Elegy for Missing Data, in Advance

Or: All Web is Not Created Equal, have you noticed?

One of the sessions I attended at the AHA this month was Session 151, Social Media and History. It featured one of our JIers, Max Mueller, talking about tensions and complications in the church’s “I am a Mormon” campaign, including the fascinating case of one woman whose tattoos were airbrushed out of her profile pic (her profile is now gone, for other reasons). Great talk, by the way, along with several others that reflected on the ethical and methodological problems of using social media as historical sources for researching marginalized groups or threatened voices. In each of the presentations — Max’s on constructing Mormon online “diversity,” Jessica Lingel’s on underground music scenes, Sadaf Jaffer’s on online discussion boards for Pakistani atheists, and Amy Holmes-Tagchungdarpa’s on sites made by and about Tibetans — the very existence of the sites to begin with, and especially their continued life on the web, is inherently unstable. It was actually a rather terrifying session, like watching 4 canaries in a coal mine (Hey! There’s a pocket of air over here! Oh wait, never mind).

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Arapeen, the Ute Prophet

Filed away in the Brigham Young Papers at the Church History Library, there is a document that records the vision of a nineteenth-century prophet. That visionary, however, was not Brigham Young. Rather, it was Arapeen, a leading Ute chief during the Mormons? first two decades in the Great Basin. That the Saints believed that Arapeen had received a legitimate revelation is revealed in the language they used to categorize the document. John Lowry, Jr., the Manti resident who interpreted for Arapeen, and George Peacock, who acted as scribe, entitled the document ?Vision of Arapine on the night of the 4th of Feb 1855.? Later, after it had been sent to Young?s office in Salt Lake City, an unidentified clerk scrawled ?The Lord to Arrowpin? in the margins.[1] Arapeen?s vision provides a fascinating window into the Utes? hybrid religious culture that was in the process of formation in the years following the Mormons? arrival in 1847.

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From the Archives: The Mormon Problem in the Mind of Freethinkers, circa 1886

At the annual meeting of the Mormon History Association in June, historian Leigh Eric Schmidt delivered a fascinating Tanner Lecture on “Mormons, Freethinkers, and the Limits of Toleration” (a helpful summary of his remarks can be found here). Among other things, I was struck by Schmidt’s discussion of the occasional moments of  agreement between Mormons and Freethinkers in the late 19th century. It was, most often, their mutual distrust and dislike of mainline Christians that afforded them these brief instances of mutual respect and accord.

I recently browsed through several issues of The Truth Seeker, a prominent 19th century newspaper devoted to “freethought and reform,” in search of something entirely unrelated to Mormonism.[1] But as I did, I came across a couple of articles on Mormonism. In the May 15, 1886 edition of the paper, Samuel B. Putnam, the secretary of the American Secular Union, reported on his recent visit to Utah. Among other things, Putnam noted with pleasure that “there are many Liberals at Ogden,” including some former Mormons. “Mr. James B. Stoddard was born in Mormonism,” he reported. “He, however, has a keen and fearless mind, and has broken away from the trammels. He will do much for Freethought by his influence and ability.”

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Reference Archivists

The Society for American Archives month has designated October Archives Month. To celebrate, here?s a highlight of the recent SAA journal.

Musings on Archival Research, Methods and Workflow

…or how to hack your summer archives trip and come off victorious.

This post grew out of a conversation I had with fellow JI-er Christopher Jones during one of his lengthy jaunts around the Atlantic seaboard during his summer dissertation research. I have the good fortune to be located not too far from the American Antiquarian Society and could offer him room & board during his research trip there, and since I didn?t set foot inside an archives all summer I was living vicariously through everyone else?s treasure-hunting. We got to talking about archival research method: how we historians actually do what we do inside the archives, and reflecting on how we all get very little graduate-level instruction on the nitty-gritty of how to do this, and how it might benefit our JI community to have a broader conversation about it.

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Joseph F. Smith and the New York City Draft Riots, Part 3: 15-18 July 1863

This is the third in a three-part series of posts about Joseph F. Smith?s experiences during the New York Draft Riots of July 1863.  See the first two parts here and here.

