Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 79, Number 2, 2011

98 IN THIS ISSUE 100

“Epoch in Musical History:” The Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s First Recordings

By Richard E. Turley Jr. 122

William and Jeannette Ferry: Presbyterian Pillars in Mormon Utah

By David A. Hales and Sandra Dawn Brimhall 144

Bishop Mitty’s Tough Love: History and Documents

By Gary Topping 164

The 1966 BYU Student Spy Ring

By Gary James Bergera 189 IN MEMORIAM — Brigham D. Madsen 192 BOOK REVIEWS

Eric Jay Dolin. Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America Reviewed by John D. Barton

Brian G. Shellum. Black Officer in a Buffalo Soldier Regiment: The Military Career of Charles Young Reviewed by Ronald G. Coleman

David M. Emmons. Beyond the American Pale: The Irish in the West 1845-1910 Reviewed by Camden Burd W. Paul Reeve and Ardis E. Parshall, eds. Mormonism: A Historical Encylopedia

Reviewed by Michael K. Winder 199 BOOK NOTICES

When the Mormon Tabernacle Choir stepped onto the international stage with its award-winning performance at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, little did anyone realize that in the coming years the choir would become an American institution. Today radio and television programs, tours, special performances, and concerts provide opportunities for millions to experience the treasure of religious and secular music performed by the choir. The invention of the phonograph by Thomas Edison in 1877 and subsequent improvements brought new opportunities for the choir to share music through the millions of copies of its more than 160 recordings. How it all began and how the first recordings were produced and marketed, is the subject of our first article in this issue. The 1909 recordings of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir were a pioneering endeavor marking the first successful attempt to record a four-hundred voice choir. That success helped gain for Utah recognition as a cultural center. It also inspired groups and individuals that through music and other cultural pursuits, life could be more fulfilling.

The philanthropy and community service of those who secured their wealth from Utah’s mines and related activities are a recognized part of the state’s history. Individuals such as Thomas and Jenny Kearns, David and Mary Keith, John and Mary Judge, Alfred and Elizabeth McCune, Jesse and Amanda Knight, are perhaps the best known. Add to the list William and Jeannette Ferry, the subjects of our

FRONT COVER: The Mormon Tabernacle Choir at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, shortly after Utahʼs admission to statehood. CHURCH HISTORY LIBRARY, FAMILY AND CHURCH HISTORY DEPARTMENT, THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS. IN THIS ISSUE (ABOVE): A view of Westminster College in 1914 looking east from the west gate toward Converse Hall on the left and Ferry Hall on the right. SHIPLER COLLECTION, UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY. (RIGHT) Part of the crowd at the new stadium (now Lavell Edwards Stadium) for a BYU football game in the mid 1960s. BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY LIBRARY.

second article. While the Kearns, Keiths, and Judges were Catholics; the McCunes and Knights Mormons, the Ferrys were devout Presbyterians. Already in their fifties, they came to Utah in 1878, settled in Park City, and built an impressive Victorian mansion at the mouth of Thayne’s Canyon. Later, they moved to Salt Lake City where Jeannette became involved in the anti-polygamy movement and William an unsuccessful candidate for Congress in 1886 and Utah governor in 1904. Their most lasting legacy is their support for the fledgling Westminster College in donating land for the campus and the construction of the women’s dormitory appropriately named Ferry Hall.

Our last two articles for this issue reveal the difficult challenges in administering religious and educational institutions. In 1926 when John A. Mitty became the third bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake, following Lawrence Scanlan and Joseph S. Glass, he faced what his biographer calls “A spreading perception of financial hopelessness,” among those to whom he was assigned to minister. The letters and notes from Bishop Mitty offer a glimpse of the frustrations, disappointments, burdens, and imperfections of a dedicated leader.

Four decades later, Ernest L. Wilkinson encountered his own frustrations at Brigham Young University. Returning to his post as university president following an unsuccessful campaign for the United States Senate, Wilkinson undertook a dual effort to promote patriotism, capitalism, anti-communism, and obedience, and thwart a perceived encroaching socialism and procommunism encouraged and abetted by some members of his own faculty. The misguided spy episode, the subject of our last article, proved to be a bitter experience for all involved—students, faculty, and administrators. It left a blemish on what was an unprecedented record of growth and the emergence of the “Y” as a nationally recognized and respected university. For some, the BYU spy episode foreshadowed another tragedy that followed a few years later when the nation learned of the Watergate break-in that culminated in the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon in August 1974.

We conclude this issue with an In Memoriam tribute to a beloved gentleman and historian, Brigham D. Madsen, who died on December 24, 2010, at the age of ninety-six.

“Epoch in Musical History:” The Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s First Recordings

BY RICHARD E. TURLEY JR.

Today the Mormon Tabernacle Choir is among the most recognized performing groups on earth. Organized in the mid-nineteenth century in Utah, it has since become the centerpiece of the world’s longest-running continuous network radio broadcast (now also on television), Music and the Spoken Word, which is aired on more than two thousand radio and television stations and cable systems. The choir has released more than 160 recordings, which have sold millions of copies. Five of those recordings have achieved gold record status and two have gone platinum. Choir performances have led to a Grammy Award and an Emmy. And in 2010, the choir was named to the National Radio Hall of Fame—all with an unpaid group that

Richard E. Turley Jr. is Assistant Church Historian and Recorder for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints. Prior to this appointment, he served for eight years as managing director of the combined Family and Church History Department, four years as managing director of the Family History Department, and fourteen years as managing director of the Church Historical Department. He is a coauthor, along with Ronald W. Walker and Glen M. Leonard, of Massacre at Mountain Meadows (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). The author wishes to thank Grant A. Anderson, Alison K. Gainer, Jay A. Parry, and Rebecca M. Taylor for their assistance on this article.

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir at the Chicago Worldʼs Fair in 1893.

is required to rehearse and perform on a demanding schedule.1

The choir’s rise from obscurity to prominence was significantly bolstered by its long history of acclaimed sound recordings. That history began a century ago when the choir participated in its first-ever recording session, one that resulted in the earliest Tabernacle Choir records. Even the record company expected those experimental recording efforts to result in failure.2 But they were indeed successful both technically and musically, bringing state-of-the-art technology (though primitive by today’s standards) together with a choir that was just beginning to come into its own.

Situated at the crossroads of the West in Salt Lake City, the historic Tabernacle attracted many overland travelers, who sometimes commented on the quality of the fledgling choir and impressive organ they heard there. 3 But the choir received little formal acclaim until its trip to the Columbian Exposition in 1893 (also known as the Chicago World’s Fair) earned it a second-place finish in a choral competition.4

Even after that achievement, however, the choir remained relatively unknown, largely because few people around the world had heard it perform. With concert tours the choir began to be better known, but it was the popularization of recorded music that offered the greatest opportunity to expand the choir’s audience.5 Thomas Edison invented the phonograph in 1877, the year Brigham Young died. Over the next three decades, the functions of the phonograph and its related technologies came to be applied primarily to one use: the recording and playing of music. During that same time period, three major recording giants began to dominate the record industry: Columbia Phonograph Company, Victor Talking Machine Company, and Edison Phonograph Company. Each sought to capture the sounds of the world’s best available musicians for its growing lists of commercial records.6

1

“Frequently Asked Questions,” http://mormontabernaclechoir.org. This official website of the choir states, “The Choir has released more than 130 musical compilations.” However, an actual count of the records listed yields a total of 168 releases by the choir (including new compilations from previously released albums and remastered albums). The 1959 Grammy for the best performance by a vocal group or chorus was awarded to Richard P. Condie, the choir director, for “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” performed by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. See http://www2.grammy.com/Recording_Academy/ Awards/ (accessed November 17, 2010).

2 “Big Choir Sings into Phonograph,” Deseret Evening News, September 2, 1910.

3 Ronald W. Walker, “The Salt Lake Tabernacle in the Nineteenth Century: A Glimpse of Early Mormonism,” Journal of Mormon History 32 (Fall 2005): 229–32.

4 Utah at the World’s Columbian Exposition (Salt Lake City: Salt Lake Lithographing Co., 1894), 59. See also Reid L. Neilson, Exhibiting Mormonism: Latter-day Saints and the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).

5 For a discussion of the choir’s early out-of-state tours, see J. Spencer Cornwall, A Century of Singing: The Salt Lake Mormon Tabernacle Choir (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1958), 64–69, 75–81.

6 Tim Brooks, The Columbia Master Book Discography, Volume 1: U.S. Matrix Series 1 through 4999, 1901–1910 with a History of the Columbia Phonograph Company to 1934 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999), 1–3; Gary Marmorstein, The Label: The Story of Columbia Records (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2007), 7–8, 11–12, 15–16, 19; Andre J. Millard, America on Record: A History of Recorded Sound, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 50; “Scenes in Columbia Record-Making Laboratory,” The Music Trades, August 27, 1910.

These early days of sound recording offered many challenges. Although the microphone had been invented, it had not yet been developed to the point where it could record music well, and artists had to stand in front of a horn that focused sound toward an acoustic recording device. This technology, first developed for telephone use, generally worked well for solo artists or small ensembles but made it particularly difficult to capture the sounds of large performing groups.

In 1909, a fan of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir “noted the paucity of organ and church choir music in the [phonograph] machine catalogues.” He suggested that Joseph J. Daynes Jr., cofounder and manager of Daynes-Beebe Music Store, contact “the great eastern talking machine manufacturers” to encourage a recording of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and organ. The suggestion was well received, and a contact was made with Columbia Phonograph Company (and perhaps others). “They found the Columbia people entirely agreeable to the proposition” and firmed up the arrangements in a visit to New York some weeks later.7

Joseph J. Daynes Jr. had a long association with the choir—and with the local music scene. His father, Joseph Sr., had served as Tabernacle Choir organist for thirty-three years. His grandfather, John Daynes, had established a music store (John Daynes Music and Jewelry) in Salt Lake City shortly after his arrival in 1862. Joseph Jr. later worked as president and general manager of the Daynes Music Company, an offshoot of the original store that was owned by his father. In 1909, Joseph Jr. founded his own store, the Daynes-Beebe Music Company, with his brother-in-law Ovando C. Beebe.8

Columbia welcomed the overtures from Daynes. The New York company had been anxious to begin recording large groups and seemed eager to send specially developed equipment to Salt Lake City to capture the stirring sounds of the choir and organ. All the optimistic talk, however, was followed by the gloomy reality of delay.

On December 11, 1909, the Deseret Evening News reported, “Not a word

7 “Music and Musicians,” Deseret Evening News, October 30, 1909.

8 Andrew Jenson, Latter-day Saint Biographical Encyclopedia, vol. 1 (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1901), 746; Utah: A Centennial History, vol. 3 (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1949), 56–57; Ralph B. Simmons, comp. and ed., Utah’s Distinguished Personalities, Commonwealth Edition, vol. 1 (Salt Lake City: Personality Publishing, 1933), 86. The wives of Joseph J. Daynes Jr. and Ovando C. Beebe— Winnifred B. Woodruff and Clara M. Woodruff, respectively—were both daughters of Wilford Woodruff and Emma Smith Woodruff. Men of Affairs in the State of Utah (Salt Lake City: The Press Club of Salt Lake, 1914), n.p.; Matthias F. Cowley, Wilford Woodruff: History of His Life and Labors (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1909), 691.

Joseph J. Daynes Sr. Mormon Tabernacle organist.

has been heard from the Columbian Phono[g]raph people as to how long the delay will continue in sending to this city their special apparatus for recording performances of the Tabernacle choir and the organ, but Col. [Joseph J.] Daynes [Jr.], lo[o]ks for an expert and his machine next week.”9 But the sheer bulk of the massive machinery occasioned further delay— and spurred advancements in technology geared toward shrinking its size.

Two weeks later, on Christmas Day, the paper reported that New York’s “Columbia Talking Machine company” had notified Salt Lake City’s Daynes-Beebe Music Company that “the delay in sending the record-taking machine for recording the tabernacle choir and organ, has been caused by finding the regular apparatus too heavy and bulky, the weight being 500 pounds.” Columbia decided to invent a lighter machine and, “after repeated trials and experiments,” succeeded in creating one “weighing but 100 pounds.” Columbia explained that it was shipping the machine to Salt Lake City “in care of an expert who will conduct its operation.” The paper boldly announced, “Both the choir and Prof. [John J.] McClellan are ready to do their part when the apparatus comes.”10 McClellan was the chief organist for the Tabernacle and its choir. He served in that position for a quarter century, from 1900 to 1925.11

If Utahns expected the machine’s quick arrival, they were once again disappointed. Many months would pass before it reached Salt Lake City. In August 1910, however, prospects finally brightened, and Tabernacle Choir conductor Evan Stephens intensified his efforts to hone his singers’ skills

9 “Music and Musicians,” Deseret Evening News, December 11, 1909. Joseph J. Daynes Jr. was called “Colonel” because he “was lieutenant-colonel of the staff of Gov. John C. Cutler for four years, and was re-appointed to that position by Governor William Spry, serving four years.” Men of Affairs in the State of Utah (Salt Lake City: The Press Club of Salt Lake, 1914), n.p.

10

“Music and Musicians,” Deseret Evening News, December 25, 1909.

11 Latham True, “John J. McClellan,” The American Organist 2 (April 1919): 144–46; Roger L. Miller, “Mormon Tabernacle Choir,” Utah History Encyclopedia, ed. Allan Kent Powell (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1994), 379.

The Daynes-Beebe Music Store in 1914, located at 45 South Main Street in Salt Lake City.

MORMON TABERNACLE CHOIR

Utah State Historical Society

and solicit their participation in the anticipated recording session.12

At the time, the choir had a loose membership of around six hundred people, some of whom participated only on special occasions. In an August 20 Deseret Evening News article, Stephens commented on the recording session and encouraged a good turnout. Conscious of the potential long-term impact of the recordings on the choir’s reputation, Stephens said, “Inasmuch as the records, if acceptable, will be heard the world over, and represent our choir, the importance of a full representation of the singers will appeal to every one. Not less than 400 voices should be heard to do the choir justice in a phonograph.”

Four hundred singers was a lofty goal, one that could be achieved only by drawing on talented singers who had retired from active participation but had joined in past tours. The newspaper reporter said Stephens earnestly desired that “every prominent singer who has taken part in the choir’s work during the years past, especially those who have represented the choir on the excursions to California and Seattle in addition to all present regulars, be on hand next Thursday night, to drill carefully for the work in the selections to be recorded.” Stephens added the tantalizing detail that the recording would set a world record—the choir would be the largest ever recorded— hoping this claim to fame would entice more participants: It will be a matter of personal pride to every loyal member of the choir to have their voices included in this record—the first ever taken of a large choir. And a special list will be kept by the choir for future use, of the names of all taking part, that no one may in the future claim the honor who was not present. So members of the Harmony club, Seattle, California, Denver and world’s fair choruses, as well as the soloists who gave their services on those occasions, should be present to reinforce the regulars of today. Thus will be represented each and all groups who have for years past helped to maintain th[e] reputation of the choir.13

12 Evan Stephens was the director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir for twenty-six years, from 1890 to 1916. J. Spencer Cornwall, A Century of Singing: The Salt Lake Mormon Tabernacle Choir (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1958), 11. Today, eighteen of Stephens’s hymns appear in the 1985 edition of Hymns of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 13 “Records to be Made,” Deseret Evening News, August 20, 1910. The claim that this recording was to be “the first ever taken of a large choir” is corroborated by articles in the national music press. The Music Trade Review (September 17, 1910) wrote, “After many trials to make acceptable records of large bodies of singers, the Columbia Phonograph Co., General, New York, have been successful. In the celebrated Mormon Tabernacle of [Salt Lake] city, on the evening of September 1, the reproductions of twelve numbers, sung by the Tabernacle choir of 300, were secured within two hours by Expert Hausmann, of the Columbia record-

Joseph J. Daynes Jr., was instrumental in promoting and selling the first Tabernacle Choir recordings.

Besides encouraging participation from past choir members, Stephens had to deal with public interest in the event and whether people outside the choir could attend the recording session. “The public are inquiring if they can be admitted to this novel performance,” he explained. “The matter is being considered of admitting to the lower body of the house for a nominal price, all who may desire to be present.”14 At first, Stephens hoped to treat the recording session like a concert. It was a plan he would later abandon when the exacting requirements of the recording process made it clear that a live audience would generate unacceptable background noise.

His best estimate was that the first three evenings in September would be required to record all twelve of the numbers, which included the Mormon hymns “We Thank Thee O God, for a Prophet” and “O My Father,” as well as Handel’s classic, the Hallelujah chorus from the Messiah

Since the recording sessions would also focus on the Tabernacle’s famed pipe organ, organist John J. McClellan likewise selected his numbers with care, his goal being to “show adequately the remarkable orchestral and delicate, as well as the more powerful and majestic qualities,” of the instrument. Though his numbers were still under consideration at news time, the reporter observed, “He has decided to date, on the last movement from the overture to ‘Tannhauser,’ a movement from the A minor Fantasia of Mozart, as much of the D minor Fugu[e] of J.S. Bach as the record will admit, selections from ‘Cavaleria Rusticana,’ the Liebestodt [sic] from ‘Tristan and Isolde,’ the Gavot from ‘Mignon,’ ‘Annie Laurie’ with harmonic variations, the Batiste ‘First Communion,’ one of the most brilliant concert overtures, and others.” Reflecting the excitement building in the community, the reporter concluded, “There is a growing interest in this most novel experiment, and an ardent hope that every effort will be successful.”15

On August 22, the Deseret Evening News quoted Joseph J. Daynes Jr. as saying he had received intelligence from the Columbia Phonograph Company that “the machine to take the tabernacle records” was on its way and expected to reach Salt Lake City on the twenty-ninth, “with an expert from New York to conduct the experiments.” 16 Daynes, of course, was involved in the recording process from the conceptual stage, and he continued to be Columbia’s contact as record proofs were sent and then, later, as the actual records were delivered.

ing laboratory.” In an article published on the same day, The Musical Age reported in the same vein, noting that fortunes had been spent on the effort to develop the technology to record large choirs, “but to no purpose.” Searches of major online catalogs (the Library of Congress Catalog and the British Library Sound Archive Catalogue) also do not yield any evidence of a recording by a large choir before 1910—with one exception. An experimental recording of a four-thousand-voice chorus was made at the Crystal Palace in London in 1888. The chorus sang Handel’s Moses and the Children of Israel; Colonel George Gouraud, who made the recording, did so from “a distance of 100 yards.” The catalog claims that this is the “earliest known recorded music in existence.” See http://cadensa.bl.uk/uhtbin/cgisirsi/B86bjU9ijs/WORKS-FILE/0/49

(accessed November 17, 2010).

14 “Records to be Made,” Deseret Evening News, August 20, 1910.

15 Ibid.

16 “Machine on the Way,” Deseret Evening News, August 22, 1910.

On Saturday, August 27, the News reported that Stephens had called a special choir rehearsal for Monday night, the day the recording machine was expected to arrive and be set up. The big question had become where to place the machine in the Tabernacle to get the best recording. The reporter wrote: There is considerable speculation as to where it can be placed to the best advantage. There is also some guessing as to whether the same laws governing the refrangibility of light within an elliptical spheroid, will apply equally to acoustics, as the shape of the tabernacle interior is elliptical. Then there are the galleries to consider in applying the laws of acoustics, so that altogether there is much uncertainty. A number of local scientific men are anxious to be present when the machine is being moved about to locate the vocal focus, and study the phenomena connected with the experimenting. There is disappointment, however, over the shortness of the time allot[t]ed for recording, or what the photographers would call “exposures.”17

On Monday, as expected, the machinery arrived from New York in two shipments. The first reached Salt Lake City in the morning, and the parts were unloaded and “stacked up back of the Daynes-Beebe warerooms.” By noon, “Col. Daynes” was feeling optimistic about the venture. He had worried the machinery might arrive late, unduly shortening the recording time. The equipment’s timely arrival meant that both the choir and the organ could do “longer and better work.” The reporter who interviewed Daynes announced, “The expert and the remainder of the machine are expected this afternoon.”18

Later that day, the rest of the recording machinery arrived as expected, along with “the expert, A. Hausmann.” The Deseret Evening News called the five-hundred-pound machine with its “nearly 500 parts” a “rather complicated affair.” Some of the parts, the article noted, were “very delicate, requiring the most careful handling by an operator skilled and experienced in the work.”19

The gawkiest portions of the instrument were its “two great receiving horns,” each fifty-six inches in length and two feet wide at its opening. Their role was to capture the sound and direct it to the greatest technological wonder of all: “the recorder,” the component that transferred sound waves to wax. This device was “a little disc no larger than the palm of the hand” that was “made of the finest tempered steel, glass, wax, and a sapphire needle.” The choice of sapphire for the needle drew comment: “Diamonds were tried first in the place of sapphire,” the News noted, “but it was found that the latter jewel could not be improved upon, and now nothing else is used as a needle.”20

The source of these news details was the recording engineer, Alexander Hausmann, who warmed to the reporter and provided other interesting

17 “Music and Musicians,” Deseret Evening News, August 27, 1910.

18 “Recording Machine Here,” Deseret Evening News, August 29, 1910.

19 “Ready to Record Tabernacle Choir,” Deseret Evening News, August 30, 1910. On December 25, 1909 the Deseret News in “Music and Musicians” reported that Columbia was sending a one hundred pound machine, but it appears they reverted to the larger machine

20 Ibid. The reporter considered the recorder to be almost priceless. The rest of the machine he valued at $450.00.

tidbits: “Mr. Hausmann says that while recorders are being steadily made, only about once a year is one turned out that does the work satisfactorily; and with this one, half a million dollars’ worth of discs can be made.”21

The recorder inscribed grooves in a wax blank revolving horizontally below it. The wax blanks came in bulk from Germany, and though their precise composition was a closely guarded secret, the reporter concluded quickly by observation that “most of the material is refined wax.” Hausmann explained the general process of manufacturing the blanks (as paraphrased by the reporter):

This composition is boiled for three hours at 350 degrees Fahrenheit, and then strained carefully through many strainers of muslin, thus eliminating all impurities. Then the resultant material is moulded and baked at a certain temperature, and put through other processes requiring most careful watching, until the completed blank is turned out. The face is shaved one hundredth of an inch at a time until the face is mathematically smooth. Then it is ready for receiving sound impressions. These have to be watched with a microscope in the hands of an expert, that all irregularities may be detected.22

If a recording made on the wax proved unsatisfactory, the blank could be

21 Ibid. After the recording sessions in Salt Lake City, the newspaper elaborated on the wondrous sapphire needle:

According to the phonographic expert who was here last week, the entire success of a record taking depends on so apparently simple a thing as a sapphire needle which transmits the sound waves from the receiving trumpets to the recording wax blank. This needle must be tapered “just so,” the diameter of the needle must be “just so,” to the thousandth of an inch. It has been found possible with the mechanical appliances at hand to reproduce just such dimensions only about once a year, though needles and recording discs are being constantly made. The glass must be of just such a thickness, the metallic parts exactly in sympathy, in fact it seems to be about as difficult to make one of these things as a large telescopic lens. “Music and Musicians,” Deseret Evening News, September 10, 1910.

22 “Ready to Record Tabernacle Choir,” Deseret Evening News, August 30, 1910.

Evan Stephens, conductor of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, in his home on South State Street.

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

melted down and reused. The recording machine had to be kept clean, with “the most scrupulous care” being taken to guard “against dust or foreign matter of any kind getting into any of the working parts of the machine, as the slightest imperfection ruins the record.”23 Hausmann was the expert who would monitor the delicate process of recording on the wax blanks, something he had undoubtedly done many times before.

To assure the best recordings, Hausmann needed to raise the temperature of the recording wax to roughly ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit. During the Tabernacle recording sessions, the temperature in the old wooden structure would not reach the desired level. But Hausmann had come prepared. He would use an electric incandescent bulb to heat the wax to the ideal temperature.24

The greatest challenge for Hausmann was where to place the recording machine, a question on which local science aficionados had been opining for days. Using his best understanding of the Tabernacle’s shape and the physics of sound, Hausmann planned to choose a location for the device and make a test recording while McClellan played the organ. Hausmann hoped to place the instrument in a position that would capture with clarity both loud and soft passages from the organ. The News reporter wrote:

Mr. Hausmann says the laws of acoustics operate the same in the case of an ellipse, as the laws of reflection of light, viz., the rays converging to a common point, or focus. But in the case of the tabernacle, the presence of the large galleries will modify the location of the foci so that the machine will have to be mounted on a movable scaffolding and changed around from place to place until the actual focus is located. This is what has already been forecast in The News. The expert fears that with the machine located so as to record perfectly fortissimo passages, when pianissimo passages are played they will be too faint. However, this may not be so. At any rate it is expected a location will be discovered by which this difficulty may be obviated.25

In Tuesday’s experiment, Hausmann planned to record “three or four bars of organ music” as McClellan played. Those bars would then be played back using “a special device prepared for that purpose.” Through trial and error, Hausmann hoped to find the right location to place the recording machine so that he could make successful wax recordings of the organ and the choir. He could then carefully pack the wax recordings for shipment to New York, where a matrix would be made of each from which the company could prepare “performing discs”—what later generations would simply call records.26

Even though Tuesday night’s session was closed to the general public, interest ran high “in these tabernacle experiments.” At first, the Deseret Evening News reported that by Thursday evening, September 1, the public was expected to witness “just how the thing is done . . . when the apparatus

23 Ibid. 24

“Music and Musicians,” Deseret Evening News, September 10, 1910. 25 “Ready to Record Tabernacle Choir,” Deseret Evening News, August 30, 1910. 26 Ibid.

will be in full working order.”27 Thursday was to be the first of three days of recording. After the Tuesday evening session, Stephens concluded it would be impractical to admit the public during the recording sessions because of “the necessity of absolutely no outside disturbing elements.”28

The experiments began a little after 6:00 p.m., when Hausmann, Daynes, McClellan, and George Studham—“an assistant”—arrived at the Tabernacle. McClellan took his seat at the organ, and Hausmann “placed the machine tentatively in the center of the house, then at the sides, then in the galleries, over at the east side of the auditorium, and next at the side of the organ.” Finally, he suggested putting the machine “on the ledge of the organ case under the ‘1896,’” the illuminated date of Utah’s admission to the union that proudly hung with a star above the organ case. To accommodate the recording machine, one of the front ornamental pipes of the organ was removed and the device positioned so that the wide opening of the long recording horn fit just inside the case.

As planned, when the machine was ready, McClellan played “a few bars of music,” which Hausmann recorded and played back to him using a “reproducer.” Satisfied, McClellan “then played the final movement of the ‘Tannhauser’ overture.” The number recorded beautifully, and Hausmann declared “it could not have been bettered.” According to the Deseret Evening

27 Ibid. 28 “Cannot Admit Public,” Deseret Evening News, August 31, 1910.

Interior of the Salt Lake City Tabernacle in about 1896.

News, Hausmann also said the recording was the first ever made “from a pipe organ.”

Before Tuesday evening’s tests, no one was sure the experiment to record the organ and choir would succeed. But by the time the night ended, the Deseret Evening News was ready to declare the experiments “a complete success” that put to rest “all apprehension as to possible failure.”29

The next night, with the recording device in the same position, McClellan recorded other numbers. Columbia’s ten-inch disc technology made it possible to record just slightly over three minutes of music on a blank. “Wednesday night’s tabernacle organ performance for phonograph record was another gratifying success,” proclaimed the Deseret Evening News. “Prof. McClellan played the famous sextet from ‘Lucia,’ as much of the great D minor fugue of J. S. Bach as could be got into three minutes and 15 seconds, Nevin’s ‘Gondolier,’ a selection from ‘Cavaleria Rusticana,’ ‘Traumerie,’ ‘Evening Star,’ Mendelssohns’s ‘Spring Song,’ Rubinstein’s ‘Melodie in F,’ and the ‘Sixth Organ Toccata,’ by Widor, organist of St. Sulpice in Paris.” The article went on to explain that the organ’s sound capabilities outstripped the capacity of the recording machine to capture its range.

Owing to the peculiarities of organ construction, the records of Wednesday evening were taken from the “Great,” “Choir” and “Pedal” organs. The pipes of the “Solo” and “Swell” organs were enclosed in great boxes above, the fronts of which are opened and closed by shutters which modulate the sound. To get records involving these parts of the instrument, it will be necessary to set the recording machine in the upper part of

John J. McClellan, Mormon Tabernacle organist.

the organ where the “Solo” and “Swell” organs are located. This is to be done Friday evening, when records will be taken giving the most beautiful effects of the great instrument, including the vox humana combinations. Prof. McClellan is to play “Annie Laurie” with variations for one number, and Prof. J. J. Daynes [Sr.], the old time organist of the tabernacle, is to give a couple of numbers, including the Batiste “Communion in G.”30

Between the Wednesday and Friday organ recording sessions, the choir performed to an empty house. Thursday’s Deseret Evening News explained: “The choir records are to be taken this evening at 7:30; but the public will not be admitted. Expert Hausmann of the phonograph company is very much pleased with the results so far, and does not anticipate any trouble at all in completing his work. The wax blanks containing the records go to New York where the matrices are to be made and the discs cast. The completed records will be ready for performance just before Christmas.”31 Thursday evening’s session was awaited with eagerness. Recording the organ was a challenge given its size and complexity. But recording a choral group the size of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir brought a different set of challenges. As noted earlier, Columbia had been transfixed with the notion of recording large performing groups, a goal that tested the limits of the new recording technology. The Thursday evening session, therefore, was set to make its own kind of history in the recording of choral music.

