Results by title

In 1879, 230 settlers in southwestern Utah heeded the call from leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to pull up stakes and move to the distant San Juan country of southeastern Utah. Their year-long journey became one of the most extraordinary wagon trips ever undertaken in North America, their trail one of peril, difficulty, and spectacular vistas. Beginning in Cedar City, Utah, this trail crosses today’s Dixie National Forest, skirts Bryce Canyon National Park, bisects the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, crosses the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, and comes close to Natural Bridges National Monument on its way to Bluff, Utah.

Though the trail that these devoted pioneers broke across raw frontier was used for several years afterward, no highway was built over most of the route because it was deemed too rugged for modern vehicles. In addition to the historical value of the story of these pioneers, this guide includes road logs, maps, and hiking trails along the historic trail. It also points out fascinating natural history along the way, making A Guide to Southern Utah’s Hole-in-the-Rock Trail a significant reference for a variety of readers. 

 Emma Lee is the classic biography of one of John D. Lee's plural wives. Emma experienced the best and worst of polygamy and came as near to the Mountain Meadows Massacre as anyone could without participating first hand. 

Hosea Stout witnessed and influenced many of the major civil and political events over fifty years of LDS history, but until the publication of his diaries, he was a relatively obscure figure to historians. Hosea Stout: Lawman, Legislator, Mormon Defender is the first-ever biography of this devoted follower who played a significant role in Mormon and Utah history.

Stout joined the Mormons in Missouri in 1838 and followed them to Nauvoo, where he rose quickly to become a top leader in the Nauvoo Legion and chief of police, a position he also held at Winter Quarters. He became the first attorney general for the Territory of Utah, was elected to the Utah Territorial Legislature, and served as regent for the University of Deseret (which later became the University of Utah) and as judge advocate of the Nauvoo Legion in Utah. In 1862, Stout was appointed US attorney for the Territory of Utah by President Abraham Lincoln. In 1867, he became city attorney of Salt Lake City and he was elected to the Utah House of Representatives in 1881.

But Stout’s history also had its troubled moments. Known as a violent man and aggressive enforcer, he was often at the center of controversy during his days on the police force and was accused of having a connection with deaths in Nauvoo and Utah. Ultimately, however, none of these allegations ever found traction, and the leaders of the LDS community, especially Brigham Young, saw to it that Stout was promoted to roles of increasing responsibility throughout his life. When he died in 1889, Hosea Stout left a complicated legacy of service to his state, his church, and the members of his faith community.

On September 11, 1857, some 120 men, women, and children from the Arkansas hills were murdered in the remote desert valley of Mountain Meadows, Utah. This notorious massacre was, in fact, a mass execution: having surrendered their weapons, the victims were bludgeoned to death or shot at point-blank range. The perpetrators were local Mormon militiamen whose motives have been fiercely debated for 150 years.

In House of Mourning, Shannon A. Novak goes beyond the question of motive to the question of loss. Who were the victims at Mountain Meadows? How had they settled and raised their families in the American South, and why were they moving west once again? What were they hoping to find or make for themselves at the end of the trail? By integrating archival records and oral histories with the first analysis of skeletal remains from the massacre site, Novak offers a detailed and sensitive portrait of the victims as individuals, family members, cultural beings, and living bodies.

The history of the massacre has often been treated as a morality tale whose chief purpose was to vilify (or to glorify) some collective body. Resisting this tendency to oversimplify the past, Novak explores Mountain Meadows as a busy and dangerous intersection of cultural and material forces in antebellum America. House of Mourning is a bold experiment in a new kind of history, the biocultural analysis of complex events.

Winner of the Society for Historical Archaeology James Deetz Book Award. 
 

An illustrated collection of historical articles originally published in the Salt Lake Tribune from 1993 to 1996, In
Another Time provides both an entertaining introduction to Utah and a distinguished and popular historian's summary views of the state's peculiar history.

Another Time will entertain and inform newcomers seeking an introductory understanding of what has made Utah different, old hands wanting to know more about the rich complexity of the state's past, and anyone who enjoys well-told historical tales.
 

John D. Lee is most often remembered as the only man executed for his role in the infamous 1857 massacre by Mormons of a California-bound emigrant train at Mountain Meadows in southern Utah. This classic biography examines the circumstances and events which brought Lee to that end. It also, however, looks at the other dimensions of his active life, showing that he was a far more important and complex man than subsequent generations, eager for a dark symbol, have acknowledged. He was a leader in the Mormon colonization of southern Utah and northern Arizona. With the title Indian Farmer, he became his church's emissary to Indians in the area. During and prior to the Mormon migration west, he participated in and kept detailed accounts of the conflicts and other events in Missouri, Illinois, and along the trail. An early practitioner, and recorder, of the custom of plural marriage, he was the adopted son of Brigham Young and a close associate of other Mormon leaders. His occupations included builder, farmer, missionary, ferry operator, town founder, and faith leader.

