San Bernardino: The Rise and Fall of a California Community
Autor Edward L. Lymanen Limba Engleză Hardback – 14 apr 1996 – vârsta ani
In the mid-1800s San Bernardino emerged as one of the largest settlements in southern California. It surpassed Pueblo de los Angeles and San Diego in grain and lumber yields and boasted a burgeoning cattle industry and promising wine vineyards. But as a Mormon commune–the farthest outpost in Brigham Young’s Rocky Mountain empire–the colony was threatened, and finally abandoned, in 1857 during the Utah war with the United States.
From the beginning, Young had misgivings about the colony. Particularly perplexing was the mix of atypical Latter-day Saints who gravitated there. Among these were ex-slave holders; inter-racial polygamists; horse-race gamblers; distillery proprietors; former mountain men, prospectors, and mercenaries; disgruntled Polynesian immigrants; and finally Apostle Amasa M. Lyman, the colony’s leader, who became involved in spiritualist seances.
Despite Young’s suspicions, when he issued the call to relocate to Utah, two-thirds of the city’s 3,000 residents dutifully obeyed, leaving behind their cumulative fortunes and a city stripped of its regional economic standing. Recounting this remarkable story, Edward Leo Lyman skillfully interweaves the most intriguing details about the setting and chain of events, emphasizing both the significance and irony of this diverse legacy.
Despite Young’s suspicions, when he issued the call to relocate to Utah, two-thirds of the city’s 3,000 residents dutifully obeyed, leaving behind their cumulative fortunes and a city stripped of its regional economic standing. Recounting this remarkable story, Edward Leo Lyman skillfully interweaves the most intriguing details about the setting and chain of events, emphasizing both the significance and irony of this diverse legacy.
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9781560850670
ISBN-10: 1560850671
Pagini: 484
Dimensiuni: 159 x 235 x 61 mm
Greutate: 0.86 kg
Ediția:1
Editura: SIGNATURE BOOKS INC
Colecția Signature Books
ISBN-10: 1560850671
Pagini: 484
Dimensiuni: 159 x 235 x 61 mm
Greutate: 0.86 kg
Ediția:1
Editura: SIGNATURE BOOKS INC
Colecția Signature Books
Notă biografică
Edward Leo Lyman is a professor of history at Victor Valley College in southern California. He is the author of Political Deliverance: The Mormon Quest for Utah Statehood and San Bernardino: The Rise and Fall of a California Community, as well as a short guidebook to Mormon Historical Sites in the San Bernardino Area. He has been published in Arizona and the West, Brigham Young University Studies, California History, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Idaho Yesterdays, Southern California Quarterly, and the Utah Historical Quarterly. He is co-authoring the forthcoming Millard County, Utah: A Centennial History.
Extras
Southern California Quarterly, Larry E. Burgess
A timely new comprehensive study by historian Leo Lyman, San Bernardino: The Rise and Fall of a California Community, brings forth new details and provides fresh insight into the importance of the Mormon colony at San Bernardino and its context in the settlement of the West and southern California. It will serve as the standard interpretation for many years to come.
A knowledgeable core of regional historians appreciate the importance of the Mormon Colony in San Bernardino in the 1850s and the Colony’s significance to the history of southern California. The most complete account of this period was written by George and Helen P. Beattie in 1938 in their book Heritage of the Valley, now long out-of-print and a collector’s item.
With access to the Mormon Church archives and as a descendant of Amasa M. Lyman, one of the Colony’s founders, Leo Lyman offers a complete portrait of the San Bernardino settlement’s success and the reasons for its abandonment. In four hundred pages, Lyman’s evidence illumines the economic imperatives tied to the theological and missionary concerns which led Apostles Lyman and Charles C. Rich to venture forth with a large group of colonists from Salt Lake City in March of 1851. Brigham Young’s role, which at first encouraged the proposed Colony as part of a larger goal to have a chain of settlements from Salt Lake City to the Pacific, turned to doubt and reproach at the expedition’s start. Young, as the power of approval, is also seen as the spoiler and this is a theme which runs as a connecting skein throughout the narrative.
