1. Dickens’s analysis was correct, as passengers aboard the Amazon would go on to be respected vocalists, newspaper editors, business and community leaders, and one U.S. Supreme Court justice. See Richard L. Jensen and Gordon Irving, “The Voyage of the Amazon: A Close View of One Immigrant Company,” Ensign 10, no. 3 (March 1980): 16–19.

2. Charles Dickens, “Bound for the Great Salt Lake,” in The Uncommercial Traveller and Reprinted Pieces (London: Oxford University Press, 1958), 232, 224, 228, 228. For a more complete exploration of Dickens’s interactions with Mormonism in the preceding decades and his subtle shifts in perspective on religious minority groups, see Richard J. Dunn, “Dickens and the Mormons,” BYU Studies 8, no. 3 (1967–68): 325–34.

3. Katharine Coman, Economic Beginnings of the Far West, 2 vols. (New York: MacMillan, 1912), 2:184.

4. Saints by Sea: Latter-day Saint Immigration to America, https://saintsbysea.lib.byu.edu.

5. A Voice of Warning, a catalytic 216-page tract written by Elder Parley P. Pratt, published in 1837, had a profound impact on many Latter-day Saint conversions. Pratt’s biographers, Terryl L. Givens and Matthew J. Grow, argue that from the time A Voice of Warning was published, it “served the church as its most powerful proselytizing tool—after the Book of Mormon—for more than a century.” It was eventually printed in over thirty English-language editions. See Terry L. Givens and Matthew J. Grow, Parley P. Pratt: The Apostle Paul of Mormonism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 90, 103, 119; see also Parley P. Pratt, A Voice of Warning and Instruction to All People, Containing a Declaration of the Faith and Doctrine of the Church of the Latter-day Saints, Commonly Called Mormons (New York: Sandford, 1837).

6. For further exploration of the push- and pull-factor sociological theories of migration, see Douglas S. Massey and others, “Theories of International Migration: A Review and Appraisal,” Population and Development Review 19, no. 3 (September 1993): 431–66.

7. This belief stemmed from Joseph Smith’s early teachings. Five months after the Church was organized in April 1830, Smith received a revelation in which he was commanded to “bring to pass the gathering of mine elect” and gave a specific purpose for this gathering: “Wherefore the decree hath gone forth from the Father that they shall be gathered in unto one place upon the face of this land, to prepare their hearts and be prepared in all things against the day when tribulation and desolation are sent forth upon the wicked” (D&C 29:7–8). In January 1831, another revelation gave additional reasons for gathering, including building a community with the righteous, escaping “the enemy,” and receiving heavenly power: “And that ye might escape the power of the enemy [and Babylon], and be gathered unto me a righteous people, without spot and blameless—wherefore, for this cause I gave unto you the a commandment that ye should go to the Ohio [or other gathering places]; and there I will give unto you my law [consecration]; and there you shall be endowed with power from on high” (D&C 38:31–32).

8. Hence the periodical’s title: the Millennial Star.

9. W. S. Shepperson, British Emigration to North America: Projects and Opinions in the Early Victorian Period (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1957), 143.

10. For an overview of the first Latter-day Saint missionary activity in Great Britain, see James B. Allen, Ronald K. Esplin, and David J. Whittaker, Men with a Mission, 1837–1841: The Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in the British Isles (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1992); Richard L. Evans, A Century of “Mormonism” in Great Britain: A Brief Summary of the Activities of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the United Kingdom, with Emphasis on Its Introduction One Hundred Years Ago (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1937); V. Ben Bloxham, “The Call of the Apostles to the British Isles” and “The Apostolic Foundations, 1840–41,” in Truth Will Prevail: The Rise of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the British Isles, 1837–1987, ed. V. Ben Bloxham, James R. Moss, and Larry C. Porter (Cambridge, Eng.: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1987), 104–62; Robert L. Lively Jr., “Some Sociological Reflections on the Nineteenth-Century British Mission,” in Mormons in Early Victorian Britain, ed. Richard L. Jensen and Malcolm R. Thorp (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1989), 16–30; Ronald K. Esplin, “The 1840–41 Mission to England and the Development of the Quorum of the Twelve,” in Jensen and Thorp, Mormons in Early Victorian Britain, 70–91; Arnold K. Garr, “George A. Smith’s Mission with the Twelve in England, 1839–41,” in Regional Studies in Latter-day Saint Church History: The British Isles, ed. Cynthia Doxey and others (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2007), 21–40; Clyde J. Williams, “‘More Value . . . Than All the Gold and Silver of England’: The Book of Mormon in Britain, 1837–52,” in Doxey and others, Regional Studies in Latter-day Saint Church History: The British Isles, 79–108; James B. Allen and Malcolm R. Thorp, “The Mission of the Twelve to England, 1840–41: Mormon Apostles and the Working Class,” BYU Studies 15, no. 4 (1975): 499–526; Fred E. Woods, “A Gifted Gentleman in Perpetual Motion: John Taylor as an Emigration Agent,” in John Taylor, Champion of Liberty, Brigham Young University Church History Symposium, ed. Mary Jane Woodger (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2009), 171–91.

