DOCSLIB.ORG

REVIEWS a Classic Reprinted

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
REVIEWS a Classic Reprinted REVIEWS A Classic Reprinted West from Fort Bridger: The Pioneering of ated and available to students. Immigrant Trails across Utah, 1846-1850. Because the original edition printed Edited and with an introduction by J. fewer than 1,000 copies, the book has Roderic Korns and Dale L. Morgan; long been out of print. Finally, and for- revised and updated by Will Bagley tunately, two very able historians, with and Harold Schindler (Logan: Utah the support of the Crossroads Chapter State University Press, 1994). of the Oregon California Trails Associa- tion and Utah State University Press, Reviewed by Melvin T. Smith, were enlisted to revise and update the Ph.D., Mt. Pleasant, Utah. original work. Bagley and Schindler ac- WHEN PUBLISHED ORIGINALLY IN 1951 knowledge their debt to Morgan for his as volume 19 of the Utah Historical own beginning revision efforts. They Quarterly, this book made a major con- obtained the actual copy that Morgan tribution to understanding the his- had "worked" on. tory of overland routes traveled west The book discusses, briefly, the from Fort Bridger to California. No Bartelson-Bidwell wagon route of other work since has superseded it. 1841, and John C. Fremont's expedi- One primary option for emigrants had tions of 1843 and 1845. He made the been to continue north and west along first crossing of the Salt Lake Desert the Oregon Trail route to the vicinity route in the fall of 1845 on his trip to of Fort Hall, and then take the Califor- California. However, Lansford W. Hast- nia branch to the southwest, catch the ings promoted it as an emigrant route. Humbolt River, and find passage The editors see him as both dishonest across the Sierra Nevada Mountains to and downright irresponsible. their California destinations. Routes Included in this work are excerpts across the Salt Lake Valley and the salt from various journals, letters, and re- desert sought to eliminate the extra ports of several travelers over these miles of this northern route "dog leg." routes between 1846 and 1850. The original book resulted from The "Journal of James Clyman" the "field work" of Roderic Korns, (21 May-June 1846) reports on the Dale Morgan, and Charles Kelley. Hastings-Hudspeth trek from Sutter's They shared freely their interests for Fort to Fort Bridger. This party traveled locating routes through the Wasatch with horses and mules, as Fremont's Mountains, as well as their knowl- expedition had the previous fall, and edge of historical documents and arrived in good time and condition. sources that could be recovered. It The "Journal of Edwin Bryant" was a remarkably competent team ef- records the Bryant-Russell trip from fort: however, Korns died before the Fort Bridger (17 July 1846), south of work was completed, and the task of the Great Salt Lake to Mary's River in committing it to paper fell to Dale Nevada (8 August 1846), also on Morgan who was anxious to ensure horses and mules. They were the first that Korns's work would be appreci- to "choose" the Hastings Cutoff..
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Oregon-California Trails Association Convention Booklet
    Oregon-California Trails Association Thirty-Sixth Annual Convention August 6 – 11, 2018 Convention Booklet Theme: Rails and Trails - Confluence and Impact at Utah’s Crossroads of the West \ 1 | P a g e Table of Contents Page 2 Invitation & Contact Info 3 Registration Information 4 Acknowledgement of Risk 5 Menu 7 Mail in Form 9 Schedule & Daily Events 11 Activity Stations/Displays 12 Speakers 14 Activity Station Presenters 16 Tour Guides 17 Pre-& Post-Convention Tour Descriptions 20 Convention Bus Tour Descriptions 22 Special Events 22 Book Room, Exhibits, & Authors Night 23 Accommodations (Hotels, RV sites) 24 State Parks 24 Places to Visit 26 Suggested Reading List, Sun & Altitude & Ogden-Eccles Conference Center Area Maps 2415 Washington Blvd. Ogden, Utah 84401 27-28 Convention Center Maps An Invitation to OCTA’s Thirty-Sixth Annual Convention On behalf of the Utah Crossroads Chapter, we invite you to the 2018 OCTA Convention at the Eccles Convention Center in Ogden, Utah. Northern Utah was in many ways a Crossroads long before the emigrants, settlers, railroad and military came here. As early as pre-Fremont Native Americans, we find evidence of trails and trade routes across this geographic area. The trappers and traders, both English and American, knew the area and crisscrossed it following many of the Native American trails. They also established new routes. Explorers sought additional routes to avoid natural barriers such as the mountains and the Great Salt Lake. As emigrants and settlers traveled west, knowledge of the area spread. The Crossroads designation was permanently established once the Railroad spanned the nation.
