Stories by author "Makoto Hunter, Brigham Young University": 23
Stories
Annie Clark Tanner’s Underground Journey: “Years I Had Wandered”
In early 1888, Annie Clark Tanner was expecting her first child with Joseph Marion Tanner (see “Annie Clark Tanner’s ‘Wedding Supper’ and Early Marriage” for background). Motherhood made her feel “secure,” “thankful,” and “happy,” but contemporary…
Annie Clark Tanner’s “Wedding Supper” and Early Marriage
After Annie Clark Tanner married Joseph Marion Tanner in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City, they rode the northbound train home in silence. Annie suspected they refrained from conversation on account of the feelings of Jane “Jennie” Tanner, who…
The United States v. Udall Cases and the St. Johns Ring
When authorities arrested Latter-day Saint bishop David King Udall on perjury charge in May 1884, his second wife Ida Hunt Udall called it a “trumped-up charge, simply got through malice on the part of the ‘ring.’” Though Ida dismissed the case as…
Polygamist Flight from St. Johns
In July 1884, the David, Ella, and Ida Udall family of St. Johns, Arizona was optimistic about the future. The Udalls were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (then often nicknamed Mormons), and they were also polygamists,…
George Reynolds’s Polygamy Convictions
Although Congress passed the Morrill Anti-bigamy Act in 1862, twelve years later in 1874 no court had yet found a single member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (sometimes nicknamed “Mormons” in that time) guilty of having multiple…
Three Conversions to Mormon Polygamy: David, Ella, & Ida Udall
In 1882, Ella Stewart Udall and her husband David King Udall had a happy life as a frontier couple. David ran a store in St. Johns, Arizona and led their local congregation, and they had a two-year-old daughter, Pearl. But on May 25, the family…
The Confederate Connections of Dixie State University
“The name ‘Dixie’ is one of those distinctive things about this part of Utah,” historian Andrew Karl Larson wrote in his 1962 history of the Virgin River Basin of southern Utah. “It is a name much used, indeed overused, it would seem to the casual…
The Rebels of Dixie State
A statue on Dixie State College campus depicted a scene right out of American history: a Civil War soldier rode on horseback through a battlefield, reaching down to grab a comrade by the arm and lift him out of danger. The artist, Jerry Anderson of…
The Dixie “Secessions,” 1987–1988
“The old South will rise again,” declared the Washington County News on March 13, 1987. “Rebels everywhere prepare to secede from the state in a two-day celebration of Utah’s Dixie,” a nickname for southern Utah.
Part county fair, part gala, and…
Helena, Montana’s Confederate Memorial Fountain
On the late summer evening of September 6, 1916, Montana’s capital city of Helena formally unveiled and dedicated its newest landmark: a $2,000 fountain gracing the highest hill of a city park. George H. Carsley, known as “the architect of Helena,”…
Leesburg and Grantsville, Idaho
Along with others who migrated to the Rocky Mountain West during the mid-nineteenth century, former Union and Confederate soldiers mixed in remote western locales like the mountains and valleys of Idaho. Miners settled land and panned for gold in…