“What may, without stretch of the imagination, be considered the most interesting event in local musical history, occurred Thursday evening, in the tabernacle,” the Deseret Evening News exclaimed the next day. “It was the successful recording for phonographic reproduction, of 12 numbers sung by the tabernacle choir of 300 singers within two hours, by Expert Hausmann of the Columbia Phonograph company of New York city.”32

For readers unfamiliar with the technology race, the newspaper explained the significance of Thursday night’s success:

The achievement is the more remarkable from the fact that for the last four years or more, the three great phonograph companies have been endeavoring to secure acceptable records of large bodies of singers. Fortunes have been expended in all kinds of experiments with mechanisms and horns, principally the latter, but to no purpose. Mr. Hausmann says sometimes as high as $50 have been paid for a single horn, only to discard it finally as not the thing. Horns in brass, in zinc, in various metallic compositions, in various kinds of woods, hard and soft, have been tried under all sorts of conditions and surrounding, to no purpose.33

Although curiosity seekers and the press had pumped Hausmann for details about the recording process, he had apparently withheld a key bit of information about the trip itself, a secret that he now revealed since success was virtually assured. The News went on to report that, given the difficulty

30

“Record Organ Successfully,” Deseret Evening News, September 1, 1910. References in this paper to Daynes as organist or to “Professor Daynes” refer to the elder Joseph Daynes.

31 Ibid.

32

“Big Choir Sings into Phonograph,” Deseret Evening News, September 2, 1910. 33 Ibid.

of the task, Columbia had “had no particular faith in the success of the Salt Lake experiments.” The company had sent Hausmann to Utah “rather . . . as a forlorn hope, expecting his experience would tally up with the experiences of the past.” In fact, another expert was to have traveled to Utah with Hausmann but abandoned the project because he “didn’t think it worth while.”34

The newspaper praised Hausmann, “this unpretentious, thoughtful German who has little to say, but a great deal to do.” Hausmann “took the matter in hand determined to make a success, if such a thing was possible.” Based on Thursday night’s recordings, Hausmann “made a success that if carried out, as expected, in the casting and disc making at the New York end, will have achieved what has been hoped for and dreamed of for the last four years or more.”35

The key to Hausmann’s success was how he arranged the physical setting so as to capture all the voices of the choir in balance. He and his assistant spent two hours experimenting with placement of the long horns that would direct the sound into the recorder. “Finally,” the News reported, “he suspended them from a rope stretched across from gallery to gallery, the flaring bells of the two horns covering [the singers]—the one the sopranos and altos, the other the tenors and basses, the small ends connecting directly with the machine where the choir leader stands at the east of the organ console.” The success of this arrangement could be determined only after the choir arrived, and “when the singers gathered,” the paper reported, “this was found to work satisfactorily.”36

The actual recording began at 8:00 p.m. At Hausmann’s request, “the ladies all removed their hats, and the entire aggregation of singers were packed in together as close as possible, all facing the horns.” Because of the distance of the recording equipment from the organ pipes, McClellan had to play the accompaniments fortissimo . Meanwhile, the soloists, soprano Lizzie Thomas Edward and baritone Horace Ensign, were asked to stand “with their faces in one of the horn bells.” “Of course,” the newspaper critic noted, “fine shading work was out of the question; massive effects were the principal thing.”37

Evan Stephens, the choir’s long-time conductor, had a reputation for directing the choir as though it were a single instrument.38 Certainly he knew that concert audiences might forgive and forget a stray note. But with recording technology, miscues could last indefinitely, stored in public and private music libraries. Before the recording began, Stephens addressed his singers in what was half warning, half pep talk. According to the Deseret 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid., and “Music and Musicians,” Deseret Evening News, September 3, 1910. 37 “Big Choir Sings into Phonograph,” Deseret Evening News, September 2, 1910. 38 George D. Pyper, “Six Thousand Miles With the ‘Mormon’ Tabernacle Choir: Impressions of the Manager,” Juvenile Instructor 47 (March-December 1912): 201, 321.

Evening News, “Prof. Stephens again called to the attention of the choir that they were now about to sing for the world, to be careful not to let individual vo[ic]es stick out above the general ensemble, and to do their level best.” When Stephens’s brief speech ended, “Expert Hausmann turned his electric globe on the wax plate, and turned on the motor.”39 Choral history was about to be made.

The first order of business—just as it had been in recording the organ—was to record a few measures of music and play them back. The choir sang a few bars of the initial number to be recorded—“We Thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet”—and then paused as critics listened at the opening of the “reproducing horn.” As the first recorded sounds of the choir reached the ears of those positioned around the horn, they “expressed their delight, as the work was just what had been hoped for.” Success seemed “right within the grasp”; yet out of an abundance of caution, they tried the experiment again with “acceptable” results. It was now time for “full testing” to begin.40

The Deseret Evening News listed the following numbers, soloists, and times for the recordings made that evening:

“We thank thee, O God, for a prophet,” Mrs. Norton’s hymn; two stanzas, 2 minutes. Anthem, “Let the Mountains Shout for Joy!” by Prof. Evan Stephens; 3 minutes, 5 seconds.

“Soldier’s Chorus,” “Faust;” 2 minutes, 25 seconds.

“Hallelujah Chorus,” Handel, two plates; 2 minutes, and 1 minute, 50 seconds, respectively.

“Inflammatus,” Rossini, 3 minutes, 15 seconds; Mrs. Edward soloist.

“Gypsy Sweetheart,” Horace Ensign soloist; 2 minutes 43 seconds.

“Hosannah!” temple dedication anthem, by Prof. Evan Stephens; 3 minutes.

“Pilgrim’s Chorus,” “Il Lombardi;” 2 minutes 52 seconds.

“Light and Truth,” famous Welsh march; 2 minutes 7 seconds.

“America,” “Star Spangled Banner;” 2 minutes 53 seconds.

39

“Big Choir Sings into Phonograph,” Deseret Evening News, September 2, 1910. 40 Ibid.

MORMON TABERNACLE CHOIR

Lizzie Thomas Edward. UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Hymn, “O My Father;” 3 minutes 40 seconds.

“Unfold Ye Portals,” from Gounod’s “Redemption;” 3 minutes 35 seconds41

The newspaper also described the spirit with which the choir members sang. “The choir was right on its mettle; it was ‘determined to do or die.’ It sang with a vim, a wholesouled vigor, an earnestness, a wonderful unison and attack that carried Prof. Stephens and those who were there to listen, almost off their feet, as the expression is.” To the reporter, Stephens in particular seemed “delighted, his face beamed like the rising sun, he was entirely satisfied that the work of that great choir could not have been bettered.” Those present who witnessed the performance compared it to the choir’s sterling performance “with Gilmore’s band” and “the wonderfully fine work done on that occasion.”42

After the choir had recorded its numbers, Hausmann was introduced to its members, expressing his cautious optimism. Record-making, he said, was intricate and included work yet to be done in the factory. He warned that “while the indications pointed toward success, still it would be well to wait and see how it came out in New York.” The choir members seemed to like the modest, competent engineer, and many shook hands with him afterward. “Manager Daynes of the Daynes-Beebe company was there to assist and represent the Columbia people, with the expert.”43

The final recording session in the Tabernacle took place on Friday, September 2, 1910. At 1:00 p.m. that day, according to the Salt Lake Herald, “Professor J. J. McClellan, at the organ, and Professor Willard E. Weihe, on the violin, rendered the ‘Cradle Song,’ by Sauret, and ‘Traumerei,’ by Schumann, immediately after which Professor J. J. Daynes, former organist at the Tabernacle, played the ‘Communion in G,’ by Batiste.” 44 By the Deseret Evening News account, “On Friday evening Willard Weihe played two violin solos. Prof. McClellan gave two additional organ numbers, and Prof. J. J. Daynes, former tabernacle organist, played two numbers on special invitation.”45

41 Ibid. The correct title of Verdi’s opera is I Lombardi, or, in full, I Lombardi alla prima crociata The Opera Quarterly 20 (Winter 2004): 26.

42 Ibid. Gilmore’s Band was a brass band founded by Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore, who is regarded as the “Father of the American Band.” Gilmore also wrote the lyrics to “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” and the music to the famous “22nd Regiment March.” See http://www.psgilmoresociety.org/aboutGilmore.html (accessed November 17, 2010). Gilmore appears to have first visited Salt Lake City in April 1876, when he performed with his band in the Tabernacle. It does not appear that the choir also performed on that occasion. http://www.worldmilitarybands.com/the-bent-brothers/ (accessed November 17, 2010). In 1889 Gilmore returned to Salt Lake City to direct “Gilmore’s Grand Musical Festival,” which was presented three times in the Tabernacle. Participating in the festival was a four-hundred-voice choir organized by Evan Stephens. Even though Stephens’s choir, which he called the Salt Lake Choral Society, was not exclusively composed of Mormons, it did include many members of the Tabernacle Choir. Charles Jeffrey Calman, The Mormon Tabernacle Choir (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), 55. It may be this latter visit that is being referred to in the Deseret Evening News article.

43 “Big Choir Sings into Phonograph,” Deseret Evening News, September 2, 1910.

44 “Last Records Secured,” Salt Lake Herald, September 3, 1910.

45 “Music and Musicians,” Deseret Evening News, September 3, 1910.

As on the other days, placement of the recording device was the major issue with which the musicians had to contend. When organ solos had been recorded on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, the device had been set on the organ case with the flared part of its horn “reaching into the organ.” On this day, however, “the machine was placed on a level of the ‘Solo’ organ boxes, inside the case, so that the delicate stops of the two upper manuals could be used.”46 With the recorder inside the organ, Weihe had no choice but to climb inside the case so that he could play his violin near the horn flare.

The News reported that with his recording work now finished, Hausmann was “entirely satisfied with the results of his experiments.”

In a final tally of the recordings, the Salt Lake Herald reported that “Hausmann took twenty-five records, twelve of which were selections by the famous Tabernacle choir, ten by Professor McClellan, two by McClellan and Professor Weihe, and one by Professor Daynes.” His work finished, Hausmann “left for the east . . . , enthusiastic over his success in getting a number of excellent records.”47

Once the recording sessions had all ended, Hausmann shipped the wax recordings by express to New York. The Deseret Evening News explained that a matrix would be made from each recording, “and the material from which the discs are made” would be “poured hot into the matrices, just like stereotyping.” Anticipation of the completed records ran high. “The discs are to be here by Christmas,” the News projected.48

To meet the Christmas deadline, preliminary discs had to be made in New York and shipped to Daynes-Beebe Music Company for approval sometime in October. On Friday evening, September 23, George W. Lyle, Columbia’s general manager, occasioned “a musical surprise party” in Salt Lake by sending an unexpected telegram to Joseph J. Daynes Jr., Daynes-Beebe’s manager. The telegram read, “First sample records

46 Ibid.

47

“Music and Musicians,” Deseret Evening News, September 3, 1910; “Last Records Secured,” Salt Lake Herald, September 3, 1910. The word records here refers to recordings, rather than the finished product, as we presently use the word.

48 Ibid. Stereotyping was a process borrowed from printing, in which a mold, or matrix, was created from a one-of-a-kind original, from which matrix many copies could be made. In the case of printing, the original was the metal type arranged for a set of pages; in the case of recording, it was the wax on which the recorded impressions were made. See Edward H. Knight, American Mechanical Dictionary , 3 vols. (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1876), 3:2379–82; Lovell N. Reddie, “The Gramophone, and the Mechanical Recording and Reproduction of Musical Sounds,” Journal of the Royal Society of Arts 56 (May 8, 1908): 633–48.

Horace Ensign.

completed; expressing you some today.”49

The Salt Lake Herald spread the word on Sunday with a headline echoing Paul Revere and trumpeting that the “Records Are Coming.” That same weekend the Deseret Evening News reported that although initially the record proofs “were not expected here for a couple of weeks yet,” Columbia had “pushed through” production of the samples at its Bridgeport, Connecticut, factory “with unusual expedition.” The paper quoted Daynes as saying he expected the proofs on “Monday next,” when there would “certainly be a great rush to hear them.” Although Columbia’s telegram said nothing about the quality of the records made from the wax discs recorded in the Tabernacle, “the fact that the records have been sent west, argues that they must be satisfactory,” the reporter concluded.50

The proofs were expected on Monday, September 26, but the first copies did not actually arrive until Thursday. Meanwhile, Daynes-Beebe began clearing out its music store to prepare for expansion. An advertisement on Wednesday reminded readers that the company carried “the largest stock” of instruments and music “in this great intermountain country.” But its large building had “grown too small,” and, to make way for workmen, the

49

“Choir Records Coming,” Deseret Evening News, September 24, 1910.

50 “Tabernacle Choir: Records Are Coming,” Salt Lake Herald, September 25, 1910; “Choir Records Coming,” Deseret Evening News, September 24, 1910.

Edward Elgar Acoustic Recording session, illustrating a “receiving horn.”

company planned to liquidate sixty-eight pianos by 9:30 p.m. on Saturday.51 Finally, on Thursday morning, September 29, the first four proofs arrived: two organ numbers (“Pilgrim’s Song of Hope” and the final movement in the overture to “Tannhauser”) and two choir numbers (“O My Father” and “Let the Mountains Shout for Joy”). Joseph J. Daynes Jr. played them on a phonograph in his company’s “warerooms,” as John J. McClellan, Horace Ensign, and “a number of local musical enthusiasts” listened in. Their first attempt at listening to one of the samples was on a Grafanola, a newly developed machine that combined “a writing table with a talking machine.” But “the volume of sound was too subdued,” so they switched to a more traditional horn machine. Their verdict: “They are a success.” As the Deseret Evening News reported:

The records reproduce the well balanced vocalization, the predominance of parts in certain passages, as well as the volume of the general ensemble. In the double forte passages the volume of sound was “like the rushing of a mighty wind,” but it was a very melodious wind, a wind that was majestic and deeply impressive withal. As the choir almost shouted in joyful exultation, in the Stephens’ anthem, the full effects were reproduced with thrilling faithfulness, while the heavy deep, sonorous ensemble was overpowering.52

The reviewer went on to note that the heavy bass tones on the organ had been lost, but such limitations in recording were “characteristic of ordinary band reproductions.” Despite any flaws in the product, McClellan was thrilled. He observed that “this is the first time in the history of phonograph record taking where a large body of singers was able to sing with satisfactory results. The record of the Papal choir in the Sistine chapel was a failure in comparison.”53

Other reviewers were equally enthusiastic. The reviewer for the Salt Lake Herald commented on the “marvelous fidelity of expression, the tunefulness of the Tabernacle choir, and the greatness of the tabernacle organ.” He thought that the rendition of “O My Father” in particular would become a popular record. “Filled with all its varying emotions, sonorous at times and swelling from the subtle into the full depth of proclaimed affection, the favorite hymn is repeated with all its intensity of feeling in the phonograph record. . . . The splendid harmony and blending of the choir voices is remarkably brought out and faithfully reproduced.” He further predicted—with exuberance—that the recordings would bring the choir “world-wide attention.”54

Fifteen additional proofs arrived from New York on October 11. Six recordings had been substandard, and no proofs were sent of those songs.

51

“68 Pianos Must Be Sold During Next Three Days,” Deseret Evening News, September 28, 1910. Sale prices on the pianos ranged from $127 to $296, all for upright models—generally they were selling for about half price. By the time of this ad, 131 pianos had been sold in eight days.

52

“Choir Records Prove Success,” Deseret Evening News, September 29, 1910. 53 Ibid.

54 “Records True in Expression,” Salt Lake Herald, September 30, 1910.

With each of the failed recordings, “the records were uneven, good in places, but blurred or too faint in others.” Included among the rejected songs were “Inflammatus,” “We Thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet,” and at least two organ numbers. Of the record proofs that were produced, one presented the violin and organ duet, six held choir numbers, and the remaining dozen had organ performances.55

When Daynes tested the new proofs, he found that all were at least “satisfactory,” and some were “remarkably excellent. The ‘Hosannah’ anthem and the ‘Hallelujah’ chorus from the choir were not merely impressive, they were majestic. A great volume of song rolled forth from the machine that certainly did the choir justice. . . . The ‘Hallelujah’ number is in two records, which may make it rather awkward, although the quality is unimpeachable.” The writer then noted a peculiarity in the recording of the “Hallelujah” chorus: “As the first part ends, one of the sopranos had failed to notice Conductor Stephens’ baton fall, and kept on.” He added straightforwardly: “Her continuation of the strain is faithfully reproduced.” (It was that moment in the recording that later generated “considerable merriment” when the song was played for the choir—to the almost certain embarrassment of the offending singer.)56

The News was equally complimentary about the other recordings: Willard Weihe’s violin solo “could hardly have been bettered,” a particularly remarkable feat given the fact that it was recorded “with the violinist perched up inside the instrument, with no communication whatever with the organist.” “My Little Gypsy Sweetheart,” by soloist Horace Ensign and the choir, was viewed as “the gem of the entire repertoire.” Ensign’s voice had “a richness of tone that would do credit to the baritones of the Metropolitan opera company.” The organ numbers were “marvelous,” “remarkable,” “dramatic,” and “gratifying.”57

Throughout all the songs, the Salt Lake Herald recorded, concurring with the Deseret Evening News, “the original expression has been preserved, and the more subtle tonal values, so frequently lost in recording the human voice, faithfully reproduced.” Still, the recording technology left something to be desired: capturing the “heavy pedal notes” was “an acoustic impossibility.” In the future, “separate receiving trumpet arrangements” would be needed to “record the heavy pipes of the pedal organ.”58

55

“Choir and Organ Records Splendid,” Deseret Evening News, October 11, 1910. Besides the choir numbers mentioned, this article noted two organ numbers that didn’t make the cut: “Mignon” and “Andantino.” Another newspaper report gives a somewhat different list of songs in which the recording failed: “Inflammatus,” “Unfold Ye Portals,” “Soldier’s Chorus”—all by the choir—and three organ numbers: “Traumerei,” “Mignon,” and “patriotic airs.” No mention is made in that report of “We Thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet.” “Music and Musicians,” Deseret Evening News, October 15, 1910; “Records by Choir Highly Pleasing,” Salt Lake Herald, October 13, 1910.

56 “Choir and Organ Records Splendid,” Deseret Evening News , October 11, 1910; “Music and Musicians,” Deseret Evening News, October 15, 1910.

57 “Choir and Organ Records Splendid,” Deseret Evening News, October 11, 1910.

58 “Records by Choir Highly Pleasing,” Salt Lake Herald, October 13, 1910; “Choir and Organ Records Splendid,” Deseret Evening News, October 11, 1910.

After the private reviews of the record proofs, listening opportunities were staged for the public.

On September 29, the Tabernacle Choir heard the first four records.59 The day after the additional record proofs arrived on October 11, “half an hundred people heard the concert of . . . most of the nineteen records” at the DaynesBeebe Music Company. 60 Another such opportunity was made available the next day. And at the choir rehearsal that same evening, the choir heard all the recordings that had been received, “a large attendance being present.”61 No mention is made of whether families of choir members or anyone from the general public attended. First the “talking machine” was placed “on the President’s stand in front of the choir.” The result was less than satisfactory, and the operators moved the machine to the rail of the rear gallery, which acoustically worked much better, “the volume of sound filling the great tabernacle auditorium to a degree that was surprising.”62

One of the first records of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir produced by Columbia Records, entitled Mormon Hymn— “O My Father.”

Even though the reviewer on this occasion was very complimentary (it was apparent that no one in the choir “did any soldiering,” he said, referring to the practice of pretending to work while actually loafing), he did observe that the songs seemed rushed. Because of the limitations of recording very short records, “the tempo has to be quickened considerably beyond that in which it was taken by the choir, so to that extent they could hardly be called correct.” But the recording company was planning to use fourteen-inch plates the next time, which would “extend the duration of performance one minute, at least.”63

Overall, the “concert” was deemed so successful that Stephens proposed that they give a public recital of the records. But such a recital was never subsequently mentioned in the local newspapers—which had thorough

59

“Choir Records Prove Success,” Deseret Evening News, September 29, 1910.

60

“Records by Choir Highly Pleasing,” Salt Lake Herald, October 13, 1910.

61

“Choir Hears Records,” Salt Lake Herald, October 14, 1910.

62

“Music and Musicians,” Deseret Evening News, October 15, 1910.

63 Ibid.

coverage of the choir and its recordings— suggesting that it never occurred. Perhaps the sale of the actual records obviated the need for another public concert.

The first twenty-five copies of the finished records (as opposed to record proofs) arrived in Salt Lake City on October 29, and a thousand more were announced as being on the way. The first batch of mass-produced recordings included “O My Father”; “Let the Mountains Shout for Joy”; “Little Gypsy Sweetheart”; and “Cradle Song,” the violin number played by Willard Weihe.64

Of the twenty-five recordings that were made, the sound quality on nineteen was regarded as good enough for proofs; of those, only eight were judged to be of sufficiently high quality for commercial release. The first shipment sold out the first day. A Daynes-Beebe advertisement boasted: “Never in the history of the famous Tabernacle Choir has there been anything transpire that has more favorably brought the magnificent work of the organization before the public” than the release of the Columbia records. It was “incredible” but true that individuals could “have the songs of this great body reproduced” in their own homes. Listeners would “hear the thundering tones of this great organ peal out its melodious tones”—and then “hear the choir sing the songs that fairly set you wild with enthusiasm.” The Tabernacle Choir, the ad writer said, was an “instantly 64

“Music and Musicians,” Deseret Evening News, October 29, 1910.

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir shortly after Utah Statehood in 1896.

responsive singing organization—the greatest choral association in the world.” The cost of owning these records? “The marvelously low price of 75¢.” And if the readers didn’t own a phonograph machine, Daynes-Beebe would sell them one “on very easy monthly payments.”65

After the records were produced, advertised, and available for purchase, Columbia finally signed a recording contract with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The contract specified that American Graphophone Company, the parent company of Columbia Phonograph Company, had “the sole and exclusive right to make talking machine sound records of the Tabernacle organ and choir . . . for the term of three years from date hereof.” The church was to be paid a royalty of 7 percent of all the records manufactured—although 25 percent of such records were exempted from the royalty because of possible “over-manufacture as compared with sales,” returns on records sold, and “the wearing out of records in demonstrations, etc.” The contract was signed on November 15, 1910, by Joseph F. Smith, President of the Church and “Trustee-in-trust for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” and (apparently) George W. Lyle, vice president and general manager of American Graphophone Company.66

Even though the choir recordings elicited true excitement in Salt Lake City, the records do not seem to have been distributed nationally or marketed widely by Columbia. None of the Columbia catalogs of the era appear to mention the recordings, perhaps because the recent Reed Smoot hearings (1904-1907) had left many Americans with a distaste for Mormons.67 In fact, even though Columbia had gone to significant expense to make the recordings, they may have left it to Daynes-Beebe to be the sole distributorsfor the Tabernacle Choir records.68 Still, it was an auspicious beginning to the choir’s gradual transformation from a regional choir to a worldwide recording giant. In the first fifty years after those humble beginnings, the choir released fourteen additional record albums. In the subsequent fifty years, it has released more than 160, becoming one of the most prolific recording groups in history.

65

“Tabernacle Choir Records Prove a Tremendous Hit!” Deseret Evening News, November 14, 1910.

66 Contract between American Graphophone Company and Joseph F. Smith, Trustee in Trust for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Joseph F. Smith presidential era papers, Church History Library.

67 See Kathleen Flake, The Politics of American Religious Identity: The Seating of Senator Reed Smoot, Mormon Apostle (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004).

68 “Tabernacle Choir Records Prove a Tremendous Hit!” Deseret Evening News, November 14, 1910.

William and Jeannette Ferry: Presbyterian Pillars in Mormon Utah

By DAVID A HALES AND SANDRA DAWN BRIMHALL

Colonel William Montague Ferry and his wife, Jeannette Hollister Ferry, were devout lay Presbyterians who were active in the business, political, and religious affairs in Mormon Utah between the 1870s and the first decade of the twentieth century. Col. Ferry and other wealthy and successful businessmen and associates of Col. Ferry from Michigan were drawn to Park City’s mines and the economic possibilities found in the mining district in the 1870s. Collectively, this group was identified as the “Michigan Bunch.” The Michigan Bunch and in particular Col. Ferry and his wife, Jeannette, brought with them a

Ferry Hall, constructed on the Westminster College Campus in 1908 and named for William and Jeannette Ferry.

David A. Hales is a retired librarian from Westminster College, now teaching in China at Nanjing University. Sandra Dawn Brimhall is a writer and history enthusiast living in West Jordan.

keen desire to improve education and culture to the Intermountain West.1 These “Michiganites who came to Park City in the early days were considered the elite of the town,” according to William M. McPhee, a historian of Utah mining. “They were in good financial standing, members of protestant churches and many were Masons.”2

Col. Ferry, eldest son of Rev. William M. Ferry and Amanda White Ferry, was born on July 8, 1824, on Mackinac Island, Michigan. He had three brothers and three sisters.3

Rev. Ferry, a New Englander from Massachusetts, began his career as a missionary for the United Foreign Missionary Society in 1822, organizing a mission consisting of a church and school on Mackinac Island.4

The family remained on Mackinac Island for twelve years, until Rev. Ferry’s ill health forced him to move to the west coast of Lake Michigan in November 1834. Here, he played a major role in settling the community of Grand Haven, located at the mouth of the Grand River, where he reportedly built the first permanent house in the area and established the first Presbyterian church, serving as its minister for many years. In addition to his religious ministry, he also built the first school and engaged in the lumber, shipping, and banking businesses, becoming wealthy and influential.5

Col. Ferry was a bright, robust child with an insatiable appetite for books

1 Wallace K. Ewing. “Michigan Bunch,” A Topical Directory of the History of the Northwest Ottawa County, 8th rev. (electronic edition only), February 2005, 92, http://www.loutitlibrary.org/ewing_topics.pdf; Sally Elliott, “Park City’s Michigan Bunch,” Park City Record, June 24, 2000. The “Michigan Bunch” consisted of James M. Barnett, Dr. R. M. Barrow, Edward Payson Ferry, Col. William M. Ferry, Harvey J. Hollister, James W. Mason, David C. McLaughlin, Frederick Augustine Nims, W. V. Rice, and Lewis Hinsdill Withey. Biographical information can be found about all of these men, except Rice, in Wallace K. Ewing, A Directory of People in Northwest Ottawa County , 8th rev. (electronic only), http://www.loutitlibrary.org.ewing_people.pdf. (Accessed February 2005.) Only the Ferry brothers, McLaughlin, Mason, and Nims actually moved to Park City where they made their fortunes. Nims and Mason returned to Grand Haven, Michigan. McLaughlin, an attorney, remained in Utah and became very active in business and mining. See Hal Compton and David Hampshire, “Park City” in Colleen Whitley, ed., From the Ground Up: The History of Mining in Utah (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2006), 321-22.

2 William M. McPhee, The Trail of the Leprechaun: Early History of a Utah Mining Camp (Hicksville, NY: Exposition Press, 1977), 85. Col. Ferry was a Mason, and a large number of Masons participated in his funeral procession in Park City.

3 The name William Montague Ferry presents some confusion. Ewing identifies the colonel as “William Montague Ferry II” and his father as “William Montague Ferry.” Leo C. Lillie, Historic Grand Haven and Ottawa County (Grand Haven, MI.: n. pub., 1931), 120, calls the Col. William Montague Ferry Jr. The Grand Haven (MI) Tribune, January 5, 1905, and the Park Record, January 7, 1905, also gives the colonel’s middle name as ‘Montague.” The colonel’s younger brother, Edward, named his son William Montague Ferry, which is probably the source of some of the confusion despite the difference of a generation. To avoid confusion between father, son, and nephew, we consistently refer to the main subject of this biographical article as “Colonel Ferry,” even though he did not acquire the title until 1865. Edward was born in Grand Haven, Michigan, on April 16, 1837, and died in Los Angeles, California, on March 11, 1917. He moved to Park City, in 1873. William and Jeanette arrived in Utah five years later in 1878.

4 Daniel H. Evans, “Living and Dying in the Lord: Sermon Delivered on the Occasion of the Funeral of Rev. William M. Ferry, in Grand Haven, Michigan, January 11, 1868”; In Memoriam: Funeral Obsequies on Occasion of the Death of Rev. William Montague Ferry, born in Granby, Mass., September 1796, Died in Grand Haven Michigan, December 30, 1867 (Detroit: Tribune Job Printing Establishment, 1869), 10, 11. Copy in the possession of the authors. The Rev. Ferry was licensed and ordained by the Presbytery of New York in 1822.

5 Ewing, A Directory of People, 417.

and a marked ability to learn languages easily. During the years the family lived on Mackinac Island, he recalled, “My vernacular was the French language, acquired from my playmates, children on the island, the Ojibway [sic] and Ottawa were equally familiar, and the use of the English language a later accomplishment.”6

In Grand Haven, Col. Ferry received his early training in his father’s library, and from the extensive libraries of two family friends. Additionally, he attended the Sanderson Academy in Ashfield, Massachusetts, for one year. There, he studied under Henry L. Dawes, who would later become a U.S. Senator. He also studied for one year at the Kalamazoo Branch of the University of Michigan.7

The Col. was given considerable responsibility at an early age. At fifteen, he managed his father’s lumber business on the Grand River, overseeing large gangs of loggers.8 He also acquired the trade of machinist and engineer under the supervision of Demetrius Turner, an accomplished mechanic, who designed and built the machinery throughout Grand Haven’s waterworks. With this background, Col. Ferry founded the Ottawa Iron Works in 1850 at Ferrysburg, a community which he, along with his brother Thomas White Ferry, were credited with platting. The Ottawa Iron Works manufactured stationary steam engines, marine steam engines, and sawmill machinery.9

On October 29, 1851, William Montague Ferry, age twenty-seven, married twenty-three-year-old Jeannette A. Hollister, the daughter of John Bentley Hollister and Mary Chamberlain Hollister, in Grand Rapids, Michigan.10 The couple enjoyed “an ideal wedded life,” were known as devoted Christians and ardent patriots. The couple would be blessed with six children, two of whom reached adulthood: Mary M. Ferry (Mrs. Eugene Allen) and Kate Ferry (Mrs. George A. Hancock).11

6 Charles C. Goodwin, As I Remember Them (Salt Lake City: Salt Lake Commercial Club, 1913), 317.

7 “William Montague Ferry,” in Burke Hinsdale, History of the University of Michigan with Biographical Sketches of Regents and Members of the University Senate from 1837 to 1906 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1906), 187.

