author
John R. Young
b. 1837
A firsthand voice from the Mormon pioneer era, his memoir brings childhood migration, frontier travel, and early Utah settlement into sharp personal focus. His writing is valued for the lived detail of a man who crossed the plains in 1847 and later recorded that world from memory.
1 Audiobook
Memoirs of John R. Young, Utah Pioneer, 1847
by John R. Young
About the author
Born in Kirtland, Ohio, on April 30, 1837, John R. Young was an American Mormon pioneer and memoirist whose life was closely tied to the early history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Church and library records identify him as John Ray Young, the son of Lorenzo Dow Young and Persis Goodall Young.
As a child, he traveled west with the first Latter-day Saint pioneers to enter the Salt Lake Valley in 1847. He later served in additional pioneer and freight companies, and his recollections became the basis of Memoirs of John R. Young, Utah Pioneer, 1847, published in 1920.
That memoir is the main reason readers still seek him out today: it offers a personal, ground-level account of migration, settlement, and everyday frontier life. Young lived a long life that stretched from the early Mormon movement into the 20th century, dying in 1931.