By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
For many years, I thought Catholics had no role in the Days of ‘47, the annual Utah celebration of the arrival of the Mormon pioneers in the Salt Lake Valley. A couple of local historic markers taught me otherwise.
The Days of ‘47 probably started on June 27, 1844, when a mob in Carthage, Illinois, murdered Joseph Smith, the president and founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, then commonly known as the Mormons. After Smith’s death, and repeated conflicts with anti-Mormon groups in Nauvoo, Smith’s successor Brigham Young decided to move his followers out west.
In 1846, the Mormon Pioneers moved to Winter Quarters in Nebraska, the launching point for their trek. On July 24, 1847, Young’s wagon train arrived in the Salt Lake Valley, traveling through what now is known as Emigration Canyon. The man known as the “Lion of the Lord” emerged from his Conestoga and announced, “This is the right place. Drive on.”
Since then, Utah and Latter-day Saints annually celebrate July 24th as a holiday. As a boy, I attended my hometown Ogden’s annual Pioneer Days parade. Although I enjoyed the horses and floats, as a Utah Irish-Catholic I did not feel any direct connection to the Mormon Pioneers. Perhaps I should have.
A large memorial dedicated in 1947 marks Young’s historic arrival here. Surprisingly, the monument also includes Father Pierre-Jean De Smet, a 19th century Jesuit missionary and explorer. Why is a Belgian Catholic priest on a monument to the Mormon Pioneers?
A different historic marker in Ogden explains: “Father De Smet became well acquainted with the region of the Great Salt Lake, and gave much valuable information to Brigham Young and the Mormon Pioneers while they were at Winter Quarters, Nebraska, in November, 1846.” A 1909 Intermountain Catholic newspaper article goes even further, concluding that Brigham Young “was probably induced to settle at Salt Lake by the Jesuit’s glowing account of the valley.”
That’s a fairly significant Catholic connection to the annual Utah holiday. And it is not the only one.
When Utah’s first Catholic bishop Lawrence Scanlan died on May 10, 1915, the Intermountain Catholic noted, “His relations with Brigham Young were always cordial and pleasant, and no antagonism between the Bishop and any of the successors of Brigham Young has ever arisen.” My friend Utah historian Gary Topping, however, has said he “doubts that the two men had much to do with each other.”
Scanlan arrived in Utah in 1873. Young died just four years later in 1877. In a 2013 article about Mormon/Catholic relations in the early years, Topping explained, “The Mormon prophet was in his declining years, and the young priest had his hands full trying to provide churches and priests and schools for his far-flung flock, scattered from Ogden to Silver Reef.”
Thus, comity between members of the two faiths probably developed due to circumstances other than a personal friendship between the two church leaders. One factor may have been Scanlan’s consistently tolerant attitude towards the often-controversial saints.
In a 1952 Utah Historical Quarterly article, Utah Catholic priest Father Robert J. Dwyer described Scanlan’s attitude, “Early in his career in the stronghold of Mormonism, the young priest (he had just turned 30) seems to have determined a course of action toward the Latter-day Saints from which he rarely varied in all the subsequent years. He would live among them on terms of cordiality, avoiding intimacy on the one hand, and antagonism on the other. Among his predecessors, Father Kelly seems to have shared some of the Gentile bitterness toward Brigham Young and his followers, and occasionally, as time went on, Scanlan detected a like tendency on the part of several of his associates in the Utah priesthood. He never encouraged it. He took no part in the anti-Mormon crusade, although there was never any doubt as to his stand on the issue of polygamy.”
Perhaps it is this cordial demeanor that earned Bishop Scanlan an invitation to participate in the Days of ‘47 ceremonies dedicating the famous statue of Brigham Young in downtown Salt Lake City. The event occurred in July 1897, on the 50th anniversary of Young’s arrival.
An online article about the statue’s history sets the scene: “The statue stood wrapped in an American flag on its new pedestal. Behind the statue a platform to accommodate the pioneers had been erected six feet high and covered with an awning. Sitting in the front of the platform was LDS church president Wilford Woodruff, who was the oldest living pioneer, his counselors, the Quorum of the Twelve, Governor Heber Wells, Bishop Lawrence Scanlan of the Catholic church, and Judge John M. Zane. When recent presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan arrived, the crowd stirred with enthusiasm.” Brigham Young’s son—also named Brigham and a Latter-day Saint apostle—was present too.
I have not found any specific reports of what Scanlan said in his benediction, and newspaper accounts simply report the fact that he gave it. According to Father Dwyer’s article, however, Scanlan “referred with no little feeling to Young’s personal benevolence toward him and his fellow Catholics in the days when the Church was struggling to obtain a footing in Utah.”
Fifty years later, during the 1947 centennial celebration of Young’s arrival in Salt Lake, another Catholic Bishop helped unveil another statue depicting the Lion of the Lord. Bishop Duane G. Hunt, who served as vice chair of the monument commission, joined the dedication of the statute we all know at This is the Place monument in Salt Lake City’s foothills.
All those benevolent feelings crossing denominational lines would be sorely tested during the next year or two when—among other things—Trappist monks from Kentucky, with support from local Catholic leaders, established a new monastery in Northern Utah in the very backyard of David O. McKay, a Huntsville native who soon would be president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
In the process, monastic leaders expressed some rather negative attitudes about the Latter-day Saints and President McKay told followers that the Catholic Church was out to get them. I tell all about it in my new book, tentatively titled In the Valley of Monks and Saints. That is, however, a story for another day.
A better sentiment for today comes from former Salt Lake Tribune columnist Tom Wharton, a fellow Catholic. Ten years ago, Wharton wrote, “A state holiday such as July 24th should be spent celebrating all of our many Utah roots, religions and cultures. It should be a day when non-Mormons not only honor the spirit of Brigham Young — who did indeed help the pioneers make the desert blossom like a rose — but our own roles in shaping a state that, despite its quirks, remains a wonderful place to live and raise a family.”
*Mike O’Brien (author website here: https://michaelpobrien.com/) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. His book Monastery Mornings (https://www.amazon.com/Monastery-Mornings-Unusual-Boyhood-Saints/dp/1640606491), about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, was published by Paraclete Press in August 2021.
Note: this article also appeared in The Salt Lake Tribune on July 24, 2022, see: https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2022/07/24/utahs-days-47-its-place-latter/
This is a fascinating discussion of a little-known aspect of Mormon-Catholic relations in Utah history. Since I am quoted in it, let me add a few minor modifications.
While it is true that Brigham Young had gotten information about the Great Basin from Father DeSmet, my fellow historians have concluded that Fr. DeSmet never personally entered the Basin and was reporting only hearsay from the Indians in Idaho and Montana among whom he had been working. More direct sources were the mountain men Jim Bridger and Moses “Black” Harris whom the Mormons encountered along the Oregon Trail. They told Brigham to take the new Hastings Cutoff from Fort Bridger to Salt Lake Valley via Emigration Canyon, a route that had been created the previous summer by the ill-fated Donner party.
Brigham’s best source of information, though, and the one that probably caused him to decided to settle in the Salt Lake Valley, was John C. Fremont’s 1843 government report on his survey that year of the Great Basin. Fremont was the first to determine that the Great Basin was a separate geophysical province. He had even paddled out to what became known as Fremont Island in the Great Salt Lake, where one of his guides, Kit Carson, a mountain man and a Roman Catholic, had inscribed a cross which is visible even today on the highest rock promontory. It’s another little piece of Utah Catholic history.
Thanks Gary!