Latter-day Saint Scandinavian Migration through Hull, England, 1852–1894

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Nearly one hundred thousand Latter-day Saints made the journey across the Atlantic during the nineteenth century. Both contemporary commentators and Mormon historians alike have described these ocean crossings extensively. Yet the journey from Liverpool to America was but one segment in the much longer gathering process for over twenty-four thousand Scandinavian Mormons who migrated to Utah during this period. Scandinavians represented the second-largest ethnic group of Saints gathering to Zion between 1852 and 1894. During these years, nearly two hundred vessels carrying Latter-day Saints (fig. 1) left Scandinavia bound for Hull, an important port on the east coast of England.1 The emigrants then made the overland railway crossing from Hull to Liverpool, where the headquarters of the British and European Missions were situated.2 Only once they had completed the journey to Liverpool could the transatlantic crossing commence. Our study of the migrant journeys made during these years seeks to explain the patterns of migration along established trade routes through the British port of Hull.

The Call to Gather and the Founding of the Hull Conference

Less than six months after the founding of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Prophet Joseph Smith announced that he had received a revelation calling for a gathering of the Saints: “And ye are called to bring to pass the gathering of mine elect; . . . they shall be gathered in unto one place upon the face of this land” (D&C 29:7–8). Latter-day Saint immigration to America commenced a decade later when the Latter-day Saint missionaries who had first arrived in Britain in 1837 reaped a rich harvest of converts in the British Isles.3

During this period, 1837–41, the missionaries baptized thousands throughout Great Britain, necessitating the organization of various conferences (ecclesiastical units). Each conference comprised several branches (smaller ecclesiastical units). Among the larger units was the Hull Conference, established in 1843.4 By December 1847, its membership had reached 65, “including 1 high priest, 3 elders, 5 priests, 3 teachers, and 2 deacons.”5 Eight months later, the conference had reportedly increased to 163.6 By 1851, the Hull Conference had grown to 318 members.7 By the mid-nineteenth century, the Latter-day Saints in the Hull region were in a position not only to observe and proselytize the inhabitants of England’s third largest port but also to offer support to their fellow Saints who were immigrating through the port en route to America.

Hull as a Way Station for Converts in Eastern England

The first known Saints who migrated to America through Hull were a group of five families from the Louth Branch in Lincolnshire (then part of the Hull Conference).8 The members of this group made their way through Hull before traveling by rail to Liverpool and then crossing the Atlantic en route to Utah via New Orleans.9 One teenage member of the group recalled:

On the 16th of January, 1849, we left Louth by the morning train and although it was quite early in the morning, the station house was crowded with our friends and associates who were there to say farewell. . . . The departure of these leading families of the Louth Branch left it in a disorganized condition, from which it has not since recovered.

Our journey from Louth to Hull on the 16th, and from Hull to Liverpool on the 17th of January was full of interest to me, a boy of 16 years of age, when I could appreciate to some extent the many strange, interesting, and delightful scenes we witnessed.10

The use of the port of Hull as an entrepôt for gathering Saints increased as rates of conversion in the hinterlands of Hull, the East Riding of Yorkshire, and nearby North Lincolnshire accelerated. But Hull and its surrounding region would never harvest the large numbers of converts that the West Yorkshire and Lancastrian towns yielded.11 In this aspect, Hull would remain a relatively insignificant branch of the Church throughout the 1840s. Hull’s important role in Latter-day Saint history grew not from the region’s harvested souls but through the large numbers of Latter-day Saint emigrants who migrated through the port en route to Utah. Hull’s location as a harbor with railway access to Liverpool allowed the Church an economically feasible yet quick option in assisting the newly converted migrants who passed through the port each year.

Early History of the Latter-day Saint Scandinavian Mission

Having already established a secure foothold in Britain, the Church began planning to expand missionary work into parts of mainland Europe. The funds needed for missionary work and for helping converts migrate came from the trade generated by prospectors passing through Utah in 1849.12 During the same year, King Frederick VII of Denmark signed a new constitution, which granted religious toleration to its citizens and enabled the Danes—who were the largest portion of Scandinavian Latter-day Saint converts—the opportunity to hear the restored gospel.13

Four months after this declaration of religious tolerance, the fall general conference saw several Mormon elders called to various missions on October 6–7, 1849.14 Among them was Elder Erastus Snow, called to Denmark, with Elders Peter O. Hansen and John E. Forsgren called to work under his direction in Denmark and Sweden.15 Hasty preparations were made for the missionaries’ late-season journey across America. They left their wives and children to perform the household chores and prepare for the crop harvest, while they departed to Europe to harvest souls.

On October 19, 1849, the missionaries gathered east of the Salt Lake Valley “at the mouth of Emigration Canyon,” where they were met by Brigham Young, who bade farewell to a company consisting of “twelve wagons, forty-two horses and mules, one carriage, and thirty-five men.” By December 7, 1849, despite terrible mountain snowstorms, they reached the Missouri River and were warmly greeted by friends at Kanesville, Iowa. From Kanesville, the missionaries took different routes and visited local groups of Saints in the cities they passed through, such as St. Louis, New Orleans, and Boston. They preached the gathering and received liberal contributions to their missions in each of the places they visited.16 In spring 1850, they finally set sail for Liverpool.17

Once in Britain, the three elders traveled extensively, preached to local Saints, and received much-needed financial assistance for their forthcoming missionary work in Scandinavia. They added to their number George Parker Dykes, a Latter-day Saint missionary already serving in Britain who had earlier ministered among Norwegian immigrants in Illinois. Peter O. Hansen “proceeded alone to his native land, Denmark,” arriving in Copenhagen on May 11, 1850.18 The others followed from Hull on June 14, on board the steamer Victoria.19 Once the missionaries were reunited, their important work could commence, and they began to introduce the gospel in Scandinavia.

During the earliest days of the Scandinavian Mission, Elder Snow (who served as Scandinavian Mission president) urged postponing baptisms until converts had thoroughly investigated the Church. The Lord, however, warned him in a dream to move ahead with baptisms. As a result, the first fifteen Danish Latter-day Saint converts were baptized on August 12, 1850, just two months after the missionaries arrived in Copenhagen.20 The first fruits of preaching the restored gospel in Denmark were now realized, and the first Danish branch was organized in Copenhagen on September 15, 1850.21

Just as in America in the 1830s and then Britain in the late 1830s and ’40s, the early successes of missionary work enabled the mission to spread. The Scandinavian Mission expanded throughout Denmark and then to Sweden and Norway. Though the Latter-day Saint missionaries encountered difficulties throughout Scandinavia, they successfully established branches of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in each of the countries that they visited. As the Scandinavian Mission grew, the need to organize the gathering escalated.

