Brigham Young: A Concise Biography of the Mormon Moses

Brigham Young: A Concise Biography of the Mormon Moses

Language: English

Pages: 208

ISBN: 1621570401

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


He was a carpenter. A visionary. A governor. A prophet. A pioneer. A preacher. A businessman. A temple-builder.

Brigham Young loomed large in a tumultuous time. He helped found the state of Utah in the era of American Manifest Destiny. He rallied thousands around Mormonism, a new faith with powerful detractors who tried to stamp it out in the towns and villages where its communities sprang up. With barely a dozen days of formal education under his belt, he left a legacy of writings, letters and sermons that continue to enrich the study of the Mormon Church and the era of American Western expansion.

In Brigham Young, Ed Breslin distills Young's larger-than-life story into a concise, readable biography that focuses on his most critical moments and achievements. Unlike other biographies, Breslin's account neither whitewashes nor sensationalizes Brigham Young's controversial life. Brigham Young is the perfect primer on Young's vast and complicated legacy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

in the Old Testament, Joseph Smith had been convinced that the Bible validated this practice. At that time he had been studying the Bible vigorously with Oliver Cowdery and realized that some Old Testament patriarchs had more than one wife. The practice had also been approved in revelations to Joseph Smith himself, in The Book of Mormon Jacob, 2-27-30. Smith held that it was imperative for his new Christian church to embrace all ancient biblical principles, and therefore plural marriage needed to

in Aurelius quite comfortable, John did not hesitate to abandon it and head westward again to establish a new homestead at the tip of the wilderness. John may well have been feeling overwhelmed by the loss of his wife, and he must have feared that he would prove inadequate at raising the two youngest children. As a result he left Louisa and Lorenzo Dow back in Aurelius with their older sister Rhoda and her preacher husband John. Rhoda and John were able to share the duties of parenting Louisa

up various territorial administrative departments they deemed to be beyond Brigham’s authority. Brigham did not share this view, and friction and jockeying for position broke out. The tenures of this first wave of officials were short. Understandably, they came with the preconceived notion that they were in charge, in accordance with their federal appointments. They did not factor in Mormon intransigence. They did not expect to be undermined and rejected by Mormon elders—and by Governor Brigham

construction of spectacularly beautiful temples in all of them. His interest in these construction projects was all-encompassing, just as it had been in the cases of the temples in Kirtland and in Nauvoo, in Salt Lake City and in St. George, the spa-like town in southern Utah Territory. The old master carpenter and builder in Brigham wanted to oversee every detail of construction and of interior decoration in many of these temples in satellite communities. Regrettably, he did not live to see the

Missouri River, 68, 122–26, 130–32, 156 Mohawk Valley, 8–9 Montrose, Iowa, 75, 83, 85 Morley, 116 Mormon Battalion, the, 129–33, 141, 151 Mormon community, 41–43, 63, 76, 89, 94, 133, 168–69 “Mormon Corridor, the,” 168 Mormon hymnbook, 80–81 Mormon Moses, the, 30. See also Young, Brigham Mormon Rebellion, the, 183–90 Mormons, 2, 26, 89, 122, 12, 176, 219–205 Brigham Young and, 30, 41, 82, 109, 111, 144, 157, 165–67 conflicts with, 48–51, 64–65, 71–72, 100, 115–20, 162, 171, 184–85

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