11. Fred E. Woods, “Introduction: The Latter-day Saint Gathering,” in Liverpool to Great Salt Lake, ed. Ronald G. Watt and LaJean Purcell Carruth (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2022), xx.

12. For an account of the Britannia, see James Allen, “‘We Had a Very Hard Voyage for the Season’: John Moon’s Account of the First Emigrant Company of British Saints,” BYU Studies 17, no. 3 (1976–77): 339–41.

13. See Fred E. Woods, “The Tide of Mormon Migration Flowing through the Port of Liverpool, England,” International Journal of Mormon Studies 1 (2008): 67.

14. For early Church history in the Three Counties area in England (Herefordshire, Gloucestershire, and Worcestershire), see Carol Wilkinson and Cynthia Doxey Green, The Field Is White: Harvest in the Three Counties of England (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2017). For history in Cambridgeshire, see Leonard Reed, Living Latter-day Saint History in Cambridgeshire (self-pub., 2007). For history in Lancashire, see David M. W. Pickup, The Pick and Flower of England: The Illustrated Story of the Mormons in Victorian England and The Story of the Preston Temple, 3rd revised, enlarged, and illustrated ed. (Lancashire, U.K.: Living Legend, 1997). For history in Staffordshire, see Stephen G. Arrowsmith, “The ‘Unidentified Pioneers’: An Analysis of Staffordshire Mormons, 1837 to 1870” (master’s thesis, Brigham Young University, 2003).

15. Ronald D. Dennis, “The Welsh and the Gospel,” in Bloxham, Moss, and Porter, Truth Will Prevail, 236–67.

16. Frederick S. Buchanan, “The Ebb and Flow of the Church in Scotland,” in Bloxham, Moss, and Porter, Truth Will Prevail, 268–98; Fred E. Woods, “Conveyance and Contribution: Mormon Scots Gather to an American Zion,” History Scotland 5, no. 4 (July/August 2005): 48–54; Fred E. Woods, “Conveyance and Contribution: Mormon Scots Gather to an American Zion (Part II),” History Scotland 5, no. 5 (September/October 2005): 37–42; Bernard Aspinwall, “A Fertile Field: Scotland in the Days of the Early Missions,” in Jensen and Thorp, Mormons in Early Victorian Britain, 104–17; Frederick S. Buchanan, “Scots among the Mormons,” Utah Historical Quarterly 36, no. 4 (Fall 1968): 328–52; Frederick Buchanan, “The Emigration of Scottish Mormons to Utah, 1849–1900” (master’s thesis, University of Utah, 1961).

17. Significant levels of Latter-day Saint emigration persisted until the 1890s, though my study focuses only on the first two decades of emigration.

18. Ray Jay Davis, “Law and the Nineteenth-Century British Mormon Migration,” in Jensen and Thorp, Mormons in Early Victorian Britain, 243–57; Fred E. Woods, Gathering to Nauvoo (American Fork, Utah: Covenant Communications, 2002), 54–57.

19. It is worth noting that another Passenger Act was passed in 1855, and while it was being crafted, the House of Commons invited Samuel W. Richards, on behalf of the Church, to testify before a select committee about the Latter-day Saint migration system. The Morning Advertiser wrote, “[Richards] gave himself no airs but was so respectful in his demeanour, and ready in his answers, that, at the close of his examination he received the thanks of the committee in rather a marked manner.” See Frederick Piercy, Route from Liverpool to Great Salt Lake Valley (Liverpool: Franklin D. Richards, 1855), 18.

20. See Woods, Gathering to Nauvoo; Fred E. Woods, “Gathering to Nauvoo: Mormon Immigration 1840–46,” Nauvoo Journal 11, no. 2 (Fall 1999): 43–63. For further explorations of British emigration during the Nauvoo period, see James B. Allen, “To the Saints in England: Impressions of a Mormon Immigrant (the 10 December 1840 William Clayton Letter from Nauvoo to Manchester),” BYU Studies 18, no. 3 (1978): 475–80; Richard L. Jensen, “Transplanted to Zion: The Impact of British Latter-day Saint Immigration upon Nauvoo,” BYU Studies 31, no. 1 (1991): 76–87; and Fred E. Woods, “The Gathering of the British Saints” in Joseph: Exploring the Life and Ministry of the Prophet, ed. Susan Easton Black and Andrew C. Skinner (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2005), 331–39.

