Neither Poet Nor Prophet

The cover of Ellsworth’s seventh-grade Utah history textbook, published in 1972.

USHS

Neither Poet Nor Prophet

S. George Ellsworth and the History of Utah

BY ROBERT E. PARSON

S. George Ellsworth occasionally proclaimed that as a professor at Utah State University (USU) he felt privileged to have taught the history of all three of the world’s great cultures: Rome, Greece, and Utah. He delivered this statement with such perfect deadpan that those uninitiated to his subtle humor never quite knew when, or if, to laugh. Furthermore, given his strong affection for Utah and Mormon history, Ellsworth likely did not intend his comparison to be entirely absurd.

While the careers of Utah’s more famous practitioners have been chronicled, Ellsworth’s contributions as a Utah historian remain largely unknown. 1 He is by no means alone in this vacuum. There are many deserving of wider recognition. This essay will endeavor to place Ellsworth in the company of his more prominent contemporaries by emphasizing his unique historian–archivist approach to primary documents and by examining his impact as a teacher, researcher, writer, and facilitator and promoter of local, state, and western history.

Born into the Mormon community at Safford, Arizona, Ellsworth spent the earliest years of his life in Payson, Utah, where his father James managed a bank and later served a term as mayor. In 1924, the family moved to Salt Lake City, then to Ogden, before relocating to Long Beach, California. Although George spent much of his youth moving from one part of the country to another, the family remained deeply committed to its Mormon heritage and seemed always intent on returning to the Mormon West. 2

History seminar held in the Merrill Library’s Hatch Room, ca. 1960s. J. Duncan Brite, whose class Ellsworth took as an undergraduate, is at the head of the table.

Special Collections and Archives, Merrill-Cazier Library, USU

Ellsworth graduated from Central High School in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1934, and after attending junior college for two years, embarked to the north-central states for an LDS church mission. Following his mission, he returned to Utah, where he registered for classes at the Utah State Agricultural College (hereafter USU) in Logan. As Ellsworth pursued his nascent interest in history he found the classes taught by J. Duncan Brite, Milton R. Merrill, and Joel E. Ricks particularly rewarding. Ricks had immersed himself in the study of the West, especially as it related to Mormon settlement, and had warm friendships with such luminaries as Herbert Eugene Bolton and Frederick Jackson Turner. 3 Ellsworth supported himself as a janitor, a night watchman, and, drawing on his previous predilection for architecture, a draftsman, preparing plans for various campus projects. 4 He earned twenty-five cents per hour through employment provided by the National Youth Administration. More than two thousand USU students depended on this New Deal Era program during the 1930s, one of inestimable value to the college, declared USU president E. G. Peterson. “No action of the Federal Government . . . has been more defensible from every point of view than this program of student aid.” 5

After his graduation, Ellsworth accepted a position as principal of Virgin Valley High School in the remote Mormon community of Bunkerville, Nevada. While in Nevada, he met and married Maria Smith from the Mormon community of Snowflake, Arizona. Shortly after their marriage, Ellsworth enlisted for service during World War II, where he served as a clerk and later as a chaplain with the Army Air Corps.

Following release from the military in 1946, he entered the graduate program at UC–Berkeley, which had a long tradition as a training ground for Utah historians. 6 Although not among these, Joel Ricks encouraged his young protégé to continue that tradition, hoping to unite him with his old friend, Herbert Eugene Bolton. Ellsworth also received encouragement from Milton R. Hunter and Thomas C. Romney, both of whom had graduated from Berkeley under Bolton’s tutelage. Bolton was professor of Latin American history at Berkeley, serving as president of the American Historical Association in 1932. He also was curator of the Bancroft Library. 7 Nearing the twilight of his career, the aged scholar often invited Ellsworth into his study adjacent to the library, where we “had many chats on many subjects,” Ellsworth later recalled. 8

Ellsworth worked primarily with Bolton’s successor, Lawrence Kinnaird, as would several others (including Richard Poll and Everett Cooley) who also gravitated to Berkeley for graduate training. Ellsworth recalled the exhilarating academic atmosphere at Berkeley, where students experienced the “thrill of discovery,” were encouraged to apply “new approaches,” and received constructive criticism. Kinnaird offered succinct advice, Ellsworth remembered: teach and learn while teaching, take your written and oral exams, and, most importantly, “finish and get out of here!” 9 Partially as a result of his Mormon upbringing, which emphasized the blessings of hard work, but also from his impoverished college and military years, Ellsworth developed an indefatigable capacity for work. In a little more than four years he completed requirements for both the master’s and doctoral degrees.

