to the Pacific Islands. Caroline wrote in her diary,“we have now got to take another and ever more tedious journey [to] take up our abode among the wild sons of nature,”then perhaps remembering why they had come to Utah in the first place.Caroline fell back on her deep faith,adding,it’s “all for the gospel’s sake”(142).

Shifting geographical locations to the United States,two other first-rate essays look at Mormonism in early California:Matthew J.Grow,“A Providential Means of Agitating Mormonism:Parley P.Pratt and the San Francisco Press in the 1850s,”and Edward Leo Lyman’s “The Rise and Decline of Mormon San Bernardino.”While both of these essays focus upon California Mormons,they consider two different matters —in the first,a means of spreading the gospel and, in the latter,the failure of a once-promising church colony.

Additional essays look at the Saints in Australia,New Zealand,and Asia.Ten of the papers making up this anthology were published previously.But as Professor Britsch comments in the foreword,“Some of these articles have been buried for many years and deserve to be read anew“ (xii).I enthusiastically agree.

M. GUYBISHOP Woods Cross

Old Deseret Live Stock Company:A Stockman’s Memoir. By W.Dean Frischknecht. (Logan:Utah State University Press,2008.210 pp.Cloth,$39.95.)

DEAN FRISCHKNECHT AND HIS WIFE KATHRYN arrived at the spring sheep headquarters of the sprawling Deseret Live Stock Company ranch in northern Utah on June 13,1946,with their two infant children.Frischknecht had first worked at the ranch in the summer of 1943 while completing a graduate degree in animal science from then Utah State Agricultural College (today’s Utah State University),and became manager of the ranch’s more than forty thousand sheep. The company had been incorporated as a joint stock company in 1891 with ninety-five stock holders consisting primarily of existing sheep ranchers,their

lands and sheep located in northeastern Utah.Over time the ranch expanded as additional lands were purchased,including adjacent ranches which had not originally joined the cooperative,state and federal lands,Union Pacific railroad land,and the lands at Iosepa,Tooele County,which the Latter-day Saint church had acquired when the Hawaiian settlers departed in 1916-1917.The company initially had retail stores in three locations in northeastern Utah as well as their direct ranching activities,but after the Great Depression of the 1930s these were closed and the Moyle family became the largest stockholder,holding over one-third of the stock by 1938.By the time Frischknecht arrived in the mid-forties the ranch concentrated on sheep,but also included more than five thousand cattle and four hundred horses and more than sixty employees (some of whom were seasonal workers for shearing,fencing,and general operations).

The strength of the book lies in its detailed description of large scale sheep ranching operations in Utah in the mid-twentieth century.The logistics of arranging for shearing,docking tails,branding,breeding,herding,driving to new ranges, dealing with disease and/or predators,culling old or weak animals,lambing, marketing lambs,and feeding workers dominates Frischknecht’s reminiscence.He includes actual copies of grocery orders from the company’s sheepherders,details such as the two hundred sacks of flour stored at the main ranch headquarters yearly,the number of slaughtered cattle and hogs to keep the workers fed,the living conditions of him and his family during shearing,and while at the summer and winter ranges.This wealth of detail about the ranching operations and the lives of those who operated it ranks as the strongest point of the book.

From the first chapter which sets the stage for his hiring as the sheep manager through twenty-four subsequent chapters nominally centered on shearing,trail drives to summer pastures,breeding,lambing,the heavy snowfalls of 1948-49, disasters and recovery of numbers,and his ultimate forced resignation in January 1954,Frischknecht’s lively account describes for readers unfamiliar with ranching its joys and hardships.This book will also be greeted with fond nostalgia by those fortunate to have some ranching or farming experience.Hard and endless work, rustic accommodations,and isolation are clearly and unflinchingly described,but so too are the joys of accomplishment associated with completion of hard tasks,or of the bucolic environment associated with the summer range,and the shared friendships,joys and sorrows of ranch workers,their families and associates.

