On 10/8 in New Mormon History...

[New Mormon History]

Historic events in New Mormon History on 10/8

1854: in what Apostle Wilford describes as “the greatest sermon that ever was delivered to the Latter day Saints since they have been a people,” Brigham Young announces: “I beleive [sic] in Sisters marrying brothers, and brothers haveing [sic] their sisters for Wives. Why? because we cannot do otherwise. There are none others for me to marry but my sisters. . . .Our spirits all brothers and sisters, and so are our bodies; and the opposite idea has resulted from the ignorant, and foolish traditions of the nations of the earth.” Young’s secretary George D. Walt has already married his own half-sister as a plural wife. Her letter to Young shows that he was initially “unfavorable” toward allowing them to marry, but this sermon reveals theological basis for Young’s authorizing Watt’s brother-sister marriage and the three children born of their union.
Source: See The Mormon Hierarchy - Extensions of Power by D. Michael Quinn

1855: Young’s counselors, Heber C. Kimball and Jedediah M. Grant are each sustained as “Prophet, Seer, and Revelator.” Not since 1841 have Presidency Counselors been publicly announced in this manner. He has had this public title since April 1851.
Source: See The Mormon Hierarchy - Extensions of Power by D. Michael Quinn

1856: second counselor Jedediah M. Grant declares that Polysophical Society is “a stink in his nostrils,” Heber C. Kimball agrees. They regard its equality of female participation as “an adulterous spirit.” The Society does not survive this general conférence.
Source: See The Mormon Hierarchy - Extensions of Power by D. Michael Quinn

1859: Brigham Young tells bishops to give the Melchizedek priesthood to eighteen-year-old boys, even if they "have been sowing their wild oats for years."
Source: See The Mormon Hierarchy - Extensions of Power by D. Michael Quinn

1860: Brigham Young preaches "he was contending against a principle in many of the Bishops to use up all the Tithing they could for their own families."
Source: See The Mormon Hierarchy - Extensions of Power by D. Michael Quinn

1861: Brigham Young preaches that no woman "will never become an angel to the devil, and sin so far as to place herself beyond the reach of mercy."
Source: See The Mormon Hierarchy - Extensions of Power by D. Michael Quinn

1870: First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve excommunicate the following leaders of the Mountain Meadows Massacre: Isaac C. Haight, John D. Lee, and George Wood: "They [are] not to have the privilege of returning again to the Church again in this life."
Source: See The Mormon Hierarchy - Extensions of Power by D. Michael Quinn

1875: Brigham Young is sustained again as Trustee-in-Trust, following the death of his replacement, George A. Smith. He has no assistants, and the office remains with the presiding apostle or church president from now on.
Source: See The Mormon Hierarchy - Extensions of Power by D. Michael Quinn

1881: first counselor George Q. Cannon tells general conference: "We hear now of men having to get married to cover up certain things; of children born wonderfully soon after marriage in some of our settlements, and perhaps in this city no less than in our [rural] settlements."
Source: See The Mormon Hierarchy - Extensions of Power by D. Michael Quinn

1882: Theodore B. Lewis is the first Civil War soldier and former prisoner to be sustained as a general authority, and he is also the only Confederate Army veteran appointed. Despite being publicly sustained as a new member of the First Council of the Seventy, Lewis's appointment is cancelled the next day when the First Presidency learns he is also a high priest.
Source: See The Mormon Hierarchy - Extensions of Power by D. Michael Quinn

1888: Nevada Supreme Court declares as unconstitutional Nevada's law which denies the vote to anyone "who is a member of or belongs to the 'Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,' commonly called the 'Mormon Church'..."
Source: See The Mormon Hierarchy - Extensions of Power by D. Michael Quinn

1904: A Mormon tells Senator Reed Smoot's secretary that "Apostle [Abraham Owen] Woodruff told him that a certain number of worthy people had been commissioned to keep alive the principle of plural marriage." This view is the basis of the Mormon Fundamentalist movement which does not fully emerge until the 1920s. Woodruff, who died in June after visiting his post-Manifesto plural wife and her first baby, is honored as a polygamy martyr by these Mormons.
Source: See The Mormon Hierarchy - Extensions of Power by D. Michael Quinn

1910: The First Presidency instructs local priesthood leaders to investigate and excommunicate persons who enter recent plural marriages.
Source: See The Mormon Hierarchy - Extensions of Power by D. Michael Quinn

1942: General conference sustains Joseph F. Smith (b. 1899) as Patriarch to the Church, ending the ten-year vacancy.
Source: See The Mormon Hierarchy - Extensions of Power by D. Michael Quinn

1949: General conference is broadcast on television for the first time.
Source: See The Mormon Hierarchy - Extensions of Power by D. Michael Quinn

1960: N. Eldon Tanner and Theodore M. Burton are sustained as Assistants to the Twelve. Tanner is the first general authority who had prominent office in a non-U.S. government, three terms as Minister of Lands and Mines in the cabinet of Canada's premier. Burton is the first Ph.D. appointed as an Assistant.
Source: See The Mormon Hierarchy - Extensions of Power by D. Michael Quinn



To see the whole database in chronological order, Click here. Note that I'm not done entering all the information. While most of these facts come from Quinn's book, I'm seeking the primary sources for each, but this will take a long time.