Ellsworth’s conscientious work ethic served him well once he joined Joel Ricks and Duncan Brite as a junior member of USU’s History Department in 1951. One of his primary responsibilities was to develop a course specifically on Utah. Ellsworth pioneered the use of a wide range of primary documents to study the state’s past. 10 He promoted this concept in two 1954 Utah Historical Quarterly (UHQ) articles describing the primary sources he had consulted in the Bancroft Library while pursuing his graduate degrees at UC–Berkeley. In the first, Ellsworth presented Hubert Howe Bancroft’s life history and work developing a manuscript collection on Utah history. In the 1870s, Bancroft had worked closely with the LDS apostle Orson Pratt, at the time serving as Church Historian, to convince the church to copy or loan its primary documents to him for use in preparing a history of Utah Territory. 11 As Ellsworth asserted on more than one occasion, Bancroft’s History of Utah had enduring significance as a “standard narrative” of territorial Utah’s history. The documents he collected contained in the Bancroft Collection at UC–Berkeley gave “life and blood and emotion to the first thirty years of Utah history.” Although Bancroft never fully utilized these materials, Ellsworth envisioned them as a wellspring of historical information, awaiting “the searching eye of today’s historian.” Most importantly, however, the work was an “indispensable . . . bibliographic guide.” 12

Ellsworth’s affinity for bibliography distinguished him from other Utah historians. His writings were often more pedagogical than they were analytical, more educational than interpretive. In part two of the UHQ series, Ellsworth presented “A Guide to the Manuscripts in the Bancroft Library Relating to the History of Utah,” wherein he demonstrated his fondness for bibliography, as well as his aptitude for teaching. 13 Ellsworth carefully annotated the guide. Each entry consisted of the full name of the document’s author, followed by the author’s birth and death dates, where determinable; the subject of the manuscript, or title contained within quotation marks, if applicable; place and date of creation; number of volumes or pages; size of the document; analysis of the handwriting; and the document’s provenance, including brief descriptions of the writer, the subject and scope and content of the manuscript. While Ellsworth held true the “historian’s dictum” regarding the indispensability of documents (“no documents, no history”), he was equally convinced in the essentialness of knowing “as much as possible about each document . . . its origins, authorship and backgrounds.” 14

In this conviction, George Ellsworth was perhaps as much archivist as he was historian, although in his case, the two professions were inseparable. At the second home he and his wife purchased a short distance from their 300 East Street family residence in Logan, he used the main floor as his study. It was there, nearly a decade after his retirement and only a few years before his death in 1997, that he and I first became acquainted. He had invited us down to survey the contents of his life’s work in anticipation of him donating it to USU’s Special Collections. 15

Ellsworth unlocked the side door to lead my colleague John Powell and me up the short span of stairs, into the kitchen. The kitchen was used by one carefully screened graduate student, who otherwise occupied the basement floor. Beyond the kitchen we entered the main parlor. I recognized immediately that this was much more than a simple study. This was a library, or more accurately, an archive (he actually kept his book collections in several rooms up the street at the family home). Around the walls were rows of map, microfilm, and filing cabinets, along with shelves containing an array of document boxes, all labeled, numbered, and impeccably well ordered. A vintage Kodagraph microfilm reader occupied one corner, and in the center of the room was a large work table, constructed of cinder blocks and ply board. The configuration of the table left only enough space around the room’s perimeter to open file drawers and allow for a walkway.

The work area looked chaotic, but I recognized that the piles of papers and bundles of note cards represented what we archivists somewhat pretentiously refer to as “arrangement,” the process of establishing physical and intellectual control over archives. Although accomplished at archival arrangement (and even more so at archival description), it became clear to me during the succeeding years of processing his collection that Ellsworth was less proficient at the de-accession of materials. He rarely threw anything away. No document was dispensable, no scrap or bit of information unessential. Both the weighty and trivial, the eminent and ephemeral—all had significance in documenting the past. Who besides George Ellsworth kept thirty years of mimeographed invitations announcing the annual steak fry of the Faculty Men’s Forum?

USU hails Ellsworth as its first archivist. 16 Being a keeper as well as a user of primary documents made his approach to Utah history unique. Ellsworth’s collection of documents enabled him to visualize the panorama of history and to focus on the smallest details of an event—always with an eye for the connection between the two. Ellsworth knew the sources and was frequently critical of students and professionals who failed to consider them in their writing. An advocate for balance and impartiality, Ellsworth also encouraged the study of history from all perspectives, including those traditionally excluded from the historical record. “It is relatively easy to write on the beginnings of mining . . . [or] to center on the wealthy owner,” he wrote, but much more difficult to tell “the story of the operators, the workers, [and] the townspeople.” 17 But though Ellsworth was an incessant supporter of writing “bottom-up” history, he was also wary of over-specialization. There is “a tendency . . . to overdo microstudies,” he complained. “Soon we are knowing more and more about less and less, and ultimately we wind up knowing everything about nothing.” 18

Ellsworth’s resolve to preserve institutional records and other local archival materials had developed during a committee assignment he shared with the art professor H. Rueben Reynolds and the librarians King Hendricks and Milton Abrams in 1954. The committee proposed creating the Hatch Memorial Reading Room in the library. Having as its corpus the books, manuscripts, and furnishings donated by L. Boyd and Anne McQuarrie Hatch, the committee further suggested stocking the room with books and materials having “irreplaceability” or “uniqueness.” Particularly, the committee identified the books and materials with “local archival value.” 19

Although this marks the beginning of what is now the Merrill-Cazier Library’s Special Collections, foremost on Ellsworth’s agenda at the time was to collect those materials that he respectfully referred to as Utahnalia. Defined by the committee as “the letters, diaries, journals or books of interest to this area,” these sources would be essential in writing a history of Cache Valley, slated for publication in 1956, the centennial year of its Mormon settlement. 20