Numerous pictures are included,which help bring to life the account of people and places.More importantly,the narrative is interesting enough that readers will find it difficult to put down as they anticipate the hinted end of the writer’s ranching career.Frishchknecht’s role on the ranch ended shortly after ownership changed.In his account,“The new owners were outstanding Utah businessmen”who purchased the Moyle family’s stock in the company and elected one of the new investors,Kendall (Ken) Garff,to replace Henry D.Moyle as president of the company (180).

There is little to criticize in this book.The lack of footnotes or references to

any documents may annoy some readers,but simply reflects the purpose of the book as a memoir.The author concludes with a final chapter that paints in brief his career after leaving the ranch and the broad changes that occurred at the ranch after his departure including ending sheep production.

Readers familiar with Utah history will no doubt wish there was more information about the relationship between the LDS church and Utah businessmen in the twentieth century.A few clues are suggested by the fact that Henry D.Moyle became an important church leader,the church purchased the livestock company, and the church acquired ranch lands in Florida that Moyle earlier had wanted the Deseret Live Stock Company to buy.Until some historian researches the twentieth century LDS church and Utah economic activities similar to what Leonard Arrington did for nineteenth century LDS/Utah economic activities,this memoir, in the meantime,will fill an important role in helping others to understand Utah ranch life in the mid- twentieth century.

RICHARDH. JACKSON Orem

Rocky Mountain Heartland:Colorado,Montana,and Wyoming in the Twentieth Century. By Duane A.Smith.(Tucson:The University of Arizona Press,2008. xiv + 304 pp.Cloth,$50.00;paper,$22.95.)

DUANE A.SMITH was born in 1937,and therefore lived through most of the last century and the time span for his book, Rocky Mountain Heartland:Colorado, Montana,and Wyoming in the Twentieth Century. While California is his birthplace, Dr.Smith was educated at the University of Colorado where he was a student of Robert G.Athearn,a well-known historian of the American West.Since 1964 Smith has taught at Fort Lewis College as Professor of Southwest Studies and History.His fields of historical research and writing are varied,and includes the West,Colorado,mining,the Civil War,urban areas,and baseball.

Dr.Smith has produced an impressive overview of three Rocky Mountain states,Colorado,Montana,and Wyoming,throughout the twentieth century. “These states constitute the Rocky Mountain heartland,a place that has intrigued and fascinated Americans and others for well over two centuries,”explains the author.“What they have in common geographically are the Rocky Mountains running down their backbones and the Great Plains pushing up against those majestic mountains from the east”(ix).

In chronological order,the author explains numerous similarities and differences among the three states while covering an array of topics throughout the century.Discussion includes the economies of the area,such as agriculture, mining,and tourism.Politics is also covered,notably as the states were impacted

by national and world events.Discussion is included about the influence on the area from transportation brought on by national railroads and highways,then air travel.Education,too,is included in the study from elementary schools to the states’colleges and universities,and the role these institutions played in the formation of the states.

A common theme throughout the book is the impact these nearly isolated states,particularly in the first half of the twentieth century,had from national and world events.Markets far from the Rocky Mountains determined mineral and agriculture prices and production.World wars and economic depressions,as well as good times,in turn drove the markets.Smith’s discussion includes the previously discussed historical debate about the West as a “colony”of the East,most notably in its economic relationship.Excellent examples are presented in this study to support this historical theory.

With the vast array of topics for over a century covered in this book,one might expect the study to be superficial and eclectic.This is not the case.For the wide span of information presented,enough examples and details are provided to substantiate points being made.The author presents numerous topics within each chapter,yet the abundance of information isn’t lost on the reader.Dr.Smith has done an excellent job at presenting a wide-range of detailed information covering a wide span of history.This book is a valuable contribution to the history of the American West for its good overview of the twentieth century.

