An 1844 Francis Henry Grice Daguerreotype Proposed to Depict Jedediah Morgan Grant, “Brigham’s Sledgehammer”

This “F Grice” image appears on Pinterest (see: 4613c25935f589818600208bd168bb4f.jpg (952×1135) (pinimg.com)) This image proposed by RBN to depict Jedediah Grant (1816-1856) is the first F Grice image to be located by RBN outside the Grice Collection at the Library of Congress. The image depicted here is no longer found on eBay, and its current domicile is unknown.
The left image is cropped from Jedediah Morgan Grant – Biography (josephsmithpapers.org). The image was captured before 1857 by Savage and Ottinger, Salt Lake City. The right image is cropped from the image above. Neither has been flipped horizontally.

Jedediah Morgan Grant’s migration from New York to Utah typified the “chain migration” west of families and closely-knit New England Communities. Wilford Woodruff and Grant left Nauvoo together in May 1844 to go east to campaign for Joseph Smith’s bid for U.S. President. They stopped to visit Jedediah’s father Joshua at the latter’s farm near Galesburg in Knox County Illinois. Here Woodruff recalled that his own father and Joshua’s father (also a Joshua) were classmates back in Connecticut.

TITLE

Page 258

TRANSCRIPT

May 11, 1844 ~ Saturday

11th We travled across the prairies this day to Br Justice Ames on Ceder Creek within 3 miles
of Galesburg, it was the first time I had been on his farm he had a plesent place of 100 acres & 40 acres in corn & wheat they all appeared glad to see me we spent the night with them I talked with them untill about midnight. In the morning before we left, we lade hands upon Br Justice Ames & his Son Christopher Ames & ordained them unto the office of Elders. distance of the day 20 miles

May 12, 1844 ~ Sunday

12th Sunday we parted with Br Ames family He accompanied us on our way 12 miles to the big mound & we parted with him & he returned & we continued on to walnut grove & stoped at Br John Gaylords & fed the Horses I accompanied Br Grant to his fathers house He found them well except his mother was some out of health his father Joshua Grant was a school mate of my fathers in Connecticut told an anecdote concerning a coon & a cheese after spending 2 hours plesantly & dining with them we took our departure & rode to Fraker’s Groove & spent the night with Br Austin Grant & Gideon Gillet distance of the day 31 miles

May 13, 1844 ~ Monday

13th [FIGURE] I wrote a letter to Mrs Woodruff & sent By Elder Grant informed her to write to Kirtland we had a rainy morning, we parted with Elder Grant and rode to Toulon and spent the night with Br Adam Perry held a meeting with the Saints & appointed a meeting at the Court House at 2 oclock on the morrow distance of the day 9.

Page 258 of Journal (January 1, 1843 – December 31, 1844) | Wilford Woodruff Papers

Grice daguerreotypes have sporadically appeared on the internet and in museum exhibitions. For example the web site, 35 Vintage Photos Show Styles of Victorian Men in the Mid-19th Century ~ Vintage Everyday, include the two Grice images shown below, Reverend Arthur Buckminster Fuller (1822-1862) and Brigham Young (1801-1877). A current exhibition at the New Orleans Museum of Art, Called to the Camera: Black American Studio Photographers – New Orleans Museum of Art (noma.org), displays Grice’s portrait of Reverend Fuller’s 1844 fellow Nauvoo visitors, Reverend Augustus Conant and Betsey Kelsey Conant.

A Francis Henry Grice August 23, 1844, Portrait Proposed to Depict Phebe Carter Woodruff, Wife of Wilford Woodruff

August 23, 1844 ~ Friday

23rd [FIGURE] Mrs Woodruff and myself visited Br
and Sister Stodard and Br and Sister Foster and
obtained our miniatures by the ingennuety of Br Foster at the apparatus of his Darroutype [daguerreotype] we both obtained a good likeness.” Page 320 of Journal (January 1, 1843 – December 31, 1844) | Wilford Woodruff Papers, Please also see: William Woodruff or Yet Another Nauvoo Francis Grice Doppelganger? – Rod’s Ramblings and Ruminations (genevanotes.com)

