Author: Paul Reeve

Gadianton Robbers Among the Ancestors

In fall 2001 (vol. 27, pp. 125-149) the Journal of Mormon History published an article I wrote entitled “‘As Ugly as Evil’ and ‘As Wicked as Hell’: Gadianton Robbers and the Legend Process among the Mormons.” Let me share a few excerpts from it and then pose a question.

My People Shall Wear Wooden Shoes

In 1874 a short lived satirical newspaper appeared in Utah, under the title Enoch’s Advocate: A Temporary Journal Devoted to the Interests of the United Order of Wooden Shoes. The paper’s sole intent was to take jabs both in picture and in print at Brigham Young and the United Order effort he had launched territory wide that year.

Polygamy: How Much Instead of How Many

In a 19th-century Utah newspaper, a wise and thoughtful satirist argued that the polygamy “problem” had wrongly been characterized as a numbers issue—how many wives a man had—rather than a quantity issue—how much wife a man had. The satirist offered this ingenious answer under the heading,

What Do Mormons Look Like?

In 1846 during the Mormon Exodus from Illinois, as the Saints were strung out in various camps across Iowa and farther west, Mormon Warren Foote went in search of a mill to grind some of his grain: “It is quite a curiosity for the inhabitants here to see a “Mormon,” he wrote.