Mormons in New York City

Two articles in the Brooklyn Eagle show the dramatic change in the branch of the church that met in Williamsburg Brooklyn. The first article is from November 1873, and it portrays a branch that is thriving. The reporter says that about 120 people attended the branch meeting, including 25 or 30 elders. The article goes on to say that some 13,000 LDS emigrants arrive in New York each year.

In contrast, a November 1887 article, also in the Brooklyn Eagle, says that the Williamsburg branch then consisted of 28 people, two men, 22 women and four children. One of the men told the Eagle that “there were 2,000 or 3,000 Mormons at a time in the city. This is a dull season of the year because few proselytes cross the ocean in the Fall and Winter. Most of the traveling is done in the Spring.”

While it is certainly true that most of the immigration arrived in New York in the Spring and Summer, that doesn’t account for the drop in what the Eagle’s reporters saw between 1873 and 1887, since both reporters accounts are from November of those years. Instead, the change is likely because the Church’s immigration system got better. Before the 1870s many immigrants would have to stop in New York City to earn money to finish traveling to Utah. This meant that the branches in the region were larger, as immigrants spread around the city and adjoining states to find work. By the late 1870s and 1880s the Church’s ‘perpetual immigration fund’ and better preparation of immigrants reduced the number that had to stop in New York, and almost all of the immigrants went on to Utah. As a result the branches got smaller and smaller. They began to grow again in 1893 as the Church started up the Eastern States Mission (closed in 1858) again.

http://wiki.nycldshistory.com/w/1873_11_08_Brooklyn_Eagle-The_Mormons
http://wiki.nycldshistory.com/w/1887-11-27-Brooklyn_Eagle-Mormons_in_Brooklyn

A visit by Pres. Heber J. Grant and the conference held and the Brooklyn chapel in March 1930 drew a reaction from a poet for the Brooklyn Eagle, who wrote a poem lampooning the speech given by Elder Marvin J. Ballard during the conference. John Alden, whose poetry about current events (called occasional poetry) frequently appeared in the Eagle, drew on Ballard’s remarks about the benefits of the word of wisdom as inspiration for his witty take.

President Grand and Elder Ballard were in New York as part of a periodic tour of the Eastern States Mission, which included speaking at both Sunday morning and evening services in Manhattan, as well as at services in the afternoon at the LDS chapel in Brooklyn. Newspaper coverage added that they would hold a conference for 25 missionaries in the Brooklyn Chapel on that Monday.

Both President Grant’s remarks and those of Elder Ballard focused on the Word of Wisdom, suggesting that tobacco, alcohol, tea, and coffee should not be used. Elder Ballard also claimed that the divorce rate among church members was 1/5th that of the United States as a whole. According to a report in the Eagle, Ballard said:

“Marriage is the foundation of church and state, and when the institution loses stability, the nation stumbles and church declines. The low rate of divorce among Mormons is due to the fact that Mormon marriage is contracted not for this world alone, but for the hereafter, and is as a consequence more sacred.”

The report said that Ballard also lauded the “Mormon system of community economics” (probably the nascent welfare program).

Alden, in a preface to his poem, quotes Elder Ballard as saying:

“If any people could save the price of tobacco, tea, coffee and liquors they would derive an economic benefit alone that would make them leaders. And they would derive other benefits. Average life in our Church is six years longer than outside it.”

Following this, Alden added the following poem:

On coffee and tea and tobacco,
.   The Latter Day Saints are at war;
Opinions they form on the old Book of Mormon
.   Aggressive and irritant are.

Of course they soft-pedal beet sugar¹,
.   Which goes with the coffee and tea;
But thinkers may seize on the adequate reason—
.   What Smoot might explain it to be.

They’re stricter than all the Wahabis²
.   Or Mecca in fixing their creed;
They frown on the habits of even our Babbitts³,
.   And never a protest they heed.

Like Moslems, with pre-Volstead⁴ firmness
.   All drinks alcoholic they shun;
They line up their forces against all divorces,
.   Except the divorces they’ve won.

Let’s own they’re more saintly than we are.
.   They shame common everyday chaps;
No doubt ever jostles their dozen apostles,
.   But we are more human, perhaps.

¹ Reference to the Church program to grow Sugar Beets in order to produce Sugar.
² A reference to a fundamentalist Muslim sect, who strictly prohibited alcohol and other Muslim beliefs.
³ Reference to Sinclair Lewis’ 1922 novel, Babbitt, which critiqued middle class conformity in the U.S. The controversy over the novel led, in part, to Lewis receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature later in 1930.
⁴ The 1919 Volstead Act implemented the 18th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, prohibiting alcoholic beverages. Prohibition was in force when this poem was written, and wasn’t repealed until 1933.

One of the most fascinating stories of the church in New York City is the 1839 meetings held by Elder John P. Greene to seek charitable relief for the saints who had been expelled from Missouri. Greene had been called to preside over the Eastern States Mission, and while travelling to New York from the refugee camp in Quincy, Illinois he held meetings along the way seeking money for the relief of the refugees. The meetings gave an account of the persecution and suffering of the church in Missouri, and sought donations for their relief. Notices of the meetings, held at National Hall (268-270 Canal Street, then the meeting place of the New York branch. The building collapsed in 1868), appeared in multiple New York City newspapers, and reports on the meeting appeared in newspapers during the following days.

