This is the easiest yeast bread in the world to make — you don’t really knead it (just squeeze it enough for the dough to stick together), and you don’t need a loaf pan (a pie plate or a glass casserole dish, even an oven-proof mixing bowl, works just fine to produce a rustic-looking loaf).

What does it have to do with Mormon history? (more…)

Jan Harold Brunvand, “As the Saints Go Marching By: Modern Jokelore Concerning Mormons,” The Journal of American Folklore 83:327 (Jan.-Mar. 1970), 53-60.

Brunvand offers his study of humor by and about contemporary Utah Mormons to demonstrate that folklore can be modern as well as a survival from the 19th century; that folklore is generated by both those within a group and those without; that folklore, while often good natured, sometimes has a negative bite; and that while folklore about the Mormons has often centered on the libidinous, other themes do exist.

Me, I like the article simply for the corny jokes contained therein. (more…)

Yad Vashem, the Jewish memorial to those who died in the Holocaust of the 1940s, includes a program to recognize the contributions of the Righteous Gentiles, or the “righteous among the nations,” those who “mustered extraordinary courage to uphold human values.”

The Righteous honored by Yad Vashem come from 44 countries; they are Christians from all denominations as well as Muslims, religious and agnostic, men and women, people from all walks of life, of all ages, educated professionals and illiterate peasants, rich and poor. The only common denominator is the humanity and the courage they displayed by standing up for their moral principles.

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“Out of the cavernous canyons of the Wasatch, shaking off the misty mystery of centuries, in all his magic splendor and mystifying majesty, the Wizard of the Wasatch will come into the city of Salt Lake on the evening of August 9 …”

To Utah readers in the 19-teens, that newspaper announcement made perfect sense. They knew that Hatumai, the Wizard of the Wasatch, lived with Queen Sirrah in a cavern far up City Creek Canyon, attended by legions of fairies. Hatumai was the great Spirit of the state, who eons ago laid down the precious metals and conditioned the soil to bring forth fruits and flowers. He guarded the Indians and guided the pioneers and miners, and once each year he visited his capital city. (more…)

Fisher Sanford Harris was arguably the most beloved man in Utah when he died in 1909. A Protestant welcomed in Mormon country, a respected Democrat in what was fast becoming a Republican fortress, the son of a Confederate family who counted Salt Lake’s minorities among his close friends, a humble hotel clerk who rallied the richest businessmen – Harris navigated all social minefields to bridge the chasms and mend the breaches of a polarized past.

He won such respect by his unfailing courtesy and by utterly refusing to make any man the butt of a joke or the target of scorn. (more…)

Catherine Garber was born in Ohio in 1851, the middle of eleven siblings who remained close friends all their lives. As a young woman Catherine became a stage actress, joining troupes that traveled from town to town, playing for a day or two before traveling on to the next town for another short stay.

Catherine soon became such an accomplished actress that she progressed from the rural Midwestern circuits to the larger cities of the east coast. She adopted the stage name Kate Andrews and was managed by Rhea, Janansbek, Peel and Duff – names that are now forgotten but who were among the brightest stars in the theatrical world of their day. (more…)

In the first concurrent session of this year’s meeting of the Mormon History Association, three men who have been intimately involved with researching and evaluating material related to the forthcoming Massacre and Mountain Meadows by Ronald W. Walker, Richard E. Turley Jr., and Glen M. Leonard spoke about three facets of their work. I was invited to respond, partly because I use or search for the kinds of documents described by two speakers, and especially because the first speaker was offering a reinterpretation of events narrated in my article “‘Pursue, Retake & Punish’: The 1857 Santa Clara Ambush” (here, at page 64). This is an article I’m proud to say won the Dale L. Morgan Award, a ginormous cash prize for the best scholarly article of 2005. (more…)

More rip-snortin’ humor from the original Keepapitchinin:

HINTS TO SKATERS.

