The most famous debate between a Mormon and non-Mormon preacher

The Deseret News announcement of a debate over polygamy between Orson Pratt and President Ulysses Grant’s personal pastor.

And this summary from the Wardell Family Genealogy site:

In August, 1870, Dr. John P. Newman, chaplain of the U.S. Senate and President Ulysses S. Grant's personal pastor, delivered a strong anti-pologamy sermon in his Metropolitan Methodist Church in Washington, D.C.

Salt Lake Daily Telegraph editor Edward Sloan proposed that Newman debate polygamy in Salt Lake.

Newman accepted and, when Brigham Young declined to be his opponent, debated instead with Orson Pratt.

The 3 day debate was reported daily in the New York Herald. Edward Tullidge declared that "millions of readers followed the arguments of Dr. Newman and Orson Pratt and it is safe to estimate that quite two-thirds of them yielded to the Mormon apostle. It is reported that Newman never forgave "the Mormons". 

- http://wardell-family.org/bates/not15.htm

And this from

Salt Lake City l9 January 1871
Elder P. O. Thomassen

Dear Brother,
Thank you for your letter of 20 December. Since returning from my mission in Denmark I have had some amusing experiences, including a few religious ones. I'll try to tell you a little about them.

First, the "learned" chaplain of the American Congress, Dr. Newman, challenged our president to a debate on the frequently discussed question, "Does the Bible sanction polygamy?"

Brigham Young found it beneath his dignity to defend our principle, but sent Orson Pratt in his stead.

The debate lasted three days.

The first two Elder Pratt lathered his learned opponent, and the third he shaved him as smooth as an eel.

I attended the entire debate. Shortly afterward several American newspapers, both in California and the eastern states, wrote things like: "The learned Reverend Dr. Newman recently went to 'the city of the Saints' to convince both the prophet and all true Mormons that polygamy is wrong. He wanted to point out verses in the Bible that forbid its practice.

Old Brigham did not himself refute Dr. Newman, but sent one of his apostles, Orson Pratt, who did it so impressively that we must tell the learned gentleman from Washington the same thing the Savior told the woman: 'Go and sin no more."

- Letters: Scandinavian Saints write about America

Mary Jarvis Crossley and James Crossley – my people

HISTORICAL NOTES
Part I is a work of fiction and other than actual historical figures, the characters are fictional.

The events in part II about the handcart journey are offered as more or less accurate and in sequence.  A more personal and significant source to me came about after I  discovered, during the writing and while scanning the roster of emigrants in Edward Martin's Company, the names of Mary Jarvis Crossley (45) with two sons and three daughters: Mary Ann (23), Joseph (19), Hannah (15), Sarah (12), Ephraim (5) and Mary Ann's son William (1).

At that point something changed for me in the writing of this story. It suddenly became extremely personal and, as I had already invested quite a bit of energy in trying to write about the handcart journey, I acquired a new and more powerful sense of heritage.

Mary Jarvis Crossley was the mother of Ephraim Jarvis Crossley who made the handcart journey at the age of five.

Ephraim Jarvis Crossley became the father of Joseph Ephraim Crossley, who became the father of Joseph Heber Crossley, who was the father of Cora Lanor Crossley, my mother.

Mary Jarvis Crossley is therefore my Great Great Great Grandmother.

Up until the time of discovering this information, I knew very little about my mother's side of the family; where they came from, when and how they joined the LDS Church and how they came to reside in Idaho.

I found a family member, Hope Hayes of Soda Springs, Idaho, who could answer my questions about my Crossley ancestors and also sent me a most precious package of information upon which the events and activities of my fictional characters were based.

I received life stories of James Crossley (Mary's husband and my Great Great Great Grandfather), Mary Crossley and Sarah Crossley Sessions (age 12 during the handcart journey), diary entries from James Crossley and, extremely precious and useful, diary entries from the journal of 19-year old Joseph for May and June, 1856 when the family crossed the Atlantic on the ship Horizon.

In the novel, Rose Blake's journal for May and June, 1856 is based entirely on what is in Joseph's (his last name was Smith as he was Mary's son by a prior marriage) diary.

Joseph died at Martin's Cove and the incident in the novel when Abigail see's  wolves attack Albert's body is based on Mary Crossley  seeing wolves go after the deceased Joseph as the emigrants were leaving Martin's Cove and she gazed back at her son's body.

The handcart story became a story I have inherited; became in that way my own story, helping me, more than a hundred years later, come to a greater sense of who I am.

Part of my mother's side of the family came to Utah in handcarts and part of my father's side of the family, namely Anson Call who is named toward the end of the rescue, participated in helping them get to Utah.

* * *

Words and acts of actual historical persons are quoted and described according to the reference materials utilized in the crafting of the story.

All characters named were actual people with the exception of Turner Cole, Joshua Cole, Jacob Hannah, and the Blake family, Reverend Charles, Oliver Leach, Tommy Brown, Sabina Cole and the Jenkins family which was named in one fictional conversation.

The Rescue Team characters were all actual historical personages as were Edward Martin, James Willie, Franklin D. Richards, Levi Savage and the emigrant families named in the novel.

The words of Brigham Young are quoted based on historical quotations.

Reference works included:
Handcarts to Zion 1856-60, by Leroy R. and Ann W. Hagen (Arthur H. Clark Co., Glendale CA, 1981);


Rescue of the 1856 Handcart Companies, a Charles Red Monograph in 
Western History (distributed by Signature Books, Salt Lake City, UT, 1982);


The Latter Day Saints Emigrants' Guide by William Clayton (printed in St. Louis, MO 1848 and edited by Stanley B. Kimball//The Patrice Press, 1983).

Conversion of a prostitute? By LDS missionaries?

On Rose Blake - heroine

Rose’s circumstances as a historical character trapped in a life of prostitution that was as cruelly enforced 150 years ago in industrial England as it is today, is not extraordinary nor forced  creative license.

Among numerous  readings I learned about Mary Woolstoncraft who has been called “the first feminist” or the “mother of feminism” and whose influence was quite strong in mid-19th century England.

I also found the following tragic quote while researching how I might portray Rose.

“The getting of fresh girls is easy enough. I have gone and courted girls in the country under all kinds of disguises, occasionally assuming the dress of a parson ...and got them in my power to please a customer.... I bring her up, take her here and there, give her plenty to eat and drink, especially drink. I contrive it so that she loses her last train ...I offer her nice lodgings for the night ...my client gets His maid." - THE ENGLISH- A SOCIAL HISTORY: 1066-1945, Christopher Hibbert

My larger priority in writing And Should We Die was always authenticity and consistency in historical details of the actual handcart experience. The England context was based on readings and study of available personal journals and recollections as well as published histories such as Hibbert’s above.

Furthermore for a sense of mood and social environment, I was counseled that I might also take a long look at the writings of Dickens whose David Copperfield, for example was not that dissimilar to the background of what I needed for the Blake family circumstance when found by Jake Hannah and Turner Cole.

The greater priority for Rose was the exploration of the literal difficulties of conversion not so much  from one religion to another but of an attempt to change – based on spiritual values – of a way of life condemned by Christian religion. 

Rose then does not appear as an innocent almost diva-like beauty more related to stereotypical historical romances for whom visually we are treated mostly to life where heroes and heroines have much more time on their hands to be in love with love and the afflictions of  soap-opera drama.

When we meet Rose we meet her gritty hand-to-mouth existence – a pattern of life that might be so conflicted or convoluted by greed and cruelty that escape or empowerment  by religious conversion might be an impossible task.