8 Ibid.

9 William Montague Ferry, Ottawa’s Old Settlers, 577. Copy in the possession of authors. Available in Making of America: Michigan Historical Collections, vol. 30, 572-82.

10 “The Homegoing of Mrs. Ferry,” Utah Westminster 4, no. 3 (1917): 2.

11 “Remains Are Brought Here for Burial: Mrs. William M. Ferry, Pioneer Resident, Will be Laid to Rest in Old Home,” Grand Haven Daily Tribune , November 12, 1917; (1) Mary M. Ferry was born February 27, 1853, and died in Los Angeles, on March 20, 1933. David H. Seibold, Grand Haven: In the Path of Destiny: A History of Grand Haven, Spring Lake, Ferrysburg and Adjoining Townships (Spring Lake, MI: D-2 Enterprises, 2007), 40. She was an active participant in Utah women’s organizations, serving as the Worthy Grand Matron in the Order of the Eastern Star, Stage Regent of the Daughters of the American Revolution and was signally recognized by that society in being elected honorary State Regent for life. See “Mrs. Mary Allen Called by Death,” Redlands Daily Facts (Redlands, CA) March 21, 1933; (2) Kate Harwood Ferry was born July 11, 1856, and died in Salt Lake City on March 1, 1940. See “Mrs. Kate Harwood Hancock,” The Utah Westminster, August 1940, 4, and George Rattle Hancock, State of Utah Death Certificate, State Board of Health File No. 1282. Both women were charter members of the Westminster College Women’s Board. Kate Ferry Hancock also served on the Westminster College Board of Trustees. She was the first woman to be appointed to the board in 1913, and served as a member until her death in 1940.

Jeannette and William Ferry: Presbyterian Pillars in Mormon Utah.

Jeannette, who was born in Romeo, Michigan, on August 31, 1828, had three brothers and one sister. Like the colonel, she came from sturdy New England stock. Her father served as a colonel in the War of 1812, and following the war was a government surveyor who laid out the boundaries of Missouri and Arkansas.12

At age thirteen, Jeannette entered the academy, which later became the University of Michigan. At the time, women were not admitted to higherlevel courses so she finished her education at a ladies’ school, which later became the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York. Jeannette was apparently also gifted in languages. According to TheWestminster Review , “She taught French, understood German and read her New Testament in the original Greek.”13

After completing her education in 1848, Jeannette was invited to teach in Grand Rapids, Michigan, by the Rev. Dr. Joseph Penney, pastor of the Dutch Reformed Church and a former Rochester resident. However, her teaching tenure at the first school was short lived. A year later in November 1849, when classes began in the new “stone school house” in Grand Rapids, Jeannette was hired to serve as an assistant to the principal E. M. Johnson.14

In 1850, Rev. Dr. Francis H. Cuming, who earlier had been named

12

“The Homegoing of Mrs. Ferry.”

13

“Fiftieth Anniversary: Col. and Mrs. William Ferry of Park City Give a Brilliant Reception to Friends,” Salt Lake Tribune, October 30, 1901; “The Homegoing of Mrs. Ferry,” 2.

14 Rebecca L. Richmond, “The Snow-Haired Girls of Old Grand Rapids,” Grand Rapids Press , November 29, 1917; Albert Baxter, History of the City of Grand Rapids, Michigan (Grand Rapids, MI: Munsell & Company, 1891), 221.

Edward P. Ferry, a successful mine owner in Park City and brother of William Ferry, encouraged the Ferrys to move to Utah from Michigan. UTAH

director of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Grand Rapids, invited Jeannette to become principal of the “female department” of the brandnew St. Mark’s College in Grand Rapids.”

In addition to her administrative responsibilities, Jeannette also instructed her charges in the Bible and French, and she “was beloved by pupils and parents alike for her charm of person, mind and heart.”15

As the community of Grand Haven grew, Col. Ferry demonstrated a keen interest in civic improvements and in establishing and maintaining good schools. He was a charter member of both the Ottawa County Agricultural Society and the Ottawa Historical Society and was elected to the Michigan legislature in 1857. He also served as the school inspector for the Mill Point education system in 1859 and as a regent of the University of Michigan (1856-1864).16

In addition, he sought to promote religious education and, after becoming president of the Ottawa County Bible Society, he began a campaign to place a copy of the Bible, at a nominal cost or for free if necessary, in every home in the county.17

At the outbreak of the Civil War, the thirty-seven-year-old businessman enlisted on November 24, 1861, as a private in Company B of the Fourteenth Michigan Infantry Volunteers, where he served for the duration of the war.18 Col. Ferry evidently displayed leadership ability early because only seven months after his enlistment, President Abraham Lincoln signed his commission as a captain on June 30, 1862, and as a “Commissary of Subsistence.”19 In the spring of 1863, he was detailed to serve on the staff of Gen. James R. McPherson, Seventeenth Army Corps. Wounded during the July 1863 siege of Vicksburg, Captain Ferry was then placed in command of the Depot Commissary at Memphis, Tennessee. On March 13, 1865, he

15 Richmond, “The Snow-Haired Girls of Old Grand Rapids”; Baxter, History of the City of Grand Rapids, 244, 296.

16 Ewing, A Directory of People, 417. Ferry was also a member of the following societies: The Loyal Legion in the commandery of the State of Michigan, the Society of the Army of the Tennessee, the Muskegon Lodge and the commandery No. 2 of the Knights Templar. See Sally Elliott, “Mines, Mills and Moguls,” 1. Unpublished manuscript in possession of the authors.

17 Ferry, Ottawa’s Old Settlers, 579.

18 Ibid.

19 Ewing, A Directory of the People, 132.

STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

was brevetted to the ranks of major and lieutenant colonel—the source of the title by which he was known for the rest of his life.20

While her husband was away, Jeannette busied herself with their children. It was a great sorrow to her that her husband was not with her to share the grief when their fifth child, a daughter also named Jeannette Hollister Ferry, age six months, died in 1863, shortly before the colonel was able to return home from the service.21

After the war, the colonel became actively engaged in local and state politics. In 1870, the Democrats of his district nominated him to Congress, but he was defeated. Two years later in 1872, Col. Ferry served as secretary for the Democratic National Convention at Louisville, Kentucky, and made an unsuccessful run as the Democratic nominee for governor of Michigan. A year later, he became a member of the Michigan Constitutional Convention, and in 1876, he was elected mayor of Grand Haven, Michigan. During this period he was offered honorable and lucrative positions abroad because of his mastery of the French language. He never accepted any of the positions.22

The colonel’s father, Rev. William M. Ferry, died on December 30, 1867, leaving a sizeable estate estimated to be worth $410,000. He made

20

Lillie, Historic Grand Haven and Ottawa County, 310. See also U.S. Civil War Soldier Records and Profiles about William M Ferry, Record of Service of Michigan Volunteers 1861-65 Union Blue: History of Mollus Heitman: Register of United States Army 1789-1903. Family Search, October 28, 2009.

21“Remains Are Brought Here for Burial,” Grand Haven Tribune, November 12, 1917.

22 “Col. W.M. Ferry,” Park Record, January 7, 1905; Ewing, A Directory of the People, 132; Goodwin, As I Remember Them 320

WILLIAM AND JEANNETTE FERRY

The Ferry Home in Park City.

PARK CITY HISTORICAL SOCIETY AND MUSEUM

substantial bequests to schools, missions, and religious groups; the remaining $273,000 was divided between his widow, who received $128,000, and $145,000, divided among his five surviving children.23 The colonel’s younger brother, Edward Payson Ferry, was named executor of the estate and exercised broad discretion in handling the funds. After investing heavily in mining properties in Utah, Edward moved to Park City in 1873, so that he could be close to his investments.24

One of his first ventures was the purchase of the Flagstaff Mine for fifty thousand dollars, which he renamed the Marsac Silver Mining Company. Edward also built the Marsac Mill, also known as the Daly Mill, to process the ore from his and other Park City mines. 25 He also invested in the Woodside Mine, the Anchor Mine, and the American Flag Mine and consolidated these properties on Pioneer Ridge to form the Crescent Mine.

Following the discovery of rich ore deposits in the Park City area, people from many states and foreign countries migrated to Park City, lured by the possibilities of great riches. The early population was a mixture of Irish, Cornish, English, Scots, Scandinavians, and Chinese. Since leaders of the Mormon church discouraged prospecting precious metals, Mormons in nearby communities tended to stick to agriculture and other business pursuits.

Soon after the arrival of David C. McLaughlin, J. W. Mason, and Frederick A. Nims, members of the “Michigan Bunch,” they discovered Park City had never been platted or recorded and that most of the people who had built their houses and businesses in Park City were technically squatters. They then had the town surveyed, prepared legal descriptions, and filed for ownership in the land office in Salt Lake City, after paying the small fee. The opportunists then gave the residents the option of either purchasing the land or vacating it.26 Their actions generated long-standing resentment among fellow Park City citizens, which spilled over to other members of the Michigan Bunch. Two members identified with

23 Seibold, Grand Haven: In the Path of Destiny, 39.

24 According to Seibold, Grand Haven: In the Path of Destiny, Edward’s use of estate funds for his “freewheeling speculation” eventually caused a rift in the family. In 1903 Henry Hall, husband of Col. Ferry’s sister, Amanda, filed a petition requesting Edward P. Ferry be removed as administrator of Rev. Ferry’s estates, arguing that Edward was incompetent. After lengthy litigation in the lower courts, the matter appeared in the U.S. Supreme Court that ruled that Edward owed his father’s estate $915,000, but by then Edward had been declared mentally incompetent and was confined to a sanitarium in Park City. As a result, the management of the Ferry estate passed to his two sons, William Montague (Mont) Ferry and Edward (Ned) S. Ferry. Ned, a Salt Lake City attorney and counsel in the family’s lawsuit, became despondent following the Supreme Court ruling and reportedly committed suicide. Mont Ferry was managing director of the Silver King Mine (1905-1919), a member of the Salt Lake City Council, president of the Utah State Senate (1911-1915), and mayor of Salt Lake City (1915-1919). Edward Ferry, Death Certificate, digital copy in the Utah State Archives. Copies of court documents in the possession of authors. We have not been able to determine if any of the money was actually repaid to Rev. Ferry’s estate.

25 Edward P. Ferry chose the name of Marsac to honor a Grand Haven family friend, Sophie de Marsac. See Hal Compton, “Marsac Mystery,” Park Record, May 1-3, 2002.

26 Compton and Hampshire, “Park City,” 322.

the Michigan crowd, Edward P. Ferry was defeated in the mayoral election of 1882 by Park City voters and they also rejected David McLaughlin when he ran for mayor in 1884.27

The colonel, now fifty-four, and Jeannette, fifty, and their two living children, Mary and Kate, followed Edward to Park City in 1878 and soon became influential members of the community. 28 Among some of Park City’s much needed improvements, the Ferrys started a waterworks company that supplied water to the town and the ore mills and also built boardwalks on Main Street.29 In addition to supplying culinary water to the residents, the waterworks company made Park City, “second to none in having protection against fire.”30

27 See Sally Elliott, “Mines, Mills and Moguls,” 8. Unpublished manuscript in possession of the authors.

28 According to “Obligations of Westminster College to Col. Ferry,” The Utah Westminster, 1, no. 2, (January 1908) : 1, the colonel came to Utah, not for financial gain, but to obtain relief from asthma. See also “Park City Items,” Salt Lake Tribune, Feb. 24, 1880; Seibold, Grand Haven: In the Path of Destiny, 40.

29 Seibold, Grand Haven: In the Path of Destiny, 44-49. McPhee, On the Trail of the Leprechaun, 15, 128, 129 further notes that, by 1874, just four years before Col. and Mrs. Ferry arrived in Park City, there was already a store, a blacksmith shop, a saloon, a boarding house, and a meat market. By 1887 the population of Park City had grown to approximately 4,500. For other sources about the history of Park City see: Raye Carleson Price and Harry Harpster, Diggings and Doings in Park City , 2d ed. (Salt Lake City: Bonneville Books and University of Utah Press, 1972), Thompson and Buck, Treasure Mountain Home; David Hampshire, Martha Sonntag Bradley, and Allen D. Roberts, A History of Summit County (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society and Summit County Commission, 1998). Compton and Hampshire, “Park City,” 318-41.

30 Raye Carleson Price and Harry Harpster, Diggings and Doings in Park City (Salt Lake City: Bonneville Books, University of Utah Press, 1972), [35], not paginated. In spite of the town’s waterworks protection, Park City experienced two major fires: the September 13, 1890, fire nearly destroyed the business section; the June 19, 1898, fire destroyed more than two hundred businesses and homes. No lives were lost in the second fire, but some five hundred people were left homeless, and property loss was estimated at more than one million dollars.

Miners inside one of the Park City mines.

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

By October of 1883, the profits from the colonel’s mining interests enabled him to purchase the Walker & Webster Mine for $50,000. His profits from this mine alone were reported to make him about $150,000 per month. Edward Ferry was making equal profits from his Utah and Anchor mines.31 In addition to these holdings, the colonel was one of the original owners of the lucrative Quincy Mine, which later merged into the famous Daly-West mine.32

Unlike most of the mining magnates who built luxurious mansions in Salt Lake City, Col. Ferry built a Victorian mansion which was completed in 1890 in North Park City at the mouth of Thayne’s Canyon. The mansion, with its stained glass windows, hardwood furniture, Nottingham lace curtains and a fireplace in every room which was reputed to be the largest and finest home in Park City.33

The Ferrys, with their wide interests and genial personalities, were extremely popular in Park City. Their residence became known as the “Rest House” for all of the Protestants engaged in educational and religious work in the area. In the summer of 1879, Anna E. Street, Mary H. Wadell, Edward Ferry’s wife, Clara, and Col. William Ferry organized a Congregational Sunday school in Park City. Colonel Ferry was appointed superintendent, while Clara Ferry was one of the school’s “active and earnest helpers.”34 The Ferrys also made generous donations to the Miners’ Hospital and helped to organize a Protestant church.35

Later that fall, Dr. Charles C. Creegan, the Congregational church’s superintendent for the intermountain region, visited the town and found that a group of eighteen was anxious to establish a church. Sixteen were or had been Presbyterians but they were willing to organize themselves into any denomination, provided that it would support them until they were able to stand alone. As a result of Dr. Creegan’s visit, Rev. C. W. Hill was sent to Park City in the spring of 1880, and soon acquired the use of the old schoolhouse for Sunday services and organized the First Congregational Church of Park City. It was incorporated a year later on March 21, 1881, with both William and Edward Ferry signing the articles of association.36

31 Seibold, Grand Haven: In the Path of Destiny, 41. Col. Ferry was listed in the “Financial Red Book of America” as being one of the wealthiest men in Utah. “Wealthy Utahns Are Listed in Book,” Ogden Standard, October 15, 1903.

32 Elliott, “Mines, Mills, and Moguls,” 4.See also Compton and Hampshire, “Park City,” 322. The big strike at the Woodside Mine, which was incorporated in 1889 by Edward P. Ferry, was a bonanza from the start and contributed greatly to increased mining on Park City’s Treasure Hill and he eventually opened the Silver King Mine, which, over time, yielded approximately fifty million dollars for its owners.

33 Hal Compton, “Man Who Built the Mansion,” Park Record, July 17-19, 2002; In 1973, the mansion was moved to Monitor Drive in Park City. Edward Ferry built his mansion at 474 E. South Temple Street in Salt Lake City.

34

“Park City Utah. First Congregational Church.” The Church Review, Historical Ed.,December 29, 1896, 36.

35

“The Homegoing of Mrs. Ferry,” 2.

36

“Park City Utah. First Congregational Church.”

Jeannette also was “always enthusiastically interested in the cause of Christian education.” 37 She served as corresponding secretary of the Woman’s Presbyterial Missionary Society and as president of the Woman’s Synodical Missionary Society. In 1883, she traveled with Rev. Duncan James McMillan to most of the Presbyterian schools south of Salt Lake City. During her travels she offered encouragement and support to the Presbyterian teachers and church leaders. Later in the fall of 1883, she reported on her travel experiences and described the challenges the Presbyterian teachers and clergy faced in Mormon Utah to the Woman’s Synodical Committee of the Board of Home Missions for Michigan at their annual meeting. She closed her report by stating, “I would earnestly commend to your interest and sympathy, and to your prayers, these teachers and their work, these people and their needs. We have a work here at home to do for them. None are too poor to give something for these schools. . . . We owe it to ourselves. . . .We owe it to our Lord. . . .Let it be said of each of us, ‘She reached forth her hand to the needy.’”38

Years later when she was in her eighties, Jeannette published an article in the Presbyterian church’s Home Mission Monthly extolling the success of the mission schools and encouraging Presbyterians nationwide to provide financial and sympathetic support for the cause.She described how the schools were broadening and developing individuality of thought among Utah students who were “taught little else than tenets of the Mormon Church.” Her article also praised the excellent work of early Presbyterian church leaders and teachers such as Sheldon Jackson, John McCutcheon Coyner, Duncan James McMillan, Samuel Ellis Wishard, Mary Moore, and others.39

In addition to her activities with mission schools, Jeannette was a member of both the Daughters of the American Revolution and the United States Daughters of 1812. Additionally, she participated in the antipolygamy and women’s suffrage movement in Utah. During the 1870s and 1880s, Americans were appalled by the practice of Mormon polygamy, which Harriet Pritchard, a national anti-polygamy leader, called “this dreadful dragon of impurity.” Protestant churches actively pressured the U.S. government to take more aggressive measures to abolish polygamy. Pritchard wrote, “National and personal liberty can never exist in a country whose government harbors polygamy, which enslaves the motherhood and degrades the fatherhood, thus making degenerates of their posterity.

37 “A Tribute from Dr. W. M. Paden,” The Utah Westminster, 4, no. 3 (1917):3; Fred Burton, e-mail message to David Hales, December 9, 2009.

38 Mrs. William M. Ferry, “Our Schools in Utah,” Women’s Synodical Committee of the Board of Home Missions for Michigan, 1883, 1, 11-12. Copy in the possession of the authors. Also Presbyterian Historical Society, RG 105, Box 1, F4. The Rev. Duncan James McMillan (1846-1939) was a prominent Presbyterian minister and missionary who came to Utah in 1875. McMillan played a pivotal role in establishing Presbyterian mission schools and churches in Utah. One of those schools, the Wasatch Academy in Mt. Pleasant, Utah, is still operating today.

39

Mrs. William M. Ferry, “Are Presbyterian Mission Schools Among Mormons Doing Any Good?” Home Mission Monthly, January 1912, 71.

Polygamy strikes at the heart of the nation’s life when it destroys the sacredness of the home (one father and mother and their offspring).”40

In 1876, Angie Newman, a home mission lobbyist, women’s suffrage leader, and temperance advocate, visited relatives in Utah where she was deeply affected by the plight of Mormon polygamist women. (According to historian Peggy Pascoe, Newman “pushed aside her other causes to devote herself to the establishment of a refuge for polygamous women, taking full advantage of the evangelical and political contacts she had developed over the years.”) 41 In 1883, she obtained $6,500 from the Cincinnati-based (Methodist Episcopal) Woman’s Home Missionary Society to fund the Industrial Home, a refuge for plural wives seeking to escape polygamy. She was greatly encouraged by the support she received from the wives of several Methodist bishops and from America’s First Lady, Mrs. Rutherford B. Hayes.42 Although her influence with this group ebbed, she rallied Utah women, including Jeannette Ferry and members of the Ladies Anti-Polygamy Society in Utah, to form the interdenominational Christian Home Association. To expand their financial resources, this society sent Newman to Washington, D.C., to lobby the federal government for more funding. On May 7, 1886, she was granted a hearing before the Senate Committee on Education and Labor, where her impassioned descriptions of Mormon women victimized by polygamy and the need to provide a sanctuary for neglected or discontented polygamous wives and their offspring struck a responsive chord with the committee members. 43 This committee recommended an appropriation of forty thousand dollars, which was passed on August 4, 1886.44 While Congress agreed to fund the Industrial Home, it was less willing to give the Ladies Anti-Polygamy Society financial control, thus revealing the distinction between the women’s political influence , which was considerable, and their political power, which was quite limited. Congress appointed an all-male board of control consisting of Utah’s territorial governor, its Supreme Court justices, and the district attorney.45 The board refused the women’s attempted compromise—that the board would limit itself to endorsing financial transactions while the women managed the home. It was in this conflicted environment that the home opened in

40 “Homegoing of Mrs. Ferry,” 2; Harriett S. Pritchard, The American Harem: Work for the Anti-Polygamy Amendment to the Federal Constitution (New York: Harriett S. Pritchard Committee, 1917), 1, 12.

41 Peggy Pascoe, Relations of Rescue: The Search of Female Moral Authority in the AmericanWest, 1874-1939 (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 24.

42 Gustive O. Larson, “An Industrial Home for Polygamous Wives,” Utah Historical Quarterly 38 (Summer 1970): 264. The Industrial Christian Home was located in Salt Lake City on 500 East between 100 South and 200 South. Completed in June 1889, it was a three-story brick and stone building. In addition to an office and service areas, it held forty sleeping rooms which could be increased to fifty if needed. Also, Pascoe states that Newman acquired $660.00 from the Cincinnati-based Women’s Home Missionary Society while Larson quotes $6,500.

43 Pasco, Relations of Rescue, 25.

44 Robert Joseph Dwyer, The Gentile Comes to Utah (Salt Lake City: Western Epics, 1971), 209.

45 Pasco, Relations of Rescue, 26.

December 1886, with Jeannette Ferry as president. However, other conflicts emerged, including deep disagreements about the eligibility requirements for candidates and even its underlying philosophy.46

Mormon leaders strongly opposed the project and the Woman’s Exponent and church-owned Deseret News published editorialscalling on women to demonstrate their love for their husband and their loyalty to their faith by refusing to accept government aid, pointing out that the home was supported by the same Congress that was legislating anti-polygamy laws.47 These newspapers warned that Mormon women who entered the Industrial Home would be “those who are in darkness who have not the Holy Spirit abiding in them.” They also wrote that “Mrs. Newman and the other ladies interested in this institution will find, and Congress will also comprehend in due time, that the offer made them and terms specified will be rejected in the same sort of way as the proposal of His Excellency, Gov. West, to the brethren in the Utah Penitentiary, imprisoned there for conscience sake.”48

At the outset of the operation of the Industrial Home, there was confusion and disagreement between the women who managed the home and the all-male control board. During the first nine months of operation, the home received applications from 154 women and children but the

46 Ibid. 47 Ibid., 87-90.

48 Larson, “An Industrial Home for Polygamous Wives,” 100.

UTAH

board of control allowed only thirty-three to be admitted. Governor West and the other board members narrowly interpreted the law’s language, which limited entrance “to women who renounced polygamy and [to] their children of tender age.” According to historian Peggy Pascoe, “West interpreted the phrase [in the federal legislation] to exclude many first wives, children of polygamists apart from their mother, and women and children not currently involved in plural marriage, but who home mission women believed might prove susceptible to inducements to enter polygamy.”49

The first report made by the Board of Control to the president late in November 1887 stated that in the months following the opening of the house on November 27, 1886, “it has received within its walls to the present time, of the class prescribed by law, twenty-seven as follows: From December 1886 through February 1887—twelve persons—3 women and 9 children; in the second quarter, six—two women and four children; in the third quarter—eight—four women and four children—also one child born in the House.”50 According to Pascoe, by this time, “the Industrial Christian Home had become something of a laughingstock in Salt Lake City. The battle between the Home Association and the Board had made sensational copy for rival local newspapers.”51

Jeannette fought vigorously to keep the home open, recommending less stringent admissions requirements and more discretion for the manager. She argued in an 1892 report to Congress that the home’s success could not be measured in numbers but pointed out that it was forcing Mormons to take better care of their poor for fear they might enter the home’s open door.52

At one point, in 1893, frustrated that Congress was turning a deaf ear to her pleas, she threatened to return the building to the government with the residents still inside it.53 The Woodruff Manifesto of 1890, which withdrew the church’s support for new plural marriages, caused the national interest in the Industrial Home to rapidly wane.54 Although it still housed about twenty inmates in 1892, “the Commission, in October, admitted failure of the project,” and the home closed in 1893.55

Jeannette soon became involved in another civic cause, the Women’s Athenaeum Club in Park City, which was organized February 22, 1897, with twenty-five members. Jeannette was elected to serve for two years as the club’s first president. The organization set lofty goals “to promote the

49 Pascoe, Relations of Rescue, 27.

50 Quoted from Congressional Record, see Larson, “An Industrial Home for Polygamous Wives,” 269.

51 Pascoe, Relations of Rescue, 28.

52 U.S. Congress, House of Representatives , Committee on the Territories, Industrial Christian Home Association of Utah: Communication for the Utah Commissioners Transmitting their Annual Report to Congress, 52 Cong., 2d sess. 1892, Misc. Doc. No. 6.

53 Report of the Utah Commission (Washington, D.C. Government Printing Office, 1893), 4.

54 Dwyer, The Gentile Comes to Utah, 213.

55 Larson, “An Industrial Home for Polygamous Wives,” 272.

welfare of the community” and to seek out “the best things morally and intellectually.”56 During the club’s monthly meetings, members discussed American history, literature, current affairs and education. Members also funded a collection of books that were sent to various southern Utah communities and the club provided books for both the Park City High School library and the public library.57

The Salt Lake City residence of George R. and Kate Ferry Hancock at 444 South 700 East. The home was purchased by Col. Ferry in 1901 and given to his daughter and husband. The first meetings of the Westminster College Womenʼs Board were held in the house.

Like his wife, the colonel, in addition to his interests in religion and education, also was very active in civic activities and politics. Although he was honored in numerous arenas because of his ardent devotion to the Democratic Party in Utah he also became an aggressive member of the Utah Liberal Party, which worked tirelessly for the separation of church and state. In 1880, he was appointed as the probate judge for Summit County.58 Eight years later, Governor Caleb W. West chose the colonel to serve as a delegate to represent Utah at the International Deep Water Convention in Denver, Colorado.59

56 “Organization Day,” Park Record, February 27, 1920.

57 “The Women’s Athenaeum,” Park Record , February 25, 1899; “Organization Day,” Park Record, February 27, 1920.

58 “Proclamation of the Governor,” Deseret News, September 20, 1882.

59 “A Proclamation: Appointing Delegates to the Deep Water Convention,” Deseret News, August 22, 1888.

The Salt Lake Tribune in its obituary of Col. Ferry recalled that in 1886 the colonel was Utah’s Democratic nominee for Congress. “The [Utah] Liberal party did not make any nominations to the Fiftieth Congress, so Col. Ferry ran for that office on the Democratic ticket.”60 At the time of his nomination, the Salt Lake Tribune supported his candidacy:

We sincerely hope that every Gentile in the Territory who believes in native land and who feels that the Mormon Church as a political power should be broken, will work for Mr. Ferry steadily until election day and finish the work on that day by voting for him. There is no man more clear and sound on the Mormon question than Colonel William M. Ferry. He is in every respect a high minded, honorable gentleman; he is deserving of the suffrages of all good men….Every vote that is polled in favor of Col. Ferry will stand in Washington as a protest against Church despotism and polygamy.61

Despite this strong endorsement, John T. Caine, a Mormon, defeated him with 19,605 to 2,810 votes.62

Holding strong views concerning the church-state matter in Utah, the two Ferry brothers, William and Edward, travelled to Washington, D.C., in 1888 to testify before Congress against the terms of statehood proposed by the Mormon-dominated territorial legislature. The Ferrys were concerned that, if Utah was admitted as a state, it would be under the total control of the Mormons.63 That same year Col. Ferry was elected to a four-year term as a member of the National Democratic Committee. In 1893, President Benjamin Harrison honored Col. Ferry appointing him alternate commissioner from Utah to the World’s Columbian Exposition held in Chicago.64

The colonel was the American Party’s candidate for Utah governor in 1904. The American Party was a reaction to Utah Senator Reed Smoot co-opting much of the Republican Party and those political figures who were less inclined to be hostile towards the LDS church’s ecclesiastical influence in state politics. The party held its first state convention at the Grand Theater in Salt Lake City on September 30, 1904. More than two thousand men and women crowded into the auditorium and on the stage, while many hundreds were unable to gain admittance. The Salt Lake Tribune extravagantly termed it “the largest and most enthusiastic state convention ever held in Utah.”65 After accepting his nomination, Col. Ferry followed up with a letter to State Chairman Willard F. Snyder: “I recognize the honor conferred in my nomination for Governor of the State of Utah. I am in full accord with the purpose of the American Party of Utah. The severance of church and state, the maintenance of the integrity of the public schools, liberty regulated and restrained by law—for these principles every

60

“Col. W. M. Ferry Rests in Peace,” Salt Lake Tribune, January 3, 1905.

61 Colonel Ferry’s Nomination,” Salt Lake Tribune, October 23, 1886.

62 The Election in Utah,” Salt Lake Tribune, November 13, 1886.

63 Seibold, “Grand Haven: In the Path of Destiny,” 44-49.

64 “Col. W.M. Ferry Rests in Peace.”

65 “Hiles Heads the Ticket, Jurist Nominated by Americans, W. M. Ferry of Summit is Chosen for Governor,” Salt Lake Tribune, October 5, 1904.

