Show ‘Gentiies’ in uiiah have ion BC Presbyterian oldest congregation in the state By F M Huchel Special to (tie Standard Examiner BRIGHAM CITY — The appointment of the Rev Constance “Connie” Dorn as interim pastor of the Community Presbyterian Church in Brigham City brings to mind the long history of the Presbyterian Church in Brigham City and the roots of organized religion in Utah The first 20 years or so of Utah's history under the plow of the pioneer settlers from the eastern side of the Missouri River was the same as the history of the LDS Church The Mormons under the leadership of the Yankee colonizer Brigham Young took charge of the valleys of the west-ej- n Great Basin In 1869 a railroad was completed across the United States tying the nation together The sectionalism that brought about the Civil War was replaced by a national unity With the railroad came builders engineers tracklayers conductors laborers merchants bankers and all those people who follow in the wake of such a venture The soldiers and the miners and prospectors the merchants non-Morm- and laborers and bankers brought their religious views with them and eventually groups formed and coalesced into congregations Priests and pastors were hired from the East and along Utah’s streets were built steeples whose bells tolled for small congregations not part of the larger Utah society Jewish services were held in Utah as early as 1864 followed by the Catholics (Patrick Connor professed Catholicism) the Methodists Episcopalians and the Presbyterians Other faiths soon established congregations in Utah By far the largest group of (called “Gentiles” much to their annoyance by the Mormon settlers) came to settle in a new railroad town built where the transcontinental rails crossed the Bear River The town was named Corinne This railroad town grew into a population of at least 10000 in the early 1870s with a corre- sponding churches compliment of The first protestant denomination to establish itself in Corinne was the Episcopal Church Its 'first permanent minister the Rev Ballard S Dunn was as unusual a pastor as was the town to which he was assigned He had been dismissed from a pastorate in California for his involvement in a mass emmigra- - 8 Church New Standard-Examin- er Looking back tion of Southerners to Brazil after the defeat of the Confederacy The disgruntled Confederates went to Brazil and the Rev Dunn came to Corinne He had been promised a salary of $1500 a year but upon arrival he discovered a nearly congregation Dunn spent his spare time prospecting One Sunday according to Corinne pioneer Alexander Toponce only one man showed up for services He was Nat Stein a vestryman and companion in Dunn’s mining interests After a time the minister said “Brother Stein it looks as if no one else is coming What shall we do? Preach or pound quartz?” They adjourned according to the story to the parsonage testing mineral samples for gold Alex Toponce noted that the Rev Dunn did not remain long in Corinne: “In the fullness of time a wicked and ungodly Californian jumped one of Dunn’s claims on Antelope Island and it was said that when the parson visited the island and found the sinful interloper in possession he smote him hip and thigh and chased him off the island with a shotgun loaded with buckshot" This was a little too much for Bishop Tuttle in charge of the Episcopalian missions in the west and he allowed Dunn to resign and go into mining exclunon-existe- nt sively Corinne Methodist Church come to the desert valleys of the Great Basin to be alone and they did not welcome the influx of the very people whose society they had so recently fled Brigham Young remarked on one occasion “Our outside friends say they want to civilize us here They mean by that to establish gambling holes grog shops and house of ill fame on also swearing every corner drinking shooting and debauchThat is what ing each other priests and deacons lawyers and and all hell doctors want wants it But the Saints do not want it and we will not have it” Dunn became a mining promoter in Montana Life was not easy for a pioneer minister in Utah Because of those feelings it One who was more successful was not easy for a pioneer minwas the Rev Samuel Lovejoy ister in the city named for Gillespie The first permanent Brigham The teamsters who pastor of the Corinne Presbyterihelped move the Gillespie famian Church founded in July of ly from Corinne were disciplined 870 Gillespie assumed the pulby their ecclesiastical leaders for pit at Corinne in 1874 After the consorting with Gentiles and Utah and Northern Railroad the sheriff challenged the took away Corinne’s position as right to preach from the a major rail terminal and the courthouse steps boomtown weni bust Gillespie moved to Brigham City The Gillespies came to know some unpleasant incithrough MorMoving to a close-kndents that they were not being mon community in the 1870s welcomed to Brigham City was not like taking a pulpit in a tensions cooled Eventually town in the East or Midwest enough that Gillespie and his The Mormons had a certain bigrowing congregation became an as They had been driven from accepted part of the Brigham four states because of their reliCity landscape gious beliefs their houses As a matter of fact when a burned and their women ravmanse was built next to the chaished by mobs — often numbert ing among their number pel in 1914 $600 of the $3000-cosof the building was donated ministers elders and deacons of local congregations by members of the Mormon The Mormon people had Church 1 pas--tor- ’s Further readings available For further reading on early Protestant Church establishments in Utah: On Corinne: “Corinne the Gentile Capital of Utah” by Brigham D Madsen “Corinne City of the by Bernice Gibbs Anderson “Reminiscences of Alexander Toponce" by Alexander Toponce On Rev Dunn: ‘Madsen and Toponce" On Rev Gillespie: “A Brief Sketch of the Life and Work of Rev Samuel L Un-Godl- y” With the new century and statehood for Utah a new era dawned for Utah’s “other” religions Although there is still no love lost between individual Mormons and Protestants for one another's doctrine people of many religions have learned to coexist in peace in the valleys of Utah it Several of Corinne’s early churches moved to Ogden forming the basis of some of the denominations which now have large churches and strong congregations The Creightons early Catholic freighters plying the roads between Corinne and the Montana mines moved back East when Corinne withered Had Corinne continued to grow Creighton University may well have been Gillespie” by Rev Stewart “A Centennial JH His- tory of the Community Presbyterian Church of Brigham City Utah by Sarah Yates On the Presbyterian Church in Brigham City: see also “History of Box Elder 1878-'197- County 1851-193- 7” Lydia Walker Forsgren 8” by edi- tor On the colony of Southerners in Brazil: “Soldado Descanca” by Judith MacKnight Jones built on the banks of Bear River The Southern colony in Brazil prospered with a strong Presbyterian congregation as the town of Americana sprang up in the interior of the State of Sao Paulo near the Tropic of Capricorn Dunn continued in the mining business and Gillespie ministered to his congregation in Brigham City until 1895 The Brigham City Presbyterian congregation is the oldest continuously meeting congregation in the state Dorn rather than finding the persecutions and trials of a pioneer minister in a strange land today finds herself accepted by a strong and established congregation with the comfort of being “just” another pastor in another small church in a quiet community in the American West October 29 1983 |