Manuscripts
Autograph signature of Priscilla Horton Reed
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Two license books of John Larpent
Manuscripts
Register of licenses issued by John Larpent from Jan. 1801 to Jan 15, 1824. The entries include the names and brief descriptions of the plays for which licenses were granted, with the name of the theatre where it was to be performed, together with the entry for the license fee. In addition to the London theatres -- the Haymarket, Covent Garden, Drury Lane, the Adelphi and the Olympic -- there are entries for provincial theaters such as Norwich, Birmingham, Margate, Liverpool, Manchester, York, Hull, and Glasgow, sometimes with the name of the manager. A few plays are crossed out as "refused." There is an entry for "An address to be spoken on Master Betty's 1st appearance in London, Theatre Royal Covent Garden Dec. 1st 1804."
mssHM 19926
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Mai Richie Reed diaries
Manuscripts
Reed kept these diaries during two separate trips to the American southwest. They give a detailed description of Reed's experience traveling through New Mexico, Arizona, and California. Reed, and the friends with whom she was traveling, visited Acoma, Isleta Pueblo (where they witnessed a dance ceremony), and Laguna in New Mexico; Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon in Arizona; and La Jolla, San Diego, Pasadena, and the San Gabriel Mission in California. The diaries are illustrated with photographs from the trips and include Reed and her friends, the southwest landscape, the places she visited, and the Hopi, Navajo, and Isleta Indians (most of the photographs are labeled by Reed).
mssHM 64598-64599
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Samuel Benedict Reed letters
Manuscripts
This typescript of letters written by Samuel B. Reed to his wife covers six years of Reed's work for the Union Pacific Railroad Company. In the letters, he details his group's work surveying parts of Utah, Nevada, Colorado, Idaho, and Wyoming while searching for a practical route for the railroad, as well as the construction of the railroad tracks. He discusses the people involved including Frank Case, James A. Evans, Grenville Dodge, Oliver Ames, Thomas Clark Durant, and Sidney Dillon. Reed spent much time in Salt Lake City and became friends with Brigham Young and in his letters, he talks a lot about his many conversations with Young. Reed also discusses his group's interactions and experiences with the Ute and Shoshoni Indians. The typescript also includes copies of reports written by Reed.
mssHM 66497
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Mary Jane Brooks letters to Thomas and Priscilla Marsh
Manuscripts
These manuscripts are a series of letters from Mary Jane Brooks to her sister Priscilla Marsh and brother Thomas Marsh. HM 19790 is dated 1853, December 14 and 15, and lists the current price of goods in San Francisco. Mary Jane Brooks also writes of her family and friends. In the next letter (HM 19791, dated 1854, February 28), Mary Jane Brooks writes further of family and friends. HM 19792, dated 1854, July 14, tells of a fire in San Francisco, but the Brooks home was undamaged. Mary Jane Brooks writes in the next letter (HM 19793, dated 1855, July 28) that her father is not doing well. He has quit working, and "thinks he is not long for this world." HM 19794, the final letter in this sequence, is dated 1856, March 4. Father is still alive, but is ailing, and Mary Jane Brooks urges Priscilla to prepare their mother for his passing. The letters are written from San Francisco, and all are signed "Aaron and Mary Jane Brooks" but letters are in the handwriting of Mary Jane Brooks. With one-page typescript of an additional letter, dated 1856, July 5.
mssHM 19790-19794
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Reed Peck memoir
Manuscripts
The original of the Reed Peck Manuscript, an 1839 memoir criticizing Mormon actions in Missouri during the conflicts of 1838. Peck opens with a prophecy about "redeeming" Zion (Missouri) through armed force, the "interpretation" of which led Joseph Smith to call for volunteers to march to Clay County "under arms" (they were waylaid by a cholera outbreak). Peck goes on to relate alleged financial and power conflicts in Kirtland, Ohio, between, among others, Joseph and Hyrum Smith, Sidney Rigdon, and Oliver Cowdery, as well as disagreements over where in Missouri to establish a Mormon settlement. He writes that once the Mormons had settled in Caldwell County, the Mormon presidency became a "despotic government" and that it proposed a policy, encouraged by Rigdon, that dissenters from the Church be killed so that "they would not be capable of injuring the church." He goes on to say that the Mormon leadership demanded that all followers consecrate their property to the Church or be turned over to the "terrible brother of Gideon" (Jared Carter) for punishment. Peck continues that he and some others were "ever after ... opposed to the rule of the presidency" because "their word was law in religious, civil and military matters." He writes of the formation of a "secret military organization" (the Danites) by Carter, George W. Robinson, and Sampson Avard "under the instruction of the presidency," and of pretending to join the group, although he avoided taking the official oath and "declared to my trusty friends that I would never act in the office." He also remembers that Carter was later found guilty of criticizing the presidency, and alleges that he heard Joseph Smith say he would have "cut his throat on the spot" if he had been alone. The remainder of the memoir recounts the events of the Mormon War, in which Peck claims that hostilities between Mormons and Gentiles were inflamed by Joseph Smith. He begins with disputes over an election in Daviess County, leading to a "skirmish" which he says was exaggerated into accounts of a "bloody massacre of ... Mormons," leading non-Mormon citizens to fear retaliation and call for the expulsion of the Mormons from Daviess County. He criticizes the Mormons for initiating confrontations, plundering goods, and for attacking the militia under Capt. Bogart at the Battle of Crooked River, but he condemns the attack on Mormons in the Haun's Hill Massacre. He concludes his narrative of events with the arrest and subsequent escape of the Smiths, Rigdon, Wight, Parley Pratt, and others. He closes the manuscript by condemning Smith and the Church ("how can he [Smith] expect to support his character as a man of God when facts are exhibited to the world in their true light," he wrote) and by listing the sources for his narrative, much of which was allegedly based on his own eyewitness accounts. Other individuals mentioned in the memoir include W.W. Phelps, Edward Partridge, John Corrill, and Dimmock Baker Huntington. There appear to be pages missing after page 152.
mssHM 54458
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Mary Jane Brooks letters to Thomas and Priscilla Marsh
Manuscripts
In this first letter (HM 19797, dated 1853, September 14), Mary Jane Brooks describes her journey to California "according to agreement" to her sister Priscilla and her husband Thomas Marsh. Much of this letter contains Brooks' description of Kingston, Jamaica, where she stopped en route to California. She laments that she has not yet found a man to run away with her. HM 19798, written August 12, 1886, and includes an envelope. Brooks is still in San Francisco, and writes of people she is seeing and letters written and received. The last letter in this sequence was written 1886, September 2. Brooks writes that she has reached her sixtieth birthday, but feels "old beyond my years." She discusses the possibility of getting her share of the farmstead left by her father, and hopes her sister will cooperate.
mssHM 19797-19799