History Commons^™

Telling Her People's Story: Mae Timbimboo Parry, Matriarch Of The Northwestern Band Of The Shoshone Nation, 1919-2007, Dean Mcguire

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Mae Timbimboo Parry played a significant role in changing the public’s narrative about the Bear River Massacre and shaping the current knowledge about Northwestern Shoshone history. According to Mae Parry, Northwestern Shoshones were not desperate victims of violence but rather Native Americans who adapted from a great tragedy and survived on their own terms. This thesis explores the meaning of her work for Northwestern Shoshones today.

Measuring Rural Revolutionary Mobilization: The Militiamen, Soldiers, And Minutemen Of Fauquier County, Virginia 1775 - 1782, Jason Fackrell

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The story of the rural soldiers and militiamen of Virginia that served in the American Revolution remains open to historical research and exploration. Recent scholarship of Virginia’s military contribution to the Revolution focuses heavily on relationships of power among social groups that operated within the colony’s hierarchy, concluding that a lack of white, lower-class political and economic representation disabled mobilization among the Old Dominion’s more settled regions. My study emphasizes the revolutionary backcountry’s story by using Fauquier County, Virginia as a case study.

A study of Rural Virginia during the Revolution presents scholars with significant challenges. Literacy rates among the …

Propagating Perfection: Eugenic Sterilization At The Utah State Training School, 1935 - 1974, Jennifer Rust

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Compulsory sterilization as a tool of eugenics occurred in the United States from before the U.S. Supreme Court upheld its’ constitutionality in 1927 until the early 1970s. Initial justification for removing a person’s ability to procreate was rooted in hereditarian assertions that disability was transmitted from parent to offspring, and incorporated an economic argument that individuals with disabilities placed a financial burden on the state for care. Due to scientific deconstruction of the hereditarian argument, rationalization for sterilization evolved into an anxiety over the perceived inability of the disabled to parent. The state of Utah sterilized 738 individuals with intellectual …

Claiming The Best Of Both Worlds: Mixed Heritage Children Of The Pacific Northwest Fur Trade And The Formation Of Identity, Alanna Cameron Beason

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The fur trade in the Pacific Northwest, a region encompassing Oregon, Washington, Idaho, the western half of Montana, and British Columbia, supplied the needed ingredients for the formation of a distinctive identity to form among the mixed heritage children born to indigenous women and men of the fur trade. This thesis examined how this identity formed in some the leading families of the time. The MacDonald’s, McKay’s, and the Tolmie’s all embraced both sides of their parental cultures and used them to create and defend their own sense of identity and community. Language was an important aspect of this new …

Recreating Religion: The Response To Joseph Smith’S Innovations In The Second Prophetic Generation Of Mormonism, Christopher James Blythe

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

On June 27, 1844, Joseph Smith, the founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints, was assassinated. In the wake of his death, a number of would-be
successors emerged. Each of these leaders - part of what I call the second prophetic
generation - established a unique vision of Mormonism.

In 1844, Mormonism was in the middle of a major shift in its character. Joseph
Smith’s death left numerous theological and practical questions unresolved. This thesis argues that, rather than merely a succession struggle of competition and power, a principal function of the second prophetic generation in Mormonism …

The Career Intern Program: An Alternative High School In 1970'S Philadelphia, Brandon Rains

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In 1971, Leon Sullivan, founder and chairman of the Board for the Opportunities Industrialization Centers of America, created the Career Intern Program. The purpose of the Program was to identify and help dropouts and potential dropouts from high school graduate and select and start a career. In order to accomplish these ambitious goals, Program leaders introduced a variety of educational innovations designed to help interns succeed where traditional educational methods had not. During the Career Intern Program's operational life, CIP leaders turned to the federal government for funding, and the National Institute of Education became CIP's primary funder from 1972 …

Sex In The Kitchen: The Re-Interpretation Of Gendered Space Within The Post-World War Ii Suburban Home In The West, Philip M. Lockette

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In the decades following 1945, Americans moved increasingly out of cities into suburbs. The migration illustrated the emergence of a new, broader middle class as a result of growing postwar affluence. In the previous half-century, families living in a suburb could claim middle-class status. The emerging class built its identity on the forms and values adopted from this earlier, more affluent Victorian middle class. These adopted values were played out in a home designed around Progressive era ideals of the family. Through this Progressive filter, the new concept of the home was scaled down, without servants, and ceased existing wholly …

History Steps Off The Page: The Past In The Future, A Case Study Of How The Mormon Battalion Is Making History Interactive, Allyson Jones

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This thesis addresses the presentation of the Mormon Battalion's history in three interactive forms. The Battalion served in the U.S.-Mexican War between 1846 and 1847. In 2008 a group known as Battalion Trek chose to rehike the original trail as closely as possible. The three chapters of this thesis address the reenactors who planned and completed the rehike, the blog they kept as they did so, and a program which allows those interested to learn more about the trail. Analyzing what such presentations have to offer is important as history moves into the hands of the public and as the …