Ellsworth collaborated again with the college’s librarians, as well as with the Utah State Historical Society (USHS) and the LDS Church Historical Department, to cooperatively purchase three sets of microfilm containing Bancroft’s Utah-related documents, the same documents he had meticulously described in his 1954 UHQ article. Ellsworth further persuaded his library colleagues to purchase the territorial reports for both Utah and Idaho, which had recently been filmed by the National Archives. Ellsworth discovered these in 1954 during trips he made to the National Archives and to the Library of Congress while serving as a visiting professor at the West Virginia University. He also canvassed other libraries and repositories in the East in search of records on Utah and Mormon history. As he informed USU President Daryl Chase, his quest yielded “mines of materials which will take a lifetime to study and digest.” 21

To further the centennial history project, Ellsworth spearheaded a drive to microfilm public and personal historical records from Cache Valley. Armed with a camera borrowed from USHS and film purchased by the College Library, Ellsworth supervised the filling of twenty-nine rolls of film with diaries, scrapbooks, journals, and business records, as well as the official government records for towns in both Cache County, Utah, and Franklin County, Idaho. 22 With Ellsworth’s usual attention to detail, his inventory of these historical resources included copious scope and content notes for each entry. 23 Importantly, since it retained the film negative, the library planned to make copies and “negotiate with other institutions for an exchange of . . . materials,” further enhancing its Utah and Mormon collections. 24 These resources, along with those collected earlier by professors Ricks and Brite, were to be housed in the Hatch Room, designated as the official archive of the Cache Valley Historical Society (CVHS).

Everett L.Cooley, Joel E. Ricks, A. R. Mortensen, and S. George Ellsworth examining bound volumes of Cache Valley pioneer journals collected by Ricks.

USHS

It is more than coincidental that the CVHS began in 1951, the year George Ellsworth returned to his alma mater as an assistant professor of history. Joel Ricks had charted the course for establishing local historical societies while serving as president of the Board of State History. It remained, however, for the energetic Ellsworth to implement the plan in Cache Valley. In affiliation with the USHS, his History Department colleagues, and Leonard J. Arrington, then teaching economics at USU, he built a thriving local organization, which at its zenith included nearly two hundred dues-paying memberws. 25

The CVHS charged ahead to complete the writing of Cache Valley’s centennial history. Edited by Joel Ricks and state archivist Everett L. Cooley, The History of a Valley stood in contrast to most local histories. Of the nine contributors, all were professionals, most had advanced degrees, and all but two held academic rank at USU. 26 While Ellsworth only authored the chapter dealing with political developments, he more importantly penned the concluding bibliographic essay. His essay was encompassing. Not only did it identify the sources used by the authors in writing The History of a Valley (an imperative given that the book does not contain footnotes) it also discussed general works on the history of Utah, Idaho, and Mormonism. 27 Furthermore, by taking the reader through the steps of historical inquiry, the essay provided a methodological framework that could be followed by other students of Utah history. Once again, Ellsworth demonstrated his effectiveness as both bibliographer and teacher. 28

Building the library’s collections, while preparing bibliographies and guides to these primary resources, enhanced Ellsworth’s ability to teach Utah history to college students. Even as this was his primary motivation, he recognized that public school teachers and their students also faced a dearth of materials to support the Utah history curriculum. He offered a corrective to that, penning the officially adopted textbook for seventh-grade students studying Utah history. Most students who attended a Utah public school from 1972 until the mid-1990s were familiar with Utah’s Heritage. 29 It made an important contribution to the public school curriculum by providing teachers with a narrative of the past that not only advanced Utah history into the twentieth century, but through a reliance on primary sources also encompassed a “breadth of coverage” not found in previous textbooks. 30

Writing Utah’s Heritage proved much more difficult than Ellsworth had initially thought. Following a faculty meeting to discuss research and creativity in August 1955, Ellsworth proposed the idea to USU President Daryl Chase. Ellsworth had already approached Arrington, USHS director A. R. Mortensen, and Richard D. Poll, chair of Brigham Young University’s History Department, about collaborating on a college-level text. “Without doubt,” Ellsworth reasoned, “such a work could be re-written to suit the needs of a junior high text.” 31 For a number of reasons, the glow on Ellsworth’s rosy optimism soon faded.

Ellsworth took a keen interest in the work of Ward J. Roylance, who, as a graduate student at the University of Utah in 1957, made a study “to determine the need for a new textbook dealing with Utah.” 32 He also spoke at length with educators and public school teachers, many of whom asserted that a “new book on Utah History is probably our greatest single text book need.” 33

Reassured by these sentiments and armed with the preliminary results of Roylance’s research, Ellsworth made application to the College’s Research Council for funds to begin the project. Unlike the current school text, which he characterized as being “poorly organized, incomplete in its coverage, disproportionate in its treatment, considerably biased, and [including] little or none of the research done in so many fields,” Ellsworth proposed to write a history text that would “treat each period . . . proportionately,” extending to “economic development[,] the utilization, exploitation and conservation of natural resources, agriculture, farming and ranching, mining, industry, home production, communication, transportation, the distribution and consumption of goods, [as well as] social and cultural achievements.” 34 Rather than limiting the scope of the work to “only the usual political, ecclesiastical and settlement history,” Ellsworth envisioned a text “comparing and contrasting” developments in Utah “with those of the contemporary West and Nation” and addressing the history of Mormonism as well as that of “Utah Jews, Catholics and Protestant groups,” and other underrepresented communities. 35 The Research Council enthusiastically supported Ellsworth’s proposal, even amending its policies to allow him to use the funding during his sabbatical beginning in 1957. Ellsworth set a goal of completing the project during his sabbatical, with plans to present a published book to the Utah Textbook Adoption Committee in January 1959.

