Mormon Studies Commons^™

Review: Carol Edison, Eric A. Eliason, And Lynne S. Mcneill, Eds. This Is The Plate: Utah Food Traditions. Salt Lake City: University Of Utah Press, 2020., Nora Rubel

Mormon Studies Review

Whimsically entitled This is the Plate—an homage to Brigham Young’s apocryphal words, “this is the place,” when he first saw the desert valley that would eventually become the state of Utah—this volume offers something for everyone. Editors Carol A. Edison, Eric A. Eliason, and Lynne S. McNeill have provided a well-integrated selection of essays, vignettes, and recipes (fifty-seven!) that showcase the historical, cultural, and religious foodways of Utah. McNeill’s introduction, “Eat, Drink, and Be Merry, for Tomorrow You May Be in Utah,” sets the stage for an enjoyable romp through Utahn history, presenting the reader with a wide variety …

Review: David Walker. Railroading Religion: Mormons, Tourists, And The Corporate Spirit Of The West. Chapel Hill: University Of North Carolina Press, 2019., Emily Ogden

Mormon Studies Review

David Walker’s Railroading Religion: Mormons, Tourists, and the Corporate Spirit of the West tells the riveting story of how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints won the battle not only to define what the railroad would mean in Utah but also to locate the junction and stations that would have a definitive impact on development near the Great Salt Lake. Through well-executed bureaucratic maneuvers, Brigham Young and other church leaders secured the construction of a railroad infrastructure that they calculated would best serve church interests.

Utahisms: Unique Expressions, Inventions, Place Names, And More By David Ellingson Eddington, Roger Terry

BYU Studies

This slim volume by Brigham Young University linguistics professor David Eddington should interest anyone who grew up in Utah, lived in Utah, or is curious about the linguistic, geographic, and historical curiosities of the Beehive State. The book offers numerous surprises and debunks several common misconceptions about the origins of Utah names, places, inventions, and novelties.

Review: Craig S. Smith, Ed. The Selected Letters Of Juanita Brooks. Salt Lake City: University Of Utah Press, 2019., Claudia L. Bushman

Mormon Studies Review

This book reproduces 222 letters of the more than nine hundred extant letters of Juanita Brooks, the fiercely honest and highly respected historian of Utah and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The letters in this collection, written to fellow scholars and friends, date from 1941 to 1978 and trace the development of her historical projects and her interaction with many of her contemporaries. Craig S. Smith has chosen to include the letters in their entirety, rather than editing them for specific facts and quotations, arranging them chronologically in subject groups. That Brooks typed those letters, filing away …

Orson Pratt And The Expansion Of The Doctrine And Covenants, Brian C. Passantino

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a faith that is distinguished by its religious texts. The nickname "Mormon," that has been applied to adherents of the faith, comes from the name of its most cherished canonical book, the Book of Mormon. Aside from the Bible and the Book of Mormon, Latter-day Saints accept two other books of scriptures – the Pearl of Great Price and the Doctrine and Covenants. These four books constitute the authorized scriptures of the faith, or as they refer to them, "the standard works."

My thesis focuses on the book entitled the Doctrine …

A Treasure Trove Of Research Resources About Historical Latter-Day Saint Women, Connie Lamb

BYU Studies

Even considering the fine books and articles on the history of Latter-day Saint women that have been written in the last fifty years, there are still innumerable questions about early Utah women to be explored. For example, how did the votes of women in territorial Utah from 1870 on affect local and territorial elections? Who were the first female politicians in Utah, and what did they accomplish? In what ways were Latter-day Saint women involved in the national suffrage movement in the United States? How did Kanab, Utah, come to have an entire slate of female city officials, and what …

Guardians Of Virtue, Tamsen Maloy, Tasia Jensen

Capstones

Guardians of Virtue is a short documentary following Tamsen Maloy as she explores how the church of her upbringing--the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormon church)--handles sexual assault. It is quickly revealed that the church does not have adequate resources for sexual assault survivors. On the contrary, the culture and system of the church enables assault and encourages survivors to feel they are to blame.

