Heber J. Grant and his family, a timeline of the rise of the modern church

Pre-Nauvoo  Rachel’s family was contacted by a missionary named Jedediah “Jeddy” Grant.  She loved to sing, which was forbidden by her family’s faith.  They were Quakers and were discouraged that she was “all levity” after joining the Mormons

Jedediah Grant marched with Zion’s camp at age 18. He served the first mission in Maryland, North Carolina and Virginia where he met Rachel Ivins’ family

William Smith married Jeddy Grant’s sister, Caroline Amanda Grant  in 1833 connecting the Smith and Grant families closely.

1842 Rachel Ivins had Victorian era values… 20 year-old and had charm and refinement. While little is known of her daily Nauvoo activity and interests, her bosom companion was Sarah Kimball

 But in private and informal moments, he seemed distressingly “unProphet-like.”  – Rachel Ivins on Joseph Smith

“He would play with the people, and he was always cheerful and happy,” Rachel Ivins on Joseph Smith

Once while visiting the Ivinses on the Sabbath, he requested the family girls sing the popular “In the Gloaming.” Rachel believed singing and newspaper reading breached the Sabbath and responded with a mortified, “Why Joseph, it’s Sunday!”

1843 – When Joseph sought an interview with her, she believed he wished to ask for her hand in plural marriage. Her personal turmoil over this prospect must have been excruciating

[I would] “sooner go to hell as a virtuous woman than to heaven as a whore.” — Rachel’s reply if Joseph were to Propose to her

Rachel leaves the Saints for 10 years. Heber J. Grant would later say “When plural marriage was first taught, my mother left the church on account of it.” She returned to New Jersey, ailing physically as well as spiritually and planning never to mingle with the Saints again. She would be gone almost ten years.[

In Victorian symbolism, a dried white rose had an unmistakable meaning: better be ravaged by time and death than to lose one’s virtue. While Mormon leaders insisted that their plural marriage was heaven-sent and honorable, Rachel, like most women of her generation, initially rejected the practice. She was, in fact, the quintessence of the nineteenth century’s prevailing feminine ideal.

1844 Charles (one of the publishers of the Nauvoo Expositor) and James Ivins (Rachel’s brothers and Heber’s uncles) joined Law, Foster and Higbee (this was after they learned about plural marriage, and Rachel talked to one of them about a possible proposal by Joseph Smith)

Jedediah Grant campaigns for Joseph Smith as a presidential candidate.

1845 – Jedediah Grant added to First Council of the Seventy

May 1845 – Caroline Grant dies, leaving William Smith a widower.

22 June 1845 – William married Mary Jane Rollins  who left him two months later

1846 -47 – The Bulk of Nauvoo’s population head west following Brigham Young.  About 1/4 follow James Strang. A few remain behind in Nauvoo such as William and Emma Smith.

18 May 1847 – William Smith marries Roxie Ann Grant, Caroline’s younger sister, by whom he had two more children before they separated.  This close connection may explain why William approached Rachel Ivins; and it reminded her to go west and meet up with Jedediah Grant.

May 4 and 5 1849George D. Grant presides at a gathering of saints at Pidgeon Creek.

May 6th, 1849George D. Grant leads group against indians who stole horses

May 29, 1850Captain George D. Grant leads volunteer calvary against indians at Skull Valley

August 8, 9 1850George D. Grant leads 4th company of volunteers in indian battle at Fort Utah 

1851 – Jedediah Grant’s brother Joshua Jr. Grant dies.  Jedediah Grant is made Mayor of Salt Lake by Brigham Young

1853 – Visited by William Smith back east.

April 5, 1853 – Rachel left for Utah. Arrived in Salt Lake City on 11 August, and met with Jedidiah Grant to be lodged, whom she would marry (She was thrity-two years old)

 “One could be happy in the marriage relations without love,” she reportedly advised, “but could never be happy without respect.”

1853 – Grantsville, Utah named for George Grant

1854 – Jedediah Grant added to the First Presidency under church president Brigham Young.

29 November 1855 – Brigham Young chose [Jedediah] as his counselor and as mayor of Salt Lake City. Already much married, Jeddy sought out Rachel’s hand as his seventh wife two years after her Utah arrival.  Brigham insisted she be eternally sealed to Joseph first, Rachel married Jedediah Grant for time only in the Endowment house

1856Mormon Reformation begins.

