Jun 12 at 12:00 PM - Sale 2708 -
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Sale 2708 - Lot 135

Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
(MORMONS.) Papers of John Silvanus Davis and his daughter Julia, a Welsh Mormon immigrant family in early Salt Lake City. 47 items (0.4 linear feet), including manuscripts and printed ephemera; generally minimal to minor wear. Salt Lake City and elsewhere, bulk 1853-1877
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Additional Details

John Silvanus Davis (1822-1882) and his wife Elizabeth Phillips (1823-1906) joined the Latter-Day Saints in Wales, where he helped produce the first Welsh Mormon newspaper, and translated the Book of Mormon into Welsh. They emigrated to Salt Lake City in 1854, where he was a printer and operated a grocery store. He produced a popular non-alcoholic "cronk beer" similar to root beer. Their daughter Julia Elizabeth Davis (1851-1946) emigrated with her parents as a young girl. In 1876, she married a former Mormon, Joseph Lafayette Rawlins (1850-1926), a Salt Lake City attorney who served in the United States Senate for Utah from 1897 to 1903.

From John Davis, this lot includes a retained draft of his 5 April 1853 letter to Elder Franklin D. Richards written from Merthyr-Tydfil in Wales (discussing the sales of Welsh Mormon tracts, and his plans to emigrate to the United States); and his 1856 membership certificate in the Typographical Association of Deseret signed by Phineas Young (older brother of Brigham). His manuscript song "Love Among the Mormons," apparently unpublished, is dated Salt Lake City, 16 October 1869. It celebrates plural marriage: "Tis time for seven women / To one man's shirts to cling / I wonder what our Congress / May think of such a thing / Don't matter, we must flourish / For we keep the law of Moses."

From daughter Julia, this lot includes her daily diaries as a young woman from 1873 through 1877; a memorandum book with a few entries from 1865 to 1872; her 1908 United States passport; and several pages of reminiscences of her early life. The diaries contain some references to the early Church fathers. On 25 May 1873, "Father and I went to the Tabernacle . . . G. Bywater spoke, and President Young." On 9 July 1873, "Sister Woolley got angry at Hattie because she said that the Gentile rites of marriage was better in some respects to the Mormons." She notes the departure of Brigham Young's "Wife No. 19" on 17 July 1873: "I heard that Ann Eliza Webb had left the President." She heard Orson Pratt preach on 30 November 1873. The death of Brigham Young took place after her marriage. On 28 August 1876, her husband reported that "the President was so bloated & not expected to live." On 1 September, she went "to the Tabernacle to see the remains of the President. It was quite crowded & I felt very faint." She attended the burial the next day.

Julia describes a walk with a suitor named Clark on 23 August 1874: "He asked me if I loved a man with my whole heart, would I marry him if he was not a Mormon? I told him that as I felt now, I would not. He told me that he loved me. I wonder if he does?" She was then courted by Joseph L. Rawlins, who had been raised a Mormon but was no longer practicing. On 5 June 1876, "Josie wanted me to tell him when I would marry him." She describes her wedding day to Rawlins on 8 December 1876, presided by Judge Elias Smith (cousin of Joseph). She frequently attended concerts and the theater; on 14 May 1873 she saw the pianist Blind Tom perform. On 6 October 1877 she attended a local baseball game with her husband.

Julia's family memoir, consisting of 18 pages of manuscript and typescript notes, is accurately headed "Disconnected Remembrances," but includes interesting stories from the early days of Salt Lake City, arriving from Wales at the age of 2, "after a six months journey across the plains." On their new land, "the President advised father to build a good substantial house on the lot, so father did, it being the only full two story house below Main St."

This lot also includes a substantial collection of printed ephemera: the 27 May 1854 issue of the Millennial Star; the 3 January 1870 issue of the Deseret Evening News; the 19 April 1890 issue of the Salt Lake Herald (with birth of Boyce Rawlins); the Overland 1876 Almanac (San Francisco); and the posthumous "The Unfavored Few: The Auto-Biography of Joseph L. Rawlins, 1956. 4 uncaptioned photographs apparently depict Rawlins at various ages.

John S. Davis's 1844 London Bible has extensive annotations to the endpapers. Tipped in at rear is the small 8-page pamphlet by Lorenzo Barnes, "Very Important References, to Prove the Religion and Principles of the Latter Day Saints, to be True" (Bradford, Yorkshire: B. Walker, 1842). This is Crowley 152, the revised edition of "References to Prove the Gospel."

Finally, we have a selection of songs and poems published by John Silvanus Davis in Salt Lake City. His 30-page "The Bee-Hive Songster" is a compilation of songs (Flake 2722, see lot 137 below for a duplicate offered separately). 6 are newspaper clippings of his works with unrelated text on verso. 8 small song sheets, apparently published separately, include "Acrostic to my Wife Elizabeth Davis," 17 January 1867 (Flake 2721a, 4 copies); "A Song for Deseret," 23 October 1859 (Flake 2722d); "Love," 5 November 1859; "The Truth (Composed at the Request of Mr. T. Giles, the Blind Harpist)," 16 October 1859; and "The Kingdom of God or Nothing," 18 January 1858 (Flake 2722c).

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