Using Lee's extensive diaries, bolstered by numerous supporting accounts, Juanita Brooks has not only written a thorough and objective portrait of one man's life, a life which would be worthy of study even if it were not controversial, she also has provided numerous insights into early Mormon society and culture. Anyone interested in Mormon polygamy, family life, leadership, relations with Indians, or other aspects of their frontier existence will find this a storehouse of information.

This classic biography is now in its fourth Utah State University Press printing. It is unparalleled in providing a thorough and accurate account of John D. Lee's involvement in the tragic 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre. 

Until recently, most scholarly work on Chinese music in both Chinese and Western languages has focused on genres, musical structure, and general history and concepts, rather than on the musicians themselves. This volume breaks new ground by focusing on individual musicians active in different amateur and professional music scenes in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Chinese communities in Europe. Using biography to deepen understanding of Chinese music, contributors present contextualized portraits of rural folk singers, urban opera singers, literati, and musicians on both geographic and cultural frontiers. Contributors are Nimrod Baranovitch, Rachel Harris, Frank Kouwenhoven, Tong Soon Lee, Peter Micic, Helen Rees, Antoinet Schimmelpenninck, Shao Binsun, Jonathan P. J. Stock, and Bell Yung.

Back in print, this essential reference for readers interested in the Mormon Trail is part history, part resource book, part guide and photographic essay. Driven from their home in Nauvoo, Illinois, Mormons led by Brigham Young began in 1846 to journey west to an expected haven in the Great Salt Lake Valley. The first party arrived there in July 1847. Thousands of members and converts later followed the Mormon Trail, which for much of its way traced the route of the Oregon Trail, although it generally stayed across the Platte River from the more-traveled way. It was thus, until the railroad's arrival in 1869, one of the West's most important and heavily used roads.

Although the Mormons' experience was in most ways similar to that of other emigrants, the religious motivations, tight organization, and family groups of the Mormons gave their migration a distinct character. William E. Hill introduces the Mormons, their eventful early history, and the characteristics of the migration west. His book also includes a chronology of trail-related events, excerpts from diaries and guidebooks, songs, historical maps, over 200 then-and-now illustrations, descriptions of major museums and displays on the trail, and recommendations for further reading.

There are no historical events that have more iconic significance for the people of Utah than the trek of the vanguard company of Mormons west in 1847. Its meaning may vary, but overall, the march has a highly symbolic and seminal historical importance for virtually all Utahns. While the journey has been widely celebrated, memorialized, and even sanctified and various books have been written about it, there is more that can be said and understood about the migration's place in western history; about its context, including events preceding and following it; and about the real experiences of its participants. Particularly lacking in most published accounts are the stories of the rank and file members, the individuals who, in contrast to the well-known leadership, with Brigham Young at the top, might fittingly be called foot soldiers. The 1847 company had a military-like organization, which is captured by Ronald Barney's term brigade in the title. Norton Jacob was such a man of the ranks in 1847. He had no special status in the Mormon Church, and there was little to make him stand out in the historical record than that he left what is regarded by many trail historians as one of the best and most informative journals of the early Mormon emigration. While the heart of Jacob's record concerns the 1847 journey, there is much more to it. The diary published here begins in 1844, the year of church founder Joseph Smith's murder. It continues through the crisis events that followed: the Mormons' flight from Nauvoo, their trudging journey across Iowa to Winter Quarters, and the beginnings of mass migration to Utah. After the apex of 1847, the arc of the narrative moves through accounts of Jacob's return to Nauvoo late that year and of the much larger Mormon emigration in 1848. It reaches denouement in a short record of his first years in Salt Lake Valley.

Caroline Crosby's life took a wandering course between her 1834 marriage to Jonathan Crosby and conversion to the infant Mormon Church and her departure for her final home, Utah, on New Year's Day, 1858. In the intervening years, she lived in many places but never long enough to set firm roots. Her adherence to a frontier religion on the move kept her moving, even after the church began to settle down in Utah. Despite the impermanence of her situation—perhaps even because of it—Caroline Crosby left a remarkably rich record of her life and travels, thereby telling us not only much about herself and her family but also about times and places of which her documentary record provides a virtually unparalleled view. A notable aspect of her memoirs and journals is what they convey of the character of their author, who, despite the many challenges of transience and poverty she faced, appears to have remained curious, dedicated, observant, and optimistic.

