Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 81, Number 1, 2013

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

(ISSN 0 042-143X)

EDITORIAL STAFF

ALLAN KENT POWELL, Managing Editor

ADVISORY BOARD OF EDITORS

CRAIG FULLER, Salt Lake City, 2015

BRANDON JOHNSON, Bristow,Virginia, 2014

LEE ANN KREUTZER, Salt Lake City, 2015

ROBERT E. PARSON, Benson, 2013

W. PAUL REEVE, Salt Lake City, 2014

JOHN SILLITO, Ogden, 2013

GARY TOPPING, Salt Lake City, 2014

RONALD G. WATT, West Valley City, 2013

COLLEEN WHITLEY, Salt Lake City, 2015

Utah Historical Quarterly was established in 1928 to publish articles, documents, and reviews contributing to knowledge of Utah history. The Quarterly is published four times a year by the Utah State Historical Society, 300 Rio Grande, Salt Lake City, Utah 84101. Phone (801) 533-3500 for membership and publications information. Members of the Society receive the Quarterly upon payment of the annual dues: individual, $30; institution, $40; student and senior citizen (age sixty-five or older), $25; business, $40; sustaining, $40; patron, $60; sponsor, $100.

Manuscripts submitted for publication should be double-spaced with endnotes. Authors are encouraged to submit both a paper and electronic version of the manuscript. For additional information on requirements, contact the managing editor. Articles and book reviews represent the views of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Utah State Historical Society.

Periodicals postage is paid at Salt Lake City, Utah.

POSTMASTER: Send address change to Utah Historical Quarterly, 300 Rio Grande, Salt Lake City, Utah 84101.

Department of Heritage and Arts Division of State History

BOARD OF STATE HISTORY

MICHAEL W. HOMER, Salt Lake City, 2013, Chair

MARTHA SONNTAG BRADLEY, Salt Lake City, 2013, Vice Chair

SCOTT R. CHRISTENSEN, Salt Lake City, 2013

YVETTE DONOSSO, Sandy, 2015

MARIA GARCIAZ, Salt Lake City, 2015

DEANNE G. MATHENY, Lindon, 2013

ROBERT S. MCPHERSON, Blanding, 2015

MAX J. SMITH, Salt Lake City, 2013

GREGORY C. THOMPSON, Salt Lake City, 2015

PATTY TIMBIMBOO-MADSEN, Plymouth, 2015

MICHAEL K. WINDER, West Valley City, 2013

ADMINISTRATION

WILSON G. MARTIN, Director and State Historic Preservation Officer

KRISTEN ROGERS-IVERSEN, Assistant Director

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

The activity that is the subject of this journal has been financed in part with Federal funds from the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, and administered by the State Historic Preservation Office of Utah. The contents and opinions do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Department of the Interior or the Utah State Historic Preservation Office, nor does the mention of trade names or commercial products constitute endorsement or recommendation by the Department of the Interior or the Utah State Historic Preservation Office.

This program receives Federal financial assistance for identification and protection of historic properties. Under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and the Age Discrimination Act of 1975, as amended, the U.S. Department of the Interior prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, disability or age in its federally assisted programs. If you believe you have been discriminated against in any program, activity, or facility as described above, or if you desire further information, please write to: Office for Equal Opportunity, National Park Service, 849 C Street NW, Washington, D.C. 20240.

2 IN THIS ISSUE

4

Fame Meets Infamy: The Powell Survey and Mountain Meadows Participants, 1870-1873

By Richard E. Turley Jr. and Eric C. Olson

25 Labor Spies in Utah During the Early Twentieth Century

By Dawn Retta Brimhall and Sandra Dawn Brimhall

46 A Majestic Building Stone: Sanpete Oolite Limestone

By William T. Parry

65 Student Political Activism at Brigham Young University, 1965-1971

By Gary James Bergera

91 BOOK REVIEWS

Deni J. Seymour. From the Land of Ever Winter to the American Southwest: Athapaskan Migrations, Mobility, and Ethnogenesis Reviewed by Robert S. McPherson

Jesse G. Petersen, ed. West from Salt Lake City: Diaries from the Central Overland Trail

Reviewed by Peter H. DeLaFosse

Don D. Fowler, ed. Cleaving the Unknown World: The Powell Expeditions and the Scientific Exploration of the Colorado Plateau Reviewed by Brad Cole

Polly Aird, Jeff Nichols, and Will Bagley, eds. Playing with Shadows: Voices of Dissent in the Mormon West Reviewed by Ronald G. Watt

Reid L. Neilson, ed. Hugh J. Cannon, To the Peripheries of Mormondom: The Apostolic Around-the-World Journey of David O. McKay, 1920-1921

Reviewed by Scott C. Esplin

Chase Nebeker Peterson. The Guardian Poplar: A Memoir of Deep Roots, Journey and Rediscovery Reviewed by Gary James Bergera

Eric Walz. Nikkei in the Interior West: Japanese Immigration and Community Building 1882-1945

Reviewed by Ronald M. Aramaki

Martha Bradley-Evans, ed. Plural Wife: The Life Story of Mabel Finlayson Allred

Reviewed by Colleen Whitley

As this issue begins the eighty-first volume of the Utah Historical Quarterly we might return to the ageless questions of what is history and why does it matter. In his book, The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past, Professor John Lewis Gaddis offers some insights. He cautions that “Studying the past is no sure guide to predicting the future. What it does do, though, is to prepare you for the future by expanding experience, so that you can increase your skills, your stamina—and, if all goes well, your wisdom” (11). Professor Gaddis also instructs that “Historians ought not to delude themselves into thinking they provide the only means by which acquired skills—and ideas—are transmitted from one generation to the next. Culture, religion, technology, environment, and tradition can all do this. But history is arguably the best method of enlarging experience in such a way as to command the widest possible consensus on what the significance of that experience might be” (9). For the past eighty years, the Utah Historical Quarterly has enlarged our understanding of the Utah experience from prehistoric times to the present. The four articles in this issue continue that mission.

When John Wesley Powell and his men carried out the systematic survey of the Colorado River region following the epic 1869 expedition down the Green and Colorado Rivers, they came to rely on southern Utah Mormons to provide and transport supplies and to help them navigate their way through the twisted geography of Utah’s canyon country. Respect, if not friendship, came to characterize the relationship between Powell’s men and the Mormons with whom

COVER: A group of early twentieth century men, women, and children pose in front of the California Bar in Bingham Canyon. UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

In ThIs IssuE: Miners in Bingham Canyon during the first decade of the twentieth century. UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

they worked and traveled. Their relationship was all the more interesting in that many of the Mormon frontiersmen who assisted with the survey were participants in the infamous massacre of men, women, and children at Mountain Meadows in September 1857. What questions were asked of these participants and what answers were given as the men sat around campfires in the remote locations far from towns and villages is an interesting topic for speculation and investigation. Contemporary diaries and letters, as analyzed in our first article, offer some clues.

Testifying before a committee of the United States House of Representatives in 1879 considering the question of the eight hour work day, Henry Rothschild argued against the proposed law claiming “Political economy teaches us that the laborers and the capitalists are two different forms of society….The laborer should do as good as he can for himself, and the capitalist should do as good as he can for himself.” This view was expressed by workers as well including the radical Industrial Workers of the World whose 1905 preamble begins with the sentence, “The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace as long as hunger and want are found among millions of working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.” How did this clash of capital and labor play out in early years of the twentieth century as Industrial America drove the nation to economic supremacy? One manifestation was the employment of labor spies by companies to keep a clandestine eye on the workers and their unions and to subvert their goals when they clashed with those of the company. Our second article reveals a little-known aspect of Utah’s history in discussing the activities of labor spies in the state.

As early Utahns built their homes, businesses, places of worship, and public buildings they made use of an abundance of local stone—granite, sandstone, volcanic rock, and limestone. As our third article reveals Sanpete oolite limestone was a popular local building material that came to be used in some of Salt Lake City’s most prominent homes and buildings as well as the famous Spreckels mansion and the Hearst Castle in California. How was the stone formed, how was it quarried, how was it used are questions answered in this insightful article.

Our final article for this issue takes readers back to the tumultuous years of the late 1960s and early 1970s when student unrest, anti-war protests, and a counterculture movement raised new challenges. Few, if any, of the nation’s colleges and universities were unaffected. Even Brigham Young University saw a wave of student activism roll over the Provo campus. While the activism was not as violent or as radical as on many other university campuses, it nevertheless did exist at BYU and occurred at a time when the university became a nationally known institution.

This offering of explorers, frontiersmen, labor spies, miners, businessmen, quarry workers, builders, students, professors, and administrators, will, we hope, bring expanded insights and wisdom.

Fame Meets Infamy: The Powell Survey and Mountain Meadows Participants, 1870-1873

By RICHARd E. TuRLEy JR. ANd ERIC C. OLSON

John Wesley Powell took his midday meal on September 5, 1870, high on the plateau between Paragonah and Panguitch, Utah, in company with John D. Lee and Jacob Hamblin. Lee recorded that they enjoyed a “pare of Baked chickings.” “Major” Powell — as most called him in reference to his service during the Civil War— had attached himself to an expedition of some forty men headed by Brigham Young. The expedition’s goal was to visit the Mormon settlements on the Paria River and Kanab Creek. This was the first day of what would turn out to be a

Lee’s Ferry, Paria Crossing, seen from the west with Lonely Dell in the center, 1872.

Richard E. Turley Jr. is Assistant Church Historian and Recorder for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints. He coauthored Massacre at Mountain Meadows (2008) and coedited Mountain Meadows Massacre: The Andrew Jenson and David H. Morris Collections (2009). Eric C. Olson practices law in Salt Lake City and, with Mr. Turley, spends time exploring the backcountry of southern Utah and northern Arizona. A long-time student of Mormon history, he also serves as a volunteer at the Church History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The authors wish to thank Chad Folger, Alison K. Gainer, Allen J. Malmquist, Brandon Metcalf, Jay A. Parry, Brian Reeves, and William W. Slaughter for their assistance on this article.

four-day journey to the Paria and then to Kanab.1

Less than twelve months earlier, at age thirty-five, Powell had completed his famous run from Green River, Wyoming Territory, to the confluence of the Colorado and Virgin rivers in present-day Nevada. This tangled canyon country cut by the Green and Colorado rivers was a massive area, at the time virtually unknown to those of European descent. As one biographer said of the 1869 trip, “Powell aimed to fill in that blank in the map. His plan, such as it was, took audacity to the brink of lunacy.” Indeed, the physical strain and excitement notwithstanding, “for Powell, the expedition was primarily an intellectual adventure”—an effort to advance science by filling in the “blank space on the map.”2

Powell’s journey with the Mormon exploration party grew out of lessons learned during the 1869 expedition. That first effort had been low budget and ramshackle. Given the quality of the equipment and the limited private funding, it was a wonder Powell and most of his men survived the journey. While they had proven humans could run the Green and Colorado, from Powell’s perspective they had accomplished very little science.Thus, Powell set his sights on a second expedition, this one covering the same route as the first but with the backing, staffing, time, equipment, and supplies to complete a full survey of the canyon country. As William H. Goetzmann has observed, “Because the [1869] voyage had been so hectic and the scientific results so meager, Powell decided to make the trip again in 1871, this time in a more leisurely fashion that would include stops to map the terrain and measure such things as the dip and strike of the geological strata.”3 Key to this second attempt would be sufficient resupply at the few points along the route where people could gain access to the river. In 1870, Powell found himself again in Utah to make such arrangements.

By the summer of 1870, as the result of his 1869 journey, Powell was a nationally known figure. As Donald Worster has written, “Powell’s journey down the legendary river of the West was one of the greatest events in the history of American exploration.” 4 Goetzmann labeled the 1869 trip through “the rapids and the whirlpools and the deep forbidding canyons of the unknown Colorado” to reveal “the last mystery of the American West” as “one of history’s most dramatic events.” 5 Consequently, as Edward Dolnick observed, “Powell emerged from the Grand Canyon a hero and a celebrity, a kind of nineteenth-century astronaut.”6

1 A Mormon Chronicle: The Diaries of John D. Lee, 1848–1876, ed. Robert Glass Cleland and Juanita Brooks (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1983), 2:135.

2 Edward Dolnick, Down the Great Unknown: John Wesley Powell’s 1869 Journey of Discovery and Tragedy through the Grand Canyon (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 3, 13; emphasis in original.

3 William H. Goetzmann, foreword to Frederick S. Dellenbaugh, A Canyon Voyage (1962; repr., Tucson: University of Arizona, 1991), xvii.

4 Donald Worster, A River Running West: The Life of John Wesley Powell (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 200.

5 Goetzmann, foreword to Dellenbaugh, Canyon Voyage (1991), xvii.

6 Dolnick, Down the Great Unknown, 290.

The September 1870 exploratory trip had an all-star cast, even apart from Major Powell. Sixty-nine-year-old Brigham Young stood at the head, as he did in nearly all things concerning The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in early Utah. His principal guide and interpreter was Jacob Hamblin, who by then had decades of experience scouting the high desert canyons and mesas of the Colorado Plateau. In response to Powell’s inquiry, Young had recommended Hamblin to assist the major in the effort to resupply the second expedition. Also included in the expedition—as “road commissioner” and “commissary,” respectively—were two of Mountain Meadows Massacre infamy: John D. Lee and William Dame. Lee was charged “with instruction to take Guard, locate & work New Roads,” while Dame ran the “Traveling Tavorn” with responsibility for the group’s “sumpteous table.”7

Powell’s midday meal with Lee on September 5, 1870, proved to be the first of many contacts in the coming months between the major (and other members of his survey party) and men with a connection to the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Both groups found themselves traversing the identical blank spaces on the map, though on decidedly divergent trajectories with equally divergent purposes.

The aging perpetrators of the massacre lived on the margins because they felt the heat of the law and the disapprobation of even their fellow Mormons; they were on the run, seeking isolation. Powell’s youthful corps of scientists and explorers simultaneously sought adventure and aspired to account for one of the least known places on the continent by bringing the tools of science and careful observation to bear on the tumbled drainage of the Colorado. Thrown together in these fringes, the groups met and interacted. Powell’s men relied on the massacre participants for assistance in finding their way, moving supplies, and working with native peoples.

The 1870 Young party, having concluded the midday meal, made its way off the plateau to the former site of Panguitch, now abandoned as the result of the Black Hawk War. Powell, Hamblin, and Lee selected the second night’s encampment at “Bishop Roundy’s old Station”—present-day Alton. When Brigham Young decided to bypass the settlement of Kanab on the journey out, Powell loaned Lee a horse so he could ride to Kanab to direct supplies eastward for the exploring party.8

Lee rejoined the party at a point well beyond the mouth of Johnson Canyon along the base of the Vermilion Cliffs. By 6:00 p.m. on September 8, the group had negotiated the Chinle hills west of the Paria and the wide, silty bottomlands of the Paria River; then they pushed through the high cliff of the “Box,” where the river cuts through the upthrust of Navajo and Wingate sandstone west of the Cockscomb, and pressed six miles south to the “noted Fortification built by Peter Shirt[s],” Lee’s old neighbor at Fort Harmony.9

7 Mormon Chronicle, 2:135; Worster, River Running West, 210–11.

8 Mormon Chronicle, 2:135–37.

9 Ibid., 2:137.

Shirts had built a fort and planted crops in a broad cove near the meandering and fitful Paria. Neither Young nor Lee was impressed. Young declared, “There is nothing here desirable for us.” The party headed for Kanab the following day.10 Along the way, Powell recounted to Lee “a Miricle,” which had occurred the previous day, before Lee rejoined the party. One of the two horses pulling Lorenzo Roundy’s wagon stumbled, causing the horses, wagon, and driver to tumble down a twenty-foot slope. There they became pinned, balancing just short of a much more precipitousfall. Powell had expected to see “a Man’s Neck broke, a Pair of Horses killed & a carriage [broken] to attums at least. But,” Powell explained to Lee, “with you Mormons, in a Moment all is up again & no body hurt.”11 Roundy walked away with “a slight embrasure on the arm and head,” while “the horses were a little bruised.”12

The journey from Johnson Canyon to the Paria took the party across “barren, Roling, cedar Ridges covered occasionally with Petr[i]fied wood.”13 This coincided with Brigham Young’s later report, on September 25, in the Salt Lake Tabernacle, of a notable campfire discussion with “Major Powell.” Among the topics were the speed with which light traveled from the stars to the earth and the origins of the “petrified trees lying on the ground” and of fossilized shells. As Young recalled, Powell “philosophised a little upon it” but left Young feeling that, while “it is not our prerogative to dispute the effects, for they are before us, these and kindred topics give rise to much speculation on the part of the scientific; but it is for me to wait until their causes are made known from the proper

10 Ibid., 2:138–39.

11 Ibid., 2:139; A. Milton Musser to editor, September 10, 1870, in “Correspondence,” Deseret Evening News, September 21, 1870.

12 Musser to editor, September 10, 1870, in “Correspondence.”

13 Mormon Chronicle, 2:137.

John Wesley Powell, December 1869.

Overview Map, Second Powell Expedition (1870–1873).

source.” Young concluded, “Though we do not understand the combination, nature, and action of those elements, we can see their results.”14

Thus, Powell’s 1870 scouting trip first brought him into contact with two men directly connected to the Mountain Meadows Massacre, John D. Lee and William Dame, and Jacob Hamblin, a witness in the case. Powell found the Mormons—regardless of their possible connection to the massacre thirteen years earlier—to be highly useful in pursuit of his goal to fill in the blank spaces on the map. The following year, 1871, marked the commencement of that effort in earnest and brought Powell and his men into even closer contact with several massacre participants.

Powell’s second expedition left Green River, Wyoming, on May 22, 1871. Of the eleven in his party, Powell was the oldest at age thirty-seven and the only one who had previously run the rivers. Second in command—and second oldest at age thirty-two—was Powell’s brother-inlaw, Almon Harris Thompson, the party’s “chief geographer, astronomer and topographer.” Men as young as eighteen and no older than thirty-one comprised the remainder of the party. Most had some training or talent— surveying, topography, photography, or art—that made them useful on the journey.15

To permit additional time for gathering scientific data, Powell divided the second journey into two parts: from Green River, Wyoming, to the Paria River below Glen Canyon in 1871, and from the Paria, through the Grand Canyon, to the mouth of the Virgin River in 1872. The 1871 journey proceeded more slowly than planned. Although the group had left

14

Brigham Young, September 25, 1870, in Journal of Discourses, 26 vols. (Liverpool: F. D. Richards, etc., 1854–1886), 13:248–49.

15 Worster, River Running West, 219–20.

Wyoming in May, it did not reach the mouth of the Dirty Devil River until September 30, 1871.16

Jacob Hamblin had responsibility for arranging resupply at points where there was access to the river. The exploratory party met one such supply train from Hamblin at Gunnison Crossing (today’s Green River, Utah, where I-70 crosses the river). Powell, who had parted with the company earlier in the Uinta Basin, was in the lead, accompanied by Fred and Lyman Hamblin, Jacob’s brother and son.17

A second supply train was to meet the party at the Dirty Devil, but in the unexplored sandstone maze of what is now Garfield and Wayne Counties, Hamblin could not find the headwaters of the river. Consequently, Powell’s group cached one of its boats—the Cañonita—and started down Glen Canyon for the Paria in the remaining two vessels. Hamblin arranged for a resupply at Crossing of the Fathers in lower Glen Canyon.18

At Crossing of the Fathers, Powell left the party to return to Salt Lake City. Accompanying Powell was Jack Hillers, whom Powell had hired in Salt Lake City the previous May as an oarsman.19 Their route to Kanab took them through the Skutumpah settlement, where John D. Lee had a ranch to which he had moved some of his large and growing family earlier that year. On October 17, Hillers recorded that Lee “entertained us hugely.”20

Back on the Colorado River, Thompson led the remaining eight members of the party to the point where the Paria River joins the Colorado (known today as Lee’s Ferry), where they arrived on October 23, 1871.21 At this point, the high sandstone walls dropped just enough to permit relatively easy access to the river from both sides. The Paria Crossing had long been used by both Indians and whites to traverse the river.

16 Ibid., 230.

17 “Journal of Stephen Vandiver Jones, April 21, 1871–December 14, 1872,” ed. Herbert E. Gregory, Utah Historical Quarterly 16–17 (1948–1949): 70–71; “Diary of Almon Harris Thompson,” ed. Herbert E. Gregory, Utah Historical Quarterly 7 (January, April, and July 1939): 41–42.

18 “Journal of Stephen Vandiver Jones,” 70–71; Worster, River Running West, 230. Isaac C. Haight—the main church, civic, and military leader at Cedar City who helped plan the Mountain Meadows Massacre—had accompanied Hamblin in his effort to find the route down to the mouth of the Dirty Devil. “Journal of W. C. Powell, April 21, 1871–December 7, 1872,” ed. Charles Kelly, Utah Historical Quarterly 16–17 (1948–1949): 417–18.

19 Worster, River Running West, 222, 231. Hillers served as part-time assistant to original Powell survey photographer E. O. Beaman and photographer-in-training Clem Powell. Later he was an apprentice to replacement photographer James Fennemore. In the process, Hillers mastered the complex, laborious photographic process of the day. A clear favorite of Major Powell, Hillers rose from deck hand to become photographer of the survey. Later he served as photographer for both “Powell’s Geological and Geographical Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region” and the United States Geological Survey. “Photographed All the Best Scenery”: Jack Hillers’s Diary of the Powell Expeditions, 1871–1875, ed. Don D. Fowler (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1972), 1.

20“Photographed All the Best Scenery,” 87.

21 “Diary of Almon Harris Thompson,” 56–60. One member of the original 1871 crew, Frank Richardson, was left behind at Browns Park because the strain of the voyage had proven too much for him. Worster, River Running West, 226; “Journal of W. C. Powell,” 270.

Powell’s men were low on food. Frederick Dellenbaugh noted that “so liberally had we used our rations that we were nearing the end, and we began to look hopefully in the direction from which we expected the pack-train to arrive.” Yet “four days passed and still there was no sign of it.”22 The party was reduced to half-rations.

They had their first visitors on October 28—five days after their arrival. From the far side of the Colorado, not from Kanab, they first heard an “Indian yell” and looked to see “three natives.” Soon another figure appeared “and in good English came the words, ‘G-o-o-d m-o-r-n-i-n-g,’ long drawn out.” Powell’s men rowed over to investigate. “On landing,” Dellenbaugh wrote, “we were met by a slow-moving, very quiet individual, who said he was Jacob Hamblin. His voice was so low, his manner so simple, his clothing so usual, that I could hardly believe that this was Utah’s famous Indian-fighter and manager.”23 Hamblin and company were returning from an expedition to the Navajo.

Accompanying Hamblin were nine Navajos for a trading visit to the southern Mormon settlements, as well as Isaac C. Haight, George W. Adair, and Joe Mangum. Haight and Adair had both participated in the Mountain Meadows Massacre, Haight playing a major role in Cedar City and Adair being present on the ground.24

The members of the Powell expedition took great pleasure in the company of both the Navajos and the Mormons. They made supper for the group. The Navajos were “a very jolly set of fellows, ready to take or give any amount of chaff, and perfectly honest,” Dellenbaugh wrote.25 Clem Powell remembered that the Powell men persuaded the Navajos to sing and dance. After a while, Clem recorded, “all of us, white and red, joined hands and danced around the fire.”26 When the Navajos retired, the remaining visitors—Hamblin, Haight, Adair, and Mangum—sang some “Mormon songs” and spent time “relating . . . their Mormon experiences.”27

Before leaving the next day, the Mormons shared with the hungry Powell expedition what Clem Powell called “Mormon beans” and what Dellenbaugh (perhaps more accurately) called “Mexican beans.” These “reddish brown” beans (in contrast to the white beans in the expedition’s supplies) helped the Powell group to “eke out [their] supplies” for a few more days.28 Still, if the supply train did not arrive soon, Powell’s men faced

22 Frederick S. Dellenbaugh, A Canyon Voyage: The Narrative of the Second Powell Expedition down the Green-Colorado River from Wyoming, and the Explorations on Land, in the Years 1871 and 1872 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1908), 152.

23 Ibid., 153.

24 Ibid., 153; “Journal of W. C. Powell,” 358–59; “Journal of Stephen Vandiver Jones,” 105.

25 Dellenbaugh, Canyon Voyage , 154; “Journal of W. C. Powell,” 35–59; “Diary of Almon Harris Thompson,” 60.

26 “Journal of W. C. Powell,” 359.

27 Dellenbaugh, Canyon Voyage, 154; “Journal of W. C. Powell,” 359.

28 “Journal of W. C. Powell,” 359; Dellenbaugh, Canyon Voyage, 154.

possible starvation. “If we are compelled to leave here on foot with but one day’s rations,” wrote John F. Steward, who was injured, “I do not know how it will end. . . . I should probably not survive.”29

Second Powell expedition, Green River, Wyoming, May 22, 1871. Individuals shown, from left: (left boat) E.O. Beaman, Andrew Hattan, Walter Clement Powell; (center boat) Stephen Vandiver Jones, John K. Hillers, John Wesley Powell, Frederick S. Dellenbaugh; (right boat) Almon Harris Thompson, John F. Steward, Francis Marion Bishop, Frank Richardson.

Arriving in Kanab, Hamblin and Haight learned that Powell’s supply train had not been heard from for days and might be lost. Haight enlisted Charles Riggs to join him in making a hurried trip to the Paria with a pack mule laden with relief supplies. The two men covered the distance from Kanab to the mouth of the Paria in two and a half days and “galloped into camp at full speed” on November 4. Less than twenty-four hours earlier, the supply train had finally arrived.30 The pack train had become lost, taking ten days to cover the distance Haight had traveledin less than three.

Haight’s efforts impressed Powell’s men. Both Clem Powell and Fred Dellenbaugh made special note of the quantity of butter packed on their mule, saying it was “the first time we had seen any of this latter article since the final breakfast at [Green River, Wyoming] on May 22d.”31 Clem praised

29“Journal of John F. Steward, May 22–November 3, 1871,” ed. William Culp Darrah, Utah Historical Quarterly 16–17 (1948–49): 249–50.

30 Dellenbaugh, Canyon Voyage, 157; “Journal of W. C. Powell,” 361.

31 Dellenbaugh, Canyon Voyage, 157; “Journal of W. C. Powell,” 362.

uTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETy

Haight and Riggs as “large-hearted gentlemen” who had “hastened to our rescue,” making “the journey in two days, driving furiously.” Their “prompt and generous efforts in our behalf we . . . will long remember.”32

That night, “Haight favoured us with some Mormon songs and recited examples of the marvellous curative effects of the Mormon ‘laying on of hands.’”33 From their personal dealings with the man, Powell’s men could not reconcile Haight’s great kindness with his reputed role in the massacre. “He is an agreeable man in camp,” wrote Stephen Jones. “It is hard to believe him guilty of the crimes laid to his charge. Can it be that he would sanction and assist in the murder of women and children?”34

For much of 1872, Powell was absent from the survey that bore his name. Thompson took charge of the work just as he had during earlier travels on the Green and Colorado. The principal labor of the winter months was to establish a nine-mile base line and then triangulate from that base line to establish distances and locations for mapping. Thompson directed the efforts of a crew that included Bishop (for a time), Clem Powell, Fred Dellenbaugh, Jack Hillers, Stephen Jones, E. O. Beaman, and

32 Chicago Tribune, February 27, 1872, in “Journal of W. C. Powell,” 361–62n. A few months later, on February 6, 1872, Thompson paid Charles Riggs $12.00 for the “trip to Colorado” and “Mrs. Riggs $10.00 for butter and milk.” “Diary of Almon Harris Thompson,” 67–68.

33 Dellenbaugh, Canyon Voyage, 157.

34 “Journal of Stephen Vandiver Jones,” 106. Thompson felt sufficiently comfortable with Haight to dine in Toquerville with the Haight family on April 10, 1872. “Diary of Almon Harris Thompson,” 74.

Second Powell Expedition, Eastern Operations.

Andrew Hattan, along with various Mormon locals.35 Thompson and his men finished the Kanab base line on February 21, 1872.36

The following day, Thompson added Mountain Meadows Massacre participant and Kanab resident George W. Adair to the survey payroll at forty dollars per month. Twenty years old at the time of the massacre, Adair was now in his mid-thirties. He had more extensive involvement with the Powell survey than any other massacre participant, working under Thompson’s direction on and off for the next year and a half. Perhaps not coincidentally, on the day Thompson hired Adair, he noted: “Found all our stock for the first time for a month.”37

On March 21, Thompson led an excursion southwest from Pipe Spring across the Uinkaret Plateau toward Mt. Trumbull. They camped in the vicinity of Mt. Trumbull, making visits to the tops of that mount and Mt. Logan. Some visited the Grand Canyon. By early April, the heavy, late-season snow had chased the party down to lower (and warmer) climes in the vicinity of St. George. Thompson recorded on April 7 that they “ate all our flour tonight” and the next morning had a “breakfast of beans.”38

The next day, at Berry Springs along the Virgin River (just south of Harrisville Gap and present-day Quail Creek Reservoir) they encountered George Adair with Clem Powell and a wagon with corn and beef from Kanab. Adair had left Kanab for Washington County on April 3. Thompson noted: “George commenced work again.” Two days after meeting up with Adair at Berry Springs, Thompson “took dinner at Haights” in Toquerville.39

One editor has characterized Adair’s role in the Powell survey as “horse wrangler, packer, and man-of-all-work.”40 Thompson noted “taking George Adair with me to talk to Indians.”41 On April 22, Adair retrieved “some goods that the Major had procured in Salt Lake City and shipped down for distribution among the Sheviwits and Pa-Utes”; he then hauled the “Indian goods” to Ft. Pearce, southeast of St. George. Next, Adair joined Thompson,

35 Robert W. Olsen Jr., “The Powell Survey Kanab Base Line,” Utah Historical Quarterly 37 (Spring 1969): 262–64; Worster, River Running West, 234–36. The Powell surveyors’ first camp was at Eight Mile Spring, east of Kanab at Eight Mile Gap at the base of the Shinarump Cliffs just north of the UtahArizona border.

36 Olsen, “Powell Survey Kanab Base Line,” 266.

37 “Diary of Almon Harris Thompson,” 69. For references to Adair’s interactions with Powell’s men, see Fowler, “Photographed All the Best Scenery,” 95, 96, 104, 107, 110n61, 111n63, 113, 117; “Journal of Stephen Vandiver Jones,” 113–14, 120, 126–27, 131–33, 135–36, 138–39, 141; “Diary of Almon Harris Thompson,” 74–78, 88, 90, 93, 98, 101, 105–6; “Journal of W. C. Powell,” 410, 413, 417, 422, 449, 453–54, 457–58, 471, 475. Herbert E. Gregory, in “Stephen Vandiver Jones, 1840–1920,” 15, wrote, “To no small degree the success of the land surveys is due to the skill and knowledge of Utah men employed as guides and packers,” including “George Adair.”

38 “Diary of Almon Harris Thompson,” 70–74.

39 Ibid., 74; “Journal of Stephen Vandiver Jones,” 113.

40 “Journal of Stephen Vandiver Jones,” 113n94. This source mistakenly lists an obituary for a different George Adair.

41 “Diary of Almon Harris Thompson,” 74.

Thompson’s wife, Ellen, Dellenbaugh, and Clem on an exploringtrip to Mt. Bangs in the Virgin Mountains southwest of St. George. 42 In the midst of this, Adair repeatedly picked up supplies for the group.43

Adair’s trip to St. George with Professor and Mrs. Thompson coincided with news that the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that “the trials in the territorial court over which Judge [James B.] McKean presided were illegal,” resulting in the release of certain Mormon prisoners, including Brigham Young. While the Thompsons returned to Berry Springs, Adair remained in Washington with fellow Mormon and survey wrangler William (Willie) Johnson to enjoy the “jubilee” that ensued.44

“Johnson returned at noon” the next day and “reported a big time last night. Nearly every one drunk.” Jones concluded: “From his appearance judge that he assisted.” As for Adair, he “had a fight and remained to have his trial. Came in near night, looking considerably the worse for rough usage.” Nonetheless, Jones recorded that the next day “Adair went to Rockville to buy corn,” and three days later “Adair went to Washington to buy flour.”45 Apparently, Adair’s rowdy and exuberant behavior, fueled by a bit of Dixie wine, did not diminish his usefulness to the survey party or

42 “Journal of Stephen Vandiver Jones,” 120, 121; “Diary of Almon Harris Thompson,” 76. One of the expedition’s boats was named the “Nellie Powell,” after Thompson’s wife, Ellen L. Powell, a sister of John Wesley Powell.

43 “Journal of Stephen Vandiver Jones,” 117, 120; “Diary of Almon Harris Thompson,” 75.

44 “Journal of Stephen Vandiver Jones,” 119. On the legal case in question, Clinton v. Englebrecht, see Edwin Brown Firmage and Richard Collin Mangrum, Zion in the Courts: A Legal History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1830–1900 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 137–38, 246–47.

45 “Journal of Stephen Vandiver Jones,” 119, 120. An entry in the records of the Washington County probate court for May 6, 1872, shows that Adair and three others were convicted of “riot” on April 17, 1872, and were fined ten dollars. County Court Record Book, Book B, May 6, 1872, p. 11, Washington County, County Clerk, Court Records, 1854–1887, film 484840, item 5, Family History Library, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah.

Almon Harris Thompson, Powell’s second in command and director of field operations for the second expedition.

Thompson’s confidence in Adair’s ability to keep the group supplied. On May 10, Thompson recorded, “George went home.” Four days later, Thompson “let George Adair have 215 lbs. flour” and, on May 20, Adair “commenced work again.”46

Shortly thereafter, Adair joined Thompson and others of the survey on the first part of a remarkable four-week journey (May 25-June 22) from Kanab to the mouth of the Dirty Devil River over some of the wildest country on the continent. Their immediate goal was to locate the mouth of the Dirty Devil and retrieve the Cañonita. If he successfully located this junction, Thompson would accomplish what Powell, Hamblin, and others before him had failed to do. Where Hamblin had mistaken the Escalante River for the Dirty Devil and others had become snarled in the convoluted slickrock wilderness west of the Colorado River, Thompson alone recognized that the Escalante ran to the west of the Henry Mountains (then called the “Dirty Devil” or “Unknown” mountains), while the Dirty Devil ran to the east of them.47

The party began to assemble in Johnson Canyon on May 25. New photographer James Fennemore, delayed by illness, had missed the turn north into Johnson Canyon in the dark. When he finally stopped at midnight, he “tied his mule and tried to sleep.” In the night, “the mule broke loose,” and Fennemore had to “back track” on foot to Johnson Canyon. Meanwhile, Adair had gone “back on the road to find some things lost last night” on his way and found Fennemore, thirsty, tired, and hungry. With Adair’s assistance, Fennemore finally reached camp at 10 a.m., “played out.”48

The party set out on Thursday, May 30, 1872. (Thompson employed massacre participant Nephi Johnson to care for a horse during his absence.) In addition to six members of the second Powell expedition (Thompson, Jones, Dellenbaugh, Hillers, Clem Powell, and Hattan), the group included Pardon Dodds, former agent from the Uintah Agency; Fennemore; and the two Mormon wranglers, Adair and Willie Johnson.49

On May 31, 1872, the group found itself six miles from the base of the Paunsaugunt Plateau southeast of the “Pink Cliffs” of what is now Bryce Canyon National Park, in a “beautiful valley with a fine cool spring.” They were “about ¾ miles” north of Swallow Lake in Park Wash. This little lake (“200 yards across,” according to Thompson) had its outlet through “a narrow cañon of white [Navajo] sandstone.” Jones declared the location “very pretty,” and Dellenbaugh concurred that it was “an exceedingly beautiful little valley.”50

46 “Diary of Almon Harris Thompson,” 77, 78.

47 Worster, River Running West, 242–44.

48 “Journal of Stephen Vandiver Jones,” 126–27; “Journal of W. C. Powell,” 417. 49 “Diary of Almon Harris Thompson,” 79; “Journal of Stephen Vandiver Jones,” 127, 127–28n109.

50 “Diary of Almon Harris Thompson,” 79; “Journal of Stephen Vandiver Jones,” 128-29; Dellenbaugh, Canyon Voyage, 197.

Struck by the beauty of the location, with water from both a spring and a lake, “George Adair instantly declared that he meant to come back here to live.”51 According to Jones, “Adair laid claim to the entire valley by sticking up a notice to that effect by the spring.”52 Thompson proposed to call the wide, timbered valley in which the party set their camp “Adair Valley” and the nearby watering area “Adair Spring.”53

The group proceeded northeast along the heads of several deep Navajo sandstone gorges and finally emerged in a side canyon where, six years earlier—in August 1866, at the height of the Black Hawk War—a band of Indians attacked Mormon militiamen, killing Elijah Averett Jr. The Mormons buried Averett in a shallow grave. Dellenbaugh noted that “the wolves had dug out [the grave], leaving the human bones scattered all around.” Clem recorded, “We replace the remains, hoping they will not again be disturbed.”54

As the exploration stalled in Potato Valley about a week later, Thompson concluded to send Adair and two of the Powell party—Clem Powell and Stephen Jones—back “to Kanab for rations,” with instructions to “return here as soon as possible.”55 Thompson could see what is also apparent today: the Escalante drainage and the Boulder Mountain high country defy all order and logic. Given the group’s uncertainty about the trail to the Dirty Devil and the remote, daunting terrain, resupply was essential.

Accordingly, on June 8, 1872, Adair, Jones, and Clem turned their faces toward Kanab leading a train of four pack horses. By the time the group reached Kanab on June 12, Adair was “quite sick.” Nonetheless, the next day they “packed 3 horses and left Kanab at 11 A.M.” By June 16, when they had traveled sixty-two miles to the head of the Paria, Jones wrote, “Adair very unwell” and “Adair very sick.” After covering thirteen miles, the men “decided to camp until morning” to permit Adair some rest. The group soon pushed on despite discomfort and inconvenience.56

For more than a week, the three-man relief party waited for Thompson, Dodds, and Hattan (the other four members of the party were to take the Cañonita down the Colorado to the Paria from the mouth of the Dirty Devil). It was “anxious waiting” as the men considered whether “the party . . . had trouble with the Indians.” On June 30, their path crossed a fresh horse

51 Dellenbaugh, Canyon Voyage, 197.

52 “Journal of Stephen Vandiver Jones,” 129; “Journal of W. C. Powell,” 419.

53 “Diary of Almon Harris Thompson,” 79. Today, this location is just south of the Skutumpah Road in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, a few miles north of Lick Wash. There is no indication that Adair ever settled in the valley. At 6,500 feet and many miles from any settlement, the setting’s beauty was likely outweighed by the impracticality of living in such a harsh and isolated place. Not much has changed in the intervening 140 years.

54 Dellenbaugh, Canyon Voyage (1908), 197–98; “Journal of W. C. Powell,” 420–21. On events surrounding the killing of Averett, see John Alton Peterson, Utah’s Black Hawk War (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1998), 313n54.

55 “Journal of Stephen Vandiver Jones,” 132.

56 “Journal of Stephen Vandiver Jones,” 132–33; “Diary of Almon Harris Thompson,” 82.

trail, and the resupply party met up with the returning explorers.57

They reported that, after twelve days’ effort and wandering, Thompson had successfully reached the point where the Dirty Devil met the Colorado. There, he left Dellenbaugh, Hillers, Fennemore, and Johnson to repair the Cañonita and float it down the Colorado to the Paria. Thompson, accompanied by Dodds and Hattan, turned back towards Kanab, where they met Adair and the others who had been waiting nearly two weeks.58

On returning to Kanab, Thompson turned his attention to another important aspect of the second leg of the voyage: resupply in the Grand Canyon. He took Adair and Jones, along with five Paiutes, on a short exploration trip to the Kaibab Plateau looking for resupply routes into the Grand Canyon. From Thompson’s description, the group reached the Grand Canyon on July 17 near what today is known as Monument Point, north of and several thousand feet above a bend in the Colorado River. Thompson determined their location to be due west of Mt. Trumbull and nine air miles from Kanab Wash, a location known as the “Pa Ute” trail down to the river at which “we can take rations in without trouble.”59

Willie Johnson soon arrived in Kanab from the mouth of the Paria to report that his four-man group had successfully floated the Cañonita down the Colorado from the Dirty Devil through Glen Canyon to the Paria Crossing. The three remaining members of that group—Hillers, Dellenbaugh, and Fennemore—along with Clem Powell and Hattan (who later traveled over from Kanab) waited nearly a month for Major Powell and Thompson to arrive.60

57

“Journal of Stephen Vandiver Jones,” 133–36.

58 “Diary of Almon Harris Thompson,” 83–88.

59 Ibid., 90–91.

60 “Diary of Almon Harris Thompson,” 91; Dellenbaugh, Canyon Voyage, 209–14.

Isaac Haight.

Of the Cañonita group’s arrival at the Paria crossing in 1872, Dellenbaugh wrote, “We discovered that some one had come in here since our last visit, and built a house.”61 In the early months of 1872, John D. Lee had commenced a ferry at the Paria Crossing and had established a home (“Lonely Dell”). When Powell’s men arrived, Lee was busy farming to provide for himself and one of his families.62

Firing signal shots and getting no reply, Dellenbaugh walked up the Paria with his Winchester on his shoulder. “Why I had the gun I don’t know,” Dellenbaugh later ruminated, “not for Lee of course.” One of Lee’s wives, Rachel Woolsey Lee, spotted Dellenbaugh and the rifle. As he approached the cabin, she slipped inside. Farther on, Dellenbaugh found Lee plowing a field. “Lee stopped the horses and resting his hands on the plough handles turned his head to look at the new comer,” Dellenbaugh recalled. “As soon as Lee understood who I was he was very pleasant and always was while we were there.”63 Hillers was with Dellenbaugh and recorded, “After stating our case, [Lee] told us to make his home our home until our men came down, which we accepted. Gave him some flour.”64 Dellenbaugh reported

61 Frederick S. Dellenbaugh, The Romance of the Colorado River: The Story of Its Discovery in 1540, with an Account of the Later Explorations, and with Special Reference to the Voyages of Powell through the Line of the Great Canyons (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1903), 316.

62 Mormon Chronicle, 2:175, 180–84, 195; Dellenbaugh, Canyon Voyage, 211.

63 Frederick S. Dellenbaugh to Mr. Kelly, in “F. S. Dellenbaugh of the Colorado: Some Letters Pertaining to the Powell Voyages and the History of the Colorado River,” ed. C. Gregory Crampton, Utah Historical Quarterly 37 (Spring 1969): 235; Dellenbaugh, Canyon Voyage, 210.

64 “Photographed All the Best Scenery,” 129.

Second Powell Expedition, Western Operations.

that the “farm [was] in fairly good order with crops growing, well irrigated by the water he took out of the Paria.”65

Lee had earlier confided in his diary, “I looked upon Powel as being a Friend to us.” He recorded the group’s arrival with an eye to the providential: “They were out of Meat & groceries, all but coffee & Flour.” Consequently, Powell’s men made a deal with Lee: “They offered to furnish us the Flour & coffee if we would cook for them till the remainder of the co. would come up with supplies from Kanab.” To Lee, “this was again another Manifestation of the favour of Heaven, for we were getting Short of Groceries, & flour was also good pay & when Powel’s supplies came that they furnish me.” Conversely, “our vegitables, Beef, Butter & cheese was a treat to [them].”66

Powell’s men immediately stepped in to assist Lee in moving a wagon along an eroded bank of the Colorado. They “were verry kind & saved our waggons from upsetting in the River,” Lee wrote.67 A midsummer storm sent a flash flood down the Paria, tearing out a recently constructed diversiondam and filling the irrigation ditches with heavy silt. Powell’s men attempted to repair the dam. This proved unsuccessful, though, when another “freshet” swept down the Paria, nearly “tak[ing] th[e]m away, tools & all.”68 On July 19, Clem recorded: “Received another invitation to work on the dam. Accepted it and lost our shovel; Andy swore.”69

Powell’s men assisted with Lee’s garden. Hillers noted: “Hoed onions and beets in the forenoon.” On August 2, Hillers “commenced to make a cultivator for Lee.”70 Dellenbaugh joined Hillers in doing a little gardening. “On Monday having nothing else to do,” Dellenbaugh wrote, “we took some hoes and worked in Lee’s garden till near noon.” He added, “The next day we worked in the garden again, repaired the irrigating ditch, and helped about the place in a general way, glad enough to have some occupation even though the sun was burning hot and the thermometer stood at 110° in the shade.”71 On July 29, Clem recorded that Dellenbaugh had been “plowing for ‘Brother Lee’” and “returned late from Lee’s with a lame foot.” In sum, Dellenbaugh explained, “almost every day we did some work in the garden and we also repaired the irrigation dam.”72

Lee kept what he saw as his part of the bargain with Powell’s men. As Clem put it on his arrival from Kanab, “The boys have been boarding with Mrs. Lee, No. the 18th,” Emma Batchelor.73 Indeed, on the day that Clem

65

Dellenbaugh, Canyon Voyage, 211.

66 Mormon Chronicle, 2:194, 204–5.

67 Ibid., 2:205.

68 Ibid., 2:206; “Photographed All the Best Scenery,” 130; Dellenbaugh, Canyon Voyage, 211.

69 “Journal of W. C. Powell,” 433.

70

“Photographed All the Best Scenery,” 129–32. Clem also noted on July 31: “Another day wasted and spent in idleness. Thermometer regularly reaches 110° above zero.” “Journal of W. C. Powell,” 435.

71 Dellenbaugh, Canyon Voyage, 211.

72 “Journal of W. C. Powell,” 434; Dellenbaugh, Canyon Voyage , 211.

73 “Journal of W. C. Powell,” 432.

and Hattan arrived, “Sister Emma, as she would in Utah properly be called, invited us to dinner and supper,” Dellenbaugh wrote.74 On July 16, after “the boys worked on the dam,” Clem noted “a gay dinner at Lee’s and some home-made beer.”75

Assistance from Lee’s family also came in the form of fresh produce. One evening after working in the Lee garden, Hillers and Dellenbaugh returned to camp with corn and squashes. Clem commented, “Vegetables are doing us a pile of good at this season of the year.” A few days later he noted that Lee had sent “a few squashes and some onions.” Still later, “Lee sent over some green corn and squashes.”76

Lee did not pass up the opportunity to share his Mormon faith with his visitors. On July 21, Lee visited the Powell camp to deliver a Navajo blanket that Clem had lost on the trail from Jacob’s Pools. Clem wrote, “‘Brother’ Lee . . . regaled us with the doctrines of the Latter-day Saints; boasts of having 18 wives and 62 children.” 77 Dellenbaugh noted that “Brother Lee . . . called to give us a lengthy dissertation on the faith of the Latter-Day Saints.” As Lee did so, Andy Hattan, “always up to mischief, in his quiet way, delighted to get behind [Lee] and cock a rifle. At the sound of the ominous click Lee would wheel like a flash to see what was up. We had no intention of capturing him, of course,” Dellenbaugh reflected, “but it amused Andy to act in a way that kept Lee on the qui vive.”78

To celebrate the July 24 holiday—what Clem called “the anniversary of Mormon Independence”—Lee and his family fixed “a splendid Dinner & invited our generous friends . . . to spend the glorious 24th with us & participate in the festivities & recreations.”79 “Had a good dinner,” Clem Powell recorded. “The Old Gent regaled us with sermons, jokes, cards, &c.” 80 Dellenbaugh concluded his description of the day: “So far as our intercourse with Lee was concerned we had no cause for complaint. He was genial, courteous, and generous.”81 Hillers wrote that they had “a splendid dinner” and “played cards and sang songs.” But despite Lee’s sermons, the Powell men “returned to camp without a change of opinion of Mormonism.”82 Lee’s enthusiasm and frequent preaching led Clem Powell to conclude that “Lee is a little crazy.”83 Lee felt the same mixture of wonder and oddness toward his guests, judging that the July 24 celebration went off well. “All enjoyed ourselves first rate,” he wrote, “with many thanks from our strange friends.”84

74

Dellenbaugh, Canyon Voyage, 211.

75 “Journal of W. C. Powell,” 433.

76 Ibid., 435–36.

77 Ibid., 433.

78

Dellenbaugh, Canyon Voyage, 212.

79 “Journal of W. C. Powell,” 434; Mormon Chronicle, 2:206.

80 “Journal of W. C. Powell,” 434.

81 Dellenbaugh, Canyon Voyage, 212.

82 “Photographed All the Best Scenery,” 130.

83 “Journal of W. C. Powell,” 434.

84 Mormon Chronicle, 2:206.

As might be expected, the topic of the massacre came up almost as soon as the Cañonita party reached Lonely Dell from the Dirty Devil. The night of their arrival, Lee confided in Dellenbaugh “his own version of the Mountain Meadows Massacre claiming that he really had nothing to do with it and had tried to stop it.”85 Whether Dellenbaugh believed Lee’s story at the time or not, he found that “personally,” Lee “was an agreeable man” and “pleasant enough.” Dellenbaugh felt “sure that, ordinarily he would have had no murderous intentions.” Although Powell’s men had no plans to apprehend the fugitive, “yet he sometimes thought we might be trying to capture him,” Dellenbaugh recalled.86

Powell and Lee crossed paths on August 13, 1872, just a mile out of Lonely Dell.87 Powell was heading for the survey’s camp at the mouth of the Paria. “‘Brother’ Lee invited the new-comers over to supper,” Clem wrote.88 The group enjoyed “wattermellons” selected by Lee and Powell and “a super of vegitables . . . with much applause to the donors.”89

Powell was in a hurry to complete the run of the Grand Canyon. On August 15, he sent Adair back to Kanab with the wagons. Thompson

85 Dellenbaugh, Canyon Voyage, 211. In fact, Lee’s role in the massacre was substantial. See Ronald W. Walker, Richard E. Turley Jr., and Glen M. Leonard, Massacre at Mountain Meadows: An American Tragedy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 142–45, 148, 153–55, 157–59, 161–62, 168–73, 187–209.

86 Dellenbaugh, Romance of the Colorado, 138n1; Dellenbaugh to Kelly, in Crampton, “F. S. Dellenbaugh of the Colorado,” 235–36.

87 Mormon Chronicle, 2:207; “Photographed All the Best Scenery,” 132.

88 “Journal of W. C. Powell,” 436.

89 Mormon Chronicle, 2:208.

Second Powell Expedition, first encampment.

uTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETy

recorded that they gave Adair seventy-five dollars with instructions to buy rations and meet the party at the mouth of the Kanab in the Grand Canyon by September 4.90

Powell was apprehensive about the remaining leg of the voyage—the darkest, most isolated section of the trip—because not only was it laced with rocks and rapids, but the water level in the Colorado was much higher than when Powell had passed through in 1869.91 His young and depleted crew would need the confidence and assurance that supplies awaited them at a specific location downstream.

Adair’s resupply role was crucial. Having lost three men on his first expedition because of despair, Powell knew the psychological, as well as practical, peril of running short on basic provisions. That Powell now entrusted Adair with responsibility to move supplies down Kanab Canyon to the Colorado River by a date certain underscores the confidence that Powell and Thompson had developed in this massacre participant. The leaders of the survey knew from experience that Adair was a frontiersman, confident enough in the wild to follow directions and arrive on time at a remote rendezvous point where resupply was essential.

In Thompson’s diary, Adair is always “George,” suggesting an affection or familiarity not afforded other members of the party. Clem Powell captured Adair’s lively personality: “Adair is our Indian interpreter, a late acquisition to the party. He abounds in jest and anecdotes; his yarns about the campfire would set up a Dime Novel Company for a twelve-month.”92 Adair told Powell’s men about the massacre. Dellenbaugh remembered: “George Adair, whom I knew well, a young fellow at the time, said he joined the crowd without knowing what it was all about.” From his experience with Adair, Dellenbaugh was inclined to believe that Haight, Lee, and Philip Klingensmith were the “real perpetrators” of the crime.93

As Powell and his men commenced the final leg of their journey, Lee summarized in his diary entry for July 24 his view of the group as “our generous friends of Maj. Powel’s expedition.” 94 In turn, Dellenbaugh remembered, “Lee was most cordial and we could not have asked better treatment than he gave us the whole time we were at Lonely Dell.”95

The push down the Colorado from the Paria to the Kanab was, in the eyes of Dellenbaugh, “a forlorn hope.” The expedition was undermanned without original members Francis Bishop, Beaman, and Steward. They were down to just two boats with the roughest and most isolated stretch of river ahead in high water. The enterprise evoked great uncertainty.96

90 “Diary of Almon Harris Thompson,” 93; “Journal of W. C. Powell,” 437.

91 “Journal of W. C. Powell,” 438.

92 Ibid., 422.

93 Frederick S. Dellenbaugh to Mr. Kelly, August 16, 1934, in “F. S. Dellenbaugh of the Colorado,” 242 94 Mormon Chronicle, 2:206.

95 Dellenbaugh, Canyon Voyage, 216.

96 Ibid., 215.

The three-week run through the Grand Canyon, although a challenge, achieved the basic scientific goals of the expedition. When Powell and his men reached Kanab Wash on September 7, George Adair and two other men were there to meet them with supplies.97 With reports of unfriendly Indians downstream, high water that made the rougher rapids ahead even more dangerous than on the 1869 voyage, and little more to be gained on the scientific front by running the rest of the canyon, Powell and Thompson concluded to terminate their journey at that point and head north to Kanab. Thompson wrote of informing “the boys of our decision this morning. All very pleased. The fact is each one is impressed with the impossibility of continuing down the river.”98 By September 12, most of the party was back in Kanab. Survey work continued for the next several months—with Adair in his accustomed support role—but by the end of 1872, the remainder of Powell’s men who had come down the river from Wyoming in 1871 had returned to their homes in the east. Only Thompson and Hillers would continue to work with Powell in the survey.99 Powell’s confidence in Adair is seen once more in a final assignment: Adair guided American landscape artist Thomas Moran and New York Times correspondent Justin E. Colburn from Fillmore south to Kanab. As Moran reported to his wife: “Powell does not leave here with us, but gives us a man [Adair] who has been with him a long while. So we are all right.” 100 Their route took them through Toquerville on July 23 after a side trip to the dark pink Navajo sandstone cliffs southeast of Kanarraville, now part of the Kolob section of Zion National Park. Adair apparently also served as “guide” for “an excursion of four days” into what “is called by the Mormons ‘Little Zion Valley,’” today’s Zion Canyon.101

97 “Photographed All the Best Scenery,” 141–42.

98 “Diary of Almon Harris Thompson,” 98.

99 “Journal of Stephen Vandiver Jones,” 155; Worster, River Running West, 257–58.

100 Tom to “My dear Wife,” July 17, 1873, in Amy O. Bassford, ed., Home-Thoughts, from Afar: Letters of Thomas Moran to Mary Nimmo Moran (East Hampton, NY: East Hampton Free Library, 1967), 33; Worster, River Running West, 298–301; [Justin E. Colburn], letter, July 23, 1873, in “The Land of Mormon,” New York Times, August 7, 1873; [Justin E. Colburn], letter, August 13, 1873, in “The Colorado Canon,” New York Times, September 4, 1873. In 1872, Powell had “been appointed Commissioner to locate the Indians of southern Utah and northern Arizona on reservations.” Gregory, in “Journal of Stephen Vandiver Jones,” 141.

101 [Justin E. Colburn], letter, August 13, 1873, in “The Colorado Canon,” New York Times, September 4, 1873.

George Adair.

The men who accompanied Powell on his second expedition—none of whom was over the age of thirty-five—returned east to lives of accomplishment far from the desert country of the Colorado Plateau. Only young Dellenbaugh—not yet twentyat the conclusion of the second voyage—stayed in close contact with the West. For sixty years after the second expedition, Dellenbaugh continued to correspond with people in Utah; he had been profoundly moved by what he had seen and experienced during his twenty months with Powell’s men in the canyon country.

In compiling the account of his explorations, Powell conflated the original journey of 1869 with the second expedition of the 1870s.102 Notably, he was silent about his expedition’s repeated interactions with, and reliance on, figures who had a part in the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Lost in the earliest telling of the story were the firsthand accounts of contact and reciprocity over a period of four years between the youthful adventurers from the East and the seasoned Mormon frontiersmen of the West, some of whom bore blame for the massacre of Arkansas emigrants in 1857.

102 J. W. Powell, Exploration of the Colorado River of the West and Its Tributaries, Explored in 1869, 1870, 1871, and 1872 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1875). Goetzmann labels this a “literary strategy” that “did extreme violence to history, obscuring not only some of his [Powell’s] own achievements but also those of the able men who served under him on his second expedition.” The second expedition, he noted, “produced the more lasting scientific results.” Goetzmann, foreword to Dellenbaugh, Canyon Voyage (1991), xviii.

Second Powell expedition, boats in Marble Canyon, 1872.

uTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETy

Labor Spies in Utah

During the Early Twentieth Century

By dAWN RETTA BRIMHALL ANd SANdRA dAWN BRIMHALL

When George W. Riddell came looking for work in Utah’s Tintic Mining District in 1905, the boomtown where he settled, Eureka, was the district’s business and civic center. Eureka had a population of approximately thirty-five hundred, and was home to more than ninety businesses and four major mines— the Bullion Beck and Champion, Centennial Eureka, Eureka Hill and Gemini—and later the Chief Consolidated Mining Company. A few years earlier, Tintic had been heralded by The Salt Lake Mining Review as “among the leading mining sections of the intermountain region,” and the Eureka Reporter had boasted that the district, which had produced approximately thirty-five million dollars in ore from 18701899, was “carving its way into becoming one of the richest and largest producers of the entire country.”1

The Pinkerton Labor Spy, an exposé of the use of labor spies to disrupt and gather information on western labor unions. The book was published in 1907.

1 Eureka Reporter, September 15, 1905. The Tintic Mining District is located approximately seventy miles southwest of Salt Lake City in Utah and Juab counties. Eureka had a population of 3,325 in 1900 that grew to 3,829 in 1910. Philip F. Notarianni, “Tintic Mining District” in From the Ground Up: The History of Mining in Utah, ed. Colleen Whitley (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2006), 342, 353-54. Eureka’s population experienced ebbs and flows between census years due to the transitory nature of the mining town.

Dawn Retta Brimhall teaches high school history and geography at City Academy in Salt Lake City. Sandra Dawn Brimhall is a writer and amateur historian who lives in West Jordan.

After finding employment in one of the mines, Riddell promptly joined and took an active role in the affairs of the Eureka Miners’ Union No. 151, which was affiliated with the Western Federation of Miners (WFM). By September 1905, he had moved up the union ladder to become vicepresident, and, six months later, on March 9, 1906, he was elected president. Riddell served in this capacity until September 7, 1906, and he was subsequently chosen to represent the union at the WFM national convention scheduled for June 1907 in Denver, Colorado.

The promising newcomer, however, soon proved to be a flash in the pan. A month before the convention, in May 1907, Riddell suddenly left town, without settling with creditors or leaving his forwarding address. Like fool’s gold, he was not what he had pretended to be. Although he had posed as a hard-rock miner, Riddell was in fact an undercover Pinkerton detective, known as “Agent No. 36,” who had been hired by the Tintic Mine Owners’ Association to spy on the union.2

Riddell and other Pinkerton detectives across the United States were forced to take cover after they were publicly identified and denounced as labor spies by a disgruntled former Pinkerton National Detective Agency employee, Morris Friedman, who had worked as a stenographer in the agency’s Denver office. In 1907 Friedman published an exposé titled The Pinkerton Labor Spy that detailed the company’s use of its agents to “disrupt, subvert, and spy on the Western Federation and other unions.”3

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as unions struggled to organize various parts of America’s labor, one strategy used by businessmen, railroad owners and mine moguls to combat unionization was to employ undercover private detectives to infiltrate unions and to monitor their activities. As a result, during this period, private detective agencies experienced unprecedented growth and prosperity. In 1899 the Pinkerton agency hired fifty-eight new detectives and an additional sixty-five the next year. Within a few years, the agency also opened twelve new offices, increasing its national total to twenty. By 1904 New York City alone had seventy-five different agencies and Chicago and Philadelphia were home to approximately thirty each.4

The spies reported on employees’ attitudes and work performance,

2 Eureka Reporter , September 15, 1905; March 9, 1906; May 17, 1907. The Pinkerton National Detective Agency, which was founded by Allan Pinkerton in Chicago in 1850, is a private security guard and detective agency.

3 Morris Friedman, The Pinkerton Labor Spy (New York: Wilshire Book Co., 1907); J. Anthony Lukas, Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets off a Struggle for the Soul of America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), 687.

4 Lukas, Big Trouble, 83-84. In 1907, there were three detective agencies listed in the R. L. Polk & Co. Salt Lake City Directory, but only one agency, the Western Detective Agency, appears to have had a local office, which was listed at 400-401 Herald Building. The other two agencies, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency and the Thiel Detective Service Company, were listed as having offices in Denver. However, according to an article in the Salt Lake Herald, dated October 27, 1906, the Thiel Agency of St. Louis filed a notice with the county clerk, announcing its intent to open a branch office in Salt Lake City.

identified union organizers and members, advised management of union plans and the possibility of strikes, obtained positions of leadership to influence union policies and encouraged members to be more favorable to management. Through studying the activities of Riddell, and other undercover agents, it is possible to analyze the character and methods of union spies and the result of their actions in Utah and neighboring states.5

Such a dramatic increase of private detectives throughout the nation was evidence of a massive breakdown of unity and trust among individuals, employers and employees, business colleagues, and government leaders and their constituents. There were several reasons for this erosion of mutual confidence—enormouseconomic growth and expansion of mass markets, migration of workers from rural areas to big cities, increased European immigration, corruption in business and government, and huge technological developments that changed the nature and pace of the miners’ work.6

James McParland, a spy for the Pinkerton Agency, infiltrated the Molly Maguires, a secret society of Irish coal miners in Pennsylvania in the 1870s. He later became head of the agency’s Denver office.

The technological advancements, such as compressed air drills, often decreased the number of workers needed and demoted experienced miners to muckers or shovelers, reducing their pay from $3.00 to $2.50 per day. The innovative equipment and procedures, if they were improperly

5 Friedman, The Pinkerton Labor Spy, 1; Lukas, Big Trouble, 83. Some labor spies also reported on problems in the work environment such as timbers that were in bad shape or a shortage of drills. They also evaluated the mine supervisors and noted when they were bad-tempered or uncivil to the miners. See Katherine G. Aiken, Idaho’s Bunker Hill: The Rise and Fall of a Great Mining Company, 1885-1981 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2005), 51.

6 Lukas, Big Trouble, 84; Ben E. Pingenot, Siringo (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1989), xix-xxi; Aiken, Idaho’s Bunker Hill, 11.

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implemented or when they occasionally failed, also created new risks for miners already working in a hazardous environment. Existing tension between mine owners and miners was further aggravated when the owners, seeking more luxurious living conditions, moved away from the mining towns, relying on managers to look after their interests. The miners blamed the faceless, “greedy” owners for many of their problems.7

To reclaim their status and to retake control of their workplace, miners organized into local unions. During the first years of the twentieth century, union membership in the United States increased from 868, 500 in 1900 to 2,072,700 by 1904.8 In Utah, hard-rock miners, coal miners and smelter workers also participated in the national trend toward unionization, although many of the early unions “more or less took on the form of fraternal organizations.”9

Mine owners responded to the dramatic increase in unions by forming owners’ associations that worked together to fix wages, to prevent union activists from organizing or obtaining employment and to keep tabs on existing unions. They also worked to divide the miners along ethnic lines and to disenchant them with the union leaders’ political views.10

Pinkerton detectives first became involved in labor issues in the early 1870s when the Molly Maguires, a secret society of Irish coal miners, began perpetrating terrorist activities in Pennsylvania’s anthracite counties. James McParland, a legendary Pinkerton operative, was assigned to infiltrate the Mollies and to stop the murders, violence and destruction of property.

Acting undercover for two and a half years using the pseudonym James McKenna, McParland obtained sufficient evidence to convict twenty Mollies for the crimes, and they were eventually hanged. The Pinkerton’s participation in the widely publicized Mollie Maguire case caused some to conclude the agency had an anti-labor bias.11

Successful undercover operatives like McParland possessed several

7 Elizabeth Jameson, All That Glitters: Class, Conflict, and Community in Cripple Creek (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 25, 76; Jeanette Rodda, “Go Ye and Study the Beehive: The Making of a Western Working Class (New York: Routledge, 2000), 173.

8 Aiken, Idaho’s Bunker Hill, 11; Allan Kent Powell, “The Foreign Element and the 1903-04 Carbon County Coal Miners’ Strike,” Utah Historical Quarterly 43 (1975): 125. According to Aiken, one of the main reasons miners formed unions was because of safety concerns. Many miners contributed one dollar per month to a hospital fund because, due to the dangerous nature of mining, hospitals were very important to miners. There was a general concern that the mine company was spending the miners’ hospital contributions. Jameson also stressed that mining was a hazardous occupation and that “family welfare depended on the health of the wage-earners. Injury sickness and death lurked as constant dangers.”Jameson, All That Glitters, 90-91.

9 Sheelwant B. Pawar, “The Structure and Nature of Labor Unions in Utah, An Historical Perspective, 1890-1920, Utah Historical Quarterly 35 (1967):246-48; David L. Schirer, “The Western Federation of Miners,” in Utah History Encyclopedia, ed. Allan Kent Powell (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 1994), 632-33.

10 Aiken, Idaho’s Bunker Hill, 46, 51-52; Mark Wyman, Hard Rock Epic: Western Miners and the Industrial Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 80.

11 Pingenot, Siringo, xix-xxi; Lukas, Big Trouble, 178-87. McParland, who was dubbed by some as the “Great Detective,” was eventually promoted as the head of the agency’s Denver office.

essential qualities besides quick-wits and nerve—they were “strong enough to bear heavy manual labor;” they were a “gregarious sort, who could drink and roughhouse;” and they were “American enough to keep faith with Pinkerton and civilization.” Many of the secret agents also were unmarried; a desirable characteristic for their type of work, so if worse came to worse they “wouldn’t leave behind a widow and a brood of helpless babes.”12

Some union leaders maintained there was another requirement for an effective labor spy—treachery. During the Molly Maguire trial, one of the defense attorneys, in describing McParland, said, “This man who will take you to his bosom, gain your confidence and stealthily work upon your affections, your favor or your esteem, and then like a viper turn upon you and betray you, ought to be condemned by every honorable and right-thinking person.”13

In 1891, the Pinkertons were associated with another high profile dispute between labor and management in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, when mine owners employed operatives from several agencies to infiltrate the local unions in the district’s mining camps. One of those agents was Charles A. Siringo, a tough and resourceful forty-four-year-old “cowboy detective” who had worked undercover out of the Pinkerton’s Denver office for five years.

Siringo had his work cut out for him. The miners were constantly on the lookout for spies and only a few weeks before Siringo arrived, they had run a detective from another agency out of town. Under the name C. Leon Allison, Siringo obtained work as a mucker for the Gem mine and then

12 Lukas, Big Trouble, 178; Aiken, Idaho’s Bunker Hill, 50. According to Aiken, “most of the operative reports emphasized how taxing the detectives found their undercover employment to be; the operatives often stayed home from work because they were too tired or the work was too difficult.”

13 Lukas, Big Trouble, 187.

Charles A. Siringo worked as an undercover agent out of the Pinkerton’s Denver office for five years during the 1890s.

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ingratiated himself with the miners by frequenting the saloons and making himself “a ‘good fellow’ among ‘the boys.’” After winning the miners’ trust he was elected as the union’s recording secretary, a position that made him privy to the union’s plans and gave him access to its records.

Like Riddell, Siringo was eventually identified as a spy, but not before he had spent several months dispatching valuable information to the agency, which helped keep the owners a step ahead of the miners. After learning that armed union men were gunning for him, Siringo decided it was time “to emigrate,” and he escaped the mob by crawling beneath the boardwalk of Coeur d’Alene’s main street. Although it first appeared the miners had achieved an unequivocal victory throughout the mining district, Idaho Governor, Norman B. Willey ultimately declared martial law and sent six companies of the national guard into the area to quash the rebellion.14

The success of the mine owners’ associations in crushing local unions in the West created a movement for region-wide associations of unions.15 After the controversial events at Coeur d’Alene, delegates of local unions from Idaho, Montana, South Dakota, Colorado and Utah met in Butte, Montana in 1893 and organized the Western Federation of Miners, the WFM, “a great federation of underground workers throughout the western states.” The Eureka Miners’ Union, which was established in 1886, was one of the local unions that sent representatives to the convention.16

By 1903, the WFM had recruited thirty to forty thousand members with approximately two hundred local unions throughout half a dozen states and parts of Canada. In Utah, between the years 1900 to 1916, approximately thirty-five locals affiliated with the WFM.17

Although it was later perceived as an extremist organization, the WFM initially vowed to establish a positive relationship with employers through the use of arbitration and conciliation to settle disputes.18 The vow was soon broken, however, in response to western mine owners’ militant anti-unionism, the socialist leanings of WFM officers, and economic pressures brought on by the national panic and depression of 1893. The panic resulted in a decline of silver and lead prices, which exacerbated the existing tensions between management and labor when some mine owners decided to lay off workers, reduce wages, and increase their attacks on unions.19

14 Charles A. Siringo, A Cowboy Detective, (Chicago: W. B. Conkey Co., 1912), 135-52; Lukas, Big Trouble, 101-103. According to Lukas, the miners had first begun to unionize in Coeur d’ Alene in 1887.

15 Rodda, Go Ye and Study the Beehive , 209; Michael Neuschatz, The Golden Sword: The Coming of Capitalism in the Colorado Mining Frontier (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1986), 28.

16 Lukas, Big Trouble, 104; Philip F. Notarianni, Faith, Hope and Prosperity: The Tintic Mining District, (Eureka: Tintic Historical Society, 1992), 39; Paul A. Frisch, “Labor Conflicts at Eureka, 1886-97,” Utah Historical Quarterly 49 (Spring 1981): 155.

17 Lukas, Big Trouble, 221; Schirer, “Western Federation of Miners,” 632-33.

18 Wyman, Hard Rock Epic, 172.

19 Rodda, Go Ye and Study the Beehive, 256; James C. Foster, ed., American Labor in the Southwest: The First One Hundred Years (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1982), 33; Notarianni, “Tintic Mining District,”

The mining town of Eureka with the Eureka Miners’ Union Hall on the north (right) side of Main Street.

Like their counterparts in other western states, Utah miners also were severely affected by the economic downturn of 1893. In Eureka, the miners’ union voted to strike after management closed the Bullion Beck Mine putting two hundred men out of work. The company later reopened the mine but reduced wages from $3.00 to $2.50 a day. The national WFM supported the Eureka miners, donating six hundred dollars to their cause. As the strike progressed, tempers flared on all sides—management, workers, and strike breakers—leading to incidents of violence. After seven long months and despite significant support from members of the community, the strike ended and miners were forced to accept the lower wages.20 The strike was the most severe labor dispute in the district’s history. Although recovery was slow, the development of new mills, improved water supplies, and renewed mining activity in the mid-1890s brought Tintic again to the forefront of Utah’s mining districts.21

In 1901, a Socialist Party was organized in Eureka, and a year later, on February 8, 1902, the Eureka Miners’ Union Local No. 151, which again affiliated with the WFM, was re-organized with fifty charter members.

349. According to Foster, who was quoting Samuel Gompers, “The Western Federation of Miners was so determined to subordinate the labor movement to socialism that reason could not prevail.” Silver and lead prices became unstable and fell in 1893 when the government repealed the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890, which had required the government to back currency with silver by purchasing one half million ounces of silver per month. See Notarianni, Faith, Hope and Prosperity, 39; Neuschatz, The Golden Sword, 30.

20 Notarianni, Faith, Hope and Prosperity, 39; Frisch, “Labor Conflicts at Eureka,” 155. According to Notarianni, the miners’ union also had grievances regarding the company boarding house and store.

21 Ibid, 45.

The Eureka Miners’ Hall was used for union and fraternal organization meetings on the second floor and housed the Golden Rule Store on the first floor.

According to William M. Knerr, the Socialist Party’s organizer in Utah, the Tintic district was “a perfect example of the industrial and political movements of the workers working hand in hand, and they are certainly a lively bunch. . . .”22

The re-launching of a union in the town was an uphill battle because of the troubles with the old union, but once it had a toehold, the new union’s growth was “phenomenal,” and by 1907 its membership had swelled to approximately seven hundred.23 According to the Eureka Reporter, the new union struggled to improve the lives of the miners and lobbied for a uniform pay scale in the district. “Some of the mines in Eureka are paying the lowest wages that are being paid anywhere in the state but others are paying all that the union is asking for,” wrote the Eureka Reporter, quoting union president J. J. O’Hara.24

In the spring of 1905, the union threatened another strike but the dispute was amicably settled. “We are pleased to know that the mine owners and those in charge of the various mines were willing to treat their employees fairly in this matter,” wrote the Eureka Reporter. “The outlook

22 Ibid, 74; John S. McCormick, John R. Sillito, “Socialists in Power: The Eureka, Utah, Experience: 1907-1925,” Weber Studies 6 (Spring 1989):58; John S. McCormick, John R. Sillito, A History of Utah Radicalism: Startling, Socialistic and Decidedly Revolutionary (Logan: Utah State University, 2011), 108, 144-45, 223. According to McCormick and Sillito, by 1911 there were nearly three hundred Socialists in Eureka. In addition, more than five hundred members of the Eureka Miners’ Union subscribed to the Socialist Party’s newspaper, The Inter-Mountain Worker. William M. Knerr visited Eureka to solicit support for the newspaper. Knerr also said concerning his trip that “Our meeting with the miner’s union was splendid, the reception accorded us being most enthusiastic and cordial.” In 1912, Knerr ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the United States House of Representatives as Utah’s Socialist candidate. It is interesting to note that in Utah politics, the Socialist Party enjoyed its greatest electoral success in Eureka.

23 Eureka Reporter, February 1, 1907.

24 Ibid., April 14, 1905.

for Eureka is more bright than it has been for many years and while we have such capable and honest men connected with the union and the various mines of the camp there is little likelihood of any serious trouble between employer and employee.”25

An offshoot of the Western Federation of Miners, the Industrial Workers of the World, (IWW) was founded in Chicago in June 1905 proclaiming that workers and owners had nothing in common. An IWW local was organized in Eureka during November 1905 with thirty-nine members. The IWW, or “Wobblies,” was even more radical than the WFM and was reputed to be primarily supported by socialists and anarchists. The Wobblies believed that the solution to society’s ills was not a reformation, as advocated by the WFM, but a revolution through direct action such as strikes, demonstrations, and sabotage. The ideological differences between the two unions eventually resulted in an internal war in the fall of 1906 and by 1907 the WFM had withdrawn its support from the IWW.26

A combination of several factors including the lingering ill-feelings over the 1893 strike, Eureka’s rejuvenation and the possibility of additional crippling strikes, the continuing fluctuation of prices for silver and lead ore, the rise of socialism, and the organization and rapid growth of the WFM and IWW unions in Eureka were the likely catalyst in motivating the Tintic Mine Operators’ Association to hire a labor spy.

Whatever the reason, either the mine owners or the Pinkertons, or both, apparently believed the situation merited one of the agency’s best operatives because George Riddell was no run-of-the-mill detective. Friedman, who described him as a “second James McParland,” grudgingly admired the former quartz miner for his intelligence and shrewdness.27

Before coming to Utah, Riddell worked undercover for two years in a mine near Telluride, Colorado. He infiltrated the local WFM union to investigate the murder of mine manager Arthur Collins and the suspicious disappearance of mine guard William J. Barney. Although the mine owners paid the agency approximately seven thousand dollars for Riddell’s services, he was unable to unearth any important evidence or discover an “inner circle” of members within the WFM who were allegedly responsible for the crimes.28

25 Ibid., April 21, 1905.

26 David Hampshire, Martha Sonntag Bradley and Allen Roberts, A History of Summit County: Utah History Series (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society and Summit County Commission, 1998), 301; Eureka Reporter, November 17, 1905; Lukas, Big Trouble, 232-33, 691-92; Andrew Hunt, “Beyond the Spotlight: The Red Scare in Utah, Utah Historical Quarterly 61 (Fall 1993): 374.

27 Friedman, Pinkerton Labor Spy, 117-19.

28 Ibid. The WFM organized a series of strikes in Colorado during the early part of the twentieth century that later became known as the “Colorado labor wars.” The first of these strikes, one of the nation’s bloodiest, took place at Cripple Creek in 1903-1904, and additional strikes followed in other mining camps such as Telluride. According to James D. Horan, “The miners used dynamiters and rifle teams, while the owners used the state militia, armed strikebreakers, and vigilantes.” See James D. Horan, The Pinkertons: The Detective Dynasty That Made History (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc, 1967), 459, 466.

Although there is no record of Riddell’s precise movements when he first arrived in Eureka, it is likely he followed the agency’s standard procedure for undercover operatives. According to Friedman, when an operative began a new assignment, he first found a place to live with a private room, usually in company lodgings. The operative next rented a post office box under his real name and promptly sent the box number to one of the agency’s many post office boxes, all rented under assumed names. He then secured work, through his own efforts, as a bona fide craftsman. However, if after a reasonable length of time, the operative was unable to obtain employment, the agency disclosed the operative’s identity to the client, under strict confidentiality, and he was immediately put to work.29

The standard rate of pay for secret agents was eighteen dollars a week, plus reimbursement for any living and incidental expenses. Agents were allowed to pocket any additional money they received from working as miners. In addition, clients were required to pay ten dollars a day for a daily report that the operative mailed to the agency.30

According to Friedman, “secret agents were the main source of revenue and profit at every branch of the Agency,” and because of this, extreme care was exercised by the agency to preserve the true identify of all secret operatives to protect them from physical danger and to maintain their effectiveness as spies. Only the superintendent of the office where the operative worked, and the superintendent’s assistant, knew an operative’s real name. The agency always used the operative’s assigned number, instead of his signature, on all receipts, letters and expense bills.31

Labor spies in the mining industry were most vulnerable to exposure when they actually began working in the mines. It was one thing to be a “good old boy” in the saloons, but an inexperienced miner or a man unaccustomed to hard physical labor, stood out like a sore thumb. One of the advantages that both Siringo and Riddell had was that they were seasoned laborers who could hold their own with the other miners.32

Ironically, some of the characteristics that enabled the detectives to be good at their jobs, such as intelligence and shrewdness, also made them easily distinguishable from the miners and put union leaders on their guard.33 Agents also caused suspicion when they mailed their daily reports to the agency. After his exposure, Siringo was told by one of the miners one of the things that had caused union leaders to suspect he was a traitor was that he had made too many trips to a nearby town to mail letters.34

29 Ibid, 8-9. For additional information on company towns and boardinghouses, see James B. Allen, “The Company Town: A Passing Phase of Utah’s Industrial Development,” Utah Historical Quarterly 34 (1966): 138-60.

30 Ibid, 10, 16.

31 Ibid, 8, 17.

32 Aiken, Idaho’s Bunker Hill, 50.

33 Ibid, 213, endnote 28, citing Frederick Burbidge, Bunker Hill Mine Assistant Manager.

34 Siringo, A Cowboy Detective, 137-38. According to Friedman, all correspondence between the agency

Union labor spies, such as Riddell and Siringo, not only provided intelligence on “the ranks of labor,” they also were used as agents provocateurs who provoked workingmen to “ill-advised action, or even violence” in order to “tarnish and break the union.” 35 During the mid-1920s, some critics of labor espionage even went so far as to allege that detective agencies “agitated radicalism, formed radical labor organizations, and fomented labor troubles through paid representatives in order to make fees in exposing the movement,” and they also claimed that “prominent radicals were allowed to slip through the hands of the investigators that the search might be continued.”36

One method of “breaking the union” was to encourage indiscriminate expenditures from union funds, which depleted the union’s financial reserves and weakened its bargaining power. On March 16, 1906, a week after Riddell was elected president of the union, its members voted to appropriate a thousand dollars, roughly a miner’s yearly salary, for the defense fund of WFM President Charles H. Moyer and Secretary William D. Haywood, who were both on trial in Boise for the assassination of Idaho’s former governor Frank Steunenberg. According to the Eureka Reporter, the money was “undoubtedly the largest sum appropriated for this purpose by any union in the state.”37 A month later, the union donated another one hundred dollars for the “homeless people of California” and the local IWW gave twenty-five dollars.38

Riddell also may have been instrumental in negotiations that helped to

and its secret operatives was written on plain stationery and envelopes. The letters of instruction to operatives were written with lead pencil, but the envelopes could be addressed with pen. It was a strict rule of the agency that none of the correspondence should be typewritten, because it might arouse suspicion. See Friedman, Pinkerton Labor Spy, 8-9.

35 Lukas, Big Trouble, 83, 178. Lukas was quoting from Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor who noted, somewhat later, that “Never has the private detective been used to such an extent, or with such unscrupulousness, as during the first decade of the twentieth century.”

36 Salt Lake Telegram, February 13, 1923.

37 Eureka Reporter, March 16, 1906. Steunenberg served as Idaho’s fourth governor from 1897-1901. He died on 30 December 1905 from injuries sustained from a bomb that had been wired to the gate in front of his home. Steunenberg had incurred the wrath, and lasting animosity, of labor and WFM leaders when he was governor, after he requested that President William McKinley send troops to Idaho to quell trouble in the mining camps. The military commander of the force arrested miners without preferring charges, incarcerated them in “bull pens” or stockades and shut down local newspapers. According to Horan, Steunenberg’s murder was the “climax to the war between the mining unions and the mine operators. For years, both sides had indulged in a number of savage acts. The union members bombed, shot, and mutilated nonunion workers in Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and Idaho mines. The operators in the MOA – Mine Owners Associations – paid dismal wages, refused to adopt safety measures, and used their political strength to influence local and state officials to crush the unions.” Local authorities believed that Haywood and Moyer, acting as officers of the WFM, were responsible for Steunenberg’s assassination and they charged them with his murder and brought them to trial in Boise, Idaho. It is interesting to note that Haywood, who was known in labor circles as “Big Bill,” was the son of a Mormon pioneer and he was born in Salt Lake City on 4 February1869. Haywood’s father was a Pony Express rider who also tried his hand at silver mining in the Oquirrh Mountains. “Big Bill” joined the WFM in 1895 and in May 1900 he had become a member of the WFM executive board. He also was one of the founding members of the IWW. See Lukas, Big Trouble, 50, 204, 209; Horan, The Pinkertons, 469.

38 Eureka Reporter, April 27, 1906.

prevent a miners’ strike. On July 27, 1906, the Eureka Reporter wrote, the “mining companies of Eureka and in fact all of the mines of the district have decided to grant the request of the miners for a uniform scale of $3.00 per day. . . . it was generally understood that unless the increase was granted there would be a general strike on the first of next month and this uncertain feeling has created a scarcity of labor here keeping union miners away from the Tintic camps. Business has also suffered to a certain extent as a result of the strike rumors which have been in circulation and for that reason the statement that the trouble has been adjusted satisfactorily to all concerned will be good news to everyone.”39

During Riddell’s tenure as president, members of the Eureka Miners’ Union finalized plans for a new union hall. They also accelerated the construction schedule for the building’s completion to accommodate the increasing number of persons who wished to attend union meetings. When the building was finished in 1907, the two-story concrete block structure cost the union between fourteen and sixteen thousand dollars.40

After leaving Eureka, Riddell traveled to Boise, Idaho, where he attended the Steunenberg murder trial, as a possible witness for the prosecution.41 Testimony from a miner named Joseph C. Barnes, who had been a friend of Riddell’s when they belonged to the union at Telluride, shed further light on Riddell’s activities as a provocateur. According to one newspaper account, Barnes, who testified for the defense, “declared Riddell was constantly suggesting violence. He proposed to roll two logs of dynamite down a hill into the Liberty Bell mill; he advised the miners to ‘punch’ any of the deputies or ‘bad men’ who looked cross; told them to burn the town of Telluride, to beat up any man who started to work and run them out of town.”42

When Barnes was cross-examined by the prosecuting attorney, however, he was forced to admit he had never engaged in any criminal act with Riddell. He also acknowledged that although he and Riddell had talked about killing any man who stopped them from returning to Telluride after they had been deported, Riddell had never actually offered to help him commit murder.43

Riddell’s audacity was demonstrated during the trial when Friedman, at the request of the famous defense attorney Clarence Darrow, pointed the wily detective out to court spectators. One newspaper reported, “Riddell—

39 Ibid., July 27, 1906. According to the newspaper article, other laborers and muckers continued to work for $2.50 per day.

40 Eureka Reporter, April 13 and July 27, 1906; Pearl D. Wilson, June McNulty and David Hampshire, A History of Juab County, Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society and Juab County Commission, 1999), 126. Union meetings were held on the second floor, but the first floor was rented out to commercial establishments. The first occupant in 1909 was the Golden Rule Store, owned and operated by Earl C. Sams and J.C. Penney. Sams later became national president of the J.C. Penney Company.

41 Eureka Reporter, June 28, 1907.

42 Salt Lake Telegram, July 3, 1907.

43 Ibid.

The motto and symbol for the Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency was well known to Utah and Western miners.

who ten days before had gone on a drunken binge through Boise saloons— smilingly acknowledged the witness’s attention.” 44 Darrow, who was apparently annoyed by Riddell’s cheek, described him as a “grinning hyena,” and referred to the agency in general as a bunch of “slimy Pinkertons.”45

The Eureka Reporter, which closely monitored and reported on the trial, expressed moral outrage at Riddell’s covert activities. “There is absolutely nothing of a secret nature about the doings of our union and our meetings might as well be open to the public said a well-known member of the local branch. These spies are sent out for the purpose of stirring up trouble— nothing else. The members here know that on several occasions this man Riddell tried to incite union men to do things which would have put our organization in an unfavorable light.”46

On May 20, 1907 the Deseret News ran an article about another Pinkerton agent, W. H. Adams, who was exposed as a spy while serving as a union official in Bingham. Adams, after being elected as the union’s corresponding secretary, had forwarded the minutes of all of the organization’s secret meetings to the Pinkerton regional office in Denver.

The detective was described as “a pleasant appearing young man, about 30 years old, who rapidly won favor as a member of the union.” Suspicion first arose against Adams after he missed a union meeting and he was “overly anxious” to see the minutes from the meeting. When Adams subsequently repeated the request each time he was absent, he was shadowed and he was “finally caught with the goods and was told to decamp from town.” The secretary of the union, E. O. Locke, maintained that the fact Adams was allowed to leave peaceably instead of receiving “drum head treatment,” was evidence the union had “nothing to conceal and our records will stand all rigid inspection.” According to Locke, miners were upset that Adams had betrayed their trust, not because of any damage he had done to the union. “To know that he has done what he has only arouses in us the contempt anyone would have for one who plays false, but there is no resentment,

44 Lukas, Big Trouble, 688.

45 Ibid, 706.

46 Eureka Reporter, June 7, 1907.

WIKIPEdIA

as nothing could have gone out that can hurt us,” Locke said.”47

Whether or not the Bingham union had something to conceal is debatable, but the union members in Eureka and Bingham appeared to be less violent towards those they considered traitors than their fellow miners in Idaho and Colorado. Riddell and Adams, unlike Siringo who had to flee the Coeur d’ Alene district in fear of his life, apparently did not suffer any serious repercussions for their actions. Adams, in particular, who moved to Salt Lake City after leaving Bingham, evidently did not fear local retaliation.48 Labor spies had evidently become a genuine problem for the WFM because its officers, Charles Moyer and Big Bill Haywood, who had attendeda WFM convention in Salt Lake City in the summer of 1905, both charged that “every one of their most secret meetings had been attended by Pinkerton detectives, employed by the Mine Owners’ Association.” The two men supported their claim by pointing out to reporters “men who fraternized with them in the saloons and restaurants, and others who attended their meetings as spies upon their actions, and argued in the convention, from these premises, that it would be best to hold no more secret sessions, but to open the doors.” According to the Deseret News, the new policy was implemented and local reporters were allowed admittance at many of the WFM meetings.49

Other unions complained about spies in their organizations as well. When Frank Buchanan, president of the Structural Iron and Bridge Workers’ Union visited Salt Lake City in March 1904, he noted during a speech that paid spies had entered the unions and that employers were hiring leaders to mislead their constituents.50

Pinkerton agents, detectives in general, and people who were causing trouble in labor circles were discussed during a meeting of striking telegraphers in August 1907. According to an article in the Ogden Standard Examiner, “Local No. 30 of the Commercial Telegraphers’ union is not to be outdone by the Western Federation of Miners in the importance of their present strike. The boys have discovered that they are being watched and spied upon by Pinkerton detectives. Some of the operators claim to have seen Pinkerton men, whom they were able to identify following them around and spying upon their movements.”51

The suspicion that there were union spies throughout Utah’s mining camps created an atmosphere of mistrust and fear among miners and

47

The Deseret News, May 20, 1907.

48 Ibid.

49

Ibid. On January 15, 1908, a group of mining men, representing fifty producing Utah mines, met in Salt Lake City and organized the Utah Mine Operators’ Association also known as the Utah Mine Owners’ Association.The officers were: John Dern, president; Thomas Kearns, first vice-president; Willard F. Snyder, second vice-president; Harry S. Joseph, secretary; and C. E. Loose, treasurer. The officers, in addition to W. W. Riter, Ernest Bamberger, Lafayette Hanchott and W. C. Alexander, comprised the directorate. See Salt Lake Mining Review, January 30, 1908.

50 Deseret News, March 22, 1904.

51 Ogden Standard Examiner, August 20, 1907.

fostered a “them against us” mentality between management and workers. A former resident of Bingham recalled, “In the mines a person had to be on his guard, there were company spies who spoke their language and who carried all rumor and talk of labor troubles to the mine officials. The companies were enemies.”52 Despite the precautions that some Utah labor leaders adopted to prevent espionage, such as only electing “well known union men as officers,” they were unable to keep all labor spies from infiltrating the unions.53

In 1913, Pinkerton operatives who were working undercover in the Bingham mine made news again when they informed local authorities that Mexican laborers were supplying a fugitive, Rafael Lopez, with food and that they were endeavoring to raise the money to help him leave the country. Lopez, who had been born to a prominent Mexican family in Chihuahua in 1886, was a desperado who became the object of one of Utah’s most sensational manhunts. After killing half a dozen men, Lopez was eventually “trapped inside the Apex Mine, [at Bingham] which was smudged and sealed, and left to starve.”54

During the next decade, labor spies continued their covert activities throughout Utah. When the United States entered World War I in 1917, the departure of men for Europe created a skilled labor shortage that decreased the output of the mines. In early 1919, Park City mine owners attempted to control rising costs by reducing wages seventy-five cents per

52 Helen Z. Papanikolas, “Life and Labor Among the Immigrants of Bingham Canyon,” Utah Historical Quarterly 33 (Fall 1965): 293.

53 Eureka Reporter, March 8, 1907.

54 Carbon County News, December 18, 1913; Linda Sillitoe, A History of Salt Lake County: Utah Centennial History Series (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society and Salt Lake County Commission, 1998), 157. According to some sources, Lopez somehow escaped the mine and returned to Mexico.

Park City miners. The mines were infiltrated by labor union spies.

day, an amount so significant that eight to nine hundred miners and mill workers went on strike, forcing the first total closure of Park City’s mines in fifty years.55

Mine owners, who blamed the strike on the IWW, refused to negotiate with the union, claiming the extremist organization did not represent the majority of miners. To monitor interaction between IWW members and more conservative miners, the Silver King Consolidated Mining Company hired the Globe Inspection Company, which had an office in downtown Salt Lake City, to send operatives to work undercover in Park City.56

The Globe Inspection Company’s reports provide further insight on how labor spies operated in the mining camps. On May 27, 1919, after spending the morning at Salt Lake City’s Union Passenger Station to meet the Butte train and observe if any known IWW union leaders or members had come to town, “Operative No. 240” boarded “the afternoon stage for Park City and upon the Opr’s. [sic] arrival in Park City he started looking for a room and getting situated there. The Opr. secured a room at the Salt Lake House. In the evening the Opr. walked around town but found everything to be rather quiet. The Opr. noticed, however, that there were numbers of men standing around and talking or walking up and down the street.”57

On the following day, the operative, who evidently was an experienced miner and was in good standing with the union, interviewed a number of men about the strike situation. “Home owners and married men of Park City say as soon as the mine owners give a 75 cent raise, they will go back. However, the majority of the miners, who are single, are more radical than the others.”58

During the next few weeks, the operative continued to make daily rounds of the train depot, Miner’s Union Hall and other known gathering places of union members, gleaning information that he forwarded to the home office.

Most of the married men believe that if a secret ballot is taken on Sunday, the majority would call off the strike . . . .Operative heard no less than fifteen men complaining that the strike committee was not trying to settle the trouble . . . . This morning there seems to be a split in the ranks of the strikers, and the men are all talking about the coming meeting tonight in the American Theater. The strike committee has a type written notice posted in several places in the city and in the Union Hall to notify all loyal union members on strike to stay away from the meeting called for tonight . . . . At 8:15 p.m., just before the meeting was called to order, Opr. stepped outside and in front of

55 Hal Compton and David Hampshire, “Park City,” in From the Ground Up: The History of Mining Utah, Colleen Whitley ed. (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2006), 330

56 Mike Ivers Papers, Silver King Consolidated Mining Company, MS 370, Box 1, Folder 8, J. Willard Marriott Library, Special Collections, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah. The Global Inspection Company’s office was located in the Judge Building, which was built by Mary Judge in 1906. She was the widow of John Judge, who was a partner in the Daly-Judge Mining Company and who also worked with Thomas Kearns and David Keith to develop the Silver King Mine in Park City.

57 Ibid, May 27, 1919.

58 Ibid, May 28, 1919.

the Miner’s Union Hall and counted between 255 to 260 men who were loyal to the strike committee and were not going to attend the meeting . . . .[During the meeting] there were 106 votes cast and every one of those votes were to call the strike off and go back to work.59

On June 20, 1919, after talking with a man named Dave Gwilliams, who was the chairman of the strike committee, the operative reported that Gwilliams “seems very down-hearted and said that he was sure now that the strike was broken, because so many of the men he thought were loyal to the committee were going over to the new faction.” He also noted that he had overheard other men in the miner’s hall express their concern that the miners who had returned to the mines seeking work “were apt to get all of the preferred jobs.” The operative also did his part to further discourage the miners from continuing the strike by telling them “it was useless to try and continue with the men split up in two factions as they are now, and with more of them going back up the hill each day rustling for work.”60

Despite the strike committee’s discouragement about continuing the strike, union leaders confided to the operative that they “were going to get busy and keep up the agitation and hard feelings as much as possible.” Bert Young, an IWW delegate, even said he hoped that the mine owners in Park City did not raise the wages because it would hurt their plans of trying to get the boys into “one big union.” Young also revealed his plans to go “over to Eureka and also around the Tintic Standard Mine” for a few days to “try and write up as many new members as possible,” noting that “he would have to be very careful so that the ‘home guards’ as he called them, would not know that he was in the city.”61

In addition to his regular reports, the operative prepared a list of approximately two hundred men who were IWW members or union sympathizers and he also kept a tally of the miners, radicals and foreigners he observed leaving town with their baggage. Some of the intelligence the operative passed on to the mine owners may have actually benefited the miners in the long run, such as the conversation he overheard between union leaders Dave Gwilliams and G. Adamson that the miner’s hospital was in “deplorable condition.” The operative also relayed the opinion of a miner named Willard McKenzie, a “radical” who did not belong to the IWW, that one foreman was “trying to get the tunnel through too cheap and that was why he was passing some timber work that should be done at once.” Other dangerous conditions in the mine, such as “broken caps that needed to be changed at once,” were also brought to the mine owners’ attention.62 By the end of the summer of 1919, the strike had completely collapsed and from 1921 to 1922, production in the mining district doubled.63

59 Ibid, June, 13, 14, and 17, 1919.

60 Ibid, June 20 and 22, 1919.

61 Ibid, July 4, 1919.

62 Ibid, August 7, 1919.

63 Compton and Hampshire, “Park City,” 332.

After the resolution of the strike, Globe Inspection Company spies continued their espionage in Park City and Salt Lake City. A report from the company dated July 10, 1923, quoted a warning issued to union members by IWW delegate W. G. Nelson, who was an organizer in the Eureka district. “Be careful when rustling employment at the Tintic Standard. It is full of stools and it is well known among the IWW that twelve men who have the authority to wear stars are working undercover in that mine.”64

In another report dated August 17, 1923, an operative who attended an IWW meeting in Salt Lake City, expressed his contempt at the behavior of five unfamiliar men he suspected were labor spies from a competing company. After the men maneuvered to have their leader, Harry Kinney, nominated and sustained as the chairman of the meeting, the operative observed, “This man Kinney proved himself to be a very poor chairman, apparently not familiar with proceedings and before the meeting had been in session any length of time, a motion was made that another of these strangers be appointed to act as chairman . . . . Action of this kind only increased suspicion, the old ‘Wobblies’ realizing there was a frame-up somewhere . . . . Secretary Sullivan protested against the seating of anyone in such a manner.” After some confusion, the meeting was ruled “out of order” and “all old ‘Wobblies’ left the hall together, leaving the balance standing in front of the hall.” He added:

All five of the strangers who tried to get into the meeting last night are under suspicion and this man Kinney has been singled out as a detective. There was much business of importance to be transacted in the meeting last night, but the old members did not feel like taking any chances in bringing this business up unless absolutely certain that all members present were loyal ‘Wobblies.’ It is my personal opinion that Kinney is a representative from some agency but his work was rather crude. He will never get very far when it comes to getting information as he is under suspicion and those in charge of the office will watch him closely.65

The Globe Inspection Company became involved in another Utah labor dispute when coal miners throughout the nation went on strike in 1922 and coal companies near Price, in Carbon County, employed spies to infiltrate “miners’ union and keep close tabs on the activities of union leaders.”66 Operatives, also known as “inspectors,” attended local IWW and United Mine Workers (UMW) meetings and also closely followed the movements of all union members.67

After attending one IWW meeting, an inspector reported, “There is going to be considerable labor trouble in the mining camps of Utah this

64

Ivers papers, July 10, 1923.

65 Ibid, August 17, 1923.

66

Allan Kent Powell, “Utah and the Nationwide Coal Miners’ Strike of 1922,” Utah Historical Quarterly 45 (Spring 1977): 138.

67 Spring Canyon Area Coal Company Records, MSS 252, Box 3, Folder 6, Harold B. Lee Library, Special Collections, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. The United Mine Workers, a union for coal workers and technicians, was founded in Columbus, Ohio, on January 22, 1890.

Spring . . . . Delegates in the Bingham district, Park City district and Butte district report that men are getting uneasy . . . . some of the members in the Bingham district are anxious to take action sometime in March.” A few months later, another report quoted two IWW workers who predicted “that within the next year the coal miners of this state would be lined up solidly under the IWW banner.” Another inspector reported that after following two Italians from a distance and eavesdropping on their conversation, he had learned that “if trouble breaks out in this district during the coming year and it is possible to get the American miners to walk out, the Italians and Greeks will go with them and will stick until they finish. But the foreigners are not going to be goats again and unless the Americans take the lead, there will be no strike.” Other reports described the activities of UMW labor organizer Frank Bonacci. “Ran into Bonacci who had bought a new car to get around the camps better. Bonacci has recruited 200 new members.” On March 24, 1926, Bonacci told an inspector he was having so much success that he had “sent in a special request for a good organizer to come to Utah immediately and help him out.”68

This boost in union membership in Utah and throughout the nation was paralleled by an increase in labor espionage which, by the late 1920s, had “come to be a common, almost universal, practice in American industry.69 According to testimony provided by members of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) during Senate hearings in 1937, American industrieswere spending more than eighty million dollars per year to spy on their workers. In addition to their testimony, NLRB members also provided a list showing that 230 private detective agencies had labor informants in more than one hundred cities. The hearings were part of an investigation that began in 1936, when the nation’s leaders addressed the issue of labor espionage after the Seventy-fourth United States Congress

68 Spring Canyon Area Coal Company Records, February 16, August 2, 1924; February 23, 1925; March 20 and 24, 1926.

69 Robert Michael Smith, From Blackjacks to Briefcases: A History of Commercialized Strikebreaking and Unionbusting in the United States (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2003), 82.

Four members of the Park City Western Federation of Miners.

uTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETy

passed Resolution 266, which called for an “investigation of violations of the right of free speech, assembly, and of interference with the right of labor to organize and bargain collectively.” The Committee of Education and Labor was assigned to conduct the investigation and a subcommittee was appointed to focus specifically on labor espionage. From 1936 and 1941, the subcommittee, under the direction of Senators Elbert D. Thomas of Utah and Robert La Follette, Jr., of Wisconsin, held hearings and published reports on the subject, which was vigorously debated on both sides of the question.70

One of the agencies scrutinized during the hearings was the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. La Follette charged that “while the Pinkertons pointed with pride to the fact that they had refused retainers that had any connection with marital infidelity, it was within their code to pay men to spy on fellow workers and that without such work the Agency would collapse.” 71 Robert Pinkerton, who was the grandson of the agency’s founder, Allan Pinkerton, defended the employment of labor spies, which had been one of the most lucrative aspects of his company’s business, with the argument that “I feel a man running a business must keep himself posted on how that business is being run.” The agency also justified its actions by submitting a file that contained evidence of more than two thousand court convictions of criminals who had been guilty of labor related crimes such as assault, bombings and murder. Pinkerton, however, refused to provide sources for this information, alleging that it would jeopardize the safety of the agency’s secret operatives.72

After the hearings were concluded, a resolution was passed stating that “so-called industrial spy systems breeds fear, suspicion and animosity, tends to cause strikes and industrial warfare and is contrary to sound public policy.”73 According to historian Robert Michael Smith, “While no sweeping legislation had been enacted, the revelations of the La Follette Committee sparked a strong public reaction against the anti-union industry. Cringing under an uncomplimentary light in April 1937, the Pinkerton board of

70 Horan, The Pinkertons, 508-509. During the Great Depression, the public’s reverence for business and private property dramatically decreased and there was an outcry against unethical business practices, including anti-union activities. In 1935, Congress passed the Wagner Act, which made the federal government the arbiter of employer-employee relations through the creation of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The Wagner Act established the rights of employees to organize, join, or aid labor unions and to participate in collective bargaining through their representatives. When the NLRB experienced obstacles in implementing the guidelines of the Wagner Act, the board called for congressional action. In 1936, a Democratic Congress responded by passing Resolution 266.

71 Horan, The Pinkertons, 508-509 . According to Robert Michael Smith, “Nearly one-third of those in the employ of the Pinkerton Agency, for instance, held high positions, including one national vice- presidency, fourteen local presidencies, eight local vice-presidencies, and numerous secretaryships.” Smith, From Blackjacks to Briefcases, 88

72 Horan, The Pinkertons, 509.Besides the Pinkerton agency, the subcommittee investigated the nation’s four other largest detective agencies: William Burns International Detective Agency, the National Corporation Service, the Railway Audit and Inspection Company and the Corporations Auxiliary Company. See Morn, The Eye That Never Sleeps, 186-88.

73 Ibid.

directors unanimously agreed that ‘this agency in the future not furnish informationto anyone concerning the lawful attempts of labor unions or employees to organize and bargain collectively.’”74 In a later interview with the New York Times, Robert Pinkerton stated, “That [labor espionage] is a phase of our business that we are not particularly proud of and we’re delighted we’re out of it. However, there was nothing illegal about it at the time.”75

The presence of labor spies in Utah during the early part of the twentieth century impacted the state’s industry and labor in several ways. Labor espionage aggravated the already strained relations between mine owners and miners; it generated mistrust among workers; it kindled sympathy for the labor movement in local newspapers and in public opinion; and, in some cases, it motivated union leaders to decrease the number of their secret sessions and to open their doors to local reporters.

It also left its mark on those who practiced it. In later life, Siringo, who worked for the Pinkertons for twenty-two years, came to regret some of his questionable activities as a labor spy. Although he had initially considered the agency to be a “model institution,” he later denounced it as “a school for the making of anarchists, and a disgrace to the enlightened age.”76

Siringo, McParland and Riddell, and others like them, were an ingenious and resilient breed of men who were required to operate in an environment where the boundaries between honor and treachery were undefined and where the end often seemed to justify the means. In the end, however, there were few winners and many losers among those who were involved with labor espionage. One historian has opined it was inevitable that private detective agencies, and their employees, that were “born out of a nationwide need for law and order,” should eventually “become ensnared in the same corrupting influence and moral decay that so pervaded the era.”77

74 Smith, From Blackjacks to Briefcases, 95.

75 Quoted in Horan, The Pinkertons, 508-509.

76 Pingenot, Siringo, xix-xxi.

77 Ibid; James McParland passed away in Denver, Colorado, on May 18, 1919. After retiring from the Pinkerton agency, Charles Siringo spent the rest of his life in Texas and California. He died on October 18, 1928, in Altadene, California. The authors have been unable to determine what happened to George W. Riddell after his appearance in Boise at the Steunenberg murder trial.

A

Majestic Building Stone: Sanpete Oolite Limestone

By WILLIAM T. PARRy

Long before gold, silver, and copper mines caught the headlines in early Utah newspapers, another treasure was being quarried from the earth in the Sanpete Valley. Oolite limestone from Sanpete County was the building stone chosen for many private and public structures in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A great variety of rocks suitable for building were formed during the complex geological history of Utah. The building stone varieties exposed in the mountains near the early settlements include onyx marble from Nephi, sandstone from

The Hearst Castle (Casa Grande).

Geology

William T. Parry is Emeritus Professor of

and Geophysics, University of Utah.

dREAMSTIME PHOTOGRAPH

Park City and Heber City, granite from Little Cottonwood Canyon near Salt Lake City, and volcanic rock from St. George and Beaver.1 The oolite limestone exposed in the isolated Sanpete Valley one hundred miles south of Salt Lake City was the most widely used.

The widespread use of the Sanpete oolite limestone was due to its cream color, ease of quarrying and carving, durability, and its exposure in easily accessible sites near the valley floor. Stone craftsmen among early Mormon immigrant settlers recognized the value of the stone and opened quarries soon after settlement. Architects inspired by the Beaux-Arts and Neoclassical styles found the stone suited their artistic talents, and the arrival of railroad transportation, made possible the use of the stone for structures beyond Sanpete County.

The attractive physical properties of the Sanpete oolite limestone were due to the geological conditions of formation and exposure in Sanpete Valley. Sanpete Valley is surrounded by great slabs of inclined sedimentary rock layers that rise from the valley floor and flatten on the crest of the Wasatch Plateau on the east, and the cliffs of the San Pitch Mountains on the west. Oolite limestone beds occur at the base of the Wasatch Plateau near the valley floor. The oolite limestone is a part of the Green River Formation, which was formed in a large prehistoric lake named Lake Uinta that extended from Sanpete Valley into the Uinta Basin. The age of the lake and the limestone is 43.1 to 46.4 million years.2

The formation of oolites in a lake environment required some special conditions. First, the water must be supersaturated with the carbonate minerals. Next a suitable nucleus must be present around which the carbonate mineral may precipitate. Wave action agitates the grains to permit precipitation to completely surround the nucleus. Oolites are restricted to water that is less than a few meters in depth and agitated by wave action near a shoreline.3

The properties of the stone reflect its texture, mineralogy, and chemical composition. Oolites 1.5 to 2 millimeters in diameter are the most striking textural feature. They are either hollow or partially filled with granular material cemented by medium gray silica and calcite. Composition includes both calcium and magnesium carbonate. The carbonate minerals are relatively soft and easily carved. The limestone contains small amounts of iron and aluminum oxides that contribute to the pleasing color of the quarried stone.4

Exposure of the stone at the surface made quarrying Sanpete oolite

1 Bryce Tripp, Utah Stone (Salt Lake City: Utah Geological Survey Public Information Series No. 17, 1993), 1-17.

2 Malcolm P. Weiss and Douglas A. Sprinkel, Geologic Map of the Manti 7.5-minute Quadrangle, Sanpete County, Utah (Salt Lake City: Utah Geological Survey Map 188, 2002), 10.

3 B. W. Sellwood , “Shallow-water carbonate environments,” in H. G. Reading ed. Sedimentary Environments and facies (New York: Elsevier, 1978), 268; R. C. Selly, Ancient Sedimentary Environments and Their Subsurface Recognition, 4th ed.(London: Chapman and Hall, 1996), 213.

4 A. R. Pratt and Eugene Callaghan, Land and Mineral Resources of Sanpete County, Utah , Utah Geological and Mineralogical Survey, Bulletin 85 (Salt Lake City: Utah Geological and Mineralogical Survey, 1970), 38.

The location of oolite limestone quarries in Sanpete County. The quarry locations are indicated by an open square. The shaded area indicates the oolite limestone exposures in the county.

stone for construction material an attractive endeavor. Sanpete Valley formed as a result of faulting on the Valley Fault on the west side of the valley. The west side of the valley dropped downward forming the valley and tilting the sedimentary layers upward to the east on what is known as the Wasatch Monocline, which extends seventy miles from Milburn to Salina. 5 The minimum age of the monocline is thirty-eight million years.6 The underlying Flagstaff Limestone is also tilted upward to the east, and makes up much of the upper surface of the Wasatch Plateau.7 Erosion by westward flowing streams removed much of the Green River Formation from the Wasatch Plateau and exposed the Green River Formation at the base of the plateau.

The stone sometimes deteriorates with time due to freezing and thawing of water in the stone pores, groundwater attack, and chemical attack by industrial gases. Water trapped in moist limestone expands when frozen and causes deterioration. Also, ground water chemically attacks the limestone. Carl J. Christensen studied the response of the stone to atmospheric sulfur derived from industrial sources. In a series of laboratory experiments and examination of deteriorated stone on the University of Utah Park Building, he found that atmospheric sulfur reacted with the limestone to form hydrated calcium sulfate mineral, gypsum. The gypsum replaced the

5 Weiss and Sprinkel, Geologic Map of the Manti; Irving J. Witkind, Malcolm P. Weiss, and Terrence L. Brown, Geologic Map of the Manti 30’ x 60’ Quadrangle, Carbon, Emery, Juab, Sanpete, and Sevier Counties, Utah (U. S. Geological Survey Miscellaneous Investigation Series Map I-1631, 1987).

6 Shelly A. Judge, “The Origin and Evolution of the Wasatch Monocline, Central Utah,” (Ph. D. Dissertation, Ohio State University, 2007), 180, 329.

7 Hellmut H. Doelling, Paul A. Kuehne, and Douglas A. Sprinkel, Interim Geologic Map of the Ephraim 7.5-minute Quadrangle, Sanpete County, Utah, Open-file Report, 556(Salt Lake City: Utah Geological Survey , 2009).

limestone, expanded in volume and caused exfoliation of the limestone building blocks.8

The oolite limestone was easily located by quarry men due to the extensive exposure and highly visible white color along the base of the inclined rock layers. Once located, the limestone was relatively easy to quarry compared to other types of rock. For example, in 1904 the cost of quarrying granite was estimated at $4.53 per cubic yard compared to the cost of limestone at $0.74 per cubic yard.9

The limestone was quarried and split to dimensions ready for stonecutters to begin dressing the surface. Quarrying began by first excavating a working face in the quarry. Next a channel was excavated at the end of this face and overlying shale or unsuitable rock was removed to expose three faces of the stone. Then, the art of quarrying begins by taking advantage of joints and natural planes of weakness in the rock. In the oolite which is a sedimentary rock, bedding surfaces form one set of weakness planes, and two sets of joints perpendicular to bedding that may be visible only to a trained eye form additional weakness planes. The rock may be quarried into large, rectangular-shaped blocks along such weakness planes.

The rock was quarried using only hand tools and the plug-and-feather technique. First, holes were drilled by hand along one of the joint sets. Then a “feather” was inserted. The feathers were short pieces of half-round iron, and the rounded side fits the curved sides of the drilled hole. The plug was a wedge that fits between two feathers. The wedges were hammered with successive hammer blows to tighten them, and then each plug (wedge) was struck with one or two hard blows in succession, waiting a suitable length of time between each set of blows to allow the strain to accumulate in the rock. The ring of the hammer blow against the wedge told the quarry man that the strain was the same in each wedge. The depth of the drilled holes and the spacing along the joint were determined by the thickness between adjacent bedding planes of the rock that were being quarried.10

Once broken loose from the quarry working face, the quarried stones were moved on to rollers then loaded onto horse-drawn wagons using a derrick. In the photograph taken about 1901, six quarry men and a dog are shown in the foreground of the working Ephraim quarry. The overburden waste of shale and thin-bedded limestone has been removed with the help of the man at the far right and his wheelbarrow. The man at the far left foreground stands on the upper limestone surface where feather and

8 Carl J. Christensen, Sanpete Oolite Limestone as a Building Material , Bulletin No. 140 of the State School of Mines, University of Utah (Salt Lake City: Utah Engineering Experiment Station, University of Utah, 1967), 1-30.

9 Hulbert Powers Gillette, Rock Excavation Methods and Costs (New York: M. C. Clark, 1904), 209-13.

10 Mary Gage and James Gage, The Art of Splitting Stone (Amesbury, MA: Powwow River Books, 2005), 36-44, 58-62.

Tools used in splitting oolite limestone using the plug and feather method.

wedges were to be used to break the stone free. Edward L. Parry, in a dark suit, and the quarry foreman in a vest stand next to stone newly broken loose and moved into position for lifting by the derrick. The stout pole derrick consisted of a heavy vertical timber held in place by guy ropes. An inclined timber attached to the base of the vertical timber was hinged so that its distal end could move both horizontally and vertically. A block-and-tackle assembly at the end of the inclined timber passed through pulleys from the end of the inclined timber to the top of the vertical timber and then to a winch. The winch, with a set of gears, was operated by hand. The lifting tongs, a scissor-like apparatus with a chain looped through the two handles and both ends, were attached to the block and tackle. As the chain was lifted by operation of the winch, the two hooks were pulled together to hold the block of rock securely. Once the rock was clear of the ground surface, the inclined timber could be swung horizontally to a desired location, and the rock lifted vertically so that it could be placed on a wagon or railroad car. The worker near the wagon holds the derrick tail rope to position the crane over the wagon being loaded. Two men at the vertical timber operate the winch for hoisting the stone. The chain tongs holds the stone suspended from the derrick as it is swung into place over the wagon. Various hand tools are held by other workers or scattered about including shovels, lever bars, picks, etc. The vertical timber stands today in the Ephraim quarry and the decayed remains of the inclined timber can still be seen.

Manti, settled in 1849, Ephraim, settled in 1854, and Spring City, settled after much Indian trouble in 1859 were central to the development of the oolite limestone. Stonemasons, stonecutters, and quarrymen who had learned their trade from such diverse localities as Tennessee, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont, Denmark, Sweden, Wales, Canada, and England were among the pioneer settlers in each of these communities.

Under the leadership of Isaac Morley, the original settlers of Manti comprised of 224 men, women, and children arrived in the isolated, high-mountain Sanpete Valley on November 19, 1849, and sought shelter from the winter winds on the south side of a prominent sagebrush, juniper covered, and rattlesnake infested hill protruding from the plateau to the east that would later become known as “Temple Hill.” Twenty-seven dugouts were built into the hillside composed of shale and oolite limestone. This first group of settlers included at least one stonemason, Agustus E. Dodge who was born in New York. Early pioneers spent the first miserable winter in the dugout caves. Their first homes were built of logs and later adobe. Trees had to be felled in the nearby mountains and hauled to the building site for log homes, but the stone was nearby.

