Lowell Dale Morgan (December 18, 1914 – March 30, 1971), generally cited as Dale Morgan or Dale L. Morgan, was an American
historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human species; as well as the ...
, accomplished researcher, biographer, editor, and critic. He specialized in material on
Utah
Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is one of the Four Corners states, sharing a border with Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. It also borders Wyoming to the northea ...
history, Mormon history, the American
fur trade
The fur trade is a worldwide industry dealing in the acquisition and sale of animal fur. Since the establishment of a world fur market in the early modern period, furs of boreal ecosystem, boreal, polar and cold temperate mammalian animals h ...
, and overland trails. His work is known both for its comprehensive research and accuracy and for the fluid imagery of his prose.
Morgan was forced by post-lingual deafness as an early teen to communicate by letters throughout his professional life. This effort created a written network for scholars interested in Western American themes. Vast stores of correspondence indicate his willingness to help another writer or scholar, to provide information on sources and materials, or offer advice on projects. Many emerging scholars, particularly those out of the academic mainstream, considered him a mentor. As a result, Morgan stood in the center of a scholarly group of literary figures of the 1930s through 1960s involved in history and biography of the American West. These individuals included
Juanita Brooks
Juanita Pulsipher Brooks (January 15, 1898 – August 26, 1989) was an American historian and author, specializing in the American West and Mormon history. Her most notable contribution was her book related to the Mountain Meadows Massacre, to wh ...
,
Fawn Brodie
Fawn McKay Brodie (September 15, 1915 – January 10, 1981) was an American biographer and one of the first female professors of history at UCLA. She is best known for ''Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History'' (1974), a work of psychobiography, ...
,
Bernard DeVoto
Bernard ('' Bernhard'') is a French and West Germanic masculine given name. It has West Germanic origin and is also a surname.
The name is attested from at least the 9th century. West Germanic ''Bernhard'' is composed from the two elements ''ber ...
,
Charles Kelly,
J. Roderic Korns, A. Russell Mortensen, William Mulder, and
Harold Schindler.
Early life
Morgan was born in
Salt Lake City, Utah
Salt Lake City, often shortened to Salt Lake or SLC, is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of cities and towns in Utah, most populous city of the U.S. state of Utah. It is the county seat of Salt Lake County, Utah, Salt ...
in 1914 and spent his childhood and young adulthood in the city. He was the oldest of the four children of James Lowell Morgan and Emily Holmes. His father, James Morgan died of
appendicitis
Appendicitis is inflammation of the Appendix (anatomy), appendix. Symptoms commonly include right lower abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, fever and anorexia (symptom), decreased appetite. However, approximately 40% of people do not have these t ...
when Dale Morgan was only five years old. To raise her children, Emily Morgan returned to college to upgrade her normal certificate to a college degree and worked until her retirement as an elementary school teacher.
A promising and intelligent youth, Morgan contracted meningitis in August 1929. The disease left him with a total loss of hearing. Emily Morgan kept him home from school for an entire year, hoping that some hearing would return. Deafness cut off his ability to relate to people around him. The once popular, social, and athletic boy became socially introverted, devoting much of his time to reading and study. Morgan recalled that he had not yet reconciled himself to his deafness by the time he returned to school. In 1951, in a letter to Marguerite Sinclair Reusser, he wrote that a minor family crisis in March 1931 led to a hysterical outburst. During this emotional time, Morgan finally confided in his mother the difficulties and fears he had faced over the loss of his hearing. "I began to face the future instead of wasting myself in bitter regret over a past that was beyond my reach. That was the beginning of my adjustment to the fact that my hearing was gone and would probably never return."
At this time, he began a lifelong pattern of writing, producing thousands of careful transcriptions, personal letters, and books in his field.
Morgan learned and became quite competent in lip reading, but was never comfortable with the inaccuracy and ambiguity of the method. His friends noted that he could speak quite clearly but typically chose not to do so unless among people he knew well. Deafness gave him no way to regulate his voice and his conversation was locked in a high-pitched monotone. Instead he typically turned to communicating in writing, carrying on personal conversations with the use of note cards, the backs of letters, scratch paper, and other handy paper. Archivist and historiographer Gary Topping noted that "...because Morgan’s deafness shifted his communication with the external world entirely to the written world, his world became a literary world, and the long hours of practice with the written world turned him into a virtuosos of English prose in the same way that musical practice produces virtuosity."