The Beginnings of Latter-day Saint Scandinavian Emigration

Each Scandinavian convert represented a potential emigrant. Between 1850 and 1905, just under 49 percent of the Scandinavian converts emigrated22 (fig. 2). Unlike the British emigrants from Liverpool, no Scandinavian convert would travel a direct course to America but instead made a “series of journeys.”23 As William Mulder explained:

Going to America involved a whole series of journeys. The proselytes first had to make their way to Copenhagen [the] main assembly point. . . . From Copenhagen they took a steamer to Kiel or Lübeck on the German portion of the peninsula, continuing by rail to Altona, within walking distance of Hamburg, or Glückstadt, a little farther down the Elbe. Except for the years 1862, 1865, and 1866, when parties went directly from Hamburg to America, the emigrants moved straight across the North Sea to Grimsby or Hull and entrained for Liverpool along with whatever Norwegian Saints had come directly from Christiania or Stavanger.24

The First Scandinavian Migrants. The first Mormon Scandinavian migrants, consisting of a small group of nine converts, left Copenhagen on January 31, 1852, and traveled to Liverpool via Hamburg and London. They arrived on February 7, too late for the voyage of the Ellen Maria, and so had to wait over a month in Liverpool for the chance to leave on another Latter-day Saint–chartered vessel.25 During this time, Elder Erastus Snow arrived from Copenhagen with another group of nineteen Scandinavian converts. The combined group of twenty-eight emigrants left Liverpool on the ship Italy on March 11, 1852, in the care of Ole U. C. Mönster.26

With the first group of converts now sailing to Zion, the Scandinavian Mission commenced arrangements for the transportation of future emigrating companies along the migrant route (via Hull and Liverpool) used by thousands of non–Latter-day Saint European emigrants. As historian Phillip A. M. Taylor noted:

In 1852, Appleton Harmon made enquiries about the cost of bringing over the very first company of Scandinavian Mormons. He found that Gee and Company of Hull would charge a guinea a head from Copenhagen for deck or steerage passage, or would provide a whole ship for three or four hundred people, at £1. 10.[s] 0d. each [per shipload].27

Many steamship operators of the time were willing to transport passengers on the routes their ships plied regularly, but transporting the large companies of emigrating Saints necessitated special arrangements between the shipping agent and the mission leaders. Furthermore, the leaders of the Scandinavian Mission in Copenhagen and the British Mission in Liverpool sought to charter such vessels for their exclusive use, enabling the allocation of more space (per passenger) than was normally provided for third-class passengers traveling during this period.28

Such arrangements required careful negotiation, but the business was competitive. By fall 1852, Morris and Company of Hamburg had outbid the competing companies and accordingly received the contract to carry the first large company, the John Forsgren Company, of Scandinavian Latter-day Saint converts from Copenhagen, through various cities and finally to New Orleans.29 With this contract in place, the emigration of Latter-day Saint converts commenced en masse. Each group of emigrating Saints gathered in Copenhagen, then traveled to Hamburg or Glückstadt, before journeying to Liverpool via Hull or Grimsby.30

The John Forsgren Company. The first large company of Mormon Scandinavians to embark from Copenhagen—led by Elder John E. Forsgren, one of the original four missionaries sent to Scandinavia—consisted of “199 adults and 95 children under [the age of] twelve.”31 These Latter-day Saint converts voyaged from Copenhagen to Kiel, Germany, on the steamer Obotrit. After taking a train to Hamburg, they voyaged down the Elbe River and into the North Sea on the Lion (see fig. 1). Here they abruptly encountered the most difficult part of their journey westward when a terrible winter storm enveloped them in the night. One Danish Saint wrote in his journal on Sunday, December 26, 1852: “Toward midnight a terrific storm arose and the great waves broke over the ship in quick succession, and frequently the water poured down upon us in the hold.”32 The “Manuscript History of the John H. Forsgren Emigrating Company” entry for Tuesday, December 28, verifies this event:

After sailing all of Sunday and Monday, and most of today we arrived through the grace and kindness of God at Hull, England, at 5 o’clock in the evening. We had come through a storm the like of which the captain of the ship said he had never been out in. Some of the ship’s cargo was ruined, and the wind was so strong that our clothes were nearly blown overboard. The Lord helped and strengthened all of us both in body and soul so that we could continue our journey without delay.33

The hurricane conditions experienced on this North Sea crossing were some of the worst in the area for over thirteen years. The local press described the storm and its aftermath: “On Saturday, Sunday, and Monday last, this island was visited by terrific gales of wind, approaching, in fact, to a perfect hurricane. As a matter of course, the wrecks upon our coast have been frightfully numerous, and, what is still worse, they have been accompanied with a shocking loss of human life.”34 The John Forsgren Company suffered no loss of life and landed at the Steam Packet Wharf in Hull on Tuesday, December 28, where they were met by Richard Cortis, one of Hull’s emigration agents35 (fig. 3).

On the morning of Wednesday, December 29, 1852, having stayed overnight in a nearby lodging house, the migrants made the one-and-a-half-mile journey on foot to the Paragon Railway Station.36 From this station, the Scandinavian Saints traveled on a specially chartered train that took them all the way to Liverpool. There, the Forsgren Company remained in another lodging house while awaiting their departure on the Forest Monarch, which sailed on January 16, 1853, with 297 Saints on board.37

The migration route of the Forsgren Company from Copenhagen to Liverpool (via Hull) established the primary pattern that would be followed by Scandinavian converts for the subsequent forty-one years. Though 3,175 immigrating Saints would arrive in Liverpool via Grimsby, 4 via Newcastle, and 9 via London, it would be Hull that received most of the Saints destined for Utah, with 21,243 (87 percent) arriving there between 1852 and 1894.38

Trade Agreements and Migration through Hull

The Latter-day Saint Scandinavians who emigrated between 1852 and 1894 represent only a small fraction of the many Europeans who migrated to America. Between 1836 and 1914, an estimated thirty million Europeans immigrated to the United States.39 About four million of these migrated through the United Kingdom “via the eastern ports of Harwich, Hull, Grimsby, Leith, London, Newcastle and West Hartlepool.” Having arrived at an east coast port, the “transmigrants were then transported by train to the ports of Glasgow, Liverpool, London, and Southampton.”40 Even though London was used as the primary port of entry for European immigrants who settled in Great Britain, the ports of Hull and Grimsby were used by about three million (75 percent) of the European migrants destined for America and Canada because the distance between the River Humber and Liverpool by rail was the shortest. Of these migrants, about 2.2 million (73 percent) favored Hull over Grimsby.

British ship owners, and later the railway companies, developed an effective system of organization for migrant shipping. As steamships replaced sailing vessels, trade agreements between steamship companies and rail operators became stronger, led by the Wilson shipping line of Hull, the North Eastern Railway, and (later) the Guion shipping line of Liverpool. Trade agreements between shipping and railway operators were essential because they enabled the British operators to lower the price of direct migration. Cheap, safe, and reliable travel encouraged millions of Europeans to travel via Britain.