The left image is cropped from Phebe Woodruff, Mar 8, 1849, Boston, Massachusetts | Wilford Woodruff Papers and represents an interesting intersection of the history of the Mormons and the history of Daguerreotypy. It was taken in the Boston Studio of John Plumbe, Jr., by one of his trainees, Marsena Cannon. (Plumbe’s Studio in Boston was the place where Jonathan Walker’s branded right hand was imaged in 1846: MHS Collections Online: The branded hand of Captain Jonathan Walker (masshist.org) The right image is cropped from the Grice Collection [Unidentified woman, seated half-length portrait, facing front] | Library of Congress (loc.gov) and is image #1515. This sixth-plate image is in an ornate Rinhart Case 96 with a decorated brass surround. Francis Grice learned Daguerrotypy from his cousin Robert Douglass, Jr., who studied under the famed portraitist Thomas Sully at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Douglass learned Daguerreotypy from Daguerre in Paris in 1839. (see: Francis Henry Grice’s Daguerrean Views – Rod’s Ramblings and Ruminations (genevanotes.com)) Obviously, Grice’s Portrait of Phoebe Woodruff is far superior to Cannon’s both artistically and technically.
[Unidentified woman, seated half-length portrait, facing front] | Library of Congress (loc.gov)
Phoebe’s mother was Sarah Fabyan Carter (1775-1845). Pheobe’s maternal grantfather was Joshua Fabyan (1742-1799). Geneva, Illinois, readers would recognize the name of Colonel George Fabyan. The Colonel’s great-grandfather was also Joshua Fabyan (1742-1799) of Scarborough, Cumberland County, Maine, United States of America.

For additional information about the Grice Daguerreotypes in the Library of Congress, please see: 1) All Twenty-Five Men in the Library of Congress Francis Henry Grice Daguerreotype Collection with Their Identities as Proposed by RBN, Details Elsewhere on this site – Rod’s Ramblings and Ruminations (genevanotes.com); and 2) Francis Henry Grice’s Daguerrean Views – Rod’s Ramblings and Ruminations (genevanotes.com)

A Francis Henry Grice Daguerreotype Proposed to Depict Eliza R. Snow, Early Mormon Leader, and Poet, Spring or Summer of 1844, Nauvoo, Illinois, Plus, Her Poem on a Portrait of Joseph Smith

This intriguing stanza from Eliza Snow’s poem “The Portrait” certainly sounds like a description of a Daguerreotype case. If so, that Daguerreotype could have been the long suspected “missing Daguerreotype of the Prophet.” But if it were a frontal facial image why would so many profile images have been made? See, for example, below the drawing attributed to Eliza Snow’s friend and colleague Bathsheba Smith. Also, the poem’s description predates the arrival in Nauvoo of Lucian R. Foster and Francis Grice in the spring of 1844.
This list of agents for the Nauvoo “Wasp” appears on the same page as the Snow poem. The Grice Collection contains images of Rev. Augustus and Betsy Conant and Rev. Arthur Buckminster Fuller, both known from their published diaries to have visited Nauvoo in the summer of 1844 shortly after the murder of the Smith brothers.

For a chronology of the images of Joseph Smith, see: Images of Joseph Smith – Mormonism, The Mormon Church, Beliefs, & Religion – MormonWiki. The half-portrait of Joseph Smith attributed to David Rogers (not to David White Rogers) was not executed until September 1842.

Early Life of Eliza Snow

“Eliza was born January 21, 1804, in Becket, Massachusetts, to Oliver and Rosetta Snow. She was the second of seven children. Her younger brother Lorenzo Snow later became the fifth President of the Church. The Snow family valued learning, and Eliza was a brilliant student. By the time she joined the Church in 1835, she was famous for her poems. Her autograph book includes signatures from the likes of Queen Victoria of England, Victor Hugo, Susan B. Anthony, and President Abraham Lincoln.

