History of Utah, 1540-1886 - Brigham Young University

CHAPTER XVI.
MISSIONS AND IMMIGRATION.
1830-1883.
Mormon Missionaries—Parley Pratt and his Colleagues—Missionary
Labor in Canada—In Great Britain—Missionaries in Europe—And
in Other Parts of the World—The Perpetual Emigration Fund—
A General Epistle of the Twelve—From Liverpool to Salt Lake
City for Fifty Dollars—Emigrant Ships—Report of a Liverpool
Manager—The Passage to New Orleans—Overland Travel—
Classes of Emigrants—George A. Smith's Companies at South Pass
—The Hand-cart Emigration—Biographical.
Of the twenty-five or thirty thousand latter-day
saints gathered in the valley of the Great Salt Lake at
the close of the year 1852, less than one third came
from Nauvoo; nearly seven thousand proselytes had
arrived from various parts of Europe, and the remainder
consisted principally of converts made in the
United States. 1 As to the number of those who
1 The pioneer band included, as we have seen, 143 members. Parley Pratt's
companies, which arrived in Sept. 1847, mustered 1,540. In August 1848 the
inhabitants at Salt Lake City were estimated at nearly 1,800, and there were
at this date no other settlements with any considerable population. The
emigrants from Winter Quarters during the autumn of this year numbered
2,393, and in 1849, 1,400. Smaller bands arrived from time to time, but with
the close of the latter year the migration from Nauvoo practically came to an
end. The number of Mormons from Nauvoo gathered in the valley at this
date may be roughly estimated at not more than 8,000, for there were still
large numbers scattered throughout the western states. According to the
statistics of emigration from Great Britain and Europe, in Linforth's Route
from Liverpool, 14-15, 2,877 proselytes left the United Kingdom between 1846
and 1849. This would make a total of 10,877. As the reader will remember,
the entire population is stated at 11,380 in the U. S. Census Rept of 1850.
Add to this number 3,714 emigrants who arrived from Great Britain and
Europe between 1850 and 1852, as reported in Linforth's tables, we have a
total of 15,094. The remainder were not all converts from the U. S., for
there was a considerable number of persons who were not Mormons, probably
500 in all.
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