Searching for Cora Sue - 11 - The Temple and Mark Twain on Brigham Young

“Why don’t we tour the Mormon Buildings? It would be a shame to have spent time in Salt Lake
City and not know a bit about those who built it,” said Kate.

So we walked just a few blocks down the road to where the extensive set of buildings owned by the Mormon Church were located.

There was the offer of a guided tour, which we thought was too good an opportunity to miss, and they were leaving within ten minutes of when we arrived.

Our tour guide was very friendly and made the ten of us, that he was conducting around, feel at ease.

“Fur trappers were the first white men to come upon the Great Salt Lake in 1820. Due to the high
salt content of the water, it was never much use, and the surrounding valley was deemed as the land nobody wanted. The area saw little development until 1847 when Brigham Young and his pioneers of the Latter Day Saints church traveled west over the mountains and into the Salt Lake valley. Upon seeing the great lake and the surrounding mountain valley Brigham exclaimed 'This is the place' and the church finally had a new home.”

“Where was their old home?” someone asked.

“They started out in New York in 1830 when Joseph Smith published the Book of Mormon, in which he claims he received as golden plates through the divine intervention of the angel Moroni. But the following year they moved from New York to Kirkland, Ohio, and then again they went to join another group of Mormons settled in Missouri. Wherever they settle their practice of polygamy aroused loud protests. Within a year, the authorities jailed Smith and ordered the Mormons to leave Missouri. Then they settled in Nauvoo, Illinois, and built their town along the Mississippi where they hoped to stay forever.

"Smith escaped from jail but in 1844 he and his brother Hyrum were blamed for an attack on a
newspaper critic of the group and while they awaited trial, a mob stormed the jail and killed them. So the Mormons began another exodus, this time to Utah, under the leadership of Brigham Young,
traveling with the organization of a military campaign.  In 1847, the they set off to look for a new home, and that is what they found here.

“They constructed farms and irrigation canals, laid out a city plan, and erected their homes and
churches. The remoteness of the valley and the mistaken view that the land was worthless gave the settlers the chance to live their own lifestyle away from the influence of the 'gentiles' that had
tormented them all the way from Pennsylvania.”

“How many were there in the beginning?”

“The founding group numbered 148, consisting of 143 men, three women, and two children.

“In 1848, as the Mormons reveled in the growth of their community and its first crops, a massive hoard of cricket like grasshoppers crawled down from the mountains, covered the fields, and began to devour the newly grown vegetation. It appeared the Mormons would be devastated
in their first year! But, thousands of seagulls from the Great Salt Lake came flying to the rescue. As the astonished settlers watched, the gulls began to eat the crickets. Enough of the crop was saved for the Mormons to survive until the next year. The people took this as a sure sign from God himself that they were meant to live in this valley.”

“Wow,” said one man, “I would say that was a miracle.”

“The settlers went on to form a great city. They prospered and began to spread out, forming many outlying villages in and along the Wasatch mountains.

“Things started to change around 1870. Even though the church did its best to keep news of
mineral wealth in the surrounding mountains quiet from the outside world, eventually soldiers stationed at Fort Douglas, a facility created to keep the rebel Mormons in line after the so called Mormon War, began to explore the region and then discovered rich strikes of silver and gold.”

“What do you mean, the Mormon War? What was that all about?”

“That was in 1857-8, and it was caused because when Utah became a State, Brigham Young was
elected the Governor. But the non-Mormons didn’t like that and they forced President James Buchanan to replace him with a non-Mormon. The President sent troops to the area to maintain order and that is what was known as the Mormon War.”

“Construction on the Mormon temple which you see here, began in 1853, but the capstone of this magnificent structure was not put into place until 1892. The temple is built with granite blocks which, until a branch railroad line was run into Little Cottonwood Canyon, were individually hauled by ox and wagon from the canyon to the building site.

As interesting as it was, both Kate and I had enough of standing around, so we dropped out of the
tour and made our way back to our hotel.

“I think I will have a read in Mark Twain again tonight, as I’m sure he spent time here on his
trip to the West. Maybe he can give us some ideas about what to do tomorrow morning,” I said.

I read through the relevant bits in his book, and kept reading out loud to Kate, when I came to a part that I thought she would find interesting.

“Oh listen to this, Kate. 'At four in the afternoon we arrived on the summit of Big Mountain, fifteen miles from Salt Lake City, when all the world was glorified with the setting sun, and the
most stupendous panorama of mountain peaks yet encountered burst on our sight. We looked out upon this sublime spectacle from under the arch of a brilliant rainbow! 

“'Half an hour or an hour later, we changed horses, and took supper with a Mormon Destroying
Angel. 'Destroying Angels, as I understand it, are Latter-Day Saints who are set apart by the Church
to conduct permanent disappearances of obnoxious citizens. I had heard a deal about these Mormon Destroying Angels and the dark and bloody deeds they had done, and when I entered this one's house I had my shudder all ready. But alas for all our romances, he was nothing but a loud, profane, offensive, old blackguard! He was murderous enough, possibly, to fill the bill of a Destroyer, but would you have any kind of an Angel devoid of dignity? Could you abide an Angel in an unclean shirt and no suspenders? Could you respect an Angel with a horse-laugh and a swagger like a buccaneer?