21. See Leonard J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830–1900, new ed. (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2005): 97–108.

22. Richard D. Poll, “The British Mission during the Utah War, 1857–58,” in Jensen and Thorp, Mormons in Early Victorian Britain, 224–42.

23. Phillip A. M. Taylor, “Why Did British Mormons Emigrate?,” Utah Historical Quarterly 22, nos. 1–4 (1954).

24. Taylor, Expectations Westward, 154.

25. One example of this is the Saints by Sea database, which contains over thirteen hundred first-person emigration accounts written by Latter-day Saints. But even in Taylor’s day, access to many emigrant accounts was possible, as evidenced by the scholarly work in this literature review that dates to the mid-twentieth century. Taylor, who wrote his 1965 book as a faculty member in the Department of American Studies at the University of Hull in Hull, U.K., would have had considerably more difficulty in accessing many of these emigrant accounts, largely stored in archives in the western U.S., than his American counterparts would have had.

26. Woods, “Tide of Mormon Migration,” 60–86.

27. Woods, “Introduction: The Latter-day Saint Gathering,” in Watt and Carruth, Liverpool to Great Salt Lake, xv–xxiii.

28. Woods, “Tide of Mormon Migration,” 69.

29. Malcolm R. Thorp. “The Religious Backgrounds of Mormon Converts in Britain, 1837–52,” Journal of Mormon History 4 (1977): 52.

30. Leslie F. Church, The Early Methodist People (London: Epworth Press, 1948), vii, emphasis in original.

31. Thorp, “Religious Backgrounds,” 51.

32. Conway B. Sonne, Saints on the Seas: A Maritime History of Mormon Migration, 1830–1890 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1983), xv. Taylor makes this case, as well: “It is, indeed, possible that, within the broader teaching about the Kingdom, the theme of emigration may have seemed especially attractive [to the British convert]. But it would be unwise to isolate this from the appeal of the Mormon faith as a whole.” See Taylor, Expectations Westward, 38.

33. Russell M. Nelson, “The Gathering of Scattered Israel,” Ensign 36, no. 11 (November 2006): 79–81.

34. For this reason, I do not directly cite Polly Aird, “Why Did the Scots Convert?,” Journal of Mormon History 26, no. 1 (2000): 91–122, in this work, although its subject matter is similar to my own, because Aird does not adequately distinguish between the acts of conversion and emigration. Her title suggests an emphasis on conversion, yet the paper is an analysis of the push and pull factors driving emigration. She frequently uses the terms “convert” and “emigrate” interchangeably, with no apparent distinction.

35. For example, Thorp did not discover any evidence of economic factors or “the building of Zion” having a role in converts’ decision to join the Church. Both of these themes recur in my study, which will be detailed further. For Thorp’s analysis, see Thorp, “Religious Backgrounds,” 63.

36. Thorp, “Religious Backgrounds,” 63.

37. Bartholomew defines this as “contemporary documents created by a directly-involved party,” such as diaries. She called these “Type A” records. “Type B” records are “further removed from the actual events but still close to the women’s lives,” such as autobiographies or biographies written by a close family member. “Type C” records, the most numerous of all, include biographies written by descendants. The total tally for Bartholomew’s study: Type A, 34; Type B, 16; Type C, 50. See Rebecca Bartholomew, Audacious Women: Early British Mormon Immigrants (Salt Lake City, Utah: Signature Books, 1995), xii–xiii.

38. Bartholomew, Audacious Women, xii–xiii.

39. Bartholomew, Audacious Women, 134–42.

40. When Harrison—a renowned professor of history at the University of Leeds, Sussex University, and the University of Wisconsin–Madison—passed away in 2018, the Guardian praised him as a “pioneer of ‘history from below,’” noting his extensive work on working-class movements and “popular” life in Victorian England. In his early work on this topic, he was not sympathetic to Mormonism, however. In 1971, Harrison clumped Mormonism under the umbrella of “popular religion,” alongside the “adventist and millenarian sects” that flourished in Victorian England—none of which qualified to be called, by his term, “respectable religion.” But by 1987, Harrison was intimately interested in Latter-day Saint history, as evidenced by his being invited to offer the Tanner Lecture at the Mormon History Association’s annual conference, in which he presented his research on Latter-day Saints in early Victorian Britain. Perhaps Harrison’s discovery, in his words, of the “rich collection of Mormon journals and autobiographies” from his period of study played a role in his paradigm shift on Mormonism. In his 1971 work, Harrison noted “popular religion[s]” were those “about which historians at present know very little”; by his keynote address in 1987, he’d discovered a trove of journals and autobiographies, “scarcely known outside Mormon circles, just waiting to be exploited by historians of nineteenth-century Britain.” His warmth toward Latter-day Saints (and, particularly, to BYU professor Malcolm Thorp) eventually led to an additional contribution to Mormon history: he sold some 5,400 items to Brigham Young University from his personal collection, dealing largely with Victorian British history. These books, pamphlets, and serials are now housed in the J. F. C. Harrison Collection in the Harold B. Lee Library. See J. F. C. Harrison, Early Victorian Britain, 1832–51 (London: Fontana/Collins, 1971): 159; John F. C. Harrison, “The Popular History of Early Victorian Britain: A Mormon Contribution,” in Jensen and Thorp, Mormons in Early Victorian Britain, 1–15; and Malcolm Chase, “JFC Harrison Obituary,” Guardian, February 5, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/05/jfc-harrison-obituary.

