Hnau
Banned
There was an althist short story you can read on Google Books called Pebble in Time. An LDS time-traveler goes back to 1847 Utah to witness the moment the "Mormon Moses", Brigham Young, uttered his famous words while looking over the Salt Lake Valley: "This is the place." Unfortunately he is seen and, thinking him a Gentile due to his clean, dust-free clothing, Brigham Young decides to forge ahead in order to find an unoccupied location for Zion.
Well what if the LDS decided to doggedly press on to the Pacific Edge, mm? It's not impossible. Thanks to the efforts of Samuel Brannan, Yerba Buena (now San Francisco) was effectively owned by the Latter-day Saints as early as July 1846. A year later, Brannan raced to Utah to urge Brigham Young to bring the Saints to California. His proposal was denied. What if Brannan had gotten there a little sooner, before Brigham Young and the "Vanguard Company" of LDS pioneers had begun to set up camp and invest themselves in the region? Or what if Young was merely convinced by Brannan to bring the Saints to California where in OTL he was not? Or what if Young decided by himself that "This is not the place."
One of the three scenarios occurs. Salt Lake City is established at some point during the late 1840s or 1850s as a colony, but the Mormon Trail quickly becomes synonomous with the California Trail. It is easier to take a more northerly route to Fort Hall in Idaho if you are heading for California overland. Fort Hall and Idaho Falls thus become Latter-day Saint colonies much earlier, as members are instructed to build up the area to service LDS pioneers for the second leg of the journey.
It's a long way from Nauvoo/Iowa City/Winter Quarters to Salt Lake City, but it's longer to get to Coloma/Sutter's Fort/Yerba Buena. There's also more mountainous terrain to navigate through. In OTL, of the 70,000 LDS pioneers who traveled overland to Utah between 1847 and 1869, about 6,000 perished. Here, it'll be worse. One in seven, or 10,000 die over this entire period. Keep that in mind as we go over other events.
By the time James Marshall found pieces of gold in the American River, in January 1848, there's not going to be enough divergent Latter-day Saints in the state to make a difference on the timing of the Gold Rush. Only 1,900 more LDS than there would be otherwise. However, I can bet you they'd profit from being there first and serving the gold miners. Samuel Brannan became the first millionaire in California by provisioning the gold fields with all the equipment and necessities the miners needed. I can imagine a few more ingenious individuals joining in his entrepreneurial spirit and making fortunes of their own. The increased tithing will no doubt be spent to pay for Saints back east to come west.
Whereas in OTL the Latter-day Saints created stories, fables, and testimonies based on the taming of the wilderness through the power of God (one example being the Miracle of the Gulls, when through the power of prayer seagulls came by the hundreds to eat up crickets that were ravaging newly-planted fields), ITTL stories will be created out of the increasing persecution from the gold miners. A deep contrast will be painted between the pious Latter-Day Saints who seek the knowledge of God and come to California to worship Him freely, and the greedy Gold Miner who wants only easy money with which to pursue his own appetites and desires. No doubt some vigilantes go after the Mormons sooner or later, and it may become a common occurence, but the Church will adapt. All these difficulties with co-existing whereas IOTL they would have been free to live alone won't affect statistics too much, only culture. For here, conversion will be higher as more Latter-day Saints come into contact with gold-seekers and affiliated groups. I can see the LDS missionaries courageously venturing into the vilest of the boom towns, the crowded tent-cities, preaching the Word of God to those who seem to be the last to accept it. Among those that feel persecuted by the Americans, such as the Latins and possibly the different Asian groups, they might find an eager friend in the LDS Church who have the organization and money required to provide some kind of support against various vigilantes and mobs. The Relief Society of the LDS Church will likely establish soup kitchens and bread lines to provide for those down-on-their-luck miners who have nothing to eat... as long as they listen to a couple of missionaries for a lesson or two.