September 13, 1856 – In multiple “soul-stirring addresses,” Jedediah Grant called on the people to live their religion in minute detail, observe cleanliness in every sense, and set themselves, their families and communities in order. Of those who would not so conduct themselves,“let them be unto you as heathen men and publicans, and not numbered among the Saints.” http://utah.ptfs.com/awweb/awarchive?type=file&item=11947

October 7, 1856 – The first rescue party to save the hand cart companies left Salt Lake City with 16 wagon-loads of food and supplies, pulled by four-mule teams with 27 young men serving as teamsters and rescuers. The party elected George D. Grant (heber J. Grant’s uncle) as their captain.

22 November 1856,  – Rachel has her son, Heber Jede Ivins Grant, nine days before “lung disease,” a combination of typhoid and pneumonia, took Jedediah Grant’s life at the early age of forty.

Heber was named by Bishop Woolley, who performed the blessing and said he knew he’d be an apostle: Preston W. Parkinson, The Utah Woolley Family (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1967), p. 126. The christening is recorded in the Thirteenth Ward Historical Record, Book B: 1854–59, 1 Jan. 1857, Church Archives.

Rachel had given away most of what she had brought from New Jersey (wealth of any kind) and the estate was divided among the wives.  She could come back east at any time if she rejected her religion

17 February 1858 – Rachel remarries for her religion and her son: Brigham told some of Jeddy’s wives to marry George Grant, Jeddy’s brother, as their new husband, they would successfully raise their children She married George on 17 February 1858, resolute in her religious obedience and hopeful for the future of her son to be a faithful Mormon.

The union was a disaster. George, once a faithful churchman, Indian fighter, and hero of the 1856 handcart tragedy was, unbeknown to Church leaders, on a downward course. His erratic and immoderate behavior, apparently due to alcoholism, soon became public. Six months after his marriage to Rachel, George “committed an unprovoked attack on Thos. S. Williams with [the] attempt to kill.” The fracas ended in a street brawl.  Heber is 2 years old

1860President Young dissolved the two-year-old marriage, but Rachel’s hurt never entirely healed. “It was the one frightful ordeal of my mother’s life and the one thing she never wishes to refer to,” Heber remarked in later years.

1864 – For several years she and her son remained at the Grant home on Main Street with a couple of the other widowed and now divorced wives. But the lack of money forced the sale of that property and the break-up of their extended family. With President Young’s permission, Rachel took her $500 share of the transaction and purchased a cottage on Second East Street.

The disappointed and disoriented six-year-old Heber wandered back to the Main Street home and vowed that some day he would live there again

1869 – About five years after moving to Second East Street, Rachel began serving meals to boarders out of her small basement kitchen. Alex Hawes, a non-Mormon New York Life insurance man, helped make her venture successful. Attracted by her intelligence, charm, and culinary skill, Hawes first boarded and then at his own expense outfitted a small room at the Grant’s for his use. His rent and warm testimonials to Rachel’s cooking provided her, as the boarding business increased, with a growing margin of financial security.  In addition, Alex would teach Heber the ins and outs of selling fire insurance.

Rachel was “blessed and set apart” as the Thirteenth Ward Relief Society “presidentess.”  On occasion she prophesied. She experienced uncommon faith and expression while praying. Following priesthood counsel, she used when possible articles manufactured in Utah, and when Brigham Young requested women to abandon their cumbersome eastern styles, she wore, despite ridicule from many women, the simplified and home-designed “Deseret Costume.”

“We all have trials to pass through,” she spoke from personal experience, “but if living up to our duty they are sanctified to our best good.”

1871 – At the age of fifteen, Heber J. Grant joined the insurance firms of H. R. Mann and Company as an office boy and policy clerk. After business hours he marketed fire insurance.

He is also made a member of the 70.

1875 – By nineteen, Heber J. Grant had bought out his employers and organized his own successful agency.

1876 – During his early twenties Heber broadens out into other business activities.

1877-78 – Heber J. Grant is appointed to fill the assistant cashier position at Zion’s bank

Nov 1st, 1877Heber J. Grant marries Lucy Stringham.  He had vowed to capture her before his twenty-first birthday and succeeded with three weeks to spare.  She would die at the age of 34 leaving 5 children between the ages of 4 and 14 (Anna, Edith, Florence, Lucy, and Rachel)

1879 – At the age of twenty-three Heber J. Grant is called to preside over the Tooele Stake.

