DESERET NEWS. By W. Richards. G[reat]. S[alt]. L[ake]. City, Deseret, Aug. 31, 1850. Vol. 1.--No. 12.
Single issue. 27 X 20½ cm. at greatest extremities (approximately 10½ X 8 inches). Paged [89]-96 (eight pages, complete issue).
SOLD::postpaid: $ 875::
NEVER BOUND; NEVER TRIMMED. Medium wear and soiling. The most desirable form for an old newspaper - primitive and uncut. The back folds each show the pair of holes where the issue would have been held together with a simple straight pin after being "opened" (cut along the upper fold at the tops of the pages for reading) by an early owner. A faint penciled name at the top of the front page shows that this paper was once owned or destined for a J. L. [or J. S.?] Smith. I have not been able to identify the handwriting.
FLAKE 2822; ALTER 280ff.; SAUNDERS, Printing in Deseret, 18. The first newspaper in Utah, and something of a small miracle. The following extract from Saunders will demonstrate the significance of the scarce remnant now offered here . . .
"Considering with respect to the conditions under which it was created," wrote historian Seymour Dunbar, "the apparently insuperable difficulties encountered and surmounted in its publication; the spirit which guided and characterized it; and the decisive power it wielded, the Deseret News may well be described as perhaps the most remarkable and historically interesting newspaper that ever existed." The paper's production history is certainly colorful enough.
After circulating a manuscript prospectus about the city near the first of June, editor Willard Richards compiled the first issue of the paper, B. H. Young got the type set, Thomas Bullock proofed the galleys, and the pages were made up. The inaugural number was printed June 15, 1850, and made available to the small handful of local subscribers—no more than three hundred fifty, most of whom had probably subscribed on promises—two days later. Thereafter, for a year and two months, the editor, proofreader, and pressmen continued to crank out the quarto issues through the thirty-nine numbers of the paper that constitute the first volume. The newspaper was not delivered in the modern sense. Subscribers in the city itself retrieved their copies from the post office. Home delivery was available at a surcharge of fifty cents. For the first few issues, no provisions at all were made to get papers to subscribers living beyond the city. Beginning with issue number 5, the editor proposed to make up into packages all the newspapers from a given area (e.g., Utah Valley) and forward them collectively to agents for distribution. [Richard L. Saunders, Printing in Deseret; Mormons, Economy, Politics & Utah's Incunabula, 1849-1851. A History and Descriptive Bibliography (Salt Lake City: University. of Utah Press, 2000), pp. 138-40]
WHY INDULGE in large, gaudy headlines or outrageous expressions to describe the rarity of this newspaper? It is something quite special, and stands on its own merits. Alter quotes from a colorful description taken from a late nineteenth-century issue of the Deseret News . . .
"During the winter of 1846-47 Judge W. W. Phelps was sent from Winter Quarters to Philadelphia . . . to purchase a printing press, type, ink, etcetera . . . and brought to Winter Quarters a small printing plant . . . This printing outfit was conveyed across the plains by the Pioneer Company . . . The press was a small wrought iron affair known as a Ramage Press and the quantity of type was but small.
"In the spring of 1850 the press was set up in a small adobe building which adjoins on the east the present Deseret News buildings . . . (Eastern edge, Hotel Utah). On this press was printed . . . the first number of the Deseret News . . . Horace K. Whitney set the type and Brigham H. Young worked the press for the first issue."
(S. A. Kenner, in Utah AS It Is, says the Ramage hand press was but little larger than a clothes wringer; and the first home of the Desert News was an adobe shack that was as easy to get on top of as into!) [J. Cecil Alter, Early Utah Journalism . . . (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society, 1938), pp. 280-1, quoting from "Something of Ourselves," Deseret News, July 24, 1897]
Where else would we find a front-page advertisement by Joseph Smith's uncle, offering to give patriarchal blessings each Saturday and Monday?
News in this paper is surprisingly cosmopolitan, ranging from concerns in Key West about a Cuban uprising, to reports of financial crises in London. Local Utah news and advertisements appear primarily on the front and the back two pages. Here are examples . . .