Conversions will be high enough in this setting so as to counter-balance those members who will be lost because of lynch mobs and general hostility that will be encountered in California. Slightly more Chinese and Latinos in the Church from the 1850s on. Brigham Young will no doubt want to distance the membership from the gold fields following a certain number of incidents and rising hostility against his "peculiar people". So colonies are established farther south, in Los Angeles where the Mormon Batallion identified potential settlement sites. Also Las Vegas and Logan and probably a few more in Central California.
The Mormon Reformation doesn't quite happen. Some elements of it might occur in the face of hostility and repression from the gold-seekers, but it'll be spread out over a longer time and won't be as drastic. Unfortunately, the idea of blood atonement will probably still come about, though it won't be adopted any more here than in OTL. What you don't get is the drought that caused it, that caused starvation and an economic meltdown. Not a good time for the LDS Church.
The Utah War doesn't happen! That's a big deal. Why? Because Brigham Young isn't the Governor of the Territory of Utah. There are no hysterical claims back east that the Latter-Day Saints had created a theocratic empire in the west where people were being kept at gunpoint from leaving. Because of the Utah War, Brigham Young called for a scorched earth policy, to leave Utah in tatters while the Saints would pick up en masse and leave for Mexico. It destroyed the Utah economy. Bad news for the Saints. Lots of people left at that point.
The drought years, the Utah War, the post-war reconstruction... three episodes during the 1850s that stretched LDS resources thin and lost us many members. ITTL, growth continues at a normal pace. So while we lost 4,000 more members to get to California, in the long-run its a net-gain. By 1870, the LDS Church has 137,000 members instead of 90,000. By 1890, 70% of of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints resides in California, and that number has risen to 200,000 out of about 1,410,000 in the state. Another 20% lives in the rest of North America, mainly in Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon and Utah. The other 10% lives outside of the country.
Because there are no divergences in appointments to the Quorum of the Twelve until the late 1850s, there's really no divergence as to the Prophet and President of the LDS Church until the death of Lorenzo Snow in 1901. I'm inclined to say that Joseph F. Smith will likely succeed him, as he was likely to be called to become an Apostle at some point in the 1860s and lived a long life, making him a likely candidate. So polygamy comes to an end much as it did in OTL. However, California is already a state by 1850, so there's little reason to keep Utah from joining the Union for so long.
Which means that Nevada Territory is never created so as to provide political independence for people escaping Mormon dominance of the Utah Territory. When President Lincoln pushes for another state, the entire Utah Territory is accepted as the State of Utah. In 1866, in order to put a state government in control of the gold rush in Clark County, all territory north and west of the Colorado River in the Territory of Arizona is added to Utah. That's a big state, which leads me to believe that earlier, in 1861, with the establishment of Colorado Territory, that the eastern third or half of the OTL state of Utah is given over to Colorado.
This leads to New Mexico absorbing Arizona, I would bet. I doubt there's many more changes to the states... the Dakotas might emerge as one state, but it might be unlikely. Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Wyoming, Montana... all are unlikely to diverge according to borders.
This is all going to wreak havoc on political patterns, and we haven't even considered butterflies. The LDS in California won't like the Republicans, as they came out strongly against polygamy... I am sure it would be enough that Stephen Douglas takes California in 1860. He was only a few hundred votes off anyway. Those four electoral votes don't win him the election, of course. California and Utah will be swayed to vote for Horatio Seymour in 1868, I'm pretty sure of that. Greeley takes Oregon and Utah in 1872. After that I'm not so sure.
What I do know is that by 2010, barring a worse devastation than we've seen in OTL, is that if the LDS Church keeps on growing at the same rate, it'll reach about 22 million in membership by 2010, instead of 14 million in OTL. Some 14% of California is LDS, not too much has changed over the years to change those demographics. California is more heavily populated, while Utah is not. It also has a special place in LDS theology as a "Land of Destiny" that is to harbor Zion until the Last Days, when the Latter-day Saints will assemble once more in Missouri to build Shiloam, the New Jerusalem. With its headquarters in Sacramento and much closer to San Francisco and the Pacific, it is likely that missionary efforts were aimed more frequently to the Pacific islands and the Far East. I'd also like to think that the multiculturalism of California, as well as the people's tendency in the 20th century to adopt progressive ideas, would lead to an LDS Church that gives the priesthood to blacks earlier than 1978, and possibly have a more lenient position on the treatment of non-heterosexuals.
