Brigham D. Madsen papers
Collection
Identifier: MS 0671
Scope and Contents
The Brigham D. Madsen papers (1854-2000) contain diaries, correspondence, research files, and manuscripts. In addition to providing information on Madsen's personal and professional activities, this collection contains primary and secondary source material on the Northwestern Shoshone Indians, most particularly the Shoshone and Bannock, whose tribal lands are now limited to the Fort Hall Indian Reservation in Southeastern Idaho. Research files include photocopies of, and Madsen's notes related to, diaries, letters, news clippings, articles, government documents, biographies and autobiographies, military reports, travelers' tales, documents associated with lawsuits, and various published books. Also of interest are Madsen's files relating to the policies and doctrines of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) in the twentieth century, and to Mormon culture in general. The materials are divided into eighteen sections. Each section is arranged in roughly chronological order. Because Madsen kept files organized both topically and by type of document, there is some interlap between file types. Madsen's original folder titles have been retained wherever possible. No attempt has been made to standardize names (for example, "Shoshone" and "Shoshoni"), as variations reflect standard usage of the time.
Section I, Personal Material, is housed in boxes 1 through 5, and contains items relative to Madsen's personal life, such as correspondence, missionary and military diaries, memorabilia, and personal and autobiographical writings. The correspondence spans his career from the early days as a Brigham Young University professor through his retirement from the University of Utah and subsequent activities as an author and lecturer. Although these files contain references to Madsen's activities as a builder, consultant, and administrator, the bulk of the correspondence is from the 1980s and is concerned with his activities as an author and university professor. Many of the letters refer to the history and culture of the Shoshone Indians and to Mormon theology and the policies of the LDS Church. Correspondence here is both incoming and outgoing, with outgoing letters either in the form of carbon copies or Madsen's handwritten originals. There are scattered third-party letters, usually written or received by close friends such as Everett Cooley or Sterling McMurrin. In addition to photocopies of Madsen's missionary and armed forces diaries, this section contains biographical information, an interview of Madsen, and a manuscript version of his autobiography.
Section II, Career, contains material pertaining to Madsen's activities as historian, builder, administrator, and university professor. Located in boxes 6 through 20, this material begins with Madsen's copy of the history of the United States Third Army while under the command of General George S. Patton, Jr. Madsen's predecessor in the historical division oversaw the preparation of this official account of the activities of Patton's army, of which less than 300 copies were printed. Also found in this section are documents pertaining to Madsen's activities as assistant director of training for the Peace Corps (1963-1964) and as director of training (1965) for Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA). This material includes correspondence, news clippings, speeches, pamphlets and brochures, newsletters, observation notes, and articles related to the "war on poverty." This section also contains scattered remnants, mostly from the 1970s, of Madsen's years as a professor of history at the University of Utah, as well as seven folders of material pertaining to the Shoshone-Bannock (Sho-Ban) tribe of Fort Hall, Idaho. Most of Madsen's research material on the Sho-Bans is located in sections of the collection which contain material related to individual books. The documents located here pertain to the announcement of the settlement of legal claims brought by the tribe against the United States government. The bulk of this section consists of Madsen's research files on nineteenth-century land grant legislation, which was produced in the late 1970s in connection with his services as consulting historian in the matter of Anschutz Land and Livestock vs. the Union Pacific Railroad.
Section III, General Writings, housed in boxes 21 through 26, contains documents relating to Madsen's articles, speeches, papers, and book reviews. These materials provide an overview of Madsen's interests as a writer. The documents span a period of over five decades, from a student paper on the Snake River valley written in 1942 to a retrospective look at the writing of history published in 1995. This section consists mainly of manuscript drafts. The exception is box 23, which in addition to drafts of speeches and articles on the Montana Trail, contains ephemera related to the Oregon-California Trail Association (OCTA) and correspondence related to Madsen's attempt to win official status for the Montana Trail. Also found in this section are scattered published and unpublished articles written in the course of Madsen's career. Articles specifically connected with Madsen's books are located with the material for that book. Madsen's book review files typically contain notes, drafts, or typescripts of reviews written between 1956 and 1994. In cases where Madsen kept a copy of the article, this has been filed with his review. Generally, these reviews pertain to both Western and Mormon history.