The New York Herald (then the largest circulation newspaper in the world) reported:

The sufferings and miseries endured by this sect, as set forthin the narrative of Mr. Green, were truly heartrending, and drew tears from the eyes of a great number of those present; for dreadful as has been the details communicated through the newspapers, they did not include a tithe of the outrages which have been inflicted upon this unfortunate people, on account of their particular religious tenets. The meeting was a highly respectable one, and one third were well dressed ladies.

In general, newspaper accounts were very positive and praised the generosity of New Yorkers. The Herald concluded its report saying:

The object of the meeting was to afford these poor women and children speedy relief, and resolutions were passed for that purpose, and a committee appointed to receive subscriptions and forward the money to Quincy. Several powerful speeches were made, and a handsome collection taken up. The proceedings were unanimous; and although they went not to denounce unheard the governor of Missouri, they pledged the city of New York to sustain the citizens of every part of the United States from those dreadful persecutions that proceed from religious bigotry and intolerance, and the oppressions of every kind of priestcraft.

Following these meetings, Greene remained as Eastern States Mission President, serving until 1843, when he returned to Nauvoo.

Included in the very first issue of The Prophet was the following item, explaining the origins of the newspaper. This makes the proposal sound very democratic and a local effort, and Crawley’s Descriptive Bibliography (v1 p255) suggests, apparently based on this article, that the proposal for the newspaper was local, came from George Leach and was enthusiastically adopted by William Smith.

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On the last page of the The Mormon for May 30, 1857, the editor, Apostle John Taylor, included an article entitled:

Aux Elders et aux Saints, en Canada, en France,
en Suisse, en Italie, et dans les iles
de la Manche.
(To the Elders and Saints in Canada, in France, in Switzerland, in Italy and throughout the isles of the Sea.)

What followed was a treatise or the text of a tract in French expounding the truth of the gospel and urging members to “let their light shine before men.” As far as I can tell, nothing in the 2,500 word text is unusual. Except that it is in French and published in a New York City LDS newspaper.

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Browsing the pages of The Mormon the other day, I came across the folowing advertisement¹:

Since its a little blurry, here is the text:

ADVERTISEMENT.

TO PRESIDENTS OF CONFERENCES OR BRANCHES.

W. J. SILVER, (Box 5057, Post Office, New York,) has for Sale—
Blank Licences,                                  per 100,      $0.75
.    ”     Certificates,                             per 100,        0.75
.    ”            ”               for a less number, each        0.01
Conference Notices,                          per 100,        1.00
Ruled Books for District Visitors   per dozen,    0.30
Festival Tickets,                                 per 100,        0.25

N.B.—Licences will be forwarded to the written order of a President of a Conference only.
Certificats to the written order of the President a Branch or Conference only.
Terms, Invariably, Cash, including expenses of carriage, if any, to accompany the order.

——-

Perhaps this ad is mundane, simply a necessary element of running an organization like a church. But I’m not convinced that any element can be truly unimportant, given the relative lack of information about this time in Mormonism in New York City.  Some of the things mentioned in this ad I believe I understand. Others I’m not so sure.

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Mormon visitors to New York City  in the 1870s mention most frequently two individuals in the New York City region, if they mention anyone at all. Williams C. Staines was the emigration agent, the missionary sent from Salt Lake City to assist the emigrants from Europe through customs and through the transfer from ship to train. In contrast Henry G. Bywater, the Brooklyn Branch President, hadn’t come from Utah and didn’t visit there frequently. He lived permanently in Brooklyn while trying to earn a living and get his family to Utah. When Staines was not around, everyone went to Bywater for advice and assistance.

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It is unusual these days for LDS congregations in Manhattan to experience death. Members of the Church here are generally young, and longtime members often move away by the time they arrive at retirement age—so we don’t see funerals or memorial services very often.

That was probably true in the early 20th century also. Newspaper accounts of the Church here often refer to the bulk of members here as the “Utah colony” and speak of why members have arrived (usually for work or school) and how they are returning back “home.”

But, of course, there were occasional deaths and the associated memorial services—which were held in place of funerals because the deceased was sent back “home” for a funeral.

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Some elements of our every day lives are so mundane, that we never think to record anything about them. How many of us burden our diaries and journals with the details of our daily commute? Which route we took, whether the light at a particular street was red or green that day and what car we owned at the time just don’t seem like important details. But more than 100 years later these details sometimes make a lot of difference in how we understand the past.

Do you record the details of sacrament meetings in your journal? Has it ever occurred to you that 100 years in the future sacrament meeting might be somewhat different? Fortunately, outsiders sometimes see the mundane of our lives with different eyes, and their accounts of what is mundane to us and unusual to them are, 100 years later, insightful accounts of important parts of every day lives.

Sacrament meeting is a good example, in this case. In 1873 a reporter for the Brooklyn Eagle published an account of a Brooklyn sacrament meeting, leaving us what is, I think, an interesting outsider’s view of the “mundane” of Mormonism:

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Where were Mormon meetings first held in New York City? It depends a lot on what you mean by meetings. Do we count meetings held before the congregation was organized? Should we include the homes and private rooms of members? or only places meant for large groups? Do we include where members met privately? or only meetings open to the public?

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