Sep 26, 2019 - Sale 2517

Sale 2517 - Lot 229

Price Realized: $ 6,500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
(UTAH.) File of letters to Salt Lake City Tribune editor Frederic Lockley. 21 letters sent to Frederic Lockley by various parties, one retained draft of a letter sent by Lockley, and two later letters by Lockley's son; minor wear. Vp, 1875-81, 1931
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Frederic Lockley (1824-1905) was an English-born emigrant who served in the Civil War for New York, went west to Kansas, and in 1872 became the managing editor of the anti-Mormon Salt Lake City Tribune. These letters include 5 from Judge Jacob Boreman of Beaver City, UT discussing the polygamy laws and other topics. Boreman's 2 December 1879 letter explains at length how word had gone out "from the Mormons at Salt Lake City, that all the Indians must be ready to go to war as the Mormons and Americans were going to fight, and the Indians were expected to help the Mormons." He blames the recent Ute outbreak on Mormon instigators, and recounts that "whilst those massacres were going on in the White River Agency country, some Mormons went right through that country and were not molested although they saw plenty of Indians." Among the other correspondents here are U.S. Marshal George R. Maxwell (2 letters), District Attorney Philip T. Van Zile (discussing the enforcement of polygamy laws in January 1879), and General Moses M. Bane of the United States Land Office. Leading anti-polygamy activist Jennie Anderson Froiseth writes in 1880, asking for support in her quest to launch a women's journal in Salt Lake City. George W. Gallagher, a Presbyterian minister in Ogden, UT, seeks help in an 1879 letter for a forthcoming anti-Mormon lecture: "Is there any evidence that the Danites are still in existence as a band of thugs? Are George Adair and Bill Stewart, the butchers of infants in the Mountain Meadows Massacre, still alive and at large?" Another 1879 letter from Ogden warned that an angry Mormon named James Horrocks planned to "get four trusty men whom he knew to go with him to the Tribune office and clean out the whole gang there. He didn't say what he wanted to do with the carcasses. James Horrocks is regarded here by both Mormons & Gentiles as a bad man." The lot also includes a retained draft of a letter from Lockley to former vice president Schuyler Colfax concerning the coming polygamy trials and missing witness Carrie Owen. Lockley's son Fred Lockley Jr. (1871-1958) became a nationally known journalist, best known for his reminiscences of Oregon's pioneer days. The lot is accompanied by two 1931 letters from the younger Lockley to collector Herbert Auerbach, discussing the sale of these letters.