A Salt Lake City Stopover, July 1859

Hannah Keziah Clapp

INTRODUCTION

It would be difficult to imagine any more exciting personality in the history of the American West than Hannah Keziah Clapp, educator and advocate for the rights of women.

This woman, born a New Yorker, made her first appearance on history’s page as a teacher in Ypsilanti, Michigan, in 1849 at the age of 25 years.¹ She moved on from there to Lansing, where she was principal of that city’s Female Seminary. She then became a teacher in the Michigan Female College. During these years she was an active feminist, even adopting the “freedom costume,” the “bloomer dress.”²

During the spring of 1859 Hannah decided to travel over the trail to California with her brother, Nathan, and his family. The letter printed below was written from Salt Lake City to an unnamed friend in Lansing, who, as Hannah suggested, took it to the colorful editor of the Lansing Republican, Rufus (“Roof”) Hosmer,³ who published it on September 6,1859. A photocopy of the clipping was kindly supplied from the Hannah Clapp Collection by the Nevada State Historical Society, Reno. The public library in Lansing has a file of the newspaper on microfilm.

The overland party on its way west paused in Salt Lake City for a few days. Hannah’s letter was written on July 17, 1859. They reached California in the fall. For the next year Hannah taught in Vacaville, some thirty miles southwest of Sacramento.

A year later, in the fall of 1860, she retraced her steps over the Sierra to the newly laid out town of Carson City, Nevada. It was in that territory and state that she spent most of the rest of her life. She and a friend, Mrs. W.K. (Ellen) Cutler organized a private school, Sierra Seminary. Mrs. Cutler was “a noted singer and elocutionist.”⁴ She departed Nevada in the spring of 1864, and Hannah advertised for another teacher who would specialize in Latin and English. Eliza C. Babcock, a native of Maine responded to the ad, and the two ladies soon became inseperable in a friendship that lasted 35 years.

In 1887 Hannah Clapp was appointed to the staff of the newly founded University of Nevada at Reno as “Preceptress and Professor of History and the English Language.”⁵ She also served as librarian. The two friends moved to Reno. Hannah told those gathered for a reunion thirty years later that the first faculty “consisted of the following important names, to-wit, President [Leroy D.] Brown and H.K. Clapp.” She added, “This august body presided over the destinies of a microscopic student body, whom it inspired with reverence and awe.”⁶

In the years following Hannah Clapp was also involved intensely in the pursuit of suffrage for women. She became acquainted with the national leaders of that movement, including Susan B. Anthony. Her work on woman suffrage all seemed to be fruitless as the legislature turned it down in 1869,1883,1885, and 1895. It did not come about in Nevada until 1914, six years after Hannah’s death.⁷

The two companions lived together until the death of Eliza Babcock on September 19, 1899. Hannah Keziah Clapp moved to Palo Alto, California, where she lived until the day of her death, October 8, 1908.

HANNAH CLAPP’S LETTER

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Lansing, Michigan, Republican, September 6, 1859: The following interesting letter from Miss H.K. Clapp was received by a lady of this city, who politely permitted us to publish, of which permisson we have availed ourselves, believing it likely to interest our readers:

GREAT SALT LAKE, July 17, 1859.

This Sunday is very much like others days with us here; although now we have the privilege of attending Mormon meeting. I embraced the opportunity on Sunday — went with my bloomer dress and hat, with my revolver by my side. Heard Lord Pratt,¹ and saw Prophet Brigham. The congregation were seated in a large room, the seats graduated from the pulpit on three sides — the back seats as high as the pulpit. The Prophet Brigham and his consellors, Kimbal² and Wells³, came in a back way, well guarded by soldiery. The Lord does not always take care of his Prophets, and they are a little afraid of their heads. The twelve Apostles were seated in this pulpit, which has a close panneled wall around it, four feet high. The men come into this Tabernacle at one end door, and the women at the other. The appearance of the congregation was after their own peculiar institution — barefoot and no hoops; the men in their shirt-sleeves; emigrants in their emigrant clothes; all armed — bowie knife, and revolver.

Salt Lake City is a large place, situated at the head of the great valley; on the east, the river Jordan; and on the east and north, laterally, mountains. Its first appearance, at a distance, looked like an Irish huddle;⁴ but on approaching it, it looked better. It is laid out in squares of forty rods each, streets crossing each other at right angles; and on either sides, streams of water, brought from the mountains for the purpose of irrigation, as it seldom rains here.

