New York City has a longer continuous involvement with the Mormons than any large city in the world.
Pre-400 AD
Mormon history says that the Lamanites, who were from the lost tribes of Israel, came to the Americas where Jesus Christ appeared to them.
400 A.D.
Mormon history says that a battle between the Nephites and Lamanites took place at Hill Cumorah, Palmyra, New York. The Nephities were wiped out, and the Lamanites became ancestors of the American Indians.
Prophet Mormon compiles the Book of Mormon which his son buried in Hill Cumorah in upstate New York.
1805 Dec 23 Mormon founder Joseph Smith, Jr. born.
1827 Sept 27 Angel Moroni allows Smith to start the translation of Book of Mormon.
1820 Around this time Smith receives his First Vision.
1828
Martin Harris visits and asks classics professor Charles Anthon of Columbia College to authenticate the Book of Mormon
1829 May 15
Smith records that John the Baptist appeared to him and a colleague to give authority to start a new Biblical priesthood.
1829 July 1 Joseph Smith finishes translation of Book of Mormon in Palmyra, New York
1830 April 6 Church of the Latter-day Saints organized in Fayette, New York
1831 Aug 31, Sept 1
“The Mormonites” by journalist James Gordon Bennett published in NYC’s Morning Courier and Enquirer
“In politics — in religion — in all the great concerns of man, New York has a character peculiarly her own; strikingly original, purely American — energetic and wild to the very farthest boundaries of imagination. The centre of the state is quiet comparatively, and grave to a degree; but its two extremities, Eastern and Western; the city of the Atlantic, and the continuous villages of the Lakes, contain all that is curious in human character — daring in conception — wild in invention, and singular in practical good sense as well as in solemn foolery…
Mormonism is the latest device of roguery, ingenuity, ignorance and religious excitement combined, and acting on materials prepared by those who ought to know better. It is one of the mental exhalations of Western New York…
About this time a very considerable religious excitement came over New York in the shape of a revival…This general impulse given to religious fanaticism by a set of men in Western New York, has been productive among other strange results of the infatuation of Mormonism. This piece of roguery, folly and frenzy (for it partakes of all) is the genuine fruit…”
1832
Founder of Mormonism Joseph Smith visits New York City on a shopping expedition. He wrote his wife, “The buildings are truly great and wonderful, to the astonishing of every beholder…I am determined to lift up my voice in this city.”
1837 June
One Mormon lives in NYC: Elijah Fordham. Visiting Mormon missionaries mail Orson Hyde’s Timely Warnings to every NYC minister.
1837 July
Mormon leader Parley P. Pratt moves to NYC. He and Fordham hand out tracks, preach and gather 4-6 followers.
1837 Sept Pratt and Fordham publish A Voice of Warning.
1837
Pratt reports that the Holy Spirit was poured out on Elijah Fordham, other worshipers and himself at prayer meeting. There were speaking in tongues and prophecies to continue the work in New York City.
“The Lord said that He had heard our prayers, beheld our labors, diligence, and long suffering towards that city; and that He had seen our tears. […] We should tarry in the city, and go not thence as yet; for the Lord had many people in that city, and He had now come by the power of His Holy Spirit to gather them into His fold.”
1837?
Miracle healings. At 13 Bedford Street Wandle Mace’s child healed from brain fever after doctors declared “no hope.”
1838 NYC’s Zion Watchman publishes an 8-part series opposing Mormonism.
1838 April Orson Pratt becomes NYC leader of Mormons. About 100 newly baptized members.
1840 May Manhattan has 200 Mormons, Staten Island and Brooklyn 16.
1844 Smith was killed by a mob in Carthage, Illinois.
1844 Dec 1 NYC Mormon paper The Prophet started.
1845 Controversy over NYC Mormon leader’s ideas of polygamy (called “spiritual marriage” by Mormons)
1846 June 12
Model of Mormon temple at Navuoo, Illinois included in an exhibit of models of city structures at the Granite Building, Broadway and Chambers Street.
1846
Orson Pratt urges Mormons to leave NYC: “Brethren Awake! Be determined to get out from this evil nation by next spring.”
1846
First Mormons to arrive on West Coast came from NYC on the ship S.S. Brooklyn. Mormons leave the United States for Utah.