Sections IV through XV contain documents related to the publication of individual books, grouped here chronologically in order of publication. These sections contain research files, manuscript drafts, correspondence directly related to the book, and book reviews. Also included are documents associated with various lectures, speeches, and articles that grew out of the research for each book. In most cases, these sections begin with Madsen's research files, organized chronologically, alphabetically, and topically according to project needs. Following the research files are manuscript drafts and revisions, then reviews and correspondence. In cases where there is significant correspondence relating to the origin of the project, the correspondence files are located at the beginning of the section. Usually, related articles which appeared before publication of the book are located before the manuscript drafts, while those written after publication follow the manuscript material. Exceptions are noted. Although this arrangement has been followed throughout, each project developed idiosyncratically and every effort has been made to retain the files as Madsen created them. Madsen's original folder titles for his research material have been retained, although descriptive notes have been added when appropriate. For example, Madsen often filed excerpts from secondary sources under general chronological headings; thus, photocopied sections from a recently-published military history may have been labeled "General, 1865." The folder title in this register has been expanded to read "General 1865, Frontiersmen in Blue, Robert Utley."
Section IV, housed in boxes 27 through 29, contains documents related to Madsen's first book, The Bannock of Idaho (Caxton Printers, 1958), written in the summer of 1948 as a Ph.D. dissertation. Correspondence concerning this manuscript, ranging from inquiries about research possibilities in the late 1940s to letters related to publication of a paperback edition in the mid-1990s, appears first, followed by school papers on related topics and a typescript of Madsen's dissertation. This section also contains manuscript drafts, galley proofs, page proofs, and Madsen's introduction to the 1996 edition. The original dissertation draft and related manuscripts dating from Madsen's graduate work at the University of California at Berkeley, donated as this register was being finalized, are located in the addendum, boxes 130 and 131.
Section V consists of one box of material associated with Madsen's work on the Agnes Just Reid manuscript, Letters of Long Ago (University of Utah, Tanner Trust Fund, 1973). Madsen's editorial work entailed putting the events described in the manuscript into historical context, and files in this section are limited to genealogical information on the Thompson and Just families and research concerning the nineteenth-century Mormon splinter group known as the Morrisites. Also included are correspondence with Reid and transcripts of an interview with the author dating from the early 1970s. Further information regarding the publication of this manuscript can be found in the Agnes Just Reid Papers (Ms 365) and the Everett L. Cooley Papers (Accn 73).
Section VI, boxes 31 through 43, contains material related to the two books on the Northern Shoshone which came out of Madsen's research for the law firm representing the Shoshone-Bannock Indians of Fort Hall, Idaho. The two books, The Lemhi: Sacajawea's People (Caxton Printers, 1979) and The Northern Shoshoni (Caxton Printers, 1980) were originally written as one. The decision to extract the material on the Lemhi and publish it separately was made in conjunction with the publisher, therefore the correspondence and reviews for both books are located first, followed by fragmentary source documents on the Lemhi which were separated from the bulk of the research files during the rewriting process. These files, arranged both topically and according to record series, represent only a fragment of Madsen's research, most of which was transferred to the Shoshone-Bannock tribal offices in Fort Hall. Research files in this section range in date from the mid-nineteenth century to 1974. Drawn almost exclusively from government sources, these documents provide a comprehensive record of Indian-white interaction from a white perspective. Material in this section includes census reports, news clippings, treaties, legal documents from the 1930s to the 1970s, reports and correspondence from various Indian agencies and military units, and excerpts from published histories concerning Indian-white conflict. Several drafts of the manuscript eventually published as The Northern Shoshoni follow the research files.
Materials in section VII, housed in boxes 44 through 48, are concerned with North to Montana! (University of Utah Press, 1980), a history of freighting between Salt Lake City and Fort Benton, Montana, which was a collaboration with Betty Madsen. At the time of accession, there were only scattered remnants of the research and writing produced by the Madsens over a period of nearly fifteen years. It is likely that Betty shared Brigham's penchant for detail--one reviewer reflected that the book apparently sought to "trace every wagon that set out over the trail," however, little of the Madsens research files remain. The bulk of this section contains manuscripts documenting the process of writing and rewriting this collaborative work. Many folders contain several chapter versions and extensive editorial notes. More material associated with this manuscript was donated in 1997, and is located in boxes 132 and 133.
Section VIII, boxes 49 through 54, consists of material associated with Corinne: The Gentile Capital of Utah (Utah State Historical Society, 1980), a monograph detailing the economic and political life of a frontier town on the Montana Trail. The research files for this manuscript are arranged both chronologically and alphabetically by author, and contain extensive material from nineteenth-century Western newspapers. The bulk of the material in this section deals with events in Utah between 1868 and 1878. Manuscripts, correspondence, and reviews appear after the source documents. Three articles on Corinne written between 1969 and 1980 follow the reviews.
