Mormons in New York City

Both New York City and the Church have attracted their share of unusual characters, so when we look at the Church in New York City, the characters can act quite strange. Add to that attention from sometimes equally unusual anti-Mormons and the situation will appear in the newspaper. One such case arose in the early 1840s, when a tailor and actor named George J. Adams joined the Church.

Adams quickly became a significant part of the missionary efforts in the area, preaching regularly and traveling throughout the area. In the newspaper accounts of the time, it often seems like the newspapers thought that Adams was the main representative of the Church in New York City, because he is most often mentioned in coverage.

Aligned against Adams and the Church in New York City was an evangelical minister named George Montgomery West. Born in Ireland, West emigrated to New Brunswick where he was associated with the Methodists, who labeled him an intemperate and a fraud. He went on to Ohio, becoming an Episcopalian minister there, but ran afoul of them also. By 1842 he was in New York City, where he agreed to debate George J. Adams.

Their debates were the subject of newspaper reports from late June through the end of July as the debates shifted from Boston to New York City and then to Philadelphia. Each night they would entertain audiences who paid 12 cents each to hear Adams and West argue about the claims of the LDS Church for two hours. Each debater would speak for 20 minutes, and the two would alternate to fill up the time. The New York Herald report of the debate even reached the Times and Seasons newspaper in Nauvoo, which included one of the Herald articles word for word.

In Philadelphia the collusion of the two debaters in making their debate dramatic was on full display according to the Journal of Commerce, which reported:

At the latter part of his discourse he called out with Stentorian lungs, “where now is the celebrated and learned Dr. West? He knew I was coming to Philadelphia. Why does he not appear and vindicate Orthodoxy if in his power?” At this moment a portly figure started up and electrified the audience by stating, “Ladies and gentlemen, the person who has addressed you professes to speak by inspiration, but had he possessed what he professes, he would have known that Dr. WEST IS PRESENT, and now challenges him to prove the TRUTH of his monstrosities before this enlightened community.”

Whether these histrionic debates led to any additional conversions to the Church is anyone’s guess—history is silent on the matter. However, we do know something of what happened to Adams and West in the following years.

Following the Martyrdom, Adams, still in New York City, at first defended the Twelve’s leadership of the Church against the claims of Sidney Rigdon and his followers, but eventually followed James J. Strang, becoming a leader in his church. After Strang’s death, Adams returned to New York City and the stage before founding his own church. Convinced that the Jews would soon return to Palestine, he led his flock there and established a colony near Jaffa. When that failed, some of his followers returned to the U.S., by chance on the same ship as Mark Twain, who wrote about them in his book Innocents Abroad. Adams returned to the U.S. in 1870 and died soon after.

West fared little better. He joined a Presbyterian church in Brooklyn, but was convicted by them of falsehood and drunkenness. Still fighting the LDS Church, he joined the apostate John C. Bennett for a series of lectures. By 1850 he had joined a Presbyterian church in Albany, but his bad behavior ran afoul of that group as well, leading to the publication of a pamphlet titled “Impostures and calumnies of George Montgomery West,” (1850), and his grandiosely titled response, “The Living Martyr and the Unholy Alliance; Or Calumny Exposed, Truth Defended, and Character Vindicated, by Irrefutable Evidence.”

All this reminds me of the pithy saying my mother often cited:

People’s names and people’s faces
Don’t belong in public places.

There’s often a role for attracting attention, but too often the reason someone is attracting attention is for themselves, and not for the ideals they are teaching. That is, I think, true outside and inside the Church.

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

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.

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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