Improvement Era, July 1928

Improvement Era •+'jnrAr+'Ar+*J£.-*rAm. Vol. XXXI JULY, 1928 No. 9 Founders of Western Civilization By Andrew Jenson, Assistant Church Historian AS YEARS roll on, and the west half of the United States of America becomes more thickly settled, the achievements of the early pioneers of the great West become matters of interesting study. No one who visits Salt Lake City at the present time can afford to ignore the fact that the Latter-day Saints were the first to raise the standard of Anglo-Saxon civilization in the great intermountain region and elsewhere. Nobody dares dispute the historical fact that they were also eminently successful as pio- neers, for the many flourishing cities, towns and villages with which that part of our country once known as the Great American Desert is now dotted testifies abundantly of the energy, the union, the determination and success of the "Mormon" pioneers. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was organized as a religious body in 1830, in the western part of the state oi New York. Said Church was only about a year old when some of its members became pioneers of the West. In the month of June, ] 83 1, Joseph Smith with a small body of men left the little village of Kirtland, Ohio, as missionaries, for the western boundary of the United States, four men of the community having preceded them there in the beginning of the same year. Arriving in Jackson county, Mo., in July, 183 1, Joseph Smith and his companions, together with a number of families known in Church history as the Colesville branch, commenced operations as a colonizing community im- mediately east of where Kansas City now stands. There those eastern people experienced most trying difficulties in establishing what we may term a Yankee colony in a slave-holding state. They practically became the first farmers without slave labor in that part of the country, and in a remarkably short time they had a prosperous colony numbering about twelve hundred people in Jackson county. In this colony was established a printing office, which at the time was 120 miles farther west than any other printing office in the United States. The "Mormons" also opened a successful store, built one or more mills, commenced schools and developed a number of