Documents related to Madsen's seventh book, A Forty-niner in Utah (Tanner Trust Fund, University of Utah Library, 1981) are found in Section IX, boxes 55 through 57. This volume contains the diaries and letters of John Hudson, a young nineteenth-century Englishman who emigrated to New York, crossed the plains to Utah, and served as a member of the Stansbury expedition to the Great Salt Lake. The bulk of the research is concerned with the years 1845 through 1855. Typical of the documents found in this section are letters, diaries, biographical sketches, articles on aspects of pioneer life in the mid-nineteenth century, and excerpts from published works. Madsen's working copies of Hudson's letters and journals appear first, followed by source documents used to prepare explanatory notes. Manuscript drafts and post-publication material such as correspondence and reviews are followed by documents associated with Madsen's 1983 article for the Utah Historical Quarterly, "The Colony Guard to California in '49," which provides more details on Hudson's trek across the plains. Hudson's original diaries, letters, and sketches are located in the John Hudson Papers (Accn 674), along with more information on the acquisition by the Marriott Library of these documents.
Section X, housed in boxes 58 through 61, contains material associated with Gold Rush Sojourners in Great Salt lake City, 1849-1850 (University of Utah Press, 1983), Madsen's study of California emigrants passing through the Salt Lake valley. Documents found in this section focus on 1849 and 1850, the peak years of the gold rush, and include excerpts from journals, diaries, and newspaper articles. Secondary sources include published and unpublished works pertaining to westward emigration and to Mormon-gentile perceptions of one another. Many of the documents in this section are photocopies of material in the National Archives and in the Bancroft, Huntington, and Yale University libraries. In addition to research files, manuscripts, and post-publication material, this section contains two Madsen speeches, given eleven years apart, which are related to this book.
Files associated with Madsen's only book outside the field of Western history, B. H. Roberts: Studies of the Book of Mormon (University of Illinois Press, 1985), are located in Section XI, boxes 62 through 69. This book brought together three hitherto-unpublished B. H. Roberts manuscripts exploring the origin of the Book of Mormon. Roberts, a historian and one of the most influential scholars in the LDS Church, appears in these private studies to have questioned the divine origin of the Book of Mormon. Publication of the documents raised the question of whether Roberts' research had uncovered damaging evidence about the Joseph Smith story of divine revelation. Madsen edited the manuscripts and wrote explanatory notes, Everett Cooley prepared a preface, and Sterling M. McMurrin wrote a brief biography of B. H. Roberts. This section begins with extensive correspondence relating to the origin of the project, various publication issues, and the controversy which the book spawned. Following the correspondence are documents related to Madsen's research for the explanatory notes. Boxes 63 and 64 contain photocopies of B. H. Roberts' published statements from 1887 to 1933 on matters relative to the Book of Mormon. Boxes 64 and 65 contain both nineteenth and twentieth-century documents concerned with nineteenth-century scientific theory and with literary works popular in the years Joseph Smith was engaged in his work with the Book of Mormon. Madsen's drafts for this book begin in box 66 and are followed by extensive readers' comments. Located after this manuscript material are book reviews, some information on the controversy surrounding the book, and drafts of Madsen's portion of the joint Madsen-McMurrin rebuttal of criticisms leveled against the book by the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS). Also present are materials associated with various lectures and panel discussions on the book, Madsen's files on academic freedom at Brigham Young University and on LDS excommunications, and articles collected by Madsen on topics related to the LDS Church. The manuscript material found here is for Madsen's editorial work only. Researchers interested in the development of the preface and biography should consult the Sterling M. McMurrin Papers (Ms 32) and the Everett L. Cooley Papers (Accn 73). For more information on Brigham Henry Roberts, see the Papers of B. H. Roberts (Ms 106). The Papers of H. Grant Ivins (Ms 362) include material on the provenance of the Roberts manuscripts as well as Ivins' notes on the content of the documents.
Section XII, boxes 70 through 79, contains documents related to The Shoshoni Frontier and the Bear River Massacre (University of Utah Press, 1985), in which Madsen explores Indian-white conflict in the Great Basin. Madsen's research files are arranged chronologically according to the event being described; thus, accounts written by eyewitnesses to the events are filed alongside recent historical accounts. Primary and secondary materials and published and unpublished documents are interspersed with Madsen's handwritten notes. The book focuses on the years between 1847 and 1863. Source documents in this section range in date from the mid-1840s to the early 1980s. Drafts of the manuscript and post-publication material follow the research files. The Shoshoni Frontier and the Bear River Massacre provided much of the historical underpinning for the report of the National Park Service recommending that the massacre site be awarded status as a national landmark. Documents involved in Madsen's participation in that effort are located at the end of this section, along with documents pertaining to Madsen's exposure of the fictitious "Almo Massacre."