41. The Tanner Lecture, now a mainstay of the Mormon History Association’s annual conference, was founded in 1980 and provides a platform for prominent, non–Latter-day Saint historians to share their research on themes relating to Latter-day Saint history or practice. See Dean L. May and Reid L. Neilson, eds., The Mormon History Association’s Tanner Lectures: The First Twenty Years (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006).

42. Harrison, “Popular History,” 13.

43. Harrison, “Popular History,” 15.

44. Lily Pritchard, “Across the Waves: Mormon Emigration of British Saints 1840–1870” (undergraduate thesis, University of Bradford, 1989).

45. Sonne, Saints on the Seas, xv.

46. Sonne, Saints on the Seas, 148–59; for a more complete list of companies, see the Deseret News 1997–98 Church Almanac (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1996): 159–67.

47. Shepperson, British Emigration to North America, 143.

48. Taylor, Expectations Westward, 145.

49. See Richard E. Bennett, We’ll Find the Place: The Mormon Exodus 1846–1848 (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1997).

50. Many early Latter-day Saints saw the Civil War as a fulfillment of Joseph Smith’s 1832 prophecy, in which he predicted the “rebellion of South Carolina,” so that the “Southern States shall be divided against the Northern States.” This revelation is now canonized as Doctrine and Covenants 87. The revelation was likely used by early missionaries, and its contextualization of the war as a part of the chaos to precede Christ’s Second Coming only hastened the need to gather. See Scott C. Esplin, “‘Have We Not Had a Prophet among Us?’: Joseph Smith’s Civil War Prophecy,” in Civil War Saints (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2012), 41–59. See also Richard E. Bennett, “‘We Know No North, No South, No East, No West’: Mormon Interpretations of the Civil War, 1861–1865,” Mormon Historical Studies 10, no. 1 (2009): 51–63. For a more complete examination of British emigration to Utah during the Civil War years, see Fred E. Woods, “East to West through North and South: Mormon Immigration during the Civil War,” BYU Studies 39, no. 1 (2000): 6–29.

51. Hugh Moon, a passenger on the 1840 ship Britannia (the first Latter-day Saint emigrant ship to leave England), recorded in his diary: “Brother Heber C. Kimball told me to write everything that transpired down in my journal from the time we left our homes.” See “The First Ships—1840–1849,” in Our Pioneer Heritage, comp. Kate B. Carter, 20 vols. (Salt Lake City: Daughters of Utah Pioneers, 1958–77), 12:426.

52. Wrote historian Rebecca Bartholomew: “Nineteenth-century Mormon church records in Britain were kept by men, which may explain why they dealt 96 percent with men. . . . Whether it is strictly true that [Victorian British women] could not write, most did not.” Historians have made strides in writing the oft-unwritten history of women, including Bartholomew—who, as the descendant of Welsh and English emigrants, sees her work as “a search for my mothers.” See Bartholomew, Audacious Women, viii–ix.

53. Nine of the fifty accounts I studied were written by women.

54. The accounts I studied are housed in several places. The resource that proved most useful was Brigham Young University’s Saints by Sea database, formerly called “Mormon Migration.” This online database includes ship records for every known vessel that carried Latter-day Saints across the Atlantic from 1840 to 1890. Biographical information—such as emigrants’ age, ship name, and travel dates—are readily accessible. Some writings of the emigrants themselves are available in this database, but only in snippets (and usually only when emigrants describe the journey itself, not the buildup to emigration, where hints as to motive are more likely found). As such, although I reference accounts published in Saints by Sea frequently, I located the original documents wherever possible. I also consulted FamilySearch’s digital records, an online genealogical service provided by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I found several accounts in physical archives, namely the Church History Library in Salt Lake City; Brigham Young University’s Harold B. Lee Library in Provo, Utah; the British Library in London; and the Cambridge University Library in Cambridge, U.K. The Church History Library holds troves of accounts, many of which I located using references in the Saints by Sea database, and a number are accessible in the library’s reading room on microfiche or in physical form. The Harold B. Lee Library includes every edition of Our Pioneer Heritage, a twenty-volume series published by the Daughters of Utah Pioneers between 1957 and 1977, which often includes full autobiographies of early British converts. The British Library and Cambridge University Library both contain published diaries of more well-known emigrants. The family history library at the local chapel of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Cambridge was an unexpectedly helpful resource as well, thanks to the superb work of former ward historian Leonard Reed in documenting the early converts in Cambridgeshire. I cite his work repeatedly.

