“The spirit of murder seems to be on the increase … due to the increase in firearms”: George Q. Cannon Denounces Gun Violence, 1891

In the July 15, 1891 issue of the (original) Juvenile Instructor, Mormon apostle and editor George Q. Cannon penned an editorial entitled, “Obedience — Do not Kill.” As that title implies, Cannon’s editorial contains both advice to parents on raising obedient children (“the best family government is that in which the judgment of children is appealed to and they are shown, by kind words, that the requests made of them are for their benefit and happiness”) and a denunciation of violence and bloodshed.

Cannon’s aim is broad — he decries both murder and, in words that seem as foreign to modern Mormonism as polygamy — hunting for sport. But his primary focus is on the shedding of innocent human blood, and in light of additional mass shootings this past weekend, Cannon’s words are all too relevant:

The spirit of murder seems to be on the increase in our day. This is partly due to the increase of firearms and to their cheapness, also to the fashion which prevails in many quarters of carrying deadly weapons. The frequency with which shooting is done also has its effect to break down the feeling of sacredness which should surround human life.

George Q. Cannon, “Obedience — Do not Kill,” Juvenile Instructor 26:14 (July 15, 1891), 443

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Digitized Publications Available from Utah Archives

This post will focus on digitized periodicals and publications available through Utah archives related to Mormon history. All of these sources are very helpful for doing research, both in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in particular has a rich history of magazines, though many of these magazines ended in 1970 with the push towards correlation and consolidation. Even though this post is focused on publications, I will also include a few other helpful links and materials. Before I get going, I want to express my gratitude to all the archivists and employees at so many archives who worked to make this material available. These are such rich sources, and being able to access so many remotely is just awesome. And it wouldn’t be possible without all the labor these people put in.

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The Rough Draft of the Manifesto

The George Q. Cannon Diaries, recently published by the Church Historian’s Press, reveal a wealth of information about nineteenth-century Mormonism, politics, and polygamy. The journal entry that I wanted confirmed was from September 24, 1890, which featured a copy of the “original” or “first draft” of the Woodruff Manifesto, before church leaders and lawyers added edits.

Historians have known for some time that Wilford Woodruff wrote an initial draft of the Manifesto, but now we also know what happened that day.

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From the Archives: Black Internationalism in 19th Century Salt Lake City; or a Haitian-born African American in Utah Reports on the Fourth of July, 1873

NOTE: The original version of this post was based, in part, on faulty research, for which I take full blame. What appears below is a revised version (with a slightly modified title).  There is no documentation identifying either Francis or Martha Grice as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Believing, however, that the source shared below is still sufficiently interesting and important, I’m keeping the post. A copy of the original can be seen here. 

I’ve been slowly making my way through Paul Ortiz’s new book, An African American and Latinx History of the United States. In a chapter on the Cuban Solidarity Movement of the 1860s through the 1890s, Ortiz quotes an 1873 letter from “an African American in Salt Lake City,” published in the black-owned newspaper, The Elevator.[1] Curious to learn more (and anxious to see if there were any clues where the SLC correspondent was a Latter-day Saint), I searched for the original letter in the digitized version of the paper (courtesy of the California Digital Newspaper Collection), and to my great delight, discovered that it was written by Francis H. Grice, a “mulatto” artist, miner, and restauranteur who moved to Salt Lake City in 1871.[2] 

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A Rather Disappointing Sequel to the “Great Hawaiian Cat Massacre”

Regular readers of JI may remember a post that I wrote a few years ago about Joseph F. Smith’s beheading of a cat.

It was a fun post to write and remains one of my favorite posts that I wrote during my time at JI. I recently discovered, however, that Joseph F.’s hatred of cats may have been a family trait.

I am currently researching the life and thought of Ina Coolbrith, who was a first cousin of Joseph F. Smith and California’s first poet laureate. She hid her connection to the Mormon community as an adult but was a frequent correspondent with the Smith family. One newspaper even suggested that Joseph F. Smith may have proposed marriage to her.

