Salt Lake City—It was 160 years ago, sixty miles west of Lake Tahoe, that a group of Mormon laborers gathered to see what James Marshall held in his hand. He had just discovered gold. The Mormon-owned newspaper in San Francisco, the California Star, was the first to advertize the discovery which set the gold rush into motion.

On May 22-25, a few hundred historians will meet in Sacramento to discuss these and other topics. More specifically, they have researched the involvement of Mormons in California history. The event is hosted by the Mormon History Association of Salt Lake City.

One of the principal addresses will be delivered by Professor Kenneth N. Owens of California State-Sacramento on the topic, “Not Quite Zion: California’s Gold Rush Saints.” A recently retired professor from Victor Valley College, Edward Leo Lyman, will speak on a similar theme: “Amasa M. Lyman: Apostle in the Gold Fields.”

Other presenters include professors from Butte College, Cal State-Fullerton, Claremont Graduate University, College of the Sequoias, San Francisco State, and UCLA. In addition, independent researcher Camilla Miner Smith of San Francisco will introduce historians to California’s first Poet Laureate, Ina Coolbrith, a stepdaughter of Mormon founder Joseph Smith. Richard K. Behrens of Brentwood will speak on William B. Ide, the Mormon who led the Bear Flag Revolt.

The conference will include an excursion to the Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park and other sites of interest to LDS historians. At an evening banquet, book awards will be announced and presented.

The first Mormons in California came in 1846 when some 230 Latter-day Saints arrived on the ship Brooklyn at what was then called Yerba Buena, now San Francisco. They were the first Americans to reach the newly conquered Mexican province by sea, and historian Hubert Howe Bancroft wrote that, for a time, San Francisco was “largely a Mormon town.”

That same year, the U.S. Army enlisted some 500 Mormon men to serve in the war with Mexico. At the time, the Mormon Church was still located in the Midwest. After marching 2,000 miles from Florence, Nebraska, to San Diego, the soldiers ventured north to meet fellow Latter-day Saints. Nearly 100 of them found employment at Sutter’s Mill, where gold was soon discovered.

Ironically, Sam Brannon, the Mormon whose newspaper sparked the gold rush, went on to use his fortune to plant some of California’s first vineyards in Napa Valley. A teetotaling people, the Mormons eventually excommunicated him.

Ninety-five percent of Native Americans can trace their ancestry to six "founding mothers" who arrived in the New World from Siberia 20,000 years ago, according to a new study by researchers at the Utah-based Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation and the University of Pavia in Italy. The research was published online Wednesday by the Public Library of Science, www.plos.org.

At this symposium co-sponsored by the John Whitmer Historical Association, Community of Christ Seminary, and Sunstone Education Foundation, one of the highlights will be an advance screening of Adam Christing's upcoming documentary, A Mormon President, about Joseph Smith's 1844 run for the U.S. presidency. Following the screening there will be a welcome from Wallace B. Smith, president emeritus of the Community of Christ.

On Sunday morning, there will be a special tour of the Community of Christ temple and auditorium complex, complete with a viewing of some of the historical artifacts held in the archives. For more information, contact the John Whitmer Historical Association or Sunstone (801-355-5926).

Claremont Graduate University is thirty-five miles east of LosAngeles. All sessions of this symposium will be held in Stauffer Hall. Among the many interesting topics to be discussed will be Mormon theology, the life of Gordon B. Hinckley, ex-Mormon narratives, Mormon women's studies, and pioneer literacy. For more information, contact Sunstone at 801-355-5926 or read about the program here.