Elizah Averett born in Tennessee, Jerome B. Kempton born in New York, Thomas Thorpe from England, Welcome Chapman from Vermont, Artemus Millet from New Hampshire, and William Miles from New York were masons and stonecutters who arrived in 1850.11 Within the first few years of settlement, these stonemasons recognized the utility of the stone exposed in that first hill where settlement began. Stone quarries were quickly opened and stone was quarried for farm buildings, many of the first houses, all of the first public buildings, and a stone wall fort, twelve-feet

11 Population Schedules of the Seventh Census of the United States 1850, Microfilm roll 919, National Archives Microfilm Publication.

Ephraim oolite limestone quarry about 1901.

high and walls two feet thick, was constructed in May and June 1852 for protection.12

The first oolite home in Manti was built in 1851, but was later demolished. Some examples of oolite limestone structures still standing are the BlackTuttle-Folsom Home built in three stages from the 1850s to 1880s, and the John Patten House built in 1854 of primitive stone masonry. Orville Sutherland Cox and then Jezereel Shoemaker first owned the Cox-Shoemaker-Parry Home, built in 1858. Both men were members of the 1849 group of settlers. The house was purchased by Edward L. Parry in 1877 and was home to four generations of Parrys. The John Crawford home was built in 1874, the Manti City Hall was built in 1873-1882, the present-day Yardley Inn and Spa was built of oolite limestone in 1910, and the Sanpete County Courthouse was built in 1935-1937.

The unique beauty and utility of the Sanpete stone was quickly recognized throughout the territory. When the Washington National Monument Society on February 10, 1851, invited the Utah Territory to provide a stone for the Washington Monument in Washington D. C., the General Assembly of the Provisional State of Deseret passed a resolution approved by Governor Brigham Young to “procure a block of marble from the best specimens of stone in the state (territory).” A committee chosen by Governor Young selected the oolitic limestone from quarries at Manti.

The talented stonemason, William Ward, considerably enhanced the qualities of the stone with his carving. A native of Leicester, England, Ward followed the family trade of stonemasonry and carving. After emigrating to Nauvoo, Illinois, in 1844 and later to Utah in 1850, he was appointed foremanof the stonecutters working on the temple block in Salt Lake City and was made assistant to Truman O. Angell Sr., chief LDS architect. His credits included participating in the design and construction of the Lion House, the Salt Lake Temple, and other buildings. His intricate carving of the oolite limestone made it a magnificent addition to the Washington Monument.

The block of oolitic limestone for the Washington Monument was three-feet long, two-feet wide and six and one-half inches thick. The carving on the stone features a beehive at the center with the motto “Holiness to the Lord” and the all-seeing eye with rays above and Deseret in large letters below. The base of the block is covered with carvings of different kinds of foliage and a semicircular arch is enriched with morning glory vines and blooms. On each side are spandrels, one showing the symbol of union enriched with foliage, and the other displaying a cornucopia. The edge is a fillet 1.5 inches wide and 0.75 inches deep. After a three-month journey, the stone arrived at Washington D. C. on September 27, 1853, and was placed in the monument some time during

12 Demont H. Howell, The Shoulders on Which We Stand (Fairview: Fairview Museum of History and Art, 1982), 4.

the mid 1880s. The limestone later showed the ravages of time and weather, and was supplemented by more durable granite in 1951.13

The most spectacular structure in Manti, the Manti LDS Temple, was constructed of oolite limestone from 1877 to1888. The temple is luminous, and under a combination of light from the setting sun and floodlight illumination, appears to float in the sky in the evening light when viewed from many miles away. The beautiful building is the result of the work of William Harrison Folsom, the architect for the temple, and Edward L. Parry, the master mason. The temple walls, with buttresses and crenellations, resemble a medieval fortress. The two towers were designed in French Second Empire style with mansard roofs and dormer windows all related in a harmonious manner. Folsom rejected the traditional American religious architecture of spires and cupolas. The completed building appears more like a great mansion than a conventional church or cathedral. Folsom also designed the Manti Tabernacle built of oolite stone, but the Manti Temple was his crowning achievement.14

Ephraim, formerly named Pine Creek and then Cottonwood, was settled

13 Senate Document No. 12, 82nd Congress, 1st session, March, 1951, 25 pages. Stonemason William Ward was one of the four English stone carvers described by Carol Edison in “Custom-made gravestones in early Salt Lake City: The Work of Four English Stone Carvers,” Utah Historical Quarterly 56 (Fall 1988): 312-17.

14 Paul L. Anderson, “William Harrison Folsom: Pioneer Architect,” Utah Historical Quarterly 43 (Summer 1975): 254-55; V. J. Rasmussen, 1988, The Manti Temple, (Manti: Manti Temple Centennial Committee, 1988), 8.

Shoemaker-Cox-Parry Home in Manti was constructed of locally quarried oolite limestone in 1858.

soon after Manti, and construction of the fort began in 1854, as the establishment of stone quarries in the nearby exposures of stone east and northeast of Ephraim followed soon after settlement. Names of quarry operators are a clear indication of their Scandinavian heritage. In Ephraim, the Sanpete White Stone Company’s initial owners were P.C. Peterson Sr., Anthon H. Lund, Dr. Charles Jensen, and Henry Lund. Later P.C. Petersen Jr. was a part owner and manager and Heber Poulson was foreman. There was no shortage of talent as the White Stone Company employed seventy-two men a day. Other quarries were owned and operated by Lauritz, Otto, andA. C. Nielson, Jacob Peterson, Joseph Thorpe, M. P. Madsen, Peter Mortensen, Jorgen Jorgenson, and Soren P. Jensen.

The 1860 U. S. Census for Ephraim lists stonemasons and cutters from far flung places. Collins E. Flanders was from New Hampshire, Parlen McFarlen and William Bubble hailed from Canada, Nels Christian and Andrew Hanson had come from Denmark. Additional stonecutters included Peter L. Breinholt, Alfred Bailey Sr., John C. Johnson Sr., Lars Christensen, Niels Jensen, and Niels Spendrup. These craftsmen built many homes and other buildings of oolite limestone. For example, the Ephraim City Building was constructed of machine-cut oolite limestone, and the Ephraim United Order Cooperative Store was constructed in 1872 of oolite limestone.15

Centennial Book Committee, William G. Barton, ed., Ephraim’s First 100 Years (Ephraim, 1954), 69.

This stone of oolite limestone was carved for the Washington Monument.

Spring City is the third city whose geology and history are intricately bound with the Sanpete stone industry. This picturesque little town lies in solitude at the foot of the Wasatch Plateau hidden behind white hills of oolite limestone that separate it from the rest of the Sanpete Valley.

The first attempt to settle Spring City was made in 1852, but was abandoned because of Indian attacks. The community was resettled in 1859, and the 1860 U. S. Census lists no stonemasons.16 Stonemasons arrived with the Danish immigrants who arrived in the 1860s. The new arrivals wasted no time in quarrying limestone from the hills southwest of town. Homes built between 1865 and 1890 comprise over one-third of existing homes and either the rich cream-colored oolite limestone or adobe were the most common building materials.

Jens Jorgen Sorensen, John Peter (Jens) Carlson, and John Bohlin were the principal stonemasons. Thirty-year-old Jens Jorgen Sorensen arrived in Spring City in 1882. A native of Stanby, Denmark, Sorensen made his mark as a stonemason on many buildings in the area including the Manti Temple,

16 Population Schedules of the Eighth Census of the United States 1860.

The Manti Temple was constructed of oolite limestone between 1877 and 1888.

The Spring City Chapel was constructed of oolite limestone between 1902 and 1911.

the Spring City Hall, the Spring City Chapel, and the James Blair home.

John P. Carlson was an excellent craftsman. His stonework included the Manti Temple, Spring City LDS chapel, City Hall and many homes in town; his own home is regarded as an outstanding example of his proficiency. Carlson began construction of his home in 1896 doing everything himself. He quarried, dressed, and smoothed the stone. He made lime fillings to form mortar for the 1/8-inch joints; the interior walls exposed the smoothed stone. Unfortunately, Carlson died in 1927 at age seventy-eight before construction on his home was completed.

Scandinavian stonemasons who worked on buildings in Spring City included Wiley Allred, Hans Hansen, and Peter Monsen. Wiley Payne Allred was both a physician and stonecutter. He was born in Bedford County, Tennessee, the son of James and Elizabeth Warren Allred. He crossed the plains in 1851, settled first in Provo, then the Allred Settlement that became Spring City, and later contributed his skills to the Manti Temple construction. Hans Jorgen Hansen and his wife, Ane Kirsten, came from Denmark in 1859. They lived first in a dugout then a log cabin, before construction of their one and a half story rock home built in1874. Peter Monsen was a Swedish convert who built his own cut stone home between 1871 and 1883.

The strikingly beautiful Spring City LDS Chapel is the most prominent of Spring City's oolite limestone structures. It is situated on the town's Main Street where its stunning architecture and white stonework set the tone for the whole town. John F Bohlin was the stone supervisor while John P. Carlson prepared the stone for the building. The stonemasons were John P. Carlson, Jens Sorensen and Lars Larsen. Architect Richard C. Watkins designed the building, which took nine years to build (1902-1911) and was dedicated in 1914 when the annex was completed. The main hall is 40 x 89 feet with a 75 foot tower, ten rooms and a seven-room annex.

Scandinavian stone workers also built Spring City's city hall in 1893 of local oolite limestone, and the Crisp-Allred house of oolite limestone in the early 1880s. Danish immigrant Niels Peter “Baker” Jensen built a rock barn. The Orson Hyde home was built sometime after 1863. (Hyde was an important LDS church leader.) Jens Sorensen built the Isaac Edgar Allred home of cut stone in 1875. The older section of the Judge Jacob Johnson home was built between 1870 and 1872 of cut stone with a large addition completed in 1892. The Simon T. Beck residence was built in 1883 and the Crawforth Homestead in 1884.17

Oolite limestone quarries are exposed almost the full north-south length of Sanpete Valley. Edward L. Parry and sons operated the largest quarries near Ephraim and Manti. The Ephraim quarry is the largest of the quarries with a working face fifty to seventy-five feet high and twenty-four hundred feet long. The upper part is waste rock of calcareous shale and thin-bedded limestone. The lower part is composed of massive limestone beds four to six feet thick separated by thin shale partings. The Manti quarry most recently worked lies on both sides of a north-flowing gully and forms a discontinuous chain with a composite length of 2,380 feet. The latest oolitic bed to be quarried is eight feet thick overlain by twenty-two feet of waste rock. An older quarry east of the temple that has not been worked for many years has a working face ten to fifteen feet high and 1,650 feet long with

17 For more information on Spring City buildings see Cindy Rice, “Spring City: A Look at a Nineteenth Century Mormon Village,” Utah Historical Quarterly 43(Summer 1975): 260-77; Kaye C. Watson, Life under the Horseshoe: A History of Spring City (Salt Lake City: Publishers Press, 1987), 23-120; and Peter L. Goss and Kaye Watson, A Guide to Architecture and History of Spring City rev. ed, (Spring City: Friends of Spring City, 2007), 1-52.

The Sanpete County Courthouse in Manti was constructed of oolite limestone between 1920 and 1926.

AuTHOR

usable stone three to five feet thick at the base of the working face.18

The Mine, Quarry, and Metallurgical Record of the United States, Canada and Mexico lists limestone quarries at Ephraim and Manti operated by E. L. Parry in 1897, but no other operators were listed. Arthur Henrie and Company cut stone for buildings and cemetery markers; later the company became Manti Marble Works in competition with E. L. Parry and sons. By 1907, three quarries were in operation: the Oolitic Stone Company organized by K. B. Koch, S. D. Evans, and C. B Jack, Parry Brothers, and Lauritz, Otto, and A. C. Nielson Brothers.19

None of the early skilled and experienced stone masons and quarrymen in Sanpete County was as experienced as Edward L. Parry. He learned the mason trade from his father in St. George, Denbighshire, North Wales, located adjacent to Caernarvonshire with the two largest quarries in the

18 W. R. Hansen, “Stone” in Mineral and Water Resources of Utah, UGMS Bulletin (Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office,1964), 222-28.

19 Mine and Quarry News Bureau 1897; “Sandstone and Limestone” in Stone; an Illustrated Magazine 28 (1907) 283; Albert Antrei, High Dry and Offside (Manti: Manti City Corporation, 1995), 269; Salt Lake Tribune, July 2, 1907; Salt Lake Herald, September 18, 1906.

The Thomas Kearns Mansion on Salt Lake City’s South Temple Street was constructed of oolite limestone between 1900 and 1902.

world—Penrhyn and Dinorwic.20 Edward L. Parry migrated to the United States in 1853 at the age of thirty-five. He participated in the initial stages of the construction of the Salt Lake LDS Temple, became chief mason of the St. George LDS Temple, directed building of the St. George Social Hall, was chief mason on the St. George Tabernacle, and several other buildings. Immediately after completion of the St. George Temple, Edward moved to Manti where he was master mason on the Manti LDS Temple from 1877 to 1888.21 He and his eldest son Edward Thomas prospected for potential quarries, located attractive ledges of stone northeast of Ephraim, and filed claims on the property.22

The Ephraim quarry was opened and operated while construction on the Manti Temple was in progress. Stone from the Ephraim quarry was used in some of the upper levels of the temple.23

After completion of the Manti Temple, the oolite limestone continued to be used for local buildings including the Sanpete County Courthouse completed in the 1930s. With the arrival of the railroad in Sanpete County—first to Wales in 1882, then Moroni in 1884 and Manti in 1893— the local limestone could be shipped from the county to Salt Lake City, San Francisco, and localities from Colorado to California. The first stone from the E. L. Parry and Sons Ephraim quarry was shipped to Elias Morris, a stone dealer in Salt Lake City in 1882. The stone blocks, ranging in size from 157 to 257 cubic feet (13 to 21 tons), were taken to Wales on wagons and put on railroad cars for shipment to Salt Lake City. 24 E. L. Parry's account books show regular shipments of stone including shipments to San

20 In the mid-nineteenth century Penrhyn employed 2,000 men and the slate industry at its peak in the 1870s employed 11,000 to 14,000 men. The rock splitter was the real artist and quarrymen were the elite group of the quarry workers. R. Merfyn Jones, The North Wales Quarrymen (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1982), 72.

21 Orson F. Whitney, History of Utah, Vol. IV Biographical (Salt Lake City: George Q. Cannon and Sons, 1892), 459-61. George Brooks grew up in the home of Edward L. Parry where he learned the craft of stone masonry. Details of the life of Edward L Parry are given in Juanita Brooks, George Brooks Artist in Stone, (N.P., 1965),11- 79.

22 Edward L. Parry claimed 368 acres in 1880, and Edward Thomas claimed an additional 80 acres in circa 1883. The Utah Territory had no laws providing for claiming public lands for the purpose of quarrying stone. The Parrys had been advised that in the absence of any other method, the land could be claimed under the Desert Land Act. Blodwen P. Olson, “The White Stone Men,” Beehive History 23 (1997): 18; “The Quarry Contest,” Deseret News, May 21, 1884. Claims were filed on the property under the Desert Land Act of March 3, 1877, which was enacted to promote the development of arid and semiarid lands of the Western United States. Through this act, individuals could apply for land to cultivate and irrigate public lands. The cost was $1.25 per acre and a promise to irrigate at least one-eighth of the land within three years. A partial payment of $0.25 per acre was required. Competition among quarry men for the best stone was intense, and included examples of overlapping claims and claim jumping. “Attempt to Jump a Stone Quarry,” Deseret News, May 7, 1884; “The Sanpete Quarry Question,” Deseret News, May 7, 1884; “The Quarry Question Again,” and “Made Still More Clear,” Deseret News, May 21, 1884

23 “Stone Quarries Fade into History Pages,” Manti Messenger, July 30, 1970.

24 Gary B. Peterson and Lowell C. Bennion, Sanpete Scenes: A Guide to Utah's Heart (Eureka: Basin Plateau Press, 1987), 60-61; David F. Johnson, “The History and Economics of Utah Railroads” (M.S. Thesis, University of Utah, 1947); Clarence Andrew Reeder, “The History of Utah’s Railroads, 18691883” (Ph. D. dissertation, University of Utah, 1970).

Francisco. In 1887, stone was shipped from the Ephraim quarries to Salt Lake City for use in the Hooper and Eldredge Building on Main Street and the Salt Lake County Jail.25

The David Keith mansion, a short distance west of his partner’s mansion on South Temple Street, was constructed of oolite limestone between 1898 and 1902.

Stone was supplied from the largest quarries northeast of Ephraim and in Manti for other impressive buildings in Salt Lake City and in California. The building stone treasure of Sanpete County and the fortunes being made from the silver mines of Park City came together on South Temple (Brigham) Street in Salt Lake City. Two good friends and silver mining partners, Thomas Kearns and David Keith, chose the north side of South Temple Street at 529 East (Keith) and 603 East (Kearns) for their homes of oolite limestone. In 1900, the railway transported twelve hundred tons of white oolite from the E. L. Parry and Sons Quarry to be used in the Thomas Kearns residence.26 The Kearns mansion, now the state governor's mansion, is a French Renaissance Chateauesque structure designed by architect Carl M. Neuhausen who also designed the Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake City.27 The mansion, begun in 1900 and completed in 1902, was built of

25 Blodwen P. Olson, “The White Stone Men,” Beehive History 23 (1997): 18.

26 ”Parry’s Stone Quarry,” Deseret News, August 10, 1887.

27 Salt Lake Tribune, April 4, 1900.

oolite limestone. It displays round towers at the corners with conical roofs, a steeply pitched hipped roof, complex exceedingly broken roofline, tall chimneys, and gabled decorative wall dormers

Architect Frederick A. Hale designed the nearby David Keith mansion, begun in 1898 and completed in 1902.28 The mansion incorporates four massive Tuscan stone columns that support a Greek-style, pedimented portico and symmetrical facade in a Neoclassical style. The Keith mansion is built upon a sandstone foundation to avoid the deleterious effects of moisture on the oolite limestone structure. In sharp contrast to the Kearns mansion only a short distance to the east, the roofline is simple with neither towers nor tall chimneys. Rectangular window openings appear on a smooth facade.

The Pacific Heights area of San Francisco, California, has a breathtaking view of San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate. Adolph B. Spreckels, son of sugar tycoon Adolph Claus J. Spreckels, and his wife, Alma de Bretteville Spreckels, built the Spreckels mansion to be San Francisco's largest mansion. The architects were Kenneth MacDonald Jr. and George A. Applegarth. Applegarth was trained at Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France, and the Spreckels mansion was his most prominent contribution to San Francisco's architectural heritage. Several homes were torn down or moved down the street to make room for the large mansion. The massive Beaux-Arts French baroque-style chateau was completed in 1913 and

28 Margaret D. Lester, Brigham Street (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society, 1979), 89-98.

The Adolph B. Spreckels mansion, completed in 1913, was constructed of Sanpete oolite limestone in the Pacific Heights area of San Francisco.

displays Beaux-Arts influences of rigid symmetry, perfect proportions, and columned entries. The mansion was built of reinforced concrete faced with “cream colored Manti stone that yields itself delicately to the finest touches of the artist’s chisel. The vestibule is also of Manti stone inlaid with mosaics.”29 The mansion, sometimes referred to as the “Parthenon of the West,” consists of fifty-five rooms including a Louis XVI Ballroom. A series of arched window bays are separated by stylized Ionic columns. Intricately carved limestone forms the cornice, tops of the columns, and spaces between window arches and balconies above.30

About two hundred miles south of San Francisco along the Pacific coast, a second, larger, more magnificent mansion with equally spectacular views of the Pacific Ocean was begun for William Randolph Hearst, a leading newspaper publisher. The mansion sits on a hill overlooking San Simeon Bay and offers some of the most impressive views of the central California coast. Architect Julia Morgan designed the Hearst mansion also called the Hearst Castle or Casa Grande at Hearst’s 240,000 acre ranch at San Simeon, California. Morgan, like Applegarth, was trained at the Ecole Des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France. The Hearst Castle designed in the Renaissance style of southern Spain was constructed of reinforced concrete and faced with Sanpete oolite limestone. Four stairway towers are modeled after a church in Ronda, Spain. The mansion has fifty-eight bedrooms, fifty-nine bathrooms, and many other rooms. Construction began in 1919 and was finally completed in 1947. In 1927, limestone from Sanpete was selected for the facing of the main building.31

The Park (Administration) Building at the University of Utah, located on the hill overlooking the Salt Lake Valley at the top of Second South Street is another building constructed with Sanpete oolite limestone. The Beaus-Arts and Neoclassical styles inspired architects S. C. Dallas and William S. Hedges of the architectural firm of Cannon, Fetzer, and Hansen.32 Broad expanses of plain walls, quiet roofline, square window bays, 29

“New A. P. Spreckels Home Splendid Mansion,” San Francisco Call, May 25, 1913. 30 Bernice Scharlach, Big Alma San Francisco’s Alma Spreckels (San Francisco: Scottwall Associates, 1990), 34, 40; Sally B. Woodbridge, John M. Woodbridge, Chuck Byrne, San Francisco Architecture (Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 2005), 144; Mitchell Schwarzer, Architecture of the San Francisco Bay Area: A History and Guide (San Francisco: William Stout Publishers, 2007), 107.

31 ”We finally took the bull by the horns and are facing the entire main building with a Manti stone from Utah, about the color of Caen stone or of the similar Spanish stone most of the carved Gothic ‘antiques’ have been made of.” Julie Morgan to Arthur Byne, Spanish expert and antiquarian, October 31, 1927, Julia Morgan Collection, Special Collections, Robert E. Kennedy Library, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, California. See Victoria Kastner with photographs by Victoria Garagliano, Hearst Castle: The Biography of a Country House (New York: Harry N Abrams Books, New York, 2000), 132; Sara Holmes Boutelle, Julia Morgan Architect (New York: Abbeville Press, 1988), 188-98.

32 Ralph V. Chamberlin, The University of Utah: A History of its First Hundred Years 1850-1950 (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press 1960), 242-43; United States Department of Interior, National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places, Inventory Nomination Form Number 78002682, University of Utah Circle, URL http://pdfhost.focus,nps.gov/docs/NRHP/text/78002682.pdf [accessed May 15, 2012 .]

ionic columns and a pedimented portico illustrate the neo-classical revival style of the architecture. Construction was completed in 1914.

The Utah County Courthouse in Provo is a Neoclassical building constructed 1920-1926 of oolite limestone from Manti and Ephraim quarries. 33 Joseph Nielson of Provo designed the Neoclassical building exterior to follow classical features of Greek buildings similar to the Park Building.

The Sanpete oolite limestone was exhibited in at least two world fairs— the 1893 Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition and the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. At the 1904 Fair, E.L. Parry and Sons were awarded a silver medal for their oolite limestone exhibition.34

The Green River Formation in Sanpete County has been an important historical source of building stone and will likely continue to be an important producer in the future. Currently, the Utah State Division of Oil, Gas, and Mining reports six active building stone quarry permits in Sanpete County.35

Quarrying, cutting, and laying the stone are labor intensive and expensive. Other building materials such as brick, concrete, other natural

33 Richard Neitzel Holzapfel, A History of Utah County (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society and Utah County Commission, 1999), 185.

34 Manti Messenger, December 22, 1893; July 6, 1905.

35 Andrew Rupke, Bryce Tripp, and Taylor Boden, Limestone, Dolomite, and Building Stone of Sanpete County, Open-file Report 589 (Salt Lake City: Utah Geological Survey, 2011), 15.

The University of Utah’s Park Building, constructed of Sanpete oolite limestone, was completed in 1914.

stone, and synthetic stone have competed successfully with the Sanpete oolite limestone. In addition, the durability of the oolite limestone is questionable in some applications. Some renovation, repair, and replacement of stones have been necessary because of exposure to the elements.

The extensive use of Sanpete oolite limestone in many public and private structures is a product of historical, cultural and geological conditions. Geological conditions of formation were responsible for the attractive color, ease of shaping, and carving. Later geological events led to its extensive exposure throughout the north-south length of Sanpete valley. Experienced stone craftsmen arrived with Mormon immigrants and recognized the beauty and utility of the stone. The arrival of the railroad permitted use of the stone in structures from Colorado to California, and the stone suited the imaginations of architects inspired by the Beaux-Arts and Neoclassical styles who chose the stone for their projects. All of these factors contributed to popular use of the Sanpete Valley oolite limestone.

Student Political Activism at Brigham Young University, 1965-71

By GARy JAMES BERGERA

There is certainly a spirit of unrest throughout the country and while it is manifest only slightly at the BYU it is nevertheless manifested here.

–Ernest L. Wilkinson, May 11, 1970

The presence of student political activism at Brigham Young University during the late 1960s and early 1970s was, like student activism elsewhere, as much a function of the school’s prevailing culture as of activist trends nationally. BYU students across the political spectrum responded to local and national events in ways both informed by and in

Students meet in Student President Brian Walton’s office in 1971. Left to right: Nanci Sinclair, Jon Ferguson (vice-president), Ann Fluckiger, Paul Larsen, Lauryl Fife, Terrell Hunt, John Taggert, and Walton.

Gary James Bergera is managing director of the Smith-Pettit

Lake City,

He appreciates the advice and encouragement of Lavina Fielding Anderson,

E. Bush,

E. Hunt, Omar and Nancy Kader, Kenneth T. Kartchner, Andrew E. Kimball, Jerry L. Owens, Ron Priddis, Larry R. Vollintine, and Brian Walton, as well as Thomas G. Alexander, W. Paul Reeve, and Colleen Whitley. All errors are Bergera’s own.

Foundation, Salt

Utah.

Lester

Terrell

reaction to political and intellectual currents on the Utah Valley campus. Thus a discussion of BYU student activism must also examine the political climate at the LDS church-owned school. Such a consideration locates BYU activism as occurring at an institution already politicized by an outspoken president, a mostly—but not entirely—sympathetic Board of Trustees, and a faculty and student body espousing somewhat broader political interests.

The appointment in 1951 of Ernest L. Wilkinson as BYU president reflected, in part, LDS fears over the perceived threat of Soviet communism. 1 A convert to the Republican Party and hardline conservative, Wilkinson needed little encouragement when Stephen L. Richards, a member of the LDS First Presidency, charged at his inauguration that he “implant in youth a deep love of country and a reverential regard for the Constitution of the United States.” 2 The Church’s president, David O. McKay, subsequently prayed that Wilkinson might “understand more than anyone else in education circles the dangers of communism...”3 “This institution,” Wilkinson promised, “is definitely committed to a philosophy which is the antithesis of that espoused by the communists.”4 “[H]ardly a day went by that we did not hear something about socialism or the like,” remembered one of Wilkinson’s employees. “He didn’t want anything tainting our campus, and he pretty much saw to it that people of that kind were kept out.”5

“There had been some activity politically at the university before Ernest Wilkinson became president,” remembered Provo attorney George S. Ballif, “but not nearly as much as [after] his administration began. ... There were many university professors who were Democrats, and some ... stayed on with the university after Ernest came, but they weren’t very vocal Democrats.”6 In 1953, one BYU teacher characterized the “professional radicalism” of his colleagues as extending “no further than [to a] belief in Social Security or Adlai Stevenson.” 7 Until 1959, Wilkinson refused to authorize activities honoring the United Nations, which he believed competed with the “American form of republican government.”8

1 For more, see Gary James Bergera, “Ernest L. Wilkinson’s Appointment as Seventh President of Brigham Young University,” Journal of Mormon History 23 (Fall 1997): 128-54.

2 Richards, “The Charge,” October 8, 1951, in The Messenger, November 1951, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.

3 Quoted in Ernest L. Wilkinson, Diary, April 28, 1960, Wilkinson Papers, Perry Special Collections.

4 Ernest L. Wilkinson to John A. Widtsoe, August 13, 1949, in Wilkinson Biographical File, Perry Special Collections.

5 Jan Chase Izatt, Oral History, April 1968, 4, Perry Special Collections.

6 George S. Ballif, Oral History, February 18 and March 8, 1974, 32-33, Perry Special Collections.

7 Quoted in “Scope of Academic Freedom; Dogmatism Is Only Real Threat,” Daily Universe, April 21, 1953.

8 Board of Trustees, Minutes, November 23, 1955, June 3, December 2, 1959; “Board of Trustees Reverses Stand on BYU United Nations Activities,” Daily Universe, December 10, 1959. All citations from the minutes of BYU’s trustees, including board and executive committee meetings, are from excerpts in possession of the Smith-Pettit Foundation.

While anti-communist speakers appeared regularly on campus during Wilkinson’s twenty years in office, liberal-leaning lecturers were often excluded. “There are certainly going to be no communists speaking to our students,” Wilkinson insisted in 1957, “nor are there going to be any fellow travelers who invoke the Fifth Amendment ...” 9 Administrators tried repeatedly to persuade FBI director and anticommunist crusader J. Edgar Hoover to visit the school.10 “Over the years,” Wilkinson wrote to Hoover in 1958, “we have had great admiration for your distinguished and unselfish public service which has not been surpassed by anyone else in the nation.”11 Speakers routinely challenged students to “become as indoctrinated in Americanism as Soviet children are in communism.”12 “When the conservative position in modern America is viewed in light of the Kingdom of God,” BYU religion professor Hyrum L. Andrus told students in 1962, “its strengths become apparent....liberalism, like the plan proposed by [Satan] and his hosts in the War in Heaven, is deficient and perverse.”13 The next day, BYU alumnus Reed Benson, Utah coordinator for the ultra-conservative John Birch Society and oldest son of LDS Apostle Ezra Taft Benson himself an ardent anti-communist, added, “We haven’t treated [communists] yet for what they are–murderers.”14

9 Wilkinson, Diary, September 9, 1957.

10 See “Crusader Tells Menace of Communist Program,” Daily Universe, October 24, 1960.

11 Ernest L. Wilkinson to J. Edgar Hoover, July 29, 1958, Wilkinson Biographical File.

12 “Education Answer to Threat of Communism,” Daily Universe, May 1, 1962.

13 “Conservatism,” Daily Universe, November 8, 1962.

14 “R. Benson Advocates Opposition,” Daily Universe, November 9, 1962.

Campaigning during the 1970 student election.

Responding to such rhetoric, some students complained about Wilkinson’s “unabashed partisanship.” “The political speakers at university programs, with one exception, have been of one political party,” wrote one student in 1954. “I believe ... these programs have degenerated from an educational function into a political harangue.” 15 In 1961, when Wilkinson announced that the year’s commencement speaker would be Barry Goldwater , conservative Republican Senator from Arizona—whom Wilkinson introduced as “essentially one of us”–one undergraduate composed a “special glossary of terms”: socialism —“any plan for social change or betterment not cleared with either Barry Goldwater or President Wilkinson”; conscience—“a special sense of right and wrong which is possessed only by ... a few Republicans of the extreme right, most of whom the students of Brigham Young University have been privileged to hear speak during the last year”; and freedom of assembly—“freedom to listen ... to a defense of President Wilkinson’s political philosophy.”16

Throughout the early 1960s, the number of politically partisan speeches sometimes accounted for almost 60 percent of total offerings. Some students “object[ed] to the use of our devotional as the vehicle of political

15 Roger A. Sorenson, Letter, Daily Universe, November 2, 1954.

16 Maurice M. Tanner, Letter, Daily Universe, May 23, 1961.Wilkinson, Introduction, “Brigham Young University Commencement Address,” June 2, 1961, in BYU Speeches of the Year, 1960-61 (Provo: Brigham Young University, 1961).

Celebrating BYU’s win over the University of Utah football team in 1965.

indoctrination.” 17 BYU’s student newspaper added: “Most of us who have been around for a while realize that President Wilkinson is a conservative Republican. We know these things because he has told us many times.” Another student wrote, “Can we claim intellectual honesty for ourselves ... when we present only one side of an issue while the other is disparaged or at best neglected?” Not all students were dissatisfied, however. More than a few expressed shock when the director of the American Association of Marriage Counselors claimed that “Soviet families are happier and more stable than American families.” One undergraduate commented, “It would appear [the speaker] is in actual essence a socialist at heart and chooses to support his views with what he saw in Russia.” Still, many, perhaps most, students remained politically neutral.18

By 1963, political topics occupied much of Wilkinson’s time, sometimes taking 70 percent of his meetings with LDS officials.19 Running for elected office became increasingly attractive as Wilkinson regularly toured the country in defense of free enterprise. Amid the call for more opinions on campus, Wilkinson announced in May 1963 that Soviet journalist Gyorgi I. Velikovosky would appear at a university assembly. Wilkinson uncharacteristically explained, “We have had so many references to communism this year, it seemed well that students should have the opportunity to hear from a real communist.”20 Two-thirds into his well-attended address, Velikovosky dropped the Russian accent and announced that he was George Velliotes, a California businessman and former history teacher, who had adopted the masquerade to dramatize “the evils of communism.” 21 Dismissing the

17 Jim Duggan, Letter, Daily Universe, April 19, 1962. According to my calculations from speeches printed in BYU Speeches of the Year, 1952-53, and succeeding years.

18 “Same Old Stuff? Maybe,” Daily Universe, June 21, 1962; S. George Sundal, Letter, Daily Universe, May 22, 1963; “Home Life Happy in Soviet Union,” Daily Universe, December 5, 1961; “Student Initiates Critique Series,” Daily Universe, December 5, 1961; and “Campus Political Balance,” Daily Universe, December 5, 1962.

19 Wilkinson, Memoranda of Conferences with David O. McKay, January 19 and March 7, 1962, Wilkinson Papers. For more, 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.

20 “Communist Will Speak at Wednesday Assembly,” Daily Universe, May 10, 1963.

21 “Forum Speaker Strikes Blow at Communism,” Daily Universe, May 16, 1963.

Royce Swenson received a plaque honoring him as the one thousandth graduate of the BYU Air Force ROTC Program, May 26, 1972.

criticisms that followed, Wilkinson stressed: “Brigham Young University stands squarely... in denouncing communism as a devilish and satanic gospel. I am surprised that anyone thought otherwise.”22

Wilkinson also expanded the criteria used in faculty hiring and promotion to include “commitments to business history and ... the business community,” as well as “affiliations with the conservative elements of economics.”23 He balked at appointing teachers whose political and economic views differed from his own, and sometimes punished faculty whose views did.24 BYU’s undergraduate course in American history was “adjusted” in 1968 to include “treatments of ... the American system of free enterprise” as well as LDS Churchman J. Reuben Clark’s writings on the U.S. Constitution. 25 After reviewing a survey of student attitudes two years later, Wilkinson vowed to do even more “to maintain our republic.”26 Campus dance bands were screened for possible communist sympathizers. School administrators contacted local radio stations to complain about musicians such as Joan Baez, “known to be a communist...”27 When Wilkinson learned that the number of BYU students using federal food stamps had more than doubled, he asked “for guidance.” Trustees felt that “additional comments... would draw attention to the program,” but Apostle Benson later publicly condemned the practice.28

Wilkinson’s anti-communism reflected an affinity among many LDS officers, most notably Benson, for right-wing ideologies. At BYU, the response to such a faction was divided. Religion professors Reid E. Bankhead, Glenn L. Pearson, and Hyrum Andrus favored, like Benson, the political/economic teachings of the John Birch Society and had to be cautioned not to “interject their personal opinions and feelings in the classroom.” 29 After meeting Birch Society founder Robert Welch,

22 “Wilkinson Comments Repeated,” Daily Universe, May 21, 1963; “Wilkinson Quotes Church Officials,” Daily Universe, May 17, 1963.

23 Weldon J. Taylor, Memorandum to Robert K. Thomas, December 4, 1968, Perry Special Collections; Wilkinson, Diary, November 29, 1960; Board of Trustees, Executive Committee Minutes, January 28, February 3 and 25, 1965, June 4, 1969; Wilkinson, Diary, February 1-6, 1965.

24 See Board of Trustees, Executive Committee, Minutes, January 28, February 3 and 25, 1965; and Wilkinson, Diary, February 1-6, 1965. The specific case here involved the hiring of LDS church members Bartell C. Jensen and Robert H. Slover. Jensen accepted a position at Utah State University; Slover joined BYU’s political science faculty. Slover, who was also a colonel in the U.S. Army, told LDS officials: “a staff officer’s job is to ... fight for what he thinks is right and as far as the problem is concerned ... [But] when the commander makes a decision whether it’s your decision or somebody else’s decision, then you get behind him and make it work” Slover, Oral History, February 10, 1994, 3, Perry Special Collections. See also, Gary James Bergera, “The Monitoring of BYU Faculty Tithing Payments, 1957-63,” Sunstone, October 2011, 32-43; and Bergera, “The 1966 BYU Student Spy Ring,” Utah Historical Quarterly 79 (Spring 2011): 164-88. Slover taught full time from 1965 to 1978, then an additional eight years part time.

25 Board of Trustees, Executive Committee, Minutes, November 21, 1968.

26 Wilkinson, Memorandum to Weldon J. Taylor, March 27, 1970, Perry Special Collections.

27 Wilkinson, Memorandum to J. Elliott Cameron, September 27, 1966, Perry Special Collections.

28

“Food Stamp Numbers Climb,” Daily Universe, March 25, 1971; Board of Trustees, Minutes, April 7, 1971; “Pres. Benson Warns Against Communism,” Daily Universe, April 13, 1977.

29 College of Religious Instruction Departmental Chairmen’s Meeting, Minutes, April 20, May 6, 1964, Perry Special Collections.

Wilkinson wrote, “The John Birch Society is a real patriotic living and moving organization....I would probably agree with 90 percent of their teachings.”30 BYU political scientist Louis C. Midgley took a dimmer view and publicly rebuked Birch devotees in 1964: “Their morality is simply the old notion that the end justifies the means; any stick to beat the devil.”31 Two months later, twenty-two BYU teachers signed an open letter condemning John A. Stormer’s 1964 conservative call-to-arms None Dare Call It Treason as a “piece of fanaticism.”32 They explained that their letter was written because Stormer’s book was “being distributed in certain BYU religion classes... [and] regarded as authoritative because of this sponsorship.”33 David O. McKay, who worried that Birch-LDS inroads were “causing...embarrassment,” instructed BYU officials not to “bring [Birch] speakers to the campus... The matter [should be] dropped entirely.”34

The number of non-Birch Society conservative lecturers picked up considerably following Wilkinson’s unsuccessful bid for the U.S. Senate in 1964 and return to campus.35 Favored speakers included General Carlos P. Romulo of the Philippines; George M. Mardikian, San Francisco restaurateur and U.S. military advisor on food preparation; Kenneth W. McFarland, superintendent of the Topeka (Kansas) Public School District; and news commentator Paul Harvey. As Wilkinson explained: “I am looking for the very best speakers in the nation, but they must have honest-to-God

30 Wilkinson, Diary, August 19-22, 1965, April 13, 1966.

31

“Birch Society Review,” Daily Universe, May 22, 1964.

32 “None Dare Call It Treason Causes Sincere Concern,” Daily Universe, July 23, 1964.

33 Richard D. Poll, Letter, Daily Universe, July 30, 1964.

34 Combined from Earl C. Crockett, Memorandum, December 11, 1965, and McKay, Letter to Crockett, June 4, 1964, Wilkinson Papers (while Wilkinson ran for office, Crockett was Acting President).

BYU students in 1969.

American thinking, who inspire us to greater heights rather than sow the seeds of disillusionment.”36 In an effort to distance himself from criticism, Wilkinson partially delegated responsibility for the selection of speakers in 1965 to a Speakers Committee, though he retained final approval.37 Under Wilkinson’s eye, committee members adopted a policy of prohibiting speakers who “advocate the overthrow of the government of the United States or of its constituent units by force, or in any other way violate restrictions imposed for public safety”; or who “advocate or espouse ideas inimical to a belief in a divine creator, honesty, morality and individual responsibility, or take advantage of [their] forum in any other way to demean the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or its doctrines or policies.”38 The next year, BYU’s Young Democrats and Young Republicans jointly hosted a discussion on “Political Extremism” featuring faculty from BYU, the University of Utah, and Weber State College.39

During Wilkinson’s 1964 absence, BYU’s Acting President Earl C. Crockett approved the speaking engagements of four alleged communist sympathizers: Louis Untermyer, a consultant in English poetry to the Library of Congress; Max Lerner, a syndicated newspaper columnist; Stringfellow Barr, a historian and political satirist; and musicologist Allan Lomax.40 Upon his return, Wilkinson cancelled the contracts of Barr and Lomax.41 When television journalist Howard K. Smith, who had also been invited during Wilkinson’s absence, spoke favorably of U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson’s New Society, Wilkinson promised critics that Smith would not be invited again. 42 Following the appearance of U.S.

35 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.

36 Wilkinson, Letter to Kenneth McFarland, April 19, 1966, Wilkinson Papers.

37 BYU’s emphasis on politics in speaker selection coincided with a de-emphasis in such areas elsewhere. See, for example, Stanley N. Kinney, “The Speaker Ban and Student Organizations at the University of Michigan, 1914-20,” History of Education Journal 7 (Summer 1956): 133-43; “The Speaker Ban Extended at the University of Michigan, 1920-35,” History of Education Journal 7(Fall 1956): 1-17; and James E. Watson, “The Place of Controversy on the Campus,” Journal of Higher Education 36 (January 1965); 18-24.

38 Wilkinson, Memorandum to John T. Bernhard, Stephen Covey, Herald R. Clark, H. Smith Broadbent, LaVar Rockwood, D. Kirt Hart, Dale Taylor, and the ASBYU President, April 23, 1965, Wilkinson Papers; “Policy for BYU Speakers Committee,” August 1965, Perry Special Collections.

39 See J. Kenneth Davies, ed., Political Extremism—Under the Spotlight (Privately printed, 1966). The discussion was held on the BYU campus on April 25, 1966, and featured John T. Bernhard (BYU), Victor B. Cline (University of Utah), James T. Duke (BYU), David K. Hart (BYU), and Quinn G. McKay (Weber State College).

40 For criticisms of Untermyer, Lerner, Barr, and Lomax, see E. Eugene Bryce, Letter to David O. McKay, November 30, 1965, Wilkinson Papers; Wilkinson, Diary, October 5, 1965; Wilkinson, Letter to Mrs. Grant E. Mann, January 18, 1966, Wilkinson Papers; and Wilkinson, Letter to Mrs. Newell J. Olsen, January 25, 1966, Wilkinson Papers.

41 Wilkinson, Memorandum to John T. Bernhard, January 31, 1966, Wilkinson, Memorandum to J. LaVar Bateman, February 14, 1966, and Bateman, Memorandum to Wilkinson, February 18, 1966, all in Perry Special Collections. Barr’s and Lomax’s contracts were signed by BYU representatives after Wilkinson’s return.

42 Wilkinson, Letter to Anne Richards Horton, April 2, 1966; and Wilkinson, Letter to Helen Stafford, April 2, 1966, both in Perry Special Collections.

Vice-President Hubert Humphrey in October 1966, Wilkinson complained that he had been pressured into allowing the Vice-President to speak, and was particularly annoyed that he had not had enough time to provide a Republican rebuttal.43 Less than two years later, Wilkinson refused to cancel classes for U.S. Presidential candidate Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Still, an overflow of some fifteen thousand students packed the George Albert Smith Fieldhouse to hear Kennedy quip, “I had a very nice conversation with Dr. Wilkinson, and I promised him that all Democrats would be off the campus by sundown.”44 In late 1970, Wilkinson accompanied Barry Gold- water and Utah’s Repub-lican candidate for the U.S. Senate, Laurence J. Burton, to the school’s Homecom-ing Assembly. Over the protests of student body officers, Wilkinson invited Goldwater, who had not been cleared, to address the captive audience.45

During the late 1960s, trustees expanded school policy to prohibit speakers who “engaged in programs or movements antagonistic to the Church or its standards.” Wilkinson interpreted this to bar “atheists,” “subversives,” “those [having] any link with Russia or who would destroy our country,” and “those who would defame or ridicule our concept of strict morality.” 46 Because conservative speakers remained a dominant presence, complaints persisted. “It is my impression,” wrote BYU political

43 Wilkinson, Diary, October 15, 17, and 21, 1966; “Vice-President Humphrey Visits BYU,” Daily Universe, October 24, 1966; Wilkinson, Memorandum of a conference with David O. McKay, October 24, 1966, Wilkinson Papers.

44 “Kennedy at BYU Wednesday,” Daily Universe, March 25, 1968; “Kennedy Speech Attracts Capacity Crowd,” Daily Universe, March 28, 1968. One student remembered the experience as “something I would never have predicted and will never forget. It was stunning” (Brian Walton, E-mail to Bergera, November 29, 2011). Wilkinson recorded: “I really think that Bobby is more competent than his brother [John F. Kennedy]—helped in large part by his legal training, but I still don’t trust him” (Diary, March 27, 1968).

45 “At Forum,” Daily Universe, October 20, 1970.

46 Board of Trustees, Minutes, March 6, 1968; Wilkinson, Memorandum for Trustees, December 15, 1969, Perry Special Collections.

Vice-President Spiro Agnew with BYU President Ernest Wilkinson, May 8, 1969.

scientist Ray C. Hillam, “that the [speakers] committee is entirely responsible for censoring rather than promoting...” 47 Five months later, Wilkinson responded, “It is a matter of deciding whether to host speakers whose views on matters parallel our own as opposed to those whose views we do not respect.”48 Nearly two-thirds of BYU students countered in a 1970 poll that “viewpoints contrary to the Church stand should have an opportunity for exposure on campus.”49 Perhaps aware of the sentiment among students, Speakers Committee members tried to increase student participation in choosing speakers in 1969. However, Wilkinson advised the committee, “I am not at all sure that students are the ones to select these assembly speakers.”50 Men and women prohibited from speaking for political reasons throughout the late 1960s include Donna Allen, Erich Fromm, George Wallace, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (Shah of Iran), Gore Vidal, Marshall McLuhan, Whitney Young, Stewart Udall, Betty Furness, and Jesse Jackson.51 Wilkinson also criticized the speaking engagements of members of his own faculty, including economist J. Kenneth Davies; political scientists Stewart L. Grow, Melvin P. Mabey, and J. Keith Melville; and historian Thomas G. Alexander, whom Wilkinson called a “socialist.”52

Also in keeping with his conservative agenda, Wilkinson pushed for the establishment of an ROTC (Reserve Officers’ Training Corps) unit on campus. Trustees had previously rejected such requests but relented in the wake of deepening U.S. involvement in Korea.53 Wilkinson assured parents in 1956 that BYU’s U.S. Air Force unit had been “set up with prudence under the spirit of our Heavenly Father.”54 He was convinced that such training afforded students “one way in which, in accordance with prophecy, the elders of Zion may help to save our country.”55 Given the alternative

47 Hillam, Memorandum to John T. Bernhard, May 31, 1968, Perry Special Collections.

48 “Wilkinson Defends Policies,” Daily Universe, October 30, 1968.

49 “BYU Student Body, 1970,” 32, Perry Special Collections.

50 Wilkinson, Memorandum to Lorin F. Wheelwright, April 17, 1969, Perry Special Collections.

51 See “The Case of Donna Allen, or Censorship at BYU,” ca. 1967, Perry Special Collections; “Student Government,” Daily Universe, January 4, 1968; Wilkinson, Memorandum to J. Elliot Cameron, August 26, September 28, 1968, Wilkinson Papers; Wilkinson, Memorandum to Robert K. Thomas, December 1, 1969, Perry Special Collections, and University Speakers’ Committee, Minutes, 1965-71, Perry Special Collections.

52 Wilkinson, Memorandum to Robert K. Thomas et al., October 12, 1970, Wilkinson Papers; Wilkinson, Diary, May 10, 1970. The next year, Wilkinson attempted to expand the list of “proscribed performances.” Instead, trustees adopted a statement mirroring the 1965 BYU Speakers’ Committee guidelines, with the following additions: that speakers not have committed “acts of immorality, dishonesty, or other conduct”; that “any person who has qualified as a candidate for the ... office of president of the United States [be allowed to] address general assemblies ... without prior submission of his or her name to the board”; and that “no speaker be disqualified solely on political grounds.” See “General Policies of the Performance Standards Committee–Working Paper, 13 April 1971,” 3-4, and “General Policies of the Performance Standards Committee–Working Paper, 11 May 1971,” both in Perry Special Collections; Board of Trustees, Minutes, December 1, 1971.

53 Board of Trustees, Minutes, June 5, 1953.

54 Wilkinson, “Your Boy in the Service,” 33rd Annual Leadership Week, 1956 (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1956), 11-12, Perry Special Collections.

55 Wilkinson, “ROTC Enrollment at BYU,” September 24, 1968, 9, Perry Special Collections.

demonstrating for the recall of student body president Brian Walton, November 1970.

facing draft-age students, the response tended to be favorable. “An ROTC unit here–now–would have certain very definite advantages,” one student commented. “...Male students who feel the warm breath of their local draft boards down the back of their necks would not have to transfer to schools which already have [a military program] to finish their education.” 56 By 1953, enrollment had skyrocketed to eighteen hundred, then plummeted during the early 1960s to less than a hundred, but by 1965 had more than quadrupled.57 BYU subsequently obtained permission to establish an Army ROTC unit, and the Daniel H. Wells ROTC building was dedicated in 1969. Following the end of the Vietnam war in the mid-1970s, enrollment in both units again decreased, though participation has remained relatively strong.

At the beginning of fall semester 1961, BYU administrators suggested that ROTC cadets supervise daily U.S. flag raising and lowering ceremonies on campus. 58 Some students viewed the ceremony as an inconvenience, and one school official observed, “Very few will stop to pay proper respect by standing at attention...”59 Irked, administrators decided to have the national anthem played as well. The response was again mixed. While many students stood at attention, others protested.60 One wrote, “I believe that forcing people to surrender even one minute a day through coercion is un-American.”61 Another joked, “I have also watched many of the foreign students during these precious moments....They seem to show a passive tolerance and not a deep passionate commitment. They need to be taught true love of America, and if they are not going to develop that love they can leave–especially those ungrateful Canadians.”62

56

“BYU Men Voice Approval of ROTC Establishment,” Daily Universe, February 13, 1951.

57 See Joseph F. Boone, “The Roles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Relation to the United States Military, 1900-1975,” (Ph.D. dissertation, Brigham Young University, April 1975), 446, 457-60, 462.

58 “ROTC Takes Care of Flag,” Daily Universe, October 5, 1961.

59 “Flag Deserves Attention,” Daily Universe, January 12, 1962.

60 Roger B. McFarland, Letter, Daily Universe, April 23, 1965.

61 David L. Daly, Letter, Daily Universe, March 28, 1967.

62 Mike Noonchester, Letter, Daily Universe, December 18, 1968.

BYU students

THE BAyNAN

Wilkinson’s support of ROTC was matched by his distrust of the Peace Corps. Both the Peace Corps and its domestic counterpart, VISTA (Volunteers In Service To America), were repeatedly refused permission to recruit on campus.63 Although LDS businessman J. Willard Marriott and LDS official Hugh B. Brown opposed Wilkinson’s policy, Wilkinson argued that the programs were welfare subsidies to third world countries and attracted students away from military and LDS missionary service.64 The irony of sponsoring an ROTC unit while denying the Peace Corps access to campus did not go unnoticed.65 Because of increasing criticism of BYU’s policy, Peace Corps representatives were eventually allowed, in late 1970, to interview interested students “on the same basis as any other company interviewing students”: through appointments initiated by students in response to announcements on campus bulletin boards.66

In many ways, the initial response of BYU students to the Vietnam war differed from their reaction to the first three American wars of the twentieth century. Where Mormons had previously remained suspicious of the intentions of U.S. leaders at the onset of American mobilization, U.S. Cold War rhetoric had by the early 1950s made considerable headway among c church members. Nearly 60 percent of BYU students in one survey believed that war with Russia was “inevitable.” Many based their belief on LDS scripture.67 A 1952 survey revealed that more than three-fourths of BYU men favored compulsory military service, but that a majority also felt a person should not be “forced to go to war if he considers it to be morally wrong.”68 Within fifteen years, support of military involvement in Vietnam had become a measure of patriotism, and following Congress’s passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964, 84 percent of BYU men expressed a willingness to fight. 69 The next month, while a growing number of American college students protested United States intervention in Vietnam, eighty BYU students marched through Provo’s streets to mail a letter carrying sixty-five hundred signatures to President Lyndon Johnson in support of the war.70 “In these days of student protests,” commented one student, “it is good to know that some colleges like BYU are not joining in.”71

63 Board of Trustees, Minutes, May 3, 1961; Deans’ Council, Minutes, January 5, 1965, Perry Special Collections; Board of Trustees, Minutes, September 1, November 3, December 1, 1965.

64 Milan D. Smith and J. Willard Marriott, Letter to Thorpe B. Isaacson, November 29, 1965, Perry Special Collections; Board of Trustees, Minutes, January 10, 1952, June 3, 1970; “Church Continues Ban on Peace Corps Recruiting on ‘Y’ Campus,” Daily Herald, June 10, 1970.

65 Scott Hinckley, Letter, Daily Universe, November 2, 1970.

66 Ben E. Lewis, Minutes of a Meeting, November 20, 1970, Perry Special Collections; Board of Trustees, Minutes, December 2, 1970.

67

“BYU Students Present Views in Poll on Important Issues,” Daily Universe, February 5, 1952.

68 “Wars and Rumors of Wars,” Daily Universe, February 5, 1952.

69

“Men Prefer War, Women Marriage,” Daily Universe, October 19, 1965.

70

“Y Students March Through Provo,” Daily Universe, November 1, 1965; “Draft Card Burning No Joke,” Daily Universe, November 3, 1965. Wilkinson was one of the letter’s signers (“Viet Nam Letter Receives Praise,” Daily Universe, October 29, 1965).

71 “Viet Protestors, Blight on America,” Daily Universe, October 20, 1965.

As U.S. involvement in Vietnam deepened, LDS officials announced in December 1965, “Latter-day Saints are not pacifists. ... Neither are they conscientious objectors.” 72 “Mere membership in the Church does not make one a conscientious objector,” the First Presidency’s secretary stated a year later: “It is not possible for an individual citizen to have the information that is available to the president and the Congress, and without all of the facts he is not in a position to judge.” 73 BYU speakers reminded students that “freedom is bought with the red blood of soldiers, not red paint on posters.”74 One undergraduate pinned his draft card to his shirt and announced that he was “protest[ing] against protestors.”75 Fears that a weekly “Free Forum” sponsored by BYU student government was turning the school into “another Berkeley” proved unfounded when a 1967 poll showed that 80 percent of students believed the United States “should not pull out of Vietnam.” 76 That same year, administrators announced the inauguration of an annual “American Week” to “promote support for a better America.” Military Week followed to demonstrate support for the school’s ROTC units.77 In April 1968, Boyd K. Packer, an Air Force veteran and Church leader, publicly condemned conscientious objection.78 Faced with “jeopardiz[ing] its already fragile and restricted arrangement with the U.S. government for deferments from the draft for LDS proselyting missionaries,” the First Presidency affirmed its support of the draft in 1969.79 Wilkinson told graduating seniors in 1970, “I trust you will all be good soldiers.”80

One of the most revealing studies of the reaction of BYU students to Vietnam was conducted in 1968 by two BYU psychologists. They found that most students lacked “a solid foundation on which to base their policy preferences,” but nonetheless agreed that “communists must be crushed before peaceful solutions can be implemented” and that “continued American intervention in the war is justified.”81 A second study added that most students shared a common belief, reinforced by LDS and BYU leaders, in America as “God’s chosen land” and viewed American foreign policies as

72 Editorial, LDS Church News, December 4, 1965, written by LDS Church Apostle Mark E. Petersen.

73 Joseph Anderson, Secretary to the First Presidency, Letter to Chaplain Brent M. Holmes, October 30, 1970, copy in possession of the Smith-Pettit Foundation.

74 “Dr. McFarland Stresses ‘Stand Up, Be Counted,’” Daily Universe, April 15, 1966.

75 Phillip H. Porter, Letter, Daily Universe, December 6, 1967.

76 “Alarm Over Free Forum,” Daily Universe, March 22, 1967; “Y Opinion Places Romney on Top,” Daily Universe, October 18, 1967.

77 See Torch of Freedom (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1967).

78 Packer, Speech in Conference Reports of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, April 1968 (Salt Lake City: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1968), 33-36.

79 D. Michael Quinn, “Conscientious Objectors or Christian Soldiers? The Latter-day Saint Position on Militarism,” Sunstone, March 1985, 21.

80 Wilkinson, “Student Problems: Civil Disorder, Vietnam,” June 16, 1970, in Speeches, Summer School, 1970-71 (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1971), 6.

81 Knud S. Larsen and Gary Schwendiman, “The Vietnam War Through the Eyes of a Mormon Subculture,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 3 (Autumn 1968): 152-62.

1970.

moral.82 Polls also found that the political orientation of BYU students was becoming more conservative. From 1967 to 1972, the percentage of students identifying as Republican or American Independent grew from 54 to 75 percent, while the number identifying as Democrat rose only from 13 to 16 percent.83

Despite BYU’s reputation as an “oasis of calm” during this period, public acts of dissent were not entirely absent from the LDS campus. Indeed, when compared to World War I, World War II, and the Korean war,Vietnam proved to be the most divisive among BYU students. As with student unrest nationally, dissent at BYU embraced not only the war but also student rights, student participation in campus decision-making, and minority discrimination. 84 “Why should the [Vietnamese government] waste [its] own people when [it] can sucker American boys to blindly fight and die instead?” asked one BYU student.85 During BYU’s 1969 Military Week, a second student wrote, “I do not believe it a fit honor to our war dead to display the weapons that killed them.”86 The on-going discussion of American policies, contained in letters to BYU’s student newspaper and elsewhere, found outlets in more visible forms of dissent. An unexpected voice in support of pacifism came in late 1969 from LDS Apostle Gordon B. Hinckley. “I have felt very keenly the feelings of many of our young men concerning this terrible conflict,” he reported at a BYU devotional service. In apparent defense of conscientious objection, he confided, “A man has to live with his conscience, his principles, his convictions and testimony, and without that he is as miserable as hell. Excuse me, but I believe

82 T. Tammy Tanaka, “Why No Revolts at BYU: The Silent Language of the Mormon World-View and Patriotism at Brigham Young University,” (Master’s Thesis, Brigham Young University, 1968).

83 Political affiliations are reported in Larsen and Schwendiman, “Mormon Subculture,” 153; “Nixon Leads Seven to One,” Daily Universe, November 3, 1972.

84 “No Flag-Burning at Brigham Young University–A University Without Trouble,” U.S. News and World Report, January 20, 1969, 58-59; Verne A. Stadtman, “Constellations in a Nebulous Galaxy,” Academic Transformation, Seventeen Institutions Under Pressure, David Riesman and Verne A. Stadtman, eds. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973, sponsored by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education), 1-11.

85 “U.S. Policy,” Daily Universe, December 7, 1967.

86 Mark Jasinski, Letter, Daily Universe, March 27, 1969.

BYU students demonstrating in support of student body president Brian Walton, November

it.”87 Utah’s Democratic Senator Frank Moss echoed Hinckley’s sentiment six days later.88 But at a special Veteran’s Day devotional service the next week, Hartman J. Rector Jr., a Navy veteran and member of the Church’s First Council of the Seventy, appeared in military uniform to highlight his support of U.S. policy. “This nation represents the last great bastion of freedom and liberty,” he asserted.89 The next year, again only a few days apart, Hinckley reaffirmed his hatred “of war with all its mocking panoply,” while Rector speculated that war “was an instrument in the hands of the Lord” to further missionary work in Vietnam.90 Meanwhile, that spring, LDS Church member Frank C. Child, a professor of economics at the University of California–Davis, told BYU students, “In the name of freedom we stamp out freedom,” and former U.S. Presidential candidate George W. Romney said that the war “was the most tragic foreign policy mistake in our nation’s history.”91

Debate over the war soon shifted to more tangible activism. Although BYU students of the late 1960s and early 1970s were influenced by their peers on other American campuses, a tradition of sometimes large-scale demonstrations was not unknown to BYU alumni. In 1910, students paraded through Provo in support of prohibition.92 The next year, almost the entire student body gathered to oppose the dismissal of three faculty members for teaching organic evolution and biblical criticism.93 In 1919, students demonstrated for the League of Nations and later boycotted devotional services because of a policy of forced attendance.94 In the early 1960s, a protracted struggle to extend BYU’s Christmas break divided the school. At the height of the controversy, more than two thousand students burned the Dean of Student Life in effigy.95 The mid-1960s also saw the emergence of BYU panty raids and hardening of the school’s policy on “demonstrations.” Following one particularly animated siege in 1965,

87 Combined from “The Loneliness of Leadership,” November 4, 1969, in Speeches of the Year, 1969-70 (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1970), 3, and “Elder Hinckley Speaks of Leaders’ Loneliness,” Daily Universe, November 5, 1969. The second half of Hinckley’s comment appears only in the Daily Universe.

88 “Senator Moss Says Leave Vietnam,” Daily Universe, November 11, 1969.

89 Rector, “Let Us Stand Up For Freedom,” November 11, 1969, in Speeches of the Year, 1969-70 (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1970), 8.

90 Hinckley, “Lest We Forget,” November 10, 1970, in Speeches of the Year, 1970-71 (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1971), 3; “Missionaries to Nam,” Daily Universe, November 16, 1970.

91 “War Topic of Viet Advisor,” Daily Universe, April 22, 1970; Romney, “A New Age for America,” April 27, 1970, in Speeches of the Year, 1969-70 (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1970), 5.

92 “Greatest Parade in the History of the World,” White and Blue, November 8, 1910.

93 John T. Wahlquist, “B.Y.U. Reminiscences,” 1-2, in N. L. Nelson Biographical File, Perry Special Collections.

94 Ibid.; “Dean’s Council Vetoes Student Body Petition for Registration Delay,” Daily Universe, December 12, 1950.

95 See “Senate Vote Falls Short, IOC Subjection Remains,” Daily Universe, May 10, 1960; “Grumble, Grumble,” Daily Universe, May 20, 1960; “Students Question Dean on Vacation, Rent, Jobs,” Daily Universe, October 26, 1960; “Short Holiday Ahead,” Daily Universe, October 27, 1960; “Vacation Mad Students Rally at Cannon Center,” Daily Universe, December 9, 1960; “It’s Official! Leave Friday,” Daily Universe, December 12, 1960; “Angry Students Erupt in Protest Rally,” Daily Universe, December 3, 1962; “Five Days Added for Travel,” Daily Universe, October 11, 1967.

Wilkinson ruled that any student apprehended at the scene of a “riot,” defined as a gathering of two or more people disturbing the peace, would be summarily “dismissed.”96

As fall semester 1965 began, Wilkinson asked the Dean of Student Life, in what may be the earliest reference to the possibility of Vietnam-related protests, to “look out” for “incipient tendencies” among students “so that we can nip [them] in the bud.” 97 To students two days later, Wilkinson commented, “All of us feel very good because we feel that the student body is completely behind us.” 98 Despite mounting anti-war sentiment nationally, not until late 1968 did the first major demonstration occur at BYU, when sixty students wearing black armbands attended a speech by Curtis LeMay retired U.S. Air Force general and conservative running mate of third party U.S. presidential candidate George Wallace. Their backs to LeMay, the students tried to disrupt his address by applauding at intervals.99 Fearing such activities might escalate, administrators produced a list of “suggestions regarding disturbances” and appointed a committee on student unrest.100 They also adopted, two years later, a civil disturbance plan and discussed the feasibility of organizing a campus “riot squad.”101

As U.S. fighting in Vietnam intensified through 1968-69, so did student unrest. In March 1969, representatives of a BYU “Free Student Coalition” presented sixteen demands–including recognition of a Mobilization for Peace Club, abolishment of ROTC class credit, and establishment of a Civil Rights week–to unreceptive administrators. 102 Wilkinson, in an April memo, expressed anxiety that “nothing get started on this campus against the ROTC” and blamed national demonstrations on “communist revolutionaries.”103 “Their ultimate goal,” he later explained, was “... destruction of our existing social order.” 104 At campus-wide devotional services in late April 1969, Boyd Packer invited student critics to study elsewhere.105 When rumors of a demonstration against the appearance of Vice-President Spiro T. Agnew surfaced in early May, BYU’s Dean of Fine Arts suggested that

96 See “Six Face Discipline for Friday Student Rampage,” Daily Universe, December 5, 1962; “On the Acropolis,” Daily Universe, December 14, 1962; “300 Participate in Riot,” Daily Universe, February 24, 1965; “Dean Sets Action Code,” Daily Universe, September 28, 1965.

97 Wilkinson, Memorandum to J. Elliot Cameron, September 22, 1965, Wilkinson Papers.

98 “President Wilkinson Blasts Misconduct in Annual Address,” Daily Universe, September 24, 1965.

99 See Ralph McDonald, Letter, Zion’s Opinion, November 13, 1968, Perry Special Collections.

100

“Suggestions for School Leaders Regarding Disturbances”; Swen C. Nielsen, Chief of BYU Security, Memorandum to Committee on Civil Disturbance, October 24, 1968, both in Perry Special Collections.

101 Swen C. Nielsen, Memorandum to Sam F. Brewster, “Confrontation and Disaster Alert Plan,” March 25, 1970, Perry Special Collections.

102

“Sixteen Demands of Free Student Coalition Delivered by Ralph McDonald at Hyde Park Forum, March 5, 1969, 12:00 noon, Memorial Lounge, ELWC,” Perry Special Collections.

103 Wilkinson, Memorandum to Edwin B. Butterworth, April 12, 1969, Perry Special Collections.

104

“Pres. Wilkinson Lays Riots Squarely On Revolutionaries,” Daily Universe, April 18, 1969; “Rout Campus Rioters With Force,Y. President Declares,” Salt Lake Tribune, April 19, 1969.

105 “Packer Discusses Role of Dissent,” Daily Universe, May 1, 1969.

the university “alert some of our outstanding students to be ready to stand up for what we believe... It would be hard for the media not to recognize such students or to ignore their statements in favor of our position.” 106 Wilkinson agreed, but Agnew’s appearance took place without incident.107

Hoping to improve relations with the student body, Wilkinson “subjected” himself to an “interrogation” (Wilkinson’s terms) by nearly three hundred students at a campus “Free Forum” in late May 1969. Wilkinson afterwards confided that “there is more unrest on the campus than there has been in any previous year.”108 As a reminder that BYU would not tolerate violent dissent, Wilkinson had the school’s Code of Student Conduct amended that fall to provide for “disciplinary action” in the event of “obstruction or disruption of teaching, research, administration, disciplinary procedures, or other university activities...” 109 Student plans for participation in a nationwide boycott of classes in mid-October 1969 to protest the war were averted when student government officers voted instead to “support the idea that each person should write his congressman expressinghis opinions either for or against the Vietnam War.” As a further compromise, several campus workshops and lectures on war and pacifism were scheduled during the national moratorium.110

106 Wheelwright, Memorandum to Wilkinson, April 24, 1969, and Wilkinson, Memorandum to Wheelwright, April 25, 1969, Perry Special Collections. For the response of Student Body President Kenneth T. Kartchner to the suggestion, see below.

107 Lael J. Woodbury, Memorandum to Wheelwright, May 1, 1969, Perry Special Collections; “Agnew Condemns Violence,” Daily Universe, May 9, 1969.

108 Wilkinson, Diary, May 9, 1969. See also a transcript of the question-and-answer session attached to Lyle Curtis, Memorandum to Wilkinson, June 3, 1969, Perry Special Collections.

109

110

“Brigham Young University Code of Student Conduct,” Fall 1969, Perry Special Collections.

“Miller, Beutler Protest War, Apathy During ‘Indoor’ Hyde Park Forum,” Daily Universe, October 9, 1969, and “The Program,” The Young Democrat, October 20, 1969; “Moratorium Motivates Collegians,” Daily Universe, October 15, 1969; ASBYU Executive Council, Minutes, October 13, 1969, Perry Special Collections; “Task Force: ‘No Simple Solution’” and “Hyde Park Sparks Heated Debate,” Daily Universe, October 16, 1969. For events at the University of Utah, see Nicole L. Thompson, “Utah , the AntiVietnam War Movement, and the University of Utah,” Utah Historical Quarterly 78 (Spring 2010):154-74.

The BYU student club Spectrum sponsored in 1970 a series of skits collectively titled “Guerilla Theater” protesting US involvement in the Vietnam war.

During the next few years, administrators initiated a program of covert surveillance of the university’s “radical” students. 111 For example, at Wilkinson’s insistence, BYU Security maintained a close watch on activist and Vietnam veteran Jerry L. Owens, a participant in November 1969’s moratorium demonstrations in Salt Lake City, as well as on some forty other people involved in the weekend demonstrations. BYU’s Chief of Security reported, “Heretofore some of our students with radical political views have floundered about rather aimlessly; however, it appears now that they are being used by some rather skillful agitators, some of whom are what we might call ‘known communists.’” Wilkinson instructed Security to continue its surveillance to prevent any “entanglement” between BYU and possible communist sympathizers and, in early 1970, asked trustees for a supplemental appropriation to cover “additional security protection”112 Increasingly defensive, Wilkinson issued a special statement in March 1970 on “campus conduct”: “Any person who participates in or supports illegal or disruptive action designed to subvert the purposes of the university and its sponsoring institution will be subject to immediate arrest and criminal prosecution.”113 Wilkinson also asked the Director of Public Relations to brief him regularly on “disturbances or riots” at other American universities.114 That May, Wilkinson applauded BYU’s “cool” reaction to the expansion of the war into Cambodia and the deaths of four demonstrators at Kent State University in Ohio. To his diary, however, he confessed, “There is certainly a spirit of unrest throughout the country and while it is manifest only slightly at the BYU it is nevertheless manifested here.”115

When specific instances of student protest occurred on campus, BYU officials tended to act swiftly. For example, undergraduates were told to remove peace signs from their dormitory windows with the curt explanation, “You don’t need a reason.” 116 More drastically, students who publicly questioned BYU policies were sometimes quietly investigated by the Office of Student Life to determine if grounds existed for disciplinary action.117 After the appearance of one student’s letters to the editor in the Daily Universe, Wilkinson complained to the Deans of Fine Arts and Student Life, “I wish [the dean of Fine Arts] would see to it that no further letters of [this student] go into the Universe , and I wish [the Dean of

111 Faculty were not immune from such surveillance. See Bergera, “The 1966 BYU Student Spy Ring.”

112 Swen C. Nielsen, Memorandum to Wilkinson, November 17, 1969, Wilkinson Papers; Board of Trustees, Minutes, January 7, 1970; Board of Trustees, Special Executive Committee, Minutes, February 19, 1970. See also “Dissent at BYU,” Seventh East Press, February 20, 1982.

113 Bulletin, March 13, 1970, reprinted in J. Wesley Sherwood, “Emergency Operations Plan, Brigham Young University,” September 1979, E2, Perry Special Collections.

114 Wilkinson, Memorandum to Edwin Butterworth, March 16, 1970, Perry Special Collections.

115 “Y Pres Lauds ‘Cool’ Students,” Daily Universe, May 11, 1970; Wilkinson, Diary, May 11, 1970.

116 Bob Anderson and Glenn Blake, Letter, Daily Universe, May 16, May 1969. See also Wilkinson, Memorandum to J. Elliot Cameron, December 11, 1969, and attachment, Wilkinson Papers.

117 See, as an example, David W. Child, Letter, Daily Universe, May 6, 1969; Wilkinson, Memorandum to J. Elliot Cameron, May 12, 1969, Wilkinson Papers.

Student Life] would see if there is anything we can do with respect to [the student].” The Dean of Student Life replied that his office had been “watching” the student “very carefully during the entire year.” He admitted that he did not “have anything that would justify taking any action against [the student] at this point” but promised that after the student’s graduation, his office intended “to tag [the student’s] records so that he will not return to BYU.”118

In May 1970, when several students asked permission to collect signatures on a petition calling for the withdrawal of congressional funding for the war, officials responded by banning all petitions.119 Wilkinson explained that with the approach of the end of the school year, “students need all of their time to adequately prepare” for final exams.120 One student replied, “If my memory is correct, a few years ago a petition circulated at BYU was sent to Washington supporting the war in Vietnam. How can this apparent double standard be rationalized?”121 Another wrote, “I am angry. Angry because of the invisible iron glove that keeps us in our place; angry with the kind of education that teaches us to ‘accept’ rather than discover; angered by words praising us for our silence, words that have undertones of warning.”122 Five days later, administrators reversed their decision to allow “individual students [to] circulate petitions on campus which do not violate the fundamental objectives of BYU.” Still, “all petitions would be submitted to the dean of students for approval.”123

Students responded, in part, to such measures by electing in 1969 and in 1970 Kenneth T. Kartchner and Brian F. Walton as student body presidents. Kartchner, who campaigned that “the policies of student ‘government’ are essentially decided by the administration,” won by more than a thousand votes.124 Seeing himself as an “interloper in student government,” Kartchner later termed his victory “a cruel satire on student elections that had backfired” and recalled his year in office as “not a particularly satisfying time, but it was endlessly interesting.”125 At one point, Wilkinson suggested that Kartchner

118 Wilkinson, Memorandum to Lorin F. Wheelwright and J. Elliot Cameron, April 20, 1970, Perry Special Collections; Cameron, Memorandum to Wilkinson, May 20, 1970, Wilkinson Papers. The student, William Marshall Cowden, was a sociology major and a member of Students for a Democratic Society (Cowden, Letter, Daily Universe, April 1, 1970). See also the anti-SDS editorial in the Daily Universe, April 13, 1970, and Wheelwright, Memorandum to Wilkinson, April 14, 1970, Perry Special Collections.

119

“War and Riot Messages Sent,” Daily Universe, May 8, 1970. See also “Election, War Spark Five Petitions,” Daily Universe, May 21, 1970, and Wilkinson, Diary, May 11, 1970.

120

“Draft of Statement on Decision Not to Have Political Petitions Circulated at the Present Time,” Perry Special Collections; “Petition Ban Explained,” Daily Universe, May 14, 1970; “BYU Bans Student Petitions,” Salt Lake Tribune, May 14, 1970.

121 Paul S. Carpenter, Letter, Daily Universe, May 14, 1970.

122 Linda McKenzie, Letter, Daily Universe, May 21, 1970.

123

“BYU Eases Restraints on Campus Petitions,” Salt Lake Tribune, May 16, 1970; “Petitions Okay with ‘Order,’” Daily Universe, May 19, 1970.

124 Campaign advertisement, Daily Universe, April 17, 1969; “Kartchner Wins by One Thousand,” Daily Universe, April 28, 1969.

125 Kenneth T. Kartchner, E-mail to Bergera, November 19, 2011, and attachment.

stage a university-wide “demonstration” in support for U.S. government and BYU’s “wholesomeness.” Kartchner thought the idea was “artificial and contrived.” He met with BYU religion teacher and Democrat Hugh Nibley on how best to show “respect for the president vs. my own disgust of the war.” Nibley opined that he “wouldn’t do it.” Kartchner decided not to.126 Walton believed that administrators “lack wisdom because they don’t take into account the maturity, responsibility and loyalty of the student body,” and later vowed, with running mate Jon Ferguson, to make student government more relevant. Worried, Wilkinson asked an aide about Walton’s politics. “I am told that Brian Walton [is] very far to the left,” he wrote. 127 Walton described himself as “barely to the left of center.”128

Despite losing in the preliminaries, Walton and Ferguson survived as write-in contenders. On the second day of voting, however, they were disqualified for alleged campaign violations. An appeal to the ASBYU Supreme Court resulted in a ruling in their favor as well as a public chastisement of the Student Elections Committee for “discriminatory enforcement of rules.” A new election was ordered. 129 Two days later, Wilkinson announced he was postponing the elections so that he could conduct a “special investigation” into possible “violations of university standards.” 130 Four months earlier, Walton had been stopped by a BYU Bookstore employee for alleged shoplifting. Walton said that he had simply forgotten, before leaving the store, to pay for the few items in question. He received a reprimand from University Standards but no other punishment. Trustees wondered if Wilkinson should “encourage Brother Walton to withdraw” from the election. Wilkinson decided to turn the investigation over to the ASBYU Supreme Court, while also privately instructing BYU’s legal counsel to assist the student justices in reaching a decision.131

Two weeks later, the student court found Walton “not guilty” and ruled that no one would be disqualified from the election. When votes were

126 Ibid. Kartchner “didn’t think students should be doing much more than studying...My orientation was forged in a semester I had spent at the University of San Marcos in Lima, Peru, 1962. The president of the Student Communist Party was in one of my classes and we spent more time in the streets and on strike than in the classroom. It was an exhilarating 4 months and richly fulfilled my personal objective of learning Spanish, but classwork was virtually non-existent and I felt like my student friends were in a pas de deux with the professors to avoid actual school work. I didn’t want to contribute to moving BYU in that direction...” (E-mail to Bergera, November 20, 2011).

127

“Rival Emerges at Registration,” Daily Universe, September 22, 1969. Walton served as Vice-president of Academics from 1969 to 1970. “Remember to Vote,” Daily Universe, April 10, 1970; Wilkinson, Memorandum to Dean A. Peterson, March 31, 1970, Wilkinson Papers.

128 Walton, E-mail to Bergera.

129 “Walton Appeal Heard,” Daily Universe, April 20, 1970; “Court Calls New Election,” Daily Universe, April 22, 1970.

130 “Walton Rumor Told,” Daily Universe, April 17, 1970; “Election Postponed,” Daily Universe, April 23, 1970.

131 Board of Trustees, Executive Committee, Minutes, April 23, 1970; “Supreme Court to Decide Election,” Daily Universe, April 28, 1970; “Walton Statements,” Daily Universe, May 13, 1970; Gary H. Carver, Memorandum to Walton, December 29, 1969, Perry Special Collections. Clyde D. Sandgren, Memorandum to Wilkinson, May 11, 1970, Perry Special Collections.

counted the next week, Walton and Ferguson won by 350 votes. 132 In congratulating Walton, Wilkinson pointed out “that there were only 7,048 votes cast, or about 30 percent of the student body, and that [Walton] received only 38 percent of the votes cast, or [the support of only] about 13 percent of the student body.”133

Wilkinson’s letter initiated an exchange that continued throughout Walton’s term. When Wilkinson introduced an unscheduled political speaker at a student assembly, Walton complained in behalf of ASBYU’s Executive Council. When Wilkinson announced his intent to hold students to increasingly strict dress standards, Walton wrote: “If the introduction of these arbitrary specifics is an attempt to remove ‘radical’ elements from campus, I think that it is ill-founded.” Walton thought the school should “treat students with due respect.”134

In fall 1970, Walton created a President’s Commission on Student Affairs with subcommittees on “Student Government,” “Student Rights,” and “Legal Research.” The Student Rights Subcommittee reviewed “inconsistencies or arbitrary application of university policy to the detriment of students.” The Legal Research Subcommittee investigated student rights in contractual agreements with the university, specifically student housing contracts. When Walton delivered an address to students toward the end of October calling for increased sensitivity on racial issues, he announced the creation of a committee to study the recruiting of black students.135 BYU religion professor Rodney Turner responded: “The Negro issue is a most sensitive one; it should be dealt with by the inspired servants of God; it should not be the subject of a campus-wide forum.” Colleague Reid Bankhead urged BYU’s returned missionaries to run for office so that it could be “hissed abroad that returned missionaries run the BYU campus, and not intellectuals, disciples of Plato and Rousseau, eggheads, whiz kids, rationalistic sharpies, et cetera.”136

At about the same time, Wilkinson issued a one-page flyer entitled “Men of BYU–A Message from the President,” encouraging enrollment in ROTC. Twelve students, including Walton and Ferguson, countered with five hundred copies of “An Important Message to the Men of BYU,” identifying alternatives to military service, which they distributed at special

132 “ASBYU vs. Brian Walton,” 18, Perry Special Collections; “No Candidate Cut,” Daily Universe, May 8, 1970. “Vote Today or Tomorrow,” Daily Universe, May 14, 1970; “Walton Wins,” Daily Universe, May 18, 1970

133 Wilkinson, Letter to Walton, May 18, 1970, Perry Special Collections.

134 Walton, Memoranda to Wilkinson, October 30, May 28, 1970, Perry Special Collections.

135 “Student Commission Details Released,” Daily Universe, October 26, 1970; “Group Study Begins,” Daily Universe, December 15, 1970. Walton, “BYU and Race: Where We Are Now,” October 28, 1970, Perry Special Collections; “Racial Tensions Aired,” Daily Universe, October 29, 1970.

136 Rodney Turner, Letter, Daily Universe, October 27, 1970; “Prof Asks Returned Missionaries to Lead,” Daily Universe, October 28, 1970.

Founders Day ceremonies.137 Wilkinson denounced the flyer, condemned Walton, and invited all BYU veterans to wear their uniforms during an upcoming campus Veteran’s Day devotional.138 The controversy reached school trustees, and the Dean of Student Life quickly notified Walton that “authorization to distribute this pamphlet...is hereby rescinded.”139

A group of students began circulating a petition for Walton’s resignation. They asserted that Walton had encouraged students to “go against the council of [the Church’s] prophets” and claimed his committees misrepresented “the mutual love and appreciation which characterize the administration, faculty, and students at BYU.” Walton responded that “no one should have [thought] that this year’s student body presidency was going to stick its head in the sand.” By the end of 1970, fifteen students issued A More Important Message to the Men of BYU in defense of military service.140 Walton served to the end of his term, but his tenure was dampened somewhat by what one professor termed the “shameful harassment of the student body president.”141

Wilkinson’s anxieties also spilled over into the management of the Daily Universe. In early 1969, he forwarded three clippings from the Universe to an aide asking, “I wish you would take the time to prepare a careful answer to the letter published January 6, and we will find some way of getting it in the Universe under some student’s name.”142 Wilkinson wanted a newspaper that “represent[ed] all publics other than just the students.”143 The next year, he hired a professional “general manager” to oversee the student newspaper. A list of unsuitable topics soon included “advocacy of communism, socialism, fascism and other extremist doctrines or systems of government;...of birth control, illicit sex, drug abuse, illegal procedures, invasion of privacy, and other anti-social practices; debate on the validity of church doctrines;

137 The other ten signers were Jay Christensen, Peggy Fletcher, Peggy Hunt, Terrell Hunt, Andrew Kimball, Paul Larson, Tom Litster, Joel McKinnon, Westley Shook III, and Nanci Sinclair. Terrell Hunt, who served as both Walton’s campaign manager and later Executive Assistant, had prepared a statement in defense of his application for status as a conscientious objector and drew from this to produce the “basic content” of An Important Message (see Hunt, E-mail to Bergera, November 30, 2011, and attachment).

138 Wilkinson, Diary, October 24, 1970. “I was a little scared to sign it [i.e., the flyer],” Walton remembered. “I thought I would take a big hit for doing it, but I couldn’t have seen it being as big as it was. We quoted the General Authorities [of the LDS Church], as I recall, and it was quite mild” (E-mail to Bergera).”Uniforms on Campus Okayed by Wilkinson,” Daily Universe, November 9, 1970; “Wilkinson States Military Position,” Daily Universe, November 11, 1970.

139 Board of Trustees, Minutes, October 29, November 4, 1970; J. Elliot Cameron, Memorandum to Walton, November 3, 1970, in ASBYU History, 1970-71, 115, Perry Special Collections.

140 Wilkinson, Memorandum to Ben E. Lewis, December 1, 1970, Wilkinson Papers; Performance Standards Committee, Minutes, December 8, 1970, Perry Special Collections; Ben E. Lewis, Minutes of Meeting, December 11, 1970, Perry Special Collections. The fifteen students signing A More Important Message were Joanne Campbell, Janet Darley, Alice Ferger, David Handy, Paula Hansen, Joan Hendricks, Bary Larsen, Ken Larsen, Jane Nance, Donald Perkins, Bela Petsco, Carol Anne Schuster, Clarence Starks, Carl Watkins, and Atheline B. Wold.

141 “Recall Walton,” Daily Universe, November 5, 1970; “ASBYU President’s Message,” Daily Universe, November 6, 1970; Skip Morrow et al., Letter, Daily Universe, November 9, 1970; “Students Withdraw Recall,” Daily Universe, November 13, 1970; William E. Dibble, Letter, Daily Universe, November 6, 1970.

142 Wilkinson, Memorandum to Stephen R. Covey, January 15, 1969, Perry Special Collections.

143 Wilkinson, Memorandum to Stephen R. Covey, January 15, 1969, Perry Special Collections andWilkinson, Diary, April 18, 1969.

ridicule of university and Church leaders;...[and] other issues as may be identified by the Board of Trustees.” Over the next few years, the list of taboo topics grew: “Negro and the priesthood and other racial problems; polygamy; sex education, pornography, nudity;...personal stories on Church leaders involving age, health, children, et cetera; confidential Church and university information...embarrassing incidents both historical and current; attacks on Church and BYU policies;...Church policies regarding the war in Vietnam;...evolution and claims of science in conflict with beliefs of Church leaders; Church censorship...and acid rock music, nude painting, et cetera.”144

At the administration’s urging, the Universe’s 1969 student editor, Pierre Hathaway, agreed to replace the Letters to the Editor section with a question-and-answer column, allowing administrators to respond to inquiries rather than have criticisms appear uncontested. However, only five months later, in February 1970, the paper’s manager reported to the Board of Student Publications that Hathaway was guilty of “gross irresponsibility” and called for his resignation. One week later, Hathaway resigned.145

144 Lorin F. Wheelwright, Memorandum to Wilkinson, June 27, 1969, Perry Special Collections, and Wheelwright, Memorandum to Dallin H. Oaks, February 9, 1972, Perry Special Collections.

145 “Policy Respecting Publication of [Letters in] the Universe,” June 13, 1969; “Policy Statement for the Daily Universe ,” September 12, 1969, both in Perry Special Collections; Rodger Dean Duncan,

BYU student activists Tom Litster (left) and Andrew Kimball (right), 1970-71.

Hathaway’s critics complained that he had run photographs of long hair and beards, favorable reviews of rock-and-roll groups, and discussions of the LDS church and blacks.146 When Hathaway’s replacement in April 1970 printed an article on racial prejudice, Wilkinson wrote to the chair of the publications board (who was also Dean of Fine Arts), “Will you please see to it that...when there are articles, they are somewhat buried by their location in the newspaper?”147 In response, the publications chair urged that students be allowed to “continue to publish student opinion that expresses viewpoints different from official opinion... and that [advisors] try to balance the same with opposite opinion of equal or superior weight and influence.” He believed that if administrators “muzzle every cry of student anguish and never give it a chance to be heard in the Universe [they could] expect it to be expressed in some other way–in an underground paper, or, heaven forbid, in more violent form.”148 Less than a month later, Wilkinson received a letter from the First Presidency cautioning him “against doing or saying anything which could be misinterpreted as an improper suppression of student thoughts and attitudes.”149 Wilkinson proceeded quietly to transform the Universe into a strictly “laboratory paper” headquartered in the Department of Communications.150

In referencing underground newspapers, BYU’s publications chair had in mind two recent publications. The single-issue Cuspidor told of BYU students “Dick Decent” and “Jane Birch,” whose conversation included, “Oh my goodness. Is it already time for me to go learn more about the great things our wonderful Military Industrial Complex is doing to keep that ever present danger, communism, for ever entering...these great United States?”151 From October 1968 to May 1969, Zion’s Opinion, a two-sided, single sheet, became one of the most successful independent student publications to surface at BYU. Containing articles and editorials praising a free press, Zion’s Opinion also provided readers with excerpts from the school’s 1966 re-accreditation report and other information not widely available.152 Concerned, Wilkinson asked an aide if there were “any legal action [that could

Memorandum to Board of Student Publications, February 10, 1970, Perry Special Collections; “Full Support,” Daily Universe, February 10, 1970; “Gillespie Replaces Hathaway,” Daily Universe, February 16, 1970.

146 See Duncan, Memorandum to Wilkinson, February 17, 1970; Wilkinson, Memorandum to J. Elliot Cameron, October 1, 1969; Duncan, Memorandum to Cameron, October 16, 1970; N. Eldon Tanner, Letter to Wilkinson, January 16, 1970; Wilkinson, Letter to Tanner, January 17, 1970; Lorin F. Wheelwright, Memorandum to Wilkinson, January 14, 1970, all in Perry Special Collections.

147 Wilkinson, Memorandum to Wheelwright, May 7, 1970, Perry Special Collections.

148 Wheelwright, Memorandum to Wilkinson, May 22, 1970, Perry Special Collections.

149 First Presidency, Letter to Wilkinson, June 18, 1970, Perry Special Collections.

150 “Suggested Reorganization of Daily Universe” and correspondence between Heber G. Wolsey and Wilkinson, Perry Special Collections; “Editors Note,” Daily Universe, May 11, 1972; “Daily Universe Professionalized,” Daily Universe, July 26, 1972; “President Oaks Years,” Daily Universe, January 12, 1976; “The Daily Universe,” Daily Universe, September 5, 1978.

151 Cuspidor, n.d., Perry Special Collections.

152 Zion’s Opinion, October 18, December 5, 1968, March 17, 1969, Perry Special Collections. Zion’s Opinion began simply as Opinion, but by the third issue had added Zion’s.

be taken against] the undercover newspaper.”153 The editors discontinued the paper in May 1969 at the urging of a ranking Church official in favor of working “within the established procedures and organization at the BYU.”154 Other dissenting voices surfaced, but the threat of reprisal succeeded in limiting protest. 155 During the 1968-69 school year, the student club Spectrum, a “forum for open discussion of important matters on a non-partisan and hopefully intelligent level,” sponsored a panel on poverty in America and also gathered eighteen hundred signatures on a petition calling for an all-volunteer military. In October 1970, Spectrum members staged a series of anti-war skits titled “Guerilla Theater.” 156 Complaints followed, and the students were denied permission to restage the production.157 Spectrum later held a public discussion on Vietnam, featuring BYU conscientious objectors Terrell E. Hunt and Andrew E. Kimball, grandson of Church Apostle Spencer W. Kimball. “If we loved [each other],” Kimball said, “we wouldn’t butcher each other.”158 “[T]he opposing panelists (and the overwhelming majority of the audience),” Hunt recalled, “took the position that war is justified under a very broad range of circumstances, and has even been characterized as be[ing] ordered by God Himself. That’s pretty stiff competition, but we made our point!”159 The event “turned out to be not nearly so violent [an] attack as we were afraid of,” Wilkinson recorded. “Young Andy Kimball is very sincere in his views but is naive and impractical.” Still, Wilkinson insisted, “I don’t believe any Mormon can be [a pacifist].”160

By 1968, six explicitly partisan political clubs had emerged on campus:

153 Wilkinson, Diary, November 19, 1968.

154 Wilkinson, Memorandum to J. Morris Richards and Lorin F. Wheelwright, May 16, 1969, Wilkinson Papers. See also “Once an Underground Newspaper,” Daily Universe, December 13, 1979. Though not an underground paper per se, the monthly newsletter of BYU’s Young Democrats, especially under the leadership of student activist Omar Kader, published liberal points of view.

155 For the decline in student unrest nationally, see Phillip G. Altbach, “Student Activism in the 1970s and 1980s,” Student Politics: Perspectives for the Eighties, Philip G. Altbach, ed. (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1981), 8-11.

156 Spectrum was founded by students Dante Gumucio, Andrew Kimball Jr., and Larry Vollintine in 1967 as New Politics Club, with BYU Dean Martin B. Hickman as faculty advisor. Initially, administrators asked club members to sign loyalty oaths, but Hickman advised against doing so. Administrators backed down, then asked that the club change its name to avoid confusion with the national left-leaning “National Conference for New Politics.” Spectrum returned to campus in 1968 and during the height of its popularity had some fifty-plus members. See Larry R. Vollintine, “The Founding of Spectrum at BYU, 1967-1969,” attached to Vollintine, E-mail to Bergera, November 17, 2011. “Club Presents Guerilla Theater,” Daily Universe, October 29, 1970. See also Gale Lee Gray, Letter, Daily Universe, October 30, 1970.

157 Performance Standards Committee, Minutes, December 11, 1970, Perry Special Collections.

158 “Spectrum Panel Probes Vietnam,” Daily Universe, February 26, 1971.

159 Hunt, E-mail to Bergera, and attachment.

160 Wilkinson, Diary, February 24, 1971. For Kimball’s anti-war activism, see Wasatch Front, October 1970, 7, 11, Perry Special Collections. Shortly afterwards, and at Wilkinson’s prodding, Kimball’s grandfathers met separately with him “to talk me out of my unorthodox views. ... The conversations were silly, on both our sides,” Kimball recalled. One grandfather “emphasized that long hair conveyed the wrong values. I responded that short hair conveyed to me materialism, complacency, etc., and that in any case Jesus had long hair, which made my grandfather angry, and he forbade me to speak about ‘the savior’ in connection with hippies” (E-mail to Bergera, November 3, 2011).

Young Democrats, Young Republicans, Young Independents, Young Conservatives, Young Americans for Freedom, and Young American Independents. Petitions to organize chapters of the W. E. B. DuBois Club, Students for a Democratic Society, Americans for Democratic Action, and the Peace and Freedom Party were denied. Administrators contended that DuBois was a “communist front organization,” that SDS championed violence, and that Peace and Freedom advocated “contraceptives” and “free love.”161 Only one club, Young Democrats, provided an outlet for politically liberal students. Consequently, they not only boasted the largest membership of any official political club during the 1960s but drew repeated threats of banishment, such as in 1969 when members displayed a peace symbol on campus, distributed anti-draft literature, and exhibited books by “Che” Guevara and Malcolm X.162

Much of the drive fostering student political activism at BYU waned with Wilkinson’s 1971 resignation, the end of the Vietnam war, and an upswing in conservatism among college students nationally. The number of political clubs dwindled until administrators decided to recognize only two: Young Republicans and Young Democrats. Trustees noted that the Republican and Democratic Parties enjoy an “established record of not creating the kind of difficulties with which the board is concerned” and banned additional clubs to “avoid...excessive” politicization.163 The number of BYU undergraduates favoring a Republican U.S. President rose from 73 to 86 percent.164 By the mid-1970s, students had begun referring to BYU as a “hot bed of social rest.”165

While not as dramatic or as frequent as that taking place at some other American colleges, BYU student political activism during the late 1960s and early 1970s was nonetheless a recurring feature of student life on the LDS campus. Students, and occasionally faculty, pursued a variety of approaches in expressing a wide spectrum of political views on national and local events. Such activism speaks to the intellectual engagement with modern American life that both marks the contemporary college experience and functions as an indicator of the diversity of belief among LDS church members generally.

161 J. Elliot Cameron, Memorandum to Wilkinson, November 26, 1968, Wilkinson Papers; “BYU Refuses SDS Formation,” Daily Universe, November 21, 1968; “Sounding Board,” Daily Universe, December 6, 1968.

162 Bob Keith, Letter, Zion’s Opinion, March 25, 1969.

163 See “Minutes of the Meeting of Dean Cameron with Vice-Presidents,” March 19, 1971, Perry Special Collections; Board of Trustees, Executive Committee, Minutes, April 18, June 20, December 19, 1974; Board of Trustees, Minutes, January 9, 1975.

164 See “GOP Affiliation Vaults to Highest Level Since Eisenhower Era,” Salt Lake Tribune, November 25, 1984; “Nixon Leads Seven to One,” Daily Universe, November 3, 1972; “Political Speeches Highlight Y Week,” Daily Universe, October 29, 1976.

165 Beginning BYU, 1976-77, 43, Perry Special Collections. Not until the early 1980s did dissent again begin to surface at BYU. See, for example, “Disputes Follow Iranian Speech,” Daily Universe, February 28, 1980; “Mrs. Matheson Heckled,” Daily Universe, October 23, 1980; “‘Plowshares Not Guns’ at BYU,” Sunstone Review, April 1982, 3; “BYU Students Demonstrate Against Aid for Contras,” Salt Lake Tribune, March 18, 1986; and “Demonstrators Duel Politely at BYU,” Salt Lake Tribune, April 5, 2007.

BOOK REVIEWS

From the Land of Ever Winter to the American Southwest: Athapaskan Migrations, Mobility, and Ethnogenesis. By Deni J. Seymour (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 2012. xii + 443 pp. Cloth, $70.00.)

ARCHAEOLOGISTS have a way of starting debates that last for decades and may never be satisfactorily concluded. That is a short time when one is used to working in one thousand year increments. Ongoing discussions include the origin of Native Americans, how many were here at time of contact, and when did they arrive in their present location. Deni J. Seymour tackles the latter issue as it applies to Athapaskan speakers (Navajo and Apache) and their entrance into the Southwest. This long-standing deliberation has advanced steadily as various disciplines— archaeology, history, linguistics, biology (DNA), mythology, geography, and art (ceramics and rock art)—are brought to bear to determine when, where, and how these people arrived. For the Utah reader, since the Navajo comprise the largest tribe in the state, this discussion is as prehistorically relevant as the advent of the Mormons and others during historic times.

The when of the debate is still not settled. With nineteen authors and eighteen chapters in this book, fact and opinion have been unable to provide a definitive answer—the chronology ranging between 1000 AD and the early 1500s. The general trend with most of the authors, however, is to push Navajo entrance further into the past; what used to be considered highly unlikely—1300 AD—is now within a reasonable possibility. This date is particularly important since it is by this time that the Anasazi abandoned sites like Mesa Verde and others in the northern San Juan region. Part of the problem with dating sites and artifacts is defining what belonged to these proto-Athapaskan people. As hunters and gatherers mixed with like-minded folk such as the proto-Numic speakers (Utes and Paiutes) plus the activity of the Ancestral Puebloans (Anasazi and Fremont), one can see how issues arise. While there are certainly diagnostic elements peculiar to the sedentary cultures, there are still questions as to what Athapaskan pottery and other aspects of material culture look like.

The migration route of these people is another concern. There are proponents for travelers descending from northwestern Canada on the western side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, some who argue for a route between the mountains, while others vote for travel on the plains east of the Rockies. Most of the presenters tend toward the latter two with some of the more convincing arguments suggesting that the between-mountain route through Utah and into the Southwest is most likely. Many believe that the Farmington, New Mexico, area and Four Corners region was a crucial starting point for identifiable Navajo culture. The Diné agree since according to their religious teachings, this is where they emerged from the worlds beneath this one.

Among some of the interesting tidbits that arise from this research is the Apache recollection of place names far to the north that describe geographical sites along a possible migration route; the fact that DNA for Navajos “shows the greatest evidence of Southwestern ancestry . . . . [and that they] most resemble the Puebloans and least resemble the northwestern Athapaskans”(125). Other points of interest are that Navajo mythology may hold important answers that have previously been ignored; and that a specific tribe—the Chipewyan—actually is the most likely candidate for being the northern ancestor of the Navajo and Apache based on “linguistics, glottochronology, and Saskatchewan and Barrenland archaeological site material” as well as radiocarbon dating of specific sites along a tentative migration route(338). Regardless of the fact-based arguments each author makes, there is an opportunity for everyone to raise a hand off of his or her armchair and vote.

This book is recommended as the latest and best summary of the literature examining the Athapaskan migration into the Southwest. As in most volumes with multiple contributors, some chapters are more compelling, better written, and documented than others. But in general, this is an excellent work that Deni Seymour has pieced together.

ROBERT S. MCPHERSON  Utah State University, Eastern–Blanding Campus

West from Salt Lake City: Diaries from the Central Overland Trail. Edited by Jesse G. Petersen. (Norman: The Arthur H. Clark Company, 2012. 328 pp. Cloth, $34.95.)

IN 1858, CAPTAIN JAMES H. SIMPSON of the U.S. Army’s Corps of Topographical Engineers was ordered to Utah during the so-called Utah War. He was stationed at Camp Floyd, south of Salt Lake City. In 1859, he was ordered to survey a travel route from Camp Floyd across the Great Salt Lake Desert and the Great Basin that ended at present-day Genoa, Nevada. This route became the Central Overland Trail and was used by the Pony Express and the Overland Stage. Simpson’s route would be an alternative for travelers from Salt Lake City to California who had to travel a much longer distance either by a northern route or a southern route.

Research for West from Salt Lake began over a decade ago by James O. Hall who was curious about how many overland emigrant parties traveled the Central Overland Trail. Because of health problems, Hall was unable to complete his research. Jesse G. Petersen, author of the book A Route for the Overland Stage: James H. Simpson’s 1859 Trail Across the Great Basin, stepped in to completethe research and bring this book to publication.

One of the major goals of the research was to document the approximate number of emigrants who used the Central Overland Trail. Twenty-seven diaries were eventually located and are included in this book. A handful of these diaries have been previously published, but most were in editions that had limited distribution, so it is useful for researchers to have them collected in this volume. The diaries cover the years from 1859 to 1868.

The collection includes eleven diaries by females. In Petersen’s judgment, these diaries are the most interesting and I agree with this opinion. One of the most detailed diaries in this book is by Delia Thompson Brown. Brown’s diary is rich in details of day-to-day travel across the desert. Although water and grass were scarce, the beauty of the desert did not escape her notice. On August 3, 1860, she wrote: “A bright beautiful morning and Oh such a glorious sunrise. The air is so bracing and pure but some complain of cold. It just suits me—so much better than the valley climate we have had” (120).

Petersen concludes that the diaries in this book establish the fact that more emigrants than were previously thought used the Central Overland Route and makes this book a significant contribution to Western trails history. No doubt this book will stimulate interest in searching for additional diaries of this route. Petersen is an expert on this trail and his some eight hundred footnotes fill out details of diary entries, which by the nature of a travel diary are generally brief. Nine maps are grouped at the beginning of the diaries. These maps are among the clearest and most informative I have ever seen, and, again, can serve as a model for trail historians.

I would like to conclude by noting that this book is dedicated to the memory of the late Gregory M. Franzwa. Franzwa was a superb trails historian and a principal founder of the Oregon-California Trails Association, one of the most active organizations dedicated to interpreting and preserving this historic trail. This is a fitting memorial.

PETER H. DELAFOSSE  Salt Lake City

Cleaving the Unknown World: The Powell Expeditions and the Scientific Exploration of the Colorado Plateau. Edited by Don D. Fowler. (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press/Utah State Historical Society, 2012. xx + 251 pp. Paper, $24.95.)

ROY WEBB IN HIS FOREWORD to Cleaving the Unknown describes John Wesley Powell’s 1869 and 1871 explorations of the Green and Colorado rivers as “among the most significant, stirring and well documented in American history” (ix). Webb also points out that from these

expeditions seventeen different accounts were produced. These documents coupled with the current popularity of river rafting and of the exotic draw of the Southwest have kept the demand for these expedition accounts alive and well among historians and the general public.

Cleaving the Unknown represents the finish to an ambitious project by the University of Utah Press and the Utah State Historical Society to reprint and make available all of the different journals and documents associated with John Wesley Powell’s Colorado River explorations. This particular volume brings together previously published and out of print journals, maps, photographs and correspondence depicting these famous explorations. Although a bit eclectic, this book of documents may be the most interesting of this series because it brings back into print the diaries, photographs, maps and writings of the lesser known members of the expedition—Jack Hillers, Francis Bishop, Frederick Dellenbaugh and John Colton Summer.

Also of significance is the reprinting of the original journal of John Wesley Powell’s 1871-72 expedition. As Don and Catherine Fowler note in their introduction, there has been some confusion and complaint over Powell’s willingness, most likely for public relations purposes, to blend together events from his 1869 and 1871 trips. These accounts were published in Part 1 of his book Explorations of the Colorado of the West and Its Tributaries . However, the particular diary published here was actually written on the 1871-72 trip, giving the reader a more accurate account of Powell’s experiences.

Cleaving also reprints the fine book about Jack Hillers “Photographed All the Best Scenery.” Hillers, who started as a boat hand on the 1871 expedition, showed an interest and an aptitude for photography and eventually replaced E.O. Beaman as Powell’s photographer. This serendipitous event helped launch Hillers to a career as a notable western photographer. Hillers kept a lengthy journal of the trip, plus journal excerpts from later expeditions in the southwest. As an added bonus many of Hillers’ photographs are printed in this volume.

Two other sets of documents relating to the 1871-72 expeditions can also be found in Cleaving the Unknown. The rough maps of Francis Bishop (with William Rusho’s excellent commentary) enlighten the readers to how the cartography of the second trip was created. Rusho also notes that Bishop’s maps, although not the best, had the added bonus of showing where camp sites and lunch breaks were taken. Finally, a set of Dellenbaugh letters is presented that give his impressions of the expeditions and how they have been depicted a half century after the fact. This definitely adds Dellenbaugh’s perspective fifty years after his voyage with Powell.

Finally, the last piece of this volume is the 1869 journal of John Colton Summer edited by famous river historian Dock Marston. This piece,

although interesting, seems a bit out of place because all of the other documents in the book relate to the 1871-72 expeditions and beyond. Of interest is the story of how Summer’s diary arrived at the office of the Missouri Democrat

This book, along with the series about Powell, represents an important contribution to the literature of western American exploration, especially of the Colorado Plateau. Being able to purchase all six of these accounts in one volume is definitely a plus.

BRAD COLE  Utah State University

Playing with Shadows: Voices of Dissent in the Mormon West. Edited by Polly Aird, Jeff Nichols, and Will Bagley. (Norman: Arthur H. Clark Company, 2011. 518 pp. Cloth, $45.00.)

THE TITLE FOR THIS BOOK, Playing With Shadows, comes from an 1853 warning by Brigham Young to followers of Gladden Bishop, “…not [to] court persecution for…you are not playing with shadows, but it is the voice of the Almighty you are trying to play with…” (5). Playing with Shadows, Volume 13 in the Arthur H. Clark series Kingdom in the West: The Mormons and the American Frontier, provides an introduction and an afterword in which the editors recount the story of dissent within the Mormon faith from the period of Joseph Smith to the end of the nineteenth century. The writings of George Armstrong Hicks, Charles Derry, Ann Gordge, and Brigham Young Hampton comprise the bulk of the book with the Hicks, Derry, and Gordge accounts from reminiscences, whereas Hampton’s is from a diary. The editors introduce each individual and provide excellent and abundant footnotes to explain the events and people identified in the accounts.

The first story is that of George Armstrong Hicks, a man who had his differences with both Brigham Young and Erastus Snow. Hicks is perhaps best known for his ballad, “Once I Lived in Cottonwood.” Polly Aird explains that he never lived in Cottonwood but moved to Utah’s Dixie from Palmyra, Utah. His story begins with an excellent description of how he was just a common worker, “…one of the hewers of wood and drawers of water” (83). He then discusses his family joining Mormonism, his life in Palmyra, his move to southern Utah, his problems with Erastus Snow when Snow refused to give him some flour, and also with Brigham Young concerning the Mountain Meadows Massacre and other matters. He was excommunicated from the LDS church but returned late in life.

Charles Derry’s story is that of an English convert who came to Utah in the 1850s where he experienced the Reformation and the Utah War and found that life among Utah Mormons was much different than he had anticipated. After suffering injustices, abuse, and confiscation of his oxen when he expressed his plans to leave Utah, he eventually made his way to the Midwest where he died in 1921 at the age of ninety-five.

The inclusion by the editors of the Ann Gordge account was a poor choice. Gordge was the last wife of John D. Lee and writes of her life with Lee and his other wives and the mayhem that took place until she departed and went off to other adventures with the Apache Indians and Billy the Kid. The editors justify including her early story because it is based on facts which they discuss in the footnotes. However, even the editors admit that her later story is pure imagination. Sources are most important in substantiating any life history, and as one who has worked with sources all his life, I find the Gordge account is a poor source and should have been excluded from this book.

The last account is from Brigham Young Hampton’s journal. The editors have done an excellent job in filling in the gaps in the story of this strange man whose story adds much to this volume. The editors describe Hampton as one “…eager to live his faith and defend his church…he remained loyal to the LDS church, despite his anger and disillusionment with some of its leaders after the death of Brigham Young” (331).

Altogether the stories, except for Gordge’s, are believable and interesting and needed to be published so that readers can know about their hardships, struggles, and problems.

The editors begin with a general premise about apostasy. However, the life stories included are not all about apostates. Derry left Utah Mormonism only to join with the Josephites. Hicks left Mormonism over injustices in his own life only to finally return. From what the editors can gather Gordge left the church and never returned. Hampton was a faithful Mormon to the end and later served in the Salt Lake Temple.

Brigham Young and Erastus Snow in particular are presented in a negative light. A more balanced use of footnotes, including the elimination of questionable sources, would temper the harsh assessment of these church leaders and give a better understanding of the complexities of individuals and events.

Playing With Shadows seems to be two books in one: the first concerning the life histories of four individuals; and the second an examination of apostasy in nineteenth century Mormonism--probably an impossible attempt for one book. Nevertheless, the book will help us understand better such terms as apostasy, dissent, disillusionment, and individual choice, that are essential in writing the history of nineteenth century Utah.

To the Peripheries of Mormondom: The Apostolic Around-the-World Journey of David O. McKay, 1920-1921. By Hugh J. Cannon, edited by Reid L. Neilson. (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 2011. xxxii + 244 pp. Cloth, $29.95.)

“COME WITH US . . . on our trip around the world,” invites Salt Lake City stake president Hugh J. Cannon as he begins the tale of his and Latterday Saint Church Apostle David O. McKay’s 366-day journey crisscrossing the globe studying the “spiritual and, as far as possible, temporal needs” of Church membership while seeking to “ascertain the effects of ‘Mormonism’ upon their lives” (1). More than nine decades after their adventure, Cannon’s account of the journey comes to life in Reid L. Neilson’s edited account, To the Peripheries of Mormondon: The Apostolic Around-the-World Journey of David O. McKay, 1920-1921 . Winner of the Mormon History Association’s Geraldine McBride Woodward Best International Book Award for 2012, the book chronicles the mission of McKay and Cannon as they “traveled a total of 61,646 miles not counting trips made by auto, streetcars, tugs, ferry boats, horseback, camels etc.” (154).

To the Peripheries of Mormondom recounts their meetings with missionaries and members in Japan, Hawaii, Tahiti, the Cook Islands, New Zealand, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Australia, the Middle East, and Europe as well as experiences touring the mystical lands of China, Singapore, India, and Egypt. Highlights include McKay’s dedicating the country of China for the preaching of the gospel and the pair’s walking in the footsteps of the Savior in the Holy Land.

Cannon’s original text, authored shortly after the mission but never published in his or McKay’s lifetime, is augmented by Neilson’s skilled editorial hand. His light editing preserves the account’s devotional tone, while his sixty-eight page introductory and photographic essay and sixty-three pages of endnotes add flavor and scholastic insight. Drawing from his expertise as a leading historian of global Mormonism as well as his knowledge of sources as managing director of the Church History Department for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Neilson’s additions clarify cultural and geographic terms, introduce prominent characters, and enliven the account with material from McKay’s personal writings. These scholarly additions enhance the engaging narrative previously published by Cannon’s children as David O. McKay Around the World: An Apostolic Mission, Prelude to Church Globalization (2005).

While at its most basic level, To the Peripheries of Mormondom is a travelogue, Cannon and Neilson both repeatedly seek a higher purpose for their text. Cannon openly admits “the impelling motive in writing an account of this tour is to bear witness of the goodness of the Lord to those who depend upon him” (34). True to this purpose, Cannon’s narrative wanders

at times, skipping some details while focusing on others, always seeking to demonstrate the divine hand in their journey. For his part, Neilson demonstrates his expertise in international religious history, asserting that the account of the tour “is one of the more significant texts in the historical canon of global Mormon studies” because it narrates a journey that transformed the faith, through its future leader David O. McKay, into a global religion (ix).

Though more than ninety years old, the text has significance for students of modern Mormonism. While the tale narrates globetrotting adventures, the book is important for western American history because it demonstrates how two prominent Utahns and the church they served interacted with the outside world in the 1920s. The mission transformed David O. McKay, and he later transformed his Utah-based church because of it. As Neilson argues, the journey reshaped the faith’s global worldview, laying the groundwork for its modern international initiatives. Cannon concluded that “the most wonderful thing [they] saw on this journey around the world” was the gospel’s “effect upon mankind”(155, 158). The account demonstrates how an expanded appreciation for the peoples of the world affects church leaders, helping them fulfill the charge to take the gospel to all nations.

SCOTT C. ESPLIN  Brigham Young University

The Guardian Poplar: A Memoir of Deep Roots, Journey, and Rediscovery.

By Chase Nebeker Peterson. (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 2012. xx + 300 pp. Cloth, $39.95.)

IS IT POSSIBLE to review a memoir without also commenting on the memoirist’s own life? Though I had read of Chase N. Peterson before turning to the recently published autobiography–of his contributions to Utah’s educational landscape, his career as a medical doctor, his years at Harvard followed by his years at the University of Utah, and finally news of his cancer diagnosis–I had never met him in person. I still haven’t, but based on his touching, engaging memoir, I regret never having done so. Approaching his mid-eighties, Peterson emerges in his autobiography as intelligent and driven, personable, broad-minded, compassionate. He is a man fully engaged with the world; animated as much by science as by Mozart; compelled by both belief and skepticism; as much in love as ever with his wife and muse of more than fifty years, Grethe Ballif.

Peterson’s narrative is episodic and conversational, and may not be as

precisely detailed as some readers would want. (For example, I had to look elsewhere to find Peterson’s exact birth date.) But such a focus is not Peterson’s primary objective. The book, he writes, “is a collection of stories that shed light on my particular human and spiritual journey” (xvi). “The stories I have chosen to record in a memoir,” he later adds, “may have the purpose, in part, of pushing back the evening of growing darkness while shining a small light on life as it is” (285). Peterson thus conducts readers through the lives and impact of his forebears and especially parents; from a halcyon youth in Logan,where his father presided for twenty-nine years over Utah State Agricultural College (later Utah State University) to a heady, privileged education at a New England preparatory school; then to Harvard and back to Utah where he practiced medicine in Salt Lake City. In 1967, he returned to Harvard as Dean of Admissions and in 1971 was named a vice-president. In 1978, he journeyed back to Utah as Vice-President for Health Sciences at the University of Utah, and five years later was appointed university president, a position he held until 1991. Following his resignation, he took up medicine again and in the late 1990s was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a bone-marrow cancer. He chose to pursue both traditional and experimental treatments, and despite some difficult periods, including bouts of post-traumatic stress and anxiety, has lived well beyond the three to four years that were originally predicted.

Peterson is a gentle, self-effacing memoirist, and the unpretentious nature of his narrative occasionally serves to highlight the limits of autobiography. Readers will not find much in the way of a critical, probing in-depth analysis of Peterson’s life. Largely, but not entirely, absent is any attempt to weigh carefully the various aspects of Peterson’s character, personality, and intellect that have contributed to his successes and missteps. (An exception may be his account of his involvement in the “Cold Fusion” controversy at the University of Utah.) For example, Peterson downplays his extraordinary admission as an extremely precocious teenager to the prestigious Middlesex College school; he glosses without much comment over his rise as a popular student leader; and presents himself as similarly oblivious of the importance of his acceptance into Harvard and later into Harvard’s medical school. Clearly, there is more to Peterson than appears on the pages of his autobiography. While readers (myself among them) applaud his humility, I am left to wonder how best to account satisfactorily for the nature and scope of his accomplishments.

Peterson is also generous almost to a fault; rarely, if ever, does he offer criticisms of his colleagues and acquaintances. And when he does, he seems always to couch them in ways that could also be read as compliments. For example, he notes that colorful basketball coach Rick Majerus was known for a “coarse midwestern tongue”–a euphemism for the coach’s use of profanity–and was “almost incapable of being managed” (203). Even so,

Peterson adds, “It was hard to stay mad at the fellow” (204).