Section XIII, housed in boxes 80 through 84, contains material connected with Madsen's 1986 biography, Chief Pocatello: The "White Plume" (University of Utah Press, 1986). Documents which specifically mention Pocatello are located in the first box of this section, followed by more general research files, arranged chronologically. The bulk of the material in this section is composed of governmental correspondence and reports, newspaper stories, and journal accounts of events between 1856 and 1884. Four versions of the manuscript are found in this section, the numerical designations have been assigned by the processor. Manuscript drafts, reader comments, correspondence, and reviews follow.
Section XIV, contained in boxes 85 through 96, features material associated with Exploring the Great Salt Lake: The Stansbury Expedition of 1849-50 (University of Utah Press, 1989). This volume brings together all of the documents associated with the nineteenth-century military survey of the Great Salt Lake, including official journals and reports, correspondence, and diaries. Correspondence related to the project from its inception through publication is located at the beginning of this section, followed by general information on trail routes and biographical information on survey party members. Following the general information are files used to prepare footnotes for the various legs of the journey. Madsen used the same organizational scheme as in the John Hudson project, filing source material according to where the topic under consideration was mentioned by travelers. The bulk of the research material consists of biographical information and articles pertaining to westward emigration. Research materials used to describe the flora and fauna of the Great Plains follows. Located next are photocopies of selected documents from the Dale L. Morgan Papers held by the Bancroft Library. Morgan discovered the official expedition journals in the National Archives in 1944 and subsequently did considerable research on the expedition. The Morgan material includes nineteenth-century documents collected by Morgan, his notes on those documents, and his correspondence with others interested in trail research. A microfilm copy of the entire Morgan collection is available under the title "The Dale L. Morgan Papers," (Ms 560). Photocopies and transcripts of the survey party journals and notebooks follow the Morgan material. Manuscript drafts, reviews, and related articles are located at the end of this section.
Section XV, housed in boxes 97 through 117, contains material related to Glory Hunter: A Biography of Patrick Edward Connor (University of Utah Press, 1990). Research files begin with biographical information on Connor, followed by chronological files containing primary and secondary source materials related to Connor's life and interests. Source documents for this project center around the years between 1839 and 1891, and are arranged chronologically. Madsen also subdivided his files topically within years, using three subjects: general information, Mormon affairs, and military affairs. These files typically contain biographical information on Connor, newspaper stories, correspondence, military reports and rosters, and various other government documents. Information on Connor's death appear at the end of the research files, followed by manuscript drafts, reviews, and related articles.
Section XVI, Maps, consists of one box of miscellaneous maps used as illustrations in Madsen's published works. Most are concerned with illustrating trail routes and boundary lines in the mid-nineteenth-century. These maps are generally oversized and vary from hand-traced maps on onion-skin paper to printed maps mounted for display. Maps used in the research for and writing of Madsen's books (including road maps, topographical maps, and historical maps) are located in the previous sections.
Section XVII, Articles by Others, contains four boxes of articles written between 1920 and 1996 which were of interest to Madsen. Most date from the 1980s and 1990s, and are on topics of interest to historians of the American West and of Mormon culture. A majority of the articles found here are published. The files in this section are organized alphabetically by author, and chronologically there under.
Section XVIII, Addendum, consists of material donated in 1997, as this register was being finalized, and spans the years 1934 to 1997. This addendum contains additional documents pertaining to Madsen's missionary, military, and graduate school experience, as well as scattered manuscript drafts. Recent personal correspondence, news clippings, and book reviews appear first. Ten folders of material from the 1930s and 1940s pertaining to Mormonism follow. Five boxes of material collected during Madsen's World War II military service are located next. (Several maps produced by the United States Army have been placed in the map case). The military material includes pamphlets, notebooks, guidebooks, and souvenirs. This addendum also contains notebooks and papers from Madsen's student days, as well as manuscript drafts.
Section I, Personal Material, is housed in boxes 1 through 5, and contains items relative to Madsen's personal life, such as correspondence, missionary and military diaries, memorabilia, and personal and autobiographical writings. The correspondence spans his career from the early days as a Brigham Young University professor through his retirement from the University of Utah and subsequent activities as an author and lecturer. Although these files contain references to Madsen's activities as a builder, consultant, and administrator, the bulk of the correspondence is from the 1980s and is concerned with his activities as an author and university professor. Many of the letters refer to the history and culture of the Shoshone Indians and to Mormon theology and the policies of the LDS Church. Correspondence here is both incoming and outgoing, with outgoing letters either in the form of carbon copies or Madsen's handwritten originals. There are scattered third-party letters, usually written or received by close friends such as Everett Cooley or Sterling McMurrin. In addition to photocopies of Madsen's missionary and armed forces diaries, this section contains biographical information, an interview of Madsen, and a manuscript version of his autobiography.
