Wasted Seed and Spent Men: Corinne Allen Tuckerman and the Politics of Polygamy after 1890

I am at the Schlesinger Library this week doing research in the papers of Corinne Allen Tuckerman, a woman who lived with her husband in Salt Lake City during the turn-of-the-century.  A member of the first class to matriculate at Smith College, she was also the President of the National Congress of Mothers, a founder of the Parent and Teachers Association, and a fierce opponent of polygamy.  Tuckerman wrote letters to the presidents of seminaries and colleges asking them what their classes taught about marriage, gave lectures about the evils of polygamy, and helped to found Hallock Hall in Utah as a refuge for working class girls.  Because the publication of our first edition of the ?What I learned from Jack Weyland? series is going to be a bit postponed, I thought I would give you some snippets from her correspondence:

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“Linking One Generation to Another”: Dedicating the “This is the Place” Monument, 1947

At 6 a.m. on July 24, 1947, the centennial of the Mormon Pioneers’ entrance into the Salt Lake Valley, the first spectators arrived at the mouth of Emigration Canyon, Utah. By mid-morning, perhaps ten thousand cars were parked over several square miles, with as many as fifty thousand attendees waiting for the festivities to begin. They had gathered to witness the dedication of the sixty-foot tall ?This is the Place? Monument, which would honor not only the Latter-day Saint Pioneers, but also the Spanish, British, and American forerunners who had laid a foundation for the Mormon settlement of the Great Basin. At 9:30, the Boy Scouts raised the American and Utah state flags, while the U.S. Marines band from San Diego, California, began playing ?America.? Church President George Albert Smith, as master of ceremonies, introduced the program and delivered the dedicatory prayer. Speakers included J. Rueben Clark and David O. McKay, Smith’s counselors in the First Presidency; the Most Rev. Duane G. Hunt, bishop of the Salt Lake Catholic Diocese; Rt. Rev. Arthur W. Moulton, retired Episcopalian bishop of Utah; and Rabbi Alvin S. Luchs of Temple B’Nai Israel, all of whom were members of the monument commission. The dedication marked an important occasion in what Laurie Maffly-Kipp has called the ?Long Approach to the Mormon Moment,?as Latter-day Saints sought to claim a prominent place both in the present and the past of the American nation.

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A New Messenger Has Arrived (with apologies to Tony Kushner)

We’re happy to announce that we’ve added an enlightening new permablogger to our ranks.

Her bio:

Cristine Hutchison-Jones (call me Crissy!) received her BA in American Studies and Religion from Florida State University in 2001, and her PhD in Religious and Theological Studies from Boston University in 2011. She is a cultural and intellectual historian of religion in the United States with a focus on religious intolerance and representations of minorities. Her dissertation, “Reviling and Revering the Mormons: Defining American Values, 1890-2008,” explored images of the Mormons in American news, fiction and non-fiction writing, and television and film. She is the author of “Center and Periphery: Mormons and American Culture in Tony Kushner’s *Angels in America*.”

Welcome, Crissy!

Southwestern States Mission: Pioneer Day

Pioneer Day, July 24, commemorates the 1847 arrival of Mormon settlers in Salt Lake Valley. Some church members and missionaries in the Southwestern States Mission observed the holiday, but, as with the Fourth of July, city-dwellers celebrated more elaborately.

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From the Archives: “Who May Bear the Priesthood?”

I came across an intriguing article not long ago, published in a 1927 issue of the Cumorah Monthly Bulletin. The Bulletin was the official publication of the South African Mission from 1927-1970.[1] I suppose you know what’s coming next based on the title of this post, so I might as well get right to it.

WHO MAY BEAR THE PRIESTHOOD?

This is a subject of frequent inquiry in the South African Mission, where so many good people are unable to declare, with certainty, a genealogy pure from the Hamite or Canaanitish blood.[2]

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An open letter to political theorists who presume to lecture historians on how to be historians

To whom it may concern:

I’m thrilled that you’ve taken an interest in Mormon studies. I think that there is much interdisciplinary work to be done in this emerging (sub)field and welcome the perspectives you bring from your own discipline. There seems to be some confusion on your end, though, about what historians do. Let me try and assuage your concerns by assuring you of two things:

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Reading suggestions for the amateur historian

The ecology of Mormon History has tremendous benefits. Among them are deeply committed institutional patrons, obsessive readership, and dedicated amateur researchers willing to slog through enormous volumes of minutiae. Some of these benefits can also yield challenges. I’d like to focus on one in particular: Denominational histories that even when not overtly devotional are disconnected from the historiography and analytical trends of religious history more broadly.

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What I Learned from Jack Weyland, or a New Series on the History of Mormon Girls

A few months ago, in a post called The Mormon Body Project, I asked what a history of Mormon women and their relationship to their bodies would be like.  How did Mormon garments with their emphasis upon modesty and purity change the way that women thought about their menstrual cycles, their breasts, and other intimate aspects of their bodies?  Did Mormon theology and its emphasis upon the divinity of the body allow Mormon women to develop more positive ideas about their body?  And, finally, how did Mormon institutions like Young Women?s and Relief Society help girls manage the transition from childhood to adolescence? 

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Announcing a New Permablogger: J. Stapley

We’re absolutely thrilled to announce that Jonathan Stapley has agreed to join the Juvenile Instructor on a more permanent basis. He likely needs no introduction to regular readers, but for anyone unfamiliar, Jonathan is an independent researcher in Mormon history who has authored and co-authored prize-winning articles on Mormon women, ritual healing, and baptism. He is also widely known for his stellar blogging at By Common Consent, and has been an invaluable friend and reader of JI from the beginning (he designed and currently hosts the site, and regularly handles IT issues for us). Recently, J. has very graciously participated in two of the initial three entries in our “Responses” series.

J. will continue doing his thing at BCC, but will also begin posting here on a regular basis. Please join us in officially welcoming J. Stapley to the Juvenile Instructor.

Welcome to a new blog, Worlds Without End: A Mormon Studies Roundtable

In many ways, the strength of Mormon studies can be measured by the number of quality voices. It is in that vein that we at JI happily welcome another Mormon studies blog to the fold: Worlds Without End. Here is how they describe themselves:

Worlds Without End: A Mormon Studies Roundtable is a group blog for friendly, high-quality academic conversation about Mormon religious worlds and their larger contexts, connections, and consequences. Participants have been carefully selected for their intelligence, diversity of perspectives, and friendly, constructive, respectful styles of discourse.

The use of the term ?conversation? is deliberate. Worlds Without End is intended to be academic, but not dry or impersonal. We strive to produce quality content that will be of interest to academics as well as hobbyists, but we also work hard to balance this with humor, pictures, and a warm and lively communal atmosphere. Contributors to Worlds Without End don?t ?bracket? their personalities here. We believe our personal beliefs, experiences, and voices are part of what make us interesting and give significance to the things we write. Writing in our own voices is an invitation for readers to connect and engage with us on a personal as well as an intellectual level. It is also, however, an act of vulnerability, so please be considerate in your interactions with us.

Worlds Without End, ultimately, is more than a blog. It?s a vision of one possible future for the discipline. We strive to model the openness, insight, creativity, and verve that we believe represent the ideal way forward for Mormon Studies.

As a fellow group blog who shares many of those ideals, we heartily welcome them and look forward to their contributions. Many of their contributors are good friends to JI, and others we hope to get to know more.