Peterson portrays himself as a faithful member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Yet his liberal temperament sometimes placed him at odds with certain LDS church teachings. He writes sensitively of his disagreement with his church’s withholding of its priesthood from black men of African descent, and of the pleading letter he and others sent to LDS Church President Spencer W. Kimball urging the lifting of such restriction less than a month before the policy was officially reversed in mid-1978. (Peterson does not in the least claim credit for the change, though the coincidence of the timing of his letter and the change in policy is intriguing.) Of his church’s current opposition to same-sex marriage, Peterson’s dissent is equally thoughtful: “Reason and tolerance lie at the heart of the gay issue for me. I ache with the pain the debate causes individuals and families, especially as a result of the strong stand against homosexual marriage the LDS Church took on a recent gay-marriage initiative in California [i.e., the Proposition 8 controversy]. I believe the church will wrestle with that problem for the next decade while moving to include more ‘in the tent,’ much as it did with the issue of granting the priesthood to people of black heritage” (269).

Peterson concludes his autobiography with a poetic meditation on solitude and loss as well as a paean to friends, family, and especially his wife. “To hide from loneliness,” he writes, “is to hide from love and family and humanity, for loneliness defines my blessings” (286). “I can’t wait to be Chase boy again,” he then closes, “be fed from a scraped apple and pass it on to Charlie [a grandson who died at age one]. That is the loneliness of gratitude ... and the glory down to the final mortal moments graced with family, Mahler, and Mozart” (286; ellipsis in original). All memoirs should be so eloquent, so moving, so humane.

Nikkei in the Interior West: Japanese Immigration and Community Building

1882-1945. By Eric Walz. (Tuscon: The University of Arizona Press, 2012. xvii + 236 pp. Cloth, $50.00)

NIKKEI IN THE INTERIOR WEST documents the immigration and settlement of Japanese Americans in the interior states of Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and Nebraska.

The author, who grew up in southeastern Idaho, had spent his early years on a farm surrounded by immigrant farmers and neighbors. An interest

GARY JAMES BERGERA  Salt Lake City

in farming and ethnicity, and the influence of a particular Japanese American neighbor, led him to study ethnicity and agriculture.

The dearth of information on Japanese American farmers and their influence in the West led the author to the present book: A history of Japanese immigration to the West and their migration from the West Coast to the interior western states.

The time period is from 1882—the Chinese Exclusion Act and the beginning of Japanese immigration to the United States—to 1945, the end of World War II and the return to civilian life following the removal and internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans from the West Coast.

The book begins with a description of the conditions in Japan—social, economic, and personal—that led to migration to the United States. It then describes the forces that brought the Japanese immigrants from Hawaii and the West Coast to the inland Western states.

The author incorporates models of immigration, such as uprooting, transplanting, and adaptation, to explain the dynamic of immigration. To further understand and explain the development of Japanese American communities, he discusses the idea of diaspora--the dispersal or scattering of communities overseas. The term Nikkei describes descendants of Japanese who emigrated to another country.

Through diaries, interviews, local records, and oral history documents, the author brings a personal and very human odyssey as seen through the eyes of one family in particular as well as the experiences of other Japanese Americans. Photographs and maps add visual immediacy. On a personal note, the histories were informative, as this reviewer knew these families and learned more about their incredible history in Utah through reading this book.

Distinctions were found in the experiences of the Nikkei communities of the West Coast and the Interior West. The fewer numbers who settled in the interior formed smaller enclaves yet faced similar economic, social, and prejudicial hardships as the Japanese Americans in larger West Coast cities. The austerity of geography and climate also prevented communities from coalescing into larger groups.

A chapter is dedicated to the formation of local associations such as Japanese associations, Japanese language schools, Buddhist and Christian churches, and the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) that provided cultural support and served as community focal points. The LDS church was a key religious and community influence that cemented the Nikkei communities to the white community.

The author describes the effects of Pearl Harbor and the internment of West Coast Japanese on the Nikkei communities in the interior. While the interior Nikkei were not rounded up and put in internment camps, wartime hysteria led majority groups to presume all Japanese Americans

were guilty of being anti-American by reason of race.

Although the author ends his book around 1945, he does make references to the aftermath of the war on the lives of the Nikkei community. However, the premise that the long time residents were not actively protesting the government’s actions or clamoring for redress overlooks the evidence that the 1978 biennial JACL convention in Salt Lake City called for redress and reparations from the government: a formal apology for the unlawful incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans, and reparations in the form of monetary payment to survivors.

In Nikkei in the Interior West, Eric Walz has written a well-researched and detailed view of the settlement of Japanese Americans in the interior west. He documents the presence and growth of Japanese Americans in the region long before World War II. Through following the lives of real people and their families, he provides insight into their contributions to the social, economic, and cultural fabric of their larger communities.

RONALD M. ARAMAKI Dexter, Michigan

Plural Wife: The Life Story of Mabel Finlayson Allred. Edited by Martha BradleyEvans. (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2012. vi +190 pp. Cloth, $34.94.)

WHEN MABEL FINLAYSON married Rulon Allred in 1937, he already had other wives, including her twin sister, Melba. Mabel became part of a polygamous organization she refers to simply as “The Group.” Her life story offers a personal insight seldom seen into the fundamentalist groups that developed when The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints dropped the practice of polygamy in 1890.

Martha Bradley-Evans’s introduction, which occupies almost one-third of the book, and her notes throughout provide excellent background and context. She discusses the end of the practice of polygamy by the LDS church and then provides the bases of the various fundamentalists’ claims to hold the right and authority to continue the practice. For example, when Mabel talks about the “Eight-hour Meeting” during which LDS President John Taylor purportedly granted authority to perform polygamous marriages, Bradley-Evans adds background information with sources.

Bradley-Evans was initially given three separate versions of Mabel Allred’s life story: Mabel’s hand-written original “on simple lined paper in pencil, the kind a child would take to school in a notebook” (2). The first typed version had some adjustments in grammar, style and language and shows editing by Mabel, her daughter Dorothy, and son Jerry. Finally there was a second typed version. Bradley-Evans chose to use the original as her

base, with information from the later ones inserted in brackets or notes. It was a good decision.

The finished product reflects Mabel Allred’s own voice and personality well. Her style is conversational. A reader can almost hear her whisper as she confides secrets or her delight at a family gathering. Mabel explains why she chose to leave the LDS church in which she had been raised, live much of her life in hiding from civil authorities, bouncing from house to house, city to city, even back and forth to Mexico. While she talks about living in a house with several wives, living in a house with her children, living in a hovel or a huge mansion, she continually emphasizes Rulon’s attempts to be fair to all of his wives.

We learn that Mabel experienced bouts with depression for nearly her entire life. She must ask Rulon’s permission for everything from giving piano lessons to buying something. She delights in her gift for music, whether she is teaching Rulon’s children how to play or serving as the organist for the local LDS Ward, even though the bishop knows her family situation full well. She explains her return to the LDS church near the end of her life.

Mabel paints her life as a love story. She knew as soon as she met Rulon that he was the man she would marry, and she never lost the belief that he was the only man for her. When she talks about rival claimants murdering him at his naturopathic physician’s office, she does not dwell on the horror. She emphasizes that he died six weeks after their fortieth wedding anniversary.

The book is enhanced by the use of family photographs and ends with a postlude from the Allred children about their parents followed by a few of Rulon Allred’s poems. The single drawback is the lack of an index, although that is mitigated by frequent breaks in the text for what are effectively chapter titles.

While this book opens a window into the practices of fundamentalists for any student of Utah or LDS history, it is far more a doorway into the thoughts and feelings of a woman who followed her own conscience but who also made insightful observations of others with both clarity and charity.

COLLEEN WHITLEY

UTAH STATE

HISTORICAL SOCIETY FELLOWS

THOMAS G. ALEXANDER

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FAWN M. BRODIE (1915-1981)

JUANITA BROOKS (1898-1989) OLIVE W. BURT (1894-1981) EUGENE E. CAMPBELL (1915-1986) EVERETT L. COOLEY (1917-2006) C. GREGORY CRAMPTON (1911-1995) S. GEORGE ELLSWORTH (1916-1997) MAX. J. EVANS AUSTIN E. FIFE (1909-1986) PETER L. GOSS LEROY R. HAFEN (1893-1985) B. CARMON HARDY JOEL JANETSKI

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UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

(ISSN 0 042-143X)

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Managing Editor

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ADVISORY BOARD OF EDITORS

CRAIG FULLER, Salt Lake City, 2015

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JOHN SILLITO, Ogden, 2013

GARY TOPPING, Salt Lake City, 2014

RONALD G. WATT, West Valley City, 2013

COLLEEN WHITLEY, Salt Lake City, 2015

Utah Historical Quarterly was established in 1928 to publish articles, documents, and reviews contributing to knowledge of Utah history. The Quarterly is published four times a year by the Utah State Historical Society, 300 Rio Grande, Salt Lake City, Utah 84101. Phone (801) 533-3500 for membership and publications information. Members of the Society receive the Quarterly upon payment of the annual dues: individual, $30; institution, $40; student and senior citizen (age sixty-five or older), $25; business, $40; sustaining, $40; patron, $60; sponsor, $100.

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BOARD OF STATE HISTORY

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SCOTT R. CHRISTENSEN, Salt Lake City, 2013

YVETTE DONOSSO, Sandy, 2015

MARIA GARCIAZ, Salt Lake City, 2015

DEANNE G. MATHENY, Lindon, 2013

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MAX J. SMITH, Salt Lake City, 2013

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MICHAEL K. WINDER, West Valley City, 2013

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

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106 IN THIS ISSUE

108

Buchanan, Popular Sovereignty, and the Mormons: The Election of 1856

By Ronald W. Walker

133 Women and the Kindergarten Movement in Utah By Andrea Ventilla

149 Taylor A. Woolley: Utah Architect and Draftsman to Frank Lloyd Wright

By Peter L. Goss

159 Safety Lessons: The 1938 Burgon’s Crossing School Bus and Train Accident

By Eric G. Swedin

169 The Renaissance Man of Delta: Frank Asahel Beckwith, Millard County Chronicle Publisher, Scientist, and Scholar, 1875-1951

By David A. Hales

187 IN MEMORIAM: Jay M. Haymond, 1933-2013

190

BOOK REVIEWS

John G. Turner. Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet Reviewed by Newell G. Bringhurst

Kenneth L. Alford, ed. Civil War Saints

Reviewed by Gene A. Sessions

Thomas G. Alexander. Edward Hunter Snow: Pioneer–Educator–Statesman.

Reviewed by Douglas D. Alder

Erin Ann Thomas. Coal in Our Veins: A Personal Journey Reviewed by Edward A. Geary

Victoria D. Burgess. The Midwife: A Biography of Laurine Ekstrom Kingston

Reviewed by Melissa Ferguson

It could be argued that the four most important presidential elections of the nineteenth century were the 1800 election of Thomas Jefferson that brought the Revolution of 1800 and its transfer of authority from the Federalists to the Jeffersonian Republicans; the 1828 Election of Andrew Jackson that ushered in the era of Jacksonian Democracy and the “Common Man;” the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln that brought the Southern Secession and Civil War; and its precursor the election of 1856 that witnessed the birth of the Republican Party, the deepening conflict over slavery, and raised again the question of federal authority versus local rights and prerogatives. The platforms were clear. For Democrats the idea of popular sovereignty was the solution for the slavery question. Territories, not the federal government, would have the right to allow or not allow slavery. For the newly created Republican Party, the ultimate goal was to abolish not only slavery, but its twin relic of barbarism—polygamy. Mormon Utah favored the Democratic platform. The Territory had been created as part of the Compromise of 1850 which gave both Utah and New Mexico the choice about slavery under the canons of popular sovereignty. Furthermore the Democratic platform directed that territories could make decisions about all their “domestic institutions.” Was polygamy a “domestic institution” exempt from federal interference under the popular sovereignty idea? Our first article in this issue analyzes the question with interesting and surprising insights.

COVER: Students and teachers in front of the Molen, Emery County School. UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

IN THIS ISSUE: A children’s playhouse in the Forest School, 900 East 1200 South, in Salt Lake City. UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

A fundamental element in our public education system is the kindergarten, an institution that developed first in Europe and came to the United States in the 1860s. Kindergartens are part of a public school system that now includes elementary schools, junior high/middle schools, and high schools. Utah’s kindergarten movement began in 1880 as part of the education initiative carried out by the Presbyterian Church. In a short time other churches, including the LDS church, established kindergartens. As church-sponsored kindergartens developed, so did the prospect of making kindergartens a part of the territorial public school program. The effort was led by teachers and other professional educators. Success came in 1895 with legislation permitting children age four to six to attend public kindergartens with the cost paid by local school districts. In 1904 the Salt Lake City Board of Education established a public kindergarten program. A half century later, in 1953, state funds became available to local school districts for kindergartens. The story of this struggle and the women who made public kindergartens a reality in Utah is the subject of our second article in this issue.

In the pantheon of Utah’s most famous twentieth century architects, Taylor A. Woolley occupies an important position for promoting the Prairie Style of Frank Lloyd Wright in the state and ushering in a dramatic change in the state’s built landscape in the early twentieth century as the Prairie Style and its compatible bungalow-type houses replaced the pioneer and Victorian styles of the nineteenth century. Woolley began working for Frank Lloyd Wright in 1909 as a draftsman and continued his association with the famous architect after Woolley returned to Salt Lake City.

The unwarranted shooting death of twenty children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14, 2012, is the most recent in a heartbreaking list of tragedies and accidents that have befallen the United States. Utahns were drawn even closer to the event with the news that one of the victims, six-year-old Emily Parker, a native of Ogden would be returned to Utah for a memorial service and burial. Seventy-four years earlier another December tragedy near Riverton in the South end of the Salt Lake Valley brought national attention to Utah when twenty-three students and their twentynine-year-old bus driver were killed when the school bus in which they were riding was hit by a north bound Denver and Rio Grande Western train at Burgon’s Crossing. Fifteen students survived the horrific accident, although seven suffered severe injuries in what was, to that time, the most deadly bus-train accident in American history. Our fourth article in this issue recounts the event and ensuing reforms that were instituted to better safeguard the public.

Our final article for this issue recalls the life of one of Utah’s early twentiethcentury local newspaper men, community promoter, and history enthusiast. Frank Asahel Beckwith arrived in Delta in 1913 and until his death in 1951 at the age of seventy-four published the Millard County Chronicle. He was, in addition to being one of Utah’s most respected and best-known newspapermen, “…an author, inventor, geologist, anthropologist, explorer, and, above all else, the epitome of an eternal scholar.” More than sixty years after his death, Delta, Millard County, and Utah continue to benefit from his legacy.

Buchanan, Popular Sovereignty, and the Mormons: The Election of 1856

BY RONALD W. WALKER

During the last week of February 1857, with clouds dark and lowering, the citizens of Lancaster, Pennsylvania turned out to say goodbye to their favorite son, James Buchanan, who was on his way to become the fifteenth president of the United States. 1 Buchanan had been elected after a tumultuous contest, which had more than its share of moral and political theater. 2 Buchanan had won on a platform of “popular

The Musical Fund Hall in Philadelphia where the Republican Party met in 1856 to nominate John C. Fremont as its presidential candidate and adopt a platform calling for the abolition of the “twin relics of barbarism” —slavery and polygamy.

1 George Ticknor Curtis, Life of James Buchanan: Fifteenth President of the United States, 2 vols. (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1883), 2:187; Philip Shriver Klein, President James Buchanan: A Biography (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1962), 270-71.

2 Kenneth M. Stampp, America in 1857: A Nation on the Brink (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 31.

Ronald W. Walker is a professional historian living in Salt Lake City who has published widely on Utah and Mormon history.

sovereignty,” which promised American territories the right to make decisions about their “domestic institutions.” Before the election was over, however, politicians also raised a side issue: Did popular sovereignty apply to the Mormons in distant Utah? And what should be done with these peculiar people? While these questions may have not have influenced many ballots, they were important to Utah. They set the stage for the Utah War by increasing the public’s hostility to the Mormon people. They also revealed the hopes of the Saints, who, contrary to some historians, wanted local decision-making, not political independence. It is a story that historians have largely left untold.3

As Buchanan’s carriage made its way to the railroad station, the crowd cheered wildly, which brought the president-elect to protest: It was not right, he modestly said, for a mortal man to receive such homage.4 This was exactly the kind of heavy comment that people came to expect of Buchanan, whose self-importance reflected the general belief that he was one of the best prepared politicians to gain the White House. He was hoping that his administration might equal or exceed Washington’s, he told close advisors, and certainly the times required a great man.5 The nation seemed overtaken by political violence and low political practices. Everyone was talking about the slave question. Could the Union endure?

Buchanan had been at the political game longer than most could remember. Early in his career, he had served in the Pennsylvania legislature and then four terms in the House as a member of the Federalist party, before joining the Democrats and supporting Andrew Jackson’s bid for the presidency in 1828. The move put Buchanan in the political mainstream, just as the Democratic Party was beginning its thirty-year ascendancy. Jackson, who some said really did not like Buchanan, put aside his distaste to appoint him to the legation at St. Petersburg in Russia. During this tour Buchanan found himself in his natural element. He learned fine wines and cigars. He also learned that he could hold his own with some of the best diplomats in Europe.6

3 The classic study for the politics of 1856 and the Mormon question is Richard D. Poll, “The Mormon Question, 1850-1865: A Study of Politics and Public Opinion,” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1948), which served as the basis for Poll’s, “The Mormon Question Enters National Politics, 1850-1856,” Utah Historical Quarterly 25 (1957): 117-31. Poll’s main interest was how the Mormon question affected national politics—and not how the election shaped Utah. Nor did Poll have available to him many national newspapers and several important sources now available at the Church History Library of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City. Subsequent studies of the Utah War, more by omission than by argument, have also downplayed the election’s impact. See Norman F. Furniss, The Mormon Conflict, 1850-59 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1960) and William P. MacKinnon, At Sword’s Point, Part I: A Documentary History of the Utah War to 1858 (Norman: The Arthur H. Clark Company, 2008), 56. David L. Bigler and Will Bagley, The Mormon Rebellion: America’s First Civil War, 1857-1858 (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 2011) also minimized the election, while suggesting that the Utah Saints sought political or national independence.

4 Curtis, Life of James Buchanan, vol. 2, 187; Klein, President James Buchanan, 270.

5 Klein, President James Buchanan, xvii.

6 Philip Gerald Auchampaugh, James Buchanan and His Cabinet on the Eve of Secession (Lancaster, PA: Lancaster Press, 1926), 10; Klein, President James Buchanan, 73-8, 96.

When Buchanan returned home, Pennsylvania chose him as one of its senators. He served for the next decade. Although hard-working and devoted to his political party and generally well respected, he never escaped the shadows. He was unable or unwilling to attach his name to any important piece of legislation—never becoming the center of interest or debate. He liked instead to work behind the scenes, perhaps in small groups or at one of his famous dinner parties, where he was at his best. He never hazarded himself too far on any issue, gaining the sobriquet, “Friend of the Obvious.”7

Buchanan was a perpetual candidate for the U.S. presidency, in 1844, 1848, and 1852, usually by coyly staying above the fray and “reluctantly” making himself available. One observer remarked, “Never did a wily politician more industriously plot and plan to secure a nomination than Mr. Buchanan did, in his still hunt for the Presidency.”8 Compensations came along the way. James K. Polk made him his secretary of state and eight years later, Franklin Pierce, another man who beat him out for the presidency, offered him a seat on the Supreme Court (which Buchanan turned down) before appointing him minister plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James in London.

Buchanan was in London when the campaign of 1856 began. He had an unusual credential. By “freak fate,” he had always been out of Congress during the great debates over the extension of slavery and therefore carried no heavy sectional baggage. As a result, his supporters argued he could unite the Democratic party and finally carry the election. He remained properly modest. “I know. . . that you would consider me in a state of mental delusion if I were to say how indifferent I feel in regard to myself on the question of the next Presidency,” Buchanan wrote to a possible supporter. However, the next breath kept the door open. The next presidential term, he gravely warned, would likely be “the most important and responsible of any which has occurred since the origin of the Government,” which meant that “no competent and patriotic man” could shrink from such a duty.9 He was waiting in the wings.

One of Buchanan’s rivals for the Democratic Party’s nomination was the “Little Giant”—Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois. Aware that economic and political power were shifting to the North, Douglas and other party leaders wanted to get the slave question out of Congress where southern representatives were fighting a rearguard action for their “rights.” Douglas’s plan for sectional peace was to let the people in the territories decide on slavery for themselves. He called his proposal “popular sovereignty,”

7 Klein, President James Buchanan, 142.

8 Ben Perley Poole as cited in Klein, President James Buchanan, 194.

9 James Buchanan to William L. Marcy, February 15, 1856, in John Bassett Moore, comp. and ed., The Works of James Buchanan, Comprising his Speeches, State Papers, and Private Correspondence, 12 vols. (New York: Antiquarian Press Ltd.,1960), 10:49.

or sometimes “popular democracy” or “squatter democracy.”

These phrases were not new. They had been around at least since the 1600s when the English Puritans used them against the Stuart kings. The American colonists had used them, too, when fighting the crownappointed officers before and during the American revolution.10 The idea of popular sovereignty lay at the root of the famed Northwest Ordinance of 1787 when America promised self-government and eventual statehood to the settlers living in the western lands of the new republic. But the Ordinance, despite its good intentions, posed problems. It required a step-by-step process that might require many years to complete, during which time, according to one historian, “the rights of self-government that most white males elsewhere took for granted,” including the right to elect leaders and make local laws, were withheld.11 During this awkward stage, territorial governments were “colonial” in the sense that outsiders were generally appointed by a distant central government to hold local executive and judicial offices. Selfgovernment was postponed.

Douglas wanted to end this situation while at the same time he was making a series of political calculations. With people in the territories exercising their “popular sovereignty” to decide the slave question for themselves, he hoped to temper the South’s rising spirit of secession and bring peace to the nation. Along the way, the South might pick up a few new states friendly to its cause. Of course, personal ambition was a factor, too. If his policies were a success, he might be that much closer to taking up quarters at the Executive Mansion. His first step was some language he inserted into the omnibus Compromise of 1850. Four years later he got the Nebraska-Kansas Act through Congress, which promised these territories the right to decide whether slavery should exist within their boundaries.

When the Democratic Party met for its national convention in Cincinnati during the summer of 1856, delegates made “popular sovereignty” the centerpiece of their platform. They then turned to selecting a nominee. The leading candidates were incumbent president Franklin Pierce, Stephen Douglas, and James Buchanan. On the sixteenth ballot, the convention

10 Julienne L. Wood, “Popular Sovereignty,” in Dictionary of American History, 415-16, ed. Stanley I. Kutler, et. al., vol. 6 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons and Thomson Gale, 2003).

11 Richard White, It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own: A History of the American West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 155.

James Buchanan, elected president of the United States in 1856.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

finally went for Buchanan, who accepted by writing a formal letter filled with the diplomatic phrases for which he was famous. The Kansas-Nebraska Act “does no more than give the force of law to this elementary principle of self-government,” Buchanan told the delegates. At stake was neither slavery nor anti-slavery, but democracy, Buchanan said, who insisted that the position was the political high road. “How vain and illusory would any other principle prove in practice in regard to the Territories,” he wrote.”12 Buchanan probably went further than he wished. When the Kansas-Nebraska Act passed Congress two years earlier, he had silently wrung his hands with indecision and foreboding from the safe distance of London. But now party unity required him to agree. He was also setting aside his well-known antipathy for Douglas, which was fully reciprocated (when Buchanan was Secretary of State, Douglas had turned down one Buchanan dinner invitation after another).

Buchanan’s letter to the convention also had a few words to say about religion. “No party founded on religious or political intolerance towards one class of American citizens, whether born in our own or in a foreign land, can long continue to exist in this country,” he said, probably with an eye to putting down the anti-Catholicism in the country. “We are all equal before God and the Constitution and the spirit of despotism and bigotry which would create odious distinction among our fellow-citizens will be speedily rebuked by a free and enlightened public opinion.” These words came from a man who some said was among the most religious ever to be elected to the presidency. Although he put off a formal declaration of an institutional faith, he had been raised under the stern demands of his Scotch-Irish forebears, and he regularly attended services and paid his pew fees. A further measure of his feeling, he tried to find time each day to read

12

, 10:81-5.

James Buchanan to the Committee of Notification, June 16, 1856, Moore, The Works of James Buchanan

John C. Frémont, Republican candidate for the presidency in 1856.

from the Bible or from one of the popular scriptural homilies of the time, and he prayed as often. He looked for God’s hand in human events.13 He closed his letter with a summary of his religion, sense of providence, and U.S. Constitutionalism, which had been the anchors of his life. “Let us humbly implore His continued blessings,” he wrote, and pray “He may avert from us the punishment we justly deserve for being discontented and ungrateful while enjoying privileges above all nations, under such a constitution and such a Union as has never been vouchsafed to any other people.”14

Buchanan and the Democratic Party had two opponents during the election. The American Party fielded Millard Fillmore, an upstate New Yorker and former U.S. President, who during his career had shown surprising kindness to the Mormons. First he had appointed Brigham Young, the Mormon leader, to be governor of the newly created Utah Territory in 1850. He then retained Young during the “Runaway Controversy”a year later, when territorial officers in Utah left their posts and clamored for a new governor and the dispatch of U.S. troops to the western territory. The American Party hoped to steer a middle course in the politics of the time, and it hoped to capture the votes of old-line Whigs, whose party had collapsed before the sectional crisis. Unfortunately, the American Party also had a mean streak about it. Many of its members opposed Masons, Catholics, and the new immigrants who were flooding the nation and threatening “traditional” values. Buchanan’s words about religion were meant to strike a blow against the American Party’s intolerance and nativism and to win as many Irish-Catholic votes as possible.

The Republicans also opposed the Democrats. These men were members of a new party, only a couple of years old, that stood for a liberal policy of dispensing western lands to homesteaders, a national program of public works such as a transcontinental railroad, and the regulating of commerce from Washington. Above all else, it wanted an end to the compromises over the possible extension of slavery—the party believed that “popularsovereignty” was a dodge to avoid making hard, moral decisions. For their presidential candidate, the party overlooked some of its most able and seasoned leaders, such as New York Senator William H. Seward or Ohio’s Salmon P. Chase, in favor of “Pathfinder” John C. Frémont, famous for four explorations of the American West as well as for his impulsive, insubordinate dash. In sum, the Republicans declared themselves alliteratively to favor “Free Soil, Free Men, and Frémont.”

Events in Kansas Territory were a backdrop to the election. Shortly after Congress declared itself in favor of letting territories decide for themselves about slavery, pro-slavery Missourians crossed the Kansas border to elect candidates of their choosing. Northerners responded with young men from

13

Auchampaugh, James Buchanan and His Cabinet, 159-60, 198.

14 James Buchanan to the Committee of Notification, June 16, 1856, Moore, The Works of James Buchanan, 10:81-5.

the Midwest and New England, who entered Kansas to cast opposing ballots. Soon Kansas had rival legislatures, rival governors, and rival capitals—and a rising tide of violence that mocked the ideals of democracy and fair play. After seven hundred pro-slavers took the abolitionist stronghold of Lawrence, Kansas, and burned its “Free State Hotel” and broke up two newspapers, Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner furiously denounced the “Crime Against Kansas” on the floor of the upper chamber. Sumner’s violence with words was met with actual physical violence: Preston Brooks, a South Carolina congressman, beat Sumner with a heavy cane while Sumner sat at his desk in the Senate chamber, inflicting injuries from which Sumner never fully recovered. Two days later the half-crazed abolitionist, John Brown, along with a small band of like-minded men, butchered five pro-slavery men in Kansas. Brown split open the head of one man and chopped his arms from his body.15 In a wild response, four hundred Missourian “Border Ruffians” leveled the town of Osawatomie, Kansas, and killed one of Brown’s sons. As the election of 1856 approached, the cycles of voting fraud, property damage, and killing were transforming the territory into what Horace Greeley and the New York Tribune called “Bleeding Kansas.”16

All these issues and events were prologue to the “Mormon issue.” Most Americans knew at least something about the Mormons, whose church had been established in 1830 in upstate New York and had taken the formal name of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Americans generally knew, too, strife seemed to go hand-in-hand with these people. They had been driven from New York to Ohio and then to Missouri, Illinois, and most recently to Utah Territory. Buchanan had more than a nodding acquaintance with them. In 1839 he had met with President Van Buren and Joseph Smith, the Mormon founding prophet, when Smith came to Washington to ask for help after his people had been forced to leave Missouri. Buchanan was Secretary of State when the government enrolled five hundred Mormons to serve in the Mexican War. He had also donated to the national relief campaign to aid the Mormon refugees strung across the plains of Iowa during their “exodus” to Utah.17

The Mormons continued to make news once they settled in Utah. The “Runaways” created headlines with their claims that Young was disloyal and was a polygamist. In 1852 the Mormons officially admitted their plural marriage. The following year Indians in central Utah killed U.S. Army

15 Affidavits of Mahala Doyle and John Doyle in testimony attached to minority report, “Howard Committee,” as cited in Albert J. Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1858, 4 vols. (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1928), 4:43.

16 Nicole Etcheson, Bleeding Kansas: Contested Liberty in the Civil War Era (Lawrence: University of Kansas, 2004); Thomas Goodrich, War to the Knife: Bleeding Kansas, 1854-1861 (Mechanicsburg, PA., Stackpole Books, 1998).

17 Davis Bitton, “American Philanthropy and Mormon Refugees, 1846-1849,” Journal of Mormon History 7 (1980), 69.

Captain John Gunnison, along with a half dozen of Gunnison’s men. Although the Indians had attacked the troopers for the killing of one of their leaders by emigrants a few weeks before, many easterners put the blame on the Mormons.18 Some non-Mormons in Utah, whom Utahns called “Gentiles,” agreed, and they said the Mormons were trying to turn the Indians against the nation.

It is not clear what motivated the anti-Mormons. Some were put off by Young, others by nothing more than an anti-Mormon scorn. Still others were unscrupulous opportunists, who hoped for government contracts if power shifted away from the local people.19 Some opposition reflected the delicate insecurities of Americans themselves.20 On the other hand, some argued on grounds of principle and vision. They believed that the Mormons, with their polygamy and theocracy, did not fit into the usual American mold—Utah seemed too seventeenth-century Puritan, too odd and anxious, and too millenarian. These men, in and outside of Utah, believed the nation had to bring the saints under control.

By the beginning of 1856, Utah’s delegate to Congress, John M. Bernhisel, knew that the opposition to his people was strong and growing. Bernhisel, an unassuming and temperate man, was everything that the supposedly fanatical Mormons were not. He had been trained as a medical doctor at the University of Pennsylvania and once served as Joseph Smith’s physician and attaché. He had an another advantage: He was a one-wife man and a reluctant one at that—he had waited until the age of forty-six to marry. His quiet diplomacy had won many friends in Washington, and when necessary he could speak his mind to President Young, although always in his quiet and well-spoken way.

Bernhisel began the year with a public letter to the Washington Union, the Democrats’ party newspaper. A simple visit to Utah’s “longitudes,” Bernhisel said, would quickly dispel any idea that the Mormons were disloyal. Nor was there truth about Young’s publicized statement that he intended to remain as Utah’s governor, whatever the costs. Bernhisel said Young had merely expressed his “devout submission to the Providence which rules all created things” (Young’s belief in providence at least equaled Buchanan’s). Finally, he denied rumors that Utah had thirty thousand under arms (another report Bernhisel cited said seven thousand “disciplined” troops), although the territory, like most American communities, had a

18 David Henry Miller, “The Impact of the Gunnison Massacre on Mormon Federal Relations: Colonel Edward Jenner Steptoe’s Command in Utah Territory, 1854-55" (Master’s thesis, University of Utah, 1968); Ronald W.Walker, “President Young Writes Jefferson Davis about the Gunnison Massacre Affair,” Brigham Young University Studies 35 (1995) 146-70.

19 Thomas G. Alexander, “Conflict and Fraud: Utah Public Land Surveys in the 1850s, the Subsequent Investigation, and Problems with the Land Disposal System,” Utah Historical Quarterly 80 (Spring 2012): 108-131.

20 J. Spencer Fluhman, “A Peculiar People”: Anti-Mormonism and the Making of Religion in NineteenthCentury America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012).

21 Washington Union, January 4, 1856.

militia to keep order. Bernhisel was trying to put out fires, and his various denials were a catalog about what was being said about the Mormons.21

Bernhisel’s private letters to Young were also full of foreboding. Congress would never reconfirm Young as governor as things stood, Bernhisel told the Mormon leader. The best that could be done was to let the matter slide, which effectively would allow Young to stay in office into the indefinite future. Meanwhile, Bernhisel told Young to expect no favors from Congress, like the building of a new road from Great Salt Lake City to Fort Bridger or paying off some of the costs of a recent “Walker” Indian war. He also warned that Utah’s new attempt to secure statehood was doomed from the start. “The bitter and cruel prejudice against us as a people is such, ostensibly on account of the plurality doctrine, but the true cause probably lies much deeper.”22 Bernhisel was speaking of the prejudice that he was meeting on every side.

The question of statehood also raised the explosive issue of whether “popular sovereignty” applied to Utah. 23 What was good for the Democrats’ goose (the extension of slavery) might equally serve the Mormon gander (polygamy), Republicans were sure to say. For Americans unwilling to accept Utah’s unusual marriage system, Utah statehood showed just how pernicious the constitutional doctrine of “popular sovereignty” might be.

Popular sovereignty and polygamy had been linked before. Shortly after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, newspapers opposed to Douglas in Illinois had suggested that the senator had a hidden purpose. Douglas, who had forged friendly or at least political ties with the Mormons while they were his constituents, had used the phrase domestic institutions when writing the Kansas-Nebraska Act. What institutions did Douglas have in mind besides slavery, it was asked? Could he also be talking about polygamy? The prominent, early twentieth-century historian-politician, Albert J. Beveridge, reviewing the political back-and-forth in Illinois in the middle 1850s, put polygamy at the head of a list of secondary issues facing Douglas in the state’s political wars, after the extension of slavery itself.24

Nor had the linkage passed the notice of Senator Sumner, who saw the political and moral advantage of putting polygamy and popular sovereignty side-by-side. “I presume no person could contend that a polygamous husband, resident in one of the States, would be entitled to enter the national Territory with his harem—his property if you please—and there claim immunity,” Sumner had protested when the Kansas-Nebraska Law was being debated in the nation. “Clearly, when he [the polygamist] passes

22

Bernhisel to Brigham Young, January 17, 1856 and March 18, 1856, Church History Library. Last citation has the quotation.

23 New York Times, March 19 and June 3, 1856.

24 Albert J. Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1858, 4 vols. (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1928), 3:236-7.

the bounds of that local jurisdiction which sanctions polygamy, the peculiar domestic relation would cease; and it is precisely the same with Slavery.”25

Historian Richard Poll found the similar tie after Franklin Pierce in 1853 recommended that the federal lands in Utah and New Mexico territoriesbe surveyed and made available to settlers.26 The House Committee on Public Lands reported a bill that proposed “that the benefits of this act shall not extend to any person who shall now, or at any time hereafter, be the husband of more than one wife.”27 The proposed bill set off a warm debate over the constitutionality of federal authority and local decision-making, and to avoid the dangerous issue Congress finally removed from the legislation any provision about ownership and instead simply appointed a surveyorgeneral for Utah to measure metes and bounds. For the next fifteen years, Utahns would bristle over their inability to secure legal title to their lands, claiming their religion was being used as an excuse to deny them the land rights extended elsewhere. The privileges of the federal domain were not given Utah until 1869.28

The issue of polygamy and popular sovereignty would not go away. The St. Louis Republican looked at the constitution Utahns were proposing and saw conspiracy. “The plan of crimes, mutually tolerating each other, seems to be spreading shameless iniquities, seeking the possession of new territories,” the newspaper opined. Slavery and polygamy were trying to “jointly possess the land.” The Republican ’s comments came despite the proposed Utah constitution saying nothing about either slavery or polygamy—Utahns hoped that silence might increase the chances of their bid. The editorial reached even upstate New York where the celebrated Frederick Douglass’s Paper, the organ of the former slave and now a crusading abolitionist, put it into its pages.29

It was probably inevitable that the polygamy issue would find its way into the Republican Party’s platform in 1856, given the strong views being bandied about. The party met in Philadelphia in the middle of June, two weeks after Democrats had selected Buchanan and popular sovereignty. Californian John A. Willis was given the task of writing the first draft of the plank on federal authority in the territories, and he decided to join slavery and polygamy together, “to make war upon polygamy, and at the same time strengthen the case against slavery,” he later said. “Polygamy was already odious in the public mind and a growing evil,” and both “social institutions [slavery and polygamy] rested precisely on the same constitutional basis,”

25 Congressional Globe, 33rd Congress, 1st Session, appendix, 268.

26 Poll, “The Mormon Question, 1850-1865,” 30-34.

27 Congressional Globe, 33rd Congress, 1st Session, 1092.

28 Lawrence L. Linford, “Establishing and Maintaining Land Ownership in Utah Prior to 1869,” Utah Historical Quarterly 42 (Spring 1974): 126-43.

29 St. Louis Republican, May 28, 1856, and “State of Deseret,” Frederick Douglass’ Paper [Syracuse, New York], June 13, 1856, as archived in Historian’s Office, Historical Scrapbooks, 1840-1904, LDS Church History Library.

with popular sovereignty sheltering each. Willis’s resolution declared Federal power. “Resolved, That the Constitution confers upon Congress sovereign power over the territories of the United States for their government, and that in the exercise of this power it is both the right and the duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism—polygamy and slavery.”30

When Willis submitted his draft proposal to the larger committee, he met two objections. First, one party leader complained that the resolution was repeating itself. Wasn’t polygamy just another form of slavery? Another objection was about style. Were the Republicans going to stoop to epithets? In the end, both complaints were swept aside, and the highly charged words, “the Twin Relics of Barbarism,” were retained as useful “instrumentalities in political warfare.” When presented to the delegates, the resolution was approved with “rapturous enthusiasm.”31 After all, Republican politicians and newspapers had been saying as much for two years, but without the catchphrase that transformed heavy political arguments into a campaign war cry. With the words sounding deep within the Republican soul, “The Twin Relics of Barbarism” became one of the more famous slogans of American presidential politics.

The conventions had done their work, and now came the campaigning. The Democrats stood for preserving the Union—and the old, proven ways of their political power, which put a premium upon local and states rights and the hope of keeping the issue of slavery off the national agenda. In contrast, the Republicans were proposing the radical expansion of federal power, mainly to curb the moral evil of slavery. Somewhere in the tumult was the Mormon question, which more than one Republican warrior pressed to his bosom. According to New York Senator William H. Seward, perhaps the leading man of the party, slavery and polygamy went hand-inhand. To allow either Utah into the Union as a polygamous state or Kansas as a slave state “will bear heavily, perhaps conclusively, on the fortunes of the entire conflict between Freedom and Slavery,” he said.32 He had been making the same argument for several years.33

The New York Herald put the matter in down-to-earth tones that was typical with the newspaper: “And here comes a nice question—nicer than niggers—between Congress and squatter sovereignty. Does Congress or does squatter sovereignty cover the question of polygamy? Does the constitution reach it? What is to be done with it? The question will soon be put, and it will have to be met. . . . Utah and the saints must be looked after.”34

30 Kirk H. Porter and Donald Bruce Johnson, comp. National Party Platforms, 2 vols. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1956), 1:27.

31 John W. Willis, “The Twin Relics of Barbarism,” Publications of the Historical Society of Southern California 1 (1890), 41-42.

32

“The Presidential Contest, New York Tribune, October 23, 1856.

33 Congressional Globe, 33rd Congress, 1st session, appendeix, 154.

34 New York Herald, June 17, 1856.

Millard Fillmore, who was elected president in 1850, ran in the 1856 as a candidate of the Whig— American—and Know Nothing Party.

Buchanan and Frémont observed the protocols of the time by letting their supporters do the campaigning. Less than a week after the Republican convention, former Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton launched an attack upon President Franklin Pierce for not taking action against the Mormons. Benton had been an archnemesis of the saints since the late 1830s when Missouri ultras had driven them from the state. The intervening years had not softened his opposition. He now claimed that Utah represented a “state of things at which morality, decency, [and] shame revolts,” with Brigham Young defiant in his power. As a leading Democrat, Benton was trying to prevent the Republicans from tarring the Grand Democracy with the Mormon brush— making people think that popular sovereignty somehow put the Democrats on the side of the saints. When it came time to cast his vote, Benton went for Buchanan, despite being Frémont’s fatherin-law.35

Republican Congressman Justin S. Morrill of Vermont also used strong language. Morrill, one of the party’s founding fathers, labeled polygamy an “abomination” and created a “sensation” in the House by proposing national legislation to end it. He was aiming squarely at overturning Democratic constitutional doctrine, claiming that Washington had “exclusive jurisdiction” in the territories and that “no principle of self-government or citizen sovereignty” could possibly justify Mormon plurality. His bill called for a fine not exceeding five hundred dollars against polygamists and a stiff prison sentence of two to five years on any “person” marrying a plural spouse or sexually “cohabiting” with them. Morrill’s loosely drawn

35 Extract of Thomas H. Benton’s Speech at St Louis, June 21, 1856, from unnamed newspaper, Historian’s Office, Historical Scrapbooks, 1840-1904, box 1, folder 4, book 4, page 42, Church History Library.

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

provisions put Mormon women as well as Mormon men at risk—and theoretically any non-Mormon living in the territories who might be involved in an extended sexual relationship outside of marriage.36 Morrill would introduce one anti-LDS bill after another during the next twenty years.

Morrill’s bill combined moral reform with shrewd politics, which continued with parade float and banner during the next months. According to nineteenth-century Utah historian, Edward Tullidge, “every campaign where John C. Frémont was the standard bearer of the party, there could be read: The abolishment of slavery and polygamy; the twin relics of barbarism!”37 Incidental evidence suggests that Tullidge was not exaggerating too much. An Indianapolis, Indiana, rally had “Brigham Young, with six wives most fashionably dressed, hoop skirts and all, each with a little Brigham in her arms,” occupying one parade wagon drawn by a yoke of pioneer oxen. “Brigham,” said the correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, “was making himself as useful and interesting as possible among his white, black and piebald better-halves. He also held a banner inscribed ‘Hurrah for the Kansas-Nebraska bill—it introduces Polygamy and Slavery.’”38 The parade attracted a reported crowd of sixty thousand people.39

A handbill, allegedly written by the Mormons, was distributed at a preelection rally in Philadelphia. Addressed to the “Faithful Followers of the Lord, and Recipients of His Grace,” it claimed to give advice. “We call upon you to stand firm to the principles of our religion in the coming contest for President of the country,” it said. “The Democratic Party is the instrument in God’s hand, by which is to be effected our recognition as a sovereign State, with the domestic institutions of slavery and polygamy, as established by the patriarchs and prophets of old, under divine authority, and renewed in the saints of Latter-day, through God’s chosen rulers and prophets.” In contrast, the handbill said the Republicans were standing in the way of the saints and the fulfillment of the scripture when in the last days “seven women [shall] lay hold to one man.” The flyer was supposedly ordered by “the President and Rulers, at Great Salt Lake on the Fourteenth Day of August, 1856.”40

It was a fake, of course. It used words that were neither a part of the style nor the vocabulary of the Mormons, and nothing in the present-day church archives gives the document the least credence. It was undoubtedly the product of some Republican operatives who hoped to use antiMormon prejudice to peel votes from Buchanan—what modern politicians would call “dirty tricks.” Nevertheless, leading opinion-makers took the

36“The Latest News,”New York Tribune, June 27, 1856.

37 Edward W. Tullidge, History of Salt Lake City (Salt Lake City: By the Author, 1886), 140.

38 Chicago Tribune, July 15, 1856, cited in New York Times, July 21, 1856.

39 Ibid.

40 As reproduced in The Mormon, November 15, 1856.

bait. Shortly after the election, Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune printed the broadside as well as an article that opined that Buchanan, “old bachelor though he is” (Buchanan never married) had become the instrument of Mormon hopes for getting Utah and polygamy into the Union—perhaps the Mormons even hoped that Buchanan at the right time might renounce “his bachelorship, . . . [and] make up for lost time by taking [the prescribed] seven wives.” The sarcasm of the article was aimed at the slave-holders of the South: Because southerners made slaves their concubines, it was a small step for them to accept the Mormon version of sexual plurality, especially if it might gain the South two votes in the Senate once Utah got into the Union.41 The New York Herald also printed the handbill, and it became grist for such politicians as Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois and Representative Morrill, who saw it as another example of the saints’ treachery.42

During the first week of July, President Pierce summoned Bernhisel to the White House to give him a dressing-down. Pierce was furious about rumors he was hearing concerning the Mormons’ supposedly rigging or tampering with juries—no doubt an echo from the Gunnison trial. Moreover, Pierce had heard that Governor Young was preaching the doctrine of exclusion, that is, telling the saints not to have anything to do with Gentile outsiders.

U.S. army officers and Utah’s federal territorial officials had been experiencing one run-in after another with the Utah settlers, and their one-sided and exaggerated reports had been flowing to the nation’s capital for several years. Sometime after his stressful meeting with Pierce, Bernhisel met with an excited congressman, who wanted to cut off a shipment of arms to Utah’s territorial militia. “We shall have trouble with your people,” the congressman told Bernhisel, “and I think we should not put arms into their hands.” Of greatest concern to Bernhisel, however, was the looming Morrill Anti-Polygamy bill, which he now thought would get through the House, although he hoped that he had enough votes in the Senate to kill it. “The feeling and prejudice among members of both branches of the national Legislature against Utah, and its domestic institution were never before so great as at this time, and the hostile feeling seems to be on the increase, and is not confined to northern [Republican] members alone, but is shared by some southern members, slave holders, who profess to believe in the principle of [federal] non-intervention [in the territories].”43 The latter were running for political cover because of the Republican campaign assaults.

John Taylor and George A. Smith—the two men given the task of presenting Utah’s statehood petition to Congress—did not know what to do. They were among Utah’s best and ablest. Both had served in the local

41 New York Tribune, November 10, 1856.

42 New York Herald , November 9, 1856. For the Trumbull and Morrill expressions, see Poll, “The Mormon Question Enters National Politics,”130.

43 Bernhisel to Young, July 17, 1856, Brigham Young Office Files, Church History Library.

territorial assembly and, reflecting Utah’s church-state condition, also had high church office as members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, second only to Young’s three-man First Presidency. Taylor’s most recent assignment was to preside over the church’s eastern missions and to publish the New York-based newspaper, The Mormon, which put him in the cockpit of the war of words. Smith, a cousin of founding-prophet Joseph Smith and the youngest apostle ever chosen for the Quorum, had Falstaffian wit and girth and the easy way of a natural politician. Both Taylor and Smith felt the heavy duty of being on a religious and political mission. They had arrived in Washington during the summer of 1856 and immediately sought the advice of Senator Douglas, who must have remembered one of his talks with Joseph Smith. Smith predicted a bright future for Douglas, including a quest for the U.S. presidency—though Smith’s prediction had come with a warning. “If ever you turn your hand against me or the Latter day Saints you will feel the weight of the hand of the Almighty upon you,” Smith reportedly had said, “and you will live to see and know that I have testified the truth to you, for the conversation of this day will stick to you through life.”44 Douglas had helped the saints many times in the intervening years, perhaps for political reasons, but the saints saw in Douglas a man whose sympathies for them ran warm and perhaps deep.45 Douglas had aided the saints’ trek west by supplying government maps and reports, and several Mormon letters since had warmly renewed the bond.46 One of Young’s letters to Douglas repeatedly called him a “friend.”47 In the first months of 1850, during the preliminaries before the Congress enacted its great sectional compromise of that year, Douglas had laid before the Senate an earlier Utah petition for statehood.48

When Taylor and Smith approached Douglas, they knew that the Mormon situation had become difficult. The “twin relics” platform, Taylor fumed, had been a “mean, dastardly act” that had used polygamy as a wedge issue against the Democrats, the Mormons’ natural political allies. Taylor complained that the Democrats, thrown back on their heels, were showing an anti-Mormon zeal that put even the Republicans “in the shade.” The Mormons had become “the great national political shuttlecock, to be bandied by every political battledore.”49

44 Church Historian’s Office, History of the Church, CR 100 102, volume 11, pp. 197-8, May 18, 1843; Brigham Young to Stephan A. Douglas, May 2, 1861, Brigham Young Office Files, CR 1234, box 5, volume 5, p. 783.

45 Poll, “The Mormon Question, 1850-1865,” 35-38.

46 Orson Hyde to the Council of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, April 26, 1844, 5, Joseph Smith Papers, box 3, fd. 6, Church History Library.

47 Brigham Young to Stephen A. Douglas, April 29, 1854,Young Correspondence.

48 Poll, “The Mormon Question, 1850-1865,” 38.

49 “Report of Taylor and Smith to the Utah Legislative Assembly,” printed in Everett L. Cooley, comp., “Journals of the Legislative Assembly Territory of Utah Seventh Annual Session, 1857-1858,” Utah Historical Quarterly 24 (October 1956), 346-8; John Taylor to Brigham Young, July 12, 1856, Brigham Young Office Files, Church History Library.

Yet, Douglas appeared to be sympathetic. As chairman of the Senate’s powerful committee on territories, Douglas told the Mormon representatives he had been able to defeat the mad rush to dismantle Utah Territory by giving its land to surrounding states and territories—the objective was to neuter Mormon local government (and local choice) by making the saints isolated minorities in surrounding governments. However, Douglas also told the delegates that if they insisted upon presenting their petitions for statehood, they would pay a heavy price. The petitions would certainly go down before heavy majorities in both the House and Senate, and the bill to cut Utah into pieces might gain new strength. Moreover, Morrill’s anti-polygamy bill continued to be a problem, which, if enacted, threatened to put Utah in the middle of a widespread and unprecedented federal prosecution. Because of the strong winds blowing against the saints, Douglas told Taylor and Smith to be patient. If Buchanan were elected and if the Democrats gained control of Congress—and if popular sovereignty became more widely accepted—then something might be done for the Mormons.50 The “ifs” were large.

Taylor and Smith reluctantly accepted Douglas’s advice. Their decision to stand down was carried in the national press, and the Mormons went on record with the face-saving comment that “the present opposition [against them] to be only for party effect,” which might end after the election.51 But nothing that Taylor and Smith did—or did not do—appeared to help. The Mormon question had become too much a part of the campaign. In August, the New York Herald, arguably the nation’s most popular newspaper, began more articles on Utah. “Humanity shudders at the degradation, disgrace and suffering which those unhappy females are compelled to submit to,” said one article about the women in Utah. “The hard labor, the cruel treatment, and personal neglect they endure is absolutely shocking. [Moreover] the manner in which the local government is conducted, the vulgarity of the public documents, and the occasional proclamations of the Governor of this benighted Territory, afford the most complete evidence of bigotry, misrule and tyranny.”52 The newspaper made no attempt to document any of its sweeping charges.

It is not known what prompted the Herald’s fierce obloquy, although there was a group of men in Utah, opposed to Mormon rule, who during the summer had begun a letter-writing campaign to put conditions in the territory in the worst possible light. One of the most damaging letters was from “Veritas,” which appeared in the New York Tribune. While the identity of its author is unknown, a leading candidate is William W. Drummond, an

50

“Report of Taylor and Smith to the Utah Legislative Assembly,” 346-8; John Taylor to Brigham Young, July 12, 1856, Brigham Young Office Files, Church History Library.

51 New York Tribune, July 5, 1856.

52

Historian’s Office, Historical Scrapbooks 1840-1904, box 1, fd. 4, book 4, p. 57, quoting New York Herald, August 20, 1856.

unsteady territorial judge, who had become involved in several bitter conflicts with the saints. Drummond had recently left the main Utah settlements for the Carson Valley in present-day Nevada, where he began to write anti-Mormon dispatches as well as a legal opinion that challenged the way Mormons were using Utah’s probate courts. Another of Drummond’s public-press letters would appear under the like-sounding name of “Verastus.”53 Drummond liked Latin names. He used them when naming his children, one of whom was called “Veritas,” or something like it. He had apparently chosen a pen name as sort of an insider’s game to hint at his real identity.54

Veritas claimed to be writing from Utah and said he possessed the most serious inside information. He suggested that the “diabolical” rituals of the Mormon endowment rivaled those of the Greeks’ sensual Temple of Ceres and said the endowment bound the saints together in blood-oaths to avenge the murder of Joseph Smith. He also said that Utahns had stolen the Green River ferries from mountain men and that the church, working behind the scenes, had prevented the felony convictions during the Gunnison massacre trial. Veritas pointed out that Brigham Young was currently building a large home for his “sixty spirituals (formerly called concubines),” which meant that the American government, by paying Young’s governor’s salary, was subsidizing his corruption. Drummond’s charges were meant to put a stop to Utah’s statehood proposals and to make sure that Douglas’s doctrine of “popular sovereignty” would never have a place in the territory. “Now. . . [Utahns] ask you to admit them [as a new state] and thus legalize their system,” the letter concluded. “May I not hope the American people will pause and reflect before taking such a step—one which would dim the luster of our national greatness; which would bring with it present disgrace and future infamy—a step which time with its finger of scorn would point at as the blackest page in our history.”55

In addition to the incendiary, over-the-top public letters making their way east, a dozen additional letters are known to have been sent to various offices of the government, and this number probably did not represent the half of it.56 Several complaints had to do with the territorial post office, as territorial officers claimed that their mail was being regularly opened. Young strongly denied the charge, although copies of some letters ended up in Young’s office files.57 Surveyor-General David H. Burr reported that

53 MacKinnon, At Sword’s Point, 120.

54 Communication of William MacKinnon to author, June 2012.

55 “The Political Secrets of Mormonism,” May 30, 1856, published in New York Tribune, August 7, 1856.

56 MacKinnon, At Sword’s Point, 56-60.

57 Brigham Young to Bernhisel, February 4, 1858,Young Correspondence. “I know nothing of it [opening the non-Mormon mail], “and care less,”Young wrote. “Hence treat this [rumor] like thousands of other attempts to fasten upon this people guilt and crime, we pass it by unnoticed. We could not afford to keep a standing army of clerks to refute such idle tales.” For letters in Young’s files, see MacKinnon, At Sword’s Point, 53, 58.

one of his men had been brutally attacked, and a full recovery was in doubt. The beating had “high authority,” Burr said, which implied Young’s responsibility. 58 Indian Agent Garland Hurt told Washington that Young’s “boasted policy” toward the local Indians had been “conducted at the sacrifice of the lives and property of a deluded populace, who were groaningin poverty and distress.”59 Hurt also joined the chorus accusing saints of alienating the Indians from the government, making them Mormon vassals.

William M. F. Magraw’s letter to Franklin Pierce, written in October, was another piece of Gentile anti-Mormonism. Magraw was a former U.S. mail contractor and Utah surveyor, and he shared the negative feelings of many of the territorial officers about Utah and the saints, especially after he lost his mail contract to Utahns and a local court imposed a costly settlement against him for a breach of contract to Mormon apostle Erastus Snow. “There was much warmth and feeling on this occasion,” said Magraw’s attorney after the court decision had been handed down by the Mormon jury.60 Perhaps in pique and certainly because of his strong opposition to all things that were Mormon, Magraw complained that “there is left no vestige of law and order, no protection for life and property” in Utah, as the local

58 David H. Burr to Thomas A. Hendricks, August 30 and September 20, 1856, “The Utah Expedition,” Message from the President of the United States, 35th Congress, House of Representatives, 1st Session, Ex. Doc. No. 71, 115-6, 117-8.

59 Garland Hurt to George W. Manypenny, November 20, 1856, “The Utah Expedition,” Message from the President of the United States, 35th Congress, House of Representatives, 1st Session, Ex. Doc. No. 71, 182.

60 Hosea Stout, On the Mormon Frontier: The Diary of Hosea Stout, 1844-1861, edited by Juanita Brooks, 2 vols. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press and Utah State Historical Society, 1964), July 2, 1855, August 5, 1856, and September 15, 1856, 2:557-8, 599, and 600.

Map of the United States showing the election results in 1856.

priesthood was “as despotic, dangerous and damnable as has ever been known to exist in any country.”61

Magraw claimed Mormon policy was “framed in dark corners” and “promulgated from the stand of tabernacle or church, and executed at midnight, or upon the highways, by an organized band of bravos and assassins, whose masters compel an outraged community to tolerate [it] in their midst.” This last charge had often been made against the Mormons since their days in Missouri when they were accused of having a group of men called “Danites” to kill anyone who stood in their way. While Magraw’s letter lacked proof, he nevertheless assured Polk “conservative people” would recoil once the full story became known. Then, an outraged public might bring upon Utah “bloodshed, robbery[,] and rapine” and leave the territory to become a “howling wilderness.” However, there was a solution. If Young were removed from office, hundreds of grateful citizens, he predicted, would rise up against the current church leaders. “I know that they will be at no loss for a leader.”62

At the time that Magraw was writing his letter to Pierce, Isaac Hockaday, brother of Magraw’s former partner John M. Hockaday, sent one of his own to the President. Hockaday’s letter charged that the Gentiles in Utah were suffering “wrongs, abuses and outrages” and that Utah was under the control “of the most lawless set of knaves and assassins who disregard and trample under foot the rights of those not belonging to their so called religious community as well as those who are unwilling to sanction and affiliate with them in their most obscene outrages.”63

The Gentile letters must have had a role in the growing consensus about the saints. By late October as the election campaign was ending, the leading newspapers of the nation were calling for drastic action. The bumptious New York Herald wanted federal troops to “exterminate the Mormons” and scorned the American government’s failure to take on the Mormons.64 The New York Tribune , perhaps the Republicans’ leading journalistic voice, called for “wise and firm measures” against the Mormons and their “evil.” The Tribune cited strategic reasons. The Mormons and the Indian allies controlled the transcontinental lines of travel and communication,it complained, where the national railroad was likely to be built.65 Even Buchanan overcame his scruples against national public works and joined the Republicans to support the project, also citing national security. California and the west coast could not be protected

61 W. M. F. Magraw to Mr. President, October 3, 1856, “The Utah Expedition,” Message from the President of the United States, 35th Congress, House of Representatives, 1st Session, Ex. Doc. No. 71, 2-3.

62 Ibid.

63 Isaac Hockaday to Pierce, October 6, 1856, Miscellaneous Letters of Department of State, National Archives, as cited in MacKinnon, At Sword’s Point, 57.

64 New York Herald, October 19, 1856, as cited in TheMormon, October 25, 1856.

65 Historian’s Office, Historical Scrapbooks 1840-1904, CR 100, 91, box 1, fd. 4, book 4, pp. 63, apparently quoting the New York Tribune, October 25, 1856.

without it, he argued.66

“Prejudice against Utah on account of its ‘peculiar institution’” had never been greater, Bernhisel wrote Young. 67 George A. Smith offered to boost Bernhisel’s flagging spirits by having joint prayers, but Bernhisel put him off, apparently thinking that Smith was trying to manage him. 68 Taylor took refuge about what was being said against his people in the strain of apocalypticism that ran in early Mormonism. Were not the lies and distortions being leveled against the saints fulfilling the end-of-times that Joseph Smith had often spoken of? Taylor had in mind Smith’s prophecy about a coming civil war. This revelation predicted the “death and misery of many souls” beginning in South Carolina, probably because of the slavery.69

“How fast the words of Joseph are hastening to their accomplishment in regard to the division of the North and South; and how literal in regard to South Carolina,” Taylor pointed out. Preston Brooks, the congressman who had thrashed Sumner, came from South Carolina, along with other firebrands who were warning that the South would leave the Union if Frémont won the election. “Talk about us entering the Union; there is no Union,” Taylor said. “There is a nominal, patched up, national growling, disunited, quar relingconfedera cy; but no Union. The elements will not fuse and the different factions meet in Congress not as the representatives of a great Nation, but as demagogues[,] as factionists, as national enemies.” Taylor believed the nation was coming apart, everything a “boiling cauldron,” as old political alliances were breaking down and new ones rising.70

66 Stampp, America in 1857, 48.

67 Bernhisel to Young, August 18, 1856,Young Correspondence.

68 George A. Smith to Young, November 12, 1856,Young Correspondence.

69 Doctrine and Covenants 87:1-2; 130:12-13.

70 John Taylor to Young, October 17, 1856,Young Correspondence.

Stephen Douglas, Senator from Illinois, supporter of Popular Sovereignty, and presidential candidate in 1860.

WIKIPEDIA

The Mormon bid for statehood was not as simple as it seemed. On one hand, the saints wanted to be admitted to the Union, which they valued because it upheld “just and holy principles” that, according to another of Smith’s revelations, set the pattern for the “rights and protection of all flesh.”71 The saints believed among the great constitutional privileges was self-government. As long as Utah remained a territory and not a state, that God-given right remained very uncertain. However, while the practical Mormons were doing their best to make Utah a state, their belief in a quickly coming end-of-times kept them second-guessing. Were all their efforts to get into the Union really a waste of time?

The only weapon that the Mormons had during the election was The Mormon, which Taylor continued to edit. The newspaper called on those making charges against the Mormons to offer “the act, the time, the place, to justify their accusations.”72 It also tried to draw a narrow but impossible line between Utah’s desire for local government and its practice of plural marriage. “All we want is equal rights,” the newspaper said. Another editorial tried to make Utah’s polygamy a matter of humor. “Polygamy among the Mormons can never be part of . . . any one’s business outside of Mormonism. . . . How can it? We don’t insist that . . .others should have two or more wives—there are plenty of men that never deserved one— neither do we ask . . . others for any jewel [of a wife] that . . . they may possess.” 73 In the end, Taylor’s hope to duel with the nation’s leading newspapers went nowhere. No one was listening.

When the campaign ended, Buchanan won the presidency, and the Democrats enjoyed majorities in the new Thirty-Fifth Congress. But there was a new political landscape. Although Fillmore’s American Party received more than one in five votes cast, it had captured only one border state. It had no future. Nor had the Democrats done well in the North. Frémont had closed fast and carried all but five of the “free states.” 74 The Republicans had every reason to feel good about their first try at national politics—and for their future. A few more northern states, and next time they would have the Executive Mansion.

During the campaign, The Mormon had praised Buchanan as an “honorable, high-minded, courteous gentleman,” but had done little else to support him. 75 The last thing that Buchanan and the Democrats (and popular sovereignty) needed was the support of the Mormons, which was lukewarm anyway.Young privately hoped for Fillmore in 1856 and Douglas in 1860, the two national figures who had done the most to help Utah.76

71 Doctrine and Covenants 101:77, 80; see also Doctrine and Covenants 98:5-7.

72 “Ex-Gov. Reeder on Gov.Young and Utah,” The Mormon, August 30, 1856.

73 “Boys, Don’t Disturb the Bee Hive,” The Mormon June 1854.

74 Stampp, America in 1857, 6, 37.

75 “Mr. Buchanan,” The Mormon, June 14, 1856.

76 Brigham Young to John M. Bernhisel, July 17, 1856,Young Correspondence.

But Young was too much a realist, or millenarian, to be optimistic. When Buchanan was elected, he had the satisfaction that the nationally-minded, anti-polygamy Republicans had been kept out of office. But there was no jubilation. Bernhisel, writing from Washington, warned not to expect any favors.77

The Mormons hoped that once the ballots were counted things might calm down. But the Saints were too good newspaper copy, and once the moral flame about polygamy and theocracy had been lit, it was hard to extinguish. Something had to be done about Utah, clamored the New York Sun, two weeks after the polls closed, and the newspaper wanted the work to start with the next session of Congress. A “libidinous priesthood” was demoralizing and enslaving women, while government in Utah was more absolute than even Mahomet’s rule. The Sun even made the remarkable claim the Mormons posed the greatest threat facing American republicanism, ignoring for the moment the problems with race and section.78

The billingsgate was not limited to the New York dailies. Democrats in the South and Upper South, realizing the damage done by polygamy to their popular sovereignty and to their party, tried to rid themselves of any vexing Mormon tie. “The abominations of polygamy, and the outrages of theocratic despotism, cannot shelter themselves under the panoply of Squatter Sovereignty,” said the Richmond Enquirer, casting aside the South’s usual constitutional views.79 By the end of the year, Apostle Taylor, still editing The Mormon in New York City, was beside himself. “There does seem . . . to be gaining ground a deep[,] settled prejudice against Utah and her interests,” he wrote to Young. “Some of our papers here have hinted at [our] extermination &c. A general feeling of hatred is being engendered.”80

There was still the unfinished business of Utah’s statehood petitions. In January 1857, Bernhisel, Smith, and Taylor were back in Senator Douglas’s office asking for more advice. Douglas was even more outspoken. Any move to request statehood—the slightest tremor—might bring from Congress “hostile action,” Douglas gravely warned. The startled Mormons wanted to know what Douglas was actually saying. While Douglas refused to give any details, his reply had alarming ambiguity and emphasis. If the Mormons insisted on going before Congress, they should expect a reaction “of the most hostile character.”81

“All our friends if we have any deserving the appellation have been of [the] opinion nothing could be effected and that an attempt would be certain defeat and injurious,” Taylor tried to explain to Young. Taylor said

77 George A. Smith to Young, November 12, 1856, and Bernhisel to Young, November 19, 1856, Young Correspondence.

78 New York Sun, November 18, 1856, in Historian’s Office Historical Scrapbooks, 1840-1940, box 1, fd. 4, book 4, p. 78.

79 As cited in The Mormon, December 13, 1856.

80 John Taylor to Brigham Young, December 20, 1856,Young Correspondence.

81 “Report of Taylor and Smith to the Utah Legislative Assembly,” 348. Emphasis in the original.

that Greeley at the New York Tribune continued his “deadly hostility” by publishing the anonymous letters from Utah. The church could not have “a more virulent, bitter, and unscrupulous enemy” than Greeley, Taylor thought.82 But editor James Gordon Bennett of the New York Herald was only a step or two behind, if that.83

The Mormons began to think that there might be some kind of a plot against them—as almost certainly there was. Some of the letters and articles appeared to be a part of an organized attempt to overthrow the Mormon regime and seemed to come from a small group of long-standing opponents in Utah. These conspirators included territorial officers, men seeking or holding Federal contracts, and Gentile merchants in Salt Lake City. Young had already sent a list of more than two dozen names of possible church enemies to see if Taylor could find anything out about their work. An unnamed source had given this information to Young, and Young admitted that he was uncertain about its accuracy. 84 But according to Young’s source, these opponents were preparing anti-statehood affidavits and making lists of plural wives of Mormon leaders. The idea was to embarrass the Mormons at every turn.85 In early 1857 at least three national journals carried statistical surveys of the plural wives of Mormon leaders, just as predicted.86

Taylor responded to Young’s rumors with some of his own. During recent weeks, he had heard of “certain indications and expressions” of dark plots, Taylor wrote back to Salt Lake City. Enemies in Utah might be working to bring “a new dynasty” to the church and possibly even working to destroy or kill the Mormon leaders, he told Young, although he could learn nothing for certain. 87 Taylor’s findings agreed with some of the passages of Magraw’s letter to Pierce, which had spoken of a possible coup. The apostle’s startling report was written in a matter-of-fact letter to Young. Its even tenor showed how much the Mormons had come to expect violation and hardship. After receiving Taylor’s letter—and perhaps before—Young withdrew from public view for several months. While perhaps Young’s absence was due to poor health, it is also possible he took the threats against his life seriously.

The election of 1856 and the conduct of the territorial officers left Young despairing, and in January 1857 the Utah legislature drafted strongly worded memorials asserting its “right to have a voice in the selection of our rulers.”88 The “right” apparently included taking action against the

82 John Taylor to Brigham Young, December 20, 1856,Young Correspondence.

83 The Mormon replied to these and other articles, November 15 and 29, December 6, 13, and 20, 1856, and January 3, 10, 17, and 24, 1857.

84 Brigham Young to George A. Smith, July 30, 1856,Young Correspondence.

85 Brigham Young to John M. Bernhisel, July 17, 1856,Young Correspondence.

86 Poll, “The Mormon Question, 1850-1865,” 66ff.

87 John Taylor to Brigham Young, December 20, 1856,Young Correspondence.

88 Memorial, Executive Files, Governor’s Office Files,Young Office Files, Church History Library.

officers still in the territory as well as those who might come in their place. “Why not kick them out of the Territory[,] say You,” Young rhetorically wrote to his friend Thomas L. Kane about the men who had been so busy with their conspiratorial letter-writing. “That’s just it, we intend to, the very first opportunity. We are resolved that their United States’ official dignity shall no longer screen them.”89 Young also told Smith and Bernhisel that any new batch of unfit federal appointees would be turned out “as fast as they come let the consequences be what they may.” The saints were “determined to claim the right of having a voice in the selection of our officers, he said, and if the politicians in Washington were unwilling to listen, Young wanted the memorials of the Utah legislature published in the national press.90 While historians have recently argued that these petitions and Young’s anger were keys to precipitating the Utah War, a great deal lay behind both.91

Much had changed in 1856. While the year had begun with the Mormons hoping that Utah might gain statehood and become an equal partner in the Union, these plans were in ruins twelve months later. An American public had found deeper fathoms of mistrust and objection against the Mormons. A new national political alignment had taken hold that involved a surging and moralistic Republican Party, anxious to end old constitutional theories about local decision-making in the west. As it turned out, while Representative Justin S. Morrill did not have the votes to pass his anti-polygamy bill, he did persuade the House in January 1857 to pass a resolution requesting the President to tell Congress whether “any resistance, organized or otherwise, has been made, or is to be apprehended, against the official action or administration of the United States territorial officials in the Territory of Utah.”92 Outgoing Franklin Pierce quietly pocketedthe request. This was one dangerous baton best passed on to a successor.

There is no way of knowing what Buchanan thought of the Mormons as he made his way to the Lancaster railroad station in February 1857. He did not keep a diary, and his letters were as circumspect as usual, which left close friends and later historians guessing. Of course, he knew of the Republican success with the “relics” of barbarism, and he knew what the newspapers were saying about the Mormons—and he may have known something about the reports that had come to the Pierce Administration. Buchanan went to great pains to keep himself informed, and he had a wide network of friends inside and outside of the government. He must have felt an obligation to preserve the Democratic Party as well as the Union, and

89 Brigham Young to Thomas L. Kane, January 7, 1857, Letterbook C, Young Office Files, Church History Library.

90 Brigham Young to George A. Smith and John M. Bernhisel, January 3, 1857, Letterpress Copybook 3:259,Young Office Files, Church History Library.

91 William P. MacKinnon, At Sword’s Point, Part I, 65-74, 100-102; Bigler and Bagley, The Mormon Rebellion, 105-7.

92 Cited in Poll, “The Mormon Question, 1850-1865,” 68.

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

for him the two objectives went hand-in-hand. As a “dough-faced Democrat”—a northerner with sympathy for the South—he knew that he had to take action to prevent the Republicans from exploiting the Mormon issue further.

These political pressures posed a dilemma. On one hand, the Democratic Party was still officially committed to popular sovereignty, but Buchanan was having private second thoughts. An early draft of Buchanan’s inaugural speech suggested the citizens of Kansas and Nebraska didn’t have power to make a decision over slavery until a state constitution was proposed, which, if adopted, would have gutted the doctrine. When Lewis Cass, soon-tobecome Buchanan’s Secretary of State, learned of these words he was furious. Cass, one the first and strongest squatter rights boosters in the country, threatened to withdraw from the new cabinet. Buchanan quickly retreated. The right to local decision-making was “sacred,” he said when actually giving his speech, “as ancient as free government itself.” Nothing could be “fairer” than to let the people of a territory “to decide their own destiny for themselves, subject only to the Constitution of the United States,” he said.93

As Buchanan now became responsible for making the government’s public decisions regarding Utah, he had to choose between this constitutional ideal—the view of the nation’s dominant political party—or respond to the rising calls being made upon him to take action against the saints. In the end, he chose an expedient path and no doubt what he felt to be the necessary one. One reason why he abandoned popular sovereignty and sent an army to Utah was the election of 1856. In the end, the Utah War had another nagging inconsistency. Many of the soldiers and government officers sent to Utah in 1857-58, who were so outspoken about the saints being traitors and successionists, would in a few short years, carry the colors of the Confederacy’s Stars and Bars.

93 Moore, The Works of James Buchanan, 10: 106-8fn.; also see Klein, President James Buchanan, 271-2.

Women and the Kindergarten Movement in Utah

By ANDREA VENTILLA

The account of the kindergarten movement in Utah in the late nineteenth century offers an opportunity to reevaluate important issues in Utah’s history regarding women and education. These include the role of women and educational associations of the territory in fostering the kindergarten movement, the establishment of the first kindergartens and kindergarten training schools in Utah as well as the role of religious organizations in that effort, the reaction of the territorial and state education superintendents to the developing kindergarten movement, and how and when the women of Utah were able to make kindergarten attendance free and part of public education. Essential to the understanding of the early kindergarten movement in Utah is the arrival during the 1870s of missionaries and educators from Protestant denominations who saw education as the means to win converts from the Mormon faith. Consequently, the attitudes of Mormon and non-Mormon women toward each other helped shape a united effort to promote kindergartens.

Paradigms about children and childhood discovery began to change during the eighteenth century Enlightenment in Europe. At

The kindergarten movement in Utah was enhanced by the training at Utah’s universities. These students and faculty at Brigham Young University were members of the Myster Club in 1906.

Andrea Ventilla is a PhD candidate in the Department of History of Education at the University of Pecs, Hungary. She would like to thank Angela Hagen and Gabor Ventilla for their assistance. This article received the 2012 Helen Papanikolas Award for the best student paper on Utah Women’s History.

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this time philosophers and educators such as John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Claud Adrien Helvetius, and Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi redefined the Middle Age idea that children were mini-adults to be used as servants in homes to a different view that encouraged the treatment and education of children consistent with their age.1

Friedrich Froebel was one of the most prominent and influential nineteenth century proponents of kindergarten education. 2 His ideas were brought to the United States by German immigrants in the 1850s. 3 Elizabeth Palmer Peabody became an enthusiastic American follower of Froebel’s theories in the 1860s.4 By the 1870s Peabody not only urged the establishment of kindergartens but she also called for the creation of kindergarten training schools. Due to her direct influence, a number of Froebel and kindergarten associations were formed throughout the United States in the 1880s.

Elizabeth Peabody believed “... that the average woman is sufficiently gifted by nature to make a good kindergartner… one who could not be educated to become a kindergartner, should never dare to become a mother.”5

Although kindergarten education was a womanly duty, it required appropriate training: “any soundly cultured, intelligent, genial-tempered young woman, who loves children, can appreciate and practice it [kindergarten work], if —and only if—she is trained by a teacher.”6

These ideas regarding kindergarten reached Utah more gradually where Camilla Cobb, adopted daughter of German immigrant and educator Karl G. Maeser, opened the first kindergarten in 1874 after attending Dr. Adolph Douai’s training school in New Jersey.7 The kindergarten was established in

1

For more information about educators in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, see: S. P. ChaubeAkhilesh Chaube, Western Educational Thinkers (New Delhi, India: Concept Publishing Company, 2002).

2 Friedrich Froebel was a German pedagogue who recognized that little children have unique needs and capabilities. He developed the word “kindergarten” and also the concept of early childhood education. In Froebel’s theory the kindergarten is a place for children wherethey can observe and interact with nature, and also a location where they themselves can grow and develop in freedom from arbitary political and social imperatives. For more information about Froebel and his method, see Joachim Liebschner, A Child’s Work: Freedom and Guidance in Froebel’s Educational Theory and Practice (Cambridge, UK: Lutherworth Press, 2006).

3 Kristen Dombkowski Nawrotzki, “The Anglo-American Kindergarten Movements and Early Education in England and the USA, 1950-1965,” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 2005), 42.

4 Elizabeth Peabody was an educator, philosopher, and writer. As a literature lover she opened a bookstore in her hometown, Boston. She was able to read in ten different languages and translated the first English version of a Buddhist scripture. Peabody was an advocate of antislavery and Transcendentalism. She also made efforts for the rights of the Paiute Indians. For additional details about Elizabeth Peabody’s life, see: Bruce A. Ronda, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody: A Reformer On Her Own Terms (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999).

5 Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Lectures in the Training Schools for Kindergartners (Boston: D. C. Heath & Company, 1897), 16.

6 Elizabeth Peabody, Moral Culture of Infancy, and Kindergarten Guide (New York: J. W. Schemerhorn & Co., 1870), iii.

7 As a new convert to Mormonism, Camilla Cobb came to Utah from Germany in 1857. She taught in her private elementary school and served in the LDS Primary Association for thirty-seven years. Catherine Britsch Frantz, “Camilla Clara Mieth Cobb. Founder of the Utah Kindergarten,” in Colleen Whitley, ed., Worth Their Salt,Too (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2000), 45.

the house of the LDS church president Brigham Young, with the support of Brigham’s son, John W. Young. The kindergarten lasted for two years until Camilla was asked to teach older students and a qualified replacement for the kindergarten was unavailable. Later, however, with the organization of the LDS Church’s Primary Association, she returned to early childhood education and continued to be active until the end of her life.

According to contemporary educators, kindergarten education was important for developing young children’s early moral and religious education. They recommended that this be accomplished by reading the Holy Bible and other religious literature. This approach was particularly emphasized in Utah, where different Protestant denominations came, beginning in the late 1860s, with a principal purpose of converting members of the LDS church from their misguided religion. Education seemed to provide the best tool for achieving this objective, especially with children and, to a lesser extent, their parents. “The schoolwork must go hand in hand with church work in evangelizing the territory,” admonished the Presbyterian journal The Earnest Worker in 1883.8 Elizabeth A. Parsons, a teacher of the Presbyterian Collegiate Institute, wrote in her reminiscences about the necessity of religious education in early childhood education: Somewhere in my reading I had learned of the new educational ideal and methods of Pestalozzi and Froebel. I was deeply impressed with the importance these two great educators laid upon spiritual development in their educational system, and I felt that their methods, if applied in this mission school [Collegiate Institute], would be a very great assistance not only to the intellectual but to the spiritual aspects of the work of this institution and the efforts in general that were being made by the Home Missions among the Mormon youth of the territory.9

The first private kindergarten owned by a Presbyterian opened on September 3, 1880, under the management of Anna Elizabeth Richards Jones and operated until 1887.10 In 1883, the Presbyterian Church began its

8 The Earnest Worker, September 1883. Archives, Giovale Library, Westminster College, Salt Lake City, Utah. 9 “Reminiscences of the Beginning of Kindergartens in Salt Lake City, Utah.” Anne Marie Fox Felt papers, box 1, folder 4, p.1, Special Collections, Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah. Elizabeth H. Parson and her husband were teachers at the Collegiate Institute until their retirement in 1898. Elizabeth Parson was also the matron of the boarding department at this institution. After their work in Utah they moved to Pasadena, California. J.M. Coyner, “History of the Salt Lake Collegiate Institute from its organization April 12, 1875 to May 5, 1885,” written in 1897. Copy in Archives, Giovale Library, Westminster College.The Presbyterian Church founded the Collegiate Institute in Salt Lake City in 1875. The school had both elementary and college preparatory classes. In 1897, the school began to offer college classes and changed its name to Sheldon Jackson College. This institute took up the new name of Westminster College five years later. In 1911 the school became the first accredited two-year junior college in the Intermountain area.For more information about Westminster College see: Joseph A. Vinatieri, “The Growing Years: Westminster College from Birth to Adolescence,” Utah HistoricalQuarterly 43 (Fall 1975): 344-61; R. Douglas Brackenridge, Westminster College of Salt Lake City. From Presbyterian Mission School to Independent College (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1998).

10 Anna Elizabeth Richards Jones graduated from the Normal Department of Iowa College in 1878. She moved to Utah with her husband, Marcus E. Jones in 1880. After closing her school, she conducted a kindergarten training school at the University of Utah during the school year of 1887-1888. Anna Elizabeth Richardson Jones, “As a Teacher,” Anne Marie Fox Felt Papers, Box 2, folder 3. The term private mainly refers to the fact that the parents had to pay tuition for the education. The private kindergartens accepted any children regardless of religion.

involvement in the kindergarten movement in Utah when women members requested that the Woman’s Executive Board of Home Missions in New York City send a kindergarten teacher to Salt Lake City. The first kindergarten opened under the direction of Elizabeth Dickey in the basement of the Collegiate Institute. The kindergarten consisted of two grades: one with morning sessions for the youngest children between ages two and four, and the other with afternoon sessions for five year old children that served as a preparatory class for lower school grades.11 Elizabeth Dickey conducted kindergarten training programs in both Salt Lake City and in the Westminster Presbyterian congregation. 12 To promote kindergarten education, Dickey organized classes for mothers where she demonstrated kindergarten methods and drew attention to the importance of proper education for children. In 1887, after four years, Dickey’s health began to deteriorate and she resigned, resulting in the closure of the kindergarten in the Presbyterian Church. Five years later, Bessie Goodrich, another welleducated kindergarten teacher, arrived in Salt Lake City at the invitation of Mary Millspaugh, the wife of the principal of the Collegiate Institute. Health problems hindered Goodrich’s work as a teacher until she left Utah in 1894.

Following the Presbyterian Church’s pattern, other denominations also tried to establish kindergartens. Because of the fundraising and charitable activities of women, free kindergartens were offered for short periods of time, but, for the most part, they remained private institutions with regular tuition charged. For example, the Episcopal Church opened a private kindergarten in Rowland Hall with the help of Bertha Robinson Harmes in 1892.13 A year later, the Episcopal Church opened a free kindergarten under the direction of Helen H. Durant, a graduate of California Kindergarten Training School. However, it lasted only for a year.14

With the arrival of Alice Chapin, a well-educated kindergarten teacher and trainer from Boston Kindergarten Training School, kindergarten training

11 Salt Lake Collegiate Institute Catalogue, 1886-1887. Archives, Giovale Library, Westminster College.

12 “Reminiscences of the Beginning of Kindergartens in Salt Lake City,” 3.

13 Rowland Hall was a combined elementary and high school institution for girls only, which was run by the Episcopal Church. Making an exception for the kindergarten department, they accepted boys as well. “Rowland Hall A Home School for Girls, Salt Lake City. 1892-93,” Rowland Hall-St. Mark’s School Records, 1883-1955. Utah State Historical Society. For a more detailed description of this school, see: Mary R. Clark, ”Rowland Hall-St Mark’s School: Alternative Education for More than a Century,” Utah Historical Quarterly 48 (Summer 1980): 271-92.

14 Salt Lake Tribune, December 23, 1893.

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started to blossom in Utah. She began her first kindergarten training class in 1894. In order to provide practical training opportunities for her kindergarten courses, Elizabeth Porter launched a model kindergarten in the First Congregational Church.15 Under the direction of Alice Chapin, additional kindergartens were opened at the First Methodist and First Baptist Churches. Also in 1894, three other churches—the Methodist, The Salt Lake Phillips Congregational, and the Unitarian—started private kindergartens with the coordination of their active women.16

Beginning in 1878, LDS church women expanded the Primary Association as a religious organization for elementary-aged children. Two leaders of the Primary Association, Louie B. Felt and May Anderson, were actively engaged in kindergarten, participating in Alice Chapin’s 1894 kindergarten teacher training course and using the acquired knowledge to develop the Primary Association’s curriculum, as well as for starting a private kindergarten in the Eleventh Ward in 1895.17

As the kindergarten movement began in Utah, kindergarten associations were organized nationally to help promote early childhood education, and a number of educators proclaimed the usefulness and importance of early childhood education in preparing little children for elementary school. At the Congress of Women held in Chicago in 1893, two speeches addressed the importance of kindergartens:

The kindergarten system is based upon the belief, laid down by the greatest authorities on education, that the most important formative period in youth is before the child has finished seven years of life, and before the regular training of the public school belongs to him by right of age. Habits, associations, desires and experiences are acquired which last through life. The faculties are developed, the senses quickened, and good behavior, discipline, self-control, manners, morals–all begin with the first awakening powers of the child.18

Women in Utah understood the importance of this duty. In January 1892, women of the Presbyterian Church organized the first kindergarten association called the Salt Lake Kindergarten Association. By this time the women’s priorities shifted from converting the LDS population of the territory to making kindergarten education free and available to the general public: “The Association felt the necessity for free kindergartens, both as an introduction step to kindergartens in the public schools and as something

15 “Reminiscences of the Beginning of Kindergartens in Salt Lake City,” 8.

16 Salt Lake Tribune, February 16, September 9, 1894; John Sillito, “Conflict and Contributions: Women in Churches, 1847-1920” in Patricia Lyn Scott and Linda Thatcher, eds., Women in Utah History. Paradigm or Paradox? (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2005), 93.

17 For more information about the history of the LDS Primary Association, see: Carol Cornwall Madsen and Susan Staker Oman, Sisters and Little Saints One Hundred Years of Primary (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1979); Susan Staker Oman, “Nurturing LDS Primaries. Louie Felt and May Anderson 1880-1940,” Utah Historical Quarterly 49 (Summer 1981): 262-75; Deseret Evening News, December 24, 1895.

18 Virginia Thrall Smith, “The Kindergarten,” The Congress of Women (Kansas City: Thompson & Hood, 1894), 178-79.The two speeches were given by Virginia Thrall Smith and Sarah Brown Cooper. Blanche Brown, who later came to Utah to teach kindergarten training, presented a kindergarten class at the Fair.

indispensible for the many poor children getting a street education in vice and crime before reaching the school age of six years.”19 With the growth in the awareness of the benefits of the kindergarten movement, charitable attention began to focus on kindergartens. Augusta W. Grant wrote about kindergarten work in her journal: “Attended meeting of the board of the kindergarten association of which I am secretary. The kindergarten has been opened for about a month ago. It is a school for little waifs, and I think it is a very sweet charity.”20

The Salt Lake Kindergarten Association also advocated the education of mothers and kindergarten teachers. The Association did not only organize kindergartens but also arranged for a kindergarten teacher training course taught by Bessie Goodrich.21 The organization strived to support the cause among community members with the hope that kindergartens would become part of the public school system. The Association secured passage of territorial legislation in 1894 that allowed Utah school boards to make kindergartens part of their public schooling.22 As momentum accelerated, a new organization, the Free Kindergarten Association, held its first meeting in the Salt Lake City Ladies’ Literary Club on June 18, 1894.23 Under the leadership of Emma J. McVicker, the Free Kindergarten Association replaced the Salt Lake Kindergarten Association. 24 With the Utah Federation of Women’s Club providing accommodations, the Free Kindergarten Association arranged for “Froebel classes” to educate mothers.25 Alice Chapin began to teach and conduct the kindergarten teacher training. As a result of the Association’s ongoing fund raising activities, the first free kindergarten commenced in January 1895 under the name of Neighborhood House.26 Blanche Brown, a teacher from Chicago, was first assigned to teach the children. However, because of illness, Brown returned to the East Coast, and Alice Chapin took over the leadership of the

19

“First Kindergarten in Salt Lake City,” Anne Marie Fox Felt papers, box 1, fd. 4, p.1.

20 This approach led to opening several orphanages in Utah. Floralie Millsaps, “Caring for Children: The Orphan's Home and Day Nursery Association,” Beehive History 27 (2001): 26-28; Kathryn Callahan, “Sisters of the Holy Cross and Kearns-St. Ann’s Orphanage,” Utah Historical Quarterly 78 (Summer 2010): 254-74; and Anne Marie Fox Felt papers, box 1, fd. 10.

21

“First Kindergarten in Salt Lake City,” 1 .

22

“Reminiscences of the Beginning of Kindergartens in Salt Lake City,” 6.

23 The Ladies’ Literary Club was organized by non-Mormon women in Salt Lake City for the purpose of “literary pursuits and mental culture.” Patricia Lyn Scott, “Eliza Kirtley Royle: Beloved Club Mother,” in Colleen Whitley, ed., Worth Their Salt (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1996), 44-59.

24 Emma J. McVicker was an enthusiastic educator in Utah. She began her career in the Collegiate Institute and later became the first woman superintendent in Utah. Regarding her life, see: Carol Ann Lubomudrov, “A Woman State School Superintendent: Whatever Happened to Mrs. McVicker?” Utah Historical Quarterly 49 (Summer 1981): 254-61.

25 “Mother’s classes” or “Froebel classes” referred to the same training session which focused on Froebel’s method. The curriculum of the classes included Froebel’s works, Peabody’s letters, and Pestalozzi’s works as well. This training also aimed to teach appropriate children songs and games. “Reminiscences of the Beginning of Kindergartens in Salt Lake City,” 11. Emma J. McVicker was also the president of the Utah Federation of Women’s Club. See: Jill Mulvay Derr, “Scholarship, Service, and Sisterhood: Women’s Clubs and Associations, 1877-1977” in Scott and Thatcher, eds., Women in Utah History, 249-94.

26 The Salt Lake Herald, January 13, 1895.

institution. 27 Like its predecessor, the Free Kindergarten Association also considered its most important duty to ratify free public kindergartens. In 1895 the Free Kindergarten Association succeeded in securing passage of a school law permitting attendance of children four to six years of age, with the cost to be covered by the school district. Thanks to this campaign, Utah included kindergarten as an integral part of its school system and as a provision of the new state constitution.28

On March 29, 1895, LDS women, including Sarah M. Kimball, Ellis R. Shipp, Emmeline B. Wells, and Mary Isabelle Horne, met in the home of Georgiana Fox Young, to establish the Utah Kindergarten Association for the purpose of opening kindergartens by Mormons and promoting the usefulness of kindergarten education among Mormon mothers. The Association established five kindergartens, namely in the Fourteenth, Fifteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Wards as well as in Forest Dale. Graduates of the Brigham Young Academy (BYA) kindergarten department and those students who completed the Utah Kindergarten Association’s kindergarten training taught in all five of the ward kindergartens.29 Like the

27 Regarding the history of the Neighborhood House see: Lela Horn Richards, Fifty Years of Neighborhood House 1894-1944 (Salt Lake City: Neighborhood House and Day Nursery Association, 1944).

28 Article X Section 2 of The Constitution of the State of Utah, 1895, states: “The Public School system shall include kindergarten schools, common schools, consisting of primary and grammar grades, high schools, an Agricultural College, a University, and such other schools as the Legislature may establish.”

29 Utah Daily Chronicle, May 21, 1895.

Children participate in a school outing.

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Salt Lake Kindergarten Association and the Free Kindergarten Association, the Utah Kindergarten Association endeavored to establish appropriate training for mothers. The Association worked with Anna K. Craig of the Brigham Young Academy kindergarten department to launch the appropriate courses.

The kindergarten movement in Utah expanded to include other churches, congregations, and organizations. For example, Anna Elizabeth Jones’ Salt Lake Kindergarten and Grade School taught the children in Salt Lake City’s Jewish Synagogue from 1884 until 1887. 30 The first free kindergarten, called Neighborhood House, began operations in the Odd Fellows Hall in 1895, but later moved to St. Mark's Episcopal Church, then to the LDS Thirteenth Ward schoolhouse, and, by the early 1900s, the kindergarten continued its operations in the basement of the Unitarian Church. The Salt Lake Tribune reported in 1893: “At last we have the prospect of free kindergartens in Salt Lake. The churches have joined in the broad and concerted movement for turning over the buildings used for their primary schools for this purpose and also to aid in establishing and keeping up this beautiful charity.”31

Cooperation was also evident in the training of kindergarten teachers who were required, like all teachers, to have a suitable certificate to be eligible for employment as a teacher and training was sought regardless of religion. For example, Emmeline Y. Wells, who later became the Mormon Utah Kindergarten Association’s teacher trainer, received her certificate from the Presbyterian Salt Lake Kindergarten Association.32 Ella Nebeker Stewart, a Mormon who later taught in the University of Utah’s model kindergarten, attended a Presbyterian training school. 33 Dr. Jesse Millspaugh, a Presbyterian and leader of the Salt Lake School District, volunteered that in selecting girls to take the kindergarten training and act as teachers in that capacity, he preferred the Mormons.34

30

“Anna Elizabeth Richardson Jones As a Teacher,” Anne Marie Fox Felt Papers, Box 2, folder 7, p. 3.

31 “Free Kindergartens,” Salt Lake Tribune, June 11, 1893.

32 Emmeline Young Wells was the daughter of the early Salt Lake City mayor, Daniel H. Wells. She was in charge of directing kindergartens for the Utah Kindergarten Association. After receiving a certificate in kindergarten teaching, she studied psychology at LDS College in Salt Lake City. Beside the kindergarten movement she also participated in other activities. She was a charter member of the Cleofan Literary Club as well as the Wasatch Club. She was also the curator of the Daughters of Utah Pioneer’s Museum for many years. She served at the Primary Board of the Salt Lake Stake of the LDS church. Anne Marie Fox Felt Papers, box 6, fd. 10.

33 “Reminiscences of Mrs. William Stewart,” Anne Marie Fox Felt Papers, Box 1, folder 4.

34 Dr. Jesse Millspaugh had a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania. He came to Utah in 1883 and became the second principal of the Collegiate Institute. He continued his work there until 1890 when he was appointed to be the first superintendent in Salt Lake City. In 1889 he moved to Minnesota to become president of the Minnesota State Normal School. In 1904 he accepted the appointment as President of the California State Normal School at Los Angeles. He lived there until his death in 1937. He made this statement while he was a superintendent in Salt Lake City, but unfortunately it is unclear why he preferred Mormon teachers. For summaries about the Mormon-Presbyterian relations, see: Jana Kathryn Riess, “Heathen in Our Fair Land: Presbyterian Women Missionaries in Utah, 1870-90,” Journal of Mormon History 26 (Winter, 2000): 165-95; R. Douglas Brackenridge, “Hostile Mormons and Persecuted Presbyterians in Utah, 1870-1900: A Reappraisal,” Journal of Mormon History 37 (Summer, 2011): 162-228; Minutes of the Utah Kindergarten Association June 14, 1895, Anne Marie Fox Felt Papers, Box 1, folder 5.

The Presbyterian Free Kindergarten Association demonstrated its willingness to cooperate with other denominations when soon after its organization, the Association’s president, Emma J. McVicker, suggested inviting the Mormon May Booth Talmage, the wife of the president of the University of Utah, to be a member of the executive board of the Association, which she accepted. 35 This gesture seemed to create an opportunity for the various denominations to unite in an effort to advance the kindergarten movement in spite of the distrust and animosity on other issues that existed among different religious organizations at this time in Utah’s history.

Children on a kindergarten playground with teeter-totters as the primary recreational equipment.

Nevertheless, conflict did surface between two leaders of the kindergarten movement in Utah—Alice Chapin and Emmeline Y. Wells. Soon after Chapin arrived in Utah, she wrote a letter to the territorial school commission complaining that Miss Wells, an ambitious teacher for the Utah Kindergarten Association, did not have a kindergarten certificate and should not be allowed to teach36 Chapin’s motive is not clear, but Wells responded to the accusation by stating that she had earned a certificate from a training held by the Salt Lake Kindergarten Association in 1892. To put the issue to rest, Wells was sent to Colorado Springs at the Utah Kindergarten Association’s expense to participate in a summer kindergarten

35 Minutes of the Utah Kindergarten Association June 14, 1895.The next year, in 1896, Emma J. McVicker was appointed as the first female member of the University of Utah Board of Regents. Utah Daily Chronicle, April 8, 1896. May Booth Talmage was a well-educated teacher who enrolled in Brigham Young Academy's normal course (teacher training). After graduation she taught in an elementary school in Kaysville until she married James G. Talmage. She was a women activist, serving on the General Board of the Young Women's Mutual Improvement Association of the LDS church for almost forty years. She was also a member of the Utah Territorial Women's Suffrage Association and represented the women of Utah at the World Congress of Women at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893. She was charter member of a few other associations, such as the Parent-Teacher Association, Authors' Club, and the Friendship Circle. Register of the Merry May Talmage (1868-1944) Papers, L. Tom Perry Special Collection, Brigham Young University. Minutes of the Utah Kindergarten Association June 14, 1895.

36 Minutes of the Utah Kindergarten Association May 3, 1895.

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

course. 37 The conflict was resolved and Emmeline Wells was invited to teach songs and games at Alice Chapin’s training school.38

For Mormon leaders of the Utah Kindergarten Association, the question of accepting non-Mormon children and prospective teachers arose in 1895 when they received letters from women wanting to place their children in the Association’s kindergarten and desiring to enroll in teacher training courses. 39 The Association members voted to accept non-Mormon participants, a decision that was confirmed by Salt Lake Stake President Angus M. Cannon.40 At Brigham Young Academy in Provo, non-Mormon Anna K. Craig directed the school’s kindergarten department from 1894 until 1897.41 By the late 1920s the kindergarten movement had met with success in Utah. In writing a history of the kindergarten movement in Utah for her master’s thesis, Anne Marie Fox Felt asked Elizabeth A. Parsons to write her reminiscence about the early kindergartens in Utah. In her account, Parsons stated that Elizabeth Dickey had opened the first Froebelian kindergarten. However, in an affidavit before a notary public, Camilla Cobb also claimed to have opened the first Froebelian kindergarten in Utah after going to the East Coast to study the Froebel methods there.42 Cobb’s claim was substantiated by notarized statements by former students Susa Y. Gates, Brigham W. Young, Fannie V. Young Clayton, Zina Young Card, and Seymour B. Young that they had attended Cobb’s

37 Minutes of the Utah Kindergarten AssociationJuly 3, 1895.

38 Marie Anne Fox Felt, “History of Kindergartens during the Pioneering Period 1874-1898,” Marie Anne Fox Felt papers Box 8, folder 1. p. 14. Alice Chapin’s course was popular among the Mormon women leaders. For example Ruth May Fox and Ellis R. Shipp participated in it as well. See: Kenneth W. Godfrey, Audrey M. Godfrey, and Jill Mulvay Derr, Women’s Voices. An Untold History of the Latter-Day Saints1830-1900. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1982): 375-76.Minutes of the Utah Kindergarten Association,July 3, 1895.

39 Ibid.

40 Ibid., June 14, 1895. For summaries about women in different churches in Utah see: Carol Cornwall Madsen, “Decade of Détente: The Mormon-Gentile Female Relationship in Nineteenth Century Utah,” Utah Historical Quarterly 63 (Fall, 1995): 298-319; John Sillito, “Conflict and Contributions: Women in Churches, 1847-1920,” in Scott and Thatcher, eds., Women in Utah History, 82-128.

41 Anna K. Craig came to Utah to teach in the kindergarten department of Brigham Young Academy in 1892. As many women at the time, she played an active role in different associations and clubs, such as the Utah Sororis Club, and the Nineteenth Century Club of Provo. She became a member of the first Board of Directors of the Women’s Council. She was a charter member of the First Church of Christ and registered herself as a Christian Science practitioner. She lived in Provo for forty-six years, until her death. Shortly after her appointment, Craig wrote to Sarah Cooper, President of the Golden Gate Kindergarten Association in San Francisco, in advance of Cooper’s planned meeting with Karl G. Maeser, principal at BYA. Fearing that she might lose her job because she was not a member of the Mormon church, Craig asked Cooper to reinforce the importance of kindergarten education and the significance of Craig’s work. Anna K. Craig to Sarah Cooper, February 27, 1894, Sarah Brown Ingersoll Cooper Papers 1813-1921, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library. The reasons for Craig’s fears are not clear, but there seemed to be no basis for them as she stayed with the faculty until 1897, and kindergarten education continued for years at the Academy. Anna Craig’s professional reputation was also apparent when the Utah Kindergarten Association asked her to be one of the trainers in the kindergarten teacher’s class. The Association knew that Craig’s nursery training education was accepted everywhere in the nation.

42 Felt papers, box 1, fd. 1

kindergarten in 1874 and 1875.43

Early education leaders recognized the selfless efforts of kindergarten advocates in Utah’s largest communities, but also questioned the timing for adding kindergartens to the public school system. In his 1894-95 report, the territorial school superintendent T. B. Lewis concluded:

Too much cannot be said in commendation of the labor that has been performed by representative ladies of Salt Lake, Ogden, Provo, Logan and in other cities and towns in the way of establishing kindergarten schools and in some instances maintaining them free from any charge of tuition against the parents of the children. . . . I must however call your attention to the fact that first class kindergarten training is being given in the cities mentioned, under the management of noble and heroic women whose hearts are engaged in their efforts; and the class-work is being conducted by trained teachers who have demonstrated satisfactorily their fitness and competency. It now rests with the legislature to make the kindergarten the base of our free public school system.44

However, in his first report as state school superintendent, Dr. John R. Park expressed negative feelings about making kindergarten part of the public school system asserting that the public schools of Utah should not be expanded to include kindergartens “until the common schools were placed on a more efficient basis.”45 Park also said that no clear philosophy had developed to provide a worthwhile objective for kindergarten education, and that because of this it would be some time before capable teachers would be available. Park concluded that “a far-seeing public policy would dictate that no public function should be extended until it has been clearly shown that no injustice will be done and that the people will be benefited in proportion to the outlay.”46

In response to Park’s harsh and in some ways true opinion, a new group, the Utah State Kindergarten Association, was founded on June 24, 1896, to

43 Copy of the original can be found inFelt, “History of Kindergartens during the Pioneering Period 1874-1898.”

44 Biennial Report of the Commissioner of Schools for Utah Territory, for the Years 1894 and 1895. (Salt Lake City: Geo. Q. Cannon & Sons Company, 1896): 9.

45 First report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction of the State of Utah for the school year ending June 30, 1896(Salt Lake City, 1897), 39.

46 Ibid.

The Free Kindergarten in Salt Lake City.

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

extend the kindergarten work throughout the state. Among the new organization’s aims was to establish a kindergarten training school at the University of Utah which would provide qualified teachers, expand the numberof kindergartens in public schools, and circulate kindergarten literature among parents and teachers.

Until the founding of the Utah State Kindergarten Association, the kindergarten movement was focused primarily on the Salt Lake City area. The new Association immediately turned its attention to establishing branches throughout Utah, and sought to organize summer kindergartens and mother classes in every county. As a result of the Association’s campaign, 11,164 children attended kindergarten throughout Utah during the 1910-11 school year.47

Utah political, educational, and religious leaders signed an endorsement in support of the goals and work of the Utah State Kindergarten Association. These leaders included Heber M. Wells, Governor of Utah, John R. Park, President of the State Board of Education; James E. Talmage, President of the University of Utah; J. F. Millspaugh, Superintendent of the Salt Lake City schools; R. J. Caskey, Superintendent of the Collegiate Institute; R. G. McNiece, Pastor of the First Presbyterian Church; Dr T. C. Illiff, Superintendent of the Methodist Mission; Reverend Clarence T. Brown, Pastor of the First Congregational Church; Reverend Lawrance B. Ridgley, Rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church; Reverend B. F. Clay, Pastor of the Central Christian Church; H. B. Steelman, Pastor of the first Baptist Church; and Heber J. Grant, Apostle of the LDS Church.48 Augusta M. Grant, wife of Mormon Apostle Heber J. Grant, became president of the

47 John Clifton Moffit, The History of Public Education in Utah, (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1946), 353.

48 “Kindergarten Association to Honor Charter Members on Fortieth Anniversary,” Anne Marie Fox Felt papers, box 1, fd. 1,

Anna K. Craig.

association.49 Presbyterian Emma J. McVicker was appointed treasurer while Anna K. Craig, Alice Chapin, Elizabeth H. Parsons, and William Stewart were among the Association’s members.50

Students and teachers sitting in a school gymnasium.

The establishment of kindergarten classes at the University of Utah was a welcome expansion for the university and boon to the kindergarten movement. In his report for 1896, University President James E. Talmage wrote that: “The addition of a well equipped Kindergarten department is rendered necessary by the growing importance of this part of the teacher’s labor. The Kindergarten is recognized in the Constitution of the State as an integral part of the public school system; and already many petitions have been presented asking that kindergarten training classes be established in connection with the normal School.”51 His comments, together with the Association’s efforts, resulted in a grant of thirty-five hundred dollars to the kindergarten department at the University of Utah for two years in a row.52 The funding made possible two free kindergartens and a popular mother’s

49 Augusta W. Grant began her teaching career when she was thirteen as a teacher assistant in her mother’s school. Later she became the principal. She graduated from the University of Utah’s teacher training course. She continued to teach until her marriage to Heber J. Grant, who later became president of the LDS church. She participated in other women activities and she was also a delegate to the Mother’s Congress held in Washington D.C. in 1898. Emerson Roy West, Latter-Day Prophets: Their Lives, Teachings, and Testimonies with Profiles of Their Wives. (American Fork: Covenant Communication Inc, 1997), 123.

50 “History of Utah State Kindergarten Association,” Anne Marie Fox Felt papers, box 1, folder 7, p. 3.

51 Reports of the Board of Regents and of the President, for the Year 1896. (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Publishing Company, 1897), 24.

52 The kindergarten training commenced at the University of Utah in 1888. William M. Stewart, the previous Nineteenth Ward District school principal, became the head of the normal (teacher training) department at the university in 1888. He invited Anna Elizabeth Richards Jones to teach in the department. The training was terminated after a year and did not resume until 1897. “Anna Elizabeth Richardson Jones As a Teacher,” Anne Marie Fox Felt papers, box 2, fd. 7.

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class, which operated under the joint management of a committee made up of members of the board of education and the Utah State Kindergarten Association.53 Initially three classes were offered within the kindergarten program: Child Study, Observation in Kindergarten, and Kindergarten Practice and Theory.54

Recognizing the need for more structure to the program, Mary C. May, a graduate of the Chicago Kindergarten Association and leader of the kindergarten department at the University of Utah, proposed that “both the Kindergarten and Primary work would be greatly benefitted if each department would have supplementary training in the work of the other.”55

With the approval of university president Dr. Joseph T.Kingsbury and William M. Stewart, the head of the teacher training department, May wrote to two experts on teacher training, Colonel Francis Wayland Parker of the Cook County Normal School in Chicago and Dr. John Dewey, a professor of the University of Chicago, asking for their opinions about establishing a training curriculum where the kindergarten graduates could teach in primary grades and the primary teacher could use kindergarten methods and materials. Both men supported the proposal and by 1902 two training programs were established—a four year long kindergarten course and an expanded five year normal-kindergarten course.56 Although trained teachers were highly sought, those who did not possess a certificate of efficiency in kindergarten work from a normal school could teach by demonstrating their knowledge of the principles and practices of teaching kindergarten by passing an examination offered by the state board of education.57

After John Park’s death in 1900, Emma J. McVicker, a key figure of the kindergarten movement, was appointed state superintendent of education. She proposed that the school age be lowered to five years and that the first two years of school be spent in kindergarten. She anticipated the need for more kindergarten teachers and encouraged young women to

53

“History of Kindergartens during the Pioneering Period 1874-1898,” 1.

54 Second Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction of the State of Utah. For the biennial period ending June 30, 1898, (Salt Lake City, 1899), 76, 83.

55 Mary C. May was a native of Chicago who studied at Saint Mary's School in Illinois. She earned an educational degree from The Chicago Free Kindergarten Association where she worked as a kindergarten teacher after her graduation for nine years. Mary established the kindergarten department at the University of Utah where she remained until 1906.“Mary C. May Autobiography,” Anne Marie Fox Felt papers box 2, fd. 10.

56 Fourth Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction of the State of Utah, for the biennial period ending June 30, 1902. (Salt Lake City: Star Printing Company, 1903), 38. Besides the University of Utah, Brigham Young Academy also offered kindergarten training. The first kindergarten summer training course commenced in 1891 under the leadership of Emma Finch Park. After this summer course the Academy established a kindergarten department where Mary Lyman Gowan taught for a year. Between 1893 and 1897, Anna K. Craig led the department. The next year, in 1898, Jane Skofield became the director of education at the institution. Ida Smooth Dusenberry began her work in the kindergarten department in 1899. She was a graduate from Anna Craig’s class and received her certificate from Wheelock Kindergarten College in Boston. Dusenberry taught at BYA for more than twenty years.

57 Laws of the State of Utah (Salt Lake City: Star Printing Company, 1897), 162.

receive formal training to teach.58

In 1904 the Salt Lake City Board of Education established a public kindergarten in the Union School at the corner of Third West and First North Streets making the first time that “...children under six years of age were admitted to the public schools.” 59 D. H. Christiansen, Salt Lake City School Superintendent, proposed that in order to deal with the large number of children of kindergarten age in the city several short sessions be held in the same room for rotating sections of children or, alternatively, that the different sections be offered for a part of the year.60

Funding remained the basic problem as state law permitted kindergartens to be established by local school districts, but state lawmakers failed to provide any monetary support for kindergartens. With the support of the State School Superintendent, the Utah State Parent-Teachers’ Association, the Daughters of Utah Pioneers, the LDS Primary Association, and the Salt Lake Federation of Labor, the Utah State Kindergarten Association proposed legislation in 1913 to address the funding problem. But the initial initiatives were not successful because of opposition by local superintendents and school boards concerned about the increased financial burden they would incur for their districts.61

58 Third report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction of the State of Utah, for the biennal period ending June 30, 1900, (Salt Lake City, 1901), 24-25.

59 Fifth report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction of the State of Utah, for the biennial period ending June 30, 1904 (Salt Lake City: Star Printing Company, 1905), 52.

60 Ibid., 53.

61 Report of the Kindergarten Association on work completed in connection with house bill #82. Anne Marie Fox Felt Papers, box 1, fd. 11.

A kindergarten Christmas program.

The effort was renewed in 1923 under the leadership of Rose Jones, President of the Utah State Kindergarten Association. The association’s goals included obtaining the backing of other organizations, expanding the number of branches throughout the state, promoting the establishment of kindergartens, and seeking to convince local school superintendents of their value.62 In a letter sent in 1930 to all Utah school superintendents, the group now known as the Utah State Kindergarten-Primary Association, acknowledged the financial difficulties local school districts faced, but made a strong case for the value of kindergartens.

We are aware of the fact that…the establishment of kindergartens in the many communities of the state, would bring about added expense and so increase the yearly budget. On the other hand, we would fail in our mission if we did not call your attention to the compensating fact that, in the long run, kindergarten education will pay for itself.…In the first place, experience has shown that where efficient kindergartens have been established retardation in the first grade has been reduced to a minimum. In the second place, children who have received kindergarten training are more alert, physically, intellectually. In the third place, a good kindergarten becomes the community laboratory for training young mothers in the best methods of child management. In this way, it contributes directly to the solution of the very important problem of adult education and training for family life.63

Progress came with small victories. State legislation passed requiring at least one kindergarten in each school district with a population of two thousand or more. Consequently for the 1937-1938 school year, sixty-three trained kindergarten teachers taught in one hundred and four public and an additional five private kindergartens in the state.64

Support for the kindergarten movement continued in the post-World War II era as the Utah State Kindergarten—Primary Association worked with the Education Committee of the Utah House of Representatives. Their efforts culminated in the passage of House Bill 27 in 1953, which provided state funds to local school districts to support kindergartens.65

What had begun three-quarters of a century earlier as an initiative of progressive-minded women working with their respective religious institutions and cooperating in statewide organizations was now an accepted and popular element of Utah’s public education system.

62 Rose Jones was an enthusiastic educator. She received her Bachelor’s Degree from Brigham Young Academy’s teacher training program in 1896. She taught in Logan until 1904 when she began her Master’s program at Columbia University. Her involvement with the kindergarten movement began in 1915 when she became head of the kindergarten department at the University of Utah.Anne Marie Fox Felt Papers, box 2, fd. 8.

63 Anne Marie Fox Felt Papers, box 1, fd. 11.

64“History of the kindergarten movements in the western states.” Presented at the 47th annual convention of the Association for Childhood Education. (Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1940), 54.

65 The passage of House Bill 27 was especially noteworthy in that it came during the administration of Governor J. Bracken Lee whose conservative philosophy was to restrict public funding for education.

Taylor

A. Woolley,

By PETER L. GOSS

Utah

Architect and Draftsman to Frank Lloyd Wright

Taylor Woolley outside the Villino Belvedere, Fiesole, Italy, 1910.Taylor Woolley left Salt Lake City in 1908 and headed to Chicago hoping to find work in one of the city’s major architectural offices. The following year he found work in Frank Lloyd Wright’s office. After closing his Chicago office Wright traveled to Europe to prepare a portfolio of his work for a German publisher. He invited his draftsman, Taylor Woolley, and his oldest son, Lloyd Wright, to assist him. Woolley is standing outside the Villino Belvedere in which he and Lloyd Wright worked on the drawings for the famous “Wasmuth” Portfolio.

Peter L. Goss is professor emeritus of architecture at the University of Utah and a Fellow of the Utah State Historical Society.

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Construction photograph of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin, Spring Green, Wisconsin. The wing on the left contained a workroom-studio and a bedroom for the draftsmen. The main living area for Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Cheney is at the end of the courtyard.

Photo by Taylor Woolley, c. 1911.

Architecture was a promising career for Taylor A. Woolley, a young Utahn at the turn of the twentieth century. Unfortunately formal education in the subject was not available in Utah or the surrounding states. A beginning draftsman learned by office experience and by taking drafting and drawing courses through such institutions as the International Correspondence School of Scranton, Pennsylvania. Woolley worked as a draftsman for two Salt Lake architectural firms. His office experience no doubt introduced him to the architecture of Chicago and New York City via architectural periodicals, and, most likely, the encouragement of one of his bosses, architect Alberto Treganza, led to his wanderlust. With three years of work experience as a draftsman, he headed to Chicago first working for a well-connected “society” architect, Howard Van Doren, Shaw in 1908 and part of 1909. In the evenings he took classes in drawing at the Chicago Art Institute. Beginning in 1909 he was employed as a draftsman by the successful and prolific Frank Lloyd Wright.

At the time Wright was considering a major change in his life due to several circumstances. A romantic liaison with the wife of one of his clients caused personal unrest and affected his marriage. The invitation of a German

publisher to produce a portfolio of his work offered an opportunityfor professional advancement. Wright decidedto sell his practice and go to Europe with Mamah Borthwick Cheney where he would set to work on the portfolio. In what appeared to be a last minute decision Wright invited his oldest son Lloyd and Taylor Woolley to go to Italy to help produce the drawings that would become the lithographic plates for a two volume publication known as the Wasmuth Portfolio.

Woolley and Lloyd went to Italy in 1910 and helped Wright set up a studio in the

Taylor Woolley (left) and his future architectural partner Cliff Evans at Taliesin c.1911. They are standing outside the workroom wing of Frank Lloyd Wright’s unfinished Taliesin near Spring Green Wisconsin preparing to paint a portion of the new construction.

The dining room (above) of Taliesin, Spring Green, Wisconsin, c. 1911. The dining room and adjacent living room at Taliesin were destroyed in a fire set by a servant in August of 1914. Mamah Cheney, and her two children, and four others were murdered at the time the fire was set by the same servant.

TAYLOR A. WOOLLEY SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, MARRIOTT LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF UTAH

TAYLOR WOOLLEY COLLECTION, UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Villino Belvedere in Fiesole, near Florence. Using Wright’s office renderings and working drawings, Woolley and the younger Wright completed, with crow quill pen and India ink, the drawings from which the lithographic plates were produced. Woolley realized the significance of this event and documented their working environment with his Kodak folding pocket camera. A year later he used the same camera to document the construction of Taliesin, the home Wright built for himself and the then divorced Mamah Borthwick, near Spring Green, Wisconsin. Woolley’s photographs of Taliesin under construction between 1910 and 1911 were the first documentation of this world famous site. Several of his photographs include his friend and eventual partner Cliff Evans.

Between 1911 and 1914 Woolley divided his time between Salt Lake City, where he designed homes in the Prairie Style for the Kimball and Richards Building Company, developers of Salt Lake City’s Gilmer and Highland Park subdivisions, and Chicago where he assisted with projects in several architectural offices. In

A Prairie Style residence in the Ste. Strevell subdivision c. 1913. This project for Charles N. Strevell, owner of the Salt Lake Hardware Co. never reached fruition. It consisted of eleven Prairie style residences surrounding a creek. The site was to be bordered by 900 East and Windsor Ave. in the Sugarhouse neighborhood of Salt Lake City. The project was co-designed by architects Taylor Woolley and Raymond Ashton.