Conversion and Marriage

It was in Mantua, Ohio, where Eliza grew up, that the Snow family heard the restored gospel and was baptized. Shortly after her baptism in the spring of 1835, Eliza moved to Kirtland, Ohio, to teach the daughters and nieces of the Prophet Joseph Smith. During this time she developed a deep love for the Prophet and a fervent testimony of his divine calling. She was sealed to the Prophet on June 29, 1842. After his martyrdom, which grieved her deeply, Eliza became a plural wife of President Brigham Young, who held her in the highest esteem. She never had children. Eliza died in Salt Lake City on December 5, 1887.” Relief Society General President (churchofjesuschrist.org)

The subjects in the above images are in eerily similar poses, complete with tables and books. The left image is cropped from an image attributed to Marsena Cannon, ca1852. Eliza Roxcy Snow – Biography (josephsmithpapers.org) The right image is from the Grice collection at the Library of Congress. [Unidentified woman, three-quarters length portrait, seated, with arm resting on a table with tablecloth] (loc.gov) Neither image has been horizontally flipped. The left image may be a tintype taken later than 1852 and thus may not be “mirrored.” The right image is a Daguerreotype and is mirrored. Note the ring on the left hand in the left picture and on the right hand in the right picture. The blouse buttons seem to be “backward” (as expected) on the right image. Eliza R. Snow was sealed to Joseph Smith, Jr., on June 29, 1842. Thus, the ring worn in the summer of 1844 may signify that marriage.
Joseph Smith was in hiding for a time in 1842 because of an alleged attempt on the life of Governor Boggs of Missouri., hence “…”driv’n from your home.” The “F” in “Miss F. R. Snow” is a typographical error. “Poem from Eliza R. Snow, 20 August 1842,” p. [4], The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed October 4, 2022, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/poem-from-eliza-r-snow-20-august-1842/1

File:Joseph Smith, Jr. profile by Bathsheba Smith circa 1843.jpg – Wikimedia Commons For more on Bathsheba Smith and her friend Eliza R. Snow, see: Arrington, Leonard J. “The Legacy of Early Latter-Day Saint Women.” The John Whitmer Historical Association Journal 10 (1990): 3–17. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43200856.
[Unidentified woman, three-quarters length portrait, seated, with arm resting on a table with tablecloth] (loc.gov)

A Mulligan at Emma’s Landing While City Sandbags Its Handicap

Dirty little secrets of a sandbagger | Golf News and Tour Information | GolfDigest.com

The City of Geneva has awarded itself a do-over of Ordinance 2022-10 (see agenda for Oct. 3, 2022. – “Ordinance 2022-40″). In March 2022-10 was passed creating Special Service Area #34 for Emma’s Landing to protect Geneva from the consequences of flooding resulting from that Special Planned Unit Development. Floods seem likely if Emma’s planners function at the same level as the Geneva City Council.

But here’s the thing. According to Geneva Municipal Code “11-9-3: – INITIATION: The owner of the property for which a planned unit development is sought may initiate a request for a special use planned unit development.” (Ord. 95-28, 5-1-1995). The City Council tripped on the starting line and face-planted long before the SSA became an issue. Mostly in secret and while disregarding 11-9-3, the City clandestinely chose the Burton Foundation (a one-person operation) to be the unlawful non-owner “requester” for its already guaranteed LIHTC PUD. In the process, the Council secretly tossed out a better candidate in MVAH, who even wanted to make a counteroffer to the Burton greased ambush, but Geneva ignored MVAH’s plea for fairness.

The provision that the actual property owner apply for the PUD is sound. The applicant should have skin in the game, or else a procession of carpet baggers will take flyers on obtaining a low cost buy option while the resident taxpayers pay more than half of the application costs for these outsiders through bloated municipal salaries and consultants.

Of course, only a privileged few knew anything about this until at least a year after the fact. Now City of Geneva comes with a fairy tale about a mistaken signing of the PUD plat by a surrogate claiming ownership of the property. Finally, City of Geneva is willing to go on public record that it was the owner of Emma’s Parcel. By Code the owner must “initiate a request for a special planned unit development.” The Mayor, without approval by his minions of the Council, filed a “correction” with the County Recorder. No lawful request for a PUD was ever made by anyone. It was all winks and nods and smoke and mirrors, as per the Geneva Way. Remember Geneva “waived” its fees (and sandbagged its way to bonus points from the Illinois Housing Development Authority for it.) Geneva also duped IHDA into believing it donated Emma’s Site. Without these stolen “strokes” Geneva and Burton would have lost the match. Actually, they should have been DQ’ed and banned from further play.

