The Juvenile Instructor will be reviewing the contents of a number of Mormon-related periodicals including BYU Studies, the Journal of Mormon History, the John Whitmer Association Journal, Restoration Studies and others as they come to us. This will be a regular feature on the JI.

Today, it’s BYU Studies 48:1 (2009). (more…)

I post this because it may be of some value to someone. I strongly believe in sharing faith journeys. Listening forces us to confront the prismatic nature of another person’s spiritual experience and accept that perhaps a multiplicity of paths lead to the same truth or to a different truth entirely. We become less judgemental of others as we learn the ways in which God has worked in their lives, sometimes inexplicably, but usually in ways that are similar to our own. (more…)

[This is third post in the Perspectives of Parley Pratt's Autobiography series. Matt Grow has a PhD in History from Notre Dame University, where he studied under George Marsden. His first book, a biography on Thomas L. Kane, was published with Yale University Press. He is currently co-authoring a biography of Pratt, tentatively titled Parley Parker Pratt: The Saint Paul of Mormonism, to be published with with Oxford University Press. Matt is an assistant professor of history and director of the Center for Communal Studies at the University of Southern Indiana.]

In late 1853, Orson Pratt, then in Washington, D.C., excitedly wrote to his brother Parley about an effort to publish genealogical information on the descendants of their ancestor William Pratt, a Puritan who migrated from England to Connecticut in the 1630s. (more…)

This morning, several hundred members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints gathered on the steps of Salt Lake City’s Matheson Courthouse and on the lawn of the Salt Lake City and County Building across the street to express their dismay that District Judge Denise Lindberg was considering ordering the United Effort Plan trust, which contains a great deal of church property, dismantled and sold.

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Continued from Part 1.

The next article, “The Tragic Matter of Louie Wells and John Q. Cannon” by Kenneth Cannon discusses a rather messy series of incidents. Louie Wells, the talented daughter of Emmeline B. and Daniel H. Wells was the sister-in-law of John Q. Cannon, son of George Q. Cannon. John was married to Louis’ sister Annie and all three lived under one roof for a time.  After a number of pages of biographical information on Louis and John, Cannon launches into his story.  (more…)

A reader has asked that we post the following Call for Papers.

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In a previous post, I quoted an entomologist who thought the name “Mormon Fly” was “an insolvable mystery.” [1] He went on to say that “there was somewhat more plausible ground for calling the Chinch bug the ‘Mormon louse;’ for that little pest really did swarm for the first time in Illinois about the same year that the Mormons settled there.” (more…)

As a follow up to Mary Ann Jeffries’s letter that I posted, here is a comment in a letter form Caroline Grant Smith to her brother Jedediah Grant. Grant had been the presiding elder in Philadelphia but was back in Nauvoo.

“You must know the Church one and all are vary ancious to see you. The first inquery when any of the sisters come in is when do you think Brother Grant will come? Have your had any news? What no letter yet and sutch like expressions.” [1] (more…)

This is sort of a statement of contrition as well as an advertisement for the upcoming EMSA which probably none of us can make it to.

My first trip to MHA was at the end of my master’s program. My paper was on the early Mormon branches throughout North America and why we should study them. (more…)

We worship here in the shadow of the This Is The Place monument, the quintessential symbol of the Mormon Pioneer trek. I must say that this has been perhaps the hardest talk I’ve had to compose, and for a number of reasons.  For one, out of all the topics in Mormon history, the overland migration to Utah has been the one topic that has never interested me.  And when it’s in my face on occasions like on the 24^th of July in Utah, it becomes clear that though there are a few token nods in the Mormon Times or on the blogs to the notion that we are all pioneers wherever we go, and wherever we are or that there are pioneers in other countries, at the end of the day we don’t know or tell their stories. (more…)

Ben’s previous post was an effort to highlight the “personal agenda” behind Parley Pratt’s writing of his Autobiography. He outlined two chief forces behind its production: Parley’s desires (conscious or not) to relive and revive his preeminent influence in the Church, and to give a revisionist account of its history more favorable and forgiving to himself. To those two well-reasoned general motives, I would like to add a third fundamental impetus – one that was relatively unique to Parley as an individual. (more…)

Freedom was closed the day I visited. A pity: I was curious to see what it was all about.  (more…)

So in my ever-stewing never-ending revisions of my work on Mormonism in the Philadelphia area, I’ve decided that I need to say more about women. This is a challenge since my sources are overwhelmingly written by men. I do have some detailed journals that I can mine better than I have though.

