Sojourners to the Mormon West: Historian Michael Homer on Seeing Mormonism and Utah through European Eyes (Season 3, Ep. 9)

**Brad Westwood** (0:09)
Welcome to the podcast Speak Your Piece. This is a podcast about Utah's history produced by the Utah Dept. of Culture and Community Engagement. I'm Brad Westwood, Senior Public Historian. My job is to make the very best, the most interesting and the most accurate history of Utah accessible to the widest audience. If there's one place, one podcast to get your Utah history fix, I hope this is the place. If you subscribe to the podcast, or if this is your very first time listening, go back, would you, and listen to the dozens of prior episodes. Please also rate and review Speak Your Piece on iTunes, Google and elsewhere.
My guest today is Western and Mormon historian, Michael W. Homer, who is also a practicing trial lawyer. I first became acquainted with Michael as an astute collector of rare Western Utah and Mormon historical materials, and as a fellow member of the Utah Westerners. He was also a longtime chairman of the Utah Board of State History, including the five and a half years that I was director of the Utah Division of State History.
He has been honorary Italian Consul of Utah from 2007 to the present, and in 2020 became a Knight of the Order of the Star of Italy. Or Michael, if you would please say this in Italian.

**Michael W. Homer** (1:32)
Sure, Cavaliere dell'Ordine della Stella di Italia.

**Brad Westwood** (1:36)
Finally, he is a Sherlockian, a member of both the Sherlock Holmes Society of London and the Baker Street Irregulars.
He has served as president of the Alta Club, and both Mike and his wife, Nancy Browning, are members of the University of Utah's J. Willard Marriott Library Board. Good morning, Michael. So good to have you here.

**Michael W. Homer** (1:57)
Yeah, Brad, it's an honor to be here with you today, and to participate with you on this podcast. That has become really the gold standard in documenting Utah's history, so thank you.

**Brad Westwood** (2:11)
Thank you. Any excuse will do to have a good time, and you're one dear friend, so thank you so much, Michael. Among numerous published articles and books and book chapters, Michael's book of history includes Mormon in the Piazza, History of the Latter-day Saints in Italy, co-written by James Toronto and Eric Dursteller, published in 2017, and Joseph's Temples, a dynamic relationship between Freemasonry and Mormonism, published in 2014 Today we'll be discussing and reading from his 2006 book entitled On the Way to Somewhere Else, European Sojourners in the Mormon West, 1834 to 1930, which represents decades of careful bibliographic and scholarly work from Mr. Homer, searching out and at times collecting hundreds of European published accounts, both 19th and early 20th century travelers and adventurers who tarried in Utah, who wrote about the Mormons and the non-Mormons, who called all of them, calling Utah home.
These are writers who were English, Irish, French, Scandinavian, Prussian, German, Italian, Belgian and more.
Yes, we have heard about Charles Dickens' account of Mormons, and we've heard snippets from Sir Richard F. Burton's 1861 book, The City of Saints. But there are hundreds of heretofore forgotten or lost published accounts, detailing, revealing or offering insightful historical and, too, fictional accounts about Mormons and those whom today we call members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In our show today, we're going to learn and listen of some of these accounts, as well as new accounts that Mr. Homer has discovered since the publication of his book in 2006 Michael, again, thank you so much for being here.

**Michael W. Homer** (4:09)
Thank you.

**Brad Westwood** (4:11)
Describe your book in the various published forms.
First, it was Volume 8 of the Arthur H. Clark Company's Kingdom of the West, Mormons and the American Frontier series. And then how was it republished by the University of Utah Press, the University of Oklahoma Press? Tell us about the beginnings, the road taken to make this book, but also speak about the publishers and editors too.

**Michael W. Homer** (4:36)
Well, Brad, just to demonstrate how far back this goes, when I first met Greg Thompson, who, as you know, is retiring this week.

**Brad Westwood** (4:47)
Yes, from the University of Utah.

**Michael W. Homer** (4:48)
After 50 years.
And when we were both students at the University of Utah during the early 1970s, he recommended that I read Bill Moulders and Russ Mortenson's book, Among the Mormons, Historic Accounts by Contemporary Observers. The book, as you know, with a few exceptions, included accounts written by English and American travelers who visited Utah. But one of the continental European travelers that Moulders and Mortenson did include was Jules Remy, a French traveler who visited Utah during the 1850s, who was really an excellent source and used by many travelers. You're a continental European traveler who visited Utah, and they were influenced greatly by his memoir.