Link to capstone: https://tantproductions.wordpress.com/

Martin Harris Comes To Utah, 1870, Susan Easton Black, Larry C. Porter

BYU Studies

[The following is an excerpt from chapter 14 of the new biography Martin Harris: Uncompromising Witness of the Book of Mormon by Susan Easton Black and Larry C. Porter. This biography, published by BYU Studies, will be available in October 2018. For further information, see the advertisement on page 208 of this issue.]

Hosea Stout: Lawman, Legislator, Mormon Defender, Jay H. Buckley

BYU Studies

Stephen L. Prince. Hosea Stout: Lawman, Legislator, Mormon Defender.

Logan: Utah State University Press; Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2016.

The Awkward State Of Utah: Coming Of Age In The Nation, 1896-1945

BYU Studies

The Awkward State of Utah: Coming of Age in the Nation, 1896–1945, by Charles S. Peterson and Brian Q. Cannon (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2015)

The Civil War Years In Utah: The Kingdom Of God And The Territory That Did Not Fight, Kenneth L. Alford

BYU Studies

John Gary Maxwell. The Civil War Years in Utah: The Kingdom of God and the Territory That Did Not Fight.

Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016.

Violence And Disruptive Behavior On The Difficult Trail To Utah, 1847–1868, David L. Clark

BYU Studies

One aspect of the Mormon pioneer experience has not been studied: violence. Did the pioneers have problems with fighting and other aggressive behavior? How did company leaders prevent problems and handle disputes when they inevitably arose? This article reports pioneer records mentioning arguments, punishments, and other violent actions. The stories range from a threatened whipping for children who dallied behind their group to the heartbreaking tale of handcart pioneers being whipped to keep them moving along a frozen trail. While sickness, hunger, accidents, and weather took their toll on the Mormon pioneers, violence was not a major issue. Although records …

“The Frontier Thesis In Transnational Migration: The U.S. West In The Making Of Italy Abroad,” In Immigrants In The Far West: Historical Identities And Experiences, Edited By Jessie L. Embry And Brian Q. Cannon (Salt Lake City: University Of Utah Press, 2014), 363-381., Mark I. Choate

Faculty Publications

In 1879, a young postal worker in the small town of Lendinara, Italy, decided to emigrate. Adolfo Rossi, twenty-two years old, was discouraged with his prospects in his small town near Venice. Adolfo lived at home with his mother in the heavily populated Polesine valley. Although he had a steady job, he wanted to become a journalist. In Adolfo’s words, while taking a walk along the Adige river one night, a strange idea struck my mind like a bolt of lightning. I reflected only a moment and committed myself to an audacious resolution. “No, I will not stay vegetating here,” …

Suffrage By Jenifer Nii, Directed By Cheryl Ann Cluff, Melissa L. Larson, Cheryl Ann Cluff, Jenifer Nii

BYU Studies

Jenifer Nii's new and original play Suffrage, set in 1880s territorial Utah, is the story of Frances (played by April Fossen) and Ruth (played by Sarah Young), two plural wives in a household under siege by the federal government. Their husband, Benjamin, is in prison awaiting trial, and his five wives and numerous children must find ways to make ends meet. Frances is stalwart and traditional, loving her sister wives' children as she does her own and thinking constantly of her dear husband and his welfare. Considerably younger, Ruth is a firecracker of high ideals and modern thought, getting deeply …

Design And Construction Of The Great Tabernacle Arches, Elwin C. Robison, W Randall Dixon

BYU Studies

Brigham Young desired to build a place where thousands of Saints could meet and a speaker could be heard. The Great Tabernacle in Salt Lake City was built using trussed arches. The genesis of this type of construction was the lattice truss, patented in 1820. The design was brought to Utah by Henry Grow. Brigham Young hired Grow to design and build a road bridge made of straight wooden lattice trusses over the Jordan River in 1860. Trusses could also be built as arches, and the Tabernacle was built as a long barrel vault with half-arch ends. This design allowed …

