Mormons in New York City

Time Magazine, then a relatively young 11 years old, told its readers in mid December of 1934 about the organizing meeting of the New York Stake on December 9th. Presided over by ‘stubble-bearded’ Church President Heber Jedediah Grant, the meeting included his first counselor, ‘pudding-jowled’ Joshua Reuben Clark Jr., ‘rangy’ Presiding Bishop Sylvester Q. Cannon, and Eastern States Mission President Don Byron Colton in addition to local members led by the new Stake President Fred G. Taylor.

Time seemed to find the process of sustaining the creation of the stake and the sustaining of its officers unusual, given its prominent position in the coverage. The magazine also explained the concept and etymology of a stake, and what the administrative change meant for local members:

Before it gained its present 2,000 followers, New York Mormonism was guided by one of the many missions which operate throughout the world. Henceforth the faithful saints of Metropolitan New York will worship under President Fred Taylor and the bishops of four wards (parishes)—Manhattan, Queens, East Orange (N. J.) and Brooklyn.

After pointing out from just 1,300 members outside of Utah 50 years earlier the Church now had some 100,000 members there, President Grant also said he felt the newspapers then treated the Church fairly:

He spoke of his troubles as a missionary in England, where he could not get a word in the newspapers to refute the abuse heaped on his faith. “Today,” said he, “we are treated splendidly.”

http://wiki.nycldshistory.com/w/1934_12_17_Time-Stake_of_Zion

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