Yesterday, Paul Reeve, Associate Professor of History from the University of Utah told us that St. George was once more cosmopolitan in the early years.  It had more (raw numbers of) blacks, Chinese, Polynesians and Europeans in the early days of settlement until the past few decades.  It was a really interesting presentation.

I have been very interested to learn about new research websites.  In the afternoon, Rick Turley, Randy Olsen and Jeffrey Walker introduced the brand new Church History Library Beta Website.  Apparently it is brand new this week.  Turley said that they are in the process of digitizing millions of documents and photographs.  Some are already available and they hope that many will be available soon.  They encouraged us to make requests for digitization.  I checked out the website yesterday.  It is a beta website, and did go down for a few minutes yesterday, but I look forward to checking it out some more.  I just realized that all the items I saved on my e-shelf were erased because I did not log in.

They also showed us the Joseph Smith Papers website.  This website contains all the information found in the bound volumes, as well as new information not in the books.  Jeffrey Walker gave an entertaining introduction, and said we should all watch the 2:08 video on the home page since he is prominently featured there.  The room was packed with researchers.

This morning, I attended the inaugural Mormon Women’s History Initiative breakfast.  They have a Facebook page, as well as a website to assist those interested in studying women’s history.  It was here that I was able to talk to Richard Bushman.  When I told him I was a statistician, I was surprised that he started asking me questions!  He asked me if I followed Wordprint studies, and I was pleased to say that I have.  I told him to stop by my blog, so I’ll make it easy to find the items.  Here are a few posts on the topic.

• an in-depth review of Rebuttal to Jockers here on my website
• a shorter version of it at Wheat and Tares
• my first review of Wordprints in general
• I was bummed to see that the comments were removed from Mormon Matters about my review of the Jockers study.
• There were very interesting comments at Mormon Discussions.  Bruce Schaalje of BYU and Matt Criddle of Stanford went the rounds a bit.

Yesterday afternoon I attended a session called “Reading and Writing Southern Utah History.”  Brandon Metcalf of the Church History Department gave a history of the southern Utah historian James Bleak (pronounced Blake).  Curt Bench gave a delightful presentation on Juanita Brooks (he’s a big fan and a bibliophile), and George D Smith gave a history of apostle George A. Smith, for whom St George is named.  George A Smith was a cousin to Joseph Smith, and the grandfather of future prophet George Albert Smith.

This  morning, I was able to attend a great session on the Mountain Meadows Massacre.  Ugo Perego was supposed to give a presentation called “‘Poisoned Springs?’  Scientific Testing of the More Recent Anthrax Theory.”  Perego wasn’t able to give the presentation because he was in Italy accepting an award, so the president of Soreneson Molecular Genealogy, Scott Woodward gave his presentation.  It was awesome.

As you may or may not know, the Fancher party was accused of poisoning a spring and causing cattle to die.  This was supposedly the cause of the Indians getting angry at the Fancher party and seeking their deaths.  However, historians have said they don’t believe there was any poison.  Perego looked at poisons and environmnetal explanations of the poisoned springs theory.  Strychnine and Arsenic were the two most common poisons available in 1857, but he doesn’t think it fits the descriptions.  Anthrax and Brucellosis seem more likely, with anthrax seeming to fit the descriptions best.

A young boy from Fillmore, Utah named Proctor Robison was known to have skinned a cow and died shortly thereafter in a manner similar to the descriptions of the Fancher party “poisonings”.  The Sorenson group asked for permission to exhume the body and see if there was evidence of anthrax in the boy’s death.  While they were able to positively identify the boy using DNA testing, the ground was very moist.  Anthrax has been known to leave dormant spores around for centuries in the right conditions.  If the boy did die of anthrax, the moist ground has erased any evidence of anthrax in his death.  I think it is a really interesting theory, and I was fascinated by the presentation.

Barbara Jones Brown discussed the Marvelous Flood of 1862 which devastated much of the area surrounding Mountain Meadows, and Richard Turley discussed John Wesley Powell’s interactions (for whom Lake Powell is named) in southern Utah.  Powell came in contact with John D Lee and others of MMM infamy.  It was a great session, and a packed house.

I’ll post more tomorrow.  Questions or comments?

Apparently Mr. Bastow, a friend of Wentworth, wanted to write a history of New Hampshire.  That’s a little odd because Joseph starts out stating he was born in Vermont.  In order for Wentworth to publish the letter, Joseph asks Wentworth to

publish the account entire, ungarnished, and without misrepresentation.

Joseph says

My father was a farmer and taught me in the art of husbandry.

Curious wording–husbandry–don’t you think?  As a polygamist, it seems he was a natural husband.  So one of the cool things about the Kindle is the built in dictionary.  I had a feeling that husbandry had a different definition, so I highlighted the word so the dictionary would pop up.  Here’s what it said:

1 – The care, cultivation, and breeding of crops and animals:  crop husbandry.

2 – management and conservation of resources.

<ORIGIN> Middle English: from HUSBAND in the obsolete sense ‘farmer’; compare with HUSBANDMAN.

