Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Utopian Spaces: Mormons And Icarians In Nauvoo, Illinois, Sarah Jaggi Lee

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Nauvoo, Illinois was the setting for two important social experiments in the middle of the nineteenth century. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormons, made this city their headquarters of their rapidly expanding church from 1838 until 1846. Only three years after the departure of the Mormons, a group of Frenchmen calling themselves Icarians came to the same spot to realize a system of communal living and brotherhood that lasted in Nauvoo until 1856. While several studies have been devoted to these groups, as yet none have combined a study of the two communities …