Looking at the Documents
This past sunday evening New York Stake member and friend of our history committee, Mark Holden, showed many of the interesting items from his personal collection at a fireside held in the 87th street building. The collection was really quite fascinating, as were Mark’s stories about the items and how he found them. The fireside drew more than 50 people and even included a few items of interest to those studying the Mormon presence in New York.
Mark’s collection includes copies of three LDS newspapers published here in New York City: The Prophet, The New York Messenger, and The Mormon. The masthead of The Mormon, in particular, is fantastic — the small details are not at all clear in the scans and photos that we have now, and those details are worth seeing in the original.
Seeing these newspapers got me thinking that we really need the full text of all three of these newspapers available. None of these three newspapers lasted more than a year or so, and the most frequent of the newspapers was published weekly, so the amount of content isn’t huge. When I asked Mark about this, he indicated that the University of Utah was digitizing The Mormon. It is not on line yet, but we may gain a lot of information when it is available.
I hope that is soon.
Tags: 87th Street Building, Fireside, full text, Mark Holden, Newspapers, The Mormon, The New York Messenger, The Prophet, University of Utah
August 2nd, 2008 at 8:55 pm
Going back a few centuries, on my mothers ancestral line, We have a progernator that was one of the first settlers in New York City. He was sent to the new world in about 1632 when it was New Amsterdam, I assume by the Dutch government. He and two other men were sent on an exploring expedition into the interior of this land. At that time his name was Jan Jansen. He was honored for this service by receiving a title, Jan Jansen Van Osterhout, the name of the city he was from in Holland. When the English took over the city they changed the name to New York. An English judge said his name was to long and so he descided to keep the honory title, and drop Jansen. I wondered why he was sent on this expedition and then my daughter went on vacation to the Holy Land and purchased a book while she was there called, TRACKS TO THE PROMISED LAND. INside was a map made in the early 1600’s and the mapmaker was a Jan Jansen. It could be a coincidence but the peices seem to fit.
August 3rd, 2008 at 7:03 am
Gerald,
While we appreciate your comment, I hope you noticed that this blog is not about New York City history in general, but about the history of Mormonism in and around the city. I can’t see anything in your message that ties what you mention to Mormonism.
Is there something that I missed?