BELIEF AND BEHAVIOR IN A MORMON TOWN: NINETEENTH-CENTURY ST. GEORGE, UTAH

This study describes Mormon beliefs and demographic behavior in early St. George, a town in southwestern Utah. Marriage, fertility, and mortality were at the heart of the Latter-day Saints\u27 doctrine, and the goal of this project was to gauge the interaction of Mormon beliefs and demographic behavior. The demographic data covered the period from St. George\u27s founding in 1861 to the 1880 census. The principal source was family group sheets, the Latter-day Saints\u27 records of their ancestors. Detailed information was found for nearly 90 percent of all families that appeared in the town\u27s censuses. A variety of tests showed that the data were of exceptional quality. Sources for describing the residents\u27 beliefs were primarily their own accounts of their lives in diaries and autobiographies. The St. George data reveal complex relationships between beliefs and behavior. The prevalence of plural marriages indicates wide acceptance of the Church\u27s urgings on polygamy, instead of the massive resistance found in other studies. Again contrary to other findings, polygamous fertility in St. George was the same as monogamous fertility, consistent with the Church\u27s declaration that large families were necessary for heavenly glory. St. George women had worse mortality than men, probably because, knowing that husbands were the key to wives\u27 salvation, women neglected their own nutrition to maintain their husbands\u27 health. Yet residents modified other points of Mormon doctrine, such as beliefs about the innate goodness of the spirit and the fate of spirits just after death. The data show that the doctrines on post-resurrection existence were uniquely compelling to the people of St. George. Although they adapted other tenets to life\u27s realities, residents carefully adhered to the doctrines that prescribed eligibility for heavenly glory, because they could thus determine their own destiny