Brigham Young ~ Utah State Capitol Building
Posted by: 
brwhiz
N 40° 46.669 W 111° 53.291
12T E 425051 N 4514472
This larger than life statue of Brigham Young is located in the Utah State Capital building.
Waymark Code: WME9H9
Location: Utah, United States
Date Posted: 04/22/2012
Views: 5
BRIGHAM YOUNG
When he died August 29, 1877, Brigham Young was the leader of a Commonwealth centered in Salt Lake City, Utah, of 350 towns and cities in what had been a desert 30 years before. He was loved and sustained as a Prophet by more than 100,000 members of the Latter-day Saint Church founded only 47 years before. He later came to be called the greatest colonizer of the American West, "The American Moses".
Born June 1, 1801, in Whittingham, Vermont, and raised on a series of frontier homesteads in western New York, Brigham Young had little formal schooling. He educated himself and became a skilled and respected carpenter, cabinate maker and glazier in Albany, and then Mendon, New York. In 1830 he read the Book of Mormon just after it was published in nearby Palmyra, New York. After two years of careful investigation he joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and devoted himself to missionary work and loyal support of its founder, Joseph Smith. In 1835 he was chosen as one of the Church's first group of twelve apostles and was sent on many missions, including a year (1840) in Great Britain, where he supervised successful preaching and church organization and then emigration of converts to America.
After Joseph Smith was killed by a mob in Illinois in 1844, Brigham Young led the Latter-day Saints (Mormons) in the great exodus to Utah. He is best known as an energetic and judicious leader. He was President of the Church for nearly 30 years; Governor of the Utah Territory and Superintendent of Indian Affairs from 1851-1857; a builder of railroads, theaters, temples and industries. He was also a powerful and witty orator and a deeply spiritual man who said he saw the Salt Lake valley in a vision before he was able to announce, "This is the right place."
Brigham Young always fostered education -- encouraging learning societies and schools in pioneer Utah, and in 1875, founded the Academy that became Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. He wrote, "Education is the power to think clearly, to act well in the day's work, and to appreciate life."