The buildings are made of adobe, a kind of sunburned brick; all unpainted except Brigham’s Harem, this is painted a kind of cream. His buildings and garden occupy one square, and are enclosed with a stone wall twelve feet high, laid in lime mortar. Every rod are pillars built up four feet higher than the wall. These are the “watchmen of the towers of Zion.” Over the main door of this Harem is a huge lion, carved in marble, perhaps of the “tribe of Judah.” On the top of the cupola is a bee-hive. Over the main gate is an eagle, with her wings spread.

An armed guard is stationed at the gates, and all entrances into this enclosure. No one is permitted to go in unless he has business with Prophet B ————. Some of our party tried to call on him, but could not gain admittance. I told them I meant to see him, still I did not wish to show him the least respect. I consider him guilty of treason against the Government, and not worthy the recognition of an American.

I sent him a note, saying I would like to see him — curiosity of course — and if he would name the hour, I would call, with my escort. After much questioning, the messenger brought me word that his Superior, Prophet-like Majesty would attend to my call at my earliest convenience. We were admitted into his august presence, through guard. The room was large. There were thirteen men besides himself in the room, all armed. He sat in his armed chair. In a back room were armed guards.

A man about fifty eight, of medium height, sanguine temperament, portly, sallow countenance, (effect of being housed up, undoubtedly,) arose from his chair to receive us, we knowing by this act that he was a man, &c. We had a very pleasant call. After the first few moments he seemed much interested in the conversation. We made a long call, but when we came to retire, he came to the door and asked us to call again. Among the sixty wives we did not see one. A little chap came into the room while we were sitting there, about eight years of age. I asked the little fellow what his name was. He replied, “Brigham Young the Third.” His grandpa replied that “he was the eldest son of his eldest son.” This is the way the Brighams are counted.⁵

The man of the house where we put up while we were in the city, “The Utah House,” had three wives. The first wife was very talkative. He was one and seventy, and kept preaching to me. One day he told me that “it would be the business of the Saints, in another world, to teach those of the gentiles that had not heard the gospel in this life; but he had preached to me, and he feared if I did not embrace the doctrine I would go to hell.” I think Governor Cummings⁶ would consider my life in danger if he knew what I said to them. I will preach a little to the women when I get a chance, in spite of the Governor.

We called on Governor Cummings. He is a superannuated, brandy-soaked, Buchanan Democrat. Believes in the Territories controlling their own peculiar institutions in their own peculiar way. He told us that “we had nothing to fear of the Mormons while passing their their territory, if we would not talk their religion with them; pass through quietly, not argue with them at all, or meddle with their religious views.” Oh! I know we are in a foreign land; not American soil here! This is the “Independent State of Deseret.” To be sure the United States has a Consul here, in the person of the Governor, as you would have known on the glorious Fourth; for you would have seen the American flag waving over his private dwelling, while at other places you see the Mormon flag hoisted. This was a beautiful spectacle. The spirit of ’76 so burned in the bosom of some of the emigrants that I do believe if there had been a hundred of them they would have pulled down the foreign flags and hoisted the American flag.

The soldiers of this “Independent State of Deseret” came out in uniform, on horseback, marched around Brigham’s harem, and he came out on the steps, inside the wall, and made a short speech. At the present appearance of the government, they will pour many more millions of dollars into the pockets of these rebels without bringing “one sinner to rependance.” Two hundred thousand dollars, Col. Johnson⁷ says, have been paid out of government funds to Brigham Young for lumber, at seventy dollars per thousand, for building the Fort at Camp Floyd. This Fort is forty-seven miles from the city. The statements I make concerning the Mormons are authentic, and if Hosmer wants them for his paper, let him have them.

Col. Johnson also says that the army coming here have not quelled the Mormons, only for the time. Sending the peace officers ahead of the army, placed the army in a position where they could not do anything — they were powerless. All of the army were convinced that this people were a guilty band of rebels, robbers and murderers. Their burning the provisions of the army — there were ten trains burned, one on Green River, the other on the other side, ninety wagons in all. The irons of sixty I saw lay, as they had been corralled for the night, on the banks of the Green River, and there they will remain, as a monument of this rebellion, until the emigrants shall pick them away, iron by iron. The log chains, or large chains, have been straightened out, and some of the men paced a hundred rods and still there was chain. Enough to rivet every rebel Mormon’s neck, if they could be used.

Then when you come to pass through the canons, see the fortifications, and the savage and fiendish manner that they have prepared to mutilate and mow down the army of their own nation. Every entrance into the city is well fortified, and they had their men out by the thousands.