Ok, so that better explains Jesus’ parable in Matthew 21:33-46 about the husbandman–why don’t they just translate that as farmer?

Anyway, back to the letter.  Joseph goes on to explain the Book of Mormon, and rehearses the mob violence in Missouri.  He almost quotes The Standard of Truth, just before giving the Articles of Faith.  So, have any of you actually read the Wentworth Letter before?  What are your impressions?

And if you have any other suggestions for me, I’m all ears.

www.litefeeds.com

I just found this website to view comments and apparently post, so give it a try!  Also, here’s a reminder to add a photo to your comments with a Gravatar!

(A)  Go to http://en.gravatar.com and sign in using your email address.  They will send you an email and ask you to create a nickname, and  password, and then you can upload a picture. (Warning, No spaces or capitals in your Nickname.)

That’s all there is to it!  Now, your picture will appear on any WordPress blogs.  I checked mine at Irrestible (Dis)grace and Grace for Grace (talk about opposite ends of the theological spectrum!) and now I FINALLY have a photo.

Now, for those of you like me who want to add the photo capability to your WordPress blog comments, there’s a few easy steps you need to do.

(1)  First, go to http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/easygravatars/installation/ and download the ZIP file.  I’m don’t think you need to expand the ZIP, but it doesn’t matter if you do it anyway.  Remember where you saved the ZIP file on your computer, because you’ll need the location in a minute.

(2)  Login to your WordPress Admin (as you would to create a brand new post), and click “Plugins”.  Then “Add new plugin”.  It will ask you to browse to the location where your ZIP file is located.  Upload the file, and your last step is to “Activate” the plugin.

That’s all you need to do!  I know there are other plugins and/or ways to add it, but this one worked for me, and I think was easiest to install.  So, for those of you on Blogspot, just do step (a) above, and I’ll be able to see your gravatar on any WordPress blog!

In reviewing my blog, I am relying on Google Analytics.  For any bloggers out there who want to know who/where and what visitors are looking at your site, this is a free service (you just need a free gmail account.  Click here for more info.)  I installed the code on June 15^th of last year, and have been tracking things since then, so this would be my 10 month anniversary of being able to track statistics.  Unfortunately, I did not install the code at the beginning, so my first 6 months of stats are missing.

My Worst Post

While most people would start with the good, I’ll start with the bad and talk about my worst post.  Apparently, my worst post was Looking at Mitt on Super Tuesday, which I did on Feb 2 last year.  Not a single person has clicked on that post since June 15, and it received no comments.  Nobody apparently cares that I predicted a loss for Mitt to McCain, and nobody bothered to check out the spreadsheet to see that I was pretty close to predicting the delegate count.  I guess I’ll take that as a lesson that people don’t come here for my political analysis, (though I did get a mention on Mormon Times on my post about Obama on MLK Day.)

My Top Ten Most Viewed

I have been consistently surprised that my post what’s the difference between arabs and persians is consistently one of the most viewed, and my top post.  Even over the last 30 days, it is my second highest post, and has been my most viewed post in 2 different months.  On the other hand, it hasn’t received as many comments as one would expect from a Most Viewed Post.

Another funny thing I’ve noticed is that with Easter here, my post from last year on Why don’t mormons celebrate Easter? has had a huge surge to #2, and is my top post this month (1 year later!)  When I checked last week, it wasn’t even in my top ten, so I expect that to fall back out of the top 10 soon.

Here’s my overall top ten.

1.       whats the difference between arabs persians

2.       why don’t mormons celebrate easter

3.       early christian heresies gnosticism

4.       was priesthood ban inspired

5.       using fear pride and greed to pay tithing

6.       emma smith my story

7.    gnosticism dead sea scrolls nag hammadi library

8.       shaken faith syndrome

9.    eastern orthodoxy theosis/deification

10.  book of mormon geography

It’s also interesting to me to see my top posts each month.  One would think that current posts would receive the most hits, but that’s not always the case.  I also found that how one cuts up the month makes a big difference.  I compared the months from the 1^st day to the last day, with from the 15^th to the 14^th (since I installed Google Analytics on the 15^th of the month, April and June would be short-changed by the first criteria.)  Results were surprisingly  different.

My Favorite Posts

1.       was priesthood ban inspired

2.       gods in embroyo my first sunstone

3.       joshuas unholy war

4.       a radically different book of mormon geography theory

Most Commented  Posts

Comments don’t always indicate popularity with viewers, but the interactions with others is always fun and welcome.  My new post on a radically different book of mormon geography theory has been rising quickly and is already in my top 5 in just a week!

1.    was priesthood ban inspired – 76 comments

2.    be ye therefore perfect what does it really mean - 67 comments

3.    joshuas unholy war – 57 comments

4.    after death experience the message – 44 comments

5.    a radically different book of mormon geography theory - 38 comments

My Favorite Blogs

I have them listed to the side, but I most frequently visit the following:

• The Faithful Dissident
• Hieing to Kolob
• Mormon Matters
• Gospel Doctrine Underground
• Things of My Soul

So, did I miss anything you liked?