1876 Mormons continue to meet in Williamsburg, Brooklyn
1890 Mormon church disavowed practice of polygamy (reiterated in 1906).
1905 Mormons start meeting in Harlem, 33 W 126th Street
1913 400 Mormons in NYC area
1914 Ex-Mormon U.S. Senator Frank Cannon holds an anti-Mormon rally at Carnegie Hall.
1919
First Mormon chapel since the great move to Utah was built east of Mississippi at 272 Gates Avenue, Brooklyn
1919 Postwar immigration of Germans to NYC and into the Mormon church
1918
Fragments of eleven ancient Egyptian papyri, which Joseph Smith claimed showed Abraham being sacrificed upon an altar, stored at 221 Ralph Avenue, Brooklyn. A fragment used in the sacred Mormon Book of Abraham. Fragments were transferred to the Metropolitan Museum of History which gave them back to Mormons in 1967.
1922
B.H. Roberts in NYC creates Mormon evangelistic method of two-person teams, writes Rasha the Jew and The Truth, the Way, The Life.
1929 Weekly CBS broadcast of Mormon Tabernacle Choir
1930 About 1,600 Mormons in New York City
1934 Dec 9
New York Stake (like a diocese) formed at a meeting in Stillman’s Gym, 316 W 57th Street.
1955 Apr 6
“Mormons in New York will mark, this coming Sabbath, the 125th anniversary of the founding of their Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
…members of the sect, a quiet, thrifty group, will in most cases go about their daily routine as on any other day…The chances are, if the weather is nice, that some time between the morning and evening church meetings most of the Mormons in Manhattan will go ‘Eastering.’ That is an Easter Sunday picnicking tradition back in Utah’s hills, and some families continue it here.
Mrs. Thora Allen…said the other day that there must be around 2,000 active Mormons in this metropolis, with the largest concentration–about 500–on Manhattan Island. A goodly percentage of these are young men and young women enrolled at colleges and universities on or near Manhattan…G. Stanley McAllister of the Manhattan Ward…is vice president and general manger at Lord & Taylor’s department store. Kenneth H. Beesley…teaches philosophy of education at Teachers College, Columbia University…Mrs. Colleen Hutching Vanderweghe…was Miss America 1952. A large number of men in the congregation are insurance company executives.
Because the Mormons adhere pretty sternly to a policy of self-sustenance wherever they are, men and women from the Manhattan Ward and from other wards and branches in the local stake voluntarily spend week-ends working the stake farm at Washington, N.J. They raise wheat, corn, cattle, chickens, horses and hogs. The crops are neatly stored against a day of possible need…
The town is full of young people from Utah struggling for places on the stage, in TV, radio and in the other areas of the arts. It is this group, thought, that is likely to slip out of the Mormon orbit, especially those who stay overlong…
Converts come in at a rate, roughly, of three or four a month.” —from Meyer Berger’s New York.
1964
Mormon Pavilion at NY World’s Fair features a 12-story replica of the façade of the Salt Lake Temple and the film “Man’s Search for Happiness.” Spurs city-wide growth of Mormons, particularly in Hispanic communities. Hispanic interest and questions about the position of African Americans in Mormonism raised questions about Mormon racial policies.
1965 May First Spanish-speaking Mormon congregation.
1971 Mormons establish a church across from Lincoln Center
1978
Mormon president Spencer W. Kimball announced revelation that African American men are eligible for priesthood. African Americans gain full access to rituals and privileges in church.
1997 Harlem Mormons start Sunday meetings at Sylvia’s Restaurant.
1998 Harlem Mormons buy former Jehovah Witness’s Kingdom Hall at 58 W. 129th Street
1000 In Palmyra, New York Mormons build their 100th temple.
2004 20% of NYC Mormons are African Americans.
June 13, 2004 Manhattan Temple dedicated
2005 New Harlem church building opens at 128th Street and Malcolm X Boulevard.
2008 Nov 12
Anti-Mormon protest at Broadway temple by gay rights activists against church’s support of California’s defense of marriage proposition 8.
2010
34,870 members in New York City.
Manhattan = 8354
Bronx = 5629
Queens = 10463
Brooklyn = 9096
Staten Island = 1328
Source: 2010 Religious Congregations and Members Survey
2011 “I’m a Mormon” advertising campaign in New York City.
2012
42 congregations (wards) in New York City: 14 in Manhattan; 12 in Queens; 9 in Brooklyn; 5 in the Bronx; and 2 in Staten Island.
Mormons prepared to build a large temple in Flushing, Queens. Democratic State Representative Tony Avilla of Bayside calls the temple “public enemy number 1.”
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Thanks to archivists at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, NY Public Library, Columbia University, and Library of Congress. [2017_0203;2012_1024]
Sources include:
Claudia Bushman, Contemporary Mormonism, 2008.
Terryl L. Givens & Matthew Grow, Parley P. Pratt, 2011.
Scott Tiffany, ed., City Saints. Mormons in the New York metropolis, 2004.
Richard N. Ostling & Joan K. Ostling, Mormon America, 2007.