:118 As an adult his publication manuscripts exhibit heavy revisions and editing, while his letters flow through his manual typewriters and onto paper as seemingly seamless compositions, almost without typographic error.
The advent of the Depression, and Morgan's deafness, reduced his ability to find employment after graduation from high school. However, an admiring English teacher found college funds for him in a vocational rehabilitation program. From 1933 to 1937, Morgan studied commercial art at the
University of Utah
The University of Utah (the U, U of U, or simply Utah) is a public university, public research university in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. It was established in 1850 as the University of Deseret (Book of Mormon), Deseret by the General A ...
, taking advantage of known talents and a personal interest in drawing and graphic layout. However, he found his personal interests drawn to literary studies and writing. He was a contributor to the student newspaper, the ''Daily Chronicle,'' and added to his writing experience by contributing creative work to ''The Pen,'' the student literary publication. At college he developed a close association with other students who would be recognized for history and literature. These included future historian
Helen Zeese (later Papanikolas), and Ray Benedict West Jr. Two important relationships were formed with Daily Chronicle editor
Richard Scowcroft and faculty advisor
Wallace Stegner
Wallace Earle Stegner (February 18, 1909 – April 13, 1993) was an American novelist, writer, environmentalist, and historian. He was often called "The Dean of Western Writers". He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972 and the U.S. National Book Award ...
. Both men became novelists and operated the respected writing programme at Stanford University.
Career as historian
In 1937, with the country still in the Depression, Morgan was unable to find a position in commercial art and occupied spare time as an occasional book reviewer for a city newspaper, the ''
Salt Lake Tribune
''The Salt Lake Tribune'' is a newspaper published in the city of Salt Lake City, Utah. The ''Tribune'' is owned by The Salt Lake Tribune, Inc., a non-profit corporation. The newspaper's motto is "Utah's Independent Voice Since 1871."
History ...
''. In August 1938, again helped by a tip and recommendation from a friend, Morgan capitalized on his career as a reviewer to join the Utah Historical Records Survey as a part-time editor and publicist. Within a short time his ability to remember and associate facts brought him into a front-row position writing for the HRS. By 1940 he was transferred to the Utah Writers' Project to complete the state guidebook. Later he became director of the state branch of the Federal Writers Project.
In these
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of wide-reaching economic, social, and political reforms enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1938, in response to the Great Depression in the United States, Great Depressi ...
relief programs, Morgan honed his skills in research and organization. He acquired a deep understanding of primary source material and information retrieval from his work in the library of
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, informally known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church, is a Nontrinitarianism, nontrinitarian Restorationism, restorationist Christianity, Christian Christian denomination, denomination and the ...
. Within months, he was a major figure in the survey of state and county records, organizing much of the work and completing the writing of surveys done for state and county archives. By 1940 he was overseeing both programs, and by 1942 had supervised the production of histories of
Ogden Ogden may refer to:
Places Canada
*Ogden, Calgary, in Calgary, Alberta
*Ogden, Quebec, a small municipality in the Eastern Townships
* Ogdensville, British Columbia or Ogden City, alternate names for gold rush-era Seymour Arm, British Columbia
*Og ...
and
Provo as well as acting as a primary writer of ''The WPA Guide To Utah''. His work was well received by his superiors in the east and by local historians. Also in 1940, Morgan published the first substantive historical study of the Provisional
State of Deseret
The State of Deseret (modern pronunciation , contemporaneously , as recorded in the Deseret alphabet spelling 𐐔𐐯𐑅𐐨𐑉𐐯𐐻) was a proposed U.S. state, state of the United States promoted by leaders of the Church of Jesus Chri ...
in the Utah Historical Quarterly, analyzing primary documents dealing with the
State of Deseret
The State of Deseret (modern pronunciation , contemporaneously , as recorded in the Deseret alphabet spelling 𐐔𐐯𐑅𐐨𐑉𐐯𐐻) was a proposed U.S. state, state of the United States promoted by leaders of the Church of Jesus Chri ...
, including the constitution and early ordinances of the state, with a lengthy editorial introduction explaining their context. He also was involved in other writing projects, including the state contribution to a history of grazing in the western U.S. During this time he began exchanging correspondence with two women who would become well-respected writers,
Juanita Brooks
Juanita Pulsipher Brooks (January 15, 1898 – August 26, 1989) was an American historian and author, specializing in the American West and Mormon history. Her most notable contribution was her book related to the Mountain Meadows Massacre, to wh ...
and
Fawn M. Brodie. Morgan contributed substantively to the work of each as a mentor, critic, and advocate.