Putting the fine points of the Royal & Ancient Rules aside, this was government of the government, by the government, and for the government. The phantom “request” for the PUD was made by the City Council as the applicant owner, and then the City Council acted as the judge and jury. The City Council lied and claimed that there were no other parties interested. The Council lied when it claimed Emma’s would be taxed like any other Geneva private property. In fact, Emma’s will be the only property in Geneva taxed differently (2005 Illinois 35 ILCS 200/ Property Tax Code. Division 11 – Low-Income Housing” “…local assessment officers must consider the actual or probable net operating income attributable to the project,”). All this impairs the funding of the SSA, which is predicated on a much different taxing scheme based on income, not market value. These perjuries alone should have resulted in sanctions (if not a sentence) by the judge, but the Council was and is the judge.

Every property owner in Geneva Township and even some nearby will see his or her taxes go up as a result of this swindle. Residents near Emma’s Landing may see their property values permanently impaired by the banditti vigilantes carrying bogus council badges.  Some lower-income households may be taxed out of their homes. Some of these victims can’t even vote for a new mayor or alderman, as they do not live in Geneva.

Don’t let the City of Geneva into your foursome – their bets all come out of your pockets, and the City keeps score. The taxpayers deserve a mulligan on Emma’s Landing.

Francis Henry Grice Daguerreotype (ca1844) Proposed to Depict Heber Chase Kimball One of the Original Twelve Apostles in the Church of the Latter-Day Saints

The left image is Heber Chase Kimball cropped but not flipped horizontally from Heber Chase Kimball – Biography (josephsmithpapers.org). The description is: “Circa 1850, photograph likely by Marsena Cannon or Lewis W. Chaffin, copy by George Edward Anderson (courtesy L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT).” The image on the right is from [Unidentified young man, half-length portrait, facing front] (loc.gov). It is Library of Congress Daguerreotype #1504, plate 63 x 51 mm (ninth plate format). The image has been cropped, lightened, and horizontally flipped.
[Unidentified young man, half-length portrait, facing front] (loc.gov)

Francis Henry Grice Library of Congress Daguerreotype 1357 Proposed to Depict Mary Ann Frost Stearns Pratt, Early Morman Champion of Women’s Rights

[Unidentified woman, half-length portrait, facing front] (loc.gov)

The left image is Mary Ann Foster Stearns Pratt from: Mary Ann Frost | Church History Biographical Database (churchofjesuschrist.org); The right image is cropped and horizontally flipped from the restored version of [Unidentified woman, half-length portrait, facing front] (loc.gov)

The Woman’s Exponent 1880-04-01 vol. 8 no. 21 – Woman’s Exponent – Digital Collections (byu.edu)

STILL, No Answers to Those Pesky Emma’s Landing Questions

City of Geneva: Review and Release the Minutes and Tapes* of the February 2020 Secret Meetings NOW

The page displayed below relates to the Geneva “Emma’s Landing” Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) project. The document’s provenance is important and the red boxes around two paragraphs have significance. I received the communication via a Freedom of Information Act request to the Illinois Housing Development Authority (IHDA). The document is page 22 of a 48-page file (attached) titled “11831_site control, Emma’s Landing, Geneva, Illinois, The Burton Foundation.“

I made similar FOIA requests to the City of Geneva for information related to all aspects of the Emma’s Landing application and approval. Although I received hundreds of pages of mostly redundant email threads, I did not receive the document with the red box. The yellow highlighting of “Good news” was added by me. The red box was present on the IHDA FOIA response.

