The first missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints went to Hawaii in 1850. As native converts joined the Church, many desired to gather in Utah with converts from other parts of the world, in order to perform Church ordinances in the temples located there. Until about 1870, Hawaiians were prohibited by their government from leaving the Islands permanently. As the laws were relaxed they came to Utah a few at a time with returning missionaries until by 1889 about seventy-five were living in Salt Lake City.Cultural and social problems arose causing the Church officials to decide to locate all the Polynesians in one place by themselves. Under the direction of the First Presidency of the Mormon Church a committee of three former Hawaiian missioanries and three natives selected the ranch of John Irch in Skull Valley, Tooele County, Utah as the site for a Polynesian colony. A Church-controlled corporation was established to purchase and hold the colony's properties. The Polynesians were hired to work on the ranch.A townsite was laid out, lots were sold and homes were bult for the colonists. The colony was named Iosepa, in honor of the sixth president of the Church, Joseph F. Smith, who had served as a missionary among the Hawaiians and was solicitous of their welfare.For the first decade, the company operated at a loss due to the financial difficulties of the 1890's. Gradually financial conditions improved, the company began to feed more livestock, a store was opened and then Iosepa began to realize a profit.At first Iosepa was isolated from other Utah communities. The only way in or out of the colony was by foot or horses. Its post office was in Grantsville, about thirty miles to the northeast. In 1906 the Western Pacific Railroad Company built a line through Utah passing through Timpie, fifteen miles north of Iosepa. A Stagecoach line was established between Timpie and the colony and mail services were extended to the settlement. About the same time, a long distance telephone line gave the colonists a means of rapid communciation with the outside world. By about 1910 the Hawaiians were enjoying as many of the amenities of modern life as any other Utah community its size.Ecclesiastically Iosepa held a unique position in the Church. As a mission branch, all its reports went directly to the First Preidency. Religious leadership was vested in a returned Hawaiian missionary. Hawaiian members usually served as officers in the auxillary organizations.Leprosy and various illnesses caused some concern in the colony, but by 1900 the lepers had died. As doctors became more attainable and as the Hawaiians became more acclimated, problems of sickness decereased.In 1915 the Church announced that a temple was to be built at Laie, Hawaii. Upon hearing this some of the Hawaiians announced that they were returning to the Islands. Soon the movement to return was under way and all were swept with it. By 1917 all had returned to the Islands but one family which remained in Salt Lake City. That fall the Deseret Livestock Company purchased the Iosepa property and Utah's Polynesian colony ceased to exist.Some have asserted that leprosy, other sickness, financial failure or failure of the Polynesians to become acclimated to the area caused the failure and closing of the colony. Each one of these problems was overcome years before the colony's end. The colony was a success. It had been established for a purpose; when its purpose was fulfilled it ceased to exist.

Increasingly, environmentalists have focused on Judeo-Christian tradition as the cause of Western culture's ecological crisis. It is the purpose of this paper to examine the charges against Judeo-Christian tradition and to show how the revealed doctrines of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints provide possible solutions to environmental challenges. The resulting Latter-day Saint environmental paradigm will be superimposed on selected Mormon literature to determine how effectively the doctrines taught by Church authorities filtered into popular Mormon culture.Despite the inspired teachings of Latter-day Saint prophets, Mormons remain unimpressive in their environmental practices. My research will show that while Church environmental doctrines did indeed filter into popular Mormon culture, outside influences and disillusionment with Church authority gradually moved Church members toward more traditional Judeo-Christian environmental attitudes. However, contemporary Mormon literature suggests an increased awareness of and renewed dedication to the Latter-day Saint environmental paradigm.

This descriptive study examined the nursing and health care activities of Mormon women in the pre-depression period of 1914 through 1930 through analysis of the official voice of the Relief Society, the Relief Society Magazine. Entries from the Relief Society Magazine that dealt with any nursing or health care topic were coded according to the themes they addressed. Five themes emerged: Nursing, faith, healing, women's health, children's health, and public health.In each of the themes, the Relief Society Magazine showed that the members of the Relief Society recognized the health care problems of their communities and claimed responsibility for addressing those challenges. Mormon women developed programs and cooperated with existing government and private organizations to achieve their health care goals. The existence of the Relief Society Magazine gave Mormon women a vehicle for communicating their nursing and health care plans, goals, and successes with each other and provided an instrument for exploring the nursing and health work of Mormon women in the 1914 to 1930 period.