Moreover, further complications arise because of Amasa Lyman’s friendship and confidence enjoyed with Mormonism’s prophet, Joseph Smith. When Young assumed authority as the head of the church, it seems to have provided a tension between the two men and thus transferred tension to the San Bernardino Colony. The complex issues presented in Leo Lyman’s account lay in the evolving theological and cultural traditions of the Mormon Church of the time and the larger political relationships between the United States government, the demographics of southern California and the economic and social patterns of the San Bernardino Valley.
Mountain men—such as John Brown, Rube Herring, and James Waters who came into contact with the Mormons leaving Missouri for Utah—at first embraced the Mormons and some even ostensibly converted. However, by the time they appeared as part of the Mormon Colony, they developed a political and legal hostility exacerbated by land ownership disputes. These so-called “Anti’s” provided energy for the opposition group populated with Mormons who had been defellowshipped or who had left the Church. Adding to the tension was growing resentment and suspicion on Young’s part that material success in San Bernardino came at the cost of spiritual dedication. While President Young was fully willing to use the San Bernardino Colony as a lucrative cash cow for enhancing his work at Salt Lake, he was troubled with reports about Lyman’s theological views and increasingly demonstrated a jealous attitude over the success of the Colony.
Lyman suggests that the “Mormon victory in adapting to the life in the semi-arid West is one of the Latter-day Saints’ contributions to the history of the United States.” Success also came because of mutual cooperation and willingness to follow “sometimes authoritarian ecclesiastical leaders,” he writes. The example of success and industriousness among the Mormons and the respect the Colony enjoyed in southern California provides support for this conclusion.
By 1858, Young ordered a recall of the Mormon faithful to Utah, and the San Bernardino Colony saw 60% of its population following the injunction. In their tracks, Lyman and Rich left the newly created County of San Bernardino and City of San Bernardino, a thriving agricultural empire—embracing flour, wine production, and vegetables, lumbering (Los Angeles was largely built by timber from the San Bernardino Mountains), and roads for the transportation of goods to many points in southern California.
Discussions of cultural ethnocentrism prevalent at the time, relations with the Californios, the Cahuilla Indians and their Chief Juan Antonio, early African American and Jewish settlers as Mormon colonists, are all afforded their role in the diverse Colony’s history. All this made possible because of Lyman’s permission to use for the first time archival material in the Church archives.
In calling San Bernardino’s Mormon Colony “a community in the truest sense of the word, one of the outstanding examples of selflessness and commitment to others ever demonstrated in American History,” Lyman makes a broad reach and might well have added that such comes in contrast, and almost in spite of, the less than helpful stance toward the San Bernardino community from Young’s office in Salt Lake City. There is no doubt that outside of Salt Lake City, San Bernardino was the most successful of the Mormon colonies in the West and would have continued to be so had not Young recalled the faithful. The role and nature of a theocracy in nineteenth-century America is presented by Lyman and is contrasted with the inevitable pitfalls when people challenge such authority and frequently pay the price of one’s membership in the faith. Lyman’s account earns a place on the shelf of works which continue to clarify the evolving understanding of the region called “southern California.”
A knowledgeable core of regional historians appreciate the importance of the Mormon Colony in San Bernardino in the 1850s and the Colony’s significance to the history of southern California. The most complete account of this period was written by George and Helen P. Beattie in 1938 in their book Heritage of the Valley, now long out-of-print and a collector’s item.
