Mar 10, 2020 - Sale 2533

Sale 2533 - Lot 158

Price Realized: $ 5,750
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 8,000 - $ 12,000
(MORMONS.) Young, Brigham. Invitation to a small post-Pioneer Day commemoration in the wake of the Utah War. Letter Signed "B. Young," addressed to Elder Charles C. Rich. One page, 6 1/2 x 4 inches, plus address panel on integral blank (no postal markings); folds, moderate dampstaining. Great Salt Lake City, UT, 23 August 1858
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A personal invitation for what appears to be a belated annual Pioneer Day celebration. "Elder Chas. C. Rich and ladies are respectfully invited to attend a social pic-nic party in Big Cotton-wood Kanyon on Thursday the 26th inst. at one o'clock p.m. at Mill D, the fourth mill up the kanyon." The recipient was a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Young adds an intriguing postscript: "P.S. Take your fire arms."
The Mormon settlement in Utah had a tradition of commemorating their 24 July 1847 arrival with an annual Pioneer Day festival at Cottonwood Canyon. The 1857 Pioneer Day festivities had been interrupted by the arrival of the United States Army, which began the Utah War. When the time of the 1858 Pioneer Day rolled around, the Army was just beginning to withdraw to a remote location, so the annual celebration was cancelled. However, a month later, Young held a much smaller celebration in the traditional spot. The Deseret News described the event in its 8 September issue. Rather than the usual thousands of attendees, for this event Young invited "the First Presidency, his Excellency Governor Cumming, and several other citizens, with ladies and children." They reported that "the party returned on the 28th, delighted and refreshed by the pleasant drive, the pure kanyon breezes, and the two nights and a day's encampment amid leafy towers by ice-cold streams." The firearms were probably not for recreational purposes--with the United States Army still camped nearby, the leadership of the Saints may have been reluctant to gather in a remote location unarmed. Provenance: from the famed Western Americana collection of Herbert S. Auerbach (1882-1945).