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Lot 142
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Mormons's Perpetual Emigration Fund 1853 receipt re: woman traveling alone.
Mormons's Perpetual Emigration Fund 1853 receipt re: woman traveling alone.
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Description:

Mormons -

Mormons's Perpetual Emigration Fund receipt regarding woman traveling alone in 1853.

1pp receipt on bifold blind stamped blue lined paper, clerically signed by Mormon leader and missionary Erastus Snow as "Yours very truly for Erastus Snow" at bottom right. Also signed by Snow's assistant James M. Brown as "James M. Brown" at extreme bottom. Docket inscription "E. Snowes [sic] order to provide for Martha Ansell" found at top of fourth page. In very good condition to near fine condition with expected paper folds. Minor handling and scuff marks to back. Each page measures 4.875" x 7.875".

The note, with irregular punctuation, reads in full:

"PE Fund Co. St Louis Agency.

St. Louis Mo. 25 May / 53

John S. Fullmer Esq.

G.C. of PEF passengers

Atchison KT

The Bearer Martha Ansell has paid the office. the sum of $46. say forty-six dollars on account of her passage to G. S Lake Valley. You will please provide for her emigration amongst the PE Fund passengers.

Yours very truly for Erastus Snow Agt.

? No. ------- James M. Brown"

Erastus Snow via his secretary James M. Brown at Perpetual Emigration Fund Company headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri relayed a directive to a church agent in Atchison, Kansas Territory. John S. Fullmer was directed to convey Martha Ansell from Kansas territory to Utah territory. For Mormons traveling west, St. Louis and Atchison were important stops on the way west to the Great Salt Lake Valley. The historical records do not offer much more information about Martha Ansell, but it is significant to note that she was a woman traveling alone. The average journey out west took about two months unimpeded by disease, starvation, accidents, Indian attacks, or other misfortunes.

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. It had already helped Mormon converts travel to Great Salt Lake Valley for four years by the spring of 1853, when Martha Ansell benefited from its resources. 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. If Martha Ansell had not paid off her debts by 1880, she might have benefited from the Jubilee pardon granted by then Church President John Taylor that absolved half of outstanding debts.

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.

James Morehead Brown (1834-1924) was the son of Captain James Brown of Company "C" of the Mormon Battalion during the Mexican War. The Mormon Battalion was a 500-member corps that traveled almost 2,000 miles west to southern California during the conflict. Brown and other Mormon families had recently relocated to the Utah territory, where Brown held several civic and church leadership roles. He had thirteen wives and twenty-eight children, among whom James M. Brown, Erastus Snow's assistant, was one. James M. Brown worked as a carpenter, a police official, and a church missionary after leaving the Midwest for the western territories.

John S. Fullmer (19th C.) was one of six co-founders of the Great Salt Lake Carrying Company, an outfit that carried passengers, goods, and mails to the Great Salt Lake and Sacramento Valleys. An editorial announcement/advertisement appearing in Volume 12 of The Latter-day Saints' Millennial Star in December 1849 promised that paying passengers "may expect the proprietors to use every exertion to render them as comfortable as the nature of the journey will admit of". Four years after this advertisement appeared in the newspaper, Fullmer was working with the Perpetual Emigration Fund in its eastern Kansas office.

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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