Morrisite.org: What’s new

Free to reuse, with credit

Tue, 10 Nov 2026 12:00:00 +0000

Free to reuse, with credit. The guide’s own text and data are now licensed under CC BY 4.0, and the data files carry a release number and a list of changes, so a figure can be traced to the version it came from. Every name on the roll now has its own link (hover over a name and click #), pages can be saved to Zotero with one click, and pages print without menus and buttons. The About page now explains how corrections are made and what the guide does for accessibility.

The guide’s data, to download

Mon, 09 Nov 2026 12:00:00 +0000

The guide’s data, to download. A new Data page offers the lists behind the roll, the person pages and the Where they went map as CSV files: the 1861–62 roll with FamilySearch matches, birthplaces, emigrating companies and later affiliations; documented whereabouts after 1862; family ties on the roll; and others named as Morrisites. Each comes with a description of its columns and their limits, and all four can be downloaded together. The page also shows how much is known so far about the people on the roll, where they were decade by decade, a table of the roll that can be sorted, filtered, shared by link and downloaded, and a tool for counting the roll by any two characteristics, with the unknowns shown.

Birthright by phrenology?

Mon, 09 Nov 2026 12:00:00 +0000

Birthright by phrenology? A fragment of a letter in the Morrisite collection at USU says that a prophet in hiding at Cottonwood felt men’s heads “Phrenologically” to tell them their priesthood, and that no descendant of Cain would enter the Church. Kirk Watson, who found it, identifies the prophet as the Prophet Cainan. The page also names a Niel Beck. See the new question of interpretation.

The Racetrack church in 2020

Mon, 09 Nov 2026 12:00:00 +0000

The Racetrack church in 2020. Ten photographs taken inside and outside the Lord’s House on August 16, 2020, contributed by a reader, extend the condition record between 2018 and the videos of 2026. They show the pulpit, benches and table still in place, and the hymnals and a 1931 Reorganized Church lesson quarterly left in the building. See Images. The Bibliography adds In the Shadow of Mount Haggin (1975), on the Evans family at Gwendale, and an Anaconda Standard article of 1935 that Patrick F. Morris cites.

The missing pages of the Davies case

Mon, 09 Nov 2026 12:00:00 +0000

The missing pages of the Davies case. Pages 133–157 of the 1880 case against Davies are not in the file at the Washington State Archives: archivist Lee Pierce confirms the whole file was scanned and that those pages were missing before it reached the archives. They may have left the courthouse with pages 158–195, which Whitman College later found and returned. See Repositories.

Corrections

Sun, 08 Nov 2026 12:00:00 +0000

Corrections. A check of the guide against its sources led to several fixes. The chronology no longer gives a single death toll for the siege, and now says that John Banks died in custody on the evening of the surrender. The Glossary explains that “Church of the Firstborn” was not the name of Morris’s church in 1861: his revelations call it “my Church,” and Anderson gives the Church of Jesus Christ of Saints of the Most High. The roll no longer lists Joseph Morris’s wives as Mary and Karen: his wife Mary Olsen is probably the roll’s Mary Morris, and Karen Morris is not identified. Notes on Anne Bar now record that the sources disagree on whether her baby died. Citations of The Spirit Prevails have been checked against the 1886 text; the account of the surrender, the trials and the pardons is on its p. 8, not p. 7, and it names the second woman shot at the surrender “Mrs. O’Hagg” (see Who died at Kington Fort?). The counts on Who they were now include all 178 people linked to Family Tree.

Reading the sources