Morris and Company. From 1852 to 1869, Morris and Company provided good service for the European Latter-day Saint migrants. Although Morris and Company chartered only sailing vessels to transport Saints on the Atlantic crossing from Liverpool, they were able to use the steamers of the Wilson Line, owned by the Hull-based Thomas Wilson (fig. 4), Sons and Company and other North Sea operators, on the North Sea crossing.41 The success of the Wilson Line’s passenger operations was based upon its ability to supply Liverpool shipping operators with the large numbers of third-class passengers needed to fill the vessels that ferried passengers across the North Atlantic. But beginning in 1867, Morris and Company gradually lost the “Mormon Contract” to transport Saints to Zion when the Guion Line began transporting Saints across the North Atlantic on steamships instead of sailing vessels. After three sailing vessels (probably belonging to Morris and Company) of Latter-day Saint immigrants were sent the following year (1868), an agreement was made between the Church and the Guion Line to transport the remaining Mormon migrants for the remainder of the year.42

The Guion and Wilson Lines. The Guion Line’s steamships drastically reduced the time involved in gathering to Zion, shortening the length of the Atlantic crossing from 32–36 days to 10–16 days.43 Although the Mormons contracted solely with the Guion Line for the transport of all their European converts, the Liverpool-based company subcontracted the Wilson Line to carry the European converts across the North Sea to Hull (as the Wilson Line had successfully done for Morris and Company). After the Church signed a new emigrant contract with Guion for a company traveling in 1869, Mormon converts traveled on a Wilson Line steamer to Hull (fig. 5) and journeyed across England to Liverpool by the North Eastern Railway’s trains before they were allocated a berth on a steamship of the Guion Line for their transatlantic passage. This integrated service utilized the successful operations of large-scale transport companies on chartered (not scheduled) services and demonstrated how organized groups could form successful partnerships that were beneficial to all parties concerned. In addition, organized groups, such as the Mormons, were able to obtain a reduction in price by purchasing their tickets in bulk.

On May 13, 1869, George Ramsden, agent of the Guion Line, met with British Mission President Albert Carrington in Liverpool to arrange transatlantic transport for a company of Mormon converts aboard the Minnesota.44 According to their plan, the Saints boarded the Minnesota in Liverpool on June 1, 1869. The British Mission history records:

On their arrival on board they were provided with tea, and everything was done by the manager, Mr. G. Ramsden, for the comfort of the Saints. They had the best part of the steamer entirely for themselves and could use the aft part of the ship in common with the cabin passengers.45

The successful partnership between the Church and the Guion line lasted for a quarter of a century (1869–94). The relationship of Guion agent George Ramsden with the Mormons was extraordinary. In praise of the trust Ramsden enjoyed with the Saints, British Mission President Anthon H. Lund pointed out that Ramsden worked for decades with the Church without a written contract.46

For its part, the Wilson Line provided a standard of steamer that surpassed most of its North Sea rivals.47 The Guion Line (fig. 6), for its agreed responsibilities, hired the services of Charles Maples, a Hull-based emigration agent, who met the migrants on arrival in port and escorted them safely to the railway station.48 Maples, like his counterparts at Liverpool, was noted by Latter-day Saint migrants for the help he provided in assisting the foreign converts en route to Liverpool.49

Not only did the Saints receive a good standard of service from these shipping lines, but they were also assisted by their fellow Saints en route. Scandinavian Saint Peter O. Hansen noted on arrival at Hull in 1855 that the company he traveled with was “very kindly greeted by the Hull Saints.”50 Four years later, another Mormon migrant wrote: “At the landing place, 18 brethren and sisters picked us up, who accompanied us to our inn where they entertained us greatly with their song.”51

Those who could not afford to emigrate often sought assistance through the Perpetual Emigrating Fund, a revolving fund that assisted Saints migrating to Utah. Others sold their goods in order to pay for the cost of the long journey westward. Unlike previously used shipping lines, the Wilson Line offered services from numerous ports in Europe. Eventually a system was established in which Saints would journey to Hull from their local port in Norway, Sweden, or Denmark without having always to gather at the Scandinavian Mission headquarters in Copenhagen. Although this system increased the number of European ports from which the Saints could embark, Wilson’s base in Hull ensured that Grimsby would no longer be used by the Saints as a port of entry into Britain. Hull would now monopolize the Latter-day Saint migrant trade to Liverpool as Copenhagen once had. Hull would retain this role until 1894, when the Guion Line folded.

The Rail Journey from Hull to Liverpool

From Hull, the Latter-day Saint migrants traveled by train to Liverpool. A fifteen-year-old Mormon convert who traveled in 1888 described the train:

The passenger trains were different then any I had seen before. The coaches were divided into compartments that would accommodate from 6 to eight passengers; they would be locked in. A running board on the outside of the train that the conductor used to go from compartment through the whole train. I thought it a practical way to check all passengers with out disturbing those already checked.52

Rail services from Hull to Liverpool had been established in 1840 when the rail line between Liverpool and Selby was extended all the way to Hull.53 The North Eastern Railway, which took over control of this route in 1851, chartered trains from Hull to Liverpool for emigrants when trade necessitated. As the scale of the migration grew, so the facilities improved. An emigrant waiting room was provided at the Paragon Railway Station in Hull from 1871 and extended in 1881 (fig. 7). It provided the migrants with a warm room, limited washing facilities, and seats to rest on while waiting for the train tickets for their railway journey across the Pennines to Liverpool.54 The journey to Liverpool lasted up to six hours.

The rail route out of Hull varied according to arrangements made in advance between the railway and steamship companies and the agents for the Latter-day Saints. The majority traveled on the North Eastern Railway’s trains via Leeds, Manchester, and Bolton before arriving at Liverpool’s Lime Street Station. Most migrating Saints saw little of the port of Hull. As one passing Saint recorded:

I did not see anything of Hull beyond the streets through which we went to reach the railway station. The railway station itself was beautiful and imposing. We left for Liverpool on a special train at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, and came through the towns of Howden, Selby, Normington [Normanton], Brandford [Bradford], Leeds Hudbersfild [Huddersfield], Manchester and Bolton to Liverpool. But as it became dark at an early hour, I saw little or nothing at all of the cities and the country we passed through. The country around Hull was pretty, flat and fertile. Farther away it was more mountainous. The railway was frequently on a higher level than the towns and villages, and sometimes it also went along below the surface at considerably long stretches.55

Passengers arriving in England via Grimsby in the 1850s and 1860s waited at the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire Railway’s dock terminus in Grimsby. Located near to the landing stage where the migrants had arrived, they slept overnight in a large dining-cum sleeping room before traveling to Liverpool via Sheffield, Manchester, and seven tunnels.56

Regardless of the route they took, all migrants traveled the 140-mile journey to Liverpool by steam train. The scenery they passed through varied as greatly as the diverse backgrounds of the passengers on board. From the flat hinterlands of the Humber to the rugged terrain of the Pennines, the journey was an experience they would never forget—especially for those like Joseph Hansen and his father. Joseph wrote that “this was the first and only time that my father rode in a railroad train.”57

The Arrival in Liverpool

At Liverpool, the Mormon converts were greeted by the agents of the shipping company with which they were booked to cross the Atlantic as well as with Church-appointed emigration agents. As the primary port of Mormon embarkation, Liverpool launched most of the international emigration-voyages made to America in the nineteenth century. It was not only the home of the British Mission and the administrative headquarters for the Church in Europe,58 but it was also (by the time Mormon emigration was launched in 1840) considered the most active international port of emigration in the world. With two thousand public houses, it was considered a sailor’s paradise. Its prominence derived from its prime location for rail connections in the British Isles and from its excellent navigable channels in the Mersey River.59 Though Scandinavian Latter-day Saint emigrants would join other European converts (mostly British) who were also emigrating to Zion, the cosmopolitan nature of Britain’s second largest port left a permanent impression upon those traveling via the Atlantic port.

