Solomon Nunes Carvalho (1815-1897) was a Sephardic Jew born in Charleston, South Carolina who was invited to join John C. Fremont’s 1853-54 expedition as an artist and daguerreotypist. In February at Parowan, Utah, he separated from the expedition due to illness; the expedition had passed a rough winter in the Rockies, surviving off the flesh of their horses for fifty days. From Parowan, “I left for great Salt Lake City, in a wagon belonging to one of a large company of Mormons, who were on their way to ‘Conference.’” After three months convalescing, he traveled to Los Angeles, California with a party “consisting of twenty-three Mormons, missionaries to the Sandwich Islands, under command of Parley Pratt.”

Hoping all enjoyed a delightful Nevada Day this past weekend, here is a portion of Carvalho’s account of May 30, 1854 during their stay in Las Vegas:

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Not that anyone is slaughtering millions of humans, but Read the rest of this entry »

From The Inheritance of Rome by Chris Wickam, page 55:

But in this case change was possible, all the same. For a start, whereas to pagan eyes an entire landscape could be numinous, to Christian eyes only specific cult-sites were so, points of light in an otherwise secular space. These were always, or soon became, churches, so they were highly visible. Few churches were ever built directly on or in temples, and those few were almost all urban. In cities, indeed, Christian topographies were in general rather more different from those of the pagans. Traditional public religion had been focused on the ceremonial buildings around the forum in the centre of the city, but churches for Christian worship were often on the edges of town, or outside, in cemetery areas. Urban religious activity became much more decentralized as a result, and cities even became spatially fragmented in some parts of the empire (in Gaul in particular), with little settlement nuclei around scattered churches, and in some cases a traditional city centre left in ruins. Read the rest of this entry »

Next Sunday in my ward the Relief Society and the priesthood quorums will study Chapter 39, “Relief Society: Divine Organization of Women.” In this chapter are several statements about the future of Relief Society, including these two:

Emma Smith: “We are going to do something extraordinary. … We expect extraordinary occasions and pressing calls.”

Joseph Smith: The Relief Society is “to assist by correcting the morals and strengthening the virtues of the community.”

What do you consider to be the things of greatest significance that the Relief Society has done on an international, national, or local level?

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