    [Show full text]
  • The Mormon Trail
    Utah State University DigitalCommons@USU All USU Press Publications USU Press 2006 The Mormon Trail William E. Hill Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs Part of the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Hill, W. E. (1996). The Mormon Trail: Yesterday and today. Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press. This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the USU Press at DigitalCommons@USU. It has been accepted for inclusion in All USU Press Publications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@USU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE MORMON TRAIL Yesterday and Today Number: 223 Orig: 26.5 x 38.5 Crop: 26.5 x 36 Scale: 100% Final: 26.5 x 36 BRIGHAM YOUNG—From Piercy’s Route from Liverpool to Great Salt Lake Valley Brigham Young was one of the early converts to helped to organize the exodus from Nauvoo in Mormonism who joined in 1832. He moved to 1846, led the first Mormon pioneers from Win- Kirtland, was a member of Zion’s Camp in ter Quarters to Salt Lake in 1847, and again led 1834, and became a member of the first Quo- the 1848 migration. He was sustained as the sec- rum of Twelve Apostles in 1835. He served as a ond president of the Mormon Church in 1847, missionary to England. After the death of became the territorial governor of Utah in 1850, Joseph Smith in 1844, he was the senior apostle and continued to lead the Mormon Church and became leader of the Mormon Church.
    [Show full text]
  • Fawn Brodie and Her Quest for Independence
    Fawn Brodie and Her Quest for Independence Newell G. Bringhurst FAWN MCKAY BRODIE IS KNOWN IN MORMON CIRCLES primarily for her con- troversial 1945 biography of Joseph Smith — No Man Knows My History. Because of this work she was excommunicated from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In the 23 May 1946 summons, William H. Reeder, presi- dent of the New England Mission, charged her with apostasy: You assert matters as truths which deny the divine origin of the Book of Mormon, the restoration of the Priesthood and of Christ's Church through the instrumentality of the Prophet Joseph Smith, contrary to the beliefs, doctrines, and teachings of the Church. This reaction did not surprise the author of the biography. For Brodie had approached the Mormon prophet from a "naturalistic perspective" — that is, she saw him as having primarily non-religious motives. As she later noted: "I was convinced before I ever began writing that Joseph Smith was not a true Prophet" (1975, 10). Writing No Man Knows My History was Brodie's declaration of independence from Mormonism. In the words of Richard S. Van Wagoner, Brodie's "compulsion to rid herself of the hooks that Mor- monism had embedded in her soul centered on her defrocking Joseph Smith" (1982, 32). She herself, in a 4 November 1959 letter to her uncle, Dean Brim- hall, described the writing of the biography as "a desperate effort to come to terms with my childhood." NEWELL G. BRINGHURST is an instructor of history and political science at College of the Sequoias in Visalia, California.
    [Show full text]
  • BRODIE: the a Personal Look at Mormonisrn’S Best-Known Rebel
    BRODIE: the A personal look at Mormonisrn’s best-known rebel RICHARD S. VAN WAGONER LMOST as much as we love to love our folk unseen influences which shape our destinies, I took my heroes, we Mormons love to hate our heretics. stand with the ’heretics’; and, as it happened, my own AWe lick our chops at the thought of John C. was the first woman’s name enrolled in their cause. Bennett spending his autumn years raising chickens in The most recent name enrolled on the list of women Polk City, Iowa--so far a fall for the once-proud heretics is Sonia Johnson. Trading barbs with Utah’s Brigadier General in the Invincible Light Dragoons of Mormon Senator Orrin Hatch, Johnson quickly rose to Illinois and member of Joseph Smith’s First Presidency. prominence as a fervent spokeswoman for "Mormons We remember with delight millionaire Sam Brannan of for ERA." Her outspoken opposition to Church political California gold rush fame, once high and mighty enough activism over the Equal Rights Amendment resulted in to refuse to give up Church tithes until Brigham Young national press attention, loss of her Church sent a "receipt signed by the Lord," dying of a bowel membership, and delicious hissings from Church infection, wifeless and penniless. We retell with relish members in general. the sad tale of stroke-ravaged Thomas B. Marsh, the man who might have been Church president upon The best-known Mormon rebel of all time, however, Joseph Smith’s death, returning to the Church in 1856 "a neither led a protest movement against polygamy nor poor decrepid [sic], broken down old man .
