History of Utah, 1540-1886 - Brigham Young University

BOOKS ON UTAH. 637
founding the Southampton conference, and being for three years president of
the Swiss and Italian missions. In 1S69 he apostatized, and soon afterward
removed to the city of New York, where he found employment as a journalist
and wrote the above work. His decease occurred in 1882. See Stenhouse's
Tell It All, preface; Burton's Rocky Mountain Saints, 272; S. F. Bulletin, March
7, 188-2.
Expos4 of Polygamy in Utah: A Lady's Life among the Mormons, by Mrs
T. B. H. Stenhouse. New York, 1872. Tell It All: The Story of a Life's Experience
in Mormonism. An Autobiography; by Mrs T. B. II. Stenhouse.
Hartford, Conn., 1879. An Englishwoman in Utah: The Story of a Life's
Experience in Mormonism. An Autobiography; by Mrs T. B. II. Stenhouse.
London, 1880. The last two of these works are almost identical, except that
one or two chapters of the former are omitted in the latter volume. Beginning
with her first introduction to Mormonism about the year 1849, until the
date of her own and her husband's apostasy, some 20 years later, the authoress
gives what is claimed to be a plain, unvarnished record of facts which have
come under her own notice. A few months after the publication of the Expose'
of Polygamy, Mrs Stenhouse was asked to lecture on that subject, and wherever
she spoke was requested to give her narrative more circumstantially and in
more detail. Finally she accepted the suggestion of a gentile newspaper,
published at S. L. City, to 'tell it all.' Hence the title and subject-matter of
this work. Though claiming no literary merit, it is well told, and certainly
tells enough, while containing nothing that can be termed positively indelicate.
The Mormon Prophet and his Harem: or, An Authentic History of Brigham
Young, his Numerous Wives and Children, by Mrs G. V. Waite. Cambridge,
18G6. Apart from the opening chapter, which contains the early life of Brigham,
the first half of this work is devoted to the political history of Utah.
Its main interest centres, however, in the information given in the latter portion,
as to the family and social relations of the Mormon leader. There is the
inevitable chapter on polygamy, written, the authoress remarks, as dispassionately
as the writer's utter abhorrence of the system will permit. There is
also a chapter where the mysteries of the endowment house are described in
the form of a burlesque, and others where Brigham is set forth as prophet,
seer, revelator, and grand archee. The volume is compact and well written;
but though many of the facts may have been gathered, as is claimed, from
original sources, they contain little that is not well known at the present day.
Life in Utah : or, The Mysteries and Crimes of Mormonism, being an Expose
of the Sacred Rites and Ceremonies of the Latter-Day Saints, with a Fall and
Authentic History of Polygamy and the Mormon Sect from its Origin to the
Present Time, by J. H. Beadle. Philadelphia, etc., 1870. Though the author
claims to have had access to valuable personal records and other private sources
of information, his book has no special value. There are chapters on Mormon
society, Mormon theology and theocracy, Mormon mysteries, theoretical and
practical polygamy, but all these matters have been better treated by others,
while the historical portions of the work are far inferior to those of Stenhouse.
In relating the crimes of the Mormons, Mr Beadle claims that the statements
for and against them have been equally presented. The reader need only
turn to his account of the Mountain Meadows massacre to find that this is not
the case. Here, and elsewhere, in the usual vein of looseness and exaggeration,
crimes are alleged against the saints that have never been sustained,
and all extenuating circumstances are omitted. Murders are laid to their
charge of which there is no evidence, and which are not even mentioned by
the leading authorities. The volume forms one of the many works that have
been written on Mormonism with a view to pander to the vicious tastes of a
certain class of readers rather than to furnish information.
The following is a more complete list of the authorities consulted in the
preceding chapters: Taylor's Rem. , MS. ; Wells' Narr. , M S. ; Utah Notes, MS.
Jennings' Mat. Progr., MS.; Early Hist. Carson Valley, MS.; Little's Mail
Service, MS.; Incidents in Utah Hist., MS.; Nebeker's Early Justice, MS.; U.
;