120 years ago today - Aug 6, 1906

[Heber J. Grant, Letter to Matthias F. Cowley]

"None of the Quorum saw fit to inform me of yours and Bro[ther]. John W [Taylor]'s resignations as members of the Quorum of the Apostles and my first official notice came from the Presidency after the April conference. No particulars as to why the resignations were given have been given to me. Toney [Anthony W. Ivins], Pres[ident]. [Joseph E.] Robinson and others gave an intimation of what was coming and I hoped and prayed that they were mistaken. I cannot possibly express to you the deep sorrow that I have felt that any such action as has been taken was considered necessary. My home coming in meeting my family and friends is looked forward to with much pleasure, but when I think of meeting in the Temple with my dearly beloved associates in our quarterly conferences and recall that you and John will not be there and that Bro[ther]s. [Marriner Wood] Merrill and [Abraham] Owen [Woodruff] will also be absent, it will indeed be a sad home coming. I am in perfect harmony with the action taken and am sure that no mistake has been made but this assurance makes no difference in the deep sorrow that I feel that there was any cause for action in yours and John's case."

[Heber J. Grant, Letter to Matthias F. Cowley, as quoted in Minutes of the Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1835-1951, Electronic Edition, 2015]

120 years ago today - Aug 6, 1906

"At 7 30 P.M. went to High Priests (Sic) Quorum Meeting and listened to a very interesting talk by brother Samuel Richard, the last of the original company of young men organized by Joseph the Prophet to go and explore the Rocky Mountains for a dwelling place for the Saints, he spoke of a night vision he had in answer to his prayers wherein he came west all over these rigions down into California Mexico and back up to Jackson Co where he helped to build the Great Temple there." [This is a recounting of the Horse Shoe Prophecy]

[Diary Excerpts of Thomas A. Clawson, Signature Books Library, http://amzn.to/newmormonstudies]

165 years ago today - Aug 6, 1861

[Brigham Young]

He further remarked that the Government would have to acknowledge the independence of the Southern Confederacy, and after a while there would be a scarcity of grain. -- Salt Lake City

[Brigham Young Office Journals, in The Complete Discourses of Brigham Young, Ed. Richard S. Van Wagoner, Smith-Pettit Foundation, Salt Lake City (2009), http://bit.ly/BY-discourses]

45 years ago today - Aug 5, 1981-Wednesday

[Leonard Arrington]

Word has come to us that Elder [G. Homer] Durham is working out a policy on "conflict of interest" in the Historical Department. This policy includes the following elements:

1. No employee of the Historical Department is permitted to do any research or writing at his desk. This not only includes his work time but he may not use lunch time for the purpose nor stay after work hours to do so. He may, of course, do so on annual leave time if approved by Elder Durham.

2. He has not definitely ruled on the matter but is giving serious consideration to prohibiting Gordon Irving from serving as an assistant editor of the Journal of Mormon History. [[Durham ultimately approved Irving's outside involvement in the journal, for which Irving appeared in the staff box for six years, vols. 7-12 (1980-85).]]

3. No Historical Department employee will be able to use his Historical Department position as a power base for moving into a university or other professional position.

[Confessions of a Mormon historian : the diaries of Leonard J. Arrington, 1971-1997, Gary James Bergera, editor, Signature Books, 2018]

165 years ago today - Aug 5, 1861

Brigham Young's office journal records: " In the evening Pres[ident] Wells read to the President a part of the life of Senator Stephen A. Douglass, deceased, in which it mentioned a circumstance wherein Joseph Smith (Prophet) was protected by him. The President remarked that Stephen A. Douglass was a far better man than President Abel Lincoln for he knew his feelings were hostile to this people."

35 years ago today - Aug 4, 1991

The newly renovated Smith Family Cemetery in Nauvoo, Illinois, is dedicated. The cemetery contains the graves of Joseph, Emma, and Hyrum Smith, among others. A site of interest to both the RLDS and LDS Church, the dedication is performed under the joint direction of President Wallace Smith, president of the RLDS Church, and Elder M. Russell Ballard of the LDS Church.