1911 he designed a Prairie Style residence for his sister and brother-in-law, Irreta and Samuel Jackson in the Forest Dale neighborhood of Sugarhouse. He also became a registered architect in Utah. In Chicago he worked for Hermann Von Holst with Marion Mahony, who also had previously worked for Wright. Mahony married Walter Burley Griffin in 1911 and Woolley worked in their office after 1911. The Griffins won the 1912 design competition for Australia’s Capitol City, Canberra.

At the end of March 1914 Wright wired Woolley requesting his help to prepare an exhibition of Wright’s work to be shown at the Chicago Architectural Club. Woolley, who was in Salt Lake City at the time, immediately left for Taliesin where he took another set of photographs that included a puppet theater that Wright had built for the exhibition. The exhibition opened at the Chicago Art Institute in April 1914; Wright wanted Woolley to stay on at Taliesin through the summer; however Woolley was unable to do so. On August 15, 1914, a terrible tragedy

TAYLOR A. WOOLLEY

The William W. Ray residence, 1915, Yale Ave., Salt Lake City.Woolley’s inspiration for this house was Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Fireproof House Plan for $5,000,” published in Ladies Home Journal in 1907. This house type became very popular in Utah as well as nationally. Originally intended to be constructed of concrete very few were, although Utah examples were often constructed of masonry.

SHIPLER COLLECTION, UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

SHIPLER COLLECTION, UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

SHIPLER COLLECTION, UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Residence of Taylor and Dorrit Woolley, 1222 East 900 South, Salt Lake City, c. 1917. The house is located in the Gilmer Park subdivision, a portion of which was designed by Woolley for the Kimball and Richards Development Company. No longer designing in the Prairie Style the Woolley’s residence reflects the vernacular architecture of an English Cottage. The living room featured Dorrit’s baby grand piano.

Automobile Showroom of the Randall-Dodd Automobile Company, Social Hall Ave., Salt Lake City, c. 1919. Tall, reinforced concrete columns form a spacious showroom for automobiles of the 1920s.

The Belvedere Apartments on the corner of State St. and Social Hall Ave., Salt Lake City, c. 1919. Designed by Woolley for the firm of Miller Woolley and Evans this cosmopolitan structure is the first of two large commissions undertaken by the firm for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was constructed of a reinforced concrete frame covered with a brick veneer containing decorative terra-cotta accents.

Automotive Center, Randall-Dodd Automobile Company, Social Hall Ave., Salt Lake City, c. 1919 (Demolished). Social Hall Ave. was transformed into an automobile row consisting of a number of auto showrooms for various motor companies all constructed of reinforced concrete frames. This was the second of the two LDS Church commercial commissions undertaken by the Woolley Miller and Evans firm. At the completion of the project in 1922 the Social Hall was demolished.

SHIPLER COLLECTION, UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

SHIPLER COLLECTION, UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

occurred at Taliesin when a deranged servant set fire to the house and then murdered Mamah Borthwick, her two children, and four others, including Emil Brodelle the thirty-year-old draftsman that took Woolley’s place.

When work in Chicago declined, Woolley returned to Salt Lake City but maintained contact with the Griffin office and worked periodically on projects for the Chicago firm. He married his sweetheart Dorrit Evans on December 15, 1915. Dorrit was a musician who formally studied piano in Chicago. Within three years they moved into their new home designed by Taylor on property they owned in Gilmer Park, its living room dominated by a baby grand piano. It is there that they raised their son, Nathan and their daughter, Blossom. Woolley practiced architecture in the Chicago office of Walter Burley Griffin until 1917 when he joined fellow Salt Lake City architects Miles Miller and his brother-in-law Cliff Evans in the firm of Miller, Woolley and Evans.

Miles Miller, a Utahn, began his apprenticeship in Salt Lake City in 1908. His early work consisted of schools and church buildings in Utah and Idaho. The announcement of their firm in the Salt Lake Tribune mentions the role of each of the principals: Miller in charge of the business organization and superintendence of out-of-town work, Woolley, the head designer responsible for city work; and landscape architecture; and Evans, to supervise the engineering department. Almost immediately the firm was commissioned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to undertake two large commercial projects on Social Hall Avenue in downtown Salt Lake City. It is not known whether Miles Miller was instrumental in securing these commissions, but the Belvedere Apartment building and Automotive Center showrooms along Social Hall Avenue were the largest commissions of their careers. The firm generated eightyfour ink-on-linen sheets of drawings for the apartment building and one hundred three ink-on-linen sheets of drawings for the Automotive Center. Woolley continued to do most of the residential work of the firm, including his own residence on 900 South. The firm dissolved in 1922 after the completion of the Social Hall Avenue commissions. Miller opened his own firm in 1922 and continued specializing primarily in public schools and church buildings for the LDS church in Utah and Nevada. The firm of Woolley and Evans was formed in 1922 and provided design services for commercial, religious, and residential projects. The Midwestern Prairie Style was no longer popular nationally and many architects turned to various historical styles. The firm’s first major religious commission for the LDS church was the Colonial Revival red brick Yale Ward House of 1925, not far from their own residences in Gilmer Park. In 1931 the Salt Lake City Commission gave permission to the Salt Lake City Art Barn Association to build an exhibition space in Reservoir Park. The firm of Woolley & Evans was chosen to design the facility and again used the Colonial Revival style. The Art Barn opened in 1933 with an exhibition of Utah artists picked by Woolley, a friend of many Utah artists. During that

Drawing of the Garden Park Ward Scout Home, Yale Ave., Salt Lake City, 1941. This building is west of the ward house designed by Woolley and Evans in 1938. To the south of this building, Red Butte Creek runs through the site.

same year Governor Henry H. Blood appointed Woolley to the position of “Capitol Architect.” This appointment lasted until 1941 at the of conclusion Blood’s second term as the seventh governor of Utah. In this position Woolley was involved with landscape at the Capitol building as well as supervising work done on the Capitol building, including the installation of murals in the capitol rotunda painted by various Utah artists during the WPA era. Apparently Woolley’s position as state architect did not prevent the firm from accepting work during the 1930s. In 1938 Woolley and Evans received the commission to design the LDS ward house in their neighborhood. The Garden Park ward on Yale Avenue in Gilmer Park was unusual in that it was built partly upon the foundations of the Legrand Young— John Howard estate. The ward house is one of two non-residential buildings within the Gilmer Park National Register Historic District. The brick building’s style according to the ward dedicatory pamphlet was “English with an Elizabethan spirit.” At the south end of the site Red Butte Creek flows east to west through attractively landscaped grounds that contain a pond and gazebo enclosed by a decorative brick wall, making it a favorite setting for wedding photographs.

During the 1940s the firm continued designing residences, commercial buildings, and a large number of remodelings of existing buildings. In 1941

his beloved wife Dorrit passed away at the age of forty-eight. Taylor Woolley ended his career in the late 1940s with his involvement in the design of “This Is the Place” state park. Here he collaborated with his lifelong friends sculptor Mahonri Young and artist Waldo Midgley. It was Young’s commission, and in 1947 he brought in Woolley for architectural consultation and to handle the landscape surrounding the monument. Midgley worked on the monument lettering. It wasn’t considered complete until the official lighting ceremony held November 15, 1949. Taylor Woolley lived out the remainder of his life at his home in Gilmer Park and died in 1965 at the age of eighty.

The lighting ceremony at “This Is the Place Monument” November 15, 1949. The monument involved the collaboration of Taylor Woolley, Mahonri Young, sculptor, and painter Waldo Midgley. It was completed a year or so before the lighting ceremony.

Among the dignitaries are Mr. and Mrs. Ezra Taft Benson, John D. Giles at the microphone, Taylor Woolley, Mahonri Young, President George Albert Smith, and Governor J. Bracken Lee.

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Safety Lessons: The 1938 Burgon’s Crossing School Bus and Train Accident

By ERIC G. SWEDIN

On December 1, 1938, a Thursday, early in the morning, Denver and Rio Grande Western No. 31 left Helper, located in central Utah, pulling twelve loaded freight cars, thirty-eight empty cars, and a caboose. The second-class freight train, named the Flying Ute, was running late, but that was not unusual; it lost even more time as it made its way north, running four hours and nineteen minutes late when it passed Provo. A light snow was falling in the cold morning. Just northwest of Riverton, in the southern part of the Salt Lake Valley at approximately 3rd West and 102nd South, a country road approached the railroad track, but turned to run parallel to the railroad track for 2,600 feet, almost a half a mile, before turning at a right angle to cross the tracks at Burgon’s Crossing. As the train came to the road, the fireman on the engine saw that a school bus was on the parallel section of the road, some distance ahead of the train. The crew had seen school buses on this road before. Visibility was reported to be up to a half mile and the open country contained no obstructions; the head brakeman later testified that he could see the end of his train at all times from his position in the engine.

Eric Swedin is Associate Professor of History at Weber State University.

Photo of the crash site that appeared in the December 2, 1938, issue of the Salt Lake Tribune

The route of the school bus from Riverton north to Jordan High School.

Trains were required to sound a whistle whenever they approached a railroad crossing. A whistle board on the side of the track, 1,430 feet from Burgon’s Crossing, reminded them of this responsibility. The crew sounded the whistle and kept it blowing as they approached the crossing.

The bus driver, twenty-nine-year-old Farrold Henry Silcox, had been driving the bus for almost three years, and had not been cited for any traffic violations as a driver. Silcox was familiar with the route and the road and he had already picked up thirtyeight students. Band instruments being brought to school by the students were piled on seats towards the front of the bus.

The morning bus run could be a hard drive on winter mornings because there was no heater in the vehicle, though the windshield was equipped with a defrosting window and windshield wiper. The driver ran a strict bus, not allowing students to stand or be too loud. Students reported that on that morning there was no “unusual noise, loud talking, laughing or singing.”1

The bus windows were closed because of the weather, and steam covered all the windows, with the exception of the defrosted windshield.

The bus turned and stopped at the railroad crossing. State law required, as did school district policy, that school buses come to a full stop before crossing railroad tracks, and “before proceeding on his way, the driver must be certain that no train is approaching from either side.”2 Normally, at this

1 “Interstate Commerce Commission; Washington; Report of the Director Bureau of Safety; Accident on the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad; Riverton, Utah; December 1, 1938; Investigation No. 2315,” <http://www.drgw.net/info/index.php?n=Main.ICC2315>, accessed November 5, 2012. This is a copy of Inv-2315, the Interstate Commerce Commission report of their investigation of the accident. Unless otherwise cited, the narrative is derived from this detailed report, which is the most reliable and objective account of the accident, written shortly afterwards with a focus on what exactly happened. As time went on, survivors of the accident and others added details to their recollections that may or may not be accurate. This is not suprising, since a sudden traumatic accident usually leaves only fragmented memories that survivors sift through and and reassess over the years, adding information from other sources, and trying to make sense of what happened. Two other useful accounts of the accident are found in Scott Crump, The First 100 Years: A History of Jordan School District (West Jordan: Jordan School District, 2005), 23-26, 59; and Melvin L. Bashore and Scott Crump, Riverton: The Story of a Utah Country Town (Riverton: Riverton Historical Society, 1994), 151-63.

2 Ibid. State law did not require school buses to stop if traffic control signals (also called safety appliances) were operating. See Revised Statutes of Utah 1933, 57-7-44.

time of day, no trains were on the tracks. Investigators later watched the tracks themselves and found that on average only twenty-two trains a day used this track, with a tendency for more traffic to occur in the middle of the night. The bus driver was on the left-hand side of the bus, while the train approached from his right. The train engineman was on the right side of his engine, while the bus was stopped on his left side.

These photos of the school bus show the main part of the bus after the accident (above left) and part of the bus attached to the locomotive (above).

Seeing no train, because the side windows were steamed up, and not hearing the train whistle because the windows were all closed, and not expecting a train at that time of day, the bus driver worked the gears and proceeded forward. None of the students remembered hearing the train whistle, though one girl remembered hearing another student toward the front of the bus cry out, “train.”3

The fireman on the train was still looking out the side window when he saw the bus start to move forward. He cried out a warning to the engineman, who immediately applied the emergency brakes. The train had a valve pilot which recorded engine power output and speed on a strip of paper, which served both as an instrument that the train driver used and a record of engine performance and speed. The valve-pilot tape on the engine later showed that the train was going fifty-two miles per hour.4 Trains on this section of track were allowed to travel fifty miles per hour. At 8:43 a.m., the freight train hit the center of the bus.

Sixteen-year-old June Wynn lived near the crossing and was standing at her doorway, waiting for the bus to pick her up. She described the

3 “Survivors Relate Impressions After Bus Disaster,” Salt Lake Tribune, December 2, 1938.

4 See William Bell Wait, Valve Pilot Tape Talks (New York:Valve Pilot Corporation, 1943).

SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

RIVERTON: THE STORY OF A UTAH COUNTRY TOWN

accident for a reporter: “I could see the lights of the bus and the train half a mile away, and I watched while the bus pulled up to the tracks. It stopped today the same as usual. It always stops for the crossing. But this time it started up again . . . The bus just sort of exploded and went dragging off down the tracks.”5

The bus was made completely of steel. The right side of the bus was sheared off and the body of the bus came to rest one hundred feet from the railroad crossing, while the more sturdy chassis of the bus was pushed by the train engine almost a half mile further down the track before the train came to a stop. Debris from the bus was scattered along that half mile. The bus chassis forced the lead pair of train engine wheels off of the tracks and welding torches were necessary to later cut the bus chassis out from underneath the front of the train engine.

David Witter, an unemployed twenty-two year old truck driver, was catching a ride in a boxcar, walking back and forth, trying to keep warm, when the train came to a stop. He got out to see “the awfullest thing I ever saw.”6 At first, because of all the carnage, he assumed that the train had hit a cattle truck, then he saw the children in the snow, some lying still and some looking “bewildered.” 7 Those victims that looked well enough to be moved, he carried to the warmth of the caboose. “One little girl was standing there screaming, holding for dear life to a little pocketbook.”8 A newspaper reporter arrived to find “Fragments of torn bodies, tattered bits of school texts, battered band instruments and twisted pieces” of the bus, scattered along the tracks on the snowy landscape.9

Within a half hour, hundreds of people gathered at the site: “hysterical parents,” rescue crews, law enforcement officers, ambulances, and anxious onlookers. 10 Searching through the wreckage, Highway Patrolman Bob Howard found his own niece and nephew.11 Other workers walked along the tracks with baskets and sacks, gathering bus parts and body parts, while the injured and the dead were taken to the Salt Lake General Hospital.12 The New York Times also reported that Sheriff Grant Young ordered “a thorough search of the snow-covered area near the track to recover parts of bodies and clothing.”13

5 “23 Killed in School Bus Hit By Train in Utah in Storm,” New York Times, December 2, 1938; also quoted in “Engine Plows Into Car [sic] of Jordan Pupils,” Salt Lake Tribune, December 2, 1938. Numerous other articles in this issue of the Salt Lake Tribune cover various aspects of the accident.

6 “23 Killed.”

7 “Traveler Tells of Aiding Hurt Children,” Salt Lake Tribune, December 2, 1938.

8 “23 Killed.”

9 “Engine Plows.”

10 Ibid.

11

“Utah Department of Public Safety: Nation’s Deadliest Traffic Accident,” <http://www.publicsafety.utah.gov/highwaypatrol/history_1939/deadliest_accident.html>, accessed on November 5, 2012.

12 “Engine Plows.”

13 “23 Killed.”

Twenty-two students and the bus driver died immediately. Another student, fifteenyear-old Rela Marie Beckstead, died at St. Marks Hospital three days later. The remaining fifteen students lived, though seven of them were gravely injured. It was the kind of accident, with so much force involved, that death and life were a matter of inches. The girl who heard another student call out “train” woke up to find herself in the snow with only slight injuries.14 Other students survived by happenchance: one girl was reported dead, though she was not on the bus; another boy, who had a perfect school attendance record for the year, helped his father with the family grocery store in the morning and was too late to catch the bus, though he ran after the bus in an effort to catch it; his sister normally rode the bus, but had taken another bus instead; and two other teenagers were delayed by the snow and missed the bus.15

Dr. Paul S. Richards, who ran the nearby Bingham Hospital and Clinic and was also president of the Jordan School District Board, heard about the accident via a telephone call and immediately rushed to the site of the accident, some ten miles away.

Richards “stayed on the scene until all the bodies had been cleaned up. Many of them were mangled and torn into shreds and small fragments. We got underneath the train with whisk-brooms and dust-pans and gathered

14 “Survivors

15 “Youth Spoils School Mark, Saves Life by Tardiness,” Salt Lake Tribune, December 2, 1938.

Relate Impressions.”

SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

Funeral services for fourteen of the twenty-four victims were held on Sunday, December 4th at the Riverton Junior High School.

pieces of flesh, bowel, clothing, hair, skin and the like.” Richards was also concerned about the psychological fallout from the accident and took particular care to ensure that all traces of the victims were collected or removed. He intuitively understood that people would visit this site, perhaps as part of the grieving process, and finding blood or flesh would simply be horrifying. After the train had been moved away, the rescue workers “took flaming torches and seared the ties and rails and removed all blood spots until there was no remaining evidence of the accident.”16

Dr. Richards recalled later that the dead bodies “were put together in [similar] caskets as carefully as could be and inasmuch as many were fragmented, experts were called in.” One expert, “who had the ability of matching like tissues,” came from Denver. Some “bodies were torn to the point where no identity could be established,” except through dental records. 17 A special local Red Cross relief committee was immediately formed to direct aid to the accident victims and their families. The committee planned to raise funds to pay for medical bills and other immediate needs, as well as to pay for long term care for those crippled in the accident. Richards served as the chairman.18

Six mass funerals were planned for Sunday and Monday. Two of the funerals, morning and afternoon, were held in the school auditorium of Riverton Junior High to make room for the numerous mourners.19 Ten seconds of silence were observed in church services throughout the state on Sunday. Jordan High School suspended classes after the accident and did not reopen until Tuesday, while Riverton Junior High School was closed on Monday. Other school children in the Jordan school district were asked to go to the nearest schools to their homes on Monday, regardless of whether they attended that school normally, where they assembled at 10:00 a.m., to stand at attention and “pay silent tribute to the memory of their deceased schoolmates.”20 The students were then dismissed for the rest of the day.

The nation’s newspapers ran the accident as front page news. The newspaper coverage asked the obvious questions: what had happened, why had it happened, and how could it be prevented in the future? The Salt Lake Tribune reported that local fog had been heavy, making visibility a problem,

16 Ann R. Barton, ed., Paul S. Richards, “The Memoirs of Dr. Paul” (1965), 73-74. This typescript document is available at the Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library at the University of Utah. Copies are also available at the Special Collections at the J. Willard Marriot Library at the same university and the Historical Department Library, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City.

17 Ibid.

18 “Relief Committee Acts to Aid Bereft Families,” The Salt Lake Tribune, December 3, 1938.

19 See “Wards Plan Mass Funeral Rites for Bus Disaster Victims,” The Salt Lake Tribune, December 3, 1938; “Rail Crossing Crash Victims’ Rites Set Sunday, Monday,” The Salt Lake Tribune, December 3, 1938; “Mass Funerals Will Honor Crash Victims,” The Salt Lake Tribune, December 4, 1938; and “Crash Victims Buried as Another Dies,” Salt Lake Tribune, December 5, 1938.

20 “ICC Starts Fatal Crash Investigation,” The Deseret News, December 3, 1938.

though later investigation showed that this was not accurate.21 The federal government sent two investigators from the Interstate Commerce Commission, while other agencies from the state government conducted their own inquiries, including the “State Public Service Commission, the State Industrial Commission, State Department of Public Instruction, and the State Highway Patrol.”22 On the local level, the county sheriff conducted an investigation to report to the county attorney.

Dr. Richards and the Jordan School District board met in “long meetings with parents of the victims . . . We felt that inasmuch as this was purely an accident we should get the parties together and come to some kind of an agreement regarding the settlement.” The school board also “advised the parents against employing any attorneys” and the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad gave the school board the “responsibility of adjudicating the losses.” Richards took on the personal responsibility to “adjudicate lost functions in those who had been injured,” a similar responsibility that he often performed for the Utah State Industrial Commission by medically describing the resulting permanent disabilities from industrial accidents. According to Richards,

the families agreed to a reasonable settlement for those who had been killed. This whole case was handled through the understanding which the Board achieved with both the railroad and the families of the students who had been involved in the accident. To me, it was a very remarkable thing that we could conduct the whole accident as a school problem and have no hard feelings, no legal involvement, and no attempt at placing the responsibility.23

While Richards’ recalled a lack of legal action two decades later in his dictated memoirs, unified legal action by the families of the victims did occur.24

While the injured students had been taken to the county hospital, afterwards the victims went to other doctors for further care and rehabilitation. Richards cared for several of the cases because of his reputation for such care. He recalled students “with broken backs and some with compound fractures” of their limbs; “Some of these patients were very

21

“Fog Obscured Rail Crossing,” Salt Lake Tribune, December 2, 1938.

22

“New Crash Death Boosts Bus-Train Fatalities to 23,” The Deseret News, December 2, 1938. See also “State Board to Probe All Bus Crossings,” The Deseret News, December 2, 1938; and “Agencies Join In Probe of Bus Disaster,” The Salt Lake Tribune, December 3, 1938.

23 Barton, ed., “The Memoirs of Dr. Paul,” 73-74.

Dr. Paul S. Richards.

AUTHOR

disfigured, but with plastic surgery and restorative types of procedures all the injured turned out very well.”25 Some of the students remained his patients for the next two decades.

This was the worst school bus accident up until that time in American history and still remains the worst bus-train accident. Two later accidents that exceeded the death toll for school bus accidents both happened in Kentucky. In 1958 a school bus near Prestonsburg, Kentucky, collided with a tow truck and plunged into a river, drowning the driver and twenty-six students. Twentytwo other students managed to swim to safety.26 In 1988, near Carrollton, Kentucky, a drunk driver in a pickup truck collided head-on with a former school bus being used as a church bus. The accident initially caused only minor injuries, but the bus caught fire and twenty-seven people, mostly children, died trying to use the narrow rear exit. Only seven people escaped.27 Other train accidents have killed many more, usually when a train with passengers derailed or two trains collided.

The nation already knew that it had a problem with school bus accidents at railroad crossings. In the previous ten years, four school buses had been hit, killing a number of people. The public conversation immediately

24

“Damage Suits For $365,500 Filed by Bus Victims’ Parents,” The Ute Sentinel, February 24, 1939.

25 Barton, ed., “The Memoirs of Dr. Paul,” 75.

26 “Kentucky: National Guard History Museum—Prestonsburg School Bus Disaster,” <http://kynghistory.ky.gov/history/4qtr/addinfo/pburgbusdisaster.htm>, accessed November 5, 2012.

27 “10 years ago, 27 people died in a fiery crash,”

Pictures of eighteen of the twenty-four victims were published in the December 2, 1938, issue of the Salt Lake Tribune

turned to the safety appliance that would have stopped the Utah accident from happening: a train-actuated crossing guard. The sole warning sign at Burgon’s Crossing was a crossed-buck sign reading “RAILROAD CROSSING.” There were 2,200 railroad crossings in Utah, of which only 125 were “protected by train-actuated signals” and twenty more had watchmen.28 The state Public Service Commission had “recently recommended” that 137 more crossings receive additional safety appliances.29 As a temporary measure elsewhere in the state, Weber County formed junior traffic patrols where a student would get out of every school bus at railroad crossings to see if a train was approaching before the bus would be allowed to cross the tracks.30

This episode effectively illustrated contemporary attitudes towards safety and the causes of accidents. Dr. Richards analyzed what happened, seeking to find a root cause, which he found in the weather conditions. According to Richards:

We allayed all hysteria and concluded from every possible angle that this was purely an accident. The locomotive engineer said that the bus stopped. He knew it stopped because he saw it standing there, but because of a peculiar type of cloud formation that was hanging near the ground, the driver's view must have been obscured and as he advanced forward onto the tracks, the train struck the middle of the bus.31

The search to find a person to blame by their actions or lack of action was common in safety thinking at this time, dominated as it was by the psychological approach.32 The bus driver was exempted from blame because of the weather. Richards did not take the analysis one step further, though many others did. A safety appliance, if it had worked correctly, would have certainly averted the collision.

The official accident report for the Interstate Commerce Commission concluded with some common sense recommendations. They recognized that not only was the accident a result of not having an additional safety appliance, like the crossing guards, but it also reflected the lack of the correct rules to govern driver behavior. Such rules, turned into habits, made a person’s activities safer. The recommendations: that more stringent rules covering the operation of school buses over grade crossings should be prescribed and strictly enforced; that all drivers of school buses be required to open the front side door when the stop is made at each railroad crossing at grade; and that, whenever practicable, buses should be routed so as to avoid grade crossings that are not protected by watchmen or devices to give visual warning when a train is approaching.33

<http://www.enquirer.com/editions/1998/05/10/kybusa110.html>, accessed November 5, 2012. 28 “Agencies Join.” 29 “23 Killed.” 30 “ICC Starts.”

31 Barton, ed., “The Memoirs of Dr. Paul,” 73.

32 See Michael Guarnieri, “Landmarks in the History of Safety,” Journal of Safety Research 23 (1992): 151-58.

33 ”Interstate Commerce Commission.”

While the number of train-automobile collisions and fatalities have fallen in frequency over the years, the problem still persists despite the widespread use of safety appliances at crossings, such as warning lights and crossing arms, and safety education programs and public service advertisements. In 2008, there were 2,426 collisions involving trains in the United States and 290 people died.34

The Burgon’s Crossing accident and others like it did have a positive effect. Any child who has ridden a school bus may have noticed that the school bus stops at every railroad crossing and the driver opens the front side door while looking both directions down the tracks. That simple act of opening the front door would have saved twenty-three students and a bus driver in 1938.

34

“Crossing Collisions & Casualties By Year Operation Lifesaver, Inc.,” <http://oli.org/aboutus/news/collisions-casulties/>, accessed November 5, 2012.

The Renaissance Man of Delta: Frank Asahel Beckwith, Millard County Chronicle Publisher, Scientist, and Scholar, 1875-1951

By DAVID A. HALES

On February 1, 1913, at five o’clock in the morning, Frank Asahel Beckwith and his wife, Mary Amelia Simister Beckwith, arrived at the train station in Delta, Millard County, Utah. The weather was mild for mid-winter, warm enough that Frank carried his Remington typewriter in his bare hands as they trudged across the snowless ground to the hotel. After breakfast, the Beckwiths walked over to the town for their first look at their new home, and to say that Frank was displeased with what he saw would be something of an understatement. “Never was I more discouraged in my life,” he wrote. “Such a dreary outlook! Scattered over 900 acres was the most miserable collection of huts, shells, shacks, and whatnots ever slung up in a hurry.…I had never stepped into a more soul-sinking place in my life. And to think that I had deliberately chosen to settle here! …I was never so blue. I would have turned back and taken the

Frank Beckwith was an avid reader and student of many subjects.

David A. Hales is a retired librarian and educator now living in Draper. The author wishes to thank Jane Beckwith for her assistance with the article and for allowing him access to the private papers and photographs of the Beckwith family in her possession. He also acknowledges and thanks Meghan Hekker Nestel for her editorial assistance.

train out but that the wife held me fast to the bargain I’d made.”1

Beckwith had agreed to serve as the cashier of the Delta State Bank, which opened with four thousand dollars, including one two-thousand dollar deposit made by attorney and co-founder James A. Melville.2 The safe did not arrive for three weeks after the bank opened, so Beckwith took five hundred dollars in silver home every night in a “tin can-like affair,” and slept with the currency in his vest underneath his night gown and a revolver inside the bed.3 Beckwith’s salary was seventy-five dollars a month, which he soon learned did not go far in supporting a family of five (their three children had joined them in time for summer), even in tiny Delta, Utah. They lived for a while in the basement of the Kelly Hotel, in conditions that Beckwith referred to as “might raw,” and swept more than one “trantler bug” (scorpion) from their home.4

It did not take long, however, for the Beckwith family to overcome their negative first impressions of Delta.Yes, times were tough, “But, what,” wrote Beckwith, “was the use of complaining. Everybody else was just as poor or even poorer.”5 Their hardships gave the people of Delta a common ground, a reason to connect with and support each other, and Beckwith was impressed that “nobody was stuck up.” Instead, they “were all in the same canoe, paddling or bailing water, and no drones. And all worked right on the same common level, free with the other, no sharp lines drawn…We danced together, without clique or coterie, all one bunch, jolly, free and everybody knew everybody else. …We all sigh and look back to those times and say ‘Them were the good old days all rightee!’” 6 It was this second impression of Delta that would be the lasting one—Frank Beckwith would call Delta home for most of the rest of his life, and make many significant contributions to his town, state, and country, not only as a banker, but as a newspaper publisher, writer, photographer, inventor, anthropologist, geologist, and explorer.

Considering Beckwith’s life before moving to Delta, it is not surprising it took him a little while to warm up to the town. Beckwith was born in Evanston, Wyoming, to Asahel Collins Beckwith and Mary Stuart Rose on November 24, 1875. He had an older brother, Fred Beckwith (born in Echo City, Summit County, Utah Territory, on December 16, 1873), and two half-siblings from his father’s first marriage.7 Asahel Collins Beckwith

1 Frank A. Beckwith, “Personal Reminiscences: A Gleaning of Thirteen Years in Delta,” 1, typescript in the possession of Jane Beckwith, Delta, Utah.

2 The letterhead for the Delta State Bank on a letter dated June 21, 1917, notes the following: Officers: James A. Melville, President; Frank Beckwith, Cashier; Directors: James A. Melville, Hiett C. Maxfield, William J. Finlinson, John E. Steele, Edgar W. Jeffery, J.W. Jenkins, Joseph Sampson.

3 Frank A. Beckwith, “Personal Reminiscences,” 3-4.

4 Ibid., 3.

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid., 5.

7 Asahel C. Beckwith was first married to Elizabeth Russel. They had two children Dora Edith Beckwith, born October 2, 1859, in Medina City, Clemens County, Nebraska, and John Asahel Beckwith, born on March 10, 1862, on the Little Blue River, Nebraska.

was one of the richest men in Wyoming. When he was a young man, A. C. Beckwith and his friend, Anthony Quinn, had almost literally stumbled across a fortune when they found a small steamboat filled with guns, ammunition, barrels of whiskey, and knives abandoned in the mud of the Platte River. A. C. Beckwith and Quinn appropriated the deserted supplies, as law and custom stated such discarded goods were “the property of anyone who could retrieve it,” and sold them to Union Pacific Railroad workers in Wyoming and Utah.8 According to Frank Beckwith’s friend Charles Kelly, “by the time construction was completed the boys [A.C. Beckwith and Quinn] were comparatively rich.” 9 A. C. Beckwith invested his profits in various enterprises, opened a bank, and started the “BQ” Ranch (Beckwith, Quinn, and Company Ranch), which included fifteen thousand acres and the largest cattle herd in Wyoming.10 He also built the Beckwith Race Tracks in Evanston, co-operated the Rock Springs coal mines, was the senior member of the mercantile firm of Beckwith & Lauder, served as a World’s Fair commissioner for the state of Wyoming, and held several other prestigious positions within the state.11

His wealth and position allowed A. C. Beckwith to provide a comfortable life for his family, including a beautiful red brick home in Evanston and the services of a maid and a houseboy.12 In spite of such material luxuries, Frank did not have an easy childhood—his father “ruled with a fist of iron,

8 Charles Kelly, “Steamboat in the Desert, the Story of Asa [sic] C. Beckwith, Father of Frank Beckwith, Resident of Evanston, Wyoming.” Charles Kelly Papers, Special Collections, Marriot Library, University of Utah, MS 100, Box 11, Folder 21.

9 Ibid., 4.

10 Ibid.; Errol Jack Lloyd, “History of Cokeville, Wyoming” (master’s thesis, UtahState University, 1970), 103.

11 David Dean, “The Uinta Stock Farm—1884,” 3, typed unpublished manuscript in the possession of Jane Beckwith; “Asahel C. Beckwith,” manuscript dated 1897 in the Wyoming Historical Society, Cheyenne, Wyoming, 332.

12 Jane Beckwith, interview by author, January 10, 2012.

Frank Beckwith as a young boy.

BECKWITH PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION, DELTA CITY LIBRARY

and no glove, and was determined that his young sons, Fred and Frank, were not to grow up as ‘sissies’.”13 He expected them to work hard and become successful businessmen like him. Fortunately for Beckwith, learning came naturally. From an early age, Frank Beckwith had an inquisitive mind and loved to read about many subjects. His mother was a former schoolteacher, and she had accumulated a large collection of books in their home, including works of history and Greek mythology. She encouraged Frank to read these works when he was a young boy and books provided a never-ending fascination for her son.14

Beckwith graduated from Evanston High School in 1892 at the age of sixteen. His valedictory essay concerned electricity, a subject Beckwith had been “delving into it for many years” with the help of The A.B.C. of Electricity by William Henry Meadowcraft, a book endorsed by Thomas A. Edison himself. Beckwith “read and re-read the book, until I had completely and fully mastered the essay lessons it taught. Then I got volume after volume, harder and harder.” He even “built a small dynamo; and it ran—but not for long at a time, as it was crude, quickly got over-heated, and the brushes would actually get to burning, showing the blue flames of vaporized copper. Was I tickled?” 15 Beckwith may have wanted to continue his education after high school, but instead, Frank was to become a banker, a position he had learned about while working at his father’s bank in Evanston.16 However, two years after his graduation, when Beckwith was just eighteen, his mother passed away, f ollowed by A.C. Beckwith two years later. At such a young age, Fred and Frank Beckwith did not have the necessary experience to maintain their father’s expansive holdings, and the companies slowly went bankrupt.17

On August 25, 1898, Beckwith started his own family when he married Mary Amelia Simister of Coalville, Utah.18 The couple made their home in Evanston for about two years, lived briefly in Salt Lake City, and then

13

14 Ibid.

15 Frank A. Beckwith, “Affliction, Agony and Torture to E. Eugene Gardner,”1, typescript in the possession of Jane Beckwith.

16 Jane Beckwith, interview.

17 Leland Ray Hunsaker, “A History of the Millard County Chronicle 1910-1956” (master’s thesis, Brigham Young University, 1968), 29; This is the most definitive history of the Millard County Chronicle from its beginnings to 1956.

Utah Newspaper Hall of Fame (Salt Lake City: Utah State Press Association, 1966),1, copy in the possession of Jane Beckwith, Delta, Utah.

BECKWITH

FRANK ASAHEL BECKWITH

moved back to Evanston in 1902, where Beckwith worked for the Beckwith banking company. In 1907, Frank and Mary returned to Salt Lake City, where Frank found employment as a banker for the McCormick Banking Company and Utah Savings, Tracy Loan & Trust Company, a teacher at Henager Business College, and a secretary for C.C. Goodwin at Goodwin’s Weekly. By the time the Beckwiths made their 1913 move to Delta, they had added three children to their family—Athena Beckwith Cook, born 1900; Frank S. Beckwith, born 1904; and Florence W. Beckwith Reeves, born 1907. The family lived in Delta until 1917, when they moved to Oakley, Idaho, where Beckwith worked as a bank cashier. In 1919, the Beckwiths returned to Delta, and made the small town their permanent home.19

Upon his return to Delta, Beckwith discovered that the local newspaper, The Millard County Chronicle, was for sale, and jumped at the chance to change careers. The paper had been published since July 4, 1910, and its owner, Charles A. Davis, had become physically and mentally exhausted by the strain of producing it. Whether Davis himself sold his stock in the paper and his interest in the Linotype machine to Beckwith, or whether the bank repossessed the paper and then sold it to Beckwith is not clear, but either way, Frank Beckwith was now a newspaperman.20

When Beckwith took over the paper, its future seemed pretty secure. The alfalfa seed crops were record breaking, and the sugar factory in Delta assured a ready market for the sugar beets. Mines were operating in the area, and the railroad had announced plans to build a spur line to Sugarville (a farming area northwest of Delta) to haul beets to the sugar factory.21 Beckwith was able to convince Otto Reidman, a Swede who had worked for Davis, to stay on at the paper long enough to teach Beckwith’s eldest daughter, Athena, how to operate the Linotype and his son, Frank S. Beckwith, how to operate the handset.22 For several years, the Beckwiths self-produced the paper, with only the occasional added help of a few parttime workers and correspondents from nearby towns. Athena took most of the responsibility for the business aspects of the paper including social news gathering and selling advertisements, which left Beckwith free to do what

18 Mary was born on May 1, 1874, at Coalville, Summit County, the daughter of John William and Elizabeth Brierly Simister. During their entire married life she was very supportive of her husband’s many activities and assisted in the publication of the weekly newspaper until the business was sold in 1958. In Delta, she was active in civic and community affairs, including the American Red Cross, the Jolly Stitchers Club, and Betah Rebekah Lodge No. 47, I.O.O. F., at Delta. Mary died on February 2, 1965, in Delta. She was ninety years old and outlived her husband by fourteen years. She is buried next to him in the Delta City Cemetery; “Final Tribute Paid in Rites Friday for Mrs. Beckwith,” Millard County Chronicle, February 11,1965.

19 “Frank A. Beckwith, Editor of Chronicle Since 1919, Dies of Heart Ailment,” Millard County Chronicle, June 14, 1951.

20 J. Cecil Alter, Early Utah Journalism (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society, 1938), 65.

21 Hunsaker, “A History of the Millard County Chronicle,” 30.

22 Ibid., 37.

he truly came to love—write about what he was interested in. Frank Beckwith’s enthusiasm for the newspaper was clear in his general attitude and the effort he put into it. According to Charles Kelly, Beckwith always went about his work amiably. He never “got temperamental, never got angry, and in the toughest situations [he] could always think of a joke.”23 Beckwith also always dressed up to go to work, donning a white long-sleeved shirt with garters, a bow tie, and sometimes a green visor.24 He enlisted the assistance of eleven correspondents, who sent him news from the surrounding communities to help keep the people of Delta informed of what was happening with their friends and relatives, and he himself gathered the local news and took the majority of the photographs needed for the paper. Beckwith, camera in hand, became a familiar face at all the local events, and he traveled the county in his old truck, visiting various towns and sites. In later years, he also took up aerial photography.25

Like many locally based newspapers of the time, the Chronicle documented the comings and goings of the county, along with births, marriages, deaths, news from churches, clubs, and lodges, and local and national politics. It featured articles about local individuals and events, as well as emergencies, accidents, fires, and major events, including the Great Depression, the two World Wars, the building of and local news from the World War II Topaz Internment Camp, and the discussion regarding the decision to build Highway 6 connecting Delta with Ely, Nevada. It included cartoons drawn by Beckwith, and was printed in special editions at Christmas time and in commemoration of important events (such as a memorial edition highlighting local servicemen who died in World War I).26

The business end of the paper changed hands a couple of times while under Beckwith’s ownership. On October 1, 1925, Beckwith leased the printing work to Henry T. Howes, an Englishman and an experienced newspaperman who moved to Delta from Roosevelt. Beckwith enjoyed having more time to write without worrying about the business side of managing a weekly local newspaper, but the arrangement only lasted until September of 1927, when, according to Athena Beckwith Cook, Howes became overdue on his payments.27 At this time, Beckwith’s son, Frank. S. Beckwith, was persuaded to return from Los Angeles, where he had been working in the real estate business after studying for two years at the University of California at Berkeley. Frank S. Beckwith did some writing for the newspaper, but his primary responsibility was to be the business manager and printer. He and his father were very different in their

23 Charles Kelly, “Reminiscences of Frank A. Beckwith,” Charles Kelly Papers, Special Collections, Marriott Library, University of Utah, MS 100, Box 12, Folder 3.

24 Jane Beckwith, e-mail message to author, March 7, 2012.

25 Over 2,000 of Beckwith’s photographs have been digitized and are available online at the Delta City Library, Beckwith Photograph Collection. URL content.lib.utah.edu/cdm4/az_details.php?id=45

26 Hunsaker, “ A History of the Millard County Chronicle,” 92

27 Ibid., 45.

FRANK ASAHEL

approaches to writing and business, Frank S. being much less formal than his father, but the two enjoyed working together, and Beckwith was happy to once again have more time for writing. No matter who was running the business end, however, Beckwith was firmly aware that the Chronicle had an obligation to be dependable, reliable, and informative for its readers, and he was committed to producing a paper dedicated to its readership.

Not surprisingly, a large portion of the Chronicle ’s readership was composed of farmers. Farming was an essential aspect of life in Millard County, and it was the rich soil deposited from Lake Bonneville that first drew Mormon pioneers to the west side of the county in 1860. Crops grew well in this soil, if the farmers learned how to irrigate the heavy clay soil and there was water to irrigate them. At first, there were difficulties controlling the water that came down the Sevier River, but the ability to build reservoirs over the years alleviated the water problems unless there was a drought. Starting in the early 1900s, efforts were made to encourage outsiders to purchase land and move to the area. The Carey Land Act, also known as the Federal Desert Land Act, also played a role in settlers coming to the area because they could purchase 160 acres of land for fifty cents per acre plus the cost of water rights. These new residents settled primarily in Sutherland, Woodrow, north of Sutherland, and South Tract, located southeast and east of Delta.28

The Millard County Chronicle helped with these promotions, and when Frank Beckwith first came to Delta in 1913, he became actively engaged in these efforts. He wrote brochures and newspaper articles to persuade new farmers to come to the area. The following is typical of the types of articles published in the Chronicle to advertise the area:

This special edition is issued because this country needs population—men and women who are not afraid of hard work—who will grub the brush from the soil, and make this great valley and the adjoining foothills into one vast garden spot. Thousands of acres of fine tillable soil with first-class water rights are now lying dormant here awaiting more toilers so that they may be utilized for the benefit of mankind.29

28 Edward Leo Lyman and Linda Newell King, A History of Millard County (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society and Millard County Commission, 1999) 211, 229. While most of the early residents of West Millard County were Mormons, this changed considerably with the development of the land boom. Most of the individuals who moved into the area at that time were non-Mormons.

The building in Delta that housed the hotel and bank office.

BECKWITH PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION, DELTA CITY LIBRARY

By the time Beckwith purchased the Chronicle in 1919, the population of Millard County was still less than ten thousand. Of the 3,840,000 acres of land, the majority of which was tillable, only about 133,000 acres were actually being farmed with irrigation, with some additional land being dry-farmed.30 A letter written to a Mr. M. de Brabant on September 14, 1921, by an unknown author who had just completed an inspection tour of Millard County sponsored by the Pahvant Valley Boosters Day Celebration Committee, accurately noted some of the positive and negative aspects of the farming situation in the area:

Millard County has excellent soil, good climate, adequate water supply and all the natural requirements necessary to a productive agricultural district….[However] the entire “Delta District” is in a deplorable condition from an agricultural standpoint. Through mismanagement, ignorance and an attempt to farm large acreage per man, the district has become water-logged, pest infested and productive of less than twenty-five per cent of its capabilities.31

In order to correct these conditions, the letter writer recommended that the farmers be “taught intensified farming, fertilization, crop-rotation and constant war on pest control,” and that more farmers be encouraged to settle in the area, in order to “permit the present holder of the land to decrease their overage and make it possible for them to farm their smaller farms…. About 40 acres is all one man can farm successfully in Millard County.”32

The unknown letter writer was not the only one to hold these opinions about what was needed to improve the county, and upon purchasing the Chronicle , Beckwith resumed his dedication to encouraging agricultural progress. He continued to write promotional articles in the paper, praising the attributes of the county and calling on those willing to work the land to come farm in Millard. He also wrote articles about farming practices, and featured articles about successful farmers in the area. Eventually, he started writing articles urging farmers to become more diversified in the types of crops they grew, encouraging them to raise turkeys to eat all the grasshoppers in the area, and attempting to motivate them to try new farming techniques that could benefit not just them, but the county.

Regardless of any efforts that were made to follow advice such as that published by Beckwith, Millard County farmers as a whole had mixed financial success in the years after World War I. During and immediately after the Great War, the number of acres under cultivation doubled, and the additional land yielded a good quantity of alfalfa seed and sugar beets, but by the time of the Great Depression, increased taxes and poor drainage problems had caused many farmers to leave.33

29 Millard County Chronicle, November 22, 1917.

30 Letter to Mr. M. de Brabant, September 14, 1921. The name of the author of the letter is illegible, but it was sent from Los Angeles, California. Copy in the possession of Jane Beckwith.

31 Ibid.

32 Ibid.

FRANK ASAHEL BECKWITH

Much like the community it served, the Millard County Chronicle had its ups and downs. The paper fared pretty well in the aftermath of World War I—subscriptions increased as more people came into the area, and the Beckwiths were able to supplement the paper’s income by printing butter wrappers for a number of local women who marked their homemade butter with their trademark before selling it.34 However, by the end of the 1920s, the agricultural troubles in the area led to a decrease in subscriptions and the need for butter wraps, as farmers lost their property and left the area. Conditions were so severe that the sugar factory closed in 1924.

Despite these losses, the Chronicle actually prospered during the depression. According to Frank S. Beckwith, “If the depression hadn’t come along when it did we would have gone broke, but as it was we were swamped with legals (and they paid for them at the legal rate) and so we not only weathered the storm but actually prospered. I never had it so good—work two days a week and fish five.”35 The Chronicle received another increase in prosperity during World War II, when the War Relocation Authority removed eleven thousand Japanese-Americans to Topaz, which was located just sixteen miles northwest of Delta. This was the biggest surge to the economy since the sugar factory was built in the area in 1918, and “Everybody benefitted, especially the businessmen who dealt in goods.”36 Thus, while the Chronicle’s readersstruggled through drought, financial panic, and agricultural depression, the paper flourished through the Great

33 Lyman and King, A History of Millard County, 280-82.

34 Hunsaker, “A History of the Millard County Chronicle,” 37.

35 Frank S. Beckwith, “The Millard County Chronicle,” Utah Publisher and Printer, April 1953), 8.

36 Ibid.

Frank Beckwith at his desk in the Delta bank.

BECKWITH PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION, DELTA CITY LIBRARY

Depression and the prosperity of two world wars. Under Beckwith’s guidance, it remained a leader in the week-to-week business of helping to mold and establish public opinion; serving as a “faithful mirror of the community”; and, recording the history of Millard County through narrative and photograph.37

Frank Beckwith was much more than a banker and newspaper man, however. He was also an author, inventor, geologist, anthropologist, explorer, and, above all else, the epitome of an eternal scholar. Beckwith had a great quest for knowledge that had been encouraged by his school teacher mother, and he spent countless hours studying many subjects, including Latin and Greek, and the works of Plato, Homer, Shakespeare, Emerson, and many others. He learned the Pittman Howard method of shorthand, using an Edison phonograph with cylinders that enabled him to make recordings that he played back to help him practice. Beckwith quickly became proficient, and used the technique to take notes on his readings, interviews, and research.

The breadth and depth of Beckwith’s self-taught information was astonishing—his friend Charles Kelly wrote that he “was constantly amazed at the extent of his knowledge of so many different subjects.” 38 For example, Beckwith became fascinated with the Mayan calendar, and spent hours extensively studying and trying to decipher the characters. He drew correlations between the calendar and known astronomical dates, and tried without success to have his findings published in scientific magazines.39

Religion was also an area of great interest for Beckwith. While he was a Mason as his father was before him, he was also, as noted by Kelly, “a student of all religions” whose “mind was too great to be fettered by any one dogma. His great unrealized ambition was to put on a breech-clout and live like a primitive Indian, close to nature. He felt that the Indians were more sincere in their beliefs than most white men.”40 Beckwith was also very interested in Hindu philosophy and mythology, along with other

37 George L. Bird and Frederic E. Merwin, The Press and Society: A Book of Readings (New York: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1952), 199.

38 Charles Kelly, “A Tribute to Frank Beckwith,” Millard County Chronicle, June 21, 1951.

39 Frank A. Beckwith, “Mayan Calendar,” documents in the possession of Jane Beckwith.

40 Kelly, “Tribute.” Beckwith was a member of the Wasatch Lodge No. 1 and the Tintic Lodge No. 9 Free and Accepted Masons. He first became a Mason in 1902.

Frank Beckwith, his daughter Athena and wife Mary Simister Beckwith.

religions. Above all, he believed in religious tolerance. To his Mormon friend E. Eugene Gardner he wrote, “The traditions of Mormonism are too precious to you for appreaisal [sic] by another. Cherish them. They are what greatness is made from.”41

Although he was not a member of the LDS church, Beckwith became interested in the religious background of Utah in general, and more specifically the local area. After reading the book The Mountain Meadows Massacre by Josiah F. Gibbs, he became enamored with the subject, especially after learning that some of the descendants of the men involved lived in the area. Kelly wrote that Beckwith “became more and more interested in his research on ‘MMM’ as he wrote it, until finally he could talk of nothing else. He pursued every possible clue that would furnish additional information.”42 Kelly himself was also interested in the massacre, and the two pursued their research together over a twenty year period, often visiting and camping overnight at the site. After accumulating so much material for so many years on the subject, Kelly approached Beckwith about publishing a book with their findings, but Beckwith, who did not wish to stir up trouble as a gentile in a largely Mormon town, was opposed. 43 Beckwith did, however, feel that it was important to place historical monuments at the appropriate sites. He worked tirelessly in an effort to get historical monuments built at the Mountain Meadows Massacre site, and the site of the 1853 Gunnison Massacre (which occurred just west of Delta). Beckwith even spoke at the dedication ceremony of the Mountain Meadows monument on September 9, 1932, marking the 75th

41 Frank A. Beckwith. “Affliction, Agony and Torture to E. Eugene Gardner,” 6, typescript in the possession of Jane Beckwith.

42 Kelly, “Reminiscences.”

43 Ibid,; Kelly wrote a draft of the book, but it was never published. Materials collected by Frank Beckwith were deposited as Manuscript Collection 49 at the Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

FRANK ASAHEL BECKWITH

BECKWITH PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION, DELTA CITY LIBRARY

Frank Beckwith working at the printing press for the Millard County Chronicle

anniversary of the event.44

The subjects that appealed to Beckwith more than any other, however, were those involving science. Kelly noted that Beckwith “had the mentality of a scientist and an almost fanatical desire to pursue any subject in which he was interested to the furthest possible conclusion.” 45 Beckwith himself remarked that he “would rather study Geology for vast intervals of time, and Astronomy for Vast distances, Light as I study it for Photography—and Chemistry for its wonders—well, I hump over those volumes more than you possibly imagine.” In the same letter to Eugene Gardner he wrote, “Science is the noblest, best, most fascinating thought in the world. As Pupin says, ‘It is God’s language: and we men must learn it, Eugene—must learn its vowels, its words, its construction. We must master the physical laws of the universe.’”46 As he had done with electricity as a young man in high school, as an adult, Beckwith “studied radio activity until I was black in the face.”47 He also studied astronomy from an early age, and he had a telescope when he lived in Delta that he would let others use to observe the night skies. His granddaughter, Jessie Lynn Cook, clearly remembers nights spent staring at the stars, her grandfather pointing out the constellations.48

Beckwith’s interest in science naturally lent itself to creation, and by the time he moved to Delta, he had three inventions under his belt. In the 1890s, he had remodeled “an old-style Ideal powder measure fitted with a disk for loading a small charge of nitro powder, one disk for 10 grains and one for 12 grains of Laflin & Rand Sporting Rifle Smokeless.” His detailed account of the procedure, including drawings and tables, were published in 1899. 49 Next, Beckwith invented a safety device for firearms that was “applicable to single and double action revolvers and rifles and shot guns.”50 For this invention, he was offered a fifteen thousand dollar capital stock and

44 Delta City Library, Beckwith Photograph Collection, Identifier 030gp.tif.

45 Kelly, “Reminiscences,”1; This document is also

46 Frank A. Beckwith, “Affliction, Agony and Torture,” 5, 6, 8.

47 Ibid.

48 Jessie Lynn Cook, “His Knowledge Ever Grows,” 1950-1951, typescript in the possession of Jane Beckwith.

49 Frank A. Beckwith, “A Powder Measure,” Shooting and Fishing, November 9, 1899, 68-69.

50 Wyoming Pun, April 28, 1906.

published in Frank Beckwith, Indian Joe: In Person and in Background (Delta: DuWill Publishing Company, 1975).

A caricature of Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany drawn by Frank Beckwith during World War I.

BECKWITH PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION, DELTA CITY LIBRARY

10 per cent royalty on all cash sales. In 1907, Beckwith patented an automatic temperature regulator, which, in conjunction with an electric thermostat, provided a means to automatically control the heat supply to the desired degree during both day and night. It was equally efficient on furnaces or boilers.51 The device was manufactured by the Jewell Manufacturing Company in Auburn, New York, who advertised it as “The Jewell Controller with Time Clock Attachment.” According to the advertisement, there would be “No shivering or ‘catching cold’ on chilly mornings when the Jewell Control is looking after your comfort.”52

After living in Delta a short time, Beckwith discovered a new fascination—the history and culture of local American Indians. Customers consistently brought to the bank Indian artifacts that they had unearthed while plowing and working the fields, and Beckwith rapidly developed an anthropological interest in the study of Indians.53 Over the years, Beckwith amassed an extensive collection of Indian artifacts, which he housed in the Chronicle offices. The artifacts, some of which were eventually returned to their owners, attracted a large number of visitors both locally and from afar, and Beckwith was always happy to share his knowledge. Beckwith also fulfilled a life-long dream when he traveled to New Mexico to visit the Pueblo Indians. He made lantern slides of the photographs he took during the trip and gave lectures about the Pueblo Indians that eventually included information about Millard County Indians as well.54

This photograph of the sun emblem petroglyph was taken by Frank Beckwith in Braffet Canyon, near Summit in Iron County in 1939.

Inspired by his fascination with Indian artifacts, Beckwith also undertook the study of the petroglyphs in the area, and became an authority on petroglyphs in Utah. He and Charles Kelly traveled all over the state, photographing and attempting to interpret the engravings. With the help of Joseph J. Pickyavit, a Native American who resided in Kanosh and who was known locally as “Indian Joe,” Beckwith attempted to deduce what certain petroglyphs depicted. He published several articles and photographs about

51 Frank A. Beckwith, Automatic Temperature Regulator, patented March 26, 1907, No. 848,280, copy in the possession of Jane Beckwith, Delta, Utah.

52 “70 at 7-” Jewell Manufacturing Company Advertisement, copy in the possession of Jane Beckwith, Delta, Utah.

53 Hunsaker, “A History of the Millard County Chronicle,” 29.

54 Ibid., 67.

FRANK ASAHEL BECKWITH

BECKWITH PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION, DELTA CITY LIBRARY

photograph of a Navajo woman and girl was taken by Frank Beckwith in Delta in 1948.

petroglyphs in popular and professional journals such as the Saturday Evening Post, the Desert Magazine, National Pictographic Society Newsletter, El Palecio, and in early issues of the Utah Historical Quarterly . According to Kelly, these articles made Beckwith one of the first people to write about the petroglyphs, as for many years archaeologists and ethnologists had considered them taboo.55

Pursuing his study of petroglyphs gave Beckwith an even deeper appreciation of Indian culture. “Because of his deep study of Indian lore,” Kelly states, “[Frank] was accepted immediately and always enjoyed his visits with these Indians. I believe he learned more of the lore and mental processes of these Indians than any other white man. His great ambition at this time was to be able to forget he was white, and live as an Indian long enough to understand them perfectly.”56 Beckwith is even said to have had an Indian name, Chief SEV-VI-TOOTS, although it is not known if he was given it by the Indians or gave it to himself.57 Because of his time spent with the local Indians, Beckwith eventually wrote a book about them. Titling his book Indian Joe: In Person and in Background, Beckwith focused on the family and culture of Joe Pickyavit and his people. 58 At first he produced six copies of the original manuscript himself, setting the type on an old Linotype and providing his own illustrations and photographs. The book has been called “a grandiose task and a great tribute to his friend Indian Joe and the other Paiutes…The appeal of the book is the personal account of one man’s reaction to the friendship of another.”59

Beckwith’s explorations of the Millard County area in his quest for petroglyphs also sparked his interest in the geology of the region. Delta and the surrounding area were once the bottom of Lake Bonneville, and the ter-

55 Kelly, “Frank A. Beckwith, Reminiscences,” 2.

56 Ibid.

57 Jane Beckwith, interview.

58 Beckwith, Indian Joe, xiii.

59 Frank A. Beckwith, Indian Joe: In Person and Background (Delta: DuWil Publishing Company, 1975), v. In 1975, twenty four years after the first six copies were published, the grandchildren of Beckwith published a thousand copies of the book. According to Dorena Martineau, a staff member at the administrative office of the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah, this book is still used extensively to answer questions they receive; telephone conversation with Dorena Martineau, December 13, 2012.

This

FRANK ASAHEL BECKWITH

races made by its shorelines are visible on surrounding mountains. Beckwith first studied and photographed the Pahvant Butte, a volcanic crater built up from the bottom of the lake. He then began to study the House Mountains, west of Delta, where he found his first fossil trilobites. Beckwith later found more trilobites in the Wheeler Amphitheatre, and west through Marjum Pass and Wahwah Valley. Curious to learn more about the fine specimens he was finding everywhere, Beckwith ordered every available book on the subject. He had an impressively large collection of various types of fossils, including microscopic trilobites no larger than a flyspeck.

Over the years, Beckwith sent thousands of his collected trilobites to the Smithsonian Institution, but one fossil in particular stood out over the others. Encouraged by Kelly, Beckwith sent the Smithsonian a trilobitesque fossil that had been given to him by Emory John, a farmer in Clear Lake, Utah. The fossil, as it turned out, was actually a new genus of merostome, and was the first one ever found in Millard County. Experts at the Smithsonian named the fossil Beckwithia typa, and paleontologist Charles Elmer Resser wrote about it in a professional publication. 60 Beckwith’s daughter Athena reported that having the fossil named after him was the greatest honor that had ever come to her father, and that he would rather have had the write-up about the fossils than a thousand dollars.61 Another unique feature on the specimen was named after Emory John.

Along with petroglyphs and trilobites, Frank Beckwith was known for discovering and naming various historic landmarks in the area. In 1926, Beckwith and Mormon Bishop Joseph Damron were credited with discoveringthe resemblance of the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith in a volcanic rock. The formation is known today by various names, such as the

60 Charles Elmer Resser, “A new Middle Cambrian Merostome Crustacean,” Proceedings U.S. National Museum, Vol. 79, ART.33 68272-31. A sampling of the accession records from the Smithsonian Institution, United States National Museum record: April 21, 1927, twenty-seven specimens of trilobites from the Middle Cambrian of Utah; July 6, nineteen hundred specimens of Middle Cambrian trilobites of Antelope Springs, Utah and forty slabs containing Cambrian and Ordovician fossils, from Utah; January 5, 1928, two hundred specimens of Cambrian trilobites and two slabs of Ordovician fossils from Nevada.

61 Hunsaker, “A History of the Millard County Chronicle,” 66-67.

BECKWITH PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION, DELTA CITY LIBRARY

Frank Beckwith speaking at the dedicatory cermony of a monument at Mountain Meadows on September 10, 1932, the seventy-fifth anniversary of the tragic massacre.

“Great Stone Face,” “Guardian of the Desert,” and “Keeper of the Desert.”62 Beckwith also played an important role in exploring and naming landforms in the area around what is today Arches National Park. Local residents of Grand County had explored the beautiful rock formations for many years, and as early as 1917, Delicate Arch was featured on the front page of the local newspaper and heralded as “Scenic Wonder Near Moab.” The potential for tourism in the area was soon evident, and eventually led to President Herbert Hoover signing an executive order creating Arches National Monument on April 12, 1929. In 1933-34, an official expedition was organized and sent into the Arches to prepare a map of the area and to conduct an official archaeological investigation of the new monument.63

Due to his knowledge and experience as a geologist, explorer, and historian of the area, Frank A. Beckwith was selected as the expedition’s leader. Along with about fifteen trained scientists and assistants, Beckwith surveyed the area, and the group named and renamed many of the landforms. Frank Beckwith is credited with naming Landscape Arch. By the end of March 1934, the team had completed their work for less than ten thousand dollars. Beckwith followed up the expedition by publishing an official report, and he “also wrote several articles publicizing the area. Maps and a geologic survey were also published as a result of the expedition.”64

After traveling so extensively, and studying the archaeology, geology, and history of mid-Utah so thoroughly, Beckwith decided to write a guide to the area entitled Trips to Points of Interest in Millard and Nearby. For this book, he “drew materials from his large library of scientific works, sorted it, removed the technical terms, and gave the boys a presentation very readable, highly informative, and entertaining.”65 Beckwith dedicated the book to the Boy Scouts of Millard County, whom he had accompanied on many trips into the desert and given many talks on astronomy, because he felt that “The Boy Scouts are taught to do a ‘good turn.’—Well here’s a ‘good turn’ done to them.” 66 The Boy Scouts sold the guidebook door to door, and all proceeds went to support their activities. The publication remained a popular guide for the local people and for visitors to the area for many years.

As is probably quite clear by now, Frank Beckwith was a prolific writer. Besides his hundreds of editorials for the Chronicle, his articles on petroglyphs and trilobites, and his books on Indian Joe and places to see in Millard County, Beckwith also published articles relating to banking in Journal of the American Bankers Association, Inter-mountain Banker, and Coast Banking. He

62 Frank A. Beckwith, Trips to Points of Interest in Millard and Nearby (Springville: Art City Publishing, 1947), 4; “Does the Great Stone Face Really Resemble the Prophet Joseph?,” Deseret News, May 9, 2010.

63 Richard A. Firmage. History of Grand County (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society and Grand County Commission), 1996, 270.

64 Ibid.

65 Frank A. Beckwith, Trips to Points of Interest, 4.

66 Ibid.; For his contribution to the Boy Scouts of America, Beckwith was presented with their Honorary Tenderfoot Badge by President George Albert Smith of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints at a ceremony in Salt Lake City.

FRANK ASAHEL BECKWITH

wrote many feature articles for the Deseret News and the Salt Lake Tribune , as well as for other small Utah newspapers. Although Beckwith was not a Mormon, the official Mormon publication The ImprovementEra published fourteen articles under his legal name and a further seven articles under his pen name, Mrs. Grace Wharton Montaigne, between 1925 and 1930.67 Articles published included “First Issue of the Deseret News,” “Historic Old Cove Fort,” and “Recipe for a Wedding Cake,” which addressed the items needed for a successful marriage. Some of these articles were illustrated with his own photographs.

Beckwith also wrote many essays and articles that were never published. He compiled numerous scrapbooks of various lengths and for a multiplicity of subjects, including one for his granddaughter, one for his daughter, and one for historical sites. He also wrote extensive essays on various topics, such as a seventeen page essay called “Thoughts on the Fossil,” and composed long letters to friends. Beckwith would have liked to have had more of his works published, a wish that stemmed from a sincere desire to share his knowledge rather than any concern about becoming wealthy, but, as noted by Charles Kelly, “Frank had one very unfortunate fault. When he became intensely interested in a subject, he seemed to take for granted that everyone else was almost as well informed as himself. Consequently…. he would dive into the middle of a discussion rather than begin at the beginning or carry through. This was the only thing that prevented him from selling various articles he wrote.”68 Nevertheless, Beckwith served as an inspiration to other writers, including Kelly, who dedicated his book Outlaw Trail to him, because he first introduced Kelly to the story of Butch Cassidy. Kelly also fashioned the character “Fossil Hunter” in Sand and Sagebrush after Beckwith.69

Frank A. Beckwith continued his work at the Chronicle and his many other projects and activities until he died from a heart ailment at the age of seventy-four on June 11, 1951, at the Fillmore Hospital. His funeral was conducted in Delta by the Tintic Lodge No. 9. Free and Accepted Masons. He was buried in the Delta City Cemetery. In 1966, Beckwith was inducted

67 It is not known why he used the pen name of Grace Wharton Montaigne or why the Improvement Era would publish his article under this name. However, one of his favorite authors was Michel de Montaigne.

68 Kelly, “Reminiscences.”

69 Kelly, “Tribute.”

Frank Beckwith and his friend and fellow historian, Charles Kelly, December 12, 1948.

BECKWITH PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION, DELTA CITY LIBRARY

into the Utah Newspaper Hall of Fame in recognition of the considerable contributions he made to his community and to the Utah newspaper publishing world through his many years operating the Chronicle . 70 But Beckwith was much more than a newspaperman. He was a good father and grandfather, who drew cartoon horses for his granddaughter and took the time to explain to her the meanings behind the beaded figures on an Indian-made pair of gloves.71 He was an expert on the rock art, archaeology, geology, and history of the Millard County area, and he was always willing to consult in a kind and professional manner with any of the many amateurs and scientists who came to the desert seeking his knowledge. He was a story-teller and a teacher, both through the written and spoken word, and as one listened to him “the emptiness of the desert [began] to fade, and the wasteland [became] a fabulous storehouse of scientific information as well as an area of interest.”72 He was a photographer,a writer, and, above all, a scholar.

At the time of Beckwith’s death, Marvel Wilcox Clayton, a life-long resident of Millard County wrote:

Delta valley has lost one of its noblest citizens. It seems difficult to visualize Delta without an aristocratic-appearing, brilliant scholar—Mr. Beckwith. He was one of the few men you could know by name and sight only and yet feel an utter emptiness at the thought of not seeing him again. But we shall never forget him, for he has left so much to remember; and, after all, the most enduring treasures of life are those of memory.73

It is one such memory, recorded by his granddaughter in the year before his death, which perhaps provides the most timeless and encapsulating image of Frank Beckwith: “He sits by the fire smoking his pipe, eyes intent and foot swinging lazily. Dickens, Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Kipling, and Greek philosophers are friends to him. No amount of research is too much for [him]….His studies never end, his interests never end, his knowledge ever grows.”74

70 Frank S. only survived his father by five years. He died of a heart attack on May 12, 1956 in Delta. He is buried in the Delta City Cemetery, and was inducted into the Utah Newspaper Hall of Fame in 1984. The Millard County Chronicle was owned and operated by Robert and Inez Riding from 1958 until 1970. Since then the newspaper has been back in the hands of the family. Today, the newspaper is skillfully guided by Sue Beckwith Dutson, a daughter of Frank S. Beckwith and granddaughter of Frank A. Beckwith, and her partner and daughter-in-law Shellie Morris Dutson.

71 Cook, “His Knowledge Ever Grows.”

72 Don Howard, “Frank Beckwith—Desert Scholar,” Salt Lake Tribune, December 17, 1949.

73 Marvel Wilcox Clayton, letter to Jessie Lynn Cook, June 13, 1951, copy in the possession of Jane Beckwith.

74 Cook, “His Knowledge Ever Grows.”

In Memoriam

JAY M. HAYMOND

October 11, 1933 - January 12, 2013

Jay Melvin Haymond was born October 11, 1933. I would make his acquaintance at Brigham Young University in 1964, where he was pursuing a Master’s Degree in Political Science and History. In 1965 we both accepted positions at Dixie College in St. George, Utah. The college had recently moved to its new campus. We shared an office, he teaching both political science and history classes. He was faculty sponsor for the “Young Republicans”; I for the “Young Democrats” who numbered about one-fourth of the group he enjoyed.

We both left Dixie College in 1969; Jay to pursue his Ph.D. in history at the University of Utah, and I as “historic preservation officer” at the Utah State Historical Society. In August 1971, I was appointed Director, Utah State Historical Society, and Jay was completing his Ph.D. work.

John James, former librarian at the Society had resigned for health reasons, which allowed us to offer Dr. Haymond that job at the Society. Replacing John James was a major challenge for anyone, but librarian Jay would be asked within a few years to move the Society and its library treasures to new facilities, since Governor Scott Matheson and First Lady Norma chose to re-occupy the Kearns Mansion as the Governor’s residence.

The first move in 1978 was to the Crane Building located at 200 South and 300 West while the Denver and Rio Grande Depot was being renovated as the new and current home for the Utah State Historical Society. Again, Jay directed and managed the transfer of the many historical materials to the new location and put the new library facilities in top shape to serve the public and scholars.

Jay had a larger vision for his and the library’s role at the Society, which included collecting documents, expanding service, the education of those who would use the library, and giving greater attention to history groups and organizations throughout the state. To assist in that mission, Jay set up an “Oral History Program,” which interviewed hundreds of people so that their histories would be preserved and made accessible.

Secondly, he organized the state’s Geographic and Place Names Association, which collected data and educated the public and historians about that facet of Utah history. He would also help organize the Intermountain Archivists Association, which provided education services for the professional care and use of their documents, and for making them readily available to researchers who used these repositories. He helped organize the Utah Historic Trails Consortium to help understand, interpret, and preserve the trails that have been important in Utah’s past.

Jay’s penchant for marshaling all of the Utah history resources he could led him to move forward in organizing the Association of Utah Historians consisting of the staff at the Historical Society, public school teachers teaching Utah history, and professional historians at the various colleges, universities, and organizations in the state. Direct dividends of these organizational efforts were extensive. First off, with the celebration of the United States Bicentennial in 1976, Jay worked to secure the selection of Charles S. Peterson as the author of the Utah volume in the States and the Nation Series prepared under the direction of the American Association for State and Local History. With the Utah Statehood Centennial Celebration in 1996, Jay directed the compilation and publication of Utah: The Right Place , a one-volume history of Utah written by Thomas G. Alexander. It was his vision and involvement that led to the compilation of the twenty-nine volume Utah Centennial County History series as an important legacy of Utah’s centennial celebration in honor of Utah becoming the forty-fifth state.

Jay was also given administrative assignments as acting director of the Society in 1985 and 1986. His tenure at the Society came to an end with his retirement in 1998. He faced the long-term challenges of type I diabetes. He apprised colleagues of possible symptoms of troubles, but in my more than twenty years of working with him, only once did we need to intervene, using information he made certain we had been given. Jay was a mentor to younger members of the staff by encouraging them to further their research and study of Utah history. He believed that every community and group should actively engage its history with the best tools and resources available.

Upon retirement, Jay and his wife Pat continued to live in Salt Lake City; however, when their daughter Lise and her husband Mark Hansen moved to Illinois, they chose to follow. Pat died in 2003. Jay moved to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and then to Boise, Idaho, choosing to remainclose to family.

Jay died January 12, 2013, at age seventy-nine. He touched the lives of us who knew him personally. His integrity was always evident. His services to Utah history, and to the Utah State Historical Society are without peer. We thank you Dr. Jay M. Haymond on both counts.

Melvin T. Smith Former Director, Utah State Historical Society

BOOK REVIEWS

Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet By John G. Turner. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012. vii + 500 pp. Cloth, $35.00.)

JOHN G. TURNER, a Professor of Religious Studies at George Mason University and a non-Mormon, has written a major new biography on Brigham Young. Turner’s work is the most complete, in-depth study of the Mormon leader produced in some three decades. Not since Leonard J. Arrington’s landmark 1985 Brigham Young: American Moses has there been a comparable biography. Turner’s book is significant in several respects. First, it is the most thoroughly researched biography on Young yet produced. The author carefully utilizes the vast collection of Brigham Young papers in the LDS Church History Library. He has also drawn from manuscripts and primary sources in various other libraries and archives throughout the country. Turner has effectively mined these materials, resulting in a fresh look at Young as a complex and, in some ways, conflicted individual. These documents also reveal the Mormon leader as “sincere in his faith [whose] highest loyalty was to his church and its kingdom”(5).

A second major contribution is Turner’s skill in placing Young “within the context of mid-nineteenth century American religion and politics” (viii). Turner carefully discusses Young’s early activities as a struggling artisan in upstate New York, including his encounter with the “welter of religions” in the so-called Burned-Over District and his continuing struggles with “spiritual despair” as “a pious Christian seeker”(14,17, 19). All this preceded Young joining Joseph Smith’s still-fledgling Mormon church in 1832. Turner traces Young’s activities following his Mormon conversion and links his extraordinary missionary success in England to the hard times known as the Hungry 1840s.

Turning to Young’s emergence as Mormonism’s principal leader following Joseph Smith’s death, the author discusses the Latter-day Saints’ problematic relationship with federal authorities relative to political developments in American society at large. These included westward expansion, sectionalism, and Reconstruction—all of which informed Young’s actions as the Mormon prophet-president.

Third, Turner provides a detailed, frank examination of Brigham Young’s polygamous household. He carefully considers the changing dynamics within Young’s ever-growing family, as it evolved over some five decades. Young’s first two monogamous marriages were followed by a series of plural marriages, commencing with Lucy Decker in 1842 and ending in 1872 to Hannah Tapfield—his fifty-fifth and last wife.

Turner forthrightly details Young’s dilemma in satisfying the oftenconflicting desires of these women. This was due, in part, to the fact that Young had his favorites—specifically, Emmeline Free and Amelia Folsom.

In contrast, a number of Young’s other wives expressed dissatisfaction, and twelve women abandoned Young’s polygamous household through either divorce or separation or both. Turner quotes Young’s daughter Susa Young Gates who stated that her father “could not pay equal attention” to all his wives (327). Young himself admitted “that no polygamous husband could always satisfy all of his wives,” lamenting, “Where is the man who has wives and all of them think he is doing just right to them? I do not know such a man” (181).

Fourth, Turner offers enlightening insights concerning Young’s inner thoughts and anxieties. In discussing Young’s troubled psyche at the time of the Utah War, the author vividly describes his subject’s “unusual and sometimes intimate dreams. In various dreams Colonel [Albert Sidney] Johnston and his old nemesis Lieutenant Sylvester Mowery tried to kill [Young], enemies chased him into a ravine, and a California emigrant first attacked him with a bowie knife before deciding to take his own life. In yet another dream, a woman approached him privately and indicated that ‘she wished to have connection with him.’” And in a third dream, “one of the new territorial judges ordered him [Young] to relieve himself in public.” Turner concludes, “The intimate disclosures and the hints at Young’s sexuality were out-of-character for a man usually circumspect about such topics” (289).

The strengths of Turner’s biography notwithstanding, it is disappointing in several respects. A complete list of Young’s fifty-five wives and fifty-seven children is conspicuously absent—a striking omission given the author’s detailed discussion of Young’s involvement with polygamy. More seriously, the author fails to discuss other aspects of Young’s family life, in particular his interactions with his children. Other than brief mention of Young’s less-than-successful efforts to groom his three oldest sons for leadership positions within the LDS church hierarchy, little more is said about his role as a father. Turner also fails to elaborate on Young’s evolving relationship with his father and brothers. This oversight is perplexing given Turner’s earlier, detailed discussion of Young’s difficult relationship with his authoritarian father as contrasted to the amicable relationships with his brothers.

Even more problematic is the tone and tenor of Turner’s narrative, painting a generally negative portrait of the Mormon leader. Granted, the author acknowledges Young’s notable accomplishments, specifically his success in persuading the largest number of Mormons to accept his leadership claims in wake of Joseph Smith’s 1844 assassination and his skill in shepherding thousands of his followers to the Great Basin and subsequently settling them in some 350 scattered settlements, thereby earning him the title, “the greatest colonizer in American history” (3).

But, in general, the biography focuses on the less-uplifting aspects of the Mormon leader’s behavior and actions. Turner repeatedly notes Young’s

teaching of the so-called Adam-God theory, along with the “doctrine of blood atonement.” “Several brutal acts of violence” resulted from the latter teaching during the turbulent 1850s, which Turner claims were either “explicitly authorized” by Young or “condoned” by him (258–63). As for Young’s role in the infamous 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre, Turner states that the Mormon leader “fomented the hatred and anxiety that made it conceivable for Mormons … to slaughter men, women, and children,” adding that his “saber-rattling, militia operations and Indian policy contributed” to the atrocity (280). In its aftermath, Young “denigrated the massacre’s victims and defended the Mormon murderers” and placed “full blame” for the massacre itself on the local Indians (309–10). Such observations prompt Turner to ask, rhetorically, “Could Young have accomplished what he did without leading his people into the darker chapters of Mormon history, such as the excesses of the [Mormon] reformation, the handcart tragedy, and the Mountain Meadows Massacre?” (410).

Despite its deficiencies, John G. Turner’s Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet provides significant new information and presents the Mormon leader from a fresh, provocative perspective. It, moreover, chronicles Young’s own religious odyssey, including his tenacity in protecting both his church and dedicated followers. As the author astutely notes, Young’s “faith became his ‘all in all’” in that he “fully accepted that Joseph Smith was God’s prophet” and, following the latter’s death, saw “himself occupying a similar, divinely appointed position” (4–5). Turner’s important work, while not completely superseding Arrington’s American Moses (admittedly, an overly effusive work), is certain to stimulate debate concerning the validity of either scholar’s portrait. Indeed, the basic dilemma facing all Mormon Studies scholars, as sagaciously noted by Turner himself, is that “the field of Mormon history is a hall of mirrors, full of distorted and incomplete reflections of nearly every event” (viii).

Civil War Saints Edited by Kenneth L. Alford. (Provo and Salt Lake City: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University and Deseret Book Company, 2012. xxxiv + 569 pp. Cloth, $31.99.)

THE WORD THAT IMMEDIATELY comes to mind when the reader first takes this book in hand is “Wow!” In thick and slick coffee-table form, the volume is heavy, both literally and figuratively. With the sesquicentennial of the Civil War upon us, a new book about how the Mormons dealt with

NEWELL G. BRINGHURST Visalia, California

the bloody quarrel seemed inevitable, but what was not so inevitable was that it would be this good and this complete in its coverage of the Mormon experience with the national travail. While E. B. Long’s The Saints and the Union (1981) dealt principally with events and issues within Utah Territory and its western environs during the war, and Margaret Fisher’s 1929 book satisfied genealogists, Kenneth Alford has collected nineteen scholarly essays that delve into virtually every aspect of the conflict’s connections to Mormon life and thought, from Lincoln’s relationship with the Mormons (Mary Jane Woodger) to a reprint of the late Harold Schindler’s revisionist analysis of the Bear River Massacre (with an addendum by Ephriam Dickson). In brief, the volume gives much truth to the cliché about “leaving no stone unturned.”

At the end of the essays, Alford appends three documents edited by William MacKinnon on Civil War strategies “Rooted in Utah” and then an exhaustive, and eminently usable, bibliography. After a brief analysis of the work of Camp Douglas photographer Charles Beckwith (Ephriam Dickson), there follow almost one hundred fifty pages devoted to identifying hundreds of Latter-day Saints who qualified for the title of “Civil War Veterans,” nearly a fifth of them Confederates. The appendices present not only genealogical and sometimes biographical data on the soldiers but also a painstaking descriptionof research methods that led to their identification. Although not a few of them became Mormons after the war and many were members of Lot Smith’s mounted company protecting the Overland Trail, the findings perhaps challenge the common notion that only a handful of Latter-day Saints served in either contending army. As a genealogical tool alone, Alford’s volume would be worth the price, but the rest of the book presents enough information and riveting analysis to double its value.

For readers familiar with the history of nineteenth-century Utah, there are few surprises in the collection of essays, particularly with reference to Mormon ambivalence and virtual neutrality during the hostilities. Apostle John Taylor declared during the early days of the war, “We know no North, no South, no East, no West,” a statement that provided Richard Bennett with a title for his contribution on Mormon interpretations of the war (100). Actually, Taylor’s remark was among the mildest of the hierarchy’s condemnatory comments about the United States. “The destruction of the nation is sealed,” proclaimed Heber Kimball (97). His friend Brigham Young’s near delight with the apparent dissolution of the Union and his visceral dislike for Abraham Lincoln, whom he considered “as weak as water,” helped fuel his apocalyptic vision of the conflict, his belief in the justice of the war’s carnage, and his hope that the isolated saints could stay essentially aloof from it all (69). Other essays nevertheless demonstrate that the war had inexorable effects on Young’s followers and their homeland in the West. The establishment of Camp Douglas, chronicled by William

MacKinnon and Ken Alford, as well as the role of the Grand Army of the Republic (Ken Alford) and other carpetbaggers in Utah (Andrew Skinner) in the aftermath of the war directly affected Utah and the Mormons. Also interesting in this respect was the war’s impact on Mormon emigration (William Hartley).

The editor and his collaborators have constructed an invaluable resource for Utahns, as well as for Civil War historians and genealogists. The collection contains a few quibbling flaws, among them some unnecessary redundancy and, more understandably, an unevenness of quality, but the overall achievement is prodigious.

GENE A. SESSIONS Weber State University

Edward Hunter Snow: Pioneer—Educator—Statesman. ByThomas G. Alexander. (Norman: Arthur H. Clark Company, 2012. 432 pp. Cloth, $34.95.)

THOMAS ALEXANDER has produced another significant book, this one a biography and one of the most important of the many biographies about Utah history. It is closely related to his major work, Mormonism in Transition (1986). Both books describe Utah’s change, between 1880 and 1930, from an agricultural society and village system to a society at the beginning of urbanism and industrialization. The current work focuses on remote southern Utah, where Edward Hunter Snow was an entrepreneur, political leader, educator, and ecclesiastical leader. One of Alexander’s interpretive points is that for Latter-day Saints there existed little distinction between secular and sacred activities. For Snow, promoting a telephone system or a canal company was a community effort worth religious as well as government labor.

Edward Hunter Snow was the son of Apostle Erastus Snow, the great colonizer of Utah’s Dixie. The elder Snow deeply influenced his son, though Edward did not become a polygamist. In this he served as an example of the transition taking place within Mormonism. The younger Snow spent his youth farming, but he also took education seriously and promoted it all his life. After his 1885 marriage to Sarah Hannah Nelson, Snow served the LDS church in a number of capacities; his callings included missionary, tithing clerk (which allowed him to learn much about the local economy), and high councilor. In 1888, Snow faced the difficulty of his father’s death. Anthony W. Ivins—Snow’s brother-in-law and a high-ranking member of the LDS hierarchy who nonetheless did not enter polygamy—then became his role model.

A life-long Democrat, Snow committed himself to public service. In 1894, Snow (at only twenty-nine years old) and Ivins both served in the State Constitutional Convention. After ratification and statehood came to Utah, “Tony” Ivins convinced Edward to run for the legislature. Snow served for two terms, but further ecclesiastical assignments soon occupied his time. Among these was a calling as president of the St. George LDS stake, a capacity Snow filled for the next twenty-four years. The stake at that time included the area from Ely to Bunkerville, Nevada, and from Harmony, Utah, to Mt. Trumbull, Arizona, as well as the heartland of Utah’s Dixie. To visit this vast area, Snow regularly traveled fifteen hundred miles by buggy.

At the beginning of his term as stake president, Snow suggested the following goals to his fellow stake leaders: build an ice plant, get electric lights into the area, develop a water system, and build a high school. They approved. Snow promoted the building of a public school (with grades one to eight) named the Woodward School, in 1901. Woodward School’s success made it sensible to have a high school. Woodward was a public school, but Snow knew the church would more likely sponsor an academy. After the LDS First Presidency approved the building of what became Dixie College, Snow and his colleagues scoured the stake to raise matching funds for the church donation of $20,000. The Stake Board of Education directed the college until 1935, when the State of Utah took it over.

All during his stake presidency, Snow promoted economic development. He owned a flour mill and several farms and founded the St. George Bank. Yet Snow faced the challenge of geographical isolation because the railroad never reached St. George, which limited economic growth. In 1930, Snow thrilled to watch as the Arrowhead Trail (with his support) became Highway 91.

Sarah Hannah Snow was a powerful supporter of her husband’s career. Initially she feared that Edward would bring a second wife home from his mission, but he remained a determined monogamist throughout his life. Some women may have envied Hannah’s large home and other advantages, but her life was challenging. Edward’s many positions required him to leave home often and required her to regularly host church, state, and financial officials. Further, the couple had seven children, the youngest born when Hannah was forty-five years old.

In 1931, the LDS church released Snow as stake president and called him to serve as the president of the St. George Temple. Meanwhile, he had worked nearly full-time in Salt Lake City since 1925 as chair of the State Board of Equalization and Assessment. Snow felt strongly about reforming the state’s tax structure. As an outspoken Democrat, he had considerable influence in writing the legislation that led to the creation of the State Tax Commission. That passed the legislature in March 1931, following a tough

series of negotiations. Governor George Dern nominated Snow to be chair of the new commission, but he declined in order to return to his southern Utah responsibilities. Snow had only a year to live.

Edward Hunter Snow provides all historians with a model in the use of documents. Alexander had hundreds of documents at his disposal, including Snow’s journals, letters, and talks; the extensive collections of the Harold B. Lee Library and Archive at Brigham Young University; the collections of the LDS Church History Library, the Utah State Historical Society; Dixie State College; and the Washington County News. Alexander has been over this ground before and has mastered it again. For instance, his chapter on the tax question provides a clear, complete description of all the issues and negotiations involved, even as it details Utah’s transition into modernity. On the issue of documentation, the book is outstanding. Alexander masterfully describes the life of a man hardly known by Utahns and causes one to consider seriously the demands and meanings of a life spent in civic service.

DOUGLAS D. ALDER Dixie State College

Coal in Our Veins: A Personal Journey. By Erin Ann Thomas. (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2012. 274 pp. Cloth, $29.95.)

MANY ACCOUNTS of the development of the Utah coal industry tend to focus on the important role of industrial immigrants from southern Europe. But before the Italians and Greeks and South Slavs came, there were the Welsh and other immigrants from the coal districts of Britain, who composed the greater part of the mining workforce in the nineteenth century. One of those Welsh miners was Evan Thomas, who immigrated to Utah from Merthyr Tydfil in 1874 with his wife, Margaret Davis, and their five children. They settled initially in Logan but within a few years relocated to Scofield, where their two eldest sons, Frederick and Evan, Jr., were among the two hundred or more men and boys killed in the May 1, 1900, Winter Quarters mine explosion. Evan, Sr., and a third son, Zephaniah, would normally have been with them in Mine Number One, but Evan, “feeling he had been given an inferior room, ‘rose to his full five foot three inches and roundly denounced the foreman, the superintendent, and the Pleasant Valley Coal Company generally before taking his youngest working son and heading home’”(60). Zephaniah later made his way into management and served as mine foreman at Castle Gate during a tumultuous period that included the 1922 strike; the mine explosion on March 8, 1924, that killed 172 men; and the subsequent surge in Ku Klux Klan activity that culminated in the lynching of Robert Marshall on

June 18, 1925, for the murder of Castle Gate mine guard Milton Burns.

Zeph’s son Robert, whose early memories included the Utah National Guard protecting his family’s home during the 1922 strike, later worked alongside his father in a small Oregon mine. It was Robert who initiated the family’s break from coal mining, earning a doctoral degree from Columbia University and becoming a prominent professor and administrator at Brigham Young University. Author Erin Ann Thomas dedicates her book to Robert, her grandfather.

As the title suggests, this is a highly personal effort to come to terms with the author’s mining heritage, a book that combines family memoir with investigative journalism. Impelled by the memory of seeing both her grandfather and her father weeping as they watched the old movie, How Green Was My Valley , Thomas made a pilgrimage back to the ancestral landscape of South Wales where she visited with miners’ families and examined the human impacts of mine disasters, including the 1966 Aberfan disaster in which a waste dump landslide crushed an elementary school, killing 144. She also noted the disruption of lives that followed upon the closure of the last deep pits. From Wales, she returned to Utah and retraced her family history through Scofield, Winter Quarters, Sunnyside, and Castle Gate, some of them now ghost towns where only the cemeteries remain to tell the story of life and death in the mines. Then the book’s focus shifts to a series of visits the author made from her current home near Washington, D. C., to the coal country of West Virginia. There she met with the families and neighbors of the thirteen miners who died in the 2006 Sago explosion and observed the environmental impacts of the growing practice of mountaintop removal.

Coal in Our Veins remains personal even as it ranges farther and farther from Thomas’s own family heritage. The author’s own experiences, impressions, and thoughts are always at the forefront. However, the character of the book changes in the later chapters, becoming more polemical as the author develops a critique of the role of coal in our economy and society. The image of “coal in our veins,” which initially referred to a family heritage of mining, broadens to include a clinical reference to the author’s asthma, aggravated by atmospheric pollutants from coal-burning power plants. In the final chapters, beginning with “The Energy Future of America,” the “coal in our veins” refers also to the nation’s excessive dependence on cheap fossil fuels and the social and environmental costs of that dependence.

The author’s arguments are obviously deeply felt, but the latter part of the book is, on the whole, less satisfying than the earlier portions. Thomas acknowledges that some coal mines are better, safer, than others, and that many miners take pride in their skills and find fulfillment in the fellowship of their comrades. She grants the economic benefits of coal mining to local

communities, noting that is one of the best-compensated industrial occupations. Still, she would obviously prefer a future in which no men had to descend underground to earn a living, no hills were decapitated to uncover their treasures, and no coal-fired power plants spewed their particulate matter into the atmosphere. But like many other advocates of clean, renewable energy, she underestimates the massive scale of the transformation that would be required to replace the energy-density of fossil fuels: all of the windmill forests that would have to cover the hills, all of the quiet desert valleys filled with unsightly solar collectors; the shorelines sacrificed to tidal generation schemes and the pain to consumers compelled to pay more and more for the electricity on which their lifestyle depends.

EDWARD A. GEARY Huntington

The Midwife: A Biography of Laurine Ekstrom Kingston By Victoria D. Burgess. (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2012. xiv + 272 pp. Cloth, $26.95.)

LAURINE EKSTROM KINGSTON is a fascinating subject for biography. The first wife of the son of Charles Elden Kingston, founder of the Davis County Cooperative Society and the Mormon fundamentalist Latter-day Church of Christ (LDCC), Kingston dedicated much of her life to midwifery within her church community and outside of it. The Midwife is Victoria D. Burgess's attempt to share Kingston’s life and philosophy. In addition, The Midwife includes a brief history of one of the most notorious polygamist groups in the country, as well as Kingston's role in the home birth movement in Utah.

Born in Idaho in 1931, Kingston and her parents moved to Bountiful in 1935 to join the Davis County Cooperative Society. Her Mormon mother and Lutheran father were drawn to the Co-op primarily for its economic utopianism. All members consecrated their property to a common pool and drew upon the Co-op's funds when needed. Members denied themselves of worldly goods in order to keep their hearts pure. While many Co-op members entered into polygamist relationships, Kingston's father was never interested in taking a second wife.

With the approval of the Kingston leadership, Kingston finished high school and earned her Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN) degree in 1951. She soon found work at LDS Hospital. She married her “love match,” Leon Kingston, the eldest son of the churches founder Charles Elden. After Kingston became a mother she stayed home with her children. Eventually her husband took her sister Rowenna as a second wife. As her children grew older, Kingston felt herself “called” by God to serve as a midwife. A

spiritual person by nature, Kingston saw her work as divinely inspired and was described as having a “sixth sense” about the needs of both mother and baby. Her medical training ensured that she had a contingency plan in place should complications arise over the course of a delivery.

While Burgess reveals the basics of gendered power and an alternative economic arrangement within the Co-op and the LDCC, her characterization of the Kingston group is rather benign when compared to Andrea Moore-Emmett’s God’s Brothel (2004). Kingston's sister-wife Rowenna was one of the founding members of Tapestry Against Polygamy, an organization to help stop physical and sexual abuse within polygamist sects. Burgess briefly discusses Rowenna’s story and hints at moments where Kingston delivered babies from mothers who had been sexually abused. However, there is no mention of incestuous marriages, teen mothers, preventable deaths, or children born with birth defects (ranging from not having fingernails to fused limbs) as former polygamist women describe in God’s Brothel. For the reader expecting these claims to be verified by a midwife to fundamentalist polygamists, Burgess and Kingston offer only silence.

Perhaps this is due to Kingston's personal nature. Burgess explains that Kingston’s door was always open to anyone in need. In a delivery, Kingston’s primary objective was to ensure that both baby and mother were cared for, to introduce the child's spirit to the world, and to encourage instant bonding between mother and child. Kingston's career grew outside of her community as more parents chose home births. Her position as both an experienced LPN and a midwife allowed her to create bridges between sometimes antagonistic medical professionals and home birth advocates.

A biography written by a psychologist, Kingston's story does not come heavily footnoted or extensively connected to the background material one might expect of a professional historian. Drawing upon a series of interviews conducted with Kingston, at times it is difficult to discern Burgess's voice from that of her subject. Also problematic is a lack of linear storytelling that is essential to biography. This tendency to jump back and forth through time proves difficult for the reader, since biographical writing requires linear progression for structural support. Despite these flaws, the story of Laurine Ekstrom Kingston's life is an important addition to better understanding women’s roles in medicine, the home birth movement, and religious history in Utah and the United States.

MELISSA FERGUSON Utah Division of State History

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GARY TOPPING, Salt Lake City, 2014

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Utah Historical Quarterly was established in 1928 to publish articles, documents, and reviews contributing to knowledge of Utah history. The Quarterly is published four times a year by the Utah State Historical Society, 300 Rio Grande, Salt Lake City, Utah 84101. Phone (801) 245-7231 for membership and publications information. Members of the Society receive the Quarterly upon payment of the annual dues: individual, $30; institution, $40; student and senior citizen (age sixty-five or older), $25; business, $40; sustaining, $40; patron, $60; sponsor, $100.

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202 IN THIS ISSUE

204

230

“This Time of Crisis”: The Race-Based Anti-BYU Athletic Protests of 1968 to 1971

By Gary James Bergera

Mormon-Catholic Relations in Utah History: The Early Years By Gary Topping

249 Murder and Mapping in the “Land of Death,” Part I: The Walcott-McNally Incident By Robert S. McPherson

267

“The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here”: Utah Veterans and the Gettysburg Reunion of 1913

By Kenneth L. Alford and Ken Nelson 290 BOOK REVIEWS

Susan H. Swetnam, Books, Bluster, and Bounty: Local Politics and Intermountain West Carnegie Library Building Grants, 1898-1920 Reviewed by Jeff Nichols

Anne M. Butler, Across God’s Frontiers: Catholic Sisters in the American West, 1850-1920 Reviewed by Andrea Ventilla

Robert L. Dorman, Hell of a Vision: Regionalism and the Modern American West Reviewed by Brian Q. Cannon

Brock Cheney, Plain but Wholesome: Foodways of the Mormon Pioneers Reviewed by Melissa Coy Ferguson

Mark T. Smokov, He Rode with Butch and Sundance: The Story of Harvey “Kid Curry” Logan Reviewed by A. Joel Frandsen 297 BOOK NOTICES

IN THIS ISSUE

Conflict is surely one of the overriding themes of history, but with conflict also comes the opportunity for reconciliation. In the waning days of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln urged Americans to behave “with malice toward none, with charity for all,” doing “all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” This was a tall order: people clash with one another for complex reasons that cannot be easily dismissed. Even so, the reality of conflict and the hope of reconciliation unite this issue’s articles.

Athletics are, at least in part, about contest; in the midst of the civil rights movement, Brigham Young University’s athletic program became truly contested as activists used college sports to challenge racial inequality in the LDS church and in American society as a whole. From 1968 to 1971, the Cougars faced a tide of race-based demonstrations at their games. Some of these events escalated into memorable protests, such as the 1969 “black fourteen” incident in Laramie,

COVER:

ABOVE: Union and Confederate veterans reminiscing together at a 1913 reunion held in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.

Hashkéneinii Biye’, son of the noted Navajo headman Hashkéneinii, circa 1935–40. UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

Wyoming. Meanwhile, the momentum of social change became increasingly evident on the BYU campus itself, as our first article shows.

A century earlier, a young Catholic priest named Edward Kelly moved to Utah and soon thereafter crossed paths with Brigham Young. Their encounter came about because of a property dispute—a situation filled with the potential for disagreement. And yet, according to legend, Young acted in Kelly’s favor, and the two laid the foundation for a peaceful relationship between Catholics and Mormons in Utah. Our second article concludes that, in spite of real differences, leaders from both religions have fostered a climate of ecumenism. Author Gary Topping deals with a variety of sources in this article, encouraging us to consider questions about the quality of historical documents. Can we trust a document’s creator? What difference does that person’s perspective and motives make?

Our third article also examines the significance of perspective; it concerns clashes between Navajos and Anglos in the late nineteenth century. During that era, two white prospectors were murdered in an area of the Four Corners region that government agents called the “land of death.” Determining culpability for the crime was difficult, to say the least: a number of individuals presented conflicting reports, while an inadequate knowledge of the terrain hampered the effectiveness of investigations bywhite authorities. A history of strife between local whites and Indians only compounded these problems. It was a situation rife with trouble and misunderstanding.

The summer issue of Utah Historical Quarterly concludes with the story of Union and Confederate veterans who, in 1913, met under friendly circumstances to commemorate their battles of fifty years earlier. Utah sent a party of its own Civil War veterans to that 1913 Gettysburg reunion, though not without a little contemporary bickering among politicians. Still, the Gettysburg reunion was a satisfying event, where what might have seemed unthinkable before—the development of friendships among former enemies—occurred.

BY GARY JAMES BERGERA

Prior to mid-1978, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints prohibited black men of African lineage from its priesthood. The Salt Lake City–based church also barred black men and women from most of its sacred temple ceremonies. The

Coach Tommy Hudspeth and three BYU football players, 1965.

Gary James Bergera is the managing director of the Smith-Pettit Foundation, Salt Lake City, Utah. He appreciates the advice and assistance of Lester E. Bush, LaVell Edwards, Holly George, Duane E. Jeffery, Ron Priddis, Paul C. Richards, Paul A. Ruffner, Brian Walton, and Margaret Blair Young. All errors are Bergera’s own.

“This Time of Crisis”: The Race-Based Anti-BYU Athletic Protests of 1968-1971

HAROLD B. LEE SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

church taught that the restriction was God’s will.1 Beginning especially during the American civil rights era of the 1960s, the church found itself at the center of a growing controversy over its policy, which many outsiders branded as de facto racism. Soon, critics began to focus on the church’s educational showpiece, Brigham Young University (BYU), and its intercollegiate athletic program. The present study centers on the race-based anti-BYU intercollegiate athletic protests of the late 1960s and early 1970s, but first reviews BYU’s encounters with issues of race specifically relating to blacks. Protestors portrayed BYU as a symbol of both LDS discrimination and American racism generally. At the same time, tension regarding the church’s policy existed within the BYU community itself, as the orthodox stance of the school’s hierarchy—embodied by its outspoken president, Ernest L.Wilkinson— occasionally clashed with the growing momentum of social change.

During the mid-twentieth century, the percentage of LDS students at BYU hovered at about 95 percent.2 Yet despite such seeming homogeneity, students were not entirely “unified on social, political, or even religious questions,” according to historian Heather Rigby.3 Two of the earliest references to blacks made in letters to BYU’s student newspaper support Rigby’s claim. “If those who laughed so loudly at those jokes about negroes [at a campus assembly],” Virginia B. Smith wrote in October 1948, “had stopped to consider whether that would really be the decent thing to do, there would probably have been very little . . . laughter.”4 BYU’s student council wrote, “One of our students has been the object of discrimination because of race . . . [as] a member of the Negro race . . . and we feel that as fellow students the entire studentbody should protest such discrimination to the utmost of our ability. It is a tradition of the Brigham Young University that men be accepted for their worth and not for the color of their skin.”5

In 1954, BYU students debated the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Brown v. Board of Education decision banning segregation in public schools, as well as related developments. 6 BYU’s conservative lawyer-turned-president,

1 Lester E. Bush and Armand L. Mauss, eds., Neither White nor Black: Mormon Scholars Confront the Race Issue in a Universal Church (Midvale, UT: Signature Books, 1984); Newell G. Bringhurst and Darron T. Smith, eds., Black and Mormon (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004).

2 Brigham Young University, Brigham Young University Enrollment Resume, 1977–78 (Provo, UT: BYU Office of Institutional Research and Planning, September 1978), 3, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah; John Hawkins et al., “A Study of Current Student Attitudes about Brigham Young University and their Implications for University Fund Raising Programs,” BYU College of Business, Graduate Student Research Report, No. 13, 1969, 47–48, Perry Special Collections.

3 Heather Rigby, “Responses to Racial Issues at Brigham Young University, 1963–1972,” 1997, 8, MSS SC 2897, Perry Special Collections.

4 Virginia B. Smith, letter, Universe, October 14, 1948.

5 ASBYU Executive Legislative Council, letter, Universe, March 3, 1949.

6 Ardis Smith, “CRM [Civil Rights Movement], the Daily Universe, and the 1950s–Part One,” March 19, 2009, accessed November 27, 2011, www.juvenileinstructor.org/crm-the-daily-universe-and-the1950s-part-one; F. Ross Peterson, “‘Blindside’: Utah on the Eve of Brown v. Board of Education,” Utah Historical Quarterly 73 (Winter 2005): 4–20.

Ernest Wilkinson, told LDS official Adam S. Bennion a week after Brown that the “Negro Question” “arises more frequently and gives us more trouble than any other.”7 By late 1958, some students began to wonder if BYU’s lack of engagement with integration issues might contribute to “racial prejudice” on campus.8 Other students approvingly quoted LDS leader Mark E. Petersen’s August 27, 1954, speech to church educators: “The negro seeks absorption with the white race. He will not be satisfied until he achieves it by intermarriage. That is his objective and we must face it. We must not allow our feelings to carry us away, nor must we feel so sorry for the negroes that we will open our arms and embrace them with everything we have.”9

Rebuttals followed. “While some students strongly supported segregation,” historian Ardis Smith comments, “other students spoke out against [segregation]. . . . One student declared that the current racial strife was rooted in ‘the miscarriage of the meddlings of the post–Civil War Republican Congress.’ . . . Another student . . . stat[ed] that segregation was not truly decided upon or supported by the people because ‘thousands of negroes [were] kept from the polls by fear and unfair practices.’” “BYU students had very different views and opinions of the civil rights movement and specifically about segregation,” Smith concludes.10

In January 1960, following a campus performance by the Harlem Globetrotters, an all-black exhibition basketball team, BYU’s Board of Trustees, composed of high-ranking church leaders, decided not to permit the team future use of the university’s facilities.11 Two months later, the president of the Salt Lake City branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Albert B. Fritz, asserted that a Nigerian BYU student a few years earlier had been forced to live in the attic of a Protestant church because “the people of Provo would not rent their apartments” to black students, and that “Negro entertainers were not signed for [the 1959] junior prom because no motel or hotel” would lodge them.12

The following May 1960, Wilkinson learned that BYU had agreed to employ a black man—Edward O. Minor from Florida A. and M. University—to teach during summer school, a decision Wilkinson termed

7 Ernest L. Wilkinson to Adam S. Bennion, June 1, 1954, Ernest L. Wilkinson Presidential Papers, Perry Special Collections.

8 “Students Tired of Integration Issue,” Daily Universe, December 5, 1958.

9 Lila and Lurleen LaVar, letter, Daily Universe, December 10, 1958; see also George Hallock, letter, Daily Universe, January 5, 1959; for a history of LDS opposition to interracial marriage, see Patrick Q. Mason, “The Prohibition of Interracial Marriage in Utah, 1888–1963,” Utah Historical Quarterly 76 (Spring 2008): 108–31.

10 Smith, “CRM.”

11 Wilkinson, Diary, January 13, 1960, Wilkinson Papers; Brigham Young University, Board of Trustees Minutes, March 2, 1960, originals, Perry Special Collections; see also Board of Trustees, Minutes, March 3, 1965, and Executive Committee, Board of Trustees, Minutes, August 28, 1969. Copies of many of the documents cited in this article, including the minutes of BYU’s trustees, are in possession of the SmithPettit Foundation, Salt Lake City, where they are available to researchers.

12 “America—All Races and Religions,” Daily Universe, March 23, 1960.

a “serious mistake of judgment.” Minor’s name had been submitted for clearance without, according to Wilkinson, mention of his race. When religion professor Daniel H. Ludlow informed an administrator that Minor was “colored,” the administrator reported the news to the academic vice president, Earl C. Crockett. “Crockett never even informed me,” Wilkinson wrote, “thinking apparently on the representation that he was light in color that others would not know it. The man’s photograph appeared in the paper the first of this week, from which it was apparent that he was colored. . . . I wish we could take him on our faculty,” Wilkinson continued, “but the danger in doing so is that students and others take license from this and assume that there is nothing improper about mingling with the other races.”13 By the next day, administrators had changed Minor’s duties from teaching students to advising departmental administrators, thus minimizing any risk of “mingling.”14

Some six months later, Wilkinson informed a few trustees that “a colored boy on the campus [had] been a candidate for the vice presidency of a class and receiv[ed] a very large vote.” The trustees “were very much concerned.” In fact, Wilkinson recorded in his diary that Harold B. Lee, an influential LDS apostle, had told him that “if a granddaughter of mine should ever go to the BYU and become engaged to a colored boy there I would hold you responsible.” Wilkinson retorted that Lee should “hold himself responsible because he was one of the members of the Board of Trustees that permitted the present policy [regarding the admission of blacks]; that if it was not right he ought to change it.” All three trustees present for the exchange favored “barring colored students from the BYU.” “This is a very serious problem,” Wilkinson recorded, “on which, of course, there are obviously arguments on both sides but surely we will have to face it squarely and resolve it.”15 Early the next year, and evidently for the first time ever, trustees went on record as officially “encourag[ing] Negro students to attend other universities.”16

In February 1961, during a basketball game against Utah State University in Logan, BYU became the target of the first race-related incident involving intercollegiate athletics. During the game, BYU’s Bob Wilson fouled out, at which point he and USU’s Max Perry “traded a few punches under the basket.” Soon other players joined in, including BYU center Dave Eastis and USU’s Darnel Haney.17 New violence broke out at the end of the game. Wilkinson recorded: “This colored player by the name of Haney came up and when one of our players [Eastis] was standing talking to others completely unguarded, swung at him and hit him square

13 Wilkinson, Diary, May 5, 1960.

14 Ibid., May 6, 1960.

15 Ibid., November 10, 1960.

16 Board of Trustees, Minutes, February 1, 1961.

17 “Aggies ‘KO’ Cats 94–73,” Daily Universe, February 13, 1961.

in the mouth.”18 BYU’s student newspaper reported that “fans and students from both sides poured onto the floor and the battle raged.”19

Wilkinson and USU President Daryl Chase, together with BYU and USU coaches, met until 11:30 p.m. that evening. “Because the BYU is still the only white team in Utah,” Wilkinson wrote, “we are immediately accused of being anticolored. Indeed, one of the prof[essor]s of USU . . . said it was too bad that we had to draw the color line.” Wilkinson thought the schools should sever relations but that “public relations would forbid this.”20 Instead, Chase and Wilkinson issued a public statement reading, in part: “Our investigation has already disclosed, contrary to persistent reports, that it was not triggered by any racial animosity on the part of the players, but was a case of individual controversy between certain players.”21 Haney sat out the rest of the season; Eastis graduated a few months later; Wilson was not permitted to play again against USU.22

In early 1963, LDS church president David O. McKay approved the awarding of a BYU scholarship to a student from Nigeria. 23 The move reflected the church’s decision to open an exploratory mission in West Africa. Soon a formal scholarship subsidized the enrollment of Nigerians. Two years later, however, after two Nigerians had received scholarships, Harold B. Lee “vigorously” protested during a trustees’ meeting to “giv[ing]

18 Wilkinson, Diary, February 11, 1961.

19 “It ‘Had to Happen,’” Daily Universe, February 13, 1961.

20 Wilkinson, Diary, February 11, 1961.

21

“Wilkinson, Chase Issue Statement, Seek Causes,” Daily Universe, February 13, 1961.

22

“Too Much Secrecy in ‘Trade’ Farce,” Daily Universe, February 8, 1962; Darnel Haney, interview by Brad Cole and Bob Parsons, July 31, 2006, accessed February 11, 2013, http://129.123.124.192/cdm/ref/collection/minority/id/233.

23

Board of Trustees, Minutes, March 6, 1963; Executive Committee, Board of Trustees, Minutes, March 14, 1963.

Cougar basketballers carry Stan Watts after a championship win, Madison Square Garden, 1966. HAROLD

a scholarship at the B.Y.U. to a negro student from Africa.” Wilkinson thought that since McKay had authorized the program, “Brother Lee will have no more to say about this.”24 However, by the end of the month, trustees decided to “discontinue . . . efforts to encourage other Nigerian students to attend BYU.” 25 At the time, a total of three Nigerians had enrolled at BYU, and sixteen others, all non-LDS, had applied for admission. 26 The decision to end the scholarship terminated the enrollment process for the applying Nigerians.

In early October 1963, the church, hoping to fend off accusations of racism as well as rumors of mass civil rights protests planned for downtown Salt Lake City, officially endorsed the federal Civil Rights Act (signed into law on July 2, 1964).27 Yet, “‘Full’ equality to me,” wrote one BYU student, “means the inclusion of religious equality, and two ways of committing ourselves to establish this are to get to know and appreciate the Negro and to pray to our Heavenly Father to give to our Church in our time the revelation that will establish this.”28 Before the end of the month, nationally circulated Look magazine published BYU freshman Ira Jeffrey Nye’s “Memo from a Mormon: In Which a Troubled Young Man Raises the Question of His Church’s Attitude toward Negroes.” Nye asked, “Can the principle of equality be reconciled with the Mormon doctrine of denial of the priesthood? This is the question that troubles me today.”29

Two months later, Thomas E. Cheney, a BYU professor of English, stated publicly, “If the denial of priesthood to Negroes is interpreted as God’s will, a person might conclude . . . that the doctrine promotes rather than discourages discrimination, for if God denies Negroes equal rights, what other course has man?”30 Complaints about Cheney’s comment quickly followed. BYU’s acting president, Earl Crockett, replied: “I am convinced that his [Cheney’s] intentions were good but he did not use wisdom regarding some of the things he said.”31 Crockett also met with Cheney, who recalled: “He said that the [First] Presidency of the Church were getting a lot of letters, and that they were upset about a lot of the things that were being said. . . . But President Crockett was very kind, and when he read the paper, he wrote me a note saying that he agreed with me in all that I said.” Later, Cheney learned that his promotion to full professor had

24 Wilkinson, Diary, March 3, 1965.

25 Board of Trustees, Minutes, March 31, 1965; see also James B. Allen, “Would-Be Saints: West Africa before the 1978 Priesthood Revelation,” Journal of Mormon History 17 (1991): 207–47.

26 Wilkinson, memorandum of a meeting with the First Presidency, July 7, 1965, Wilkinson Papers.

27

See Conference Report of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, October 1963), 91–95.

28 Iwan de Vries, letter, Daily Universe, October 10, 1963.

29

Ira Jeffrey Nye, “Memo from a Mormon: In Which a Troubled Young Man Raises the Question of His Church’s Attitude toward Negroes,” Look, October 22, 1963, 74.

30

“End of Mormon Bias against Negro Seen,” Detroit Free Press, December 30, 1963.

31

Perc A. Reeve and Market Berrett to Ernest L. Wilkinson, January 7, 1964; and Earl C. Crockett to Perc A. Reeve, January 9, 1964, Wilkinson Papers.

been held up because of his statements. “I saw your name on the list,” Crockett told him, “and I decided that it might be better to wait for a year until it quieted down and was forgotten.”32

Racist rhetoric continued to surface sporadically on campus. In early 1965, a student wrote: “When I first heard a heckler . . . at a BYU football game call a Negro member of an opposing team a derogatory name, I was shocked . . . by the number of students who actually laughed and mocked in unison. . . . It has happened every time I have witnessed an athletic event where Negroes have participated at BYU.”33 At the end of the year, another added that “The spirit of brotherhood is not manifested in cries like ‘Catch that nigger!’”34 In late 1965, Wilkinson and members of BYU’s athletics staff debated whether to recruit as football players two black LDS church members. While stating that if the young men’s “academic training justified it,” they would be “wholeheartedly” accepted, Wilkinson stressed that blacks should not be actively recruited, stating: “we felt that since there is no colored population in Provo. . . they might be better off going to some other institution where there are other colored students.” 35 The next month, the dean of physical education, Milton Hartvigsen, confirmed that “we limited our recruiting to . . . non-negro athletes.”36 About this same time, administrators began sending the following letter to blacks who applied for admission:

As an Institution we do not look with favor upon marriages of any individuals outside their own race, whatever that race might be, and hence frown upon mixed courtships, which might result in such mar riages. This point of view is not a matter of race prejudice for we believe that all races are important in God’s eyes, but is the out-growth of observations relative to such relationships and the difficulties encountered by individuals participating in such courtships and marriages when attempting to adjust differences in family and cultural backgrounds.37

That same spring of 1965, Wilkinson cancelled the campus appearance of the famous black singer Nancy Wilson. As if in response, a BYU student government–sponsored survey subsequently revealed that 95 percent of students had no “feeling concerning [the] race, creed, or color of entertainers.”38 Administrators also rejected a campus lecture on “Mormonism and the Negro.”39 Late the next year, the BYU Speakers Committee rebuffed a request to invite Monroe Fleming, one of few black Latter-day Saints, to

32 Thomas E. Cheney, interviewed by J. Roman Andrus, October 10, 1979, 13–14, Perry Special Collections. Cheney was appointed as full professor early the next year.

33 Allan Weinstock, letter, Daily Universe, February 16, 1965.

34 Rigby, “Responses to Racial Issues,” 10.

35 Wilkinson, Diary, December 22, 1965.

36 Milton Hartvigsen, memorandum to Ernest L. Wilkinson, January 3, 1966, Wilkinson Papers.

37 “Dear Sir,” undated typescript in Lester Bush, comp., “A Compilation on the Negro in Mormonism,” photocopy, privately circulated, copy in possession of the Smith-Pettit Foundation.

38 Wilkinson, Diary, March 23, April 4, April 6, 1966; “Name Attractions, Finance, and Student Talent,” ASBYU Student Body History, 1966–67, n.p., Perry Special Collections.

39 University Speakers Committee, Minutes, December 2, 1966, Perry Special Collections.

speak.40 When the topic of “The Negro and Job Opportunities in America” later came up, the Speakers Committee was told bluntly that McKay opposed “discussion for the present on this topic,” however noncontroversial.41

BYU’s next major brush with race relations came with the murder of nationally prominent civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968. King’s assassination occurred at the beginning of spring break, so public comment at BYU was mostly, but not entirely, absent. One student, Barbara J. McDaniel, complained about the lack of coverage, urging her peers to consider their own complicity in civil rights inequalities and expressing her “dream” that “freedom will ring from ‘Y’ mountain.” When the Daily Universe student editor explained the inadequatecoverage of King’s death by referring to “dead news,” McDaniel countered: “[a] great man’s death and a tribute to his life is never ‘dead news’ as we testify to every Sunday.” In a note appended to McDaniel’s letter, the Universe said that comparing King’s death to that of Jesus was “in poor taste.” A second student added that King was not to be admired since his advocacy of civil disobedience contradicted LDS teachings on “obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law.”42

In this illustration from the 1970 Banyan yearbook, a BYU Cougar faces a UTEP Miner.

Nationally, King’s death solidified black unrest into a tidal wave of resistance, protest, and demonstration. On April 13, 1968, seven black track and field athletes from the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) boycotted a match against BYU, the first such race-based protest against BYU. Two

40 Ibid., December 5, 1967.

41 Ibid., March 20, 1968.

42 Ardis Smith, “BYU and Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968,” December 22, 2009, accessed November 27, 2011, www.juvenileinstructor.org/byu-and-martin-luther-king-jr-in-1968.

