Come, Come, Ye Saints (churchofjesuschrist.org)

Frederick Piercy, artist and engraver, departed aboard Jersey from Liverpool on February 5, 1853, with a party of about 300 other Mormon immigrants. They were bound for the port of New Orleans, and eventually to Salt Lake City via St. Louis. He accompanied the Miller-Cooley Company to Salt Lake City later in 1853. This journey resulted in the publication of the illustrated travel book, “Route from Liverpool to Great Salt Lake Valley”. The multivolume book was purchased by the Mormon Church, but a dispute over the offering price led to an estrangement between Piercy and both the Church and Pratt.

Frederick Piercy, Route from Liverpool to Great Salt Lake Valley: illustrated with steel engravings and woodcuts from sketches made by Frederick Piercy . . . : together with a geographical and historical description of Utah, and a map of the overland routes to that territory from the Missouri River: also an authentic history of the Latter-Day Saints’ emigration from Europe from the commencement up to the close of 1855, with statistics, ed. James Linforth (Liverpool published by Franklin D. Richards; London: Latter-Day Saints’ Book Depot,
1855).

So, Piercy and Orson Pratt had a troubled relationship, as was the relationship between Pratt and Brigham Young. THE ORSON PRATT-BRIGHAM YOUNG CONTROVERSIES: CONFLICT WITHIN THE QUORUMS, 1853 TO 1868 on JSTOR The dates of the engravings above are taken from the Joseph Smith Papers entry. But a more detailed description of Piercy’s relationship with the Mormans is given by Chatterley (see: https://ensignpeakfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/MHS_Fall2003_Frederick-Piercy.pdf ). Pratt presided over the Mormon Church in Great Britain, 1848–1849, 1856–1857. (England, Breck. The Life and Thought of Orson Pratt. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1985.) Chatterley gives an 1849 date for the stippled left engraving, meaning it was executed in Great Britain if done from life. The raised left eyebrow (actually right, as the Daguerreotype is a mirrored image) mimics the Grice Daguerreotype, suggesting that both engravings were done from Daguerreotypes. Piercy did many Morman engravings. In 1853, the Church also published an engraving Piercy made that is a composite of portraits of the General Authorities of the Church, based on daguerreotypes made in Salt Lake City. (See Fairbanks, Jonathan, “The Great Platte River Trail in 1853).

Distortion in data selection can be purposeful when the practice is deemed “cherry-picking,” or distortion can come from well-meaning but misguided attempts at objectivity. Of the various cognitive forms of bias, apophenia (the human tendency to perceive meaningful patterns within random data) is both the most euphonious and most ubiquitous in both history and medicine. A medical mentor was heard to mutter when a colleague supported his own strong opinion by citing his long experience: “You have repeatedly made the same mistake for 40 years and now dignify it as experience.”[1]

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Of the 51 images returned from a search for the word “Grice” in the LOC Daguerreotype Collection, 27 depict an adult male either alone (21) or with a woman(6). This small sample size of 27 presents both some protections from the pitfalls of apophenia and some susceptibilities.

The Grice 27 images seem to have been made with the same technique, probably with the same camera/lens and very similar if not a single “batch” of plates. Lighting was ambient indoors and thus variable depending on weather, time of day, etc. Lenses (originally mirrors) needed to have wide apertures which limited the depth of field that was in focus and introduced distortions.

Fifteen of the 27 images were made on 82 x 70 mm (sixth plate format), silvered copper. However, two images (#1524 & 1382) were 140 x 104 mm (half plate format). Three images were in quarter plate format. Six images were 65 x 50 mm (ninth plate format). The larger plates produced better images.

Bromide vapors were introduced that increased light sensitivity and reduced exposure time. Lenses also improved. So, the task of matching the ~1844 identity of a subject based on images gathered a decade or more later is confounded by differing perspectives/poses, improvements in technique, and the aging of the subjects.

Orson Hyde (1807-1878) was 37 years old in 1844 which seems consistent with his appearance in Daguerreotype #1381. A much heavier Orson Hyde is depicted in the image on the right.

Some will quickly point to the absence of the chin cleft in the gaunt youthful picture. However, Orson had been seriously ill for much of 1839 with “fever and ague” – i.e., malaria, which was endemic in the swamps of Nauvoo. He was emaciated and unable to travel. Howard Barron included a sketch of Hyde dated ca1839 on page 20 of his 1977 biography. He credited Prof. Lamar C. Berrett as the source of the illustrations.

