Come, Come, Ye Saints | James B. Allen and Thomas G. Alexander, eds., Manchester Mormons: The Journal of William Clayton, 1840 to 1842

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Personal narratives of religious history and emigration have always been too few, commonly because ordinary people seldom undertake systematic writing. Mormons, however, were enjoined to record their experiences and great numbers of them did so; and it is gratifying to learn that Clayton’s is the first of a series of such journals to be printed. 

William Clayton was never one of the Mormon Church’s high command. Nor was he, like Parley P. Pratt, a writer of consistent originality and force. His Latter day Saints’ Emigrants’ Guide demonstrates his capacity to be useful; his well known journal of the Pioneer Company shows him writing clearly and straight forwardly; only rarely, as in a hymn, or his description of Brigham Young’s rebuke to the Pioneers for conduct unworthy of Saints, does he show power, even eloquence. He was a very early English convert, a man of above-average though not commanding intelligence, who presided over one of the Church’s earliest English branches. He took part in the first year’s migration of Mormon converts. The rute he took to Nauvoo differed in several respects from those commonly followed, and differed even more markedly from those followed towards Utah in later years. All this makes the present journal valuable, for it supplements the descriptions of the British Mission given by Young, Pratt, Kimball and Woodruff, and the more or less official reports in Millenial Star. 

Rather more than two-thirds of the journal treats eight months of Clayton’s work in Manchester. It becomes clear how missionaries were supported: Clayton received lodging from members, and meals, drink, fruit, clothing, and money in sixpences and shillings, in lieu of any regular stipend. He was endlessly busy, travelling, preaching, baptising, arguing with Methodists and socialists, deliberating on members’ marriage problems, raising funds for the sick and praying over and anointing them, writing letters for the illiterate. Members could be quarrelsome and obstinate; some of them buttressed their attitudes with appeals to scripture or claims to personal revelation; and in the face of all this, Clayton strove to maintain Church authority and unity. He writes a long report of a difficult council meeting, gives the titles of his sermons, often mentions members’ speaking in tongues, describes interruptions of services by hostile elements. He received a formal blessing from Wilford Woodruff, who with other members of the Twelve reached England in this year. He helped Heber C. Kimball with his journal (did he not do the same during the pioneer journey?). He kept the minutes of a conference at Preston. In the final third of the journal we see Clayton’s preparations for emigration, his journey to Liverpool, and his five-week Atlantic crossing. He testifies to the severity of seasickness, the filthy habits of the converts, the readiness of the master to take offence and to speak of mutiny and irons, the willingness of certain women to “make very free” with sailors and cabin passengers. He records services held on board, the deaths of children, and arrival at New York. Thence he and his party travelled by steamboat up the Hudson, then by boat more than a week on the Erie Canal, then by steam again from Buffalo to Chicago through the Great Lakes. From Chicago the journey involved a hundred miles by wagon, and finally five days by improvised sailing-boat to Nauvoo. A few pages follow on Clayton’s early life in Iowa, down to his appointment, in February 1842, as secretary to Joseph Smith. 

The summary may serve to convince readers of the journal’s worth. Since, however, it is to be the first of a series, it is important for a reviewer to comment at some length on editorial methods and standards. 

The book’s format is small, and the placing of notes, in smaller type, after each journal entry makes for a crowded page; yet it may be defended as making possible the very modest price. There is a satisfactory index. An appendix lists people mentioned in the journal, ordinary Manchester Mormons as well as Church leaders. Three editorial practices call for praise: scriptural references are identified; English places are described, by the use of a multi-volume topographical dictionary published in the middle of the nineteenth century and containing population figures from the census of 1841; journal entries for several episodes are supplemented by quotations from Clayton’s letters to his superiors. The Introduction is workmanlike, on the origin of the British Mission, the condition of Manchester’s population in a period of industrial depression, Clayton’s family and some of the people around him. Little can be discovered, however, about the precise occupations or living-standards of Manchester’s Mormons; and the editors, after using Faucher’s descriptions of the city, quote, rather rashly, the occupations I long ago worked out for Mormon emigrants over a long period of time. Total membership consisted also of people who later deserted the Church, or were excommunicated, or were too poor to move to America; so the economic balance may have been different. Inevitably there is a degree of repetition between Introduction, notes and Appendix. A few points are laboured excessively: the casual attitude in 1840 towards the Word of Wisdom, in Clayton’s numerous glasses of beer; the filling of the lower priesthood ranks with adults, which of course was inevitable at a time when all members were converts and not born into Mormon families; and small differences of practice in anointing the sick. Two identifications are missed, Altrincham and Runcorn on p. 151; Salford would not commonly be called a sub urb of Manchester (note 65) though it is a town immediately contiguous; in note 84 “Buty” is surely a misprint for “Bury”; and the index misspells “Dukinfield.” The entry of 10 October 1840 should have the word “foremast”; and all notes in the book misspell “millennium.” I am sure that there was no continuity through two centuries down to the Ranters discussed in note “06. The term was commonly ap plied to the Primitive Methodists, then, at the end of the nineteeth century, became merely a colloquial expression for any sect distasteful to the speaker and melodramatic in evangelical style. One identification, in note 185, I am sure is wrong. The journal’s text, with its reference to the arrival of a doctor, anchoring between two islands, and then an hour’s sail to New York Harbor, points to a stop at the Narrows, with the buildings observed the quarantine station on Staten Island. The map at the end is inaccurate in two respects. Although the rivers in New York State are marked, the emigrants’ route appears to go across country rather than by the Hudson and the Erie Canal. From Chicago, their route follows a river which must represent a confused combination of two separate streams. 

Three other points are worth making. The editors lean rather far in putting the most favorable construction upon Clayton’s relations with Alice Hardman and Sarah Crooks: the remark at the top of p. 119 is indeed ambiguous; but editors of the more famous diaries of Pepys and Byrd would have made a very different assumption, and fairly similar words are used on pp. 179-80 about the erring women on board ship. The quotations from Clayton’s letters to Church leaders, involving as they do several references to collections of papers in Utah, point to the need for some description of such sources, their place in the archives, and their accessibility to scholars. The final note, however, must be one of warm approval. In a single small book we now have one more excellent description of an Atlantic crossing under sail. We have a detailed record of the narrow world of early English converts, with all its poverty, enthusiasm, loyalty and contentiousness. Above all we have the story, even if unclear at a few points, of one man’s attempt, in that problem-filled society and separated from his own family, to do his duty as the local leader of his Church.

Manchester Mormons: The Journal of William Clayton, 1840 to 1842. Edited by James B. Allen and Thomas G. Alexander. Santa Barbara and Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith Inc. 1974. 248 pp. $8.95.