Annette Lyon

Spires of Stone

HISTORICAL NOTES

Warning!
The historical background below contains a few spoilers for Spires of Stone.

Everything below is found in the book's notes section but arranged by topic so it's easy to navigate.

Audio "readers" in particular may find the background helpful, since these notes were not included in the recording.

Original Foundation

Transportation of Granite

Earth Stones and Courses

Parry Brothers' Stone Shop

Salt Lake Theater

Deseret Evening News

Double Wedding Date

Capstone Ceremony

Original Foundation

The fact that the Salt Lake Temple took forty years to complete is common knowledge, but some of the reasons are not. Roughly the last fifteen years of construction progressed at a good pace, but it was the first quarter of a century that was painstakingly slow.

The groundbreaking for the temple took place in 1853, and progress on the foundation went along until 1857, when the Utah War forced Saints to leave Salt Lake City. It was then that they buried the foundation of the temple—made of sandstone—to hide it from the U.S. Army. Upon unearthing the foundation, they found cracks all over it.

Due to a number of factors, including the Utah War and crop failures, the original sandstone foundation wasn't taken out until about 1862. Obviously, having to redo the foundation hindered progress considerably. But no one wanted another cracked foundation, so debate began as to what to use to make the new temple. Granite became the new choice. According to Wallace Alan Raynor's thesis about the Salt Lake Temple, although most of the foundation was replaced, not all of it was, and a handful of sandstone pieces remain today.

Transportation of Granite

Granite, while stronger than sandstone, created another big factor in slowing construction. The original sandstone—a relatively lightweight rock—came from the Red Butte quarry, only a few miles from the temple lot. The road from that quarry back to the site was mostly downhill, making for an easy haul. As a result, a team of horses could bring in two loads a day.

However, the gray granite was cut from the Little Cottonwood Quarry, nearly twenty miles from the temple block. Granite is much heavier than sandstone, and much too heavy for horses to pull. Only a three-yoke ox team could manage the weight of the blocks, which were about 2500 pounds each. In addition, the teams didn't have the luxury of a gentle downhill slope, because the road from Little Cottonwood went up and down hills to navigate the canyon. The result of all of these elements was that one round-trip took four days to complete.

For this story, I assumed that one day was spent getting to the quarry, since traveling twenty miles without a load would be a relatively simple matter, and that the other three days were spent hauling the granite back to the temple site.

Finding enough oxen and wagons for the job became a significant challenge for Church leaders. This was due to a couple of factors. In both the spring and fall, most ox teams and wagons were needed for farm work. Then during the summer, animals and wagons still proved elusive because of another Church effort—helping Latter-day Saint immigrants make it across the plains to the Salt Lake Valley.

As indicated in the book, in the fall of 1867, the wards in and around Salt Lake were asked to bring in 1500 loads of granite, and specific assignments were divided among the wards as to how many loads they were expected to haul from the quarry. Raynor observed that the load assignments appeared to be given largely based on a ward's geography and size, so the farther away and the smaller the ward, the fewer loads assigned.

Church leaders asked workers to bring their own wagons when possible because repairing Church-owned ones was proving so costly. I imagine that using their own wagons would make workers more careful as well. They were also required to bring food and supplies for both their animals and themselves.

Several solutions for the transportation problem were attempted, including a wooden railroad and a canal to float the stones to the temple block. All failed. The quarry was temporarily shut down in 1867 to await the completion of a standard railroad, which was finished in 1873, several years after the main story of this book. With the railroad in place, the progress on the temple increased dramatically: two dozen blocks of stone could be delivered in a single day.

Earth Stones and Courses

The layers of granite (called courses) were fourteen inches high, and the walls of the temple at their thickest are nine feet deep. The stones are extremely large. For example, according to Raynor's thesis, the dimensions of the earth stones Ben would have worked on were four and a half feet wide and twenty inches deep. The round globe of the stone was cut to be three feet, eleven inches in diameter. Each earth stone weighed an enormous 5,600 pounds. Some have figured that each earth stone, from start to finish, may have cost as much as $300 to complete (which today would be equal to about $4,000).

Parry Brothers' Stone Shop

The place where Ben first learned the stonecutter's trade, the Parry Brothers' shop, really existed, and the Parry brothers were instrumental as workers and even master masons for many early temples.

Second Engine

The pace of construction increased further in 1876 when the temple effort received an engine that could lift heavy stones. When the Logan Temple was completed in 1884, the engine that had been used there was brought to Salt Lake. With two engines running, stone could be laid twice as quickly, and the Salt Lake Temple rose relatively rapidly.

Word of Wisdom

One thing to remember regarding Claude's drinking is that in 1867 the Word of Wisdom was considered a guideline rather than a measuring stick for Church membership and/or worthiness. The vast majority of Latter-day Saints still drank alcohol and used tobacco at that time, many even growing tobacco on their farms.

Once such example can be found in the Cotton Mission, which extended through much of Southern Utah, including the cities of Washington and St. George, which had tobacco fields and wine vineyards. Mission leaders reported about two thirds of the Saints in the area abiding fully by the Word of Wisdom during the 1870s, which was considered high for Church membership, and they were rather proud of that percentage.