At the time of Ellsworth’s application to the Research Council it appeared very likely that the State Curriculum Committee would place Utah History within the ninth grade. Ellsworth had received some assurance from his contacts at the Department of Public Instruction, and the Curriculum Committee had, in fact, made that recommendation. Richard Poll, Ellsworth’s friend and colleague since their days together at UC Berkeley, spoke in favor of this arrangement. At Ellsworth’s solicitation, Poll urged the committee to move the curriculum to the ninth grade. Most compelling was seventh graders’ lack of maturity. “There are important problems in Utah history which require a degree of maturity and sophistication for their understanding,” Poll asserted. “It hardly needs to be argued that the histories of few states involve topics as demanding of careful, thoughtful classroom presentation as the history of Utah.” 36 Despite these advances, in late 1956 the committee decided to leave Utah history as part of the seventh-grade curriculum. “This decision,” Ellsworth declared, “was unfortunate.” Its placement “on the seventh grade level . . . [would require] emphasis . . . on . . . history as simple story,” not the sort of encompassing narrative he envisioned. 37

Ellsworth knew, and Poll concurred, that the ninth grade was “as early as . . . matters of institutional analysis and development can be effectively considered.” 38 The committee’s reversal disrupted Ellsworth’s prospect of writing a comprehensive narrative that with some modification could serve both as a college text, as well as one for high school freshmen. Simplifying the narrative to a level appropriate for seventh graders proved tedious and time consuming. His dismay at having underestimated the difficulty of writing for an adolescent audience likely contributed to an extended illness that incapacitated him during much of his sabbatical. Ellsworth found it necessary to write the first draft at “average college level” and then painstakingly “rework, and rework, and rework” the manuscript into “another draft for a seventh grade textbook.” 39 This procedure, he confessed, gave him little “conviction of success.” 40 While Ellsworth had compiled an impressive amount of research material and had a clear outline for the book’s organization, he was unable to finish the chapters by his January 1959 deadline.

While the university remained supportive, continuing to provide modest funding for the Utah history project, Ellsworth was clearly discouraged. 41 His discouragement was manifest further during fall 1960 when Milton R. Hunter published The Utah Story. This newly minted title, although “loaded with color pictures,” was simply a revision of Utah in Her Western Setting, Hunter’s previous textbook that Ellsworth and others had criticized as an unsatisfactory “educational tool.” “Even so,” he lamented, “since there is no other to choose from, schools will buy it and the market will be taken.” 42

As Ellsworth recommitted himself to the classroom, his research and writing was further curtailed. 43 His teaching duties were substantial. Not only did Ellsworth develop and teach the course on Utah history, but his responsibilities also included teaching survey courses in ancient world civilizations, modern world civilizations, current world affairs, and modern U.S. history. He also taught the four courses on the history of Greece, Rome, medieval Europe, and on the Renaissance and Reformation period; a course on Hispanic-American History; the senior seminar for history majors; plus two graduate seminars, one on methodology and the other on the history of the Mountain West. 44 Ellsworth joined in the campaign to reduce the faculty teaching load but still took the art of instruction very seriously. Far from delivering “extemporaneous talks . . . about events of the past,” he developed his lectures as “portions of a large scheme of narrative and interpretation [close] in character and relation to a musical composition.” Since history is continually being “re-investigated and re-interpreted . . . by scholars,” he believed that “these new finds must be studied if one is to keep alive in the field.” Ellsworth saw a “great danger of teaching antiquated history,” and he devoted several hours to the preparation of a single lecture. If the professor is “to cover the material and bring into focus the pertinent facts and interpretations,” he emphasized, then “he must be prepared. . . . The composition must be smooth running, continuous, related, and completed.” 45 Students rewarded him for his commitment in the classroom by naming him Teacher of the Year within the College of Humanities and Arts in 1961, and again during the 1965 Robins Awards, where he was recognized as University Teacher of the Year. 46 Although he received many awards during his career, few others resonated so deeply with Ellsworth.

Following the retirements of Joel Ricks and Duncan Brite, Ellsworth became department head in 1966. 47 Even with new administrative duties added to an already busy schedule, Ellsworth still found time to establish the Western Historical Quarterly (WHQ) at USU. He approached USU Vice President Milton Merrill with the idea early in 1968, after the Western History Association (WHA) circulated its call for proposals for institutions interested in housing the offices of the WHQ. Ellsworth reminded the vice president of USU’s long involvement with western history. Not only had Joel Ricks taught the history of the American West, he had also established a warm, collegial relationship with two of the profession’s founding fathers, Frederick Jackson Turner and Frederick P. Merk, who taught at the institution’s National Summer School in 1924 and 1925, respectively. 48 Although supportive, Merrill balked at the $30,000 budget. It “bowls me over,” he complained; “this would be most difficult.” 49

In July 1968, Glen L. Taggart assumed the presidency of USU. Ellsworth wasted no time pitching the WHQ to incoming vice president R. Gaurth Hansen. 50 Receiving Hansen’s approval, Ellsworth recommended that the university hire Everett L. Cooley as WHQ editor. Cooley had served as state archivist and had worked closely with Ellsworth when Cooley coedited History of a Valley. As director of the Utah State Historical Society he had also gained considerable experience editing the Utah Historical Quarterly.