October 1882 – Heber J. Grant called as an apostle

Believing it his personal ministry to preserve Mormon commercial influence, he launched a series of enterprises. In addition to his insurance agency, he was owner or principal investor in the territory’s leading agricultural implement concern, two insurance companies, a livery stable, a leading Salt Lake City newspaper, a bank, the famed Salt Lake Theatre, and the Utah Sugar Company, which provided Utah agriculture with its most important cash crop. There also were less successful ventures in mining and the manufacture of soap and vinegar. During the Panic of 1893 and its aftermath, his eastern loan brokering and public subscriptions maintained the solvency of his church and many Utah businesses as well.  http://www.uen.org/utah_history_encyclopedia/g/GRANT_HEBER.html

1880’s – successively saved ZCMI, the Salt Lake Herald, and the Utah Sugar Company from their respective problems.  He was one of five Saints who raised the legal and lobbying fees for Utah’s statehood drive.

1883 – Joshua Grant, Heber’s half-brother along with George T. Odell and Heber start the largest wagon company in Utah Grant, Odell & Company

May 26, 1884 – Married polygamously, Augusta Winters.  She was reputed to be the ablest and highest-salaried schoolmarm in the territory.

Once Augusta suggested that each of them point out the annoying habits of the other. Her husband agreed. She mentioned several of Heber’s idiosyncrasies and waited for his suggestions. There was a slight twinkle in his eye, she remembered, and then he replied, “You haven’t one.”

In the late 1880s Augusta took up residence in New York City to try and prevent Grant’s arrest on polygamy charges. Augusta bore one daughter. She accompanied Grant to Japan when he was sent to open the Japanese Mission in 1901.

She would often travel with him when he was president of the church, especially when he went to address non-Mormon audiences. She died in 1952.

May 27, 1884 – Married Emily H. Wells (grant’s next door neighbor) were among the most prominent young orators in Salt Lake society in the 1870s, both connected with the “Wasatch Literary Association”, and Grant was a counselor to Emily’s brother in the 13th Ward YMMIA presidency. The marriage of Grant and Emily was expected by all who knew them. However, Emily then announced publicly her opposition to polygamy. This caused a falling-out between Grant and Emily

Emily went to England to live at the LDS mission home to have her first child. She returned to the United States 16 months later and moved between multiple locations in Utah Territory and Idaho to avoid capture.

April 1886Heber J. Grant drafts his half-brother Hyrum into organizing the Grant Brothers’ Livery and Transfer Company and began a furious war to control the local cab and transfer business.  The local cab drivers were opposed to the Church, and Grant had a difficult time arranging carriages when Wilford Woodruff’s wife died.  Hence he organized a “faithful” cab service.

1887 Edmunds act forbidding poligamy

1889 – Trying to avoid being forced to testify in pending unlawful cohabitation charges against her husband, Emily went to Manassa, Colorado, where she stayed for a year and a half. Grant accompanied her on the train-ride from Pueblo to Manassa, having been on a different train on the previous part of the journey to avoid arrest. Grant stayed two weeks, setting up for Emily the most comfortable house in the town, and leaving his mother to help Emily.[20]:5 She remained in Manassa until March 1891 when she returned to Salt Lake City.

1892UL&T pays its last dividend

Panic of 1893 –  Church tries to resolve it viaNew deal” style solutions

Following the 1893 panic, when Salt Lake City’s tax collector, who also served as an LDS bishop, mismanaged $32,000 in public funds, Grant had led the campaign to pay off quickly his debts without embarrassing the church.

The worst of the depression occurred in the winter of 1893—94, when Utah’s urban unemployment exceeded 25 percent and some laborers in Salt Lake City marched to demand “bread or blood.”

At the same time 1,400 unruly “Commonwealers” — out-of-work Californians traveling East to protest the prevailing scarcity — were camped in Ogden City.

Rachel Ivins gives her personal stocks and properties to Heber to help him through the financial crisis.