    [Show full text]
  • Review of at Sword's Point, Part 1: a Documentary History of the Utah War to 1858
    Mormon Studies Review Manuscript 1105 Review of At Sword’s Point, Part 1: A Documentary History of the Utah War to 1858; At Sword’s Point, Part 2: A Documentary History of the Utah War, 1858-1859, edited by William P. MacKinnon. Brent M. Rogers Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/msr2 Part of the Mormon Studies Commons Rogers: Review of At Sword’s Point, Part 1: Title Review of At Sword’s Point, Part 1: A Documentary History of the Utah War to 1858; At Sword’s Point, Part 2: A Documentary History of the Utah War, 1858-1859, by William P. MacKinnon. edited Author Brent M. Rogers Reference Mormon Studies Review (201 ): 126 131. ISSN 2156-8022 (print), 2156-80305 8 (online)– DOI https://doi.org/10.18809/msr.2018.0117 Published by BYU ScholarsArchive, 1 Submission to Mormon Studies Review 126 Mormon Studies Review wins but instead how different peoples are made vulnerable by each new adjustment. Neil J. Young is an Affiliated Research Scholar with the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. He is the author of We Gather Together: The Religious Right and theProblem of Interfaith Politics (Oxford, 2015). William P. MacKinnon, ed. At Sword’s Point, Part 1: A Documentary History of the Utah War to 1858. Vol. 10 of the series Kingdom in the West: The Mormons and the American Frontier, edited by Will Bagley. Norman, OK: Arthur H. Clark Company, 2008. William P. MacKinnon, ed. At Sword’s Point, Part 2: A Documentary History of the Utah War, 1858–1859.
    [Show full text]
  • Dale Morgan on Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon
    Review of Books on the Book of Mormon 1989–2011 Volume 8 Number 1 Article 14 1996 “The Most Convenient Form of Error”: Dale Morgan on Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon Gary F. Novak Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/msr BYU ScholarsArchive Citation Novak, Gary F. (1996) "“The Most Convenient Form of Error”: Dale Morgan on Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon," Review of Books on the Book of Mormon 1989–2011: Vol. 8 : No. 1 , Article 14. Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/msr/vol8/iss1/14 This Historical and Cultural Studies is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Review of Books on the Book of Mormon 1989–2011 by an authorized editor of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. Title “The Most Convenient Form of Error”: Dale Morgan on Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon Author(s) Gary F. Novak Reference FARMS Review of Books 8/1 (1996): 122–67. ISSN 1099-9450 (print), 2168-3123 (online) Abstract Review of Dale Morgan On Early Mormonism: Correspondence and a New History (1986), edited by John Phillip Walker. John Phillip Walker, ed. Dale Morgan On Early Mor· mOllism: Correspondence and a New History. Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1986. viii + 414 pp., with bibliography, no index. $20.95 (out of print). Reviewed by Gary F. Novak "The Most Convenient Form of Error": Dale Morgan on Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon We are onl y critica l about the th ings we don't want to believe.
    [Show full text]
  • WRESTLING BRIGHAM in the Remaining Sixty Pages, Bagley Dis- Cusses the Fate of Such Massacre Planners Or Participants As Isaac C
    62-65_briggs_botp_review.qxd 12/23/02 11:36 AM Page 62 SUNSTONE was convicted in the second and was ulti- BOOK REVIEW mately executed by firing squad in early 1877, the same year Brigham Young died. More than a third of the narrative deals with the events of this twenty-year period. WRESTLING BRIGHAM In the remaining sixty pages, Bagley dis- cusses the fate of such massacre planners or participants as Isaac C. Haight, Philip BLOOD OF THE PROPHETS:BRIGHAM YOUNG Klingensmith, John M. Higbee, and William AND THE MASSACRE AT MOUNTAIN MEADOWS H. Dame, all of whom died between 1880 and 1910. He briefly treats the contributions by Will Bagley of massacre commentators such as Josiah University of Oklahoma Press, 2002 Gibbs, Josiah Rogerson, Orson Whitney, and 493 pages, $39.95 Robert Baskin. And he highlights the final years of the last of the militia participants and the Fancher party’s surviving children. Reviewed by Robert H. Briggs In the final chapter and epilogue, Bagley recounts Juanita Brooks’s courageous revela- tion of the details of the massacre in the early 1950s, the tentative efforts toward reconcilia- tion between descendants of the Arkansas Historian Will Bagley identifies the victims, train and of southern Utah militiamen in- heroes, and villains of the Mountain cluding John D. Lee, and the successive placing of monuments in 1990 and 1999 at Meadows massacre, but focuses especially the Mountain Meadows massacre site as on the question, “What did Brigham Young more fitting remembrances of the dead. Here and earlier, as he pays respect and know and when did he know it?” acknowledges intellectual debts, Bagley praises Brooks as one of the West’s “best and bravest historians” (xiii) and announces that Y DUSK ON Friday, 11 September tury has brought the conditions that sur- his work “is not a revision but an extension 1857, the massacre at Mountain round horrific massacres into sharper focus.