Anyway, up at the archives the other day and I came across another letter from a woman in the area (making a total of 5 letters by women in all). (more…)

All that is green west of the Rockies quivers before that most fearsome of Mormon beasts, the Mormon cricket. It wasn’t always so. Before the 1870s (in the Anglo-European world), mesch, “a curious kind of cricket,” “an ugly cricket,” “a large kind of cricket,” the “mountain cricket” ravaged the left side of the American map. [1] Colonel Kane and the Mormons described it:

Wingless, dumpy, black, swollen-headed, with bulging eyes in cases like goggles, mounted upon legs of steel wire and clock-spring, and with a general personal appearance that justified the Mormons in comparing him to a cross of the spider on the Buffalo, the Deseret cricket comes down from the mountains at a certain season of the year, in voracious and desolating myriads. [3]

As you’ve probably grown tired of hearing, the Mormon cricket isn’t really a cricket. It’s a katydid sporting the genus name Anabrus, “in allusion to [its] unprepossessing appearance”; an + abroV = “not soft, delicate, tender, dainty, or beautiful,” which I think fits pretty well. [4] (Image: A. simplex cannibalizes [2]) (more…)

Well, a friend tipped me off that it appears we will be taking a break from the Teachings of the Prophets series we’ve had over the last few years as the Relief Society/Melchizedek Priesthood course of study. The new curriculum for two years, 2010-2011, will be the [fanfare] (more…)

After months of anticipation, the JI’s Christopher has successfully completed his MA thesis at BYU. The thesis examines the influence of Methodism on early Mormon history, and will doubtless be a valuable contribution. It is available on-line here and I’ve reproduced the abstract after the jump: (more…)

The most recent issue of the Journal of Mormon History actually arrived a little while back, but I’ve been slow to post this.  Since the next will be here soon, I’d better get this out! I’ll be more prompt next time! (more…)

An 1840s British visitor to Illinois noted that “among the novel discomforts of the West, that of insects is one of no trifling character. The whole earth and air seems teeming with them….” [1] A big bunch of them, including mayflies, teemed at Nauvoo. (more…)

Warning: If you have grown sick with the number of Parley Pratt posts coming from me lately, it’s about to get worse; much, much worse. (more…)

In a post earlier today, Chris asked about instances when Mormons defended polygamy by attacking sexual relations between races. I have been working on racial construction by Mormons and non-Mormons in the late 1880s to 1890s and happen to have two pieces ready to go. They would be too long for a comment, so I’m posting them here. (more…)

While continuing my research on Mormonism in the South this morning, I came across the story of a debate between some young Mormon missionaries and a couple of Protestant ministers in North Carolina in 1900. The local newspaper contained the following summary of the debate: (more…)

Fraternity with monkeys was (and remains) a standard trope of racializing discourse. So, in my ongoing efforts to (a) understand late nineteenth-century Mormon identity construction and (b) graduate, I poked around for comparisons between Mormons and animals in the 19^th century. I was pretty excited when I found a baboon labeled “mormon.” I thought that, together with Mormon crickets, I had a high-protein entrée for my thesis. I mean, if I were manufacturing monstrosities for 19^th-century anti-Mormons, it would be hard to beat the prolific, ravenous, cannibalistic Mormon cricket and a certified Mormon, polygamous baboon. (more…)

Greetings, JI readers.  Tomorrow the polls close over at Mormon Matters.  As you may know, the Juvenile Instructor is up for #2 Best Group Blog and the race is tight. So if you feel so inclined, go to MM and cast your vote! (more…)

Mormon History Association
2010 Independence Missouri Conference
Call for Papers
The Home and the Homeland:
Families in Diverse Mormon Traditions

The forty-fifth annual conference of the Mormon History Association will be held May 27-30, 2010, at the Kansas City Sports Complex Hotel in Kansas City, MO. It has been twenty-five years since the last MHA conference was held in Missouri. The 2010 theme, “The Home and the Homeland: Families in Diverse Mormon Traditions” recognizes the family as a central social and religious institution within Mormon traditions. (more…)

J. Stapley tipped me off recently that Laurie Maffly-Kipp is one of the newest members of the Journal of Mormon History Board of Editors.  Dr. Maffly-Kipp is an associate professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (Where our own Stan is headed for his Ph. D. program). Along with her contributions to African-American religion, she has contributed to the study of Mormons and Protestants in the Pacific Basin in lectures and articles, being the coeditor (with Reid Nielson) of Proclamation to the People: Nineteenth-century Mormonism and the Pacific Basin Frontier. She also recently presented at the Sacred Space Symposium at BYU on the preparation of the Chilean people for the opening of the Santiago, Chile temple. (more…)

I have in the past devoted significant wordiage to the subtle intersections between the religiocultural paradoxes of the Wasatch Front, the deeper ideologies of the Mormon mind, and pro basketball. These arguments, one hopes, have made the world such a place that the reasons why Lance Allred’s new book should be immediately embraced by all students of such things are always already self-evident. But in case they are not, I here offer a few lines of explication.
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This announcement comes from Benchmark books, which I’ll post here for your reference. This is the latest fulfillment from the forthcoming list I made last year.  I’m pleased to see this biography of such an important figure and hope for continued work on some of the lesser-known apostles of this and subsequent periods. (more…)

[What follows is an extract from a section of my paper presented at the 2009 Pratt Summer Seminar, titled "'Here Was an End to Mysticism': Divine Embodiment, Human Corporality, and Parley Pratt."] (more…)

I recently received the latest Utah Historical Quarterly, and here’s a run down of what you’ll find.

The first article is “Julius F. Taylor and the Broad Ax of Salt Lake City” by Michael S. Sweeney

From the UHQ website (subsequent quotes also from this site): (more…)

Almost everyone with the least smidge of north-of-the-Rio-Grande Mormon exposure knows that, in a Mormon context, “Happy Valley” means… well, not everyone agrees. (more…)