The history of history in Utah

Tucked away in storage rooms at the Museum of Church History and Art is a stuffed penguin, about 2 feet tall, somewhat faded and worn, but with a whimsical look in its eye.

Whenever new people come to work at the museum, "we always let them discover the penguin," says Carrie Snow, supervisor for collections care for art and artifacts at the museum. At first, the bird seems out of place; people wonder what it is doing there.

But it is one of the oldest artifacts in the museum, probably brought back by a missionary to New Zealand, and it represents the interest the early pioneers had in actively seeking knowledge in all fields, says Snow. "I've heard that they were going to send it to another museum, but the staff wouldn't let it go."

As with the other 150,000 or so artifacts in the museum's collection, the penguin's true worth is not in the object itself but in the story behind it. And that story is one of very early interest in the past.

The history of history in Utah — at least as far as the studying, collecting and trying to preserve it goes — actually began while the saints were in Kirtland, Ohio. Lucy Mack Smith was given custody of some Egyptian mummies, and she charged a small fee to visitors who wanted to see them.

After they moved to Nauvoo, she continued that practice. Technically, says Glen M. Leonard, former director of the MCHA, "that was the first church museum."

Its scope was broadened somewhat when, as reported on May 24, 1843, Addison Pratt "presented the tooth of a whale, coral, bones of an Albatross' wing and skin of a foot, jaw-bone of a porpoise and tooth of a South sea seal as the beginning for a museum in Nauvoo."

Nauvoo resident Philo Dibble was also interested in "the broad concept of a museum as an educational institution for learning, books and art," says Leonard. Dibble collected books and commissioned the painting of a couple of large murals relating to church history that were shown publicly in the Masonic Hall.

It was Dibble who acquired the death masks of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. While the saints were still at Winter Quarters, he wanted to collect more artifacts and got Brigham Young to issue a proclamation. "If the saints will be diligent," Young said, and bring "all kinds of mathematical and philosophical/scientific/instruments, together with all rare specimens of natural curiosities and works of art . . . we will soon have the best, the most useful and attractive museum on earth."

After the pioneers settled in the Salt Lake Valley, plans for a museum got sidetracked somewhat. "They were so busy eking out a living that Dibble could not get the support he wanted to open a museum," says Leonard.