From Caroline's home in Canada, she and Jonathan Crosby first went to the headquarters of Joseph Smith's new church in Kirtland, Ohio. She recounts, in a memoir, the early struggles of his followers there. As the church moved west, the Crosbys did as well, but, as became characteristic, they did not move immediately with the main body to the center of the religion. For a while they settled in Indiana, finally reaching the new Mormon center of Nauvoo in 1842. Fleeing Nauvoo with the last of the Mormons in 1846, they spent two years in Iowa and set out for Utah in 1848, the account of which is the first of Caroline Crosby's vivid trail journals. The Crosbys were able to rest in Salt Lake City for less than two years before Brigham Young sent them on a church mission to the Society and Austral Islands in the South Pacific. She recorded, in detail, their overland travel to San Francisco and then by sea to French Polynesia and their service on the islands. In late 1852 the Crosbys returned to California, beginning what is probably the most historically significant time recorded in her writings, her diaries of life. First, in immediately post-Gold-Rush San Francisco and, second, in the new Mormon village of San Bernardino in southern California. There is no comparable record by a woman of 1850s life in these growing communities. The Crosbys responded in 1857 to Brigham Young's call for church members to gather in Utah and again abandoned a new home—the nicest one they had built and one of the finest houses in San Bernardino—again displaying their unquestioning loyalty to the Mormon church.

Hosea Stout was a participant in the mainstream movement as the newly formed Mormon Church expanded its membership and range. He held numerous positions of responsibility in church, civic, and governmental organizations, including as officer of the militias of Illinois and Utah, attorney general of the state of Deseret and the territory of Utah, and president of the house of the Utah Territorial Legislature. Such positions gave Stout the opportunity to observe and record events of great moment in Mormon history that were outside the reach of many diarists. His records of the territorial legislature offer a more informative and detailed account of the affairs of the legislative assembly than even the official journals of that body. Yet Stout also imbues his diaries with a sense of the familiar, recounting moving experiences from his daily life.

This edition of On the Mormon Frontier presents Stout’s diary in a single volume, proving that it continues to be an essential work in the study of Mormon and American history.

"What an astonishing life and what a remarkable biography. Lewis Barney's sojourn on the hard edge of the American frontier is a forgotten epic. Not only does this book tell of an amazing personal odyssey from his birth in upstate New York in 1808 to his death in Mancos, Colorado, in 1894, but Barney's tale represents a living evocation of some of the most significant themes in American history. Frederick Jackson Turner theorized that the frontier shaped our national character, but Lewis Barney's life stands as a testament to the real impact of the westering experience on a man and his family. Ron Barney's detailed biography of Lewis Barney provides a participant's view of Mormonism's first six decades of controversy, hardship, and triumph, viewed from the bottom of the social heap. Despite his wide-ranging experience and endless sacrifices, Lewis Barney was a worker in the Mormon vineyard, not one of the princes of the Kingdom of God whose lives have been so exhaustively celebrated. Barney's lack of status in this complex hierarchy adds tremendously to the value of this study, since so much nineteenth-century LDS biography has ignored the lives of ordinary people to celebrate a surprisingly small elite whose experiences were far different from those of the general Mormon population." —Will Bagley, editor of the series Kingdom in the West: The Mormons and the American Frontier and editor of The Pioneer Camp of the Saints: The 1846-1847 Mormon Trail Journals of Thomas Bullock.

Plain But Wholesome presents a groundbreaking foray into Mormon history. Brock Cheney explores the foodways of Mormon pioneers from their trek west through the arrival of the railroad and reveals new perspectives on the fasci-nating Mormon settlement era. Relying on original diaries, newspaper accounts, and recipe books from the 1850s, Cheney draws a vivid portrait of what Mormon pioneers ate and drank. Although other authors have sketched the subject before, this portrait is the first effort that might be described as scholarly, though the lively prose will interest a broad general audience.

Presented here are the first explicit descriptions of the menus, food processes, and recipes of the Mormon pioneers. While many have supposed that earlier pioneer foodways continued to be handed down through Mormon families, Cheney has confirmed traditions going back generations and covering more than a century. The book also exposes myths and clichés about pioneer piety and hardships, as Cheney examines such pioneer extravagances as fresh “oysters on the half shell” and pioneer trends of alcohol consumption.

A perfect gift for the history buff or Dutch oven chef, Plain But Wholesome will also prove its place among scholars and historians. With its rollicking blend of historical source material and modern interpretation, this book will entertain and educate novice and expert alike.
 