Cooley was an excellent choice. Yet beyond his qualifications as an editor, Ellsworth had a secondary motive for endorsing his candidacy. Since beginning his tenure at Utah State, Ellsworth had championed the collecting of research materials to study Utah history. Following his suggestion in 1954, the university had initiated an Institute of Utah Studies. 51 Ellsworth envisioned an ambitious program not only to build library collections but also to promote and publish research on Utah history. For lack of funding, the institute never materialized beyond holding a few summer workshops for teachers. With Cooley on staff, however, Ellsworth could now picture the institute in full flower and the fulfillment of his dream to make USU the preeminent center for teaching and researching Utah history.

Unfortunately, the University of Utah was also pursuing Cooley “to head up their new . . . library and archival program,” Ellsworth confessed. USU’s effort “will suffer in comparison for not having something so good or someone so able doing the same.” 52 Even after Cooley informed Ellsworth that he felt obligated to honor the contract with the University of Utah, and not to “renege on his word,” Ellsworth continued to hold hope that he could be persuaded. He suggested offering a number of inducements to convince Cooley to change his mind and relocate to USU. Not the least of these was the opportunity of “special assignment . . . to find and obtain valued manuscripts and manuscript collections and rare books for the University library.” 53

Ellsworth’s hope of embedding Cooley within the library meshed ideally with his vision for making USU the center for Utah studies. Much of the early Utah and local collection had come to the library through Ellsworth’s initiative. In 1956, the library recognized his effort by naming him curator of manuscripts. 54 This was largely a ceremonial appointment, and like his subsequent appointment three years later as University Archivist, was in addition to his regular faculty position. Cooley’s decision to remain at the University of Utah disappointed Ellsworth, who for many years thereafter remained disenchanted with the direction of Special Collections and Archives at USU. 55

Following Cooley’s decision, Ellsworth suggested that USU complete its negotiations with the WHA by naming Leonard Arrington editor and himself as the associate or managing editor. 56 Arrington had only peripheral involvement with the negotiations on campus. As president of WHA, however, he had been intimately engaged in promoting USU to the membership of that organization. Well known, widely published, and well connected in western history circles, Arrington enjoyed the WHA’s full support. Ellsworth acknowledged Arrington’s greater prominence in the profession and agreed that he was in the best position to be accepted as editor by the association. 57

These long-time colleagues profoundly respected each other. Ellsworth credited Arrington for being the most “prolific writer on Utah history.” 58 Arrington acknowledged Ellsworth’s substantial influence on his development as a historian. 59 While laboring at the Huntington Library to complete the final draft of what would become Great Basin Kingdom in 1957, he frequently had sought Ellsworth’s assistance and counsel. Ellsworth even edited and critiqued the final draft just prior to its submission for publication. 60 Nevertheless, the WHQ editorial arrangement strained their long relationship. Ellsworth and Arrington approached their professions very differently. Unlike Arrington, Ellsworth avoided the limelight. 61 Ever the perfectionist, Ellsworth spent nearly fifteen years researching and writing his seventh-grade history text. Conversely, Arrington, the entrepreneurial historian, had employed graduate students and collaborated with other historians to publish nine books by 1972 when he left the editorship and USU to accept the calling as LDS Church Historian.

Aerial view of Utah State University, 1958. Old Main, the bell-tower building, houses the offices of the History Department and since 1969 the Western Historical Quarterly.

Special Collections and Archives, Merrill-Cazier Library, USU

With Arrington’s departure, Ellsworth became editor of WHQ, both in title and toil. Charles S. Peterson soon joined him as associate editor. 62 With the quarterly on firm footing, Ellsworth could finally refocus his attention on completing Utah’s Heritage, published by Peregrine Smith in 1972 and soon adopted as the official text for Utah public school students. The Mormon History Association awarded Utah’s Heritage its Book of the Year award in 1973. Teachers, as well, generally gave the book positive reviews. It is “beautifully written, thorough and scholarly,” one remarked, while another considered it the “best comprehensive study of Utah.” Interestingly, some teachers felt the book was too advanced for seventh-grade students, a problem Ellsworth had been grappling with since first beginning the project nearly twenty years earlier. 63 Ellsworth revised and reissued the text in 1985 as The New Utah’s Heritage.

Officers of the Cache Valley Historical Society, 1950s. Ellsworth (standing, third from left) and Arrington (standing, far right) were long time associates.