The three states Dr.Smith chose to study are interesting.As the twentieth century evolved,Colorado changed the most,yet the three states continued to struggle with similar issues.While pressures from national and world political and economic issues dominate the region,Dr.Smith presented unique problems for the Rocky Mountain states.“Rainfall,except in the mountains,is a rare commodity, and water is treasured everywhere.Indeed,water,or lack thereof,holds the key to the twenty-first century,”explains Smith in his Preface (ix).His point was proven by the book’s end.

Why study these three states? This book would be of interest to those people living within the area of discussion,particularly as it gives a good historical perspective to many current day concerns,including agriculture,mining,and tourism.The author,in his epilogue,presents an additional contribution of the book when he notes,“It has been said that to know Colorado,Wyoming,and Montana is to know America.Whether one agrees or not,the three states reflect much that was and is America.Both the good and the bad,the hard luck and good luck,the success and failures,and the overriding confidence and optimism that has characterized the American spirit”(282).

ANNCHAMBERSNOBLE

Cora, Wyoming

Feast or Famine:Food and Drink in American Westward Expansion.

By Reginald Horsman.(Columbia and London:University of Missouri Press.2008. 356 pp.Cloth,$39.95.)

SOMETIMES WHEN I AM LECTURING in my American history classes and the students start to get that glazed look,I ask them:“What do you think about a history of food? Imagine studying American history by studying the food available to people,or what they ate during different time periods.”This always gets their minds working and back to the subject at hand.Now comes a delightful book that turns my fantasy question into a reality.Reginald Horsman,Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee,offers a unique history of westward expansion by examining the food and drink available to generations of pioneers who settled America.

Horsman maintains that Americans ate well because of the country’s abundant natural resources.Throughout the cycle of settlement there were lean,hungry times, but conditions improved and were never as bad as those found in Europe;immigrants truly came to America for a better way of life and this included an improved diet.

Divided into seven parts,Horsman’s text begins in the forests of the East,the Kentucky frontier where pork and corn were dietary staples.Explorers and trappers in the trans-Mississippi West hunted and lived on a steady diet of meat. Emigrants following the overland trails supplemented their supplies with hunting, and by the late 1850s there were opportunities to purchase items at forts and settlements such as Fort Laramie and Fort Bridger,and from the Mormon settlements in Utah.Horsman describes the diets and culinary opportunities in mining camps,at stagecoach and railroad stops.Also included are vivid descriptions of food available as well as victuals lacking in the diets of army soldiers stationed at forts throughout the West.And in the final chapters,the author examines the cattle and farming frontiers.

As people moved west they encountered new foods such as Mexican southwest cuisine or Asian food introduced by Chinese and Japanese settlers in the Far West. People tended to like,and to want,foods they had always known,and often refused to try new tastes or consider something other than salted pork and bread. The author notes that many people traveling through the West did not take advantage of many streams plentiful of fish,even when food was scarce;they preferred meat.A common problem throughout the earliest years of westward expansion was a lack of fruits and vegetables.But usually within a few years, settlers had planted gardens and more easily maintained a balanced diet.As Horsman concludes his tome,“…temporary shortages were soon succeeded by a rich abundance”(343).

Horsman makes copious use of a variety of diaries and personal reminiscences to tell this story of westward settlement.Mountain men,explorers such as Lewis

and Clark,Fremont and Pike,women like Susan Magoffin traveling the Santa Fe trail,Mormon converts pushing handcarts to a new Zion,and international visitors Sir Richard Burton and Isabella Bird wrote first person accounts that divulge and describe what people ate,when they ate it,and under what conditions.By the end of the nineteenth century,travel was much easier as railroads crossed the continent and technological advancements provided new methods for food preservation,thus alleviating problems faced by earlier pioneers and travelers.

The use of diaries,letters and reminiscences make this an excellent book for students and those unfamiliar with the field of western Americana.This book lacks a bibliography,but notations are at the bottom of each page,which is helpful to the reader who wishes to check sources.Horsman triumphantly achieves the stated purpose of this book:“My emphasis is on broad differences in eating patterns at the different stages of the advance westward,particularly on how specific individuals ate from day to day”(6).No glazed eyes for readers of this book,only sparkles of awe and curiosity with each page.This is a pleasing addition to the shelf of western American history.