Decreasing the use of those substances was a gradual effort—one that took decades. The Word of Wisdom didn't become binding until a 1907 General Conference. It is likely that missionaries in the field and returned missionaries alike would have had alcohol periodically, although getting drop-dead drunk like Claude did would probably have been highly unusual.

Salt Lake Theater

The Salt Lake Theater, the first in Utah—and at the time, the largest west of the Mississippi—was built at Brigham Young's request on the northeast corner of State Street and 100 South. The theater thrived for many years, finally losing ground to motion pictures, vaudeville, and people using automobiles to go longer distances for their entertainment. In 1928 it was sold to Mountain State Telephone and Telegraph, which razed the building.

Edwin Booth was a famed Shakespearean actor known for his signature role of Hamlet. He was the brother of John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Abraham Lincoln, and the son of Junius (June) Booth, who was also an actor, known for playing Macbeth. Edwin was active in theater in New York and elsewhere for many years.

While he did perform at the Salt Lake Theater, I do not know whether it was during the timeframe of this book. Edwin managed the Winter Garden Theater until 1867, when it burned down, so I thought it possible that without a theater keeping him back East, he could have been in Salt Lake late that summer. However, his trip to Utah might have been when he toured in the mid 1870s. Other famous people who performed on the Salt Lake Theater stage include Maude Adams, Ethyl Barrymore, Billie Burke, Buffalo Bill Cody, and P. T. Barnum. Much of the information about the theater, including the description of the interior, came from the book Through Our Eyes, published by the Deseret News on their 150th Anniversary to commemorate the years of Utah history they'd reported on.

Cameos

The Fourth Stake is fictional. A stake with that name probably existed, but any reference to it is fabricated and not intended to portray anyone who really lived there or served in leadership positions. As mentioned in the acknowledgments, Brother Franklin, the former stake president portrayed, and his adopted son Abe, the young Indian boy who helped Bethany, were added to the book briefly as a "hello" of sorts to my previous readers. Those who do not know these characters but who would like to learn about Abe as an adult can read my previous historical novel House on the Hill, and its sequel, At the Journey's End.

Photography

In Phillip's time, a photography studio would have been referred to as a gallery. Since that term has a different connotation to modern readers, I avoided using it even though it would be correct in context. The so-called "wet plate" technique was used in photography during this time.

Charles Lyon

The worker at the temple lot who informs Phillip of the quarry closure is a nod to my husband's great-great-grandfather, Charles Lyon. Records indicate that he worked on the Salt Lake Temple, but we don't know exactly when or in what capacity. He moved to Hyde Park, Utah, in April of 1867, just four months before this book opens, so he wouldn't have really been in Salt Lake City during the time of the story.

Deseret Evening News

The notice about twelve-year-old Thomas Lyon being missing was actually published in the Deseret Evening News, although it appeared three years earlier than in the story, on July 4, 1864. At the time of this story, the paper was weekly, and it came out on Mondays. The version of the notice here is slightly abbreviated from the original. There is a chance that Thomas Lyon could be a relative, since we had family living in Salt Lake City during that period, but we have no documentation to clarify any relationship.

Double Wedding Date

As a side note, November 15, 1867 really was a Friday, and I picked the date for the double wedding not only because it fits well with the timeline of the story, but also because it's my father's birthday.

Capstone Ceremony

The temple capstone ceremony was held during the week of general conference on Wednesday, April 6, 1892, following a conference session in the Tabernacle. It boasted the largest crowd ever assembled in Utah—some 50,000 people—a record that remained unbroken for many years. People crowded into the area south of the temple, and many climbed onto rooftops to see better.

Following the conference session, the congregation joined the rest of the crowd outside to witness the placing of the capstone. The events of that day portrayed in the book are accurate, including the Hosanna Shout, the angel Moroni being put in place later that evening, and people getting tickets that allowed them to go up onto the scaffolding and view the city from the temple towers. This opportunity began a few weeks before the capstone celebration.

The Last Year

The decades of work had been spent mostly on the exterior of the temple. As a result, finishing the interior in time for the dedication was a monumental feat that required long hours of labor and many pleas for donations to fund the effort over the course of that last year. Tens of thousands of dollars were raised to help complete the temple by the forty-year mark. During that time, art missionaries who had been sent to Europe to enhance their skills were called home to paint murals on the interior temple walls. Some of the murals weren't completed for a couple of months after the temple dedication, but most of the building was finished in time.

The Dedication

The Salt Lake Temple was finally dedicated one year to the day following the placing of the capstone, on April 6, 1893—exactly forty years after the cornerstone dedication marking the beginning of construction.

The month before the dedication, President Wilford Woodruff sent out a letter to Church members asking them to let go of grievances, forgive one another, and repent of any past offences so that they would all be ready to be partake of the blessings of the temple. Many testimony meetings were held throughout the Church during that month to help heal some of these rifts between Saints. President Woodruff indicated that he felt the Lord would accept the temple, but he wasn't sure that the Lord would accept the people unless they repented.

While the dedication happened a full year after this story ends, I found it fitting to have Claude returning to Salt Lake City and receiving forgiveness from his family at such a significant temple event.