The Mormon emigrants’ stay in Liverpool was often shorter than that of their non–Latter-day Saint counterparts. When Morris and Company (based in Hamburg) had the Mormon contract, emigrants usually spent anywhere from a few days to a few weeks there. Once Guion (based in Liverpool) had taken over the business of shipping Latter-day Saint emigrants, the waiting time was reduced to a day or two. After gathering their luggage from the railway station, a lodging house, or the mission headquarters, the Scandinavian pioneers joined their fellow travelers on board vessels that would transport them across the Atlantic. Having traversed the North Sea and Britain, the Saints had overcome the first stage in their lengthy journey west.

Conclusion

During the latter half of the nineteenth century, the Scandinavian Mission sent off over twenty-four thousand Latter-day Saint immigrants.60 Each detail of their journey from Europe to America was planned in advance by Church leaders, shepherding missionaries, and the providers of chartered transport. Leaders arranged for agents, located from Copenhagen to Liverpool, to meet each group of Saints at each stop on their epic journeys west.

Throughout the period of gathering, Church leaders took advantage of the latest developments in technology to transport the foreign converts in as comfortable and efficient a way as possible. Though Latter-day Saints are generally aware of European converts crossing the Atlantic from Liverpool, it was the transit arrangements at Copenhagen, Hamburg, Grimsby, and Hull that ensured that the Scandinavian converts would reach Utah. These “feeder ports” each had a pivotal role in this process, but it would be Hull that sent more Latter-day Saint Scandinavian migrants on to Liverpool than any other port in this era of gathering.

Hull’s role was not determined by geographic location alone. More important, the links fostered between the Church leaders in Copenhagen and Liverpool and specific steam and rail operators accounted for Hull’s significant role in transporting Latter-day Saint converts to America. Such operators proved they could provide a level of service and integrated transportation systems that would efficiently convey the migrants to the vessels moored in Liverpool. Such services led Church leaders in Europe to direct the majority of Scandinavia’s Mormon emigrants to the ships chartered by Morris and Company and later the Guion Line. Both shipping lines chartered ships to transport the Saints across the North Sea from various parts of Europe to the European Mission headquarters in Liverpool. Between 1867 and 1894, all these feeder services would be provided by the Wilson Line of Hull and the rail services of the North Eastern Railway.

The revolution in steam technology drastically reduced the time needed to make the journey from mainland Europe to the great Mormon gathering place in the Salt Lake Valley. This change, coupled with competition between rival steamship operators and Church financial assistance, put Zion within easier reach of European disciples.

Though traveling was a drawn-out affair, almost every one of Zion’s gatherers knew it would be worth it. This determination to reach Zion is perhaps best exemplified by the journal of Jane C. Robinson Hindley, who in 1855 wrote:

I believed in the principle of the gathering and felt it my duty to go altho it was a severe trial to me in my feelings to leave my native Land and the pleasing associations I had formed there, but my heart was fixed I knew in whom I had trusted and with the fire of Israels God burning in my bosom, I forsook my home.61

About the author(s)

Fred E. Woods is Associate Professor of Church History and Doctrine at Brigham Young University. He received his B.A. and M.A. from BYU and his Ph.D. from the University of Utah. In 2002 he was awarded the Richard L. Anderson Distinguished Research Award by Religious Education.

Nicholas J. Evans is Caird Doctoral Fellow at the Maritime Historical Studies Centre, University of Hull, England. He received his B.A. in history from Leicester and is currently completing a Ph.D. on European migration via the United Kingdom, 1836–1916.

Notes

1. See Gordon Jackson, “The Ports,” in Transport in Victorian Britain, ed. Michael J. Freeman and Derek H. Aldcroft (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), 218–52. The city of Hull is officially styled Kingston upon Hull, which is derived from the fact that Hull was founded by King Edward I and was situated upon the River Hull.

2. Most of the Scandinavian converts embarked from Copenhagen, headquarters of the Scandinavian Mission. This information has been culled from the Mormon Immigration Index CD (Salt Lake City: Family History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2000); British and Scandinavian Mission Records; and Customs Bills of Entry in the City of Hull, England. For information concerning vessels carrying Mormon Scandinavian converts from Copenhagen, see Shauna C. Anderson, Ruth Ellen Maness, and Susan Easton Black, Passport to Paradise: The Copenhagen “Mormon” Lists, 2 vols. (West Jordan, Utah: Genealogical Services, 2000), vols. 1–2, covering the years 1872–94.

3. The gathering from distant lands did not commence until the necessary priesthood keys of the gathering were restored in 1836 (D&C 110:11). The following year, Apostle Heber C. Kimball was called by Joseph Smith to lead a mission to England. Accompanied by Apostle Orson Hyde, Elder Kimball led a small group of missionaries who found great success in the British Isles. They had been warned by Joseph to “remain silent concerning the gathering . . . until such time as the work was fully established, and it should be clearly made manifest by the Spirit to do otherwise.” See Joseph Smith Jr., History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, ed. B. H. Roberts, 2d ed. rev., 7 vols. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1971), 2:492. Their groundbreaking work was greatly augmented by the mission of the Twelve in 1840–41. For excellent information on these early missions, see James B. Allen, Ronald K. Esplin, and David J. Whittaker, Men with a Mission, 1837–1841: The Quorum of the Twelve in the British Isles (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1992); and James B. Allen and Malcom R. Thorp, “The Mission of the Twelve to England, 1840–1841: Mormon Apostles and the Working Classes,” BYU Studies 15, no. 4 (1975): 499–526.

4. Andrew Jenson, Encyclopedic History of the Church (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Publishing, 1941), 346, notes: “The Hull Conference, or District, of the British Mission, dates back to 1843 and continued under that name until 1868, when it became a part of the Leeds Conference. When the Grimsby Conference was organized in 1900 the branches formerly belonging to the Hull Conference constituted this new conference which continued until 1910, when the Grimsby Conference became the Hull Conference, consisting of the Latter-day Saints residing in the city of Hull and vicinity in Yorkshire, England with headquarters at Hull.” See also Jack Spurr, ed., A History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Hull Area, 1844–1973 (Hull, England: By the editor, 1973).

The Hull Conference and its local branch in Hull developed in a region that had experienced the large-scale growth of nonconformist religious groups during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. By 1851, membership and attendance at nonconformist churches, chapels, and mission halls in this important maritime center had eclipsed that of England’s state church, the Church of England. See David Neave, Lost Churches and Chapels of Hull (n.p.: Hutton Press, Cherry Burton, 1991), 7.

