1. Excerpted from James Brady to David and Ann MacNeil, 21 May 1853, letter in possession of Frederick S. Buchanan, Salt Lake City. Copy in author’s possession.

2. Millennial Star 18 (16 February 1856): 106.

3. A local historian of Kilmarnock also faintly praised Lyon’s pre-Mormon “poetic effusions.” See John Kelso Hunter, “Retrospects: John Lyon, the Mormon Poet,” Kilmarnock Standard, Senex supplement, 20 April 1895, 6.

4. See various diaries in Library-Archives, Historical Department, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City (hereafter cited as LDS Church Archives); some examples noted in Samuel W. Richards, 24 April, 30 August, and 1 December 1847; Franklin D. Richards, 5 December 1846; Levi Richards, 4 March 1851.

5. See John Taylor, “Lines Inscribed to the Author,” in John Lyon, Harp of Zion (Liverpool: S. W. Richards, 1853), 3.

6. Eliza R. Snow, Poems: Religious, Historical, and Political (London: LDS Book Depot, 1856), 235.

7. Millennial Star 11 (1 February 1849): 42–43.

8. John Lyon, Letters to Levi Richards, 184–51, in author’s possession.

9. Franklin D. Richards, Diary, 15 October 1851, LDS Church Archives.

10. Millennial Star 14 (2 October 1852): 504.

11. William M. Powell, “The Harp of Zion,” MS, 1, Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo.

12. The Liverpool office kept excellent financial records of the exact amounts spent for printing. On 16 and 17 November 1853 a clerk detailed the entire account for the Harp of Zion. For a summary of this account see appendix A which is adapted from vol. 8 of European Mission Publication Accounts Journal, LDS Church Archives.

13. Millennial Star 14 (2 October 1852): 504–5.

14. Ibid., 15 (29 January 1853): 73.

15. European Mission Publication Accounts Journal 9:49.

16. George Q. Cannon, Letters to Brigham Young. 31 March 1861, LDS Church Archives.

17. Ibid.

18. Deseret News, 14 September 1864.

19. Millennial Star 51 (23 December 1889): 813.

20. Journal History, 13 August 1857.

21. This judgment comes from Helen H. Macare, “The Singing Saints: A Study of the Mormon Hymnal, 1835–1950” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1961), 352. Macare observes that after the schisms of the Nauvoo period, Church leaders felt the need to create more hymns of their own, written by faithful Mormons. Lyon fit the criteria very well.

22. Nile J. Washburn, “A Critical Study of Latter-day Saint Poetry from 1847 to 1877” (Master’s thesis, Brigham Young University, 1936), 122.

23. Lyon, Harp of Zion, 53.

24. Ibid., 155.

25. Ibid., 131.

26. The claim, however, is subject to some dispute since in 1840 Parley P. Pratt had published a 140 page collection of his poems and miscellaneous writings, which may be considered the first book of poetry published by a nineteenth-century Mormon. It did not, however, have the certification of the Church, which is tacitly implied in Lyon’s 1853 work, published by and for Church members. In later years, newspapers in Utah regularly hailed Lyon as the first Mormon to publish a complete book of poetry, likely because he was so well known, Parley P. Pratt was dead, and “thousands of copies [of Lyon’s Harp of Zion ] are to be found scattered through the homes of Utah” (see Millennial Star 51 [23 December 1889]: 813).

27. Millennial Star 22 (18 February 1860): 110.

28. Lyon, Harp of Zion, 139.

Thomas Edgar Lyon Jr.

BYU Studies Publications