Section II, Career, contains material pertaining to Madsen's activities as historian, builder, administrator, and university professor. Located in boxes 6 through 20, this material begins with Madsen's copy of the history of the United States Third Army while under the command of General George S. Patton, Jr. Madsen's predecessor in the historical division oversaw the preparation of this official account of the activities of Patton's army, of which less than 300 copies were printed. Also found in this section are documents pertaining to Madsen's activities as assistant director of training for the Peace Corps (1963-1964) and as director of training (1965) for Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA). This material includes correspondence, news clippings, speeches, pamphlets and brochures, newsletters, observation notes, and articles related to the "war on poverty." This section also contains scattered remnants, mostly from the 1970s, of Madsen's years as a professor of history at the University of Utah, as well as seven folders of material pertaining to the Shoshone-Bannock (Sho-Ban) tribe of Fort Hall, Idaho. Most of Madsen's research material on the Sho-Bans is located in sections of the collection which contain material related to individual books. The documents located here pertain to the announcement of the settlement of legal claims brought by the tribe against the United States government. The bulk of this section consists of Madsen's research files on nineteenth-century land grant legislation, which was produced in the late 1970s in connection with his services as consulting historian in the matter of Anschutz Land and Livestock vs. the Union Pacific Railroad.
Section III, General Writings, housed in boxes 21 through 26, contains documents relating to Madsen's articles, speeches, papers, and book reviews. These materials provide an overview of Madsen's interests as a writer. The documents span a period of over five decades, from a student paper on the Snake River valley written in 1942 to a retrospective look at the writing of history published in 1995. This section consists mainly of manuscript drafts. The exception is box 23, which in addition to drafts of speeches and articles on the Montana Trail, contains ephemera related to the Oregon-California Trail Association (OCTA) and correspondence related to Madsen's attempt to win official status for the Montana Trail. Also found in this section are scattered published and unpublished articles written in the course of Madsen's career. Articles specifically connected with Madsen's books are located with the material for that book. Madsen's book review files typically contain notes, drafts, or typescripts of reviews written between 1956 and 1994. In cases where Madsen kept a copy of the article, this has been filed with his review. Generally, these reviews pertain to both Western and Mormon history.
Sections IV through XV contain documents related to the publication of individual books, grouped here chronologically in order of publication. These sections contain research files, manuscript drafts, correspondence directly related to the book, and book reviews. Also included are documents associated with various lectures, speeches, and articles that grew out of the research for each book. In most cases, these sections begin with Madsen's research files, organized chronologically, alphabetically, and topically according to project needs. Following the research files are manuscript drafts and revisions, then reviews and correspondence. In cases where there is significant correspondence relating to the origin of the project, the correspondence files are located at the beginning of the section. Usually, related articles which appeared before publication of the book are located before the manuscript drafts, while those written after publication follow the manuscript material. Exceptions are noted. Although this arrangement has been followed throughout, each project developed idiosyncratically and every effort has been made to retain the files as Madsen created them. Madsen's original folder titles for his research material have been retained, although descriptive notes have been added when appropriate. For example, Madsen often filed excerpts from secondary sources under general chronological headings; thus, photocopied sections from a recently-published military history may have been labeled "General, 1865." The folder title in this register has been expanded to read "General 1865, Frontiersmen in Blue, Robert Utley."
Section IV, housed in boxes 27 through 29, contains documents related to Madsen's first book, The Bannock of Idaho (Caxton Printers, 1958), written in the summer of 1948 as a Ph.D. dissertation. Correspondence concerning this manuscript, ranging from inquiries about research possibilities in the late 1940s to letters related to publication of a paperback edition in the mid-1990s, appears first, followed by school papers on related topics and a typescript of Madsen's dissertation. This section also contains manuscript drafts, galley proofs, page proofs, and Madsen's introduction to the 1996 edition. The original dissertation draft and related manuscripts dating from Madsen's graduate work at the University of California at Berkeley, donated as this register was being finalized, are located in the addendum, boxes 130 and 131.
Section V consists of one box of material associated with Madsen's work on the Agnes Just Reid manuscript, Letters of Long Ago (University of Utah, Tanner Trust Fund, 1973). Madsen's editorial work entailed putting the events described in the manuscript into historical context, and files in this section are limited to genealogical information on the Thompson and Just families and research concerning the nineteenth-century Mormon splinter group known as the Morrisites. Also included are correspondence with Reid and transcripts of an interview with the author dating from the early 1970s. Further information regarding the publication of this manuscript can be found in the Agnes Just Reid Papers (Ms 365) and the Everett L. Cooley Papers (Accn 73).
