A Window on Utah, 1849–50 | Brigham D. Madsen, ed., A Forty-niner in Utah: With the Stansbury Exploration of Great Salt Lake: Letters and Journals of John Hudson, 1848–50, and Brigham D. Madsen, Gold Rush Sojourners in Great Salt Lake City, 1849 and 1850

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It is a pleasure to discuss these two books edited and written by Brigham D. Madsen, professor of history at the University of Utah. Their primary subject matter is the westward migration during the California gold rush era and its impact on newly established Salt Lake City. 

Although most readers are aware that thousands stopped in Salt Lake on their way to the gold fields, it comes as a surprise to be reminded that possibly a third of the 75,000 who reached the Pacific Coast in 1849 and 1850 traveled by way of the Mormon city. Some 10,000 arrived in 1849, the first year good crops were produced in the valley, and about 15,000 in 1850, the last year of heavy migration related to the gold rush. 

Considering that the Mormon population was only 6,000 to 7,000 and that most of the travelers arrived in need of provisions and fresh animals to continue their journey, their presence was certainly felt, even if they remained only two days (the minimum) or a week (the average). How ever, some stayed several weeks because of sickness or to engage in lawsuits with troublesome traveling companions. Others arrived late in the season and remained through the winter months. A few con verted to Mormonism and took up residence in this mountain-basin region. 

Looking at these two publications together, Forty-niner is the particular and Sojourners is the general. In the process of completing the background research on the letters and journal of John Hudson, Dr. Madsen, a mature and able scholar, examined numerous forty-niner diaries as well as Mormon diaries and journals to get a balanced view of this two-year period. For the Forty-niner book, this information was used as introductory material and notes. For the Sojourners book, this col lection of general information became the source for a view of Mormons through sojourner eyes and a view of sojourners through Mormon eyes. 

John Hudson’s letters in Forty-niner give us views of the school he taught under frontier conditions in a crude house that was also his residence, the dispensing of frontier justice seen from his vantage point as clerk of the court, a 24th of July celebration staged by a grateful people, and the religious gatherings of the Mormons as experienced by one who would become a convert. His sketches provide us with views of Salt Lake City and the Great Salt Lake as he saw them in 1849-50, and his journal enriches our understanding of Stansbury’s exploration of the lake.

The publication of Forty-niner reminds us of the continuing contributions of Dale L. Morgan who first called attention to the contribution the John Hudson journal and sketches made to the Stansbury report on the Great Salt Lake (1852), of Everett L. Cooley who remembered the Morgan reference to Hudson when he had an opportunity to acquire the Hudson letters and related materials, and of Obert C. Tanner who established the Tanner Trust Fund in memory of his mother, Annie Clark Tanner, thereby making possible the publication of the Hudson material in such an attractive format. 

From reports in the diaries of the Sojourners, we are able to appreciate such experiences as the pleasure felt after consuming all the fresh vegetables possible, the luxury of bathing and shaving in natural warm springs after weeks on the prairies, the pleasure of seeing a woman dressed in her best to attend a church meeting after an extended period in an all-male group, the resentment arising from the Mormons passing punitive laws to try to control the swearing which was a normal part of the vocabulary of the migrants, and the indignation felt by the sojourners, in need of pro visions and fresh animals, for the sharp bar gaining practiced by some of the “saints.” 

Just as sojourner accounts gave the United States a window on the society that the Mormons were establishing in Utah, these two books give us a window on Utah Mormon history and the interactions be tween the Mormons and the migrants enroute to the California gold fields in 1849-50, an experience that was useful, if sometimes troublesome, to both parties. 

A Forty-niner in Utah: With the Stans bury Exploration of Great Salt Lake: Letters and Journals of John Hudson, 1848-50, edited by Brigham D. Madsen (Salt Lake City, Utah: Tanner Trust Fund, University of Utah Library, 1981), xvii+227 pp., $22.50. 

Gold Rush Sojourners in Great Salt Lake City, 1849 and 1850 by Brigham D. Madsen (Salt Lake City, Utah: University of Utah Press, 1983), xvi + 178 pp., $17.50.