20008

18

112

Book

English

Aird, Polly

Mormon Convert, Mormon Defector : A Scottish Immigrant in the American West, 1848-1861

Norman, OK

Arthur H. Clark Co.

2009

[2010 Mormon Historical Association Winner for Best Biography]

"Peter McAuslan heeded Mormon missionaries spreading the faith in his native Scotland in the mid-1840s. The uncertainty his family faced in a rapidly industrializing economy, the political turmoil erupting across Europe, the welter of competing religions'all were signs of the imminent end of time, the missionaries warned. For those who would journey to a new Zion in the American West, opportunity and spiritual redemption awaited. When McAuslan converted in 1848, he believed he had a found a faith that would give his life meaning. A few years later, McAuslan and his family left Scotland for Utah, but soon after arriving, Peter's doubts grew about the religious community he had joined so wholeheartedly. Historian Polly Aird tells the story of how McAuslan first embraced, then came to question, and ultimately renounced the Mormon faith and left Utah. It would be the most courageous act of his life. In Mormon Convert, Mormon Defector, Aird tells of Scottish emigrants who endured a harrowing trans-Atlantic and transcontinental journey to join their brethren in the valley of the Great Salt Lake. But to McAuslan and others like him, the Promised Land of Salt Lake City turned out to be quite different from what was promised: droughts and plagues of locusts destroyed crops and brought on famine, and U.S. Army troops threatened on the borders. Mormon leaders responded with fiery sermons attributing their trials to divine retribution for backsliding and sin. When the leaders countenanced violence and demanded absolute obedience, Peter McAuslan decided to abandon his adopted faith. With his family, and escorted by a U.S. Army detachment for protection, he fled to California. Mormon Convert, Mormon Defector reveals the tumultuous 1850s in Utah and the West in vivid detail. Drawing on McAuslan's own writings and other archival sources, Aird offers a rare interior portrait of a man in whom religious enthusiasm warred with indignation at absolutist religious authorities and fear for the consequences of dissension. In so doing, she brings to life a dramatic but little-known period of American history." [Publisher's Abstract]

Dissent and dissenters, 19th century
Award Winner
Immigrants, Scottish
McAuslan, Peter

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Biography in Mormon Studies
Brigham Young : Pioneer Prophet
God and the People : Theodemocracy in Nineteenth-Century Mormonism
In Sacred Loneliness: The Documents
John Hawley, Mormon Ulysses : His LDS Mission to Iowa and Eventual RLDS Conversion
Ladder to the Moon
Mormonism in Europe : Historical and Contemporary Perspectives
Playing with Shadows : Voices of Dissent in the Mormon West
Revelation, Scripture, and Authority in the Latter-day Saint Diaspora, 1840-1870
Robert Newton Baskin and the Making of Modern Utah
The Civil War Years in Utah : The Kingdom of God and the Territory that did not Fight
The History Between the Lines
The LDS Gospel Topics Series : A Scholarly Engagement
The Mormon Rebellion : America's First Civil War, 1857-1858
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Writing Mormon History : Historians and Their Books

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Aaron Johnson, Faithful Steward : A Documentary History
A Brief History of Springville, Utah
A Century of 'Mormonism' in Great Britain
A Comprehensive History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
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Among the Mormons : Historic Accounts by Contemporary Observers
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At Sword's Point, Part 1 : A Documentary History of the Utah War to 1858
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Autobiography of Elder Charles Derry
Blood of the Prophets : Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows
Bound for Zion : The Ten- and Thirteen-Pound Emigrating Companies, 1853-54
Brigham Young at Home
Brigham Young : The American Moses
Camp Floyd and the Mormons : The Utah War
Camp in the Sagebrush : Camp Floyd, Utah, 1858-1861
Causes of the Utah War Reconsidered
Charles Mackay and His 'True and Impartial History' of the Mormons
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Early Mormon Pamphleteering
Escape from Zion : The United States Army Escort of Mormon Apostates, 1859
Establishing Zion : The Mormon Church in the American West, 1847-69
Expectations Westward : The Mormons and the Emigration of Their British Converts in the Nineteenth Century
Fish and the Famine of 1855-56
Forgotten Kingdom : The Mormon Theocracy in the American West, 1847-1896
Fort Limhi : The Mormon Adventure in Oregon Territory, 1855-1858
From Men to Boys : LDS Aaronic Priesthood Offices, 1829-1996
From the Missouri to the Clyde : Samuel W. Richards in Scotland, 1846-1848
Great Basin Kingdom : An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900
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John Doyle Lee : Zealot, Pioneer Builder, Scapegoat
John Lyon : The Life of a Pioneer Poet
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Mormonism's Encounter with Spiritualism
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New Views of Mormon History : A Collection of Essays in Honor of Leonard J. Arrington
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The Bone in the Throat : Orson Pratt and the Public Announcement of Plural Marriage
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The Diary of Charles Lowell Walker
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The Great Platte River Road : The Covered Wagon Mainline Via Fort Kearny to Fort Laramie
The History of Spanish Fork
The Latter-day Saints' Emigrants' Guide
The Life and Thought of Orson Pratt
The Mormon Conflict, 1850-1859
The Mormon Crossing of the United States, 1840-1870
The Mormon Question : Polygamy and Constitutional Conflict in Nineteenth-Century America
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The Mormon Reformation of 1856-1857 : The Rhetoric and the Reality
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The Mormons : Or Latter-Day Saints
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The Teachings of President Brigham Young Vol. 3, 1852–1854
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