That Dame's Got Grit: Selling The Women's Land Army, Pamela Jo Pierce

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This thesis analyzes the marketing of the Women's Land Army (WLA) using archival sources. I explore how farmerettes, the name given to WLA members, used their patriotic work on the farm as a means of redefining femininity and interrogating the definition of "true womanhood." "That Dame's Got Grit" discusses how the WLA was sold in World War I and World War II. The first chapter describes the press book used to market Little Comrade, a 1919 film about a fashionable farmerette. The theme of uniforms, an idea that weaves throughout the thesis, emerges strongly in this chapter. "A Seductive …

Bushnell General Military Hospital And The Community Of Brigham City, Utah During World War Ii, Andrea Kaye Carter

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Bushnell General Military Hospital was an Army World War II hospital in Brigham City, Utah from August 1942 to June 1946. It specialized in treating amputations, maxillofacial surgery, neuropsychiatric conditions, and tropical diseases. It was also one of the first hospitals to experimentally use penicillin. Bushnell was a regional facility for wounded solders from the Mountain States that provided quality medical care to patients. The community of Brigham City and the citizens of other Northern Utah communities were an integral part of the success of Bushnell. Citizens donated time, supplies, and money to support the facility and to assist in …

Combining Environmental History And Soil Phytolith Analysis At The City Of Rocks National Reserve: Developing New Methods In Historical Ecology, Lesley Morris

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Historical ecology is an emerging and interdisciplinary field that seeks to explain the changes in ecosystems over time through a synthesis of information derived from human records and biological data. The methods in historical ecology cover a wide range of temporal and spatial scales. However, methods for the more recent past (about 200 years) are largely limited to the human archive and dendrochronological evidence which can be subject to human bias, limited in spatial extent or not appropriate for non-forested systems. There is a need to explore new methods by which biological data can be used to understand historic vegetation …

Design Guidelines For The Historic Downtown Of The City Of St. George, Utah, Bronson Ron Tatton

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This document proposes historic preservation guidelines for the downtown area of the City of St. George, Utah. It grew from a summer internship with the city where I took inventory of the streetscape in the Historic Downtown and prepared recommendations in the form of a PowerPoint Presentation that was given to the city council. This paper summarizes the summer internship and introduces a more appropriate approach based on reflection of the internship. The new approach involves a thorough inventory of the historic character, in-depth research of the historic elements that contribute to the historic character, development of design guidelines and …

Emersonian Perfectionism: A Man Is A God In Ruins, Brad James Rowe

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Ralph Waldo Emerson is a great American literary figure that began his career as a minister at Boston’s Second Church. He discontinued his ministry to become an essayist and lecturer and continued as such for the remainder of his life. This thesis was written with the intent of demonstrating that, in spite of leaving the ministry, Emerson continued to be religious and a religionist throughout his life and that he promulgated a unique religion based upon the principle of self-reliance. At the heart of Emerson’s religion of self-reliance is the doctrine of perfectionism, the infinite capacity of individuals. This thesis …

Pushing The Car Of Progress Forward: The Salt Lake Tribune's Quest To Change Utah For Statehood, 1871-1896, Robert Patrick Mills

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The debate over Utah statehood involved several controversial issues that the United States government and the American public wanted resolved before admission would be granted. One strong advocate for such changes in Utah was the widely published newspaper, the Salt Lake Tribune, which continually published anti-statehood and anti-Mormon ideas in the final decades before Utah was finally admitted in 1896. This thesis studies and analyzes the Tribune’s editorials and news stories to better understand which issues opponents of statehood worried the most over and what they wanted to accomplish with their protest. It finds that Mormon political domination was …

Uncertain Justice: The Ute Jurisdiction Case And Conflicting Directions In Federal Indian Law, A. J. Taylor

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Questions of jurisdiction over Indian lands between tribal and state governments constitute some of the most vexing problems in federal Indian law. The Ute jurisdiction case captures, in one instance, the complexities that surround this important body of law. Many cases concerning Native American jurisdiction rights center on disputed interpretations of antiquated federal laws. In the Ute case, both the State of Utah and the Ute Indian tribe contested the meaning of a series of congressional acts that opened Ute lands to white settlement at the turn of the century. The protracted litigation that marked the Ute case revealed many …

History Of The Japanese-American Relocation Center At Hunt, Minidoka County, Idaho, Donald E. Hausler

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the event which hurled the United States into the throes of the Second World War, convinced many military strategists that precautions should be taken to guard the West Canst against possible invasion. The erection of a formidable defense system along the coast was complicated by the fact that 110,000 Japanese lived in Washington, Oregon, and California, a situation that could be hardly ignored by a suspicious public who rapidly formed the opinion that most Japanese-Americans harbored disloyal attitudes and would prove to be a menace to the war effort unless measures were immediately taken …