As our course is only meeting once a week from now on, Eben and I thought it best to meet during the time we have already set aside on Mondays for the course.
This week we had an extensive visit at the SUU Special Collections and hit a gold mine of resources. We found a Mormon Migration book that gives several specific timelines for the Mormon Pioneers as well as the religion itself. We studied a book that was partly written by Brigham Young about the proposed state of Deseret and learned much about the original plans for the Mormon Migration. We scanned in most of the book to cite as well as a map drawn by Brigham Young of his desired territory. We also found a journal written by a pioneer in the second Mormon Migration and scanned in his accounts of the brutal journey. The pioneer also quotes Brigham Young and his attempt for Zion as it was “necessary for self-sufficiency”– which goes perfectly with our project.
We have also been playing around with Story Maps and having some difficulties. However, we did find out that one of our professors at SUU recently went to a conference about the program and is an expert at it. We are pursuing help from him to get more one-on-one assistance. Slowly we have been adding more information to our site, a home page, pages, and information on the secession. We will be adding more this weekend. We have also scheduled another trip to the Archives for next week and scanned in several documents we are still studying.