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Welcome back to our series about Utah’s road to statehood. In this post we will explore some of the history of the Latter-day Saint pioneers who settled in the Salt Lake Valley in the later half of the nineteenth century. Immigration to Salt Lake Valley The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints was founded in 1830 in New York

Indigenous Americans The earliest settlers in modern Utah were, of course, the Indigenous Americans. The Ancestral Puebloans lived in the vicinity of Utah from 500-1300 AD. They were commonly known as ‘Anasazi,’ an exonym coined by the Navajos, and not preferred by the Puebloans, which means ancient enemies. The Puebloans occupied the southeastern portion of Utah, as well as portions

One hundred and twenty-five years ago, President Grover Cleveland issued the proclamation that officially welcomed Utah into the Union as a state on January 4, 1896. Utah had been working towards this goal since 1849, when newly-arrived white settlers first petitioned Congress for statehood. They petitioned a total of seven times over those forty-five years. This year the Utah State

When World War I started in 1914, the U.S. started with a strict policy of neutrality. The policy was tested when German U-boats sunk the Lusitania in 1915, killing 124 Americans. The U.S. demanded that Germany stop engaging in unrestricted warfare, and Germany agreed, allowing neutral ships with non-military passengers to pass without attack. However, in 1917 Germany resumed unrestricted

Mae Timbimboo was born in Washakie, Utah in 1919. Washakie was a community of the Shoshone tribe, made up of descendants of the people who survived the Bear River Massacre in 1863. Mae attended boarding school at Washakie Day School. Boarding school was common for Indigenous Americans at the time and was designed to force Indigenous American children to assimilate

Geneal Anderson was born in 1952 and grew up in Cedar City, Utah and Las Vegas, Nevada. She was born into the Paiute tribe of Native Americans. Just two years after her birth, a law was passed declaring the Paiute tribe was no longer recognized nationally and their lands were no longer protected. This was part of the belief that

The story of Ellis Reynolds started in 1847 in Iowa. Her family converted to the LDS church and moved to Utah when she was five years old. In a speech about her early life, Ellis relates one of her strongest memories of the trip. One of her fellow travelers, Sister Winters, contracted cholera and died. Ellis’s grandmother was the nurse

Pearl Harbor and Alien Enemy Registration After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the U.S. was suspicious of Japanese citizens. They were afraid that those who had immigrated to the U.S. from Japan were secretly spies for their birth country. As tensions rose, people of Japanese descent were evacuated from the Pacific Coast due to fears

First Female Lawyers in Utah The Utah Bar admitted Phoebe Couzins and Georgia Snow on the same day in 1872. Couzins studied law at Washington University Law School in Missouri, and had been admitted to the bar in Missouri and in Arkansas. The Utah bar accepted her automatically, as she had credentials and experience practicing in other states. Judge McKean,

Early Life Martha Hughes was born in Wales in 1857. Her parents were recent converts to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, immigrating to Utah when Martha was four years old in 1861. Martha’s father, Peter Hughes, died of consumption just days after they arrived. Her mother remarried about a year later and the family settled in Salt