55. All North America–bound ships carrying British Latter-day Saints between 1840 and 60 departed from Liverpool except three, which departed from Bristol: the Caroline, the Harmony, and the Caroline (each 1841 departures). See the Deseret News 1997–98 Church Almanac, 159–62.

56. In this table, each emigrant is numbered 1 through 50. Throughout the text, whenever I reference this dataset, I indicate it by including the number after the emigrant’s name in parentheses, such as William Clayton (1). I do this for two reasons: First, I reference a number of secondary sources throughout my analysis, and I do not wish the reader to be confused when distinguishing between the two. Second, if the reader desires to see more demographic information on the emigrant quoted, the reader need only find the emigrant’s number in the appendix.

57. Charles Read, “Laissez-Faire, the Irish Famine, and British Financial Crisis,” Economic History Review 69, no. 2 (December 3, 2015): 411–34, https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.12274.

58. Taylor, “Why Did British Mormons Emigrate?,” 250.

59. Robert G. Gammage, History of the Chartist Movement (London: Truslove and Hanson, 1894), 87.

60. Taylor, “Why Did British Mormons Emigrate?,” 252.

61. Amy J. Lloyd, “Emigration, Immigration and Migration in Nineteenth-Century Britain,” British Library Newspapers (Detroit: Gale, 2007); “UK Population Estimates 1851 to 2014,” Office for National Statistics, https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/adhocs/004356ukpopulationestimates1851to2014.

62. The late Leonard Reed, former ward historian in the Cambridge Ward, disputes Taylor’s assertion that these British emigrants were predominantly urban. Of the 163 documented emigrants from Cambridgeshire from 1850 to 1862, only 33 came from urban areas, Reed argues. Writes Reed, “My study, which also looked at the same period (1850–62), showed that a majority of the Cambridgeshire emigrants came from rural areas—approximately 54–68% from rural locations compared to around 27–41% from urban areas. . . . Both Taylor’s figures and my own suffer from the limitations of available data, so are not entirely accurate. However, with 55 known emigrants in this period coming from one Cambridgeshire rural parish alone (Gravely), Taylor’s figures cannot possibly represent the true picture.” For further analysis, see Reed, Living Latter-day Saint History in Cambridgeshire, 25, emphasis in original.

63. Taylor, “Why Did British Mormons Emigrate?,” 267.

64. “Emigration,” Millennial Star 1, no. 10 (February 1841): 263.

65. “Emigration,” Millennial Star 2, no. 10 (February 1842): 153.

66. “Important from Salt Lake City,” Millennial Star 12, no. 8 (April 1850): 120.

67. Quoted in J. B. Munro, “Mormon Colonization Scheme for Vancouver Island,” Washington Historical Quarterly 25, no. 4 (October 1934): 279–80.

68. According to its articles of incorporation, the PEF’s purpose was twofold: to assist the migration of both the poor and of skilled laborers. In 1856, the criteria for receiving PEF loans was changed to prioritize those who had been waiting the longest to emigrate. See Scott Alan Carson, “Indentured Migration in America’s Great Basin: Occupational Targeting and Adverse Selection,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 32, no. 3 (Winter 2002): 389–90. For further reading, see Gustive O. Larson, “The Story of the Perpetual Emigration Fund,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 18, no. 2 (September 1931): 184–94; and Heather Fay Howard, “An Economic Analysis of the Perpetual Emigrating Fund” (PhD diss., Cornell University, 2008).

69. “The Perpetual Emigrating Fund,” Millennial Star 15, no. 47 (November 19, 1853): 753.

70. Millennial Star 17, no. 52 (December 1855): 814–15. Interestingly, Young signs this letter as “President, P.E.F. Co.” instead of as “Church President.”

71. “Letter from Joseph Fielding,” Saints by Sea, accessed August 15, 2023, https://saintsbysea.lib.byu.edu/mii/account/1207.

72. “Autobiography of George Whitaker,” Saints by Sea, accessed August 15, 2023, https://saintsbysea.lib.byu.edu/mii/account/1101.

