Joseph Post-Mission

Main Street in Salt Lake City, 1889

I submitted all of Joseph's journal entries in their entirety which chronicled his trip back home to Utah to the BYU faculty member overseeing mormonmigration.org. For anyone interested, it should be included here at some future date.

Joseph arrived in Salt Lake City on Tuesday 23 October 1888, a little less than a month from when he left Helsingborg. He stayed for a few days with "Aunt Maggie", his father's sister, Magdalena, who was the third polygamous wife of  Danish immigrant, Frederik Pedersen.

On Friday, 26 October he traveled home to Gunnison where he and another returning missionary, Albert Nephi Tollestrup, were met by a rousing crowd including family, friends, a brass band, and a banner bearing the inscription "Welcome Home!" Following a festive welcome home party at the Relief Society Hall, Joseph accompanied his mother to her residence which Joseph described as a "neat little home of two rooms." If you remember, Johanna was forced to leave the much larger "duplex" home she had previously shared with John and his other wife or risk John being convicted and imprisoned for "unlawful cohabitation".

Joseph commenced helping his father with various types of farm work. In his writings Joseph made it abundantly clear he was not well suited nor conditioned to that type of manual labor. At one point John had implied that he would help finance Joseph's higher education but that never panned out. Joseph was often asked to speak at various church-related meetings and gatherings, became active in Y.M.M.I.A., was elected president of a newly formed choir, and assisted in planning and participating in various social events with the Seventies.

After a month of back-breaking farm work, Joseph was approached by Jens Jensen, one of the "School Trustees for District No. 12", and was asked if he would consider teaching in the "Primary department". It would only pay $5/week, but Joseph considered it an answer to prayer. His teaching position was dependent on him passing a certification test. He began teaching on Tuesday, 4 December and later found out he had passed the test with a score of 74.5% correct.

On Tuesday, 1 January 1889 Joseph traveled to Manti with John and Christena to obtain his own temple endowment and to perform temple work on behalf of some of his ancestors. On Wednesday, 2 January 1889 Joseph wrote:

Received my Endowments.  Felt that I was indeed in the presence of an Heavenly influence.  They are blessings then I can more fully appreciate than before I went on my mission.  I really believe it was for my good to go on a mission first.  Seemed to be the finest time one could wish for.  Feel that it is not too much to sacrifice everything to have the privelage of receiving your blessings there.

As a side note, (and I may be reading more into that last journal entry than was intended, but I really don't think so) I find it quite telling that toward the end of the last sentence he inserted the word "your". Clearly he had someone in mind while he was writing. As I briefly discussed in a previous blog post, it 's like the purpose of his journal was not just a way to keep track of his various daily events and activities, nor was journaling in general used to help him process his thoughts and feelings. His journal was very much a narrative written directly to God to document those things he did throughout his life that would qualify him for eternal exaltation in the celestial kingdom. Because, as was (and still is in the minds of most modern Mormons) inherent in Mormon doctrine, exaltation MUST be earned. The saving graces of Jesus Christ are only available to the very righteous to make up any small gap in obedience to all the commandments of God. If you don't measure up and do enough "good works of your own free will and choice and bring to pass much righteousness" you subject yourself to eternal damnation in a lesser kingdom of God.

Back to Joseph's timeline.

Over the next couple of months the school for which Joseph was engaged in teaching continued to go through changes. At one point Joseph mentioned "consolidation". In mid-March Joseph complained that "The school takes all my time. Am bothered trying to teach properly." By late March he began writing about several disciplinary problems he was having, mostly involving students trying to test the power and authority he held over them. On 31 March, he wrote:

On getting home Mamma told me that word had been sent that my services were not required as a teacher any longer.

He offered no additional commentary. Perhaps he knew it was coming or, quite likely, he knew his skills in one way or another were not quite up to par.

Joseph wrote about "studying", and it appears he was involved in a few higher education evening classes of some sort. After being dismissed from his teaching position he earned money however he could. One of those jobs was shearing sheep. On Monday, 6 May he wrote:

At work on the sheep again. It is very dirty work. I go to work very slowly, as am afraid of cutting the poor things. Some of the boys almost skin the poor sheep in their hurry to earn money.

By the end of June 1889, 8 months after returning to Utah from Sweden, Joseph got a much welcome break and made plans to leave Gunnison for Salt Lake City to participate in an effort which would begin his political activism and forever end his life as a small town farmhand. On Thursday, 27 June Joseph wrote:

A quite a crowd of us are going to the city to work. We are to live there long enough to become entitled to vote at the coming election. The liberals are trying to carry the city by fraud, and the people are using all lawful means to frustrate them. At the same time they are giving work to many who would otherwise be idle.

In other words, "the people" in Joseph's statement above refers to "the Mormon Church". The leaders of the church moved prospective male voters into specific areas of Salt Lake City which were otherwise dominated by members of the opposing political party and, through their church connections, helped to secure them employment and assistance in exchange for votes. It may have been legal, but the ethical nature could easily be called into question. (It was also the practice at the time for church leaders to instruct the members over the pulpit as to whom they should support and vote into political office. Church leaders also took it upon themselves to allow or disallow a church member from running for office.)

Joseph arranged to board with T.E. Taylor, a son of the recently deceased church president John Taylor. T.E. Taylor was also a member of the Salt Lake 14th Ward, and the man who would take Joseph's half-sister, Minnie, as his 3rd polygamous wife just 2 weeks later. (Thomas Edward "T.E." Taylor should not be confused with Thomas Taylor who would be the bishop of the Salt Lake 14th Ward and molested teenage boys in southern Utah.) Joseph wrote that it was "Penrose", probably referring to Charles W. Penrose, a leader in the church and a former elected member of the state legislature (here) and also the man responsible for bringing potential voters to the city, secured a job for Joseph selling sewing machines. Joseph had somewhat moderate success, but by the end of July he was petitioning Bro. Penrose to find him more agreeable and profitable work. Bro. Penrose came through by referring Joseph to "George Reynolds of the Church office". After testing his handwriting, Joseph was employed by the church at a salary of  $160/month, one-third in cash and two-thirds in tithing orders. 

Joseph settled quite nicely in the 14th Ward, being asked to speak his very first Sunday in attendance. Of course, also attending the Salt Lake 14th Ward was the Brown family, including daughter Lilian Rachel Brown. Between the high visibility job and a certain young lady he would meet in his new ward, this move to the big city was the start of something big for Joseph Christenson.