This "Annotated Bibliography of Literary Mormon Humor" includes over five hundred sources, cross-referenced to pertinent commentary and criticism, and divided into seven sections: "Humor in Mormon Fiction," "Humor in Mormon Non-Fiction," "Mormon Criticism Assessing ‘Inside Humor,’" "Gentile Criticism of the Saints' Humor," "Gentile Humor About Mormons," "Mormon Criticism of Gentile Humor," and "Mormon Internet Humor," all made accessible to scholars by a comprehensive index of more than one thousand topics. The author has filed selected photocopied pages of alphabetized, annotated items by author, or chronologically as periodicals, into a twenty-volume Archive of Mormon Humor in Literature, housed at the Center for Study of Christian Values in Literature, 3076E JKHB, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. The introduction includes the author's survey of recent trends in Mormon literary humor.This compilation of Mormon humor and literary criticism conclusively dispels the notion that Mormons are humorless. Indeed, this bibliography convincingly documents the fact that the Mormon people enjoy laughing at themselves.

Considerable literature has been written about the Mormons and their settlement of the lands within the Great Basin; yet no one has produced a systematic study which analyzes the following geographical factors: What pattern of land occupancy was actually used by these early pioneers? Which physical characteristics determined the selection of a site for the Mormon village? What type of city survey pattern was instigated as towns were established along the eastern margin of the Great Basin? What was the relationship between the forts and the settlements in their lay-out patterns? As these questions were systematically analyzed new findings were brought to the surface, thus shedding new light on topics which previously had not been explored satisfactorily.

Moab, located in southeastern Utah, began as an agricultural village, in accordance with the economy of early Utah. However, Moab's growth was limited by a restricted physical site. The purpose of this study is to trace the development of the economic functions of Moab in relation to its resource base. Despite the physical limitations of the area, agriculture remained the chief economic activity up to the mid-twentieth century. Periodic booms in speculative mining were only temporary and not significant to the permant economy of the community.However, in the 1950s, a spectacular uranium boom brought unprecedented growth to the town. As the uranium boom slackened, economic and population decline threatened the town's new status. Potash production and tourist-service industries emerged to buoy up the sagging economy. Although the economy was aided by the addition of other activities, the sectors of the economy still remained disproportionately unbalanced in comparison to the norm. The future economic stability of the community remains questionable unless balance can be attained.

This thesis explores the stories which revolve around folk legend Hugh Winder Nibley and what those stories mean to the people of Brigham Young University. Folklore reveals who we are and what is important to us. But, interestingly, folklore tends to reveal more about the person telling the story than about the subject of the story itself. People can't remember every story they hear. The ones they do remember are important to them. The stories are important because they fulfill basic needs of the teller. Such needs are a desire to look up to a hero, a need to fit in and belong to a group, a need to feel superior, a need to reinforce paradigms, a wish to instill others with values one believes in, a wish fulfillment, or a desire for entertainment. Nibley plays many roles for the people of BYU including hero, iconoclast, eccentric, spiritual guide, and defender of the faith. Whether remembering our group past or individual past, stories fill the functions of codifying what is acceptable behavior, releasing tension, illustrating an important point, mitigating the harshness of life, and providing a unifying link between people in a community. Stories are important. The Nibley stories I have collected demonstrate what BYU as a community feels deeply about.

Because the need exists for a professional image among lady missionaries, this thesis will define what knowledge concerning communication of clothing is necessary in order to create a desirable image of professionalism. The term "professional" is derived from available research describing the most appropriate attire for women business executives. In lieu of an experimental study by this author, the interpretation of the professional look is supported by Molloy's extensive research on women's wearing apparel. His research shows that beyond a doubt, the skirted suit and blouse give women "a look of authority and a sense of presence in business." In fact, when a woman is dressed in a good suit, "it is easier to give orders and have them carried out."

This study sought to explore the non-native English-speaking LDS adult's comprehension of the English LDS lexicon. Stahle (1981) conducted a study of the LDS lexicon which established at least 249 words as "basic" vocabulary. The current study had two foci: it first sought to determine how difficult these words were in both English and Spanish for native Spanish-speaking LDS adults living in the U.S. To assess this, a dual-language vocabulary instrument was administered to 245 subjects from Texas, California, and Utah. Item Response Theory (IRT) analysis was used to calculate difficulty levels of words and these values were plotted two-dimensionally in order to categorize the words according to how easy or difficult they were in English or Spanish (relatively).The IRT analysis was also used to generate the ability levels of participants; these ability levels were then used as the dependent variables in a Multiple Analyses of Variance used to assess the second focus of the study, the effect of the following independent variables: time in the U.S., time in the LDS Church, language(s) used to conduct Church meetings, location, and gender. While none of the independent variables showed statistical significance, the overall univariate English model did; this fact strengthened the conclusion that the variation in the sample was too great to pinpoint significance of any one variable, but that significance might be yet shown in a follow-up study which controlled the variables more strictly. In particular, to reassess the positive directional hypothesis in this study that length of exposure to the LDS church would effect comprehension, LDS versus non-LDS subjects could be tested, controlling for age, educational level, sex, etc., as much as possible.

The name of Karl G. Maeser will long be remembered among the people of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints because of his influence on the present system of education within the church. His ability as a teacher of all ages and his gift for organization were the two characteristics which contributed to his success as an educator. He was a humble man, he devoted his life to this calling.