I hope there is an actual broadcast of the voice of Charles Penrose himself. I’m told there is a old film that includes him and several of the First Presidency and apostles, but I forget to ask about it when I’m at the church archives.

Maurine, that is a wonderful story. I’d love to read Rosetta’s entire history. I regret not interviewing my older relatives while they were still alive. One small correction–Lucetta’s family name was Stratford. They were his first converts in Maldon. They met in March 1851 and by 1854 were engaged, but had to wait at least a year before the mission president gave Charles permission to marry. George Stratford did come to the US with the family, but he made it only as far as Kanesville where he died of typhoid fever.

As far as seeing Zion as images in his mind’s eye, I wonder if the early missionaries had some kind of sketches of Utah to show converts. By the time Penrose wrote “O Ye Mountains High” he’d been a member for five years and worked with many American missionaries and elders. My guess is that he would have pumped them for information and descriptions.

I’m one of the many great-grandchildren of Charles and Lucetta. I’ve been working on the stories of his hymns to put on my family history website, but haven’t quite finished.

A couple of thoughts:

I was impressed that, after being falsely accused, Brother Penrose chose to funnel his pain and struggle into something constructive. I was thinking that my own source of consolation has never been writing devotional poetry, but is usually a big bag of potato chips. [sigh]

Also, I wasn’t aware that Penrose had never been to Salt Lake City when he wrote “O Ye Mountains High.” Did I read that right? If so, it’s caused me to rethink some of my assumptions about that hymn.

For example, the allusions to “Zion” in that poem have long been interpreted by us moderns as merely allegorical (viz., “Zion is the pure in heart”), but I’ve always tended to view that poem as a sort of “geographical hagiography,” and, of course, specifically referring to pre-statehood Utah.

But if Penrose was actually just dreaming up images in his mind’s eye (even if inspired by a real place), I’m wondering if “O Ye Mountains High” really shouldn’t be viewed as rhetorical poetry — a longing for a Zion and not necessarily a paean to an actual place. Hmm . . .

Radio scripts for what was probably an hour-long program are a little long for blog posts. I think, though, that I will post others from time to time just so they are available in the archive. Sometime they will fill just the right need by someone who googles.

We even once had the wind blow open our locked front door while we were at church one Sunday, and came home to about a foot of drifted snow in our entry and part of our living room. Certainly not as deadly for us as the circumstances described in Maurine’s comment or the JFS story, but I know what they are describing. Interesting to know the genesis of that song, and a little more about Bro. Penrose.

I can’t find the reference to this right at the moment, but at one time the winds were so bad that a church leader rebuked the winds, which died down for awhile.

Just after I was married, we were renting a little renovated granary in Centerville during one of the east winds. Two of our windows blew out. Even today, it is quite often during a fierce east wind for all of the semi trucks to pull off the freeway to wait the wind out, or risk being blown over.

Penrose married Lucetta, the oldest daughter of George and Eliza Stratton in 1855 in Maldon. Widow Eliza Stratton, her son Edwin and his family, Charles Penrose and his family, and my great grandfather, who was baptised in Maldon in 1851, also, came to American and crossed the plains in the Homer Duncan Company in 1861.

When my great grandmother, Rosetta, was in her late 80s and early 90s, she lived with my grandparents and my mother, with her sisters. My aunt Dorothy interviewed Rosetta often during those years and wrote notes about all the things Rosetta said. This is what Dorothy wrote, based on those interviews. Granted, this is second hand knowledge gleaned from an older women (who apparently had a very good memory, from other things she said which I have verified).

“At times after his [Penrose] marriage he would visit the girls as they sewed. One day as he came in, he had been composing the song, O Ye Mountains High. ‘Girls,’ he said, ‘I’ve got it all except one line. Help me with that.’”

“Another time he had been to Danbury when a brother had offended him; as he walked the six miles back to Maldon, he composed the song School Thy Feelings, Oh, My Brother. He entered the Stratford home tired, but he wrote the words down before resting.”