BYU BANYAN YEARBOOK, 1970

months earlier, a group of UTEP athletes had crossed picket lines protesting racism at the New York Athletic Club. When UTEP’s returning black runnerswere praised for breaking the boycott line, they began to reevaluate their position. The students decided not to participate against BYU because, they said, of BYU’s “belief that blacks are inferior and that we are disciples of the devil.” “As a reason for the track team’s boycott it may sound like a small thing to a white person,” commented the team captain, “but who the hell wants to go up there and run your tail off in front of a bunch of spectators who think you’ve got horns.”43 UTEP suspended the seven athletes but also responded to BYU.44 “Without any suggestion at all of trying to run your business,” UTEP President Joseph M. Ray wrote to Wilkinson, “I think your institution will be a thorn in the side of the [Western Athletic] Conference until such time as you recruit at least a token Negro athlete. Until you do, all explanations that the charges are not true will not carry the ring of conviction.” 45 “[M]ay I inform you,” Wilkinson responded, “that . . . all Negroes who apply for admission and can meet the academic standards are admitted.”46

By this time, Wilkinson had also received word that the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare was sending a five-person team to BYU to “determine whether we are complying with the [1964] Civil Rights Act. This, in and of itself, did not disturb us,” Wilkinson recorded, “but we learned, unofficially, that we were the only university in this area to be visited in such manner, and that the committee was ‘out to get us.’” BYU trustees contemplated foregoing all federal research contracts. Wilkinson urged patience, but placed on temporary hold plans for a new multimillion-dollar sports arena, worried that if BYU were expelled from the WAC, it might not be able to sustain the large venue.47

Wilkinson soon found himself facing additional controversies. He met with staff to try to determine how best to handle a brewing imbroglio involving the musical group the Tijuana Brass. After signing a contract, the Brass had asked to bring with them a rhythm-and-blues band, the Checkmates, Ltd. Two BYU administrators previewed a Checkmates performance and, according to Wilkinson, “found their show to be filthy.” BYU informed the Brass that the Checkmates would not be invited; the Brass demurred; BYU released them from their contract. However, as some of the Checkmates were black, Wilkinson worried, “people are bound to jump to the conclusion that we cancelled the contract because they were

43

Craig Collisson, “The BSU Takes on BYU and the UW Athletics Program, 1970,” accessed October 27, 2011, http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/BSU_BYU.htm.

44

“Negro Athletes Boycott Track Meet with BYU,” Ames Daily Tribune, April 13, 1968.

45 Joseph M. Ray to Ernest L. Wilkinson, April 22, 1968, Wilkinson Papers.

46 Ernest L. Wilkinson to Joseph M. Ray, May 3, 1968, Wilkinson Papers.

47 Wilkinson, Diary, May 1, 1968; see also September 9, 1968. BYU announced plans for a new activities center—eventually named the Marriott Center—on September 17, 1968.

Negroes.”48 Three months later, Wilkinson worked with student leaders to find “acceptable Negro speakers,” then confronted a new wrinkle. Administrators had previously ruled that any student caught selling marijuana “would be terminated immediately.” However, they also learned that BYU’s sole “American Negro” student was reportedly “selling marijuana.” “[B]efore we suspend him from school,” Wilkinson recorded, “he had better be convicted in the courts; otherwise. . . there would be a public clamor to the effect that he was being suspended because he was Negro.” Staff members objected that “we ought to treat him as we have done other students . . . I recognize that the proposal I had made gives him preference,” Wilkinson wondered, “but I am not sure but what it’s the wise course.”49

BYU’s 1968 football season kicked off the next, more serious wave of race-based protests against the school. In late October, word spread that seven members of the San Jose State College team would boycott the November 30 game unless San Jose replaced its current coach, who was leaving, with a black coach and donated a percentage of revenues from the game to the college’s black student union. The previous month, at the international Olympic Games, two San Jose runners had raised blackgloved fists on the winners’ podium in silent support of human rights worldwide. San Jose’s student officers supported the protesters, urging administrators to “take all possible steps to cancel the football contract with BYU.”50 San Jose president Robert D. Clark told the boycotting students that, while they would lose their grants-in-aid, he would help to replace the funds. “You’ve got to understand how we feel,” San Jose halfback Frank Slaton explained. “Those Mormons say . . . we can’t go to heaven because we’re black. Man, I just don’t want to associate with those people in any way.”51 When the two teams met, attendance was sparse, security heavy.52 Outside, protesters carried signs reading: “By attending this game you are silently supporting the racial bigotry of Mormonism.”53 The night before, a bomb threat almost evacuated the hotel where the BYU team was staying.54 “Those were tough times,” recalled linebacker and president of

48 Wilkinson, Diary, May 10, 1968. See “Tijuana Trouble Brews,” Daily Universe, May 13, 1968; “No Tijuana,” Daily Universe, May 14, 1968. Herb Alpert asserted that BYU’s decision was racially motivated, a charge Wilkinson denied. See “Alpert Says BYU Racist,” San Francisco Examiner, June 13, 1968; “An Open Letter to Herb Alpert,” Daily Universe, June 18, 1968. Alpert’s accusations evidently stung: within the year, BYU approved the appearances of the black Ramsey Lewis jazz trio and the Fifth Dimension. See “The Night Soul Settled on BYU,” Daily Universe, April 14, 1969.

49 Wilkinson, memorandum to Grant Richards, August 27, 1968, Perry Special Collections (first quotation); Wilkinson, Diary, October 22, 1968 (following quotations); see also January 24, 1969.

50 “SJS Demands Cancellation,” Daily Universe, November 27, 1968; see also Timothy K. Fitzgerald, Wawona Brotherhood: The San Jose State Campus Revolt (New York: Strategic Book, 2004, 2005), 139–44.

51

“SJS Blacks May Boycott Y Game,” Daily Universe, November 25, 1968.

52 David A. Schulthess, interviewed by Paul C. Richards, January 14, 1992, 11, Perry Special Collections.

53 “Threats Fizzle,” Daily Universe, December 2, 1968.

54 “DB on BYU’s 1969 Team Shares His Memory of Black 14 Protest,” Salt Lake Tribune, accessed October 27, 2011, www.sltrib.com/byu/archive.php?p=5368&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1.

San Jose’s Black Athletes Federation, Anthony L. Jackson. “We were criticized by some for doing too little and others for doing too much. . . . In the end, it was worth it.”55

During the run-up to the boycott, BYU trustees wondered if the game should be canceled, but ultimately decided to proceed—provided that “adequate precautions and protections” be afforded the BYU participants; and that “any public statements on behalf of the University should merely state that BYU . . . merely operates under the direction of the University’s Board of Trustees.” 56 Wilkinson stressed that a cancelation “might be interpreted as an erroneous admission that we discriminate against the Negroes” and that “blacks on any other campus with whom we play could start an agitation to cancel those games.” 57 The controversy prompted considerable student comment at BYU. “I’m grateful for being of the white race in a land where the white is supreme,” wrote student reporter Judy Geissler, employing irony to provoke discussion. “But I’m even more thankful for having the sense of social responsibility to know it’s my job to do everything I can to end the hypocrisy of the racial ‘double standard’ in America.”58 “These two statements are mutually exclusive,” countered Alan A. Enke and Mima Broadbent. “Please, Miss Geissler—if you have one, make up your mind.” 59 “A tribute to Judy Geissler and others of the supreme white race from a non-white student. Oink. Oink. Your inferior, Michael Hu,” added another. 60 “I recently heard a high official of the Church slip into ‘colored humor’ at a stake conference,” reported Ron Simpson. “Similar material has been rendered at BYU sacrament meetings.”61 At about the same time, the Daily Universe found that 65 percent of BYU students favored recruiting black athletes. “The reason they don’t recruit them isn’t valid,” one student said; “they just don’t want negroes to socialize with our girls.” 62 In explaining the situation, the newspaper reported the oft-repeated concerns about intermarriage.63

Meanwhile, an angry Wilkinson thought he had made it clear that “no article would appear in the ‘Universe’ on the Negro question unless” it was cleared with him.64 He reported being “pretty caustic” with the student editor, telling him that he would see him again “after my meeting with the

55 Sports, Washington Square Magazine, Summer 2009, accessed October 27, 2011,http://www.sjsu.edu/wsq/archive/summer09/sports/.

56

Executive Committee, Board of Trustees, Minutes, November 21, 1968.

57

Executive Committee, Board of Trustees, Special Meeting, Minutes, November 26, 1968; see also Wilkinson, memorandum, December 4, 1968, Wilkinson Papers.

58

“The Way It Is—Editorial Rambling,” Daily Universe, November 27, 1968.

59 Letter, Daily Universe, December 3, 1968.

60 Letter, Daily Universe, December 13, 1968.

61 Letter, Daily Universe, December 13, 1968.

62

“Y Students Favor Negro Recruitment,” Daily Universe, December 19, 1968.

63

“Honest Discussion of BYU-Negro Athlete Recruitment Essential,” Daily Universe, December 19, 1968.

64 Wilkinson, Diary, December 19, 1968.

Board of Trustees in which this matter would be up for discussion.”65 Wilkinson’s fears of trustee backlash were confirmed: “Why can’t [BYU] leave such problems to the Board of Trustees to decide?” asked LDS Apostle Delbert L. Stapley. “These two articles are ill-advised to say the least. This matter has been discussed a time or two with the Executive Committee and Board. They have not looked upon [the recruitment of blacks] with favor, as you know. . . . This could present problems about the whole school athletic program.”66

In early January 1969, Wilkinson was relieved when a rumored sit-down strike during BYU’s basketball game against Stanford did not materialize.67 A few days later, he secured approval “to make a statement with respect to Negro athletes and our policy on recruitment.” While some trustees— notably Ezra Taft Benson and Stapley—“thought no statement of any kind should be issued,” N. Eldon Tanner “thought we could no longer avoid making the statement. That turned the tide.” 68 The next day, Lester B. Whetten, a BYU dean and the former director of public relations, opined: “The Negro of today is not, and cannot become compatible with B.Y.U. standards.”69 Likewise, BYU’s Speakers Committee quietly rejected appearances by prominent blacks, including Alex Haley.70 Yet almost simultaneously, a panel of BYU professors insisted that the “allegation that BYU is racist in general and . . . anti-Negro in particular requires an answer.”71

Wilkinson quickly discovered that issuing a public statement was more difficult than he anticipated. Meeting with LDS officials Tanner, Gordon B. Hinckley, and Thomas S. Monson, he hoped for a positive statement. However, following comments by BYU administrators Milton Hartvigsen and Robert K. Thomas, the difficulties of the situation—which required finding solutions to “satisfy the blacks” and BYU’s accrediting agencies— became clear. When Hartvigsen “chimed in with the statement that if we did not do something, we were through with athletics at BYU,” Wilkinson became especially frustrated.

Annoyed, he asked Hartvigsen to “prepar[e] a very careful memorandum indicating that even if our athletic schedule with other schools was seriously curtailed, we would still need the activity center.” Wilkinson also asked Thomas to “prepar[e] a careful memorandum as to what may be the consequences in other fields of activity if it should be thought that we are

65 Ibid., January 8, 1969.

66 Stapley to Ernest L. Wilkinson, December 23, 1968, Wilkinson Papers. Stapley believed that “the Negro is entitled to considerations” but not to “full social benefits nor inter-marriage privileges with the Whites.” Stapley, letter to George W. Romney, January 23, 1964, copy, Smith-Pettit Foundation.

67 Wilkinson, Diary, January 3, 1969.

68 Ibid., January 9, 1969.

69 Memorandum to Wilkinson, January 10, 1969, Perry Special Collections.

70 University Speakers Committee, Minutes, January 14, January 21, 1969.

71 “BYU Profs Discuss Racism,” Daily Universe, January 14, 1969.

discriminating.”72 Trustees decided not to make any statement; they also wondered about avoiding all programs that called attention to minorities but concluded to continue to recognize creative minority students.73

In early March 1969, news spread that students, mostly members of the black students union at the University of New Mexico, were petitioning their administrators to denounce BYU as a “racist institution,” cancel an upcoming track meet, and drop BYU from the WAC. 74 New Mexico’s student senate also recommended that the school cut all ties to BYU, a proposal that the school’s faculty also entertained. “The humiliation and anxiety suffered by the black athletes who have to participate in events against BYU,” explained New Mexico’s black forward, Greg “Stretch” Howard, “go beyond the realm of academic tolerance.”75 However, New Mexico’s athletic council announced that it would suspend athletes who refused to participate for the remainder of the season.76 At this same time, ATT executive Ramon S. Scruggs told BYU students that “white Americans are operating under a set of false assumptions. They believe that they are dealing with stupid people . . . [and] that only the hard-core ghetto black is bitter against the white man. . . . Mormons should understand, perhaps better than any other group of people, what the problems of prejudice are.”77

The next month, Wilkinson received positive news: word that BYU was in full compliance with the anti-discrimination provisions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and notification that the WAC refused to investigate allegations of racism and to cancel an upcoming BYU–UTEP track meet.78 On the other hand, Wilkinson had to deal with trustees who disagreed with his assessment that “for us to refuse to hire a Negro on our faculty because of his race was a plain violation of the law. Brother [Harold B.] Lee disputed this, saying that he could read the statute as well as I. I am sure he has never read the [Civil Rights] statute, and I could tell that other members of the committee were on my side not his.”79

Hoping to dispel widespread rumors of racial insensitivity, BYU’s sophomoreclass sponsored a special “Brotherhood Week” in May 1969. Events included a faculty panel on “Causes of Racial Prejudice and Its Political Effects,” film screenings, a book display, an art and literature

72 Wilkinson, Diary, January 24, 1969.

73 See Board of Trustees, Minutes, February 5, March 5, and April 9, 1969.

74 “N.M. Students Seek End to BYU Ties,” Salt Lake Tribune, March 4, 1969; “Charges Refuted,” Daily Universe, March 5, 1969; “Dr. Wilkinson Denies BYU Tends to Practice in Racism,” Salt Lake Tribune, March 5, 1969.

75 “Lobo Student Senate Votes to Sever BYU Athletic Relations,” Provo Daily Herald, March 21, 1969; “New Mexico May Sever Relations with BYU,” Daily Universe, March 25, 1969.

76 “Lobo Athletes Warned about Boycotting BYU,” Provo Daily Herald, March 26, 1969; “UNM Warns Black Athletes Play or Face Suspension,” Daily Universe, March 27, 1969.

77 “Scruggs Questions White Hang-Up,” Daily Universe, March 25, 1969; see also “Blacks Contribute,” Daily Universe, April 23, 1970.

78 “BYU Complies with National Civil Rights Act,” Provo Daily Herald, April 3, 1969; “BYU Policy Study Refused by WAC,” Salt Lake Tribune, April 4, 1969.

79 Wilkinson, Diary, April 9, 1969.

A demonstration outside a University of Arizona–BYU football game in Tucson, October 10, 1971.

contest, and a clothing drive in conjunction with the NAACP. Howeve r, administrators denied permission for several other activities. “Originally we made an attempt to secure Negro speakers,” explained Bob Elliott, sophomore class vice president and Brotherhood Week chair, “but due to a recent decisionof the Board of Trustees to limit the number of Negro speakers to two a year, our attempts were rendered impossible. A great number of further activities, including discussions of Church and university racial policies, were planned but had to be scratched at the last minute because Church and university officials preferred to stand on previous [official] statements.”80

As Brotherhood Week progressed, Judy Geissler, now assistant news editor for the Universe, penned an editorial commemorating Martin Luther King Jr. that encouraged students to “get out and DO something” to end racism.81 A week later, another student retorted that King was a “troublemaking Communist.”82 Geissler reported that reactions to her column— which included sixteen “anonymous phone calls” and “three anonymous letters”—“have amazed me, and even frightened me.” “Two of the anonymous callers insisted I was a card-carrying Communist, and a cell leader too, no doubt. One even threatened to burn a cross on my living room rug. . . . It is distressing,” she closed, “to see the two-facedness of those who profess to love their fellow men while refusing to support attempts to foster true brotherhood.”83 In response, some students accused King of hypocrisy;

80 “‘Brotherhood Week’ Begins,” Daily Universe, May 5, 1969; see also “Wilkinson Clarifies University Policies,” Daily Universe, May 12, 1969; J. LaVar Bateman, memorandum to Ernest L. Wilkinson, February 17, 1970, Wilkinson Papers; University Speakers Committee, Minutes, April 17, 1970, Perry Special Collections.

81 “In Memoriam: M. L. King,” Daily Universe, April 30, 1969, emphasis in original.

82 Letter, Daily Universe, May 6, 1969; see also Ezra Taft Benson, Civil Rights—Tool of Communist Deception (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1968), 3, 10; D. Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power (Salt Lake City: Signature Books/Smith Research Associates, 1997), 66–115.

83 “Racial Bigotry: An Open Letter,” Daily Universe, May 7, 1969.

BYU BANYAN YEARBOOK, 1971

others termed him a “man of principle.” Michael Vanille wrote that the “Founding Fathers broke laws a little more serious than parade ordinances to establish freedom for all Americans.”84

The third, and most disruptive, round of anti-BYU protests erupted that fall of 1969. On October 4, some 250 protesters gathered outside the stadium at Arizona State to heckle BYU players and fans. Organized by the school’s Black Liberation Organizational Committee, demonstrators waved signs and passed out leaflets.85 A week later, Brian Walton, a BYU student government official, helped to defeat a student-backed resolution urging the WAC to sever relations with BYU.86 The next week, fourteen black players at the University of Wyoming (Laramie) asked Coach Lloyd Eaton about wearing black armbands during their game against BYU. Eaton immediately dismissed them from the team.87 During the October 18 game, the threat of violence was high. “It was just an ugly scene, one I will never forget,” recalled BYU defensive back Dick Legas.88 “It was pretty unnerving for all of us,” added quarterback Marc Lyons. “Several wives and girlfriends made the trip to Laramie, and I still remember coach [Tommy] Hudspeth telling them, ‘I wish you hadn’t come.’”89 “Many of the guys weren’t even Mormon,” Legas continued. “I had been baptized, but I was still Episcopalian in my mind. I had no problem with any ethnicity, nor did anybody that I am aware of on the team.We just wanted to play a football game.”90 BYU lost 7 to 40.

Within the week, BYU student officers submitted to administrators their own proposed statement in support of civil rights and admissions. 91 Wilkinson, who had hoped for an equally positive declaration from church leaders, was disappointed to learn of Harold B. Lee’s obstinacy.92 BYU staff

84 Smith, “BYU and Martin Luther King.”

85 “ASU Demonstration Charges Racism,” Daily Universe, October 6, 1969; “ASU Report Given,” Daily Universe, October 7, 1969.

86 “BYU Leaders Fend Off Challenge,” Daily Universe, October 13, 1969; “Why Should ‘The Young Democrat’ Throw Its Support Behind Any Candidate–?,” Young Democrat, April–May 1970.

87

“Eaton Has Last Word,” Daily Universe, October 20, 1969; “Pokes Forgotten—UTEP Next,” Daily Universe, October 20, 1969; “Black 14 Becomes Black 11,” Provo Daily Herald, June 24, 1970; “Pokes Dismiss 14 Black Players for Support Anti-‘Y’ Protest,” Provo Daily Herald, October 19, 1969; see also “BYU Football: Remembering the Black 14 Protest,” Salt Lake Tribune, November 6, 2009; “Tony McGee and the Wyoming 14,” Freedom’s Journal, February 3, 2011, accessed November 28, 2011, www.freedomsjournal.net/2011/02/03/tony-mcgee-and-the-wyoming-14.

88

“Remembering the Black 14 Protest,” November 6, 2009.

89 Ibid.

90

“DB on BYU’s 1969”; see also Clifford A. Bullock, “Fired by Conscience: The Black 14 Incident at the University of Wyoming and Black Protest in the Western Athletic Conference,” accessed November 7, 2011, http://uwacadweb.uwyo.edu/robertshistory/fired_by_conscience.htm; James E. Barrett, “The Black 14: Williams v. Eaton, A Personal Recollection,” accessed October 26, 2011, http://uwacadweb.uwyo.edu/robertshistory/barrett_black_14.htm; Lane Demas, Integrating the Gridiron: Black Civil Rights and American College Football (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2010), 102–33; “Football, Racial Issues—Then Understanding,” Salt Lake City Deseret News, October 22, 2009.

91

“BYU Student Officers Turn in Positive Civil Rights Statement,” Salt Lake Tribune, October 23, 1969.

92 Wilkinson, Diary, October 27, 1969; see also October 29, 1969.

could only continue to insist that while blacks were welcome, most would not be happy. “We have enough trouble recruiting non-Mormons,” stated athletic director Floyd Millet; recruiting blacks would be like “putting a cat in a dog pound,” added defensive tackle Scott Brayer. “Negroes who do come to BYU become so discontented they quit.” 93 In the meantime, student officials at the universities of Arizona and New Mexico passed resolutions calling for a ban of all future athletic competitions with BYU, though Utah State University students reconfirmed their support of BYU. An all-WAC faculty council considered proposals to recognize an athlete’s “right of conscience in regard to playing against any given school” but adjourned without deciding if BYU should be expelled.94

Before the WAC faculty council closed, BYU’s Hartvigsen defended his school’s policies. Hartvigsen turned the issue of discrimination around, accusing critics of the real intolerance: “when a religious group is publicly condemned, picketed, and ridiculed because of an unfashionable doctrine that has not demonstrated social consequence, this is called bigotry. . . . It is

93

“Protest Waves Roll: Mormons Under Fire,” Daily Universe, November 4, 1969.

94 “WAC vs. BYU,” Daily Universe, October 31, 1969; “USU to Support BYU,” Daily Universe, November 11, 1969; “WAC Embroiled in Racial Study,” Daily Universe, November 5, 1969; “No Decision by WAC Council,” LDS Church News, November 8, 1969; see also “BSA Demonstration Cancels WAC Meeting in Denver,” Daily Universe, November 6, 1969.

BYU’s 1970 men’s varsity basketball team.

BYU BANYAN YEARBOOK, 1970

my opinion,” he continued, “that the Negro in Utah has better treatment, more acceptability, and greater educational opportunity than he finds outside the states represented in the Western Athletic Conference.”95

After Wyoming, BYU played UTEP on October 25. Minor protests occurred outside the stadium; five participants were arrested for fighting. Arizona at BYU followed on November 1, but without incident.96 When San Jose State arrived at BYU for November 8’s game, members of the team and coaching staff wore black armbands. (Players had worn armbands in Laramie the week before, but in solidarity.) “BYU, being sponsored by the Mormon institution,” San Jose’s players explained, “must realize that this sponsorship makes it the benefactor and somewhat the perpetrator of attitudes which will lead men into an eternal world of inharmonious relationships.” San Jose’s president called the action “commendable,” adding, “For young men to choose this form of protest to display their conscientious objections to a moral question is within the tradition of a free society.”97 As a “joke,” some 200 BYU fans donned red armbands.98

The next week, Stanford University shocked intercollegiate athletics by declaring that it would schedule no new athletic or other events with BYU because of the church’s practice of discrimination.99 BYU officials scrambled to respond. The previous November 5, while Wilkinson was out of town, the trustees had debated recruiting—and the discussions were “spirited.”100 While still not encouraging the recruiting of blacks (though not barring them from admission), trustees were becoming increasingly convinced that only a new statement explaining the church’s position might quell the protests and provide BYU with a more definitive response. Stanford’s surprise decision reinforced the need for a response.

Wilkinson accused Stanford of bigotry while also encouraging supporters to call for the ouster of school president Kenneth S. Pitzer. 101 When Wilkinson met with the presidents of the WAC in late November, he found that most “did not think that the BYU intended to do anything substantial . . . with respect to recruiting Negro athletes.”102 Summarizing

95

Leonard G. Rhoda, “The Life and Professional Contributions of Milton F. Hartvigsen” (EdD diss., Brigham Young University, 1979), 112–14.

96

“Why Blacks Protested, and How Cougars Reacted,” Salt Lake Tribune, November 30, 1969.

97

“Watts Cookin’,” Provo Daily Herald, November 9, 1969.

98 “Trouble in Happy Valley,” Newsweek, December 1, 1969, 103.

99

“Stanford to End All Competition with BYU,” Salt Lake Tribune, November 13, 1969; see also “Stanford Apologizes in Y. Incident,” Salt Lake Tribune, December 10, 1969; “Stanford Policy Explained,” Daily Universe, December 17, 1969; “Stanford Discusses BYU Situation,” Provo Daily Herald, January 14, 1970.

100

Board of Trustees, Minutes, November 5, 1969; L. Brent Goates, Harold B. Lee: Prophet and Seer (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1985), 379.

101

“Wilkinson Airs Race Policy,” Daily Universe, November 26, 1969; Special Issue, BYU Today , December 1969, copy, Perry Special Collections; “Wilkinson Claims Stanford Failed to Check Facts,” Salt Lake Tribune, December 23, 1969, cf. “Paper Flays Stanford’s BYU Policy,” Salt Lake Tribune, December 27, 196.

102 Wilkinson, Diary, November 30, 1969.

events afterwards to Delbert Stapley, Wilkinson was surprised to hear Stapley say “we ought not to recruit any Negroes at the ‘Y’.” Wilkinson reminded the LDS apostle that “the opposite direction had been made at the last meeting of the Board [of Trustees] at which [Stapley] was not present, and I would proceed in that direction.”103 Wilkinson had also heard that a “special committee” was preparing to report to top LDS leaders on “the Negro situation.” If such a report concerned BYU, Wilkinson told N. Eldon Tanner, he “wanted to . . . be in on the discussion.”104 (Wilkinson was not invited to help compose the new statement.) Several days later, Wilkinson formally approved construction of a nine-million-dollar athletics center. “If, in the years to come,” he recorded, “our athletic program should be seriously curtailed either because of refusal of other teams to play us or because we ourselves decide to withdraw from inter-collegiate competition . . . this building will probably be known as ‘Wilkinson’s Folly’.” He also huddled with a public relations team “to discuss a national campaign in which we take the offensive in public attitudes toward” BYU.105

Neither the church’s December 15 statement nor the end of the 1969 football season slowed the pace of protest, which in January 1970 shifted to BYU basketball. University of Arizona administrators rebuffed a call by the NAACP to cancel January 8’s game and ban all future relations with BYU.106 The game was delayed ten minutes when a “free-for-all” broke out at the entrance to the gym; nine Arizona students were arrested. Ironically, Arizona’s coach led a local LDS congregation. During the game, Arizona’s three black starters wore black armbands. After the game, Arizona student officers called for the resignation of their university’s president.107 Groups of Arizona students protested sporadically throughout the semester, including picketing local LDS worship services.108 The student body officers of Utah’s combined colleges and universities countered that “only the innocent student or athlete suffers as a consequence of any such action.”109 BYU’s

103 Ibid., December 3, 1969.

104 Wilkinson, memorandum of a Conference with N. Eldon Tanner, December 3, 1969, Wilkinson Papers. For more on the statement, see Goates, Harold B. Lee, 379–80; Sheri L. Dew, Go Forward with Faith: The Biography of Gordon B. Hinckley (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1996), 295–96; Gary James Bergera, “Tensions in David O. McKay’s First Presidencies,” Journal of Mormon History 33 (Spring 2007): 222–41.

105 Wilkinson, Diary, December 13, 1969.

106

“NAACP Seeks Cancellation of BYU–AU Game,” Provo Daily Herald, January 7, 1969; “Arizona U. Denies NAACP Demands; President Issues Statement Supporting BYU,” Provo Daily Herald, January 8, 1970; “Arizona Pres. Kills Y Ban,” Daily Universe, January 9, 1970.

107

“UA Students Arrested on Riot Charges,” Provo Daily Herald, January 11, 1970; “Arizona Faculty to Discuss Riot,” Provo Daily Herald, January 13, 1970; “Student Senate Calls for Resignation of U. of A. President,” Provo Daily Herald, January 13, 1970. The account in Richard Dahl, BYU’s Stan Watts: The Man and His Game (Bountiful, UT: Horizon, 1976), 166, differs slightly.

108 “30 Remain at Sit-In Against Y,” Salt Lake Tribune, February 14, 1970; “Students Ask Arizona to Cut Y. Links,” Salt Lake Tribune, February 17, 1970; “Pickets Halt LDS Service,” Daily Universe, February 24, 1970; “Arizona Negroes Protest BYU; Arrests Made at Fort Collins,” Provo Daily Herald, February 25, 1970.

109

“Utah Council Opposes ‘Using’ of Athletes,” Daily Universe, January 16, 1970.

alumni newspaper, meanwhile, implied that the protests formed part of a communist conspiracy.110 Then on January 17, during a wrestling meet in Greeley, Colorado, some eighty Colorado State students staged a sit-in; a bomb threat temporarily emptied the hall.111

In early February, the BYU community received some good news: trustees approved a request from Melvin A. Givens, pastor of Salt Lake City’s all-black Deliverance Temple Church of God in Christ, for BYU’s A Capella Choir and Philharmonic Orchestra to participate in a special fundraising event. “I don’t agree with the policy or doctrine of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” Givens commented, “but I’m glad we could get together to show people that we’re not going to kill one another about it.”112 Equally important, BYU also announced the signing of the school’s first black athlete, football defensive back Ronald Knight from Oklahoma.113 “In the past,” explained coach Tommy J. Hudspeth, “we felt we should discourage the Negroes because we felt they would not be happy in the social situation here. . . . We are only 35 minutes from Salt Lake City where there is a Negro community, and we are setting up appointments and introductions there. . . . A lot of people are mad at me right now,” he continued, “because they feel we are giving in. . . . We are trying to show the other universities that we want to cooperate with them.”114 “Ron was the one that took the brunt of what we were trying to do in regarding to breaking the color lines,” Hudspeth later stated. “Ron was quite a young man. . . . He wanted to do things right and he was proud of his race. He was put under the gun quite a few times and he came out right because he was quite a man.”115 Knight played to his 1971 graduation. Positive developments were short-lived. BYU’s basketball game against Colorado State (Fort Collins) on February 5 became the scene of the most violent demonstration yet. As BYU warmed up, protesters gathered on the floor, yelled epithets, and made threatening gestures. While BYU players met in the locker room, the faculty advisor to Colorado’s black student association offered an opening prayer condemning those who “follow the dictates of men, and not of God.” 116 At half-time, while the BYU Cougarettes performed, more than one hundred students walked onto the court, surrounded the coeds, shouted curses, and made sexually aggressive

110 “Militants, Reds Attack Y, Church,” BYU Alumnus, February 1970, 4.

111 Wilkinson, Diary, January 18, 1970.

112 “Y Groups Join Mahalia Jackson in Concert,” Daily Universe, March 3, 1970.

113 Board of Trustees, Minutes, February 4, 1970; “BYU Gets Negro Athlete,” Provo Daily Herald, February 3, 1970.

114 “Springville Chamber Hears Coach Talk about BYU Racial Situation,” Provo Daily Herald, February 16, 1970.

115 Ryan Thorburn, Black 14: The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of Wyoming Football (Boulder, CO: Burning Daylight, 2009), 70–71.

116 Wilkinson described the prayer as “not an invocation at all but a tirade against the BYU and the Mormon Church, a very inflam[m]atory speech which set the stage for what followed.” Wilkinson, Diary, February 5, 1970.

gestures. Protesters in the stands threw raw eggs and loose debris. When Colorado’s players returned, protesters moved to one of the corners. Several fights broke out. Forty Colorado security officers and Fort Collins policemen marched onto the court. Someone in the stands threw a piece of metal, which bounced off one of the helmeted security officers and struck a Rocky Mountain News photographer, leaving him temporarily unconscious. A Molotov-type cocktail followed, bursting into flames but not exploding. Seven people were eventually arrested, six suspended.117

After a half-hour delay, during which the court was cleared and cleaned, the Cougarettes finished their drill and play resumed. “I know the coach [Stan Watts] realized that what he was having to decide could actually mean the lives of his players,” BYU’s center Scott Warner commented.118 “The thing that worries me and the boys,” Watts told Sports Illustrated, “is how far will it go? . . . One of these days, you know, somebody might pull a gun or something.”119 Larry DeLaittre, one of five non-LDS members on BYU’s varsity team, remarked: “I really do sympathize with the protesters . . . I really get uptight when we come out and I see the cold stares. I want to grab hold of somebody and yell, ‘I’m Catholic! I’m Catholic!’”120 Other BYU players likewise admitted they felt uneasy about the situation and sympathized to some degree with protestors. In contrast, Utah sportscaster Paul James, who called the game for KSL Radio, labeled the demonstration as “an insult to every law abiding citizen and every principle of law and order that this country stands for.”121

Fearful, Wilkinson looked for answers in LDS theology. “Do you or any of your staff,” he asked the dean of BYU’s College of Religious Education, “know of any revelations that are specific as to what we might expect by way of disorders in the near future? Anything you can give me will be helpful to me in this time of crisis.” 122 He also asked trustees for a supplemental appropriation of $100,000 for “security protection.”123 “These demonstrations against BYU,” the religion dean subsequently asserted, “are not really demonstrations against the racial policies of this University [but]

117

“No Legitimacy in CSU Riot,” Daily Universe, May 7, 1970; “CSU Prexy Reverses Ruling on Protesters,” Provo Daily Herald, August 5, 1970.

118 Dahl, BYU’s Stan Watts, 171.

119 William F. Reed, “The Other Side of ‘the Y,’” Sports Illustrated, January 26, 1970, 38; see also “Stan Watts Years Still Remembered,” Daily Universe, October 14, 1983; “Violent Demonstration Marks BYU–Colorado Game,” Daily Universe, February 6, 1970; “Demonstration Line Forms Before Game,” Daily Universe, February 9, 1970; Dahl, BYU’s Stan Watts, 168–71; “CSUPD History,” accessed November 28, 2011, http://police.colostate.edu/pages/history.aspx; “Conviction Brought from CSU–BYU Riot,” Provo Daily Herald, March 12, 1970.

120 Reed, “The Other Side of ‘the Y,’” 38.

121

“Retrospect: Brigham Young at Colorado State,” Daily Universe, February 11, 1970. See also Paul James, Cougar Tales: The Inside Stories from 20 Years of BYU Sports (Sandy, UT: Randall Books, 1984), 47–52.

122 Wilkinson, memorandum to Daniel H. Ludlow, February 11, 1970, Perry Special Collections.

123 Wilkinson, memoranda to Ludlow, February 16 and March 11, 1970, and attachments, Perry Special Collections; Executive Committee, Board of Trustees, Minutes, February 19, 1970. Wilkinson was advised to look for the money in other areas of his budget.

. . . against The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; these demonstrations are against the principle of freedom of religion; these demonstrations are against the principle of constitutional government in the United States.”124 “These people,” coach Stan Watts echoed, “aren’t after us. They’re after America.”125 “The way to destroy the Church,” suggested Hartvigsen, “is to destroy the fine intercollegiate athletic program at BYU.”126 “This is a time of testing,” Harold B. Lee told students later that fall, “the like of which the Church has never gone through.”127

Two days after the Colorado State game, BYU faced the University of Wyoming, where ten uniformed policemen stood in each corner of the court.128 From the stands, demonstrators waved signs and then turned their backs to the American flag while the U.S. anthem played. Several games later, in El Paso, a scattering of signs and banners greeted BYU. 129 In Albuquerque, some students refused to stand or turned their backs during the national anthem. Before play started, protesters tossed raw eggs, lettuce, and other items onto the court. Liquid-filled balloons burst as they hit the floor. As the floor was cleaned, sections of the wax finish peeled off. Some forty minutes later, play started; BYU lost 68 to 82. Finally, in March, BYU played its last game of the season—losing once again, this time to Utah State. Watts had endured his worst season ever, while Wilkinson noted in his diary that “these disturbances” had a “marked effect on our players.”130

That same semester, on January 20, 1970, BYU gymnastics had competed against the University of Washington in Seattle. During the match, twenty protesters threw catsup, salad oil, and eggs onto the mat; water was tossed in the face of Washington’s coach. After the meet, police accompanied BYU’s team from the building. Washington’s athletic director decided to review all future relations with BYU. On March 8, after a month of demands, demonstrations, sit-ins, and building occupations, Washington’s executive vice president announced that the university, after fulfilling its existing obligations, “has no plans to enter into any additional contracts for intercol-

124 Daniel H. Ludlow, “Our Divine Destiny—A Third Dimension View,” March 17, 1970, in BYU Speeches of the Year, 1969–70 (Provo, Utah: BYU Extension Division, 1970), 9.

125 “Protest Not Against Y Says Watts,” Daily Universe, March 11, 1970.

126 BYU Public Relations Coordinating Council, Minutes, February 20, 1970, Perry Special Collections.

127 “Time of Testing,” Daily Universe, September 28, 1970.

128 Colorado’s student government later sent four students to BYU. They concluded that BYU was not institutionally racist. “Colorado Students Visit Y Campus,” Daily Universe, April 9, 1970; “Black at Y,” Daily Universe, April 13, 1970.

129 BYU spokesperson Heber Wolsey met with some of UTEP’s student protestors before the game. Following several heated hours of questions and answers, the students decided to curtail their plans to demonstrate. “[M]ilitant students on college campuses are not just a faceless group,” Wolsey wrote afterwards. “They may not agree with me. But they think, and hurt, just like I do.” Heber Wolsey, “Confessions of a Mormon Public Relations Man,” December 1988, 54–56, copy, Smith-Pettit Foundation.

130

“Cougars Lose Again,” Daily Universe, March 2, 1970; “2 Get Jail Terms for ‘Y’–New Mexico Game Disturbance Feb. 28,” Provo Daily Herald, July 3, 1970; James, Cougar Tales, 52–53; Wilkinson, Diary, February 28, 1970 (quotation); Dahl, BYU’s Stan Watts, 173–74.

legiate sporting events with BYU.” 131 Wilkinson was furious: “I think that he was shocked at the vigor of my conversation. . . . I thought it was very indecent on his part to not call me before the statement was made.”132

As many as thirty-five hundred protestors continued to agitate, with increasing violence, for the immediate cancellation of all contact with BYU; Washington’s black student union wanted Washington to be prohibited legally from entering into any new agreements with BYU.133 Wilkinson received permission from LDS officials to intervene in any court action and to arrange for the publication in Seattle area newspapers of a statement defending BYU.134 “From the beginning,” writes the historian Craig Collisson, “the protest at the UW was more militant than the protests at either UTEP or Wyoming.”135

A member of a U. of A. factfinding committee sent to gauge the level of racism at BYU, October 1971.

“[T]he only possibility of getting our point of view over,” BYU’s public relations director, Heber Wolsey, told Wilkinson, “was to put an advertisement

131

“Huskies to Seek Review of Relations with BYU,” Salt Lake Tribune, February 4, 1970; “BYU–Washington Situation Unsettled,” BYU Alumnus, March 1970. Other schools ending, or contemplating ending, ties with BYU included St. Mary’s College (Moraga, California) and Seattle University. Board of Trustees, Minutes, April 16, 1970; “Seattle U. Student Officers Urge Termination of Relations with BYU,” Provo Daily Herald, April 24, 1970.

132Wilkinson, Diary, March 9, 1970; see also “Demonstrators Seek Break with BYU; Hogness, Wilkinson Make Statements,” Daily Universe, March 11, 1970.

133 “Action Continues on Protests Against BYU,” Daily Universe, March 12, 1970; Wilkinson, Diary, March 13, 1970; “Panel Asks Washington U. End BYU Athletic Ties,” Salt Lake Tribune, May 27, 1970.

134 Minutes of a Meeting of Spencer W. Kimball, Heber G. Wolsey, Wilford Kirton, Ernest L. Wilkinson, Harold B. Lee, and N. Eldon Tanner, March 17, 1970, Wilkinson Papers. See also Wilkinson, Diary, September 2 and September 24, 1970; Wilkinson and Jay Butler, memorandum to the First Presidency, September 8, 1970; Wilkinson to the First Presidency, September 9, 1970; Wilford W. Kirton Jr. and Oscar W. McConkie Jr., memorandum to the First Presidency, September 14, 1970; Wilkinson and Butler, memorandum to the First Presidency, September 18, 1970, Wilkinson Papers; Board of Trustees, Minutes, October 7, 1970, and February 3, 1971.

135 Collisson, “The BSU Takes on BYU.”

BYU BANYAN YEARBOOK, 1971

in the Washington daily newspapers.” Wilkinson was skeptical: “We’d never get it approved.” “When are we going to learn the media is there for our use, too?” Wolsey pressed. “The militants know how to use it. What’s wrong with us? . . . You are not going to find the answer by expecting the past to take care of the future. What are you doing to do about it today?” “It was easier before you came to work for me,” Wilkinson quipped. “But go ahead. See what you can come up with.” 136 Accordingly, a lengthy statement, entitled “Minorities, Civil Rights and BYU,” appeared as a full-page advertisement in the Seattle Times on March 30 and in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on March 31.137 “Black members of the Mormon Church do not object to” being excluded from priesthood office, the statement read. “The objection is raised by Blacks who are not members of [our] Church and who, therefore, would have no desire to hold the Mormon priesthood. It is therefore obvious that this doctrine does not discriminate either civilly or religiously against those who are questioning it.”138 New demonstrations at Washington failed to materialize that spring, and faculty tabled a motion to sever relations with BYU. A year later, Washington officially renewed contracts with BYU. 139 Clearly, for some BYU administrators, the confrontations functioned to mitigate their views of the protestors and possibly of the reasons for protesting.

If the tide of protests seemed to be turning, the momentum had not entirely dissipated. Toward the end of April 1970, San Diego State’s student council voted to cancel its football game with BYU later that fall, then reversed itself when two-thirds of students supported the match.140 Next, the University of Hawaii’s black student union vowed to go to court to prevent BYU from participating in 1970’s Rainbow Basketball Classic. Hawaii students subsequently voted to permit the match but not schedule any future games. Hawaii’s president countered that his school “would continue to participate with Brigham Young University in athletic events, regardless of student opinions.” Additionally, members of the International Association of College Unions considered expelling LDS schools from the association, a proposal they eventually rejected. 141 In June 1970, BYU trustees decided that students should only be urged to date within their own race but not be forbidden to do otherwise.142 Three months later, LDS

136 Wolsey, “Confessions,” 64-65.

137

“BYU Policy Ad Runs in Seattle Newspapers,” Daily Universe, March 31, 1970.

138 Ibid.

139 Collison, “The BSU Takes on BYU” and “The Fight to Legitimize Blackness: How Black Students Change the University” (PhD diss., University of Washington, 2008), 62–110.

140 “Students Vote to Cancel Grid Game with BYU,” Salt Lake Tribune, April 30, 1970; “San Diego State Council Reverses Vote on BYU,” Salt Lake Tribune, May 21, 1970.

141

“Attack BYU Pact,” Salt Lake Tribune, May 21, 1970; “Hawaii BSU Tries to Block Game,” Provo Daily Herald, May 21, 1970; Board of Trustees, Minutes, June 3, November 4, 1970, March 3, 1971, April 5, 1972, and attachments; Wolsey, “Confessions,” 86–90.

142 Board of Trustees, Minutes, June 3, 1970.

and BYU officials screened a documentary on “the Negro and BYU”; the reaction was not uniformly positive, however, and the film was shelved.143 Student government officials at Western Michigan University voted to boycott the school’s September 19 football game. The game proceeded.144

In early October, six students from the University of Arizona toured BYU. They found “nothing to indicate that there [is] any more or less racism presentthan at any other school,” and that BYU was an “isolated institution whose members simply do not relate to or understand black people.” 145 Only minor protests accompanied Arizona’s October 10 game with BYU.

BYU’s new student body president, Brian Walton, decided to address the issue of racism head-on that fall as part of his activist-oriented social agenda. He convened on October 28, 1970, a special convocation to discuss “BYU’s relations with other schools” and “our internal situation with regards to minority groups and their treatment.”146 Quoting James Baldwin, Martin Luther King Jr., Claude Brown, the Book of Mormon, the New Testament, BYU religion teacher Hyrum Andrus, and LDS official Hugh B. Brown, Walton announced the formation of a special committee on blacks at BYU, including recruitment. “Currently, we are abysmally ignorant of the real situation and which alternatives are viable and which are not,” he said.147

Walton’s initiative was not universally embraced. “The . . . suggestions of . . . more Negro students, blacks studies programs, etc. are uncalled for,” wrote BYU religion professor Rodney Turner. “Our worst enemies are those well-meaning but misguided members of the Church who keep the pot of contention boiling because they will not MIND THEIR OWN STEWARDSHIPS.”148 Wilkinson, on the other hand, agreed that Walton’s issues “cannot be lightly laughed off,” but worried that Walton might attempt to “determine the policies of the institution . . . I think we better check this before it gets underway,” he told administrators. 149 Walton’s presidency soon became mired in controversy, and only a portion of his ambitious agenda came to fruition.150 While by no means the only negative reaction to Walton’s call for dialogue, Turner’s letter represented an increasingly

143 Wilkinson, Diary, September 1 and September 2, 1970; Wolsey, “Confessions,” 78–79.

144 “WMU Votes BYU Boycott,” Salt Lake CityDeseret News, September 11, 1970; Wolsey, “Confessions,” 71–79.

145 “BYU Not ‘Racist,’” Daily Universe, October 5, 1970; see also “BYU Friendliness a ‘Front?’,” Daily Universe, October 19, 1970.

146

“Brian Walton Announces Studentbody Convocation,” Daily Universe, October 23, 1970.

147 Brian Walton, “BYU and Race: Where Are We Now,” ASBYU Convocation, October 28, 1970 (Provo: Brigham Young University, 1970), Perry Special Collections, and “A University’s Dilemma: B.Y.U. and Blacks,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 6 (Spring 1971): 31–36.

148 Letter, Daily Universe, October 27, 1970, emphasis in original.

149 Wilkinson, memorandum to Ben E. Lewis, Robert K. Thomas, and Heber G. Wolsey, November 3, 1970, Wilkinson Papers.

150 Today Walton believes that the “dialogue we started with other schools and the black students there . . . really did make a difference.” Brian Walton, e-mail to Gary Bergera, February 15, 2012.

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

minority response to BYU’s and the LDS church’s engagement with the forces of social change.

As if in tacit acknowledgement of past inequities, in early December 1970, BYU announced its first black faculty member: Wynetta Willis Martin, employed by the College of Nursing, on a part-time basis, to teach about “Negro culture.” 151 A week later, students at the University of Southern California and at Oregon State University protested at separate BYU basketball games. 152 Minor incidents continued throughout the season, though nothing approached the protests of the previous year. Now, however, BYU officials—including Wilkinson and his successor as BYU’s president, Dallin H. Oaks—could point to the recruitment of blacks to assert that protests against BYU were actually protests against BYU’s black students.153 The university invited increasing numbers of black speakers to campus, including Jesse Owens, William P. Foster, Maya Angelou, and Edward W. Brooke. 154 Eventually, BYU not only invited Alex Haley to speak on campus but later awarded him an honorary degree.155

Footballer Ron Knight was joined, in 1971, by Bennie Smith, a defensive back from Arizona. Three years later, BYU’s first black basketball player, guard Gary Batiste from Berkeley, enrolled. In 1976, Robert Stevenson became BYU’s first elected black student body officer. The next year, Keith Rice, a forward from Portland, became BYU’s second black basketball player. By June 1978, BYU boasted four black athletes.156 Then, on June 9, 1978, the LDS church stunned members and critics alike by lifting all race-related restrictions to membership.157 A year later, Stanford renewed relations with BYU. BYU began actively recruiting blacks, with a goal of ten to fifteen new black students per year.158 The total number of black students on campus rose to forty in 1981. Thirty years later, the number of blacks campus-wide stood at 176 (0.6 percent of all students)—a more than three-fold increase.159

151

“Wynetta Martin Joins BYU Faculty,” Daily Universe, December 4, 1970; see also Wynetta Willis Martin, Black Mormon Tells Her Story (Salt Lake City: Hawkes Publications, 1972).

152 “Anti-BYU Demonstrations Hit Teams during Weekend Basketball Games,” Daily Universe, December 14, 1970.

153 See, for instance, Wilkinson, Diary, February 27 and May 23, 1971.

154 J. LaVar Bateman, memorandum to Wilkinson, March 8, 1971, Wilkinson Papers; “Music of an Unhappy People,” Daily Universe, August 8, 1972; “Speaker Lists Contributions,” Daily Universe, November 3, 1972; “Senator Edward W. Brooke at BYU,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 11 (Summer 1978): 119–20.

155 “Black is Beautiful,” Daily Universe, March 30, 1972; “Haley Gets Honorary Y Degree,” Daily Universe, September 1, 1977.

156

“Y’s Batiste Suspended,” Daily Universe, December 13, 1974; “ASBYU’s Black V.P.,” Daily Universe Monday Magazine, September 7, 1976; “Varsity Team Will [Have] Fresh Recruits,” Daily Universe, November 21, 1977; “Y Black Athletes React Favorably,” Daily Universe, June 13, 1978.

157 “Blacks Get Priesthood,” Daily Universe Extra, June 9, 1978.

158 David M. Sorenson and the Ad Hoc Committee on Minority Students, Re: Financial Aid for Minority Students, February 19, 1981, copy, Smith-Pettit Foundation.

159

“From Protest to Promise,” BYU Today, November 1981; “Slave Costumes Offend Blacks,” Daily Universe, November 6, 1981; “Black Club at BYU,” Sunstone Review, March 1982, 2; “BYU Demographics,” Brigham Young University, accessed July 13, 2012, http://yfacts.byu.edu/Article?id=135.

The race-based protests against BYU athletics of the late 1960s and early 1970s used the issue of the LDS church’s racial policies to focus on larger concerns regarding racism. Few activists believed that their actions, however extreme, would result in changes in LDS policy. The protestors made virtually all their demands of their own schools, not BYU. Yet BYU and the LDS church symbolized, in many ways, the obstacles to full citizenship confronting America’s black communities; in turn, BYU served as a useful surrogate for LDS policy. The strategic use of BYU as a platform on which to articulate expressions of anger, grievance, and redress dramatized— publicly and forcefully—the concerns of American blacks. As BYU adopted a more accommodating policy, including the active recruitment of blacks, it effectively defused the rhetoric that succeeded more often than not in defining the LDS school in ways the majority of its officials, faculty, and students never intended.

MormonCatholic Relations

in Utah History: The

Early Years

By GARY TOPPING

One of the major themes in the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) is the infamous inability of the Mormons and their neighbors to get along with each other.1 An examination of Mormon–Catholic relations in Utah, however, indicates otherwise. From the 1866 establishment of Catholicism in the state, with the ministry of Father Edward Kelly, to the episcopacies of Lawrence Scanlan, John Mitty, and James Kearney, and the radio broadcasts of Monsignor Duane Hunt, Catholic officials and their LDS counterparts often endeavored to build friendships. In the twentieth century, the Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake City particularly served as symbol of ecumenism. Though a few rough spots occurred along

The interior of the Cathedral of the Madeleine.

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

1 Some of those rough spots and their resolutions are studied in Gregory A. Prince and Gary Topping, “A Turbulent Coexistence: Duane Hunt, David O. McKay, and a Quarter Century of Catholic–Mormon Relations,” Journal of Mormon History 31 (Spring 2005): 142–63. Although I focus here on Catholic–Mormon relations, it should be noted that the Episcopalians also enjoyed generally good relations with the Mormons. See Frederick Quinn, Building the “Goodly Fellowship of Faith:” A History of the Episcopal Church in Utah, 1867–1996 (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2004). The vitriolic public assaults on Mormonism of the Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and Methodists raised a corresponding ire among the saints. Robert J. Dwyer, The Gentile Comes to Utah: A Study in Religious and Social Conflict (1862–1890) (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1941).

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

the way (and though extant records permit only partial understanding), this history suggests that hostility between the Mormons and their Catholic neighbors was anything but necessary or inevitable, and that, in fact, a high degree of comity existed between the two churches.

Many individual Catholics, in various capacities, passed through the territory that is now Utah during its early history. They included soldiers (the Rivera expeditions of 1765), missionaries (the Dominguez-Escalante expedition of 1776), fur trappers (Etienne Provost and Kit Carson), and even priests (Father Bonaventure Keller).2 But by the time enough railroad workers and miners had settled in Utah to justify creating a permanent Catholic institutional presence, a much larger group—The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—was already well established, and accommodating itself to its Mormon neighbors was a primary obligation of the Catholic clergy.

What would the Catholic position be vis-à-vis the Mormons? Would Catholics have an adversarial relationship with the Latter-day Saints, like the many Protestant denominations that aggressively sought Mormon converts and indeed the very destruction of Mormonism itself? Or, perhaps, would the Catholics foster a gentler posture of peaceful coexistence? On the other side, how would the Mormons react to what they might have reasonably regarded as a Catholic intrusion into the community they considered to be nothing less than a new Zion? The Catholic Church was ancient enough that the Mormons presumably understood its values and practices much better than the Catholics understood the upstart Mormon church, which had existed not even four decades. It took some time and some education in the culture of their Mormon neighbors before the early Catholic priests and lay people settled into a workable relationship.

The first priest required to wrestle with that issue was Father Edward Kelly from the Vicariate of Marysville, California, who pioneered the first permanent Catholic ministry in the territory in the fall of 1866. 3 Beginnings are always important, and a romantic legend exists about Kelly’s beginning in Utah. This inexperienced young man was also energetic: Kelly’s bishop called him “the windfall from Chicago.” Only a year after his ordination and at the outset of his tenure in Utah, Kelly encountered Brigham Young—the Lion of the Lord himself—and established a precedent for good relations with the Mormons.4 Kelly first arrived in Salt Lake City in May in response to a sick call he received in Nevada. He remained to

2 Jerome Stoffel, “The Hesitant Beginnings of the Catholic Church in Utah,” Utah Historical Quarterly 36 (Winter 1966): 48–55.

3 A vicariate is a sort of proto-diocese, to which Rome appoints a vicar to administer a geographic region that is not yet quite mature enough for diocesan status. Edward Kelly’s name appears variously as “Kelly” and “Kelley.”

4 Eugene O’Connell to A. Bowman, July 3, 1865, reports the ordination of Kelly. Archives of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, typescript copy in Archives of the Diocese of Salt Lake City (hereafter referred to as Diocesan Archives). Henry J. Walsh, S.J., Hallowed Were the Gold Dust Trails: The Story of the Pioneer Priests of Northern California (Santa Clara: University of Santa Clara Press, 1946), 205, 207. See also Jerome Stoffel, “Father Edward Kelly,” Jerome Stoffel Papers, Diocesan Archives.

The small, one-story building near the center of this view was the only building on the Salt Lake City lot purchased by Father Edward Kelly in 1866.

celebrate Mass at Fort Douglas and baptize a dozen children; the enthusiasmof the tiny Catholic community so impressed Kelly that he sought, and was granted, permission to purchase land in the city. On this land, he proposed to build a church and a school.

Returning to Utah in September 1866 from a quick trip to Nevada, Kelly learned to his dismay that the person from whom he had purchased the property did not have clear title to it. Kelly agreed to submit the matter to Brigham Young for arbitration, so the story goes, because he did not want to involve the fledgling Catholic Church in Utah in a potentially messy and protracted lawsuit before it was even fairly launched. Although city records indicate that the matter actually was settled in court, the legend says that the prophet ruled in favor of the priest and even offered five hundred dollars toward construction of the school.5 Further, in an effort to establish

5 The story of Brigham Young’s arbitration in the property dispute appears in Denis Kiely, “The Story of the Catholic Church in Utah,” (1900), 2, Diocesan Archives, and was published for the first time in Dean W. R. Harris, The Catholic Church in Utah, 1776–1909 (Salt Lake City: Intermountain Catholic Press, 1909), 282. Kiely’s and Harris’s influence as mythmakers was potent: Bernice Mooney, Salt of the Earth: The History of the Catholic Church in Utah, 1776–1987 (Salt Lake City: Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City, 2nd ed., 1992), 41, Stoffel, “The Hesitant Beginnings,” 56, and Gary Topping, The Story of the Cathedral of the Madeleine (Salt Lake City: Sagebrush Press, 2009), 3, repeat the story, even though Mooney, on p. 43, cites the case files of the court settlement!

a policy of open dialogue between the two leaders, Young admonished Kelly that “if you hear rumors flying about touching me or this people, come right here with them and I will always set things right. That’s the best way.”6 Actually, both the legend of Brigham Young’s intervention and the settlement in court could be true. The Utah judicial system at the time was the probate court system—infamous to those outside the LDS church because it was little more than a rubber stamp for the church—and the court would have followed whatever the prophet decided.

On another occasion, a non-Mormon doctor in Salt Lake City, John Robinson, entered into a property conflict with the mayor, Daniel H. Wells, and the city council. Robinson was called out in the middle of the night, supposedly to look after a patient, and brutally gunned down— some thought by Mormon fanatics. “Fears of violence seized the whole non-Mormon community,” one observer recalled. “The Gentiles are Panic Stricken and dare not express opinions of the foul deed,” reported another. After attending the funeral, Kelly received an anonymous note ordering him to leave the city. The next day, he showed the note to Brigham Young, who said, “Father Kelly, that was not written by my people and I can prove it by the quality of the paper used. You remain and I will see that you shall not be disturbed and that not even a hair of your head shall be touched.”7 What should we make of these two alleged encounters with the Lion of the Lord? The first one, the offer to dispel rumors, has a ring of authenticity, both because it is a first-hand report from Bishop Daniel S. Tuttle of the Episcopal Church about his own experience and because Tuttle would likely have known that Young made the same suggestion to Kelly. And certainly Young had an interest in any opportunity to rebut rumors started by his Protestant antagonists.

Young’s reported dismissal of the threatening note, however, cannot be literally true—though the prophet likely encouraged the priest to stay, for the welcome of any clergy who bore an olive branch meant good public relations for the Mormons. But the report itself is ridden with problems. One supposes that non-Mormon merchants, many of whom operated in Salt Lake City in 1866, imported paper of a better quality than the

6 Stoffel, "The Hesitant Beginnings,” 56. The property, which did indeed become the site of the first permanent Catholic church in Utah, was at the east end of Social Hall Avenue, on Second East between South Temple and First South. Kelly does seem to have met Brigham Young, however: Bishop O’Connell wrote that the young priest “was introduced to the monster Young, who received him most courteously . . . and invited him to officiate in the Tabernacle.” Kelly declined the offer, preferring to celebrate Mass in the Congregationalist Independence Hall. Walsh, Hallowed Were the Gold Dust Trails, 205. The story of the offer of five hundred dollars for the school appears in the Semi-Weekly Telegraph, March 14, 1867. I am indebted to Ron Watt for this reference. Kelly left Utah shortly after the resolution of the property dispute and never built the school; no record exists that Brigham Young ever paid him the money or renewed the offer to his successor. Young’s offer to dispel rumors comes from the reminiscences of the pioneer Episcopal Bishop Daniel S. Tuttle, to whom he made the same offer and who reported that Young had previously made it to Father Kelly. Quinn, Building the “Goodly Fellowship of Faith,” 12.

7 Kiely, “The Story of the Catholic Church in Utah.”

homespun variety the Mormons manufactured. Customers of any or no religion would have access to such paper in the stationery shops of the city, and the idea that Young could instantly and confidently identify the author of the note as a Gentile by the appearance of the paper is incredible. Moreover, the last statement, in which Young guarantees Kelly’s safety, would have been a tacit admission that Robinson’s assassins were Mormons and that Young had the authority to tell them to leave Kelly alone. Otherwise, the only assurance he would be giving Kelly is that the local police would look after him, and the priest would derive little comfort from that, given the protection they afforded Dr. Robinson.

The problem with this account arises from the unreliability of its source, Father Denis Kiely, who arrived in Utah in the 1870s. Kiely claimed to have known Kelly and to have obtained his information directly from Kelly. We do know that Kelly revisited Salt Lake City several times in later years; however, Kelly’s memory of his relationship with Brigham Young might have deteriorated, or Kiely might have altered this narrative to serve his project of creating a myth of Mormon–Catholic comity.8

At any rate, even if the report of Young’s proffered protection were only approximately true, not only had Catholic–Mormon relations made a promising start, but the episode had also “cooled the ardor of those who had hoped to find in [Kelly] a champion of the forces of anti-Mormonism.” 9 Furthermore, both of Kelly’s encounters with Young demonstrate the amicable state of relations between the two Utah churches in the 1860s.

Utah Catholics struggled through the next few years and were preoccupiedwith building their first church, which they finished and dedicated in 1871; little indication exists of significant dealings with the Mormons during this period. The issue next emerges in the writings of Father Lawrence Scanlan, the great pioneer priest and first bishop of Salt Lake City, who brought Utah Catholicism to institutional maturity. Scanlan (1843–1915) was an Irishman educated at All Hallows College in Dublin, an institution created to train missionary priests who would minister to expatriate Irish scattered by the potato famine. Immediately following his ordination, Scanlan departed for California and arrived in San Francisco in 1868. After a brief parish ministry there, he was sent to the mining frontier of Nevada, where he received his baptism of fire serving rough Irish miners in Pioche. Scanlan returned briefly to Petaluma, California, but in 1873 he was sent to Utah, where he remained for the rest of his life.10

Although Scanlan's obituary includes the statement that “His relations with Brigham Young were always cordial and pleasant, and no antagonism

8 See Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950).

9 David L. Bigler and Will Bagley, Innocent Blood: Essential Narratives of the Mountain Meadows Massacre (Norman, OK: Arthur H. Clark, 2008), 262.

10 Robert J. Dwyer, “Pioneer Bishop: Lawrence Scanlan, 1843–1915,” Utah Historical Quarterly 20 (April 1952): 135–58.

between the Bishop and any of the successors of Brigham Young has ever arisen,” one doubts that the two men had much to do with one another.11 The Mormon prophet was in his declining years, and the young priest had his hands full trying to provide churches and priests and schools for his far-flung flock, scattered from Ogden to Silver Reef.

The Church of St. Mary Magdalen, erected in 1871 on the lot purchased by Kelly. The church was located on Second East, between South Temple and First South, at the east end of Social Hall Avenue.

If Scanlan dealt infrequently with Young, dealing with the Mormon people was a daily fact of life. Much of what we know about those relationships comes to us through annual reports submitted by Scanlan, Denis Kiely (now Scanlan’s vicar general), and the archbishop of San Francisco, Joseph Sadoc Alemany, to the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, an organization of French laypeople upon whom the tiny Utah Catholic population largely depended for financial support. 12 The reports

11 Intermountain Catholic, May 15, 1915.

12 Although in recent decades the Roman Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City has become financially much better off than ever before, it has never been completely independent. During Scanlan's day support came from the Pious Fund, an endowment for missions dating back to the Spanish era, and the Society for the Propagation of the Faith. Once profits from Utah silver mines began to roll in around the turn of the twentieth century, the church benefited from the fact that some of the wealthiest miners were Catholics, and Scanlan tapped some of those fortunes for special projects like the Cathedral of the Madeleine and St. Ann Orphanage. After the diocese went through some hard times trying to retire its debt in the 1920s and 1930s and having to finance a massive exterior restoration of the Cathedral in the 1970s, the bishops began to see the need for more systematic fundraising efforts. Accordingly, Bishop Joseph Lennox Federal

reveal at least two things: first, the Catholic clergy, which consisted of two recently arrived Irish priests (Scanlan and Kiely) and a Spaniard (Alemany), possessed little understanding of Mormonism and of the best ways to deal with Mormons; second, that their understanding of and attitudes toward the Mormons changed considerably over time. The historian must exercise considerable wariness in using those reports as sources, for they were fund-raising appeals, and a certain amount of demonizing the Mormons no doubt helped loosen those French purse strings.13

In a letter attached to the first report—an 1874 appeal for funds to help establish a Catholic school in Salt Lake City—Alemany admitted surprise at the warm reception the Mormons gave to the Catholics: “For some reason or other, they seem friendly to us; and if we could have a good Academy of Sisters there, much good could be hoped for.” 14 Scanlan amplifiedthe meaning of “much good” in his 1876 report, wherein he urged that “A Catholic school is very much needed in Ogden, where all the Catholic children are attending either Mormon or Protestant schools. This should be attended to at an early date, otherwise there is not only a

created the Diocesan Development Drive in the 1960s, and Bishop William K. Weigand created the Catholic Foundation of Utah in the 1980s. Even at that, the diocese still receives funds for special projects from the Catholic Church Extension Society and extraordinary grants from local patrons like Sam Skaggs.

13 Several of those reports, copies of which reside in the archives of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, have previously been edited for publication: John Bernard McGloin, “Two Early Reports Concerning Roman Catholicism in Utah, 1876–1881,” Utah Historical Quarterly 29 (October 1961): 333–46; Francis J. Weber, “Father Lawrence Scanlan’s Report of Catholicism in Utah, 1880,” Utah Historical Quarterly 34 (Fall 1966): 283–89, and “Catholicism Among the Mormons, 1875–79,” Utah Historical Quarterly 44 (Spring 1976): 112–32. As photocopies of all extant reports, both in French and English translation, exist in the Archives of the Diocese of Salt Lake City, I have used those copies even where a published text is available.

14 Alemany to the Society, January 31, 1874.

Reverend Denis Kiely, Bishop Lawrence Scanlan’s right-hand man and the first Vicar General of the Diocese of Salt Lake City.

danger, but a certainty that many of our children there shall be perverted and for ever lost to the church.” On the other hand, he disclosed that simply educating Catholic children was only part of the plan—Catholics must also convert Latter-day Saint children. After observing “that there exists in the minds of non-Catholics generally, in this country, a bitter prejudice against anything Catholic,” Scanlan reported that the pious lives of the Holy Cross Sisters who established St. Mary’s Academy in Salt Lake City in 1875 made great progress “not only removing all prejudices from [Mormon] minds, but even gaining their respect and admiration.” Then came the climax of Scanlan’s report: “Hence, during the past year, many of the [Mormon] pupils expressed a desire to be baptized. I baptized about a dozen and refused to comply with the desires of many others, through motives of prudence and objections raised by their parents.”15

One respects Scanlan’s wisdom and sensitivity in refusing baptism to perhaps impressionable young minds, especially in the face of parental protest, but one must also observe that little difference existed between the motives and goals of Catholic and Protestant schools at that time. Both groups had learned that trying to shake the faith of an adult Mormon was generally a futile effort, while ministering to children—not yet so well-established in their faith—had potential. This was particularly so in the late 1870s and 1880s when public education in Utah meant Mormon ward schools; these institutions were, at best, of an inconsistent quality, while well-qualified teachers staffed the Catholic and Protestant schools. Scanlan put the matter bluntly in his 1880 report:

I am more in favor of schools here than of churches because the greater my experience, the more I am convinced that, if we would strike at the roots of the great evil prevailing here, we must do it, chiefly, if not entirely, through good schools, wherein the young minds shall be impressed, at least by example, by the truth and beauty of our holy Faith, before they are enslaved by passions and false teachings. Little, comparatively speaking, can be done with the adult portion of the Mormon people. Their training, the persecutions which they fancy they have suffered for the Lord; and their whole ecclesiastical system have made them fanatics and “set in their way”; and hence, there is no reasoning with them. Those who apostatize from the Mormon faith are opposed to every form of religion and generally become spiritualists [or] down-right infidels.16

Accordingly, Scanlan and the other clergy were capable of characterizing Mormonism intemperately, referring to Utah as “this far off and all but Pagan Land,” where they found themselves “amongst a people who had transplanted in American soil, if not all, at least the most objectionable errors of Mahomet, & whose superstition, & fanaticism have no parallel in modern times. . . . surrounded by numberless Mormons, all sorts of heresies, and countless scandals.”

Over time, though, close contact with those “numberless Mormons”

15

Scanlan to the Society, October 12, 1876, Diocesan Archives.

16 Scanlan to the Society, November 8, 1880, Diocesan Archives.

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

caused a dramatic change in attitude.17 It began happening in the early 1880s as a result of the demanding journeys Scanlan made through hundreds of miles of rural Utah to minister to Catholics in such remote communities as Silver Reef and Frisco. During those trips he often found himself dependent for provisions and lodging on the residents of Mormon farm towns along the way. Scanlan’s obituary records that “he was compelled to seek shelter under their roofs, and be it said to their credit he was never disappointed. They had heard of him, and his difficult field of labor, and willingly and most hospitably received him wherever he went. This may serve in great measure to explain the broad tolerance which characterized his dealings with the members of that church.”18

Presumably as a result of those cordial contacts, Scanlan began to receive invitations from Mormon communities to speak about Catholicism. Here once again the historian must keep an eye out for hyperbole: one questions whether towns like Provo—with its lone Catholic family—ever exhibited quite the avid curiosity that Scanlan’s reports to the society indicate. Still, even discounting the reports considerably, they were nevertheless impressive:

We sometimes visit exclusively Mormon towns, and they receive us kindly and hospitably, offering us the use of a hall and even of their own churches, wherein to say Mass and hold other services. I visited some of those places lately, and preached night and morning to large and attentive audiences. After the services, many came to me and expressed themselves well pleased with our doctrines, asked me several questions and invited me to come again. This will show you that they are well disposed toward us, and our holy religion. This is as much as we can reasonably expect and is a strong encouragement to us in our efforts and sacrifices to convert and save them through the grace and mercy of God.19

By the end of 1880s, a major reorientation in attitude toward the Mormons was taking place. In 1888, in his last appeal to the Society, Scanlan indicated that converting Mormons remained a goal, but he also offered the following:

A friendly feeling, which may eventually result in some good, has been of late years manifested by the Mormons toward the Catholic Church and her institutions. This is owing to the fact that I, with my priests have adopted [a] reconciliatory policy towards them. Instead of abuse, which is unmercifully poured out against them from Protestant pulpits, we preach Catholic truth savoured with charity. [By] this many are attracted to the church, and it’s of daily occurance [sic] to hear some of them say “If the Mormon church be not true, the Catholic Church must certainly be the true & only church.”20

During the anti-polygamy crusade of the 1880s, Scanlan and the Episcopal bishop Daniel S. Tuttle seem to have been the only non-

17 Scanlan to the Society, October 12, 1876; Kiely to the Society, September 29, 1887; Alemany to the Society, November 7, 1881, Diocesan Archives.

18 Intermountain Catholic, May 15, 1915.

19 Scanlan to the Society, November 1, 1883, Diocesan Archives.

20 Scanlan to the Society, November 2, 1888, Diocesan Archives.

Mormon clergymen in Salt Lake City to remain aloof. 21 Apparently on repeated occasions the Protestant clergy held meetings to draft protests against polygamy to send to fellow clergy in the East, which the eastern ministers could use to lobby for government suppression of the institution. Scanlan was invited to such a meeting in 1881, but when he saw what the others intended to do, he walked out and refused to allow his name to be attached to the document. To his great dismay, however, and to that of his Mormon friends, the Protestants included his name nevertheless! Finding himself chided for the first time in the Mormon press, Scanlan issued a retraction. His obituary recounted the story: “‘I told them [the Protestant clergy],’ said the Bishop, shaking his head sternly as though recalling the incident vividly, ‘that I would not be a party to any such fight. If Mormonism is right,’ I said, 'there is nothing that I can do to stop it from succeeding. If it is wrong, it will die of its own accord.’”22

Part of Scanlan's mellowing attitude toward the Mormons during the late 1880s was apparently motivated by his sympathy for them in the face of the withering assaults brought against them by the Protestants. In fact, he even came to their defense. Scanlan’s Christmas homily in 1886 was in part a rebuke to the local Protestants for what he considered their unchristian treatment of the Mormons. The Deseret News reported the story with glee: “[He] has poked his sacerdotal stick into a hornet’s nest. He has blown the local sectarian fire into a blaze and caused the flames of hate to encircle his devoted head . . . [by his homily] in which he used some expressions not highly complimentary to the religious status of the Protestant sects.”23

Thereafter the Deseret News could hardly keep out of its own way in reporting stories complimentary to Scanlan. On the twenty-fifth anniversary of his ordination, for example, an editorial asserted that “There are few if any public men anywhere who stand fairer or more erect in the presence of the community in which they live than does Mr. Scanlan. He has been with us for the greater portion of the time, nearly all of it in fact, and has uniformly conducted the affairs of his church in a dignified, capable and unobtrusive manner, while personally affable, approachable and altogether correct in his deportment.” Finally, the paper offered “congratulations to

21 Quinn, Building the “Goodly Fellowship of Faith,” 30, reports the Deseret News’s assessment of Tuttle as one who, like Scanlan, could be critical of Mormon theology while remaining friendly to both the LDS church and to individual Mormons.

22 The Deseret News confused the chronology in its reporting of these episodes. A November 1881 draft of the protest document appeared in the News on April 26, 1882, with Scanlan's name included. The News of June 7, 1882, carried a chastisement of Scanlan by a Mormon who reminded him that his Irish heritage included a tradition of persecution similar to the persecution of Mormons, implying that his participation in the anti-polygamy crusade was unseemly. Finally, the May 6, 1885, Deseret News contained Scanlan's retraction and indicated that it referred to an incident of “about a year and a half ago,” suggesting that he had been approached more than once. The narrative is contained in his obituary in the Intermountain Catholic, May 5, 1915.

23 Salt Lake City Deseret News, February 2, 1887. The News had not reported the homily directly and had learned about it by means of an attack on it carried in a local Protestant paper, the Utah Christian Advocate. Thus the News reported the story over a month after the fact.

Bishop Scanlan,” wishing him “many more pleasant and prosperous years.” Similarly, notingthat Scanlan gave the benediction at the dedication of the Brigham Young monument in downtown Salt Lake City, the News added that Scanlan “is known as a liberal-minded ecclesiastical official and is respected by all who know him. . . . Of a man’s religious views and principles there is always room for difference of opinion, but the Latter-day Saints will be first to accord to every one who is honest and sincere in his convictions the rights and privileges to which sincerity is entitled.”24

For its part, the Catholic press reciprocated with positive reportage about Mormon leaders. When Lorenzo Snow, president of the LDS church, died in 1901, for example, the Intermountain Catholic ran a substantial article on him and quoted the Deseret News in praise of his character. An extensive obituary likewise appeared for James S. Brown, one of the three Mormon pioneers responsible for the California gold discovery, though perhaps that discovery was perceived as giving Brown a historical significance irrelevant to his religion. And the 1911 death of the LDS apostle John Henry Smith, who was said to have been “rather a favorite friend” to Scanlan, elicited a long and laudatory obituary. “Differing radically from us in his religious beliefs,” the article said, “it is nevertheless incumbent upon all fair-minded men to lay aside those differences in creed and to note the sterling characteristics which endeared him to those nearest to him and to pay tribute to the man.”25

24 Salt Lake City Deseret News, July 8, 1893, and August 7, 1897. 25 Intermountain Catholic, October 12, 1901, March 29, 1902, January 21, 1911, May 15, 1915.

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

The Smith obituary struck exactly the right balance: approval of the life of a great man should not be mistaken for approval of his religion. Utah Catholics, in their quest for cordial relations with their neighbors, never fell into the error of grasping at superficial similarities to plaster over the gulf that in fact existed between Catholicism and other faiths. That point became quite clear in a 1902 Intermountain Catholic article reprinting a national story announcing that the church’s official position was to remain aloof from the Protestant crusade against Mormonism. It was a Catholic position from which neither of the other religions could have derived much comfort: “The Catholic Church stands alone, in magnificent isolation, from the jarring sects as they rise, wrangle, and decay. . . . In her eyes they are all the same—rebels against her divine authority, destroyers of Christian unity in the world, and teachers of false doctrines.”26

Nevertheless, within those well-defined theological limits, Mormons and Catholics found it possible not only to get along, but even to cooperate. Perhaps the most dramatic symbol of cooperation between the two faiths occurred in St. George in 1879. In the mid-1870s, what turned out to be rich silver deposits were discovered in the midst of sandstone strata some twenty miles northeast of St. George, and the ensuing rush to the site in 1876 created a non-Mormon mining town called Silver Reef. The geological anomaly of silver deposits in sandstone—a virtually unique phenomenon—was echoed by the equally anomalous social and economic phenomenon of a non-Mormon capitalist community in the midst of the Mormon agricultural towns of Washington County. Although the two communities regarded each other somewhat warily at the outset, it soon became apparent that they needed each other: the miners needed food, transportation, and building supplies, and the Mormons needed markets and money; as a result, a mutually beneficial symbiosis developed between them.27

The relationship between the Silver Reef Catholics, the largest religious group in the town, and their Mormon neighbors formed a component of that symbiosis. Scanlan had a particular interest in the Silver Reef Catholics even though, in those horse-and-buggy days, the almost three hundred miles separating them from Salt Lake City might reasonably have put them beyond all but the most sporadic pastoral care. Upon his first visit to Silver Reef, though, Scanlan discovered that most of the Catholics were former members of his Pioche, Nevada, parish who had followed the silver rush to Utah. Accordingly, beginning in January 1879, he hurriedly erected a church, a school, and a hospital.

During his visits to Silver Reef, Scanlan boarded at the same hotel as John M. Macfarlane, a Latter-day Saint and the director of the St. George

26 Intermountain Catholic, April 19, 1902.

27 The story of Silver Reef has been told numerous times, most recently in Gary Topping, “Another Look at Silver Reef,” Utah Historical Quarterly 79 (Fall 2011): 300–316, from which the passage that follows is derived.

Tabernacle choir, whose day job as deputy U.S. mineral surveyor required travel among the mining centers of the region. Learning of their mutual love of choral music, the two struck up a friendship. As that friendship developed, Macfarlane boldly offered the use of the St. George Tabernacle and his choir if Scanlan would bring the Silver Reef Catholics to St. George and present Mass there. The president of Macfarlane’s Mormon stake turned out not to be as ecumenically minded as the choir director, but the higher-ranking Erastus Snow, an LDS apostle, intervened and ordered the service to be held.28 The date of May 25, 1879, was selected.

What did Scanlan, Macfarlane, and their two churches hope to gain through such remarkable collaboration? Only tentative answers are possible, and even then only by reading between the lines of the sources. Although Scanlan reportedly told Macfarlane he had “neither a church nor a choir” in Silver Reef, he exaggerated at least in part, for the church had been completed in time for Easter Mass on April 13.29 And surely Scanlan could have cobbled together at least some sort of choir out of the substantial Catholic population. More likely, he recognized that the tabernacle was a much finer structure than his little clapboard church, and that its choir, in the tradition of Mormon choral music, would far outdo anything he might assemble. Further, Scanlan did not abandon the quixotic quest for converts among the Mormons until the following decade, and he apparently regarded the St. George performance as an opportunity to disseminate sound doctrine.

On the Mormon side, Snow and Macfarlane might have seen it as an opportunity to show off the new tabernacle, which the LDS church had dedicated three years earlier in 1876, and its well-trained choir. On a darker note, the historian Juanita Brooks speculates that the Washington County Mormons might have been looking for some goodwill in their attempts to live down the grisly Mountain Meadows Massacre, which occurred only a few miles away—especially since the 1877 execution there of John D. Lee would have revived memories of that ghastly episode.30

In any case, the service did take place. Scanlan previously claimed to have celebrated Mass in Mormon churches, but this is the only documented case of such an event. The liturgy was a Mass in D by a composer named Peters. Legend has it that Scanlan made repeated trips to St. George to help rehearse the choir in the meaning and proper pronunciation of the Latin. Although the St. George Mormons would have far outnumbered the contingent of Silver Reef Catholics, Scanlan carefully bridged understanding between the two groups by taking a few moments to explain the vestments he would wear, as well as including, perhaps in a homily or in a lecture

28

L. W. Macfarlane, Yours Sincerely, John M. Macfarlane (Salt Lake City: The Author, 1980), 153–59 29 Ibid., 155.

30 Jerome Stoffel to [Paul S.] Kuzy, December 30, 1987, Diocesan Archives. See also, Michael N. Landon, “‘A Shrine to the Whole Church’: The History of the St. George Tabernacle,” Mormon Historical Studies 12 (Spring 2011): 125–48.

afterwards, the basic history and doctrines of Catholicism.31

Did this remarkable episode create rapprochement between Mormons and Catholics? It seems to have had little influence. The event was never repeated, and, with the dwindling of silver deposits, the Catholic presence in Silver Reef lasted only until 1885. Genuine ecumenical understanding must build upon many such outreach attempts over a long period of time. Also, the fact that this effort took place among a small group of people at the geographical frontier of both Utah Mormonism and Catholicism meant that its ripples were not likely to extend far. On the other hand, it is firmly planted in the historical memories of both churches, particularly the LDS church, whose historians have missed no opportunities to retell the story proudly. For a people so often treated as pariahs in American culture, the opportunity to extend an ecumenical gesture and to have it so enthusiastically accepted is a happy indication of the future possibilities such gestures hold.32

Although documentation of Scanlan’s episcopacy is more sparse than the historian would like, he kept much better records than any of his next three successors, Joseph S. Glass (1915–26), John J. Mitty (1926–32), and James E. Kearney (1932–7). Also, coverage of the bishops’ activities and their relations with the Mormon church dropped off to little more than pious assertions by the local press that all people of all religions loved the bishops. The lack of press interest may reflect the fact that by the time of Scanlan’s death, the existence of a growing flock of Catholics in the heart of Mormon country had ceased to be a novelty. Further, internal church matters occupied the bishops so fully that participation in public ceremonies constituted the bulk of their newsworthy activities. Bishop Glass, for one, was heavily involved with the Council of Defense during World War I and with redecorating the interior of the Cathedral of the Madeleine, while his two successors became desperately preoccupied with raising funds to retire the heavy indebtedness that Glass incurred through such ambitious projects and through a lack of financial acumen.33

Amidst the scanty documentation of Glass’s relationship with the Mormon Church, two sources give mixed signals. One—if indeed it is even credible—indicates that Glass had a close personal relationship with Heber J. Grant, president of the LDS church. This clue comes from the

31 Macfarlane, Yours Sincerely, 156; Denis Kiely, “Report to the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, October 31, 1879,” Diocesan Archives.

32 At the dedication of the Notre Dame de Lourdes church in Price on June 20, 1923, three Mormon women—June Whitmore, Edith Olson, and Mrs. L. S. Evans—provided vocal music as part of the Mass. Ronald W. Watt, City of Diversity: A History of Price, Utah (Price, UT: City of Price, 2001), 76. Since most of what happens in history never gets written down, it is impossible to know whether or how often such episodes of ecumenical cooperation occurred. But the existence of these two events in St. George and Price suggests that we might reasonably infer that other such cooperative efforts happened.

33 See Gary Topping, “Bishop Mitty’s Tough Love: History and Documents,” Utah Historical Quarterly 79 (Spring 2011): 144–63.

papers of a Catholic lawyer, John Frederick Tobin. Tobin had been out of town for a period late in 1923, so a lawyer friend, Ira R. Humphrey, wrote to catch him up on the news of his social circle in Salt Lake City. In a postscript, Humphrey offered the following explanation for a typographical error earlier in the letter: “The spelling of ‘guess’ in the second paragraph is due to the fact that I played poker last night until after three o’clock this morning with Heber J. Grant, Rev. Goshen, Bishop Glass and Charley Quickley.”34 The Salt Lake City directory reveals that Goshen served as pastor of the First Congregational Church and that a Charles Quigley (Humphrey’s typography was still unreliable) was a mine operator in the firm of Quigley and Welch.

Is this letter credible? It challenges the imagination to picture the puritanical Grant sitting at a card table, coatless with necktie loosened, bluffing a pair of deuces. Of course, that ardent prohibitionist and strict observer of the LDS health code, the Word of Wisdom, would not have

34 Ira Humphrey to J. F. Tobin, December 15, 1923, J. F. Tobin Papers, Utah State Historical Society, Salt Lake City, Utah.

Bishop Joseph S. Glass standing on the staircase in the reception area of his home at 82 Laurel Street, Salt Lake City. This might have been the site of the 1923 poker game.

partaken of the cigars and whiskey that seem fit accompaniments to such gatherings. And yet, unless this is some kind of inside joke to which we are not privy, there seems no reason to take the letter at anything but face value. Besides, Grant was well known for his efforts to eradicate Utah stereotypes and to establish productive relationships with powerful non-Mormons outside the state. 35 Looked at in that way, it is perhaps not incredible to discover him in an ecumenical role, rubbing shoulders with a Protestant minister and a Catholic bishop—even, perhaps, around a card table.

However, evidence of contemporary ecclesiastical friction exists in a very public forum. When Glass redecorated Scanlan’s Cathedral of the Madeleine during World War I, he employed an array of artists in various media to transform the church from its simple, even austere, décor to the lavish display of color and intricate woodcarving that adorns the edifice today. Among the additions was a series of scriptural quotations in large gold letters across the front of the church, some of which could be interpreted as pointed theological statements. Two of them are well-known texts that the church has always cited as bases for Catholic authority: the famous “Thou art Peter” of Matthew 16:18 and “Except you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood you shall not have life in you,” from John 6:54–5. Above the St. Joseph altar in the east transept, though, sits St. Paul’s warning from Galatians 1:8 that “Though we or an angel from heaven preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you let him be anathema” could be interpreted as Glass’s scriptural basis for condemnation of the LDS religion, which Joseph Smith claimed to have received through the agency of heavenly visitors.

Or perhaps not. Amidst the struggles of World War I, the press gave so little coverage of the redecoration, even in the Intermountain Catholic, that it is difficult to know what anyone made of those messages, if that is what they were. Moreover, in those days before the cultural programs and ecumenical services that have flourished since the 1993 renovation of the Cathedral of the Madeline, few Mormons would even have entered the place and been aware of the inscriptions. Altogether, the history of that edifice encapsulates, to a degree, the ambivalent relationship between Mormons and Catholics in Utah.

Following Glass’s episcopacy, bishops Mitty and Kearney were so preoccupied with fundraising efforts to get out of the financial hole created by Glass’s extravagance that scant documentation of Mormon–Catholic encounters, positive or negative, remains. In the 1990s, Bishop William K. Weigand and Monsignor M. Francis Mannion successfully appealed to a wide variety of funding sources by portraying the cathedral as a “Cathedral

35 Ronald W. Walker, “Heber J. Grant,” in Utah History Encyclopedia, ed. Allan Kent Powell (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1994), 230–31.

One of the potentially antiMormon scriptural quotations installed in the Cathedral of the Madeleine during Bishop Glass’s World War I–era redecoration.

for all People,” because of its value architecturally and as venue for cultural events. During the tenures of Mitty and Kearney, though, Salt Lakers essentially perceived the cathedral as a Catholic site, leaving the bishops to raise funds exc lusivelyfrom Catholic sources. Accordingly, no documented efforts were made to appeal for help even to individual Mormons, let alone the LDS church itself.

Nevertheless, evidence exists that Mitty was well received in the community, presumably by Mormons as well as by everyone else, largely because of his wartime service as an Army chaplain in Europe and because of his patriotism. Well before he completed the first year of his tenure, Mitty wrote to his mentor, Patrick Cardinal Hayes of New York, that “The nonCatholics 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. [Monsignor Duane G.] Hunt who has lived in Salt Lake [City] for 13 years tells me that he never saw such desire to have the Bishop or any Catholic attend non sectarian functions.”36

36 John J. Mitty to Patrick Hayes, November 18, 1926, Mitty Papers, Diocesan Archives.

Mitty used Hunt himself as a bridge between the Mormon and Catholic communities through a series of weekly radio broadcasts, called the “Utah Catholic Hour,” that aired almost continually on KSL, the LDS-affiliated radio station, from 1927 to 1949. Named for Father Charles Coughlin’s popular “Catholic Hour,” the program remained scrupulously noncontroversial and was devoted, instead, to explaining Catholic doctrines to Catholics and to discussing religious and ethical issues that had no sectarian content. Hunt brought to the broadcasts rhetorical skills finely honed from years of teaching at the University of Utah, and the programs became popular. Two years later, KSL created a national feed to the CBS network, allowing Hunt to reach an estimated one million listeners each week. Although the diocese paid KSL for the air time, the station reaped the further benefit of getting a million radio dials tuned to its frequency each week.37

By the time Hunt became bishop of the Diocese of Salt Lake City in 1937, the Catholic and LDS churches had already developed deep historical

37 Francis J. Weber, “Duane Hunt, Apostle of Airwaves,” The Tidings (Archdiocese of Los Angeles), February 24, 1984. There were less happy encounters as well: after Hunt became bishop in 1937, he enlisted other priests to substitute for him occasionally. One was Msgr. Jerome Stoffel, who reminisced to Gregory Prince that once during a remodeling of the station, KSL assigned to him the more commodious studio that J. Reuben Clark used for broadcasts on Mormon subjects. As Stoffel left the studio, he encountered Clark, “who glowered at him as if to say, ‘What in the hell are you doing in my studio?’” Jerome Stoffel, interview by Gregory Prince, October 6, 1995, quoted in Prince, e-mail to Gary Topping, September 3, 2002, p. 6.

Duane G. Hunt, who hosted “Catholic Hour” broadcasts on KSL.

DIOCESAN ARCHIVES

roots—roots that have only deepened over subsequent years. It is surely a remarkable fact in the history of religion that two faiths with such fundamental and irreconcilable theological differences have learned to coexist so peacefully and productively. Reviewing that history, their amicable relationship seems to have been based, for one thing, in the determination of Catholics to neither proselytize Latter-day Saints, nor, indeed, to engage in polemical exchanges of any kind. Catholic clergy have generally felt that they had their hands full just ministering to their own people without trying to steal sheep from other folds—a thievery that has, in any event, proved rather unproductive when attempted by Protestants. For the Mormons’ part, after enduring violent assaults on their existence from other churches, the Catholic olive branch obviously represented a welcome respite.

Furthermore, Catholics and Mormons have learned to join forces in charitable, philanthropic, and cultural endeavors where religious differences have seemed irrelevant. Consider, for example, the cultural events regularly staged at the Cathedral of the Madeleine after its 1993 reopening. Even more dramatically, at this writing, Catholic Community Services is headed by Brad Drake—a Mormon. All these manifestations of interfaith cooperation and collaboration draw strength from a historical relationship carefully nurtured by leaders of both churches since the first permanent establishment of Catholicism in the heart of Mormon Utah.

Murder and Mapping in the “Land of Death,” Part I: The Walcott-McNally Incident

By ROBERT S. MCPHERSON

During the second half of the nineteenth century, the Four Corners region, especially southeastern Utah, had a reputation as a haven for troublemakers. Whether for Navajo, Ute, and Paiute Indians, or Anglo cowboys, miners, settlers, and transients, the area served as an escape hatch for those on the lam. This well-deserved but ill-begotten fame received a strong boost in the 1880s as groups of settlers and ranchers made their way into the area from different directions and for a variety of purposes. Competition for resources and differing ways of life created the kinds of conflicts that Hollywood later recreated and filmed in the same landscape. But for now, life was real and raw. This article examines how the physical and social landscape of the Four Corners area—with its reputation as a “land of death”—played a role in the demise of two miners. This isolated incident, by itself, is not terribly important and is largely lost in the pages of history. It does, however, provide an interesting case study that typifies the problems of law enforcement in an isolated area, known only to those who lived there. Eventually, enough incidents occurred that the military considered placing a permanent cantonment near present-day Monticello—the topic of a second article, to be published in the fall 2013 issue of Utah Historical Quarterly. While this plan did not reach fruition, there is no missing the feelings of necessity that prompted the investigation and led to the charting of this unknown area.

In 1884 Dennis M. Riordan sat in the Navajo Agency in Fort Defiance, Arizona, feeling anything but defiant. He had assumed control of the expanding Navajo Nation in January 1883, leaving his home in California for the red rock desert of Arizona and New Mexico. The Indian agent now had responsibility for a growing population that between 1868 and 1892 officially doubled to 18,000 souls, but in reality was much

A 1932 view of Navajo Mountain.

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Robert S. McPherson is professor of history at Utah State University, Blanding Campus; he currently serves on the Utah Board of State History.

larger.1 The difficulties of the landscape pushed the Navajo all over their 20,000-square-mile reservation in mobile family units that made keeping track of most of them impossible, given the poor location of the agency at the southern end of this huge expanse of desert. Riordan was as impoverished as were his charges, with an annual salary of $1,500 that encouragedhim to submit his resignation six months after he arrived. It would take almost a year, however, before John Bowman from Colorado came to replace him.2 Even during his short tenure, Riordan learned about “the land of death” northwest of the agency, that territory beyond the reservation boundaries that encompassed primarily northern Arizona and southern Utah. The agency’s 1882 annual report commented upon “a lawless remnant of the Pah Ute Indians and the Navajos affiliating with them,” but yet retained “hope that murders of prospectors and others in that heretofore land of death will be less frequent.”3

Unfortunately, these hopes were dashed on two counts. First, in early April 1884, word filtered south to Fort Defiance that Navajos had killed two prospectors—Samuel T. Walcott and James McNally—in the vicinity of Navajo Mountain, which straddles the Utah–Arizona border. As Riordan packed his bags, he dealt with this situation as best he could but left the main share of the follow-up work to the incoming Bowman. Second, the borders of the Navajo Reservation—and thus the area of primary jurisdictional concern—were about to change. On May 17, 1884, President Chester A. Arthur signed two executive orders that made all of the land in southeastern Utah between the San Juan River and the northern border of Arizona, as well as lands south of that border, part of the reservation. This did not encompass all of the “land of death,” which also included a triangle of territory with Moab at its northern tip, the Colorado River to the west, and the Colorado border to its east. It was enough, however, to add hundreds of miles of terrain to the agent’s responsibility.

The “land of death” deserved its name. Also known to whites as “the Dark Corner” because it contrasted with the relatively calmer portions of the Four Corners area, this terra incognita of southeastern Utah had become a welcoming black hole for those who wished to disappear from the law and society. Ute, Paiute, and Navajo factions, as well as lawless elements from white settlements, appreciated the isolated canyon country, where resources were available only to those who understood the land and where many fight-and-flight incidents occurred.4 Two significant skirmishes

1 Garrick Bailey and Roberta Glenn Bailey, A History of the Navajos: The Reservation Years (Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 1986), 28.

2 William Haas Moore, Chiefs, Agents and Soldiers: Conflict on the Navajo Frontier, 1868–1882 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994): 256–57.

3 Galen Eastman, “Reports of Agents in New Mexico,” September 1, 1882, Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1883), 129.

4 For examples of lawlessness in this area, see Robert S. McPherson, As If the Land Owned Us: An Ethnohistory of the White Mesa Utes (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2011) and The Northern Navajo

The Four Corners region, including Navajo Mountain, Fort Defiance, and Fort Lewis.

—the Pinhook Draw fight of 1881 and the battle at Soldier Cro ssing in 1884—led to embarrassing situations for white belligerents; on both occasions, Utes fought white forces to a standstill. In 1881, a group of cowboys suffered the loss of ten men, while in 1884, the U.S. military fled the scene because of poor logistical support.5 In these and several other conflicts, no one knew the canyon systems, watering holes, mountainous topography, escape routes, ambush sites, and location of allies as well as did the Native Americans. Indeed, in both 1881 and 1884, the Indians established traps for advancing forces, held the high ground, and understood what local resources could support them while they defeated their opponents. It was not surprising, then, that Riordan was reluctant to get involved in the tangle of canyons and ambush sites that sheltered hostile elements.

Navajo Mountain, a landmark on the northern edge of the reservation, had served as a sanctuary for Navajos ever since the United States military began rounding them up in the 1850s and 1860s to incarcerate them at Fort Sumner in New Mexico. To those fleeing from the cavalry and its Ute

Frontier, 1860–1900: Expansion through Adversity (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2001); J. Lee Correll, “Navajo Frontiers in Utah and Troublous Times in Monument Valley,” Utah Historical Quarterly 39 (Spring 1971): 145–61; and Albert R. Lyman, Indians and Outlaws: Settling of the San Juan Frontier (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1962, 1980).

5 Rusty Salmon and Robert S. McPherson, “Cowboys, Indians, and Conflict: The Pinhook Draw–Little Castle Valley Fight, 1881,” Utah Historical Quarterly 69 (Winter 2001): 4–28; McPherson and Winston B. Hurst, “The Fight at Soldier Crossing 1884: Military Considerations in Canyon Country,” Utah Historical Quarterly 70 (Summer 2002): 258–81.

scouts, the mountain known as Naatsis’ 11 n (Head of Earth Woman) was both part of a supernatural being and a shield that enemies could not penetrate. Even today’s chants intone thanks to Navajo Mountain: “I am spared! Enemy has missed me!” “All of us have survived! … For many more years!”6

The mountain’s power proved sufficient to hold Navajo adversaries at bay. With water from the San Juan and Colorado rivers, springs and seeps dotting its sides, wood and grass enough for man and animal, and myriad tributary canyons, the mountain and its surrounding area beckoned to those needing shelter. Hashkéneinii (Giving out Anger) was one of these. One day in the early 1860s, a rider surprised Hashkéneinii at his hogan in Kayenta, Arizona, and announced that the dust they saw on the horizon belonged to American soldiers. Further, “there were some Ute scouts among the white soldiers and we were more afraid of them than the whites, as we had always been at war with them.”7 In response to this news, Hashkéneinii and sixteen other people scattered across the desert floor and in the nearby canyons to avoid detection, reassembled that night, and with a few possessions headed north.

Hashkéneinii, mounted and armed, led the party and scouted for enemies. Next he turned west, traveling through a maze of canyons until he reached the southern end of Navajo Mountain. Exhausted, hungry, and footsore along with the rest of the group, Hashkéneinii’s wife sat down and refused to go farther. The group selected a campsite, located a permanent source of water, began collecting seeds and nuts, killed an occasional rabbit, and prepared for winter. In order for their flock of twenty animals to increase, Hashkéneinii insisted that they could not eat sheep. Hashkéneinii was a taskmaster, pushing his people to work constantly, to do whatever survival required. His son recalled, “He drove everyone all day long and would never let us rest, knowing that we might starve.” For this, Hashkéneinii received his name, which translates as “Giving out Anger” or “The Angry One.” Hashkéneinii’s group remained hidden at Navajo Mountain for six years. By the time the government released the Navajos from Fort Sumner in 1868, Hashkéneinii and his family owned large herds of sheep, as well as silver jewelry made from a vein of ore he had discovered.8

Navajo Mountain thereafter became the preferred hiding spot for Navajos, Utes, and Paiutes fleeing retribution. Thus, in 1884 when word first reached Riordan and later Bowman about the defiance of Navajos who had killed two prospectors near the mountain, they were learning of the latest incident in a long string of events that played off the isolation and

6

For an explanation of traditional Navajo religious teachings concerning this landmark, see Karl W. Luckert, Navajo Mountain and Rainbow Bridge Religion (Flagstaff: Museum of Northern Arizona, 1977).

7 Hashkéneinii Biye’, cited in Charles Kelly, “Chief Hoskaninni,” Utah Historical Quarterly 21 (Summer 1953): 219–26.

8 Ibid., 221.

lack of information concerning this territory. The seemingly insignificant deaths of Walcott and McNally provide a classic example of what the military faced when serving justice in an unknown and unforgiving land— a lesson repeated numerous times. Indeed, that July, even as the military attempted to apprehend one of the killers and retrieve the dead miners’ bodies, the Soldier Crossing incident occurred. In this skirmish, Utes fought to a standstill an expedition of 175 men led by Captain Henry P. Perrine, commander of F Troop, Sixth Cavalry, from Fort Lewis, Colorado. The military lost two men. The captain’s drubbing occurred because he lacked knowledge of terrain, while his enemies successfully made their way toward Navajo Mountain.9 So the Walcott-McNally incident represented a number of such brushes in the “land of death,” furnishing a lesson that the military and others had to learn and relearn until their knowledge of the land became comparable to that of their foes.

First news of the Walcott-McNally murders filtered into the agency via word of mouth. Riordan sent a Navajo scout named Pete to investigate. In the meantime, Henry L. Mitchell, a well-known firebrand living in Riverside (now Aneth), Utah, sent to the agent a copy of a letter that he had mailed to a friend of Walcott’s. Mitchell reported two things. First, since February 8, Walcott and McNally had lost contact with fellow prospectors after splitting with a larger group to follow rumors of rich copper deposits. A month later, the other miners arrived on the San Juan River but knew nothing about their companions. Mitchell, who had lost a son and an acquaintance to Ute and Paiute depredations while prospecting in Monument Valley four years earlier, suspected the worst. Suggesting that “it is a common thing for the Navajos to kill white men that are travelling through the country,” Mitchell felt the time had come to teach the Indians a lesson they would not forget. That brought him to his second point. Mitchell had recently skirmished with a number of Navajos, killing one of them and “hop[ing] others [were] wounded or killed.” This led to the stationing of Perrine’s Fort Lewis troops in the vicinity of Mitchell’s ranch in order to keep the lid on such problems—problems that would eventually contribute to the fight at Soldier Crossing.10

Concern grew. Riordan wrote to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs that he himself had had a brush with the rumored perpetrators, who cornered him and another white man. The Navajos debated for several hours before letting the two go. As far as the agent was concerned, “this band of cut throats in that region” needed to be punished, “and if the party sent out is not strong enough to bring them in, I propose to send the entire

9

10 Henry L. Mitchell to Fred Fickey Jr., April 16, 1884, Letters Received—Adjutant General’s Office, 1881–1889, Record Group 94, National Archives, Washington, D.C. (hereafter cited as Letters Received— AGO). For more on Mitchell, see Robert S. McPherson, “Navajos, Mormons, and Henry L. Mitchell,” Utah Historical Quarterly 55 (Winter 1987): 50–65.

See McPherson and Hurst, “The Fight at Soldier Crossing.”

force at my command and if that will not do, I shall ask for troops. If my resignation was not pending, I would go myself and get those men or they’d get me.”11

Several firsthand accounts of the murders emerged. The first version, as reported by unnamed sources to Pete, the Navajo scout, placed the blame squarely on Hashkéneinii Biye’ and described Slim Man, a second Navajo connected to the murders, as a concerned bystander. A second account, reported by an unnamed Navajo scout, blamed one of the miners for startinga shootout at the campfire. Slim Man himself accused Hashkéneinii Biye’ of the killings, while Hashkéneinii Biye’, in turn, implicated Slim Man. An account offered by Little Mustache defended Hashkéneinii Biye’. The presiding agent at Fort Defiance then had to sift through these versions of the story, with facts and fictions that could only be verified by action on the ground.

On April 19, the Navajo scout Pete returned with a detailed report provided by eyewitnesses. Near the southeast corner of Navajo Mountain, the powerful headman Hashkéneinii lived with his son, Hashkéneinii Biye’. These men had resided there now for more than two decades, were well-known, and were respected for both the physical and supernatural power they commanded. When Walcott and McNally camped in their territory, the members of this band naturally visited them to find out what had brought these strangers there.12 Man with White Horses (Hastiin Bil88{igai) appeared first and learned that the white men wanted to trade for corn and meat, which he promised to bring the next morning. When Slim Man (Diné Ts’0s7) and Man with White Horses’s son, a “halfgrown boy,” reached the prospectors’ camp, they joined Hashkéneinii Biye’,

11

12 The

Dennis M. Riordan to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, April 19, 1884, Letters Received—Navajo Agency, New Mexico, Record Group 75, National Archives, Washington, D.C. (hereafter cited as Letters Received—Navajo Agency).

following account is based on information found in “Report of Pete,” May 4, 1884, Letters Received—Navajo Agency.

Hashkéneinii Biye’—a central figure in the Walcott-McNally incident—photographed by Charles Kelly, circa 1935–40.

already seated at the fire. All three Navajos watched as the Americans ate breakfast, after which McNally left to secure the prospectors’ five horses. The Indians were ready to barter, but Walcott wanted to wait for his companion to return, and so the Navajos bided their time. Slim Man wondered if the white men would accept one of his horses as a trade for the rifle he saw lying on the ground. Hashkéneinii Biye’ proposed the deal; Walcott refused. This angered Hashkéneinii Biye’ and rekindled the resentment that had smoldered in his heart since the killing of his relatives in Utah ten years before.

In January 1874, four young Navajos on a trading expedition had stopped in Grass Valley, Utah, during a terrific snowstorm. Seeking shelter, the men came across an empty cabin, took up residence until the storm ended, and killed a calf for food. Angered by the intrusion onto their property, the William McCarty family entered the cabin, killed three of the Navajos, and wounded the fourth, who managed to escape. This severely injured fourth man made his way back to his people, blamed the Mormons since the killings occurred in their country, and encouraged Navajos living on the northern end of the reservation to go to war. Jacob Hamblin, the Mormon apostle to the Indians, held council with the distraught Navajos and eventually averted a possible frontier war, but not before Navajo agent William F. M. Arny became involved in the situation and ratcheted up the rhetoric. Central to Hamblin’s success was his proving that the murderers were not Mormons but only bad men who needed punishment.13

Apparently, as Hashkéneinii Biye’ contemplated these events, he rememberedthat there had been no satisfaction and no revenge on the perpetrators. He was still angry about it and his wife knew it. Because of this, the night before his encounter with Walcott and McNally, she hid his moccasins so that he could not hurt the two peaceful miners. But now, the time seemed right. Hashkéneinii Biye’ proclaimed, “Let’s kill these Americans. They are always mean and have no accommodation about them.” Man with White Horses’s son readily agreed, but Slim Man cautioned that their relatives would not like them to do it; the other two did not seem to care. Hashkéneinii Biye’ told the boy to pick up the rifle, while he grabbed an ax. Walcott responded to Hashkéneinii Biye’ first, trying to wrest the tool out of his hands until the Indian told Walcott that he was just checking the blade for sharpness. Walcott then went to the boy to get his rifle as the youth began to remove it from its scabbard. As Walcott bent over to secure the rifle, Hashkéneinii Biye’ struck him in the back of the head with the ax, killing him instantly. As two older Navajos joined the group, Slim Man rose from his seat and asked, “What have you boys been doing fighting?” Slim Man explained to the older men what had happened, which raised the question of what course to follow with McNally. One of the old men,

Moore, Chiefs, Agents, and Soldiers, 124–36.

Little Mustache (D1ghaa’ Y1zh7), answered “As long as one is killed, it is better to kill the other one too, for if they are murdered, no one will ever know anything about it.”

The Navajos withdrew a short distance from the camp, but as McNally approached, Hashkéneinii Biye’ began shooting at him with the newly acquired Winchester rifle. The prospector immediately tied all three horses he had together to form a standing breastwork, until all of the animals fell, mortally wounded. McNally lay behind his dead mounts and returned fire. Hashkéneinii Biye’ quickly used all eight cartridges in the rifle and decided that he and his companions needed to crawl as close as they could toward their victim then engage him with their pistols. Little Mustache came the closest, twenty-five feet from the barricade, before all the Indians began firing. When Little Mustache raised himself above a tuft of grass to see, the miner spotted him and shot him in the head; McNally’s bullet entered near his right eye and exited behind his ear. The wounded Indian jumped up and stumbled away. The others broke off the fight, secured their wounded friend, and brought him to a nearby hogan, where he could be warmed and cared for. They also sent word to Hashkéneinii’s camp to make the headman aware of the incident. Shortly after dark, Hashkéneinii arrived with a group of followers. He sent an observer to see if McNally had moved and if so, where. The scout eventually returned saying that the white man had left; he did not know when or in which direction, but McNally had definitely left. Father and son, along with a number of others in this group, took up the trail, lighting matches to follow the miner’s tracks. The next day it was over; they killed McNally.

Pete reported that Slim Man buried Walcott; collected and burned the men’s blankets, saddles, and equipment (all covered with blood); and captured their two remaining horses, as well as two horses from the recent fracas at Mitchell’s ranch on the San Juan River. He accompanied the scout as far as Pete’s home in the Chinle Valley and planned to come to the agency with animals and equipment once the horses could travel again. Slim Man also made a statement of the events he witnessed. Riordan appreciated this testimony, which corroborated his judgment that these murders added to “scores of white men during the past ten years [who] have paid the penalty of daring to examine the country outside of this reservation with their lives.”14

Additional information trickled in. According to another Navajo scout with a less convincing report, Walcott was much more the aggressor: he spoke sharply to the Navajos, drew his gun first, and shot one of the Navajos who sat peacefully at the campfire. The scout also asserted that McNally was badly wounded before leaving his horse barricade and that other uninvolved Navajos found him dead. Despite his significant injury, Little Mustache remained alive.15

14 Riordan to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, April 22, 1884, Letters Received—Navajo Agency.

15 “Report of Sam-Boo-ko-di,” April 19, 1884, Letters Received—Navajo Agency.

Slim Man came into the agency on May 5 and offered a report sharply at odds with that of the second Navajo scout. According to his account, when Man with White Horses first approached the camp the night before the shooting, he and the two miners shook hands and “hugged each other all around,” followed by a gift exchange of tobacco. The next morning after breakfast, the white men gave all three of the new visitors tobacco; Hashkéneinii Biye’ “was moving around all the time while the other two sat by the fire.” After the Navajo killed Walcott, he removed a pistol and holster that he had tried to trade for earlier, but had been refused. At this point, Man with White Horses returned to the camp, suggesting that they put a white rag on a stick, approach McNally, and then point him in the direction he should go to get home safely. Another Navajo man disagreed, and the group eventually decided to kill McNally. Slim Man explained the next day’s fight, adding that under the cover of darkness McNally had left his barricade before departing, gone into the camp, wrapped Walcott in some blankets, and piled his things around him. That night, although badly wounded, McNally travelled twenty-five miles before Hashkéneinii Biye’, Hashkéneinii, and “an old Navajo” caught up to the prospector and killed him. As for Slim Man, he felt sorry about the whole affair and did not hesitate to contradict Hashkéneinii, who had threatened to kill anyone who talked about it.16

Yet another actor in the drama came forth to testify—Hashkéneinii Biye’ himself, who arrived at the agency with his father and “a large

16 Ten-nai-tsosi (Diné Ts’ 0 s 7 ) “Story,” given to Riordan, May 5, 1884, Letters Received—Navajo Agency.

A Navajo hogan in Monument Valley.

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

number of his warriors” on May 7.17 The interim agent, S. E. Marshall, took his sworn statement, which both the young man and his father signed, then turned the pair loose. Hashkéneinii Biye’ began his version of the events with his illness and his friends “singing over me all night to make me well.” Tired from the ceremony, he and his wife were returning that morning when they encountered the two Americans. Husband and wife received tobacco, offered to sell some mutton to the men, and then went home. The next morning, Hashkéneinii Biye’ traveled to the prospectors’ camp, watched them eat breakfast and then inhospitably give the leftovers to their dog, and waited for McNally to retrieve his horses. Hashkéneinii Biye’ told Slim Man to tell the white man where the animals were, but twice Slim Man refused. Walcott took out a pair of binoculars and let Hashkéneinii Biye’ look through them, but denied Slim Man the opportunity. Man with White Horses’s son went to look at the rifle on the ground; this angered the white man, so he chased after the boy with an ax but never caught him. Next, Walcott went after Slim Man, who sat by the fire. Fortunately, according to his account, Hashkéneinii Biye’ wrestled the ax out of the white man’s hand. The Navajo “hit him on the back of his head—not very hard, but just enough to knock him down. When the American fell I was very much frightened and threw the ax away.” Slim Man searched the prospector for things he might like, but as the victim gained consciousness, Slim Man took the ax and with three or four swings killed Walcott.

At this point Little Mustache arrived, and in answer to his question of what happened, Slim Man pointed to Hashkéneinii Biye’ and said, “My brother. I would be dead now if it was not for this man—he saved my life. The American was just about to hit me with the ax when he stopped it.” Twice later, Slim Man begged Hashkéneinii Biye’ not to tell what he had done: “Dear brother [do] not give [me] away and tell that [I] killed the old American as he was not hurt badly when [I] took the ax and killed him.” Slim Man also purportedly attacked McNally, trying to fire his pistol three times without success; he later assisted the others in the multi-pronged attack against the barricaded miner. Slim Man did not finally kill McNally, according to Hashkéneinii Biye’, but he certainly joined the party that searched for the miner. Whether this reversed story had any impact on subsequent events remains unclear, but Hashkéneinii Biye’ was not arrested during his trip to Fort Defiance.

Word of the incident eventually filtered back East, where friends and relatives of the murdered men demanded an investigation and some type of justice. Fred Fickey, an insurance adjuster and friend from Walcott’s hometown of Baltimore, Maryland, wrote a number of letters to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Secretary of the Interior, and military

17 Hashkéneinii Biye’, Statement, May 7, 1884, Charles Kelly Papers, Utah State Historical Society (USHS), Salt Lake City, Utah.

officials asking that the remains of both Walcott and his friend McNally from Albany, New York, be retrieved for a proper burial. According to Fickey, Walcott “was one of the most quiet of men, never quarreled with anyone, was a friend of the Indians,” did not drink or smoke, “and was a man who would rather run away than fight.”18 His wife was “frantic” over the incident, and the least that could be done was to have the two men’s remains procured and brought to Fort Lewis for Christian burial. Unfortunately, Fickey, who had been in contact with Mitchell and others in the area, said that no one dared venture into that country to complete the task.19 Something had to be done, but it did not appear that Agent Riordan was the man to do it.

John H. Bowman was a different kind of man. Having previously worked as a sheriff in Gunnison, Colorado, Bowman started the wheels of justice rolling toward Navajo Mountain as soon as he took charge of the Navajo Agency on June 30, 1884. Assuming responsibility for appropriate action on the ground, Bowman sent word to the miscreants that they had ten days to travel the 175 miles to the agency and give themselves up or he would assign Navajo scouts or, if necessary, the military, to apprehend them.20 Things started to happen. Colonel L. P. Bradley ordered one of the officers of the Sixth Cavalry, which operated along the San Juan River, to find the graves of Walcott and McNally, in preparation for moving their remains to Fort Lewis once the weather was cold enough to do so. He also gave directions to make a detachment of soldiers available to Bowman on request, should it be necessary to ferret out the murderers.21

At first, the military backup did not seem necessary. On July 10, within the ten-day ultimatum period, Hashkéneinii turned himself in, then traveled to Fort Wingate under guard; a day later, Little Mustache, described as a very old man still suffering from his head wound, came in with some Navajo scouts. 22 Before leaving for his incarceration, he provided a statement insisting that Hashkéneinii Biye’ and Slim Man tried to kill McNally and that he had been wounded by chance as he innocently walked near the battlefield.23 A week later, Navajo scouts brought in Slim Man, who, with Little Mustache, joined Hashkéneinii in jail at Fort Wingate.24 The effectiveness of the scouts was apparent since, according to Bowman, the “troops move so slowly that it is much easier to accomplish arrests with the scouts when the opposition is not too strong.”25

18 Fred Fickey to Jonathan Findlay, May 10, 1884, Letters Received—Navajo Agency.

19 Fickey to Hiram Price, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, June 10, 1884; E. L. Stevens to Secretary of the Interior, June 12, 1884, Letters Received—Navajo Agency.

20 John H. Bowman to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, July 3, 1884, Letters Received—Navajo Agency.

21 L. P. Bradley to Adjutant General, Dept. of the Missouri, June 27, 1884, Letters Received—AGO.

22 Bowman to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, July 11, 1884, Letters Received—Navajo Agency.

23 Bowman to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, July 12, 1884, Letters Received—Navajo Agency.

24 Bowman to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, July 19, 1884, Letters Received—Navajo Agency.

25 Bowman to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, July 12, 1884.

But opposition became too strong when the Ute and Paiute faction prominent in southeastern Utah conflicts entered the ring. Fresh from trouncing the cavalry from Fort Lewis at the Soldier Crossing fight, these men fell into their normal pattern of fight, flight, and dispersion together with their families; some made their way to Navajo Mountain. The Utes took charge of Hashkéneinii Biye’, promising to protect him. With ten scouts, Bowman headed north, where he rendezvoused with forty soldiers from Troop K, Sixth Cavalry, operating under First Lieutenant H. P. Kingsbury, from Fort Wingate, New Mexico. On August 14, the agent met with five hundred Navajos at Thomas V. Keam’s trading post in Keams Canyon, Arizona, and then moved toward Navajo Mountain.26 Bowman wanted to know, among other things, whether the killings had occurred in Utah or Arizona. A definitive answer about the location of the murders would help with future military jurisdictional control, since Navajo Mountain sat on the Utah–Arizona territorial border, government authorities lacked knowledge of the terrain, and other conflicting information existed.

Lieutenant Kingsbury provided a detailed report of what happened.27 Having traveled 122 miles from Fort Wingate to Keams Canyon in three days, the officer learned that Hashkéneinii Biye’ was camped among three groups of Utes that altogether composed a total of thirty-two men. One of these groups had recently killed two of Captain Perrine’s men at Soldier Crossing. The next day, August 19, in company with Bowman and his scouts, Kingsbury traveled thirty-eight miles over a rough and indistinct trail; another day of travel covered thirty-five miles, with little water available; after a few hours of rest, the command mounted at midnight and rode until daybreak. Finally, Kingsbury came upon the reported camp, only to find that the Utes had fled a few hours earlier and scattered into the canyons.28

26 S. E. Marshall to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, August 22, 1884, Letters Received—Navajo Agency.

