Salt Lake First Stake Building

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Early Salt Lake City was once a single stake with nineteen wards.
Utah State Historical Society

Although hundreds of scattered settlements were colonized by the mormon pioneers, Salt Lake City rapidly developed into a large, thriving community. In February 1849, about four thousand people lived in the valley. This growth led to the city’s division into nineteen ecclesiastical wards (congregations). 

Together these wards composed the Salt Lake Stake. This chapel is located in the Seventeenth Ward of the original Salt Lake Stake. When the Assembly Hall was first completed on Temple Square, stake meetings were held there. Today, this chapel serves as the Salt Lake Stake Center.

The modern Salt Lake Seventeenth Ward building.
David M. Whitchurch

In early Salt Lake history, each ward was responsible to construct its own building. The first meeting place for the Seventeenth Ward was a log building located across the street south of the present building. 

The Seventeenth Ward then erected a more permanent building, also situated across the street, directly southwest of this building. In 1904, when the Salt Lake Stake was divided into four separate stakes, the Seventeenth Ward remained a part of the original Salt Lake Stake.

This window was made by Tiffany’s of New York, 
producer of some of the finest stained-glass in nineteenth-century America.
James Sherman

God the Father and Jesus Christ appeared to young Joseph Smith in the spring of 1820.
James Sherman

Detail of the stained-glass window depicting the First Vision, 
in which Joseph Smith saw God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ.
James Sherman

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The Mormon Tabernacle Choir

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Known as the Church's official choir, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir is named for its home in the historic Tabernacle on Temple Square. The more than 350 carefully selected and well trained vocalists come from all walks of life, serve without pay, and demonstrate great commitment in their service to the Church as they rehearse and perform more than 150 days each year. 

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir in the Salt Lake Tabernacle.
© Intellectual Reserve, Inc.

The choir is seen and heard weekly "from the crossroads of the West" on its broadcast Music and the Spoken Word, carried internationally to some two thousand radio, television, and cable stations. The Tabernacle Choir is known and beloved worldwide for its more than 150 recordings.

The nineteenth floor of the Gateway West Tower offers a breathtaking view of 
Temple Square and especially the Tabernacle,
 which was updated in 2007 to meet seismic problems inherent to the 
Wasatch Fault to the east of Salt Lake City.
David M. Whitchurch

U.S. presidents have called the Tabernacle Choir "America's Choir" and "one of America's greatest treasures."

The choir has performed at six presidential inaugurations and at other important national occasions, including the opening ceremonies for the 2002 Olympic Winter Games; the bicentennial celebration of the Constitution of the United States (1987); the American Bicentenary in Washington DC (July 4, 1976); nationwide radio memorial services for John F. Kennedy (November 24, 1963) and Franklin D. Roosevelt (April 12, 1945); and the first worldwide television satellite broadcast, transmitted from Mount Rushmore (1962).

The Tabernacle organ is a complex instrument. 
Organists control over 11,000 pipes and can communicate with technicians during performances, if necessary. 
Note how the organ sits on a circular platform that may be swiveled to 
allow audiences to see different views of the organist and the console.
© by Intellectual Reserve, Inc.

The choir has performed extensively in major concert halls throughout the world. Multiple tours have taken the choir to every part of the United States and Canada, Europe, Central America, the Far East, Brazil, Scandinavia, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, Central Europe, Israel, and the former Soviet Union. The choir has also performed at thirteen world's fairs and expositions.

Only a few of the gold-leaf organ pipes in the Tabernacle actually “speak.” 
Regardless, their grandeur adds to the solemn majesty of the Tabernacle.
Richard Crookston

Five gold and two platinum records have been awarded to the choir, and the recording of "Battle Hymn of the Republic" with the Philadelphia Orchestra won a Grammy Award in 1959. The choir's first radio broadcast took place July 15, 1929, making Music and the Spoken Word the longest continuous network broadcast in the world.

The choir has also been awarded the Peabody Award for service to American broadcasting (1944, 1962), an Emmy award, and the George Washington Medal of Freedom award from the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge.

An entrance to the Tabernacle.
Gary G. Memorial

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Brigham Young University Religious Education presents

Hallowed Ground Sacred Journeys

Featuring BYU Religious Educators teaching about sites significant in

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

For more information, or to visit our interactive web site with dozens of additional sites to explore,

please visit VirtualTours.BYU.edu

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Hallowed Ground Sacred Journeys

is a co-production of

BYU Religious Education and Starrs Universal

This blog is a public service of The Watchmen Institute

and is distributed by B.U.M.P. LTD.