PATRICIAANNOWENS

Wabash Valley College Mount Carmel, Illinois

An Uncommon Common Pioneer:The Journals of James Henry Martineau, 1829-1918 Edited by Donald G.Godfrey and Rebecca S.Martineau-McCarty.(Provo: Religious Studies Center,Brigham Young University,2008.xli + 789 pp.Cloth,$39.95.)

THE JOURNALS OF JAMES HENRY MARTINEAU read at times more like a novel than a collection of daily entries in a diary.They tell the story of a curious adventurer,dedicated family man and devoted Mormon pioneer.His life is like a roadmap through the history of Utah and of the LDS Church;touching upon nearly every significant event of the time and place.The book serves as both a valuable family history to Martineau’s descendants as well as an interesting and informative account of the Mormon pioneer experience.Scholars and history enthusiasts alike will find valuable information within these pages.

Martineau was born and raised in Montgomery,Port Jackson,New York,where he learned to work hard and acquired an education that would serve him well in later years.He enlisted to fight in the Mexican War but peace was declared before he saw any military action.After being honorable mustered out of service,he ended up teaching school in St.Joseph,Missouri.

An adventurous young man,he planned to travel to the California gold fields and then across the world.When he and his traveling party reached Utah Territory, the Missourians in his group warned him to avoid Salt Lake City,as the Mormons “would surely kill us,or at least rob us,”But Martineau was curious, stating he

“wanted in future years to say I had ‘seen the Mormons.’”What started out as a mild curiosity would end up changing his life forever.He arrived in Salt Lake City in July 1850,and was baptized a member of the LDS church in January 1851.

The rest of Martineau’s life was spent in building up “the kingdom”of his newfound faith.At his leaders’requests he assisted in the settlement of Parowan and Logan,Utah,Pima,Arizona,and Colonia Juárez in Chihuahua,Mexico.He worked as a farmer,civic and religious leader,and most often,surveyor,in each of these areas.He relates accounts of his time fighting Indians,being swept up in the events of the Mormon Reformation,and of the anxiety of his fellow saints over the coming of Johnston’s Army.Serving as a scout in the local militia,he was watching for the arrival of the U.S.Cavalry at the time some of his acquaintances and neighbors were caught up in the tragic events of the Mountain Meadows Massacre.Although he was not present for that disturbing scene,he was subpoenaed in his later years to appear at the trial of William H.Dame,whom Martineau believed to be innocent of wrong doing and even posted the man’s bail.Dame was only one of a long list of well known historical figures with whom Martineau met or was acquainted, which included Brigham Young,Moses Thatcher,John D.Lee,Ute Chief Walker, and even President of the United States Rutherford B.Hayes.

As a practicing polygamist,he faced threats of arrest and imprisonment during the time of the Edmunds-Tucker act,which forced him to live for a time away from Utah.In his later years he served as a Patriarch in the LDS church,and returned to Salt Lake City where he died in 1918.

The work done by the editors to bring Martineau’s story to life was obviously painstaking.Great care was taken to include ample footnotes and references to corroborate events Martineau wrote about,as well as to explain certain concepts to readers unfamiliar with the history and practices of the LDS church.Impressive work was done on the introduction,biographical note,timeline of Martineau’s life,and list of his posterity.This additional information is a valuable supplement to Martineau’s own writing,and corroborates Martineau’s accounts almost without contradiction.Martineau himself,however,provides the most enjoyable reading,being a fair poet,a skilled storyteller,and a remarkably insightful witness of events.His accounts of daily life include the mundane and the humorous,the inspiring and the tragic.Most importantly,Martineau’s journals give the reader insight into the typical pioneer experience,touching upon such important themes as Mormon-Indian relations,polygamy and the struggle for statehood,tensions between Mormon and “Gentile”communities,and most often,simply the struggle to survive in a harsh and untamed land.Through his work as farmer,writer,poet,surveyor,religious and civic leader,missionary, and explorer,Martineau’s life allows us to experience with him the events that shaped the state of Utah and its surrounding regions.