27 H. P. Kingsbury to Post Adjutant, September 1, 1884, Letters Received—AGO.

28 Frank McNitt has a brief account of this episode in The Indian Traders (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1962, 1989), 181–85. In it he suggests that the site of the enemy camp and hence the place that Walcott and McNally were killed was near Kayenta, Arizona, at a rock formation called El Capitan. Kingsbury’s report, however, does not support this conclusion even though he says, “I had traveled very nearly due north from Keams’ Canyon, and as a crow would fly, I think about 80 miles, the highest northern point reached was about 20 miles a little south of east from Navajo Mountain.” Military mileage estimates during this time were surprisingly accurate, and although there is a marked difference between how “the crow flies” and navigation over Indian trails, the lieutenant obviously knew where he was. A few facts to support his statement: (1) All the Navajo scouts who reported to the agents during the previous five months speak of the incident being in the vicinity of the southeast corner of Navajo Mountain. (2) Straight line distance from Keams Canyon to the southeast corner of Navajo Mountain is eighty-six miles, roughly the same distance that others cited; from Keams Canyon to Kayenta is sixty-two miles, while eighty miles puts the site at the far northern end of Monument Valley, about ten miles away from El Capitan. This last distance is much closer to the vicinity of where the Mitchell–Merrick incident of 1880 occurred. (3) The military, depending on the scouts, traveled trails with their known watering places along the way. If they traveled exactly due north (360 degrees) they would be on course for Kayenta; an azimuth of 340 degrees would take them to Navajo Mountain; perhaps 350 degrees would take them “a little southeast” from this prominent landmark. (4) As a haven for escape—which the Utes

The events had reached their climax. Kingsbury backtracked twelve miles to meet with his pack train and established camp for the next three days, while Bowman secured Walcott’s remains for burial at Fort Wingate. The agent also tried unsuccessfully to acquire any stock belonging to the murderers, only to learn that the animals had been “run out of the country and up into the mountains.” Efforts to find McNally’s body proved fruitless, since only the guilty knew its location. As Bowman continued with his duties, Kingsbury had time to ponder his failure. In his mind, it was easily explained: The reason I did not surprise the Utes is plain: the Navajos were cowards and politicians; being afraid of the Utes they did not want them killed for protecting the murderer; they were afraid the Utes would retaliate on them; they therefore kept the Utes posted every night as to my whereabouts; they persistently lied about distance; they were spies the entire route.29 Meanwhile, Left Handed (T[‘ah), a local Indian, gave a firsthand account from the Navajo perspective. Everyone in the area was well aware of the killings and knew that the agent had sent word that troops would come if Hashkéneinii Biye’ did not surrender. Indeed, Hashkéneinii Biye’ had received a new name: !t’7n7, variously translated as “The One Who Did It” or “Had/Has Done It.” In response to the government demand for his surrender, Hashkéneinii Biye’ insisted, “I don’t want to go. I’d rather be dead right here on my land. If they want me so badly they can come and cut my head off and take it.”30 At this same time, a group of Utes passed through the area, claiming that they had killed soldiers and admitting, “We

sought at this time—the Navajo Mountain region was well known to them, while the flatter, better known, and more accessible terrain of the Monument Valley region would not hide them as well from pursuing forces. Further, in August the higher elevations are cooler and the resources of grass, water, and wood more plentiful.

29 Kingsbury to Post Adjutant, September 1, 1884, Letters Received—AGO.

30 Walter Dyk, Son of Old Man Hat: A Navaho Autobiography (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1938, 1967), 181.

Navajo Mountain, framed by Rainbow Bridge.

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

did wrong and we’re pretty sure we will all be killed.” The One Who Did It traded a rifle and ammunition with them and eventually left the area when he heard that soldiers were on the way. The Navajos who remained feared the Utes as much as they did the approaching cavalry—both of whom brought back memories of the pursuits of the “Fearing Time” and the subsequent Fort Sumner period.31

Left Handed’s mother panicked, “running around, saying, ‘I want to go right now. I want to save myself.’”32 Her husband, Old Man Hat, took a calmer approach; even after she fled, he leisurely gathered his livestock and prepared his camp for evacuation before leaving with a large group of Navajos for the canyon country. In the meantime, the cavalry had surrounded the empty Ute camp, the Utes and Paiutes having moved out to a “big round rock” where they spent the night building a wall with firing ports. The One Who Did It and his friend, Hairy Face (Nii’dit[’oii), built their own defensive position and waited. After the soldiers departed, Old Man Hat took charge and persuaded a group of fifty men to accompany him to visit the soldiers.

As they traveled, the Navajos discussed how they would respond if asked about the Utes. They decided to say they knew nothing because the Utes had returned to their country. The Navajos “did not want any of the troops to get killed. If they’d gone after them [the Utes] they’d have been killed for sure, because the Utes and Paiutes were up on the big rock and had everything ready.”33 As they rode, the Navajos asked Old Man Hat to sing a war song as protection and as insurance that the talks would go well. Old Man Hat agreed and instructed them to swing their horses into a line, stretched out in an open area. By the time he finished, the Navajos reached the top of a hill and saw a large camp by a wash. Old Man Hat put his men in line again and approached the camp, which showed little sign of activity. As the Navajos arrived at the edge of the wash, the soldiers came running from their tents, “making some kind of noise, whistling or something,” then forming their own line, with rifles ready.

In the meantime, Kingsbury and his interpreter, Chee Dodge, emerged from a tent and approached the Indians. They invited Old Man Hat to get off his horse; they shook hands in friendship, instructed all of the Indians to dismount and shake hands, and ordered the soldiers to stack arms and return to their tents. Old Man Hat introduced himself and his purpose:

We came here to shake hands with you, and we came to talk in the kindest way to each other. We came here for peace. And now we’ve shaken hands and are talking to each other in the kindest manner, we’re all friends now. That’s what we came here for. Even though I’m old—you look at me, and you know I’m old; you look in my mouth and

31 Utes aided Kit Carson in his scorched-earth campaign against the Navajo in 1863-64, a period that the Navajos came to call the “Fearing Time.”

32 Dyk, Son of Old Man Hat, 184.

33 Ibid., 188.

you know I haven’t any teeth, and I’m about blind and about deaf; you see my hair is white, and my skin is wrinkled, my whole face is full of wrinkles; you know I look ugly—but even though I’m this way I’m thinking about myself that I’ll live many years yet. I want to be safe always. I don’t want to die right now. Even though death from old age is coming soon I’m thinking about myself that I’ll live for a long time yet. That’s why I was chasing around, chasing away from you. I thought you were going to kill me. But here I’ve found out you are a kind man.34

The discussion continued in this same polite manner. After Kingsbury reassured them about his purpose in asking for the Navajos’ help, Old Man Hat said that if the Navajos assisted the military, The One Who Did It would kill his fellow Indians. He frightened them. Moreover, he was hard to find, and the military would not know where to seek him. “From here on it’s pretty dangerous all over,” warned Old Man Hat. “When a person does not know this country he’ll surely get lost or die of thirst. It’s dangerous to travel here, crossing the desert and the many canyons. A person has got to know where to get water, and water is scarce. There’s no water for miles and miles. So I think it is dangerous to go after him.” Next he asked that Hashkéneinii be released; the soldiers, in turn, reassured Old Man Hat that Hashkéneinii was well cared for, that the military would not harm those who lived a good life, and that everyone should come down off the mountain and go back home to care for their gardens and animals. The meeting ended with another round of handshaking and the distribution of tobacco before the Navajos departed.35

The military spent three days in this encampment, five more returning to Fort Defiance, and two more en route to Fort Wingate, where they arrived on September 1. This completed a round-trip excursion of 359 miles. Kingsbury concluded that he would need one hundred mounted men and thirty days to “run the Utes, who are protecting the murderer, to ground [and that] the Navajos should be given to understand that condign punishment would follow treachery and tale bearing, and it should be meted out to the first caught going ahead of the marching column.”36 This plan never took place. Hashkéneinii Biye’ remained at large, the government released his father and the other prisoners after about a year, McNally’s body remained where it fell, and the military moved on to other pressing problems.

There is yet another side to this story. In all the accounts of the WalcottMcNally murders—statements generated by scouts, testimony given by participants, letters written by agents, and after-action reports filed by military commanders—one central figure emerges: Hashkéneinii Biye’. In 1939, Utah historian Charles Kelly spent a week interviewing Hashkéneinii Biye’ himself. From this invaluable discussion came some of the best

34 Ibid., 190.

35 Ibid., 191.

36 Kingsbury to Adjutant, September 1, 1884.

Hashkéneinii Biye’ (left), photographed late in life by Charles Kelly, and his greatgrandson.

personal information we have about his father, Hashkéneinii, their activities during the Long Walk period, his later dealings with the prospector Cass Hite, and aspects of Navajo culture and history in the Navajo Mountain–Kayenta region. Yet Hashkéneinii Biye’ said nothing about the murders, except for what he implied when he talked about miners who came into his area to look for a silver mine. “If they refused to go, he [Hashkéneinii] had to kill them. Many white men have been killed around here; I have killed some myself.”37 Kelly went on to publish two articles based on his interviews, but he apparently did not know about the WalcottMcNally incident. 38 Hashkéneinii Biye’ died two years later; to most historians this part of the past remained buried in archives as deeply as Walcott’s body was buried in the earth.

For the Navajo people living in the Monument Valley–Kayenta–Navajo Mountain region, the heritage of the old patriarch, Hashkéneinii Biye’, continues. As the father of twenty-eight children from eight wives and as one of the wealthiest Navajos of his place and time, Hashkéneinii Biye’ left a legacy that endures in the oral tradition. Many families bear the name Atene, a simplified version of the name !t’7n7—The One Who Did It. In 1991, I had the good fortune to interview seventy-two-year-old Betty Canyon, a paternal granddaughter of Hashkéneinii Biye’, in Monument Valley. Her understanding of the incident sheds light on her grandfather’s

37 Charles Kelly, “Chief Hoskaninni,” Charles Kelly Papers,USHS.

38 Charles Kelly, “Hoskaninni,” Desert Magazine 4, no. 9 (July 1941): 6–9, and “Chief Hoskaninni,” Utah Historical Quarterly, 21 (July 1953): 219–26.

actions and on the importance of the 1874 Grass Valley killings, while also emphasizing a number of other cultural points important to the Navajos. Although this interview took place well over one hundred years after the incident and conflicts at times with the written record, the oral tradition has preserved much detail. Canyon:

The name !t’7n7 came from a man named Hastiin !t’7n7, my paternal grandfather. He got that name because he was blamed for killing some white men. While he was being hunted, they [the government] asked, “Where is the one who did this killing?” and the people said, “He is the man, he is the one who did it.” A group of soldiers came out to arrest him. They asked him why he killed these white men, and he told them because these white men had killed six [three] innocent Navajo people. These Navajos had gone to trade and sell with some white traders in a place called “Dzi[ Binii’ {igai” [Mountain with White Face] somewhere north of Navajo Mountain. These Navajos had taken with them many tanned hides, rugs, saddle blankets, and jewelry in trade for some nice horses. They got what they came for and started on their way home. It was sundown and very cold, so they decided to camp near Mountain with White Face. Here they found some old barns stocked with hay. They thought this would be a good place to keep warm. As they were settling down for the night, a couple of white men came by on their horses. The two men said it would be all right for them to stay inside for the night. Inside they found a wood stove and a pile of wood. “How nice of them. How can we refuse the offer?” they said. Neither side understood each other, but they were able to communicate through hand gestures. They were given some drinking water and some hay for their newly acquired horses and were grateful for the hospitality. Before dawn the next day, one Navajo man went out to get his horse, but realized that something strange was going on. He became suspicious when he saw that some white men were outside not too far from them warming up and loading their guns by a fire. He came back inside to warn the others, who were still resting. “Don’t be alarmed,” one of them answered. “They were very nice to us last evening; don’t worry about them.” But the man was afraid, so he went back out and saddled his horse and rode out a ways, pretending to act normal. The moment he took off galloping, he heard gunshots ring out in the barn. As he rounded the corner of the mesa, he was shot in the arm but managed to escape. The white men hunted for him for about a week but failed to find him. He survived for two weeks in the wilderness, treating his wound with natural herbs and drinking some [of a potion]. He crossed back over the San Juan River and went to see Mister [Hastiin] !t’7n7 to tell him what had happened. Mister !t’7n7 was furious. When Mister !t’7n7’s captors asked him why he had killed the soldiers [prospectors], he replied, “How can I forgive these white men? Our people cannot be replaced! They have murdered my uncle, who was a great medicine man. He used to sing the sacred Na’at’oyee Bik 2 ’j 7 (Shooting Way—Male Branch), N 7[ ch’ij 7 (Wind Way), and the H0zh==j7 (Blessing Way). He was also teaching me how to become a medicine man. For this very reason, I promised myself that I would have no mercy for any white man who strayed in our territory from that day onward. No matter what condition they were in, I was going to kill them too. The white men did the killing first—two great medicine men and some people—then took their horses. So they are at fault, not me. But yes, I am The One Who Did It (!t’7n7).” He met with his captors at T0 Deezl7nii (Where the Stream Begins). The case was finally settled in that six [three] Navajos and two white men were killed, so that was just the same. That is how the name !t’7n7 came about.39

39 Betty Canyon,

Robert S. McPherson and Marilyn Holiday, September 10, 1991, in possession of the author.

interview by

The One Who Did It went on to become a powerful medicine man who understood how to use supernatural powers. Numerous stories exist of his ability to control the elements—especially lightning—and of his other forms of power, but these stories take us far beyond the scope of this article. Perhaps the testimony of his maternal granddaughter, Susie L. Yazzie, which she gave at the age of sixty-seven in 1991, will suffice. Speaking of her grandfather,Yazzie said, He was an excellent medicine man and kept things sacred. He would not allow anyone to circle the hogan he was using for a sing [ceremony]. He would tell the people to keep away because the Holy People were present. It was the Holy People who were performing through him, so it was very sacred. And for the same reasons, he did not expect to be paid a high price. He performed the Y4’ii Bicheii ceremony, the Hail Storm Way (}l0ee), the nine day ceremonies, the fire dance and Enemy Way (Anaa’j7), plus the Blessing Way and Evil Way ( H0chx=’7j7) ceremonies. He was recognized by many people.40

Hashkéneinii Biye’ died in 1941, a powerful and respected member of his community. No indication exists that he was ever punished for the killing of the two prospectors.

Before leaving this incident, however, we must consider several points. Although they form just a short footnote in the history of the Four Corners area, the deaths of Samuel Walcott and James McNally and the subsequent events underscore the problems the military faced in performing its duty in this region. Most obviously, government officials could not fully pursue and prosecute suspects because they did not know the land—its trails and its resources. Kingsbury and Bowman depended totally on Navajo scouts. Those scouts were the only people involved in the affair who had any success in bringing in some of the culprits.

At the same time, for those fleeing the law who knew their way, travel was fairly rapid. It was just a matter of a week or so following the brush at Mitchell’s ranch on the San Juan River before horses stolen from his place appeared at Navajo Mountain. The Utes and Paiutes who left victoriously from the fight at Soldier Crossing in White Canyon appeared in the same area in short order. The Navajo scouts also knew where and how to find the people involved and were very much aware of this isolated corner of refuge for those evading the law. As for the military, without maps—their way of navigating this inhospitable terrain—they had little chance of success unless they had guides. Something needed to be done to make travel faster and more predictable. That will be the reason for our subsequent expeditions into “the land of death” and the topic of part two of this story.

40 Susie L. Yazzie, interview by Robert S. McPherson and Marilyn Holiday, August 6, 1991, in possession of the author.

By KENNETH L. ALFORD AND KEN NELSON

“This is the old soldiers’ show—they paid the price of admission fifty years ago.”

—New York Times, June 29, 1913

Gettysburg was the defining battle of the American Civil War. When the Union and Confederate armies collided in southern Pennsylvania during the first three days of July 1863, the nation’s future hung in the balance. Both forces fought heroically. By the time the Confederate army retreated, around fifty thousand men were killed, wounded, or missing across the Gettysburg battlefields—the largest number of battle casualties during the entire Civil War. With the Union victory that ended Lee’s second and final invasion of the North, Gettysburg became “one of the decisive battles of the world.”1 As the Salt Lake Herald noted in June 1913: “Had the Union army wavered and broke under the charge of Pickett’s men,

These GAR men represent some of the 44,713 Union veterans who attended the four-day reunion.

Kenneth L. Alford is an associate professor of Church History and Doctrine at Brigham Young University. He served as an active duty U.S. Army officer for nearly thirty years, retiring as a colonel. His most recent book is Civil War Saints Ken Nelson is a collection manager with Family Search. He has worked as a reference consultant in the Family History Library and is a member of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War.

1

“The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here”: Utah Veterans and the Gettysburg Reunion of 1913

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

“Veterans to Meet on Battlefield,” Carbon County News (Price, UT), June 12, 1913.

there would have been two nations where there is now but one.”2

In November 1863, President Abraham Lincoln traveled to Gettysburg to dedicate a national cemetery, and his Gettysburg Address began the slow healing process for the nation. As the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg approached in July 1913, many Americans saw it as an opportunity to host the largest gathering for veterans of the Civil War and as an opportunity to finish what Lincoln had started fifty years earlier. That grand fiftieth anniversary reunion—and Utah’s participation in it—involved far more than assembling elderly veterans. First, political wrangling at the state level frustrated the efforts of local organizers to get Utahns to the event. Second, in Utah, as elsewhere in the nation, the reunion illuminated both the lingering tensions between Union and Confederate factions and the hopes that such animosity could finally be laid to rest. As John Widdoes, a nonagenarian veteran from American Fork, remarked as he left for a later celebration, “I’m going to shake hands with a Reb, something I’ve never done before.”3

Plans to celebrate the semicentennial of the battle of Gettysburg publicly began on January 5, 1909, during Governor Edwin S. Stuart’s biennial message to the Pennsylvania general assembly, when he observed that the nation was “approaching the fiftieth anniversary of the most decisive battle of the war for the suppression of the Rebellion, fought on Pennsylvania soil, at Gettysburg, July 1–3, 1863. . . . Many of the men [who fought] are still living . . . and it would be entirely in keeping with the patriotic spirit of the people of the [Pennsylvania] Commonwealth to properly recognize and fittingly observe this anniversary.” Stuart further suggested that “other States, both north and south, whose sons fought at Gettysburg, will surely co-operate in making the occasion one that will stand foremost in the martial history of the world.” Accordingly, on May 13, 1909, Pennsylvania’s general assembly created the Gettysburg fiftieth reunion commission and authorized $5,000 for preliminary expenses.4

The newly created commission reached out to every state—including former Confederate states. They invited “the congress of the United States and her Sister States and Commonwealths to accept this invitation . . . to share in this important anniversary and to help make it an event worthy of its historical significance, and an occasion creditable and impressive to our great and re-united nation.”5 The commemoration was envisioned as “the greatest and most elaborate event of its kind ever [to] be held,” and the commission’s goal was “to have present on the battlefield all of the

2

“On to Gettysburg!” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, June 28, 1913.

3 “Five Utah Veterans Leave for Gettysburg,” Times-Independent (Moab, UT),June 30, 1938, punctuation added.

4

Fiftieth Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg: Report of the Pennsylvania Commission (Harrisburg, PA: Wm. Stanley Ray State Printer, 1914), 3–4.

5 “Veterans to Meet on Battlefield,” Carbon County News (Price, UT), June 12, 1913.

survivors of the conflict and it is expected that there will be a large attendance of both confederate and union veterans.”6 Due to opposition from Southern veterans known as the “irreconcilables,” it took the United Confederate Veterans organization almost two years to accept Pennsylvania’s invitation to participate.7

Utah responded much faster. On August 2, 1910, Governor William Spry appointed Lucian H. Smyth, a Pennsylvania native and past commander of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) Department of Utah, to represent the state during planning meetings at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, that fall.8 A committee of Utah “Grand Army men” was appointed during the GAR’s state encampment in June 1912 to begin “collecting the names of [Utah] veterans who will go to Gettysburg.” The six-member committee canvassed the state, notifying Civil War soldiers. By December the committee announced that “Utah will send a delegation of considerable size to attend the fiftieth anniversary celebration.”9

The federal government became involved in 1912 and appropriated $175,000 to pay “for the sheltering and subsistence of the veterans of the northern and southern armies” and authorized funding for “400 army ranges for cooking food, one field bakery, two large field hospitals and five infirmaries.” Washington also agreed to provide eighteen hundred physicians, surgeons, cooks, and support staff.10 Government engineers “made a survey of the [battlefield] ground, laid it off into streets and avenues, [and] created a water system for the camp.” The goal was to prepare everything so that the attending veterans would be able to eat and sleep without charge.11

Citing the examples of Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and other states that had already provided “large appropriations for expenses, par ticularly for the transportation of old soldiers,” the Utah GAR petitioned the state legislature in January 1913 “to pay traveling expenses of

6

“Local Man to Aid in Great Pageant at Gettysburg,” Salt Lake Telegram, May 10, 1912. Many smaller commemorations and military reunions were held at Gettysburg prior to 1913. See John W. Frazier, Reunion of the Blue and Gray. Philadelphia Brigade and Pickett's Division. July, 2, 3, 4, 1887 and September 15, 16, 17, 1906 (Philadelphia: Ware Bros., 1906); Nina Sibler, Romance of Reunion: Northerners and the South, 1865–1900 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993).

7 “Blue and Gray Will Meet at Gettysburg,” Salt Lake Tribune, May 9, 1912.

8 Smyth served in the Third Pennsylvania Heavy Artillery Battery during the Civil War. “To Commemorate Battle,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, August 3, 1910; “Lucian H. Smyth to Represent Utah,” Deseret News, August 2, 1910; Roster, Department of Utah G.A.R. by States. All Who Joined Since First Post was Organized. Living and Dead (1914), 20.

9

“Utah Veterans to Go to Gettysburg,” Salt Lake Tribune, December 18, 1912. Lucian H. Smyth, W. M. Bostaph, M. M. Kaighn, N. D. Corser, J. M. Bowman, and Seymour B. Young made up the GAR committee.

10 There was apparently confusion regarding the exact figure authorized by Washington. Early reports list $150,000, while later accounts suggest that Washington actually appropriated $175,000. One account claims it was $250,000. “Thousands Expect to Visit Gettysburg,” Salt Lake Tribune, May 30, 1912; “Provides Funds for the Gettysburg Celebration,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, August 9, 1912; “Will Ask $10,000 to Pay Veterans’ Expenses,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, January 24, 1913.

11 “Utah Veterans,” December 18, 1912.

each old soldier, Union and Confederate, in this state who desires to take part in the celebration.”12 Unfortunately, the appropriation bill became a casualty of legislative bureaucracy. A senate bill providing $10,000 to “pay the railroad fares and incidental expenses of the old soldiers going back to the scenes of the stirring sixties” was amended to $7,500 before the body passed it. 13 The Utah House of Representatives referred the bill to the committee on military affairs, and the committee “drafted a report providing that the bill go on the calendar without recommendation. The report was withdrawn and an adverse report was drafted. In turn, this report was killed and the bill was turned over to the appropriations committee. The next time the bill saw daylight was when, with a mass of other special appropriation bills it was presented to the house and laid on the table,” and there it remained without passage.14 A line in the separate appropriation bill provided funds “for the expenses of the Gettysburg celebration,” but the money could not be spent because “the provisions directing and author izingthe expenditures are dead.”15 When asked if the state could disburse the funds, the attorney general declared that “he could make no statement on this point until the matter had been considered formally.” The bottom line was that Utah’s Civil War veterans were left wondering if the state would pay for their travel to Gettysburg.16 On March 24, 1913, the state delayed offer inga solution to this problem when it announced that “the veterans will have to pay their own expenses and wait for reimbursement from the next legislature.”17 Many Utah veterans took these events personally and felt that the legislature “intended to appease them by appropriating the money, but purposely neglected to provide a means for paying it out.”18 An April meeting between GAR representatives and the governor determined that “the soldiers will have to make arrangements with private individuals to advance the money and wait for the next legislature to pass the lost bill, if they are to have their expenses paid to and from the reunion.”19 Utah veterans who

12 Ibid. The GAR “committee of arrangements” that helped prepare the funding legislation consisted of Lucian H. Smyth, M. M. Kaighn, J. M. Bowman, Seymour B. Young, Frank H. Hall, and Elias Price. “Will Ask $10,000,” January 24, 1913.

13 “Civil War Veterans May Attend Reunion,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, January 31, 1913.

14 “Legal Effect of Gift to Veterans Worries Officials,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, March 23, 1913.

15 “Veterans Seek Plan to Realize on Law,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, April 10, 1913.

16 “Legal Effect of Gift,” March 23, 1913; “Appropriation for Civil War Veterans’ Trip Past Senate,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, February 12, 1913. Part of the problem with funding for the Gettysburg reunion came with the Utah legislature’s simultaneous considerations about how to properly care for veterans of Utah’s Indian Wars. As state senator L. M. Olson declared, “The legislature should first consider the appropriation for caring for Utah Indian war veterans in their old age before sending Civil War veterans away on an excursion.” The final senate vote on the Gettysburg funds was “Ayes 14, nays 1, absent and not voting, 3, [Senate] President Henry Gardner voted against the bill, not because he disapproved of its purpose, he said, but because he thought the state treasury was being overtaxed.” “Appropriation for Veterans’ Trip,” February 12, 1913.

17 “Veterans Will Get Gettysburg Funds,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, March 24, 1913.

18 “Veterans Seek Plan,” April 10, 1913.

19 “No State Funds Can Aid Veterans’ Jaunt,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, April 6, 1913.

hoped to attend began an “active search for some person who can advance $7500 so [they] can attend the big Gettysburg reunion.”20 Spry added “his assurance that the next legislature would unquestionably pass a bill reimbursing those who made the advance.”21

A reported 8,694 Confederate veterans attended the reunion.

Veterans were asked to leave their battle flags at home, but many brought them anyway.

Which veterans would actually attend the reunion at the state’s expense now became a subject of debate. Newspapers reported that as many as eighty-five veterans expressed an interest in attending, and the press published several attendee lists. One list had as many as seventy-one names; in the end, sixty-five Utah veterans attended, making it one of the greatest contributors of the western states.22 The Utah GAR developed selection

20 “Veterans Looking for Some One to Give Funds,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, April 8, 1913. The veteran committee in charge of “the arrangements for Utah’s participation” consisted of Lucian H. Smyth, M. M. Kaign, Seymour B. Young; W. M. Bostaph, Fred J. Kiesel, and W. L. H. Dotson. Kiesel and Dotson, Confederate veterans, were appointed to ensure that “the confederate ranks in Utah are well represented on the committee.” “Consider Way to Raise Funds,” Logan (UT) Republican, April 17, 1913.

21 “Raise Funds,” April 17, 1913.

22 The Pennsylvania Commission Report recorded that Utah sent sixty-seven Union veterans and nine Confederate veterans, for a total of seventy-six attendees. In comparison, Utah sent more veterans than Arizona (ten), Colorado (twelve), Idaho (forty-five), Montana (twenty-two), and New Mexico (one), but less than California (one hundred), Oregon (eighty-two), and Washington State (167). Pennsylvania Commission Report, 36–37. However, a discrepancy exists between the reported figure for Utah and veterans who actually attended; it is believed that sixty-five Utahns actually attended. See “Veterans of Both Armies Leaving Salt Lake for Famous Gettysburg Battlefield,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, June 28, 1913.

criteria to determine who would travel at the state’s expense. The first priority went to veterans of the battle of Gettysburg. The second priority went to Confederate veterans “out of courtesy to the southerners.” The third, and final, priority was Union veterans who were physically fit enough to make the trip. Several veterans who wanted to attend were “barred for this reason.” Prioritization was required because Utah did not authorize enough funds to send all of the state’s Civil War veterans who wanted to attend the reunion, and only sixty-six men could be accommodated in the tents reserved for the Utah delegation of veterans.23 In developing these criteria, GAR leaders did not provide any special advantage for members of the Lot Smith Utah Cavalry Company—the only active duty Civil War military unit from Utah Territory.24 (See pages 288-89 for a list of Civil War veterans who attended from Utah.)

Lucian H. Smyth, who chaired several Utah GAR commemoration committees, traveled to Gettysburg in May 1913 to attend a Pennsylvania commission meeting and tour the battlefield. He gave an enthusiastic report of the preparations and said, “I wouldn’t have missed seeing that battle field for $1000.”25

Travel arrangements for the Utah veterans were discussed during the thirty-first annual GAR Department of Utah encampment, held in Salt Lake City on May 17, 1913.26 Resolutions passed during the encampment expressed “grateful appreciation” to Utah’s governor and legislature for appropriating $7,500 to meet the veterans’ expenses but regretted that, “owing to the congestion of business in the closing hours of the session,” the state government did not actually make the funds available. The Utah Civil War veterans were clearly disappointed that the state government had failed to deliver promised financial support. A separate, but related, GAR resolution urged “all our comrades and our friends the confederate soldiers residing in Utah to attend this great anniversary” in order to “help bury the last lingering remnant of sectional bitterness in the great ocean of patriotism that covers our beloved country.”27 It is a telling commentary on those times that even though half a century had passed since the war’s end, the GAR still felt the need to reach out—specifically addressing Confederate soldiers and appealing for unity and patriotism.

23

“Day’s Anxious Vigil Rewarded; Veterans Leave for Gettysburg Today,” Salt Lake Tribune, June 27, 1913; “Only 66 Veterans Go to Gettysburg at State’s Expense,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, June 26, 1913.

24 Four Union veterans from the Lot Smith Utah Cavalry Company attended the 1913 Gettysburg reunion: James Isaac Atkinson (Woods Cross) and Joseph A. Fisher, John H. Walker, and Seymour B. Young (Salt Lake City). For additional details, see Joseph R. Stuart and Kenneth L. Alford, “The Lot Smith Cavalry Company: Utah Goes to War,” in Civil War Saints, Kenneth L. Alford, ed. (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Religious Studies Center, 2012).

25 “Gettysburg Field Awaits Veterans,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, May 24, 1913.

26 “G.A.R. Encampment to [B]e Held Here Today,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, May 17, 1913.

27

“Utah Department, G.A.R., Holds Meeting; Veterans to Go East,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, May 18, 1913.

At noon on June 26, the day before their scheduled departure, approximately seventy Civil War veterans gathered in the U.S. marshal’s office in Salt Lake City (where Smyth worked) to complete their travel plans. Their planning was “thrown into consternation by the announcement that the $7500 appropriated by the legislature for the transportation of men [to Gettysburg] was not forthcoming, and no way had been found to get the money.” After “three hours of gloom,” Governor Spry informed the veteran committee that through the efforts of “several prominent business men” the promised $7,500 “had been raised by a note given to the Zion’s Savings bank” to furnish the money. Required travel funds were now available. The following day the Salt Lake Herald reported that the battle over funding almost “approached the proportions of the battle of Gettysburg, and many a veteran became weary of the struggle before yesterday’s triumphant ending.”28 Each former soldier received $97.00 for the trip, of which $79.50 was deducted for the cost of his railway fare. The balance paid “for their sleeper berths [on the train] and general expenses.” The Salt Lake Tribune reported that “most of them will arrange to double up” in sleeping berths to reduce the cost.29

Prior to departing Salt Lake City, each veteran was required to prove his status by showing (1) a certificate from a GAR post or United Confederate Veterans camp, (2) pension or discharge papers, or (3) Confederate parole papers or other sufficient evidence of service.30 As many of the eligible veterans were elderly, a local doctor provided free physical examinations to any veteran who doubted his “physical ability to make the trip.”31

The town of Gettysburg had fewer than five thousand residents and did not attempt to provide lodging for all of the reunion attendees. Veterans were housed on a temporary campground southwest of the city, about two hundred yards from the “high water mark monument on the battlefield” (which marks the farthest spot that Confederate soldiers reached during Pickett’s Charge). The camp covered almost three hundred acres, and veterans were housed together by state. A “big tent,” which seated between ten to fifteen thousand veterans, erected next to the camp was the site for speeches and performances during the reunion.

Over five thousand brown Sibley tents lined sixty-two streets; every street was named, and each tent was numbered. Five hundred electric streetlights were installed to “make the camp as brilliant as the Great White Way.” The Army dug four large wells to supply the camp with 600,000 gallonsof water daily. Running water was piped to every street intersection, and

28 “Fund to Send Utah Veterans to Field of Battle Raised,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, June 27, 1913; “Anxious Vigil Rewarded,” June 27, 1913. The Report of the Pennsylvania Commission (page 39) reports that $7,370 of the $7,500 was actually expended.

29 “Anxious Vigil Rewarded,” June 27, 1913.

30 “Gettysburg is Mecca for 65 Utah Veterans,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, June 19, 1913.

31 “Talk Transportation,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, June 20, 1913.

The U.S. Army erected a tent city for the reunion that housed 53,407 veterans and occupied 278 acres.

thirty-two ice-water drinking fountains were installed as well. The Utah delegates enjoyed an excellent location for their tents—near the camp headquarters, the big tent, and a field hospital.32

To care for the attendees, the campground included fourteen Red Cross stations and several regimental hospitals. “The magnitude of the undertaking would be difficult to grasp even if the encampment were for the entertainment of 50,000 men in the prime of life, but when one considers that the average age of the veterans is 72 years the task before those in charge of the camp is vastly more difficult.” Three hundred and fifty boy scouts stationed themselves throughout the camp to help answer the veterans’ questions and to guide them around. The camp’s extensive telephone system required “the stringing of 120 miles of wire” and made it possible to call anywhere in the country “reached by the telephone system.”33 Active duty military units, such as the Fifteenth U.S. Cavalry from Fort Myers, Virginia, and the Pennsylvania state police patrolled the tent city.34 The war department prepared for possible cold weather by purchasing forty thousand blankets at a cost of $100,000, but instead of cool weather during the celebration, veterans experienced extreme heat that covered Gettysburg “as a blanket.”35

Instead of twelve soldiers, eight veterans shared each tent in order to make them more comfortable. Upon arrival, each veteran was issued a cot, blankets, and a mess kit (with a plate, cup, knife, fork, and spoon). Each tent was equipped with two hand basins, a water bucket, candles, and two lanterns. Like other attendees, Utah veterans were required to carry everything they brought with them; no trunks were permitted in the camp. By giving veterans a place to sleep and meals to eat, the Army aimed to ensure that “the veterans will have nothing to do” except enjoy the reunion.36

32

“Map Showing Camp for Veterans,” Report of the Pennsylvania Commission, after page 281. 33 Ibid.

34

“Veterans’ Vanguard Reaches Gettysburg,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, June 27, 1913; “Hills of Gettysburg Mecca for Veterans,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, June 23, 1913. 35 “Not Knave but Fool,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, July 4, 1913. 36 “Hills of Gettysburg,” June 23, 1913.

J. K. Weaver, the surgeon general of the Pennsylvania National Guard, issued a set of health r ules for attendees. He admonished the veterans to get enough sleep, eat the food provided by the Army, avoid intoxicating drinks, take an extra pair of shoes, and take it easy during the week. “Don’t try to meet all of the old comrades at once. . . . In short, remember none of us is as young as we were fifty years ago.”37 In spite of that good advice, many veterans spent their time “tramping over the battlefield all day . . . as if it were a picnic. Some of them started out as early as 4 o’clock in the morning and kept it up until sundown.”38

Reunion organizers, concerned that lingering feelings of Confederate patriotism or resentment might mar the celebration, took every precaution to “prevent the stirring up of animosities.” Veterans of both armies were asked “not to take their tattered battle flags to the celebration . . . the only flag which will be admitted to the camp will be the Stars and Stripes.”39 Their efforts were quite successful. During the reunion Confederate resolutions were unanimously adopted thanking the State of Pennsylvania for initiating the reunion and, in what must have seemed a little surreal to Union onlookers, for taking “pride in the fact that to the armies of the Confederacy is due the credit of demonstrating the utter impossibility of the dismemberment of the Union.”40 A reporter from the New York Times observed that Gettysburg’s five thousand residents “saw men in blue and men in gray with arms over eac h other’s shoulders or hand in hand, fighting their battles over again, but this time in a far different spirit.”41

To feed the veterans, the government organized 1,600 cooks and dishwashers. Each of the four days, 130 bakers baked 185,000 pounds of bread in fourteen field ovens. Meal menus were created “with due regard for the age of the men.”42 The hungry veterans consumed 180,000 pounds of potatoes and tomatoes; 200,000 pounds of meat; 36,000 pounds of sugar;

37

“Veteran Vanguard Now in Gettysburg,” New York Times, June 29, 1913.

38

“Old Soldiers Defy Gettysburg Heat,” New York Times, July 2, 1913.

39 “Big Camp Bars War Flags,” New York Times, June 25, 1913.

40 “Pickett’s Charge Fifty Years After,” New York Times, July 4, 1913.

41 “Veteran Vanguard,” June 29, 1913.

42 “Hills of Gettysburg,” June 23, 1913.

and 7,000 pounds of table salt. The twenty meals provided for veterans were significantly improved over their 1863 fare. Whereas a typical soldier’s dinner in July 1863 consisted of bacon, beans, hard tack, and coffee, in 1913 a representative dinner included fricassee chicken, peas, corn, ice cream, cake, cigars, fresh bread, hard bread, butter, coffee, and iced tea.43

The sale of souvenirs and other goods was prohibited within the veterans’ camp. 44 Yet the area just outside the campground and Gettysburg itself carried “the air of a circus day.” Salesmen and showmen of every stripe came to Gettysburg in an effort to “induce the nickels from the pockets of the veterans.” Outside the veterans’ tent city every available room in Gettysburg was filled days before the reunion began. “Veterans without credentials and the civilian who had not enough foresight to make arrangements are sleeping . . . in any bed that they could find in the hustle of the day.”45

Reunion organizers hoped to demonstrate that “hatred and bitterness have been totally obliterated and that the country is a united country, with no north, no south in the sense that those terms are used in touching the

43

“Sidelights of Gettysburg Reunion,” Duchesne Record (Myton, UT), July 18, 1913.

44 “Fakers to be Barred from Veterans’ Camp,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, June 26, 1913; “Pouring into Gettysburg,” June 29, 1913.

45 “Veterans Gather on Historic Field,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, June 30, 1913.

Confederate (left) and Union (right) veterans march in honor of the Gettysburg semicentennial.

question of the conflict.” 46 Veterans—both Union and Confederate—were encouraged to “wear their army, corps, division, brigade and society badges, as a means of identification to their comrades in like commands” to assist in “bringing together comrades who would otherwise, by reason of lapse of time, fail to recognize each other.”47

The first Confederate veterans arrived at Gettysburg on June 26. “With their uniforms of gray topped by campaign hats the southerners soon became the central figures on the streets and scarcely a person they passed failed to stop and ask the privilege of a hand shake.” As a measure of the healing power of time, “the men in blue” extended them the warmest welcome.48 The first Union veterans arrived the following day when the GAR Department of Pennsylvania held a state encampment preceding the reunion. As Pennsylvania GAR Union veterans paraded through the streets of Gettysburg, the “old soldiers in the blue and in the gray” met them “with cheers and salutes.”49

While the focus of the commemoration was clearly on Civil War veterans, the GAR quickly pointed out that the commemoration was “by no means

46

“Raise Funds,” April 17, 1913; “Orders to G.A.R. Issued,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, June 8, 1913.

47

“Meet on Battlefield,” June 12, 1913.

48 “Vanguard Reaches Gettysburg,” June 27, 1913; “Pennsylvania G.A.R. Encampment Opens Gettysburg Reunion,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, June 28, 1913.

49 “Pennsylvania G.A.R. Encampment,” June 28, 1913.

Most veterans traveled to and from the Gettysburg reunion by train.

exclusively for old soldiers. . . . The spirit behind the celebration is the aim to show to the world and to the people of the United States in particular that there is no longer sectional feeling as a result of the war.” Accordingly, over fifty thousand civilians attended the commemoration.50

To help veterans better afford the trip to Gettysburg, many railroad companies offered special pricing. The Trunk Line Passenger Association, for example, charged just two cents per mile to Gettysburg.51 As the Utah veterans left Salt Lake City on June 27, the Ogden Standard reported that a “happier, jollier crowd is seldom seen.”52 Traveling over “the Oregon Short Line to Ogden, Union Pacific to Omaha, Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul to Chicago, Lake Shore & Michigan Southern to Cleveland, Erie to Youngstown and Western Maryland to Gettysburg,” they were scheduled to reach Gettysburg the morning of July 1.53 During the trip they were “side tracked” for several hours in Omaha and offered water that had “the flavor of decaying wood.” 54 They found the wait uncomfortable as the cars became very hot—later learning that “the steam heat was turned on in all the radiators.” The veterans passed the afternoon and evening in “torment” and “almost literally roasted.”55

As the Utah veterans neared Gettysburg, they “felt a decided impulse to engage themselves with reviewing recollections of the actual encounter on the battlefield fifty years ago.”56 In 1912, the Salt Lake Telegram profiled eight Civil War veterans living in Utah who fought at the battle of Gettysburg, four of whom attended the 1913 Reunion (John W. Reed, Ezra D. Haskins, Orlando F. Davis, and Norman D. Corser); each of these soldiers experienced the battle differently.57 Reed summarized the battle by comparing it to “my idea of hell.”58 Haskins was the chief bugler for the First Minnesota Regiment. After being ordered by General Winfield Scott Hancock to stop a Confederate advance, his unit charged “into the mouth of the enemy’s terrific fire. We were 262 men against 3000.” Within minutes, 215 men, 82 percent of his regiment, lay dead—one of the highest unit casualty figures during the war. 59 Davis, an infantryman in the Thirty-sixth New York Regiment, remembered being “naturally nervous” when he saw “Pickett

50

“Cared for at Gettysburg,” June 29, 1913.

51 “Meet on Battlefield,” June 12, 1913.

52 “Ogden Veterans at Gettysburg,” Ogden (UT) Standard, July 9, 1913.

53 “Veterans Leave for Gettysburg Reunion,” Salt Lake Tribune, June 28, 1913.

54

“Ogden Veterans,” July 9, 1913.

55

“Steam Heat is Turned Into Hot Car on Hot Day,” Salt Lake Tribune, July 10, 1913.

56 “Utah Veterans Enjoy Reunion” Salt Lake Tribune, July 2, 1913.

57 To read about the experiences of those veterans who could not attend the reunion, see “Celebrates Birthday Capturing Man Who Wounded Him on Head,” “Night of Horror on Battlefield After Confederates Fled,” “Rear Guard Before Battle and Followed Retreating Foemen,” and “Wounded, Seeks Rest in Open House and Is Taken by Enemy,” in Salt Lake Telegram, June 29, 1913.

58 The only available copy of this article is missing the left edge. See “——— Is Killed by ——ed of Nephew at ——— Climax of Conflict,” Salt Lake Telegram, June 29,1913.

59 “Hurricane of Lead Kills Eighty-Two Per Cent of Regiment,” Salt Lake Telegram, June 29, 1913.

aiming his famous charge right against us. We lay down just as low as we could and fired at the rebels. . . . Little we knew how big the battle was.” 60 Corser recounted being wounded at Gettysburg— one of three serious wounds he received during the war. After being struck in the side, he “lost all interest in the fight.” Passing out on the battlefield, he was taken to an army hospital where a surgeon saved his life. He was discharged shortly after the battle of Gettysburg, but rejoined his regiment and served with them until the end of the war.61 The Utah veterans arrived in Gettysburg around two o’clock on the morning of July 1, only to find that five of the eight tents reserved for them had already been taken by others. By four o’clock in the morning, they finally settled into their tents.62

The battle of Gettysburg had lasted three days (July 1–3, 1863); the semicentennial celebration at Gettysburg in 1913 spread over four days (July 1–4), and each day received a special designation from the Gettysburg Commission: July 1, Veteran’s Day; July 2, Military Day; July 3, Civic Day; and July 4, National Day.63 The “formal exercises,” mostly speeches, lasted about two hours each day. Veterans were free to spend the remainder of their time as they pleased.64

The commemoration was organized so that “the old soldiers will have the first day,” and that day began with reveille—the morning bugle call— similar to the way most soldiers’ days began during the Civil War. Newspapers reported that it was “a different reveille than that which the

60 “Another Warrior Who Played His Part on Battlefield,” Salt Lake Telegram, June 29, 1913.

61 “Got His Wound in Wheat Field Fight as Bullets Rained,” Salt Lake Telegram, June 29, 1913.

62 “Hot Car on Hot Day,” July 10, 1913.

63 “Veterans Meet Today,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, April 12, 1913.

64 “Historic Field,” June 30, 1913.

Seymour B. Young, who enlisted as a private in the Lot Smith Company in 1862, was later active in the GAR.

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

fife and drum corps of the two great armies sounded fifty years ago.” That morning’s reveille called them “to a peaceful celebration while the call to the awakening in July, 1863, was a call of armies to conflict and, to thousands of men, a call to death.” The Pennsylvania Commission, the commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, and the commander-in-chief of the United Confederate Veterans jointly directed the first day’s events. The commemoration ceremonies formally began in the big tent with speeches from Secretary of War Lindy M. Garrison and John K. Tener, who succeeded Stuart as Pennsylvania’s governor. At the conclusion of Tener’s address, General Bennett H. Young, commander-inchief of the United Confederate Veterans, rose and bowed toward Tener. He surprised the assembled veterans by announcing that “I can give you something that no one else can give you . . . the rebel yell.” Nine Confederate generals and a thousand Confederate veterans gave a yell that “was heard far back in the camp toward Gettysburg.” Young also called for government pensions to be given to Confederate as well as Union veterans by observing that “for nearly fifty years the people of the south without complaint have contributed millions for the pension of federal soldiers.”65 While the hoped-for Southern federal pensions were never realized, the 1913 reunion at Gettysburg healed many hearts.

A particularly touching moment occurred during the first day when attendees were reminded that on June 30, 1863, when Brigadier General John Buford’s soldiers rode into Gettysburg prior to the battle, several young girls stood by the road and serenaded them. Six of those same women— now “pleasant-faced [and] gray-haired”—stepped on stage and sang together again. A New York Times reporter remarked that “whether the voices were or were not so good as they were fifty years ago, they sounded clear and sweet in the big tent, and no grand opera singer ever had such an appreciative audience.” Many soldiers were seen wiping tears from their eyes.66

Veterans began misplacing personal items as soon as they arrived at Gettysburg so a lost-and-found bureau was created underneath the benches of the big tent. Thousands of soldiers checked there every day for lost items. Attendees found over one hundred crutches, and soldiers who came seeking “their lost crutches seldom can recognize them and most of them go away with somebody else’s.” Many sets of false teeth and a wooden leg were also found lying unclaimed around the camp.67

The U.S. Army chief of staff directed the following day, July 2, Military Day. The second day also saw the only “unfortunate imbroglio” that occurred during the celebration—the stabbing of seven veterans in a Gettysburg hotel dining room. The conflict occurred after a Confederate

65

“World’s Attention Again Centered on Gettysburg,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, July 2, 1913.

66 “Girls of ’63,” July 1, 1913.

67 “Sidelights of Reunion,” July 18, 1913.

veteran “uttered [a] slur upon the sacred memory of the martyred Lincoln.” A Union veteran present “jumped to his feet and began to defend the martyred President and berated his detractors. . . . Knives were out in a second and the room was thrown into an uproar. Women fled for the doors and crowded to the windows ready to jump to the street below.” The fight ended as quickly as it began, and “the men responsible for it all had disappeared.” Several doctors renewed their unheeded call to “have the Gettysburg saloons closed during the remainder of the celebration.” An editorial in the Salt Lake Herald attributed the stabbings to a combination of humidity, alcohol, and the extreme heat that “might well addle even sober brains.”68

Fortunately, incidents such as these were the rare exception, rather than the rule, throughout the reunion. Commenting on that incident, James L. Welshans, a Union veteran from Ogden, wrote that “Every ex-Confederate with whom we since have talked, expressed sorrow and disappointment over this act.” He further observed that “Much has been said lately about this event [the reunion] having the effect of doing away with animosities, bitter feelings and hatred between the northern and southern sections of our country, implying that such have been largely existant [sic]. We wish to protest against this implication and insist that no such malignant spirit has existed between the ex-soldiers of the blue and the gray, except with but very few obstinate cranks.”69

Eighteen governors participated during Civic Day on July 3. A federal delegation led by Vice President Thomas R. Marshall also included Champ Clark, Speaker of the House of Representatives, twenty-one representatives, and nine senators. 70 As evidence of the high esteem and “warmth of gratitude this great organization feels towards the Utah senator,” U.S. Senator Reed Smoot received a special invitation from the national headquarters of the Grand Army of the Republic to attend the celebration as its guest. Smoot traveled to Gettysburg on Monday, June 30, and participated in several days of reunion activities before returning to Washington, D.C.71

Speaking to veterans in the big tent, Marshall noted that expectations for the reunion had been greatly exceeded and “it would be in vain to speak of

68 “Seven Men Cut in a Fracas in Gettysburg Hotel,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, July 3, 1913.

69 “Ogden Veterans,” July 9, 1913.

70 “Pickett’s Charge,” July 4, 1913.

71 “As a member of the Committee on Pensions, Senator Smoot took an especial interest in the necessary care of the nation’s veteran defenders and their widows. . . . He was largely instrumental in securing the improvements made of recent years in the pension laws.” Hon. Reed Smoot Senior United States Senator from Utah: His Record in the Senate (Salt Lake City: Chas. A. Morris, 1914), 7; “A Signal Honor,” Salt Lake Herald-Repubican, June 30, 1913. The Report of the Pennsylvania Commission, 173, lists Smoot as a “Guest of Pennsylvania.” In April 1913, Smoot led a successful fight in the Senate to retain the jobs of “a number of civil war veterans who [were] employees and former employees of the Senate” who “Democrats [were] removing and dismissing.” See “Smoot to Lead Fight,” April 15, 1913, “Smoot to Fight for Civil War Veterans,” April 15, 1913, and “Base Ingratitude,” April 17, 1913, Salt Lake Herald-Republican.

right or wrong on this occasion. This celebration could only happen in America. Nowhere else in the world could men who fought as bitter foes fifty years ago meet and clasp hands in brother love as they are doing here.”72 Ohio’s governor, James M. Cox, promised the veterans that “today your names pass into the world’s great hall of fame—Yank with Johnny, blue with gray—to be revered as long as time endures.”73 In complimenting the assembled veterans, Governor Eberhart of Minnesota received sustained laughter when he said, “What an indescribable pleasure must be experienced by Vice President Marshall, who presides over the Senate, and Speaker Clark, who presides over the House, to come here and look into the faces of so many honest men.”74 Governor Mann of Virginia observed that good feelings were being engendered by the reunion and noted that on that day there was “no north and no south, no rebels and no yanks . . . [only] one great nation.”75

The highlight of July 3 came with the reenactment of Pickett’s charge by veterans who participated in the original charge—survivors of General George S. Pickett’s Division and the Union Philadelphia Brigade who manned the stone wall opposing them. The Confederate veterans that day were but “a handful of men in gray,” as they marched once again over the field they had charged as youthful soldiers. This time, though, “there were no flashing sabers, no guns roaring with shell, only eyes that dimmed fast and kindly faces behind the stone wall that marks the angle. At the end, in place of wounds or prison or death were handshakes, speeches and mingling cheers.” The Confederates marched over a quarter mile that day, not as enemies, but as friends, and embraced Union veterans as citizens of a united country. “They crowded over the stone wall, shook hands and the charge was over.”76

One Utah veteran, William Bostaph of the 103rd Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment, recorded his impressions of the reenactment in a letter to his wife Edith.77 “Yesterday I spent the day at the point where Pickett’s charge culminated, a little spot of perhaps four acres on which was decided by a few hundred men the question whether this was one country or a divided one. . . . How little we realized at the time the tremendous issue at stake on

72

“Charge Again at Bloody Angle,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, July 4, 1913.

73 Ibid.

74

“Pickett’s Charge,” July 4, 1913.

75 “Forty Thousand Veterans Meet on Battlefield,” Salt Lake Herald, July 1, 1913.

76 “Bloody Angle,” July 4, 1913.

77 William M. Bostaph was a civil engineer who was unanimously elected as president of the Ogden Chamber of Commerce in 1909. He was extremely active in the Grand Army of the Republic, serving, at one point, as commander of the Utah Department. In 1909, during the GAR National Encampment in Salt Lake City, Bostaph was elected “Senior Vice-Commander-in-Chief” of the national organization—the only Utahn to hold a national GAR office. “Encampment of the GAR,” Ogden Standard Examiner, May 22, 1903; “William Bostaph Returns from Arizona,” Ogden Standard Examiner, May 24, 1905; “Utah State News,” Davis County Clipper (Bountiful, UT), April 16, 1909; and Journal of the Fifty-Fifth National Encampment Grand Army of the Republic (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Offices, 1922), 269.

this little spot and in the few minutes into which it was crowded.” He continued, “I was present when the Confederates and the Union men who fought there met at 3 pm on the hour of the fiftieth anniversary of the deadly conflict. There were speeches and general handshaking over the famous wall over which they fought fifty years ago.”78

Bountiful resident Hilton Springstead, a Union veteran of the Ninth Michigan Cavalry who also witnessed the reenactment, published his impressions in the Davis County Clipper. He commented that “one of the most touching things that he witnessed while at the war veterans reunion at Gettysburg, was the burying of the hatchet between the blue and gray. He said a soldier from the north and one from the south who fifty years before had tried to club each other to death with their guns, on the third day of the engagement, when General Pickett ordered his men, numbering about 11,000 men, to make the charge at ‘bloody angle,’ went together and bought a new hatchet and dug a hole in the ground and buried the same.”79

78 “Salt Laker Writes from Battlefield,” Salt Lake Tribune, July 11, 1913.

79 “Bountiful Briefs,” Davis County Clipper (Bountiful, UT), August 15, 1913. Hilton Springsteed, who fought in several Civil War battles, moved with his family to Bountiful, Utah, from Colorado around the turn of the twentieth century, where they were “converted to Mormonism by Dr. J. H. Grant and other Bountiful Elders.” “Hilton Springsteed Passed Away Thursday,” Davis County Clipper (Bountiful, UT),May 21, 1920.

A large reunion occurred at the “Bloody Angle.” It was near this spot where Charles Warren and Daniel Ball met again after fifty years.

LIBRARY OF

Another Utah veteran who fought at Gettysburg was Confederate Charles Warren—“Old Charlie.” During the trip, he was nicknamed “Pickett” by the other Utah veterans because he was a veteran of Pickett’s Charge. Warren enlisted in the Confederate Army and served as a fourteenyear-old orderly in the 28th Virginia Infantry Regiment, the regiment of his uncle Colonel John Allen. Disobeying the orders of his uncle, he was in the first rank to reach Cemetery Ridge during Pickett’s Charge.80

While at the reunion, Warren met and shook hands over a cannon at the “Bloody Angle” with a Union veteran, Daniel O. Ball, one of Lieutenant Alonzo H. Cushing’s gunners from Company A, Fourth U.S. Artillery Battery.81 Little did Warren know that he and Ball had actually met once before—during July 1863 on Cemetery Ridge. 82 Of the experience, Warren said, “You see, I had no thought of meeting any of the boys on the other side so I could recognize them at Gettysburg, but I wanted to see the old Bloody Angle and that was one of the first places I made for when we reached Gettysburg. I had little trouble,” he said, “in finding the place for it was well marked with a monument and two cannon. As I was looking over the old gun I heard a man say he manned the same gun on that day just fifty years before.” After comparing battle memories, Warren and Ball figured out that they “had matched weapons during the thickest of the fight. I was a lad of fourteen years old and six months at the time and of course I was smaller and lighter than the gunner who proved afterwards to have been my new friend Ball. He bowled me over with the swab stick he had been using on the gun and I attacked him with one old sword bayonet, the only weapon I had. After the melee I came out with a bayonet wound in my forehead and Ball was shot through the arm.” 83 (Warren left the South after the war and headed west, ending up in Utah, because he “couldn’t stand Carpet-bagger rule.”)84

As the New York Times noted, the reunion had a great leveling effect on

80

“Shakes Hands Over Cannon with Foe of 50 Years Ago,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, August 31, 1913; “Confederate Veteran Going Home,” Salt Lake Telegram, February 28, 1928; “Hero of South Is Honored With Cross on Memorial Day,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, June 1, 1915.

81 At the outbreak of the Civil War, Battery A, Fourth U.S. Artillery—the unit Cushing would soon command—was “stationed at Fort Crittenden, in Utah Territory, protecting settlers from Indian attacks.” Quoting an 1863 press release, the New York Times reported that Cushing’s “gallantry was beyond praise.” “What the Times Reporters Saw of Pickett’s Charge,” New York Times, June 29, 1913.

82 Daniel O. Ball might have served in Utah Territory with Battery A, Fourth U.S. Artillery, at the beginning of the Civil War. An August 1861 enlistment record from “Echo Canon,” Utah Territory, exists for a soldier named Daniel Ball, aged twenty-six. Registers of Enlistments in the United States Army, 1798–1914, National Archives Microfilm Publication M233, roll 27.

83 “Shakes Hands,” August 31, 1913. See also “Defy Gettysburg Heat,” July 2, 1913; “Stories of Reunion,” Ogden Standard, July 2, 1913.

84 Upon the death of his wife in 1928 and with assistance from the Salt Lake Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, Warren decided to return to the South after a fifty-six year absence, twenty years of which he spent in Salt Lake City, to spend his last years with his comrades at the Lee Soldiers’ Home in Richmond, Virginia. Warren passed away at the Soldiers’ Home in 1929. “Exiled Veteran to Return to South Glad to Go Home—Maybe, He Says,” Salt Lake Telegram, June 1, 1928; “Confederate Veteran Dies; Charlie Warren, Who Served ‘Lost Cause’ Dies in Virginny,” Salt Lake Telegram, October 28, 1929.

the former soldiers—“Privates, Lieutenants, Captains, Majors, Colonels, Generals, [and] Governors, all look alike [at] Gettysburg.”85 Frequently after Confederate and Union veterans became acquainted, there was talk of joining the United Confederate Veterans and the Grand Army of the Republic into a single veterans’ organization called the United Veterans of the United States. The idea remained just talk, though, as no direct action was taken to do so after the reunion.86

Utah’s reunion commission chair, Lucian H. Smyth, reported that “attendance at the battlefield was beyond all expectations. The streets of Gettysburg were so jammed that it was almost impossible to walk. On the night of July 3, about 3000 automobiles got into the crowd when the fireworks display was shown at Little Round Top and all the roads were so blocked that it took several hours to clear them for traffic.” Smyth added that “the reunion was a big success, and one of the best lessons ever put before the world in showing the possibilities of a self-governing people.”87

The final day, July 4, was envisioned as “the biggest day of all” with the chief justice of the United States presiding over ceremonies in the big tent. President Woodrow Wilson addressed the veterans during a one hour visit to Gettysburg. After racing “across Pennsylvania and New Jersey at a speed sometimes approaching seventy miles an hour,” Wilson (who was the son of Confederate, Joseph Ruggles Wilson, and the first Southerner elected president since Andrew Johnson assumed the presidency upon the death of Abraham Lincoln) declared to the assembled veterans: “We have found one another again as brothers and comrades, in arms, enemies no longer, generous friends rather, our battles long past, the quarrel forgotten—except we shall not forget the splendid valor, the manly devotion of the men then arranged against one another, now grasping hands and smiling into each other’s eyes.”88 The veterans generally received the president’s speech with a collective yawn; as the New York Times put it, the speech “did not inspire its hearers to [a] very enthusiastic response.”89

The original reunion schedule called for the president to lay the cornerstone of a Gettysburg peace monument, but sufficient funding had not been obtained.90 Later that evening several hundred Confederate veterans

85

“Cared for at Gettysburg,” June 29, 1913.

86

“Defy Gettysburg Heat,” July 2, 1913.

87

“Hot Car on Hot Day,” July 10, 1913.

88 “President Proceeds from Gettysburg to Summer White House,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, July 5, 1913 (first quotation); Report of the Pennsylvania Commission,174 (second quotation).

89

“Mr. Wilson at Gettysburg,” New York Times, July 5, 1913.

90

“Raise Funds,” April 17, 1913; “Orders to G.A.R.,” June 8, 1913. “The plan for the monument fell through,” and the cornerstone was not laid as planned. The idea for a peace monument was revived soon after the reunion by Colonel Andrew Cowan, a captain of the First New York battery at Gettysburg. Cowan presided over a committee that “went to Washington with a view of securing the introduction in Congress of a bill providing for the erection of a peace monument.” “Weary Veterans Silently Depart from Gettysburg,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, July 6, 1913. As explained in the closing paragraphs of this essay, Cowan’s petition in Washington was successful.

Civil War veterans—both Confederate and Union—pose together at Gettysburg in July 1913.

marched to General Liggett’s campground headquarters “to pay their respects.” While the general “stood in front of his tent and reviewed the march” their band played “Dixie” and “Maryland, My Maryland.”91 The grand reunion ended with the lowering of the camp commander’s flag to half-staff, a brief tribute to the war dead, a forty-eight gun salute, five minutes of silence, and a fireworks display.92

Although the reunion officially ended on July 4, the camp remained open until July 6 for veterans who wished to linger a little longer. In contrast to the pageantry that marked the beginning, “no flying banners, blaring bands or marching columns” accompanied the veterans as they quietly departed Gettysburg. Newspaper accounts trumpeted the “wonderful success of what has been described as an army camp that will stand as a model for all the countries of the world for years to come.” By July 7, less than three hundred veterans remained. 93 The U.S. Army dismantled the campground over the next two months

91 “Charge Again at Bloody Angle,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, July 4, 1913.

92 “Pay Tribute to Sleeping Heroes,” July 10, 1913.

93 “Gettysburg Camp Closed,” New York City, July 7, 1913.

and restored it to its original condition.94

The first Utah veterans returned on July 7.95 Utah attendee Seymour B. Young was very pleased with his reunion experience. In 1862, Young had served as a private in the Lot Smith Cavalry Company—the only active duty Civil War unit from Utah Territory. In 1913, he served as one of the presidents of the Seventy in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and as a commander of GAR Post Eight in Salt Lake City. When Young returned to Salt Lake City on July 8, he carried a list of the Utah veterans who attended and “checked off” each veteran upon his arrival home in Utah.96

In all, 53,407 veterans attended the historic reunion—44,713 Union and 8,694 Confederate soldiers. The 1913 reunion “induced more interest among the old soldiers of the north and the south than any event which has happened since the day that the war closed.”97 The oldest veteran to attend, Micyah Weiss of New York, was 112 years old; the youngest was sixty-two. The average age was seventy-two. Surprisingly, only nine veterans died during the reunion.98

As the New York Times summarized, the Gettysburg battle commemoration was “neither a celebration of victory nor a mournful ceremony to commemorate defeat. Not a survivor of the men who fought on the Northern side in those three terrible days has gone to Gettysburg in the spirit of a conqueror, and surely none of our Southern brothers has gone to mourn the defeat of his cause. [But] the bond of fellowship and sympathy between the South and the North [was] strengthened”99 The reunion was “in all respects the most unique gathering of the soldiers of the [18]60’s ever held. Men who fought each other fifty years ago . . . fraternized as longseparated brothers.”100 What a grand experience it must have been to attend.

During the 1913 Gettysburg reunion, Confederate and Union veterans visibly demonstrated to the nation that the Civil War had truly ended. Two thousand-five hundred veterans met one last time, in 1938, for the seventyfifth anniversary of the battle. To that reunion, Utah sent only five aging Union veterans.101 As a quarter of a million visitors gathered on July 3,

94

“Weary Veterans Silently Depart from Gettysburg,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, July 6, 1913.

95 Colonel J. W. Reed visited his brother at Port Byron, New York, where he met with a local resident named Lorenzo Ames, who claimed to remember Brigham Young when Young was a paint mixer in the area. “Veterans Expected Back from East Soon,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, July 7, 1913; “Colonel Reed Visits Brigham Young Home,” Salt Lake Tribune, July 23, 1913.

96 “Veterans Return,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, July 9, 1913.

97 “Veterans to Meet on Battlefield,” Carbon County News (Price, UT), June 12, 1913.

98 James W. Wensyel, "Return to Gettysburg," American History Illustrated (July/August 1993), 45; “Pickett’s Charge,” New York Times, July 4, 1913; Stan Cohen, Hands Across the Wall: The 50th and 75th Reunions of the Gettysburg Battle (Charleston, WV: Pictorial Histories, 1982), 17.

99 “Gettysburg,” New York Times, July 4, 1913.

100 “Sidelights of Reunion,” July 18, 1913.

101 The Times-Independent reported on June 30, 1938, that “Five elderly members of the Grand Army of the Republic left Salt Lake City early this week aboard a special train carrying soldiers of both armies to

1938, to remember the war and to dedicate the “Eternal Light Peace Monument” erected on Oak Hill, President Franklin D. Roosevelt accepted the monument on behalf of the nation. At the base of the monument are inscribed the words “Peace eternal in a nation united.”102

UTAH CIVIL WAR VETERANS ATTENDINGTHE 1913 REUNION

The Salt Lake Herald-Republican published the following list of veterans on June 28, 1913, after the veterans had departed for Pennsylvania.103 An earlier list in the Salt Lake Tribune named several other veterans who planned to attend.104

Union Veterans of Gettysburg

Francis M. Bishop, Salt Lake City

William H. Brown, Ogden H. P. Burns, Salt Lake City

George A. Cook, Grouse Creek S. D. Chase, Salt Lake City

Norman D. Corser, Salt Lake City

Aaron Darling, Salt Lake City

Orlando F. Davis, Salt Lake City

William Goodsell, Salt Lake City

Ezra D. Haskins, Salt Lake City W. H. McNeil, New Harmony

Henry Page, Salt Lake City

John W. Reed, Salt Lake City

Henry C. Rode, Salt Lake City

Thomas Smith, Midvale

L. H. Smyth, Salt Lake City

John Westen, Ogden

William F. Wilson, Salt Lake City

Confederate Veterans of Gettysburg

A. D. Gillis, Eureka John J. Taylor, Payson Charles Warren, Salt Lake City

Additional Confederate Veterans John Amos, Payson

Walter A. Bennet, Salt Lake City John F. Beesley, Provo G. B. Dobbins, Salt Lake City W. L. H. Dotson, Salt Lake City B. F. Hill, East Millcreek

the gathering . . . Representing the Bee Hive state will be John W. Widdoes, 94, American Fork, Ira A. Stormes, 92, commander of the Utah department of the GAR, Robert L Rohm, 90, Myton, Thomas W. Brookbank, 92, Salt Lake City, and George W. Vogel, 97, Ogden. The state’s only two residents who fought under the Confederacy flag—William H. Perry and John D. Johnson both of Salt Lake City—could not make the trip because of illness. The five veterans all expressed pleasure at being invited to the reunion, although none actually fought in the battle of Gettysburg. “Five Utah Veterans,” June 30, 1938. None of those five Utah veterans attended the 1913 Gettysburg reunion. See Paul L. Roy, The Last Reunion of the Blue and Gray (Gettysburg, PA: Bookmart, 1950), 86.

102 Roy, Last Reunion, 117; Jay S. Hoar. "Gettysburg's Last Surviving Soldier: James Marion Lurvey," Gettysburg Magazine 16 (1997): 124–28.

103 “Veterans of Both Armies Leaving for Famous Battlefield,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, June 28, 1913. The newspaper included the name of an additional Union veteran, Amos K. Smith of Salt Lake City, in its June 28 list, but he did not attend.

104 “Day’s Anxious Vigil Rewarded; Veterans Leave for Gettysburg Today,” Salt Lake Tribune, June 27, 1913. Other lists of veteran attendees appeared on June 22 (“Thirty-Four Veterans Sign up for Trip East,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, June 22, 1913) and June 27 (“Fund to Send Utah Veterans to Field of Battle Raised,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, June 27, 1913).

Additional Union Veterans (GAR Members)

Charles E. Abbott, Salt Lake City

James Isaac Atkinson, Woods Cross

Ephraim Bartlett, Salt Lake City

William Bostaph, Salt Lake City

Charles W. Bouton, Salt Lake City

Thomas Champion, Provo

W. A. Clovis, Salt Lake City

George W. Cochlerm, Salt Lake City

Levi Dunham, Mount Pleasant

C. O. Farnsworth, Salt Lake City

Joseph A. Fisher, Salt Lake City

John Gray, Ogden

Leonidas H. Kennard, Salt Lake City

John La Due, Salt Lake City

Smith McComsey, Salt Lake City

H. F. Menough, Ogden

John N. Parsell, Salt Lake City

George Piper, Springville

John H. Powers, East Millcreek

John M. Preshaw, Ogden

Elias Price, Salt Lake City

John A. Pritchett, Fairview

A. B. Richardson, Farmington

Albert L. Rivers, Salt Lake City

William C. Roberts, Provo

Andrew J. Sargeant, Salt Lake City

Temple Short, Ogden

Joseph F. Smith, Springville

Hilton Springsteed, Bountiful

Thomas A. Starr, Salt Lake City

Edward Theriot, Salt Lake City

Frank G.Vallereux, Ogden

David O. Wald, Provo

John H. Walker, Salt Lake City

James L. Welshans, Ogden

John White, Salt Lake City

R. D. Woodruff, Salt Lake City

Seymour B.Young, Salt Lake City

BOOK REVIEWS

Books, Bluster, and Bounty: Local Politics and Intermountain West Carnegie

Library Building Grants, 1898–1920. By Susan H. Swetnam. (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2012. xi + 251 pp. Cloth, $27.95.)

BOOKS, BLUSTER, AND BOUNTY is a sleeper hit. Although its subtitle presents what might seem a dry and narrow subject, Susan Swetnam persuasively argues that the process of applying for Carnegie Library building grants—a process that was often contentious and not always successful—reveals a good deal about the Intermountain West and offers potential lessons for today. Swetnam began the project with some basic questions: Why did ordinary citizens advocate for libraries? Who were those citizens? And “can those of us who value books and reading today learn anything from them that we can use” (225)?

The supporting documentation that Swetnam mined from the Carnegie correspondence at Columbia University tells us how towns applying for a share of the industrialist’s fortune viewed themselves, their demography, their economies, and their (often inflated) hopes. Swetnam unearthed a wealth of detail, especially about populations, expectations for growth, and the ability of towns to shoulder a considerable share of costs. Here, for those towns, began the problems and the “bluster.” These places were new: many of the seventy-eight communities that applied for a grant had not existed when the previous census was taken and thus had no verifiable figures to report. Despite the rigorous application process, seventy-one towns in the Intermountain West succeeded in building a library, a success rate slightly higher than that of the nation as a whole. That success reflected the hard work and commitment of town leaders, including mothers and women’s clubs.

Swetnam divides the “Carnegie towns” into categories reflective of their populations and primary arguments. Twenty-four Utah towns applied, more than any other state in the region, and most were Mormon-dominated villages. While towns like Ephraim, Parowan, and Richmond were hardly economic powerhouses, they did have stable populations and committed leaders (virtually all of whom were Mormon men) and experienced little strife over site selection. Their applications emphasized how libraries could enrich education while helping keep vice at bay.

Not all Intermountain West towns fit the above category, of course. Some were “boom towns” that sprang up or grew dramatically because of developments like irrigation projects, mineral strikes, or railroad connections. Utah towns in this category included Beaver City, which experienced a gold strike, and Garland, with its Utah-Idaho Sugar Company mill. Such towns tended to employ boosterish rhetoric and to emphasize the literal profits that a library might help bring. Other towns, including Springville

and Eureka City, were what Swetnam calls “religiously diverse,” with substantial non-Mormon populations and comparably varied approaches. Eureka’s board, for example, reflected pride in religious toleration, and its application emphasized a library’s impact on immigrant miners.

Bigger towns—such as Salt Lake City and Ogden, both of which had gentile-dominated governments by the 1890s—made very different arguments, emphasizing how a library might help to combat Mormon domination. Swetnam’s background context here is not entirely persuasive. She claims that Salt Lake City “was home to the state’s anti-Mormon territorial government,” a problematic characterization both because it muddles state and territory and because Brigham Young was governor for a decade and the legislature was all Mormon until 1887. It seems clear, though, that Salt Lake City’s religious conflict spurred contention in the Carnegie library application process, until a fortuitous bequest of money and of a lot settled the matter.

The prospect of Utah towns gained a boost when the state government created the Utah Library-Gymnasium Commission. The commission’s first director, Howard Driggs, together with his assistants Karen Jacobsen and Mary Elizabeth Downey, tirelessly promoted the benefits of books and helped walk communities through the elaborate application process.

Swetnam concludes with laments about the current state of financial support for libraries. She suggests that today’s advocates, like their counterparts of a century ago, should “tie libraries symbolically to the coattails of current aspirations” (227). Her valuable book can help show the way.

JEFF NICHOLS Westminster College

Across God’s Frontiers: Catholic Sisters in the American West, 1850–1920.

By Anne M. Butler. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012. xxi + 424 pp. Cloth, $45.00.)

ANNE M. BUTLER, Trustee Professor Emerita at Utah State University and former editor of the Western Historical Quarterly, has written a deeply researched and eloquently argued study of the Catholic sisters’ activities in the American West between 1850 and 1920. Her book, Across God’s Frontiers, is more than a narrative of the Catholic Church’s development or the story of the Catholic sisters’ social services in the West. Rather, Butler portrays how the sisters and the nuns built the Catholic Church and its communities in the frontier. She examines how the extraordinary circumstances of the territory shaped and influenced their identity, their

way of thinking, the structure of their organizations, and their perception.

Butler first describes the immigration of the nuns to the American West as pioneers. The sisters, who usually arrived from European cloisters, faced the challenge of considerably adjusting their lifestyles. Arriving in the Wild West, they endured homesickness, poverty, and language barriers. Quoting from original diaries and correspondences, Butler illustrates how the nuns overcame such difficulties by focusing on common religious goals, having support networks, and using their senses of humor.

Next, Butler discusses the various social services the sisters instituted in their communities, as well as their struggles to provide for their own basic needs. Those zealous sisters enjoyed the freedom to explore nontraditional employments and study new disciplines while fulfilling the dual roles of public caregiver and spiritual symbol. For instance, they undertook entrepreneurial ventures such as providing health-care services for railroad workers and miners, selling crafts and fancywork, and teaching private music lessons. Financial constraints necessitated the development of the nuns’ hidden abilities and negotiating skills. In these strongly supported chapters, Butler illustrates the conflict between the male clergy and the sisters excellently: “many pastors and priests . . . showed themselves notoriously willing to take advantage of sisters’ work, withhold compensation, and overlook the desperate living conditions of the nuns” (128).

The next chapters focus on the relationship of the sisters with their motherhouses and their local church leaders. Butler concludes that “predicaments and crisis taught religious women to stay watchful and fend off autocratic masculine controls when they could” (161). At the same time, the motherhouses recognized the need for reexamining the rules and either amending or retaining regulations based on the unique circumstances of the West. To substantiate this statement, Butler illustrates how the nuns and sisters both won and sometimes lost their contests with the clergy. She further emphasizes how sisters and nuns broadened their lives and discovered more about themselves as religious women.

According to Butler, one of the key persons among the Catholic sisters in the West was Mother Katharine Drexel, who shaped Catholic education and aggressively undertook many projects to improve western society. She also reached out to Natives, making it possible for other sisters to enter into their world. As the sisters served their fellow men regardless of color, sex, or age, they began to understand the West as a place of constant struggle between different people and various cultural backgrounds, beliefs, and traditions. Consequently, they began to see themselves as residents of an American society.

Female religious history and the history of the Catholic Church in America lack well-written studies. Butler’s work, Across God’s Frontiers, fills

this gap and opens up new ways to think about the work of Catholic sisters on the frontier.

ANDREA VENTILLA University of Pecs Pecs, Hungary

Hell of a Vision: Regionalism and the Modern American West. By Robert L. Dorman. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2012. xii + 256 pp. Cloth, $50.00.)

IN THIS STIMULATING VOLUME, Robert L. Dorman, associate professor of Library Science at Oklahoma City University, explores western regional consciousness and identity between the 1890s and the present. Dorman interprets over four hundred scholarly articles and books, government reports, planning documents, novels, short stories, and films as manifestations of regionalism in this creative intellectual history. Dorman loosely defines the West as the seventeen westernmost states, excluding Alaska and Hawaii. His definition of regionalism is broad enough to encompass macroscopic views of the entire region as a distinctive, discrete area. It is also sufficiently fine-grained to encompass celebrations of local color and subregions such as individual states, river basins, and geographical provinces. This flexible definition allows Dorman to categorize far-flung works as manifestations of common regionalist impulses. A potential downside of this broad approach is that Dorman must be selective; he never mentions many significant regionalist works. The omissions are particularly apparent when viewed from the prism of a single state: prominent Utah authors whose regionalist writings receive some attention include Wallace Stegner, Bernard DeVoto, and Edward Abbey. But Dorman overlooks Stegner’s celebration of Utah’s cultural legacy, Mormon Country, as well as the writing of homegrown regionalists from Terry Tempest Williams and Dale Morgan to Juanita Brooks and Nels Anderson.

Although readers will find little that is distinctively Utah in this book, they can easily fit the state within the broad cultural outlines sketched by Dorman. The author describes how between the 1890s and the 1930s the West came to be associated with agrarianism. Two Old West archetypes flourished in popular culture: the pioneer farmer and the cowboy. Theodore Roosevelt, Owen Wister, Emerson Hough, Frederick Remington, and Zane Grey helped to perpetuate these archetypes. Meanwhile, regionalist female writers such as Willa Cather and Mari Sandoz offered detailed portraits of rural neighborhoods that complicated the male-centric vision of cowboys and homesteaders. Dorman omits other archetypal western heroes, including miners and explorers like Lewis and Clark.

Dorman convincingly argues that the Dust Bowl and Okie Migration of the 1930s delegitimized nationalistic perceptions of the pioneering farmers’ nobility. Although Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane celebrated the pioneer in their Depression-era novels, John Steinbeck, Dorothea Lange, Paul Taylor, and Carey McWilliams documented the exploitation of migrant workers by western farmers in a post-frontier era. Dorman highlights regionalist elements of the New Deal, including its encouragement of local artists and writers and Indian arts and crafts and its decentralized management of crop and rangelands under local grazing districts and soil conservation districts. He overlooks a striking irony of New Deal western regionalism: the New Deal’s best known explorations of local color—the photographs of Farm Security Administration (FSA) employees and the Bonneville Power Administration’s “Roll on Columbia” songs recorded by Woody Guthrie—were produced by outsiders. Most FSA photographers lightly touched the country they photographed as they passed through, while Guthrie moved to the Northwest for only a few weeks to write his songs about the Columbia River Valley.

Regionalism took a backseat to nationalist patriotism and 100 Percent Americanism during the 1940s and 1950s. Then the cultural ferment and environmental activism of the 1960s and 1970s breathed new life into the regionalist picture as did the migration of millions of Americans into the Southwestern Sunbelt. The American Indian Movement’s calls for sovereignty, ecologists’ focus on the ecological integrity of bioregions, wilderness advocates’ criticism of federally subsidized grazing on the public lands, and the Sagebrush Rebels’ demand that the federal government cede control of the public lands to the states all reflected the regionalist spirit.

Dorman describes a “New West renaissance” of the 1980s and 1990s in which historical scholarship, literature, film, and art criticized the underside of American imperial projects in the West.

Readers with an interest in questions of regional identity and politics will relish this volume.

BRIAN Q. CANNON Brigham Young University

Plain but Wholesome: Foodways of the Mormon Pioneers. By Brock Cheney. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2012. xiii + 210 pp. Paper, $19.95.)

IN 1997 THE UTAH STATELegislature passed a bill that designated the Dutch oven as the official state cooking pot. And yet, for nineteenthcentury Mormons, the Dutch oven of today did not exist. Brock Cheney’s Plain but Wholesome: Foodways of the Mormon Pioneers contains many delightful

revelations such as this. Through methodologies employed by folklorists, historians, and archaeologists, Cheney argues that “the story of pioneer Utah can be told in a compelling fashion by using food as our main theme. . . . Settlers spent the overwhelming bulk of their energies and time in the pursuit of growing and preparing food” (175). Cheney’s exhaustively researched study clearly identifies the realities of Mormon pioneer life for a wide audience.

One of the major challenges for a study such as this is access to sources. Pioneer women cooked by routine and passed recipes to their daughters orally. Often, these recipes remained unrecorded for several generations. Diaries mention meals and dishes, but not preparation. However, Cheney puts the pieces together by using instructions from era-appropriate cookbooks and examines the physical materials left behind. On the trail, pioneers made soda biscuits to provide the necessary carbohydrates for the trek. In the Salt Lake valley, settlers pursued what was available in the wild (including pickleweed, sego bulbs, berries, game, and fish). Cheney spends much time explaining the intricacies of bread-making, food preservation, Scandinavian cooking, and even home brewing and wine-making.

While most studies of the Word of Wisdom (the Mormon health code) and its role in nineteenth-century Mormondom briefly discuss the haphazard observance of its proscriptions, Cheney looks deeper to reveal exactly how Mormon pioneers did not always abide them. Ethnic identities sometimes took precedence over religious affiliation; for example, British converts continued their rituals around tea, and Scandinavians continued drinking coffee long after they settled in Utah. Mormon families who brewed beer at home probably did so because they viewed beer as a viable form of nutrition, not as a recreational beverage.

Studies of food and foodways have the potential to reveal interesting and important issues of power and community. Cheney explains how geographical isolation, ethnic traditions, and poverty helped differentiate Mormon foodways from others. However, these factors were present for many other western settlers, as Reginald Horsman identified in his recent study Feast or Famine: Food and Drink in American Westward Expansion. So what makes Mormon pioneer foodways different from those of other western settlers? Cheney briefly mentions that Mormon religious sensibilities brought meaning to some of their food, particularly fruit. They viewed their vast orchards as fulfilled prophecy in making the desert “blossom as the rose.” Yet most of what marks Mormonism as different in this pioneer era receives little attention.

How did living arrangements due to plural marriage affect food preparation and consumption? How did the pursuit of food affect relations between Mormons and Native Americans? How did Mormon conceptions

of communalism influence the distribution of food? While a study of Mormon foodways would benefit from pursuing such questions, Cheney's book is nevertheless a vast source of information. As he states in his preface, “Foodies will find plenty of recipes here; folklorists will find stories, audiences, and performances; academics will find notes with primary sources” (xiii). For almost every dish mentioned, Cheney provides instructions for making it in a twenty-first-century kitchen, even suggesting to “add a small pinch of dirt, sand, or ash to each serving to simulate trail conditions” (47). Hopefully, Cheney’s exhaustive and delightfully written study of Mormon pioneer foodways will lead to further studies of a topic that has much to offer the palate.

MELISSA COY FERGUSON Utah State Historical Society

He Rode with Butch and Sundance: The Story of Harvey “Kid Curry” Logan.

By Mark T. Smokov. (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2012. xvi + 440 pp. Cloth, $29.95.)

MARK T. SMOKOV HAS CAPTUREDthe life of Harvey Logan— Kid Curry—a cunning outlaw of Wild Bunch fame, in this definitive biography. It is a well-researched contribution for Wild Bunch enthusiasts that provides clarity and addresses some of the much-debated missing links in the era of transformation of the Old West.

Harvey Logan spent his formative years near Kansas City, Missouri, where he read about Jesse James. He and his brothers decided to go west to become cowboys and worked on several Montana ranches. They took on the Curry name, not from fellow Wild Bunch member Flat Nose George Currie, but because Harvey’s older brother, Hank, was trying to elude his wife. The Logan (or Curry) brothers then settled in and started their own ranch.

Smokov describes well the events leading up to the Landusky-Curry feud, the incident that probably motivated the brothers to hit the outlaw trail. This feud resulted in the infamous gunfight between Pete Landusky and Kid Curry, during which the Kid shot and killed Landusky. A coroner’s inquest found that Harvey Curry had murdered Landusky; warrants were issued for the arrest of Harvey, as well as for his brother Lonnie and friend James Thornhill. Although Lonnie and Thornhill were eventually found not guilty, Kid Curry was never cleared of his charge. He fled to the Hole-inthe-Wall in Wyoming, where he became associated with Flat Nose George Currie and eventually the other outlaws now known as the Wild Bunch.

Smokov follows Kid Curry’s life of crime through stories of the Curry

brothers’ involvement in robbing stages, sheep camps, and stores before progressing to bigger targets. At one such target, the Belle Fourche Bank in South Dakota, the Wild Bunch failed to rob the bank (getting away with money from some of the customers) but did receive unwanted recognition in the form of rewards for their capture. They were later arrested in Montana and returned to South Dakota for trial. They escaped from jail, and although two were caught, Curry and the Sundance Kid escaped.

Smokov details various train robberies attributed to the Wild Bunch, including one near Winnemucca, Nevada, and two in southern Wyoming. Of significance to Utahns, he makes the case that Utah’s Butch Cassidy did not participate in the actual robberies, but did perhaps take part in the planning and the splitting of the loot. This argument, of course, contradicts a scene in the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) that portrays Butch Cassidy as one of the perpetrators of the robbery. Smokov makes the point that Butch Cassidy did not always lead the Wild Bunch. According to Smokov, he was the leader when it came to robbing banks, but Kid Curry was definitely the leader when it came to robbing trains.

Smokov traces Kid Curry through Texas, where the famous picture of the Fort Worth Five was taken, into Montana, where Curry led Train Syndicate members Deaf Charley Hanks and Ben Kilpatrick in the Great Northern Train robbery, and finally to Colorado, where, in a gunfight following an attempted train robbery, Kid Curry took his own life by shooting himself in the head.

Smokov’s book supplies a needed addition to the literature of the Wild Bunch and the Old West.

BOOK NOTICES

Cedar City Images of America Series. By Jennifer Hunter. (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2012. 127 pp. Paper, $21.99.)

On November 11, 1851, a band of thirty-six men arrived in the middle of a blinding snowstorm to begin the settlement of Cedar City. Before the year was out, log cabins were under construction, including one by George Wood, now located in the Frontier Homestead State Park. From its tentative beginning as a Mormon pioneer settlement, to its designation as Utah’s “Festival City,” nearly a century and a half of history can be found in the pages of this book by Cedar City resident Jennifer Hunter.

A. JOEL FRANDSEN Elsinore, Utah

Organized topically, the eight chapters examine first settlers and heroes; religion and education; mining, agriculture, and industry; historic downtown and Main Street; planes, trains, and automobiles; films and tourism; Utah Shakespeare Festival; and Utah Summer Games and Festival City USA.

Salt Lake City’s Historic Architecture Images of America Series. By Allan Dale Roberts. (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2012. 127 pp. Paper, $21.99.)

The rich architectural history of Salt Lake City provides the subject of this volume by Allen D. Roberts, an award-winning author and architect. The book covers nearly a hundred years of Salt Lake City history, from 1850 to the 1930s. The nine chapters are organized by types of buildings, including civic and public architecture; religious architecture; commercial and office architecture; industrial buildings; hotels and apartments; educational architecture; clubs and societies; theaters, depots, hospitals, and miscellaneous buildings; and single family residences.

Ogden’s Trolley District. Images of America Series. By Shalae Larsen and Sue Wilkerson. (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2012. 127 pp. Paper, $21.99.)

The trolley served as a bridge between the horse-and-buggy era of the nineteenth century and the automobile age of the twentieth century. It facilitated the construction of homes outside the city center and stimulated business and activity in the heart of the city. Beginning with a mule-drawn trolley in 1883, the system evolved and became a valued part of Ogden for more than fifty years until its discontinuation in 1935. The Trolley District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, stretches from Twentieth Street south to Thirtieth Street and from Harrison Boulevard west to Adams Avenue. Two residents of that district, Shalae Larsen and Sue Wilkerson, have compiled an impressive photographic history that reflects the colorful past and rich architecture of the Ogden Trolley District.

West Valley City By Mike Winder. (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2012. 127 pp. Paper, $21.99.)

Although West Valley City was not incorporated until 1980, its origins go back to 1848, when newly arrived Mormon settlers took up

land “Over Jordan” on the west side of the Salt Lake Valley and on the west side of the Jordan River. Working with the West Valley City Historical Society, the city’s mayor and veteran author, Mike Winder, has organized a book that follows a chronological order with half of the pages covering the period just prior to incorporation to the present. The book contains more than two hundred photographs and captions. It will go far to help the residents of Utah’s second largest city develop a sense of place and historical connectedness.

Legendary Locals of Ogden By Sarah Langsdon and Melissa Johnson. (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2012. 127 pp. Paper, $21.99.)

As a companion series to the popular Arcadia Images of America Series that focuses on places, institutions, and events, Legendary Locals of Ogden is a most appropriate volume to launch the series in Utah. Sarah Langsdon and Melissa Johnson, staff at Weber State University’s Stewart Library Special Collections, have utilized the university’s collection of photographs relating to Ogden’s history—photographs that include everyone from prostitutes to presidents. Legendary Locals of Ogden is organized into nine chapters about pioneers, business men and women, public servants, teachers, the military, women’s organizations, culture and recreation, local and national leaders, and the famous and infamous.

Bitter Water: Diné Oral Histories of the Navajo–Hopi Land Dispute. Edited and translated by Malcolm D. Benally. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2011. 103 pp. Paper, $19.95.)

This slim book makes a strong case for the use of video in conducting oral history interviews. The four Navajo (Diné) women whose narratives it presents are residents of northern central Arizona, an area encompassed by the Navajo reservation that is also the historic home of the Hopi. Each of the four chapters begins with the Navajo transcript of the interview followed by the English translation. A fifth chapter, entitled “Sheep Is Life,” offers valuable insights into the importance of sheep in the culture and economic life of the Navajo. A useful chronology outlines important events in the controversy, from the passage by the United States Congress of the Navajo–Hopi Land Settlement Act in 1974 to the sending of relocation notices in October 2005.

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY FELLOWS

THOMAS G. ALEXANDER JAMES B. ALLEN

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

FAWN M. BRODIE (1915-1981) JUANITA BROOKS (1898-1989) OLIVE W. BURT (1894-1981) EUGENE E. CAMPBELL (1915-1986) EVERETT L. COOLEY (1917-2006) C. GREGORY CRAMPTON (1911-1995) S. GEORGE ELLSWORTH (1916-1997) MAX. J. EVANS 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) PHILIP F. NOTARIANNI 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 CRAIG FULLER

FLORENCE S. JACOBSEN MARLIN K. JENSEN STANFORD J. LAYTON WILLIAM P. MACKINNON JOHN S. MCCORMICK F. ROSS PETERSON RICHARD C. ROBERTS WILLIAM B. SMART MELVIN T. SMITH LINDA THATCHER GARY TOPPING

Department of Heritage and Arts Division of State History

BOARD OF STATE HISTORY

MICHAEL W. HOMER, Salt Lake City, 2013, Chair

MARTHA SONNTAG BRADLEY, Salt Lake City, 2013, Vice Chair

SCOTT R. CHRISTENSEN, Salt Lake City, 2013

YVETTE DONOSSO, Sandy, 2015

MARIA GARCIAZ, Salt Lake City, 2015

DEANNE G. MATHENY, Lindon, 2013

ROBERT S. MCPHERSON, Blanding, 2015

MAX J. SMITH, Salt Lake City, 2013

GREGORY C. THOMPSON, Salt Lake City, 2015

PATTY TIMBIMBOO-MADSEN, Plymouth, 2015

MICHAEL K. WINDER, West Valley City, 2013

ADMINISTRATION

BRAD WESTWOOD, Director and State Historic Preservation Officer KRISTEN ROGERS-IVERSEN, Deputy Director

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

The activity that is the subject of this journal has been financed in part with Federal funds from the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, and administered by the State Historic Preservation Office of Utah. The contents and opinions do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Department of the Interior or the Utah State Historic Preservation Office, nor does the mention of trade names or commercial products constitute endorsement or recommendation by the Department of the Interior or the Utah State Historic Preservation Office.

This program receives Federal financial assistance for identification and protection of historic properties. Under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and the Age Discrimination Act of 1975, as amended, the U.S. Department of the Interior prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, disability or age in its federally assisted programs. If you believe you have been discriminated against in any program, activity, or facility as described above, or if you desire further information, please write to: Office for Equal Opportunity, National Park Service, 849 C Street NW, Washington, D.C. 20240.

UTAH

HISTORICALQUARTERLY

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY (ISSN 0 042-143X)

EDITORIAL STAFF

BRAD

WESTWOOD, Editor HOLLY GEORGE, Managing Editor

ADVISORY BOARD OF EDITORS

BRIAN Q. CANNON, Provo, 2016

CRAIG FULLER, Salt Lake City, 2015

LEE ANN KREUTZER, Salt Lake City, 2015

ROBERT E. PARSON, Benson, 2013

W. PAUL REEVE, Salt Lake City, 2014

SUSAN SESSIONS RUGH, Provo, 2016

JOHN SILLITO, Ogden, 2013

GARY TOPPING, Salt Lake City, 2014

RONALD G. WATT, West Valley City, 2013 COLLEEN WHITLEY, Salt Lake City, 2015

Utah Historical Quarterly was established in 1928 to publish articles, documents, and reviews contributing to knowledge of Utah history. The Quarterly is published four times a year by the Division of State History/Utah State Historical Society, 300 S. Rio Grande, Salt Lake City, Utah 84101. Phone (801) 245-7231 for membership and publication information. Members of the Society receive the Quarterly upon payment of the annual dues: individual, $30; institution, $40; student and senior citizen (age sixty-five or older), $25; business, $40; sustaining, $40; patron, $60; sponsor, $100.

Manuscripts submitted for publication should be double-spaced with endnotes. We encourage authors to submit both a paper and an electronic version of the manuscript. For additional information, contact the managing editor or visit our website. Articles and book reviews represent the views of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Utah State Historical Society.

Find Utah Historical Quarterly online at history.utah.gov.

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POSTMASTER: Send address change to Utah Historical Quarterly, 300 S. Rio Grande, Salt Lake City, Utah 84101.

UTAHDIVSION OF STATE HISTORY

UTAHSTATEHISTORICALSOCIETY

Department

of Heritage and Arts

BOARD OF STATE HISTORY

MICHAEL W. HOMER, Salt Lake City, 2013, Chair

MARTHA SONNTAG BRADLEY, Salt Lake City, 2013, Vice Chair

SCOTT R. CHRISTENSEN, Salt Lake City, 2013

YVETTE DONOSSO, Sandy, 2015

MARIA GARCIAZ, Salt Lake City, 2015

DEANNE G. MATHENY, Lindon, 2013

ROBERT S. MCPHERSON, Blanding, 2015

MAX J. SMITH, Salt Lake City, 2013

GREGORY C. THOMPSON, Salt Lake City, 2015

PATTY TIMBIMBOO-MADSEN, Plymouth, 2015

MICHAEL K. WINDER, West Valley City, 2013

ADMINISTRATION

WESTWOOD, Director and State Historic Preservation Officer KRISTEN ROGERS-IVERSEN, Deputy Director

In 1897, public-spirited Utahns organized the Utah State Historical Society in order to expand public understanding of Utah’s past. Today, the Utah Division of State History administers the Society and, as part of its statutory obligations, publishes the Utah Historical Quarterly, which has collected and preserved Utah’s unique history since 1928. The Division also collects materials related to the history of Utah; assists communities, agencies, building owners, and consultants with state and federal processes regarding archaeological and historical resources; administers the ancient human remains program; makes historical resources available in a specialized research library; offers extensive online resources and grants; and assists in public policy and the promotion of Utah’s rich history. Please visit history.utah.gov for more information.

The activity that is the subject of this journal has been financed in part with Federal funds from the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, and administer by the State Historic Preservation Office of Utah. The contents and opinions do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Department of the Interior or the Utah State Historic Preservation Office, nor does the mention of trade names or commercial products constitute endorsement or recommendation by the Department of the Interior o r the Utah State Historic Preservation Office.

This program receives Federal financial assistance for identification and protection of historic properties. Under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and the Age Discrimination Act o f 1975, as amended, the U.S. Department of the Interior prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, disability, or age in its federally assisted programs. If you believe you have been discriminated against in any program, activity, or facility as described above, or if you desire further information, please write to: Office for Equal Opportunity, National Park Service, 849 C Street NW, Washington, D.C. 20240.

BRAD

302 IN THIS ISSUE

304 William Glasmann: Ogden’s Progressive Newspaperman and Politician

By Michael S. Eldredge

325 Isaac Russell’s Remarkable Interview with Harold Bride, Sole Surviving Wireless Operator from the Titanic

By Kenneth L. Cannon II

345 Wallace Henry Thurman: A Utah Contributor to the Harlem Renaissance

By Wilfred D. Samuels and David A. Hales

368 Murder and Mapping in “The Land of Death,” Part II: The Military Cantonment in Monticello

By Robert S. McPherson, Kevin Conti, and Gary Weicks

386

BOOK REVIEWS

Richard L. Saunders, ed., Dale Morgan on the Mormons: Collected Works Part I, 1939 –1951 Reviewed by Richard W. Sadler

Mary Muir, Donna Poulton, Robert Davis, James Poulton, and Vern Swanson, LeConte Stewart Masterworks Reviewed by James R. Swensen

Robert J. Willoughby, The Brothers Robidoux and the Opening of the American West Reviewed by John D. Barton

Armand L. Mauss, Shifting Borders and a Tattered Passport: Intellectual Journeys of a Mormon Academic Reviewed by Allan Kent Powell

Roy Webb, Lost Canyons of the Green River: The Story before Flaming Gorge Dam Reviewed by H. Bert Jenson

'

Robert S. McPherson, Dinéj7 Na Nitin: Navajo Traditional Teachings and History Reviewed by Bruce Gjeltema 395 BOOK NOTICES 397 2013 INDEX

IN THIS ISSUE

Modernity is a difficult concept, and one that can be defined in a host of ways. Still, during the late 1800s and early 1900s, much of American life had an air of change and modernity about it. Many trends made this the case, including new technologies, widespread reform efforts, the increasing presence of women in public life, and a growing emphasis on leisure, spending, and individual fulfillment. This issue of Utah Historical Quarterly examines, in part, the place of individuals in the “modern” world of the twentieth century.

William Glasmann was an exceptional person and yet clearly a part of his time and place. Like other striving men in the American West, he devoted himself to boosting, reforming, and politicking in his chosen city—Ogden, Utah. In various phases of his life, Glasmann speculated in land development near the Great Salt Lake, edited a newspaper with obvious party affiliations, asso-

COVER: Bebe Daniels, the film star, photographed in Utah in 1928. UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY. IN THIS ISSUE (ABOVE): Automobiles at the Saltair resort, circa 1912. Technological advancement, mass commercial amusement, and the visibility of women contributed to the modernity of the early twentieth century. That modern feel was surely a part of life in Utah, as these photographs demonstrate. UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

(ABOVE RIGHT): Local youth who participated in a bathing suit fashion show at the Pantages vaudeville theater. Salt Lake City, June 17, 1918. UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

ciated with national political figures, and governed Ogden in a manner his (friendly) contemporaries would have described as “clean” and “businesslike.” He was a good example of the kind of person who created change and influenced public life around the turn of the century, and his story ties Utah to politics, progressivism, and municipal governance throughout the nation.

Near the end of Glasmann’s life, Jeanette Young Easton wrote a gossipy column for the Deseret News entitled “Salt Lakers in Gotham.” Two of our articles deal with the lives of Salt Lakers who excelled in Gotham, a place that epitomized the trendsetting, fast-paced world of twentieth-century America. Isaac Russell—a grandson of Parley P. Pratt—established himself as a New York City journalist, writing for the New York Times and other publications. As with Glasmann, Russell was part of that nebulous movement historians call progressivism, and he was connected to a number of signal people and events of his era: the Wright brothers, Theodore Roosevelt, Guglielmo Marconi, and, as we learn, the sinking of the Titanic.

Wallace Thurman was several years younger than Isaac Russell and from a very different segment of Utah society than that “Mormon muckraker.” Born and educated in Salt Lake City, Thurman went on to a fantastic career in New York City and moved in the central circles of the Harlem Renaissance. He championed experimental literary efforts such as the short-lived Fire!! and wrote novels, plays, and screenplays that examined, among other things, intra-racial tensions. Our third article substantiates Thurman’s connections to Utah and explores the life and contributions of this brilliant writer. Considered together, these accounts of Thurman, Russell, and Glasmann contribute to an understanding of how twentieth-century America evolved.

The final article completes a story of “murder and mapping” that began in the summer issue. The action takes place in southeastern Utah in the 1880s, when a rash of violent incidents impelled the military to consider the creation of a military cantonment near Monticello. That violence occurred, in part, because of agricultural and livestock operations in the region and a dwindling Native land base—developments that could easily be considered indicators of modernity.

William Glasmann: Ogden’s Progressive Newspaperman and Politician

By MIChAEL S. ELDrEDGE

On Friday, July 10, 1891, liberals from all over the Territory of Utah gathered at the Reed Hotel and the Opera House in Ogden to launch a two-day convention that culminated with the organization of the official Utah Republican Party.1 Fred J. Kiesel, the first non-Mormon to ascend to the office of Ogden’s mayor on the Liberal Party ticket—thus confirming Ogden as the first “Americanized” city in Utah—was just completing his term.2 The Mormon editor of the OgdenStandard, Frank J. Cannon, organized the convention and served as its chairman. Cannon later recalled that he, his good friend Ben E. Rich, and another friend, Joseph Belknap, were the only Mormons who joined the party. “Outside of us three, I did not know of another Mormon Republican in the whole territory,” he later wrote.3 Additional Mormons came later, including Apostle John Henry Smith and President Joseph F. Smith. Mormons were at first reluctant, however, to join the political party that had been responsible for so much relentless persecution

1

“Republicans!” Ogden Standard, July 11, 1891.

2 Richard C. Roberts and Richard W. Sadler, A History of Weber County (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society and Weber County Commission, 1997), 139.

3 Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O’Higgins, Under the Prophet in Utah: The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft (Boston: C. M. Clark, 1911), 117.

Michael S. Eldredge is a lawyer practicing in Salt Lake City. A political and legal historian who concentrates on the Progressive Era, Eldredge has taught history and political science at the University of Phoenix for the past fourteen years.

William Glasmann, at work in the Ogden Standard office.

and suffering in the territory for the previous forty years.

As the 1890s wore on, the Republican Party in Utah attracted more members, both Mormon and non-Mormon, but the result was a fractured party. Ogden had become a liberal city because of the railroad and the accompanying influx of non-Mormons. The two principal factions included the liberal non-Mormon Republicans of northern Utah and more conservative Mormon Republicans. Some of these had migrated from the Democratic Party in Salt Lake and Utah counties; the Democratic Party had a strong loyal following among Mormons, stretching back to the time of Stephen A. Douglas in Nauvoo.

For the next twenty years, various subgroups would materialize and dissolve in the party, including the silver Republicans in the 1896 election, Republicans competing between the Salt Lake County and Weber County factions over state party nominations, and the “Federal bunch,” which Senator Reed Smoot dominated through patronage jobs. The conflicts mostly ended in 1912 with the desertion of the progressive Republicans to the “Bull Moose” Party, leaving the more conservative Republicans under Smoot to win Utah for Taft.

William “Bill” Glasmann first appeared in Ogden in January 1893 with his appointment as the general manager of the Standard Corporation. His story and his perspective as a non-Mormon, progressive Republican is valuable because it allows us to contrast the struggles of a progressive politician against the more conservative majority Republicans of his era. He fought with them and formed alliances with them. At first, he was an ally of Frank Cannon during their time together atthe Standard. They became bitter enemies, however, after the 1896 election, again evidencing the factions within the Republican Party.

Many schools of thought exist about progressivism in the early twentieth century, and defining a “progressive” is especially problematic for historians; further, progressivism of this era should not be confused with the liberal agenda of the twenty-first century. Likewise, Glasmann’s individual brand of progressivism was complicated. He did not embrace the radical reforms of Upton Sinclair or Lincoln Steffens. He was a non-Mormon who lived in a city populated with many other non-Mormons. Yet he got along well with Latter-day Saints; he had to. Glasmann was a classic booster-speculatornewspaperman who championed the city of Ogden and who did everything in his power to improve the city, stamp out corruption, and, through his newspaper, fight misinformation. He had subscribed to a liberal faction of the Republican Party since long before he came to Utah. He supported the free silver movement and threw himself behind William Jennings Bryan in the 1896 presidential election, but was absolutely enamored with Theodore Roosevelt. In spite of his progressive attitude toward Ogden City, Glasmann was a fiscal conservative who balanced the budget in each of his three terms as mayor. He might not have been considered progressive by the standards of Colorado or Washington, but he comfortably fit the

description of a progressive within conservative Utah society.

When William Glasmann arrived in Salt Lake City in the fall of 1885 with his infant daughter Ethel, he began life anew after leaving two businesses and a failed marriage.4 Within scarcely two years, he joined in the real estate business with one of the city’s most notable citizens, the recently retired, popular postmaster of Salt Lake City.

John Lynch and his wife Bella had arrived in Salt Lake City from Colorado sometime in 1873 after the demonetization of silver closed many western silver mines by causing a dramatic rise in the silver to gold price ratio.5 Lynch came to Salt Lake City in hopes of riding out the depression that began in 1873 and lasted until 1879. He went to work in 1876 as a postal delivery clerk, and then on November 16, 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes nominated him to become postmaster of Salt Lake City. President Chester A. Arthur renominated him in December 1881, but in 1885 Democrat W. C. Browne replaced Lynch as a result of Grover Cleveland’s first Democratic administration taking control of civil service patronage. By April 1, 1886, Lynch had turned over the Salt Lake City post office to Browne, and at fifty-six years of age “retired to private life with the well wishes of many friends.”6

By 1887, Glasmann had befriended Lynch and convinced him to form a real estate partnership. They moved into 221 South Main Street, next door to the post office that Lynch once oversaw, and began a land office business. Lynch and Glasmann stumbled onto the wave of the Utah real estate bubble that took place between 1889 through the end of 1890, during which many Utahns prospered but many more lost everything.

Beginning in 1889, with the real estate boom in full swing, Lynch and Glasmann began acquiring parcels of property, variously known as Clinton Beach properties, located in Lake Point on the southern shore of the Great Salt Lake near the Tooele–Salt Lake County line. For years, Jeter Clinton had promoted the area as a resort site, and he had also built a large home in Lake Point that bore the name Clinton Hotel. The idea never took, presumably because the property lacked shade trees. As Jeter approached age eighty, he agreed to sell the property to Bella Clinton Lynch and her husband’s real estate company.7

4 William Glasmann had migrated to Miles City, Montana, in 1878, and with Ben R. Roberts established the Cheyenne Saddle Shop in Helena in 1880. He married Elizabeth Gamer in 1882 and suddenly liquidated his interest in the prosperous saddle shop early in 1883 and moved to Fort Benton, Montana. In June 1883 he bought the Rosenkranz Harness Shop there and operated it for two years. In 1885, Elizabeth gave birth to Ethel, and that fall, William and Ethel moved on to Utah, leaving Elizabeth behind. See Michael Leeson, History of Montana, 1739–1885 (Chicago: Warner, Beers and Co., 1885), 1013.

5 Milton Friedman, “The Crime of 1873,” Journal of Political Economy 98, no. 6 (1990): 1159–94.

6 “Salt Lake Postoffice,” Salt Lake Tribune, April 1, 1886.

7 Bella Clinton Lynch was Jeter Clinton’s estranged daughter. The estrangement occurred in Nauvoo in 1846 when Lynch’s mother, Betsy Dale, left Clinton because he took a second wife, Melissa Snow. See Tooele County Daughters of Utah Pioneers, History of Tooele County (Salt Lake City: Daughters of Utah Pioneers, 1961), 148–52.

On March 10, 1890, an advertisement appeared in the Salt Lake Tribune for platted property known as Garfield City, with William Glasmann listed as the general agent.8 The advertisement emphasized three reasons why Garfield City boasted the only site on the Great Salt Lake capable of development: the property was high and dry; Glasmann promised fast-growing trees, shrubbery, and vegetation; and plenty of pure water existed for irrigationand culinary purposes. The advertisement further promised that five thousand trees would be planted in 1890 and, curiously, made a reference to buffalo.

When Lynch and Glasmann began acquiring the Clinton property in Lake Point in 1889, Glassman had a quixotic idea inspired by a trip to Texas to visit friends. While in Texas, he met Charles Jesse “Buffalo” Jones of Kansas, who owned private herds of bison in Texas, Kansas, and Manitoba.9 With expenses mounting, Jones decided to sell parts of his herd. Impulsively, Glasmann put a payment down on some bison and told Jones he planned to hire him to manage the Utah Buffalo and Zoological Gardens. He had become enamored with the idea of having a bison herd as an attraction in Garfield City. The plan fit the tenor of the times; at the height of the real estate boom, developers often cooked up hairbrained

8 “Garfield City on Great Salt Lake!” Salt Lake Tribune, March 10, 1890.

9 Hal Schindler, “Antelope Island Is Bison Home On Range,” Salt Lake Tribune, November 14, 1993, http://historytogo.utah.gov/salt_lake_tribune/in_another_time/111493.html.

Buffalo Park, where Glasmann pursued a real estate venture.

Glasmann sold his herd to a Davis County rancher who transported the animals to Antelope Island on platforms.

schemes to make their properties appear more attractive to potential buyers.10

In October 1889, the first handful of half-starved bison shipped from Manitoba arrived in Lake Point. Glasmann, who by now lived in the Clinton house in Lake Point, carefully nursed his animals to health, and by March 1890, his herd swelled to seventeen. Glasmann enjoyed all the elements of a first-rate real estate development. He figured that all he needed was the promised infrastructure and the lots would sell themselves. Eagerly, he threw himself into the task at hand and worked tirelessly on the project for the next two years.

Sometime during 1889–1890, William began courting a twenty-oneyear-old widow, Evelyn Ellis Jenkins, who was born on October 23, 1868, in Piedmont, Wyoming.11 On June 11, 1890, Glasmann married Jenkins and moved her into the Clinton House in Lake Point. The next year, on May 9, 1891, Evelyn gave birth to their first son, Roscoe.12

That same month, Glasmann officially incorporated the Buffalo Park Land Company. That incorporation basically reflected the partnership between John and Bella Clinton Lynch and William and Evelyn Glasmann.13 However, the Utah real estate bubble burst in December 1890 when news of the failure of the London banking firm Baring Brothers rippled through Utah. Overnight, property values dropped, resulting in lower profits, overextended credit, and tight money.14 Property that had sold for ten times the pre-1889 price now went for just a fraction of the former price; but Lynch and Glasmann exuded confidence that real estate in Utah still was a good investment. By the end of the year, the lots remained unsold, but the expenses kept mounting. Lynch and Glasmann desperately tried to liquidate their inventory of lots.

By the summer of 1892, the Lynches left, cutting their losses and moving on. Jeter Clinton had died on May 10, 1892, and by July 26, 1892, Evelyn had replaced John Lynch as secretary and treasurer of the Buffalo Park

10

“The Antelope Island Herd,” Macon (GA) Telegraph, January 15, 1897.

11 A small railroad hamlet founded just before the Union Pacific passed through southwest Wyoming, Piedmont sat on the Union Pacific route that led to the historic meeting with the Central Pacific Railroad at Promontory, Utah. Joseph Ellis, his wife Carrie, and their two daughters Addie and Evelyn left Piedmont when the railroad was completed and relocated to Salt Lake City, where Joseph hired on as a painter for the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad. For years, the family resided at 16 Willard Court, near 500 West and 600 South, in the heart of the LDS Sixth Ward in Salt Lake City. See“Long Illness is Fatal to Mrs. Glazebrook,” Ogden Standard-Examiner, February 25, 1955. See also Salt Lake City Directory (San Francisco: Kelly and Co., 1889), 67.

12 William Glasmann named all of his sons after prominent Republicans whom he admired. Roscoe Conklin Glasmann (1891–1964) was named for Roscoe Conkling; Abraham Lincoln Glasmann (1893–1970) for the sixteenth president; Robert Ingersol Glasmann (1895–1897) for an Illinois attorney general and prominent Republican orator; William Wiese Glasmann (1897–1964) for a friend and fellow Republican who campaigned with him in Iowa in the fall of 1896; and Blaine V. Glasmann (1900–1972) for Senator James G. Blaine, who, among other things, was popular in the West because of his efforts to lower the tariff. Family tradition related to author by Myrene Glasmann Temple.

13

“Buffalo Park,” Salt Lake Tribune, May 23, 1891.

14 Ronald W. Walker, “The Panic of 1893,” Utah History Encyclopedia, ed. Allan Kent Powell(Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1994), 413–14.

Land Company. The Glasmanns also executed notes totaling $7,500 secured by Buffalo Park Land Company property to keep the operation afloat. But by year’s end, Garfield City looked finished.15

Politically, both Lynch and Glasmann had joined with the Republicans before they came to Utah, and when the Republican Party officially organized in Utah in 1891, they found a home. Glasmann’s friends in the Republican Party included, among others, Frank J. Cannon, the thirty-twoyear-old editor of the Standard. 16 Sometime after both Glassman and Cannon had attended the first Republican Convention on September 15, 1892, Glasmann paid a visit to Ogden.17

Cannon, one of the few liberal Republican Mormons in Utah, had befriended many non-Mormons as a result of his key role in organizing the Republican Club in Utah in 1891. Cannon was particularly adamant in his support of free silver. Throughout the final decades of the nineteenth century, Americans bickered about the place of gold and silver in the national economy. By the mid-1870s, two factors combined to make silver the cheaper metal for the payment of debts: first, the discovery of large western silver deposits; second, the government had an official exchange rate of sixteen ounces of silver to one ounce of gold until silver was demonetized in 1873 because the glut of silver mined in the West created an inflationary effect on the silver market. Accordingly, many people in the West and in agricultural regions favored bimetallism, especially after the Depression of 1893. In contrast, those who favored a gold standard alone came from the commercial and industrial regions of the Northeast and Midwest. For their part, the political parties took various positions regarding the money question, which gave rise to the silver Republicans, a group composed largely of western Republicans supporting Democrat William Jennings Bryan. Cannon bucked the national Republican Party, which flip-flopped on the issue through the early 1890s; he was a staunch silver Republican who eventually went over to the Democratic Party in 1900. He also dreamed of elected office, and, after failing to win election to Congress in 1892, he mounted another campaign effort in 1894.

While Glasmann’s troubles with Garfield City and the Buffalo Park Land Company were occupying his mind, Cannon and other members of the Standard’s board of directors approached him about the possibility of taking over as business manager of the newspaper Cannon wanted to remain as managing editor, but the change promised Cannon time to pursue his political ambitions. Glasmann thought it over and decided to abandon the sinking ship in Garfield City.

On January 9, 1893, William Glasmann became one of nine directors, as well as the corporate treasurer, of the Standard Publishing Company.

15 “Buffalo Park Suit,” Salt Lake Tribune, June 19, 1895.

16 “Utah Republicanism Defined,” Ogden Standard, October 26, 1898.

17 “G. O. P.,” Ogden Standard, September 15, 1892.

The Ogden Standard office, in a photograph taken sometime after 1910. The newspaper’s office was on the northwest corner of Hudson (now Kiesel) Avenue and 24th Street, in Ogden.

