Millennial Star
The Latter-day Saints' Millennial Star
Founded in Manchester in 1840 and still publishing in 1970 — the church's longest-lived periodical, its emigration ledger, and the first printing of a great many sermons preached four thousand miles away.
What it is
The Millennial Star was the periodical of the British Mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, founded by Parley P. Pratt at Manchester in May 1840 and published — from Manchester, then Liverpool, then London — until 1970. At a hundred and thirty years it is the longest-running periodical in the church's history by a wide margin.
For much of the nineteenth century it was also the church's principal publication anywhere outside Utah. Britain was where the converts were: the mission that Brigham Young and the Twelve opened in 1840 produced tens of thousands of emigrants, and the Star was how the church talked to them before they left and about them after they arrived.
Why it matters beyond Britain
Many sermons appear here first. A discourse preached in the Salt Lake Tabernacle could reach print in Liverpool before it reached print in Utah, and for some sermons the Star's report is the earliest published text that survives. Anyone tracing what a nineteenth-century leader actually said has to read the Star alongside the Journal of Discourses and the Deseret News, because the three do not always agree.
It is also the emigration record. Ship names, sailing dates, company rosters, fares, instructions to the departing and reports of their arrival — the machinery that moved a European convert population to the Great Basin is documented here in a detail nothing else matches.
What we hold
Sixty-seven volumes, 1840 to 1905 — 2,861 separately indexed items.
| Decade | Items |
|---|---|
| 1840s | 157 |
| 1850s | 437 |
| 1860s | 493 |
| 1870s | 503 |
| 1880s | 498 |
| 1890s | 488 |
| 1900–1905 | 285 |
Sixty-five years of a monthly, indexed item by item.
| Subject | Items |
|---|---|
| Missionary work | 1,444 |
| Baptism | 1,367 |
| Book of Mormon | 1,244 |
| Priesthood | 1,157 |
| Brigham Young | 991 |
| Zion | 882 |
| Emigration | 670 |
| Plural marriage | 669 |
| Utah Territory | 616 |
| Tithing | 580 |
| Gathering of Israel | 512 |
Subject tags are model-generated. Emigration and plural marriage rank as high as they do because the Star spent decades explaining both to a British audience — one as an invitation, the other as a defence.
How to read it
- Remember the audience. The Star was written for British Saints and British critics, not for Utah. It explains things a Utah paper would assume, and defends things a Utah paper would not have to.
- Treat a sermon report as a report. Where the Star prints a discourse given in Utah, it is reprinting somebody's transcription, often at several removes and several months' delay.
- Follow the emigration columns. They are the least glamorous pages and the most useful, if the question is what actually happened to people.
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2,861 items indexed in full, 1840 to 1905.
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