Mormons in New York City

This past weekend as I added newspaper articles to the website, I came across a fascinating story about the divorce of the Glovers in 1892. The initial article mentioned that the couple attended the Mormon Church that met at Rockaway Avenue and Fulton Street. Here, I thought, was more evidence of LDS Church meetings before the Eastern States Mission was reopened in 1893.

But as I read the articles, I realized something was wrong. It didn’t sound quite like an LDS group. The real tip off was when one article reported that a high-level Church official named Sheehy testified at the trial over their contested divorce. Mr. Sheehy, the report said, was from Missouri.

Further research verified that, in fact, the couple and the church spoken of was the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (now known as the Community of Christ).

So, what to do on the wiki? Should we leave the articles in and mark them somehow?

In fact, I did leave the articles in. I also created a new article specifically about the RLDS presence in New York City. I’m not doing this because I think we need to also tell the RLDS history, far from it. However, I think that our research efforts are likely to bump into RLDS people and churches from time to time. And since both groups have been known as Mormons from time to time, it won’t always be clear when the materials we find are talking about the RLDS as opposed to LDS Church members. The above article is meant to help researchers figure out who the sources are talking about.

And who knows, there may be some interesting stories about the interaction between the two long ago.

Tags: Brooklyn, Community of Christ, Eastern States Mission, Fulton Street, Glovers, Mormons, New York City, RLDS presence in New York City, Rockaway Avenue, Sheehy, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008 at 7:58 pm and is filed under Resources. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.