By Michael Patrick O’Brien
In one of the best local podcasts, my friends David Noyce and Peggy Fletcher Stack from The Salt Lake Tribune focus on faith and interfaith issues in Utah. With St. Patrick’s month now in full swing, it’s a good time to remember the Irish sons and daughters of that podcast’s venue—Mormon Land.
Irish Mormon heritage all starts with Joseph Smith himself. A DNA researcher says the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was Irish.
His family probably adopted the Smith surname after moving to England in the 1600s. A descendant/blogger notes, “If the family had not changed their name, it is possible that the first prophet…could have been named ‘Joseph O’Malley’ or ‘Joseph Flannigan.’”
Perhaps that Celtic lineage is what inspired Smith to send missionaries to Ireland. In 1840, apostle (and future church president) John Taylor baptized the first Irish convert at Loughbrickland in Northern Ireland.
Since then, then there have been at least two Irish Latter-day Saint apostles. The first was Charles A. Callis, born in Dublin and anointed in 1933.
More recently, the Church called Patrick Kearon to the leadership role in 2023. Kearon bears the name of the great Irish saint honored each March and his father was born in Ireland.
Joseph Smith’s nephew and great nephew also served as presidents of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, meaning Ireland can lay claim to at least three Mormon prophets. What about Brigham Young?
Smith’s immediate successor had English ancestors and no known Irish blood. Moreover, The Irish Times reports there is an enduring urban legend that Young once was “duped by an Irishman named Branigan” and thus decreed “no Irish people should be admitted to the church.”
Whether the tale of Celtic shenanigans is true or not, the Irish came with Young to Utah.
The first child born to the Mormon pioneers in the Salt Lake Valley was Young Elizabeth Steele. She arrived in Utah in August 1847 just days after her parents did. Her father John Steele, a member of the Mormon Battalion, was born in Ireland.
More Irish followed.
William Butler, born in County Wexford, arrived here in 1850. He served two missions in Great Britain before returning and helping to settle the agricultural areas of western Weber County.
In 1856, Irish-born Johanna O’Connor and her teen-aged son joined a pioneer wagon train heading west. She had fled from poverty and starvation in both western Ireland and England before settling in Manti, a small Utah town where one of the first Mormon temples later was built.
No church president had visited Ireland until David O. McKay did so in 1953. The Scottish/Welsh McKay reestablished an independent Irish mission under the direction of Stephen R. Covey, an institution still supported by a group of mission alums called the Shamrock Society.
Today, there are some 4,000 Latter-day Saints living in Ireland. The Irish saints in Utah, however, likely outnumber them significantly.
According to recent census data, some 200,000 people of Irish descent live in Utah. Roughly half of the state’s population are Latter-day Saints, meaning there could be about 100,000 Irish saints here.
Many are like Judy Eccles Wight, who was devoted to her Celtic heritage. Judy was a BYU graduate and professional Latter-day Saint genealogist who specialized in the records of Ireland and Scotland.
During one of her trips to the Emerald Isle, Judy learned about the Ulster Project. The international effort brings together Catholic and Protestant teens from Northern Ireland to build a strong foundation for peace by weakening religious divisions.
Judy started a branch of the project in Utah in 1985. Judy died in 2020, but this summer, the Utah Ulster Project will bring yet another group of Irish teens to find common ground and friendship in Salt Lake City.
Irish by education if not by blood, Notre Dame football legend “Rudy” Ruettiger joined the Church of Jesus of Latter-day Saints in 2017. His fellow church member and all-American Manti Te’o played for the Fighting Irish too.
The Irish-Mormon-Utah connection is so interesting I included it in my new book, a holiday romance novel (The Merry Matchmaker Monks of Shamrock Valley) set for publication later this year in time for Christmas. One of the storylines involves an Irish immigrant named Sullivan who works his way to the Old American West building the transcontinental railroad.
After watching the driving of the Golden Spike in Northern Utah that completed the massive rail project, young Sullivan takes a job as a farmhand in nearby Huntsville and falls in love with a local Mormon girl. Over 150 years later, their granddaughter Katie Sullivan (who has a Catholic mother and a Latter-day Saint father) rescues a handsome young Salt Lake lawyer named Henry Gleason—also with Irish roots—from a snowstorm.
As a Christmas present, Katie’s and Henry’s common friends—some kind local Trappist monks who’ve known them all their lives—arrange for them to work together on a children’s holiday program at the school where Katie teaches. The two young people clash and cooperate preparing for the big event, compose a catchy new Christmas carol together, and even discover a mutual attraction.
Yet, powerful outside forces and conflicting emotions conspire to pull them apart. The intriguing plot thickens when Katie’s old boyfriend—an attractive wealthy doctor and land developer—makes a radical proposal that could forever change Katie’s life and legacy, as well as transform the pastoral landscape of her childhood.
Only at midnight on Christmas Eve will we know what paths Katie and Henry will choose, whether the old monks’ clever matchmaking plan has worked, and if the gift of love might arrive in the charming snow-filled mountain valley that they all call home.
I’m working on a sequel now too. I won’t give out too many spoilers just yet, but I can say it continues the fascinating story dynamic of interfaith relationships and focuses on a holiday too, but this time St. Patrick’s Day is front and center.
It’s not easy being Irish.
It’s often said that to be Irish is to know the world will break your heart. I can only imagine that being an Irish Latter-day Saint might even be a wee bit harder.
The good news, however, is that there is an old Irish blessing for all those difficult situations: “If God sends you down a stony path, may He give you strong shoes.”
(Images: AI enhanced by Erin O’Brien.)
*Mike O’Brien (author website here) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. Paraclete Press published his book Monastery Mornings, about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, in August 2021. The League of Utah Writers chose it as the best non-fiction book of 2022. Mike’s new holiday novel, tentatively titled “The Merry Matchmaker Monks,” will be published in time for Christmas 2026.
