Comments on: Utah’s First Annapolis Cadet (Utah history)

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Sat, 17 May 2008 00:18:13 +0000

Ha! Trust Bill MacKinnon to know the links among so many seemingly unrelated episodes of Utah/Mormon/Western history! It fascinates me to see those connections when so much of written history focuses on isolated events or personalities. Thanks for spelling these out.

By: Bill MacKinnon

Bill MacKinnon — Fri, 16 May 2008 22:37:35 +0000

Ardis,
At about the time that Territorial Delegate William H. Hooper secured the appointment of Robley Evans to Annapolis, Brigham Young asked Hooper to do likewise re the half-brother of U.S. Army Capt. Stewart Van Vliet of Fort Leavenworth, the quartermaster who had paid him that fateful visited in Salt Lake City during September 8-14, 1857 in the early weeks of the Utah War. B.Y. considered Capt. Van Vliet a friend of the Mormons, and in 1859 he believed that the times were not “right” for Utah to use its quota for service academy appointments for Mormon lads. So, in 1859 when Van Vliet asked a favor on behalf of his half-brother, B.Y. asked Delegate Hooper to secure the appointment to West Point. A year or so later, the same logic (and process) brought about the appointment to West Point from Uath Territory of the non-Mormon son of Utah’s new chief justice (for the second time) John F. Kinney. After graduating from West Point Lieut. Kinney found himself among the first U.S. Army officers to garrison the new possession of Alaska, an area that the Russians had begun negotiations to sell in December 1857 because of fear that during the Utah War B.Y. would simply seize it (without compensation) as a Mormon refuge. As the 1860s wore on, the greyness and cultural isolation of Sitka (Baranoff Island)grew so oppressive that Lieut. Kinney shot himself in a hotel-rooming house, where, by coincidence, he shared quarters with a civilian adventurer, Charles Kinkead, who in the 1850s had survived an Indian attack on a mail coach traversing the plains east of Utah that left him so full of arrows that he resembled a porcupine. A lot of interesting (and strange) tales about those service academy appointments obtained by William H. Hooper!

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Fri, 16 May 2008 22:31:57 +0000

Thanks, Joey; I will.

By: Joey

Joey — Fri, 16 May 2008 21:47:48 +0000

Ardis, I love your posts and hope that you keep them coming!

By: Ray

Ray — Fri, 16 May 2008 01:49:19 +0000

Selfish! I was only thinking of you.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Thu, 15 May 2008 22:07:12 +0000

What’s in it for me, Ray? I mean, really — isn’t it obvious that Keepapitchinininininin is a real moneymaker for me? And you want me to take time off from blogging to WORK? Hmm?

By: Ray

Ray — Thu, 15 May 2008 21:53:25 +0000

If you’re taking requests, Ardis, I have some genealogical work that needs to be done.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Thu, 15 May 2008 21:29:18 +0000

Good lead, Mark B., thanks. I’ve just done some googling and see that Mervyn Bennion is very much the kind of Utahn I like to write about.

By: Mark B.

Mark B. — Thu, 15 May 2008 20:57:35 +0000

I think it was the sword and the epaulets, Ardis.

As long as you’re on the service academies trail, you should find and publish some interesting tidbit about Capt. Mervyn Bennion, a member of the Utah Bennion clan who graduated first in his class at Annapolis in 1910, married a daughter of J. Reuben Clark, commanded the battleship West Virginia, which was at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and was awarded the Medal of Honor, posthumously, for his actions that day.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Thu, 15 May 2008 20:23:17 +0000

Thanks, old friends Ray and Researcher and Mark B., and first-time commenter Dane — I hope you’ll be back. Thanks especially for the link to Robley’s biography, Mark. I should put a copy of his photo here, don’t you think? He was a looker! (Or is that just the uniform?)

I really like to find the links between local history (whether “local” means geography or Mormonism) to the broader stories.