5. James Ure and Charles Barnes, “Conference Minutes. Hull,” Millennial Star 10 (May 1, 1848): 134.

6. Orson Pratt, “Conference Minutes. General Conference,” Millennial Star 10 (August 15, 1848): 252, reported that by August 14, 1848, the Hull Conference had 7 branches and 163 members, including 11 elders, 10 priests, 6 teachers, and 5 deacons. These statistics were also quoted in “The Latter-day Saints,” Hull Advertiser, September 29, 1848, 5, which also noted they held their meeting in the Temperance Hall, Paragon Street.

7. Spurr, Latter-day Saints in the Hull Area, 2.

8. Ure and Barnes, “Conference Minutes. Hull,” 134, noted that a conference was held in Hull on December 26, 1847, in the “Temperance-Hall on Blanket-row.” At this conference, a representation of the branches was called for which included the Louth Branch among several others. It said the “Louth Branch, [was] represented by letter, [and consisted] of 36 members, including 3 elders, 3 priests, 1 teacher, and 1 deacon.”

9. They traveled by the East Lincolnshire Railway from Louth to Grimsby before joining the train of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway from Grimsby to New Holland (on the south bank of the River Humber). At New Holland, they boarded a steam packet belonging to the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire and sailed to nearby Hull. This group of Saints from Lincolnshire sailed across the Atlantic on the Zetland. See Conway B. Sonne, Saints on the Seas: A Maritime History of Mormon Migration, 1830–1890 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1983), 149. For first-person accounts of this voyage, see the winter voyage of the Zetland on the Mormon Immigration Index CD.

10. “Autobiography of Thomas Atkin Jr.,” typescript, 4, Church Archives, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City. Other converts from Hull and the British Isles gathered to Zion for spiritual as well as temporal reasons. Letters posted in Hull’s local newspaper created an additional stir about immigration to Utah. For example, in an article titled “The Great Salt Lake Valley,” Hull Advertiser, July 26, 1850, 7, the editor posted a letter composed by a British convert who, on his way to Utah, had written to his brother, a tradesman in Hull. Among other things, the convert reported that the Salt Lake Valley had been said to be “the most healthy climate in the world, the country most beautiful, and that that people will eventually be the richest on earth.” A few years later, a Latter-day Saint convert from Hull named Mr. Wm. Brown wrote in an article titled “Letter from a Hull Mormon in America,” Hull Advertiser, December 6, 1856, 1, the following description of Springville, Utah: “I enjoy the best kind of health here amongst the mountains. I am quite happy, and rejoice in God that ever I was led to hear the Latter Day Saints preach the Gospel, and that I left England to travel to this place. . . . We are living in the last days. . . . I should impress upon your mind the necessity of obeying the gospel that is taught by the Mormons.”

11. Phillip A. M. Taylor, Expectations Westward: The Mormons and the Emigration of Their British Converts in the Nineteenth Century (Edinburgh, Scotland: Oliver and Boyd, 1965), 248–49, shows that for the period 1863 to 1870, British Mormon emigrants from the Hull Conference numbered only 94 (out of a periodic total of 10,742 emigrants from all conferences in England). For the earlier and later periods of British Mormon emigration (1850–62 and 1874–90), the number of emigrants from the Hull Conference had been included in either the figures for Mormon Emigration from Yorkshire (1,203 out of 12,618 total English Latter-day Saint emigrants between 1850 and 1862) or from the Leeds Conference (474 out of 11,168 between 1874 and 1890).

12. Leonard J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830–1890 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1958), 64. To help assist the poor international Saints who desired to emigrate, Church leaders created a revolving fund called the Perpetual Emigrating Fund, which the Saints sustained in the October 1849 general conference held in Salt Lake City. John D. Unruh Jr., The Plains Across: The Overland Emigrants and the Trans-Mississippi West, 1840–60 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 303, states that over ten thousand gold seekers made a detour through Utah in 1849 and thousands more in the immediate years that followed. See Fred E. Woods, “More Precious than Gold: The Journey to and through Zion in 1849–1850,” Nauvoo Journal 11 (spring 1999): 109, for the story of Saints who gathered to Utah instead of the California gold fields.

13. Richard L. Jensen noted in his critique of an earlier version of this article that “while there may have been official tolerance on the part of the government, much of the Danish populace was far from tolerant where religion was concerned. Many Mormons were persecuted in Denmark despite the provisions of the constitution.” Jensen also emphasized that religious freedom was even more limited in Norway and Sweden. Richard L. Jensen, email to author, October 9, 2002.

14. Marius A. Christensen, “History of the Danish Mission of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1850–1964” (master’s thesis, Brigham Young University, 1966), 6–8.

15. For a list of various places these missionaries were assigned, see Thomas Bullock, “Minutes of the General Conference, Held at the Great Salt Lake City,” Millennial Star 12 (May 1, 1850): 133.

16. Andrew Jenson, “The Gospel in Denmark,” Contributor 16 (November 1894): 45.

17. Elder Erastus Snow left Boston on April 4, arriving at Liverpool on April 16 on board the Niagara; Elder Peter O. Hansen arrived April 8; and John E. Forsgren arrived on April 19. Andrew Jenson, History of the Scandinavian Mission (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1927), 3.

18. Jenson, History of the Scandinavian Mission, 3.

19. Gerald Myron Haslam, Clash of Cultures: The Norwegian Experience with Mormonism, 1842–1920 (New York: Peter Lang, 1984), 10; Jenson, “Gospel in Denmark,” 46; Jenson, History of the Scandinavian Mission, 4. According to Freebody’s Directory of Hull (Hull, England: J. Pulleyn, 1851), 87, the cost of travel on board the Victoria was “6 shillings 6 pence Best Cabin Fare and 4 shillings for second Cabin.” Latter-day Saint missionaries in Europe nearly always traveled second class, thus enjoying the privacy of their own cabin, while presidents of the European Mission traveled first class. Elder Erastus Snow and his companions were met at the docks of Copenhagen by Peter O. Hansen and taken to a very noisy local hotel. The next day they found better lodgings at the home of Mr. Lauritz B. Malling. On their third day, they visited the meeting of a reformed Baptist minister named Peter C. Mönster, who was initially warm to the elders and allowed them to preach to his congregation. Mönster’s attitude soon hardened when he realized they were going to decrease the numbers of his flock by preaching the word of the restored gospel and not that of the Baptist persuasion. Jenson, History of the Scandinavian Mission, 4–7.