Abandon your Friday evening commute and drop in to listen to Mike Paulos, editor of the new book, The Mormon Church on Trial: Transcripts of the Reed Smoot Hearings. Mike will begin speaking around 6:30 p.m. at Benchmark Books This young scholar has interesting insights into the famous hearings which became a transforming event in Utah and Mormon history. Former BYU archivist Harvard Heath, author of the book's introduction, will also be in attendance. Heath is the editor of In the World: The Diaries of Reed Smoot. Mike and Harvard will be available from 5:30-7:30 to sign copies of the book and answer questions. Come enjoy some light refreshments, the comfortable and informal surroundings, the sight of old friends, and a store full of interesting books. For more information, contact Benchmark Books at 801-486-3111. (Benchmark is on the corner of 3300 South and State Street in Salt Lake City—just north of McDonald's—on the second floor of the dark red brick office building.

The public is invited to the "Sunday Afternoon Books and Authors Series" at the Olpin Student Union Building's Little Theater, University of Utah, at 3:00 p.m. The event is sponsored by Friends of the Marriott Library. It will include presentations by Stan Larson and Sam Passey, editors of The William E. McLellin Papers, 1854-1880, and Dawn House, one of the contributors to this important new volume. There will be a question-and-answer period.

McLellin was one of the original Twelve Apostles of the LDS Church. However, by 1838 McLellin had become a disaffected "friendly critic" who disagreed with the direction of the church but retained his belief in the divinity of the Book of Mormon. His papers were discovered by Dawn House, an editor at the Salt Lake Tribune, in Houston, Texas, in 1985 while reporting on the Mark Hofmann forgery and murder investigation. The papers were in the possession of Otis Traughber, the son of an RLDS acquaintance of McLellin's in nineteenth-century Missouri. More precisely, Otis had the papers his father had not already sold to the LDS Church in 1908, which were thereafter secured in the LDS First Presidency's private document vault. The Larson/Passey volume includes both sets of documents—those from the First Presidency's vault and those which were in Otis Traughber's possession and were ultimately purchased by the Marriott Library.

In January (2008), Signature Books will release The Mormon Church on Trial: Transcripts of the Reed Smoot Hearings, edited by Michael Harold Paulos. "The Smoot hearings are important not only to the study of Mormonism," writes Kathleen Flake, Professor of American Religious History at Vanderbilt University, "but also to the nation's interpretation of the First Amendment." Dr. Flake continues:

Making significant portions of the hearings' 3,500-page transcript available for the first time and including rich but unobtrusive annotation, this volume should be welcomed by scholars and the general reader alike, both of whom will find the hearings as interesting and amusing as they are important.

This sentiment is echoed by U.S. Senator Orrin G. Hatch, who discloses that "Reed Smoot has long been a hero of mine." The Senator adds that he "appreciate[s] this thorough, detailed collection of [Smoot's] early experiences in the U.S. Senate. With Latter-day Saints more prominent in government today than ever before, it is noteworthy how this book chronicles the way Senator Smoot challenged and overcame the anti-Mormon prejudices of his day to represent Utah in Congress.”

"The Natural object is always the best symbol"—Ezra Pound

We hope to focus our discussion, readings, and workshop on how our unique natural worlds give us poetic centers of gravity, touchstones of artistic resonance, and—as in Hemingway's "Big Two-Hearted River" stories*reflect the depths of hope and longing in our souls.

Warren Hatch is an assistant professor of English and Literature at Utah Valley State College and co-editor of Irreantum, journal of the AML. Warren's poems were selected by National Poet Laureate Billy Collins to win the 2006 Utah Writers Poetry Competition of the Western Humanities Review. Collins has said of him, "This poet has an unerring ear and a beautiful sense of how a line should be timed. I like the way precise verbal description can suddenly switch to a more colloquial line. He has the gift, the light touch, yet serious ballast on board." Scott has also won Utah Arts Council poetry contests, and his poetry collection, Mapping the Bones of the World, was published this year.

Join us from 10:00 a.m. to —12:00 noon at the Bountiful-Davis Art Center, 745 S. Main, Bountiful

Judy Busk, the author of The Sum of Our Past : Revisiting Pioneer Women will be reading from her book this Thursday, October 11, 2007, 7 p.m at the Orem Public Library, 58 N. State Street in Orem (phone: 801-229 7175). She will also speak to the Ladies Literary Club, Friday, October 12, 2007, 1:15 p.m. The literary club meets at 850 East South Temple in Salt Lake City (phone: 801-364-3451).