Now in paperback, this award-winning history tells the story of the author’s great-great grandfather, John Murray Murdoch, who came to America from Scotland to gather with other members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints during the nineteenth century.
Murdoch embraced Mormonism and set out for the Utah Territory in 1852 with his wife, Ann, and their family. En route they suffered the deaths of their two young children. Two years later, John’s mother, Wee Granny, and Ann’s brother, James Steele, both perished, along with many others of the ill-fated Martin handcart company, as they attempted to immigrate to Salt Lake City.

Murdoch was a respected member of the community and participated in the military preparations and maneuvers against the U.S. Army in the 1857 Utah War. Eventually the family moved to the Heber valley as early settlers there. Murdoch later became one of Wasatch county’s first elected officials and helped establish the sheep-ranching industry in Utah. The 'everyman' aspect of John Murdoch’s life makes his a compelling story. It will fascinate anyone interested in the individuals who helped create Utah's history. 

Winner of the Evans Handcart Award. 

During the winter of 1846–1847, members of the Donner Party found themselves stuck in the snows of the Sierra Nevada on their journey to California, losing many in their group to severe cold and starvation. Those who survived did so by cannibalizing their dead comrades. Today the Donner Party may be the most famous of American overland emigrant groups, but it was not the only one to face extreme conditions. Ten years after the Donner Party, two groups sponsored by the Mormon Church, the Willie and Martin handcart companies ran into similar difficulties. Unlike the Donner Party, however, these people were following a well-traveled path, but they were doing it in a novel way—pushing and pulling their goods and children in handcarts some 1,300 miles from Iowa to Utah. Caught in early winter storms in Wyoming, 200 members of these two companies died along the trail.

The plights of these emigrant groups have been addressed by different historians in different ways; this book is the first to examine the tragedies in terms of biology. Grayson shows that who lived or died can largely be explained by age, sex, and family ties. His investigation reveals what happens when our cultural mechanisms for dealing with famine and extreme cold are reduced to only what our bodies can provide within structured social contexts. His results are surprising and not always intuitive as he investigates who survived in these life threatening situations. 

The wagon trail between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles is one of the most important and least-known elements of nineteenth-century Western migration. Known as the Southern Route, it included the western half of the Old Spanish Trail and was favored because it could be used for travel and freighting year-round. It was, however, likely the most difficult route that pioneers traveled with any consistency, following not rivers but leading from one--sometimes dubious--desert watering place to the next and offering few havens for the sick, weary, or unfortunate. Historian Edward Leo Lyman has provided the first history of the complete Southern Route and of the people who developed and used it. Based on extensive research in primary sources--including many early travelers’ accounts--and on Lyman’s own investigation of the route and its branches, the book discusses the exploration and development of the Old Spanish Trail, its horse thieves and traders, including Jed Smith and Kit Carson, along with government explorere John C. Frémont. Developing the old pack mule trail as a wagon road between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles, miners heading for the California gold fields first used the route extensively. Mormon missionaries and the colonizers of San Bernardino and other communities also traveled that way, as did a wide array of mail carriers, soldiers and world travelers. Later, a steady stream of Anglo-American emigrants seeking new homes or fortunes in California shared the road with a surprising number of freight wagon operators. The trail passed through the territories of numerous Native American peoples, and contacts with them--both friendly and hostile--played a significant role in the experiences of travelers and in the fates of Native American cultures in this region. Lyman’s discussions of Mormon-Indian relations and of the infamous Mountain Meadows Massacre offer fresh and important analyses of these vital aspects of the westward movement.

The exodus of the Mormon people from Illinois across the Great Plains to the Salt Lake Valley  was the most monumental movement of a people in the settlement of the American West. In 1846, the first pioneers, led by Brigham Young, crossed Iowa, and this proved to be the most difficult part of their journey. The weather, the terrain and emigrants' lack  of experience and preparation tested their faith and strength, but their single-minded desire to reach a safe home in the West forged them into a strong people.

Wend Your Way: A Guide to Sites Along the Mormon Trail tells the story of this great movement through Iowa. Tracing the trail from east to west through 12 counties the guide includes:

• Mormon Trail history for each county
•Directs visitors to the 27 interpretive roadside panels that were constructed on the trail by U.S. National Park Service and Iowa Mormon Trails Association
•Reproduces the poignant illustrations that author L. Matthew Chatterley drew for these wayside exhibits
•Provides a map and directions by county to guide travelers to the route of the Mormon Trail, sites of Mormon camps and settlements and the interpretive roadside panels
•Lists other locations in southern Iowa that visitors will want to explore

Volume 1, Life Writings of Frontier Women series, edited by Maureen Ursenbach Beecher

Mary Richard's journals and letters record a young woman's rare, but richly detailed view of life in the temporary Mormon pioneer communities in Iowa.