Did you ever read “A Study in Scarlet”, the first Sherlock Holmes story? He’s not actually in it very much, it’s a long recounting of some man’s misadventures among the early Mormons. I don’t remember it very well, but I do remember thinking: woah, this isn’t the Donnie & Marie Mormons we’ve come to know and love.
Of course it is a made up story, but clearly things have changed with that group.
It might be interesting to study how much getting rid of polygamy had to do with that, if anything.
The mystery novelist Anne Perry is a Mormon. As a teenager, she was also a key player in a murder in New Zealand.
There are some interesting inclusions from Mormon history in her books.
Yes Ive read A Study in Scarlet
The contents are typical of how the Mormons behaved in Utah Territory and everywhere they went..
They were never persecuted for their religious beliefs..
The Mormons persecuted the Christians, murdered and cheated and stole from farmers and burnt their homes, and kidnapped girls for their harems..
the Christians fought back and protected themselves and their daughters..
It was the Mormons who started much of the trouble in NY, OH, MO, IL and UT...
There were Mormons still living peacefully in those starts when Brigham Young decided to sell the Nauvoo Mormon temple to the Catholics and move his followers to the Utah territory so that he and his cronies could break the decency laws of the United States and practice polygamy in another country, Utah was Mexico until about that time..
Mormons have never “got rid of polygamy”
they just went underground and lied to the American government..
Woodruff still lived polygamously and married at least one more “wife” AFTER 1890...
In the early 19002 there were at least 2 more “proclamations” declaring they would stop having extra wives but it was just a joke..
After 1890 the Mormons in Utah knowingly elected and sent a guy who had at least THREE wives to congress ..
SEVEN MILLION citizens from around the country signed petitions that he not be sworn in and seated but sent back to Utah...
and so he was..
The last Mormon prophet to practice polygamy didn’t die until 1945 so there were polygamous marriages amongst the leaders in SLC till at least then...
They MORMONs wanted to be a state - the gummint said NO! if you've going to cleave to POLYGAMY.
The LDS 'leadership' threw their GOD under the bus.