Thanks to Tod R. for sending a link to a great local resource:
The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia
It's a visually striking website with well-written content.
He also reminded me of this resource:
Free Library Digital Maps of Philadelphia
The maps are rectified (warped) to match a Google Maps image. It allows a historical exploration of places in the city.
Exploring the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Delaware Valley from the 1830s to the present
Showing posts with label Pennsylvania–Philadelphia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pennsylvania–Philadelphia. Show all posts
Thursday, December 17, 2015
Sunday, May 10, 2015
Thomas L. Kane Defends the Mormons
Thomas L. Kane memorial in Kane, Pennsylvania. (Source.) |
The message of early Mormonism was so radical that it tended to alienate wider American and European society. Missionary efforts gathered both poor and wealthy, highly educated and unschooled, master and slave, scoundrel and pillar of society, but all who survived the winnowing effect of the Nauvoo years had to pass through the same extreme trials of crossing the Great Plains to gather with the Saints. They were trying and difficult years and it meant much to the Saints to have a powerful, respected advocate outside the Church.
Philadelphia native Thomas L. Kane (1822-1883) first met members of the Church at an 1846 conference in Philadelphia. He was an idealist and merged his family's power with the causes of the poor and downtrodden. An abolitionist at the time that such activities were a fringe movement, the plight of the Mormons caught his sympathy. Over the next few years he:
- helped create the Mormon Battalion,
- secured permission for temporary refugee settlements on Pottawattamie and Omaha lands,
- defended the Church in the press,
- served as peacemaker during the Utah War,
and he did all that while suffering very poor health. In return the members of the Church held him in highest regard. They named towns and counties after him and put a statue of him in the Utah State Capitol. He never accepted Mormon beliefs, but always defended their rights as humans and citizens of the United States.
Kane spent time in Utah with his wife Elizabeth (more about her later), became a general during the Civil War, and established the town of Kane, Pennsylvania.
In 1970 the Church purchased the Presbyterian church in Kane, Pennsylvania, and created the Thomas L. Kane Memorial Chapel. Several months ago the Church donated the chapel to the Kane Historic Preservation Society.
In 1850, Thomas Kane presented a lecture to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania about the Mormons. Over the next few while I will excerpt some of his lecture.
Additional reading
The Prophet and the Reformer (Grow, Walker, 2015)—a new book about the friendship between Brigham Young and Thomas Kane
Thomas Leiper Kane & the Utah-Mormon War of 1857-58
The Kanes Have a Mormon ThanksgivingThomas Leiper Kane & the Utah-Mormon War of 1857-58
“The Qmlbwpnygax Eujugec Have Not the Power to Ktgjie the Wzznlhmpygtg”: Codes and Ciphers in Mormon History (part 1) (part 2) (part 3)
Excerpts
1—[Nauvoo] Lay as in a Dream
2—The Import of This Mysterious Solitude
3—Dreadful, Indeed, Was the Suffering
4—The Last of the Mormons That Left the City
5—
Thursday, April 9, 2015
William Penn's Prayer for Philadelphia
The 27-ton bronze statue of William Penn atop City Hall is one of the distinctive landmarks in the city of Philadelphia.
The son of an English father and Dutch mother, William Penn joined the Religious Society of Friends (Quaker) in his 20s. After several tumultuous years for the faith, Penn told King Charles II that the Quakers would leave England in return for a large land grant in America. Influential Quakers purchased West Jersey and East Jersey—New Jersey was not always divided into north and south as it is now—and then Charles II granted Penn 45,000 square miles of land with all powers to govern, except the power to engage in war, and named the territory after Penn's father, with sylvania being the Latin for "forest" or "woods."
The rest of William's Penn's life was complicated; politics and land grants can prove difficult bedfellows in any time; but he is rightly honored as one of the influential founders of the United States, not just the city of Philadelphia and Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. His legacy survives in our ideas of religious liberty, education, an amendable constitution, and, not least, the city he founded on the Delaware River.
As he left Pennsylvania for England in 1684, he wrote a moving letter to the friends and associates he was leaving behind. An excerpt from the letter is engraved on a plaque at City Hall and is known as William Penn's Prayer for Philadelphia.
And Thou, Philadelphia, the virgin settlement of this province—named before thou wert born—what love, what care, what service and what travail there have been to bring thee forth and to preserve thee from such as would abuse and defile thee.
Oh that thou mayest be kept from the evil that would overwhelm thee; that faithful to the God of thy Mercies, in the life of righteousness, thou mayest be preserved to the end.
My soul prays to God for thee that thou mayest stand in the day of trial, that thy children may be blest and thy people saved by His power.
Wednesday, April 8, 2015
Stephen Fleming on the Church in the Delaware Valley
Stephen Fleming is a talented young academic, and one of the few who has done significant work on the history of the Church in the Philadelphia area.
He wrote an article for the Mormon Historic Sites Foundation, available here:
Discord in the City of Brotherly Love: The Story of Early Mormonism in Philadelphia
Another article is not available online, but may be purchased.
The Delaware Valley and the Success of Early Mormonism
Monday, April 6, 2015
An Irish Immigrant Joins the Church, 1854
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Linton family reunion, Utah, c. 1908. Samuel Linton is sitting in the center. |
Samuel Linton was born in Ireland in 1828. His family moved to St. Johns, New Brunswick, Canada when Samuel was a child. Here he tells the story of his conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He left Philadelphia directly for Utah, where he helped rescue the Martin and Willie Handcart Companies in 1856.
I remained with my father until I was twenty (20), when I went to Philadelphia, with the approbation of my parents. I took passage on a Brigantine loaded with spare timber for New York which I helped to unload. It took us four days. I then took a train for Philadelphia where there was a job waiting for me. I was among strangers, but my friends were very kind to me.
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