In 1942, unable to serve in the armed forces, Morgan moved to Washington, D.C., and worked in the central office of a war-time regulatory agency, the Office of Price Administration. While there, his free time was spent using the relatively new National Archives and the
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...
, combing through federal records, reading methodically through hundreds of American newspapers and printed materials. This work netted him large files of typed transcriptions on Mormons, trans-Mississippi Native Americans, the activities of fur traders of the 1820s through 1840s, and exploration. Working in these institutions, Morgan standardized and honed his skill as a researcher.
Morgan had arrived in Washington, D.C., with the idea of eventually producing an authoritative history of early Mormonism. In 1945 he was awarded a post-service Guggenheim Foundation research grant, which he activated in 1947. He left Washington, D.C., and continued his research in
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
New York may also refer to:
Places United Kingdom
* ...
and New England as well as along the
Mormon Trail
The Mormon Trail is the route from Illinois to Utah on which Mormon pioneers (members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) traveled from 1846 to 1869. Today, the Mormon Trail is a part of the United States National Trails Syst ...
through
Ohio
Ohio ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Erie to the north, Pennsylvania to the east, West Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Indiana to the ...
,
Missouri
Missouri (''see #Etymology and pronunciation, pronunciation'') is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it border ...
, and
Illinois
Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. It borders on Lake Michigan to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash River, Wabash and Ohio River, Ohio rivers to its ...
, and into
California
California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...
. In late 1947, again in Utah and desperately needing paying work, Morgan agreed to edit the Utah Historical Quarterly, publishing the journals of the
John Wesley Powell
John Wesley Powell (March 24, 1834 – September 23, 1902) was an American geologist, U.S. Army soldier, explorer of the American West, professor at Illinois Wesleyan University, and director of major scientific and cultural institutions. He ...
expeditions of 1869-72 between 1947 and 1949. Of necessity Morgan acted as an independent historian between 1947 and 1952. During these years, he narrowed his focus to an intended three-volume history of Mormonism, but maintained his interest in the American fur trade and exploration. After leaving Utah again for Washington, D.C., in 1949 and the cancellation of his Mormon-book contract in 1952, Morgan turned to other aspects of the American West and produced several authoritative books on the West still regarded as definitive, including ''
Jedediah Smith
Jedediah Strong Smith (January 6, 1799 – May 27, 1831) was an American clerk, transcontinental pioneer, frontiersman, hunter, trapper, author, cartography, cartographer, mountain man and explorer of the Rocky Mountains, the Western Unit ...
and the Opening of the West'' (1953), and three bibliographies of Mormon sects.
Morgan was retained by the
University of California
The University of California (UC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university, research university system in the U.S. state of California. Headquartered in Oakland, California, Oakland, the system is co ...
's
Bancroft Library
The Bancroft Library is the primary special-collections library of the University of California, Berkeley. It was acquired from its founder, Hubert Howe Bancroft, in 1905, with the proviso that it retain the name Bancroft Library in perpetuity. ...
director George P. Hammond as a researcher for the Hopi-Navajo land claim lawsuit in 1953. In 1954 an appointment as an editor and research assistant at the Bancroft ended Morgan's precarious but productive years as an independent writer and pulled him to the West Coast. In California, his work and attention was drawn more fully into overland trail and California history. During his tenure at Bancroft he wrote or edited some forty books including the edited collection of documents in ''Overland in 1846'' (1963) and ''The West of
William H. Ashley'' (1964), as well as producing well received articles and reviews. He was named a Fellow of the Utah State Historical Society in 1960 and received the Henry Raup Wagner Award in 1961. Morgan received a second Guggenheim fellowship in 1970 to support research toward a history of the American fur trade, which he never began. Morgan died of cancer in 1971 at the age of fifty-six.
Later researchers have benefited from Dale Morgan's painstaking scholarship, extensive collection of correspondence, and reams of transcripts. He was the moving force behind the first unified catalogue of works about Mormonism, which he proposed to the Utah State Historical Society in 1951. Using Morgan's list, which had been re-typed and supplemented as a card file,
Brigham Young University
Brigham Young University (BYU) is a Private education, private research university in Provo, Utah, United States. It was founded in 1875 by religious leader Brigham Young and is the flagship university of the Church Educational System sponsore ...
librarian Chad J. Flake completed and published ''A Mormon Bibliography, 1830–1930'' (1978), with an introduction written by Morgan. Now in a second edition, it remains an indispensable reference work for scholars looking at Mormon history or sociology. Morgan's papers are at the Bancroft Library; most of his research library now forms part of the holdings of L. Tom Perry Special Collections at
Brigham Young University
Brigham Young University (BYU) is a Private education, private research university in Provo, Utah, United States. It was founded in 1875 by religious leader Brigham Young and is the flagship university of the Church Educational System sponsore ...