20. Jenson, History of the Scandinavian Mission, 4–9.

21. Jenson, History of the Scandinavian Mission, 10.

22. William Mulder, Homeward to Zion: The Mormon Migration from Scandinavia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1957; reprinted, Provo, Utah: BYU Studies, 2000), 107. For a general overview of the Scandinavian Mission, see Jenson, History of the Scandinavian Mission; and Christensen, “History of the Danish Mission.” For brief early histories of the restored Church in Sweden and Norway, see Andrew Jenson, “Scandinavian Reminiscences,” parts 2 and 5, Contributor 16 (March 1894): 94–100; (December 1894): 297–300. Mulder reports that a small fraction of the Scandinavian emigrants were Icelandic (p. 107). For a more extensive treatise of the Latter-day Saint Norwegian experience, see Haslam, Clash of Cultures. For an overview of the early history of the Church in Iceland, see Fred E. Woods, “Fire on Ice: The Conversion and Life of Gudmundur Gudmundsson,” BYU Studies 39, no. 2 (2000): 57–72; Fred E. Woods, “A Sesquicentennial Sketch of Latter-day Saint Icelandic Emigration and Conversion,” forthcoming in Regional Studies in Latter-day Saint Church History: Europe, ed. Donald Q. Cannon (Provo, Utah: Department of Church History and Doctrine, Brigham Young University, 2001).

23. William Mulder, “Mormons from Scandinavia, 1850–1900: A Shepherded Migration,” Pacific Historical Review 23 (1954): 237, notes that Scandinavian converts from Norway sometimes voyaged directly across the North Sea from Christiana or Stavenger to Liverpool, whereas the Swedes and especially the Danes came primarily through the port of Hull and secondarily through Grimsby. The Saints from Iceland were an exception, as evidence reveals that some voyaged from their homeland via Leith, Scotland, and others voyaged direct to Liverpool. See Woods, “Sesquicentennial Sketch,” 8.

24. Mulder, “Mormons from Scandinavia,” 237. According to the 1997–1998 Church Almanac (Deseret News: Salt Lake City, 1996), 162–63, during the years of embarkation from Hamburg (1862, 1865, and 1866), over three thousand Latter-day Saint converts voyaged on eight sailing vessels to gather to Zion. Mormon embarkation using the Morris Line’s sailing vessels from Hamburg was discontinued in 1866. The primary reason for this discontinuation stems from the fact that the following year, the Church decided to no longer send Latter-day Saint immigrants via sailing vessels. Commencing in 1867, all Mormon migrants were to be transported by steamers. It was also decided in this same year that Church teams would not be sent to the frontier. See “Church Emigration to Utah in 1867,” in “Church Emigration Book, 1862–1881,” Church Archives. Furthermore, Sonne, Saints on the Seas, 187, points out that in a letter to British Mission President Franklin D. Richards dated May 23, 1868, Brigham Young reaffirmed the decision to use steamships: “To enable our immigration to avail themselves of the healthiest portion or portions of the year . . . employ none but steamships.” Thus, the port of Hamburg seems to have been discontinued due to the decision to no longer use sailing vessels. Apparently it was advantageous to take the indirect route to Liverpool wherein different steam shipping lines were employed. Vessels from the port of Liverpool transporting passengers to New York were of a higher caliber than those provided by Morris and Company in Hamburg. Furthermore, vessels from Liverpool were filled with British and European Latter-day Saints, providing more bargaining power and enabling cheaper rates when the Church chartered transatlantic vessels. Finally, shipping was cheaper from Liverpool due to greater competition.

Hundreds of Swiss-German Latter-day Saints migrated through Hull in the nineteenth century, representing a small portion of the total number of European converts. These migrants were similarly conveyed via Britain, essentially as their numbers were so insignificant that there was no fiscal advantage for the Swiss-German Mission to charter a transatlantic vessel for their sole use. For information on the Swiss-German emigrants, see Douglas D. Alder, “The German-Speaking Migration to Utah, 1850–1950” (master’s thesis, University of Utah, 1959). Migrants arriving via the Port of Grimsby, as well as those who had arrived at Hull and then traversed the River Humber to Grimsby, had the added advantage of staying in the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire Railway Emigrants’ Home that opened in 1854 in a former dockside passenger station. The shelter provided a single mixed-sex dormitory-cum-dining room where the migrants slept overnight under the supervision of Isaac Freeman, the railway’s interpreter. From immediately outside this dockside shelter, migrants boarded the train that took them to Liverpool. Freeman and his wife provided a high level of service for migrants arriving at the port. In 1871, The Grimsby Observer noted, “Mr. Freeman, the port interpreter, who speaks several languages, is the manager of this important establishment, and it speaks well for its conduct that we have never heard a complaint against it, but very many instances of kindness, sympathy, and consideration for the strangers have reached us.” “The Emigrants Home,” Grimsby Observer, October 25, 1871, 4. For more information on the development by railway companies of facilities for emigrants, see Nicholas J. Evans, “A Roof over Their Heads: The Role of Shelters in Jewish Migration via the UK, 1850–1914,” in Shemot 9 (March 2001): 11–15.

25. Jenson, History of the Scandinavian Mission, 46–47, states that upon their arrival in Liverpool the Saints “were informed that they were too late to sail on the ‘Ellen Maria,’ . . . for that ship had just cleared port the same day.” Sonne, Saints on the Seas, 150, notes that the Ellen Maria departed from Liverpool on February 10, 1852, with 369 Latter-day Saint passengers on board.

26. Jenson, History of the Scandinavian Mission, 46–47; Sonne, Saints on the Seas, 150.

27. Taylor, Expectations Westward, 162. The transportation price of £1. 10.s 0d. is significantly more than a guinea. Gee and Company were a Hull-based shipping line that ran steamers between Hull and the continental ports of Antwerp, Copenhagen, Hamburg, and St. Petersburg. “Diary of Appleton Harmon,” 1850–52, typescript, 84, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, notes that on September 29, 1852, Harmon and a Brother Hardy made arrangements with the Gee and Company to bring Scandinavian converts from Copenhagen to Hull. Hardy forwarded the arrangements to a Brother Hasgreen in Copenhagen in which it was noted, “‘Emegrants from Copenhagah on the Steam ship Emperor-Deck or in the Hold of room’ £ 1..1..0.. or they would send a Steamer on purpose to fetch from 3 to 4 hundred for £ 1..10..0 per head.”

28. “Epistle of the Twelve,” Millennial Star 1 (April 1841): 311, states, “It is also a great savings to go in companies, instead of going individually. . . . [A] company can charter a vessel, so as to make the passage much cheaper than otherwise.”

29. Willard Snow, Journal, October 16, 1852, 101, Church Archives, states: “About the middle of Oct[ober] we received a proposition from Mr Morris + Co. from Liverpool through their agent, Mr Carl Rydhing in Copenhagen to the following effect that they would take Emigrants from Hamburgn to [New] Orleans via Hull & Liverpool on the following conditions: 2d Cabin 80 [rigsdaler,] 3d cabin 60 [rigsdaler,] & steerage 46 [rigsdaler] children between twelve and one 8 doll [dollars] less.” A week later (October 23, 1852), Snow wrote: “Held a conversation with Mr Morris in person who happened to be in the city & he made another proposition to take us for 52 rigsdaler from this city” to New Orleans. Three and a half weeks later, Snow wrote: “On the 16th closed the contract with Mr Morris & Co for to transport our emigration from Copenhagen by steam to Kiel by Railway from Kiel to Hamburgn and by steamer from Hamburgn to Hull and by Railway from Hull to Liverpool and by ss first rate sailing vessel from Liverpool to New Orleans for fifty two dollars a passenger children under twelve eight dollars less sucklings under one.”