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From the Archives: Mormonism in Barbados (Almost), 1853

(detail from John Arrowsmith, Map of the Windward Islands, 1844. Click on image for original)

Last month, Elder Dale Renlund visited the West Indian island of Barbados, which he dedicated for the preaching of the gospel. The timing of his doing so carries with it some special significance. As Elder Renlund noted in his remarks, the West Indies Mission was first dedicated thirty years ago, in 1988. And it was, of course, forty years ago this summer that the temple and priesthood ban denying black women and men certain blessings and opportunities in the church was lifted, which opened up Barbados and the other predominantly black Caribbean islands for full-fledged missionary work. 

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From the Archives: “Star Wars easily the favorite of most”: History Division Staff Favorites, 1978

Among my very favorite parts of archival research is the small and unexpected glimpses into the lives of historical figures that have nothing directly to do with the research at hand.

I was reminded of this last week while going through some of Leonard Arrington’s correspondence to his family at the Arrington Papers at Utah State University. Stashed in between Arrington’s near-weekly typewritten letters to his children was a copy of his diary entry for June 24, 1978 describing a retreat “up the slopes of Ensign Peak” with “all of the persons in the History Division of the Historical Department,” minus the secretaries “and Glen Leonard, who was ill.”[1] As part of the retreat, Maureen Ursenbach Beecher passed out a questionnaire, inviting those assembled “to participate in some self discovery” and “respond to fifteen questions.”

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Gem from the Local Archive: My Turn on Earth

For years, our hi-fi stereo languished in the attic. But it?s been dusted off and now resides in a place of honor in our teenager?s room, because vinyl is hip again, and suddenly we?re glad we saved our record collection all these years. Recently an LDS friend passed along some records she thought our teen might enjoy spinning, and tucked into the stack was a genuine piece of 1970s Mormon culture, a double album cast recording of the 1977 musical My Turn on Earth. With lyrics by poet Carol Lynn Pearson and music by Lex de Azevedo, My Turn on Earth turned the Plan of Salvation into a modern-day child?s parable tracing one girl?s journey from her preexistence in heaven, through allegorical earth life and back.

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A Gem from the Local Archive: A Beginner’s Boston

When you live in a place over twenty years, and you come to know people who?ve lived there even longer than you, now and then you stumble over something in what we might call the local archives. Much of both the material and intellectual culture of Mormonism ? indeed, of any group through which a thread of commonality can be drawn ? never makes it into a formal archival collection. This is true even for old things, which have had more time to make their way out of private trunks, attics, and boxes into museums and historical societies and libraries. Just this week I saw someone on Twitter threatening to make a list of things offered for sale on eBay that, by rights, should belong in a public records office. But I daresay it?s even more true for things from recent history. For starters, no one fully knows which items of the endless detritus of the 20th century deserves preserving, and for seconds, a lot of it is still counted among living people?s prized possessions.

One of those possessions was recently lent to me by a friend. The provenance of this object is probably convoluted, but suffice it to say, it?s from the local archives, and there?s more where this came from. It?s uncatalogued. But it?s a gem, nonetheless.

The object in question is a revised 1973 edition of a book that was first published in 1966. Its author, whose name no doubt is familiar to all our readers, has just released a new book, which arrived crisp and thick in my mailbox this very week. But this is her very first book.

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Year in Review … 1975, That Is

It?s the time for year-in-review articles and retrospectives, as we get ready to kick 2016 out the door. I’m not sure how to put my thoughts about this year into coherent words, so maybe I’d rather write about some other proxy year instead. Some months ago, I posted about the Church?s annual Church in Action films by profiling the 1973 version. I recently began teaching Institute in my stake and because of a boundary change I took over mid-semester in the Cornerstones class about Church history and the Restoration. Joey Stuart?s thought-provoking piece earlier this fall on Mormonism’s biggest “change year” challenged me to find a way to present some of the rapid transformations in Church demographics, policies and practices that have taken place in recent decades for the last class in the semester. I thought bringing in one of the Church in Action recaps might highlight both continuity and change in recent Mormonism. It definitely did; we had a lively discussion about the film and what had / hadn’t changed since then.

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