USHS

At the time of the text’s publication, Ellsworth had cemented his reputation as one of the state’s preeminent historians. In 1972, the editors of UHQ published a manuscript they had asked him to produce on “analysis of the history of writing Utah history.” 64 In his article Ellsworth paid tribute to a long list of authors and their works, from Bancroft to Arrington. He provided the insight that could only have come from one who had heeded his own counsel “to keep alive in the field” by critically reading and studying each publication, both the old and the new. 65 Ellsworth not only offered a retrospective on the writing of Utah history, but also looked forward to suggest areas of future scholarship. With uncanny perception, he raised questions about Utah history, many of which students and scholars have endeavored to answer. Still missing was that history of Utah that two decades earlier he had conceptualized as “the first real synthesis of all aspects of Utah developments”—the one he had intended to write but never could. 66

Perhaps revealing some regret, Ellsworth relayed remarks made many years before at a Cache Valley pioneer day celebration by former USU president John A. Widtsoe. The one who finally writes the definitive history of Utah, Widtsoe declared, must have “the mind of a historian, the heart of a poet, and the soul of a prophet.” Where we will ever find “a person of such . . . remarkable . . . talents and virtues, I do not know,” Ellsworth concluded. “I do not see him on the horizon.” 67

— Robert E. Parson is University Archivist at Utah State University and a member of UHQ’s board of editors.

Ellsworth in his office in Old Main, ca. 1970s.

Special Collections and Archives, Merrill-Cazier Library, USU

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WEB SUPPLEMENT

At history.utah.gov/uhqextras we offer conversations with noted historians on Ellsworth and the historiography of Utah, a reproduction of Ellsworth’s 1972 UHQ article, a few documents from his papers, and Leonard Arrington’s diary on the founding of the Western Historical Quarterly.

1 While Ellsworth planned to write a memoir tentatively entitled “My Time in History,” he progressed only as far as an outline and a few drafts of chapters. See “My Time in History: An Autobiography (unpublished),” boxes 11–13, series 2, Papers of S. George Ellsworth, Mss 228, Special Collections and Archives, Merrill-Cazier Library, Utah State University, Logan, Utah (hereafter SCA). The lives of other Utah historians, Juanita Brooks and Leonard J. Arrington, for instance, have been the subjects of books both biographical and autobiographical. See Levi S. Peterson, Juanita Brooks: A Mormon Woman Historian (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1988); and Leonard J. Arrington, Adventures of a Church Historian (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998).

2 “Genealogy and Biographical information on James C. Ellsworth and James Henry Ellsworth,” n.d., box 1, fd. 2, Papers of James Clarence Ellsworth, Mss 228a, SCA.

3 Although privately Ellsworth referred to Ricks as “the bulldozer,” who ran the department with an iron fist, he nonetheless exerted an enormous influence on him. See “Utah State Years—Since 1951” box 13, fd. 6, series 2, Ellsworth Papers.

4 “Remarks before the Old Main Society, April 19, 1990,” box 9, fd. 4, series 2, Ellsworth Papers.

5 Biennial Report of the President to the Board of Trustees, Utah State Agricultural College, 1934–1936, p. 6, Record Group 2.1:63, SCA.

6 Gary Topping, Utah Historians and the Reconstruction of Western History (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003), 20.

7 Thomas H. Johnson, The Oxford Companion to American History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), 93.

8 “Berkeley Years,” n.d., box 13, fd. 5, series 2, Ellsworth Papers.

9 Ibid.

10 Educational Policies Committee, minutes, October 27, 1955, Record Group 4.3:35, SCA.

11 Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of Utah: 1540–1887 (San Francisco: History Company Publishers, 1890).

12 George Ellsworth, “Hubert Howe Bancroft and the History of Utah,” Utah Historical Quarterly 22 (April 1954), 100.

13 “S. George Ellsworth, “A Guide to the Manuscripts in the Bancroft Library Relating to the History of Utah,” Utah Historical Quarterly 22 (July 1954), 197–247.

14 Ellsworth, “Hubert Howe Bancroft,” 101.

15 The preliminary details of Ellsworth’s donation had been worked out by Brad Cole before he left USU for a ten-year hiatus at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. Department Head, Ann Buttars, completed the final details, including the naming of a room in the Merrill Library in his honor. The bulk of Ellsworth’s collection, however, remained in his possession, and the task of physically transferring the collection fell to my colleague John Powell and me.

16 This was an ancillary position, largely self imposed, and was in addition to his considerable teaching load. In the recurrent language (probably suggested by Ellsworth) used to define many archival repositories, President Daryl Chase proclaimed in 1959 that “Utah State University Archives are those records which are adjudged worthy of permanent preservation for reference and research purposes,” including “all books, papers, maps, photographs, or other documentary materials . . . received by the University . . . as evidence of its functions, policies, decisions, procedures, operations, or other activities or because of the informational value of the data contained therein.” See “Abbreviated Collection Policy for Special Collections and Archives, Utah State University (draft),” November 1, 2002, 4, SCA.

17 S. George Ellsworth, “Utah History: Retrospect and Prospect,” Utah Historical Quarterly 40 (Fall 1972), 360.

18 Ibid., 366.

19 “Abbreviated Collection Policy for Special Collections and Archives, Utah State University (draft),” 4.

20 Ibid.

21 Report of Activities, Summer 1954, p. 3, box 36, file of S. George Ellsworth, Record Group 8.7/1:49, SCA.

22 Geographically, Cache Valley includes Cache County, Utah, and Franklin County, Idaho.

23 S. George Ellsworth, An Inventory of Historical Resource Materials for Cache Valley, Utah–Idaho, on Microfilm (Logan: Utah State University Library, 1957), preface.