Again, to see, as I did, those sixteen orphan children, rescued from that dreadful massacre of emigrants, known here as the “mountain meadow massacre.”⁸ When I saw these children they were camped with a portion of the army, that were being marched to Lehi, about thirteen miles out of the city. We camped here, and I went with one of the officers to the camp where these children were. They were all very bright, nice looking children, from the age of five to eight or ten; not one able to tell his or her surname, with the exception of two boys — they were the oldest. They were sent back to the city, Col. Johnson, or Judge Eckles,⁹ I know not which, sent to have them return, thinking perhaps they may be of use as evidence. This soldier told me he was one that was sent to the place of the massacre to bury the skulls — they found and buried 113. This is said to have been one of the richest emigrant companies that has ever passed through this Territory; they had over a thousand head of cattle.

I might write pages that these soldiers, officers, and men of responsibility have told me of Mormonism, and not one word of good can they say of them. Tell Hosmer, for me I believe them to be a lot of miserable, wicked land pirates, and I wish he would bring them to justice, or send them to Kingdom-Come, I care not which.

The women are miserable slaves, and the men are licentious knaves. Their children are numerous, but of a very poor quality, very raw, and not half witted. Not one to twenty of the women or children can read, and what is true the world over, converted; think they have all the rights and privileges they want. They told me the system is beautiful if I only understood it.

We were one week in the city. We are now camped twenty miles north, recruiting our animals, and waiting for some of our company to return from Camp Floyd. We are right in a settlement of Mormons. The women come daily to see us; none go away empty. Most of them are old country people, kind hearted, and I laugh, and sometimes ridicule their peculiar doctrine; still they seem interested in me. One old English widow, of forty-eight, has been several times. She came last night to bid me good-bye. She said she walked all the way from New York City to Salt Lake, and brought three children; was thankful that she had money enough to pay their fare. I told her she did more than I would for her religion, or a husband. She is good, but so bigoted.

We have had a pleasant journey, but this warm weather is tedious. We are camped at the foot of a high mountain, and in view of Salt Lake. They drive down on its banks and shovel up salt by the pailful, yes, by the wagon load.

We have the full benefit of the sun — not a shade in sight. No timber except among the mountains.

Affectionately, I remain, Your friend,

H.K. CLAPP

EPILOGUE

MARK TWAIN VISITS SIERRA ACADEMY

Mark Twain arrived in Virginia City, Nevada, in September, 1862, to become reporter on the staff of the Territorial Enterprise. He held that position until May, 1864. Much of his duty was to cover legislative and other political events in the Territorial Capital, Carson City. In his routine reporting he used his actual name, Samuel Clemens. At some point he began to sign his published letters and columns “Mark Twain.”

Such a letter, published on January 14, 1864, told of a visit with a local politician, William M. Gillespie, to the school run by Hannah Clapp and Ellen Cutler, in Carson City.

Files of the Territorial Enterprise before 1865 have been lost. However, four volumes of clippings from the Enterprise turned up in some scrapbooks kept by Orion Clemens, brother of the young reporter. They were among the effects of Anita Moffett, Clemens’ grand niece, at her death in 1952. They are now among the Mark Twain papers in the University of California Library in Berkeley. They were published in a choice book, Mark Twain of the Enterprise, (Berkely, 1957), by a competent Mark Twain scholar, the late Henry Nash Smith of the same university. Among them was the letter telling of the visit to Sierra Academy. We are grateful to Elinor Smith of Berkeley for permission to publish the letter.

MISS CLAPP’S SCHOOL

By authority of an invitation from Hon. Wm. M. Gillespie, member of the House Committee on Colleges and Common Schools, I accompanied that statesman on an unofficial visit to the excellent school of Miss Clapp and Mrs. Cutler, this afternoon. The air was soft and balmy — the sky was cloudless and serene — the odor of flowers floated upon the idle breeze — the glory of the sun descended like a benediction upon mountain and meadow and plain — the wind blew like the very devil, and the day was generally disagreeable.

The school — however, I will mention first that a charter for an educational institution to be called the Sierra Seminary, was granted to Miss Clapp during the Legislative session of 1861, and a bill will be introduced while the present Assembly is in session, asking an appropriation of $20,000 to aid the enterprise. Such a sum of money could not be more judiciously expended, and I doubt not the bill will pass.¹

The present school is a credit both to the teachers and the town. It now numbers about forty pupils, I should think, and is well and systematically conducted. The exercises this afternoon were of a character not likely to be unfamiliar to the free American citizen who has a fair recollection of how he used to pass his Friday afternoons in the days of his youth. The tactics have undergone some changes, but these variations are not important. In former times a fellow took his place in the luminous spelling class in the full consciousness that if he spelled cat with a “k,” or indulged in any other little orthographical eccentricities of a similar nature, he would be degraded to the foot or sent to his seat; whereas, he keeps his place in the ranks now, in such cases, and his punishment is simply to “’bout face.” Johnny Eaves stuck to his first position, to-day, long after, the balance of the class had rounded to, but he subsequently succumbed to the word “nape,” which he persisted in ravishing of its final vowel. There was nothing irregular about that. Your rightly constructed schoolboy will spell a multitude of hard words without hesitating once, and then lose his grip and miss fire on the easiest one in the book.