J. KYLENIELSEN University of Utah

BOOKNOTICES

Pioneer Cemeteries:Sculpture Gardens of the Old West. By Annette Stott.(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,2008.xix + 370 pp.Cloth,$36.95.)

Cemeteries in the Rocky Mountain West contained important visual resources of stone carved sculptures,wooden headboards and other materials and art work which intersect with ordinary people to help explain culture of the American West during the last half of the nineteenth-century.Annette Stott in five chapters examines various cemeteries in Colorado,Wyoming,Idaho,Montana including the Brigham City,Ogden,Provo cemeteries and the Salt Lake City,Mt. Olivet and Mt.Calvary cemeteries.The author’s focus is not who is buried in the cemeteries but who carved or made the sculptures and headboards and how these cultural artifacts convey something about the people buried,and how pioneer communities memorialized the dead.

Magnificent Failure:A Portrait of the Western Homestead Era. By John Martin Campbell.(Norman:University of Oklahoma Press,2008.xiv + 183 pp.Cloth,$19.95; paper,$14.95.)

A pictorial essay of seventy black-and-white photographs of failed homesteaders’houses,farm equipment,barns,and other homesteading artifacts that littered the prairie from the 1880s to the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl with four short essays by Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and Research Curator at the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology,University of New Mexico. Kenneth W.Karsmizki,Executive Director and Curator of History at the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center,The Dalles,Oregon,provides the introduction.

John Sutter:A Life on the North American Frontier. By Albert L.Hurtado. (Norman:University of Oklahoma Press,2008.xvii + 412 pp.Paper,$24.95.)

Albert L.Hurtado first published this award-winning,wellbalanced definitive biography of John Sutter,California’s gold-rush entrepreneur in 2006.Hurtado captures this enigmatic character as the American frontier unfolds at mid-nineteenth century.Founder of the historically famous Sutter’s Fort on the banks of the Sacramento River and an empire builder,Sutter’s personalityand motives are carefully presented in this lively written biography from his relationships with his brother,his wife,his relationship with his mother-in-law in Switzerland to his wheelings and dealings in Missouri and Santa Fe,to his efforts to build a commercial empire in California while exploiting friends,business associates,and others along a turbulent trail littered with broken promises,indebtedness,and drinking problems.

Placing Memory:A Photographic Exploration of Japanese American Internment.

Photographs by Todd Stewart.Essays by Natasha Egan and Karen J.Leong.(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,2008.127 pp.Cloth,$34.95.)

This handsome volume includes contemporary black- and- white photographs taken by the War Relocation Authority during the 1940s internment of Japanese Americans in ten relocation camps in California,Utah,Idaho, Wyoming,Colorado,Arizona,and Arkansas.The historic photographs record the life and vitality of the camps in contrast with the stark abandonment of the camps, which are captured in color more than sixty years later by Todd Stewart,an assistant professor of photography at the University of Oklahoma.Brief essays and an afterword provide context for the images and the internment experience.

The Fall of a Black Army Officer:Racism and the Myth of Henry O.Flipper.

By Charles M.Robinson III.(Norman:University of Oklahoma Press,2008. xviii + 197 pp.Cloth,$29.95.)

This book is a revised edition of the author’s earlier book, The Court-Martial of Lieutenant Henry Flipper (Texas Western Press,1994).The author in this revised edition makes “substantial changes”having discovered additional archival information about the court-martial of Henry O.Flipper,the first African American army officer to have graduated from West Point and served in the U.S. Army.The event was known among some circles as the “Flipper Affair,”as Lt.Flipper was charged in 1881 with embezzlement and conduct unbecoming an officer was acquitted of embezzlement but convicted on the other charge and was honorably discharged.In 1999 President Bill Clinton issued a posthumous pardon. The author in his re-examination of the affair asks whether Lt.Flipper was dismissed from the army based on racism of the time or Lt.Flipper was discharged as a result of his own making.