73. “Autobiography of Richard Bentley,” Saints by Sea, accessed August 15, 2023, https://saintsbysea.lib.byu.edu/mii/account/1204.

74. “Joseph Smith Papers: History, 1838–1856, Volume C-1 [2 November 1838–31 July 1842],” 1148, Joseph Smith Papers, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1838-1856-volume-c-1-2-november-1838-31-july-1842/320.

75. Taylor claims migration was “as likely to be as high as £15” per person; an 1856 Millennial Star article claims it was £9 for those over one year old and £4.10 for infants. In early Victorian Britain, a common laborer in London received between twenty and thirty shillings per week; thus, the cost to cross the Atlantic was the equivalent of about three months’ wages. See Taylor, “Why Did British Mormons Emigrate?,” 267; “Emigration to Utah for 1856,” Millennial Star 18, no. 8 (February 1856): 122; Liza Picard, “The Working Classes and the Poor,” British Library, October 14, 2009, https://www.bl.uk/victorian-britain/articles/the-working-classes-and-the-poor.

76. “Journal and Autobiography of Mary Ann Weston Maughan,” Saints by Sea, accessed October 23, 2023, https://saintsbysea.lib.byu.edu/mii/account/509.

77. “The Life of Thomas Steed from His Own Diary, 1826–1910,” 7, FamilySearch, https://www.familysearch.org/library/books/records/item/547052-redirect.

78. “Journal of George Cannon,” Saints by Sea, accessed August 15, 2023, https://saintsbysea.lib.byu.edu/mii/account/1160. It is unclear whether Cannon’s employer ever followed through on his promise.

79. “A Short Account of the Life of Edward Ockey,” 1–2, MSS SC 681, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.

80. This is an estimate. An original copy of Ockey’s diary is not available. I compared several typescripts of it (at the Lee Library and on FamilySearch.org), each of which use the American (USD) dollar sign ($). This is likely due to his autobiography being written decades after settling in Utah. However, it is unlikely he calculated the sum he spent in paying for others’ emigration in USD, since he made that payment in 1841 while still in England and before ever traveling to the U.S. As such, I assume that Ockey’s figure of 2,000 is in pounds (GBP, £), and either out of habit or the error of later transcribers, that sign was changed to USD. My calculation is simple: I divide his figure (£2000) by the reported cost of emigration for Latter-day Saints (between £9 and £15), and the result is between 133 and 222. See footnote 75 for more discussion of emigration costs.

81. “Letter from W. Rowley – January 25, 1844,” Saints by Sea, accessed August 15, 2023, https://saintsbysea.lib.byu.edu/mii/account/867.

82. Dorothy Brewerton, Carolyn Gorwill, and Leonard Reed, The Songstress of Dernford Dale: The Life of Poetess, Diarist and Latter-day Saint Pioneer Hannah Tapfield King (Cambridge: Cambridge Printers, 2011), 67.

83. “Autobiography of Robert Crookston,” Saints by Sea, accessed October 23, 2023, https://saintsbysea.lib.byu.edu/mii/account/1161.

84. “Journal of Jane Charters Robinson Hindley,” Saints by Sea, accessed August 15, 2023, https://saintsbysea.lib.byu.edu/mii/account/1156.

85. “Earthquakes, Floods, and Shipwrecks,” Millennial Star 1, no. 10 (February 1841): 260.

86. “Do We Not Live in the Last Days?,” Millennial Star 13, no. 13 (July 1851): 205.

87. As early as 1831, Joseph Smith’s revelations included language that referred to Babylon and expressly instructed the Latter-day Saints to escape Babylon. One early revelation condemned anyone who walks “after the image of his own god, whose image is in the likeness of the world, and whose substance is that of an idol, which waxeth old and shall perish in Babylon, even Babylon the great, which shall fall” (D&C 1:16).

88. “Retrospect of the Year,” Millennial Star 23, no. 52 (December 1861): 831.

89. Matthew L. Rasmussen, Mormonism and the Making of a British Zion (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2016), 16.

90. “Autobiography of George Whitaker,” Saints by Sea, accessed October 23, 2023, https://saintsbysea.lib.byu.edu/mii/account/1101.

91. “Peter McIntyre Autobiography,” 29, Church History Library, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, accessed August 28, 2023, https://catalog.churchofjesuschrist.org/assets/98d32533-5181-47b8-90d0-f5eaf0c6c08e/0/36.

92. “Peter McIntyre Autobiography,” 33.

93. “Peter McIntyre Autobiography,” 36.

94. Collection of Reminiscences of Thomas Callister,” Saints by Sea, accessed August 15, 2023, https://saintsbysea.lib.byu.edu/mii/account/1199.

