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More than One Stubborn Log in the Field
Okay, so this is from a different era. Still, I think it applies! 1863 was a troublesome year for Abraham Lincoln. His Emancipation Proclamation went into effect January 1st, but it needed to be...
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This post comes out of my experiences this fall teaching a senior seminar on “Writing Recent History” (which my students are finding especially challenging), and thinking about what that might mean in...
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Frank W. Warner and the History of Mormon Native Writing
Although recent scholarship has done much to understand Native conversions to Christianity in early America, asking intriguing questions about indigenous agency and adaptation within colonial contexts,...
View ArticleA Research Time Capsule
And now for something completely different… A few weeks ago, I introduced my first-year students to the Internet Archive, and we played a bit with the Wayback Machine, which has archived portions of...
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The Salt Lake Tabernacle as Graphic Signifier in the 1880s
In many anti-Mormon cartoons from the 1880s (and a few before and after), the Salt Lake Tabernacle functioned as a graphic shorthand to communicate Mormon-ness. That is, from its completion in 1867...
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From the Archives: Lord Macaulay’s Search for a First Edition Book of Mormon
This post resurrects an older occasional series here at JI devoted to interesting finds in the archives (manuscript, digital, or otherwise). _______________________ I’ve recently been reading Philip...
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Guest Post: From the Archives: Missionary Work, Race, and the Priesthood and...
Today’s guest post comes from Shannon Flynn, a longtime student of church history who currently lives in Gilbert, Arizona. Shannon holds a B.A. in history from the University of Utah and had published...
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Guest Post: From the Archives: Missionary Work, Race, and the Priesthood and...
This is second and final entry in a series of posts from guest Shannon Flynn on missionary work, race, and the Priesthood Ban that draws on his experience as a missionary in Brazil from 1977-1979. See...
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Color Me … Uncorrelated
This post begins with a rather cryptic instruction for Relief Society leaders, published in the Bulletin No. 13, July 1981, p. 2, which reads: Homemaking Meeting Materials: Relief Society leaders...
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From the Archives: A Jewish Perspective on Mormon Undergarments (and more),...
In September 1853, John C. Frémont embarked on his fifth and final overland expedition of the American West. Accompanying the noted explorer on his final journey was Solomon Nunes Carvalho, a South...
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Year in Review … 1975, That Is
It’s the time for year-in-review articles and retrospectives, as we get ready to kick 2016 out the door. I’m not sure how to put my thoughts about this year into coherent words, so maybe I’d rather...
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A Gem from the Local Archive: A Beginner’s Boston
When you live in a place over twenty years, and you come to know people who’ve lived there even longer than you, now and then you stumble over something in what we might call the local archives. Much...
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Gem from the Local Archive: My Turn on Earth
For years, our hi-fi stereo languished in the attic. But it’s been dusted off and now resides in a place of honor in our teenager’s room, because vinyl is hip again, and suddenly we’re glad we saved...
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From the Archives: “Star Wars easily the favorite of most”: History Division...
Among my very favorite parts of archival research is the small and unexpected glimpses into the lives of historical figures that have nothing directly to do with the research at hand. I was reminded of...
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From the Archives: Mormonism in Barbados (Almost), 1853
(detail from John Arrowsmith, Map of the Windward Islands, 1844. Click on image for original) Last month, Elder Dale Renlund visited the West Indian island of Barbados, which he dedicated for the...
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A Rather Disappointing Sequel to the “Great Hawaiian Cat Massacre”
Regular readers of JI may remember a post that I wrote a few years ago about Joseph F. Smith’s beheading of a cat. It was a fun post to write and remains one of my favorite posts that I wrote during my...
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From the Archives: Black Internationalism in 19th Century Salt Lake City; or...
NOTE: The original version of this post was based, in part, on faulty research, for which I take full blame. What appears below is a revised version (with a slightly modified title). There is no...
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The Rough Draft of the Manifesto
The George Q. Cannon Diaries, recently published by the Church Historian’s Press, reveal a wealth of information about nineteenth-century Mormonism, politics, and polygamy. The journal entry that I...
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Digitized Publications Available from Utah Archives
This post will focus on digitized periodicals and publications available through Utah archives related to Mormon history. All of these sources are very helpful for doing research, both in the...
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“The spirit of murder seems to be on the increase … due to the increase in...
In the July 15, 1891 issue of the (original) Juvenile Instructor, Mormon apostle and editor George Q. Cannon penned an editorial entitled, “Obedience — Do not Kill.” As that title implies, Cannon’s...
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