Section VI, boxes 31 through 43, contains material related to the two books on the Northern Shoshone which came out of Madsen's research for the law firm representing the Shoshone-Bannock Indians of Fort Hall, Idaho. The two books, The Lemhi: Sacajawea's People (Caxton Printers, 1979) and The Northern Shoshoni (Caxton Printers, 1980) were originally written as one. The decision to extract the material on the Lemhi and publish it separately was made in conjunction with the publisher, therefore the correspondence and reviews for both books are located first, followed by fragmentary source documents on the Lemhi which were separated from the bulk of the research files during the rewriting process. These files, arranged both topically and according to record series, represent only a fragment of Madsen's research, most of which was transferred to the Shoshone-Bannock tribal offices in Fort Hall. Research files in this section range in date from the mid-nineteenth century to 1974. Drawn almost exclusively from government sources, these documents provide a comprehensive record of Indian-white interaction from a white perspective. Material in this section includes census reports, news clippings, treaties, legal documents from the 1930s to the 1970s, reports and correspondence from various Indian agencies and military units, and excerpts from published histories concerning Indian-white conflict. Several drafts of the manuscript eventually published as The Northern Shoshoni follow the research files.
Materials in section VII, housed in boxes 44 through 48, are concerned with North to Montana! (University of Utah Press, 1980), a history of freighting between Salt Lake City and Fort Benton, Montana, which was a collaboration with Betty Madsen. At the time of accession, there were only scattered remnants of the research and writing produced by the Madsens over a period of nearly fifteen years. It is likely that Betty shared Brigham's penchant for detail--one reviewer reflected that the book apparently sought to "trace every wagon that set out over the trail," however, little of the Madsens research files remain. The bulk of this section contains manuscripts documenting the process of writing and rewriting this collaborative work. Many folders contain several chapter versions and extensive editorial notes. More material associated with this manuscript was donated in 1997, and is located in boxes 132 and 133.
Section VIII, boxes 49 through 54, consists of material associated with Corinne: The Gentile Capital of Utah (Utah State Historical Society, 1980), a monograph detailing the economic and political life of a frontier town on the Montana Trail. The research files for this manuscript are arranged both chronologically and alphabetically by author, and contain extensive material from nineteenth-century Western newspapers. The bulk of the material in this section deals with events in Utah between 1868 and 1878. Manuscripts, correspondence, and reviews appear after the source documents. Three articles on Corinne written between 1969 and 1980 follow the reviews.
Documents related to Madsen's seventh book, A Forty-niner in Utah (Tanner Trust Fund, University of Utah Library, 1981) are found in Section IX, boxes 55 through 57. This volume contains the diaries and letters of John Hudson, a young nineteenth-century Englishman who emigrated to New York, crossed the plains to Utah, and served as a member of the Stansbury expedition to the Great Salt Lake. The bulk of the research is concerned with the years 1845 through 1855. Typical of the documents found in this section are letters, diaries, biographical sketches, articles on aspects of pioneer life in the mid-nineteenth century, and excerpts from published works. Madsen's working copies of Hudson's letters and journals appear first, followed by source documents used to prepare explanatory notes. Manuscript drafts and post-publication material such as correspondence and reviews are followed by documents associated with Madsen's 1983 article for the Utah Historical Quarterly, "The Colony Guard to California in '49," which provides more details on Hudson's trek across the plains. Hudson's original diaries, letters, and sketches are located in the John Hudson Papers (Accn 674), along with more information on the acquisition by the Marriott Library of these documents.
Section X, housed in boxes 58 through 61, contains material associated with Gold Rush Sojourners in Great Salt lake City, 1849-1850 (University of Utah Press, 1983), Madsen's study of California emigrants passing through the Salt Lake valley. Documents found in this section focus on 1849 and 1850, the peak years of the gold rush, and include excerpts from journals, diaries, and newspaper articles. Secondary sources include published and unpublished works pertaining to westward emigration and to Mormon-gentile perceptions of one another. Many of the documents in this section are photocopies of material in the National Archives and in the Bancroft, Huntington, and Yale University libraries. In addition to research files, manuscripts, and post-publication material, this section contains two Madsen speeches, given eleven years apart, which are related to this book.