95. “Emigration,” Millennial Star 2, no. 10 (March 1842): 154, emphasis in original.

96. Matthew Rowan, “Poetry Book, circa 1848–1858,” 6, MS 6084, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, https://catalog.churchofjesuschrist.org/assets/512b8845-f6a2-4bd0-9ab9-4f0ca716deb5/0/7.

97. Richard Bushman, Mormonism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008): 27.

98. Pratt’s A Voice of Warning cites the word “revelation” 55 times and “prophet” 103 times. Writes Pratt, “But do you ask, why is the Lord to commission men by actual Revelation? I reply, because he has no other way of sending men in any age” (61). And later, when assuring latter-day, “face to face” communication between God and man: “Let me inquire how does God make a covenant with the people in any age? The answer must be by communicating his will to them by actual revelation; for without this, it would be impossible to make a covenant between two parties” (66).

99. “Life of Thomas Steed,” 8.

100. Pratt, Voice of Warning, 54–55.

101. “Journal of George Cannon,” Saints by Sea, accessed August 15, 2023, https://saintsbysea.lib.byu.edu/mii/account/1160; “Letter from Robert Reid – March 15, 1843,” Saints by Sea, accessed August 15, 2023, https://saintsbysea.lib.byu.edu/mii/account/1175.

102. “Letter from William Clayton—December 10, 1840,” Saints by Sea, August 15, 2023, https://saintsbysea.lib.byu.edu/mii/account/1080.

103. “Autobiography of Thomas Wrigley,” Saints by Sea, accessed August 15, 2023, https://saintsbysea.lib.byu.edu/mii/account/361.

104. “Autobiography of George Spilsbury,” Saints by Sea, accessed August 15, 2023, https://saintsbysea.lib.byu.edu/mii/account/1565.

105. “Barnes diary.”

106. “God and Gold,” 491.

107. “Journal of David Candland,” Saints by Sea, accessed October 23, 2023, https://saintsbysea.lib.byu.edu/mii/account/862.

108. “Journal of James Burgess,” Saints by Sea, accessed August 15, 2023, https://saintsbysea.lib.byu.edu/mii/account/520.

109. Pratt, Voice of Warning, 198.

110. Priscilla Staines as quoted in Edward W. Tullidge, The Women of Mormondom (New York: Tullidge and Crandall, 1877), 286.

111. Staines, quoted in Tullidge, Women of Mormondom, 288.

112. Pratt, Voice of Warning, 80–81.

113. Brewerton, Gorwill, and Reed, Songstress of Dernford Dale, 66.

114. Brewerton, Gorwill, and Reed, Songstress of Dernford Dale, 67.

115. “Journal of Jane Charters Robinson Hindley,” Saints by Sea, accessed August 15, 2023, https://saintsbysea.lib.byu.edu/mii/account/1156.

116. In an 1830 revelation, the Saints are commanded to “be gathered in unto one place upon the face of this land,” which will serve as a refuge: to “be prepared in all things against the day when tribulation and desolation are sent forth upon the wicked” (D&C 29:8). An 1831 revelation links gathering with protection from the “enemy,” association with a “righteous people,” and endowment with “power from on high” (D&C 38:31–32; see also D&C 45:68). In the summer of 1831, the term “Zion” became synonymous with Missouri in the revelations; in the three revelations delivered in July and August of that year, “Zion” was used seven times to describe Jackson County, Missouri (see D&C 57 through 59).

117. For a more thorough investigation of the idea of gathering as taught by early Church leaders, see David Morris, “The Rhetoric of the Gathering and Zion: Consistency through Change 1831–1920,” International Journal of Mormon Studies 1, no. 1 (2008): 154–71.

118. Pratt, Voice of Warning, 177.

119. It is worth noting that the Latter-day Saints were not the only people who viewed the United States as a “promised land,” of sorts; a wide array of emigrant groups were moving westward across the North American continent at this time, including gold seekers, railroad tycoons, and Russian Jewish immigrants. For a more complete examination of the Latter-day Saints’ place in the nineteenth-century westward expansion, see Christina A. Ziegler-McPherson, “Selling the Promised Land: Religious and Philanthropic Promotion,” in Selling America: Immigration Promotion and the Settlement of the American Continent, 1607–1914 (Santa Barbara, Calif.: Praeger Press, 2017), 57–71.

120. “James Barnes diary, 1840 August–1841 June,” microfiche, MS 1870, Church History Library.

121. “Autobiographical Sketch of Edward Phillips,” Saints by Sea, accessed August 15, 2023, https://saintsbysea.lib.byu.edu/mii/account/197, emphasis original.

122. “God and Gold—1847,” in Carter, Our Pioneer Heritage, 16:490.