24 S. George Ellsworth to Daryl Chase, January 24, 1958, box 36, Ellsworth file.

25 “Membership cards, 1955–1956,” box 1, fd. 8, series 7C, Ellsworth Papers.

26 Joel E. Ricks and Everett L. Cooley, The History of a Valley: Cache Valley, Utah–Idaho (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Publishing Co., 1956), xii–xiv, 479–80. Of its seventeen chapters, Leonard Arrington authored four; Joel Ricks, four; and Duncan Brite, two. Other contributors from the college faculty included William Peterson, who had devoted a lifetime to studying the geology of Cache Valley; A. N. Sorensen, emeritus English professor, who had previously served on the faculty at the Brigham Young College in Logan; and Eugene E. Campbell, who, while technically not a member of the faculty, directed the LDS Institute of Religion on campus and would continue on afterwards to a distinguished career in Utah and Mormon studies. Additional contributions to Cache Valley’s history were made by Gunnar Rasmuson, past editor of the Logan Journal, and Melvin R. Hovey, past president of the Cache Chamber of Commerce.

27 Publication costs probably contributed to the decision not to include footnotes. Furthermore, while Ellsworth, Arrington, Ricks, Brite, and other professionals were comfortable with the minutiae of citations, others such as Rasmusen and Hovey were less so.

28 Ricks and Cooley, History of a Valley, 458–78.

29 Textbooks for Use in the Schools of Utah during 1986–87 (Salt Lake City: Utah State Office of Education, 1986), 155.

30 S. George Ellsworth, Utah’s Heritage (Santa Barbara, CA: Peregrine Smith, 1972), 5.

31 “Documents relating to the beginning of the project,” n.d., box 10, fd. 9, Utah’s Heritage Research, Mss 228d, SCA.

32 Ibid. Roylance went on to a short career with the Utah Travel Council, but is probably best known as an outspoken advocate for Utah’s red rock country—what he called “the Enchanted Wilderness”—and for his greatly expanded and enlarged revision of Dale Morgan’s 1941 classic WPA project, Utah: A Guide to the State. See Ward J. Roylance, Utah: A Guide to the State (Salt Lake City: The Foundation, 1982). Roylance and Ellsworth remained friends and corresponded intermittently for the balance of their lives. See box 5, fd. 12, series 1, Ellsworth Papers.

33 Box 2, fd. U-19, Record Group 17.2:17, SCA.

34 Ibid.

35 Ibid.

36 See “Early textbook plans,” n.d., box 10, fd. 4, Utah’s Heritage Research; and Richard Poll to Ellsworth, July 23, 1956, box 4, fd. 31, series 1, Ellsworth Papers.

37 Ellsworth to Daryl Chase, November 1, 1956, box 10, fd. 4, Utah’s Heritage Research.

38 “Early textbook plans,” n.d., box 10, fd. 4, Utah’s Heritage Research.

39 Ellsworth to D. Wynn Thorne, March 25, 1959, box 2, fd. U-19, Record Group 17.2:17, SCA.

40 Ellsworth to Thorne, March 15, 1961, box 2, fd. U-19, Record Group 17.2:17, SCA.

41 Milton R. Merrill expressed a guarded concern over Ellsworth’s ability to complete the textbook. See M. R. Merrill to Daryl Chase, July 11, 1961, box 36, Ellsworth file.

42 Ibid.

43 Ellsworth’s onerous teaching load is significant to understanding why it took seventeen years for him to complete the first edition of Utah’s Heritage and why six of the eight books written, cowritten, edited, or coedited by Ellsworth appeared after his retirement.

44 Utah State Agricultural College Catalog, 1954 (Logan: Utah State Agricultural College, 1954), 126–27.

45 “On the Matter of History Teaching Load,” box 1, fd. 15, series 2, Ellsworth Papers.

46 “Awards and Honors,” n.d., box 12, fd. 9, series 11, Ellsworth Papers. The Sigma Nu Fraternity launched the Robins Awards to recognize student talent, student leaders, student athletes, student scholars, as well as faculty and alumni. The award was named in honor of William E. (Bill) Robins, a former student body president who, along with his wife Geraldine and two others, tragically died in an airplane crash.

47 Junior faculty members who joined Ellsworth during the early 1960s included Stanford Cazier, Blythe Ahlstrom, and Douglas Alder. Cazier served as president of California State University at Chico from 1971 until 1979, and then as president of USU until 1991. Alder served as president of Dixie State College from 1986 until 1993. By 1969, when Ellsworth prepared to step down as department head to launch the Western Historical Quarterly, he had recruited an impressive number of young scholars to the department, many of whom would spend the balance of their careers at USU. Included in this list are R. Edward Glatfelter, Michael (Mick) Nicholls, C. Robert Cole, William C. Lye, and F. Ross Peterson.