With access to the Mormon Church archives and as a descendant of Amasa M. Lyman, one of the Colony’s founders, Leo Lyman offers a complete portrait of the San Bernardino settlement’s success and the reasons for its abandonment. In four hundred pages, Lyman’s evidence illumines the economic imperatives tied to the theological and missionary concerns which led Apostles Lyman and Charles C. Rich to venture forth with a large group of colonists from Salt Lake City in March of 1851. Brigham Young’s role, which at first encouraged the proposed Colony as part of a larger goal to have a chain of settlements from Salt Lake City to the Pacific, turned to doubt and reproach at the expedition’s start. Young, as the power of approval, is also seen as the spoiler and this is a theme which runs as a connecting skein throughout the narrative.
Moreover, further complications arise because of Amasa Lyman’s friendship and confidence enjoyed with Mormonism’s prophet, Joseph Smith. When Young assumed authority as the head of the church, it seems to have provided a tension between the two men and thus transferred tension to the San Bernardino Colony. The complex issues presented in Leo Lyman’s account lay in the evolving theological and cultural traditions of the Mormon Church of the time and the larger political relationships between the United States government, the demographics of southern California and the economic and social patterns of the San Bernardino Valley.
Mountain men—such as John Brown, Rube Herring, and James Waters who came into contact with the Mormons leaving Missouri for Utah—at first embraced the Mormons and some even ostensibly converted. However, by the time they appeared as part of the Mormon Colony, they developed a political and legal hostility exacerbated by land ownership disputes. These so-called “Anti’s” provided energy for the opposition group populated with Mormons who had been defellowshipped or who had left the Church. Adding to the tension was growing resentment and suspicion on Young’s part that material success in San Bernardino came at the cost of spiritual dedication. While President Young was fully willing to use the San Bernardino Colony as a lucrative cash cow for enhancing his work at Salt Lake, he was troubled with reports about Lyman’s theological views and increasingly demonstrated a jealous attitude over the success of the Colony.
Lyman suggests that the “Mormon victory in adapting to the life in the semi-arid West is one of the Latter-day Saints’ contributions to the history of the United States.” Success also came because of mutual cooperation and willingness to follow “sometimes authoritarian ecclesiastical leaders,” he writes. The example of success and industriousness among the Mormons and the respect the Colony enjoyed in southern California provides support for this conclusion.
By 1858, Young ordered a recall of the Mormon faithful to Utah, and the San Bernardino Colony saw 60% of its population following the injunction. In their tracks, Lyman and Rich left the newly created County of San Bernardino and City of San Bernardino, a thriving agricultural empire—embracing flour, wine production, and vegetables, lumbering (Los Angeles was largely built by timber from the San Bernardino Mountains), and roads for the transportation of goods to many points in southern California.
Discussions of cultural ethnocentrism prevalent at the time, relations with the Californios, the Cahuilla Indians and their Chief Juan Antonio, early African American and Jewish settlers as Mormon colonists, are all afforded their role in the diverse Colony’s history. All this made possible because of Lyman’s permission to use for the first time archival material in the Church archives.
In calling San Bernardino’s Mormon Colony “a community in the truest sense of the word, one of the outstanding examples of selflessness and commitment to others ever demonstrated in American History,” Lyman makes a broad reach and might well have added that such comes in contrast, and almost in spite of, the less than helpful stance toward the San Bernardino community from Young’s office in Salt Lake City. There is no doubt that outside of Salt Lake City, San Bernardino was the most successful of the Mormon colonies in the West and would have continued to be so had not Young recalled the faithful. The role and nature of a theocracy in nineteenth-century America is presented by Lyman and is contrasted with the inevitable pitfalls when people challenge such authority and frequently pay the price of one’s membership in the faith. Lyman’s account earns a place on the shelf of works which continue to clarify the evolving understanding of the region called “southern California.”
Descriere
In the mid-1800s San Bernardino emerged as one of the largest settlements in southern California. It surpassed Pueblo de los Angeles and San Diego in grain and lumber yields and boasted a burgeoning cattle industry and promising wine vineyards. But as a Mormon commune–the farthest outpost in Brigham Young’s Rocky Mountain empire–the colony was threatened, and finally abandoned, in 1857 during the Utah war with the United States.