“'This was our first experience of the western peculiar institution, and it was not very
prepossessing.  As the night closed in we took sanctuary in the Salt Lake House and unpacked our baggage.

“'We had a fine supper, of the freshest meats and fowls and vegetables - a great variety and as
great abundance. We walked about the streets some, afterward, and glanced in at shops and stores; and there was fascination in surreptitiously staring at every creature we took to be a Mormon. We felt a curiosity to ask every child how many mothers it had, and if it could tell them
apart.

“'By and by the Acting Governor of the Territory introduced us to other Gentiles,"and we spent a sociable hour with them. Valley tan (or, at least, one form of valley tan) is a kind of whiskey, or first cousin to it; is of Mormon invention and manufactured only in Utah. Tradition says it is made of imported fire and brimstone. If I remember rightly no public drinking saloons were allowed in the kingdom by Brigham Young, and no private drinking permitted among the faithful, except they
confined themselves to valley tan.

“'Next day we strolled about everywhere through the broad, straight, level streets, and enjoyed the pleasant strangeness of a city of fifteen thousand inhabitants with no loafers perceptible in it; and no
visible drunkards or noisy people; a limpid stream rippling and dancing through every street in place of a filthy gutter.  And everywhere were workshops, factories, and all manner of industries; and intent faces and busy hands were to be seen wherever one looked

 “'On some of the mountains, to the southwest, it had been raining every day for two weeks, but not a drop had fallen in the city. And on hot days in late spring and early autumn the citizens could quit fanning and growling and go out and cool off by looking at the luxury of a glorious snow-storm going on in the mountains. They could enjoy it at a distance, at those seasons, every day, though no snow would fall in their streets, or anywhere near them.

“Salt Lake City was healthy - an extremely healthy city. “'They declared there was only one physician in the place and he was arrested every week regularly and held to answer under the vagrant act for having no visible means of support. 

“'We saw the Tithing-House, and the Lion House, and I do not know or remember how many more
church and government buildings of various kinds and curious names. We flitted hither and thither and enjoyed every hour, and picked up a great deal of useful information and entertaining nonsense, and went to bed at night satisfied.

“'Our stay in Salt Lake City amounted to only two days, and therefore, we had no time to make the customary inquisition into the workings of polygamy and get up the usual statistics and deductions preparatory to calling the attention of the nation at large once more to the matter.

“'I had the will to do it. With the gushing self-sufficiency of youth I was feverish to plunge in headlong and achieve a great reform here-until I saw the Mormon women. Then I was touched. My heart was wiser than my head. It warmed toward these poor, ungainly and pathetically homely creatures, and as I turned to hide the generous moisture in my eyes, I said, 'No, the man that marries one of them has done an act of Christian charity which entitles him to the kindly applause of mankind, not their harsh censure-and the man that marries sixty of them has done a deed of open-handed generosity so sublime that the nations should stand uncovered in his presence and worship in silence.'

“'According to these Gentile friends of ours, the Johnsons, Brigham Young's harem contains twenty or thirty wives. They said that some of them had grown old and gone out of active service, but were comfortably housed and cared for in the henery - or the Lion House, as it is strangely named. Along with each wife were her children-fifty altogether. The house was perfectly quiet and orderly, when the children were still. They all took their meals in one room, and a happy and home-like sight it was
pronounced to be.

“Mr. Johnson said that Mr. Young observed that life was a sad, sad thing 'because the joy of every new marriage a man contracted was so apt to be blighted by the inopportune funeral of a less recent bride.' And Mr. Johnson said that while he and Mr. Young were pleasantly conversing in private, one of the Mrs. Young came in and demanded a breast-pin, remarking that she had found out that he had been giving a breast-pin to No. 6, and she, for one, did not propose to let this partiality go on without making a satisfactory amount of trouble about it. Mr. Young reminded her that there was a stranger present. Mrs. Young said that if the state of things inside the house was not agreeable to the stranger, he could find room outside. Mr. Young promised the breast-pin, and she went away. But in a minute or two another Mrs. Young came in and demanded a breast-pin. Mr. Young began
a remonstrance, but Mrs. Young cut him short. She said No. 6 had got one, and No. 11 was promised one, and it was 'no use for him to try to impose on her - she hoped she knew her rights.' He gave his promise, and she went. And presently three Mrs. Youngs entered in a body and opened on their husband a tempest of tears, abuse, and entreaty. They had heard all about No. 6, No. 11, and No. 14. Three more breast-pins were promised. They were hardly gone when nine more Mrs. Youngs filed into the presence, and a new tempest burst forth and raged round about the prophet and his guest. Nine breast-pins were promised, and the weird sisters filed out again. And in came eleven more, weeping and wailing and gnashing their teeth. Eleven promised breast-pins purchased peace once more.

"Take my word for it," he told Mr. Johnson, "ten or eleven wives is all you need - never go over it.'"

“'Some instinct or other made me set this Johnson down as being unreliable. And yet he was a very
entertaining person,  a pleasant contrast to those reticent Mormons.”

“Oh, we have been so silly,” said Kate, when I had at last finished reading from Mark Twain’s
book. “We don’t need to go back and see that man tomorrow after all. Now we have his name, all we have to do is get his phone number from the telephone office, and then we will find out if Cora is his wife. And if we find out their address, we can just go, without having to get his permission.”

So with that new hope in mind, we went to sleep.