Map of Manhattan Island:  the cluster of attacks on property in the southwestern portion of the island is close to the Stevens House, where Joseph F. was staying with John W. Young.[1]

In the previous post I argued that Joseph F. Smith seemed to be simply an observer for the first two days of the draft riots.  Late in the night on July 14, 1863, however, the riots came dangerously close, momentarily changing the nature of his relationship to them.  In this last post of my brief series, I have transcribed Joseph F.?s diary entries for the last few days of the riots and their aftermath.  I think they provide an interesting, if brief, look into how the riots affected him. 

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Joseph F. Smith and the New York Draft Riots, Part 2: 13 & 14 July 1863

This is the second in a three-part series of posts about Joseph F. Smith?s experiences during the New York Draft Riots of July 1863.  See the first part here.

Image:  CHARGE OF THE POLICE ON THE RIOTERS AT THE “TRIBUNE” OFFICE, Harper?s Weekly, August 1, 1863, p. 484 [1]

Joseph F. Smith arrived in New York City on July 6, 1863, after an unremarkable journey from Liverpool (though he did mention with disappointment on July 4^th that ?no demonstrations were mad[e] to commemorate the aneversery of American Independence,?[2] ).  He had been recently released from his missionary duties in the British Isles Mission, and was fulfilling an assignment to see several groups of Mormon emigrants safely into the U.S. and on their way toward Utah.  

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Joseph F. Smith and the New York City Draft Riots, Part 1: Background

Image:  ?The Riots in New York: The Mob Lynching a Negro in Clarkson-Street? [1]

One of the things that first interested me about Joseph F. Smith was his personality as a diarist.  He liked to pen elaborate descriptions of impressive places he visited, such as the ancient Mo?okini heiau (temple) in Hawaii, the famous Mauna Loa volcano, or the Wentworth Castle and Estates near Barnsley, England.[2]  He cataloged what he saw as faults in others, ranging from family members, to LDS church enemies, to people he encountered as a missionary.[3]  He recorded seemingly insignificant details and used trite or repetitive phrases (some of which have crept into my own journaling vocabulary), in the process illuminating much about his education, priorities, biases, and spirituality.[4]  And we can?t leave out the infamous cat massacre that Amanda HK described in a post some time ago.

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From the Archives: Joseph H. Dean and Joseph F. Smith on Mexico/Polygamy

On September 24, 1890, Joseph H. Dean returned home from Samoa, where he had been serving as mission president. He returned to Salt Lake City to report on his duties to the First Presidency. After briefly speaking to Wilford Woodruff and George Q. Cannon, Dean sat down with Joseph F. Smith. Dean knew Smith from Smith’s time in the South Pacific.[1] “At his invitation,” Dean wrote in his journal, “I took supper with him, just he and I alone.”During supper, they spoke about:

“nearly every subject, among other things the advisability of my going to Mexico. The Church a ranch or rally there, where a member of the Church in good standing can settle and have all the land he can take care of. He [must][2] till the land, however, but pays a nominal [fee] for the payment of the interest in the money invested. That is so that no outsiders can get footing there and also so that an apostate could not stay there, as the laws of the state give the owners of the land the privilege of “firing” any renter that doesn’t suit them. A many can have as many wives there as he pleases so long as he only acknowledges one as such, that is, there is a tacit understanding between the church and the Mexican government, that we only practice plural marriage but must outwardly appear to have by one wife. Good land, delightful climate, and all together a desirable place to locate. I fell favorably impressed with the idea of going there.”[3]

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From the Archives: Mission Presidents Talk about Sister Missionaries, 1904

In my last few posts I have looked at discourse around early female Mormon missionaries. Below is the text of ?Lady Missionaries,? published in The Young Woman’s Journal in 1904, six-and-a-half years after the first Sister Missionary was set apart. The author is Joseph W McMurrin, one of the Seven Presidents of the Seventy, and thus one of the chief administrators in the Church’s missionary program. Note, however, that only about a third of the  1,500+ words come from McMurrin; the balance are from mission presidents. Since the article quotes four of the six US mission presidents, I think the article gives a reliable snap-shot of the leadership view at the time. 

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