Item Detail
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13255
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3
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0
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English
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A Historical Overview of the Mormons and Their Clothing, 1840-1850
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3 vols., Brigham Young University
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Ph.D. diss.
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"This is an overview of clothing of early Mormons in America and Britain during 1840-1850. Because no religious rules prescribed what members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints should wear, sources of historic Mormon clothing, art works of the period and documentary evidence were considered along with the same types of non-Mormon sources from surrounding areas and cultures. In work clothing and formal dress, Mormons wore the same styles as did those around them, but attempts to be self-sustaining in clothing production were intensified by religious and political persecutions. Leaders of the Church encouraged emigrants to bring large supplies of a variety of fabrics from Britain and the American states when they came to live in Nauvoo. Members tried to bring ready-to-wear clothing for the plains and pioneering the Utah Territory. The migration of 20,000 people from 1846 to 1850 across the Atlantic and America was organized better through the Church than among other westering emigrants. Mormons wore their oldest common clothes for the trek in order to save fine tailoring and silks for their permanent western homes. Converts came from various ethnic origins, but in Illinois and the Great Salt Lake Valley their clothing rapidly became internationalized and lost its cultural characteristics." [Author's abstract]