Slavery in Zion: A Documentary and Genealogical History of Black Lives and Black Servitude in Utah Territory, 1847-1862

"An African proverb says, "It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten." This belief underlies the work of recovery of the names and experiences of the enslaved Black residents of Utah Territory in Slavery in Zion: A Documentary and Genealogical History of Black Lives and Black Servitude in Utah Territory, 1847-1862. The total number of the enslaved has remained an open question for many years. Due to the nature of nineteenth-century records and particularly records about enslaved peoples, an exact number will never be known, but while writing this book, historian Amy Tanner Thiriot documented around one hundred enslaved or indentured African American men, women, and children in Utah Territory.Through a combination of genealogical and historical research, the book brings to light events and relationships misunderstood for well over a century. This work of historical biography corrects previous misrepresentations and gathers valuable source data for future interpretive analysis. The first section contains an introductory history, chapters on the Southern and Western experiences, and information on life after emancipation. The second section is a biographical encyclopedia with names, relationships, and experiences. Although this book contains material applicable to legal history and the history of race and Mormonism, its most important goal is to be a treasury of the experiences of Utah's enslaved Black residents. It includes better-known people like Biddy Mason and the enslaved members of the first Latter-day Saint wagon company to reach the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, Green Flake, Hark Wales, and Oscar Smith, and others who are long forgotten, including Phoebe Murphy and sisters Caroline and Tampian Hoye. This book provides the stories of the enslaved so they can become an integral part of the history of Utah and the American West, no longer forgotten or written out of history"--