When Grandpa Went to Jail - Clifford Stutz (1982) (Polygamy and the Penitentiary)

Starting in 1862, laws were enacted by the Congress of the United States which brought on wholesale arrests within the Mormon community, disrupted families, forcing mass migration of members to Mexico and Canada and long term foreign missions for many of the Church leaders. Most of the early laws brought only harassment to the Mormons. However, in March 1887, the Edmund-Tucker law was passed which disincorporated the Church, abolished the Perpetual Immigration Fund, confiscated all Church owned property and outlawed cohabitation. The law was tested in the courts and found to be constitutional by the Supreme Court in 1890. Soon after this, on September 24, 1890, President Wilford Woodruff issued a manifest declaring that the Church would no longer teach polygamy or plural marriage or permit any member of the Church to enter into its practices. The Manifesto was accepted as doctrine of the Church in General Conference on October 6, 1890. Following the Manifesto the President of the United States pardoned all who were in prison for cohabitation.
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A few notes on the State Penitentiary where Grandpa served time:

A note in the October 15, 1853 Deseret News states that proposals were being received for donations of land for the location of a penitentiary for the Territory of Utah. The Congress of the United States, when they set up a Territorial Government of Utah in 1850, appropriated $20,000.00 for the construction of public buildings. Some of this money was to be used for the construction of a Penitentiary.

On May 5, 1882, Caleb West, the new Governor of the Territory, arrived in salt Lake City. His first official act was to visit the Penitentiary and offer pardons to all who were confined there for cohabitation if they would obey the law. Of course, this meant that they must give up their plural wives and children born to these women. Most of them declared that they could not conscientiously do as he desired.

C.R.Savage, a noted photographer of Salt Lake City, took many pictures of historical events. Among these are two pictures of the men who were in the State Penitentiary for cohabitation. Lorenzo Stutz is in both pictures. One picture is close up and the other at a distance. The pictures reveal the following:

1. The men are all dressed in striped prison clothes with white shirts. Clothes other than prison garb were sent home for cleaning by the families and returned.

2. The men all kept their own civilian hats. Notes in Grandpa’s diary states that on January 4, 1887, orders were given that the prisoners were to lift their hats before speaking to an officer, and on January 7, orders were given for the prisoners to take off their hats before going into the dining room.

3. The picture taken at a distance shows a one story frame building and several people standing on top of the prison wall. Two of the people are women with parasols. In Grandpa’s diary he notes several times that members of his family were on the wall. Apparently this is where they came to visit.

4. The men are all distinguished looking. Grandpa in his diary kept a list of those who were imprisoned for cohabitation. The list starts with Rudger Clawson, No. 1, and ends with Mortensen, No. 152. Grandpa lists himself as No. 123. A supplementary list in Grandpa’s personal effects extends the list to George Percy, No. 208.

5. The Penitentiary was surrounded by a wall apparently twenty to thirty feet high. Inside are two story frame barracks with barred windows and several single story buildings. We assume the two story buildings served as kitchen, dining room, etc.