[LDS Daily, www.ldsdaily.com]

45 years ago today - Aug 4, 1981-Tuesday

[Leonard Arrington]

I have learned today the true story of the cricket and seagull episode in Mormon history in 1848. It is well known that birds eat seeds-grain seeds, flower seeds, millet seeds, wheat and so on. The seagulls had been over Salt Lake City for perhaps millennia. At any rate they circled over the fields of grain of the Saints, descended and began to eat the maturing grain, as they still do today. The Saints began to despair that the seagulls were eating up all their grain. Fearfully, they worried about their future. Nevertheless, they didn't want to shoot the seagulls. They many times sang the song, "Don't Kill the Little Birds." [["Don't Kill the Little Birds" was, for instance, in the church's 1909 Deseret Sunday School Songs.]] The crickets realized the position the Saints were in and so decided to be a sacrifice for a good purpose. So the crickets came in and lay down, playing dead, which attracted the seagulls away from the grain. The seagulls ate the crickets instead. Thus it was really, in essence, the crickets that saved the Saints' grain crop. This suggests that we ought to put up a new monument on Temple Square to the Mormon cricket. [[Arrington meant this as a joke, although a member of the division, William Hart- ley, found that the story of seagulls rescuing settlers by devouring crickets had grown more miraculous over time. See "Mormons, Crickets, and Gulls," 137-48.]]

[Confessions of a Mormon historian : the diaries of Leonard J. Arrington, 1971-1997, Gary James Bergera, editor, Signature Books, 2018]

65 years ago today - Aug 04, 1961

The Christian Broadcasting Network, founded and run by Pat Robertson, began broadcasting over the radio.

[Cline, Austin, History of American Religion: Timeline]

45 years ago today - Aug 3, 1981-Monday

[Leonard Arrington]

... I had always wanted to ask about President Romney's sister who became a Catholic nun. How did that happen? What were the circumstances? She said that this sister's name was Lurelene. She had grown up in Mexico, along with President Romney, and then went to Rexburg [Idaho], I believe. She had married and had I think five children. She had married an LDS person whose name Dona did not recall. Then she had been divorced, say when she was in her fifties. Sometime after she became a Roman Catholic and took the vows of a nun. She is known as Mary Catherine. She lives in Holladay [Utah] along with a few other nuns, perhaps six or seven. They do work on behalf of the poor and the needy. ...

[Confessions of a Mormon historian : the diaries of Leonard J. Arrington, 1971-1997, Gary James Bergera, editor, Signature Books, 2018]

115 years ago today - Aug 3, 1911

[Charles W. Penrose]

At Pres[iden]ts office & B[isho]ps office. Note from [Josiah] Rogerson about his M/s [manuscript] on Mountain Meadows [Massacre]. Meeting at Temple. Read note rec[eive]d from Josiah Rogerson informing me that the First Presidency had 'appointed' me to hear and revise his history of the M[ountain] M[eadows] Massacre. Pres[ident] [Joseph F.] Smith denied having done so, and it was voted unanimously that the M/s [manuscript] be not published.

[Charles W. Penrose Diary, as quoted in Minutes of the Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1910-1951, Privately Published, Salt Lake City, Utah 2010]

145 years ago today - Aug 3, 1881

At St. Charles, Idaho, George Q. Cannon reports "having seen the Bear Lake Monster or something of that kind this evening while strolling along the lake."

[The Mormon Hierarchy - Extensions of Power by D. Michael Quinn, [New Mormon History database (http://bit.ly/NMHdatabase)]]

175 years ago today - Aug 2, 1851

Groundbreaking for adobe Tabernacle on Temple Square.

[Timeline of Wilford Woodruff's Life in the Context of US and Church History, https://wilfordwoodruffpapers.org/timeline]

180 years ago today - Aug 2, 1846

[Wilford Woodruff marriage]

Sarah Elinore [Elinor or Eleanor] Brown. She was eighteen, Wilford was thirty-nine. They were divorced four weeks later and Sarah went to live with another family. This is Sarah Elinor Brown, born on August 22, 1827, in Vinal Haven, Knox, Maine, the daughter of Charles Brown and Mary Arey.

Wilford Woodruff apparently married her sister posthumously: Rebeca Brown born in vinal Haven Maine Oct 30, 1826 / Sealed to WW Died Aug 1839 Aged 13 year /June 15 1807/."