Pueblos,Spaniards,and the Kingdom of New Mexico. By John L.Kessell. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,2008.225 pp.Cloth,$24.95.)

When Spanish settlers arrived in New Mexico in 1598,the population of the eighty or more Pueblo villages was estimated at sixty thousand.Four hundred years later,after the population was reduced to less than ten thousand,the 2000 census counted a Pueblo population of 59,621.

In this volume,John L.Kessell,Professor Emeritus of History at the University of New Mexico,provides a synthesis of the first one hundred years of New Mexican settlement by the Spanish that includes Juan de Onate’s initial venture to

establish the Kingdom of New Mexico as a private venture,the shift to a royal colony with governors appointed every three years,the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, and the re-conquest in 1692.While conflict was part of the experience,Professor Kessell emphasizes the story is more one of coexistence and a “shared reality”in which the Pueblo natives,Spanish settlers,and descendants of both,learned to live together yet apart.

New Mexico Territory During the Civil War:Wallen and Evans Inspection Reports, 1862-1863. Edited and introduction by Jerry D.Thompson.(Albuquerque:University of New Mexico Press,2008.vii + 304 pp.Cloth,$34.95.)

Jerry D.Thompson has compiled inspection reports of inspector general Major Henry Davies Wallen and assistant inspector general Captain Andrew Wallace Evans of the army posts in New Mexico during the two years of the Civil War.The book is divided into several parts:An introduction written by Jerry D.Thompson who provides the historical setting for the series of brief inspection reports;Part II,Major Henry Davies Wallen’s inspection reports for Fort Garland,Colorado,Fort Marcy,Fort Union,Post at Mesilla,Fort Craig,Post at Los Pinos,Post at Albuquerque,Forts Sumner and Union all in the New Mexico Territory,and Post at Franklin,Texas;Part III,is the inspection reports prepared by Captain Evans for Fort McRae,Ojo del Muerto,Post at Franklin, Texas,Fort West,New Mexico,and Fort Stanton,New Mexico.Thompson provides a short history for each army installation inspected by Major Wallen and Captain Evans.

Coal Camps of Eastern Utah By SueAnn Martell.(Charleston,SC:Arcadia Publishing, 2008.126 pp.Paper,$19.99.)

The seven chapters in this volume cover each of the seven areas and their twenty-two coal camps that comprise the coal mining region of Carbon and Emery Counties,including those of Scofield,Winter Quarters,Clear Creek, Castle Gate,Spring Canyon,Kenilworth,Gordon Creek,Sunnyside,Hiawatha, Wattis,and Mohrland.Within these geographically organized chapters is a wealth of photographs depicting coal miners,mining activities,and ethnic and community life in the coal camps.This book makes a fine companion volume to Martell’s Rails Around Helper issued by Arcadia Publishing in 2007.

Mormonism Unveiled:The Life and Confession of John D.Lee and the Complete

Life of Brigham Young. (Albuquerque:University of New Mexico Press,2008.421 pp. Paper,$19.95.)

John D.Lee was executed on March 28,1877,for his role in the Mountain Meadows Massacre twenty years earlier.After his trial and before his execution,Lee wrote his Life and Confession.W.W.Bishop,Lee’s attorney,copied the manuscript and prepared it for publication.The first printing was done by Bryan,Brand and Co.,in St.Louis in 1877,with subsequent publications,including the 1891 edition published by D.M.Vandawalker & Company of St.Louis, Missouri,which is used for the reprint of this 2008 University of New Mexico Press edition.The 1877 edition was an immediate national best seller.The posthumous autobiography remains today an important source on the life of John D. Lee,the early Mormon church,and the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

A Century of Sanctuary:The Art of Zion National Park. Edited by Lyman Hafen.