Files associated with Madsen's only book outside the field of Western history, B. H. Roberts: Studies of the Book of Mormon (University of Illinois Press, 1985), are located in Section XI, boxes 62 through 69. This book brought together three hitherto-unpublished B. H. Roberts manuscripts exploring the origin of the Book of Mormon. Roberts, a historian and one of the most influential scholars in the LDS Church, appears in these private studies to have questioned the divine origin of the Book of Mormon. Publication of the documents raised the question of whether Roberts' research had uncovered damaging evidence about the Joseph Smith story of divine revelation. Madsen edited the manuscripts and wrote explanatory notes, Everett Cooley prepared a preface, and Sterling M. McMurrin wrote a brief biography of B. H. Roberts. This section begins with extensive correspondence relating to the origin of the project, various publication issues, and the controversy which the book spawned. Following the correspondence are documents related to Madsen's research for the explanatory notes. Boxes 63 and 64 contain photocopies of B. H. Roberts' published statements from 1887 to 1933 on matters relative to the Book of Mormon. Boxes 64 and 65 contain both nineteenth and twentieth-century documents concerned with nineteenth-century scientific theory and with literary works popular in the years Joseph Smith was engaged in his work with the Book of Mormon. Madsen's drafts for this book begin in box 66 and are followed by extensive readers' comments. Located after this manuscript material are book reviews, some information on the controversy surrounding the book, and drafts of Madsen's portion of the joint Madsen-McMurrin rebuttal of criticisms leveled against the book by the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS). Also present are materials associated with various lectures and panel discussions on the book, Madsen's files on academic freedom at Brigham Young University and on LDS excommunications, and articles collected by Madsen on topics related to the LDS Church. The manuscript material found here is for Madsen's editorial work only. Researchers interested in the development of the preface and biography should consult the Sterling M. McMurrin Papers (Ms 32) and the Everett L. Cooley Papers (Accn 73). For more information on Brigham Henry Roberts, see the Papers of B. H. Roberts (Ms 106). The Papers of H. Grant Ivins (Ms 362) include material on the provenance of the Roberts manuscripts as well as Ivins' notes on the content of the documents.
Section XII, boxes 70 through 79, contains documents related to The Shoshoni Frontier and the Bear River Massacre (University of Utah Press, 1985), in which Madsen explores Indian-white conflict in the Great Basin. Madsen's research files are arranged chronologically according to the event being described; thus, accounts written by eyewitnesses to the events are filed alongside recent historical accounts. Primary and secondary materials and published and unpublished documents are interspersed with Madsen's handwritten notes. The book focuses on the years between 1847 and 1863. Source documents in this section range in date from the mid-1840s to the early 1980s. Drafts of the manuscript and post-publication material follow the research files. The Shoshoni Frontier and the Bear River Massacre provided much of the historical underpinning for the report of the National Park Service recommending that the massacre site be awarded status as a national landmark. Documents involved in Madsen's participation in that effort are located at the end of this section, along with documents pertaining to Madsen's exposure of the fictitious "Almo Massacre."
Section XIII, housed in boxes 80 through 84, contains material connected with Madsen's 1986 biography, Chief Pocatello: The "White Plume" (University of Utah Press, 1986). Documents which specifically mention Pocatello are located in the first box of this section, followed by more general research files, arranged chronologically. The bulk of the material in this section is composed of governmental correspondence and reports, newspaper stories, and journal accounts of events between 1856 and 1884. Four versions of the manuscript are found in this section, the numerical designations have been assigned by the processor. Manuscript drafts, reader comments, correspondence, and reviews follow.
Section XIV, contained in boxes 85 through 96, features material associated with Exploring the Great Salt Lake: The Stansbury Expedition of 1849-50 (University of Utah Press, 1989). This volume brings together all of the documents associated with the nineteenth-century military survey of the Great Salt Lake, including official journals and reports, correspondence, and diaries. Correspondence related to the project from its inception through publication is located at the beginning of this section, followed by general information on trail routes and biographical information on survey party members. Following the general information are files used to prepare footnotes for the various legs of the journey. Madsen used the same organizational scheme as in the John Hudson project, filing source material according to where the topic under consideration was mentioned by travelers. The bulk of the research material consists of biographical information and articles pertaining to westward emigration. Research materials used to describe the flora and fauna of the Great Plains follows. Located next are photocopies of selected documents from the Dale L. Morgan Papers held by the Bancroft Library. Morgan discovered the official expedition journals in the National Archives in 1944 and subsequently did considerable research on the expedition. The Morgan material includes nineteenth-century documents collected by Morgan, his notes on those documents, and his correspondence with others interested in trail research. A microfilm copy of the entire Morgan collection is available under the title "The Dale L. Morgan Papers," (Ms 560). Photocopies and transcripts of the survey party journals and notebooks follow the Morgan material. Manuscript drafts, reviews, and related articles are located at the end of this section.