.
The Utah State Historical Society has established the annual "Dale L. Morgan Award," presented to the author of the best scholarly article published in the ''Utah Historical Quarterly''.
Skills, viewpoint, and criticism
Morgan was a great-grandson of
Orson Pratt
Orson Pratt Sr. (September 19, 1811 – October 3, 1881) was an American religious leader and mathematician who was an original member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Christ (Latter Day Saints). After the succession cri ...
, an apostle of
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, informally known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church, is a Nontrinitarianism, nontrinitarian Restorationism, restorationist Christianity, Christian Christian denomination, denomination and the ...
(LDS Church), and Morgan's family actively participated in church activities. His sudden deafness, however, caused him to drift from the LDS faith, and he did not affiliate with any religious organization as an adult. Morgan has been described by others as a "thorough going atheist." He was profoundly affected by the soft positivism of 1930s social psychology and took a stance for
historicism
Historicism is an approach to explaining the existence of phenomena, especially social and cultural practices (including ideas and beliefs), by studying the process or history by which they came about. The term is widely used in philosophy, ant ...
. Having rejected any religious motive as impossible, Morgan insisted that his work in western history and Mormonism present a completely-objective, exclusively-naturalistic viewpoint on religious matters, and he encouraged other Utah and western historians to follow his example. In 1943, writing to S. A. Burgess, a historian of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (now
Community of Christ
Community of Christ, known legally and from 1872 to 2001 as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS), is an American-based international church, and is the second-largest denomination in the Latter Day Saint movement ...
), Morgan said that his "viewpoint about Mormon history is that of the sociologist, the psychologist, the political, economic, and social historian."
Historian of the Latter Day Saint movement
Jan Shipps
Jo Ann Barnett Shipps (October 24, 1929 – April 14, 2025), known as Jan Shipps, was an American historian specializing in Mormon history, particularly in the latter half of the 20th century and into the 21st century. Shipps was generally rega ...
credits Morgan, along with three other notable historians (
Bernard DeVoto
Bernard ('' Bernhard'') is a French and West Germanic masculine given name. It has West Germanic origin and is also a surname.
The name is attested from at least the 9th century. West Germanic ''Bernhard'' is composed from the two elements ''ber ...
,
Fawn McKay Brodie
Fawn McKay Brodie (September 15, 1915 – January 10, 1981) was an American biographer and one of the first female professors of history at UCLA. She is best known for ''Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History'' (1974), a work of psychobiography, ...
, and
Juanita Brooks
Juanita Pulsipher Brooks (January 15, 1898 – August 26, 1989) was an American historian and author, specializing in the American West and Mormon history. Her most notable contribution was her book related to the Mountain Meadows Massacre, to wh ...
), with establishing a basis for the new historiography of Mormonism through significant Mormon-related works in the 1940s and 1950s.
Morgan's intellectual experience in the federal
WPA programs had both advantages and disadvantages for him as a historian. The independent nature of the programs encouraged his critical judgment and work ethic, forced him to work with a variety of people, and exposed him to a wide training ground on source development and research. However, it did not lead him to consider the larger meaning of the facts that he gathered or to understand the philosophy and theory of history, as taught in an academic setting. In fact, during the trials of his career, he became quite antagonistic to academic requirements. In response to a negative academic review of a work by his friend DeVoto, he wrote that "the term ‘history’ had better be redefined to mean, ’a species of writing produced by or enroute to a Ph.D.’ I have had enough troubles trying to break a path alongside this main-traveled road to know something of the snobberies at work here, and the ways in which the academic world and even the world of learning are geared to these attitudes."
According to Topping, this lack of perspective and understanding led Morgan to believe "that historical facts contain their own meaning, and that the historian’s intellect ought to be active only in internal and external criticism, establishing the authenticity and credibility of sources, yet passive when it came to establishing the larger significance …"
As a result, Morgan "fell short of the interpretive potential of (his) sources...asserting that the facts would somehow convey their own meaning without any help from him...."
However the same focus on fact, coupled to a spectacular memory for detail, allowed him to produce work of breathtaking detail and scope within the field. His strength and greatest contribution was as a documentary, rather than synthetic, historian.
