EXHIBITS
St. John's Episcopal Church: 150 Years of Service: First Days: 1873–1905
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First Days: 1873 – 1905
On February 4, 1873, Bishop Daniel Tuttle and the Reverend William Stoy arrived in Cache Valley on the first ever train from Ogden. Bishop Tuttle, the leader of the Episcopal Church in Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming, planned to establish a new mission in Logan with the Reverend Stoy at the head.
The first Episcopalians were not the only new arrivals in Cache Valley in early 1873. The Utah Northern Railroad to Logan from Brigham City was completed on January 31, 1873, and after a blizzard delayed the celebrations, the first train arrived.
The citizens of Cache County held several celebrations for the new connection to the world outside of the isolated mountain valley. The critical connection created by the railroad allowed for increased trade opportunities with the rest of Utah, and a route for new migrants to Idaho and Wyoming.
For the next two weeks, Bishop Tuttle and the Reverend Stoy stayed with Aaron DeWitt, who was the only non-Mormon citizen in the entire valley at the time, having left the church the previous decade.
In the spring, Stoy worked with DeWitt to rent a building that had previously been DeWitt’s bakery, an aptly named adobe building, since demolished, in the center of town that is historically known only as “the Bakery,” as a place to hold worship services and regular school classes until a church could be built.
This document illustrates why DeWitt left the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and so adamantly supported the operations of Rev. Stoy and the St. John's Mission during its early years. The DeWitt Letter is a single perspective of tensions in Utah between the Mormons and the Gentiles (the historical name for non-Mormons in Utah), and should be taken as such.
Though nearly illegible, this clipping from the Cache County Cross Cuts provides a glimpse at a struggle that the early clergy faced. In 1882, Rev. Stoy was replaced in Logan by a Rev. Bleecker.
Not very many clergy were available to replace each other in the West, and because of the tense nature of working in a nearly entirely Mormon community like Cache Valley, it was difficult to secure a steady representation of Episcopal Clergy for the first several years of St. John's history.
Building schools was the biggest goal of the early Episcopal Church in Utah. This report from the 1890 Episcopal Convocation shows that there is significant progress in the growth and success of schools across the state. It also shows that a variety of people attend these schools, not just the Gentile population of the state.
