The Seven-year old and Elder Young

Emma Burris

In his memoirs, Elder John R. Young states that he loved little seven-year old Emma Burris for saving him from what?

a.      Ambushed by natives on the Mormon Trail

b.      From drowning after falling into the Mississippi River off a paddle wheel boat

c.       From the mob while on his mission in England

d.      From a scolding from President Brigham Young

Yesterday’s answers:

1.      B.   Travel distance

In Winter Quarters and the early days of Salt Lake City, this pattern continued: the entire settlement (the stake) met together on Sunday, while bishops’ wards were not congregations, just districts for caring for the poor. During the 1850s and 1860s, increasing population and scattered settlement necessitated more manageable congregations, and modern notions gradually took hold with a ward as a single congregation with its own meetinghouse and a stake as a regional collection of wards and branches. However, there was still a great deal of ad hoc variety in local ecclesiastical governance. During the nineteenth century, the geographical creation and subdivision of wards and stakes were determined by travel distance, not by membership totals. A ward or branch covered a settlement, and a stake covered a valley or settlement region, no matter how many members it contained. Along the Wasatch Front, wards with several thousand members were common. This did not matter very much when most members were spectators in meetings and attendance rates were fairly low. However, President Lorenzo Snow stared several initiatives to strengthen the activity of members (continued under President Joseph F. Smith), including making wards and stakes smaller to increase the sense of community and the opportunities of members to serve in “callings.”

Plewe, Brandon S., et. at., Mapping Mormonism (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2012) 128.

2.      C.   Brigham Young

By the 1870s, local congregations in the Mormon settlements were a mélange of administration, including branches with presidents; congregational wards with both bishops and presidents; non-congregational wards, precincts, and districts (with non-presiding bishops); regional bishops; and fully organized regional stakes. In addition, Cache, Sanpete, and Box Elder Counties functioned like stakes but were very rarely called such and were presided over by a resident Apostle (Ezra T. Benson, Orson Hyde, and Lorenzo Snow, respectively) rather than a presidency and high council. Most stakes had high councils and presidencies, but some only had one or the other. In his last initiative as President, Brigham Young standardized the local administrative structure of the Church and spent most of 1877 traveling across Utah with his Apostles, creating and reorganizing units according to the new pattern. The number of fully organized stakes was doubled, as was the number of wards, by far the most sweeping overhaul of the Church geography in its history, before or since.

Plewe, Brandon S., et. at., Mapping Mormonism (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2012) 128.

3.      B.   48

In 1899 the Salt Lake Stake had 38,000 members in 48 wards.

Plewe, Brandon S., et. at., Mapping Mormonism (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2012) 129.