Cannon resigned as business manager and turned over those duties to Glasmann. 18 On February 10, 1893, Glasmann sold his seventeen bison to John E. Dooley, who loaded them up and sent them to Antelope Island.19

When Glasmann joined the Standard, it was losing approximately $1,000 every month. Cannon had failed to run a tight ship, and Glasmann set about to stop the hemorrhaging. Within three weeks he called a meeting of all employees along with the board of directors and proposed a 20 percent cut in pay across the board. The editorial and business departments accepted the reduction in wages, but the Ogden Typographical Union, which refused to attend the meeting, rejected the offer.20 Throughout a series of letters exchanged between Glasmann and the union, Glasmann held firm and threatened to shut the newspaper down. The union promised to organize a boycott if the Standard hired nonunion men, which could have caused the paper to fail, but Glasmann rejected the union’s threat.

Frank Cannon closed a February 19 editorial with a challenge to Ogdenites to voice their opinions on whether or not the union workers deserved better wages than “a banker or business man” and stated that if the newspaper acceded to the demands of the union, it would mean doubling the retail price of the paper.21

The next day, overwhelming support for the management ofthe Standard poured in, instantly making Glasmann a hero. People liked his

18 “The Standard Officers Elected,” Ogden Standard, January 10, 1893. For an explanation of the newspaper’s hierarchy, see “The Managing Editor,” Ogden Standard, August 22, 1906.

19 Over a century later, the herd numbers between 550 and 700 individual bison, making it one of the largest publicly held American bison herds in the world. See “Wildlife on Antelope Island,” accessed July 1, 2012, http://www.utah.com/stateparks/antelope_island_wildlife.htm.

20 “Why the Standard Closed,” Ogden Standard, February 19, 1893.

21 Ibid.

no-nonsense approach and the biting sarcasm he used to stand up to the union. Glasmann’s new-found prestige served him well. In an editorial on February 23, Cannon announced that the newspaper would remain open with nonunion workers but that he hoped the union workers would stay at their jobs at the same wage he promised the nonunion employees.22

While the Standard fought with the union, however, elsewhere in America warnings of trouble loomed on the horizon. On February 23, 1893, the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad filed for bankruptcy, sparking a “pyrotechnic contraction” in the stock market. Investors learned that the company had amassed $125 million in debt, upsetting an already fragile market. Ten days later, on March 4, 1893, Grover Cleveland succeeded Benjamin Harrison for his second term as president, but Cleveland’s administration was handicapped from the outset. Just over two months later, America plunged deep into the depression of 1893.23

Before it ran its course, the depression caused the bankruptcies of the Northern Pacific Railway, the Union Pacific Railroad, and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad; 15,242 businesses and more than five thousand banks failed; and unemployment ran as high as 18.4 percent in 1894. People abandoned their homes and moved west to metropolitan areas, boosting the populations of railway towns such as Ogden, Salt Lake City, Denver, and San Francisco.24

In Utah, several leading men went bankrupt, prompting one prominent Utahn to lament:

I have never witnessed a greater stagnation in business enterprises than has manifested itself during the last month. Money is not to be had, confidence seems to have disappeared, and credit is denied by nearly all tradesmen. Public works are stopped, and thousands of men are out of employment.25

Most observers agreed that the depression meant doom for the newspaper, in spite of cutting labor costs and management salaries. The Standard soon found itself on the fringes of the whirlpool that sucked thousands of companies into failure. Glasmann struggled to find a way to keep the newspaper open, but it looked hopeless.

On November 26, 1893, Cannon resigned as editor. In a letter to the subscribers of the Standard, Cannon explained “The reasons for this action are many, but none of them implies any lack of hope in THE STANDARD’S future.” Politics prompted the decision. When he left, Cannon parted on cordial terms with Glasmann and threw himself into his

22 “The Standard is Continued,” Ogden Standard, February 21, 1893.

23 See Douglas Steeples and David O. Whitten, Democracy in Desperation: The Depression of 1893 (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1998). Rendigs Fels coined the term “pyrotechnical contraction” in American Business Cycles, 1865–1897 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959), cited inSteeples and Whitten, Democracy in Desperation, 32.

24 Walker, “Panic of 1893,” 413; Steeples and Whitten, Democracy in Desperation, 88.

25 Walker, “Panic of 1893,” 413–14.

run for Congress with Glasmann’s support.26 He won the congressional seat in 1894, and the Utah State Legislature appointed him to the U.S. Senate in 1896.

Glasmann assumed the added duties of editor-in-chief, although his name remained absent from the masthead as editor for nearly a full year.27 Immediately, his acerbic style began to appear in editorials, especially when he talked of gold advocates, Democrats, and his political enemies, whom he boldly took to task.

On January 25, 1894, Glasmann announced that effective February 1, the circulation of the Standard was owned by H. T. Brown and Company in what essentially amounted to a factoring arrangement.28 The move freed up cash flow, which during the depression proved critical for survival.

On the same day Glasmann’s name appeared on the masthead as editor, buried on page five of the Standard, a small announcement appeared, calling for a special meeting of shareholders of the Standard Publishing Company on December 11 to amend the articles of incorporation. Glasmann most likely obtained support from the majority interests of the common stock in the Standard Publishing Company and moved to reduce the number of directors from nine to three prior to the meeting. With an assessment of $0.25 a share approved on November 14, Glasmann undoubtedly believed that no one desired to pump more money into a perceived sinking ship. In the end, Glasmann laid the groundwork to solidifying his control by amending the number of directors from nine to three at the special meetings of shareholders and directors on December 11, 1894. At the regular meeting of shareholders held on January 14, 1895, Glasmann was elected as a director and in the meeting of the directors held directly after he was elected president of the company.29

As Utah and the rest of the nation climbed out of the depression, the Bimetallic Union—which called for the use of both gold and silver in the national monetary standard—organized in Salt Lake City on May 17, 1895.30 At the convention, Glasmann met and befriended Frank Francis, forging a relationship that lasted a lifetime. Francis had just finished a lackluster term in the Nevada State Assembly after promising much reform but accomplishing little. 31 Francis wanted a new start, and Glasmann accommodated him by making him managing editor. Both men shared a

26

“Republicanism Defined.”

27 Glasmann finally claimed the title of editor and business manager on the second-page masthead of the Standard on November 20, 1894.

28

“The Standard Sells Its Circulation,” Ogden Standard, January 25, 1894.

29

“The Standard Publishing Company,” Ogden Standard, November, 1894. See also“Stockholder’s Meeting,” Ogden Standard, January 7, 1895.

30

“The Bimetallic Union,” Ogden Standard, May 17, 1895.

31

Frank Francis served in the Nevada State Legislature from November 1895 to November 1897 as a member of the Silver Party from Humboldt County. SeeNevada Journal of the Assembly, 17th sess., January 31, 1895, 40. See also“Frank Francis Succumbs After 18-Day Illness,” Ogden Standard-Examiner, December 27, 1945.

passion for free silver that transcended party allegiance, especially in the West. Bimetallism drew the interest of the majority of westerners into an issue-driven campaign that argued for free silver as a second monetized currency, if for no other reason than the poor condition of the economy. Silverites argued that the linkage between the fixed ratio of silver to gold at sixteen-to-one made sense and maintained the emotional argument that the western states needed a fixed price of monetized silver to help pull them out of the depression. 32 Glasmann’s rationale for supporting the silverites went much deeper. He focused on the global implications of abandoning silver and of interference from European banking interests, most notably the Rothschild cartel. Glasmann felt that if the United States adopted a bimetallic currency standard, the rest of the world would follow.

The term “silver Republicans” gained widespread use after the election of Democrat Grover Cleveland in 1892. It grew partially out of the mistrust of the northeastern establishment that many felt controlled Congress, no matter if they belonged to the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. The western Republicans called themselves silver Republicans to distinguish themselves from the easterners who wanted to preserve the gold standard, referred to by the pejorative title “gold bugs.”

At the Democratic Convention of 1896, William Jennings Bryan won the nomination for president, largely on account of his “Cross of Gold” speech, which sharply defined the currency issue vis-à-vis the Republican candidate, William McKinley. Glasmann supported the Bryan campaign wholeheartedly, with every bit of the gusto with which he had backed Republicans in years past. During this campaign, however, he had more time to spend, owing to the addition of Frank Francis as managing editor. While Glasmann hit the campaign trail stumping for Bryan, Francis busied himself whipping the Standard into a first-rate newspaper. On July 1, 1896, the masthead began referring to membership in the United Press. The paper also boasted the moniker “The Pioneer Silver Paper of Utah,” which it proudly used for almost three years.33 Meanwhile, Glasmann had offered his oratory skill to Bryan’s campaign and went to work for Bryan where he needed him most. The campaign sent him to Nebraska, where McKinley and Bryan were facing off in a head-to-head battle.

Glasmann stumped for Bryan seventy-two times throughout Nebraska and Iowa in five weeks. Touting his Republican background, but believing passionately in the silver question, he appealed to the rural Nebraska farmer; he argued that one could be a loyal Republican and still vote for Bryan. Silver was the issue, and Bryan was the man. On one campaign swing through northeastern Dakota County in Nebraska, across the Missouri River from the McKinley stronghold of Iowa, Glasmann earned a

32 Friedman, “Crime of 1873,” 1172.

33 On May 11, 1899, the Standard quietly removed this title from its masthead, thus following the Salt Lake Tribune in abandoning the silver cause.

glowing compliment:

Mr. Glasmann has made a host of converts in this county. Everywhere he was greeted with very large [audiences] and in most instances people were turned away. He thoroughly understands the silver question. He is convincing, eloquent and the sledge hammer blows he deals out leave no room for doubt.34

The 1896 Democratic presidential ticket, headed by William Jennings Bryan. Although Glasmann supported Bryan, he still considered himself a Republican.

In the end, Bryan lost Omaha but carried Nebraska and its eight electoral votes, thanks in no small part to Glasmann, who left the state with a large following. Glasmann possessed a natural talent for politics, and his oratory prowess would prove useful in years to come. The night before the election, Glasmann returned to his boyhood home of Davenport, Iowa, his reputation of arguing for silver well known. A huge crowd welcomed him to the city.

In spite of Glasmann’s efforts, Scott County went Republican for McKinley, but that did not dampen the citizens’ enthusiasm for their newly found favorite son. He hated to leave the adulation of Davenport, but nevertheless returned home to Utah, having won the battle but lost the war. Glasmann and his fellow Utah silver Republicans now had to face many angry McKinley Republicans, who on November 3 had enjoyed a victory in which McKinley defeated Bryan by a margin of 51 percent to 46 percent. Even though Bryan carried Utah by a whopping 83 percent to 17 percent (64,607 to 13,491), many leaders in the “Pie-eating contingent” of McKinley Republicans carried a grudge.35 The Utah Republican Party had just entered its sixth year, and a good portion of the Bryan victory in

34 “Glasmann a Vote Getter,” Omaha World-Herald, October 17, 1896. 35 “Big Meeting Assured,” Ogden Standard, September 3, 1896.

Utah came from old Mormon Democrats who owed natural allegiance to the conservative Democratic Party going back to the days of Stephen A. Douglas.36 However, Glasmann always considered himself a Republican, even though he supported Bryan because of the silver issue.

The 1900 election saw Bryan go down in defeat again to McKinley, who had a new running mate, Theodore Roosevelt. Utah went to McKinley in 1900 by a narrow margin (47,139 to 45,006). The leaders of the Utah Republican Party acknowledged that they needed Glasmann’s help to win with the liberal Republicans of Weber County, and he gave it freely, not because of what he stood to gain, but because he had already announced his reasons for abandoning silver. But why did Glasmann abandon William Jennings Bryan? Again, Glasmann answered with his global analysis of silver, and concluded:

As the silver question was the only reason why I supported Bryan, it will readily be seen that no sensible man that has studied the money question can this year support Bryan on the silver issue, and that is the only issue before the people this year, although Bryan and the Democracy are trying to keep silver in the back ground, well knowing that if the question is fully discussed this year their defeat will become greater than in 1896.37

The 1900 election was important for Glasmann, but not to the point that he abandoned his liberal attitudes. On the eve of the election, Glasmann—who ran as a candidate for the Utah State Legislature— published an article in the Standard championing the progressive strategy of initiative.38 The measure allowed citizens to initiate legislation on their own by following a certain procedure passed with Glasmann’s endorsement. This stance, however, proved immaterial to his chances of winning in his district in northern Utah. Still, with unsuccessful bids to become a representative at the state and federal levels behind him, Glasmann finally won election to the Utah State Legislature by a convincing margin. His subsequent election as Speaker of the House followed this victory. As Speaker, Glasmann led Utah Republicans in the House in an agenda that featured even more liberal ideals.

When he assumed the duties as speaker, Glasmann exercised parliamentary control of the house to the best of his ability. He also introduced several bills, many that died in committee or that other lawmakers rejected outright, presumably because of his liberal stance. They included bills to make voting easier, prevent the removal of voters from voting lists, and establish irrigation districts and dams. Glasmann’s most important accomplishment was likely a bill that passed, closing tax loopholes for

36 Cannon and O’Higgins, Under the Prophet in Utah, 117–18.

37 “Why Glasmann Left Bryan,” Ogden Standard, November 5, 1900. Glasmann argued that if the United States adopted a bimetallic system, India and Great Britain would follow suit.

38 “Direct Legislation!” Ogden Standard, October 31, 1900. Sherman S. Smith, an Ogdenite and the only Populist in the Third Legislature, sponsored the measure. Though the constitutional amendment passed in the general election, Utah conservatives prevented enabling legislation for sixteen years.

corporations and banks.39

At the end of the session his fellow legislators surprised Glasmann with the presentation of a gavel, accompanied by a heartfelt speech by Democrat Rulon S. Wells:

So honorable was the speaker’s course that not a particle of partisan feeling was aroused and perfect harmony prevailed during the sixty days of legislative work. Never in the history of the state legislatures had a presiding officer such a clean record of rulings reversed. His conduct in the chair was of that high dignity and honor which knew no discourtesy and no pettiness, and which had won for him the highest esteem of every member of the body.40

Surprised, Glasmann paused, for once at a complete loss for words. In his characteristic nature, he expressed his appreciation to the House members, and credited them for making his job easy. Taking the gavel, he looked at the engraving and read, “Presented to Hon. William Glasmann, Speaker of the House of Representatives, by Members and Officers of the Fourth Legislature, State of Utah.”41

Meanwhile, back in Ogden, for years Glasmann had waged a war of words against private interests trying to buy the city waterworks out of receivership. On June 14, it came to a head when Glasmann proposed a public debate on the issue at the Opera House. In 1900 a group of wealthy Ogdenites made a bid to buy the financially troubled waterworks. This elite group of private citizens included Hiram H. Spencer, Judge Thomas D. Dee, David Eccles, and E. M. Allison. The men admitted in court that they did not intend to sell the waterworks back to the city for what they paid, and further, they planned to use taxpayer money to pay for it through a bond offering. 42 The bid from Ogden City totaled $350,000, and the private group offered $400,000. Glasmann objected to the bid with righteous indignation, calling it a ploy to reap profits from the backs of Ogden citizens. He fought the group editorially at every turn, but on September 24, ownership of the utility transferred to Dee and his associates. The receiver turned over the system “upon property certificates of bonds as under the contract.” 43 Dee had previously threatened a boycott of the Standard, but Glasmann, in his pugilistic style, replied, “Lay on Macduff, and damned be him that first cries hold, enough.”44

In the midst of the waterworks controversy, Americans learned on September 6, 1901, that anarchist Leon Czolgosz had shot President William McKinley while the president was attending the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. Two weeks later, as McKinley’s condition worsened, the Standard recounted stoically:

39 “Utah Legislature,” Ogden Standard, March 14, 1901.

40 “Speaker Given a Gavel,” Ogden Standard, March 16, 1901.

41 Ibid.

42 “Waterworks Matter in Court,” Ogden Standard, April 27, 1900.

43 “Waterworks Sale Confirmed,” Ogden Standard, September 25, 1900.

44 “We Call a Halt,” Ogden Standard, September 27, 1900.

Last night an anxious throng stood in front of the Standard office awaiting the latest news. The bulletins, all of which held out no hope for his life, and which came direct from Milburn House, were received with sadness and sorrow as they were read through the large megaphone. The crowd changed as the people came and went, but there were many who stood for hours in anxious anticipation.45

For Glasmann, the news resulted in bittersweet feelings; he lamented the death of McKinley, but he believed the country was safe in the hands of the forward-thinking Theodore Roosevelt.

In early October, the Republicans of Ogden drafted Glasmann as a candidate for Ogden City mayor. The platform boiled down to one simple issue: Joseph Scowcroft and the Democrats for months had wanted to buy the waterworks for $45,000 cash and assume $400,000 in bonds at five percent interest. The Republicans argued “in favor of municipal ownership of all public utilities and pledge our party, if entrusted with the government of the City of Ogden, to secure control either by condemnation or purchase, first of the water works system, and afterwards of other public utilities in the order of their importance.”46 Ogdenites elected Glasmann as mayor on the primary issue of the waterworks. He defeated Scowcroft by a margin of 320 votes out of 5,518 cast, or by a margin of 5.8 percent.47

In mid-afternoon on May 29, 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt came to Ogden as part of his extensive tour of the West. Mayor Glasmann rode with Governor Heber Wells and President Roosevelt in the first

45 “Platform,” Ogden Standard, October 14, 1901.

46 Ibid.

47 “Official Count of Ogden City Vote,” Ogden Standard, November 12, 1901.

Mayor Glasmann (center front), the Ogden city council, and city officers, 1901.

carriage from the Union Depot, ahead of a long procession of dignitaries through the streets of Ogden. Roosevelt spoke briefly, and then Secretary of the Navy Moody repeated his promise to name a battleship after Utah. The entourage formed up again and departed west on Twenty-Fifth Street to the Union Depot, where Roosevelt’s party boarded the train for the trip up Weber Canyon en route to Wyoming.48

On November 5, 1903, two days after the election that saw Glasmann chosen for his second term as mayor of Ogden, Frank Francis received the news that a proposed newspaper, the Morning Examiner, had won the Associated Press (AP) morning dispatch franchise for Ogden. The Morning Examiner, announced Francis, “would be a Democratic newspaper” and start publication January 1, 1904.49 However, four months later, Glasmann ended up buying the infant paper because of a low subscription rate and mounting debt. Francis returned to the managing editor position at the Standard. Glasmann decided to run both papers while he searched for a suitable buyer of the Morning Examiner

In 1904, midway through his second term as mayor, Glasmann became an active candidate for the U.S. Senate. At the last minute, former Congressman George Sutherland threw his hat in the ring—even though, dissembling, he had suggested to Glasmann that he would not be a candidate. The following January, Glasmann knew his candidacy lacked support and removed his name from consideration; always the tactician, he considered this move the “nicest” thing to do. The Utah State Legislature elected Sutherland as senator. Though the Standard eulogized the loss by saying, “the wise man does not wait to be kicked out of the road,” it devastated Glasmann.50 Once again the rift between the Ogden liberals and the more conservative Republicans in Salt Lake City was evident. In the end, the conservative faction of the party won out, dominated by Reed Smoot and a growing faction of Utahns that crossed over to the Republican Party, but retained the conservatism of their nineteenth-century Democratic heritage.51 Glasmann was left to his next move. In late July 1905, he announced he would not run for a third term as Ogden’s mayor.52

Then in April 1906, on a trip to Washington, D.C., Glasmann stopped by the White House to see President Roosevelt. When he returned to Ogden on May 3, a reporter from the Inter-Mountain Republican asked Glasmann if he planned to apply for the open position of postmaster of Ogden. Glasmann replied that he most likely would.53

48 “Ogden, a Radiant City, Greets the Nation’s Chief,” Ogden Standard, May 29, 1903.

49 “A Morning Paper for Ogden,” Ogden Standard, November 5, 1903.

50 “Sutherland the Senator,” Ogden Standard, January 11, 1905.

51 For background on the Federal bunch, see Jan Shipps, “Utah Comes of Age Politically: A Study in the State’s Politics in the Early Years of the Twentieth Century,” Utah Historical Quarterly 35, no. 2 (Spring 1967): 99–100.

52 “The Political Pot,” OgdenStandard, July 25, 1905

53 “Glasmann Returns,” Inter-Mountain Republican (Salt Lake City),May 3, 1906.

A group of dignitaries assembled for the opening of the Lucin Cutoff, November 1903. Glasmann is seventh from the right.

With his bid for postmaster, Glasmann was again opposing the members of Smoot’s faction, who routinely kept the plum federal jobs for their loyal supporters. Knowing this, Glasmann simply went over their heads and directly to the president. On May 15, the Ogden Standard broke its silence on the matter, acknowledging that the incumbent Thomas Davis still held the inside edge over all other candidates, while John D. Murphy had the support of senators Smoot and Sutherland. In his typical self-deprecating modesty, Glasmann said his chances of landing the job “were one in a hundred.”54 On July 19, however, the Inter-Mountain Republican reported that in the coming few days, Congressman Joseph Howell would announce that Glasmann would be Ogden’s next postmaster. On the evening of August 16, Glasmann received notification from the AP that Roosevelt had officially appointed William Glasmann as postmaster of Ogden.55

On January 16, 1907, Glasmann learned of a secret petition circulated by his political enemies seeking to prevent him from official confirmation by the U.S. Senate. The Standard tried to obtain a copy of the petition, but to no avail: “No one is permitted to see the statements made in the protest unless he first pledges himself to sign it.”56 The petitioners spread the rumor

54 “Ogden Postmaster Fight,” Ogden Standard, May 15, 1906. See alsoJean Bickmore White, “The Right to be Different: Ogden and Weber County Politics, 1850–1924,” Utah Historical Quarterly 47, no. 3 (Summer 1979): 265–68.

55 “Glasmann Gets the Office,” Ogden Standard, August 17, 1906.

56 “Dirty Work of Glasmann’s Enemies Will Not Injure the Ogden Postmaster,” Ogden Standard, January 16, 1907.

that Glasmann would resign in the face of this indictment. Evidently the conspirators knew little about Glasmann, because he reacted to a political brawl by leaping into the fray with gusto.

One month later, he journeyed to New York to attend the annual meeting of the American Newspaper Publishers’ Association, followed by a quick trip to Boston, where he represented the 30,000 Population Club of Ogden in delivering a pledge of $25,000 in investment capital to lure an iron company to Ogden. From there, he took a steamer to Washington, D.C., to meet with Assistant Postmaster General Hancock about the petition to replace him as postmaster of Ogden. Hancock assured Glasmann that petitions for removal were the rule rather than exception, especially when it came to high-paying patronage jobs such as postmaster. Hancock let Glasmann see the petition letters against him and assured the Ogdenite that the absurdity of the letters guaranteed his ratification by the Senate, but not that year. He imagined Glasmann’s commission would be granted in 1908. Hancock commented it was ironic that instead of shortening Glasmann’s tenure as postmaster, his enemies actually prolonged his term. Glasmann stood to serve six years, rather than the customary four years because the term started when Glasmann received his commission.57

When he returned home by rail on the Los Angeles Limited, he commented, “the three principal letters sent to Washington were suffering of ‘explosive insanity’ and that the form of insanity was Glasmanitis.”58 With that, Glasmann penned a term that he used more and more often to taunt his detractors. True to Hancock’s prediction, the United States Senate unanimously approved his appointment on April 24, 1908.

As the election of 1908 drew near, Glasmann took a furlough from his postmaster job and headed for southern Utah to “spend the time” that amounted to political discussions for campaigning. Near the end of his tour, he made a stop at Pleasant Grove for a speech in support of Smoot, whom he knew was the only person who could make or break his chances of becoming a congressman.59 Glasmann agreed to perform his party duty by presenting a united front. The election proved successful for the Republicans, ingratiating Glasmann to the Salt Lake City faction, perhaps a sign of mending fences.

After the election, Glasmann suddenly announced on November 23 that he planned to resign as postmaster, effective December 31. Most observers thought it foolish to give up one of the highest-paid government jobs in the state. An uninformed person speculated on his sanity, but those familiar with Glasmann knew he had a personal reason for the resignation. He would turn fifty in December and needed to get on with his life.

The following October of 1909, Glasmann reluctantly accepted the

57

“Glasmann Remains in the Postoffice,” Ogden Standard, March 4, 1907. 58 Ibid.

59

“William Glasmann Makes Great Speech,” Ogden Standard, November 11, 1908.

nomination for his third term as mayor of Ogden. He wanted someone else to take the job, but the Republicans of Weber County insisted. The Republicans argued that after controlling the city for the past four years, the Democrats had run Ogden into a financial ditch and had undone everything that Glasmann fought for in his first two terms as mayor.60 They also argued that nobody understood municipal finances as well as Glasmann. The campaign proved his toughest yet. Glasmann ran against the incumbent Democrat—Alex Brewer, a popular mayor to be sure—and fully expected to lose. But in the end, the Republicans swept all but one seat on the city council, and Glasmann won the mayoralty with an extremely close margin of 134 votes out of 6,126, or a plurality of 51 percent to 49 percent.61 Humbled by his narrow triumph, Glasmann said, “I view it as the greatest victory of my political career, won against odds.”62 Ultimately, the election turned on an auditing report that agreed with Glasmann’s assessment of the first six months of municipal ownership of the waterworks: he correctly argued that the waterworks had lost money, while Brewer insisted that it had made a profit.63

In April 1911, Glasmann announced that at the end of his present mayoral term he planned to retire, due to the new council form of government that passed the Utah legislature in the 1911 session.64 He was interested, however, in a proposed dam on the South Fork of the Ogden River, below the

60 “Brewer’s City Record Exposed,” Ogden Standard, November 2, 1909.

61 “The Official Vote of Ogden,” Ogden Standard, November 9, 1909.

62 “A Few Words from the Mayor-Elect,” Ogden Standard, November 3, 1909. 63 “Brewer’s City Record.”

64 “Mayor Glasmann Will Retire,” Ogden Standard, March 31, 1911.

The South Fork of the Ogden River, photographed in 1913, in the midst of Glasmann’s efforts to construct a dam.

confluence of Cobble Creek and the South Fork. Just days before Glasmann announced his retirement, he asked the Ogden City Council to initiate steps to construct a new dam for the benefit of farmers in Ogden Valley and other rural districts of Weber County.65

Seven years before, in August 1904, Glasmann had entertained several dignitaries, including Weber County Commissioner Barlow Wilson and Fred J. Kiesel, on a trip up Ogden Canyon, but nothing substantial ever came of it.66 In early 1911, however, talk began in earnest about building a dam on the South Fork. Glasmann had witnessed the discovery of bedrock at the site shortly after he arrived in Ogden from Lake Point in 1892. He knew right where to go to uncover Moroni Skeen’s test holes and prove the dam’s feasibility.67 It seemed that all of Ogden jumped on the bandwagon, and by the spring of 1911, a host of people converged on the site, digging holes to find bedrock, including David Eccles, Thomas D. Dee, Hiram H. Spencer, M. S. Browning, John Pingree, John Watson, Charles Kircher, and Alex Brewer.68

For the next five years, the South Fork Dam consumed Glasmann. Its progress followed a tortuous path of intrigue, political vengeance, and outright misrepresentations that Glasmann patiently refuted. 69 One thing was for certain: Glasmann probably fought more tenaciously than any foe, and in the end, he always prevailed, though at a large political price; he gradually lost his supporters for the dam.

In the midst of his work on the South Fork Dam, the 1912 election disrupted all of Glasmann’s efforts of the previous years to mend the Republican Party of Utah. His friend and hero, Theodore Roosevelt, was likely going to lose the Republican nomination and become a third-party candidate running against Woodrow Wilson and President William H. Taft. In December 1911, anticipating that Glasmann would remain true to Roosevelt, Senator Smoot sent the loyal Federal bunch member and U.S. assayer, Jody Eldredge, to Ogden to buy the Ogden Standard’ssister paper, the Morning Examiner, for the conservative Republicans’ mouthpiece in Ogden. Later, Glasmann publicly lamented that the bargain price at which he sold the morning paper brought him just enough to pay its debts. In reality, however, he welcomed the chance for a true adversarial newspaper foe.

When the election ended, Roosevelt and the newly organized Progressive or Bull Moose Party had lost, and Taft had carried Vermont and Utah. Wilson’s win came even though the Democratic Party had garnered the lowest percentage of the electorate in twenty years. The tattered Republican Party became—to Smoot’s liking—the conservative party, and

65 “Big Reservoir Must Be Built,” Ogden Standard, March 27, 1911. 66 “Another Canyon Accident,” Ogden Standard, August 8, 1904. 67 “Work Begins on South Fork Dam,” Ogden Standard, November 16, 1912. 68 Ibid. 69 “The Nigger in the South Fork Dam,” Ogden Standard, August 15, 1912.

the Progressives could either return to the Republicans or go to the more liberal Democrats. 70 In voting for Taft, Utah became a conservative Republican stronghold, while elsewhere in the nation Wilson enjoyed popularity among former Bull Moose progressives who had migrated to the Democratic Party.

After the election, in 1913, Jody Eldredge resigned as assayer and moved his family to Ogden to continue as the general manager of the Morning Examiner. Glasmann, Eldredge, and Frank Francis became the best of friends, even though they held three opposing political opinions.

By 1916, it appeared that Glasmann would begin yet another political adventure. That year, candidates in the recently formed first congressional district jockeyed for U.S. Congressman. Glasmann stayed true to the Republican Party, and insisted that he had only defected in 1896 and 1912 because men deserved more loyalty than the party. Ironically, because of Glasmann’s liberal roots the party turned to him as the only person capable of defeating the likely Democratic candidate, Milton H. Welling.71 But on May 12, 1916, three weeks before the filing deadline, William Glasmann suddenly died of a heart attack while resting alone at his home. He was fifty-seven. His dreams of finishing the South Fork Dam and going to Congress died with him. The news spread quickly as Ogden mourned the loss of one of its leading citizens. Francis eulogized his friend and mentor of twenty years, saying:

It was natural that a man of such strong personality would provoke antagonism and make enemies—he had enemies and he fought them with all the intensity of his nature—yet he never harbored malice and was always ready when the battle was over, to ground his weapons and smoke the pipe of peace.72

70 For an account of the effects of the demise of the Progressive Party, see Lewis L. Gould, Reform and Regulation: American Politics from Roosevelt to Wilson (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland, 1996), supra.

71 “Newspaper’s Roots Run Deep in Ogden History,” Ogden Standard-Examiner, June 6, 1961.

72 “The Tribute of a Friend,” Ogden Standard, May 13, 1916.

Glasmann in his later years.

At his funeral, the men who represented opposite ideologies, including Eldredge and Francis, served as pallbearers. The funeral was held at the overflowing Ogden Tabernacle on 22nd Street and Washington Avenue. It seemed in life he drew as many people to his political rallies, but death silenced his oratory. His was an unfinished life.

William Glasmann’s sons, Roscoe and Abe Glasmann, carried on with the Ogden Standard under the mentorship of Eldredge and Francis. Four years later, in the spring of 1920, the Ogden Standard and the Morning Examiner merged to form the Ogden Standard-Examiner, with Abe Glasmann as publisher, Jody Eldredge as general manager. Francis was given a leave of absence to follow in his friend’s footsteps, serving as Ogden’s new mayor.

To understand argument was to understand William Glasmann. He tried to argue issues and not bring personalities into an ad hominem fight. He was persistent when he knew the facts were in his favor. He was a gentleman and maintained a calm, yet intense demeanor in an argument with political adversaries. At times he filled with righteous indignation when he knew he was “dead to rights”; Glasmann was at his weakest when he encountered maliciously obvious falsehoods, often resorting to sarcasm to demonstrate the fallacies of his adversaries. Above all, however, he remained mindful of public decorum: whether he was arguing as a silver Republican, Speaker of the House, Ogden City mayor, postmaster, or private citizen, he never lost his cool. Glasmann was, indeed, the consummate politician.

Isaac Russell’s Remarkable Interview with Harold Bride, Sole Surviving Wireless Operator from the Titanic

By KENNETh L. CANNON II

On April 18, 1912, Isaac Russell scooped the rest of the journalistic world. The Utah native, who lived in New York City and wrote for the New York Times, talked his way onto the RMS Carpathia after it docked in New York with the survivors of the Titanic disaster on board. There, Russell interviewed Harold Bride— the ship’s lone surviving Marconi wireless radio operator—about the sinking of the RMS Titanic.Without the services of Bride and the other wireless operator from the ship and without the invention of Guglielmo Marconi, it is extremely unlikely that anyone from the Titanic would have lived.1 Russell’s telling of Bride’s story covered most of the front page of the Times the next morning, and it is almost certainly the best-known eyewitness account of the sinking of the Titanic 2 When the New York Times reprinted Bride’s

This photograph of Isaac Russell appeared on the cover of Salt Lake City’s Progressive magazine on November 1, 1913. On the back of the original image, the following note appears: “Isaac Russell, reporter for the New York Times, ones [sic] of whose reports, on the sinking of the Titanic, during which he worked with Marconi, inventor of wireless telegraphy, aboard the ship the Carpathia, won honors for him.”

Kenneth L. Cannon II is an attorney in private practice and an independent historian who resides in Salt Lake City. He has published extensively on legal and historical topics and is currently editing Isaac Russell’s unpublished manuscript about Greenwich Village.

1

U.S. Senate, Committee on Commerce, “Titanic” Disaster, 62nd Cong., 2nd sess., S. Rep. No. 806 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1912), 10–11; Michael Davie, Titanic: The Death and Life of a Legend (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987), 94–115.

2 [Isaac Russell], “Thrilling Story by Titanic’s Surviving Wireless Man,” New York Times, April 19, 1912. As with most news articles of the period, no byline identified the reporter who prepared the article. The introduction to the report stated that, “This statement was dictated by Mr. Bride to a reporter for THE

story a week later, the introductory note stated that “it is the most graphic and most important story published during the tense days that followed the disaster.”3 According to one account, “every Saturday morning paper has paid compliment to the genius of Mr. Russell in securing the only account of this terrible calamity by Mr. Bride, and congratulations have been numerous from friends and newspapermen for the achievement.”4

It was all improbable. Russell was an extraordinarily talented journalist who was not always able to stay in the good graces of his editors and publishers. He had served with the Utah Light Artillery in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War, where he acted as General John J. Pershing’s personal stenographer. He also had a brush with several Filipinos who had captured an American soldier that Russell freed by engaging with them, reportedly killing two Filipinos and receiving a serious head wound.5 At the same time, at the age of eighteen, Russell started and edited American Soldier, one of the army’s first newspapers for servicemen. On his way home from the war, he talked Stanford University’s president, David Starr Jordan, into admitting him into the university. He graduated from Stanford in 1904 with high honors and returned home to Salt Lake City where he worked for several of the local

Russell during the SpanishAmerican War, from the Deseret News, June 3, 1899.

NEW YORK TIMES, who visited him with Mr. Marconi in the wireless cabin of the Carpathia a few minutes after the steamship touched her pier.” The story clearly was not “dictated” to Russell, though Bride no doubt told it to him and the newspaper billed it as being in Bride’s “own words.” Meyer Berger’s usually reliable The Story of the New York Times, 1851–1951 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1951), 200, in addition to getting the reporter’s name wrong, described the report as having been taken down “verbatim.”

3 “Titanic’s Surviving Wireless Man,” April 28, 1912.

4 Janet [Jeanette Young Easton], “Salt Lakers in Gotham,” Deseret News, April 27, 1912. Jeanette Young Easton was a daughter of Brigham Young and a professional singer who lived in New York City with her tenor husband, Robert C. Easton. Her weekly “Salt Lakers in Gotham” was a newsy column about Utahns living in or visiting New York City. Regarding the Eastons, see Ardis E. Parshall, “The Loveliest Missionary Tract Ever Published,” Keepapitchinin, December 28, 2008, accessed July 2012, www.keepapitchinin.org/2008/12/28/the-loveliest-missionary-tract-ever-published. Rival newspapers in New York City did not identify Russell as the reporter who interviewed Bride, though some noted the Times’ account. The New York Herald was very critical of the Times’ part in an alleged conspiracy with the Marconi Wireless Company not to have the Carpathia provide responses to incoming messages to preserve exclusive rights (and monetary value) to the Titanic story that would be told by any wireless operator from the Titanic. “‘Keep Your Mouth Shut, Big Money for You’ Was Message to Hide News,” New York Herald, April 21, 1912.

5 “Utah Newspaper Men in the Philippines,” Deseret News, June 3, 1899.

newspapers, ending up at the Deseret News. Russell did not get along with either the business manager or the editor of that paper and believed (no doubt correctly) that he was overworked, underpaid, and underappreciated.6

Eventually, Russell began submitting short articles to Collier’s Weekly, which had perhaps the highest circulation of any weekly magazine in the country, and Collier’s published some of his submissions. With the encouragement and letters of recommendation from Jordan and others, “Ike” moved to New York City to seek fame and glory as a writer. Immediately after landing in the city, he began placing freelance articles with the New York World. Within thirty days after Russell’s arrival, the New York Evening Sun hired him full-time, and he felt secure enough to have his wife, Allie Farr Russell, and their infant daughter join him in New York. His work on labor and aviation issues soon attracted the attention of the Times, and in early 1910 he was lured away to write for the more prominent newspaper.7

Russell rose quickly through the ranks of reporters at the Times, and the paper gave him many important assignments, allowing him to cover major political stories, labor strikes, the fledgling aviation industry, and a variety of other subjects.8 Ike also began publishing longer articles on a freelance basis for many progressive magazines, including Collier’s Weekly, Harper’s Weekly, and Pearson’s Magazine, and developed professional relationships and friendships with influential editors such as Norman Hapgood, Mark Sullivan (Collier’s), and John Thompson (Pearson’s).9 As a result, he was one of the few, if not the only, nationally recognized muckrakers who hailed from Utah.

At the time of the Titanic disaster, however, the somewhat mercurial Russell had annoyed his superiors. Carr V.Van Anda, the legendary managing editor of the New York Times, handled coverage of the Titanic’s sinking in a

6 Kenneth L. Cannon II, “Isaac Russell, Mormon Muckraker and Secret Defender of the Church,” Journal of Mormon History 39 (Fall 2013) (forthcoming); Janet, “Salt Lakers in Gotham,” Deseret News, March 27, 1909; [Ben L.] Rich to Ben E. Rich, December 2, 1908, copy, box 2, fd. 22, Isaac Russell Papers, 1898–1927, M0444, Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries (hereafter cited as Russell Papers); “Isaac Russell,” Progressive, November 1, 1913, 1; “Guide to the Isaac Russell Papers, 1898–1927,” Online Archive of California, accessed December 2011, http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf6f59n8h4/; John J. Pershing to Isaac Russell, July 6, 1900, box 2, fd. 28, Russell Papers.

7 Isaac Russell to B. H. Roberts, April 1, 1909, box 4, fd. 14, February 23, 1910, box 4, fd. 15, Scott G. Kenney Collection, Ms0587, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah (hereafter cited as Kenney Collection); Janet, “Salt Lakers in Gotham,” Deseret News, March 27, May 1, 1909, August 6, 1910.

8 Alexander Graham Bell to Isaac Russell, March 19, 1914, box 14, fd. 6, Russell Papers; [Isaac Russell], “Curtis Flies, Albany to New York, at the Speed of 54 Miles an Hour,” New York Times, May 30, 1910; Orville Wright to Isaac Russell, n.d., box 14, fd. 8, Russell Papers; Janet, “Salt Lakers in Gotham,” Deseret News, July 10, August 21, 1909; April 27, 1912; January 4, August 30, 1913; July 4, 1914; July 10, September 18, 1915; March 11, July 29, 1916; Isaac Russell to Franklin Spalding, December 13, 1912, box 14, fd. 6, Ms0686, Episcopal Diocese of Utah Records, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah.

9 See, for example, Isaac Russell, “The First Professional Strike Maker,” Pearson’s Magazine, August 1909, 269–75; “Mr. Roosevelt to the Mormons, A Letter with an Explanatory Note,” Collier’s Weekly, April 15, 1911, 28, 36; “The Charlatans of Charity,” Harper’s Weekly, August 15, 1914, 159–60.

Russell was one of seven children of Samuel Russell and Henrietta Pratt, a daughter of Parley P. Pratt. Here, the extensive polygamous family of Samuel Russell is pictured.

way that helped establish the Times as one of the preeminent newspapers in the world and him as one of the world’s greatest newspapermen. 10 From the earliest reports that the Titanic had sent out the CQD distress call and had then ceased to send any signal, Van Anda—unlike other editors—believed that the grand luxury liner had sunk.11 The White Star Line, which owned and operated the Titanic, took almost twenty-four hours to officially confirm that the ship had gone down. Just three hours after the liner sank in the North Atlantic Ocean and at a time when there was no confirmed report of the disaster, Van Anda had the Times announce in bold, front-page headlines, “New Liner Titanic Hits an Iceberg; Sinking by the Bow at Midnight; Women Put Off in Lifeboats; Last Wireless at 12:27 a.m. Blurred.”12

In the days that immediately followed the tragic accident, the Times continued its extraordinary coverage of the Titanic. Along the way, everyone

10 Barnett Fine, A Giant of the Press: Carr Van Anda (Oakland, CA: Acme Books, 1968), 43–48. At least one observer has argued that the Times, under the management of Van Anda, essentially invented modern disaster coverage with its Titanic coverage (of which Russell’s account of Bride’s story was a critical part).

Roy Peter Clark, “How the New York Times Invented Disaster Coverage with the Titanic Sinking,” accessed June 2013, www.poynter.org/how-tos/newsgathering-storytelling/writing-tools/169316/how-the-newyork-times-invented-disaster-coverage-with-the-titanic-sinking.

11 The CQD distress call was an earlier version of the SOS signal.

12 Berger, Story of the New York Times, 194–97.

learned that the Carpathia had rescued hundreds of survivors and had turned around to transport those Titanic passengers to New York, where they were scheduled to go, rather than continue its voyage to Europe. As New York City breathlessly awaited the arrival of the Carpathia, the paper’s city editor, Arthur Greaves, assembled the entire Times staff to mobilize what a historian of the Times described as the “ultimate in disaster news coverage.” The newspaper instructed its reporters to gather and write stories about everything related to the sinking of the Titanic, including survivors’ tales, the last deeds of prominent passengers, and relief efforts. Notably, correspondents learned that J. Bruce Ismay, the president of the White Star Line, had survived the tragedy. Greaves remarked that the Times might not get any information from the Carpathia, because the ship had “studiously refuse[d] to answer all queries,” in other words, wireless messages that reporters, relatives, and even President William Howard Taft had attempted to have sent to the ship had received no response. Nevertheless, the Times was certainly going to try. No one yet knew if either of the Titanic’s two wireless operators had survived, and Van Anda was intent on interviewing any Marconi operator, preferably from the Titanic, but also from the Carpathia.13

Van Anda and his staff went to unusual lengths to cover one of the biggest news stories ever. They hired an entire floor of the Strand Hotel, located at Fourteenth Street and Eleventh Avenue, just a block away from where the Carpathia would dock, and outfitted it with four telephone lines with direct connections to the Times’s “rewrite desks.” The newspaper set up more telephone lines in a building at Twenty-Third Street and Eleventh Avenue, and chauffeured cars were ready to whisk the journalists from the pier to the telephones. Sixteen reporters were sent to the pier—though the New York Times possessed only four passes, and those passes would not get their owners very close to the ship.14

In the midst of all this, Ike Russell, bright young star reporter on the Times, attended the meeting with Greaves and anxiously awaited his assignment to participate in the story of the century. As Russell later recalled,

Newspapers prepared for the greatest story of their histories breaking under conditions

13 Berger, Story of the New York Times, 197–98. Ironically, the Times was shortly thereafter accused of convincing Marconi Company officials to preserve the paper’s exclusive rights to the story that would be told by surviving wireless operators by having those operators refuse to respond to incoming messages.Van Anda’s biographer asserted that “Van Anda had, by the use of a wireless message, arranged the interview with the surviving operator, before that ship had docked.” Fine, A Giant of the Press, 47. This is inconsistent with Greaves’s statement that the Carpathia was not responding to wireless messages and directly contrary to Russell’s accounts discussed below.

14 Ibid.; I. K. Russell, unpublished manuscript on visit with Harold Bride, n.d., 9, box 16, fd. 6, Russell Papers. Internal references likely date this manuscript in the mid-1920s. A number of Russell’s published articles are in the Titanic files in his papers; it is possible that this manuscript was published, but its presence in unpublished form in his personal papers makes that unlikely. Russell began professionally going by “Isaac K. Russell” or “I. K. Russell,” rather than “Isaac Russell,” sometime in 1919. Cannon, “Isaac Russell, Mormon Muckraker.”

where the most fascinating chapters might escape all their reportorial watchfulness. The New York Times, on which I worked, hired a hotel across the water-front street from the dock at which the Carpathia was due to come in. It stocked the hotel with telephones and stocked the telephones with reporters, who were ordered to telephone in every word they could get hold of, one about the crowds, one about the police way of holding them back, one about the pier [guarded by] throngs of marines, sailors and soldiers, and some half dozen about the adventures of any Titanic passengers they might encounter at the pier entrance.15

The Carpathia was a Cunard Line ship, and it was due to arrive at the Cunard Pier (Pier 54) in the Hudson River just west of the intersection of West Twelfth Street and West Avenue between eight and nine o’clock p.m. Russell eventually came to a terrible realization: “At seven o’clock I became rudely aware of the fact that I had not been put on any schedule of the day, and was ‘off duty’ on this most important of nights! It was a stinging blow, and puzzling to account for it since I had never before been so humiliated. In a blue mood, I started from the office to buy a dinner, of which I felt a growing need.”16

As Russell left the office, however, Van Anda stopped him, probably because he had no one else left to perform a necessary errand. Van Anda told Russell to go to the home of John Bottomley, the American manager of the Marconi Wireless Company, at 254 West 132nd Street,and ask him for a letter authorizing Times reporters to talk to Marconi wireless operators on board the Carpathia.17 Van Anda instructed Ike to get the release signed by Bottomley and to take it down to the hotel that served as the paper’s headquarters for the Titanic coverage.18

15 Russell, unpublished manuscript on visit with Harold Bride, 2–3, Russell Papers.

16 Ibid., 3. Russell initially wrote in his manuscript that he had started from the office to “buy a new pair of shoes,” but crossed out “new pair of shoes” and wrote in “dinner.”

17 Russell consistently spelled the Marconi manager’s last name as “Bottomely, which appears to be wrong. Ibid., 3, 4. In Berger’s telling of the story, Van Anda devised the whole ploy to get Marconi, a personal friend of his, to the pier to talk his way onto the Carpathia. Berger, Story of the New York Times, 199–200. Berger’s version of the facts may have come from Barnett Fine’s biography of Van Anda, originally published in 1933. Fine, A Giant of the Press, 45–48. As one writer described the story, “Getting to talk to Bride was a journalistic coup and one that would be associated with Van Anda for the rest of his life.” Steve Turner, The Band that Played On: The Extraordinary Story of the 8 Musicians Who Went Down with the Titanic(Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2011), 7. No credit was given to the reporter who went to the Marconi Company office then went aboard the Carpathia with Marconi. However, as Susan Tifft and Alex Jones write, Van Anda was “known to indulge occasionally in self-glorification,” and it was “luck and an enterprising reporter [Isaac Russell] [who] played a far greater role than Van Anda [in obtaining the Bride interview].” Susan Tifft and Alex S. Jones, The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind the New York Times (Boston: Little, Brown, 1999), 804–5.

18 Russell, unpublished manuscript on visit with Harold Bride, 2–3, Russell Papers. Berger spent three pages describing the sequence of events told below through the accounts of Isaac Russell, but mistakenly identified the reporter in question as “Jim Speers.” He provided no citation for this reference to “Jim Speers,” and it is clearly incorrect. Berger, Story of the New York Times, 199–201. Books and newspaper reports noting the centennial of the Titanic’s sinking followed this inaccurate identification. See, for example, Turner, The Band that Played On, 4–7; James Barron, “After the Ship Sank, Fierce Fight to Get Story,” New York Times, April 9, 2012, accessed July 2012,www.cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/09/afterthe-ship-went-down-scrambling-to-get-the-story. Tifft and Jones’s more recent book, The Trust, 804–5, correctly identified the reporter as Russell. In support, they referred to correspondence between Russell

Guglielmo Marconi.

Isaac Russell set about his “humble errand.” When he arrived at Bottomley’s Harlem residence, Bottomley received Russell “with British sullenness and unresponsiveness. There was no request that I come in.” The Marconi manager even shut the door in the young Times reporter’s face as he decided whether to sign the release. The door was soon opened, however, by a different man, one of “surprising GENTLENESS. . . . It was something that made you love to be near him at first contact.” Russell soon realized that this gentle man was the great Guglielmo Marconi himself, the creator of the wireless radio, whose invention had facilitated the survival of anyone on the Titanic. 19 Marconi recognized Russell as a newspaper reporter. In Russell’s account, Marconi was concerned about news reports that Marconi Company wireless operators on board the Carpathia had ignored repeated requests from William Howard Taft, president of the United States, for a report of whether his military aide, Major Archibald Butt, had survived the sinking of the Titanic. The requests had been sent by the Navy scout cruiser

and Adolph Ochs (publisher of the Times) and Van Anda, some of it in the Russell Papers at Stanford. Russell’s letter to Ochs, in fact, recounted the story that Russell told several times, as discussed below. Russell to Adolph S. Ochs, September 24, 1921, box 6, fd. 25, Russell Papers. I engaged in a productive email correspondence with James Barron, who wrote the April 2012 story. Kenneth L. Cannon II to James Barron, June 28, July 26, 27, August 28, 31, September 3, 4, 2012, Barron to Cannon, June 28, July 24, 27, August 28, 31, September 4, 2012, copies in my possession. Upon being informed of the mistake in the report, the Times published another article, acknowledging that Russell apparently was the reporter who interviewed Bride but suggesting that, perhaps, L. C. Speers might have contributed in some way. Barron, “Mystery of Who Got Big Titanic Interview,” New York Times, September 4, 2012, New York City metro edition, A24; Barron, “100 Years after the Titanic, Still Wondering Who Got the Story,” accessed September 2012, www.cityroom.blogs.nytmes.com/2012/09/03/100-years-after-the-titanic-still-wondering-whogot-the-story.

19 Russell, unpublished manuscript on visit with Harold Bride, 4, Russell Papers; Isaac Russell, “How Marconi, Wizard of Wireless, Met Survivors of Titanic at Sea,” New York Evening Mail, July 6, 1917; I. K. Russell, “Why Boy Kept Silent on Maj. Butt’s Death,” New York Daily News, April 8, 1924, copy, Russell Papers; [Isaac Russell], “Marconi Pays Visit to the Rescue Ship,” New York Times, April 19, 1912.

Chester. The media reports insinuated that the Marconi operators had failed to respond to the messages because they hoped to profit from stories regarding the Titanic when they arrived in New York.20 Marconi asked whether the Times could get him a pass to board the Carpathia and find out from his operators why they had not responded to Taft’s inquiries.21

Russell knew that the Times had only four passes, that the paper had already allotted all those passes, and that the passes only permitted reporters to approach the pier and not board the ship in any event. Nevertheless, he telephoned the Times offices and asked Greaves whether Marconi, whose invention had such an important place in the rescue efforts, could have a pass. According to Russell, Greaves was flustered and did not seriously consider who was asking for a pass. “‘Tell Marconi nothing; all our passes are in use,’” came the reply. Russell did not want to discourage Marconi from visiting the pier, however, because he was confident that New York City policemen, United States Marines, and anyone else guarding the Carpathia would not follow instructions and would suspend all rules to let Guglielmo Marconi, savior for the Titanic survivors, onto the Carpathia. 22

Russell did not tell Marconi that the Times had no pass for him. Instead, he lied and said “Yes, I have your pass for you. I can take you down all right.” Bottomley signed the release letter; unfortunately for the Times, it authorized Marconi operators to talk to anyone from the press, and the Times had hoped to pay $500 for an “exclusive.” Russell told Marconi the quickest way to the Cunard Line pier and instructed him how to catch the Ninth Avenue elevated line, which he could board on 130th Street, just a few blocks away. Meanwhile, Russell hurriedly went ahead of Marconi and delivered the signed letter of release to the Times ’s rented space in the Strand Hotel. He then met Marconi at the Fourteenth Street station on the “El” and “settled down for a beautiful adventure in which seeing Marconi aboard would be the objective.”23

While the Times had no passes for Marconi, it did have a taxicab waiting

20 Shortly after the Titanic sank, Frederick Sammis, the chief engineer of the Marconi Wireless Company, testified that he had wired the Marconi operators on the Carpathia that they could probably sell their stories of the Titanic tragedy for “big money” after they landed. He denied having them refuse to respond to any incoming messages. “United States Senate Inquiry, Day 10,” Titanic Inquiry Project, accessed June 2013, http://www.titanicinquiry.org/USInq/AmInq10Sammis01.php.

21 [Russell], “Marconi Pays Visit,” April 19, 1912; Russell, “Why Boy Kept Silent,” April 8, 1924.

22 Russell, unpublished manuscript on visit with Harold Bride, 4, Russell Papers; [Russell], “Marconi Pays Visit,” April 19, 1912; Russell, “Why Boy Kept Silent,” April 8, 1924.

23 [Russell], “Marconi Pays Visit,” April 19, 1912; Russell, “Why Boy Kept Silent,” April 8, 1924; Russell, “Met Survivors of Titanic,” July 6, 1917; Russell, unpublished manuscript on visit with Harold Bride, 4, Russell Papers. The allegation that the Times had paid for an exclusive right to obtain and publish the wireless operators’ story became controversial; other New York papers seized on the allegation and the United States Senate investigated it, among other charges. Russell stated that he had delivered the release and then gone “off duty” to try to get his own story, because reporters were paid primarily for the “space” used to publish a story; wages for “errand” assignments were negligible. He worried that “errand” pay “meant tragedy with a haunting vision of babies at home for whom no daily bread was being earned.” Russell, unpublished manuscript on visit with Harold Bride, 4.

An immense crowd waiting near the Cunard pier to greet the survivors of the Titanic.

at the “El” station to transport him closer to the pier. When they reached the Cunard Line pier, Russell, Marconi, and a third man (a representative of the Marconi Company) were faced by tens of thousands of people: photographers, reporters, relatives and friends of Titanic passengers, and, mostly, onlookers, watching the end of the century’s worst disaster. New York City policemen, U.S. Marines, and security guards employed by the Cunard Line regulated the crowd. Russell knew that he had no pass, but he also knew that Marconi himself would serve as a pass for them both. “Instead of being shut out of the great work of the night, as the paper had planned,” he rejoiced, “I was to have a hand in it after all!”24

As the three men tried to make their way through the crowd, Russell focused on an old New York City Police sergeant who was one of the initial gatekeepers, whose assignment was to ensure that no one would pass to the pier. Russell introduced himself and Marconi, but his “words were lost upon my Sergeant, for he had seen Marconi standing behind me and

24 Russell, unpublished manuscript on visit with Harold Bride, 5, Russell Papers; Russell, “Met Survivors of Titanic,” July 6, 1917; Russell, “Why Boy Kept Silent,” April 8, 1924; [Russell], “Marconi Pays Visit,” April 19, 1912. Russell identified the third man as Marconi’s chief engineer; other sources have identified him as Bottomley, the American manager of the Marconi Company. Barron, “After the Ship Sank,” April 9, 2012; Berger, Story of the New York Times, 199–200. Frederick Sammis testified that he had gone to the pier with Marconi. “United States Senate Inquiry, Day 10.” Because Russell’s account was firsthand and is supported by Sammis’s Senate testimony, the details he described were almost certainly accurate.

plunged in, seized his hands, and was kissing them while tears flowed in big gobs down his cheeks.” The sergeant walked three blocks with the trio, waving off other policemen who sought to intervene.25 The three were across West Street and getting closer to the pier. They passed an Italian customs guard who bent down on his knees and began kissing Marconi, whom he recognized from photographs.26 Russell pushed on. Policemen challenged them at the pier: “The officer in charge of issuing permits to go upon the pier was appealed to. At first he had no time to listen. Finally he gathered what the request was about and came hurriedly to a place where Mr. Marconi had been backed against a pier buffer by a guard. The policeman invited him to come quickly through the door and past a long line of the suffering.” Marconi started sobbing as he met injured and traumatized Titanic survivors.27 He had been scheduled to travel on the Titanic’s maiden voyage himself and would have done so, but he needed to work en route and believed that the Lusitania had better stenographic services on board, so he took that ship a few days before the Titanic set sail.28

The obstacles to their progress were removed. As Russell described it, What mortal power could issue orders to bid Marconi stop? Sailors fell before us. Eyes popped out and lips froze with one word [“Marconi”] half uttered upon them. Gaping guards to the right of us, gaping guards to the left—and gaping guards in front of—and beside themselves and all ready to die—to see that Marconi passed in spite of every order they had received. . . . The magic word had travelled along—“Marconi” came up in a murmuring mutter from the guards ahead. And the “living wall” crumpled before us as men pressed back to hold their bayonets out of Marconi’s way, and strive for a snatch at his hand or a long glowing glance into his face.29 Russell, Marconi, and the engineer neared the gangplank to the Carpathia. The three waited as injured Titanic survivors were carried down the gangplank. “The maimed were coming off now, dangling helpless arms as they wildly looked about, and were gently guided down the living lane of guards towards the rooms where friends were waiting.” Russell whispered to the head guard that “the wireless boys” wanted Marconi. The “hard-boiled” guard responded, “Marconi goes ahead but you go back.”

Isaac Russell replied that “we are three—Marconi, his chief engineer, and myself a reporter off duty.” Russell had placed his reporter’s police card in the engineer’s hat to help him along in the crowd, but the chief guard, noticing the card and confused by everything going on around him, permitted Marconi and Russell to proceed while holding back the engineer. As Russell later recorded, “Marconi and I were more lifted than

25 Russell, unpublished manuscript on visit with Harold Bride, 5–6, Russell Papers; Russell, “Met Survivors of Titanic,” July 6, 1917.

26 Russell, unpublished manuscript on visit with Harold Bride, 6, Russell Papers. In other accounts, Russell described the man as an Italian taxicab driver who wept “because he could no better serve his great compatriot.” Russell, “Met Survivors of Titanic,” July 6, 1917.

27 [Russell], “Marconi Pays Visit,” April 19, 1912.

28 Greg Daugherty, “They Missed the Boat,” Smithsonian, March 2012, 38.

29 Russell, unpublished manuscript on visit with Harold Bride, 6, Russell Papers.

shoved by loving guards with holstered-up revolvers, onto the Carpathia’s deck.”30

The inventor and the reporter soon located the wireless cabin on the deck of the large passenger ship. There they “found a boy sitting on a high stool—sending, sending, sending—His feet dangled below him in swaths of white bandages. On his wireless stand before him sat a plate of dinner all uneaten.” On the wall of the cabin hung a photograph of Marconi. Marconi gently told the young man that the ship was now in port and that he no longer needed to keep sending messages. As he said this, Marconi “lifted the boy’s hands from the keys.” Harold Bride, the only surviving wireless operator from the Titanic, did not seem to hear what Marconi was saying. “The people out there they want these messages to go—I must send them—the people waiting by the cabin.” Marconi explained that everyone had gone ashore and that the operator could now stop sending messages and have his serious injuries attended to.31

It took what seemed like a long time before recognition came into the young man’s eyes, but when it did, he even smiled a little. “You are Mr. Marconi,” Bride finally said, as he took his fingers from the telegraph key.32

When at last he had Bride’s attention, Marconi wanted to know why Bride had not received President Taft’s messages to the Carpathia regarding

30 Ibid.

31 Ibid., 7–8; Russell, “Met Survivors of Titanic,” July 6, 1917; Russell, “Why Boy Kept Silent,” April 8, 1924.

32 Russell, unpublished manuscript on visit with Harold Bride, 7–8, Russell Papers.

A Marconi wireless training school.

the condition of his military aide, Major Butt. Bride’s astonished answer was “Did anybody call? I never once started to receive [messages]. Those people came with their messages. I just started to send—and I sent all the time. I never once had receivers on my ears.”33 After the Titanic sank, Bride had clung to a damaged lifeboat for hours and had received serious injuries; in spite of this, shortly after he was pulled aboard the Carpathia, he was consumed with sending wireless messages written by other Titanic survivors!

Twenty-two-year-old Harold Bride’s tale was harrowing. He told it to Russell and Marconi as they urged him on.34 He was the junior wireless operator on the Titanic and his principal function was to relieve the more senior operator, Jack Phillips, from midnight until some time in the morning each day, when Phillips would wake up and take over. Bride was due to start earlier than usual the night the great ship hit the iceberg, because Phillips had become exhausted working to repair the wireless equipment. The wireless had broken down on Sunday, April 14, which turned out to be fortunate, because Phillips and Bride were able to repair it just hours before disaster struck. About the time Bride took over, the Titanic hit the iceberg, but he “didn’t even feel the shock.” Bride did not know that anything had happened until Edward J. Smith, the ship’s captain, stopped in the cabin to tell the wireless operators that “we’ve struck an iceberg, and I’m having an inspection made to tell what it has done for us.” The captain continued, “You better get ready to send out a call for assistance. But don’t send it until I tell you.”35

Smith returned ten minutes later and instructed Phillips and Bride to “send the call for assistance.” The operators heard a “terrible confusion outside” the cabin, but otherwise, nothing else indicated trouble. Phillips asked which distress call to send. “The regulation international call for help. Just that,” came the captain’s reply. Phillips began to send “CQD” as the operators joked and “made light of the disaster.”36 Five minutes later, Smith returned. “What are you sending?” he asked. Phillips said he was sending CQD. Bride jokingly said they should start sending SOS because “it’s the new call and it may be your last chance to send it.”37 Though Captain Smith laughed, he did not disagree, and Phillips began sending the new SOS signal. First, the steamship Frankfurt responded, with its operator indicating that he would check with his captain to see if the Frankfurt

33 Russell, “Why Boy Kept Silent,” April 8, 1924.

34 [Russell], “Titanic’s Surviving Wireless Man,” April 19, 1912.

35 Ibid.

36 CQD was the Marconi Company’s distress call. In 1912, SOS was a relatively new call and one only adopted as an American standard that same year. The Titanic apparently used both signals. Neal McEwan, “‘SOS,’ ‘CQD,’ and the History of Maritime Distress Calls,” Telegraph Office 2, no. 1 (1997): accessed August 2012, www.telegraph-office.com/pages/arc2-2.html; Andrew Wilson, “Shadow of the Titanic,” Smithsonian, March 2012, 35.

37 [Russell], “Titanic’s Surviving Wireless Man,” April 19, 1912.

could provide any support. The Carpathia then answered the Titanic ’s distress call, and just then Bride could “observe a distinct list forward” of the Titanic. Phillips wired the Carpathia operator, giving their position and indicating that “we were sinking by the head.” Five minutes later, Phillips and Bride received word that the captain of the Carpathia had ordered his ship to change its direction and head for the Titanic 38

Phillips instructed Bride to run to Smith and inform him of what the Carpathia was doing. Bride “went through an awful mess of people to his cabin. The decks were full of scrambling men and women.” Every few minutes thereafter, Bride made a trip to the captain’s cabin, bringing reports of the Carpathia’s position and its speed as it steamed toward the Titanic. As he returned to the wireless cabin on one of these trips, Bride noticed that women and children were being loaded into lifeboats and that the ship’s “list forward was increasing.” Meanwhile, the wireless was growing weaker. The captain informed the operators that the engine rooms were taking on water and that the dynamos—which powered the ship’s electricity and therefore its wireless operation—likely would not last much longer. Phillips sent this message to the Carpathia, indicating, essentially, that the Titanic might not be able to send many more messages.39

Bride explained to Russell and Marconi how Phillips’s persistence left him awestruck. Bride related, “He was a brave man. I learned to reverence him that night and I suddenly felt for him a great reverence to see him standing there sticking to his work while everybody else was raging about. I will never live to forget the work of Phillips for that last fifteen minutes.” Bride, remembering that each crew member had a life belt, retrieved not only his life belt, but Phillips’s also. He also picked up boots and an overcoat for each of them. Phillips was still sending messages to the Carpathia to let it know the Titanic’s status and position. Phillips also began to receive messages from the Olympic, the Titanic’s sister White Line ship, which was then returning to England from New York.40

Phillips asked Bride to see if any lifeboats remained. Bride saw one last collapsible lifeboat and helped boost it down to the deck. A number of people nearby scrambled into this final lifeboat, while Bride returned to Phillips’s side. Smith stopped by, telling them that they had done their “full duty” and instructing them to abandon their cabin. Still, Phillips hung on, continuing to send messages. Bride went back to the bedroom of the operators to retrieve their money, in case they survived the sinking of the ship. As he returned, a large man, a “stoker from below decks” was slipping Phillips’s lifebelt off the courageous wireless operator. Harold Bride, who by his own account was “very small,” “suddenly felt a passion not to let that man die a decent sailor’s death. I wished he might have stretched rope or

38 Ibid. 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid. The Olympic was too far away to render any aid to the Titanic.

walked a plank. I did my duty. I hope I finished him. I don’t know. We left him on the cabin floor of the wireless room and he was not moving.”41

As Bride and Phillips ran looking for some way to save themselves, they heard the band playing a ragtime tune and then “Autumn.” The collapsible lifeboat that Bride thought he had already helped shove overboard was still on the deck. As he helped push it into the water, a “big wave carried the boat off. I had hold of an oarlock and I went off with it. The next I knew I was in the boat.” The problem was that the boat was upside down, and Bride was under it. He fought to get out from underneath the capsized lifeboat and, as he did, he saw “hundreds” of men—“the sea was dotted with them, all depending on their life belts.” As Bride looked up, he watched the Titanic as it began to move under the water—“she was a beautiful sight then.” Bride knew he had to get away from the suction, and he swam for all he was worth. He watched as “the Titanic, on her nose, with her after-quarter sticking straight up in the air, began to settle—slowly.”42

As Bride waited in the water, he quickly recognized that he was very cold and felt “like sinking” himself. He saw a boat and put all his strength into swimming for it. He realized that it was the same collapsible lifeboat he had helped to launch. As Bride approached the boat, a hand reached out and pulled him aboard. There was just room for him on the edge of the still-capsized boat. Someone sat on his legs. His legs became wedged between slats and his feet were wrenched out of shape. He hung on, even as larger and larger waves crashed over him. Someone on the boat suggested they all pray together, and they all joined in the Lord’s Prayer.43

Eventually, as the Carpathia neared them, Bride noticed that one person on their raft was dead. As he looked closely at him, he realized it was his colleague, Jack Phillips, whose relentless service had contributed so much to the successful rescue mission of the Carpathia. Bride was pulled up a rope ladder onto the deck of the Carpathia and received care for a number of hours. At that point, someone told him that the Carpathia radio operator was “getting ‘queer’” and wondered if he could take a turn on the wireless key. From then on, Bride had been sending, sending, sending. As he asked, “How could I then take news queries? Sometimes I let a newspaper ask a question and get a long string of stuff asking for full particulars about everything. Whenever I started to take such a message I thought of the poor people waiting for their messages to go—hoping for answers to them. . . . Iwas still sending my personal messages when Mr. Marconi and the Times reporter arrived to ask that I prepare this statement.”44 This was the story—clearly Bride’s—that Ike Russell told in his spare, graceful prose.

After Bride was carried off the Carpathia on a stretcher and Marconi and

41 Ibid. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid.

Russell also had left the ship, the “Nabobs of the Times” took Marconi to a midnight dinner. Meanwhile, Russell sat down to his typewriter, both to tell Harold Bride’s tale and to recount how Marconi had come to visit Bride onboard the ship. 45 As Russell later described, he was “on the fourth page of my story about the wireless boy. I saw that the ribbon was ‘going wrong’ and spreading ink about, and became aware that tears were falling on the paper in gobs as big as those shed by the old [police] sergeant” who guided Russell and Marconi through the crowds. He pondered how he would have knelt “or at least should have bowed” if Marconi were still with him. Instead, Russell “turned back to my typewriter. They say Literature is Truth touched by Emotion. I have written steadily for twenty years or more. If ever I wrote Literature, that was the night.”46

Yet Russell’s accomplishment was not without controversy. According to him, the senator who later would lead the Senate’s investigation into the tragedy of the Titanic was reportedly “furious” that Marconi and a Times reporter had boarded the ship “against all orders.”47 As part of its inquiry into the accident, Congress summoned Bride, Marconi, and other company representatives. Other newspapers claimed that the Marconi Wireless Company made an exclusive agreement with the Times for the story of the wireless operators. Harold Bride was accused of holding back information from the President of the United States about Major Butt, among other things, in order to profit from telling his experiences. Bride testified for hours before a congressional committee, acknowledging that he had received $1,000 from the New York Times the next morning for his story.48 The committee may have summoned Russell to Washington,

45 [Russell], “Marconi Pays Visit,” April 19, 1912.

46 In the same issue that Russell’s retelling of Bride’s story appeared, the Times published an account by Russell of his visit with Marconi to Bride on the Carpathia. Russell, unpublished manuscript on visit with Harold Bride, 9, Russell Papers.

47 Russell, unpublished manuscript on his visit with Harold Bride, 9, Russell Papers. The senator who chaired the Senate’s investigation was William A. Smith of Michigan.

48 U.S. Senate, Committee on Commerce, “Titanic” Disaster, 133–39, 896–907.

Harold Bride, being carried up a ship’s ramp, 1912. Bride’s description, written by Russell, is likely the best-known eyewitness account of the Titanic disaster.

LIBrAry OF CONGrESS

This image captures the hectic atmosphere of the U.S. Senate investigation of the disaster.

but never asked him to testify.49

Russell’s view of the Senate investigation makes clear his biases on the question:

The simple honest Marconi was unmercifully pilloried by a U.S. Senatorial committee for this night’s work. A Senatorial committee worked out a theory that the wireless boy had “willfully” refused to answer messages such as a message from President Taft asking how Major Archibald Butt was, and he “willfully” refrained from sending details of the story so that with Marconi’s aid he could “sell” the story on this eventful night for Gold! It was a curious theory to work out of that mania to send-send-send which kept the wireless boy with his hand on the sending key and never let him take thought of the receiving apparatus. But it was worked out and I have never seen such a crucifiction [sic] as the Senate committee made of Marconi in their ferocious attempt to make their case. I could not be called. The Nabobs of the Times were called—and all they knew was that they had offered money for a “beat” and had “got it”!50

For his part, Russell wrote that the newspapers and the Senate committee both had “accused the lad of holding back to sell his story. Many newspapers had wirelessed him fat offers for his story. He knew nothing more about them when he told it to Marconi than he did about the President’s calls that, along with all the others he had not heard—because he was sending, sending, sending.”51

Russell and Marconi worked so hard to find Harold Bride for different reasons. Marconi wanted to know why his operators on the Carpathia had not responded to Taft’s inquiries regarding Butt. Russell pursued the story because he understood that the extraordinary fortune he was experiencing, being thrown into the situation with Guglielmo Marconi, offered him a unique opportunity to write an exceptional article. From Russell’s perspective, Times officials were happy to believe that the paper had landed an exclusive on Bride’s story by paying for it. As he described it, “they were rather proud, I think, of the hypothesis put forward by the Government!”52

49 Janet, “Salt Lakers in Gotham,” Deseret News, May 18, 1912. In her Deseret News column, Easton reported that “Isaac Russell of the New York Times was in Washington during the investigation of the Titanic disaster, where his presence was desired by the investigation committee.

50 Russell, unpublished manuscript on his visit with Harold Bride, 10, Russell Papers.

51 Russell, “Met Survivors of Titanic,” July 6, 1917.

52 Russell, unpublished manuscript on his visit with Harold Bride, 10, Russell Papers.

It was Isaac Russell, working without assignment from the Times, who obtained the exclusive interview with Bride. He turned it into the best-known eyewitness account of the sinking of the Titanic largely through good fortune, but also through pluck and resolution—not through payment of a fee. The Times did pay Bride for the interview after the fact, but he had not withheld information to preserve the value of the interview. Ironically, as noted above, even the semiofficial history of the Times failed to correctly credit Russell as the Times reporter who obtained and told Bride’s famous account.

The April 19, 1912, issue of the New York Times—which ran as its lead article the story told by Harold Bride to Isaac Russell—went down in newspaper lore as one of the greatest issues ever published. Original copies of it became unusually valuable as a collector’s item. Many years later, Carr Van Anda was reported to have visited Alfred Lord Northcliffe’s Daily Mail offices in London. When Van Anda met the newspaper’s editor, the editor “opened a desk drawer at his right hand. In it lay the New York Times of April 19, 1912. He said ‘We keep this as an example of the greatest accomplishment in news reporting.’”53

The final ignominy Russell endured was that, though he received a modest $25 bonus, he received payment for the publication of the Bride story only once, even though the Times reprinted it on several occasions and newspapers and magazines all over the world described the account countless times.54 In this era, the New YorkTimes paid its reporters once per article, on a “space” basis. If an article was good enough to be reprinted, the newspaperand its readers benefitted, not the reporter. As Ike recalled,

Newspaperdom is a funny world. The next Sunday, the Times reprinted the story by “request” of people who wrote in by the scores that they broke down in the midst of reading it and finished in a flood of tears. My pay came by “space.” On account of the huge exploitation of the story by the paper and its resale all over the English-speaking world, I asked if they could not allow my “space rate” on this special supplement publication.

“No,” was the answer “you got your space the first time and now the story is ours. We would have got it anyhow, we had all our plans made if you had not slipped in on them.”55

In his unhappiness over his treatment in the whole matter, Russell neglected to acknowledge the congratulations and small bonus Adolph Ochs had sent through Arthur Greaves.56 Russell’s preparation of one of the most famous newspaper stories in history regained for him the favor of

53 Berger, Story of the New York Times, 201.

54 Arthur Greaves to Isaac Russell, April 23, 1912, box 5, fd. 1, Russell Papers. Greaves noted how Adolph Ochs, the publisher, had asked him to send Russell the bonus. Greaves also wrote that “You have been made fully aware of the opinion of everybody in the office that it was very well done.” Ibid.

55 Russell, unpublished manuscript on his visit with Harold Bride, 9–10, Russell Papers.

56 Arthur Greaves to Isaac Russell, April 23, 1912, box 5, fd. 1, Russell Papers; Tifft and Jones, The Trust, 805.

most of his superiors at the paper, but Van Anda’s comment to him the next day when they passed in the hall was “‘We would have got [Bride’s account] anyhow.’”57

A graduation photograph from Lowell School, Salt Lake City, 1895. Isaac Russell appears to be on the back row, second from the right. His classmates included the artist Mahonri Young and his brother Waldemar (who also attended Stanford with Russell); Clarence Neslen, a future mayor of Salt Lake City; and several children from prominent local families.

After his work on the Titanic story, Russell continued to gain prominence,working for the Times for three more years and contributing muckraking articles to Collier’s Weekly, Harper’s Weekly, Pearson’s Magazine, World’s Work, and other magazines. Then in June 1915, the Times fired him for covering a controversial speech made by Amos Pinchot. Together with his better-known brother, Gifford, Amos had supported Theodore Roosevelt for years. By this point, however, the relationship between the brothers and the former president was strained, and Russell reported that the Pinchots had decided to break with Roosevelt. 58 When Roosevelt learned that the Times had “summarily fired” Russell for writing the article, he “never paused until he had hunted me up and got me a new job. And

57 Russell, unpublished manuscript on his visit with Harold Bride, 9–10, Russell Papers.

58 Russell’s explanation of the break embarrassed Gifford Pinchot; as a result, both brothers accused him of misreporting Amos’s speech. [Isaac Russell], “Pinchot Renounces Allegiance to T. R.,” New York Times, May 31, 1915; “Pinchots Deny They Renounced Colonel,” New York Times, June 1, 1915. Van Anda’s take on the story that led to the firing was that Russell had “reported a ‘conclusion, not a fact.’” Tifft and Jones, The Trust, 805. Characteristically, Russell wrote an envenomed letter to the Times’s editor, asserting that he had reported the speech correctly and complaining that he had not received a fair hearing before being fired. Isaac Russell to the Editor of the New York Times, n.d., box 15, fd. 17, Russell Papers; see also Isaac Russell to Arthur Greaves, June 15, 1915, box 5, fd. 1, Russell Papers. He sent another letter to the staff of

then for two hours he told me all of his dealing with the Pinchots.” Russell’s new position was with the New York Evening Mail, where he soon became city editor and also served as the paper’s food editor.59

Though Isaac Russell left Utah for the big city in his late twenties, he maintained close ties with family, friends, and colleagues in the Beehive State. He acted as a “contributing editor” of the Progressive Party’s local Utah publication, the Progressive, and submitted many columns on contemporary political issues.60 From 1911 through 1918 and later in the 1920s, Russell operated a secret “press bureau” for the Mormon church in New York and Chicago, cleverly defending the church and its leaders against attacks; ghostwriting articles, letters to the editor, and speeches for church leaders; and generally providing brilliant public relations services for the church.61 In late 1921, he moved to Chicago, where he provided public relations, editing, and lobbying services first for the American Institute of Baking and then for Westinghouse Electric.62 Always a whirling dervish of activity, Russell found time in Chicago to write a book and numerous articles on the history of Utah and the West.63 Unfortunately, his health seriously declined in his mid-forties. In September 1927, he died of a heart attack in Chicago at the age of 47.64

the Times indicating that Ochs had sent him a check as a severance payment and, no doubt, as hush money, and that anyone deserving on the staff could have it. Russell did not want the money; he wanted a fair hearing. Isaac Russell to the Members of the Staff of the New York Times, n.d., box 15, fd. 17, Russell Papers. He later remembered this episode as the “most disastrous of [my] life.” Isaac Russell to David Starr Jordan, April 3, 1923, box 5, fd. 27, Russell Papers.

59 Isaac Russell to Mr.Vail, November 1, 1921, box 8, fd. 10, Russell Papers.

60 “Isaac Russell,” Progressive, November 1, 1913, 1. A few of his prominently featured contributions to the Progressive included Isaac Russell, “Concerning Venal Newspapers,” Progressive, February 15, 1913, 8; “The Federal Bunch and President Wilson,” Progressive, April 5, 1913, 5–6; “To Parson Simpkin—A Few Kind Words,” Progressive, April 19, 1913, 5–6; “Senator Sutherland—Doctorer of Laws,” Progressive, October 11, 1913, 9, 19; “A Smoot Hero and Bull Moose Standard,” Progressive, October 18, 1913, 3, 6; “Seven Keys to Baldpate and One to Senator Smoot,” Progressive, April 11, 1914, 4–5; “On Fighting Smoot with Moyle,” Progressive, August 15, 1914, 6–7.

61 Cannon, “Isaac Russell, Mormon Muckraker.”Russell burst on the Mormon scene when he convinced Theodore Roosevelt to write a letter for publication in a national magazine defending the Mormons against what B. H. Roberts referred to as the “magazine crusade” against the church. Kenneth L. Cannon II, “‘And Now It Is the Mormons’: The Magazine Crusade Against the Mormon Church, 1910–1911,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 46, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 22, 25–31; Isaac Russell, “Mr. Roosevelt to the Mormons, a Letter with an Explanatory Note,” Collier’s Weekly, April 15, 1911, 28, 36; Joseph F. Smith to Isaac Russell, April 25, 1911, box 7, fd. 23, Russell Papers; B. H. Roberts to Isaac Russell, April 20, 1911, box 7, fd. 9, Russell Papers.

62 Cannon, “Isaac Russell, Mormon Muckraker”; Isaac Russell to B. H. Roberts, January 22, 1922, B. H. Roberts Papers, Ms0106, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah; Isaac Russell to Lewis Bolser, April 25, 1925, box 4, fd. 11, Russell Papers; Heber J. Grant to Isaac Russell, May 10, 1925, box 4, fd. 30, Russell Papers.

63 Isaac K. Russell, in collaboration with Howard R. Driggs, Hidden Heroes of the Rockies (Yonkers-onHudson, NY: World Book Company, 1923). Russell published regularly about Utah history in the Deseret News and in LDS church magazines. See, for example, Isaac K. Russell, “Theodore Roosevelt—Staunch Friend of Utah,” Deseret News, December 20, 1919, Christmas news section, 12; Isaac K. Russell, “Joseph Smith and the Great West,” Improvement Era August, November, December 1925, February, March, April, May, September, October, December 1926, January, March, May, July 1927. The long-running “Joseph Smith and the Great West” was a broad-ranging history of Mormon settlement in Missouri.

64 “I. K. Russell Found Dead,” New York Times, September 8, 1927; Obituary, Chicago Post, September 8, 1927; “Death Closes Writer’s Work,” Salt Lake Tribune, September 8, 1927.

While Harold Bride’s eyewitness account of the Titanic disaster continues to be critical to understanding what happened that fateful night in April 1912, Isaac Russell’s preparation of that account has until now been largely forgotten. As he said in his unpublished manuscript, “[The Nabobs of the Times] did not ask their reporter, either, so none of them knew until this writing, how [the Bride account] all really came about.”65 The same is true of historians who have credited Carr Van Anda for masterminding Marconi’s visit to the Carpathia, who accused Bride and the Marconi Company of withholding information to preserve the value of the wireless operators’ stories, and who even incorrectly identified the Times reporter who accompanied the inventor onto the ship. Russell’s recounting of the extraordinary tale of how the account was obtained corrects these mistakes. When Russell and Marconi interviewed Bride, they learned that the wireless operator was not refusing to respond to incoming messages to preserve a likely fee for his story; rather, the traumatized twenty-two-yearold was so overwrought by what he had seen that he could not stop sending messages from his fellow Titanic survivors who were writing to reassure frightened relatives and loved ones that they were alive. Russell’s account is also contrary to the legend that has been created about Carr Van Anda’s supposed grand plan to get Marconi onto the Carpathia. It was not Van Anda at all. As Tifft and Jones wrote, it was “luck and an enterprising reporter” who got the story, and that enterprising reporter was Isaac Russell.66 This takes little away from the Times’ managing editor’s masterful oversight of the paper’s coverage of one of the greatest news stories of the twentieth century, but it does provide an important correction. Russell’s descendants and relatives are justifiably proud of the remarkable role he played.67

65 Russell, unpublished manuscript on his visit with Harold Bride, 10, Russell Papers.

66 Tifft and Jones, The Trust, 805.

67 A photograph of Isaac Russell at the J. Willard Marriott Library has the following handwritten note on the back: “Isaac Russell, reporter for the New York Times, ones [sic] of whose reports, on the sinking of the Titanic, during which he worked with Marconi, inventor of wireless telegraphy, aboard the ship the Carpathia, won honors for him.” Samuel Russell Photograph Collection, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah. In an article about Russell’s great-grandson, Robbie Russell, the reporter described what is certainly a family tradition he heard from Robbie, “Robbie’s great-grandfather is Isaac Russell, a former New York Times reporter who, legend has it, was the first to write about the sinking of the Titanic.” Steven Goff, “Getting to Know D.C. United’s Robbie Russell,” accessed July 2012, www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/soccer-insider/post/getting-to-know-dcuniteds-robbie-russell/2012/01/26/glQAKSvfTQ_blog.html.

Wallace Henry Thurman: A Utah Contributor to the Harlem Renaissance

By WILFrED D. SAMUELS  AND DAVID A. hALES

The 1920s were a turbulent and contradictory period in American history. Though the legacy of World War I haunted the era, it was yet a time of prosperity and optimism. On the one hand, during the so-called Roaring Twenties, many Americans enjoyed dance crazes, Model-T cars, and the first transatlantic flight. No longer bound by the tenets of what literary critic Granville Hicks called “the great tradition,” Americans across the social spectrum reveled in a frenzied pursuit of pleasure, which became paramount in the lives of urban trendsetters.1 On the other hand, it was a period of rising intolerance and isolation, as much of post–World War I America retreated into provincialism, as evidenced by the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, the anti-radical hysteria of the Palmer raids, restrictive immigration laws, and prohibition. Then came the decade’s sobering end: the stock market crash of 1929.2

The Harlem Renaissance was among the trends that sprang from and contributed to the confusion and excitement of the 1920s. Also known as the “New Negro Manhood Movement,” the Harlem Renaissance was a movement of African American artists, musicians, and writers, among others, dedicated to the celebration of black culture. It became renowned in part for its African American literary icons, such as Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, Nella Larsen, and a lesser-known Utahn, Wallace Thurman (1902–1934). Born and reared in Salt Lake City, Thurman attended West High School

Langston Hughes (left) and Wallace Thurman (right), 1934.

Wilfred D. Samuels is a professor of English and Ethnic Studies at the University of Utah. David A. Hales is a professor emeritus, University of Alaska Fairbanks, and a retired librarian and educator now living in Draper, Utah.

1 Granville Hicks, The Great Tradition: An Interpretation of American Literature since the Civil War (New York: Macmillan, 1993).

2 John F. Wukovits, ed., The 1920s (San Diego: Greenhaven, 2000), 9–19.

and the University of Utah, and worked at the Hotel Utah before moving to Los Angeles and finally to New York City, where he joined the vanguard of the Harlem Renaissance. 3 While the ways in which growing up in Utah affected Thurman remain ambiguous, the time he spent in Harlem dramatically altered his views of his hometown. One thing seems certain: the Mormon mecca indirectly impacted the “New Negro” mecca through the participation, leadership, and architectural role of one of its native sons, Wallace Thurman, whom Langston Hughes called a “strangely brilliant black boy.”4

Wallace Thurman was born in Salt Lake City on August 16, 1902, to Beulah and Oscar Thurman.5 Little is known about either of his parents. Shortly after Wallace’s birth, his father moved to California, abandoning Thurman and his mother. Beulah and Oscar divorced in 1906. The divorce papers dated Oscar’s departure as September 10, 1905, and claimed that he “willfully and wrongfully and without just cause or excuse abandoned and deserted” his wife.6 Beulah remarried at least six times and moved her family from Salt Lake City to Boise to Chicago to Omaha and back to Salt Lake City during Thurman’s childhood. 7 Beulah Thurman’s relocations reflect the wider movements of African Americans who sought freedom and economic opportunities during the first two decades of the twentieth century.

Thurman

3 Eleonore van Notten, Wallace Thurman’s Harlem Renaissance (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994), 55. Van Notten notes that she has verification of Thurman’s graduation from West High School. However, the authors could not document this fact: records for the school only go back to 1920, and Thurman does not appear in any of the school’s yearbooks or graduation programs. Linda Hale and Theresa Mbauke, e-mail to David Hales, November 21, 2011. Records concerning Thurman’s attendance at the University of Utah vary. According to student records housed at the Marriott Library, Thurman never attended the university or took classes there. Paul Mogren, e-mail to David Hales, June 26, 2012. However, according to records from the Office of the Registrar, Thurman attended the University of Utah from January to June 1920. Timothy J. Ebner, University Registrar, to David Hales, July 16, 2013. Further, the university has a transcript showing his attendance and enrollment in chemistry, physiology, pharmacy, and zoology. Copy in possession of the authors.

4 Langston Hughes, “Harlem Literati in the Twenties,” Saturday Review of Literature 22 (June 22, 1940): 13.

5 Van Notten, Wallace Thurman’s, 55.

6 Ibid., 74–77. Two days after her divorce, Beulah Thurman married Thomas Brown. They had one son, Lawrence Brown. It is not known how many husbands Beulah had. In 1929, Thurman wrote that his mother was attempting to leave her sixth husband. Even in old age Beulah was described as “an attractive elegant woman with stunning straight black hair and an intelligent outgoing personality.” Ibid., 75–76.

7 Ibid., 77, 81. In 1914 Thurman entered high school in Omaha, Nebraska, but returned with his mother to Salt Lake City shortly thereafter.

was born in Salt Lake City and spent his childhood and youth there, as this studio portrait demonstrates.

Although many blacks flocked to the Northeast—more than half a million during the World War I period—thousands also migrated to the West, especially the Pacific Northwest.8

Only sketchy, contradictory information exists about Thurman’s paternal family. In his brief autobiographical portraits, Thurman said that he came from a family of pioneer westerners.9 Richard Bruce Nugent, his long-time friend and a gay voice of the Renaissance, depicted Thurman’s family in an unpublished fictional manuscript that opened with Thurman’s great-grandparents. Nugent implied that Thurman’s earliest known paternal ancestor was a woman brought to the Salt Lake Valley with the Mormon pioneers. However, no evidence of any of his paternal ancestors in Utah before 1892 remains extant.10

When Thurman discovered that his paternal grandparents managed a hotel in California, he wired for reservations without announcing who he was. Thurman’s grandparents welcomed him. 11 While Wallace was in California, Oscar Thurman—now paralyzed and suffering from what was diagnosed as tuberculosis of the throat—came to visit his parents. Thurman wrote that he almost fainted from the sight of his father, and he called Oscar “the most pitiful albeit nauseating sight I have seen in many a day.”12

More information exists about Thurman’s mother’s family, especially his maternal grandmother, Emma Ellen Gladen Jackson (“Ma Jack”), with whom Thurman shared a deep and lasting relationship. Emma Jackson was born in Osceola, Missouri, on August 10, 1862. She and her first husband, Missouri native Thomas Stanford Stewart, moved to Leadville, Colorado, in the early 1880s, where they lived with their two children, Beulah and Arthur. Jackson married her second husband, Wallace P. Jackson, on July 29, 1890, eighteen years before Thomas Stewart’s 1908 death.13

Two years later, in June 1892 and for unknown reasons, Jackson brought her two children to Salt Lake City, which had only a small African American population.14 At the time, the federal census records indicated that most of Utah’s blacks—male and female—worked as servants and waiters in commercial establishments and private homes.15 Records divulge only enough information about Jackson’s early activities in Salt Lake City

8 Quintard Taylor, “Susie Revels Cayton, Beatrice Morrow Cannady, and the Campaign for Social Justice in the Pacific Northwest,” in African American Women Confront the West: 1600–2000, eds. Quintard Taylor and Shirley Ann Wilson Moore (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003), 189–204.

9 Van Notten, Wallace Thurman’s, 67.

10 Ibid.

11

Van Notten, Wallace Thurman’s, 78. This is according to a letter Thurman sent to William Jourdan Rapp, a New York City editor and friend.

12 Ibid. At that time his grandparents lived at 1538 Fifth Street, Santa Monica, California.

13 Ibid., 59.

14 Ibid., 60.

15 Ibid.; Wallace Thurman, “Quoth Brigham Young: —This is the Place,” Messenger 8 (August 1926): 236; Ronald Gerald Coleman, “A History of Blacks in Utah, 1825–1910” (PhD diss., University of Utah, 1980), 79–80.

to intrigue and mystify. In Utah she married five times; four of her husbands were surnamed Jackson.16

Jackson’s experiences reflected the challenges that she, like most African Americans, faced in her struggle to achieve economic and domestic stability in the years between the end of Reconstruction and the close of the nineteenth century. Although women could often find domestic work, men had difficulty getting employment; as a result, they migrated to places with more attractive job opportunities, often abandoning their families, leaving women in charge, and giving the appearance of a black matriarchy. As a woman from Boulder, Colorado, put it, “the Negro women, of course, were the support of the church, the backbone of the church, the backbone of the family, they were the backbone of the social life, everything.”17 Jackson clearly fit this profile. Indeed, she was the backbone of everything— including the life of her grandson, Wallace.

In Salt Lake City, Jackson’s role as a respected community leader was evidenced by the fact that she helped to establish the Baptist Prayer Band, “to worship, pray to God and read the Bible.”18 The group met on a regular basis in her home during the late 1890s and, in 1896, became the Calvary Missionary Baptist Church of Salt Lake City.19 Jackson’s action in founding Calvary must be considered progress; it resonated with a similar movement, which occurred particularly in the South, wherein African Americans transformed church missionary societies into social service agencies. Such societies were more than religious sanctuaries, although Calvary Baptist—founded in the shadow of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which denied the priesthood to black men—provided a refuge for its members. These churches, including Calvary Baptist, often veiled the political and economic ventures, activities, and intentions of the black women who formed them. By the century’s end, churches like the Calvary Baptist Church functioned as a “parapolitical tool,” and African American women “understood their new role in community life and their unique ability to execute it.”20 Jackson belonged to this group of women and in the forefront of Salt Lake City’s black community.

Despite Calvary’s growth, intra-racial tensions and issues related to skin color impacted the congregation. These tensions pervaded African American culture in the early twentieth century, and they would become a major theme in Wallace Thurman’s fictional work. Nationally, the Baptist church was segregated by gender, and at Calvary Baptist in Salt Lake City,

16 Van Notten, Wallace Thurman’s, 61.

17 Susan Armitage, “‘The Mountains Were Free and We Loved Them’: Dr. Ruth Flowers of Boulder, Colorado,” in Taylor and Moore, African American, 171.

18 1800. Calvary. 1976: Missionary Baptist Church (church bulletin) (Salt Lake City: Calvary Baptist Church, 1976), 2.

19 Today the Calvary Baptist Church is a thriving, integrated congregation; for a history of the church, see France A. Davis, Light in the Midst of Zion: A History of Black Baptists in Utah, 1892–1996 (Salt Lake City: Empire, 1997).

20 Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896–1920 (Durham: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 150–51.

“the complexion of one’s skin determined where a member sat in church. . . lightskinned members sat on one side and darker sat on the other side of the church.”21 The “Blue Vein Society,” so called because its members supposedly had skin light enough for veins to show through, initiated this practice and valorized “the lightness of one’s skin.” Indeed, “the church was unable to escape the social practices of its time.”22

An address entry for Emma “Ma Jack” Jackson, Thurman’s grandmother, from the 1902 Salt Lake City Polk directory. This address was in a boarding house, as the directory establishes elsewhere. Note the designation of Jackson as “col’d.”

This practice was one of the most insidious remnants of slavery that followed African Americans into the twentieth century, namely, the categorization of blacks on the basis of their proximity in color to their enslavers’ white skin. State constitutions used labels such as mulatto, quadroon, and octoroon to classify blackness in the Jim Crow era, while African Americans memorialized the self-hating glorificationof whiteness in a folk ditty: “If you was white, should be all right, / If you was brown, stick around, / But as you’s black, hmm brother, get back, get back, get back.” Yet African Americans also gave the negative signifier of blackness positivity by declaring that “black [was] beautiful,” hence, “the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice”—a proverb that became the title of Thurman’s first novel.

To be certain, intra-racial conflict functioned symbiotically with economic status in the African American community generally—and presumably within Jackson’s Salt Lake City social circles—as class stratification and social caste based on color became a double-headed viper. Light-skinned African Americans (whom Thurman called “dicty”) often belonged to the “black bourgeoisie,” had more prestigious occupations, and were granted access to higher formal education. Therefore, they enjoyed a higher social status, leadership roles, prestigious neighborhoods, and well-appointed homes.23

21 Van Notten, Wallace Thurman’s, 69.

22 Davis, Light in the Midst of Zion, 27–28.

23 The intra-racial tensions present in Jackson’s congregation were not unique to Salt Lake City. On the contrary, Thurman wrote about class divides within Harlem’s black churches. He reported that “the better class of Harlemites attend the larger churches. Most of the so called ‘dictys’ are registered ‘Episcopalians’ at St. Phillips, which is the religious sanctum of the socially elect and wealthy Negroes of Harlem. The congregation . . . is largely mulatto.” At the other end of the spectrum were the earthy “outlaw sects,” including Holy Rollers, black Jews, and Moslems. Thurman, “Negro Life in New York’s Harlem: A Lively

The historical record provides a mixed view of the economic status of Jackson and her family. According to the Salt Lake City directories, Jackson lived near 212 West 100 South in 1902, and she continued to live in the general area for a number of years. She changed residence at least five times, finally landing, in 1928, at 308 East and 900 South.24 Despite their church membership, a Thurman biographer suggests that Jackson and her seventh husband, Jesse R. Jackson, were involved in bootlegging and that their home doubled as a brothel.25 Although the difficult circumstances of the Jacksons’ life might account for their seemingly disingenuous religiosity, it is equally feasible that they viewed bootlegging and prostitution as an avenue to economic stability. Just so, as an adult, Wallace Thurman wrote to a friend that “his grandparents were financially secure” and that they owned the house on 900 South, a “typical middle-class neighbourhood [sic].”26

At this time, as African Americans sought to establish a middle class, “faith in business enterprise was mingled with the Negro’s religious faith.”27 Both Jackson and her husband supported the economic empowerment advocated by Booker T. Washington, who gave a lecture at the University of Utah and visited the Calvary Baptist Church in 1913. Washington was controversial for prioritizing economic advancement and industrial education over sociopolitical rights and formal education, and he taught blacks to “cast down your buckets where you are” to achieve success in business and commerce. Sadly, prostitution and bootlegging may have been among the limited options the Jacksons had to help them achieve a modicum of success. Their decision does not necessarily speak to their moral values alone, but also, to the scanty economic choices they had in Utah.

As for the young Wallace Thurman, according to Doris Fry, one of his childhood classmates, he was a “nervous, sickly child.” Yet Thurman was known to have a big smile, a deep laugh, and a dark brown skin. “His voice was without accent, deep and resonant. That was the most memorable thing about him,” noted Dorothy West, a fellow Harlem Renaissance novelist and a long-time friend.28

Picture of a Popular and Interesting Section,” in Amritjit Singh and Daniel M. Scott III, eds., The Collected Writings of Wallace Thurman: A Harlem Renaissance Reader (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2003), 58–59.

24 Salt Lake City Directories (Salt Lake City: R. L. Polk, 1902–1928). Here one finds the most detailed information regarding the known addresses of Emma Jackson and her family in Salt Lake City.

25 Van Notten, Wallace Thurman’s, 68–69.

26 Ibid., 71. A letter Thurman wrote to William Jourdan Rapp in 1929 suggests the complexity of the Jacksons’ relationship with their congregation. At this time, after Jackson underwent a cataract surgery, members of the Baptist church came to the family’s home to pray for her. As Thurman recorded, the minster “infected my grandmother especially when he asked mercy for the blind and the afflicted.” Thurman ordered them out of the house and wrote, “My ostracization among polite colored circles in Salt Lake will now be complete.” Singh and Scott, Collected Writings, 156–57.

27 E. Franklin Frazier, Black Bourgeoisie (New York: Free Press, 1957), 40.

28 Phyllis R. Klotman, “Wallace Henry Thurman,” in Afro-American Writers from the Harlem Renaissance to 1940, ed. Trudier Harris (Detroit: Gale Research, 1987), 261. Dorothy West, best known for her novel The Living is Easy, was a black author and part of the Harlem Renaissance.

Thurman loved to read and from an early age thought of himself as a writer. At age ten, he wrote his first novel, which was based on a film adaptation of Dante’s Inferno 29 He read William Shakespeare, Gustave Flaubert, Herbert Spencer, Charles Baudelaire, Charles Sainte-Beuve, Henrik Ibsen, Thomas Hardy, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Friedrich Nietzsche, Havelock Ellis, and Sigmund Freud. During his young adulthood, Thurman dismissed the idea of a literary career, but in college he changed his mind again.30 According to Langston Hughes, his close friend, Thurman “had read everything” and could read eleven lines at a time.31 A high school friend, Nathan Gray, said Thurman learned to read at such intense speed by sneaking into a bookstore in Salt Lake City when the owner was away and reading books without buying them.32 Thurman was also a devout movie fan; he enjoyed the typical serials that he saw (probably at Saturday matinees), and experimented with writing screenplays. His interest in film was a lasting one.33

Thurman, who attended West High School in Salt Lake City, worked as a busboy at the Hotel Utah’s café in 1919. From January to June 1920, he was enrolled as a pre-medical student at the University of Utah. In September 1922, Thurman left for California where he enrolled in the University of Southern California’s School of Journalism. Although he dropped out after one semester, he stayed in Los Angeles and worked as a postal clerk. A regular salary provided him time to write. He published “Inklings,” a column in the Pacific Defender, a black Los Angeles newspaper.34

29 Van Notten, Wallace Thurman’s, 81; Mae Gwendolyn Henderson, “Portrait of WallaceThurman,” in Remembering the Harlem Renaissance, ed. Cary D. Wintz (New York: Garland, 1996), 291.

30 Klotman, “Wallace Henry Thurman,” 261.

31 Langston Hughes, The Big Sea: An Autobiography (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1940), 234.

32 Van Notten, Wallace Thurman’s, 82.

33 Klotman, “Wallace Henry Thurman,” 261.

34 Henderson, “Portrait,” 291–92.

West High School, around the time of Thurman’s attendance.

Ambitiously, he launched a monthly magazine, the Outlet, in September 1924, labeling it “the first western Negro literary magazine.”35 This magazine provided an outlet for Thurman’s own writing and the work of some of his friends, including Arna Bontemps, who became a well-known gay American poet and Harlem Renaissance figure, and Fay Jackson, a journalist and movie publicist.36 However, Thurman could not sustain the financial burden, and the Outlet closed down after six issues. He also tried unsuccessfully to organize a literary group on the West Coast comparable to those developing in the East.37

The juncture in American and African American history and culture that took place at the dawning of the twentieth century—identified by W. E. B. DuBois as a time characterized by the problematic “color line”— witnessed, according to Alain Locke, the emergence of the “New Negro.” According to Locke, then the Dean of Humanities at Howard University, “the younger generation is vibrant with its new psychology, the new spirit is awake in the masses, and under the very eyes of the professional observers is transforming what has been a perennial problem into the progressive phase of contemporary Negro life.”38 Locke’s declaration, in many ways, confirmed DuBois’s pronouncement in The Souls of Black Folk (1902) that the new “American Negro” “would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism.”39

During the 1920s, a diverse assortment of writers, artists, musicians, dilettantes, and even revolutionaries congregated in New York and declared war on the values of middle-class America. As F. Scott Fitzgerald explored to some degree in his now-classic novel, The Great Gatsby (1925), these independent thinkers had the romantic appeal of the exotic, the fervor of insurgents, and the promise of liberation from outmoded forms. Although artists have frequently been on the fringes of “respectable” society, the culture gap that yawned during the Jazz Age was painfully deep.40 This gap existed, in part, because of the racial aspect of 1920s culture and its ability to generate stereotypes, tension, idealism, and aspiration. DuBois, Locke, and the major writers of the budding Harlem Renaissance—including Thurman—readily knew this.

The Dutch first settled the neighborhood known as “Haarlem”; German, Irish, and Jewish residents lived there in subsequent eras. The first

35 Freda Scott Giles, “Glitter, Glitz, and Race: The Production of Harlem,” Journal of American Dramaand Theatre (Fall 1995): 2.

36 Arna Wendell Bontemps (1902–1973) became a librarian at Fisk University, where he established an important collection of African American literature and culture. Fay Jackson (1902–1979) founded the first West Coast black magazine, Flash. In the 1930s, Jackson became the first black Hollywood correspondent with the Associated Negro Press.

37 Dorothy West, “Elephant’s Dance: A Memoir of Wallace Thurman,” Black World 20 (November 1970): 78.

38 Alain Locke, “The New Negro,” in The New Negro: An Interpretation (New York: Albert and Charles Boni, 1925), 3–16.

39 W. E. B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk, in Three Negro Classics (New York: Avon Books, 1965), 215.

40 Wukovits, The 1920s, 9–19.

uptown African American settlement can be pinpointed to an apartment house at 31 West 133rd Street in 1905. 41 By the early 1920s, Harlem—particularly “Strivers Row,” from 135th to 137th Streets—had become a magnet for middle-class African Americans, who were increasingly determined to achieve full citizenship, particularly because of their participationin World War I and their mass migration to the more integrated cities of the North.

Harlem, a metropolis within a metropolis, rapidly developed as an international symbol that attracted blacks not only from the American South, but also from areas such as West Africa and the Caribbean islands. Newly founded political and cultural organizations, such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the National Urban League, and Marcus Garvey’s black nationalist Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) contributed to this movement. These groups published journals and newspapers (Crisis, Opportunity, and Negro World) that encouraged blacks to migrate in order to find greater opportunities and a better chance at justice in northern communities, such as Chicago, Detroit, and Harlem.42

The settlers of Harlem included a black intelligentsia—a group of college-educated blacks, such as Harvard graduates DuBois and Locke— who were not only riding the heady wave of post–World War I optimism, but also consciously attempting to record, describe, and shape its relevance to African Americans. On the one hand, these intellectuals described the

41 Steven Watson, The Harlem Renaissance: Hub of African-American Culture, 1920–1930 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1995), 11; see also Gilbert Osofsky, Harlem, the Making of a Ghetto: Negro New York, 1890–1930 (New York: Harper & Row, 1968).

42 Watson, Harlem Renaissance, 21–26; see also Nell Irvin Painter, Creating Black Americans: AfricanAmerican History and Its Meanings, 1619 to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 189–213.

The University of Utah, circa 1920, when Thurman was enrolled there.

new cultural ebullience as a rebirth and an awakening—the Harlem Renaissance. On the other hand, artists, bearers of culture, and leaders like Garvey valorized a black aesthetics grounded in black oral and folk culture, specifically music: blues and jazz and art. As Hughes, considered the poet laureate of the Harlem Renaissance, stated in his now-classic essay, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” “perhaps these common people will give to the world its truly great Negro artist, the one who is not afraid to be himself.”43 This battle raged at the core of the general explosion of creative activity in post–World War I America.

Significantly, this movement also included many white intellectuals such as Carl Van Vechten, a contributor to Vanity Fair, and others who hoped to forget the sterility of their own lives by frequenting nightclubs that offered jazz and alcohol, where black performers danced against a backdrop of cardboard jungles. Black literati suddenly enjoyed a prestige among whites that they had not known before.Young blacks and white moderns joined in a dazzling outpouring of creativity, the whole movement anchored by a group of well-respected and well-organized older black men, including DuBois, McKay, Locke, Walter White, and George Schuyler.44 The younger, more radical generation was represented by such writers as Countee Cullen, Zora Neal Hurston, Rudolph “Bud” Fisher, Hughes, Nugent, Jean Toomer, and Thurman, who stood with the vanguard of this pioneering black cultural movement.45

Pulled by reports of the Harlem Renaissance and pushed by his lack of success in Los Angeles, Thurman followed his fellow journalist-novelist Arna Bontemps to New York City, arriving in Harlem on September 7, 1925. For the next three months he remained unemployed, although, according to Dorothy West, this “did not matter, for that was the great ‘sponge era’ too, and you ate at anyone’s mealtime. . . . Downtown whites were more than generous. You opened your hand and it closed over a five spot.”46 One could also hold a “Rent Party,” in which “you invited a crowd of people to your studio charging them admission, got your bootlegger to trust you for a gallon or two of gin, sold it at fifteen cents a paper cup, and earned enough from the evening’s proceeding to pay for your back rent, your bootlegger, and still had sufficient money left to lay a week’s supply of liquor and some crackers and sardines.”47 Judging by his account of a “Rent Party,” which he described as a “Harlem Institution” in a 1927 article in the World Tomorrow, Thurman was no stranger to such events:

43 Langston Hughes, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” in The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, ed. Henry L. Gates Jr., 2nd edition (New York: Norton, 2004), 1311–14.

44 West, “Elephant’s Dance,” 78.

45 Ibid., 79.

46 Ibid., 78.

47 Ibid.; Watson, Harlem Renaissance, 130–31, provides detailed information about the “Rent Party.” Some people made their livelihood holding such parties.

Despite the freedom and frenzy of the parties they are seldom joyous affairs. On the contrary they are rather sad and depressing. A tragic undercurrent runs through the music and is reflected in the eyes and faces of the dancers. . . . The environment in which they live is a steel vise, restricting their natural freedom, depriving them of their spontaneity.48

Significantly, as both a participant and observer of these events, Thurman provided valuable insight into their core.

Thurman eventually landed a position with Harlem theater critic Theophilus Lewis, who published his own paper, the Looking Glass. Thurman worked as an “everything” man: editorial writer, reporter, and errand boy.49 On the recommendation of Lewis, Thurman was hired as managing editor for the Messenger, “The World’s Greatest Negro Monthly,” founded and edited by the socialist labor organizers A. Philip Randolph and Chandler Owen. At the Messenger, which “became an intellectual and cultural outlet for black artists,” Thurman made the acquaintance of many active writers from whom he solicited manuscripts. Their contributions markedly improved the quality of the Messenger.50 Thurman was responsible for the publication of Hughes’s first short stories, for which the Messenger paid ten dollars apiece. By 1927, Hughes had published three short stories in the magazine: “The Young Glory of Him,” “Bodies in the Moonlight,” and “The Little Virgin.” According to Hughes, “Wallace Thurman wrote me that they were very bad stories, but better than any other they could find, so he published them.”51 In addition, Thurman published the works of Zora Neale Hurston and his own essays, reviews, and short stories, including “Grist in the Mill,” his best-known short story.52 Thurman left the Messenger in the autumn of 1926 to join the staff of the World Tomorrow, where he continued to expand his literary contacts.53

Through his editorial positions, Thurman gathered around him such lights as Hurston, Hughes, Nugent, Fisher, and West. At his boarding house at 2677 West 136th Street, known as “Niggerati Manor,” Thurman and his group mocked the older African American intellectuals and the Victorian values imitated by some blacks. In 1926 this group gathered to plan the publication of Fire!! A Quarterly Devoted to the Younger Negro Artists. They intended Fire!!, in grandiloquent terms, to “satisfy pagan thirst for beauty unadorned,” as well as to provide a forum for younger black writers who wanted to stand apart from the older, venerated black writers.54 It would be strictly literary, with no focus on contemporary social issues.55 In later years

48

“Harlem House Rent Parties,” in Singh and Scott, Collected Writings, 73–74.

49 Klotman, “Wallace Henry Thurman,” 261.

50 Sondra Kathryn Wilson, ed., The Messenger Reader: Stories, Poetry, and Essays from the Messenger Magazine (New York: Modern Library, 2000), xx.

51 Hughes, “Harlem Literati,” 13–14.

52 Wallace Thurman, “Grist in the Mill,” Messenger (June 1926).

53 Henderson, “Portrait,” 293.

54 Fire!! A Quarterly Devoted to the Younger Negro Artists (November 1926), foreword.

55 Hughes, “Harlem Literati,” 13.

cover of Fire!! featured Aaron Douglas’s striking artwork.

Hughes wrote, “Sweltering summer evenings we met to plan Fire. Each of us agreed to give fifty dollars to finance the first issue. Thurman was to edit it, John P. Davis to handle the business end, and Bruce Nugent to take charge of the distribution. The rest of us were to serve as an editorial board to collect material, contribute our own work, and act in any useful way we could.” 56

In the end,only a few members of the group donated their fifty dollars, and Thurman advanced a large portion of the publication money.

The first issue included works by Thurman, Hurston, Gwendolyn Bennett, Nugent, and Arthur Huff Fauset, and poetry by Cullen, Hughes, Bontemps, Helen Johnson, Edward Silvera, Waring Cuney, and Lewis Alexander. Aaron Douglas provided the cover art, and the volume included line drawings by Nugent.57 Yet Fire!! folded after one issue: it was plagued by financial and distribution problems, and it received only mediocre reviews. Older black intellectuals did not support it in any way. White critics hardly noticed it. As Hughes stated, “Du Bois in the Crisis roasted it. The Negro press called it all sorts of bad names.” Meanwhile “Rean Graves, the critic for the BaltimoreAfro-American, began his review by saying: ‘I have just tossed the first issue of Fire into the fire.’”58

Fire!! finally went up in flames: “several hundred copies of Fire were stored in the basement of an apartment where an actual fire occurred and the bulk of the whole issue was burned up.”59 Thurman had to continue paying the printer. Despite the magazine’s failure, Thurman did not give up on his dream of publishing the work of young writers. In 1928, with

56 Hughes, Big Sea, 236; see also “Harlem Literati,” 13.

57 Fire!!

58 Hughes, “Harlem Literati,” 14. 59 Ibid.

The

outside funding, he launched Harlem: A Forum of NegroLife, a moderate, more broadly focused magazine that was also devoted to displaying work by all young writers; it too failed after its premier issue.60

Along with the collapse of Harlem, 1928 saw the disintegration of Thurman’s whirlwind marriage to Louise Thompson, a student at the New School of Social Research and Hughes’s secretary.61 The marriage was illfated from the start. As suggested by the filmmaker Isaac Julien in Looking for Langston, Thurman was not only a literary luminary, but he, along with Locke, headed the monarchy of Harlem’s black gay community. It is now well documented that many of the writers—including Cullen, McKay, Nugent, Hurston, and possibly Hughes—were homosexual, although, in the case of Cullen, McKay, and Thurman, some of them sought to cloak their preference in heterosexuality. The openly gay Nugent was the exception; his short story “Smoke Lilies and Jade,” which was published in Fire!!, had homosexuality as its central theme.62

According to West, Thurman had “long wanted to be a father, but he had not taken into consideration that he must first be a husband.”63 Frustrated by her husband’s financial problems, heavy drinking, and continued interest in men, Thompson left Thurman after six months, although she never officially divorced him.64 Thompson later admitted that she “never understood Wallace. . . . He took nothing seriously. He laughed about everything. He would often threaten to commit suicide but you knew he would never try it. And he would never admit that he was a homosexual. Never, never, not to me at any rate.” 65 No existing records from the time Thurman

60 Van Notten, Wallace Thurman’s, 162.

61 Louise Thompson, born in Chicago on September 9, 1901, was one of the first black women to graduate from the University of California, Berkeley. She eventually moved to New York City to study at the New School of Social Research. Thompson entered Harlem Renaissance circles through a friendship with painter Aaron Douglas and his wife, Alta. Here she became acquainted with Langston Hughes, became his secretary, and later helped him found the Harlem Suitcase Theatre. She also met and married Wallace Thurman in New York City. Although they separated after six months, Thompson reportedly typed the manuscript for The Blacker the Berry and nursed Thurman in the hospital prior to his death. She joined the Communist Party, actively participated in it in America, and spent time in Russia. In 1940, Thompson moved to Chicago, where she married William Patterson, a prominent figure in the American Communist Party. In the 1960s, she was involved in the defense of Angela Davis and Black Panther leaders. She died in 1999, at ninety-seven years old. “Louise Patterson, 97, Is Dead: Figure in Harlem Renaissance,” New York Times, September 2, 1999.

62 Looking for Langston, directed by Isaac Julien (Sankofa: London, 1989); George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890–1940 (New York: Basic Books, 1994), 264–65.

63 West, “Elephant’s Dance,” 60; see also Van Notten, Wallace Thurman’s, 200. In a letter to Fay Jackson, Thurman wrote that he was not married, “not now or ever . . . and since I have no paternal instincts would be a dead waste of time, talent, and industry. If I ever mate up it will be free love and brief.”

64 West, “Elephant’s Dance,” 81. In 1929, shortly after he arrived in New York City, Thurman was arrested on a morals charge for accepting a proposition from a man in a public restroom. He appeared as a major player in most accounts of queer Harlem. Wallace Thurman to William Jourdan Rapp, May 7, 1929, in Singh and Scott, Collected Writings, 138.

65 Arnold Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes: Volume I: 1902–1941, I, Too, Sing America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 172. Emphasis in original.

spent in Utah establish his sexual orientation. However, the radical experimentation of Bohemian life in Greenwich Village and Harlem during the 1920s included many forms of alternative sexualities. Further, while Thurman himself never explicitly mentioned it, he, too, belonged to what he called “the male sisterhood,” and he was known to have lovers of both sexes during his time in New York. 66 Regarding sex, Thurman urged West to “get rid of the puritan notion that to have casual sexual intercourse is a sin. It’s a biological necessity my dear. . . . I don’t say just saunter forth and give yourself to the first taker. I only say don’t repress yourself, nor violently suppress your sex urge, just because you are Puritan enough to believe that hell fire awaits he who takes a bite of the apple.” 67 What Thurman regarded as a non-puritanical view about repression indicates that either his reading of Sigmund Freud and Havelock Ellis influenced his thinking on the subject or that their ideas struck a chord with his personal convictions, helping him to embrace his own sexual identity. In the end, while it is clear Thurman’s sexuality affected his marriage, its role in his creative and professional life remains ambiguous.

During his first years in Harlem, Thurman experienced challenges, but he also enjoyed success. In addition to working as an editor and gaining a broad network of literary friends, Thurman wrote critical articles on African American life—particularly about Harlem’s role as a hub of black culture— for such magazines as the New Republic, Independent, Bookman, and Dance Magazine in 1927 and 1928.68 In 1929, he began ghost writing stories, many of them Irish, Jewish, and Catholic “true confessions” for True Story magazine under a variety of pseudonyms, including Ethel Belle Mandrake and Patrick Casey.69 In 1929 Thurman penned his first, and most famous, literary works: Harlem: A Melodrama of Negro Life and The Blacker the Berry.

Central to Thurman’s thematic focus and the treatment of his characters was his conviction that art should celebrate the spectrum of humanity. This included the perspectives of blacks, and not solely the bourgeoisie, but also the black masses. This premise undergirded his efforts with Fire!! and ran

66 Van Notten, Wallace Thurman’s, 236–37. Nugent stated that he often slept on the floor under Thurman’s bed, while Thurman entertained his male guest overhead.

67 Wallace Thurman to Dorothy West, 1929, in Singh and Scott, Collected Writings, 172.

68 Mae G. Henderson, “Wallace Thurman,” in Encyclopedia of African-American Culture, ed. Jack Salzman (New York: Simon & Schuster and Prentice Hall International, 1996), 2659.

69 Hughes, “Harlem Literati,” 13; Therman B. O’Daniel, introduction to The Blacker the Berry, by Wallace Thurman (New York: Collier Books, 1970), xii–xiii.

Louise Thompson Patterson, Thurman’s wife for a short time.

MANUSCrIPT, ArChIVES, AND rArE BOOK LIBrAry, EMOry UNIVErSITy

counter to the contention of W. E. B. DuBois in “Criteria of Negro Art” that “all art is propaganda,” even racial propaganda.70 Thurman’s tendency to showcase unwashed and untalented African Americans truly irked middleclass black leaders such as DuBois and authors such as James Weldon Johnson, Nella Larsen, and Jessie Fauset, who focused primarily on biracial characters who denied (if not erased) their African roots and embraced whiteness.

Thurman’s play Harlem: A Melodrama of Negro Life grew out of his short story, “Cordelia the Crude,” which he published in Fire!! The play dramatizes how moving to Harlem affects the Williamses, a black family from the South. While the older generation seeks solace at church when their dreams of a “Promised Land” do not become reality, their wayward daughter, Cordelia, becomes caught up in the corruption of life in Harlem. She is the focal point of both their concern and the play’s dramatic conflict.71

After a successful weeklong tryout at the Boulevard Theatre in Jackson Heights (Queens), Harlem opened on February 20, 1929, at the Apollo Theater on 42nd Street west of Broadway.72 Thurman and William Jourdan Rapp, who had helped him rewrite the play, immediately became both famous and infamous. Though its reviews ranged from “exciting” to “vulgar,” Harlem was generally considered interesting. Blacks, however, did not care for its focus on the seedier element of Harlem life—liquor, gambling, illicit sex, and wild parties thrown to collect rent money. R. Dana Skinner wrote in Commonweal that she was especially upset by the “particular way in which this melodrama exploits the worst features of the Negro and depends for effect solely on lust and sensuality.”73 However, others said Harlem “captured the feel for life” and was “constantly entertaining.”74 Harlem ran for an impressive ninety-three performances during a poor theatrical season and then went on tour to Chicago, Detroit, Boston, Los Angeles, and Toronto.75 According to Edward Blatt, Universal Studios eventually bought the screen rights to Harlem, but never made it into a film.76

Published less than a month after the debut of Harlem, Thurman’s first novel, The Blacker the Berry (which he dedicated to his grandmother), was generally well received. Thurman titled his novel after the folk saying “the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice” and used it to launch an attack on the intra-racial prejudices. The protagonist, Emma Lou, a dark-skinned girl from Boise, Idaho, is looked down upon by her fairer family members and friends. Discouraged, she travels to Harlem, where she believes her dark

70 W. E. B. DuBois, “The Talented Tenth,” in The Seventh Son: The Thought and Writings of W. E. B. DuBois, Volume I, ed. Julius Lester (New York:Vintage Books, 1971), 385–403.

71 Klotman, “Wallace Henry Thurman,” 266.

72 R. Dana Skinner, “Harlem(Critique),” Commonweal, March 6, 1939, p. 514. Note that this is not the Apollo Theater in Harlem, but rather, the Apollo Theatre on 42nd Street, west of Broadway.

73 Ibid.

74 Ibid.

75 Giles, “Glitter, Glitz, and Race,” 9, 11.

76 Ibid., 9.

color will be accepted. However, the city offers her nothing but disenchantment. She begins emulating the looks and behaviors of fairerskinned people around her until she realizes that her light-skinned lover is homosexual, a moment that awakens Emma Lou to her own hypocrisy.77

Although critics praised Thurman for devoting a novel to the plight of a dark-skinned girl, they faulted him for being too objective, claiming he recounted Emma Lou’s life without handing down any judgment on the world in which she lived. Other critics insisted that Thurman “was working out his own feelings of self-hatred, his personal experiences with discrimination both inside and outside the race; the locales almost force the reader to see the novel as autobiography.”78 Thurman Forsythe, Thurman’s longtime friend, wrote in his 1929 review that the novel “is cold, unpoetic, unemotional, unmusical, unrhythmic but keenly analytical, fearless and honest.”79

While older readings of the novel found a correlation between the dark-skinned Thurman and his protagonist, Emma Lou, more recently, critics have not supported the argument that Blacker was a thinly veiled autobiography. In spite of Thurman’s dark skin and the insults he might have endured because of his complexion, for him, intra-cultural conflict (at least in his published work) had more to do with the tensions between blacks born in and outside of the United States than anything else. Foreignborn blacks migrated to Harlem in droves after World War I and, as Thurman argued, “the American Negro looks down upon these foreigners just as the white American looks down upon the white immigrants from Europe.”80 He further explained,

It is the Negro from the British West Indies who creates and has to face a disagreeable problem. . . . He is frowned upon and berated by the American Negro. This intra-racial prejudice is an amazing though natural thing. Imagine a community of people. . . universally known as oppressed, wasting time and energy trying to oppress others of their kind, more recently transplanted from a foreign clime. It is easy to explain. All people seem subject to prejudice, even those who suffer from it the most.81

Color and wealth, Thurman argued, were part of a larger spectrum of racial and territorial division in America and in Harlem. Meanwhile, as Daniel Scott contends, Blacker was not “a reflection of Thurman’s anxiety over his own dark skin,” but “a text that deliberately. . . [explores] identity categories as staged in Harlem, the ‘city of surprises.’”82

77 Until recently, when gay and lesbian studies made same-sex orientation and love legitimate topics of discussion in the media and academy, few, if any, critics addressed Thurman’s bold reference to homosexuality through the implied relationship between Emma Lou’s lover, Alva, and his male friend. Scholars and critics now discuss this lifestyle as a central, though often indirect and silent, theme of the Harlem Renaissance.

78 Klotman, “Wallace Henry Thurman,” 269.

79 Thurman Forsythe, “Review of The Blacker the Berry, by Wallace Thurman,” Flash (June 29, 1929): 1.

80 Thurman, “Few Know Real Harlem,” in Singh and Scott, Collected Writings, 67.

81 Thurman, “Negro Life in New York’s Harlem,” in Singh and Scott, Collected Writings, 44, emphasis added.

82 Daniel M. Scott III, “Harlem Shadows: Re-Evaluating Wallace Thurman's The Blacker the Berry,” MELUS 29, no. 3/4 (2004): 323–39.

Encouraged by his overall success as a playwright and novelist, Thurman continued his literary career in the following decade. In 1930, he collaborated with Rapp on a three-act play, Jeremiah the Magnificent, which he based on Marcus Garvey’s UNIA “Back to Africa” movement of the post–World War I era. The play remained unpublished and was only performed once after Thurman died.83 In 1932, Thurman published two more novels: Infants of the Spring and The Interne. Thurman dedicated Infants to his mother, Beulah: “The goose who laid a not so golden egg.”84 Set in Harlem during the 1920s, the story revolves around Raymond Taylor, a young black author. In this novel, Thurman suggests that the pretentious writers who surround Taylor (who, many believe, he based on well-known figures of the Harlem Renaissance, including Hughes, Locke, Hurston, and Nugent, and their ever-present supporter-patron, Carl Van Vechten) had destroyed their creativity with their decadent lifestyles.85 He vigorously attacks black writers and their white patrons, who praise everything produced by black authors regardless of its quality. Critics gave Infants a reception much like that of Blacker. Several wrote that Thurman examined too many issues; one critic wrote that the novel was “clumsily written.” While one critic “found its dialogue” to be “often incredibly bad,” another concluded that “there are monotonous speeches, an unclear thesis and a lack of unity.”86 Others praised Thurman for his frank discussion of black society. In the Saturday Review of Literature, Martha Gruening wrote, “No other Negro writer has so unflinchingly told the truth about color snobbery within the color line, the ins and outs of ‘passing’ and other vagaries of prejudice. . . . [Its] quotaof truth is just that which Negro writers, under the stress of propaganda and counterpropaganda, have generally and quite understandably omitted from their picture.”87 Some observers considered Infants one of the first books written expressly for black audiences and not white critics.88

Thurman wrote his third and final novel, The Interne, in collaboration with Abraham L. Furman, whom he met while working at Macaulay’s Publishing Company. The novel portrays medical life in an urban hospital through Carl Armstrong, a white doctor, whose ideals are shattered because of the corrupt behavior of the staff and the bureaucratic red tape. He saves himself by leaving.89 Critics could not agree whether Thurman’s account of

83 Klotman, “Wallace Henry Thurman,” 267–68; According to Amritjit Singh,Thurman wrote a number of other plays that are not extant today. Singh also notes that “some scholars have mistakenly ascribed the plays Singing the Blues (written by John McGowman) and Savage Rhythm (written by Harry Hamilton and Norman Foster) to him.” Singh and Scott, Collected Writings, 312.

84 Wallace Thurman, Infants of the Spring (New York: Macaulay, 1932), front flyleaf.

85 Klotman, “Wallace Henry Thurman,” 270.

86 Terrell Scott Herring, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Manor: Infants of the Spring and the Conundrum of Publicity,” African American Review 35, no. 4 (Winter 2001): 586.

87 Martha Gruening, “Two Ways to Harlem,” Saturday Review of Literature (March 12, 1932): 585.

88 “Wallace Thurman,” African American Literature Book Club, accessed July 17, 2013, aalbc.com/authors/Wallace.htm.

89 Klotman, “Wallace Henry Thurman,” 272.

medical wrongdoing was based on fact or not. Many claimed that the novel had no semblance of reality, while others insisted that the incidents were real, if unusual.90

Buoyed by the experience of writing his play and novels, Thurman returned to the West Coast in 1934 to write screenplays for Bryan Foy Productions. While in California and aided by his salary of more than $250 a week, he drank excessively.91 He nevertheless wrote two screenplays: Tomorrow’s Children (1934) and High School Girl (1935), which demonstrated Thurman’s readiness to discuss the controversial issues present in his previous works. Tomorrow’s Children follows the Masons, a poor white family that faces sterilization as a condition of continuing to receive welfare.92 At the time, Hollywood rarely explored such situations. The film was considered groundbreaking because it used the medical term “vasectomy” to explain the procedure for male sterilization. However, as Thurman biographer Phyllis Klotman wrote, “Although the runner sensationalizes the problem and links sterilization to prevailing Nazi theory (and practice), the film is [a] rather restrained melodrama, and in general not very different from the Hollywood norm.”93 Nevertheless, because of its revolutionary subject matter, the film was banned in New York and boycotted by the Catholic Church upon its release.94

The film High School Girl, which focuses on the controversial topics of teen pregnancy and abortion, follows a girl who gets pregnant (although the word is never mentioned) because her mother never educated her about the facts of life and sexuality. She receives help only from her brother and a biology teacher. According to Klotman, High School Girl is “another message film,” which “delivers its moral punch with a mailed fist. Babies having babies was not yet an everyday occurrence, but without recourse to legal abortion, coat hanger suicides and parental guilt were not unusual in the case of unexpected and unwanted teenage pregnancies.”95 The reviews for High School Girl were less than enthusiastic. The review in the Times

90 Ibid.

91 Klotman, “The Black Writer in Hollywood, Circa 1930: The Case of Wallace Thurman,” in Black American Cinema, ed. Manthia Diawara (New York: Routledge, 1993), 81.

92 “Tomorrow’s Children,” American Film Institute, accessed July 17, 2013, http://www.afi.com/members/catalog/DetailView.aspx?s=&Movie=4417.

93 Klotman, “Wallace Henry Thurman,” 272. An estimated 60,000 Americans were subjected to sterilization beginning around 1907 and continuing until the 1970s, especially during the 1930 and 1940s.

94 West, “Elephant’s Dance,” 86; Klotman, “The Black Writer,” 85.

95 Klotman, “The Black Writer,” 90.

Wallace Thurman, 1902–1934.

found no redeeming value in the film and Variety called it a “tiresome preachment of the facts of life and parental neglect.”96 Thurman completed these screenplays as his last major literary works before his death.

While Thurman spent most of his literary career in Southern California and New York City, he had roots in Utah and continued to visit Salt Lake City throughout his life. Thurman’s experiences in Utah and in his grandmother’s home surely affected him and his perceptions of race relations; however, the ways in which growing up in Utah influenced him are not always clear. For example, although Thurman was raised and mostly educated in the Mormon-dominated community and public school system, he never converted to the religion and he claimed that living in this environment had not greatly impacted him.97 Furthermore, while he had to deal with racism as a young man in Salt Lake City, he made little mention of his personal experiences with racism in his writings.

One such experience occurred in 1918, when soldiers attacked Thurman and a young black woman, Thelma Steward, at Second South and Main Street in Salt Lake City. Thurman was “badly beaten” and Steward was “loaded into an automobile by a crowd of soldiers,” yet the police apparently allowed the assailants to escape. According to the Salt Lake Telegram, Reverend George W. Harts, a pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, then brought the issue of police negligence before the city commission on behalf of Thurman and Steward and filed “condemnatory resolutions adopted at a mass meeting of negro [sic] citizens.”98 What came of these resolutions, or how Thurman responded to the event, remains unclear. However, while Thurman himself made no such claims, it is tempting to believe that such incidents might have influenced his decision to join the group of radical Harlem writers dedicated to representing African Americans as “New Negro[es]”—who, as Locke claimed, would no longer be passive or obsequious. Locke wrote that “the Negro of today [must] be seen through other than the dusty spectacles of past controversy. The day of ‘aunties,’ ‘uncles’ and ‘mammies’ is . . . gone.”99 McKay captured the sentiments and character of this “New Negro” in his sonnet, “If We Must Die”:

If we must die, O let us nobly die So that our precious blood may not be shed In vain; then even the monsters we defy Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!

Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack, Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!100

96 Ibid.

97 Thurman, “Quoth Brigham Young,” 236.

98 “Negligence Charge is Hurled at Police,” Salt Lake Telegram, April 18, 1918.

99 Alain Locke, “The New Negro,” in The New Negro: An Interpretation, ed. Alain Locke (New York: Johnson Reprint, 1968), 3–16, 5.

100 Claude McKay, Selected Poems of Claude McKay (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1953), 36.

While Locke and McKay announced the death of the “Old Negro” in their writing, in Salt Lake City, Harts confirmed it with his actions.

Likewise, Thurman’s participation in the Harlem Renaissance apparently colored his image of Utah. During his years in New York, Thurman returned to Salt Lake City to spend time with Jackson and to recuperate from his “fast life” in Harlem. His grandmother even took care of his finances at various times.101 In the spring of 1929, he returned to Salt Lake City on a protracted visit, during which he seems to have perceived a dramatic change in the treatment of Utah’s black population. In a letter to William Jourdan Rapp he wrote, “Here in Salt Lake just 10 years ago there was no segregation whatsoever and now Negroes are segregated a la Georgia everywhere except on street cars. A taxi man refused to drive me home from the depot!!! Now I ask you?”102 In another letter he told Rapp that he had tried to hire a public stenographer in a downtown Salt Lake City office to type his manuscript, but “the lady took it not. With hostility she regarded me. And icily informed me that she was too busy to take any work.”103

Yet other evidence suggests that the change was not so much in the way white Salt Lakers treated blacks, but rather in Thurman’s perception of his hometown. These include Thurman’s previous experiences in Utah, laws passed in the late 1880s forbidding intermarriage between whites and blacks, and other accounts of racial prejudice, such as Doris Fry’s recollection that “the Mormon Church limited job opportunities for blacks and catholics [sic] regulating them almost exclusively to the menial job market.”104 Thurman himself had noted in his 1926 article “Quoth Brigham Young” that “Negroes are rigorously segregated in theaters, public amusement parks, soda fountains, and eating places” and suggested the segregation was a “result of the post world war migration of southern Negroes to the north which was accompanied by a post world war wave of Kluxism and bigotry”; however, Thurman did not employ the same tone of personal indignation in making these observations as he did in his comments to Rapp.105 Whether this was due to his longer 1929 visit to Utah, which provided more time for observation, or because he had by then spent four years in the company of authors and artists striving to change the way blacks were viewed by others and by themselves, it seems clear that something had caused Thurman to look differently at the situation of blacks in Utah.

Thurman’s time in Harlem also affected his views of Mormon culture or at least made him fully aware of the curiosity the religion evoked in others. In “Quoth Brigham Young,” Thurman wrote that the brightest part

101 Van Notten, Wallace Thurman’s, 70.

102 Wallace Thurman to William Jourdan Rapp, in Singh and Scott, Collected Writings, 136; see also Van Notten, Wallace Thurman’s, 80. As noted by Van Notten, internal evidence suggests that this exchange occurred in April 1929.

103 Thurman to Rapp, n.d., copy in possession of authors.

104 Van Notten, Wallace Thurman’s, 80.

105 Wallace Thurman, “Quoth Brigham Young,” 236.

of returning to his home state was that it invariably furnished him with material for conversation:

It does not matter to whom I am talking, whether it be Jew or Gentile, Black or white, Baptist or Episcopalian, thief or minister, when the conversation begins to lag I can always introduce the fact that I was born in Utah, and immediately become the centre of attention nonchalantly answering the resultant barrage of questions. I find that I can even play this trick on the same group of persons more than once, for it seems as if they never tire asking—Do Mormons still have more than one wife? Do they look different from other people? . . . Are there any Negro Mormons? . . . It is for this reason alone that Utah has one warm spot in my rather chilled heart.106

The literary opportunities presented by this outside fascination with Mormon culture seem to have struck Thurman fully by his return to Utah in 1929, for in addition to finishing a collection of essays titled Aunt Hagar’s Children and apparently writing a novel (never completed) based on the script of Harlem, Thurman also began a new book or play concerning the Mormons.107 In a letter to Rapp, he announced that his room was crowded with books on Joseph Smith and the early Mormons.

I even have a book [ sic ] of Mormon, confession of one of Brigham’s wives and much other juicy materials, both scandalous and serious. Some emancipated Mormons I know here have aided me in gathering material, and I have gone directly to the Church library for the rest. Give me a week and I will have a cast of characters and ideas enough to begin work or at least to transmit to you so we can develop continuity.108

The proposed title for the work was “Sultan Smith.”109 During this same period, Thurman wrote to Rapp, “Herein is my first contribution to the beginnings of Sultan Smith. Have immersed myself in Mormon history. And am raring to go.” No record exists, however, of Thurman ever having finished this work.110

Ultimately, Thurman’s experiences outside of Utah led him to view his home state as boring and unsophisticated, albeit a conversation-starter.

In “Quoth Brigham Young,” he expressed disdain for Salt Lake City’s provincialism, noting his irritation that only one of the newsstands had ever heard of New Republic and that Nation, Living Age, Bookman, Mercury, and Saturday Review of Literature—all papers he had ready access to in New York or Los Angeles—would have to be special ordered. The proprietor of the single establishment who recognized these names “capped it all by enquiring whether or not I [Thurman] was a Bolshevist.”111 Further in the

106 Ibid.

107 Singh and Scott, Collected Writings, xviii. Singh and Scott’s compilation is the most comprehensive collection of Thurman’s writings available; in it, Aunt Hagar’s Children is published for the first time.

108 Thurman to Rapp, n.d. Copy in the possession of authors. Thurman wrote to Rapp, “I announced in my letter to you the other day that I intended to finish Harlem. I have. The entire thing has gone to my typist.You shall have it soon as she finishes her work.”

109 Van Notten, Wallace Thurman’s, 245.

110 Singh and Scott, Collected Writings, 157.

111 Wallace Thurman, “Quoth Brigham Young,” 235.

same article, Thurman exclaimed: “Thus is Utah burdened with dull and unprogressive Mormons, with more dull and speciously progressive Gentiles, with still more dull and speciously progressive Negroes. Everyone in that state seems to be more or less of a vegetable, self-satisfied and complacent.”112 He concluded with the sentiment that Utah was, at least, “not worse than some of its nearby neighboring states, which being the case the fates were not so unkind after all—I might have been born in Texas, or Georgia, or Tennessee, or Nevada, or Idaho.”113

In May 1934, Thurman returned to Harlem from California. Though he was very ill, Thurman went on one last drinking binge with his Harlem friends. He collapsed in the middle of the reunion party and was taken to City Hospital on Welfare Island, New York. That September, Walter Winchell noted in his New York Daily Mirror Broadway gossip column that Thurman had “been at the city hospital on Welfare Island for several months. . . . He once did a book called ‘The Interne,’ which many think bombasts the very hospital in which ironically he now finds himself.” 114 After spending six months in the hospital, Thurman died from tuberculosis on December 22, 1934. His funeral services were held in New York City on Christmas Eve, and he was then buried in Silver Mount Cemetery, Staten Island, New York. On the day of Thurman’s funeral, a brief article entitled “Negro Novelist Dies in Gotham” appeared in the Salt Lake Telegram. In addition to describing the circumstances of his death and listing a few of his editorial and literary works, the article claimed Wallace Thurman as a “Former Salt Laker.”115

Today, critics present varied opinions of Thurman’s contribution to the Harlem Renaissance. Some argue that he had a slight impact on the movement. Thurman’s contemporary, Langston Hughes, wrote in his autobiography:

112 Ibid., 236. This article includes other tidbits of information about blacks in Utah. Thurman noted that one seldom saw a person of color in Salt Lake City because the black population was not centralized. However, in Ogden, one often saw people of color because they lived in “the ghetto” around the railroad yards. He claimed that the only black institutions of note were the deluxe gambling clubs and whore houses in Salt Lake City and Ogden, including “three super-bawdy houses that I know of, where white ladies of joy with itching palms cavorted for the pleasure of black men only.”

113 Ibid. Thurman’s August 1929 letters to Rapp conveyed a sense of the isolation he felt in Utah and the circumstances of his grandparents’ lives. On August 13, he wrote, “I feel fine physically, and only wish I was out of Salt Lake. It is damn lonesome here, there being no one here of interest. I spent the weekend on a friend’s fruit farm, but did little work. It being much nicer to lounge around in the shade and watch the others. I did enjoy feeding the pigs, chickens, rabbits, and ducks. And oh how I devoured freshly picked fruit.” In another letter, Thurman noted that, “Before my grandfather went away he fixed up the screen porch on the rear of the house for me. I have my bed, my books and all out in the open. Hence I can type without disturbing any all night if I wish and I am sleeping and writing in the open. I feel like a million dollar McFadden disciple.” Singh and Scott, Collected Writings, 156–57, 159.

114 Walter Winchell, “BROADWAY GOSSIP: Memos of a Columnist’s Girl Friday,” New York Daily Mirror, September 26, 1934. After doing the research at Welfare Island hospital for The Interne, Thurman vowed that he would “never set foot again in the place.” Klotman, “Wallace Henry Thurman,” 273.

115 “Negro Novelist Dies in Gotham,” Salt Lake Telegram, December 24, 1934.

Thurman had also felt that he was merely a journalistic writer. His critical mind, comparing his pages to the thousands of other pages he read, by Proust, Melville, and Tolstoy, found his own pages vastly wanting. So he contented himself by writing a great deal for money, laughing bitterly at his fabulously concocted “true stories,” creating two bad motion pictures of the “Adults Only” type for Hollywood, drinking more and more gin, and then threatening to jump out of windows at people’s parties and kill himself.116

Others applaud Thurman for making the reading public aware of issues relevant not only to African Americans but to America at large that might otherwise have been ignored. The literary critic Mae Gwendolyn Henderson writes, “His significance far exceeds the work he left behind, not only was he tremendously influential upon the young and perhaps the more successful writers of the period, but his life itself became a symbol of the New Negro Movement.” 117 In recent years his books have been reprinted, and many journal articles, theses, and doctoral dissertations have been written about him and his work.

While scholarly interest in Thurman as a Harlem writer has burgeoned, he nevertheless remains a little-known figure in Utah’s history. His name commonly appears on lists of significant Harlem figures, but rarely turns up on lists of famous Utahns. The mention of his name in Salt Lake City still tends to evoke the response: “Who the hell is Wallace Thurman?” 118 However, in March 2010 Wallace Thurman made a brief but shining return to his home city, appearing in one of twelve portraits of "Uconoclasts” (“literary icons with Utah connections”) displayed at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center in Salt Lake City.119 In conjunction with this exhibit, the Plan-B Theatre Company performed Wallace, which merged Debora Threedy’s one-act play Where I Come From (the story of Wallace Stegner) with Jenifer Nii’s one-act play Fire! (the story of Wallace Thurman).120 In her review of Wallace, Barbara Bannon describes how Nii’s script captures the essence of this long-neglected writer, portraying him just as he was: “an outsider—a ‘black pioneer in a strange white land’—steadfastly searching and eventually finding a place to express his artistic voice in the Harlem Renaissance.” Appropriately, “Thurman's abiding symbol is fire: a flame that flares, flashes brilliance, then spends itself too soon.”121

116 Hughes, Big Sea, 235.

117 Henderson, “Portrait,” 147, 289.

118 Jerry Rapier—the director of Plan-B Theatre Company’s production of Wallace—recalls thinking this when Ken Sanders, the owner of a Salt Lake City bookstore, first mentioned Wallace Thurman to him. Roxana Orellana, “Plan-B Theatre: Two Paths Diverged—Then United in ‘Wallace,’” Salt Lake Tribune, February 27, 2010.

119 Ben Fulton, “Twelve Scribes of Utah: Exhibition Reveals State’s Literary ‘Uconoclasts,’” Salt Lake Tribune, February 27, 2010.

120 Barbara M. Bannon, “A Tale of Two Wallaces,” Salt Lake Tribune, March 5, 2010.

121 Ibid.

Murder and Mapping in “The Land of Death,” Part II: The Military Cantonment in Monticello

By rOBErT S. MCPhErSON, KEVIN CONTI, AND GAry WEICKS

In April 1884, Navajos killed two prospectors—Samuel T. Walcott and James McNally—in the vicinity of Navajo Mountain.1 These deaths were part of a string of other violent events in the region. Circumstances contributed plenty of reason for trouble: the increasingly settled nature of southeastern Utah, including three large cattle companies andMormon (Bluff) and non-Mormon (Aneth and Montezuma Creek) farms on the San Juan River; the expanding livestock industry of the Navajo; and the shrinking land base for the Utes. A local constabulary force composed primarily of volunteers in Bluff hardly proved adequate to confront large groups of armed men bent on theft, harassment, and murder. That job fell most often to a military force at times stymied by local conditions. The deaths of Walcott and McNally, along with a host of other incidents, encouraged the military to look for a longterm solution to the violence.

Fort Lewis near Durango, Colorado, had for four years provided mobile infantry and

Blue Mountain attracted Native Americans, miners, cattle companies, and settlers who sought resources in the high country desert. At the mountain’s southern base, the military considered establishing a fort.

Robert S. McPherson is professor of history at Utah State University, Blanding Campus, and is on the Utah Board of State History.

Kevin Conti recently graduated from Utah State University with an associate degree and certificate in Native American Studies; he is currently enrolled in the archaeology program of New Mexico State University. Kevin wishes to thank Dr. Charles Peterson for providing a scholarship that assisted in the preparation of this article.

Gary Weicks is an independent regional historian specializing in Native American and military history. He has worked extensively with government agencies on historical and archaeological research and has authored a variety of books and articles.

1 See the first article in this two-part series: Robert S. McPherson, “Murder and Mapping in ‘The Land of Death,’ Part I: The Walcott–McNally Incident,” Utah Historical Quarterly 81, no. 3 (Summer 2013): 249–66.

cavalry forces to patrol the region and react to volatile situations. Although military officers and agents involved in the area were concerned with the doings of different Indian groups, they were not blind to the activities of the cattlemen, who were often more truculent than the Native Americans or settlers. Each of these groups depended on grass, water, and other resources for their own purposes.Conflict appeared inevitable. For example, the Beaver Creek incident in southwestern Colorado erupted in 1885 when cowboys massacred four men, two women, and a child in a peaceful Ute hunting camp. Naturally, retaliation came quickly. In this case, with a military presence nearby, what could have been a large-scale war turned into an abbreviated conflict soon settled. However, in more remote areas such as southeastern Utah, events could escalate rapidly, and with plentiful and easily accessible escape routes, miscreants soon disappeared. An informed military presence on the ground, with personnel who knew the lay of the land, could provide a strong deterrent to problems while decreasing the travel time for response. The possibility of creating this presence needed to be investigated.

A sidelight of the Walcott-McNally incident was that of jurisdictional control. Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico were still territories that depended upon the strong arm of the federal government to influence issues too big for their own fledgling power. In the West, the Army filtered its tasks through two large entities—Division of the Missouri, headquartered in Saint Louis, and Division of the Pacific in San Francisco. Geographically, this put the Four Corners area at the extreme end of each jurisdiction. Departments subdivided the divisions. The Department of the Missouri ranged over Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico; the Department of the Platte held responsibility for Iowa, Nebraska, Utah, Wyoming, and parts of Montana and the Dakotas; the Department of California, one of two in the Pacific Division, controlled California, Nevada, and Arizona.2 What this meant for operational integrity was that three different departments held responsibility for some part of the Four Corners territory, and for all of them, this area was at their extreme limits. Southeastern Utah was about as far away from the geographic center of the three commands as one could get.

For this general reason and in response to a host of specific incidents, military planners toyed with the idea of establishing a permanent military presence in southeastern Utah. If created, it would complement the efforts of Fort Lewis in Colorado and a number of posts in New Mexico where officials had their hands full keeping track of various Native American groups, including the Navajo and Apache. By placing a fort or cantonment in this area, the soldiers could cover a wide geographic region—the “land

2 Robert M. Utley, Frontier Regulars, the United States Army and the Indian, 1866–1891 (New York: Macmillan, 1973), 14–15.

of death” as one Indian agent called it—and get it mapped and controlled. Since this area technically was the responsibility of the Department of the Platte but was often covered on the ground by cavalry and infantry from Fort Lewis under the direction of the Department of the Missouri, some jurisdictional definition was in order. When incidents included northern Arizona, technically a third party entered in—the Department of California. Somehow, the “Dark Corner” needed to have some light shined in it.

Forty-three citizens from both Colorado and Utah urged through petition in August 1885 that the lands of southeastern Utah be placed under the Department of the Platte to supplement the protection provided by the soldiers at Fort Lewis.3 A second petition from San Juan County, Utah, followed that October.4 As different incidents occurred in 1885, the military decided to act by sending two officers from Fort Douglas in Salt Lake City to determine the feasibility of establishing a post and mapping the area. Officials at Fort Douglas issued Order Number 200, which initiated a small reconnaissance mission that brought Lieutenant Colonel N. W. Osborne and First Lieutenant R. R. Stevens of the Sixth Infantry into southeast Utah. The two spent twenty-eight days on horseback researching the possibility of some type of installation and providing information to assist in determining whether the area should fall under the departmental jurisdiction of the Platte or the Missouri.

On September 25, 1885, the two men left Salt Lake City aboard the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad (D&RG), headed to the station at Green River, Utah (then known as Blake), where they hired a guide with pack animals. From there it was on to the budding town of Moab, which boasted a saloon on each side of the street, encouraging a rough environment with its fair share of outlaws.5 Before reaching Moab, the officers crossed the Colorado River on a ferry for a fee of four dollars. There was plenty of room—the twenty-eight-foot craft was large enough to transport a dismantled wagon and five horses. From Moab the pair traveled south, stopping to assess a possible location for a post near Blue Mountain (known also as the Abajo Mountains), thence to Bluff City, on to Fort Lewis, and ultimately back to Salt Lake City.

As the two men traveled, they observed Navajos heading north to trade with Utes, Mormons picking up newly arrived settlers at Thompson

3 Citizens of La Plata and Dolores Counties, Colorado, and San Juan County, Utah, to Secretary of the Interior, August 13, 1885, Letters Received—Adjutant General’s Office, 1881–1889, Record Group 94, National Archives, Washington, D.C. (hereafter cited as Letters Received—AGO).

4 San Juan County, Utah, to Assistant Adjutant General, Department of the Platte, October 1885, Letters Received—AGO.

5 Faun McConkie Tanner, The Far Country: A Regional History of Moab and La Sal,Utah (Salt Lake City: Olympus, 1976), 148. The William McCarty family were numbered among the outlaws in the region. The McCartys had been involved in the 1874 killings of three young Navajos and had at times ridden with Butch Cassidy. They settled in nearby La Sal, where they plied their trades of cattle rustling and legitimate ranching. See Richard A. Firmage, A History of Grand County (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society and Grand County Commission, 1996), 159–60.

Station on the D&RG, and possible sites with water for a cantonment. On October 7 they stayed in the Mormon settlement of Bluff. Here they talked with Utes and Navajos, the latter enjoying profitable sales of mutton and wool. Osborne wrote that the Navajos were inclined to petty theft of small items, while the Utes were honest but preyed upon range stock in revenge for having lost much of their hunting and gathering land in that vicinity. The leader of this group, Mancos or “Winchester” Jim, had a following of thirty to forty men who were no strangers to Navajo Mountain during times of trouble. Mancos Jim was well known for his involvement in the fight against the military and civilian factions, and he became the symbol of Ute and Paiute resistance to white encroachment in the area. As the two officers continued toward Colorado, they noted eight deserted homesteads where both farming and ranching had been practiced. Flooding and Indian pressures had caused the abandonment of these homesteads since many of the Native Americans resented the loss of land and were anxious to take in payment what the settlers owned.6

Mancos Jim, or “Winchester,” in the 1890s. Mancos Jim participated in the Pinhook Draw and Soldier Crossing fights of the 1880s while defending his land against white invaders. He was known for his bravery and leadership, and he was a constant thorn in the side of those settling the region.

This quick tour provided further encouragement for some type of military force stationed in the region. The reasons for this establishment hinged on a number of factors reported by Osborne and Stevens. First, Ute and Paiute “renegades” of southeastern Utah were preying on herds of cattle owned by non-Mormon ranchers. The massacre along Beaver Creek in Colorado that year had led to more violence and increased tension. The

6 Nathaniel W. Osborne, “Official Report,” October 26, 1885, Records of the Consolidated Ute Indian Agency, Record Group 75.19.17, Denver Federal Records Center, Denver, Colorado.

ranchers wanted more protection, so they provided the main voice calling for some type of bulwark against depredation—not to mention that more soldiers would mean increased sales. Perhaps these sales would offset some of the ranchers’ loss of cattle to the Indians, estimated by some as ten percent of their herd. In addition, friendly relations among Mormons and Indians gave rise to the suspicion that the two groups were working against the non-Mormons, another point of tension. Many Coloradoans wished to see all Utes removed from their state and pushed into Utah, while others wanted to decrease the presence of Navajos on the land. In summarizing the need for a post, Osborne concluded:

The wish for a new military post in the Blue Mountain region is generally entertained by non-Mormon interests. Difficulty of access in winter leaves the country unvisited by government forces during a large part of the year—control of trails west and southwest of the Blue Mountain, are little known except by Indians. The reported disaster in the vicinity of Blue Mountain [Soldier Crossing] and limited supply of water, easily within the control of Indians are reasons for establishing a post.7

Osborne went on to comment that the Indians also needed to be protected from white neighbors infringing on their lands. A continuous military presence would reduce the tension “growing out of the conflicting passions, prejudices, and greed of two races.” If the government decided to place an installation in this region to control the “comparatively unknown section of southeastern Utah and adjacent parts of Colorado,” then Blue Mountain offered the best location. “From there it is practicable to reach the San Juan settlements south and the Indian strongholds and trails west and southwest.” In terms of logistics, water ran the entire year in the North Fork of Montezuma Creek at the southeastern base of the mountain; during summer months, Fort Lewis could provide the region with supplies and troops, and with the railroad stop at Thompson, necessities and personnel could be transported by wagon, horseback, and ferry twelve months of the year. In conclusion, “southeastern Utah can be as effectively controlled in a military sense by the Department of the Platte as by the Department of the Missouri.”8

By March 1886 the military decided to send troops from Fort Douglas to see just how busy they would be if a permanent garrison were to be stationed in southern Utah. Planners hesitated to make a full-blown commitment, given the recent problem with the creation of Fort Thornburg, also in Utah, a few years earlier. Established in the Uinta Basin in September 1881, moved to a new spot in less than a year, then permanently abandoned a little more than a year later, that fort represented what the military wanted to avoid.9 With a constantly shrinking budget, planners

7 Ibid.

8 Ibid.

9 David L. Schirer, “Fort Thornburgh,” in Utah History Encyclopedia, ed. Allan Kent Powell (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1994), 201–202.

wished to ensure that their expenditures were meaningful and somewhat permanent. What had appeared as a necessity for Fort Thornburg had quickly become unnecessary. A good summer test for a Blue Mountain post would be worth the effort in the long haul. On April 7, 1886, the military issued the order sending units to southeastern Utah, charging both the departments of the Platte and the Missouri to provide detachments of soldiers.10

The men and officers coming from Fort Douglas faced many challenges. On June 2, 1886, the men of D Company, Sixth Infantry, completed their 220-mile ride on the D&RG from Fort Douglas in Salt Lake City to Thompson Springs, Utah. Their mission was twofold: maintain peace among contentious factions of Utes, Navajos, cowboys, and settlers and map a little-known section of country. To do so, they came well equipped—perhaps too much so—since their first official act after reassembling wagons and loading them was to leave grain, tents, ammunition, and hospital supplies behind with the stationmaster and “boarding mistress” at Thompson Springs. This was the first of a number of subsequent caches made before they reached their destination on the southeast side of Blue Mountain, eighty miles away.11

The first day’s march of nineteen miles, an average distance for soldiers, brought the men to Court House Rock, where they enjoyed a large spring of water, plentiful grazing for the animals, and abundant clumps of sagebrush for fuel. After a good night’s rest, the cavalcade started on the road again, this time covering only twelve miles before the real work began. Once they neared Moab, a wheel on the escort wagon broke, they encountered a creek swollen to five feet deep, and they saw that the widebased wagons would have a difficult time maneuvering the rough, curving road beyond. After wasting a day to see if the creek’s waters would subside, the command decided to transport the supplies across a half load at a time, float the empty wagons, and then move beyond to the ferry that traversed the wider Colorado River.

The roiling waters of the Colorado River ran high from melting snow in the Rockies that time of year. At 6:00 a.m. on June 6, the soldiers began crossing the fast-moving river just north of Moab. By 8:15 a.m. a third trip began with Captain D. H. Murdock, the company commander, and six other men working the ferry attached to a cable that spanned the river. Frightened mules aboard the vessel shuffled about, shifted their weight, and rocked the boat and its pulley system. Murdock, at the bow, attempted to muscle the main rope in order to prevent the ferry from becoming swamped; then, without warning, the rope snapped, sending him into the

10 William T. Sherman to Commanders of Department of the Platte and of the Missouri, April 7, 1886, Letters Received—AGO.

11 C. G. Morton to Adjutant General, Department of the Platte, June 25, 1886, Letters Received— AGO.

river still holding the end of the parted rope attached to the cable. The commander desperately tried to pull himself up to the wire, but the current proved too swift, forcing him to let go of the rope. Down the Colorado River he swam, trying to reach the now sinking craft, but 150 yards of struggle proved too much, and the raging brown torrent claimed him and 2,000 pounds of goods as its own. He left behind a wife, who received small comfort from the $5,000 provided her as the beneficiary of a life insurance policy.12

Second Lieutenant C. G. Morton, now in command of fifty-eight men, needed guidance. He left immediately for the telegraph key at the Thompson Springs station, arriving at nine in the evening. The next day, after receiving orders at four o’clock p.m. to proceed with the mission, Morton made an all-night ride back to his men as their newly appointed leader. This was hardly an auspicious start for a company ordered to bring peace to a troubled corner of the Colorado Plateau. Morton arrived at the river on June 8, happy to find that his soldiers had taken the initiative to repair the ferry. Wasting no time, he began the transfer of supplies across the high water, limiting loads to no more than three mules at a time, a process that occupied most of the day. Even though Moab lay only a short two miles away, the soldiers pitched camp on the south bank of the river and spent the night. By now it was apparent that the expedition needed to shed more excess weight; accordingly, the group left part of its ten-thousand-

This later version of the Moab ferry on the Colorado River is reminiscent of the ferry where Captain D. H. Murdock lost his life.

UTAh STATE hISTOrICAL SOCIETy

round allocation of ammunition and a broken wagon in Moab before continuing south on the first ten miles of good road. Eventually, however, the “thoroughfare” changed to loose sand, rocks, and sharp sliding curves, which necessitated making another cache of 250 pounds of grain. In flat, open terrain the oversized army wagons with their long wheelbase and sixmule teams worked well, but once steep hills and narrow canyons had to be traversed, manhandling and roping the wagons reduced the rate of travel to a crawl.13

On June 11 the party reached Hatch’s Cabin on the floor of Dry Valley. There they encountered a cowboy, in the employ of the Carlisle Cattle Company, who feared that Mancos Jim and his men were in the vicinity. There had been no killing or stealing, but these Indians were “armed to the teeth and very impudent when spoken to.”14 Signal fires between the La Sal and Blue Mountains provided another indicator of Indian presence, but not until sixteen Southern Utes under their leader “Erny” or “George” visited the encampment did the soldiers see their adversary in the flesh. This band was en route to Blue Mountain on a hunting expedition. The leader, George, “has a good command of the English language; he is friendly, tall and wears a wreath of leaves upon his head,” but he worried what the soldiers’ intent toward his people might be. Morton explained his reason for being there, saying that he did not view the Utes as hostile; the two groups peacefully went their different ways.15

Not as much could be said for a gang of six to twelve whites who had been on a horse-stealing spree that ranged from Dove Creek, Colorado, to Bluff, Utah. Morton learned that a posse of cowboys and Mormons led by the San Juan County sheriff was pursuing the horse thieves. Earlier, the gang had taken refuge in an Anasazi ruin forty miles northwest of Bluff, fired upon their pursuers, killed one man, and dispersed the rest. The sheriff was now continuing the chase, supplemented by a fresh posse of Carlisle’s cowboys.16

Meanwhile, for Morton’s soldiers, the next day started with the caching of another 250 pounds of supplies and the shearing off of another wagon wheel a few yards out of camp. Although this expedition was supposed to

13 Ibid.

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid.

16 Ibid. Albert R. Lyman, a local San Juan historian, has twice discussed the murder of Bill Ball, the foreman of the L. C. Cattle Company. Lyman provides some clarification, although he also has some variance. In his Indians and Outlaws: Settling of the San Juan Frontier (Salt Lake City: Publishers Press, 1980), 75–78, he tells of three thieves who killed Ball near what is today’s Dead Bull Flat, fifteen miles northwest of Bluff, while in his unpublished manuscript, “The History of San Juan County, 1879–1917” (Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah), 46–49, he gives more detail and claims there were four desperados. The report by Lieutenant Morton was the prevailing wisdom of the time, based on the current, but perhaps not as accurate, information of what he had been told. Regardless of the number of miscreants or the exact location of where Ball died, the issue of lawlessness was a concern that most people shared at that time.

Wooden wagons, wheels, and axles meant that freighting in canyon country was fraught with difficulties. The transportation of goods from the railroad station in Thompson, Utah, to Blue Mountain, over eighty miles of crude wagon trails, took a heavy toll on people, animals, and equipment.

have received the best wagons Fort Douglas had to offer, wheel-related problems plagued the group from the beginning. Close inspection showed that most of the wagon axles contained cracks that had previously been repaired. By the time the soldiers reached Peters Hill (eight miles north of current day Monticello), they were carrying 350 pounds of grain per mule. Although the command had discarded food and equipment all along the route, the wagons still had to leave half of their cargo at the base of Peters Hill so that the men could pull the half-filled wagons up with ropes. On June 13, the soldiers reached the North Fork of Montezuma Creek below the southeast face of Blue Mountain, prompting Morton to send retrieval parties back along the trail to secure cached supplies and bring them to camp. The main party established a camp in the vicinity of what would later be named Soldiers Spring, very near the present town of Monticello.

On June 20, 1886, the Blue Mountain force met with Captain Edward Thomas, D Troop, Fifth Cavalry, who had traveled from Fort Riley, Kansas, by rail to Durango, Colorado, and later to the camp in Utah. D Troop’s primary assignment was to watch for trouble in southwestern Colorado but also cooperate with Morton should conflict arise, joining forces as necessary.17 Both officers agreed that the Utes and Navajos were peaceful. Even Mancos Jim—who seemed to be everyone’s concern, given his past

56,

3, 1886,

17 Special Orders Number

June

Headquarters Department of the Missouri, Letters Received—AGO.

reputation—had moved his band of 120 people away from Blue Mountain when Morton arrived and was now on the San Juan River, amiably trading and making his way east. Captain Thomas reported: “The Indians know that troops are out and will not commit any overt acts unless attacked by cowboys. . . . They will carefully avoid injuringany person unless in retaliation for injuries inflicted upon some one of their number.” Cowboys from various ranching outfits were in the midst of the roundup season, too busy to bother the mobile Indian groups, given that approximately 50,000 head of cattle, 30,000 of which belonged to the Carlisle outfit, were spread from Fort Lewis west to Blue Mountain, south to the San Juan River, and throughout southwestern Colorado. Thomas concluded his report by stating he did not anticipate any trouble for the rest of the summer and that the army’s current position at Blue Mountain provided the optimal location to conduct military operations if necessary.18

As the potential of Indian problems faded due to the military presence, it was time to begin initial reconnaissance of the area west of the encampment in the terra incognita. Ever since the birth of the Corps of Topographical Engineers in 1813, the army had an internal organization to assist its efforts in exploration and mapmaking. Army cartographers took into account many considerations that might otherwise be disregarded on civilian maps. The military required a detailed visual representation of the lay of the land to prevent poor planning, mistakes in maneuvers, and errors in logistical support on unfamiliar terrain. Those units that chased Navajos and Utes through canyon country had no doubt about the necessity of this type of accuracy. Mapmakers at the time used an aneroid barometer to measure ascent or descent of a hill and to obtain a reasonable estimate of altitude; they calculated distance through horse paces, which proved fairly accurate. Hachured lines indicated slope and fall line where steep. Proficient mapmakers were often talented artists who made preliminary sketches from the saddle, later adding watercolor washes to represent different terrain features.19 While no description of the process that Lieutenant Morton used remain extant, his exploratory travel began the collection of necessary information.

On July 3 Morton, accompanied by a sergeant and a private, set out on a journey of two hundred miles. The small party headed southwest, hugging the base of Blue Mountain, to Recapture Creek, reaching the mouth of Cottonwood Canyon, and eventually crossing Elk Mountain (now known as Elk Ridge). The men spent the next two days exploring the terrain to the west and traveling on two different Indian trails. (Two years earlier, Captain Henry P. Perrine had fatefully followed a similar direction along

18 E. D. Thomas to Assistant Adjutant General, Department of the Missouri, July 13, 1886, Letters Received—AGO.

19 Earl B. McElfresh, Maps and Mapmakers of the Civil War (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1999), 32–33.

one of these trails.) These two trails, which began near a rock formation on Elk Ridge known as the Bears Ears, were supposed to lead to the Colorado River, but soon faded out. After numerous attempts at navigating through confounding topography, Morton and his men took an alternate route but never reached the river. Glad to be out of the canyons, they now rode atop a mesa but soon realized that traveling through a dense juniper and piñon forest could be just as confusing. The party, blocked and disoriented for part of

This image, which is a small portion of a much larger map drawn by Stevens in 1886, provides good historical information about San Juan County. The Soldiers Spring encampment was located in the canyon projecting north of Abajo Peak, where a stream and two roads converge.

a day, eventually reached Elk Ridge. Morton’s group re-crossed Elk Ridge and took what was then called the Settlement Road into Bluff. There, with their mounts fed and rested, the party mingled among Indians and settlers collecting information.20

For Morton, reaching the Colorado River via Elk Mountain had been a major objective; because he did not obtain this goal, the area required further exploration and mapping. However, this trip did yield some important points for future travelers. Chief among these was the crucial knowledge of the location of “tanks,” hollow pockets in sandstone that trap valuable rainwater from summer storms. Unless a person was intimately familiar with the land, there was no predicting the tanks’ locations; only a sure knowledge would do. The complexity of the canyons and box canyons that run in all directions mired many travelers in a morass of rock that seemed impenetrable. Morton emphasized that the terrain—with its sand, canyon mazes, dead ends with drop-offs, and limited springs—severely hampered normal travel time.21

From July to October, more reconnaissance followed, so that by the end of the summer a final report could give a far more complete description.22 Morton and two other lieutenants—R. R. Stevens and William P. Burnham, who were assigned to help with mapping—conducted much of this exploration. Along with six privates, these three officers investigated the areas between the San Juan River and Colorado River confluence and between the White Canyon and the Recapture Creek drainages, as well as north and east of Blue Mountain.23 Morton, synthesizing the information he and the others found, correctly summarized what numerous fights had proven:

The country between Elk Ridge and the Colorado is a natural Indian stronghold, and in my opinion, is the place to which the Indians would go in case of hostilities. . . . If the Indians were hard pressed in the country I have mentioned, they could go into Arizona, slip back to their reservation or cross the Colorado. The country on the west side of the river is said to be quite as rough as that on the east.24

However, unlike Osborne and Stevens in their 1885 report, Lieutenant Morton felt there was no necessity for a post, only a spring-to-fall encampment,since substantial conflict seemed only to occur during that time of year. He believed that it was the Mormons, not the cowboys, who wanted a post, to which they could sell their products. The cowboys, on the other hand, thought a post would ruin their ranges as it attracted more settlers and would also expose their illicit activities.

20 Morton to Assistant Adjutant General, Department of the Platte, July 15, 1886, Letters Received— AGO; Robert S. McPherson and Winston B. Hurst, “The Fight at Soldier Crossing, 1884: Military Considerations in Canyon Country,” Utah Historical Quarterly 70, no. 3 (Summer 2002): 258–81

21 Ibid.

22 C. G. Morton to Assistant Adjutant General, May 2, 1887, Letters Received—AGO.

23 “Record of Events,” Fort Douglas Post Returns, July 3–August 28, 1886, Fort Douglas, Salt Lake City, Utah.

24 Morton, “Report: Southeastern Utah,” April 30, 1887, Letters Received—AGO.

This 1909 view is one of the earliest available images of the Thompson Springs station. The railway was crucial to the development of southeastern Utah; the shady trees and comfortable housing in this photograph hide the fact that Thompson Springs was a desert outpost at the foot of the Book Cliffs.

But for a summer encampment, the best place was on the North Fork of Montezuma Creek, “near the place where the road from Moab to Bluff City crosses it,” on the outskirts of today’s Monticello. The reason: “Water and grass are plentiful and of good quality, the best of wood is in abundance nearby, either for fuel or building huts; it is as near the Indian strongholds as wagons can easily go; trails start from there to all points not reached by road; it is at the junction of roads from the north, east, and south so that information can be obtained concerning all parts of the country from Indians and whites passing through.” Morton felt that a company of soldiers stationed there would provide a sufficient force, and at least some food could be obtained locally for men and horses. The area also offered good places to locate a heliograph station—that is, a station where flashes of sunlight reflecting off a mirror could transmit Morse code.

Morton’s primary logistical concerns centered on access to and supplies for the proposed camp.25 The route from Thompson Station to Moab in the 1880s was less than favorable. Quickly falling rain, which the ground could not absorb, created flash floods and turned Courthouse Wash from bone-dry one minute to nine feet deep with water the next. (The wash continued to stymie travelers until 1915, when an eighty-five-ton steel superstructure, supported by eighteen-foot pilings, provided a safer means to negotiate the streambed.)26 Next, there was the crossing of the Colorado River. Morton thought the heavy freight wagons too big for the available craft, posing problems with safety and efficiency; even if there were a bigger ferry, large wagons were not maneuverable enough for the terrain beyond. Smaller

25 Ibid. 26

“The Crossing at Courthouse Wash—A Year Ago and Now,” Grand Valley Times (Moab, UT), October 15, 1915.

wagons with a shorter wheel base and four-mule teams were more suited to negotiate the steep slopes and sharp curves encountered south of Moab. The downside to these smaller wagons was their limited carrying capacity. Another logistical challenge was obtaining enough food for men and feed for horses to support field operations for an infantry company. Hay was not cut locally until August, while wheat, oats, and barley were not available until September. The road from Moab was so rough that in order to transport hay it would have to be baled; in 1886, hay cost twenty dollars per ton, delivered. An easier route of travel did not require baling, saving additional costs and requiring only four to five days to get hay from suppliers in Mancos, Colorado. The same was true of food such as potatoes and vegetables, which commanded high prices but were more readily available from towns to the east. On the other hand, winter snow buried the toll road from Durango, making it inoperable until May, while the road from Moab was accessible year-round. For Morton and his group this year, that would not present a problem. They returned to Thompson Springs to take the train back on October 17 from their garrison duty on the North Fork of Montezuma Creek with “much valuable information obtained regarding this little known region.”27 His frequent reconnaissance during the summer had paid off with information never before obtained. Morton would not return to San Juan; instead, his career would take him to many other successful assignments.28 As for the soldiers from Fort Lewis, they returned to their post in November due to the buildup of ice on the roads, which threatened the packers’ ability to deliver food and supplies.29

Spring and summer 1887 brought a rash of new conflicts. Near Bluff, two Navajos killed Amasa Barton at his trading post along the San Juan River. One of the Indians was also killed, setting in motion a larger confrontation when sixty Navajos entered the town of Bluff and threatened the handful of men who protected a large number of women and children. Fortunately, Bishop Jens Nielson quieted the affair, solidifying the peace with a communal meal shared with the Navajos. 30 Mormon stake president Francis A. Hammond requested that troops be stationed nearby. A month later, with Mancos Jim and his band of Utes and Paiutes roaming Blue Mountain and a group of Southern Utes hunting there too, it was not surprising that when Henry Hopkins, a young cook for the George Brooks

27 “Report of Brigadier General Crook,” Headquarters Department of the Platte, August 27, 1887, Report of the Secretary of War, 1st Sess., 50th Cong. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1887), 1:133.

28 Charles Morton, a graduate from West Point (1883) went on to have a highly successful military career (1883–1925) and obtained the rank of colonel. He served in such capacities as commander of the 1st Maine Volunteer Regiment (National Guard) during the Spanish-American War and instructor in the Army Staff College.

29 P. T. Swaine to Acting Adjutant General, November 5, 1886, Fort Lewis—Outgoing Correspondence #334, 1878–1891, Center of Southwest Studies, Fort Lewis College, Durango, Colorado.

30 See Robert S. McPherson, The Northern Navajo Frontier, 1860–1900: Expansion through Adversity (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2001), 73–74.

cattle outfit, was found dead with a hole in his back, the Indians took the blame. Some felt Hopkins had been a target for a wandering Indian, others pointed to a Navajo with whom he had argued, and still others suggested that lightning was the culprit. No blame was ever officially affixed, but the Utes still smarted from the Beaver Creek Massacre from two years before and were not friendly to cowboys roaming their territory. Harold Carlisle quickly posted letters to both the Ute agent and the military requesting troops. Colonel P. T. Swaine, Twenty-Second Infantry at Fort Lewis, dispatched a company of infantry on July 20 to the Blue Mountain area; three days later, he sent a second company to the San Juan River.31 If they accomplished little else, these troops would quash the rumor that a secret organization of white vigilantes was preparing to either kill or otherwise remove the Indians from the area.

While the Indians drew the most prolonged glance from the military, there was no missing the activities of the ranchers, Edmund and Harold Carlisle in particular. Captain J. B. Irvine, with thirty-eight men of Company A, Twenty-Second Infantry, camped on the North Fork of Montezuma Creek from July to September 5 at a site that received the name Soldiers Spring. Irvine soon reported that the two Carlisle brothers had set out to obtain “range for their cattle to the exclusion of all farmers, settlers, ranchmen or cattlemen” by fencing off large tracts of land to deny others any resources. “He [Edmund] has claimed through his numerous employees, lackeys, and henchmen . . . the best sections of pasture land where the grass is from two to three feet high and other fertile sections of country abounding in springs, timber, facilities for irrigation and other conveniences so attractive to farmers and settlers.”32 To enforce this intent, Carlisle had at his ranch what local historian Albert R. Lyman referred to at different times as a roost for evil birds or a lair for robbers, horse thieves, and other unscrupulous riff-raff.33 Criminals traveled from as far away as Texas to hide amidst the shadows of Blue Mountain, with its convenient escape hatches to the west that helped criminals melt into oblivion.

So when a group of Bluff Mormons began settling in South Montezuma Creek (now called Verdure, seven miles south of today’s Monticello) in May 1887, their newly established cabins and irrigation ditch were anything but welcomed. The LDS church had called these men to survey the future site of Monticello, a task they completed by July 7, 1887. They also surveyed an irrigation ditch for the anticipated town and started to divert the water from various creeks for their use. Much of this was in the territory claimed by the Carlisles. Since Harold Carlisle had assumed ownership of the area,

31 Charles F. Stollsteimer to Swaine, July 14, 1887; Swaine to Assistant Adjutant General, August 5, 1887, Letters Received—AGO.

32 J. B. Irvine to Commanding Officer, Fort Lewis, August 8, 1887, Letters Received—AGO.

33 Lyman, Indians and Outlaws, 100–13.

he gave the settlers ten days to skedaddle or else the cattlemen would “make it hot for them.”34 Seeking help from a Durango attorney and the military at Fort Lewis, the Mormons stood firm with quit-claim deed in hand. After imbibing some whiskey, a large group of cowboys rode to the fledgling settlement on South Montezuma, entering with guns ablaze. The Mormons refused to leave, ignoring the invitation for “You nesters [to] get the hell out of here, back to Bluff City, where you belong or we will move you, and in a rough way in four days.”35 But under the protection of the military camped at Soldiers Spring, the little group of colonizers not only stayed but also successfully returned the next year to found Monticello, eating crops they had stored in one of their cabins.36

Although no description exists of the soldiers’ camp, military practices of the day suggest that an average company had between thirty to forty men in the ranks. Six to eight men would usually share a tent, with separate tents for non-commissioned officers as well as officers. Thus Company A, Twenty-Second Infantry, commanded by Captain J. B. Irvine and stationed at Soldiers Spring, would have spent more than two months camped there in a cluster of approximately ten to twelve tents that also housed mess facilities and storage areas. From this cantonment, the spring received its name. Numerous shell casings reportedly found in the area by collectors suggest regular target practice; on Sunday afternoons, local Mormon families rested from their labors and went to the encampment to sell their produce and to watch the soldiers drill.37 Irvine returned with his unit to Fort Lewis sometime after October 1, 1887, as inclement weather approached.38 The soldiers’ presence had kept the cap on any confrontation between cowboys, Indians, and Mormons to the point that during the next year, 1888, the town of Monticello began its growth out of the sagebrush at the base of Blue Mountain.

The name of Soldiers Spring remained long after the dust settled from the last horse’s hoof. Today the area has a greatly reduced persistent spring with a grassy marsh land surrounding it. Much of the groundwater has either been diverted due to reservoir construction and new homes, or other water systems have lowered the aquifer and reduced its flow. Indeed, finding the spring today is somewhat of a challenge, but it is generally located northwest of today’s Hideout Golf Course on a bench in the sloping point between the North and South Creek forks of North Montezuma Creek. Exactly where the two camps of 1886 and 1887were located is still

34 Lyman, “History of San Juan County, 1879–1917,” 54–55.

35 Frank Silvey, “How Soldier’s Spring Got Its Name,” San Juan Record (Monticello, UT), August 13, 1936.

36 Harold George and Fay Lunceford Muhlestein, Monticello Journal: A History of Monticello until 1937 (Utah: printed by author, 1988), 11–12.

37 Ibid., 12.

38 W. Merritt to Assistant Adjutant General, October 1, 1887, Letters Received—AGO.

debatable, but most likely there was some activity in close proximity to the spring, possibly with a larger encampment on the more level area of the golf course.39 Collectors with metal detectors have long since stripped the area of its scattered military-issue bullet casings, but a few scattered bits of broken nineteenth-century bottles and severely rusted food can fragments remain, some of which may be refuse from the soldiers’ camp.

As with many findings in history, more questions are often raised than answered. At the head of a northern tributary of Grand Gulch sits a portion of the old Hole-in-the-Rock Trail, in close proximity to a watering place for livestock called the Cow Tanks. Lightly scratched on a rock in an alcove is the barely perceptible inscription of what appears to be “IW GRIM Co B 6 INF.” Hikers, archaeologists, and inscription-seekers have puzzled over the mystery of the epigraph’s author and date.40 Now that the involvement of the military at Soldiers Spring is better understood, its mission recognized, and its reason for traveling through the area identified, this inscription becomes an important reminder of the soldiers’ presence. The map produced from the 1886 summer reconnaissance shows Cow Tanks in direct proximity to the trail followed by Lieutenant Stevens’s mapping party when it passed through in late September or early October.

On January 22, 1884, twenty-one-year-old Isaac Grim walked into an army recruiting office in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, enlisted in the United States Army, and soon joined B Company, Sixth Infantry at Fort Douglas, Utah.41 Five feet, nine inches tall, with brown hair and a light complexion, Grim was a first-rate soldier, skilled horseman, and avid hunter and fisherman.On September 9, 1886, he and two other privates received detached service from their unit and were assigned to company D for field service in southeastern Utah. While no official report exists of Grim accompanying the mapping expedition led by Stevens, that officer did have two non-commissioned officers and six privates who traveled with him from the confluence of the Colorado and San Juan rivers through the Cow Tanks area, then to points north and east between August 28 and October 8.42 Grim’s inscription is located in the heart of the land under consideration at the time.

While in San Juan, this model soldier did well. In fact, his company commander, Stephen Baker, noted upon his return to Fort Douglas that Private Grim never caused any trouble. A year later, however, his life took a different course. On July 3, 1887, Grim was serving breakfast as part of his

39 Winston Hurst, discussion with authors, May 18, 2012.

40 The Wetherill-Grand Gulch Project team, using a method called “reverse archaeology” and led by Fred Blackburn in April 1990, discovered this inscription.

41 Isaac W. Grim, U.S. Army, Register of Enlistments, 1798–1914, accessed February 7, 2012, Ancestry.com.

42 Fort Lewis General Orders #165, September 18, 1886, Fort Lewis Military Correspondence— 1878–1891, Center of Southwest Studies; Fort Douglas Post Returns, “Records of Events,” October 17, 1886, Fort Douglas, Salt Lake City, Utah.

KP duty when a friend stopped by and invited him to go to the post trader’s store for a drink. Shortly after they arrived, the proprietor informed them that a corporal was hunting for the pair for shirking their duties. Already in trouble, the two men unwisely decided that a trip to the saloons of Salt Lake City was in order.43 Within twenty-four hours Grim and his associate became deserters. Three and a half months later, the army apprehended Grim in Provo, returned him and locked him in the post guard house, convened court martial proceedings, and sentenced him to two years at Fort Leavenworth.44 His mother had passed away when he was a young boy, so it was up to his father, Phillip Grim, who lived in West Virginia, to write letters requesting leniency for his son. 45 The military denied the requests, but released him a year early for good behavior then dishonorably discharged him.46

Grim’s inscription on an alcove wall in a tributary of Grand Gulch reminds all of us of the individual accounts of those who have gone before. The story of lowly Private Grim is just one of thousands of personal narratives of people who have come to canyon country and left little or no trace of their visit, but were still part of its history. Grim’s small inscription was the only thing that saved him from oblivion, and it now reminds us of events over 135 years ago, as soldiers set out to explore and map a land mostly unknown to them.

The trials of Private Grim, the deaths of Walcott and McNally, the origin of the name Atene, and the forgotten role of Soldiers Spring are all part of a larger history of a place no longer considered the “land of death.” Indeed, this land has become a mecca for tourists, backpackers, environmentalists, and others who marvel at the canyon country and scenic vistas as they breeze over the terrain in air-conditioned comfort. Gone are the days of difficult access to Navajo Mountain, with a paved road now leading to its base; the nagging problem of locating water in a high country desert; the animosity of different Native American cultures against outsiders taking their land; and cattlemen staking claims on resources to prevent settlement by farmers. Now only the names upon the land hint at what used to be.

43 Grim to the Members of General Court Martial, February 27, 1888, Letters Received—AGO.

44 Court Martial Orders, Headquarters Department of the Platte, Omaha, Nebraska, March 5, 1888, Letters Received—AGO.

45 Philip Grim to the Adjutant General, War Department, February 16, 1888, Letters Received—AGO.

46 Correspondence from Office of Commandant, U.S. Military Prison, Fort Leavenworth, to Adjutant Generals Office, Washington D.C., May 13, 1889, Letters Received—AGO.

BOOK REVIEWS

Dale Morgan on the Mormons: Collected Works Part 1, 1939–1951. Kingdom in

the West: The Mormons and the American Frontier, vol. 14. Edited by Richard L. Saunders. (Norman: Arthur H. Clark Company, 2012. 511 pp. Cloth, $45.00.)

THIS IS THE FIRST volume of a proposed two-volume set focused on the collected writings of Dale L. Morgan about the Mormons. Morgan (1914–1971) is perhaps best known for his books Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the West; The West of William H. Ashley; The Humboldt: Highroad of the West; The Great Salt Lake; and the two-volume set Overland in 1846: Diaries and Letters of the California-Oregon Trail. Morgan was also a major contributor to and editor of the Utah Historical Quarterly, volume nineteen (1951), West from Fort Bridger

Richard Saunders is an insightful editor, and he places Morgan’s writings within their context through careful arrangement and analysis. Saunders sets off the ten chapters detailing areas of Morgan’s research, writing, and interests with a discussion of editorial procedures and a biographical introduction to Morgan and his interest and involvement with the Latterday Saints. Saunders studied Morgan and his work for two decades with the intent of writing a biography. The editor acknowledges that, for him, Morgan’s work on the Mormons and the doctrine of the restoration “set the boundaries of Morgan’s intellectual approach to history. . . . The Mormons had been the magnet which attracted him to history in the first place, it was the realm in which his approach to history and historical method solidified, and Mormonism was a subject to which he tried vainly to return throughout his career” (17). In choosing what the two volumes about Morgan and the Mormons should contain, Saunders perused the seventy-six boxes and twenty-seven cartons of the Dale L. Morgan Papers at the Bancroft Library. Morgan’s research and writing is the focus of this book, but of perhaps equal importance are the comments and analysis put forward by Saunders as he looks over Morgan’s shoulder and dissects Morgan’s careful thinking.

Each of the ten chapters begins with an editor’s introduction. Some of Morgan’s work has been previously published, as with “Utah: A Guide to the State”; reviews of books by Richard Scowcroft, Maurine Whipple, Fawn Brodie, Virginia Sorenson, Wendell Ashton, and Samuel W. Taylor; and writings by Morgan for contract, including the Oliver Olney papers and James Strang papers. Morgan’s review of Brodie’s No Man Knows My History is of particular interest. Brodie identified Morgan in her acknowledgments as a friend whose “indefatigable scholarship in Mormon history” was of significant help and who “not only shared freely with me his superb library and manuscript files, but also went through the manuscript with

painstaking care”; to Brodie, Morgan was an “exacting historian and a penetrating critic” (Brodie, xiii).

Many chapters both have historical value and demonstrate Morgan’s perspective and careful scholarship: “Mormon Story Tellers,” “The Deseret Alphabet,” the editor’s introduction to The State of Deseret, the Danites in Mormon History in Missouri, and The Mormon Ferry on the North Platte: The Journal of William A. Empey (May 7–August 4, 1847).

The longest chapter, at about 150 pages, deals with Mormon bibliographiesand shows Morgan’s groundbreaking efforts to begin to gather all of the works dealing with early Mormonism in one bibliography. Morgan was an ambitious and prodigious pioneer in this effort, and Saunders’s volume detailing Morgan’s historical writings identifies Morgan and his work as foundational for all later Utah, western, and Mormon historians.

RICHARD W. SADLER  Weber State University

IN THE 1920s AND 1930s, many American artists looked to the “American Scene” for inspiration. Their subject matter was the people and places of the United States beyond cultural hothouses like New York City. Grant Wood, for example, famously painted Iowa. John Steuart Curry looked to Kansas while Thomas Hart Benton turned his attention to Missouri. Today we refer to their work and this inward impulse as “Regionalism”—a blanket term that requires as many variations as America has places.

Arguably the artist who best defined this style in Utah was the painter LeConte Stewart (1891–1990). In his foreword to LeConte Stewart Masterworks, publisher Gibbs Smith states that this text will “help further assert LeConte Stewart’s importance in the history of American Regionalist painting” (8). In many ways this book makes a strong argument for an increased visibility for Stewart and an elevated place for him within a broader and ever-expanding canon of American art. No other artist was as invested personally, financially, or spiritually in the Utah landscape as Stewart. From his home in Layton, he roamed the countryside of Davis, Weber, and Morgan counties for eight decades painting scenes that captured his eye. Employing an Impressionistic and tonalist style, Stewart emphasized the everyday over the iconic. According to Wallace Stegner, “the last thing Stewart can be accused of is prettification. The marks of human effort, ugly or otherwise, interest him.” 1 Masterworks primarily

LeConte Stewart Masterworks. By Mary Muir, Donna Poulton, Robert Davis, James Poulton, and Vern Swanson. (Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith, 2012. 304 pp. Cloth, $75.00.)

focuses on his paintings, drawings, and prints from around 1920 to 1940, when Stewart directed his attention not only on the weathered barns and humble farms of northern Utah, but also on urban scenes with their derelict storefronts, industry, and billboards. This body of work is his best. His 1937 painting of bindle-stiffs riding the rails, ironically titled Private Car, has been called the “finest picture ever painted by a Utahn, or in Utah.”2 Stewart was also an important teacher who trained generations of artists during his tenure at the University of Utah and through decades of private instruction.

Once again Gibbs Smith deserves praise for publishing a beautiful book. With over three hundred color plates from private and public collections, Masterworks extends the life of Stewart’s 2012 retrospective jointly held at the University of Utah Museum of Fine Art and the LDS Church History Museum. The book also features five essays from a variety of scholars, a majority of whom knew Stewart and included personal insight and anecdotes. In all, the essays provide an interesting window into the career and life of the artist. Among the topics explored in the essays are his educationand training, his troubled childhood and its losses, his spiritual attachment to the land, and the context of his art on a local and national stage. The challenge with this text, however, is that there is a lot of overlap and little coordination between essays. There are even contradictions. The most glaring and intriguing of these is the question of whether Stewart is or is not a Regionalist. Indeed, Stewart and his work are very different from Wood and Benton, but there were few as tied to a specific place and time as Stewart. Whether he was a regionalist, realist, or romantic, one thing is certain: Stewart captured the genius of place in Utah better than almost anyone else and that, if nothing else, needs to be recognized and appreciated. Is Masterworks enough to solidify his reputation on a broader stage? No, but it can help. Ultimately another text will be needed to more fully and evenly explore the depth of Stewart’s personality and creativity. Only then will we be able to more fully appreciate the Utah master, LeConte Stewart.

JAMES R. SWENSEN BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY

2

1

The

WHEN READERS OF WESTERN HISTORY consider significant names of the St. Louis fur trade, the Chouteaus, Manuel Lisa, and William

Wallace Stegner, “The Power of Homely Detail,” American Heritage 35, no. 5 (1985): 62.

Ibid.

Brothers Robidoux and the Opening of the American West. By Robert J. Willoughby. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2012. 252 pp. Cloth, $45.00.)

Ashley come readily to mind. Less well known, but as significant, was the Robidoux family. Joseph Robidoux and a son of the same name arrived in St. Louis from Canada in 1771. In the following years, the younger Joseph fathered six sons (including one named Joseph), all of whom became active in the westward expansion of the first half of the nineteenth century. The six Robidoux brothers are the focus of Robert J. Willoughby’s new study. A history of the Robidoux brothers and their contributions to western history has been slow in coming largely because of a lack of documents. The brothers were all literate, yet they left only a few records of their businesses and travels. Most of what can be gleaned of the Robidoux family comes from others’ mention of them. Willoughby, however, does an excellent job of piecing a history together from the meager records.

After a good introduction to the fur trade of the late eighteenth century, Willoughby details how three dates were significant to the West and the Robidoux family: in 1763, with the end of the French and Indian War, ownership of the land west of the Mississippi River transferred from the French to the Spanish; in 1783, the end of the American Revolutionary War marked the beginning of an American presence in the region; and in 1803, the Louisiana Purchase resulted in ownership by the young United States. The shifting ownership of St. Louis greatly impacted the French families of the city.

In the years prior to the War of 1812, Joseph Robidoux III and some of his five brothers traded extensively with the Native tribes of the lower Missouri. They went toe-to-toe with the Chouteaus and others, and they used every means possible to enhance and secure trade with Native people, including taking several “frontier wives.” In the succeeding years, they went beyond the fur trade, expanding into shipping and mercantile businesses.

Brothers Antoine and Lewis went to New Mexico in 1823. From there, they led trapping expeditions to Utah in 1824 and again in 1825, possibly in partnership with Etienne Provost. Later in the decade, they established Fort Uncompahgre on the Gunnison River in Colorado—the first trade fort west of the continental divide. Later, both Antoine and Lewis became active in politics in New Mexico.

The most famous of the six was Joseph III, the founder of the city of St. Joseph, Missouri. St. Joseph became the most-used jumping-off town for the western trails. Some years later, the brothers capitalized on the Oregon and California trail business by freighting and establishing a trading post at Scotts Bluff, Nebraska. Lewis became a leading citizen in southern California as he built a trading post and ranch on the Santa Ana River, not far from San Bernardino.

This study is well researched and written. Willoughby creates a distinctive biographical approach as he interweaves the business activities of the six

brothers and demonstrates their role in nearly every aspect of the West: participating in the fur trade, opening and operating trading posts, creating significant relationships with Native people, scouting, shipping and trading on overland routes, ranching, founding new towns, and pioneering trails.

The Brothers Robidoux is heartily recommended to all interested in the fur trade and in western history.

JOHN D. BARTON Utah State University–Uintah Basin

Shifting Borders and a Tattered Passport: Intellectual Journeys of a Mormon Academic By Armand L. Mauss (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2012. xvii + 258 pp. Cloth, $25.00.)

AMONG the Utah State Historical Society manuscript holdings of prominent Utah and Mormon historians are the sixty-one boxes that compose the Armand L. Mauss papers. Mauss was born in Utah but grew up in California. While completing a PhD in sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, Mauss taught for two years at Utah State University before moving to Washington State University. There he taught sociology and religious studies for thirty years until his retirement in 1999.

The author of numerous journal articles, Mauss is best known among Utah readers for his two books published by the University of Illinois Press, The Angel and the Beehive: The Mormon Struggle with Assimilation (1994) and All Abraham’s Children: Changing Mormon Conceptions of Race and Lineage (2003). The latter volume won the Mormon History Association’s Best Book Award in 2004. These groundbreaking books take up two fundamental questions that Mauss reintroduces in a much condensed and abbreviated version in this volume, namely, the apparent contradiction in the assimilation struggle for Mormons between “the external message . . . ‘We’re just patriotic Christians like most other Americans,’ [with] the internal message . . . ‘There is only one true church, and ours is it; don’t forget that!’” (91). The race questionis equally challenging, as Mauss finds, for past Mormon attitudes and practice, while no worse than those of other groups, were grounded neither in written scripture nor in latter-day revelation but “in the political, social, and cultural world in which the LDS Church evolved after the prophet [Joseph Smith’s] death” (112). Mauss offers his understanding of the revelatory process as one most often “informed by the research of experts and consultants, both from inside and outside the church itself” (45).

Shifting Borders and a Tattered Passport is a most appropriate title for a book that examines a life-long journey back and forth across the borders of

academic intellectualism and Mormon heritage. Picking up an analogy used by Neal A. Maxwell, an LDS leader and intellectual, Mauss explains that Jerusalem represented faith and scholarship while Athens was the center of secular scholarship, and, according to Maxwell, “LDS scholars should have our citizenship in Jerusalem and have a passport to Athens” (1). Indeed, Mauss has made a conscious decision to be a citizen of both realms. Choice, especially in matters of faith, is a universal guiding principle for all who possess a belief. Our choices create our realities and define the borders of our lives. If faith is “an active personal choice,” it is much more “than a passive acceptance of a religious tradition” (62).

Mauss recounts his early missionary service in New England, his work with American servicemen in Japan during the Korean conflict, and his subsequent activity in his local congregation as a Sunday school teacher and priesthood leader. At the invitation of LDS church general authorities, Mauss served on committees to help shape policy on such issues as retention, activity, and the evaluation of church programs. From time to time, church leaders checked his passport, and—while neither revoking nor restricting it—gave it close scrutiny. His accommodation with this reality and his own self-described libertarian streak brought him to a recognition “that the church is not a democracy and does not claim to be one. It is a corporate, centralized bureaucracy . . . with local leaders simply doing their best to cope with unpleasant responsibilities sometimes imposed on them by their roles” (189, 193). A lifetime of travel across this landscape took its toll on Mauss, leaving him with a concern that the Kleenex box has replaced the scriptures on the local church podium; a skepticism about the pronouncements of “true believers,” knowing that they may one day lose the faith; and a “disenthrallment” with the church and its leaders. But not all:Marlin K. Jensen, LDS Church Historian until 2012, whom Mauss describes as “a man without guile or pretense,” who “has proved to be a loyal and supportive friend” (171).

Other interesting elements of this book include discussions of the struggle to maintain Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought and of the recent trend in the establishment of Mormon Studies programs in higher education.

Armand Mauss will continue to be an important interpreter of Mormon history, and his Shifting Borders and a Tattered Passport provides an excellent introduction to the man and his ideas—well worth reading before taking on his two seminal monographs, Angel and the Beehive and All Abraham’s Children.

ALLAN KENT POWELL  Salt Lake City

Lost Canyons of the Green River: The Story before Flaming Gorge Dam. By Roy Webb. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2012. xviii + 158 pp. Paper, $21.95.)

TWENTY YEARS AGO, I stood on the cliffs next to the Dutch John boat ramp on Flaming Gorge Reservoir and peered into its depths. Locked in silence, the quartzite cliffs plunged almost straight down before my eyes, sinking into the depths of the near crystal clear waters until the view gradually faded into the darkness of the deep a hundred or more feet below. I stood looking on, struggling to see more and to conjure up in my mind that same scene but in a former time, thirty years earlier, before Red Canyon was covered by waters impounded by Flaming Gorge Dam. It was a prospect that only memory could summon, and it resides in the core of anyone who ever knew it.

I did see the “lost canyons of the Green,” if only briefly, when our family made several trips into the area just about the time that the keyway for Flaming Gorge Dam was being blasted into the canyon walls. From the time that I caught the first glimpse of this place, framed between pine trees clinging to canyon walls far above the river, its grandeur left me awash with excitement. From Cart Creek Bridge, built by the government to facilitate workers getting across the Green River and the maw of Red Canyon to Dutch John, I looked down on the free-flowing Green. I wondered about floating those waters and taking on the torrent some distance below. I looked upstream and down and questioned where this all began and where it ended. As I ate lunch in the shade of cottonwoods gracing the flat lands of Sheep Creek, my boyish mind turned to thoughts of ancient Indians roaming there; of mountain men, ranchers, and cowboys skirting the hills; and of outlaws hiding from the law. It truly was a magical place.

Roy Webb has written a book that is, in its own right, magical, a book that evokes in the interested reader a sort of visceral sense of the past and the look of the land and the people that once defined the lost canyons of the Green River, now buried under the waters of Flaming Gorge Reservoir. The history that blankets that former time and the legacy of its people will forever be captured and held within this book and its remarkablephotographs. Webb’s chapters take the reader through time and space, from the prehistoric era to the present. He created this account of the people and events that left their mark on a nearly forgotten land not just out of legend, but from the words of those who explored, lived, and died there. Lost Canyons of the Green is well documented. Additionally, Webb’s writing style is easy to read. Whether one is reading as someone who had the opportunity to experience the lost canyons in their natural state, or as someone learning about them for the first time, Roy Webb offers a realistic, factual, and yet compassionate history of a people and land that could not be given any less.

H. Bert Jenson  Utah State University–Uintah Basin

Dinéj7 Na`Nitin: Navajo Traditional Teachings and History. By Robert S. McPherson. (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2012. x + 287 pp. Paper, $24.95.)

THIS WORK by Robert McPherson draws on over thirty years of personal experience as a teacher of Navajo students and as a collector of oral histories from elder Navajos who were raised during the traditional times of the first third of the twentieth century. From his careful listening to Native voices, the author has developed a rare in-depth understanding of the Dinéworldview and it implications. The book interprets the traditional cultural teachings, including divination, prophecy, the role of witchcraft and evil, and the power of metaphorical thought within the Navajo (Diné) language. The main argument is that Navajo daily life is intertwined with thinking and reasoning influenced by traditional stories and teachings. McPherson also stresses the toll of cultural loss in the neglect of language, ritual, and traditional culture and the need for the reaffirmation of this invaluable legacy by current generations of Diné.

Instead of providing a systematic introduction to Navajo traditional teachings and history, the book explores specific topics through a collection of chapters that shift in focus between ethnographic, historical, and linguistic emphases. For example, the first chapter outlines the traditional practices of divination, and the second chapter follows with a narration of the crosscultural responses to the 1918 influenza epidemic by various communities, demonstrating how the Navajos encountered the new and devastating disease from their traditional understanding. The third chapter describes witchcraft and the role of sacred evil in Navajo culture, and chapter four relates the story of Ba’al7lee (a practitioner of taboo ritual and the reversal of sacred ceremony) whose resistance to the government ended in an armed standoff called the “Brawl of Aneth” in 1907.

The organizational pattern shifts with the fifth chapter, which describes how traditional thought is embedded in the metaphorical aspects of the Navajo language; the eighth chapter shows how keen observation and wit are embedded in contemporary metaphorical descriptions of objects and processes. Sandwiched in between the discussion of metaphor are the stories of how Father H. Baxter Leibler used aspects of Dinélanguage and culture in his conversion of Navajos to Episcopalian Christianity from the 1940s to the 1960s, and how the mystery surrounding the distinctive Pectol shields unearthed by amateur archeologists in 1926 was solved by attention to Navajo oral tradition in 2003. The book ends with a presentation of

prophetic warnings of Navajo elders about signs of the coming of the end of the world and how they relate to creation myths and observations of cultural deterioration.

The strength of the work is McPherson’s correlation of material from standard anthropological texts on Dinéthought and culture with voices from his many oral interviews gathered over the past thirty years. The result is an accessible record of Navajo beliefs and heritage that updates and illustrates, but does not necessarily extend, our understanding of these select aspects of Navajo traditional culture. The linguistic chapters, likewise, record and preserve various Navajo language metaphors, both old and new. The author should have spent more time, however, in his sections on history by giving context to the underlying contrasts and conflicts between traditional Navajo culture and the worldviews of outsiders, such as a government agent (Sheldon), Episcopalian missionary (Father Baxter), and LDS bishop (Ephraim Pectol). To this reviewer, the actions and motives of the Anglo participants in these sections seem to go largely unquestioned.

This book is highly recommended for readers interested in a knowledgeable and sensitive description of some of the basic aspects of traditional Navajo teachings, thought, and language and how the infringements of the dominant American culture in the past decades has undermined the application of those teachings in the lives of the contemporary Navajo people.

BRUCE GJELTEMA  University of New Mexico–Gallup

Statement of Ownership, Management, and Circulation

The Utah Historical Quarterly (ISSN 0042-143X) is published quarterly by the Utah State Historical Society, 300 S. Rio Grande, Salt Lake City, Utah 84101-1182. The managing editor is Holly George with offices at the same address as the publisher. The magazine is owned by the Utah State Historical Society, and no individual or company owns or holds any bonds, mortgages, or other securities of the society or its magazine.

The following figures are the average number of copies of each issue during the preceding twelve months: 2,400 copies printed; 1,732 mail subscriptions; 0 other classes mailed; 1,705 total paid circulation; 78 free distribution (including samples) by mail, carrier, or other means; 1,810 total distribution; 350 inventory for office use, leftover, unaccounted, spoiled after printing; total, 2,400.

The following figures are the actual number of copies of the single issue published nearest to filing date: 2,500 copies printed; 2,100 mail subscriptions; 0 other classes mailed; 0 dealer and counter sales; 1,780 total paid circulation; 48 free distribution (including samples) by mail, carrier, or other means; total distribution; inventory for office use, leftover, unaccounted, spoiled after printing, 352; total, 2,500.

BOOK NOTICES

LDS in the USA. By Lee Trepanier and Lynita K. Newswander. (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2012. x + 166 pp. Paper, $24.95.)

Using both nineteenth- and twentieth-century history as background, this book discusses ways that Mormonism and Mormons have contributed to American culture. The introduction states that “Mormons have played a substantial role in the shaping of the social, cultural, political, and religious makeup of the United States.”

In attempting to flesh out what that role has been, the authors present essays on Mormons in media (particularly television and movies), Mormon marriage beliefs and practices, Mormons in politics, the uniqueness of Mormon theology, and Mormonism as the American narrative, concluding that Mormonism is the “most American of religions” and in fact, in a sense, “is the American religion.”

The Viper on the Hearth: Mormons, Myths, and the Construction of Heresy, updated edition. By Terryl L. Givens. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997, 2013. x + 227 pp. Paper, $24.95.)

Since this innovative study was published in 1997, critics, creators, and the general public have continued to talk about Mormonism—particularly during the 2012 presidential campaign and through popular culture. Discourse about Mormonism has in fact increased during the last several years, and the author has updated Viper on the Hearth to analyze this discourse. New material in the book looks at recent media, politics and pundits, critics’ comments, and stereotypes presented in cultural creations such as The Book of Mormon Musical, Angels in America, and Under the Banner of Heaven. Givens compares contemporary treatment of the LDS church with the treatment it received during the nineteenth century, arguing that some of today’s critics continue to use myths and strategies similar to those used more than one hundred years ago.

Hell on Wheels: Wicked Towns along the Union Pacific Railroad. By Dick Kreck. (Golden, CO: Fulcrum, 2013. x + 265 pp. Paper, $16.95.)

Curiously, only nine out of this book’s sixteen chapters and its epilogue actually treat railroad towns. Other chapters provide pleasant narratives on overland travel before the railroad, women’s experience on

the trail, stage companies, “Indians!”, the beginnings of the transcontinental railroad project, building the railroad, and travel by train. The book discusses two Utah towns, Corinne and Promontory, including information on laying track through Echo and Weber canyons and the completion ceremony on May 10, 1869.

The Avenues of Salt Lake City, second edition. By Cevan J. LeSieur.

(Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press and Utah State Historical Society, 2012. xii + 378 pp. Paper, $29.95.)

Originally published by the Utah State Historical Society in 1980, this expanded edition includes new color photos, more buildings, and updated chapters. The book contains information on the history of the Avenues, patterns of ownership and development, institutional buildings, preservation efforts, and architectural styles and types. The “Significant Sites” section is organized street by street so that readers can use it as a guidebook; it also has an index to addresses and an index to names.

The Baron in the Grand Canyon. By Steven Rowan. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2012. viii + 204 pp. Cloth, $45.00.)

Cartographer, artist, explorer, and inventor Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Egloffstein joined John C. Frémont on his 1853–54 expedition. After the near-disaster in the mountains above Parowan, he left the Fremont expedition and traveled to Salt Lake City, where he joined the survivors of the Gunnison expedition. He later joined the Ives expedition up the Colorado River. This book tells of his life and journeys and reprints many of the drawings and engravings he created while in the West.

A

African Americans, in Utah, 346–50, 363–66; intra-racial tensions, 348–49, 359–60

Adair, George W., and Powell expeditions, 10, 13–17, 21–22, 23

Adams, W. H., Pinkerton operative, 37–38

Agnew, Spiro T., U.S. vice president, 73, 80–81

Agriculture, promotion in Millard County, 175–76

Alemany, Joseph Sadoc, archbishop of San Francisco, 235–36

Alexander, Thomas G., BYU professor, 74

Alton, Utah, and Powell expedition, 6

Anderson, May, and kindergarten, 137

Andrus, Hyrum L., BYU professor, 67, 70

Aneth, Utah, 368

Angell, Truman O., Sr., architect, 52

Applegarth, George A., architect, 61–62

Averett, Elijah Jr., remains of, 16

Averett, Elizah, stonemason, 50

B

Ball, Daniel O., Civil War veteran, 284

Ballif, George S., 66

Bangs, Mount, 14

Bankhead, Reid, BYU professor, 85

Beaman, E. O., and Powell expeditions, 11, 12, 22

Beaux-Arts style, 47, 57–58, 62

Beckwith, Asahel C., father of Frank, 170–72

Beckwith, Athena, daughter of Frank, 178; newspaper, 173–74, 183

Beckwith, Frank A., Millard County publisher, 169–86, 169, 171, 172, 177, 178, 179, 183, 185; images by, 180, 181, 182; scholarship, 178–86

Beckwith, Frank S., son of Frank A., and newspaper, 173–75

Beckwith, Mary Simister, wife of Frank, 169, 172–73, 178

Beckwith, Mary Rose, mother of Frank, 170, 172

Bennion, Adam S., LDS official, 206

Benson, Ezra Taft, LDS apostle, 70, 215

Benson, Reed, coordinator of John Birch Society, 67

Benton, Thomas Hart, anti-Mormon sentiments, 119

Bernhisel, John M., election of 1856, 115–16, 121, 127–29

Berry Springs, 13

Bingham, Utah, 37–39 Bishop, Francis Marion, and Powell expeditions, 11, 12, 22

Bishop Roundy’s Old Station, 6 Black Hawk War, site of, 6, 16 Blacker the Berry (Thurman), novel, 358–60 Blue Mountain (Abajos), 368, 370, 372, 375–77, 378, 379, 382 Bluff, Utah, 368, 370–71, 375, 380–81 Bonacci, Frank, UMW labor organizer, 43 Bontemps, Arna, journalist and author, 354, 356

Bostaph, William, Civil War veteran, 282–83 Bowman, John, Navajo Indian agent, 250, 252, 259–61

Bride, Harold, wireless operator, 325–26, 335–39, 339, 341–42, 344 Brigham Young University (BYU), 3, Board of Trustees, 206, 214–15; students, 204, 205, 208, 209, 211, 214; African Americans, 205–229; athletic protests, 204–229; student activism, 65–90, 67, 68, 75, 78, 81

Brown v. Board of Education (1954), 205–206 Bryce Canyon National Park, second Powell expedition, 15 Buchanan, James, 111; 126; election of, 108–132; religious tolerance, 112–13 Bullion Beck and Champion mine, 25, 31; 1893 strike, 31–33 Burgon’s Crossing accident, 159–68, 159, 160, 161, 163 Burr, David H., Utah Surveyor-General, criticism of Mormons, 124–25

C

California Bar, 2 Calvary Baptist Church, Salt Lake City, 348, 363

Cannon, Frank J., newspaperman and politician, 304–305, 309–311 Cañonita, Powell expedition boat, 9, 15–18, 21

Canyon, Betty, 264–65 Carlson, John P., stonemason, 56 Carpathia, ship, 325, 329–30, 332, 334–38, 344

Catholic churches, 235, 246; Cathedral of the Madeleine, 60, 230, 245–46, 248 Catholics, and education, 237; relationships with Mormons, 230–48 Cattle ranching, 368, 371–72, 381; Carlisle

Cattle Company, 375, 377, 382–83

Cedar City, Utah, and Powell expeditions, 10 Centennial Eureka mine, 25

Chapin, Alice, and kindergarten, 136–38, 141–42, 145

Chase, Daryl, USU president, 208

Cheney, Mamah Borthwick, 151–52, 156

Cheney, Thomas E., BYU professor, 209–10

Chief Consolidated Mining Company, 25

Child, Frank C., University of California–Davis professor, 79

Chinle Hills, 6

Christensen, Carl J., University of Utah researcher, 48

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the, and African Americans, 204–206, 347, 364–65; anti-Mormonism, 115–17, 119, 123–27, 130, 204, 238; kindergarten, 137, 139; Native Americans, 372; politics, 294–95; Powell expedition, 4, 8, 10–11, 19, 20; public relations, 343; relationships with Catholics, 230–48

Civil Rights Act of 1964, 209–210

Civil War, and Gettysburg Reunion of 1913, 267–89, 267, 271, 274, 276, 277, 286

Cobb, Camilla, and early kindergarten, 134–35, 142–43

Colburn, Justin E., New York Times correspondent, 23

Collier’s Weekly, magazine, 327, 342

Colorado River, ferries on, 370, 373, 380; Powell expeditions, 2, 5, 6, 9–11, 15–18, 22 Cordelia the Crude (Thurman), short story, 359

Corps of Topographical Engineers, 377 Corsor, Norman D., Civil War veteran, 278–79

Cox, James M., Ohio governor, 282 Cox-Shoemaker-Parry house, 52, 53

Craig, Anna K., 144; and kindergarten, 140, 142, 145

Crockett, Earl C., BYU acting president, 72, 207, 209

Crossing of the Fathers, 9 Cullen, Countee, author, 345, 354

D

Dame, William, and Powell expedition, 6, 8 Davis, Orlando F., Civil War veteran, 278–79 Delta, Utah, 169–70

Dellenbaugh, Frederick S., and Powell expeditions, 10, 11, 12, 14, 17–19, 20–22, 24

Democratic Party, 309, 312–13, 315, 318, 322–24; election of 1856, 109–12; 118–20, 122; Mormons, 129, 295; popular sovereignty, 132 Denver and Rio Grande Railroad, 370–71, 373

Deseret News, newspaper, 37–38, 239–40, 327 Dickey, Elizabeth, and early kindergarten, 136–42

Dirty Devil River, and Powell expeditions, 9, 15–17, 21 Dodds, Pardon, Uintah Agency agent, 15–17 Dodge, Agustus E., stonemason, 51 Dolnick, Edward, 5 Douglas, Stephen A., 127; advice on statehood, 123, 129; popular sovereignty, 110–111; relationship to Mormons, 116, 122–23

DuBois, W.E.B., 352–54, 356, 358–59

E

Ecumenical projects, kindergarten, 140–41 Education, 133; bus accident, 159–68; kindergarten, 133–48 Eldredge, Jody, politician, 322–24 Election of 1896, 313–14; William Jennings Bryan, 305, 309, 313, 314; William McKinley, 313–15 Election of 1912, 322–23 Ephraim City Building, 54 Ephraim United Order Cooperative Store, 54 Ephraim, Utah, 50, 53; stone industry, 49, 50, 51, 54, 59, 60

Escalante River, 15 Eureka, Utah, 25, 31, 34, 36, 41 Eureka Hill mine, 25 Eureka Miners’ Union, 26, 30–32, 36; union hall, 31, 32, 36 Eureka Reporter, newspaper, 25, 32, 36–37 Evans, Cliff, architect, 151–52, 156 Evans, Dorritt, wife of Taylor Woolley, 156, 158

F

Felt, Louie B., and kindergarten, 137 Fennemore, James, 15, 17 Fickey, Fred, 258–59

Fillmore, Millard, 119; Mormons, 113 Fire!! A Quarterly Devoted to the Younger Negro Artists, 356, 355–59

Folsom, William Harrison, architect, 53 Fort Douglas, 370, 372–73, 376

Fort Harmony, 6

Fort Lewis, 369, 372, 377, 381, 383

Fort Pierce, 13

Fort Thornburgh, 372–73

Francis, Frank, newspaperman, 312–13, 318, 323–24

Frémont, John C., 112, presidential campaign, 108, 113, 119, 128

Friedman, Morris, author of The Pinkerton Labor Spy, 26, 33, 34

G

Garfield County, 9

Garvey, Marcus, black nationalist leader, 353, 361

Gemini mine, 25

Glasmann, William, newspaperman and politician, 304–324, 304, 317, 319, 323

Glass, Joseph S., Catholic bishop, 243–45, 244

Glen Canyon, 8–9, 17

Globe Inspection Company, detective agency, 40, 42

Grand Canyon, 5, 8, 13, 17, 21–23

Grant, Augusta, 136; kindergarten, 138, 144

Grant, Heber J., LDS church president, 144, 243–45

Greaves, Arthur, New York Times city editor, 329, 332, 341

Greeks, miners, 43

Green River, the, and Powell expeditions, 5, 12

Green River, Utah, 9, 370

Green River, Wyoming, and Powell expeditions, 8, 11,

Green River Formation, 47–48, 63

Grim, Isaac, private, 384–85

Gunnison Crossing, 9

Gwilliams, David, Park City mining union member, 41

H

Haight, Isaac C., and Powell expeditions, 10–12, 17, 22

Hale, Frederick, A., architect, 61

Hamblin, Fred, and Powell expedition, 9–10

Hamblin, Jacob, and Navajos, 255; Powell expeditions, 4, 6, 8–11, 15

Hamblin, Lyman, and Powell expedition, 9

Harlem: A Forum of Negro Life, magazine, 356–57

Harlem: A Melodrama of Negro Life (Thurman), stage play, 358–59

Harlem Renaissance, artistic and social movement, 345–67

Harper’s Weekly, magazine, 327, 342 Harrisville Gap, 13 Harts, George W., pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, 363–64

Hartvigsen, Milton, BYU dean, 210, 215 Hashkéeneinii, Navajo, 252, 259, 263–64 Hashkéeneinii Biye’, Navajo, 252, 254, 254–66, 264 Haskins, Ezra D., Civil War veteran, 278 Hathaway, Pierre, BYU Universe editor, 87–88 Hattan, Andrew, second Powell expedition, 11, 12, 15–17, 20 Haymond, Jay, historian, 187–89 Haywood, William D. (Big Bill), WFM secretary, 35, 38 Hearst, William Randolph, mansion, 3, 46, 62 Henry Mountains, 15 High School Girl (Thurman),movie, 362–63 Hillam, Ray C., BYU professor, 74 Hillers, John K. (Jack), second Powell expedition, 9, 11, 12, 15, 17–20, 23 Hinckley, Gordon B., LDS apostle, 78–79, 215 Hockaday, John M., criticism of Mormons, 126 Homosexuality, 347, 357–58 Hooper and Eldredge building, Salt Lake City, 60 Hudspeth, Tommy, BYU football coach, 204 Hughes, Langston, author, 345, 346, 351, 354–57, 366 Humphrey, Ira R., 244 Hunt, Duane, Catholic bishop, 230, 246–47, 247

Hurt, Garland, Indian Agent, criticism of Mormons, 125 Hunt, Terrell, BYU student activist, 89 Hurston, Zora Neale, author, 345, 354, 356

I

Industrial Workers of the World, 3, 33, 35, 43; in Eureka, 33; in Park City, 40–42 Infants of the Spring (Thurman),novel, 360 Inter-Mountain Republican, newspaper, 317–16 Interne (Thurman), novel, 360 Italians, miners, 43

J

Jackson, Emma Ellen Gladen (Ma Jack), grandmother of Wallace Thurman, 347, 349

James Blair house, 56

Jeremiah the Magnificent (Thurman),stage play, 361

Johnson Canyon, 6, 7, 15

Johnson, Nephi, and Powell expedition, 15

Johnson, William (Willie), second Powell expedition, 14–15, 17

Jones, Anna Elizabeth Richards, and kindergarten, 135, 140 Jones, Rose, and kindergarten, 148

Jones, Stephen Vandiver, second Powell expedition, 11, 12, 14–17

K

Kaibab Plateau, 17 Kanab Canyon, 22 Kanab Creek, 4–5, 21 Kanab, Utah, and Powell expeditions, 7, 9–11, 13, 15–17, 21

Kanarraville, Utah, 23

Kartchner, Kenneth T., BYU student body president, 83–84

Kearns, Thomas, silver magnate, 60; Salt Lake City mansion, 58, 60

Kearney, James, Catholic bishop, 230, 245 Keith, David, silver magnate, 60; Salt Lake City mansion, 60, 61

Kelly, Charles, and Frank Beckwith, 178–83, 185; Hashkéeneinii Biye’, 263–64; images by, 254, 264

Kelly, Edward, Catholic priest, 230, 231–34

Kempton, Jerome B., stonemason, 51

Kiely, Dennis, Catholic priest, 234–36, 236

Kiesel, Fred J., Odgen mayor, 304, 322

Kimball, Andrew, BYU student activist, 87, 89

Kingsbury, H. P., Lt., 260–63

Kinney, Harry, labor detective, 42

Klingensmith, Philip, 22

Knerr, William M., Socialist Party organizer, 32

KSL, radio station, 247 L

Lake Point, Utah, 297–98

Lake Uinta, prehistoric lake, 47

Lee, Emma Batchelor, wife of John D. Lee, 19–20

Lee, Harold B., LDS apostle, 207–209

Lee, John D., and Powell expeditions, 4, 6–9, 18–22

Lee’s Ferry, 4, 9

Left Handed, Navajo, 261

Lewis, T. B., territorial school superintendent, 143

Liberal Party, 303 Little Mustache, Navajo, 254, 258–59 Litster, Tom, BYU student activist, 87 Locke, Alain, Harlem Renaissance figure, 352–54, 363 Logan, Mount, 13 Lonely Dell, home of John D. Lee, 4, 18, 21–22

Lowell school, Salt Lake City, 342 Ludlow, Daniel H., BYU professor, 207 Lynch, John, postmaster and speculator, 306, 308

Lynch, Bella Clinton, 306, 308 M

MacDonald, Kenneth, Jr., architect, 61 Macfarlane, John M., choir director, and Bishop Scanlan, 241–42 Magraw, William M. F., criticism of Mormons, 125–26 Man with White Horse, Navajo, 254, 258 Mancos Jim (Winchester), Native American, 371, 375–76 Mangum, Joe, Jacob Hamblin expedition to Navajos, 10 Manti City Hall, 52 Manti LDS temple, 53, 55, 56, 59 Manti LDS tabernacle, 53 Manti, Utah, 50, 51, 59 Marconi, Guglielmo, wireless inventor, 325, 331, 331–34

Marshall, Thomas R., U.S. vice president, 281–82 May, Mary C., and kindergarten, 146 McKay, Claude, author, 345, 354, 363 McKay, David O., LDS church president, 66, 71, 208

McNally, James, prospector killed by Navajos, 250, 253–59, 368 McParland, James, Pinkerton operative, 27, 28, 33

McVicker, Emma J., pres. of Free Kindergarten Association, 138, 141, 145; superintendent of education, 146 Messenger, magazine, 354 Midgley, Louis C., BYU professor, 71 Midgley, Waldo, artist, 158 Miles, William, stonemason, 51 Military, Department of the Missouri, 369–70, 372; Department of the Platte,

369–70, 372; in Utah, 368–85; Native Americans, 368–69, 372, 376–77, 379, 382

Millard County Chronicle, 173–78

Miller, Miles, architect, 156

Millet, Artemus, stonemason, 51

Minor, Edward O., educator, 206–207

Mitchell, Henry L., 253

Mitty, John, Catholic bishop, 230, 245–47

Moab, Utah, 370, 373–75, 380–82

Monson, Thomas S., LDS apostle, 215

Montezuma Creek, 368, 372, 376, 380, 382

Monticello, Utah, 382

Moran, Thomas, and trip through Utah, 23

Morgan, Julia, architect, 62

Morley, Isaac, 51

Mormons, see the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Morton, C. G., second lieutenant, 374–75, 377–81

Mountain Meadows Massacre participants, and Powell expeditions, 3, 6, 8, 13, 21–24

Moyer, Charles H., president of the WFM, 35, 38

Murdock, D. H., military captain, 372

N

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 206

Navajo Mountain, 249, 251–53, 260, 368, 371

Navajos, 370–71, 376 381; livestock, 368; Powell expedition, 10, 250; WalcottMcNally incident, 249–66, 369

Neslen, Clarence, Salt Lake City mayor, 342

Neoclassical style, 47, 62, 63

Neuhausen, Carl M., architect, 60

New York Times, newspaper, 325, 327–29, 332, 339–42, 344

New Negro manhood movement, see Harlem Renaissance

Nibley, Hugh, BYU professor, 84

Nugent, Richard Bruce, Harlem Renaissance figure, 347, 354

O

Ogden Morning Examiner, newspaper, 318, 322–24

Ogden Standard Examiner, newspaper, 38, 304, 309, 310, 311–13, 314, 310, 322, 324

Ogden Typographical Union, 310–11

Ogden, Utah, boosting of, 320; city council, 317; politics, 304–305, 308–321; waterworks debate, 316–17

O’Hara, J. J., Eureka Miners’ Union president, 32

Old Man Hat, Navajo, 262–63 Oolite limestone, quarries, 49, 51, 57–59, 63; in Sanpete Valley, 46–64; map of, 48 Osborne, N. W., lieutenant colonel, 370–72, 379

Owens, Jerry L., activist at BYU, 82

P

Packer, Boyd, LDS apostle, 80 Paiutes, and Powell expeditions, 13, 17; in Four Corners area, 250, 260, 262, 371 Panguitch, Utah, 4, 6 Panic of 1893, 30, 31, 309, 311 Paragonah, Utah, 4 Paria Crossing, 4, 9, 18 Paria River, and Powell expeditions, 4–9, 11, 16–19, 21, 22 Park, John R., superintendent of education, 143–44

Park City, 1919 strike, 40; miners, 39; mine owners, 40–41, 60 Parry, Edward L., stonemason and quarry owner, 50, 51, 52–53, 57–60, 63 Parsons, Elizabeth A., and kindergarten, 135, 142, 145

Patterson, Louise Thompson, Harlem Renaissance figure, 357–58, 358 Paunsaugunt Plateau, 15 Pearson’s Magazine, 326, 341 Perrine, Henry P., 253 Pete, Navajo scout, 253–54 Petersen, Mark E., LDS apostle, 206 Petrified trees, 7 Pickyavit, Joseph, 181–82 Pierce, Franklin, and Mormons, 121, 131 Pinkerton National Detective Agency, 33–34, 37, 38, 44

Pipe Spring, 13 Polygamy, and families, 328; in the media, 120, 123–24, 128–29; Morrill legislation, 119–21, 131; slavery, 116–18, 122 Popular sovereignty, 110–11; Utah, 108–109, 116, 124, 132

Potato Valley, 16 Powell, John Wesley, 2, 4–6, 7, 9, 11, 15, 21–24; 1869 expedition, 4–6, 23–24; second expedition (1870–73), 8, 11, 15, 17–18, 21, 22–23, 24; second expedition map, 8, 12, 17; 1870 scouting trip, 6–8

Powell, Walter Clement, and Powell expeditions, 10, 11, 13–18, 21, 22

Progressive, Salt Lake City magazine, 325, 343

Progressivism, social and political movement, 296, 313, 327, 342–43

Protestants, and anti-Mormonism, 233, 238; education, 133, 135–38

Q

Quail Creek Reservoir, 13

R

Railroad, accident, 159–68; in Sanpete County, 59

Real estate speculation, 308; Clinton Beach, 306; Garfield City, 307, 309; Buffalo Park, 307, 309

Rector, Hartman, Jr., LDS general authority, 79

Reed, John W., Civil War veteran, 278

Republican Party, election of 1856, 113, 120, 128, 131; factions within, 305, 313–12, 318–23; polygamy, 117–18; silver Republicans, 305, 309, 313; of Utah, 304–305, 309, 314, 321–23

Richards, Paul S., doctor, 163–67, 165

Richards, Stephen L., LDS First Presidency member, 66 Richardson, Frank, 11

Riddell, George W., Pinkerton operative, 25–27, 33–38

Riggs, Charles, and Powell expedition, 11–12

Riordan, Dennis M., Navajo Indian agent, 249–51, 253–56

Robinson, John, murder of, 233–34 Rockville, 14

Romney, George W., politician, 79 Roosevelt, Theodore, 305, 315, 317–18, 322, 342

Rothschild, Henry, 3 Roundy, Lorenzo, 7

Russell, Isaac, journalist, 325–44, 325, 326, 342

Russell, Samuel, father of Isaac, 328 S

Salt Lake City, 232, 235

Salt Lake Mining Review, newspaper, 25

Salt Lake LDS tabernacle, 7

Salt Lake LDS temple, 59 San Pitch Mountains, 47 Sanpete County courthouse, 52, 57, 59

Sanpete White Stone Company, 54 Scandinavians, stonemasons in Sanpete Valley, 54–57

Scanlan, Lawrence, Catholic bishop, 230, 234–43

Sheviwits, John Wesley Powell, 13 Shirts, Peter, and Powell expedition, 6, 7 Silcox, Farrold Henry, and school bus accident, 160 Silver coinage debate, 305, 309, 313, 315; Bimetallic Union, 312 Silver King Consolidated Mining Company, 40

Silver Reef, mining town, 241 Siringo, Charles A. (C. Leon Allison), Pinkerton operative, 29, 30, 34–35, 38 Skutumpah settlement, 9 Slim Man, Navajo, 254–58 Smith, George A., and statehood petition, 121–23, 127, 128 Smith, John Henry, LDS apostle, 240 Smoot, Reed, U.S. senator, and the “Federal bunch,” 305, 318–22 Smyth, Lucian H., 269, 272–73, 285 Socialist Party, organized in Eureka, Utah, 31 Soldiers Spring, 378, 382–85 South Fork Dam, 321, 322–23 Spanish-American War, 326 Spreckles, Adolph B., mansion, 3, 61, 62 Spring City, Utah, 50, 55 Spring City city hall, 56, 57 Spring City LDS chapel, 56 Springstead, Hilton, Civil War veteran, 283 Spry, William, governor, 269, 273 Soldier Crossing incident, 253, 260 St. George, 13, 14 St. George LDS tabernacle, 59, 240, 242 St. George LDS temple, 59 Stanford University, 326, 342 Stapley, Delbert L., LDS apostle, 215 Statehood, petitions, 1856, 121–24, 127–29 Steunenberg, Frank, governor of Idaho, 35; murder trial of, 36 Stevens, R. R., first lieutenant, 370–71, 378–79 Steward, John F., and Powell expeditions, 11, 22

Stewart, William M., and education, 145–46 Structural Iron and Bridge Workers’ Union, 38

Sutherland, George, U.S. congressman, 318 Swaine, P. T., colonel, 382

Swallow Lake, 15 Swenson, Royce, 69

T

Taft, William Howard, election of 1912, 322–23; Titanic disaster, 330–32, 335, 340

Talmage, James E., and education, 144–45

Tanner, N. Eldon, LDS official, 215

Taylor, John, and statehood petition, 121–23, 127, 129–30

Thompson, Almon Harris, and Powell expeditions, 8, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 21–23

Thompson Springs, Utah, 372, 379

Thorpe, Thomas, stonemason, 51

Thurman, Beulah, mother of Wallace, 347, 362

Thurman, Oscar, father of Wallace, 347–48

Thurman, Wallace Henry, Harlem Renaissance figure, 345–67, 345, 346, 362

Tintic Mining District, 25, 31, 32

Tintic Mine Owners’ Association, 26, 33, 38

Tintic Standard Mine, 41, 42

Titanic, disaster and aftermath, 325–44, 333, 339, 340

Toquerville, Utah, 13, 23

Tomorrow’s Children (Thurman),movie, 362

Trumbell, Mount, 13, 17

Turner, Rodney, BYU professor, 85

Tuttle, Daniel S., Episcopal bishop, 233, 238

U

Uinkaret Plateau, 13

Uinta Basin, 9, 47

United Mine Workers, in Park City, 42

United States Supreme Court, and Clinton v. Englebrecht, 14

University of Utah, Park (administration) building, 48, 62, 63, 353; Wallace Thurman, 346, 351

Utah State Legislature, 318, 321

Utah State University, and athletics, 207–208

Utah County courthouse, 63 Utes, in Four Corners area, 250–51, 260–63, 368–72, 375–76

V

Van Anda, Carr V., New York Times editor, 327–29, 341–42, 344

Velliotes, George, 69

Vermilion Cliffs, 6 Vietnam War, and BYU, 76–83, 81

Virgin River, the, 5, 8, 13

W

Walcott, Samuel T., prospector killed by Navajos, 250, 253–59, 368 Walton, Brian, BYU student body president, 65, 83–86

Ward, William, stonemason, 52 Warren, Charles, Civil War veteran, 284 Wasatch Monoclime, 48 Wasatch Plateau, 47, 48, 55 Washington County, 13–14 Water development, 313 Watts, Stan, BYU basketball coach, 208 Wayne County, 9 Wells, Emmeline Y., and kindergarten, 140–42 Wells, Rulon S., 316–17 Welshans, James L., Civil War veteran, 281 West, Dorothy, author, 350, 354, 357 West High School, Salt Lake City, 351; Wallace Thurman, 345, 351 Western Athletic Conference, 212 Western Federation of Miners, 26, 30–31, 33, 35, 38

Wilkinson, Ernest L., BYU president, 65–74, 73, 76, 80–86, 88–90, 205–208, 210, 212–15 Wilson, Woodrow, 285 Women, and educational efforts, 133–48 Woolley, Taylor A., architect, 149–58, 149, 151, 158; photographs by, 150, 151, 153; projects by, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156–58, 157, 158 World’s fairs, Chicago (1893), 63; St. Louis (1904), 63 Wright, Frank Lloyd, 149, 150–53 Wright, Lloyd, 151–52 Wyoming, 9

Y

Young, Bennett H., Civil War veteran, 280 Young, Brigham, 7, 8, 14; 1870 trip to southern Utah, 4, 6; Catholics, 231–35; criticism of, 124–25; federal government, 131; governor of Utah, 52; support for candidates, 128–30 Young, Mahonri, artist, 158, 342 Young, Waldemar, brother of Mahonri, 342 Young, Seymour B., Civil War veteran, 279, 287

Z

Zion Canyon, 23

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY FELLOWS

THOMAS G. ALEXANDER

JAMES B. ALLEN

LEONARD J. ARRINGTON (1917–1999) MAUREEN URSENBACH BEECHER DAVID L. BIGLER

FAWN M. BRODIE (1915–1981)

JUANITA BROOKS (1898–1989) OLIVE W. BURT (1894–1981) EUGENE E. CAMPBELL (1915–1986) EVERETT L. COOLEY (1917–2006) C. GREGORY CRAMPTON (1911–1995) S. GEORGE ELLSWORTH (1916–1997)

MAX J. EVANS AUSTIN E. FIFE (1909–1986) PETER L. GOSS

LEROY R. HAFEN (1893–1985) B. CARMON HARDY

JOEL JANETSKI 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) PHILIP F. NOTARIANNI 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 CRAIG FULLER FLORENCE S. JACOBSEN MARLIN K. JENSEN STANFORD J. LAYTON WILLIAM P. MACKINNON JOHN S. MCCORMICK F. ROSS PETERSON RICHARD C. ROBERTS WILLIAM B. SMART MELVIN T. SMITH LINDA THATCHER GARY TOPPING