The lost tribes of Mansfield: how an English market town was won by the Mormons in mid-Victorian times

Abstract

In mid-Victorian times the Mormon Church flourished in the English market town of Mansfield, Nottinghamshire. Hundreds of poor families willingly abandoned everything familiar to make perilous Atlantic crossings to pioneer an American Zion. Although young people initially led the emigration, they were soon joined by parents and siblings whose sea passage was subsidised by the Mormon Migration Fund. The vigour of the Mormon Church (LDS) among miners and framework knitters is a phenomenon made more interesting by evidence that the practice of polygamy was known to the converts. In one case documented in this article Mansfield women followed their missionary to Utah to become his plural wives. The social geography of Mansfield as well as its unique spiritual legacy of dissidence created conditions similar to those that fuelled the extraordinary exodus of Welsh Mormon converts. In this article, unreliable LDS family history records are examined in the light of British genealogical sources, to reconstruct a small group of families swept up in enthusiastic emigration to Utah.