30. Mulder, Homeward to Zion, 139–41, further notes that the Latter-day Saints used Morris and Company from 1852 to 1869. The Guion Line then became the preferred shipping company because of its superior steam vessels for which the sailing vessels provided by Morris and Company were no match.

31. Mulder, Homeward to Zion, 158.

32. Scandinavian Mission, “Manuscript History,” vol. 8 (1850–55), December 20, 1852, Church Archives, extracted this journal entry from the journal of Herman Julius Christensen, December 26, 1852. On the following day, this same passenger noted, “The captain, who had been a seafaring man for 25 years, declared that in all his previous voyages he had never experienced a worse storm.”

33. “Manuscript History of the John H. Forsgren Emigrating Company,” 1, Church Archives. The maritime safety record of the Latter-day Saint immigrants in the nineteenth century was most impressive. There were no known lives lost because of shipwreck across the North Sea or the Atlantic, and the only one known shipwreck occurred on the Pacific. This is in sharp contrast to the fact that at least fifty-nine immigrant ships were lost crossing the Atlantic between 1847 and 1853. See Sonne, Saints on the Seas, 138–39.

34. On Tuesday, December 31, 1852, the Hull Packet reported that “three hundred Mormons, from Norway and Denmark, arrived on the Lion, from Hamburg, on Tuesday night, and were forwarded by Mr. R. J. Cortis, the agent, to Liverpool, en route to New Orleans and the Salt Lake.” “Great Loss of Life,” Hull Advertiser, December 31, 1852, 5. The Master’s Declaration (return of aliens) for this first group of Saints recorded “two hundred and ninety nine passengers, emigrants on their way to America via Liverpool,” arrived on board the Lion, mastered by Mr. John Frederick Kruger at Hull from Hamburg, on December 28, 1852. “Return of Alien Passengers Made by Masters of Ships,” HO/3/67, Public Record Office, Kew, London. The Customs Bills of Entry, a document produced weekly that provided information for merchants interested in the commerce of the port, similarly noted that along with passengers, the Lion was laden with a cargo of metal, pork, wool, and linseed. Customs Bills of Entry, no. 12, January 1, 1853, Hull Central Library, Hull, England.

35. “Local Intelligence,” Hull Packet, December 31, 1852, 5. The pier has been referred to by numerous names during the past century. During the period in question, the pier was most frequently referred to as the “Humber Pier.” Richard Cortis was a one-man business who worked as an emigration agent. He worked alongside other agents who worked for various Atlantic lines—with each agent working exclusively for different Liverpool-based shipping lines. Information on Cortis can be found in various commercial directories for the port and town of Kingston upon Hull, Hull Central Library, Hull, England. For further information on the role of port-based emigration agents on the east coast of Britian, see Nicholas J. Evans, “Aliens En Route: European Migration through Britian, 1836–1914” (Ph.D. diss., University of Hull, forthcoming).

36. Hull had two railway stations. The first was situated at Wellington Street and opened in 1840. The second was at the end of Paragon Street and began operating in 1849. European migrants used only the Paragon Street terminus to Liverpool.

37. Sonne, Saints on the Seas, 150.

38. For analysis of the number of Saints migrating through Britain, see Evans, “Aliens En Route.” Details of the ports used by migrating Saints can be gleaned through the personal accounts of those Saints journeying to Zion. See the Mormon Immigration Index CD. As previously noted, the 1997–1998 Church Almanac, 162–63, indicates that over three thousand Mormon immigrants voyaged to America from Hamburg on eight vessels during the years 1862, 1865, and 1866.

39. Statistical analysis of immigration into America is provided by numerous scholars and their publications. E. A. Ross, The Old World in the New: The Significance of Past and Present Immigration to the American People (New York: Century, 1914), 307–10, states that the total number of immigrants for the period 1835–1914 was 30,245,034. British and Scandinavian Mission records reveal that over one hundred thousand European Mormon converts gathered to America from 1840–1914, of which at least one fourth were Scandinavians, while the majority were British.

40. Nicholas J. Evans, “Indirect Passage from Europe: Migration via the UK, 1836–1914,” Journal for Maritime Research (June 2001): 2.

41. For details of the vessels chartered for transatlantic travel during the period when Morris and Company enjoyed the “Mormon contract,” see the appendix of Sonne, Saints on the Seas. For details of the vessels used on the North Sea crossing, see the Mormon Immigration Index CD. This latter source also refers (along with Jenson, History of the Scandinavian Mission) to the problems encountered with vessels chartered to sail directly to America from the port of Hamburg. Comparative analysis of the time taken on the direct and indirect journeys from the European port of embaration to the American port of arrival are included in Evans, “Aliens En Route.”

Thomas Wilson was a Hull-based merchant who had previously worked in the offices of Whitaker, Wilkinson and Company, Hull’s largest importer of Swedish iron ore, before setting up in partnership in 1822 as Beckinton, Wilson and Company. In 1831, he established his second company under the name of Wilson, Hudson and Company, and then, in 1841, he founded his own firm—Thomas Wilson, Sons and Company. The company was centered in the Scandinavian and North Sea trades and quickly expanded as trade along this route, coupled with the Swedish Royal Mail Contract, generated good financial returns for the company. Wilson managed the day-to-day operations himself until 1866, when the company became jointly managed by his sons, Charles Henry Wilson and Arthur Wilson. Under their direction, the company continued to expand and by 1903 included over one hundred vessels, making it the largest privately-owned shipping company in the world. See J. Harrower, Wilson Line (Gravesend, Kent, U.K.: World Ship Society, 1998); Arthur Credland, The Wilson Line (Stroud, G.B.: Tempus, 2000).

42. Sonne, Saints on the Seas, 118. Herein, Sonne further notes that the name of the first Guion vessel that transported the Latter-day Saint immigrants in 1867 was the Manhattan.

43. See Evans, “Aliens En Route.” Sonne, Saints on the Seas, 117, indicates that the Guion Line carried over forty thousand Latter-day Saint converts across the Atlantic, which amounted to about 98 percent of all Mormon emigrants who voyaged by steamship from Liverpool to New York. The Latter-day Saints used the Guion Line consistently from 1869 to 1894, at which time the company was liquidated. For more information on the Guion Line, see “Rise and Fall of the Guion Line,” Sea Breezes 19 (1955): 190–216.

Anthon H. Lund, Journal, June 30, and July 2, 5–7, 1894, Church Archives, notes that arrangements were made by British Mission President Anthon L. Lund for the European converts to travel with the Anchor Line, based in Glasgow. Converts were thus rerouted through Glasgow before going on to New York. President Lund made these new arrangements known to President Sundwall of the Scandinavian Mission, President Naegle of the Swiss German Mission, and Church President Wilford Woodruff.