The butterflies could really make this timeline go anywhere, though.
Well what if the LDS decided to doggedly press on to the Pacific Edge, mm? It's not impossible. Thanks to the efforts of Samuel Brannan, Yerba Buena (now San Francisco) was effectively owned by the Latter-day Saints as early as July 1846. A year later, Brannan raced to Utah to urge Brigham Young to bring the Saints to California. His proposal was denied. What if Brannan had gotten there a little sooner, before Brigham Young and the "Vanguard Company" of LDS pioneers had begun to set up camp and invest themselves in the region? Or what if Young was merely convinced by Brannan to bring the Saints to California where in OTL he was not? Or what if Young decided by himself that "This is not the place."
One of the three scenarios occurs. Salt Lake City is established at some point during the late 1840s or 1850s as a colony, but the Mormon Trail quickly becomes synonomous with the California Trail. It is easier to take a more northerly route to Fort Hall in Idaho if you are heading for California overland. Fort Hall and Idaho Falls thus become Latter-day Saint colonies much earlier, as members are instructed to build up the area to service LDS pioneers for the second leg of the journey.
It's a long way from Nauvoo/Iowa City/Winter Quarters to Salt Lake City, but it's longer to get to Coloma/Sutter's Fort/Yerba Buena. There's also more mountainous terrain to navigate through. In OTL, of the 70,000 LDS pioneers who traveled overland to Utah between 1847 and 1869, about 6,000 perished. Here, it'll be worse. One in seven, or 10,000 die over this entire period. Keep that in mind as we go over other events.
By the time James Marshall found pieces of gold in the American River, in January 1848, there's not going to be enough divergent Latter-day Saints in the state to make a difference on the timing of the Gold Rush. Only 1,900 more LDS than there would be otherwise. However, I can bet you they'd profit from being there first and serving the gold miners. Samuel Brannan became the first millionaire in California by provisioning the gold fields with all the equipment and necessities the miners needed. I can imagine a few more ingenious individuals joining in his entrepreneurial spirit and making fortunes of their own. The increased tithing will no doubt be spent to pay for Saints back east to come west.
Whereas in OTL the Latter-day Saints created stories, fables, and testimonies based on the taming of the wilderness through the power of God (one example being the Miracle of the Gulls, when through the power of prayer seagulls came by the hundreds to eat up crickets that were ravaging newly-planted fields), ITTL stories will be created out of the increasing persecution from the gold miners. A deep contrast will be painted between the pious Latter-Day Saints who seek the knowledge of God and come to California to worship Him freely, and the greedy Gold Miner who wants only easy money with which to pursue his own appetites and desires. No doubt some vigilantes go after the Mormons sooner or later, and it may become a common occurence, but the Church will adapt. All these difficulties with co-existing whereas IOTL they would have been free to live alone won't affect statistics too much, only culture. For here, conversion will be higher as more Latter-day Saints come into contact with gold-seekers and affiliated groups. I can see the LDS missionaries courageously venturing into the vilest of the boom towns, the crowded tent-cities, preaching the Word of God to those who seem to be the last to accept it. Among those that feel persecuted by the Americans, such as the Latins and possibly the different Asian groups, they might find an eager friend in the LDS Church who have the organization and money required to provide some kind of support against various vigilantes and mobs. The Relief Society of the LDS Church will likely establish soup kitchens and bread lines to provide for those down-on-their-luck miners who have nothing to eat... as long as they listen to a couple of missionaries for a lesson or two.
Conversions will be high enough in this setting so as to counter-balance those members who will be lost because of lynch mobs and general hostility that will be encountered in California. Slightly more Chinese and Latinos in the Church from the 1850s on. Brigham Young will no doubt want to distance the membership from the gold fields following a certain number of incidents and rising hostility against his "peculiar people". So colonies are established farther south, in Los Angeles where the Mormon Batallion identified potential settlement sites. Also Las Vegas and Logan and probably a few more in Central California.