1893fire guts the building of the UL&T

1896 – Abraham H. Cannon offers to buy controlling interest in UL&T.  He wanted to use it to back a railroad to LA from SLC.  His money calculations basically used the bank’s reserves to back the purchase of the bank!  Six weeks later he died leaving the bank without reserves and the railroad un-backed.

late 1897 – The church itself owed over two million dollars and was looking for another loan of like amount

May 18, 1897Two employees, Leon Graves and Clarence Barton, who had removed $5,200 from the UL&T vaults and fled east are caught by the police in New York City.  Graves was dead, and Barton was terminally ill. The money was replaced by Joseph A. West by mortgaging his home but a run on bank came from rumors.

May 29, 1897 – Heber J. Grant is 90k in debt at this point.

Thomas J. Stevens- brother-in-law directors and members of Ogden’s Loan and Trust company (UL&T) approach Heber to ask him to save the bank. Charles Comstock Richards and Franklin S. Richards (Sons of Ogden’s apostle, Franklin D. Richards) established the firm. UL&T paid its last dividend in 1892.

UL&T officers, directors, and leading stockholders were a “Who’s Who” of Ogden’s LDS officialdom. General Authorities Joseph F. Smith and Francis M. Lyman owned stock and served as directors. Church’s loan agent in the East that because of the Ogden bank’s links with LDS officials, its failure would “almost sure” cause eastern bankers to demand payment on existing Mormon loans. Utah law made bank officers criminally culpable for receiving deposits after an institution’s liabilities exceeded its assets.  Almost everyone in LDS hierarchy could be held criminally culpable if exposed.

May 30th, 1897George Q. Cannon, Joseph F. Smith, Lorenzo Snow, Francis M. Lyman, John Henry Smith and Grant met for three hours to consider the bank

April 3rd, 1897The general authorities further back the UL&T on church tithe money. In case of failure, Stevens reported, “they promised to stand behind us … so that the depositors will be paid in full.”  Meanwhile the Church controlled banks in Salt Lake City, Zion’s Savings and Bank and Trust Company and the State Bank of Utah, were to be asked if they would assume respectively the UT&L’s savings and Commercial banking business.

Late 1897The LDS church owes over two million dollars and was looking for another loan of almost as much

January, 1898 Zion’s Savings loaned $5,000, to the UL&T  and the church itself eventually took a $15,000 second mortgage on the UL&T building and apparently extended the bank about $7,500 besides

May 25, 1898 – Anders Larsen, a disgruntled depositor who believed that his money had been negligently loaned, filed a lawsuit which declared the bank to be “utterly insolvent,” with “no property with which to pay its debts.” (Suit: Anders Larsen v. Utah Loan and Trust, filed May 25, 1898, Case #723, Third Circuit Court, Utah State Archives)

August 8,1898 – Rather than have the financially strapped church give aid to the bank, Joseph F. Smith proposed that Heber J. Grant be deputized to solicit money from its most prosperous members. He asked the First Presidency to call apostle Matthias Cowley to assist him and to sign a strongly-worded letter endorsing the project. “also appended a paragraph which blessed those complying with its Request” (source:  Grant, “Interesting Experience,” 2; Heber J. Grant, “President Grant’s Story about Saving the Ogden Bank,” Memorandum, box 177, fd. 7, Grant Papers; Grant, Typed Diary, August 8,1898. All diaries suggest that the climaxing meeting of the brethren was held on August 8,1898, although the extract in Grant’s Letterpress Copybook, 26:639-40 is dated two days later.) The text reads as follows:

“This letter will be presented to you by Elders Heber J. Grant and Matthias F. Cowley, and we ask you to treat as confidential all communications which they may make to you. We have called these brethren on a mission to raise the funds necessary to save one of the institutions of Zion from making an assignment. We feel that it would be a great calamity to have it fail as it would injure the credit of the Latter-day Saints as a community, and to maintain the community credit is something that should appeal to the patriotism of every true Latterday Saint. We appeal to you to render to these brethren all the financial aid that your circumstances will admit of, and also to assist them to the full extent of your ability to secure means from any of the saints residing in your Wards whom you feel are able to aid in this matter. We fully appreciate the fact that the saints have very many calls made upon them, but notwithstanding this, as sacrifice brings forth the blessings of heaven, we do not hesitate to appeal to you for aid in this matter, knowing that every sacrifice made in aiding any of the institutions of Zion will be sure to bring an ample reward from our Father in Heaven. We assure you that we shall appreciate very much indeed all you shall do to aid the brethren in making their mission a success”

Contributors to the UL&T:

George Q. Cannon promises $5,000 and gives 2,000 check as first installment

Grant asks $2,500 from Alfred W. McCune, a successful mining speculator and soon to be a candidate for the U.S. Senate who was not a member.  He replied “O hell, you cannot scare me with a thing like that,” when presented with the letter.  Heber gave him a pity story and he wrote a check for $5,000.  Heber later stoutly campaigned on McCune’s behalf, rumors came out that Grant had been bought.

Jesse Knight who was a short man with a walrus mustache and given to wearing Homburg hats, Knight was the son of two of Mormonism’s earliest converts, Newel and Lydia Knight.  He had a dream about a silver mine that turned out to be true.  It was called the Humbug! mine as that is what his friends told him when he explainedabout the dream.  Grant asked him for $500 and when turned down he stated:

“When you get home tonight get down on your knees and pray to the Lord to give you enlargement of the heart, and send me a check for $1,000.”

William H. Smart, a thirty-six-year-old Idaho livestock dealer who had been called to preside over his church’s Brooklyn Conference in the Eastern States Mission, had a niece Luella Cowley who was married to Matthias Cowley.  She explained that her husband had been assigned to help save the UL&T. Smart offered between the wide range of $1,000 and $20,000.

After presiding over the meetings of a stake conference, Grant typically would invite church leaders and prosperousmembers to a special meeting. After reading the First Presidency’s letter and touching upon UL&T matters (the comprehensiveness of his explanation seemed to vary with the occasion), he would then solicit an immediate and public response.

“When my name was called,” complained one participant who believed that he pledged beyond his means, “I did not feel like saying that I could not or would not do anything.

John Scowcroft of Ogden, gave $500 and promised to double the amount if his new business prospered.

George F. Richards offered $100 (to do so he was forced to sell 300 bushels of his stored grain), the  Apostle complained to Richards’s ecclesiastical superiors that he was not doing his share to save the institution which his family had founded. Grant later apologized to Richards for presuming to prescribe the bounds of another’s generosity.

George Romney, announced second thoughts about donating. After Grant’s paroxysm of temper, Romney’s business firm made good its $1,000 pledge

When one merchant grandiloquently promised “his time, his talent, [and] his substance” to the Kingdom in a public prayer [in the temple], Grant immediately closed in for a donation.  Grant was upset with the man when he replied that he didn’t expect the Lord to actually take those things.

1900 – UL&T on edge of collapse again.  For over a month the bank’s cash reserves had fallen well under the legal limit. “This bank ought to fix up its affairs,” the examiner wrote, “or go out of the business entirely.” Only his leniency forestalled immediate legal action.

Lorenzo Snow offers tithing dollars to back bank for $30,000 to get it back to within legal reserves limits.

Also during this time period: Rachel Ivins is baptized 8 times to try and restore her hearing, with church members from Idaho to Arizona fasting and praying for her.  her hearing is not restored:

“I watched in breathless silence to see the miracle performed, I saw my miracle . . . eight long agonizing times [she was baptized with no effect] . . . the vision of Aunt Rachel’s beaming smile at God’s refusal to hear her prayer gripped my soul with power to bear.” -Susa Young Gates

 

August 31, 1900 – The UL&T bank closed up business and requested depositors to call for their money.

Joseph West, recovered what he lent the bank (with interest after lawsuit).  David Eccles sold the bank for 20% increase, Grant became solvent via the Sugar company.  The LDS Church, which spent $50,000 (~$1,200,000) adjusted for inflation in subsidies and lost loans on the UL&T.

1901Heber J. Grant serves mission to open Japan until 1903

1902Joseph F. Smith reversed President Snow’s stand on alcohol being served on church properties and closed the saloon at Saltair, a move which the Protestant clergy heartily approved. Heber J. Grant had long tried to persuade Snow of this move and was key in convincing Joseph F. Smith.

June 1902 – The First Presidency and Twelve agreed not to fellowship anyone who operated or frequented saloons. In the same year, Joseph F. Smith urged stake presidents and others to refuse recommends to flagrant violators but to be somewhat liberal with old men who used tobacco and old ladies who drank tea. Habitual drunkards, however, were to be denied temple recommends.