Now, here are two crucial context issues for the only two red boxes in a document titled “Site Control”: 1) Given that the Governor’s Press Release announcing that Geneva was a LIHTC winner also stated that the Emma’s Landing site had been donated by the City of Geneva (which did not happen but is stated in the red box); and, 2) Given that the site also required access from a second adjacent property “control” of which is highlighted by a second red box on page 20, the conclusion is inescapable that the IHDA used informal documents improperly concealed from the public in their determination to award Burton Foundation and the controlling Fellhauer couple a large sum of money. Twenty-two competing applications were denied, and Geneva won with a trick play.

degroot-to-manning-25-feb-2020-p22Download

Below is the entire 48-page Emma’s Landing Document concerning control of the building site and access road. The two red boxes, one on page 20 and one on page 22 were placed by IHDA to indicate accepted documentation that the required site control was obtained.

This is crucial: On page 20 and high-lighted in yellow by me is this: “I realize this is coming at you last minute but the deadline is at 12:00 noon. Is there any way that this can be expedited. Thanks” The quote is from the Burton Foundation attorney’s communication to the Geneva attorney. In the red-box reply the Geneva attorney indicates “the form of the agreement” would be provided before the noon-deadline but that “the City Council will need to approve it.” Clearly, the “form of the agreement” was sufficient for Burton and IHDA to proceed based on the “comfort” of the Geneva City Council but without ever letting the sunshine of transparency reach the secret process.

Entire 48 Page “Site Control” DocumentDownload

Geneva citizens and taxpayers were played like a cheap fiddle by the Mayor, his minions, and the Fellhauers (AKA “Burton Foundation”). IHDA was either duped or gave a wink and nod when it accepted that the site was donated, raising Geneva’s Qualified Allocation Plan score high enough to cheat Geneva’s way into the winner’s circle and stuffing a couple million dollars into the Fellhauer’s pockets. Other winners exist, like Joy Nelson, who stood in as the “place holder” “owner” of the property encompassed by the fraudulent Emma’s Planned Unit Developer Ordinance and subsequently sold the property that provided the access. Many questions need answers, such as why the process was greased through on the subterranean fast track during the height of a pandemic. (Remember JBP’s evisceration of the Open Meetings Act while urging the tabling of non-urgent matters?) Who else benefitted either politically or financially (or both) from this treachery?

* Post script:

tape-destruction planned but never authorized in open sessionDownload

The City of Geneva Has Passed the Ethical Tipping Point, Zoning Police Brutality Is the New Normal

Geneva’s regression ever closer to the brink of the ethical abyss has been observable for some time. Examples of progressive moral retreats towards mobocracy are not hard to find, and some have been discussed here (Dunkin’, Emma’s, Mill Race Inn, Open Meetings Act and FOIA violations, etc.) The most recent outrage was the ceremonial charade of sanctimoniously disapproving the faux “monopine” 100-foot cell tower at Oscar Swan while simultaneously allowing the FCC’s shot clock to expire. No doubt the City of Geneva will present a protest of the foul called by Towernorth via an instant replay before a federal judge, and the City might prevail. But the unforgivable crime was to let worried and anxious Genevans celebrate their victory (which may be pyrrhic) and let them go home without telling them that the game had been played under protest. The Mayor and City Council knew about the shot clock issue when they voted. They discussed it in secret that very night.

The City of Geneva’s litany of deceptive practices has extended past the tipping point into the abyss. For me, the straw that tipped Geneva into an unrecoverable nosedive into the swamp known as “The Geneva Way” was the destruction of the historic house next door to my home of forty years.

The demolition of the historic antebellum structure used as a home and office at 314 E. State Street (most recently a photography studio and “The Curiosity Shop” a half-century ago) and its detached garage that directly abutted my home to the north has decidedly degraded my microenvironment by increasing noise pollution, increasing light trespass, destroying privacy, and reducing visual appeal. These now demolished historic structures lay within a seventeen parcel, 7.2-acre zoning district designated B(3)E and also were within the East State Street Corridor Comprehensive Plan area designated for “transitional mixed-use.” [1]

Now my home is abutting a new parking lot that was not constructed according to the improperly granted “special use” geometric plan. The applicant for the parking lot special use (Malone Funeral Home) had expanded into an adjacent parcel to the west twenty years ago without the required special use permit. “Somehow” the applicant got an unlawful “wink and a nod” approval from the City under the guise of a building permit for a “remodel.” (I have the tape of the apology for the “mistake” made by Mr. Untch at a City of Geneva Plan Commission public hearing a decade after the mistake. The most critical part begins at about the 6-minute mark.)