Allus invariable take 2 pillers with you, fasen won ov um onto the bak ov your hed and the other –

Wal, experens’l soon teech you ware tu put the uther piller.
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Frederick Daniel Worlton (1882-1931), of Lehi, Utah, served in the Eastern States Mission 1904-1906. He earned a medical degree from the University of Utah in 1910, married in 1913, and practiced medicine in Lehi, where he founded the Lehi Hospital.

I met a big straight lady at 304 Broad who was sitting on the south veranda of her house. To one just from Utah she might have appeared as a woman of not the highest type. But one soon gets accustomed to the different dress here in the east and is tempted to himself put on light, cool clothes. So after being here two weeks this lady’s big fleshy arms did not frighten me away. (more…)

“This is a country of magnificent distances. I stood high up on one of the many teeth of Comb Ridge, and looked – looked again and then round a wonderland unveiling itself before me.” So wrote Burl Armstrong in 1907, introducing readers to landscapes most would never see first hand.

Armstrong, a newspaperman, accompanied Professor Byron Cummings of the University of Utah on the first expedition to map the pueblos and rock art of the ancient civilization commonly known today as Anasazi, in the twisted, broken canyons of San Juan County. (more…)

Four or five years ago, while I was working on a project involving the families of Brigham Young, a friend shared with me an item from his own research, an article published in the 31 August 1883 edition of the Deseret Evening News. If after reading this transcription you think I’m pulling your leg, you can read the article as reprinted in the 5 September 1883 edition of the Deseret News Weekly (see Utah Digital Newspapers and search; I wasn’t able to make a direct link). (more…)

Many of Utah’s early pioneers did not remain long in the Valley. In defiance of counsel, some rushed to the California gold fields. A few went to California as missionaries, and the two apostles who founded a ranching colony in San Bernardino found no shortage of volunteers to accompany them there. Still more drifted west in apostasy or because they were unable or unwilling to dedicate themselves to the difficult task of building the new Zion.

In the fall of 1857, when fully a third of the U.S. Army was marching against Utah in what threatened to be a larger, more terrible repeat of the Missouri and Illinois persecutions, there seemed to be only two kinds of Mormons in California: (more…)

The newest issue of Smithsonian is out, with an eight-page article of Mormon history: David Roberts, “The Brink of War,” Smithsonian, June 2008, 44-51. The cover title (“The Utah War”) and interior heading (“One hundred fifty years ago, the U.S. Army marched into Utah prepared to battle Brigham Young and his Mormon militia”) summarize its chief focus and suggest the reason it is being published in this issue, on the anniversary of the de jure — if not the de facto — ending of the Utah War (that’s “Johnston’s Army” if you’re familiar with the more parochial label). This article covers a far broader slice of Mormon history than that, however. (more…)

Benjamin Franklin Cummings (1855-1918), with only two or three years of formal schooling in his past, began his journalistic career as a pre-teen manual laborer in the pressroom of the Deseret News. His natural abilities and willingness to read and observe won him promotion through the ranks of reporter, editorial writer, advertising manager, and state editor at the Deseret News; he later founded the Logan Leader. One of his three LDS missions was as editor of the Central States’ newspaper, the Liahona. Cummings also virtually invented the professional research and recording of genealogy so far as it was known among the Latter-day Saints, and was well respected among New England’s genealogists. He traveled widely in pursuit of genealogical materials. This letter was written on one such research trip. (more…)

Robley Evans was a fatherless schoolboy living in Washington, D.C., in 1859, running errands for Congressmen and dreaming of running away to sea. William Hooper, Utah’s delegate to Congress, took a liking to the 13-year-old and made him an extraordinary offer: Would Evans accept Utah’s nomination to the Naval Academy at Annapolis?

Four days later, the Virginia native was heading west to establish Utah residency. Evans rode a mule across the plains in the company of five California-bound strangers. He stayed with the Hooper family in Salt Lake, and in 1860, technically a Utahn, Evans became a naval cadet. (more…)

In 2008, “technology in the service of the gospel” means websites and satellites and DNA-assisted genealogy.