American citizen stands. They involve the life and perpetuity of our Republic.”66

Utah’s 1904 gubernatorial ballot included John C. Cutler (Republican), James H. Moyle (Democrat), Joseph A. Kaufman (Socialist), and William M. Ferry (American). Ferry finished a distant third with 7,959 votes followed by Kaufman with 4,892 votes. Cutler won the election garnering 50,837 votes followed by Moyle receiving 38,047 votes.67

Although the Ferrys’ ventures into the political arena proved disappointing, without a doubt, the most lasting contribution that William and Jeannette Ferry made to Utah was their philanthropic support of Westminster College. The Presbyterians first commenced missionary work in the Utah Territory in 1869, twenty-two years after the Mormons arrived in the Salt Lake Valley. Fired by missionary zeal, the Presbyterians were determined to save Mormons from their erroneous ways. Rev. Sheldon Jackson, then superintendent of Presbyterian missions in the Mountain West, wrote enthusiastically in 1869, “There is no section of the globe, there is no people, there is no heathenism existing where God is so dishonored as in Utah by Mormonism.”68

Failing to achieve much success in proselytizing adult Mormons, Rev. Jackson and other Presbyterian congregants decided to take a less direct approach by founding schools in which they could “surround Utah children with Christian influences and lead them into Presbyterian Sunday schools. The children in turn would draw parents and other family members into the orbit of evangelical Christianity.” They believed that, by educating the children, “we will plant a leaven in this Mormon lump which will rend it in pieces.”69

Six months after the First Presbyterian Church in Salt Lake City was completed and dedicated in October 1874, the Presbyterians on April 12, 1875, opened the Salt Lake Collegiate Institute in the church’s basement with twenty-seven students. Within a few weeks, sixty-three students were paying tuition and by the end of the first academic year, June 1876, attendance had reached nearly 150.70 The Salt Lake Collegiate Institute provided elementary, intermediate, and high school instruction under the direction of its first principal, Dr. John M. Coyner, a devout Presbyterian and educator from

66 “Ferry Feels Honored,” Ogden Standard Examiner, October 5, 1904. For additional information concerning Utah’s American Party see Reuben Joseph Snow, “The American Party in Utah: A Study of Political Party Struggles During the Early Years of Statehood” (M.A. thesis, University of Utah, 1964), and Allan Kent Powell, “Elections in the State of Utah,” Utah History Encyclopedia, (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1994), 158.

67 Powell, “Elections in Utah,” 158.

68 Paul Jesse Baird, Presbyterian Pioneers in Utah (Santa Rosa, CA.: The Author, 1996), 4.

69 R. Douglas Brackenridge, Westminster College of Salt Lake City: From Presbyterian Mission School to Independent College (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1998), 44.

70 Ibid, 44-45.

Indianapolis, Indiana. Its purpose was to provide opportunities for a Christian education and to lay the foundation for a permanent college, patterned after colleges in the East. It was also to provide aid to anyone who needed assistance to secure an education by themselves, and train teachers for Utah and the surrounding areas.71

By 1880, the Presbyterians had built a one-story brick structure specifically for the institute. Several years earlier before Jeannette’s arrival in Utah, she had corresponded with Coyner about supporting the institute; and thanks to her efforts, Michigan women had helped to fund the building’s construction.72 Over the next fifteen years, the growing enrollment dictated more expansions; and by 1895, a four-story building had been erected.73

On March 20, 1892, Dr. Robert McNiece, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Salt Lake City, presented a resolution at a meeting of the Utah Presbytery in Springville, calling for the establishment of a Presbyterian college. The presbytery adopted the resolution and appointed a committee of nine, which later became the board of trustees. Dr. McNiece was elected as president of the board and charged to pursue the resolution.74

In 1895, Dr. Sheldon Jackson offered fifty thousand dollars to endow the proposed college, making three stipulations: “(1) the Bible must be the regular textbook in the curriculum; (2) the college must never be alienated from the work and doctrines of the Presbyterian Church; (3) it must be named and always continue to be known as Sheldon Jackson College.”75 A year later on January 20, 1896, the board of trustees accepted Jackson’s proposal.76

Soon thereafter, John Eaton, former U.S. Commissioner of Education, president of Marietta College in Ohio, and a former general in the U.S. Army, was selected as college president. McNiece was appointed dean of the faculty and instructor. The college, housed in the collegiate institute buildings, opened its doors on September 7, 1897, with six students. Only two students completed the four-year program.

McNiece felt that the college needed its own building. After several proposed locations proved unsatisfactory, he appointed Dr. George Bailey and Rev. Josiah McClain to serve with himself in seeking a suitable location. Eventually they decided on the “New Grand View Addition,” the twenty-two-acre tract where Westminster College now stands.

When someone suggested Colonel Ferry as a possible donor, the committee made an appointment to visit him at the Salt Lake City home of his daughter, Kate Ferry Hancock.77 When the committee asked for

71

Joseph A.Vinatieri, “The Growing Years: Westminster College from Birth to Adolescence” Utah Historical Quarterly 43 (Fall 1975): 347.

72 Brackenridge, Westminster College of Salt Lake City, 112.

73 Vinatieri, “The Growing Years,” 351.

74 Ibid., 352.

75 Ibid., 353.

76 Ibid., 354.

77 Ibid., 355.

contributions, the colonel, “responded: ‘Gentlemen, I cannot do anything for you. My own personal obligations must be met. I am sorry.’ Mrs. Ferry spoke up and said, ‘Well, Colonel, we know we have well in hand our personal obligations . . .’ Dr. McNiece took courage from these remarks and made a second plea saying in substance, ‘Colonel, we three men have given our lives to this work. That is all we have to give. The Lord has given you money. . . .’ As Dr. McNiece and his companions were leaving, Jeannette took them aside and whispered, ‘I think you will get what you are asking for.’ ”78

The colonel asked for “a few days” to consider the matter and three days later, agreed to purchase the land upon the following conditions: “the new land was to be the site of the college, no financial encumbrances were to bear upon the land, the Bible was to be regularly used as a textbook, the teachings were to be in harmony with Presbyterian doctrine, within five years a building costing $25,000 was to be erected, and a portion of the new land was to be set aside for a women’s college building.”79

Several individuals owned the land, requiring extensive negotiations to acquire the complete parcel. On Kate Ferry Hancock’s letterhead and address, “444 South Seventh East Street,” the colonel outlined the property summary:

78 Brackenridge, Westminster College of Salt Lake City, 112-13, and Josiah McClain, “Early Days of the College,” The Utah Westminster, anniversary ed., October 1922, 13-15.

79 Vinatieri, The Growing Years , 355. A few years before Mary died she and her sister, Kate Ferry Hancock, presented a quit claim deed for the campus land their father had given to the college with certain restrictions. That action transferred the land to the college free from all binding obligation and cleared up for all time any difficulty in the matter of the transfer of the property. “Mrs. M. M. F. Allen,” The UtahWestminster (March 1933), 2.

Interior view of a room in Ferry Hall on the Westminster Campus.

GIOVALE

I have purchased of the agent Perkins Grand View Addition, Mr. E. J. Hills, through Dr. R. G. McNiece, a lot of land about 207 lots having an acreage of between 19 and 20 acres for a part of which the deeds are now made and the whole in process of deeding and securing abstracts of title and title insurance through Mr. W. M. Bradley, Attorney. The title will be from these second parties to me individually. This tract of land I propose to deed to Sheldon Jackson College and incorporate according to the laws of Utah in whole or in part. From Josiah Cope all of Lots one (1) two (2) three (3) and four (4) in Block five (5) of Perkins Grand View Addition four (4) lots. From Rebecca F. Perkins 155, Geo. H. Crow 2, W. In. Trust Co. [Western Investment & Trust Co. ] 50, Walter Bryant 3, Josiah Cope 4 [.] In all 214 [.] Common lots 2.80

In response to Col. and Mrs. Ferry’s decision, the Presbyterians bestowed a rare honor on the couple by passing the following resolution on April 2, 1902:

Resolved by the Presbytery of Utah: That its hearty thanks are due, and are hereby tendered, to Col. Wm. M. Ferry for the generous aid he has given to our Christian work in Utah by the donation of this beautiful and valuable college site in Salt Lake City.

It is the prayer of Presbytery that the Lord’s blessing may be upon Col. Ferry and his family, and that he and Mrs. Ferry may be spared many years to co-operate with us in this important Christian and educational work in Utah.

In addition to providing the land for the new campus, Col. Ferry stipulated that a women’s board of directors be appointed to oversee issues related to the construction of the women’s building and related affairs. He wrote, “I reserved the privilege of naming the directors subject to the approval of the said trustees, also, that said directors of the women’s college should be empowered to name their successors as occasion might require, subject of course, to the approval of the Westminster College Board.”81 The letter also contained the names of the twelve women he recommended for the first board. The list included his wife, Jeannette Ferry, and his two daughters Mary Ferry Allen and Kate Ferry Hancock.82

In compliance with Col. Ferry’s wishes, the women’s board held its first meeting on March 21, 1903, at the Salt Lake City home of the Ferrys’

80 Women’s Board of Westminster College Records, ACC 019, Box 1, Folder 26, Archives, Giovale Library, Westminster College. Enclosed with this document is a more detailed listing of the exact lots which were purchased from each of the above-mentioned individuals. See also Karen Hendry, “Land Tidbits, Possibly Related to Westminster College,” Salt Lake Collegiate Institute on College Hill, 2009, Photocopy in the possession of the authors.

81 Letter from Col. William M. Ferry to “Dear Madame.” No specific name is given but it appears that the individual must be a member of the Westminster College Board of Trustees. Park City, Utah, March 21,1902 (dictated). Women’s Board of Westminster College Records, 1902-1977, ACC 019, Box 2, Folder 26, Archives, Giovale Library, Westminster College.

82 Ibid. The other women he recommended were: Mrs. Charles L. Bailey, Harrisburg, Pa.; Lilian E. Emerson, Titusville, Pa. (cousin to Col. Ferry); Eunice C. Gordan, Ogden; Mrs. T. L. (Elizabeth) B. Hamlin, Washington D.C.; Mary E. James, Brooklyn, New York; Mary F. Keith, Salt Lake City; Miss S. F. Lincoln, New York City; Sara McNiece, Salt Lake City; and Mrs. E. Williamson, Salt Lake City. Later, the Constitution of the Westminster College Woman’s Board stipulated, “The object of this Board shall be to care for the interests of the students of the school; to assist in the maintenance of the buildings for the same; to interest the general public in the College and to cooperate with the President and the Board of Trustees in promoting the welfare of both the student and the institution.” Woman’s Board of Westminster College Records, 1902-1977, ACC 019, Box 1, Folder 6, Archives, Giovale Library, Westminster College.

daughter Kate Ferry Hancock. A year later, on March 15, 1904, Col. Ferry donated one thousand dollars to support the board.83

The colonel also earmarked funds to construct the first building, Converse Hall.84

He also served briefly as a charter member and vice-president of the college’s board of trustees. Before construction began, however, the colonel died on January 2, 1905. Although he was eighty, his death was unexpected. His funeral, said to be the largest held in Park City, took place at the Ferry mansion where the colonel was eulogized as “a man of wide affairs and large interests” who was “devotedly Christian and ardently patriotic.” One eulogist praised him for his “strong principles and integrity” and stated that “his death creates a noticeable vacancy in Park City, where he lived, in Salt Lake City and throughout the State of Utah.”85 The Westminster Herald:

83 Women’s Board of Westminster College Minutes, 1902-1907, ACC 020, Box 1, Folders 1, 15, 22, Archives, Giovale Library, Westminster College.

84 “The Homegoing of Mrs. Ferry,” 1. Construction on Converse Hall commenced in March 1906. Although initially named for Sheldon Jackson, the college’s name was changed to Westminster College. In 1910, the Salt Lake Collegiate Institute merged with Westminster College.Vinatieri, “The Growing Years,” 358.

85 “Col. W. M. Ferry Rests in Peace,” Salt Lake Tribune, January 3, 1905; Brackenridge, Westminster College of Salt Lake City, 112.

Westminster students on the west side of Ferry Hall with Converse Hall in the background to the north.

Quarterly Bulletin of Westminster College noted, “During his whole life, Col. Ferry was a man of affairs, and a natural leader in any enterprise with which he was connected.”86 Friends accompanied the cortège to the Union Pacific Depot, and the coffin was transported to Grand Haven, Michigan, for burial in the family plot at Lake Forest Cemetery. The Hancock Post No. 4, G. A. R., Park City of which he was a member wrote of him: “[Ferry] proved himself an able and righteous defender of the Union during…the Civil War…[and] was at all times Christian like, noble and philanthropic citizen, a loving and devoted husband and father, a sincere and magnanimousfriend and a great lover of all goodness.”87

After her husband’s death, Jeannette divided her time between her Park City home and another home she purchased in Redlands, California.88 She worked tirelessly with the woman’s board to oversee the construction and management of the women’s building on Westminster campus. By this time the woman’s board had a firm foundation.

At a board meeting on April 17, 1906, Jeannette presented the following resolution:

In recognition of the work of the Presbyterian Church in Utah, extending over thirty years, in memory of the trials and sacrifices of its founders, missionaries, and teachers, some of whom have laid down their lives, and having a personal knowledge and deep interest in the work for over twenty-five years, I, Jeannette H. Ferry will place in the treasury of the Woman’s Board of Westminster College the last fifteen ($15,000.00) thousand dollars for the erection of the Women’s Building, to cost twenty-five thousand ($25,000.00) dollars, under the condition that the remaining ten ($10,000.00) thousand dollars be first provided.”89

Although the college had not raised its entire portion of the cost, the cornerstone of Ferry Hall, which was to serve as the women’s dormitory, was laid on July 21, 1908. Jeannette personally troweled the first mortar into place beneath the stone, “and made suitable remarks.” Although Jeannette moved to Redlands in her later years, she served as president of

86

“Death of Col. Ferry,” Westminster Herald: Quarterly Bulletin of Westminster College, January 1905, 1. The Hancock Post No. 4 G.A.R., Park City, of which he was a member honored him with a “Resolutions of Respect,” in the Park Record, February 4, 1905. In addition as a token of respect to their departed brother, they draped their charter in mourning for a period of thirty days.

87

“Col. W. M. Ferry Called to His Eternal Home Monday Last,” Park Record, January 7, 1905. This article describes his funeral in Park City in detail. Services in Grand Haven, Michigan. See also Park Record, January 21, 1905, and the Deseret News, January 6, 1905. Some sources maintain that Col. Ferry was totally blind by the time he died. See the Salt Lake Tribune, September 15, 1904; Seibold, Grand Haven: In the Path of Destiny, 40; Snow, “American Party in Utah,” 95. Col. Ferry was awarded a military pension of twelve dollars per month for his service in the Civil War on November 29, 1892, and later petitioned for an increase of one hundred dollars per month, which was denied. On January 14, 1901, his pension was increased to forty dollars per month due to disease of the eyes. “The right eye has been removed and the sight of his left eye amounts to almost total blindness.” Civil War Pension File for Col. William Montague Ferry, Certificate No. 828037. A copy of the complete file is in the possession of the authors.

88 Hal Compton, “Man Who Built the Mansion,” Park Record, July 17-19, 2002. Jeannette sold her Park City mansion to the Silver King Consolidated Mining Company in which Thomas Kearns was a major stockholder. He used the mansion as a summer home and dude ranch. Jeannette’s home in Redlands, California, was built in 1902.

89 Woman’s Board of Westminster College Minutes, 1902-1977, ACC 020, Box 1 Folder 1, 25.

the Women’s Board of Westminster College—Mary and Kate were also members—and corresponding secretary of the Presbyterian Synodical Society of Utah, until her death. The Ferry women “remembered the college from time to time with gifts of money, furniture, and many articles which were of practical value, both in the buildings and on the campus.”90

Jeannette died on November 4, 1917, at the age of eighty-nine at her Redlands home, and was buried in the Grand Haven family plot. According to her obituary, “she maintained her keen interest in current affairs up to the last… She contributed great grace of person and sweetness of disposition with strong and virile qualities.”91

A memorial service for her was held on November 6 at Westminster’s chapel, where eulogies were given by Rev. Josiah McClain, a member of the board of trustees, and Dr. William M. Paden, synodical missionary for Utah. The faculty and students at Westminster College adopted a resolution of tribute and regret honoring Jeannette as a “strong leader and a tender friend,” which was sent to her daughters.92

The resolution also paid tribute to Col. Ferry, acknowledging the couple’s generous financial support and masterly leadership in championing traditional Christian values through their involvement in the Presbyterian church, education and politics during the thirty-nine years they lived in Utah. “The memory of such [lives] should be a priceless heritage to students and friends” and “should stimulate others to take a similar interest and build upon the spendid foundations so wisely laid.”93

90

“The Homegoing of Mrs. Ferry,” 1. 91 “Remains are Brought Here for Burial,” Grand Haven Tribune, November 12, 1917. 92 “A Tribute From Dr. W. M. Paden,” 3; “The Homegoing of Mrs. Ferry,” 2. 93 Ibid.

Bishop Mitty’s Tough Love: History and Documents

By GARY TOPPINGBY NICOLE L. THOMPSON

When Bishop Joseph S. Glass, second bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake, died on January 26, 1926, the diocese was in a state of crisis.1

The root of the crisis was a financial hole into which the diocese had descended during his administration (1915-26). Bishop Glass, himself a person of moderate wealth with wealthy friends, was not, unlike his predecessor, the tough pioneer Bishop Lawrence Scanlan, a frugal person, and had committed

John J. Mitty, left, in 1952 as San Francisco Archbishop, on the occasion of the ordination of Robert J. Dwyer, right, as Bishop of Reno. Mitty had called for Utah Catholic parents to give their sons to the priesthood, and Dwyer was the first native Utahn to have been ordained.

1

The diocese was known as the Diocese of Salt Lake until 1951, when it was changed to the Diocese of Salt Lake City. The first bishop, Bishop Lawrence Scanlan, served from 1891 to 1915.

Gary Topping is Archivist of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City.

the diocese to an expensive program of building, renovation, and spending that proved to be considerably beyond its available resources. Collections at both the parish and diocesan levels fell far short of meeting expenses, and loans in some cases were negotiated simply to pay the interest on other loans, the principal of which remained undiminished as the diocese spiraled toward bankruptcy. A spreading perception of financial hopelessness infected the general morale as church members saw themselves pouring good money after bad, and virtually stopped their monetary contributions. That demoralization spread to church participation as well, as people stopped supporting auxiliary organizations and attending any but obligatory services.

It would be easy to blame Bishop Glass’s fiscal improvidence for having caused the crisis, but such an interpretation ignores a number of mitigating factors. While it is true that Bishop Glass seemed to possess a reverse Midas touch and had left behind him a record of financial catastrophes as a pastor and school administrator in Los Angeles, he was on the other hand a man of great vision who extended Catholic ministries into the Utah hinterland, built new churches and schools, and oversaw the interior redecoration of the Cathedral of the Madeleine which made it one of Utah’s architectural monuments.2 Although his vision placed a nearly fatal financial stress on the diocese, there is no question that his projects left the Catholic Church in Utah much better off in the long run. Also, Bishop Glass was a man of unquestionable integrity who asked no one to shoulder a financial burden that he himself was unwilling to share. Not only did he spend most of his own money on his Salt Lake City projects, he also tapped deeply into the wealth of Los Angeles oilman Edward L. Doheny, whose wife he had baptized and who regarded Glass as almost an adopted member of his family.3

All that having been said the diocese was, nevertheless, in a life-threatening crisis at the time of his death. Finding a way out of that morass of debt and morale was the single task that dominated the terms of the next two bishops: John J. Mitty (1926-32) and James E. Kearney (1932-37). That they succeeded, and especially that they succeeded mostly during the dark days of the Great Depression, is an eloquent tribute to their talents. 4 It was Bishop Mitty, however, who turned things around, shaking the diocese out of its demoralized lethargy by means of his iron discipline, ear-blistering oratory, access to outside funds, and financial acumen. This article is the story of how he did it.

2 Bernice Maher Mooney, Salt of the Earth: The History of the Catholic Church in Utah, 1776-1987, 2nd ed. 1992 (Salt Lake City: Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City, 1987), chapter 3 narrates the events and accomplishments of the Glass years. Fr. Stafford Poole, C.M., “’An Active and Energetic Bishop:’ The Appointment of Joseph Glass, C.M. as Bishop of Salt Lake City,” Vincentian Heritage 15 (1994): 119-62 describes his complex record as a priest in Los Angeles.

3 Margaret Leslie Davis, Dark Side of Fortune: Triumph and Scandal in the Life of Oil Tycoon Edward L. Doheny (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998) includes throughout her story the role of Glass in the Doheny family.

4 Those talents did not go unrecognized by the Church: Mitty was promoted to Archbishop of San Francisco, and Kearney returned to his native New York as Bishop of Rochester.

John J. Mitty was born in the Greenwich Village district of New York City in 1884. His mother died when he was ten and his father when he was fourteen, and it seems a reasonable speculation that his experience as an orphan shaped the resolute discipline that characterized his adulthood and led to the nickname “Iron John.” Educated at Dunwoodie Seminary in New York,as well as in Rome and Bavaria, Mitty was ordained in 1906. When the United States entered World War I in 1917, Mitty was just finishing an eight year stint as professor of dogmatic theology at his old seminary and volunteered for service as a chaplain. It may have been at that time, though perhaps earlier, that he became acquainted with Patrick Cardinal Hayes, Archbishop of New York City, who served as Bishop of the Catholic Forces in the United States Army and later, as we shall see below, as mentor and patron to the young Bishop of Salt Lake. After his return, Father Mitty was assigned to Sacred Heart parish in Highland Falls, New York, which included the chaplaincy of the United States Military Academy at West Point where he is said to have become acquainted with World War II General Douglas MacArthur. He was pastor of St. Luke’s parish in the Bronx when he received his appointment to Salt Lake City. At age forty-two, he was one of the youngest American bishops in history.5

The process of selecting a new bishop is so hidden from public view that it is impossible to say how it was that Mitty’s great discipline and military demeanor came to be selected for the very diocese where those qualities were so badly needed. Although it is the Pope who makes the actual appointment, and although the Pope by various means tries to remain abreast of conditions in every diocese in the world, obviously he is heavily dependent upon local advice in making his selections. It is not unreasonable to suspect that some of that advice came from Monsignor Patrick M. Cushnahan, long-time pastor of St. Joseph parish in Ogden and Diocesan Administrator during the interregnum between Bishops Glass and Mitty. During Bishop Scanlan’s last years, when he was ill and often absent seeking medical treatment, it had been Msgr. Cushnahan, together with Thomas Kearns, who complained to the apostolic delegate to the United States about administrative neglect in the diocese and requested an Auxiliary Bishop to assist Scanlan with administrative duties.6

Although, in the documents reproduced below, Mitty repeatedly expresses astonishment at the atrociousness of the conditions he found in the Salt Lake Diocese, there is evidence that he understood that his was an

5 Mooney, Salt of the Earth, 178; Bernice Maher Mooney, The Story of the Cathedral of the Madeleine (Salt Lake City: the author, 1980),107-8.

6 Poole, “’An Active and Energetic Bishop,’” 132, 141. Bernardine Ryan Martin, a second cousin of Bishop Glass who served as his secretary from 1923 to 1926, remembered that some of the problems that had developed during Scanlan’s latter years continued through Bishop Glass’s administration: “Bishop Glass had to build a whole new clergy – the clergy of the Catholic Church were a laughed-at bunch, with mighty few who were not immoral. Bishop Scanlan should have had help years before he got it.” Bernardine Ryan Martin to Albert J. “Jack” Steiss, July 29, 1977, in Msgr. William H. McDougall, Jr., Papers, Diocesan Archives.

appointment with a purpose, to turn things around in a trouble spot. (And indeed it would be unthinkable that the Church would have posted a man to such an assignment with no foreknowledge of what he was getting into, and simply expect him to sink or swim.) At a celebratory dinner in New York immediately after his ordination as bishop, Mitty gave a brief speech in which he referred to Salt Lake as “a scattered, struggling Diocese,” and mentioned that he felt a call from God, “who wanted me for some work in Salt Lake,” thus hinting at an awareness that he was going west for a specific purpose and for a limited period of time.7

At any rate, it did not take the energetic young bishop long to plot some of the dimensions of his task. Barely two months after his consecration as bishop on September 6, 1926, he sent this first report to Cardinal Hayes, whom he had just seen both in Denver and Salt Lake City:

November 18, 1926

His Eminence, Cardinal Hayes, 452 Madison Ave., New York

Your Eminence:-

I have been anxious to write you for some time past to give you an account of my stewardship but my time has been so taken up that it has been well nigh impossible.

From the newspaper accounts I see that you are going stronger than ever since your return to New York after your invasion of the West. I hope that you are feeling well after all your travel and work. The Salt Lakers are still talking of your visit; it was an epoch and the Catholic minority here have gotten strength and courage from it; the non-Catholics are also still aglow over it while reports reaching me from Denver tell the same story. So your visit has helped the Church far more than you realise [sic].

After my return from Denver I was pretty well tired out; whether it was the reaction after five months of high pressure or the high altitude or both, I was pretty much all in and I laid up at the Hospital for a complete rest. I am back at the Rectory now and feeling fine and dandy and tackling my problems. They are indeed many and various. Unfortunately Bishop Glass never took anyone into his confidence and no one knows anything about the finances; he had the habit of taking out notes and in many cases I cannot find out for what purpose; but they are facing me; as far as I have gathered so far the indebtedness from all sources diocesan and parochial is over $250,000; apart from the Cathedral and Ogden Church, I doubt if the entire income in the diocese from all sources including intentions and the little Extension subsidies amounts to $40,000 annually; perhaps $40,000 more might be added for the Cathedral and Ogden.8 In addition to notes the poor Bishop had a mania for buying houses and real estate which are not usable and for which we could not get the money he paid. I have written the

7 Intermountain Catholic, October, 1926, p. 11.

8 St. Joseph parish is located in Ogden. For an explanation of Mass intentions, see footnote 9. The Catholic Extension is an agency that raises funds for projects beyond the reach of less wealthy dioceses. The Diocese of Salt Lake City has been the beneficiary of its help on many occasions.

Central Union Trust Co. (Mr. Goldman) asking their assistance; I asked specifically for $50,000 which they granted for four months at 5 1/2 %; I have just written my answer demanding the same treatment I received from them in New York.You may possibly hear from them about it.

I find that the priests as a rule lack the pep and the initiative of the Easterners; this is possibly due to discouragement; in one case I had to act with a strong hand with one man who had been imbibing and neglecting his parish and giving scandal; in another case, I scared the LIFE OUT OF a lazy pastor by the threat of removal if he did not get results; but I find the majority willing to work and to make sacrifices and thoroughly enthused when they feel that I am on the job and willing to help them in every way. I have been thanking God for the purse from the New York clergy and other donations I received in New York as they have enabled me to meet pressing obligations and keep out of jail. As far as I can see the future for my own personal finances, I shall have to depend for room and board upon the Cathedral and live on intentions because every cent I can lay my hands on from all sources will have to go to satisfy diocesan obligations.9 My own care is

The Salt Lake City Cathedral of the Madeleine.

the least of my worries and I feel that living in that way will have its proper reaction upon both priests and people and that when things are swinging properly,I will be able to make things go.

The big problem in Salt Lake City is schools; it has been handled in a makeshift fashion and there is a real demand for some permanent and constructive work; here the school is a diocesan not a parochial affair and I plan to get going with two school buildings in different parts of the city; I hope to start them in the Spring if God is good. At present St. Mary’s College and Academy is floundering under a debt close to a million dollars; a drive for it had been decided upon by Bishop Glass but fell through because of his death and the interregnum.10 For the sake of the Holy Cross Sisters who have done so much for religion here for the past 50 years I shall have to give it every encouragement. 11 I plan to get a Committee of Catholics, Protestants and Mormons to put it over and make an appeal to all creeds.

The non-Catholics are most cordial to me; I am getting invitations to talk from all sources and am accepting them. The American Legion had me broadcast a speech for Armistice Day and the Chamber of Commerce had me talk at their luncheon at which I waved the American flag. Mgr. Hunt who has lived in Salt Lake for 13 years tells me that he never saw such desire to have the Bishop or any Catholic attend nonsectarian functions.12 Mgr. Hunt is a tremendous help to me; he is Chancellor and is a zealous and indefatigable worker and has the ear of Protestants, Mormons and Catholics. I am sending [him] off for a vacation and

9 While it is illegal in the Church to charge a fee for access to sacraments, it is nevertheless customary to provide a small donation (stipend) when asking a priest to offer a special Mass for a specific purpose (intention). Ordinarily these are mere token donations, and such funds alone would not have provided much of a living for the bishop. According to a ledger in the Diocesan Archives titled “Old Intention Fund Book,” the going rate in the late 1920s was about one dollar. However, Bishop Mitty was also receiving substantial donations of Mass stipends from other parts of the country through Catholic Extension, and the ledger indicates a typical monthly intake of well over three hundred dollars, on top of stipends for local Masses. While there is no reason to believe all that money was being used to support the bishop, he nevertheless should have been able to find a decent living in it, and one supposes that subsisting on Mass stipends was not necessarily a sacrificial existence.

10 This was St. Mary of the Wasatch, a secondary school and college for women erected on four hundred acres of land in the Wasatch foothills purchased by the Sisters of the Holy Cross in 1921. An indebtedness of one million dollars—three times the entire debt of the diocese—seems a high estimate, though the grounds were extensive and the immense four-story structure was magnificent. But the school had only opened in 1926, and the indebtedness of such an institution is usually highest at its beginning. In any event, as the bishop implies, the debt belonged to the Holy Cross Sisters, not the diocese, though he also indicates a felt obligation to help keep them solvent since the school was run for the benefit of the diocese. Mooney, Salt of the Earth, 172-4. Despite Bishop Mitty’s intention to help the college, he in fact gave only minimal and grudging support, thereby provoking the ire of Sr. M. Madeleva, its first principal and a person every bit his match in sarcasm and invective. Their conflict is vividly narrated in Gail Porter Mandell, Madeleva: A Biography (New York City: State University of New York Press, 1997), 108-109.

11 Indeed, no religious order has labored for so long and so effectively in the Diocese of Salt Lake City than the Sisters of the Holy Cross, mostly as teachers and administrators of schools and hospitals, but also in other capacities. St. Mary of the Wasatch was the educational culmination of their efforts in Utah which had begun in 1875 with a girls’ school on the present site of the Salt Palace. See Sister M. Georgia (Costin) CSC, “Mother M. Augusta (Anderson): Doing What Needs Doing,” in Colleen Whitley, ed., Worth Their Salt: Notable But Often Unnoted Women of Utah (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1996), pp. 32-42.

