Opening Day
May 1, 2018Doc and my father got up at 4 o’clock to light the fire, heat water on the Coleman stoves for washing and get the breakfast started, then woke the rest of us. Standing outside of…
DiaBLOGue
Hagiography
May 1, 2018Her songs—those that I remember—
Were of the flight and winter crossing,
The wagons and sick children,
Sources of Mormon History in Illinois, 1832-48, and A Bibliographic Note
May 1, 2018“Sources of Mormon History in Illinois, 1839-48” at Southern Illinois University, is a collection of documents (most of which are on microfilm), which was assembled by Stanley B. Kimball, who also published an annotated catalog…
The Reorganized Church in Illinois, 1852-82: Search for Identity
May 1, 2018The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (here after referred to as the RLDS Church) was headquartered in the State of Illinois until 1882. To a greater degree than that of any…
The Historians and Mormon Nauvoo
May 1, 2018Were a nineteenth-century Mormon to assess the current scholarly literature on the Mormons in Illinois, or on Mormon history in general for that matter, he would probably be perplexed. While compelled to admit that the…
The Missouri & Illinois Mormons in Ante Bellum Fiction
May 1, 2018Our understanding of the American past has been greatly enriched in recent years by studies which have made use of literary sources. Few works, for example, surpass the challenging insights and interpretations of Henry Nash Smith’s Virgin Land (1950), William R. Taylor’s Cavalier and Yankee (1961), Edmund Wilson’s Patriotic Gore (1962), and Leo Marx’s The Machine in the Garden (1964). Such studies have proved to be so useful that some historians now concede that a review of the contemporary fiction is a fruitful, if not an indispensable, preliminary to the search for historical truth in any period.
The Kingdom of God in Illinois: Politics in Utopia
May 1, 2018The purpose of this paper is to re-examine, in a political frame of reference, the persistent question as to why the Mormons were so ferociously constrained from their attempt to establish at Nauvoo a society…
The Current Restoration of Nauvoo, Illinois
May 1, 2018Approximately 250 miles southwest of Chicago and 150 miles north of St. Louis lies Nauvoo, Illinois. At this place the Mississippi River rather abruptly pushes itself into Iowa and then returns again to its generally…
The Mormons in Early Illinois: An Introduction
May 1, 2018The Illinois period of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints commenced eight years after the founding of the Church in Fayette, New York on April 6, 1830, by Joseph Smith. From New York…
A Miscellany for the Sacripants of Relevance
May 1, 2018The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a schizophrenic church. Its ultimate concern is with things beyond—life after death, justice-in-judgment, salvation, exaltation—and with their earthly preparation—baptism, repentance, endowment. But at the same time…