[Illustration: (_Ordinances, Passed by the Legislative Council of
Great Salt Lake City, and Ordered to be Printed_)]
Brigham Young's nephew Brigham Hamilton Young was the first printer
within the present boundaries of Utah. A manuscript "Journal History"
of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints records that on
January 22, 1849, "Brigham H. Young and Thomas Bullock were engaged
in setting type for the fifty cent bills, paper currency. This was
the first typesetting in the [Salt Lake] Valley. The bills were to be
printed on the press made by Truman O. Angell."[110]
The Law Library of the Library of Congress keeps in a small manila
envelope a remarkable group of five very early examples of Utah
printing, some of which must have been issued in 1850. The one
that seems to be the earliest has the title _Ordinances, Passed by
the Legislative Council of Great Salt Lake City, and Ordered to be
Printed_. This piece--like the others without indication of place or
date of printing--may be assigned to a press from Boston which reached
Salt Lake City in August of 1849 and supplanted the original homemade
press. Listed as number 3 in Douglas C. McMurtrie's _The Beginnings of
Printing in Utah, with a Bibliography of the Issues of the Utah Press
1849-1860_ (Chicago, 1931), it is a four-page leaflet containing nine
ordinances passed between February 24 and December 29, 1849. Among
them are a "Penalty for Riding Horses Without Leave, Driving Cattle
Off the Feeding Range, &c." and "An Ordinance Creating an Office for
the Recording of 'Marks and Brands' on Horses, Mules, Cattle, and All
Other Stock."
A 34-page pamphlet entitled _Constitution of the State of Deseret_
(not in McMurtrie; Sabin 98220) is obviously from the same press.
Appended to the constitution, which was approved November 20, 1849,
are several ordinances passed between March 9, 1849, and March 28,
1850. Another issue of this press (not in McMurtrie or Sabin) is
a slightly mutilated three-page leaflet: _Rules and Regulations
for the Governing of Both Houses of the General Asse{mbly} of the
State of Deseret, When in Joint Session; and for Each Respective
House, When in Separate Session. Adopted by the Senate and House of
Representatives, December 2, 1850._ Of unspecified date is a single
leaf, unrecorded and apparently unique, captioned _Standing Committees
of the House_. Finally, there is among these imprints a copy of the
80-page _Ordinances. Passed by the General Assembly of the State of
Deseret_, known as the "Compilation of 1851" and listed as number 8 by
McMurtrie, who writes, "A copy of the 1851 volume in the library of
the Church Historian's Office was used in 1919 for making a reprint,
but the original has since disappeared.[111] A copy is said to be in
private ownership in California." The latter is undoubtedly the one
now in the Library of Congress.
The only one of these extremely rare imprints to show marks of
previous ownership is the "Compilation of 1851." It was autographed by
Phinehas Richards, who served both as representative and as senator in
the provisional legislature of the state of Deseret. Whether the other
four pieces also belonged to him is not clear; in any event all five
came into the hands of his son, Franklin Dewey Richards (1821-99),
who for half a century was an Apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-Day Saints, becoming president of the Apostles' Quorum, and
who served as Church Historian for the last 10 years of his life.[112]
A Library of Congress purchase order dated October 31, 1940, reveals
that these imprints were contained in a bound volume labeled "Laws of
Utah--F. D. Richards"; that by agreement the Library had them removed
from the volume and subsequently returned it to Mr. Frank S. Richards,
in care of the San Francisco bookseller John Howell; and that the
price paid for the detached items was $1,600. Frank S. Richards, an
attorney residing in Piedmont, Calif., is a great-grandson of Franklin
Dewey Richards, most of whose books he has given to the Bancroft
Library of the University of California.
[Footnote 110: Quoted from Wendell J. Ashton, _Voice in the West,
Biography of a Pioneer Newspaper_ (New York, 1950), p. 367, note
17. This book is about Utah's first newspaper, the _Deseret News_,
established June 15, 1850, of which the earliest original issue in the
Library of Congress is dated May 31, 1851.]
[Footnote 111: It is now available again at the Church Historian's
Office. Another copy is in the Harvard Law Library.]
[Footnote 112: See Franklin L. West, _Life of Franklin D. Richards_
(Salt Lake City [1924]).]