12 Duane G. Hunt (1884-1960) was a midwestern Methodist who converted to Catholicism in 1913. While teaching at the University of Utah he felt a call to the priesthood and was ordained in 1920. He eventually became Bishop of Salt Lake City from 1937 to 1960.

incidentally he will get to Chicago where he will see Extension officials and I hope Cardinal Mundelein; he can describe our conditions here and I hope get some help.

I trust I have not wearied you with my story but it is some help to talk it out to you. I hope you are well. And I want to thank you again for your great kindness to me. With all best wishes, Sincerely and Gratefully Yours,

P.S.- I forgot to say that Bishop Glass loaded up the place here with all kinds of paintings from Europe. The present Bishop is perfectly willing to dispose of them at a good figure—so if you know of anyone anxious to buy—just say the word.13

His Eminence Cardinal Hayes, New York City Your Eminence:-

March 2, 1927

I had intended writing you sooner but I have gotten into such a swirl of work and difficulties that I have found it well nigh impossible. I have found things very difficult; the more I become acquainted with conditions, the worse I find things. In my wildest fancy I never dreamt that things could be so chaotic; there are very few financial records and those that exist are difficult to make head or tail of; the diocese has practically had no organization and the clergy no supervision; there are two trust funds where both funds and records are missing; hardly a week passes that I do not run into some new mix-up; only yesterday the widow of Comes the architect who remodeled the Cathedral wrote me that Bishop Glass owed her $1400; the week previous, Mrs. Pope, Bishop Glass’ sister, started action on a suit against the diocese; I went to Los Angeles with my lawyer and had a conference with her; asked the Dohenys to use what pressure they could to keep her quiet; then finally saw the lady herself and told her just how Bishop Glass’ reputation would be affected by a public suit; she finally agreed to let a referee look over the books and give a decision; I have no fear of that.14 I was fortunate in staying with

13 These paintings, which are mostly gloomy depictions of Biblical or other religious subjects executed in a Renaissance style, were purchased in Europe shortly before Bishop Glass’s death. Some people, apparently including Bishop Mitty, regarded them as white elephants. After this attempt by Bishop Mitty to foist them off, they were exhibited at St. Mary of the Wasatch until it closed in 1970. Since then, most of them have been hung in various places in the Cathedral Rectory and the Pastoral Center.

14 Patrick Phelan, a one-time miner who ran a store in Bingham Canyon, died in 1901 and left a substantial amount of money to the diocese earmarked for the support of St. Ann’s Orphanage. Miss Ellen Hayes, owner of a store and hotel and a real estate speculator in Ely, Nevada, left a handsome endowment to the diocese upon her death in 1909. (Until 1931—during Bishop Mitty’s tenure—when the Diocese of Reno was created, the parishes in eastern Nevada were included in the Diocese of Salt Lake.) Despite what Bishop Mitty says, careful records were kept for both endowments and are available today in the Diocesan Archives. Apparently they were temporarily misplaced at the time of his writing. But both of those funds were created during the administration of Bishop Scanlan, who was a scrupulous keeper of financial records, and Bishop Mitty’s characterization of the slipshod nature of Bishop Glass’s record keeping is on the mark. Bishop Glass’s episcopal style was something of a throwback to the “princes of the Church” of the Renaissance: he ran the diocese out of his hip pocket and felt himself accountable to no one but God. John Theodore Comes, whom Bishop Glass had reportedly met on a golf outing, was a church architect from Luxembourg with whom Glass had worked on a new church in Los Angeles before

Bishop Cantwell who advised me at every step.

City.

Despite Bishop Mittyʼs promise to help the new college financially, the help he actually gave was minimal, and he became embroiled in a huge conflict with Sr. M. Madeleva, the renowned scholar-poet who served as its first principal and felt that he had betrayed her.

He was most hospitable and kind. The Archbishop phoned me to come home by way of San Francisco so that he could have a chat. Both the Bishops roundly abused me for sticking to the job too closely but I told them I had certain traditions to live down. I have been making Visitation in the diocese; the entire diocese is made up of mining camps and railroad centres; seven day a week work is the rule everywhere; in a recent trip covering 1000 miles, I came across only 200 Catholics; outside of Salt Lake and Ogden, there is very little to count on; most of the parishes are a liability rather than an asset; apart from the financial side, my problems are terrific.15 The only thing that has kept me from discouragement has been the fact that I keep telling the Lord that it is His job more than it is mine and that He must help me. This brings me to my requests. A number of the pastors told me

getting Comes to undertake renovation of the Cathedral of the Madelaine. See Mooney, The Story of the Cathedral of the Madeleine, 28-29. Mary Glass Pope was Bishop Glass’s younger sister, whom he named as executor of his estate and his heiress. The threatened law suit arose over a loan the bishop had made to the diocese, which Mrs. Pope argued should be repaid to her. The settlement, which evidently consisted of a negotiated one-time payment, was made out of court. The Glass papers in the Diocesan Archives contain her quitclaim deed toward any diocesan resources.

15 Mitty’s tally obviously excludes the Catholic population of Salt Lake City and Ogden. Even at that, and even though in the following letter he represents it as an actual count, the figure seems low.

BISHOP MITTY’S TOUGH LOVE

Saint Mary of the Wasatch Catholic School on the east side of Salt Lake

they would give me a collection when I wished it; the chances are that I shall be unable to get back East until the Bishops meeting; and just now I feel that I am doing more good by organizing things here than by going around collecting. Would you allow me to send the enclosed letter to all the pastors of the Archdiocese; it might bring me sufficient funds to keep me out of jail and I am hoping to get some of them to promise me a yearly offering.16 The Lord knows I need it. A second favor is this. My note from the Central Union Trust company expires on March 22; Mr. Goldman wrote that if I could get your signature to the renewal he could give me the money at 5% instead of the 5 1/2 % that I am now paying. Would it be possible for you to add your signature to mine? I need not assure you that I will not double cross you.

I hope that you are well; in spite of all my worries, I am feeling fine. With warmest filial regards, Devotedly Yours,

[Enclosed letter:]

Reverend and dear Father:

March 3, 1927

When, a few months ago, I was consecrated and installed Bishop of Salt Lake I little realized what was ahead of me. From my acquaintanceship with Catholic conditions in the east it was impossible for me to picture accurately conditions out here. You have no idea of the problems and difficulties confronting me. And if I should try to tell you I could not make you understand.

At the time of my departure from New York a number of the pastors generously offered me collections, to be taken up when I should need help. It has been my hope to return to the east and to present personally a statement of my needs; but I cannot leave here for some months yet. My presence is required by several very pressing problems. So I make this appeal by letter, with the gracious permission of the Cardinal.

My story is more than that of a Missionary Bishop; it is that, of course, but with some additional facts peculiar to this region. In this vast Diocese there are only a handful of Catholics, a large percentage made up of foreigners. Outside Salt Lake City and Ogden there is nothing but a few mining camps and railroad centers. In a recent visitation, covering a thousand miles, I counted only two hundred Catholics. The entire income of all the parishes in the Diocese amounts to less than $100,000 a year; out of that money thirty priests and thirty sisters must be paid enough to live on, and insurance and upkeep of property must be met. Unfortunately I have inherited an overwhelming debt of almost $300,000. With a few exceptions the priests receive no salaries. They are living hundreds of miles from their fellow priests; they have to travel as far as three hundred miles on sick calls. Some have died as the result of improper living conditions; others have lost their minds from lonesomeness.17 Just a few weeks ago one of my priests confessed

16 This second mention of jail suggests it is not just a figure of speech, and that he considered himself in serious jeopardy of some kind of legal action.

17 Hyperbole in fundraising appeals is not unknown, nor is the tendency of newcomers to exaggerate Utah’s exoticism to the folks back home.

to me that he had not eaten a square meal for three days. Such things are happening here in the United States to your fellow priests.

Bishop Mitty with a First Holy Communion class at Holy Rosary parish, Bingham, about 1930.

I have done what little I could. The money which the clergy and my friends gave me at my consecration has all been spent for Diocesan needs; I am receiving absolutely no income whatsoever save from intentions and donations from friends. I mention this to show that I appeal to you with clean hands.18 Will it be possible for you to take up a collection for the Diocese of Salt Lake? Candidly and very frankly, I cannot make it go without help from the outside. And I am referring to urgent and present needs only. I have said nothing about a constructive program for the Diocese for the simple reason that under present conditions such a thing is out of the question.

My priests are fighting the battle of the Church in America at the very outposts. It will give them courage if they can feel that their more fortunate brothers in Christ are interested in your work for souls and are stretching out a helping hand.19

May God bless you for your help to a begging Bishop, Devotedly yours in Christ,

18 Mitty did indeed have clean hands, and it was this conspicuous austerity that gave him the moral leverage he needed when he turned on the people of the diocese, as shown in the following document, to excoriate them for not making similar sacrifices.

19 One of the most significant features of this letter is something it does not contain: an appeal for funds to support conversion of Mormons. Early on in his tenure in Salt Lake City, Bishop Scanlan had made annual appeals to the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, an organization of French lay people whose purpose was to provide financial assistance to struggling churches like those in Utah. Scanlan’s appeals almost always mentioned efforts to convert Mormons. By the mid-1880s, though, several experiences had led to a sea change in his attitude: his lack of success in such conversions, the hospitality of Mormons who often provided food and lodging on his long journeys through rural Utah, and his sympathy for the way Mormons were being treated during the anti-polygamy crusade. Thereafter, he adopted a live-and-let-live policy which made for remarkably warm relations between the two churches. That policy and those good relations have continued to the present day. See Scanlan to the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, November 1, 1883, copy in Diocesan Archives, and Intermountain Catholic, May 5, 1915.

So far, so good. Mitty had spent his own money to try to make ends meet, and he had appealed eloquently and passionately for outside help among his well-heeled eastern friends. Now it was time to bring down the hammer at home. On the evening of May 14, 1928, Mitty summoned the heads of households from Catholic families of the diocese to a meeting at the Cathedral where he intended to address them about the current situation. In this case “the diocese” probably meant almost exclusively the relatively large Catholic populations of Salt Lake City and Ogden because May 14 was a Monday and travel after work from most outlying communities, given the available means of transportation in 1928, would probably have been prohibitive. In the diocese at that time there was a general feeling that while Bishop Mitty was “one who hid a tolerance of human weakness behind a façade of parental sternness,” his demeanor that night was that of a “drill sergeant disciplining his errant troops.”20 Surely his notes for the dressing-down, which I have transcribed below, are a masterpiece of verbal invective rarely seen in print and even today capable of setting one’s teeth on edge. One can only imagine the morbid silence in the room as Mitty freely ranged from one damning fact to another.21

In editing this document, I have left out some of the statistical data, which in any event one supposes Mitty left out as well in his oral presentation, so as not to risk diluting his vitriol. In case anyone did ask questions, he would have the data for his answer in front of him. Also, I have justified violating the bishop’s demand for confidentiality by the assumption that ample time has passed that no one could possibly be hurt by this disclosure.

May 14 – 1928

These remarks are confidential and not to be published. I am going to talk very frankly, straight from the shoulder, but I intend to say my say. I shall give you an opportunity at the end to ask questions.

Debt — $297,602.35

Parishes with debts for years. Never any principal paid.

Some parishes for years borrowing money to pay interest on debt.

In less than three months I was called upon to pay $78,494.32, within three months more $52,500, — a total of $131,000. Since then, almost the entire loan has come due.

Debt scattered everywhere.

I have attempted to fund this debt and to centralize all the obligations of the diocese in the Chancery Office.

20 Mooney, Salt of the Earth, 179.

21 Bernardine Ryan Martin reported that the father of the later Archbishop Robert J. Dwyer, in whose home she boarded while serving as Bishop Glass’s secretary, “came home a very chastened person after that meeting and the rest of the men did too.” Martin to Steiss, July 29, 1977. This report was hearsay, probably from Dwyer, because Martin left Salt Lake City late in 1926 and was not present at the time of Bishop Mitty’s meeting. Msgr. William H. McDougall, Jr., interview with Martin, April 5, 1980, p. 4, Diocesan Archives.

As head of the diocese I was the defendant in five suits against the diocese, totaling $28,000. – Bishop Glass, $6816; Kiely, $7700; Comes, $1400; Fabian, $600; and Rome, $12,000.

We have succeeded in keeping them out of court. Two are settled for $6818.60. The others are still pending.

To come to particular instances of Diocesan debt:

Cemetery:

$9,000 in unpaid bills to Cemetery. $2,200 not owed by Cemetery.

Camp Glass:22

A deficit in 1926 of over $400. An added deficit in 1927 of $135.

Catholic Men’s Club: Suppers, showed deficit. Some men come and pay for their supper and thought they were supporting the Church. Others failed to pay.

Girls’ Club: $13,266.55 debt still, apart from money paid. To date from Oct., 1926, I have received interest to amount of $720.00 from Meynell Club.23

Intermountain Catholic:

For first year 553 paid for subscriptions; 279 subscribed and did not pay.

Salt Lake School: During this year: — 325, grammar[;] 75, high school

To my best knowledge, in the eight years that the Catholic School has been functioning, the people of the diocese have never paid the current expenses. Practically every year money has had to be borrowed or taken from other funds to meet deficit. I can give a more detailed report for last two years. . . .

Total deficit in 1926 and 1927 - $9391.00

For last eight months, starting September, 1927, up to May 1, 1928, contributions from the parishes have amounted to $228.25, an average monthly contribution of $1028, whereas the normal expense to cover all items is $1666 Basement School is a standing disgrace to the Catholic people. School music and athletics.

Phelan Fund [added in pencil on typescript]

Hayes Estate – Ely [added in pencil on typescript]

22 This was a boys’ summer camp in Provo Canyon which Bishop Glass had created in 1925. Bishop Mitty closed it in 1930.

23 Named for English poet Alice Meynell, this was a girls’ club founded in 1923 devoted to various social and charitable projects such as supporting Girl Scouts and an annual Christmas program for poor children.

Parishes:

With regard to individual parishes, with one exception, none are paying off any debt. Some are not even meeting interest, and only a few are giving the pastor a salary.

In 1926 the thirty priests in the diocese received a total in salary of $13,247, making an average salary of $441 a year. In 1927 the thirty priests received $15,138, of which I obtained from outside sources $1835, leaving your contribution to priests as salary $13,303, an average of $442 a year. . . . [A list of each priest’s salary follows.]

With regard to money spent in house maintainence [sic], which includes food, laundry, servant’s salary, etc., in 1926, 12 priests ran their houses for under $1000, in amounts from $356 a year up; 9 priests were slightly over $1000.

In 1927, 15 priests were under $1000. Reports show $213, $235, $363. 6 priests were over $1000.

The homes of some priests are a disgrace. Laity have decent places; any hole good enough for priest.

Sickness of priests due to lack of proper nourishment and to lack of vacations, and due to overwork. Wonder they don’t leave.

[A table comparing salaries with parish incomes follows.]

The total income of all the parishes in the diocese from your contributions and from outside sources in 1926 was $126,000; in 1927, $130,000, an average donation from each person in diocese of $8.50. Compare with Mormon 10%. Out of this amount must come salary and support of thirty priests, salary of thirty-five Sisters teaching in parochial schools in Salt Lake, Ogden, Park City, Price, and Eureka, the maintainence [sic] and upkeep of all churches, schools, and rectories— light, heat, repair, assessments, care of sanctuary—interest to amount of $18,000.00, insurance to annual amount of about $2,000, support of diocesan needs, collections for Near East, Education of Priests, Home, Foreign, Indian, and Diocesan needs, Peter’s Pence.24

In the General Diocesan Collections since my administration:

Jan. 1927 Catholic Near East out of 15000[,] 926 contributed$1228.15

Jan. 1928 ““““ 722“ 981.83

June 1927 Mission Collection“ 778 “ 1932.41

This means that on the average only one person in twenty contributed, and that the average donation for diocese— .08; .06 1\2; .15.25

In connection with collections I may note the response of Cathedral parish to appeal of Semi-annual Interest Collection:

July 1927$1538.50

Oct. 19271255.70 $2794.50 Interest $5908.75 Deficit $3114.55

Mar. 1928 766.75 About same interest paid this year and your contribution, so far, half of what it was last year.

24 This is an annual collection to support the work of the Pope.

25 Bishop Mitty derives these figures by dividing each of the three totals in the right column by 15,000 the total number of Utah Catholics. The math is another way of making the contributions look shameful, e.g., eight cents per person.

Radio:

For the last year and a half we have made use of radio for broadcasting Catholic sermons, and for five months the High Mass was broadcast once a month, for which the Catholic Woman’s League paid. The Sunday evening sermons for practically a year and a half have been broadcast from the K.S.L. studio. The cost of each, including typeing [sic], etc., is about $15.00. In the year and a half we have received exactly $10.00. No recompense whatever for the terrific labor of Monsignor Hunt personally.26

Reports:

off.

I heard a great deal of complaint that parishioners did not receive financial reports from the pastors. I ordered each pastor to give a financial statement at the beginning of each year. In hardly any case, was any parish contributing as it should.

In the Cathedral a report was printed which gave not only a summary of general Receipts and Expenses, but a detailed report of what each individual

26

Msgr. (later Bishop) Duane G. Hunt had been a professor of rhetoric at the University of Utah before his ordination. It was Mitty’s idea to create a weekly radio program called The Catholic Hour to take advantage of Hunt’s oratorical skills. Eventually other priests took turns giving the broadcast as well. The texts of Hunt’s talks are available in the Diocesan Archives, as are recordings of some by Hunt and others.

BISHOP MITTY’S TOUGH LOVE

Archbishop Mitty, left, with Apostolic Delegate Giovanni Cicognani, center, and Salt Lake City Bishop James E. Kearney, right in November 1936 at the rededication of the Cathedral of the Madeleine after its debt had been paid

contributed. Then I received complaints about printing such a report. Reports of all the parishes have been given. Let me give you an accounting of funds received from you for the diocese and how expended: [statistical table follows] . . . .

You can judge then that the diocese does not receive enough income to pay the ordinary running expenses of the diocese. (No offering to Pope; Seminary Fund— $1800 short; very little, $291, to Diocesan mission). It has been necessary for me to give every cent of my own money to save the diocese from bankruptcy. All the money I received at the time of my Consecration, and since—all given to me personally, has had to go to the diocese. It has amounted up to Jan. 1, 1928, to $29,250.

I have received absolutely no salary nor compensation of any kind since I have come. Any donations given me have all been turned to the diocese. In addition, Father Keefe has expended $3300 of his own money on the school.27 A disgrace to the laity of the diocese.

There has been some whispering and some back stairs gossip about the supposed squandering of diocesan money on the part of Bishop Glass. Now, I shall give you reports of the finances during his administration and I shall give you an opportunity to ask questions out in the open.

[Statistical table follows, demonstrating that the] Average per person per year— about 33 cents.

Extraordinary Collections:

Bishop Glass’ Jubilee, Cathedral Debt Fund. I have been asked several times, what did the Bishop do with this money? Bishop Glass had nothing to do with this money as it was in the hands of a lay committee who alone had power to sign checks.

Now the report: Pledged$68,686.84 Paid57,324.84 Unpaid11,362.00

The money was expended as follows: Paid on Principal of Cathedral debt$43,000 Paid as Interest on Cathedral debt$12,967.50 Collecting Cost $ 1,357.34 $57,324.84

[The last two expenditures are itemized by monthly installments.]

At the beginning of Bishop Glass’ administration an appeal was made for funds for [a] parochial school. The amount contributed was used for remodeling and renovating the Judge Mercy building, at cost of $20,979.28 School equipment used up the remainder.

Summary of receipts in Bp Glass’ administration. Receipts from parishes were not sufficient to pay running expenses. The total extraordinary receipts was $8500. The average per year for extraordinary receipts from 1916-1928 was $7000. The average per person per year was 50 cents.

27 Father Joseph S. Keefe was Assistant Pastor of the Cathedral parish during the 1920s.

28 Originally a miners’ hospital, built with financial assistance from Mary Judge shortly after the turn of the twentieth century, this is the building that became Judge Memorial Catholic High School in Salt Lake City in 1920.

I trust that this statement will kill once for all any of the back stairs whispering about Bishop Glass’ squandering diocesan money. You did not give him any to squander, you did not give him enough for routine expenses. Any money he did spend was given to him by personal friends and not by you.29

Remarks have been made in connection with the Cathedral debt that Bishop Glass left a big insurance to the Diocese. In April, 1926, Monsignor Cushnahan, the Administrator of the Diocese, received from the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company the sum of $42,499.59. This was immediately expended before my arrival, as follows:

Cost of two houses next to Cathedral Rectory$25,520.83 Repaid Diocesan debt to Ogden parish12,500.00

Paid off part of debt on Girls’ Club to Tracy Loan & Trust 2,500.00 $40,520.83

The remaining $2000 was expended on Diocesan needs.

Priests:

There has been a good bit of criticism of our priests. They are not this and not that and not the other thing. In answer, bear in mind the fact that you have not one single native priest, that you have been dependent upon the charity of outside priests to administer to you, that beggars can not be choosers, that you have not given sufficient contributions to educate men for the priesthood. Since 1916 to the present time you have contributed $9,547.15, an average annual contribution of $742 a year.

From the time of being graduated from grammar school to the time of Ordination is usually twelve years. No Seminary to-day charges less than $400 a year, and some $450. The tuition alone for one student is practically $5000, not counting possible expense for railroad fare, clothes, books, etc. In other words, in these thirteen years you have not contributed enough to pay for the education of two priests.

You must give your own sons to the priesthood. You must give the sufficient funds to educate boys for the priesthood. I shall cut down on the list unless you finance it. There will be a collection on June 17th.

Orphanage:

According to the report I gave you, you contributed to the Orphanage from 1916-1926 the sum of $1931.49. I received something less than $100 making a total of $2000 for 13 years, an average of less than $170 a year. Until the Community Chest started, the condition of the Orphanage was lamentable, with the sisters practically begging to get enough money to feed the orphans. It was a disgrace. At present the cost of running the Orphanage is about $16,000 a year. The Community Chest is giving about $8,000. Some funds are received from payments for children, and other funds will be available to the diocese if the diocese needs to help.

29 Although, as we have seen in his letters to Cardinal Hayes, Bishop Mitty was well aware of his predecessor’s inadequacies as a fiscal administrator, he was not about to acknowledge them on this occasion and thus give his listeners an excuse for their own fiscal irresponsibility.

I do not expect to call upon you for assistance for the Orphanage, but if it becomes necessary I shall not fail to do so.30

Wills:

I have been here one and a half years. In that time a number of Catholic people have died. With the exception of one woman, Mrs. McGrath of Ogden, who divided her estate of about $10,000 between the Ogden Parochial School and Sacred Heart Academy, and with the exception of one man, [name withheld], who left $1000 (not pd) to St. Ann, not another person has put God or His Church in his will. This is not a Catholic attitude. It seems you will not give to the Church when you are alive, and that when you die and must leave your money behind you, even then you will not give to the Church.

Respect for Bishop and Clergy:

Your general attitude in the matter of Church support finds a reflection in your attitude toward the clergy. I have been shocked and surprised at what I consider is a lack of proper respect shown to me as the Bishop. At many functions which I have attended, I was kept waiting in a hallway or side room, sometimes for twenty to thirty minutes, after the hour scheduled. Sometimes appointments with me have been made by Catholic people and they never showed up and never apologised. I have entered Catholic gatherings and the audience remained seated. It is an unusual thing for laymen to tip their hats in passing priests on the street. Again and again Catholic men have given me their word to do a certain thing and then default in it. Committees fizzle out. One person who owed a debt to the diocese placed it in a collection envelope and made an Xmas offering of it to the Cathedral, and was quite surprised when he was called to account. Another who was careful to impress upon me what a great favor he was doing me in a business deal has not yet paid any of his debt in the matter. I have been called upon for trifles—matters that should be settled by parish clergy. I wondered sometimes if you people thought me an Office Boy.

No matter what my own personal inclinations are in these matters, there is a certain respect due to my position as Bishop. It is part of my job to train you if you show a lack of it.

Salt Lake Catholics:

Let me say a word about the Catholic group here in the City. Whatever your opinion of yourselves may be, the opinion of the clergy in which I concur is that, with the exception of one or two organizations, you are the most difficult and most unresponsive group of Catholic people any of us has ever had to deal with. I

30 After the Kearns-St. Ann’s Orphanage was closed in the 1950s, most of the records were lost or destroyed, so checking on Bishop Mitty’s gloomy assessment is difficult. During Bishop Scanlan’s day, the orphanage was the pride of the diocese: far from the Dickensian horrors the term “orphanage” tends to evoke, St. Ann’s was a model institution where the children were well fed, clothed, and educated. See, for example, a general report on its condition in Salt Lake Herald, October 8, 1900, p. 5. It is probable that funding for the orphanage declined as part of the general financial malaise of the Glass years, but Bishop Mitty fails to mention the ongoing endowment of the Phelan Fund, which was providing several hundred dollars a month during the 1920s. That was likely part of the reason why he doubts a future need for additional diocesan funding. Phelan Fund records, Diocesan Archives. Sr. Kathryn Callahan, “Sisters of the Holy Cross and Kearns-St. Ann’s Orphanage,” Utah Historical Quarterly 78 (Summer 2010): 254-74.

have had a varied experience and I never came in contact with a more difficult group. The priests who have been stationed in other cities are amazed at your utter lack of response. You are subnormal and way below par. Appeals fall on deaf ears. You are utterly impervious to them. You expect your priests to do all the work. Take Boy Scouts, we have failed with them because none of the laymen would help out. It is the same story in every sphere. Missions, Forty Hours’ Devotions, parish societies, entertainments, all kinds of efforts are expended to get you interested and only a small percentage ever respond.

As for complaints and criticisms, they would fill a library and in 99 cases out of 100 an investigation shows a lack of interest and activity on the part of the laity. There is only one way in which we can accomplish anything and that is by an active interest in our parishes, by belonging to parish societies, and going to monthly Communion in a body, by assisting your priests in varied parish activities, by helping instead of criticizing, by contributing instead of defaulting. You need to snap out of your present lethargy.

Parish Life:

I am insisting with the pastors that each parish develop its own life by having parish societies for men and women, for boys and girls, who will receive Communion in a body at least once a month. It is only in this way that any progress can be made. This is the normal Catholic life. Your own ways and schemes, if they differ from this, are not worth while and will not get us anywhere. So I am asking—frequent Communion from all our people.31

Cemetery:

In connection with this, let me say a word first about funerals. There is Church legislation governing Catholic burial. My duty is to keep this legislation. People who have renounced the Church and refused the priest cannot expect Catholic burial. Your dead should have a funeral Mass and should be buried in a Catholic cemetery where we have one; otherwise, unless covered by exceptions in the law, they will not be given a Christian burial. Hereafter, no flowers will be allowed in the Church at a funeral. It is utterly opposed to Church regulations. With regard to the Cemetery: a Lay Committee is working out a scheme for the maintainence [sic] and beautifying of the Cemetery, which will call for assistance on your part. I trust you will cooperate.

SUMMARY OF FINANCES FROM

1915-1928:

Deficit in: Cemetery, Camp Glass, Men’s Club, Girls’ Club, Intermountain Catholic, School, Parish Income, Seminary Fund, Diocesan Needs, Bishop’s Support, and Radio Broadcasting. Very small offering for Missions, Pope, Indian and Colored Work.

The conclusion from all these figures is very clear. In my administration the

31 Medieval Christians took quite seriously St. Paul’s admonition (I Corinthians 11:27-29) to examine their consciences before going to Communion, to the point that most people received the Eucharist only and this practice continued into modern times. During Bishop Mitty’s day, Pope St. Pius X (1903-14) lowered the age of First Communion for children and urged more frequent Communion for everyone. Bishop Mitty’s admonition here is part of that trend.

figures show you have not contributed to pay the ordinary running expenses of the parishes of the diocese. In Bishop Glass’ administration, even with the two extraordinary contributions for school and debt fund, the figures show that you did not give enough to run the diocese. In other words, you have been constant shirkers and constant slackers in the matter of support of your Church. Hardly any of you have made a sacrifice and the contributions of some of you are an insult to God. You have left some of your priests to live in hovels, left some of them at times to starve, left them to make all the sacrifices. There were times when the Sisters had to practically beg to get enough to eat, and you have gone along undisturbed and unconcerned. From all this you can readily realize how I feel toward all the speeches of cooperation and pledges of support that have been given to me. They have been words and nothing more—absolutely worthless.

We have come to the crossing of the roads. Things cannot go on in this way. Unless you change and change decidedly, I shall close down everything you are not supporting. If necessary, I shall close up churches where a decent support is not given the priests.

My request: A decent support of your individual parishes. The Diocese is funding all the debt of the parishes and centralizing it in the Bishop’s Office.

Non interest bearing bonds to cover the debt.

It would be difficult to imagine that any of Bishop Mitty’s listeners, at the close of the evening, were happy to have heard what they did, but subsequent developments prove that they did get the message. No doubt moved by the bishop’s own monetary sacrifice and his reformation of diocesan financial practices, the Catholic laity decided they could once again trust that their donations would be wisely administered, and collections went up dramatically: the fund for radio broadcasting, which had been a mere ten dollars annually in 1926 and 1927, swelled to $968.72 in 1928, while the Seminary Collection, which had averaged an annual $742 since 1916, became $3,611.78 in 1929 and in fact Utah’s first native-born priest, Fr. Robert J. Dwyer, was ordained in 1932 during the interregnum between Bishops Mitty and Kearney.32 Perhaps inspired by their bishop’s example of hard work and discipline, there were no fewer than nineteen Utah seminarians preparing for ordination by the time Mitty left Utah.33 “In short order,” Bernice Maher Mooney observes, “he had turned the diocese into one of the best organized in the United States. He left an authentic priestly imprint upon the Cathedral of the Madeleine and took

32 These figures are found in Mooney, Salt of the Earth , 181. Dwyer went on to have a very distinguished career: after earning a Ph.D. in history and serving as a priest in the Diocese of Salt Lake City, he was ordained Bishop of Reno in 1952 and Archbishop of Portland, Oregon in 1967. Albert J. Steiss, ed., Ecclesiastes: The Book of Archbishop Robert J. Dwyer (Los Angeles: National Catholic Register, 1982). In calling Dwyer the first native Utah priest, I am referring strictly to the state of Utah, not the Diocese of Salt Lake, because there had been native Nevadans ordained before Dwyer.

33 Mooney, The Story of the Cathedral of the Madeleine, 111-12

from it what he had absorbed therein of ‘the saintly heroic Bishop Scanlan and the gentle, cultured Bishop Glass to whom it has been my daily prayer that I might be a worthy successor.’”34

In 1932 Bishop Mitty was named Archbishop of San Francisco, where he remained until his death in 1961. Thus he was not around to lead Utah Catholics into the promised land of solvency for which he had prepared them. That honor fell to his successor, Bishop James E. Kearney, though Mitty returned in November 1936 to help rededicate the Cathedral of the Madeleine after its debt had been retired—an important symbol of that emerging solvency.

The diocese would continue in a relatively precarious financial state for several decades until the establishment of the Diocesan Development Drive under Bishop Joseph L. Federal in the 1960s and the Catholic Foundation of Utah under Bishop William K. Weigand in the 1980s. The financial stability provided by those institutions has enabled the diocese to educate seminarians, support the poor and needy, and create new missions and parishes in areas undreamt of even by the visionary pioneer Bishop Lawrence Scanlan.

In Utah Bishop Mitty seems to have been respected more than loved. Ample oral tradition indicates that in San Francisco he was roundly detested to the point where even his priests hovered near open rebellion and referred to him as “S***** Mitty from Salt Lake City.” But perhaps we who have some historical distance from his abrupt manner and scalding rhetoric find it easier than his contemporaries to admire a man who had the courage to put duty ahead of reputation and to remind his flock of some uncomfortably home truths about their responsibilities and obligations.

The 1966 BYU Student Spy Ring

By GARY JAMES BERGERA

... I wanted to know from regular students what their regular teachers were teaching, and I think information of that kind is proper for me as the President [of Brigham Young University] to know, and I think this method of finding out is a proper method ... I know of no other alternative, except wiring the rooms, and I have not employed that method.

—Ernest L. Wilkinson, “Draft of Report for the Board of Trustees on Surveillance of Teachers ...,” April 17, 1967

Following a hard-fought but unsuccessful run for the U.S. Senate in 1964, Ernest L. Wilkinson, the no-nonsense sixty-five-year-old lawyer-turned-president of LDS Church-owned Brigham Young University, returned to his beloved Utah Valley campus determined more than ever to mold the school into a showcase of conservative thought.1 His tenplus months on a grueling campaign trail had helped to reinforce his already strong political

Gary James Bergera is managing director of the Smith-Pettit Foundation,

Lake City, Utah. He appreciates the advice and cooperation of Lavina Fielding Anderson, Curt E. Conklin, Duane M. Laws, Lewis C. Midgley, Stephen Hays Russell, Jonathan A. Stapley, Larry T. Wimmer, and Richard B. Wirthlin. All errors are Bergera’s own.

1 For Wilkinson’s Senate bid, see Gary James Bergera, “‘A Sad and Expensive Experience’: Ernest L. Wilkinson’s 1964 Bid for the U.S. Senate,” Utah Historical Quarterly 62 (Fall 1993): 304-24. For Wilkinson’s politics prior to 1964, see Gary James Bergera, “‘A Strange Phenomena’: Ernest L. Wilkinson, the LDS Church, and Utah Politics,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 26 (Summer 1993): 89-115.

Brigham Young University President Ernest L. Wilkinson greets freshman students.

Salt

BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

beliefs and to further stoke his fears of a nation blindly marching towards communism. He was convinced that during his year-long absence from the Provo school a “group of ‘liberal’ teachers had decided to attempt to change the political and social atmosphere of the BYU so as to bring it more in line with the prevailing political trend toward Socialism rather than the traditional conservative view of the Church.”2 “We are facing a great crisis in this country,” he told ninety-one-year-old David O. McKay, the Church’s venerable prophet-president, “and many of our political science and economics teachers are teaching false doctrine.” 3 “The problems that I will face,” he confided to his diary, “are much larger than those I faced when I first came in as president of the B.Y.U.” in 1951. Even so, he told himself, “I am going to do what I can to reverse [this] trend.”4 Wilkinson’s attempts to expose members of his faculty who, he believed, were guilty of disloyalty to LDS doctrine—as Wilkinson interpreted it— would culminate in a short-lived administration-initiated student spy ring. Wilkinson’s subsequent actions would reveal a university president reluctant to acknowledge his own involvement and willing to shift the blame onto others less able to defend themselves.5

Wilkinson’s brand of conservative politics was shared by a majority of his church’s general officers (many of whom also served on BYU’s Board of Trustees) as well as by Church President McKay. But while almost all of his LDS colleagues tended to hold their political views closer to the chest, Wilkinson publicly positioned himself as a fearless crusader of what he termed broadly as fundamental American freedom. 6 He nurtured an especially close relationship with McKay, and carefully cultivated McKay’s

2 Wilkinson, “Report for the Board of Trustees on Surveillance of Teachers ...,” April 17, 1967 (Second Draft). Ernest L. Wilkinson Papers, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. Copies of many of the documents cited in this article are now in possession of the Smith-Pettit Foundation, Salt Lake City, where they are available to other researchers.

3 Wilkinson to McKay, July 1, 1965, Wilkinson Papers. These “false doctrines” included, according to Wilkinson: that there “is no difference between Socialism and the United Order [an early LDS attempt at communal living] except for the religious aspect”; LDS leaders “are ignorant of economical and political problems”; there “is no need to worry anything about the national debt of this country”; and there “should be complete and unrestricted freedom of speech on the BYU campus” Wilkinson, “Draft of Report for the Board of Trustees on Surveillance of Teachers ...,” April 17, 1967 (First Draft), Wilkinson Papers.

4 Wilkinson Diary, January 2, April 7, 1965. Wilkinson Papers. “The political environment at BYU in the sixties was characterized by fear and anxiety,” remembered one faculty member. “The relationship between administrators and faculty was polarized.” Ray C. Hillam, “The BYU Spy Episode, 1966-68,” July 25, 2001,” 3, Ray C. Hillam Papers, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. For more, see Gary James Bergera and Ronald Priddis, Brigham Young University: A House of Faith (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1985), 191-202.

5 For an earlier treatment, see Bergera and Priddis, Brigham Young University, 207-17. D. Michael Quinn has argued that LDS Church Apostle Ezra Taft Benson was involved in the spy ring. See Quinn, “Ezra Taft Benson and Mormon Political Conflicts,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 26 (Summer 1993): 1- 87, esp. 50-55. I have been unable to substantiate any direct link between Benson and the spy ring.

6 An exception was Ezra Taft Benson, former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture and, during the 1960s, a conservative anti-communist crusader. At the other end of the spectrum was Hugh B. Brown, a counselor in McKay’s First Presidency beginning in 1961 and life-long active Democrat. McKay usually supported both men’s freedom of speech.

support in championing his beliefs. While some trustees occasionally voiced concern over Wilkinson’s privileged access to McKay, Wilkinson almost always succeeded in securing his board’s support in his governance of BYU, thus insulating himself, he hoped, from criticism and attack.7 He may have suffered some major disappointments (such as his failure to relocate the church’s junior college from Rexburg, Idaho, to Idaho Falls, as well as to establish a national network of junior colleges feeding upper-level undergraduates to BYU), but his contributions to the development of BYU cannot easily be over-stated.8

In the years prior to 1965, Wilkinson had usually relied on subordinates to help evaluate evidence in handling complaints against so-called liberalleaning faculty.9 With time, however, he grew frustrated that such efforts seemed only to produce anonymous or hearsay testimony. 10 What was needed, he came to conclude, was a more direct approach. Sometime by early April 1966, he decided to deliver a university-wide politically charged talk crafted to provoke comment from the school’s more outspoken faculty, then to enlist the aid of one or more students to report back on the in-class criticisms of selected teachers. Armed with eyewitness evidence of these teachers’ disloyalty, Wilkinson believed he would be best equipped to secure their dismissals.11

On April 9, 1966, he met with McKay to preview a draft of his controversial remarks, entitled “The Changing Nature of American Government from a Constitutional Republic to a Welfare State.” Wilkinson knew that McKay’s approval would help to ensure that any criticism of Wilkinson could be viewed as criticism of the LDS prophet. According to McKay’s diary, the increasingly infirm Church president “listened with interest to the talk President Wilkinson has prepared . . . against Communism or any issue [a]ffecting the freedom of the people of this country. I approved in general of the talk he will give.”12 The next week, Wilkinson met with Joseph T. Bentley, BYU’s sixty-year-old comptroller. 13 According to Bentley’s diary, Wilkinson said that as Bentley “knew several students had

7

For more on Wilkinson’s personality and managerial style, see Gary James Bergera, “Wilkinson the Man,” Sunstone 20 (July 1997): 29-41.

8 See Gary James Bergera, “Building Wilkinson’s University,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 30 (Fall 1997): 105-35.

9 See the examples in Bergera and Priddis, Brigham Young University, 202-207.

10 “Although these reports came to me from many sources,” Wilkinson later asserted, “they were generally told to me in confidence, and it was, therefore, difficult to use the information for the purpose of talking to the faculty members involved ...” Wilkinson, “Draft of Report,” Wilkinson Papers.

11 “I was anxious to know the comments and reactions of teachers,” he later explained, “some of whom had been accused of teaching opposite doctrines.” Wilkinson, “Draft of Report,” Wilkinson Papers.

12 David O. McKay, Diary, April 9, 1966, photocopy, Western Americana, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City. McKay’s diary during this period was maintained by his personal secretary, and it is not always clear if McKay is speaking for himself. Because of this, the diary should be approached cautiously when looking for evidence of McKay’s own thoughts.

13 Joseph T. Bentley was born March 6, 1906. He graduated from BYU in 1928, joined BYU’s accounting department in 1953, earned a master’s degree from BYU in 1955, and was appointed accounting department chair that same year. He was made an assistant to Wilkinson in 1957.

been complaining about liberal teachers and teachers who criticized the brethren in their classes; that he was concerned about it as were some of the brethren. He mentioned that on Thursday [April 21] he was going to give a hard hitting speech in the forum assembly and undoubtedly some of the teachers wouldn’t like it. He wondered if there was some dependable student, a good conservative, who could find out what some of these professors were saying and especially their reaction to his talk.” Bentley, who shared much of Wilkinson’s politics, immediately thought of Stephen Hays Russell, a junior in economics whom Bentley had met the previous month and whom he described as “dependable[,] honest[,] and capable.” (Russell, a member of the John Birch Society, had recently received funding from the administration to attend a conservative economics symposium in New York.) Wilkinson then “suggested that I [Bentley] get [in] touch with him [Russell] and see what he could do.” Bentley shortly afterwards called “Steve and mentioned that ELW had wanted some information and asked if he could help and he said yes.”14 The next day, April 20, Wilkinson asked Bentley if “everything was fixed up with Steve to get [the] reaction of certain faculty members to his speech to be given tomorrow.” Bentley replied that he “had talked with Steven and Steve was working on the problem.” Evidently sensing the potential for negative fall-out, Wilkinson hinted at the need for deniability, stressing, as Bentley reported, that “of course he and I should be kept out of it.”15

14 Joseph T. Bentley, Diary, April 19, 1966, photocopy courtesy of the Smith-Pettit Foundation. Later, in 1982, Bentley recalled Wilkinson saying that his remarks would “rock the campus from one end to the other.” See Bentley, quoted in Ron Priddis, “BYU Spy Case Unshelved,” Seventh East Press, March 14, 1982.

15 Bentley, Diary, April 20, 1966. Wilkinson’s diary avoids direct mention of these conversations; Bentley’s does not.

UTAH

Russell, who had independently voiced his own concerns to friends and associates regarding “liberal” faculty, subsequently recalled Bentley’s inviting him to his office and telling him that he had been “selected by the administration to assist in a confidential project.” Flattered and eager to please, Russell immediately agreed. Bentley also said that “President Wilkinson’s name must remain clear,” stipulating, as Russell interpreted Bentley’s instructions, that “if I got caught at this, official university reaction would be that I was working on my own.” Then, with Russell present, Bentley “commenced writing a list of ‘liberal professors,’” inviting Russell to contribute names as he “deemed proper.” The final list included political scientists Stewart L. Grow, Ray C. Hillam, Melvin P. Mabey, Louis C. Midgley, and Jesse R. Reeder; economists J. Kenneth Davies and Richard B. Wirthlin; and English professor Briant S. Jacobs. (Several--Hillam, Mabey, and Midgley—later wondered if they had been targeted because they had publicly supported Wilkinson’s Republican opponent in 1964.)16 Bentley next introduced Russell to his assistant, Lyman Durfee, who promised Russell whatever clerical help he needed. Russell remembered “Brother Bentley prais[ing] me for my conservatism ... That day in his office, I developed a deep respect and appreciation for a fine man.”17 Bentley, too, recalled the confidence Wilkinson and he had in Russell: “We seized upon the opportunity to use this young man to set up the monitoring groups.”18 Shortly after his meeting with Bentley, Russell contacted a number of like-minded friends and acquaintances whom he had met both in local meetings of the Birch Society and in the on-campus conservative-oriented Young Americans for Freedom club. He told them that “an important situation had arisen in which they could assist me in serving the administration.” The small group assembled on campus that evening, April 20, in room 370 of the Ernest L. Wilkinson Center. 19 Russell began with a prepared statement, stressed the need for absolute secrecy, and asked those who were not sympathetic to leave. When copies of the teaching schedules of the eight professors were distributed, only two or three of the students were enrolled in any of the classes. Russell consequently asked “for volunteers to monitor the other classes for [the] three periods following the president’s speech or until the professors made a statement on the address to the class whichever came first.” At least ten students--several of whom, like Russell, had already publicly and privately complained of certain faculty— volunteered: Everett Eugene Bryce, Lyle H. Burnett, Michel L. Call, Curt E. Conklin, Ronald Ira Hankin, Edward (Ted) G. Jacob, Lloyd L. Miller, Mark A. Skousen, Lisle H. Updike, and James H. Widenmann. Russell

16 Wilkinson’s campaign manager recalled that Wilkinson was “incensed to find such opposition from his faculty.” John T. Bernhard, quoted in Priddis, “BYU Spy Case Unshelved.”

17 Stephen Hays Russell, Statement, March 13, 1967. Photocopy, Smith-Pettit Foundation.

18 Bentley, in Priddis, “BYU Spy Case Unshelved.”

19 Lyman Durfee and a representative of the local Birch Society were also invited to attend the meeting but declined.

instructed the students to “bring their reports to [him]” the following week so that he could deliver them to Bentley as soon as possible.20

As promised, Wilkinson delivered his no-pulledpunches address the next morning.21 “We had a small attendance,” he recorded in his diary, probably not more than 5,000 individuals, altogether. I got very sustained applause, however, for my talk at the end, which indicated ... that my message went over. I then went to the [BYU] Varsity Theater where I underwent questions for an hour. It was apparent ... that some of our men in Economics [department] are teaching deficit financing. I was asked in effect as to why I disagreed with them, and I told them bluntly that I preferred to follow the word of the Prophet on these things and that the Prophets had continuously warned us against the welfare state and in particular, every deficit financing [plan]. All in all, this session was beneficial also.22

“I am charged by the Board of Trustees,” Wilkinson announced near the beginning of his talk, “with the awesome mandate of making sure that the truth, as revealed and understood by the Lord’s prophets, is taught at this institution. . . .I know that there are some,” he continued, “who try to

20

Combined from Russell, Statement; Ronald I. Hankin, To Whom It May Concern, September 17, 1966 (hereafter Hankin, Statement); and Ray C. Hillam, To Whom It May Concern, August 15, 1966, Hillam Papers. Some estimates place the number of students at fifteen. Five of the students—Burnett, Call, Conklin, Hankin, and Jacob—were members of the YAF Club. Later, it was reported that Russell had told the students that Hillam, a graduate of American University (Washington, D.C.) who had joined the BYU faculty in 1960, was “on the top of the [BYU administration’s] list. ... They wanted to know about him and they [were] going to get him.” Russell subsequently explained that the previous year, 1965, he had, in fact, made such a statement, but that it had actually reflected the views of the president of Provo’s chapter of the John Birch Society. He had, Russell said, “in a moment of weakness and to project my perceived self-importance ... made [the local Birch Society’s] list the Administration’s.” (Russell, “Comments ...,” dated December 23, 1986, attached to Russell to Bergera, January 5, 1987, Smith-Pettit Foundation.

21 See “The Changing Nature of American Government from a Constitutional Republic to a Welfare State,” April 21, 1966, Perry Special Collections; reprinted in Edwin J. Butterworth and David H. Yarn, eds., Earnestly Yours: Selected Addresses of Dr. Ernest L. Wilkinson (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1971), 30-55.

22 Wilkinson, Diary, April 21, 1966, Wilkinson Papers. Close to two-thirds of the talk repeated much of Wilkinson’s 1965 BYU commencement address, “The Decline and Possible Fall of the American Republic,” Wilkinson Papers.

Ernest L. Wilkinson.

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

differentiate between advice given by our leaders on religious matters and advice which they allege pertains to political matters ... [I]f we are faithful members of the church, and if we want the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity, we are under the same moral obligation to follow his advice on political as on religious matters.” Then, after listing the statements of several church presidents condemning socialism, he announced: “[W]e have for a period of at least 30 years been proceeding just about as fast as it is possible for a nation to proceed in the direction of the welfare state.” This rush was propelled, he contended, by such federal programs as: aid to education, unemployment compensation, food stamps, medicare, increasing minimum wages, federal housing, a cabinet position of Housing and Urban Development, price supports for agriculture, and federal intervention in labor disputes. To these he added the federal income tax, the Supreme Court’s emergence as “the god of our political life,” a runaway national debt, and the erosion of individual freedoms. The solution, he suggested, was three-fold: to “study diligently . . . the founding of our Republic and the teachings of our prophets,” to “live a righteous life,” and to elect “good and wise men to public office on the local and national level, who understand these principles and who will both defend and advance them.” “I am aware,” he closed, “that there will be some who will attempt to characterize this address as politically partisan. . . . I am concerned, not with parties, but with principles. . . . It is the duty of those of us who believe in the Constitution of our fathers to resist the welfare state at every turn in both parties.”23

Following Wilkinson’s talk, Russell’s group of students dutifully attended their assigned classes, took notes, then reported back to Russell, who prepared a typed, twelve-page summary.24 “I recall being asked to attend Ray Hillam’s ‘Current Affairs’ class,” Curt Conklin later wrote, ... right after the Wilkinson address. We were told not to bring up the topic, but to simply report what Hillam said about Wilkinson’s remarks. As I recall, Hillam was asked about it by a student and his reply was something like, “No comment. I don’t want to get fired.” I remember feeling very uncomfortable in what I was doing, and distinctly recall burying my head in my hands during the class period and saying over and over to myself, “This is wrong, this is wrong.” ... I did not even bother to report it.25

At Bentley’s urging, Russell submitted his findings to Wilkinson on April 29. Russell said that he “read a few of the more explosive and derogatory remarks to [Wilkinson] and then handed him the report.” In his diary, Wilkinson characterized the document as “a voluntary report from certain

23 See Wilkinson, “Changing Nature,” 2, 3, 8, 9,10-14, 19, 21.

24 Russell later insisted that he told the students to “silently monitor [the] classes.” Russell, “Comments,” Hillam Papers. Russell also acknowledged that some students may have asked leading questions.

25“To say I feel badly about my participation in the Spy Scandal ...,” Conklin later wrote, “is an understatement ...” Conklin to the editor, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 26 (Winter 1993): vii-viii. In addition, Call and Hankin monitored Wirthlin, Hankin and Updike monitored Reeder, and Skousen monitored Grow and Midgley.

students” and fumed that “some of the liberals on the campus are fighting mad because in my address to students I quoted Church authorities for my viewpoint. This shows that they think much more of their political convictions than they do of following their prophets—a situation which cannot be permitted on this campus.”26 Ostensibly busy with other matters, Wilkinson handed Russell’s report to BYU vice president and university counsel Clyde D. Sandgren and instructed him to meet with the students individually to verify their allegations. 27 Importantly, Wilkinson did not explain to the fifty-five-year-old Sandgren precisely how the student report came to be, merely that concerned students had voluntarily complained of their professors’ comments.28 Though Russell’s group ceased to function as an organized “ring” thereafter, at Bentley’s urging, Russell continued “to keep [his] ears open.” 29 Some professors also said they were visited by some students, and on at least one occasion, a teacher reported that a student recorded their conversation without his permission. The list of “questionable” professors expanded to include David Kirk Hart (political science), Russell Horiuchi (geography), Gordon Wagner (economics), and even social sciences dean John T. Bernhard. Any such reports were channeled to Wilkinson through Sandgren, who was expected to verify the statements.30

On July 14, 1966, one of Ray Hillam’s former evening students told him that Sandgren had asked him to confirm a number of allegations against Hillam made by James C. Vandygriff, a student who had taken one of Hillam’s political science classes and, like Stephen Russell, was a member of the local Birch Society. (Vandygriff had not been a member of Russell’s spy

26 Wilkinson, Diary, April 29, 1966.

27 Clyde D. Sandgren was born September 5, 1910. He graduated from BYU in 1932 in music. He attended New York University and the Juilliard School of Music, then received a law degree from St. John’s University (New York). In addition to acting as BYU counsel, he was also secretary of the school’s Board of Trustees. He may be best remembered for having composed BYU’s “Cougar Fight Song” (1932).

28 Later, from conversations with Russell, Sandgren learned about the student group and targeted professors. See Russell, Statement.

29 Russell, “Comments.” Russell said that he personally was aware of only two instances in which reports on faculty were forwarded to Wilkinson.

30 Hankin, Statement; Russell, Statement; Wilkinson, “Report for the Board of Trustees,” Wilkinson Papers; Richard B. Wirthlin to Bentley, May 25, 1966, Bentley to Wirthlin, June 6, 1966, and Russell to Wilkinson, June 3, 1966, Hillam Papers.

The Ernest L. Wilkinson Center was dedicated on April 3, 1965.

BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

ring and his separate report on Hillam had been sent to Wilkinson’s office about two weeks after Russell’s composite report.)

Hillam, a forty-one-year-old assistant professor and lay leader of a local LDS church congregation, immediately contacted Sandgren to lodge a protest. Sandgren expressed surprise that Hillam had not been told he was under investigation. He also mentioned that in addition to Vandygriff, Stephen Russell had raised some concerns about Hillam’s teaching, but also tried to assure Hillam that he was not “on trial.” Hillam then remembered his brother-in-law telling him the previous summer that Russell had commented on Hillam’s being on some kind of “hit list.” Skeptical of Sandgren’s reassurances, Hillam contacted his department chair, Edwin Morrell, who registered a personal protest with Wilkinson over the way the investigation of Hillam was being handled. According to Morrell, Wilkinson replied that he “should not object because surveillance [was] a common practice used by the FBI.”31 Wilkinson was convinced of Hillam’s guilt but wanted to avoid charges of personal animus and decided to turn the investigation over to the university’s three vice presidents: Earl C. Crockett (Academic), Ben E. Lewis (Executive), and Sandgren and “let them determine whether the charges are true and, if true, what [the] punishment should be.”32 “Because some of the complaints made against Ray Hillam involve alleged accusations which he has made against me,” Wilkinson explained to them, “it seems to me, although I think I could be objective in the matter, that it would be unfair to him for me to sit in judgment . . . Another reason why I have disqualified myself is that over the years a number of reports have come to

31 Hillam, “Notes regarding an interview with President Clyde D. Sandgren,” July 18, 1966; Hillam, “Telephone conversation with President Sandgren,” July 19, 1966; John P. Sanders, Statement, July 20, 1966; Russell, “Comments”; Wilkinson, Diary, July 20, 1966; Hillam, “Spy Episode,” 6, Hillam Papers. See also Wilkinson, memo of conference with Morrell, July 20, 1966. When Hillam’s colleague Louis Midgley learned of the spying, he confronted Wilkinson during a chance encounter on campus, asking, “Why are you investigating Ray Hillam? I have stronger feelings of hostility toward you than he does.” Hillam, “Spy Episode,” 5.

32 Wilkinson to Sandgren, Crockett, and Lewis, July 21, 1966. See also Wilkinson to Sandgren, Crockett, and Lewis, September 19, 1966. Earl C. Crockett was born May 13, 1903. He graduated from the University of Utah (economics, 1927) and the University of California, Berkeley (1931). He joined BYU’s economics faculty in 1957, served as academic vice-president for eleven years, and was acting president during Wilkinson’s Senate bid (1964). Ben E. Lewis was born November 16, 1913. He graduated from BYU in 1940 and from the University of Denver in 1942. Following a career with Hot Shoppes, Inc., he joined the BYU administration in 1952. He served as a school administrator for twenty-seven years, and was awarded an honorary doctor of business degree in 1970.

Ray Hillam.

me as to Hillam’s intense dislike of me.”33

In a written defense, Hillam not only denied the allegations but protested the “motives and methods” of the complaining students. He later met privately with Wilkinson, who insisted that students had not been organized to “spy on” the faculty and confidently predicted that Hillam’s charge of improper administrative procedure would be put to rest during the vice presidents’ impartial hearing. “I wondered at the time,” Hillam later recalled, “how his three vice-presidents could be as fair-minded with me as with him [i.e., Wilkinson]? I learned from the 90minute visit with Wilkinson that I was in serious trouble with him.”34

On August 15, Hillam, joined by Ed Morrell, met with the three vice presidents and Vandygriff.35 Hillam thought the meeting went “pretty well” and agreed to meet with the vice presidents again the next month. He also asked that Morrell be allowed to attend again. Sandgren consented but, when Wilkinson objected, asked Hillam not to press the matter. Hillam insisted, however, and the vice presidents eventually agreed that Morrell could observe but not participate.36 Soon rumors that “the administration had used students to spy on members of the faculty” began to circulate on campus.37 Though some school administrators were embarrassed by the resulting “unrest,” Wilkinson, writing in his diary in early September, refused to “apologize” or “get in a very defensive position.”38 On September 12, Wilkinson tried to reassure faculty members:

33 Wilkinson to Sandgren, Crockett, and Lewis, July 21, 1966. Hillam later reminisced: “It hurt when he [Wilkinson] told me that he thought I did not like him.” “Spy Episode,” 28.

34 Hillam to Sandgren, July 22, 1966; Hillam, “Conversation with President Wilkinson,” July 23, 1966 (cf. Wilkinson, Diary, July 23, 1966); Hillam, “Spy Episode,” 6.

35 About a week before this, Hillam, accompanied by Wirthlin, met with Hugh B. Brown, First Counselor to McKay. “Do not surrender any ground to the vice-presidents as they are Wilkinson’s men and will prepare a case against you,” Brown advised Hillam, “Spy Episode,” 7; Hillam, Interview with President Hugh B. Brown, August 9, 1966, Hillam Papers.

36 Hillam, “Spy Episode,” 8; Sandgren to Hillam, August 30, 1966; Hillam, “Telephone conversation with President Sandgren,” September 12, 1966; Hillam, “Interview with President Sandgren,” September 13, 1966, Hillam Papers.

37 See, for example, J. Kenneth Davies, To Whom It May Concern, July 26, 1966; Hillam to Morrell, July 31, 1966; John P. Sanders, To Whom It May Concern, August 5, 1966; Russell Horiuchi, To Whom It May Concern, August 11, 1966; Gordon Wagner, To Whom It May Concern, August 11, 1966; Midgely to Hillam, August 11, 1966; Hillam, To Whom It May Concern, August 12, 1966; Richard Wirthlin, To Whom It May Concern, August 12, 1966; David Hart, Statement, August 13, 1966; Richard Poll to Hillam, September 12, 1966; and Jesse Reeder, Statement, September 21, 1966, Hillam Papers.

38 Wilkinson, Diary, September 10, 1966. See also Hillam, “Telephone conversation with Lynn Southam, BYU Student Body President,” September 12, 1966, Hillam Papers.

Joseph Bentley.

“I now hear that I am bugging phones and have instituted an elaborate spy system. This latest rumor is as false as the others.”39 The next day, one of Russell’s spies, Ron Hankin, inadvertently revealed to a neighbor of Louis Midgley that Midgley had been one of several professors under scrutiny.40 Two days later, another of Hillam’s associates overheard Hankin relate virtually the same story. Other faculty also began to piece together past incidents that, at the time, had seemed inconsequential.41

Formal hearings into Hillam began on September 15, 1966. Hillam was confronted with a list of statements he had allegedly made several months earlier. He was charged with being pro-communist because he had reportedly endorsed the entrance of the People’s Republic of China into the United Nations; with having said that “BYU is becoming an evangelical college and a center for indoctrination for conservatism;” and that “within one month, BYU’s graduate school accreditation [would] either be taken away or [placed] on a three year probation.” (The school was awaiting the final verdict of a review of its academic programs conducted decennially by faculty from other universities.)42 During the hearing, Hillam questioned Stephen Russell, who was present, to find out how he had gathered his information. Russell denied any involvement in concerted surveillance activities. Towards the end of the hearing, however, Louis Midgley interrupted the meeting to tell Hillam, “I have [Ron Hankin] and he will tell everything.” At Hankin’s presence, Sandgren became “very uneasy,” according to Russell. Hankin then detailed his story of an “administration organized spy ring,” and when Ben Lewis asked, “Who is the administration?” Hankin replied that Sandgren should know since he had personally contacted the students to confirm their reports. Caught off-guard, Sandgren said, “Well, I only heard a rumor. That is why I called you in,” indicating Russell. Sandgren then asked Russell to explain “these accusations being made against the administration.” Flustered, Russell asked for three days to prepare a response. His request was granted.43 According to Russell, he immediately afterwards “dashed right to

39 Wilkinson, “Address of Ernest L. Wilkinson to B.Y.U. Faculty,” September 12, 1966. During this period, Hillam declined to discuss the issue publicly. Hillam, “Telephone conversation with a representative of KUTV,” September 13, 1966; Hillam, “Telephone conversation with Ernest L. Wilkinson immediately after conversation with representative of KUTV,” September 13, 1966, Hillam Papers.

40 “I made a horrendous error in character judgment,” Russell later commented, “when I invited ... Ron Hankin to join the group.” Russell, “Comments.” “I think the term ‘misfit’ probably does the best justice to [Hankin],” Curt Conklin reminisced. Conklin to Bergera, Smith-Pettit Foundation.

41 Midgley to Wilkinson, September 13, 1966; Hillam, To Whom It May Concern, September 15, 1966; Steve Gilliland to Midgley, September 15, 1966, Hillam Papers.

42 See Bergera and Priddis, Brigham Young University, 217-19.

43 Russell, Statement; “Minutes from the Vandygriff and Russell Hearings,” September 15, 1966. Two days later, Midgley and Hillam conducted an in-depth interview with Hankin regarding the spy ring (see Hankin, Statement; the typescript of Hankin’s Statement runs fourteen single-spaced pages). “Eureka!” Hillam later wrote. “It was a dramatic event. We had proved our case. There WAS a conspiracy. . . . I thought the Hankin revelation would end things. What a stroke of luck! I thought it was providence. As for ending things, I was naïve.” Hillam, “Spy Episode,” 11; emphasis in original.

President Wilkinson’s office and told him of Hankin’s exposé.” Wilkinson looked at Russell and, “with an instructive tone of voice,” said, “You know of course this is the first I’ve heard of this group.” Wilkinson suggested that Russell contact Bentley for “advice on how to reply.” After Russell left, Wilkinson met with his vice presidents and was distressed to learn that both Lewis and Crockett evidently believed Hankin. He also telephoned Bentley and, “anxious to make sure Steve didn’t implicate others,” suggested that Russell be the administration’s “scapegoat.” Bentley refused, pointing out that Russell “had only done what [he] had been asked to do.” Wilkinson wanted to make certain that Bentley and he “understood the matter of Steve Russell the same. I suggested,” Bentley recorded, “that if we simply told the truth that would be all that would be necessary.” According to Russell, Bentley shortly afterwards confessed that he “was worried” about Wilkinson: “He’s involved and he’s scared.” Wilkinson thought that Russell needed to have a lawyer draft any response to the vice presidents; Bentley suggested H. Verlan Andersen, an attorney and the advisor to BYU’s Young Americans for Freedom club. Bentley, Anderson, and Russell subsequently met to “work out [Russell’s] five page reply.” In his response, Russell “criticized the manner in which Brother Sandgren had conducted the hearing” but avoided direct comment on a student “spy ring.” He charged instead that Hillam’s “shaky” evidence depended on the testimony of an unstable witness, Ronald Hankin.44

Meanwhile, Hillam met with a number of colleagues for a “strategy session.” During the meeting, Sandgren happened to telephone Hillam about meeting together in Sandgren’s office. Sandgren wanted Hillam to write a memorandum expressing appreciation that the hearing had been conducted fairly. “Like hell you’ll write a memo and get Sandgren off the hook,” one of Hillam’s colleagues protested.45 Following their meeting, the professors began conducting their own investigation. Hillam and Midgley tape-recorded an interview with Hankin and gathered testimonies from other students. 46 Richard Wirthlin went to Wilkinson four days later and accused Russell of “spying on teachers.” According to Wirthlin, Wilkinson “exploded” and demanded that he “give him all his evidence,” insisting that Hillam, not Russell, was the subject of the hearing and that the vice presidents had no right to look into allegations of spying.

44 Russell, Statement; Bentley, Diary, September 17, September 18, September 19, September 20, 1966. “On many occasions after the expose,” Russell later recalled, “he [Bentley] said, ‘We must stick to the truth at all costs.’” Russell, “Comments.” Bentley thought that Wilkinson, during this period, did not “have the old fight he used to have.”Diary, September 29, 1966.

45 Hillam, “Conversation with President Sandgren,” September 16, 1966. See also Hillam to Ben E. Lewis, September 16, 1966, not sent; “BYU Spy Case Unshelved.” Hillam later decided that Sandgren’s request for a memo reflected “Sandgren’s fear of Wilkinson.”Hillam, “Spy Episode,” 28.

46 See Hankin, Statement; Ronald I. Hankin and David M. Sisson, To Whom It May Concern, September 17, 1966; David M. Sisson, To Whom It May Concern, September 17, 1966; Wimmer, Statement, January 30, 1968, Hillam Papers.

Annoyed, Wilkinson also threatened to investigate Wirthlin.47

Within the week, BYU economist Larry T. Wimmer enlisted the help of Edwin B. Firmage, a former LDS mission companion and grandson of the first counselor in the LDS Church’s First Presidency, Hugh B. Brown. Wimmer hoped to arrange a meeting for Hillam, Morrell, and Wirthlin with Brown, N. Eldon Tanner (McKay’s second counselor), and Church Apostle Harold B. Lee. Wimmer later explained that he initiated the conference because he believed Hillam “could not expect . . . a fair and impartial hearing before the vice presidents.” According to Hillam, both Church officials were “very interested in what we had to say. Elder Lee was with us every step and would, with a sigh, say, ‘One lie leads to another.’” At the conclusion, Tanner urged that the men keep complete records of their investigations. 48 Less than a week later, Hillam left for Vietnam on a Fulbright scholarship. On October 17, the three vice presidents issued their verdict, finding Hillam guilty of minor “indiscretions” and advising him to be more cautious in the future. Hillam’s counter-charge, that he had been the object of a group of student “spies” acting under instructions from the BYU administration, was not addressed. 49 Hillam was “depressed and furious” over the report; Wilkinson condemned it as “pretty much of a whitewash” for not “advocat[ing] [any] disciplinary action . . . yet admit[ing] that [Hillam] is largely responsible because of his inflammatory statements in class.” 50 Three days later, during another university wide faculty meeting, Wilkinson “reiterated” that he had “not knowingly” urged any students or others to report on faculty members. “I feel confident,” he said, “that no members of the Administrative Council would do so.”51

The next week on October 28, Ed Morrell met with the three vice presidents to protest the omission of Russell’s surveillance activities from their report. Initially, the vice presidents “suggested that Morrell not pursue the matter further” but, by November 3, they amended their findings to include, for the first time, an admission that Russell had, in fact, “organized a group of students to obtain reactions to President Wilkinson’s speech,” though again avoided mention of Wilkinson’s involvement.52 Wilkinson wrote to Hillam the next day to insist again that he had not encouraged “any students or others” to “spy” on the faculty since such activity would be an “improper administrative procedure.”53 Early the next year, Crockett

47 Richard Wirthlin, quoted in Priddis, “BYU Spy Case Unshelved”; Wilkinson, Diary, September 19, 1966; Wilkinson, memo re: conference with Richard Wirthlin, September 20, 1966, Wilkinson Papers.

48 Hillam, “Spy Episode,” 13.

49 Crockett, Lewis, and Sandgren, “Report, Findings of Fact, Conclusions and Recommendations,” October 17, 1966. cf. Crockett, Lewis, and Sandgren to Hillam, October 20, 1966. Hillam Papers.

50 Hillam, “Spy Episode,” 15; Wilkinson, Diary, October 20, 1966. Bentley lamented: “This whole matter of Hillam & Steve Russell and all others [is] a complete flop. ELW has let liberals completely dominate the situation so it appears that they can get away with anything.” Bentley, Diary, October 5, 1966.

51 BYU Faculty Minutes, October 20, 1966, Perry Special Collections.

52 Midgley to Hillam, November 11, 1966; Crockett, Lewis, and Sandgren to Hillam, November 3, 1966, Hillam Papers.

mailed Hillam a teaching contract. Disappointed with what he felt was a minimal salary increase, Hillam responded that he would delay accepting the offer until after his own charges against the administration had been resolved.54 Others in the social sciences watched the showdown between Wilkinson and Hillam with growing dismay. Wirthlin, for example, decided to accept a position at Arizona State University.55 During a tense December 1966 meeting with social sciences faculty, Wilkinson fended off questions regarding his competence.56 Wilkinson concluded that without some kind of additional administrative intervention in faculty affairs, the campus could soon become a haven for “liberals,” and asked Verlan Andersen and W. Cleon Skousen, former Salt Lake City police chief and well-known conservative, to help draft a letter to the faculty from President McKay confirming “that [McKay] had told me many times, that he did not want socialism evaluated on our campus.”57

53 Wilkinson to Hillam, November 4, 1966, Hillam Papers.

54 Crockett to Hillam, January 27, 1967; Hillam to Crockett, February 1967, Hillam Papers.

55 Wirthlin to Hillam, December 9, 1966, Hillam Papers. Wirthlin wrote: “I am convinced that a person can double his salary by leaving BYU and reduce greatly the potential of having ulcers and a heart attack before one is 45.” At the time Wirthlin was thirty-five. He went on to become a prominent pollster and also worked on Ronald Reagan’s two successful U.S. Presidential campaigns. From 1996 to 2001, he was a member of the LDS Church’s Second Quorum of the Seventy.

56 Social Sciences Faculty, Minutes, December 13, 1966, Perry Special Collections; cf. Richard L. Bushman to Robert K. Thomas, December 30, 1966; and J. Weldon Moffitt to Wilkinson, December 22, 1966, Wilkinson Papers.

57 Wilkinson, Diary, December 13-25, 1966. At Wilkinson’s prompting, BYU’s trustees later repeated their instructions that Wilkinson “engage only those teachers whose religious, social and economic views accord with those of the president of the church ...” Board of Trustees, Executive Committee, Minutes, February 23, 1967; Board of Trustees, Minutes, May 25, 1967.

BRIGHAM

Five months later in May 1967, Wilkinson met privately with McKay, to whom he described the recent spying incident as a minor difficulty in impressing upon the faculty that they “not advocate socialism or the welfare state.” McKay signed the letter Wilkinson’s aides had drafted, urging faculty in history, sociology, political science, and economics to “continuously teach [their] students the evils of socialism and the welfare state.”58 Early the next month, Wilkinson read the letter to his Board of Trustees. Elder Ezra Taft Benson moved that the board “go on record as wholeheartedlyapproving [the] letter as the policy of the Board of Trustees.” While some trustees, knowing of McKay’s health problems, questioned the letter’s authorship, Elder Marion G. Romney thought that the letter “could not have been drafted by a lawyer because it had the ring of the prophet all through it.” 59 McKay remained silent throughout much of the board’s deliberations. Finally, all voted in favor of the proposal, except Harold B. Lee, who abstained. When Wilkinson suggested that a clarifying statement be issued to explain the intent of the letter, the board decided that the letter “should stand alone.”60 Wilkinson subsequently agreed to delete from the letter references to specific campus departments as well as explicit injunctions prohibiting the teaching of socialism.61 As eventually distributed, the letter, bearing McKay’s signature, read, in part, “I am aware that a university has the responsibility of acquainting its students with the theories and doctrines which are prevalent in various disciplines, but I hope that no one on the faculty of Brigham Young University will advocate positions which cannot be harmonized with the views of every prophet of the church.”62

On February 28, 1967, Wilkinson learned that “some very rebellious students,” as he called them, undergraduates Ronald Hankin, David M. Sisson, and Colleen D. Stone, had contacted area newspapers and television and radio stations, announcing their intention to publicly broach the “spy ring” during a “Free Forum” sponsored by the Associated Students of Brigham Young University in the Wilkinson Center. Alarmed, Wilkinson immediately met with BYU’s dean of students, J. Elliot Cameron, and the chief of BYU security, Swen Nielsen. The university had assembled a list of

58 Wilkinson, Diary, May 14, June 7, 1967; Wilkinson, memo of conference with McKay, May 21, 1967; McKay to Wilkinson, May 25, 1967, Wilkinson Papers.

59 “I approved and signed that letter—and it is mine,” McKay subsequently insisted. McKay, Diary, June 16, 1967.

60 Board of Trustees Minutes, June 7, 1967. Wilkinson in his diary referred to this meeting as “a historic occasion” (June 7, 1967). Trustees also disapproved of a BYU faculty senate, affirmed that Wilkinson retain “the right of appointment of faculty members,” affirmed that trustees “have final authority” regarding “curriculum matters,” and affirmed the school’s policy of not having “legal lifetime tenure.”

61 Wilkinson, Diary, February 27, 1968. See also McKay, Diary, June 12, June 14, June 16, 1967, February 27, 1968. Many of the changes to the letter were recommended by LDS Apostle Richard L. Evans.

62 Ernest L. Wilkinson et al., ed(s)., Brigham Young University: The First One Hundred Years, 4 Vols. (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1975-76), 4:544-45. Copies of the final version of the letter were sent to all faculty with their teaching contracts from 1968 to 1971.

“very serious” Honor Code-related “charges” against Hankin and Sisson, Wilkinson explained. Cameron and Nielsen would do well, he continued, to “interrogate [the students] so as to keep them occupied during the period they were going to make these false accusations.” Wilkinson discovered afterwards that neither Cameron nor Nielsen had been able to locate the three undergraduates prior to their public appearance and wondered if he was “getting the proper support from the dean of students.” 63 Without implicating other students, faculty, or administrators by name, Hankin told the crowd gathered in the Wilkinson Center’s Memorial Lounge on February 28 that he had been approached by “someone who was supposed to represent an administrative official” to obtain information on the “views” of certain BYU professors. Hankin and Stone were later interviewed on local television news programs.64

In the wake of Hankin’s public confession, campus officials scrambled to refute the charges, while local members of the Association of American University Professors asked the B oard of Trustees to investigate the allegations.65 Disillusionedafter nearly a week of official denials, Ed Morrell tried to resign as political science department chair but was refused. 66

63

Wilkinson, Diary, February 28, 1967.

64 “Free Forum Filled with ‘Charges,’” Daily Universe, March 1, 1967. cf. Jeri Bowne to Editor, Daily Universe, March 2, 1967); “BYU Denies Campus ‘Spy’ Story,” Salt Lake Tribune, March 1, 1967. News of the incident reached a national audience by the end of the month: “Spies, J.G.,” Newsweek, March 27, 1967, 112.

65 “BYU Denies Campus ‘Spy’ Story” and “Truth Should Back Viewpoint,” Daily Universe, March 1, 1967.

66 Wilkinson, Diary, March 1-11, 1967. For the denials, see, for example, Wilkinson to McKay, March 7, 1967: “there is probably some truth to the charge that certain students had been organized to report on certain teachers, and that the Administration may have advertently or inadvertently encouraged these students although not in the manner it took place.”

A BYU coed in front of a mirror in the Wilkinson Center to remind students to dress, groom, and behave properly.

BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

Stephen Russell, hearing his name “on every front ... mentioned with derision” and feeling “the burden of the whole affair had been carried long enough,” decided to give “a detailed confession of the affair” to his local LDS bishop, Duane M. Laws.67 Russell and Laws met with Bentley on March 5, and the next day, at Bentley’s suggestion, with Wilkinson to discuss some kind of public statement “clarifying the whole matter.” When he learned how Russell’s and Laws’s meeting with Wilkinson had gone, Bentley feared that Wilkinson is cooking up something. He told Bishop Laws and Steve that there was a misunderstanding[,] that he didn’t remember anything about asking me to get Steve to have students report on things said ... Then Steve pressed the point a little and he ELW said that he did remember casually suggesting that he would like to know the reactions of teachers to his speech but that it was just a casual remark. This of course is absolutely a lie because he called me in a[nd] requested that I contact Steve--and the next day called me to make sure I had contacted him and to find out how it was coming. He [Wilkinson] should stand up like a man and acknowledge then defend his position.68

The same day Wilkinson talked with Russell and Laws, he also hurriedly met with McKay to remind him of his previous instructions that “teachers ought not to object to [Wilkinson] knowing what they teach, nor to students reporting on the same so long as the Administrator is careful in properly evaluating such reports ... [and] that it is my [Wilkinson’s] responsibility to see that Atheism, Communism, and Socialism are not to be advocated by BYU teachers.”69 Wilkinson made sure that McKay signed a statement attesting to this understanding should he ever need to provide proof that he had merely been following McKay’s instructions. The next day, as Wilkinson and Bentley met to discuss the situation, N. Eldon Tanner telephoned to suggest that both men prepare statements of the spying incident. “Of course,” Wilkinson afterwards told Bentley, “this doesn’t mean that we can’t consult with each other.” “I d[o]n’t think we should,” Bentley replied. 70 Later that evening, Russell, at Laws’s urging, telephoned his

67 Russell, Statement.

68 Bentley, Diary, March 5-6, 1967. Bentley subsequently summarized that Laws and Russell “reported to me that President Wilkinson was evasive and stated that he couldn’t remember some of the actual happenings with regard to the matter and was somewhat contradictory when he was reminded by Steve that he (Steve) had actually handed him the reports given him by the students, and that Steve and President Wilkinson had talked about it.” Bentley, “Confidential Statement Re: So Called ‘Spy Ring’ on the BYU Campus,” March 8, 1967, Smith-Pettit Foundation. Wilkinson’s diary for March 6 does not mention meeting with Russell and Laws, merely that he “found out that during the three days I had been away from campus there had been a great agitation by a noisey few, over the question of free speech, a so-called spy ring of students, and a great many other things.” Laws was a member of BYU’s child development and family relations department, and later taught at Eastern Michigan University,Ypsilanti, from 1971 to 1994.

69 Wilkinson to McKay, March 7, 1967, in McKay, Diary, March 6, 1967. Wilkinson told Bentley he had been “called to Salt Lake by the brethren and when they call ‘I have to go.’” Bentley was skeptical: “I really doubt he was called but think he went on his own.” Bentley, Diary, March 7, 1967. Wilkinson’s diary for March 6 confirms that he “decided to go to Salt Lake where I had a conference with President McKay ...”

70 Bentley, Diary, March 7, 1967. Coincidentally, that same day, Earl Crockett sent Hillam a second teaching contract, now offering him a salary increase more comparable to that of other faculty of his rank. Crockett to Hillam, March 7, 1967, Hillam Papers.

thirty-one-year-old faculty advisor, Larry Wimmer, asking to meet. For the next two hours, Russell narrated his involvement in the spy ring. Wimmer then made arrangements for Russell to repeat his confession the next day to Tanner. When Wimmer and Russell, together with Laws, arrived in Tanner’s office, they were met also by Harold B. Lee, whom Tanner had invited. After some preliminaries, Russell again detailed his participation in the spy ring, with Lee occasionally asking questions. When Russell finished, Wimmer recalled, “Elder Lee’s first comments to Pres. Tanner and me were ‘And they spin their webs of deceit.’” As the men then prepared to leave, Lee said to them, “I want you to know that I am very concerned about the moral implications of what has happened at BYU,” adding that while he was not “currently in a position to respond to these events as I might wish,” if he ever were, there would be changes. Wimmer remembers departing “with great respect for President Tanner and Elder Lee, and the knowledge that finally we had been heard.”71

On March 11, less than two weeks after Hankin’s announcement, Wilkinson issued a formal public statement acknowledging “the organized surveillance of faculty by students,” accepting responsibility as president, and regretting any “misunderstanding and uneasiness which [had] been engendered.” However, he did not, as Bentley had guessed he would not, disclose the extent of his own involvement.72 In fact, Wilkinson privately told McKay that “a student had tried to organize some very Left-Wing organizations on the campus, and that because of the times President Wilkinson said that he had to be alert as to what some of the faculty members were teaching.” Wilkinson’s proposal, which McKay authorized, that they employ “a man with Federal Bureau of Investigation detective experience to exercise surveillance on the campus,” never materialized.73

71 Wimmer, “The BYU Spy Episode of 1965-66: My Part,” April 13, 2010, 4, copy Smith-Pettit Foundation. Wimmer remained at BYU for the next four decades, and is currently the school’s Warren and Wilson Dusenberry University Professor of Economics, Emeritus. For Russell’s account of this meeting, see Russell, “Personal History of Stephen Hays Russell,” 1983, 109-10. Russell later added: “I felt an urgency to lay out every detail of the affair to Wimmer for two reasons: (1) Wilkinson was not willing to put out a full disclosure and I felt the moral obligation to do so: (2) Wimmer’s close friend Edwin Brown Firmage had taken it upon himself to plead strongly with my fiancé (who was his mission convert) to terminate her relationship with me. I was humbled and contrite.”Russell, “Comments.”

72 Wilkinson to All Members of the Faculty, March 11, 1967; “Statements Out on ‘Spy Ring,’” Daily Universe, March 15, 1967.

73 McKay, Diary, March 15, 1967. Wilkinson may have had W. Cleon Skousen in mind.

Clyde D. Sandgren, Brigham Young University general counsel.

Two days after Wilkinson’s public statement, Russell prepared his own double-spaced, thirteen-page typewritten notarized account. The next month, Hankin and Sisson were dismissed from school. Accusations surfaced that the two undergraduates were being punished for “whistleblowing,” but administrators insisted that the students’ disclosures regarding the spy incident were completely unrelated to their expulsion.74

In his report of the controversy prepared at Tanner’s request, dated April 17, Wilkinson admitted to having asked Bentley to recruit Russell and other students, while stressing that he did not know just how aggressively Russell would pursue his assignment. He characterized his initial meeting with Bentley as an “informal hasty conversation (one of hundreds which I will have every month) occurred over a year ago,” and admitted that “there may be a difference of memory between Brother Bentley and myself as to exactly what was said.”75 According to Wilkinson, he asked Bentley if “he knew of some reliable students who would advise as to comments of teachers. He replied that he knew a Stephen Russell, who was a very competent and reliable student whom he would ask to report to him.” “Since Stephen Russell and others had been previously complaining to Brother Bentley about what they both considered to be false teachings,” Wilkinson continued, “it was understood that they would report to him as to what their teachers said and that in the same way that I had not publicized the approval of my speech by President McKay, Brother Bentley was not to inform the students that the request came from me....76 [I]t now turns out,” Wilkinson emphasized, “that Stephen Russell got a group of students together and organized them to attend certain classes in some of which they were not regularly registered. This was never contemplated by me—I merely wanted reports of regular students from their regular classes.... Further,” he closed, “it was never contemplated that a group of students would be called together in a room and be organized for the purpose of obtaining information, even from their regular teachers.”77

In his own statement, dated March 8, Bentley made certain to emphasize Wilkinson’s participation even as he defended Russell’s character:

74 Wilkinson, Diary, April 12, 26, 1967; “Standards Clarifies Hankin Suspension,” Daily Universe, April 14, 1967; Wilkinson, “Report for the Board of Trustees.” Both Hankin and Sisson petitioned the Board of Trustees for a rehearing but were denied. Shortly afterwards, Hankin accosted Wilkinson on campus; and Sisson threatened Wilkinson and was subsequently arrested for burglary (Wilkinson, Diary, May 8, 18-19, July 30, August 6-7, 1967; see also J. Elliot Cameron to Wilkinson, July 19, 1967). “Hankin was many things,” Hillam later wrote. “He was bright, articulate, and spoke with conviction. He was a ‘true believer’ and thought as a spy that he was engaged in a ‘noble cause.’ But he may have been neurotic. However, to the discomfort of Russell and Wilkinson, he was correct about the spying, the noble cause, and all that stuff.” Hillam, “Spy Episode,” 17.

75 “I ... would not be surprised if Bentley’s version is different than mine,” Wilkinson told Robert Thomas. “I have found several instances recently in other areas where he went beyond my instructions to him.” Memo dated April 20, 1967, Wilkinson Papers.

76 Russell later commented, generously, of Wilkinson that “he truly felt the interest of Brigham Young University would best be served by his protective denials.” Russell, “Comments.”

77 Wilkinson, “Draft of Report.”

On April 19, 1966, President Ernest L. Wilkinson . . . mentioned that he planned to make a hard hitting, free enterprise speech in two or three days at assembly, and he would like to know what several . . . faculty members would have to say about it. . . . He asked me if I knew of any good, dependable students who would know students of a conservative bend in the classes of these particular faculty members, who could make a report of what was said following his speech. I reminded him that he had sent me information concerning one of the top students in economics by the name of Steven Russell . . . President Wilkinson then asked that I get in touch with Steve . . .

The following day . . . I told him that I had talked to Steve and that Steve was working on the problem. He suggested at that time that of course he and I should be kept out of it. . . .

On September 17, 1966, President Wilkinson . . . wanted to make sure that Steve Russell did not implicate others. He suggested that Steve obtain the services of a lawyer . . . I asked him why because I felt that Steve had merely followed the request of the President, and I didn’t feel that he had to worry about anything as long as he was careful to speak the truth. The President felt that if Steve were called upon to testify that he shouldn’t implicate anybody else. . . .

On Sunday, September 18, President Wilkinson . . . suggested that Steve take the responsibility himself. I replied that Steve had only followed a request made by President Wilkinson so I couldn’t agree to Steve’s taking the responsibility in a way that would injure him.

On September [20] . . . [Wilkinson] stated he wanted to make sure that Steve Russell would testify properly when called by the [BYU vice-presidents’] committee to testify concerning Ray Hillam. I suggested to the President that all we needed to worry about was Russell telling the truth; that I felt that was all that was necessary. He then stated that he couldn’t remember the request coming from him as I remembered it. I was surprised and reminded him of the details. . . .

During all of this trouble and fuss and bother, I have gotten quite well acquainted with Steve Russell and have found him to be a fine young man, of high principles, a good Latter-day Saint and a loyal American citizen. He organized a few students to find out some specific information at the request of President Wilkinson through me, thinking that as President of the University, particularly a Church owned, private school, where standards and ideals and objectives and loyalties are and should be quite different than at the ordinary university, that perhaps the President should know when disloyal and untrue statements are being made in class.78

LDS officials, however concerned they may have been, chose not to pursue the delicate matter further, and Wilkinson was never asked to defend himself to his Board of Trustees. The letter he had had drafted for McKay, and adopted by the board, only hinted indirectly at the controversy. Hillam returned to BYU and resumed his teaching position in late September 1967. In Vietnam, he had been awarded a Medal of Honor by the South Vietnamese Army and a Civilian Patriotic Service award by the U.S. military.79 Wilkinson, however, continued to “wonder if I did right in persuading Hillam to come back by increasing his salary.”80 More and more

78 Bentley, “Confidential Statement.”

79 “Hillam Back from Vietnam with Honor,” Daily Universe, October 3, 1967. See also “He Serves His Church and His Country,” Church News, Deseret News, September 9, 1967.

80 Wilkinson to Thomas, September 21, 1967, Wilkinson Papers.

Brigham Young University President Ernest L. Wilkinson and student body officer Cam Caldwell prepare for the “Y Community Day” during which students and faculty painted and fixed up homes of needy persons.

alienated from his social sciences faculty, Wilkinson wanted to “find someone for a dean next year, who will put the spiritual approach above everything else.”81 Social sciences dean John Bernhard had resigned in early 1968 to accept the presidency of Western Illinois University.82 At the urging of Ezra Taft Benson, Wilkinson thought about asking one of BYU’s religion teachers to fill Bernhard’s vacancy. In fact, Wilkinson had come to trust his religion faculty more than his social sciences faculty. “They are as loyal and faithful and helpful as they can be,” he observed in his diary. “I hope you will see to it that the College of Religious Instruction, as a part of the gospel teachings, continues to decry the evils not only of communism but also of socialism,” he told religion administrators in February 1968. “It is ... just as appropriate to teach this in the College of Religious Instruction as it is in the Department of Political Science, and with more authority.”83

Some five months after his return to BYU, Hillam submitted to Vice Presidents Crockett, Lewis, and Sandgren a list of objections to their report in his case. Accompanied by his department chair and college dean, Hillam met with the vice presidents in March 1968; Joseph Bentley and Larry Wimmer also presented evidence to the vice presidents.84 Wilkinson met privately with Hillam at the end of the month, insisted that McKay had instructed him “to seek feedback from faculty on his [April 21, 1966] address,” agreed that “things got out of hand,” and, according to Hillam, apologized that students had monitored classes in which they had not been

81 Wilkinson, Diary, May 10, 1967, April 2, 1968, February 13, 1969.

82 “Dr. Bernhard Heads Illinois University,” Daily Universe, March 21, 1968. University of Utah alumnus Martin B. Hickman was eventually appointed as dean of the College of Social Sciences, a position he held for the next seventeen years.

83 Board of Trustees, Executive Committee, Minutes, April 25, 1968; Board of Trustees, Minutes, May 1, 1968, cf. Wilkinson, Diary, April 12, 1968; Wilkinson to Daniel Ludlow, Chauncey Riddle, and Roy Doxey, February 19, 1968.

84 Bentley, about this time, also privately apologized to Hillam “for participating in the spying. ... It was a tender moment,” Hillam recalled, “and I have never forgotten it.” Hillam, “Spy Episode,” 22.

officially enrolled. 85 On May 10, 1968, the vice presidents amended their report to admit, for the first time, that Bentley, at Wilkinson’s request, had asked Russell to organize students to spy on teachers. They also addressed the issue of a cover-up, expressing “regret and disappointment that we learned—sixteen months after the case had been closed (1) that important facts pertaining thereto had been withheld from us, and (2) that although we had been appointed to determine the truth and to take final action in the matter, our effort is in that direction had covertly been challenged through the services of an attorney for a key witness, said attorney having been engaged with the knowledge of the one by whom we had been appointed and for whom we were conducting the investigation.” Finally, they recommended Hillam’s appointment as chair of the Department of Political Science as a “public expression of confidence.” 86 Administrators agreed, and the action was taken.87

Though largely pleased with the vice presidents’ revised report, Hillam pushed for “a further explanation” of the administration’s involvement in the surveillance. He asked that the activities of Bentley, Sandgren, Wilkinson, and Russell be, at least, generally outlined. Several drafts

85 Hillam, memo, March 31, 1968; Hillam, “Spy Episode,” 24; Wilkinson, Diary, March 26, April 1, May 10, 1968. “Will I ever get an apology out of him [Wilkinson]?” Hillam wondered. “He did say we have both made mistakes. But it was clear that he had convinced himself that he was not that involved.” Hillam, “Spy Episode,” 24.

86 Crockett, Lewis, and Sandgren, “Amended Report, Findings of Fact, Conclusions and Recommendations,” May 10, 1968. Wilkinson could have disbanded the vice presidents’ committee at any time, but did not—perhaps, as Louis Midgley observed (in conversation with Bergera, February 3, 2010), out of an over-riding allegiance to American constitutional law.

87 Robert K. Thomas to Wilkinson, May 15, 1968, Wilkinson Papers.

BRIGHAM

subsequently passed between Hillam and Sandgren. When finally completed on May 15, 1969, more than three years after Wilkinson first called Bentley into his office, the vice-presidents’ report vindicated Hillam of all charges and detailed the activities of Wilkinson, Bentley, Sandgren, and Russell. “[W]e individually and jointly regret,” the vice-presidents concluded, “that, although we were asked to make a full investigation and were clothed with authority to make a final decision with respect there to so far as the University Administration is concerned, important facts were withheld from us. ... we acted in good faith and were greatly embarrassed to learn that we had not been given full information.”88 By this time, however, at least four social sciences faculty who had tangled with Wilkinson over a variety of matters—Richard Poll, John Bernhard, Richard Wirthlin, and David Kirk Hart—had left, or were preparing to leave, BYU. Two others, besides J. Kenneth Davies and Hillam, were later appointed department chairs: Larry Wimmer (economics) and Russell Horiuchi (geography).

Chastened from all sides, Wilkinson pursued his conservative agenda a little less zealously over the next few years until his resignation in 1971. (He was also busy trying to stem a steady waning of support from trustees, notably Harold B. Lee, in the wake of McKay’s declining health.)89 Still, rumors of student spies continued to plague his administration, and Wilkinson still sometimes pressed associates to “keep in close touch” with “trouble making” faculty, suggesting in 1971 that Louis Midgley’s promotion to full professor be postponed “another year” to “see if he doesn’t mellow a little more.” 90 Following his resignation, Wilkinson remained defiant regarding the 1966 spy ring, carefully parsing his words a year before his death on April 6, 1978, to insist: “I never made one speech on campus about my political views, except to the extent that the Board of Trustees had previously declared. I didn’t want my administration here at BYU to be dove-tailed with politics. I did not authorize students to use tape recordings of any kind. Students were never organized by the administration to spy.”91 Bentley retired from BYU shortly after Wilkinson’s resignation and spent much of his remaining twenty years in various Church assignments,

88 Hillam to John T. Bernhard, July 3, 1968; Hillam to Sandgren, October 7, 1968; Sandgren to Hillam, November 27, 1968, and attachment; Hillam to Sandgren, April 25, 1969, and attachment; Sandgren to Hillam, May 13, June 4, 1969. “I have come to terms with my Wilkinson problem,” Hillam wrote in 2001. “I have no malice toward him. ... my idealism was replaced by guarded realism. ... I learned about university politics and the concepts of power, pride, fear, and distrust.” Hillam, “Spy Episode,” 30, 31.

89 See Gary James Bergera, “Ernest L. Wilkinson and the Office of Church Commissioner of Education,” Journal of Mormon History 22 (Spring 1996): 157-72.

90 Wilkinson to Robert K. Thomas, April 29, 1970; Thomas, minutes of a meeting with Wilkinson, May 4, 1970; Wilkinson to Thomas and Robert J. Smith, March 2, 1971. For later allegations of spying, see Phares Woods, Statement, May 27, 1969.

91 Wilkinson, interview with Bergera, February 1977, notes, Smith-Pettit Foundation. Both the fourand one-volume editions of BYU’s official history blamed the episode on overzealous students. Hillam protested: “The dishonesty which accompanies the ‘cover up’ is more distressing than the spying itself.” Hillam to Wilkinson, W. Cleon Skousen, Leonard J. Arrington, and Bruce C. Hafen, November 1, 1976; Vern Anderson, “Y. Teachers Blast ‘Spy Scandal Coverup,’” Salt Lake Tribune, December 24, 1976.

Army and Air Force ROTC students assembled in the Smoot Building quad for the lowering of the colors.

including serving as president of the LDS Church’s new Argentina East Mission (beginning in 1972) and with his wife later filling an LDS mission to Budapest, Hungary.92 He died on June 16, 1993, at age eighty-seven. Sandgren retired from BYU in 1975, practiced law privately, and died on December 21, 1989; he was seventy-nine. Of BYU’s other two vice-presidents during the spy ring, Crockett returned to teaching in 1968, retired in 1972, and died on December 2, 1975, at age seventy-two; Lewis retired in 1979, served as president of the Church’s England London Mission from 1979 to 1982, and died on October 24, 2005, at ninety-one. Hillam continued to teach political science at BYU until 1993. He died sixteen years later, after a long battle with Parkinson’s Disease, on August 10, 2009, at age eighty-one. Stephen Russell graduated from BYU in economics in 1967. He went on to receive a master’s degree from the Air Force Institute of Technology in Dayton, Ohio, and a Ph.D. in business economics from Arizona State University in 1978. He taught at the Air Force Academy, Brigham Young University, Arizona State University, and the National War College in Washington, D.C. Since 1991, he has been on the faculty of the Goddard School of Business and Economics at Weber State University in Ogden. During the academic year 2003-2004, he was a visiting professor of economics at Brigham Young University–Hawaii.93

92 Bentley and his wife also presided over the Provo LDS Temple from 1976 to 1978. Joseph T. Bentley, Life and Family of Joseph T. Bentley: An Autobiography (Privately Published, 1981), 142.

93 Stephen Russell believes that “if, in Bentley’s office in April of 1966, Bentley and I had responded literally and noncreatively to Wilkinson’s request, no ‘1966 Spy Ring’ would have emerged.” Russell,

Writing in 2001, Hillam suggested that during his two decades at BYU, Wilkinson came to view the school almost as “an extension of his persona.” Increasingly, Wilkinson cloaked the power of the BYU presidency “in his conservative political ideology and religious orthodoxy,” and following his failed 1964 Senate bid returned to the campus “with vengeance and with a political agenda.” Wilkinson may have been a “scrappy infighter” and “a genius in getting things done,” but, according to Hillam, because of excessive pride, he also “stumbled” and “erred.” “In our culture,” Hillam concluded, “a higher level of perfection is expected of those who are powerful and preside over us. . . . It is perhaps unfair to them as they are not without human weaknesses.” When Wilkinson balked at telling the complete truth about the 1966 BYU student spy ring, “he was compelled by the pressures of his status, which we conferred upon him, to cover himself. And once he dissembled he became a prisoner entrapped by a web of deceit. He was compelled to protect his power and preserve his pride.”94

“Comments.” Of his own experience, Curt Conklin writes, “[T]hose of us involved were young . . . Back then, like a lot of others that age, I knew all the answers, trouble is, I didn’t know the questions!” Conklin to Bergera, Smith-Pettit Foundation. Conklin retired from BYU employ in 2009 after thirty-seven years as a librarian in the university’s J. Reuben Clark Law School.

94 Hillam, “Spy Episode,” 27, 28, 29, 30. Midgley refers to the spy ring and especially the cover-up as “Wilkinson’s Watergate.” Conversation with Bergera, February 8, 2010.

In Memoriam

BRIGHAM DWAINE MADSEN

October 21, 1914 - December 24, 2010

Measured by his accomplishments, Brigham Dwaine Madsen was, among other positions, a carpenter, contractor, army officer, scholar, teacher, principal, coach, university administrator, librarian, and federal civil servant. Measured by his passion, however, he was a historian. Born on October 21, 1914, in Magna to Mormon parents, he grew up in Pocatello, Idaho, surrounded by an ethnic and religious diversity that always seemed normal to him. After gaining very practical skills from his father under the philosophy, “You’ll never learn any younger,” Brig attended the Southern Branch of the University of Idaho (now Idaho State University) for two years. Then he left for an LDS mission in Tennessee and North Carolina, traveling without purse or scrip from 1934 to 1936. He organized street meetings, made a few converts, served as mission president, and built two small chapels for devout but penurious Saints. He later reported his amazement at hearing some of the mountain people speaking almost Elizabethan English, so great had been their isolation. This brush with living history helped him select his enduring pursuit.

Returning from his mission, he entered the University of Utah, where he met the love of his life and future wife, Betty McAllister. Another USHS

Fellow, Helen Zeese Papanikolas, remembered the two of them holding hands in the back of the class, but that did not deter their academic progress. Brig earned admittance to honor societies Phi Kappa Phi (for all majors) and Phi Delta Kappa (for educators). Upon graduation, he spent a year as teacher, coach and principal at a tiny school in Pingree, Idaho. In 1939, after marriage, he and Betty moved to Berkeley where he began studying for a Ph.D. in history and was admitted to the history honor society Phi Alpha Theta (P.A.T.). It was a point of pride later on that, as Berkeley’s P.A.T. president, he fought for admission of women to the society. They had previously been denied admission (either formally or informally) at Berkeley.

During his graduate program, Brig worked with the renowned Herbert Eugene Bolton, of “borderlands” fame. Brig’s graduate study was interrupted by World War II, in which he served with distinction as infantry rifleman, tactical officer, and army historian before returning to his studies. It was always a matter of slight regret to him that he never made the official list of “Bolton students” due to his war-time service. I know the feeling. My second pregnancy during graduate school added a year to my program, and divisiveness in the University of Utah’s History Department prompted Brig to retire in 1984, just before (rather than after) his 70th birthday. Therefore, although he participated actively in my dissertation defense and wrote me a glowing letter of recommendation, I am not officially the last Madsen student.

Brig’s distinguished tenure in the University of Utah History Department came at the end of a long series of professional and practical engagements after he earned his doctorate. First, he taught history at Brigham Young University from 1951-54, despite growing discomfort with pressure for faith-promoting, rather than intellectually challenging history. He quit, with no regrets. During the next seven years, Brig worked as a contractor, raising, with Betty, their family of four in Salt Lake City. He then taught at Utah State University from 1961 to 1964, interweaving stints of training Peace Corps volunteers in Logan and elsewhere for a year and a half. In June 1964, he became the Peace Corps’ full-time Assistant Director of Training, followed by eight months as first training director of the federal Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) Program in Washington, D.C.

Returning to Salt Lake City in 1965, Brig started long, productive service at the University of Utah. First, he served as Dean of the Division of Continuing Education, which he worked hard to integrate into the university community. Next, he served as Deputy Academic Vice President for a year, and then the inaugural Dean of the Division of International Education, then Administrative Vice President from 1967 to 1971. In this position, he dealt with student anti-war protests, construction projects (enriched by his own carpenter’s background) and parking lot locations (which he considered much more important—and underrated—than many of his other efforts). Then he took over as Director of the Marriott Library.

Next came a brief stint as the history graduate advisor and one year as history department chair, during which he also served as first director of the Utah Endowment for the Humanities (now the Utah Humanities Council). He then returned to his true love, teaching history, which he pursued while serving in a variety of advisory and service capacities. He actively mentored many, many students, and as one remarked, “On a scale of 1 to 10, he’s an 11.” Retiring in 1984, he entered an enjoyable period of research and writing.

Brig has left an impressive published legacy. He edited five books, including the thought-provoking Studies of the Book of Mormon by Brigham H. Roberts, which questioned the authenticity of the Book of Mormon. This work has occasioned much debate, both of Roberts’ views, and of Madsen’s. But Brig, despite his personal skepticism, taught ward classes for many years, and in his autobiography was moved to write: “I always consider myself to be a Mormon. My heritage is Mormon, my sympathies are Mormon, and my culture is Mormon-oriented. … After all, my first name is Brigham!” (Against the Grain, 232). But he was also a great admirer of Roberts, and sometimes insisted (possibly tongue in cheek) that he had been named for this historian, not for Brigham Young. Brig also published nine books of narrative history as a solo author and one more, the prize-winning North to Montana, with his wife, Betty. His work on Native Americans—the Lemhi and the Northern Shoshone – exemplified his lasting dedication to indigenous rights. He also published over three dozen articles. No other known historian has published four books in a single year (1980) and an edited work the year after, all of this while teaching full time. (As his son, David, remarked, “He’s competing against himself for all the prizes!”) When I asked Brig how he managed this feat, he said, “I got out of administration.” If only it were so easy.

Brig’s life was crowned with honors too numerous to list individually, including the University of Utah Distinguished Teaching Award in 1977 and election as a Fellow of the Utah State Historical Society in 1981. Another well-deserved honor was his portrait painted by Alvin Gittins in 1976, which used to hang in the Park Building lobby. Among the several then on display, Brig’s was the only one showing informal attire: a plaid shirt over a dress shirt with an unbuttoned collar, as opposed to the usual dark suit and tie. This portrait now serves as the dust jacket illustration for Brig’s ninth and final book, Against the Grain: Memoirs of a Western Historian, from which much of this information is taken. It represents the man as he was—able to move comfortably between academia and the “real” world. He deeply respected and was respected by them both. His intelligence, integrity, consistency, and compassion are all deeply missed.

Nancy J. Taniguchi Professor Emerita California State University, Stanislaus

BOOK REVIEWS

Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America.

By Eric Jay Dolin. (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, Inc., 2010.

Xvii + 442 pp. Cloth. $29.95.)

IF AN EDUCATED AMERICAN was stopped on the street and asked what animal had the greatest impact in the history of North America, most would be surprised to learn that it was the humble beaver. Best known for his industry, the beaver possesses fur that, the quest to acquire ever more, resulted in an epic clash of nations, companies, and individuals all driven by greed, fierce rivalry, and hopes of empire. In this excellent study, Fur, Fortune, and Empire: the Epic History of the Fur Trade in America, author Eric Jay Dolin details the seminal role the fur traders, in search of primarily but not exclusively beaver, played in the history of the United States and Canada for the better part of three centuries. Beginning with exploration and colonization under the leadership of titans such as Samuel Champlain, Henry Hudson, and Robert LaSalle, they sought to create empires based on beaver trade and land claims. Dolin skillfully transitions into the otter and fur-seal trade of the Pacific Northwest that played a key role in opening American trade with China. He maintains that the fur trade played a momentous role in three wars: French and Indian, Revolutionary, and even the War of 1812, as both European and American colonial powers jockeyed for position in the fur trade and with willing Indian tribes. Subsequently, each obtained entitlements to chunks of land in Canada, the Ohio River Valley, the Rockies, and the Pacific Northwest, far larger than these powers had claimed earlier.

Most readers understand that the fur trade was the economic foundation of Canada with the French competing with the British Hudson Bay Company, but many would be surprised to learn it played a vital part in Jamestown, Plymouth, Pittsburg, and Oregon. Dolin demonstrates that the role of the fur trade, brought about by the explorations and later carving out of trading territories by Lewis and Clark, the Astorians, and mountain men played out, not only in lonely mountains and beaver-rich streams, but on an international stage, which resulted in high tension and talk of yet another war between Britain and the United States in the mid-nineteenth century. He adeptly weaves into the narrative the interplay of Native American interests represented by dozens of tribes with the major and minor players from Europe and their descendants. His study continues past the decline of the beaver brokers to include the buffalo robe industry that lured yet another generation of Americans west, and drove another animal to the brink of extinction. In short, the fur trade was the crucial causational factor in fashioning a continental United States.

An excellent author, Dolin’s prose is pleasurable to read. His narrative

flows well and his arguments and conclusions are logical and persuasive He moves back and forth effortlessly and lucidly, from macro to micro issues and participants unveiling the role of nations, Indian tribes, fur companies, politicians, and individual mountain men such as Jedediah Smith and Rufus Sage. His scope of study is reminiscent of David Lavender’s and Bernard DeVoto’s classic works a generation ago. Fur, Fortune, and Empire is enthusiastically recommended for general readers, students and professional historians.

Utah

JOHN D. BARTON

State University Uintah Basin Regional Campus Roosevelt

Black Officer in a Buffalo Soldier Regiment: The Military Career of Charles Young.

By Brian G. Shellum. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010. Xxi + 360 pp. Paper, $19.95.)

BLACK OFFICER IN A BUFFALO SOLDIER REGIMENT is the second of Brian G. Shellum’s two volume study on the life of Colonel Charles Young, an African American military hero who according to the author, “deserves rescue from historical obscurity and a restoration of the prestige and recognition he enjoyed at the time of his death in 1922” (xiii). In 1889 he became the third African American to graduate from the United States Military Academy. Henry Flipper was the first in 1879 followed by John Alexander in 1887.It was nearly fifty years before another would receive his degree from West Point. The War Department’s primary concern was to make sure that a black officer not be placed in a position of having to command white troops. This concern influenced War Department decisions as to where to send black officers throughout Young’s career. An astute person, Young was steadfast in remaining on “his side of the color line” in all things social (18). He viewed this as critical to his survival in a white officer corps.

Black Officer in a Buffalo Regiment opens with a short account of the confusion surrounding Young’s first assignment. Army policy dictated that any black graduate from West Point be assigned to one of the four African American regiments in the United States Regular Army. The regiments were the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry and the Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth Infantry. Initially, Young was assigned to the Tenth Cavalry. He was reassigned to the Twenty-fifth Infantry and later requested a reconsideration of the assignment expressing a preference for one of the cavalry units. The request was approved when a position opened in the Ninth Cavalry and Young agreed to the transfer from the Twenty-fifth Infantry.

The young Second Lieutenant’s first assignment placed him in

Fort Robinson, Nebraska. Captain Frank B. Taylor, Young’s first troop commander, had a reputation of avoiding working with black officers. Young’s inexperience and lack of support led to reprimands from superiors and charges of indifference to his duties. The young officer acknowledged that he had made mistakes; however, it was not because of indifference to his responsibilities. One year after arriving at Fort Robinson, Lieutenant Young and B Troop were transferred to Fort Duchesne, located in eastern Utah, his first of two assignments at the military post. Charles Young flourished during his tours of duty at Fort Duchesne. He mastered the essentials of practical army tactics, leadership and duties. He had the fortune of being under a better command climate as his superior officers were effective leaders who also knew how to relate to all soldiers under their command. At Fort Duchesne, Lieutenant Young was reunited with his former West Point roommate, Lieutenant John Alexander. Alexander’s similar background, experiences and presence at Fort Duchesne provided an invaluable mentoring resource for Young as he learned to master the duties of a commissioned officer in the United States Army. Alexander and Young served two years at Fort Duchesne before Alexander’s transfer.

In 1894, Charles Young was given a detached duty assignment to serve as professor of Military Science and Tactics at Wilberforce University. Tragically, he was given the assignment following the unexpected death of his friend and fellow officer, John Alexander who died unexpectedly shortly after arriving at Wilberforce. There Young met and established a long lasting friendship with Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois, the noted intellectual, activist and author of The Souls of Black Folk. In 1898, during the Spanish American War, Young was asked to serve as major and commander of the Ninth Ohio Battalion U.S. Volunteers, a black military unit. He returned to Fort Duchesne in 1899. There he met a young enlisted man, Benjamin O. Davis who wanted to become a commissioned officer in the regular army. Captain Young tutored Davis in mathematics and other subjects and was very proud when Davis successfully completed the requirements for a commissioned officer’s position. Davis would later become the first African American promoted to the rank of general in the United States military service.

Captain Charles Young and his men were battle tested fighting in the Philippines and Mexico. In each setting Young was proven to be an effective leader who was firm but fair and enjoyed the respect and support of his troops. He also provided invaluable service to his country as a military attaché in Hispaniola and Liberia.

In 1917, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Young had every intention of playing a significant role along with black soldiers in the World War against Germany. Questions pertaining to his health arose as he stood before the promotion board in San Antonio, Texas. Although professionally qualified,

he was ordered to seek additional medical attention in San Francisco where he was deemed medically unfit by the examining board. A combination of parties including President Woodrow Wilson, Secretary of War Newton Baker and several senators coalesced to deny Young’s wish to play a military role in the war. Young received a medical retirement. He was the highest ranking black line officer in the United States Army. Although Colonel Young did not see service in the war, he affirmatively responded to a request from the State Department and War Department to serve again as a military attaché to Liberia.

Ironically, the concerns about Colonel Young’s health that kept him out of the war in Europe were not a concern when he was requested to return to Liberia. Arriving in Monrovia in 1920, Young pursued the objectives of his nation. On an assignment that took him to Lagos, Nigeria, Colonel Young became ill and was hospitalized. He died on January 8, 1922, and was buried the next day by the British with full military honors. Sixteen months later Colonel Charles Young’s exhumed remains were returned to the United States. His funeral service was held in the Arlington Amphitheater and his remains reinterred at Arlington Cemetery.

Black Officer in a Buffalo Soldier Regiment along with the first volume of the biography gives us a carefully researched biography of an African American soldier/diplomat whose record of service would have made him America’s first black general if not for the prevailing racism that permeated American life in the military as well as civilian worlds in the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century. Although I would have preferred a single volume biography, I believe Brian Shellum has filled an important void in African American biography and American military history.

RONALD G. COLEMAN University of Utah

Beyond the American Pale: The Irish in the West 1845-1910. By David M. Emmons. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010. 472 pp. Hardcover. $34.95.)

DAVID M. EMMONS has compiled an impressive amount of information in his work Beyond the American Pale: The Irish in the West 1845-1910. Emmons takes a closer look at one of the greatest migrations in American history and how this “pale” fits into the broader and perceived American life. The Irish and their Catholic faith contradicted the protestant beliefs of westward expansion. Early Jeffersonian ideals were being challenged by the advent of Irish immigrants and mining. Welcome or not, the Irish had a dramatic say on how the West and its history played out.

Being outcasts in a predominately protestant nation directly led to high concentrations of Irish in select areas. The Irish Catholic went where Irish Catholics already existed. Although Irish men were involved in several professions, large numbers of them ultimately were employed in mining. The earliest roots of Irish mining can be traced to early immigrants beginning in the 1850s when, “Thousands of experienced hard-rock men… made their way…to every hard-rock gold, silver, and copper mining camp” (223). When these select few settled, they acted as unofficial recruiters for future Irish immigrants.

Utah was no exception to this process. Compared to other western states (California, Nebraska, and Montana) Utah had a relatively small Irish population. With an already existing “well developed policy of Utah mine and smelter owners work through padrones and hire contract laborers;” the Irish simply avoided a Mormon dominated Utah (226). Only one county, Summit County, had a strong first- and second-generation Irish population by 1910. The mining camp in Park City supported a 12 percent Irish population. However, mining couldn’t overpower the difference in religious beliefs.

Emmons quickly draws comparisons to Mormons when evaluating Irish migration and lifestyle. Both groups tended to avoid what they viewed as “American capitalism.” The unofficial Irish capitol of Butte, Montana, embodied the same ideals of Salt Lake City. They both “lived a communal way of life that furnished a critical perspective on capitalism” (290). To the Irish, economic stability and cultural identity were a strong contradiction to the “normal” history of the West. By straying from the values of westward expansion as defined in the era, the Irish naturally ostracized themselves.

While the ideas of American reinvention in the West seemed to be discouraged by the Irish settlements and lifestyle, another history was being written. The history of the Irish in the West was a story of strong community, the aim for economic stability, and endurance of ethnicity. Cities like Butte, San Francisco, California, and Melrose, Iowa, supported large Irish communities. All three were characterized by strong identity. This identity could not be shaken by American economic and societal objectives.

Beyond the American Pale: The Irish in the West 1845-1910 is a wellresearched and well-written book. David Emmons demonstrates how the West is not an American pale consisting of Irish immigrants in limbo, but rather a frontier built with pockets of Irish pales. Despite constant critiques and discrimination, Irish immigrants made a home in the frontier. Their duration and endurance ultimately make up one of several stories that define the real American West.

CAMDEN BURD University of Utah

(Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2010. xxviii + 449 pp. Cloth, $85.00.)

SINCE 1955, ABC-CLIO has emerged as a respected publisher of reference materials empowering students, educators, librarians, and general readers with unprecedented access to the conclusions of scholars and researchers. They have been aggressive in recent years with publishing books exploring religion generally and specific religious traditions or aspects of religion. It is therefore appropriate and welcome that ABCCLIO has partnered with editors Paul Reeve and Ardis Parshall to produce a superb historical encyclopedia of Mormonism.

This single volume encyclopedia packs a lot in an introduction putting Mormonism in historical context, 101 articles, a fifteen-page chronology of the Mormons, and a fourteen-page bibliography. The articles are divided into four sections: Eras, Events, People, and Issues. Peppered throughout the book are call-out boxes on minor topics. Unfortunately, the abundance of text has left very little room for illustrations, charts, maps, and other helpful tools of other types of encyclopedias.

The section “Eras” includes six essays in chronological order beginning with “Foundation: 1820-1830” and ending in “Expansion: 1941-Present.” The section “Events” includes thirty-one articles on various events like Haun’s Mill Massacre and Priesthood Revelation of 1978, but also things like the Book of Mormon and Temples, and general topics such as Correlation, Youth Programs, and Word of Wisdom. The section “People” consists of forty-one biographical sketches of all Church presidents, but also includes a sampling of influential apostles (George Q. Cannon, J. Reuben Clark, and Bruce R. McConkie), female leaders (Aurelia Spencer Rogers, Eliza R. Snow, and Belle Smith Spafford), and others influential in Mormon history from a variety of fields (scholar Hugh Nibley, historian Leonard Arrington, humanitarian Lowell Bennion). The “Issues” section provides a closer look at twenty-three different issues from Mormon history, such as “Mormonism and Education,” “Mormonism and Science,” or “Non-Mormon Views of Mormonism.”

Reeve and Parshall have done an outstanding job providing an amazing amount and variety of information in a professional and compact manner. Contributors included fifty-three different scholars, and the list is a virtual “Who’s Who” of Mormon history, providing significant clout and credibility to the project. They have done a commendable job in being fair and balanced in laying out the historical facts in each article so that the book is neither an attack on Mormonism, nor an apologetic work.

It is tempting to debate which topics should have been included and which ones should have been left out. However, the editors themselves

Mormonism: A Historical Encyclopedia Edited by W. Paul Reeve and Ardis E. Parshall

acknowledge in their preface the difficulty in making such determinations and a fair minded reviewer would have to admit that they did a respectable job with making sure the main points of Mormon history were covered. There is some overlap, such as in the articles on “Mormonism and Race” and “Mormonism and Native Americans”; or in the article on the Smoot Hearings and the call-out box on Reed Smoot, but it is minor.

This volume would be especially helpful to a scholar wanting a one-stop source for boning up on the basics and more of Mormon history. Scholars long familiar with Mormonism will find the essays on issues useful for concise summaries of complex facets of Mormon history. The article on “Mormonism and Blacks,” for instance, is the finest I have ever read on the topic. Considering the large role that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints has played throughout the history of Utah, this landmark encyclopedia would be of significant interest to any serious student of Utah history.

MICHAEL K. WINDER Board of State History

West Valley City

BOOK NOTICES

Historic Photos of Outlaws of the Old West By Larry Johnson.

(Nashville: Turner Publishing Company, 2010. x + 206 pp. Hardcover, $39.95.)

For generations, outlaws of the old west have remained an uneasy affection in the United States. We are both compelled and made apprehensive by the myths the criminals embodied. Yet our fascination still remains. This is a book for those who are trying to understand the characters that are both legendary and less infamous.

Photographs depicting the likes of Jesse James, the Younger Brothers, Billy the Kid, and others are accompanied with stories that may be new to the reader. Johnson has collected images of bustling towns, notorious criminals, and the western stage on which their drama was played. Johnson’s research denounces certain myths of the outlaw but still manages to embrace what Americans view as the West; a raw arena of new populations, towns, and the characters that helped define an era. The images will lead from fascination to surrealism as portraits of fallen outlaws challenge the almost near immortality the bandits and their reputations have instilled.

Arena Legacy: The Heritage of American Rodeo. By Richard C. Rattenbury.

(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010. xiv + 416 pp. Cloth $65.00.)

From its earliest days as a spontaneous contest between cowboys to its fanatic following in contemporary times the rodeo has been a regular part of American culture for well over a hundred years. Richard Rattenbury has written an impressive volume documenting the historic culture that embodies the spirit of the American West. A combination of his well researched and expansive writing with a massive showcase of collections from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum has been made into a great read.

Rattenbury captures the growth of this sport by showcasing the men, women, and venues that defined the rodeo. As a curator of history at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, his access and knowledge of rodeo apparel and equipment helps to add the expansive visuals to Arena Legacy. The book is a tribute to a western American sport and will be appreciated by rodeo fanatics and western enthusiasts alike.

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY FELLOWS

THOMAS G. ALEXANDER

JAMES B. ALLEN

LEONARD J. ARRINGTON (1917-1999) MAUREEN URSENBACH BEECHER

DAVID BIGLER

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 JOEL JANETSKI

JESSE D. JENNINGS (1909-1997) A. KARL LARSON (1899-1983) GUSTIVE O. LARSON (1897-1983) WILLIAM P. MACKINNON BRIGHAM D. MADSEN (1914-2010)

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 MELVIN T. SMITH WALLACE E. STEGNER (1909-1993) WILLIAM A. WILSON

HONORARY LIFE MEMBERS

DAVID BIGLER

JAY M. HAYMOND FLORENCE S. JACOBSEN STANFORD J. LAYTON WILLIAM P. MACKINNON JOHN S. MCCORMICK MIRIAM B. MURPHY F. ROSS PETERSON RICHARD C. ROBERTS MELVIN T. SMITH LINDA THATCHER GARY TOPPING