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The LDS Family History Library

The LDS Family History Library serves as the flagship for over four thousand satellite family history centers in more than eighty-eight countries. Records for hundreds of millions of individuals are available for inspection and investigation. About two thousand people visit the library each day.

The largest family history research center in the world.

David M. Whitchurch

Researching family history is important for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who believe that husbands and wives and their children can be united as a family for eternity. President Wilford Woodruff established the first Genealogical Society of Utah in 1894.

Apostle Franklin D. Richards was its first president and donated his personal genealogical library to get it started. The original site for the society was a small room above the church historian’s office located at 47 East South Temple (southeast of where the Church Administration Building now stands). The present facility opened in 1985.

Patrons may search their family history by using the available computers and materials.

David M. Whitchurch

Two tireless proponents of family history in early Salt Lake City were Susa Young Gates, daughter of Brigham Young, and Joseph Fielding Smith, President of the Church in 1970. Susa was close to death in London in 1901 after returning from a women’s conference in Copenhagen. Reduced to eighty-five pounds, she sought a blessing from Elder Franklin D. Richards, the mission president in England. 

At first his words seemed to prepare her for death, but after a pause he said, “There has been a council held in heaven, and it has been decided you shall live to perform temple work, and you shall do a greater work than you have ever done before.” She recovered and lived to write, publicize, lead, and teach on behalf of the Genealogical Society for many years. Her diligence trained an entire generation of genealogists who helped further family history from the early to mid-1900s throughout the Church.

The Church Historian’s office used to sit across the street south of the current 
Church Administration Building. 
Early efforts to help Latter-day Saints identify their kindred dead began in meetings held here.

C. R. Savage courtesy of Richard K. Winters

Joseph Fielding Smith sought to elevate family history work as a major mission of the Church. He traveled, spoke, and wrote throughout his life about the importance of identifying ancestors and providing temple ordinances for them. “Redeeming the dead” was eventually recognized as one of the threefold objectives of the mission of the Church.

Microfilm and other records are kept in climate-controlled vaults

© by Intellectual Reserve, Inc.

In October 1938 the Church began microfilming family, civil, and vital government records. In 1963 the Granite Mountain Records Vaults were completed in Little Cottonwood Canyon about twenty miles southeast of downtown Salt Lake City. Original microfilm records needed to be kept there, where temperature and humidity would be optimal for storage. The vaults comprise six tunnels, each 190 feet long, bored into the same rock formation used to quarry stone for the construction of the Salt Lake Temple. The book Roots by Alex Haley, the television mini series that followed, and Haley’s subsequent appearance on The Tonight Show in 1977, brought the library into the national spotlight. An international flurry of interest in family history followed. 

By 2004 there were over 2.4 million rolls of microfi lm housed in the library. Full- and part-time professionals, along with many well-trained volunteers, help patrons search the records on film and computer. “The familysearch.org Web site was designed to handle 25 million hits per day, but soon after the official launch, the site was overwhelmed by more than 40 million hits per day—representing roughly 400,000 users—as well as an estimated additional 60 million unsuccessful daily hits.”

Long rows of microfilm cabinets hold family history information accessible to library patrons

David M. Whitchurch

Family history work can be fun and rewarding. Latter-day Saints search for their kindred dead so that they may attend the temple on their behalf and provide ordinances like baptism
and eternal marriage for those who did not have the opportunity to do so in mortality.

© by Intellectual Reserve, Inc.

A portrait of John Henry Smith and his wife Sarah Farr Smith, parents of George Albert Smith.

Utah Sate Historical Society

>An interesting family story is preserved regarding an important event on this site: Elder George A. Smith built an adobe house with a garden and an orchard on this property. Water from City Creek flowed down ditches at the side of the road. He planted the first crop of potatoes in the Valley. Elder Smith was asked to colonize southern Utah, and the city of St. George is named after him. He later became a counselor in the First Presidency of the Church. He died in 1875 at age fifty-eight.

His grandson George Albert Smith grew up in a home on the northwest corner of South Temple and West Temple streets (next to his grandfather’s home) and in 1945 became the eighth President of the Church. An interesting family story is preserved regarding an important event on this site:

Sarah Farr Smith [wife of John H. Smith] had just finished cleaning the kitchen after the family noontime meal when she heard a firm knock at the back door of her home at 23 North West Temple in Salt Lake City. Proceeding to the door, she was not particularly surprised to see a poor but tidy-looking gentleman standing on her porch. She didn’t know the elderly man, but it was not uncommon for transients to come to her home from the nearby railroad station asking for a meal. As Sarah often tired of serving food at all hours of the day to whoever came by, her husband, John Henry, had purchased “meal tickets” to give to those in need, which enabled them to eat a satisfying meal at a nearby restaurant.

