Sep 26, 2019 - Sale 2517

Sale 2517 - Lot 152

Price Realized: $ 7,250
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
"MARKS THE BEGINNING OF MORMONISM'S UTAH PERIOD" (MORMONS.) Young, Brigham. General Epistle from the Council of the Twelve Apostles. 8 pages, 8vo, on one uncut folding sheet; minor edge wear and toning, light smudge on first page. [St. Louis, 1848]

Additional Details

first edition of an important letter from Brigham Young to the faithful, written at Winter Quarters in Nebraska on 23 December 1847, recounting the overland journey and the reorganization of the church with Young in the First Presidency. After describing the resources of Utah, he writes "In this valley we located a site for the city, to be called the Great Salt Lake City" (page 4). He notes that "Since the murder of President Joseph Smith, many false prophets and false teachers have arisen" and announces plans to "re-organize the Church according to the original pattern, with a First Presidency and Patriarch."
"Of absorbing interest as it tells of the beginnings of the migration of the Mormons, from Nauvoo, Illinois, in 1846, the building of the Winter Quarters, and finally of the migration of a small body of the Mormons to the Salt Lake Valley in 1847 and the founding of the Mormon capital"--Streeter sale IV:2284. "Marks the beginning of Mormonism's Utah period"--Crawley 346. Flake 1507; Graff 715; Wagner-Camp 160:1. None traced at auction since 1968. The first of a recently discovered cache of six collected by Herbert S. Auerbach.