SALT LAKE DAILY TELEGRAPH for Friday, May 19, 1865 [I:275].
Folio (19 X 14 inches). Four pages, complete issue. Back fold and horizontal creases unobtrusively strengthened or repaired with archival tape and tissue. Encapsulated between sheets of archival acetate. (Not laminated: could be removed easily by cutting an edge of the plastic and sliding the newspaper from the sleeve. Opens to one large sheet measuring 19 X 28 inches + encapsulation.) In quite presentable condition.
postpaid: $200
"Published every Morning, except Monday. T. B. H. Stenhouse, Editor." The Telegraph began on July 4, 1864, as a Mormon-friendly, private enterprise of Stenhouse.
"A journalistic foil to the Vedette was deemed necessary in the city, and Mr. T. B. H. Stenhouse projected the Salt Lake Telegraph," says E. W. Tullidge in his History of Salt Lake City. Also, the Deseret News had frequently referred to the need for a strictly newspaper, while Stenhouse was working for the [Deseret] News. [J. Cecil Alter, Early Utah Journalism (Salt Lake City, 1938), p. 340]
Accordingly, this was a very secular organ indeed. More than eighteen of its twenty-four columns are filled with commercial advertisements, of which the following is one of the more folksy examples:
Most of the ads are a bit more polished in appearance, and offer a surprising variety of products from as far away as New York City. Of the three photographers' "cards" printed on the front page, however, two are right in Salt Lake: Savage & Ottinger, Photographer & Artist, and Edward Martin's New Portrait Gallery opposite Walker's Store, where J. Olsen offers special attention "Por Scandinaver."
This issue of the Telegraph offers precious little local news, but contains two columns (small type) of telegraphic reports from New York. The paper continued until December 22,1869. A problem began in 1868, when . . .
. . . T. B. H. Stenhouse, considered the "founder of Utah journalism," moved his Salt Lake Telegraph to Ogden on advice of Brigham Young. When the paper failed, so did Stenhouse's faith: "I gave evidence of my obedience, and it brought ruin, as I expected. Henceforth I will follow the best experience of my life."
A year later, he was disfellowshipped for "failure to attend the School of Prophets." Commenting on Brigham Young's role in the proceeding, T. B. H. mused, "What will he not do next? To submit would be to acknowledge him absolute, and myself a slave. There is but one alternative now—slavery or freedom. Cost me what it may, I will be free."
Stenhouse wrote his bishop that he had "no faith in Brigham's claim to an Infallible Priesthood, and that he considered that he ought to be cut off from the Church." Fanny added a postscript: "I wish to share my husband's fate." T. B. H. was excommunicated shortly after divorcing his plural wife Belinda November 25, 1869. Church action against Fanny was not taken until October 5, 1874, two years after she wrote her first exposé of Mormonism.
The Stenhouses, resolving to "walk into the jaws of death," joined William S. Godbe's "New Movement." [Richard S. Van Wagoner and Steven C. Walker, A Book of Mormons, (Salt Lake City, 1982), pp. 341-2, copied from Smith Research Associates New Mormon Studies CD-ROM, not verified against hard copy]