In 1926, missionaries were no less eager than we are to employ the latest technology in pursuit of perfecting the saints and preaching the gospel: (more…)

The Utah Historical Quarterly is a rich source of Mormon history that is less well known to the broader LDS community than the more obviously Mormon-themed periodicals like Dialogue, Journal of Mormon History, and BYU Studies. This review of an article from 1980 illustrates the kind of material that can be found in UHQ’s files. (more…)

In our (that’s the editorial “our”) Salutatory, Mark IV commented on “how hilariously cool it is to think of Orson Pratt discoursing in the tabernacle for an hour on Sunday on the subject of spirit fluid, then on Monday going into the office of Keepapitchinin to write the 19th century equivalent of knock knock jokes under a pseudonym.” While we (the editorial “we” again) can’t vouch for which of the Keepapitchinin‘s writers contributed any particular item, here is a sample of what passed for knee-slapping humor in Mormondom, circa 1870:

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American Southerners have been joining the Church since the 1830s. The Southern States Mission became the most successful mission field in the Church in the last generation of the 1800s. During those years when southern LDS meeting halls were burned and elders and even members were murdered, many thousands of Southerners responded to the gospel.

Two elders knocked on a farmhouse door in Lowndes County, Alabama, on a spring day in 1896. The door was opened by Sarah Day Hall, holding her six-month-old baby. Sarah believed the gospel message instantly, recalling later that “it was like taking a drink of water when I was very thirsty.” (more…)

Evan Stephens (1854-1930) was the musician who, more than any other, transformed the Mormon Tabernacle Choir from an excellent stake choir to the world-famous professional musical voice of the Church. Our English hymnbook still carries 19 hymns written and/or composed by Stephens.

What follows is a selection from a talk Stephens gave in the Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, on 27 August 1916, during an evening in his honor upon his retirement as director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.  (more…)

Last summer’s Crandall Canyon mine disaster cost the lives of nine men — six entombed in the initial cave-in, and three more who died in a rescue attempt. Now the U.S. Attorney for Utah is considering a congressional request to pursue a criminal investigation of the mine’s operators.

The following tribute to the heroism of Utah’s miners was written last August while we waited day after day for news from Crandall Canyon: (more…)

Alfred Milnes was born in Bradford, England, in 1844. He and his parents and several siblings emigrated to the United States, landing at New Orleans in 1854; after a few years of wandering, during which time his mother and two of his little brothers died, Milnes settled in Coldwater, Michigan. He attended public school, served in the Michigan Infantry throughout the Civil War, and went into business in Coldwater, becoming a banker, postmaster, and dealer in real estate. (more…)

Church Historian Marlin K. Jensen has recently responded to media confusion – to put it courteously – falsely equating the historic LDS practice of plural marriage with the modern FLDS practice of plural marriage. Correcting the assertion that arranging marriages of (presumably) young brides to (presumably) much older husbands, against the desires and inclinations of bride and/or groom, was a practice of the 19th century Latter-day Saints, he says: (more…)

Welcome to the Keepapitchinin, a new arrival in the Bloggernacle. The original Keepapitchinin was a comic newspaper – the Mad Magazine of its day – published at Salt Lake City sporadically from 1867 to 1871. Its chief editors were talented second-generation Mormons George J. Taylor (son of apostle, later President John Taylor), Joseph C. Rich (son of apostle Charles C. Rich) and Heber John Richards (son of apostle Willard Richards), with occasional help from apostle Orson Pratt and artists Charles R. Savage and George M. Ottinger. Ronald W. Walker’s “The Keep-A-Pitchinin, or, the Mormon Pioneer Was Human,” BYU Studies 14:3 (Spring 1974), 331-344, gives background on that publication. (more…)

8/2/2007

Morning of the Living Danites; or, Why I Am Not at FAIR Today
by Ardis Parshall

You know me, right? — Ardis Parshall, the crusading anti-Mormon, the rabble rouser, the one who never has a kind word for anything Mormon, she-who-must-disrupt? Most likely to need the blood atoning of the Danites? Right?

If that doesn’t sound like me, consider this: I was thrown out of the FAIR conference this morning for being a disruptive influence. (more…)

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