All posts by Amy Tanner Thiriot

Mormon history

The Power of a Personal Letter: David Marshall Stuart

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David Marshall Stuart was orphaned as a young boy in Paisley, Scotland. He joined the LDS church when he was sixteen years old. He set sail from Liverpool and arrived in the Great Salt Lake Valley in 1847. In early 1856, still unmarried, he was preaching the gospel in Sacramento, California, when he wrote a letter to Apostle Amasa Mason Lyman full of flowery observations on religion. As a second letter later attests, he must not have expected a reply. Here is an excerpt from his second letter, written from the heart of California gold country. Continue reading The Power of a Personal Letter: David Marshall Stuart →

family history, Guest Posts

Guest Post: When Genealogy Becomes an Issue in Presidential Politics

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This is a lightly updated version of an article I wrote last year for the genealogy-technology blog, Genealogy’s Star, when the news media renewed questions into Elizabeth Warren’s genealogy. Before you start reading, remember that this is a history blog, with occasional forays into the field of genealogy. Although it is the middle of an election year, don’t even think of making political comments! If you do, they will be gleefully deleted. Comments are welcome on the topics addressed in the post.

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When Genealogy Becomes an Issue in Presidential Politics
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Okay, so genealogy is always an issue in presidential politics. Campaigns lend themselves to questions of parentage, lineage, paternity, and race. Was Andrew Jackson biracial? Was Abraham Lincoln’s grandfather African American? Did Grover Cleveland father a child when he was a bachelor, justifying the famous chant, “Ma, Ma, where’s my pa? Gone to the White House. Ha! Ha! Ha!”?

During the last presidential election, mention was sometimes made of Mitt Romney’s polygamous heritage, a topic I addressed in the article, “A Brief Guide to Mitt Romney’s Polygamous Heritage,” but attempts to racialize a white Mormon were largely non-starters since he was running against an African American with much closer polygamous ancestry.

Six months ahead of the 2016 presidential election, genealogical questions continue to provide fodder for the news outlets.

In what looks to be an ongoing political battle, one of the candidates for president just renewed questions about Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren’s claim of Native American heritage.

Continue reading Guest Post: When Genealogy Becomes an Issue in Presidential Politics →

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Commemorating the 1866 Circleville Massacre

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One hundred and fifty years ago this Sunday, a small community in Piute County, Utah, became the site of the Circleville Massacre, the single greatest tragedy of Utah’s Black Hawk War. This Friday at 11 a.m., groups including the Utah Division of State History, the Town of Circleville, and the LDS Church History Department will dedicate a monument commemorating the massacre. The monument was created under the direction of the Paiute Tribe of Utah.

During Utah’s Black Hawk War (1865–1872), settlers in remote communities found themselves in dangerous and complex conflicts with displaced native tribes. Brigham Young tried to pursue a policy of reconciliation, but the conflict grew and the numbers of brutal deaths increased, both of native Americans and Mormon settlers, many of them Scandinavian immigrants. Orson Hyde was the local Church authority in the area that saw most of the fighting, and he did not agree on a policy of reconciliation and often fanned the flames of the conflict.

Continue reading Commemorating the 1866 Circleville Massacre →

Mormon history, Utah history

Julius Taylor Attends Old Folks’ Day

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Julius Taylor, the editor of Salt Lake City’s African American newspaper, The Broad Ax, had not been in Utah long when he was invited to attend Old Folks’ Day in 1896. He wrote the following account.

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C. R. Savage, Esq., in 1874, twenty-two years ago, conceived the idea of giving the Old Folks of Utah (Utah the imperial and the matchless new State of the intermountain region), a grand, free excursion annually, and during all of the intervening years, the old folks of Utah have continued to look forward to the days on which these annual outings would occur with a great deal of pleasure, and with the happy thought of being able to assemble together at least one day in the year somewhere in these God-blessed valleys, and converse with each other about the many and the wonderful changes which they have witnessed during the past forty-nine years here in Utah…

On the journey to and from Ogden, the old folks and all others on both trains, were served with lemonade and cake by beautiful young ladies. In passing, we cannot refrain from mentioning the name of the lady who so graciously served the Broad Ax with refreshments.

We have had the pleasure of meeting a great many handsome ladies in all parts of Utah, but we are of the opinion that none of the ladies which we have heretofore met, excels Miss E. Aris, late of Lathenham, London, England… ((Emily Aris Peart Lamoreaux, 1877–1940.)) Miss Aris has resided in this fair and beautiful city of Zion for about five weeks, and she is greatly in love with the same.

President Wilford Woodruff in passing through the cars, as other elderly gentlemen, extended his hand to us, and when we inquired the name, the response came, “Wilford Woodruff.” We were somewhat embarrassed for a few moments, and President Woodruff perceiving this, he invited us to occupy the seat opposite to him and Mrs. Woodruff, which we did. After being seated, he began to converse with us on the various topics of the day. President Woodruff is a very remarkable man. He is in his eighty-ninth year, yet he does not appear to be one day over sixty. After being engaged in conversation with him for a long time, we finally came to the conclusion that there is no purer or better American than he. William E. Gladstone is the Grand Old Man of England, and Wilford Woodruff is the Grand Old Man of America. Continue reading Julius Taylor Attends Old Folks’ Day →

Mormon Studies

Black History Month: Was Wallace Thurman a Descendant of Mormon Pioneers?

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Wallace Thurman (1902–1934) was an author, a native of Utah, and a member of the Harlem Renaissance. According to Langston Hughes, he was “…a strangely brilliant black boy, who had read everything and whose critical mind could find something wrong with everything he read.”

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Wallace Thurman

Thurman’s early life was tumultuous; his mother, Beulah, remarried five or six times after divorcing his father, Oscar Thurman. Thurman lived alternately with his mother, and his maternal grandmother, Emma Jackson. When he lived in Salt Lake City, he attended West High School and the University of Utah before leaving the state for California and New York. Continue reading Black History Month: Was Wallace Thurman a Descendant of Mormon Pioneers? →

Guest Posts, Mormon history

Missionaries Wearing Fezzes

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What were well-dressed Mormon missionaries wearing in the Turkish Mission in 1887?

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Hintze Spori Joseph Marion Tanner Constantinople

F. F. Hintze, Jacob Spori, J. M. Tanner

Last month, Ted Jones added this great photo to FamilySearch Family Tree. He had labeled his ancestor, Joseph Marion Tanner, and when I saw the picture a week or two later I took a few minutes and discovered that Tanner, Ferdinand Friis Hintze, and Jacob Spori were listed together in the Church History Library Catalog as authors of L’eâvangile que le Christ enseignait et son reâtablissement aux derniers jours. Pictures of Hintze and Spori in Family Tree confirmed their identities. Continue reading Missionaries Wearing Fezzes →

Guest Posts

…can’t stop reading probates…

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Yesterday Ancestry.com released a “new and exclusive” U.S. Wills and Probate collection. If you have any genealogists in your life, you might notice them looking rather bleary-eyed today. That would be the result of spending a good part of the night reading probates that before yesterday were only accessible on microfilm.

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Philip Pugsley was a well-to-do Utah industrialist. After he died, the Salt Lake Herald noted:

A petition was filed in the district court yesterday by the executors of the estate of the late Philip Pugsley, asking that his will be filed for probate. The executors are Ezra Thompson, J. E. F. Pugsley and J. S. Barlow. The estate is valued at about $35,576.31. (Salt Lake Herald, “Court Notes,” August 20, 1903.)

Continue reading …can’t stop reading probates… →