“In order that the large number of employees of the Star establishment may have an opportunity of joining in the celebration of the day, no paper will be issued from this office to-morrow.” – Washington Star, 3 July 1857

Some variation of that announcement appeared in newspapers around the country on the eve of the Fourth of July, 1857. But that was the next day; on the 3rd of July, reporters still had to fill the pages of their evening papers: In Brooklyn, a reporter from the Daily Eagle called at each of the public schools and reported on their Independence Day programs (at Public School No. 8, patriotic recitations were followed by three cheers for the Union). In Baltimore, the Sun invited readers to a public display of a grand panorama illustrating the Kane Expedition to the Arctic (that’s Elisha Kent Kane, older brother of Thomas L. Kane, friend of the Mormons). And in Philadelphia, a reporter for the Evening Bulletin wandered down to the wharf on Walnut Street to see what ships might have come in that day; what he found at the wharf was the packet ship Tuscarora, carrying 587 passengers – 586 of them Mormons. ((Mormon sources say there were 547 passengers aboard.))

The emigrants were principally families, and every age, from infants at their mothers’ breasts, to tottering old men and women, was represented. The strangers were generally hardy-looking people, and they had the appearance of being persons in tolerably comfortable circumstances from agricultural districts. All hands seemed happy at the prospect before them, and they were generally free from the appearance of concern and anxiety which usually distinguishes emigrants when they first reach a strange land.

The reporter credited this state of relative calm to the fact that the ship was met by Mormon agents who had not only arranged for overnight lodgings in Philadelphia, but also kept off the hordes of human vultures that greeted emigrant ships, eager to part the new arrivals from all their cash. Interviewing an officer, the reporter learned that “the passengers were moral and correct in their deportment during the passage, and … there were religious services three times each Sunday, and at given periods during the week. Our informant further stated that the passengers were generally quite intelligent, and well versed in the Scriptures.”

The passengers were described as Welsh, Danish, Swedish, English and Scottish – “there was not a single Irish person among them.” But the reporter missed one nationality: There was also a German family aboard, a young man and his wife, and their 7-year-old son. As they left the Tuscarora, the father carried a box containing the body of an infant son, who had died just as the ship approached Philadelphia.

Many of the Tuscarora passengers boarded a train within a few days, to carry them westward. A few of the passengers would make it all the way to Utah, traveling just ahead of the federal troops on their march at the opening of the Utah War. Most would find work in the East or in Iowa, waiting for peace and earning money to carry them further toward their goal. The little German family would stay in Pennsylvania, where the husband and father had been called as a missionary to the multitudes of German-speaking residents in and around Philadelphia.

–oOo–

Jump ahead a few weeks to the last weekend in August, 1857. The Latter-day Saints of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania held a three-day meeting in the New Jersey woods, part social, and part quasi-stake conference. As described by one of the New York dailies:

The annual Camp-Meeting – or Wood-Meeting, as they themselves choose to phrase it – of the latter-Day Saints of New-Jersey and vicinity began last Friday, and was announced to continue through three days. It was held in Monmouth County, near the little village of Hornerstown. On Friday the muster was about three hundred, all told. On Saturday the gathering was somewhat larger, but the figure did not increase to thousands until Sunday, when the grand performances came off. We say performances, because on that day the presence of a brass band from Trenton, and their summary execution of an assortment of brazen airs, gave a character of worldliness to the affair which is seldom authorized by the rules of camp-meetings of those who claim to be the orthodox sects.

At least three newspapers covered the camp meeting in detail. This one, I think, conveys a friendly feeling, perhaps unexpected in those days when other pages in the newspapers were filled with rantings and ravings about a supposed rebellion against American authority in Utah.