    [Show full text]
  • Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows
    Book Reviews 149 Book Reviews WILL BAGLEY. Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002. xxiv + 493 pp. Illustrations, maps, appendix, notes, bibliography, index. $39.95 hardback.) Reviewed by W. Paul Reeve, assistant professor of history, Southern Virginia University, and Ardis E. Parshall, independent researcher, Orem, Utah. Explaining the violent slaughter of 120 men, women, and children at the hands of God-fearing Christian men—priesthood holders, no less, of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—is no easy task. Biases per- meate the sources and fill the historical record with contradictions and polemics. Untangling the twisted web of self-serving testimony, journals, memoirs, government reports, and the like requires skill, forthrightness, integrity, and the utmost devotion to established standards of historical scholarship. Will Bagley, a journalist and independent historian with sever- al books on Latter-day Saint history to his credit, has recently tried his hand at unraveling the tale. Even though Bagley claims to be aware of “the basic rules of the craft of history” (xvi), he consistently violates them in Blood of the Prophets. As a result, Juanita Brooks’ The Mountain Meadows Massacre remains the most definitive and balanced account to date. Certainly there is no justification for the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Mormon men along with Paiute allies acted beyond the bounds of reason to murder the Fancher party, a group of California-bound emigrants from Arkansas passing through Utah in 1857. It is a horrific crime, one that Bagley correctly identifies as “the most violent incident in the history of America’s overland trails” (xiii), and it belongs to Utah and the Mormons.
    [Show full text]
  • Jedediah Strong Smith's Lands Purchased by Ralph Smith in Ohio
    Newsletter of the Jedediah Smith Society • University of the Pacific, Stockton, California FALL/WINTER 2010 - SPRING 2011 Jedediah Strong Smith’s located in Richland County, Green Township. (Note: Dale Morgan’s book seems to be mistaken when it says that they moved Lands to Ashland County Ohio in 1817. Ashland County did not exist until 1846, having been made up of parts of Wayne and Richland Purchased by Ralph Smith in Ohio Counties.) It is assumed that young Jedediah Strong Smith lived By Roger Williams with his parents and siblings at this location until approximately 1820, when he left home, headed west and ended up in St. Louis, Missouri in the early spring of 1821. It was also inferred that the I have read the book “Jedediah Smith Smith family was not monetarily well off, so that may have been a and the Opening of the West” by Dale factor in Jedediah S. Smith’s decision to leave home. (2) Morgan, copyright 1953; wherein he has provided several letters of Jedediah I have searched the tax records as far back as 1826 and have S. Smith to his mother and father and not found where Jedediah Smith Sr. or Ralph Smith owned land his brother Ralph Smith. This is a in Green Township. It is not a far stretch to believe that they may wonderful book on Jedediah Smith and have rented land, share cropped, or operated another general store his family. In Mr. Morgan’s book there and lumber sales that were actually owned by another person. is a note saying that Jedediah S.
    [Show full text]
  • Evaluating Robert Remini's Joseph Smith and Will Bagley's Brigham Youngs
    A Biographer's Burden: Evaluating Robert Remini's Joseph Smith and Will Bagley's Brigham Youngs Newell G. Bringhurst DURING THE PAST YEAR, I have had the opportunity to read and review two sig- nificant books Robert Remini's Joseph Smith (New York: Viking Press, 2003) and Will Bagley's Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Mas- sacre at Mountain Meadows (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002). The two reviews—one for each book and each for a different publication—were extremely brief and perfunctory due to space limitations. This prevented me from doing full justice to the books, and I wish to rectify that now. I confess from the onset that I am favorably impressed with both. Both provide fresh, il- luminating insights into their principal subjects, Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, thereby advancing the craft of Mormon biography, although I do find deficiencies in both works. The books have received nationwide attention, in- cluding reviews in such prestigious publications as the New York Times and the New York Review of Books.2 Such widespread notice would seem to suggest a coming-of-age for Mormon historical scholarship. Indeed, the fact that non-Mormon Robert Remini, a distinguished professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a nationally renowned Jacksonian scholar, would choose to write on Joseph Smith lends credence to such a coming of age. Remini is known for his definitive multi-volume biogra- phy of President Andrew Jackson, and he is a winner of the National Book Award. He has produced a compelling and, on the whole, sympathetic biogra- 1.