Sarah later married Lisbon Lamb in Salt Lake City on February 15, 1849, with whom she had three children. She died on December 25, 1915 in Farmington, Utah.

[Compton, Todd, 'The Wives of Wilford Woodruff', http://toddmcompton.com/WWfamilies.htm]

180 years ago today - Aug 2, 1846

[Wilford Woodruff marriage]

Mary Carolyn [Caroline] Barton. Thomas Alexander refers to her as a teenager. She and Wilford Woodruff divorced four weeks later and she returned to her parents.

Alexander writes, The two young wives [she and Sarah Brown, see below] began keeping company with three young men nearer their own ages, staying out with them until early in the morning for several days. . . . The thirty-nine-year-old Woodruff forebade his teenage wives from consorting with the men . . . they continued dating their friends, and Woodruff thought some sexual misconduct had taken place . . . As promised, he sent Carolyn Barton back to her parents and Sarah Brown to another famly, and Hosea Stout whipped the boys. Woodruff thought the girls deserved similar punishment, but expulsion sufficed . . . Brigham Young agreed to divorces between Woodruff and the two women."

I have not yet identified the genealogy of Mary Barton. In Mormon history, there is a Mary Caroline Barton who married Erastus Curtis, with whom she had eleven children, but this is probably not the same Mary Caroline Barton.

[Compton, Todd, 'The Wives of Wilford Woodruff', http://toddmcompton.com/WWfamilies.htm]

45 years ago today - Aug 1, 1981

A vandal attackes the "Christus" statue in the Visitor's Center on Salt Lake Temple Square and breaks off its fingers. On 16 Dec. 1982 the same vandal breaks off its arms.

[The Mormon Hierarchy - Extensions of Power by D. Michael Quinn, [New Mormon History database (http://bit.ly/NMHdatabase)]]

55 years ago today - Aug 01, 1971

Dallin H. Oaks begins his term as the eighth president of BYU (1971-80).

80 years ago today - Aug 1, 1946

[J. Reuben Clark]

Mark Petersen'Told me of a rumor about town that the underworld plus some city officialdom,'angered by Tedesco incident were going to try to get something on Hotel Utah to get even on Church.

Mr Gamble'I told Gamble at end of my lunch of what Mark Petersen had told me. I warned that if there were any truth at all to the rumor, they would "plant" something on the Hotel. He observed they had been they had been above suspicion. I repeated my caution to him.

[The Diaries of J. Reuben Clark, 1933-1961, Abridged, Digital Edition, Salt Lake City, Utah 2015]

165 years ago today - Jul 31, 1861

Major James H. Carleton writes to Army Headquarters: "Nearly all Mormons are foreigners. Among these are Welsh, English, Norwegians, Swedes, some Germans, and a few French. They are evidently of the lowest and most ignorant grade of the people in the several countries from whence they have come. Mixed in with these are a few low, unprincipled Americans. The most intelligent and crafty of these, commencing with Brigham Young, are the directors and rulers of the whole mess. . . their government is solely a hierarchy, and notwithstanding, in theory, they are assumed to be a population obedient to the laws of our common country, practically they score and deride, and set at defiance all laws that interfere with their safety or interest, save those promulgated by the great council of the church." Brigham Young's office journal records: " Br[other] W[illia]m Clayton read the Pony dispatch to the members of the Club. The first Presidency were present. This dispatch noticed considerable loss of life [in the Civil War], and confusion[.] [T]he Company took comfort in the reflection that their old enemies were getting fewer in number."

180 years ago today - Jul 31, 1846

The ship Brooklyn, with over two hundred Latter-day Saints aboard, arrives at Yerba Buena (San Francisco), California. These are the first Saints to set foot in California.

185 years ago today - Jul 31, 1841

[Brigham Young]

Met in council with the Twelve, when the following resolutions, among others, were unanimously passed:--

"That we sustain Joseph Smith as Trustee-in-Trust for the Church, and advise him to have all lands belonging to the Church deeded in his name as Trustee.

[Manuscript History of Brigham Young, 1801-1844, ed. Elden Jay Watson (Salt Lake City: Smith Secretarial Service, 1968).]