123. “Autobiography of Richard Bentley,” Saints by Sea, accessed August 15, 2023, https://saintsbysea.lib.byu.edu/mii/account/1204.

124. “Reminiscences and Diary of Charles Smith,” Saints by Sea, accessed August 15, 2023, https://saintsbysea.lib.byu.edu/mii/account/1176.

125. “Autobiography of John Nelson Harper,” Saints by Sea, accessed August 15, 2023, https://saintsbysea.lib.byu.edu/mii/account/1173.

126. “Autobiography of Christopher Layton,” Saints by Sea, accessed August 15, 2023, https://saintsbysea.lib.byu.edu/mii/account/1174.

127. “Collection of Reminiscences of Thomas Callister.”

128. It is unclear how much the missionaries in Britain and, in turn, their converts understood about the persecutions American Latter-day Saints faced. For example, Joseph Smith visited President Martin Van Buren in 1839 to seek redress for the Latter-day Saints’ hardships in Missouri, but Van Buren’s unwillingness to help left Smith disillusioned (and likely played an instrumental role in inspiring Smith’s subsequent 1844 presidential campaign). This experience conflicts with Pratt’s effusive praise of the American flag as a symbol of the “land of liberty.” Missionaries and converts in Britain were likely not apprised of Smith’s June 1844 death until the fall of that year; the first known correspondence advising British Saints of Smith’s death was a letter written by Orson Hyde on July 10, 1844. See “Letter from Elder Orson Hyde,” Millennial Star 5, no. 4 (September 1844): 14. For more on the Latter-day Saints’ disenchantment with the U.S. government and Smith’s subsequent presidential campaign, see Spencer W. McBride, Joseph Smith for President: The Prophet, the Assassins, and the Fight for American Religious Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021).

129. “Autobiography of Ann Prior Jarvis,” 10, MS 8620, reel 12, no. 6, Church History Library.

130. The case of the Hyder family is an interesting—and somewhat disputed—one. Former Church President Gordon B. Hinckley’s wife, Marjorie Pay, descended from Charlotte Jarrold Hyder. Charlotte’s father, Richard Hyder, was believed to be the dyer and tailor for Queen Victoria and the royal family, and after his death, his late wife, Sarah, joined the Church with her daughters (Ann Eliza, Charlotte, and Martha). When relating their story, Marjorie P. Hinckley claimed Sarah “was the first woman to be baptized in Cambridge.” The late Cambridge historian Leonard Reed disputes this: “This is probably not the case. William Goates’ wife Susan, who was baptized in July 1844, almost certainly preceded Sarah, and as there are no surviving nineteenth century records of the Cambridge LDS Branch, it is difficult to know who was baptized after her and when the baptisms occurred.” See Gordon B. Hinckley and Marjorie P. Hinckley, The Wondrous Power of a Mother (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1989), 11; Reed, Living Latter-day Saint History in Cambridgeshire, 18.

131. From Charlotte Jarrold Hyder’s diary, March 10, 1851, as quoted in “Biography of Charlotte Jarrold Hyder Evans, 1834–1906,” FamilySearch, https://www.familysearch.org/photos/artifacts/136130565.

132. Quoted in Allen, “‘We Had a Very Hard Voyage for the Season.’”

133. “Peter McIntyre Autobiography,” 28–29.

134. Rowan, “Poetry Book,” 5. A more complete treatment of poetry composed by Latter-day Saint emigrants between 1840 and 1890 was written by William H. Brugger, “Mormon Maritime Migration in Meter” (PhD diss., Drew University, 2007).

135. Mary Goble Pay, “A Noble Pioneer,” in Carter, Our Pioneer Heritage, 13:436.

136. Harrison, “Popular History,” 13.

137. In 1972, Elder Bruce R. McConkie discouraged Saints in Mexico from migrating to Utah: “Every nation is the gathering place for its own people,” he said. Church presidents—including Harold B. Lee and Spencer W. Kimball—repeated this counsel. See “Gathering Is in Fulfillment of Prophecy,” Church News, March 6, 1993, https://www.thechurchnews.com/1993/3/6/23258626/gathering-is-in-fulfillment-of-prophecy.

138. See Jane Lilly Lopez and others, “Shades of Belonging: The Intersection of Race and Religion in Utah Immigrants’ Social Integration,” Social Sciences 10, no. 7 (2021): 241, https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci10070246; Claudia Soto Saavedra and others, “‘It Happened When I Was Connecting to the Community . . .’: Multiple Pathways to Migrant (Non)Belonging in a New Destination Setting,” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 20, no. 3 (January 2023): 2172, https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20032172.

Samuel Benson

BYU Studies Publications