Home Waters: A Year Of Recompenses On The Provo River, Dennis R. Cutchins, George B. Handley

BYU Studies

Herman Melville begins Moby Dick by noting the way humans seem almost magnetically attracted to water. "There is magic in it," he writes. "Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream." George Handley would, no doubt, agree with this observation. His Home Waters: A Year of Recompenses on the Provo River is a gentle, slow, and deeply thoughtful book built on this special human relationship with water. Handley uses the Provo River as the locus for a series of contemplations on …

The Lot Smith Cavalry Company: Utah Goes To War, Joseph R. Stuart, Kenneth L. Alford Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

In this chapter from "Civil War Saints" (2012, published by the Brigham Young University Religious Studies Center and the Deseret Book Company), Joseph R. Stuart and Kenneth L. Alford take a close look at the cavalry unit that was called to military service on April 28, 1862, at President Lincoln’s request. Their ninety-day period of service was the only unit-level active duty military contribution Utah Territory made during the Civil War. An earlier version of this paper, written by a student for the Library Research Grant Program, can be found here.

"The Brave Men, Living And Dead, Who Struggled Here": Utah Veterans And The Gettysburg Reunion Of 1913, Kenneth L. Alford Ph.D., Ken Nelson

Faculty Publications

Gettysburg was the defining battle of the American Civil War as Union and CSA soldiers clashed in Pennsylvania. This Utah Historical Quarterly article from Summer 2013 explains how Union and Confederate veterans of the Civil War, who were living in Utah, traveled to and participated in the 1913 50th Anniversary Reunion of the Battle of Gettysburg (which took place July 1-3, 1863). The article also includes lists of the Utah veterans who attended and additionally notes which veterans participated in the battle of Gettysburg.

Striving To Live The Principle In Utah's First Temple City: A Snapshot Of Polygamy In St. George, Utah, In June 1880, Kathryn M. Daynes

BYU Studies

This article is one of a set on the practice of polygamy in the Mormon settlement of St. George, Utah, from 1861 to 1880. For years researchers have known that St. George had an unusually high percentage of its population living in polygamous households and have been grappling with the reason why and what those high percentages tell us about the practice of plural marriage in Utah generally.

The demographic work to understand the lives of those families in plural marriage is labor intensive, and this article provides only a snapshot of it in June 1880, when Daniel Handley McAllister …

Probing The High Prevalence Of Polygyny In St. George, 1861–1880: An Introduction, Davis Bitton, Lowell C. Bennion, Kathryn M. Daynes, Val Lambson

BYU Studies

This is the introduction to a trilogy of articles that interpret and map the unusually high incidence of polygamy (or polygyny, the proper term) that characterized St. George, Utah, from its founding in 1861 through the federal census of 1880. Polygamy was practiced by members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from the 1840s to 1890.

The first, and most theoretical, of the three papers, by Bitton and Lambson, recognizes for the first time in Mormon studies the limits that demography imposed upon the number of Latter-day Saints who could have practiced plural marriage during the pioneer …

Mapping The Extent Of Plural Marriage In St. George, 1861–1880, Lowell C. Bennion

BYU Studies

This article is one of a set on the practice of polygamy in St. George, Utah, from 1861 to 1880. It asks why polygamy rates in that Mormon settlement exceed the demographic limits produced by Bitton and Lambson in their article "Demographic Limits of Nineteenth-Century Mormon Polygyny." Bitton and Lambson suggest that "those willing to accept an assignment to settle in St. George were very committed Mormons, and those who remained in St. George after having observed conditions firsthand were more committed still. Very committed Mormons were much more likely to practice polygamy than were others."

