This record is not one created by a Mormon clerk or secretary, but by a journalist for the World, a New York City newspaper, and published on 31 January 1870. Williamsburg was the gathering place of choice of Mormon converts from Europe who were not financially prepared to continue their travel toward Utah. Some of these Saints remained faithful members of that branch for decades. At a time when anti-Mormon agents in Salt Lake City were trying to foment an actual armed conflict with false reports and telegraphed pleas for the United States Army to come to Utah to put down an armed rebellion – an entirely fictional armed rebellion – this report is remarkably neutral and informative.
-ooOoo-
Short after 2 o’clock yesterday little knots of men and women gathered round the door of the house in Grand street, Williamsburg, where the only congregation of Mormons in this State meet and hold Divine service every Sunday. At 3 o’clock, in the low-roofed, square room where the meetings are held, about two hundred persons were present, of whom forty were women and girls. A raised platform with preacher’s stand is at the end of the room facing on Grand street, and to the left of this platform is a square inclosure in which stands a harmonium, and around which instrument choir, thirteen or fourteen voices, gathered.
The services began by the entire congregation rising and the presiding elder invoking the blessing of the Divine spirit on the proceedings.
A hymn was then sung, and the elder proceeded to speak on the question most interesting to the congregation, the truth of Mormonism. he said that “the spirit of Divine revelation has not ceased, nor will it ever until the world’s people are made whole in the sight of the Lord. Why do unbelievers sneer and say that revelation is past, and gone for ever? Take up the Bible, from the beginning to the last line of Revelations. What is it but a continuous, never-fading stream of Divine light? Is it not preposterous and totally opposed to all common sense, to believe that he, who thus revealed in the former days, should remain with closed lips for seventeen centuries? No! Revelation is continuous, never-ending, and the revealing of the Holy Spirit will continue until there is no longer any necessity for it.” The speaker then proceeded to say that he had not proposed occupying much of their time, as there were brethren present from the valleys in the hills, who could speak better and with greater effect than he could.
A collection was then made, and the presiding elder stated that a number of Mormon books had just arrived from Liverpool, which were on sale for the members. “The Book of Mormons” [sic] would cost $1.25; “Bishop Burley’s Texts and Commentaries,” ((There is no such Mormon publication, to the best of my knowledge; I cannot think of a title the reporter might have misheard, and suppose this might be a non-Mormon reference work that some Church members found useful. I do not know, though.)) $1.25; and “Mormon Hymns,” $1.75.
The meeting closed with a benediction, and the congregation, a most orderly one, dispersed in an orderly manner.
-ooOoo-
The preaching elder might be an Elder Jackson. A column of news notes culled from various sources and telegraphed to the Springfield [Massachusetts] Republican and printed on 7 February reads:
“The Mormon missionaries at Freeport and Hempstead, L.I., and other towns in that vicinity, are working with great vigor, although they have not met with the success they expected. At Freeport, the center of operations, Burton and his colleagues have only converted twelve men, who were Mormon backsliders, but are working with unremitting energy, holding meetings three times a day, and preaching in the streets as well as in halls. The elders there expect reinforcements shortly from Utah. Ar River Head, last week, some of the Mormon agitators were so coldly received that they left, but at Williamsburg, Sunday, Elder Jackson’s services were largely attended.”
Such news notes are often wildly exaggerated and are often recognizably fiction, so it’s difficult to rely on them – hence the warning that the elder might be named Jackson. There were too many hits on “Jackson” in the Missionary Database at history.lds.org that I haven’t spent the time to read through them all to identify one serving in the right time and place.
Bishop Burley? Perhaps something by Parley P Pratt?
Some of my family joined the Church in Hempstead about thirty years before this meeting. I wonder if any of their relatives were among the “backsliders.”
These days, Williamsburg is a hipster paradise, and way too expensive for any immigrant. Besides, what non-hipster would actually want to go there?
Kent Larsen found an article in the Brooklyn Eagle that said Church meetings were being held in 1867 on the corner of Grand Street and Hooper Street (called 11th Street in those days). Assuming they hadn’t moved in three years, the meeting described in this post would have been held here.
Thanks for this one, Ardis. Its an article I didn’t have.
Oddly, this was written during a period of a slew of articles about local Mormons (late 1869 and early 1870) for reasons that have so far escaped me.
My favorite is an article which claims that the Church would build a Temple in New York City along with a boarding house for Mormon immigrants. I assume this was simply a local member or leader boasting or relating their pipe dream. Of course I would change my tune if someone came across any documentation in SLC about such a plan.
One of the interesting aspects of all this is that the Eastern States Mission had officially closed by this time — so the local branches (in New York City and Williamsburg) were apparently operating independently of a mission — perhaps under the direction of the Church’s Emmigration Agent, who was stationed in New York City.
Mark, I have a November 1869 article in the Brooklyn Eagle that still puts the branch as meeting in Grand Street, and places the number of attendees at 200.
Unfortunately, the improvement in transportation (steamships, railroad to Utah) and PEF policies led the number of Mormons in New York to dwindle — I don’t have any indication the branches were still meeting after about 1873.
Another article, the week before, lists the address of the Williamsburg branch as 145 Grant Street, and gives the name of the “preacher” that day as “Elder THOS. JACKSON” of Utah.
Perhaps, Ardis, you have information on this missionary?
Also part of this story is the statement in an earlier article that “General BURTON, who is Commander-in-Chief of the Mormon Militia and a Bishop of the Church, established his headquarters at Baldwinsville, near Rockville Center”
It sounds like Burton and Jackson were trying to set up what eventually became the Hempstead Branch on Long Island.
As Amy mentions, there were a number of members in that area who refused to gather to Utah, and who formed the core of a branch that existed, off and on, through the middle of the 20th Century.
Yeah, there’s a Thomas Jackson (1823-1883) from Payson, who served October 1869-May 1870.
Kent, what’s the rationale for saying they “refused” to gather to Utah, rather than that they couldn’t afford it, or hadn’t got around to it, or something less definite than “refused”?
One of the collateral duties of the LDS leader in Williamsburg, Brooklyn during the early 1870s was to travel episodically to West Point to visit and buck up the spirits of Cadet Willard Young, a B. Y. son who had entered the U. S. Military Academy from Utah in the summer of 1871. Not only was Willard away from home for the first time, he was the object of a lot of hazing as the member of the most famous polygamous family in the country. When Willard graduated and was commissioned a second lieutenant of engineers in 1875, he was assigned to a post at Fort Totten, NY, near the confluence of Long Island Sound and the East River (now in Queens near the Throgs Neck Bridge). Presumably he attended Sunday services in Williamsburg from that location.