The fashion of reading selections of prose and poetry remains the same; and so does the youthful manner of doing that sort of thing. Some pupils read poetry with graceful ease and correct expression, and others place the rising and falling inflection at measured intervals, as if they had learned the lesson on a “see-saw”; but then they go undulating through a stanza with such an air of unctuous satisfaction, that it is a comfort to be around when they are at it.

“The boy—stoo—dawn—the bur—ning deck—
When—sawl—but him had fled—
The flames—that shook—the battle—zreck—
Shone round—him o’er—the dead.”²

That is the old-fashioned impressive style — stately, slow-moving and solemn. It is in vogue yet among scholars of tender age. It always will be. Ever since Mrs. Hemans wrote that verse, it has suited the pleasure of juveniles to emphasize the word “him,” and lay atrocious stress upon that other word “o’er,” whether she liked it or not; and I am prepared to believe that they will continue this practice unto the end of time, and with the same indifference to Mrs. Hemans’ opinions about it, or any body’s else.

They sing in school, now-a-days, which is an improvement upon the ancient regime; and they don’t catch flies and throw spit-balls at the teacher, as they used to do in my time — which is another improvement, in a general way. Neither do the boys and girls keep a sharp look-out on each other’s shortcomings and report the same at headquarters, as was a custom of by-gone centuries. And this reminds me of Gov. Nye’s³ last anecdote, fulminated since the delivery of his message, and consequently not to be found in that document. The company were swapping old school reminiscences, and in due season they got to talking about that extinct species of tell-tales that were once to be found in all minor educational establishments, and who never failed to detect and impartially denounce every infraction of the rules that occurred among their mates. The Governor said that he threw a casual glance at a pretty girl on the next bench one day, and she complained to the teacher — which was entirely characteristic, you know. Says she, “Mister Jones, Warren Nye’s looking at me.” Whereupon, without a suggestion from anybody, upjumped an infamous, lisping, tow-headed young miscreant, and says he, “Yeth, thir, I thee him do it!” I doubt if the old original boy got off that ejaculation with more gusto than the Governor throws into it.

The “compositions” read to-day were as exactly like the compositions I used to hear read in our school as one baby’s nose is exactly like all other babies’ noses. I mean the old principal earmarks were all there: the cutting to the bone of the subject with the very first gash, without any preliminary foolishness in the way of a gorgeous introductory; the inevitable and persevering tautology; the brief, monosyllabic sentences (beginning, as a very general thing, with the pronoun “I”); the penchant for presenting rigid, uncompromising facts for the consideration of the hearer, rather than ornamental fancies; the depending for the success of the composition upon its general merits, without taking artificial aids to the end of it, in the shape of deductions or conclusions, or clap-trap climaxes, albeit their absence sometimes imparts to these essays the semblance of having come to an end before they were finished — of arriving at full speed at a jumping-off place and going suddenly overboard, as it were, leaving a sensation such as one feels when he stumbles without previous warning upon that infernal “To be Continued” in the midst of a thrilling magazine story..I know there are other styles of school compositions, but these are the characteristics of style which I have in my eye at present. I do not know why this one has particularly suggested itself to my mind, unless the literary effort of one of the boys there to-day left with me an unusually vivid impression. It ran something in this wise:

COMPOSITION

“I like horses. Where we lived before we came here, we used to have a cutter and horses. We used to ride in it. I like winter. I like snow. I used to have a pony all to myself, where I used to live before I came here. Once it drifted a good deal — very deep — and when it stopped I went out and got in it.”

That was all. There was no climax to it, except the spasmodic bow which the tautological little student jerked at the school as he closed his labors.