Using case studies of …

Plural Marriage In St. George: A Summary And An Invitation, Kathryn M. Daynes, Lowel C. Bennion, Davis Bitton, Val Lambson

BYU Studies

This is a short summary of three papers in this issue of BYU Studies Quarterly offering new insights into the importance of polygyny, or polygamy, in nineteenth-century Mormondom. The Bitton-Lambson article derives theoretical limits on the sustainability of polygyny, suggesting that, given the parameters observed in nineteenth-century Utah, a prevalence exceeding 15 to 20 percent of males and 25 to 30 percent of females is implausible. Bennion's paper provides detailed information on how prevalent polygyny was in St. George and in its wide hinterland. It also includes a number of personal stories to shed light on who the settlers were, …

Rediscovering Provo's First Tabernacle With Ground-Penetrating Radar, John H. Mcbride, Emily Utt, R. William Keach Ii, Benjamin C. Pykles

BYU Studies

During the early morning hours of December 17, 2010, fire broke out in the Provo (Utah) Tabernacle, virtually gutting the historic building and leaving only the exterior walls standing in stable condition. On October 1, 2011, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced that the ruined tabernacle will be restored as a temple, the Provo City Center Temple, giving a second life to the tabernacle. However, this building is not the first tabernacle on that square.

"That They May Secure It And Hold It Forever": Bluff's Revival, 1885–1886, David S. Carpenter

BYU Studies

This article is an extract of David S. Carpenter's Jens Nielson: Bishop of Bluff (BYU Studies, 2011). Home to only a couple of hundred people in 2011, Bluff is located in southeast Utah. The experiences of the hardy pioneers in this hostile and forbidding region have become legendary among Latter-day Saints. This extract tells the story of Mormon settlers in Bluff in 1884: their struggles over joint ventures, water, cattle grazing, and whether to maintain the settlement at all.

Touring Polygamous Utah With Elizabeth W. Kane, Winter 1872–1873, Lowell C. Bennion, Thomas R. Carter

BYU Studies

This article, originally a lecture given at Brigham Young University in 2009, was published as part of a special issue of BYU Studies featuring Thomas L. Kane. Although Kane was not a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he was an advocate for the Mormon cause and a trusted friend of Mormon leaders for almost forty years. Bennion and Carter consider the ideas presented by Elizabeth Kane, Thomas's wife, who expressed her dismay with plural marriage in her writings about her visit to Utah in 1872–73. The authors combine Elizabeth's views with their interest in Mormon …

Happy Valley, Ron Williams, Director, James Willmore, Jenny Willmore, Ron Williams

BYU Studies

Producer and director Ron Williams began his film as an attempt to follow his ex-wife, Nancy, as she entered drug rehab. While filming, Nancy's daughter, MaCall Peterson, was involved in the accidental overdose and death of her friend Amelia Sorich and the subsequent attempt to hide the body. From this development, the filmmaker realized the scope of the movie had changed considerably. He began to wonder if there was a relationship between Utah County residents' reputation for overly blissful happiness and the struggles that addicts in Utah face. Thus was born the documentary Happy Valley, a title meant as …

We Know No North, No South, No East, No West: Mormon Interpretations Of The Civil War, 1861-1865, Richard Bennett

Faculty Publications

While peace reigns in Utah, civil war, with all its horrors, prevails among those who earnestly desired to see the soil of these valleys crimsoned with the blood of the Saints, and, if we are mistaken in the signs of the times, before the conflict between the North and South shall have ended, all they unitedly desired to see meted out to the Mormons, will be poured out without measure upon those who have initiated the war of extermination, and are now carrying it on with all the energy they severally possess. So read the lead editorial in the Salt …

Pedestals And Podiums: Utah Women, Religious Authority, And Equal Rights. By Martha Sonntag Bradley, Andrea G. Radke-Moss

BYU Studies

Martha Sonntag Bradley. Pedestals and Podiums: Utah Women, Religious Authority, and Equal Rights. Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2005

God And Country: Politics In Utah. By Jeffrey E. Sells, Ed, Jacob W. Olmstead

BYU Studies

Jeffery E. Sells, ed. God and Country: Politics in Utah. Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2005.

Utah Historians And The Reconstruction Of Western History By Gary Topping, Brian Q. Cannon

BYU Studies

Gary Topping. Utah Historians and the Reconstruction of Western History. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003.