Thus far in this series identities have been proposed for the following Grice Daguerreotypes:

1. #1336 Unitarian Minister Augustus Conant and Betsy Kelsey Conant [Unidentified man and woman, seated, facing front] | Library of Congress (loc.gov) https://www.loc.gov/item/2004664531/
2. #1346 Unitarian Minister Arthur Buckminster Fuller [Unidentified man, three-quarters length portrait] | Library of Congress (loc.gov)
3. #1352 Second Scribe Oliver Cowdery [Unidentified man with beard, half-length portrait, facing front] | Library of Congress (loc.gov)
4. #1516 Mormon member of the Quorum of Twelve Charles Coulson Rich [Unidentified man with beard, head-and-shoulders portrait, facing front] | Library of Congress (loc.gov)
5. #1501 Morman member of the Quorum of Twelve Wilford Woodruff [Unidentified man, half-length portrait, facing front] | Library of Congress (loc.gov)
6. #1353 First Scribe Martin Harris [Unidentified man, head-and-shoulders portrait, facing slightly right] | Library of Congress (loc.gov)
7. #1368 Prophet, First President of LDS Joseph Smith, Jr., and Emma Hale Smith [Unidentified man and woman, three-quarters length portrait, seated] | Library of Congress (loc.gov)
8. #1381 Mormon member First Quorum of Twelve Orson Hyde [Unidentified man, half-length portrait, facing front] | Library of Congress (loc.gov)
9. #1518 Morman Member First Quorum of Twelve Orson Pratt [Unidentified man, half-length portrait, facing front] | Library of Congress (loc.gov)
10. #1520 Second President of LDS Brigham Young [Unidentified young man, half-length portrait, facing front] | Library of Congress (loc.gov)

[1] RBN, Jr., M.D., personal communication. The informant based his statement upon Hippocrates’ dictum: “Life is short and Art long; the crisis fleeting; experience perilous, and decision difficult.”

Born in Campbell County, Kentucky, Charles Coulson Rich (1809-1883) with his parents crossed the Ohio River into Dearborn County, Indiana, in 1810. Such migrations were common and often precipitated by the fact that land titles in Kentucky were notoriously fragile and by the fact that Kentucky was a slave state. Charles Coulson Rich – Biography (josephsmithpapers.org) Rich was a schoolteacher, a cooper, and a farmer who became enthralled with the Book of Mormon.

In April 1844 Rich was called to Preside over the 16 missionaries assigned to assist Joseph Smith’s presidential campaign and preach the gospel in Michigan. (History journal of the Church, April 15, 1844, p.2) Thus he, like so many other Nauvoo Mormon leaders, was not home during the fateful spring of 1844. Rich returned to Nauvoo in July 1844. Charles Coulson Rich | Church History Biographical Database (churchofjesuschrist.org)

Charles Rich went on to be an energetic stalwart of the Mormon Church who, among other things, founded the Mormon community in San Bernadino, California.

William Law was a merchant, a miller, and a physician who came to Nauvoo as part of the Toronto contingent after a missionary visit to Canada by John Tayor. Law was born in County Tyrone, Ireland, and came to America with his parents when only nine years old, settling in Pennsylvania. He practiced medicine for about sixty years, forty-five years of which were spent on his farm near Apple River (Illinois) and in nearby Shullsburg Wisconsin.

Law served as a counselor in First Presidency, 1841–1844, in Nauvoo. He was appointed aide-de-camp to the lieutenant general in the Nauvoo Legion in March 1841. Law, like Lucian Foster and Francis Grice, was a Mason, a member of the Nauvoo Masonic Lodge. Law could not abide Smith’s polygamy doctrine that was becoming more open. He was excommunicated from the Church on 18 Apr. 1844, in Nauvoo. This date coincides closely with the arrival in Nauvoo of Lucian Foster and Francis Grice.

Wiliam Law and his brother Wilson and a few other dissenters bought a printing press and issued the first edition of the Nauvoo Expositor on 7 June 1844. In it, William published an affidavit:

Palmer, Grant H. “Why William and Jane Law Left the LDS Church in 1844.” The John Whitmer Historical Association Journal 32, no. 2 (2012): 43–51. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43201313.

If the man depicted in the Grice Daguerreotype is William Law (and the hairlines, furrowed brows, facial shapes, whiskers, and eyebrows seem to match when comparing the Grice and the “Doctrines” images), the Grice image cannot be from the early 1840s. Law was only 35 years old in 1844.

None of the Library of Congress descriptions of the Daguerreotypes that bear the debossed “F. Grice” in the left lower corner of the brass surround contain provenance beyond naming the persons (Barboza or Maillet) from whom they were purchased. This is a huge obstacle to those seeking to identify subjects. And the debossed name on the brass surround does not necessarily identify the individual who opened the shutter of the Dageurrean camera for 2-3 minutes. On the other hand, a provenance assembled retrospectively based on oral traditions is only as strong as its weakest link.

This is an example where too many pieces of circumstantial evidence do not fit in the William Law puzzle. The debossed “F. Grice” is unmistakable in the brass surround. The left image looks like a daguerreotype, but the right image does not. After about 1855 Daguerreotypes gave way to tintypes and albumin prints. Trying to match images to the accurate identities of their subjects is not a scientific process, though often those who make the attempt fall into Lord Kelvin’s famous dictum: “When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it.” — William Thomson Kelvin. The informal “Curse of Kelvin” holds: “If you cannot measure it, measure it anyway.” Precision does not guarantee accuracy.