Two remarkably good compositions were read. Miss P.’s was much the best of these — but aside from its marked literary excellence it possessed another merit which was peculiarly gratifying to my feelings just at that time. Because it took the conceit out of young Gillespie as completely as perspiration takes the starch out of a shirt-collar. In his insufferable vanity, that feeble member of the House of Representatives had been assuming imposing attitudes, and beaming upon the pupils with an expression of benignant imbecility which was calculated to inspire them with the conviction that there was only one guest of any consequence in the house. Therefore, it was an unspeakable relief to me to see him forced to shed his dignity. Concerning the composition, however. After detailing the countless pleasures which had fallen to her lot during the holidays, the authoress finished with a proviso, in substance as follows — I have forgotten the precise language: “But I have no cheerful reminiscences of Christmas. It was dreary, monotonous and insipid to the last degree. Mr. Gillespie called early, and remained the greater part of the day!” You should have seen the blooming Gillespie wilt when the literary bombshell fell in his camp! The charm of the thing lay in the fact that the last naive sentence was the only suggestion offered in the way of accounting for the dismal character of the occasion. However, to my mind it was sufficient — entirely sufficient.

Since writing the above, I have seen the architectural plans and specifications for Miss Clapp and Mrs. Cutler’s proposed “Sierra Seminary” building. It will be a handsome two-story edifice, one hundred feet square, and will accommodate forty “boarders” and any number of pupils beside, who may board elsewhere. Constructed of wood, it will cost $12,000; or of stone, $18,000. Miss Clapp has devoted ten acres of ground to the use and benefit of the institution.

I sat down intending to write a dozen pages of variegated news. I have about accomplished the task. — all except the “variegated.” I have economised in the matter of current news of the day, considerably more than I purposed to do, forevery item of that nature remains stored away in my mind in a very unwritten state, and will afford unnecessarily ample material for another letter. It is useless material, though, I suspect, because, inasmuch as I have failed to incorporate it into this, I fear I shall not feel industrious enough to weave out of it another letter until it has become too stale to be interesting. Well, never mind — we must learn to take an absorbing delight in educational gossip; nine-tenths of the revenues of the Territory go into the bottomless gullet of that ravenous school fund, you must bear in mind.

MARK TWAIN

1The most definitive resource for this introduction has been Kathryn Dunn Totton, “ Hannah Keziah Clapp: The Life and Career of a Pioneer Nevada Educator, 1824–1908,” Nevada Hist. Soc. Quar., XX, No. 3 (Fall 1977), pp. 166–183.

2See Covered Wagon Women, Vol. IV, pp. 12–15; also this volume, above, p. 9; D.C. Bloomer, Life and Writings of Amelia Bloomer (New York, 1975).

3“Wielded a Strong Pen, Rufus Hosmer, an Old-Time Editor…. ” Mich. History Mag., XXV (Winter 1911), pp. 29–33.

4Henry Nash Smith, Mark Twain of the Enterprise (Berkeley, 1957), p. 227.

5Totten, op. cit., p. 173.

6Ibid.

7Totten, op. cit., p. 180; Russell R. Elliott, History of Nevada (Lincoln, Neb., 1973), pp. 246–247.

1Orson Pratt (1811–1881).

2Heher C. Kimball (1801–1868).

3Daniel H. Wells (1814–1891).

4An “ Irish huddle” would have been a conglomerate pile of something.

5Hannah Clapp evidently did not know that Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune was in Salt Lake City at the same time as she. He, too, interviewed Brigham Young. He sent back a story about that meeting entitled “Two Hours with Brigham Young,” dated July 13, just four days before the date of Hannah’s letter. In 1860 he published the story of his interview with the Mormon leader in a book, An Overland Journey from N ew York to San Francisco. Greeley heeded his own advice to “ Go west, young man,” by traveling overland in a stage coach.

6Governor Alfred Cumming. His wife, Elizabeth Wells Randall Cumming, wrote observant letters east telling about her journey west and experience in the Mormon city. Five of them were published in William Mulderand A. Russell Mortensen Among the Mormons (New York, 1958), pp. 302–315.

7Albert Sidney Johnston was the American officer in command of the army that was sent to Utah to “solve the Mormon problem.” He was an avowed agitator against all things Mormon. They were “ traitorous rogues whose actions merited the closest and most suspicious scrutiny.” Norman F. Furniss, The Mormon Conflict (New Haven, 1960), p. 98.

8A balanced treatment of the “Mountain Meadows Massacre” is to be found in Leonard J. Arrington and Davis Bitton, The Mormon Experience (New York, 1979), pp. 167–170.

9Chief Justice Delana R. Eckels.

1The bill did not pass.

2The lines are from “Casablanca,” written by Felicia Dorothea Hemans, an English poet (1793–1838).

3James W. Nye, a New Yorker, was Governor of Nevada Territory, 1861–1864; United States Senator from Nevada, 1864–1872.