(Springdale:Zion Natural History Association,2008.131 pp.Cloth,$34.95;paper,$24.95.)

As part of the centennial commemoration of the designation of Mukuntuweap National Monument on July 31,1909,which became Zion National Park in 1919,the Zion Natural History Association in collaboration with the St.George Art Museum,the St.George Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, and Zion National Park,sponsored from August 2008 to January 2009 an exhibition of art depicting the natural beauty of Zion National Park.This handsome volume was published in conjunction with the exhibition and includes more than one hundred fifty illustrations—mostly in color—of paintings and photographs from the 1870s to the present.Essays by Lyman Hafen,Peter H.Hassirck,Leslie Courtright,Roland Lee,and Deborah Reeder,curator of the exhibition,provide a helpful introduction to the history,art,and artists of Zion National Park.Brief biographies of the 112 artists represented in the exhibit conclude the book.

Bingham High School:The First One Hundred Years 1908-2008. By Scott Crump.

(Salt Lake City:Great Mountain West Supply,2008.244 pp.Paper,$25.00.)

Established in 1908,Bingham High School has been located in three communities—the historic Bingham mining town 1908 to 1931, Copperton from 1931 to 1975,and South Jordan since 1975.Author Scott Crump has been associated with Bingham High School for more than fifty years—beginning in 1954 when his father,Cal Crump,secured a teaching position at Bingham High School a position he held for thirty-six years.After graduating from Bingham High School in 1970,Scott Crump returned as a

student teacher in 1977 and since 1978 has taught history and political science.A published historian,Crump provides a fine narrative of the school’s one hundred year history in this lavishly illustrated book that finds “mixing the valley farmers and the canyon miners was a recipe for success.”

Wallace Stegner’s West. Edited by Page Stegner.(Berkeley and Santa Clara:Heyday Books and Santa Clara University,2008.296 pp.Paper,$18.95.)

To select fifteen addresses,short stories,articles,letters,and excerpts from Wallace Stegner’s twenty-seven major works for a volume of less than three hundred pages must have been a daunting task.Undoubtedly every Stegner fan would have a long and likely different list of favorites,but who can fault the first selection in this volume:“Literary Accident,”an address given to the Utah Libraries Association Convention in March 1975.Other selections come from Beyond the Hundredth Meridian,The Big Rock Candy Mountain,Angle of Repose, The Sound of Mountain Water ,and other writings.Published as part of the California Legacy Book Series,this anthology is a worthy commemoration of the one hundredth anniversary of Stegner’s birth in 1909.

A Memoir of Polygamy:In My Father’s House. Dorothy Allred Solomon (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press,2009.x + 310 pp.Cloth $21.95.)

Dorothy Allred Solomon’s reprint of her 1984 book is almost as much a eulogy of her beloved father as it is an insider’s view of life in a polygamous family.With a new preface and epilogue,this reprint is also different from its original in a few minor ways:the author is now at liberty to reveal the real names of some of the figures whose identities were previously hidden,she has made corrections to a few errors,and has clarified a few details she felt were unclear in the first edition.The epilogue reflects the author’s changing perspectives of the practice of polygamy since the book’s initial printing,her feelings of responsibility about how the first edition shaped public opinion toward polygamy, for good and ill,and her efforts to help displaced or disillusioned polygamous women find ways to cope with their own experiences.

Salvation through Slavery:Chiricahua Apaches and Priests on the Spanish Colonial Frontier. H.Henrietta Stockel (Albuquerque:University of New Mexico Press, 2008.xii + 179,cloth $27.95.)

This book is a stinging indictment of the “identity theft”imposed on a Native American people in the Southwest by the Spanish colonial missionaries and white settlers,through Christian baptism,name changing,and the creation

of a slave trade.Author Henrietta Stockel combines historic evidence and the present day perspective of the Apache descendants to examine the impact of one civilization’s attempt to change the cultural identity of another.

