Mormons in New York City

In our area, the claim for the first LDS-owned meetinghouse is often remembered to be the original Brooklyn chapel at 273 Gates Avenue, at the corner of Franklin Street. That building was on land that the Church purchased in 1916. The building itself was completed in 1918 and dedicated in February 1919. It was later sold, and still stands, housing another church.

However, the Brooklyn building was constructed more than 80 years after the first missionary work began in the New York City area, and for much of that time there was an older LDS-“owned” building—in Oceanside on Long Island.

The Parsonage was built in 1724 and stood about where Brower Avenue and Harold Street meet in what is now Oceanside, New York. In 1826 the building and the surrounding “Parsonage Farm” was purchased by James S. Pettit, who purchased surrounding land to make his farm one of the principal farms on Long Island. The Pettit family met LDS missionaries and joined the Church in 1843, and within a few years offered the “Parsonage” as the meetinghouse for the fledgling LDS branch at Christian Hook (as Oceanside was then known). While many in the family emigrated to join the rest of the Saints, James’s son Ira stayed on the family farm, but also remained a faithful member of the Church. While he sometimes visited family members in Utah, he only finally moved there permanently in 1892, just a few years before his death in 1896.

The farm remained in the family, and either the Parsonage or another building on the farm was the LDS meetinghouse, and a swimming hole in Parsonage creek was known as Mormon Hole, perhaps because LDS baptisms were performed there.

The final member of the family to own the farm (reduced in size over the years) was Percy Peace, and his estate sold the remaining land in 1972, leading to the demolition of the Parsonage in 1973. The Oceanside Branch, and later Ward, had long before moved on to a newer, larger building more suited to its needs.

While today having Sister Missionaries is expected, and is even the subject of Hollywood movies currently, that was not true in 1915, when an article in the March issue of the Church’s Improvement Era magazine wrote about the 14 ‘lady missionaries’ then serving in the Eastern States Mission. The report indicated that the women were serving in Boston, New Haven, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Baltimore and in the mission headquarters, then in Harlem. It included the following photo of the women serving:

Lady missionaries of the Eastern States Mission: Back row, left to right: Janette McNeil, Edna Crowther, Minnie, C. Poulson, Gertrude Phelps, Alta M. Johnson, Lona J. Ipsen, Lizzie O. Borgeson; middle row: Annie C. Peterson, Helga Pedersen, Mrs. Leona Monson, Ruth N. Savage, Viola Peterson; front row: Venna Monson, Zelma Peterson. (caption from the Improvement Era article.)

It is possible that the article (submitted by the mission to the Era) was inspired by a January article in the New York Tribune, which featured the two women serving there, Gertrude Phelps and Edna Crowther. Unfortunately, the article suggested that the lady missionaries would mainly attract the attention of the “man of the house”:

Fascinating disciples of Utah’s prophet have dismayed the Ridgewood section of Brooklyn by their activities in the Mormon cause. At least, the women residents are dismauyed and even horrified. If the emotions extend to the male inhabitants they conceal their feelings successfully. Which, of course, adds to the dismay and horror.

From door to door the engaging missionaries ply their trade. If the man or a man of the house answers their ring, there is sure to be a cosey chat, in the course of which the advantages of the Mormon religion are set forth.

The article also suggested that the reason lady missionaries were used was due to the start of World War I in Europe, even though the United States had not yet entered the conflict:

Their presence in this city is said to be a part of the Mormon activity that has developed here since the outbreak of hostilities in Europe necessitated the recall of many Mormon missionaries.

This idea is likely a supposition made by the reporter or some unnamed source. Since the first female missionaries were called 17 years earlier, in 1898, the influence of the war on the need for women in the mission field was minimal at best.

See:

http://wiki.nycldshistory.com/w/1915-03-Improvement_Era-Lady_missionaries_of_the_Eastern_States_Mission

http://wiki.nycldshistory.com/w/1915-01-26-New_York_Tribune-Women_in_pet_as_men_heed_fair_Mormon_aids

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.

This week I added to the wiki a list of items in the LDS Church archives that were categorized under “New York City New York History” in the computer catalog. The list includes some tempting items, including several interviews and diaries that I don’t think we knew existed, and yet another indication of LDS branches operating in New York City after the Easter States Mission was closed.

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