The place was a pleasant spot in a grove of oak and hickory, with a sprinkling of sassafras in the foreground, and a promise of blackberries in the distance. The camp-ground was surrounded on three sides by fields of tall corn. … The underbrush was cleared away, and seats were constructed in the inconvenient fashion peculiar to wood meetings; rough planks were laid with the ends resting upon timbers about four inches from the ground, making it impossible for people to sit down upon them with any comfort, until they shall be provided with some kind of patent adjustable legs, which shall be made to slide together like telescopes. … There was but one speaker’s stand, which was covered by a wooden shed; a single chair was the furniture, and a rough board was the preacher’s desk; this last was, in the early morning, decorated with three forlorn watermelon rinds, which had been put there by some derisive lover of that colicy fruit, in the place generally assigned to the Bible and Hymn Book. Indeed, watermelons seem to be a favorite food of the faithful, and to have been providentially prevalent in that vicinity, for the ground was literally covered with the remains of the succulent vegetable.

There were no evening meetings held upon the ground, and no tents were provided for dormitories and cooking purposes, the crowd dispersing at sunset and diffusing itself through the neighborhood, to reassemble at the morning meeting of the next day. …

Long processions of vehicles of every possible appearance soon began to come up – carriages, market-wagons, sulkies, buggies, hacks, peddlers’ wagons, and a host of unclassified indescribabilities. Horseback rides came in sparingly, and the footmen last of all. Conspicuous among the gallant animals were several teams of mules, who conducted themselves with much gravity and decorum. All the teams were hitched to the trees in the immediate vicinity, and there kept up a lively and apparently interesting conversation in the equine language among themselves. …

The Saints were very strenuous and strict in excluding liquors of every kind from the camp ground, save those delectable beverages, root beer and lemon soda. The bibulously disposed found, however, some place at which to gratify their anti-temperance tastes, and before the adjournment a number ere sinuously perambulating. The proportion of colored people on the spot was very large, but whether they were brothers, converts, or merely disinterested spectators, is not in evidence.

The speakers, the prayers, the hymns are all reported in detail. One day’s opening prayer would be at home in any conference today, in both sentiment and even language:

Sustain and uphold thy servant Brigham, whom thou hast appointed Seer and Revelator of thy Church; may he continue to have thy confidence; may he be the protector of our sons and daughters; may he teach them those things that pertain to their hopes and happiness, and may he be sustained in his office and upheld notwithstanding all those that may speak evil of him. Bless his counselors, that all things may move along in peace, and harmony, and joy and happiness abound in every soul. We also ask that thou shouldst remember the quorum of the Twelve. Pour out thy spirit upon them, that they may proclaim the Gospel unto the utmost bounds, and that many may be gathered to thy children in the valleys of the mountains.

One hymn was the familiar “Hail to the brightness of Zion’s glad morning” – with an unfamiliar chorus:

Men – Will you? will you?
Women – Yes; we will.
Men – You say you will?
Women – In time I will.
Both – Go to the valley.

I won’t reproduce the talks as reported in any of the newspapers – they are mostly standard LDS talks that would find a place in today’s meetings.

One speaker, though, deserves special mention. He is our newly arrived German emigrant.

He said he would address them as best he could in broken English. In this long prayer-making generation he saw men in adultery, and sin, and transgression, and he asked himself why it was. Before he became a Mormon he observed these things; he saw that not one of all the various religious sects in the world acted in harmony with his feelings. He heard of Mormonism and scoffed t it at first, but when he examined it and came to know more of it he could not express in the English language what he felt then. His happiness, and strength, and life had increased since he had joined the Saints. For this he had left his fatherland, where he was not permitted to hold this belief – for this he had left his parents, – for this he had left his friends.

Following that short talk, Angus M. Cannon arose to tell the congregation a little about the man they had just heard.

His child had just died when he landed. He had papers with him from institutions in Germany at which he had been educated. He had a classical education but left his native land on account of his religious belief. His countrymen in Philadelphia offered him a position in the academies at Philadelphia. But he told them he did not want to deceive them; he was a Mormon.

Karl G. Maeser, future educator of generations of Latter-day Saints as long-time principal of Brigham Young Academy, and as a Sunday School leader and head of the Church Educational System, had just made his first English address to a Mormon congregation.