Mormons in New York City

Our New York City LDS History Committee met the evening of November 2nd for our normal monthly meeting. Good food and fun conversation helped us get through our agenda and make plans for the next few months. We discussed the status of our upcoming newsletter issue, the banners we have placed in the LDS buildings around the city, our walking tours, and upcoming newsletter issues and events. The principal decisions made include the following:

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The Fall 2008 BYU Magazine has an article on Harleman Halls, the building on West 111th Street that has managed to fill nearly half its apartments with LDS Church members. The article not only tells how the building gained such a preponderance of Church members, but also gives a sense of the community in the building that developed as a result.

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I came across an interesting blog post this past week, some brief notes about the stay of Charles Henry Crow in New York City in 1856-1859. I’ve asked for further information from the author of the post, hoping that the information will give us further insight into what the Church was like in New York City while the Eastern States Mission was closed for a few years. The mission was reopened again in the early 1860s, and then closed for nearly 30 years until 1893.

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Saturday morning, 25 or 30 people joined Jim and Kent for our walking tour of LDS Church history sites in lower manhattan. To keep the groups manageable, we divided the group into two, and the group I took included a number of non-member Chinese speakers. One of the missionaries with the group provided interpreting.

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Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune

I came across the 1859 interview of Brigham Young by New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley this week and was able to add it to our site. The interview is quite comprehensive, in terms of the issues of the day, covering slavery and polygamy as well as some of the unusual aspects of Mormonism at the time, such as tithing.

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The next meeting of the New York New York Stake History Committee will be held on October 12th at 6:30pm at Glen Nelson’s home, 457 West 57th St #601. As always, we request that those attending bring a dish of food. We will make the agenda for the meeting available ahead of time, as usual.

Our next walking tour of LDS Church history sites in lower manhattan is coming soon. The tour is scheduled for Saturday, September 27th at 10am, and will cover historical sites in lower Manhattan that will tell the early history of the Church in New York City. The tour begins at City Hall Park, and will conclude at Old Slip. Meet at 10 AM at the fountain in City Hall Park. Tour takes approx. 1.5 hrs and covers just over 1 mile.

Further information about the tour can be found in the walking tour page on our website. The page includes a link to the brochure for the tour, and contact information for how to schedule a tour if you can’t make one of the scheduled tours.

While collecting articles that mention New York City from the Times and Seasons, I came across an 1840 letter from George J. Adams that provides some great insight into the beginnings of a branch in Brooklyn that year. Adams recounts founding a branch of 19 in Brooklyn after hearing a sermon by Heber C. Kimball in February of that year, joining the Church eight days later and being ordained an Elder eight days after that. Read the rest of this entry »

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.

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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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