A Remarkable Curiosity:Dispatches from a New York City Journalist’s 1873 Railroad Trip Across the American West. By Amos J.Cummings,Compiled and Edited by Jerald T.Milanich.(Boulder:University Press of Colorado,2008.x + 371,cloth $26.95.)

As its title suggests,this book is a collection of dispatches from New York Sun journalist Amos Jay Cummings’journey by rail across the American West.It is an enjoyable book,full of humorous and engaging anecdotes and tales either witnessed by Cummings himself or reported to him by the colorful characters he encountered on his journey.Cummings spent a great deal of time in Utah and wrote several dispatches concerning the Emma Mine controversy in the Little Cottonwood mining district,the “Great Utah Divorce”case between Brigham Young and Eliza Webb Young,and the failed Mormon expedition to establish a colony in Arizona.In line with the title of the book,and no doubt the attitudes of his eastern readers,Cummings treats the Mormons as the kind of “remarkable curiosity”one might encounter at a carnival side-show;however his two interviews with Brigham Young,as well as his awestruck description of the Great Salt Lake are of particular interest.Altogether the book provides an interesting glimpse into eastern perceptions of western lifestyles during the late nineteenth century.

Reflections of Grand Canyon Historians:Ideas,Arguments,and First-Person Accounts. Edited by Todd R.Berger.(Grand Canyon:Grand Canyon Association,2008. 224 pp.paper $15.00.)

In January 2007 the Grand Canyon Association hosted the Grand Canyon History Symposium,which was attended by three hundred historians, writers,biographers,and other Grand Canyon enthusiasts.This book is a compilation of some of the essays presented at this symposium.A collection of academic works,oral histories,and spirited debates,this book provides a glimpse into the Grand Canyon from many points of view.Among the thirty-two articles are explorations of the life and legacy of John Wesley Powell,the Havasupai Indian population,the cowboys who ran their cattle throughout the Grand Canyon area, and adventurers who claimed death-defying experiences with white water rapids. Included are engaging stories of larger than life characters,archaeological and historical studies,and photographs that add rich visuals to the book.

UTAHSTATE

HISTORICALSOCIETYFELLOWS

THOMAS G.ALEXANDER JAMES B.ALLEN LEONARD J.ARRINGTON (1917-1999) MAUREEN URSENBACH BEECHER FAWN M.BRODIE (1915-1981) JUANITA BROOKS (1898-1989) OLIVE W.BURT (1894-1981) EUGENE E.CAMPBELL (1915-1986) C.GREGORY CRAMPTON (1911-1995) EVERETT L.COOLEY (1917-2006) S.GEORGE ELLSWORTH (1916-1997) AUSTIN E.FIFE (1909-1986) PETER L.GOSS LEROY R.HAFEN (1893-1985) B.CARMON HARDY JOELJANETSKI

JESSE D.JENNINGS (1909-1997) A.KARL LARSON (1899-1983) GUSTIVE O.LARSON (1897-1983) BRIGHAM D.MADSEN CAROL CORNWALL MADSEN DEAN L.MAY (1938-2003) DAVID E.MILLER (1909-1978) DALE L.MORGAN (1914-1971) WILLIAM MULDER (1915-2008) FLOYD A.O’NEIL HELEN Z.PAPANIKOLAS (1917-2004) CHARLES S.PETERSON RICHARD W.SADLER GARY L.SHUMWAY MELVINT.SMITH WALLACE E.STEGNER (1909-1993) WILLIAM A.WILSON

HONORARYLIFEMEMBERS

DAVID BIGLER JAY M.HAYMOND FLORENCE S.JACOBSEN STANFORD J.LAYTON WILLIAM P.MACKINNON JOHN S.MCCORMICK MIRIAM B.MURPHY LAMAR PETERSEN RICHARD C.ROBERTS MELVIN T.SMITH LINDATHATCHER GARY TOPPING