One of the more notorious anti-Mormon lecturers – and one who carried on the business a little later than most (1917-1930) – was Marion Moffett Williams, who usually went by name “Mrs. Marion Williams” on the lecture circuit. She was born in Scotland in 1854, emigrated with her family to Utah in a handcart company in 1860, and eventually settled in Cache County (northern Utah, near the Idaho line). She married in 1874 as the second wife of a man very much her own age, a son of Thomas S. and Albina Merrill Williams (we’ve met Albina before).
That much is easily documented from the usual sources. Beyond that … I don’t know. We’re left with her version of events, and relying on Mrs. Marion Williams is more than a little difficult. One of her shticks on the lecture circuit, for instance, was to give men-only and women-only lectures because what she had to say was so foul that it couldn’t be shared in mixed company. Newspaper reports are generally delicate, but eyewitness reports by Latter-day Saints who attended indicate that she gave an impossibly corrupt version of temple rituals that included the “immoral use” of a virgin on the main altar every day. “None was ever wanted twice,” she claimed.
This tame little advertisement from the Minneapolis Star Tribune of 15 November 1919 is not the advertisement really featured in this post; it’s merely a placeholder.
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The far, far more common advertisement placed by Mrs. Williams or her speakers’ bureau representative in scores of newspapers throughout the 19teens and ‘20s is posted here – I don’t want it on Keepa’s front page, and I don’t want to surprise sensitive readers by throwing it in their faces unexpectedly. Before you click through, know that this is an image of an apostate in temple robes.
Also please cooperate in not discussing details that might make such sensitive readers unhappy (differences between the ceremonial dress in this picture and your own experience, for instance). Just understand that this kind of image was widely shown in the 20th century. Modern anti-Mormon vulgarity with regard to temple clothing is unimaginative and tame, by comparison. (That’s isn’t a challenge. I won’t hold your beer.)
The Mormon octopus controls the elections in 11 states? Oh, so that’s why we have President Romney!
Come for the salacious details of a Mormon harem! Stay for the details about how Mormons are an insidious anti-democratic political force!
Seems roughly equivalent to the most egregious sort of anti-Muslim propaganda you see these days. The most surprising thing is that the Unitarians allowed this on their premises — at least these days, they seem to be better neighbors than that.
“It is the religious and patriotic duty of every American man and woman to know the candid facts of Mormonism.”
Hear! Hear! Something we agree on!
That’s very disturbing.
The Nov 17 and 18 lectures were 15¢ cheaper than the following week!
Early Bird discount!
This is a new one to me. Do you know when she started lecturing? I would have thought that after the Smoot hearings most Americans had already heard or read about “the candid facts.”
The dates I posted of 1917-1930 are the dates I found her in the newspapers as lecturing around the country (she may have worked earlier and/or later, but those are the endpoints I found). I agree with you — it does seem very late. The ads appear so often that it has to have been a more or less regular program, not a one-time event. Some prejudices die slowly, I guess.
I’m coming back to this after a day; I was amused by the use of exclamation points in the early comments. It’s quite a story, and one that I missed in my research on the Williams family.
T. S. Williams was a member of the Mormon Battalion and early important merchant in Utah. He was also a bigamist, polygamist, and slave owner, and known in the late 1850s as a great apostate until his death at the hands of native raiders in California.
The newspapers and his family almost immediately blamed his murder on the Church although no one with any familiarity with the tribes and travel in that region would seriously think that the Church had anything to do with his death. It was an easy target, though, and it is interesting to see that at least one member of the extended family continued to perpetuate conspiracy theories about the Church.
By the way, T. S. and Albina Williams were the in-laws of David Patten Kimball, one of the three young men in the folkloric story about the rescue at the Sweetwater River.
“Oath of treason”?! What a snake-oil peddler she was.