The older gentleman depicted in the left image above is not Dr. William Law in the early 1840’s.

Martin Harris (1783-1875), the first scribe of Joseph Smith’s translation of the tablets., in Palmyra, New York, in the spring of 1828 (Gunnell, Wayne Cutler. “Martin Harris—Witness and Benefactor to the Book of Mormon.” Master’s thesis, Brigham Young University, 1955). Emma Hale Smith may have been the real first scribe, but Harris somehow lost the first 116 pages of the translation. Harris was 61 years old in the spring of 1844 and lived in Kirtland, Ohio, from 1831 to 1870. The Grice collection contains a daguerreotype of Oliver Cowdery, another scribe for Joseph Smith. see: Francis Henry Grice’s Daguerrean Views – Rod’s Ramblings and Ruminations (genevanotes.com)

Neither Harris nor Cowdery was known to be present in Nauvoo in 1844. If the hypothetical daguerreotype subjects are correctly identified here, one plausible explanation for dating the images to ca1844 is that Foster and Grice, traveling together, stopped in Tiffin, Ohio to see Cowdery and Kirtland, Ohio to see Harris, during their journey to Nauvoo.

Ultimately, Foster and Harris became members of the Mormon Church of James Strang (James Strang – Wikipedia), who himself translated tablets. He studied works by Thomas Paine and the Comte de Volney, whose book Les Ruines exerted a significant influence on the future prophet. Strang was an abolitionist.

The upper image above appears more consistent with about 1850 than 1844 because of the short shirt collar and bow tie. see: 34 Cool Pics Show Fashion Styles of Victorian Men in the 1840s and 1850s ~ Vintage Everyday In addition the man in the upper image might be somewhat older than 61.

At least one other image in the Grice collection seems to be from about 1850: that of Betsy Kelsey Conant and her daughter Corretta Conant, who appears to be about 7-8 years old. Unidentified woman and girl, seated half-length portrait, facing front – PICRYL Public Domain Image (getarchive.net)

Many hypotheses may be made advanced to explain the apparent clustering of early Mormons within the Grice Collection. Hopefully, further study will resolve whether the “cluster” is a mirage or an image that can be brought into sharper focus.

Wilford Woodruff was in Nauvoo in the spring of 1844. He left on May 9th on a missionary and “Joseph Smith for President of the USA” campaign trip to the east and returned to Nauvoo on August 6th, 1844.

Wilford Woodruff’s life is well chronicled, thanks to his own pen and to the diligent scholarship of others. Among those scholars were the authors of “Images of Wilford Woodruff’s Life: A Photographic Journey,” who wrote: “[H]e left an incredibly detailed handwritten record, spanning over sixty years, of just about everything he did and experienced.”

Alexander L. Baugh, “Images of Wilford Woodruff’s Life: A Photographic Journey,” in Banner of the Gospel: Wilford Woodruff, ed. Alexander L. Baugh and Susan Easton Black (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2010), 1–64.

Fifty years ago, Nelson Wadsworth wrote:

“The prophet, who was thirty-eight in 1844, did record that he “sat for a drawing of my profile to be placed on a lithograph of the map of the city of Nauvoo.” He also casually mentioned sitting for his portrait in oils but did not once record posing for a daguerreotype. Although he made no such entry in his history, there is strong circumstantial evidence that he was photographed, and that the photographer was Lucian Foster.
The omission of such an entry is understandable since these were trying days for Joseph Smith. Just when Foster photographed Smith is now a matter of sheer conjecture. The most likely time would have been around the state presidential convention which met in Nauvoo May 17, 1844, and nominated Smith for the presidency of the United States.”

Nelson Wadsworth, “Zion’s Cameramen: Early Photographers of Utah and the Mormons,” in Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 40, Number 1, 1972, pages 28, 29.

Wadsworth’s 1972 conjecture on when Lucian Rose Foster captured an image of Joseph Smith, Jr., remains in play in 2022. Wadsworth was certain that the Daguerrean image existed. Wilford Woodruff, the Fourth President of the Church of Latter-Day Saints was thirty-seven years old when Joseph Smith was murdered in 1844. Woodruff’s doppelganger happened to be in Nauvoo. In 2022 nothing seems certain, which just might be the true state of all things past and present.

Is it just an odd coincidence that the First President of the Church of LDS and the Fourth had a Daguerreotype of his doppelganger made in Nauvoo in 1844 by F. Grice? Or was Francis Henry Grice Foster’s Daguerreotypist? Did “F. Grice’s” black skin force him to be a surrogate, albeit a brilliant and talented “stand-in”?