By the 1860s, Utah's mining industry had attracted non-Mormons, who didn't want to send their children to schools centered around LDS doctrine.

So the Episcopal, Catholic, Presbyterian, Congregational and Methodist churches established private schools for their members. The first, St. Mark's Episcopal School — which has grown into today's Rowland Hall-St. Mark's School — opened in Salt Lake in 1867.

But viewpoints differ on the motives for establishing competing schools.

Mormons viewed it as a move "to counter the Latter-day Saint influence in the territorial public schools and to win young Latter-day Saints away from the church," Berrett writes.

Sister Catherine Kamphaus, superintendent of Utah Catholic schools, has a different take.

"It's not so true that we would (try to) bring them into our schools so we could win them over to our faith," said Kamphaus, adding some of Brigham Young's family members were "tutored by our sisters."

"We tend to go where the Catholic population is. . . . It hasn't been to proselytize or evangelize; it's more evangelizing our own."

At any rate, the effect of the other denominations' schools created, or perhaps added to, divisions between what were termed saints and gentiles.

"When the Latter-day Saint communities became aware of the real objective of the denominational schools, resentment arose; the breach between members and nonmembers became even more pronounced," Berrett writes.

Church and state

Meanwhile, back in Washington, pressure was mounting to loosen the LDS Church's grip on governing the territory and crack down on the church's practice of polygamy.

The Edmunds-Tucker Act, passed in 1887, outlawed polygamy, dissolved the church as a corporation, confiscated its property and, among other provisions, dealt with church-state separation — including in schools.

Meanwhile, Idaho's constitution banned Mormons from voting or holding office, and the Arizona Legislature was considering a similar ban, as was Congress.

Amid such pressures, church President Wilford Woodruff ended the practice of polygamy in 1890, and he advised church members to obey federal law, paving the way for statehood.

"It's only when the church realizes they're not going to fight the government anymore, they're not going to win, that they say, . . . 'Let's dump the parochial schools and we'll go fully behind state-sponsored education,' " Wilson said.