1903 – At the age of eighty-two, Rachel Ivins retires from the Thirteenth Ward Relief Society. “I am not one,” her resignation read, “who wishes to hold on to an office when I can not do as I wish.” She thus conceded to old age what she had steadfastly refused to grant to her deafness.

1903Heber J. Grant sent to British mission

1906 – A strong prohibition movement developed in the United States, centered in Evangelical Protestant groups.  Elder Grant who had been part of the Reed Smoot hearings, was very aware that protestants saw the saints alcohol consumption as a reason not to allow them into U.S. Politics.

1907First attempt at a correlation committee

December 1907 – Reverend Dr. George W. Young of Louisville, Kentucky, assistant general superintendent of the Anti-Saloon League of America, come to Utah and start the Utah Prohibition movement.

1908 – Emily H. Wells dies, (Frances, Emily, Grace and Martha Deseret were her surviving children) Augusta raises Lucyh’s family while Emily’s younger children (Frances and Emily) were brought up by older sisters.

1915 – Apostle tells Heber, the most valuable thing he ever did was convince people to put money into the “Rat hole” UT&L bank

“No matter whatever comes to you of importance, no matter what great labor you may perform, in my judgment you will never do anything greater than the saving of that bank, and having men put their money in a rat hole.” – 1915 Francis M. Lyman

http://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1008&context=mormonhistory

July 28, 1914 – WWI begins

1916 – Heber J. Grant becomes president of the Quorum of the Twelve.  He places himself in the forefront in the drive for Utah prohibition and led several of the state’s World War I Liberty Bond drives.

November 1918 – Heber J. Grant becomes Prophet (until his passing in 1945).  WWI ends on Nov 11th.

Farming and agriculture, two of Utah main industries, slumped badly after World War I and deteriorated still further in the Great Depression of the 1930s.

1919 – Prohibition is adopted by 26 states.

1921 – Heber J. Grant makes adherence to the proscriptions of the Word of Wisdom an absolute requirement for entering the temple

1924 – Benjamin F. Grant, Heber’s half-brother, becomes general manager of the Deseret News.  His story is really quite fascinating including his mother leaving the church when Jedediah died.  He was abandoned by his mother as an infant and apprenticed to a stern and heavy-handed Cache County farmer at six, the boy fled to Montana as a stowaway in a freighter’s wagon at the age of twelve. The lad then traveled throughout the West as a miner, cowboy, and laborer. When B. F. arrived back in Salt Lake City at the age of about fifteen, Brigham Young extended a helping hand, giving him work and schooling. But it was not until B. F. was about forty, after bankruptcy and thoughts of suicide, that he returned to the faith of his father. B. F. concluded his career as a convincing preacher to wayward youth, as Salt Lake City’s chief of police, and then in 1924 he became general manager of the Deseret News.

1925 – When Rachel Ivins died, the Thirteenth Ward Relief Society’s liberality in cash and goods exceeded $7,750. The little money left she invested for her sisters in securities which appreciated spectacularly after her death. By 1925 the Thirteenth Ward Relief Society had assets worth $20,000 Grave: http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=24013328

http://rsc.byu.edu/archived/supporting-saints-life-stories-nineteenth-century-mormons/2-rachel-r-grant-continuing

https://www.lds.org/ensign/1979/07/jedediah-and-heber-grant?lang=eng

1929Great depression begins.  It would last until 1939

December, 1930Harold B. Lee saves Christmas in his stake while only 21 years old

1933 Nazi party begins to be a force to be reckonned with

April, 1936 – The LDS Church establishes its welfare program that materially aided government relief. (Harold B. Lee)

1937 [Updated 12/19/2016 used to say “visits the Nazi Party”] – Heber J. Grant visits a gathering of saints to build relationships two years before Germany would invade poland.  He reassured the Mormons that they should remain in Germany and build up the Church there. He promised them safety if they lived righteously. Because of missionary success, Germany was divided into two missions during this visit, West Germany and East Germany, headquartered in Frankfurt and Berlin respectively. The head of the Berlin Mission would spend missionary funds to hob-nob with the officials of the Nazi Officialdom. In Moroni and the Swashtika in the Chapter “The Quintessential Political Mission President” it is made clear that the mission was to align itself with the Nazi party including meeting and talking to those who created the racial psuedo-science.

Heber J. Grant sits center, under Nazi party flag

1937 – In General Conference, at 80 years old, Grant said he worked long hours “without fatigue and without feeling the least injury.” He attributed his excellent health, in part, to eating very little meat

1939 – the Committee of Correlation and Coordination is formed

August, 1939 – only one week before Hitler invaded Poland, all 150 foreign missionaries were withdrawn from Germany, and the members took over all the work. Joseph Fielding Smith, an Apostle and future President of the Church, prophesied that all Mormon missionaries would escape Poland and Czechoslovakia without injury and that the war would not start until they were all out. The last Mormon missionaries left Eastern Europe on August 31, 1939. Hitler’s army invaded Poland the very next day.

September 1, 1939 – Germany invades Poland

1941Harold B. Lee called to Quorum of the Twelve Apostles . He is 31 years old.

May 14, 1945Heber J. Grant Dies.  Rueben clark ran the church during last few years of Heber J. Grant’s life (And George albert smith’s)

September 1945WWII ends

1960 –  Under the direction of Harold B. Lee, David O. McKay’s First Presidency directed a committee of General Authorities to review the purposes and courses of study of the priesthood and auxiliaries. The work of this committee laid the foundation for present-day correlation efforts.  More details about this committee are rarely found from church sources because the correlation committee frequently edits itself out of history except to state that it is headed by the first presidency and was founded with authority.  More details to the set up and establishment are here

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Last edited by Mithryn on March 23, 2017 at 8:39 pm

12 Responses to Heber J. Grant and his family, a timeline of the rise of the modern church

  1. Bob says:

    If I were still in seminary and taking notes, next to Heber J Grant I would have written teetotaler, vegetarian, Nazi sympathizer, fundraiser, insurance salesman, world traveler. I had no idea. If they would quit sanitizing history, maybe more of us would pay attention in class. This timeline reads as a great novel.

    “1893 – fire guts the building of the UL&T”: I wonder if they had fire insurance?

    • Mithryn says:

      They did not; which is part of why, I think, they went to Heber J. Grant (or they didn’t have enough). He had probably approached them about buying some, and then they came to him for assistance later. But if they’d had a fire insurance policy the whole thing wouldn’t have been such a terrible disaster.

  2. Nate says:

    Interesting as always.

  3. Pingback: Year of Polygamy: Rachel Ivins, Heber J. Grant, and the “End” of LDS Plural Marriage, Episode 92 | Feminist Mormon Housewives Podcast

  4. Mike says:

    you have a reference in 1856 to something that Heber J grant said a few months before he was even born

    It should read Jedediah grant

  5. Mike Day says:

    This is well put together. I would like to know more about the Poland missionary prophecy. Thank you for your work!

  6. Bob says:

    “make sadherence”… you might want to correct the typo.

  7. Pingback: The Truth about Mormon Polygamy . . . Is that it’s SECRET | TRUTH ACCESSES THE HEAVENS

  8. Rachel says:

    Just listened to your podcast on The Year of Polygamy. Fascinating. Thank you. Anthony Ivins is my great, great grandfather and Ivins is pronounced eye-vins and not i-vins. My grandmother was born in Colonial Juarez, Mexico, and she often spoke fondly of her Grandfather Ivins (eye-vins) and in fact that is her middle name.

    I’m not sure why you called him an “apostate” because Ivins was never excommunicated and did not leave the Church. In fact, he was a member of the 1st presidency when he died.

    If he was a casualty of the drama surrounding polygamy at the time, I am unaware. My family does wonder why Anthony didn’t practice polygamy and yet sent his oldest daughter to marry into it. His oldest daughter (my great grand-mother) married in Colonial Juarez, Mexico and became the 3rd wife of Guy C. Wilson.

    • Mithryn says:

      Okay this is over a year old, but I have to hope you see this. I pronounced it “Eye-vins” before we started recording and Lindsey corrected me. I have said “Eye-vins” my whole life, and felt really silly that I would get it wrong.

      Thank you for validating me. Should I ever talk to Lindsey again, I will TOTALLY let her know the right way to say it.

      I don’t think I said Apostate, but I know that Ivins did face a disciplinary hearing. By everything I read he was removed from the quorum of 12 over the Mexican Polygamy issue, and yet you are saying he died in the 1st presidency.

      Looks like I need to dig into this more. Thank you.

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