    [Show full text]
  • The Donner Party & Donner Summit
    January, 2017 issue #101 The Donner Party & Donner Summit - Part II 170 Years Ago This Month Occasionally at the DSHS we get queries about the Donner Party . Some people want to come visit the museum to learn about the Donner Party. That’s one of the hazards of being the Donner Summit Historical Society. Last month we opened this series with Part I which was an introduction. In the coming few months we'll see what was happening, regarding Donner Summit, 170 years ago. Donner Summit is most well-known for the Donner Party even though half of the party was down at Donner Lake, miles away and a thousand feet lower in elevation, and the other half, including the Donners, was even further away at Alder Creek. Since the Donner Party was not in the neighborhood so to speak and because there is a fine historical society inTruckee (Truckee Donner Historical Society) we don’t cover the story here on Donner Summit. The saga has been covered in numerous books, stories, and videos. What could we possibly have to offer? Then too, we have so many stories here, being the most significant historical spot in California and maybe in the entire Western U.S. It turns out, after thinking about it, that there is something relevant to Donner Summit to offer. The Donner Party did have a connection to Donner Summit or rather half did – the half who escaped the tragedy or were rescued from the tragedy. They all went over Donner Pass and some of the more dramatic episodes took place on Donner Summit: the escape of the Forlorn Hope, Starved Camp, the four rescue parties, the heroism of John Stark, and the end of Charles Stanton.
    [Show full text]
  • Emigrants' Guide
    THE LATTER-DAY SAINTS' EMIGRANTS' GUIDE: DI!INO A TABLE OF DISTANCES, SHOWING ALL THE SPRINGS, CRTEKS, RIVERS, HILLS, MOUNTAINS, CAMPING PL .CES, AND ALL OTHER NOTABLE PLACES, FROM COUNCIL BLUFFS, TO TBE VALLEY OF THE GREAT SALT LAKE. ALSO, THE LATITUDES, LONGITUDES AND ALTITUDES OF THE PROMINENT POINTS ON THE ROUTE. TOGETHER WITH REMARKS ON THE NATURE OF THE L.lND, TIMBER, GRASS, &c. THI WHOLE ROUTE HAVJ~G BEEN CAREFULLY MEASURED BY A ROADOXE• TER, AND THE DJSTANCJ: FROM POINT TO POllfT, IN ENGLISH MILES, ACCURATELY SBOW!f. BY W. CLAYTON. ST. LOUIS: MO. REPUBLICAN STEAM POWER rRESS-CHAMBERS &.!UiAfP, 1848. EDITED BY STANLEY B. KIMBALL \VITI-I A BIOGRAPHICAL I~TRODlTCTION BY JAMES B. ALLEN THE PATRICE PRESS/1983 All text matter in this book which is not in the public domain is Copyright© 1983 The Patrice Press All Rights Reserved First Edition Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Clayton, William, 1814-1879. The Latter-day Saints' emigrants' guide. Originally published: St. Louis : Mo. Repub­ lican Steam Power Press, 1848. Includes index. 1. West (U.S.) - Description and travel 1848-1860 - Guide-books. 2. West (U.S.) Distances, etc. I. Kimball, Stanley Buchholz. II. Allen, James B. III. Title. IV Title: Emigrants' guide. F593.C63 1983 917.8'042 83-2473 ISBN 0-935284-27-3 Published by The Patrice Press Box 42 I Gerald, MO 63037 Printed in the United States of America 6~~~~~~~,/-~ .. ~,~,:: ..-T ~f~~:._~ Pnov:.\ <i7 .. ~.H THE LATTER-DAY SAINTS' EMIGRANTS' GUIDE THE EDITOR'S PREFACE S OUR NATIONAL HERITAGE DISAPPEARS there seems to Abe a direct relationship between the rapidity with which we destroy this legacy and our desire to write and read about it, even to go in search of it.
    [Show full text]