"This manuscript is the culmination of an endeavor to identify the members of the Salt Lake City Fourteenth Ward Female Relief Society of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who sewed an album quilt in 1857. Constraints in finding traces of sixty-three nineteenth-century women, most of whom were never in the public eye, are obvious." -- P. ix.
Few American religious figures have stirred more passion among adherents and antagonists than Joseph Smith. Born in 1805 and silenced thirty-nine years later by assassins’ bullets, he dictated more than one-hundred revelations, published books of new scripture, built a temple, organized several new cities, and became the proclaimed prophet to tens of thousands during his abbreviated life. Among his many novel teachings and practices, none is more controversial than plural marriage, a restoration of the Old Testament practice that he accepted as part of his divinely appointed mission. Joseph Smith taught his polygamy doctrines only in secret and dictated a revelation in July 1843 authorizing its practice (now LDS D&C 132) that was never published during his lifetime. Although rumors and exposés multiplied, it was not until 1852 that Mormons in Brigham Young’s Utah took a public stand. By then, thousands of Mormons were engaged in the practice that was seen as essential to salvation. Victorian America saw plural marriage as immoral and Joseph Smith as acting on libido. However, the private writings of Nauvoo participants and other polygamy insiders tell another, more complex and nuanced story. Many of these accounts have never been published. Others have been printed sporadically in unrelated publications. Drawing on every known historical account, whether by supporters or opponents, Volumes 1 and 2 take a fresh look at the chronology and development of Mormon polygamy, including the difficult conundrums of the Fannie Alger relationship, polyandry, the “angel with a sword” accounts, Emma Smith’s poignant response, and the possibility of Joseph Smith offspring by his plural wives. Among the most intriguing are the newly available Andrew Jenson papers containing not only the often-quoted statements by surviving plural wives but also Jenson’s own private research, conducted in the late nineteenth century. Telling the story of Joseph Smith’s polygamy from the records of those who knew him best, augmented by those who observed him from a distance, may have produced the most useful view of all.
Latter-day Saint Art: A Critical Reader seeks to fill a substantial gap by providing a comprehensive examination of the visual art of the Latter-day Saints from the nineteenth century to the present. The volume includes twenty-two essays examining art by, for, or about Mormons, as well as over 200 high-quality color illustrations.
Mormon Women’s History: Beyond Biography demonstrates that the history and experience of Mormon women is central to the history of Mormonism and to histories of American religion, politics, and culture. Yet the study of Mormon women has mostly been confined to biographies, family histories, and women’s periodicals. The contributors to Mormon Women’s History engage the vast breadth of sources left by Mormon women—journals, diaries, letters, family histories, and periodicals as well as art, poetry, material culture, theological treatises, and genealogical records—to read between the lines, reconstruct connections, recover voices, reveal meanings, and recast stories. Mormon Women’s History presents women as incredibly inter-connected. Familial ties of kinship are multiplied and stretched through the practice and memory of polygamy, social ties of community are overlaid with ancestral ethnic connections and local congregational assignments, fictive ties are woven through shared interests and collective memories of violence and trauma. Conversion to a new faith community unites and exposes the differences among Native Americans, Yankees, and Scandinavians. Lived experiences of marriage, motherhood, death, mourning, and widowhood are played out within contexts of expulsion and exile, rape and violence, transnational immigration, establishing “civilization” in a wilderness, and missionizing both to new neighbors and far away peoples. Gender defines, limits, and opens opportunities for private expression, public discourse, and popular culture. Cultural prejudices collide with doctrinal imperatives against backdrops of changing social norms, emerging professional identities, and developing ritualization and sacralization of lived religion. The stories, experiences, and examples explored in Mormon Women’s History are neither comprehensive nor conclusive, but rather suggestive of the ways that Mormon women’s history can move beyond individual lives to enhance and inform larger historical narratives.
From the author of A Midwife's Tale, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Bancroft Prize for History, and The Age of Homespun--a revelatory, nuanced, and deeply intimate look at the world of early Mormon women whose seemingly ordinary lives belied an astonishingly revolutionary spirit, drive, and determination. A stunning and sure-to-be controversial book that pieces together, through more than two dozen nineteenth-century diaries, letters, albums, minute-books, and quilts left by first-generation Latter-day Saints, or Mormons, the never-before-told story of the earliest days of the women of Mormon "plural marriage," whose right to vote in the state of Utah was given to them by a Mormon-dominated legislature as an outgrowth of polygamy in 1870, fifty years ahead of the vote nationally ratified by Congress, and who became political actors in spite of, or because of, their marital arrangements. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, writing of this small group of Mormon women who've previously been seen as mere names and dates, has brilliantly reconstructed these textured, complex lives to give us a fulsome portrait of who these women were and of their "sex radicalism"--the idea that a woman should choose when and with whom to bear children.
Though the restored Church is comparatively young, it has a rich and vivid history, with more artifacts being uncovered constantly. This second volume highlights the history of the Church through 50 more sacred objects gathered throughout the Church's history. From its beginning with Joseph Smith and the First Vision, the Restoration has spread across the globe, and every piece of historic evidence tells the stories of the Latter-day Saints. In this volume, you will find photos and commentary of objects such as A fragment of the original Book of Mormon manuscript Wilford Woodruff's journal The first Latter-day Saint Hymnbook from 1836 A lace doily from Armenian refugee Saints Joseph Fielding Smith's typewriter The Kabul Afghanistan Military District Conference DVD Tom Trails filmstrips from the 1960s A Seawall Stone from Moroni High School in Kiribati These relics of days past testify of the hardships, joys, and testimonies of Latter-day Saints throughout the history of the Church. Through these small glimpses of history, you can interact with your forebears and be inspired by their stories of faith.
"Published by Oxford University Press in 2008, Massacre at Mountain Meadows relied on new and exhaustive research to tell the story of one of the grimmest episodes in Latter-day Saint history. On September 11, 1857, southern Utah settlers slaughtered more than 100 emigrants of a California-bound wagon train. In this much-anticipated sequel, Richard E. Turley Jr. and Barbara Jones Brown follow up that volume with an examination of the aftermath of the atrocity. In greater detail than ever before, Vengeance Is Mine documents southern Utah leaders' attempts to cover up their crime by silencing witnesses and spreading lies about the victims and perpetrators of the crime. Investigations by both governmental and church bodies were stymied by stonewalling and political wrangling. While nine men were eventually indicted, five were captured and only one, John D. Lee, was executed. The book examines the maneuvering of the defense and prosecution in Lee's two trials, the second ending in Lee's conviction. The book examines the fraught relationship between Lee and church president Brigham Young, including what Young knew of the crime and when he knew it. The book also tells the story of the seventeen young children who survived the massacre and their later return to Arkansas, from where the ill-fated wagon train originated. The book traces the fate of the perpetrators to the end of their lives, including the harrowing demise of Nephi Johnson, who screamed, "Blood! Blood! Blood!" in the delirium of his death bed more than sixty years after the massacre"--