There was something different about this particular man, and Sarah felt moved to invite him in to her kitchen table. As he was eating, the man suddenly asked where Sarah’s young son George Albert was. She indicated that he was outside playing in the yard. He then asked her to call the youth into the house so he could see him. Again she felt compelled to comply, although she was hesitant to leave a stranger alone in the house. She found George Albert, who was about eight years old, playing at a nearby two-story building north of their house, underneath a second-story balcony from which steps descended to the ground level. When she reentered her house with her young son at her side, the gentleman was gone. Sarah was searching through the house for him when she heard a loud crashing sound outside. She rushed out to see what had happened and was astonished to discover that the balcony and staircase under which her son had just been playing had collapsed, sending large beams and pieces of lumber crashing down onto playthings he had left behind just moments before.

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Brigham Young University Religious Education presents

Hallowed Ground Sacred Journeys

Featuring BYU Religious Educators teaching about sites significant in

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

For more information, or to visit our interactive web site with dozens of additional sites to explore,

please visit VirtualTours.BYU.edu

______________________________________________

Hallowed Ground Sacred Journeys

is a co-production of

BYU Religious Education and Starrs Universal

This blog is a public service of The Watchmen Institute

and is distributed by B.U.M.P. LTD.

All Rights Reserved

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The Deuel Log Cabin

This log cabin is one of only two existing pioneer homes built in 1847; the other is Levi E. Riter’s log house located in This Is the Place Heritage Park. It gives us a good idea of the typical small homes built by the pioneers when they first arrived in the Salt Lake Valley. 

Two families lived in the Deuel Log Cabin.

David M. Whitchurch

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The Deuel families, formerly well-to-do residents of Nauvoo, were among the first pioneers to enter the Salt Lake Valley. Upon arrival, Osmyn Deuel began to construct a small log cabin, which was completed in September 1847. It was originally part of the Old Fort—the first permanent settlement built by the pioneers— which stood at 300 West and 400 South.

Kitchenware and other tools inside the Deuel Log Cabin.

Robert L. Hall

The cabin is now in its fifth location since it was first constructed. Originally, the home served as the residence for two brothers, Osmyn M. and William H. Deuel, and their families. The cabin served as the headquarters for Captain Howard Stansbury during his 1849–50 survey of the Great Salt Lake, and later as the home of LDS Apostle Albert Carrington’s daughter Frances and her husband, Zebulon Jacobs. In 1910 the Deseret Museum curator received the cabin from the Jacobs and moved it to the history gallery at the museum. It later sat on the southeast corner of Temple Square before being moved to its current location.

Hand tinted photo of Deuel Cabin.

C. R. Savage courtesy of Richard K. Winters

A portrait of William Henry Deuel and his wife Eliza Avery Whiting.

Daughters of Utah Pioneers

President Ezra Taft Benson told a story about the Deuel cabin

"Years ago we had in the Quorum of the Twelve a great teacher by the name of Adam S. Bennion. On occasion when youth groups would come to Church headquarters, he would escort them over to Temple Square. He always took them to the southeast corner where the Osmyn Deuel log cabin stood. He would tell the young people that this was the kind of home many of their pioneer forefathers lived in—a one-room log hut with no bathroom, no indoor plumbing, no privacy.

He would then request the group to stand midway between the temple and the old log cabin. Then he taught: “On your right you see the circumstances of those early pioneers—how they lived—but on your left you see the temple—the vision they had of the future.”

That is what we hope happens when individuals visit this museum—they will see what their forebears wrought and that this will give a perspective to the present that will inspire them to build a more glorious, a more righteous, future. Our past, after all, is our prologue to the future."

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The marker in front of the cabin reads:

Residence of Osmyn and Mary Deuel and Osmyn’s brother, Amos, from fall 1847 to spring 1848.

This historic structure is one of two surviving homes built by the Mormon pioneers upon arrival in Salt Lake Valley in 1847 (the other is located at This is the Place State Park at the mouth of Emigration Canyon to the northeast). Originally it was part of the north extension of the pioneer fort erected by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints one mile southwest of here.

The home, 15 feet by 20 feet, was constructed of Douglas Fir and lodge pole pine brought from the mountains east of the city. As restored by the Museum of Church History and Art, its furnishings reflect the lifestyle of the Deuels. Osmyn and Mary were among the most prosperous of the 1847 pioneers.

Osmyn was a blacksmith but he also farmed. Another log structure owned by the Deuels in the fort’s north enclosure probably served as the blacksmith shop. There Osmyn and his brother, William H., whose family lived next to Osmyn and Mary, carried on their trade. It is supposed that Amos worked in the shop also. The Deuels tilled and planted fourteen acres their fi rst season in the valley and also had a garden plot near their homes.