Symposium on Morgan
In August 1985, ''
Sunstone
Sunstone is a microcline or oligoclase feldspar, which when viewed from certain directions exhibits a aventurescence, spangled appearance. It has been found in Southern Norway, Sweden, various United States localities and on some beaches along ...
'' offered a segment on ''Dale Morgan and Mormon History'' as part of their annual symposium in
Salt Lake City, Utah
Salt Lake City, often shortened to Salt Lake or SLC, is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of cities and towns in Utah, most populous city of the U.S. state of Utah. It is the county seat of Salt Lake County, Utah, Salt ...
. Historian William Mulder, a friend of Morgan, presented the segment.
Selected publications
* ''The State of Deseret'' (1940)
* ''Utah: A Guide to the State'' (1941)
* ''The Humboldt: Highroad of the West'' (1943)
* ''The
Great Salt Lake
The Great Salt Lake is the largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere and the eighth-largest terminal lake in the world. It lies in the northern part of the U.S. state of Utah and has a substantial impact upon the local climate, partic ...
'' (1947)
* ''
Jedediah Smith
Jedediah Strong Smith (January 6, 1799 – May 27, 1831) was an American clerk, transcontinental pioneer, frontiersman, hunter, trapper, author, cartography, cartographer, mountain man and explorer of the Rocky Mountains, the Western Unit ...
and the Opening of the West'' (1953)
* ''Overland in 1846: Diaries and Letters of the California-Oregon Trail'' (1963)
* ''The West of
William H. Ashley'' (1964)
With other writers and editors
* ''West from Fort Bridger: The Pioneering of the Immigrant Trails across Utah, 1846–1850'' original diaries and journals edited and with introductions by
J. Roderic Korns and Dale L. Morgan; originally published 1951. Revised and updated by Will Bagley and Harold Schindler. Publisher:
Logan, Utah
Logan is a city in Cache County, Utah, United States. The 2020 United States Census, 2020 census recorded the population at 52,778. Logan is the county seat of Cache County and the principal city of the Logan metropolitan area, which includes Ca ...
:
Utah State University
Utah State University (USU or Utah State) is a public university, public land grant colleges, land-grant research university with its main campus in Logan, Utah, United States. Founded in 1888 under the Morrill Land-Grant Acts as Utah's federal ...
Press, 1994. .
* ''Shoshonean Peoples and the Overland Trails: Frontiers of the Utah Superintendency of Indian Affairs'' ed. Richard L. Saunders. Publisher:
Logan, Utah
Logan is a city in Cache County, Utah, United States. The 2020 United States Census, 2020 census recorded the population at 52,778. Logan is the county seat of Cache County and the principal city of the Logan metropolitan area, which includes Ca ...
:
Utah State University
Utah State University (USU or Utah State) is a public university, public land grant colleges, land-grant research university with its main campus in Logan, Utah, United States. Founded in 1888 under the Morrill Land-Grant Acts as Utah's federal ...
Press, 2007.
* ''The Rocky Mountain Journals of William Marshall Anderson'', with Eleanor T. Harris, (1967)
Notes
References
*
*
*
*
*
*
*Saunders, Richard L. ''Dale L. Morgan: Mormon and Western Histories in Transition''. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2023.
External links
Signature Books Library - Dale Morgan on Early Mormonism: Correspondence and a New History (an overview of work and correspondence)*
ttp://archives.lib.byu.edu/repositories/14/resources/1359 Dale Lowell Morgan papers, MSS 16in the
L. Tom Perry Special Collections,
Harold B. Lee Library,
Brigham Young University
Brigham Young University (BYU) is a Private education, private research university in Provo, Utah, United States. It was founded in 1875 by religious leader Brigham Young and is the flagship university of the Church Educational System sponsore ...
Guide to the Dale L. Morgan papersat
The Bancroft Library
The Bancroft Library is the primary special-collections library of the University of California, Berkeley. It was acquired from its founder, Hubert Howe Bancroft, in 1905, with the proviso that it retain the name Bancroft Library in perpetuity. ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Morgan, Dale
1914 births
1971 deaths
American atheists
American people of Welsh descent
Deaf writers
Former Latter Day Saints
Historians of the American West
Historians of the Latter Day Saint movement
Historians of Utah
Historians from Utah
20th-century American historians
American deaf people
Writers from Salt Lake City
20th-century American male writers
American male non-fiction writers
American writers with disabilities