44. British Mission, “Manuscript History,” vol. 24 (1869–71), May 13, 1869, Church Archives.

45. British Mission, “Manuscript History,” June 1, 1869. However, the Guion Line did not provide food at Hull for their passengers as other shipping lines did. This is one way the Guion Line was able to cut the cost of the trip.

46. Perhaps, after the initial contract of 1869, both parties no longer felt a need for a written contract due to the relationship of trust that developed between the Guion agent George Ramsden and the Church. Praiseworthy remarks made by Anthon H. Lund at the time of Ramsden’s death are noted in “A Good Friend Gone,” Millennial Star 58 (June 4, 1896): 360–62. For an excellent discussion of the relationship between the Guion Line (especially their agent George Ramsden) and the Saints, see Richard L. Jensen, “Steaming Through: Arrangements for Mormon Emigration through Europe, 1869–1887,” Journal of Mormon History 9 (1982): 5–8. When the Guion Company was liquidated in 1894, Ramsden helped Lund with arrangements for the Saints to transfer their business to the Anchor Line, which ran its operations out of Glasgow. See British Mission, “Manuscript History,” 34 (1891–96), June 30, 1894. Although the Anchor Line is mentioned herein, not only for the date of June 30, but also for the dates of July 5–6, and September 20, 1894, it is most probable that it is rather the Allan Line that was the shipping company run from Glasgow at this time. This change rerouted the Mormon converts from the Scandinavian and Swiss-German Missions through the port of Leith to Glasgow, where they began the transatlantic voyage to New York.

47. In 1866 increasing alarm at the standard of accommodation provided for third-class or steerage passengers prompted the Hull Town Council to interview Charles Wilson, who was a member of Parliament representing Hull and the managing director of the Wilson Line. This action led to an improvement in the standard of accommodation provided for passengers carried by the Wilson Line but not by other European shipping operators. The condition of emigrants who arrived into Hull were reported in numerous reports by the Medical Officer of Health for the Hull Board of Health. The volume for 1866 can be found in Kingston upon Hull City Archives, Hull, England.

48. The 1881 British census documents that Maples was born in Thorne, a town thirty miles west of Hull. Since his wife and daughter were born in Australia, it can be assumed that Maples gained his knowledge of the emigration business through his own personal experiences in emigrating to Australia. Maples had returned to Hull during the early 1850s and established himself as an emigration agent working alongside Richard Cortis. Later, Cortis and Maples would combine their business, with Maples taking sole control upon the death of the former. 1881 British Census and National Index: England, Scotland, Wales, Channel Islands, Isle of Man, and Royal Navy, 24 CDs (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1999).

49. Latter-day Saint migrant Jesse N. Smith recalled, “Mr. Maples on behalf of the forwarding Company furnished a meal for the emigrants and sent all forward the same evening to Liverpool.” Jesse N. Smith, Autobiography and Journal, 1855–1906, July 15, 1870, 259, Church Archives. Another passing migrant noted, “Mr. Maples, the Guion Agt, came on board and got the list of Emigr[ants].” Hans Jorgenson, Reminiscences and Journal, 174, Church Archives.

Apparently this line had many staff members who also provided excellent service. Another Guion agent who is praised in several Latter-day Saint immigrant accounts is a Mr. Gibson. See, for example, E. L. Sloan to President Geo. Teasdale, Millennial Star 51 (November 25, 1889): 749; George Romney Jr. to President George Teasdale, Millennial Star 51 (December 23, 1889): 811; L. F. Monch to President George Teasdale, Millennial Star 50 (December 24, 1888): 829. However, the agency was apparently not without some criticism by the British government. According to government inspector W. Cowie, while other Atlantic passenger lines provided temporary lodging and meals for passing emigrants at Hull, the Guion Line transferred its passengers directly to the rails “so that those people are the greater portion of the day without a meal.” See Reports Received by the Board of Trade and the Local Government Board Relating to the Transit of Scandinavian Emigrants through the Port of Hull, July 11, 1882, 9. Yet for those traveling to Utah, such speed was often welcomed, because it shortened the long journey.

50. P. O. Hansen to President F. D. Richards, Millennial Star 17 (February 3, 1855): 71.

51. Heinrich Hug, Journal, August 13, 1859, in possession of Kent Hug, translated from German by Brooks Haderlie. According to his journal entry, Hug arrived with a company of Swiss Latter-day Saint immigrants in Hull on August 13, 1859. Although Hansen and Hug are the only known European Saints to mention the reception provided by the Hull Saints, these local Saints were probably instrumental in assisting other Latter-day Saint companies who passed through.

52. Frederick Zaugg, Autobiography, 25, original in private possession.

53. Edward Gillett and Kenneth A. MacMahon, A History of Hull (Hull, England: University of Hull Press, 1989), 303.

54. Plans of the North Eastern Railway’s emigrant waiting room can be seen at the Hull City Archives (OBL/M/2585 and OBL/M/6328). The Pennines are a mountain chain known as the backbone of England because they are so hilly.

55. Hans Hoth, Diary, typescript, 3–4, December 27, 1853, translated from German holograph by Peter Gulbrandsen, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

56. Ove Christian Oveson, “Sketch of the Life of Ove Christian Oveson,” typescript, April 26, 1864, 22, Church Archives.

57. Joseph Hansen, Hansen Family History, December 1852, 7, Church Archives.

58. The British Mission became the administrative center for the Church in Europe commencing June 28, 1854, under the direction of Franklin D. Richards. Richards also served at this time as the president of the British Mission. Subsequent presidents of the British Mission also had stewardship over all other missions in Europe during their various terms of service.

59. Conway B. Sonne, “Liverpool and the Mormon Emigration,” paper presented at the Mormon History Association Conference in Liverpool, England, on July 10, 1987, 2–5. Note that the public houses were also known as “pubs.” These facilities were not hotels but were establishments licensed to sell alcoholic beverages. For more information on Liverpool and Mormon emigration, see Fred E. Woods, Gathering to Nauvoo (American Fork, Utah: Covenant Communications, 2002), 42–51.

60. Jenson, History of the Scandinavian Mission, 533, provides statistical evidence that over twenty thousand Saints emigrated from the Scandinavian Mission between 1852 and 1894. As noted earlier, Mulder, Homeward to Zion, 107, maintains that 22,653 of the 46,497 Scandinavian converts immigrated to America between 1850 and 1905. These two estimates are less than the total of 24,431 Scandinavian migrants that we estimated. Our figure was based on several sources including the following: The Mormon Immigration Index CD; Jenson, History of the Scandinavian Mission; local Grimsby newspapers (1854–68); Grimsby Library Customs Bills of Entry in Hull, Hull Central Library Customs Bills of Entry (Hull), 1852–60; Hull City Archives Master’s Declaration, HO/3/1–120, Public Record Office, Kew, London.

61. Jane Charter Robinson Hindley, “Journals 1855–1905,” February 16, 1855, Church Archives.

 

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