The Deuels were natives of New York. A number of this extended family were Latter-day Saint converts in the early 1830s. They lived in Kirtland, Ohio, and Nauvoo, Illinois, before emigrating west.

After the Deuels left the log home to settle in Centerville, Utah, it is reported that the cabin was used briefly as a militia armory. In 1849 Albert Carrington, later an apostle in the Church, purchased the home and moved it to his property one and one half blocks north of here. It was acquired by the Deseret Museum in 1912. From 1919 to 1976 it was exhibited on Temple Square, then stored until it was moved to its present site where, amidst a landscape of pioneer and native plants, it was opened 19 November 1985.

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Brigham Young University Religious Education presents

Hallowed Ground Sacred Journeys

Featuring BYU Religious Educators teaching about sites significant in

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

For more information, or to visit our interactive web site with dozens of additional sites to explore,

please visit VirtualTours.BYU.edu

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Hallowed Ground Sacred Journeys

is a co-production of

BYU Religious Education and Starrs Universal

This blog is a public service of The Watchmen Institute

and is distributed by B.U.M.P. LTD.

All Rights Reserved

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Eliza R. Snow

This monument sits in front of the Pioneer Memorial Museum in Salt Lake City.
David M. Whitchurch

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Just outside the DUP Museum in Salt Lake, there is a statue that honors Zions poetess, Eliza R. Snow. Eliza was born at Becket, Berkshire County, Massachusetts, January 21, 1804, and was baptized at Kirtland, Ohio, April 5, 1835. She was sealed to Joseph Smith as a plural wife in 1842 and later married Brigham Young after the martyrdom of the Prophet Joseph.

Eliza R. Snow served as general president of the Relief Society from 1866 to 1887.
Daughters of Utah Pioneers

Eliza began her pioneer journey from Winter Quarters in June 1847, arriving in the Salt Lake Valley that October. Her powerful gift of literary expression captured the spirit of the Restoration, reflecting the foundational principles of the gospel taught by the Prophet Joseph Smith. She served as the second president of the Relief Society after the Saints arrived in Salt Lake City, figuring prominently in the events of Church history as a womens leader, poet, and writer.

Several of her hymns are Latter-day Saint favorites, including "Behold the Great Redeemer Die", "How Great the Wisdom and the Love", and "O My Father". Forty years after her arrival in the Valley, this remarkable woman passed away on December 5, 1887, at the age of eighty-four. Funeral services were held in the Assembly Hall, after which she was buried in President Brigham Young's family cemetery. Death held no fear, for she viewed it as simply a door leading to the eternal world. She had requested that no black be worn at her funeral, and the Assembly Hall on Temple Square was decked in beautiful white draperies and white flowers.

Eliza R. Snow was married to Brigham Young and is buried near him in the family cemetery.
Kathie and W. Jeffrey Marsh

“O My Father” was written in 1843 while Eliza R. Snow was living in Nauvoo, Illinois. A close friend, Zina D. Huntington (Young), was grieving when it became necessary to move her mother’s body from a temporary grave to a more permanent resting place. When the remains were exhumed, Zina discovered that they were partially petrified. It seemed to Zina as if the very foundation of the doctrine of the Resurrection crumbled. Zina asked the Prophet Joseph Smith, “Shall I know my mother when I meet her in the world beyond?” to which the Prophet responded emphatically, “Yes, you will know your mother there.” Zina D. Huntington was comforted by this promise. From the discussions surrounding such questions on the Resurrection and man’s relationship to Deity, Eliza R. Snow received inspiration to write “O My Father.”

Orson F. Whitney remarked:

“If all her other writings, prose and verse, were swept into oblivion, this poem alone, the sweetest and sublimest of all the songs of Zion, would perpetuate her fame and render her name immortal. But she believed, with Lord Byron, that a poet should do something more than make verses, and she put that belief into practice, laboring incessantly for the promulgation of her religious faith and for the teaching and counseling of the women of her people.”

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Brigham Young University Religious Education presents

Hallowed Ground Sacred Journeys

Featuring BYU Religious Educators teaching about sites significant in

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

For more information, or to visit our interactive web site with dozens of additional sites to explore,

please visit VirtualTours.BYU.edu

______________________________________________

Hallowed Ground Sacred Journeys

is a co-production of

BYU Religious Education and Starrs Universal

This blog is a public service of The Watchmen Institute

and is distributed by B.U.M.P. LTD.

All Rights Reserved

___________________________________________________________________