The current parking lot expansion special use permit “must” satisfy all nine “standards” enumerated in Geneva’s Municipal Code. Let us examine just the first standard: “The proposed use at the specified location is consistent with the comprehensive plan.” Below are links to the Geneva Comprehensive Plan and the Municipal Code. What, exactly, makes the demolition of a transitional mixed-use structure consistent with “maintain and use the existing structures?” And how does expanding yet again a parking lot use that was already unlawfully expanded once before consistent with not increasing the intensity of that use? The Municipal Code is clear that failure to meet a single standard causes the entire application to fail. Then the Mayor and City Council granted variances that violate several other standards. Geneva property owners no longer enjoy the protection of an honorable zoning police force, and the Plan Commission members are merely ceremonial court jesters.

Five historic structures have been torn down and the land left vacant (or worse) within a block or so of my home over the past couple of years. Others are on the brink of extinction. Worse, the very character of the community has been blighted by its current posse of lawless appointed vigilantes who stormed a city hall that was left undefended by a distracted citizenry. The next victim of these ochlocrats might be you and your neighbors.

[1] Comprehensive Plan | Geneva, IL – Official Website (accessed Sept 20, 2022) “Transitional Mixed-Use The area designated transitional mixed use connects the East State Street commercial corridor to the Downtown/ 3rd Street area, just to the west. This area should maintain and use the existing structures, many of which are residential conversions. While the intensity of uses should not increase, a continued mix of residential and commercial uses should be encouraged. Allowable uses within the transitional mixed-use area includes [sic] retail, commercial service, professional offices, and specialty retail.” The first of the nine Geneva Muni Code mandatory standards that “shall” (means “must”) be met to grant a special use reads: ”The proposed use at the specified location is consistent with the comprehensive plan.” CHAPTER 14 – ADMINISTRATION AND ENFORCEMENT | Code of Ordinances | Geneva, IL | Municode Library (accessed Sept 20, 2022)

Are These the Brothers Hyrum and Joseph Smith, Jr.?

The two men depicted below are proposed by RBN to be Hyrum Smith (left) and Joseph Smith, Jr., (right). The portraits are from the Library of Congress Francis Henry Grice Daguerreotype Collection and are cropped from the originals and then horizontally flipped. The LOC Daguerreotype Collection introductory page is here: Daguerreotypes – About this Collection – Prints & Photographs Online Catalog (Library of Congress) (loc.gov). The banner atop this LOC introductory page depicts Reverend Augustus Conant and his wife Betsy Kelsy Conant as captured by F. Grice. Below is a link to their story and an explanation of their roles in formulating RBN’s proposed identities of the many men and women depicted by Francis Grice in this blog.

The Grice Collection of Daguerreotypes contains 52 images purchased in two large groups. Two of the images depict the Unitarian Ministers Arthur Buckminster Fuller and Augustus Conant. Both left diaries from the summer of 1844 describing Nauvoo, Illinois, and their stay at the Mansion House run by the just-widowed Emma Smith. Hyrum and Joseph had been murdered at the Carthage Jail on June 27, 1844, while under the protection of Governor Thomas Ford. All twenty-five adult men and fifteen adult women from the Grice Collection have been assigned proposed identities by RBN and a summary can be found here: All Twenty-Five Men and Fifteen Women in the Library of Congress Francis Henry Grice Daguerreotype Collection with Their Identities as Proposed by RBN, Details Elsewhere on this site – Rod’s Ramblings and Ruminations (genevanotes.com). Individual images are found below on this blog

Please consider downloading and reading the essay linked within Francis Henry Grice’s Daguerrean Views – Rod’s Ramblings and Ruminations (genevanotes.com) Circumstantial, yet compelling, evidence places the gifted polymath and Daguerreotypist Francis Henry Grice in Nauvoo, Illinois, in the late spring and summer of 1844.