48 S. George Ellsworth, “Ten Years: An Editor’s Report,” Western Historical Quarterly 10 (October 1979), 421.

49 M. R. Merrill to Ellsworth, February 16, 1968, box 15, fd. 9, Record Group 14.6/5-1:26, SCA.

50 Ellsworth to R. Gaurth Hansen, August 27, 1968, box 15, fd. 9, Record Group 14.6/5-1:26, SCA.

51 Ibid.

52 Ibid.

53 Ellsworth to Hansen, December 5, 1968, box 15, fd. 9, Record Group 14.6/5-1:26, SCA.

54 Ellsworth to Leonard J. Arrington, November 15, 1956, box 8, fd. 14, series 5, Papers of Leonard J. Arrington, Leonard J. Arrington Historical Archives 1, SCA.

55 One certainly cannot fault the high regard Ellsworth had for Everett Cooley. Cooley peerlessly guided the Marriott Library’s Special Collections at the University of Utah from 1969 until his retirement in 1983. Concurrently, however, the young A. J. Simmonds built upon George’s beginnings a superlative Special Collections at USU, a fact that George Ellsworth never acknowledged. As late as 1978, Ellsworth continued to denounce USU’s Special Collections, characterizing it as “the poorest held by the colleges and universities of Utah.” He was even less charitable towards Simmonds, noting that “we need a thorough-going study of Special Collections: its purpose, its collections . . . its management, [and] its staff. It may be we will not get a change . . . without a change in personnel.” See Ellsworth to William F. Lye, April 10, 1978, box 7, fd. 4, Record Group 14.6:17, SCA.

56 Ellsworth to Hansen, December 5, 1968, box 15, fd. 9, Record Group 14.6/5-1:26, SCA.

57 Ibid.

58 Ellsworth to Hansen, August 28, 1968, box 15, fd. 9, Record Group 14.6/5-1:26, SCA.

59 Gary Topping, Leonard J. Arrington: A Historian’s Life (Norman: Arthur H. Clark, 2008), 40–41.

60 Arrington to Ellsworth, May 23, 1957, box 1, fd. 7, series 1, Ellsworth Papers; Ellsworth to Arrington, May 20, 1957, box 8, fd. 14, series 5, Arrington Papers. The copy of the draft manuscript of Great Basin Kingdom is found in Arrington, “Great Basin Kingdom: Draft MS before final submission,” microfilm, Utah Reel 500, SCA.

61 Arrington perceived this characteristic in Ellsworth when he confided “that he always knows how to do things better than others and this is true. He is a brilliant, imaginative person and whether it is doing carpentry work or printing or giving lectures . . . he can always do it better than anyone else.” See Arrington, Diary, March 22, 1973, box 29, fd. 1, series 10, Arrington Papers. Ellsworth offered some insight into his penchant for detail as he recounted WHQ’s history. See Ellsworth, “Ten Years: An Editor’s Report,” 423.

62 Peterson became editor of WHQ when Ellsworth stepped down in 1979. Paul A. Hutton joined the editorial staff in 1977, becoming associate editor in 1979. See Ellsworth, “Ten Years: An Editor’s Report,” 426n1. Clyde A. Milner succeeded Hutton as associate editor in 1985 and became editor, along with coeditor Anne M. Butler, upon Peterson’s retirement in 1990. Butler became editor and Milner executive editor in 1998. David Rich Lewis joined the editorial staff as associate editor in 1993, becoming coeditor and then editor in 2004 with the retirement of Anne Butler. A testament to Ellsworth’s vision, the WHQ still operates out of USU’s History Department, with Lewis as editor and Colleen O’Neill as coeditor.

63 “Survey Results from Teachers, 1975,” box 26, fd. 6, Utah’s Heritage Research.

64 Ellsworth, “Utah History: Retrospect and Prospect,” 342. See also “Utah History: A Retrospect and Prospect (notes)” box 3, fd. 18–19, series 2, Ellsworth Papers.

65 “On the Matter of History Teaching Load,” 1955, box 1, fd. 15, series 2, Ellsworth Papers.

66 Ellsworth to Wilburn N. Ball, October 15, 1956, box 4, fd. 10, Utah’s Heritage Research.

67 Ellsworth, “Utah History: Retrospect and Prospect,” 367. Ellsworth was never dismissive of previous chroniclers of Utah history, such as Orson F. Whitney, Andrew Love Neff, Leland H. Creer, and others. Several years after Ellsworth’s essay, Charles S. Peterson published a brief but effective history of Utah in commemoration of the nation’s bicentennial. See Utah, A Bicentennial History (New York: Norton, 1977). In 1987, Dean L. May published Utah: A People’s History (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1987); and a year later Wayne K. Hinton authored Utah: Unusual Beginning to Unique Present (Northridge, CA: Windsor, 1988). Additionally, Utah’s History by Richard Poll, Thomas Alexander, Eugene Campbell, and David Miller would be widely adopted throughout the state as a college- level textbook. See Utah’s History (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1989). Thomas Alexander also penned the official centennial state history in 1996. See Utah, the Right Place: The Official Centennial History (Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith, 1996). In 1999, Richard N. Holzaphel published Utah: A Journey of Discovery (Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith, 1999), which in most instances supplanted Ellsworth’s Utah’s Heritage as the state’s seventh-grade Utah history textbook. Brian Q. Cannon, David R. Lewis, Jeffrey D. Nichols, and Paul W. Reeve are presently engaged with USU Press, an imprint of University Press of Colorado, to write and edit a new college-level text.