The Mormon Reformation doesn't quite happen. Some elements of it might occur in the face of hostility and repression from the gold-seekers, but it'll be spread out over a longer time and won't be as drastic. Unfortunately, the idea of blood atonement will probably still come about, though it won't be adopted any more here than in OTL. What you don't get is the drought that caused it, that caused starvation and an economic meltdown. Not a good time for the LDS Church.
The Utah War doesn't happen! That's a big deal. Why? Because Brigham Young isn't the Governor of the Territory of Utah. There are no hysterical claims back east that the Latter-Day Saints had created a theocratic empire in the west where people were being kept at gunpoint from leaving. Because of the Utah War, Brigham Young called for a scorched earth policy, to leave Utah in tatters while the Saints would pick up en masse and leave for Mexico. It destroyed the Utah economy. Bad news for the Saints. Lots of people left at that point.
The drought years, the Utah War, the post-war reconstruction... three episodes during the 1850s that stretched LDS resources thin and lost us many members. ITTL, growth continues at a normal pace. So while we lost 4,000 more members to get to California, in the long-run its a net-gain. By 1870, the LDS Church has 137,000 members instead of 90,000. By 1890, 70% of of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints resides in California, and that number has risen to 200,000 out of about 1,410,000 in the state. Another 20% lives in the rest of North America, mainly in Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon and Utah. The other 10% lives outside of the country.
Because there are no divergences in appointments to the Quorum of the Twelve until the late 1850s, there's really no divergence as to the Prophet and President of the LDS Church until the death of Lorenzo Snow in 1901. I'm inclined to say that Joseph F. Smith will likely succeed him, as he was likely to be called to become an Apostle at some point in the 1860s and lived a long life, making him a likely candidate. So polygamy comes to an end much as it did in OTL. However, California is already a state by 1850, so there's little reason to keep Utah from joining the Union for so long.
Which means that Nevada Territory is never created so as to provide political independence for people escaping Mormon dominance of the Utah Territory. When President Lincoln pushes for another state, the entire Utah Territory is accepted as the State of Utah. In 1866, in order to put a state government in control of the gold rush in Clark County, all territory north and west of the Colorado River in the Territory of Arizona is added to Utah. That's a big state, which leads me to believe that earlier, in 1861, with the establishment of Colorado Territory, that the eastern third or half of the OTL state of Utah is given over to Colorado.
This leads to New Mexico absorbing Arizona, I would bet. I doubt there's many more changes to the states... the Dakotas might emerge as one state, but it might be unlikely. Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Wyoming, Montana... all are unlikely to diverge according to borders.
This is all going to wreak havoc on political patterns, and we haven't even considered butterflies. The LDS in California won't like the Republicans, as they came out strongly against polygamy... I am sure it would be enough that Stephen Douglas takes California in 1860. He was only a few hundred votes off anyway. Those four electoral votes don't win him the election, of course. California and Utah will be swayed to vote for Horatio Seymour in 1868, I'm pretty sure of that. Greeley takes Oregon and Utah in 1872. After that I'm not so sure.
What I do know is that by 2010, barring a worse devastation than we've seen in OTL, is that if the LDS Church keeps on growing at the same rate, it'll reach about 22 million in membership by 2010, instead of 14 million in OTL. Some 14% of California is LDS, not too much has changed over the years to change those demographics. California is more heavily populated, while Utah is not. It also has a special place in LDS theology as a "Land of Destiny" that is to harbor Zion until the Last Days, when the Latter-day Saints will assemble once more in Missouri to build Shiloam, the New Jerusalem. With its headquarters in Sacramento and much closer to San Francisco and the Pacific, it is likely that missionary efforts were aimed more frequently to the Pacific islands and the Far East. I'd also like to think that the multiculturalism of California, as well as the people's tendency in the 20th century to adopt progressive ideas, would lead to an LDS Church that gives the priesthood to blacks earlier than 1978, and possibly have a more lenient position on the treatment of non-heterosexuals.
The butterflies could really make this timeline go anywhere, though.
Last edited:
