Description:

Mormons -
Erastus Snow, early Mormon leader and European missionary, twice signed ANS relating to settlement "across the plains".

This receipt on pale blue lined paper is inscribed overall and signed twice by Mormon leader Erastus Snow as "Erastus Snow" in ink recto and "E. Snow" in pencil verso. In very good condition with expected paper folds. A darkened and uneven left edge and more handling marks verso. Paper slip measures 7.875" x 3.25".

The front of the note, with uncorrected spelling mistakes, reads in full:

"Received of William + James Ashton St. Louis two hundred + forty five dollors to be applied towards a team + provisions across the plains the ensuing year. To be furnished at Atchison Kansas Teritory. Erastus Snow, St. Louis, Mo. April 12th 1855". Snow wrote verso: "James McGain Please fill the enclosed Receipt the same as my order, E. Ashton". Docket information verso indicates that the $245 purchased one cow, one ox, and two yokes.

The "William + James Ashton" of St. Louis were likely beneficiaries of the Perpetual Emigration Fund, which helped converts travel to the Great Salt Lake Valley. The two may have been English passengers on the ship North Atlantic, which sailed from Liverpool to New Orleans in the fall of 1850. European immigration of converted Mormons is extremely well-documented, and many historical records are available digitally. The North Atlantic transported 357 Mormon passengers, or "Saints", including one James and one William Ashton. Contemporary newspapers reported that these passengers, shepherded by Elder David Sudworth, were headed from New Orleans to St. Louis, and from Council Bluffs to the Great Salt Lake Valley. The Ashtons listed on the 1850 North Atlantic ship manifest could be the same pair who presented $245 to Erastus Snow five years later in St. Louis en route to Atchison, Kansas and the Great Salt Lake Valley.

Erastus Snow (1818-1888) served in the governing body of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, or Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, for nearly forty years. He had converted in his youth, and his later life was indelibly shaped by the belief system of the congregation. Snow conducted missions in New England, Pennsylvania, the Midwest, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and Scandinavia. (Mormon outreach extended as far as Denmark, Sweden, and Iceland during this era.) When he authorized this receipt in the mid-1850s, Snow administrated midwestern Mormon communities, with his headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri. Snow, who along with Orson Pratt (1811-1881) had been the first Mormon pioneers of the Great Salt Lake Valley, returned to Utah territory in 1857. A proponent of polygamy, Snow had sixteen wives and thirty-seven children.

The Perpetual Emigration Fund, financed by church resources and private monies, enabled an estimated 30,000 converted Mormons to emigrate out west between 1849 and 1887. Emigres were given financial assistance as a loan which they had to pay back through labor, services, or money. The Perpetual Emigration Fund helped poorer people from the east coast of the United States and Europe to travel thousands of miles to western Mormon settlements including the Great Salt Lake Valley. These church-sponsored loans to new converts purchased ship passage, railroad tickets, wagons or handcarts, livestock, lodging, food, and supplies.

William and James Ashton likely received their ship passage (aboard the North Atlantic?), the $245 they presented to Erastus Snow, and other supplies from the Perpetual Emigration Fund. If the Ashtons had not paid off their debts by 1880, they might have benefited from the Jubilee pardon granted by then Church President John Taylor that absolved half of outstanding debts.

With provenance information from the Robert A. Siegler Auction Galleries, New York City. This piece was part of Lot 62A sold for $4,750 at the 464th sale conducted between January 28-30, 1975.

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