The annual meeting of The John Whitmer Historical Association will be held from Thursday, September 27th through Sunday, September 30th in Kirtland, Ohio.

Plenary and breakout sessions will be held in the new Temple Visitor Center, in the Community of Christ church, and in the lower court of the Temple itself.

Tours include visits to key Kirtland-area historic sites, including the restored Newell K. Whitney store and home; exploration of an 1830s ashery and sawmill with discussion of joint ownership within the United Order; the Isaac Morley Farm, site of a communal experiment among the followers of Sidney Rigdon (pre-Joseph Smith); John Johnson Farm, located in Hiram, Ohio, site of the vision of the three degrees of glory; and Fairport Harbor, the disembarkation point for Saints gathering to Kirtland from the New York area. Also the Zoar Village and Shaker sites in the area. See you there!

At long last the diaries of L. John Nuttall are available. The editor, Jedediah S. Rogers, has performed an enormous service by carefully transcribing and anotating them. Nuttall was notably the personal secretary to LDS church presidents in hidding, John Talyor and Wilford Woodruff. Jed will explain all this at Benchmark Books on Friday, September 28. The event will kick off at 5:30 p.m. at the bookstore located at 3269 South Main Street in Salt Lake City. As many of you know, Benchmark Books is located on the second floor of the building just north of McDonalds on the northeast corner of 3300 South and Main Street. The environment is always friendly. If you have not visited them before, Benchmark Books is a fun and interesting bookstore. Jed will begin speaking around 6:30 and will be available to sign books and answer questions. This volume, In The President's Office: The Diaries of L. John Nuttall, 1879-1892, is the eleventh installment in the Significant Diaries Series. Other volumes will also be available that night.

You can contact Benchmark Books ahead of time and reserve a copy by calling 486-3111 or if you don't live in Salt Lake you can reach them at 800-486-3112.

Warren Hatch will read selections from his new book of poetry, Mapping the Bones of the World, at the Harold B. Lee Library Auditorium at noon this Friday. Hatch is an Assistant Professor of English and Literature at Utah Valley University and editor of the journal Irreantum. His poems were selected by National Poet Laureate Billy Collins to win the 2006 Utah Writers Poetry Competition of the Western Humanities Review. He has also won the Monk Poetry Award, Utah Arts Council poetry contests, BYU's Eisteddfod Crown and Chair competitions, and BYU's Mayhew-Hinkley contest (poetry) and Ann Doty contest (short fiction). The library auditorium is located next to Special Collections on the ground floor. Click on the image to the right for more details.

The Salt Lake City Sunstone Symposium and Workshops will be held again at the Salt Lake Sheraton City Centre Hotel, located at 150 West 500 South in down town Salt Lake City.

The symposium begins Wednesday, August 8th with a variety of workshops on writing, meditation, philosophy, education and discussions of faith and doubt. Wednesday evening’s Smith-Pettit Lecture will be given by Helen Whitney, the creator of the PBS four-hour Frontline/American Experience documentary The Mormons. Durring the regular symposium, Whitney will premiere a screening of a previously unreleased version of her documentary that was excised during editing. This act, titled “Faith and Doubt,” presents firthand accouts of Latter-day Saints who lose or find faith.

Other interesting sessions are Dennis Potter’s session on Arthur "Killer" Kane, atonement and the documentary, New York Doll. Other sessions includ humor and Mormon culture with cartoonist Jeanette Atwood, Salt Lake Tribune columnist, Robert Kirby and LDS comedians Steve Marshall and Benght Washburn, a pre-screening of Richard Dutcher's new film Falling, Todd Compton on early Utah Mormon Indian liaison, Jacob Hamblin and several sessions and panels that will discuss the presidential bid by Mitt Romney including a paper on Romney by Grant McMurray, the popular former president of the Community of Christ. To register call 801-355-5926.