Section XV, housed in boxes 97 through 117, contains material related to Glory Hunter: A Biography of Patrick Edward Connor (University of Utah Press, 1990). Research files begin with biographical information on Connor, followed by chronological files containing primary and secondary source materials related to Connor's life and interests. Source documents for this project center around the years between 1839 and 1891, and are arranged chronologically. Madsen also subdivided his files topically within years, using three subjects: general information, Mormon affairs, and military affairs. These files typically contain biographical information on Connor, newspaper stories, correspondence, military reports and rosters, and various other government documents. Information on Connor's death appear at the end of the research files, followed by manuscript drafts, reviews, and related articles.
Section XVI, Maps, consists of one box of miscellaneous maps used as illustrations in Madsen's published works. Most are concerned with illustrating trail routes and boundary lines in the mid-nineteenth-century. These maps are generally oversized and vary from hand-traced maps on onion-skin paper to printed maps mounted for display. Maps used in the research for and writing of Madsen's books (including road maps, topographical maps, and historical maps) are located in the previous sections.
Section XVII, Articles by Others, contains four boxes of articles written between 1920 and 1996 which were of interest to Madsen. Most date from the 1980s and 1990s, and are on topics of interest to historians of the American West and of Mormon culture. A majority of the articles found here are published. The files in this section are organized alphabetically by author, and chronologically there under.
Section XVIII, Addendum, consists of material donated in 1997, as this register was being finalized, and spans the years 1934 to 1997. This addendum contains additional documents pertaining to Madsen's missionary, military, and graduate school experience, as well as scattered manuscript drafts. Recent personal correspondence, news clippings, and book reviews appear first. Ten folders of material from the 1930s and 1940s pertaining to Mormonism follow. Five boxes of material collected during Madsen's World War II military service are located next. (Several maps produced by the United States Army have been placed in the map case). The military material includes pamphlets, notebooks, guidebooks, and souvenirs. This addendum also contains notebooks and papers from Madsen's student days, as well as manuscript drafts.
Dates
- 1854-2000
Creator
- Madsen, Brigham D. (Person)
Language of Materials
Collection materials are in English.
Conditions Governing Access
Twenty-four hour advanced notice encouraged. Materials must be used on-site. Access to parts of this collection may be restricted under provisions of state or federal law.
Conditions Governing Use
The library does not claim to control copyright for all materials in the collection. An individual depicted in a reproduction has privacy rights as outlined in Title 45 CFR, part 46 (Protection of Human Subjects). For further information, please review the J. Willard Marriott Library’s Use Agreement and Reproduction Request forms.
Biographical Sketch
Brigham Dwaine Madsen was born in Magna, Utah, on October 21, 1914, to Brigham Andrew and Lydia Cushing Madsen. In 1919, the family, which now included sisters Ann and Phyllis, moved to Pocatello, Idaho, where Dwaine, as he was then called, attended public schools, graduating from Pocatello High School in 1932. He remained in Pocatello and attended the University of Idaho, Southern Branch, from which he graduated with a Junior College Certificate in 1934. Shortly after receiving this certificate, Madsen served a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) to the East Central States, which included Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina. He was appointed district president over the East North Carolina District in 1935.
In 1936 Madsen returned from his mission and entered the University of Utah, where he majored in history and minored in sociology. Harold Dalgliesh became a mentor, as did Andrew Love Neff, a former student of Herbert Eugene Bolton. While at the university he registered for a philosophy class taught by Waldemar Read, whom he remembered as "a wise and provocative liberal teacher" who "helped reduce some of the stuffed-shirt and superior inclinations" garnered from his missionary experience. In the spring of 1937, Madsen met Betty McAllister in a class in educational studies. By winter they had become engaged. In 1938, Madsen graduated from the University of Utah with a teacher's certificate. He returned to southeastern Idaho, where he accepted a position as both teacher and principal of the combined grade and high school in Pingree. In addition to teaching English, World History, Business Methods, Public Speaking, Algebra, and Geometry, Madsen coached the school basketball team and worked weekends in his father's construction business in Idaho Falls.
Madsen married Betty McAllister in Salt Lake City, Utah, in August of 1939. On the day following the ceremony the young couple boarded a train for Berkeley, where Madsen began work on an M.A. in history, studying primarily with Lawrence Kinnaird, another Bolton student. His early training in history was further enriched by his studies on the history of the American frontier under Frederick Logan Paxon, a student of Frederick Jackson Turner, whose frontier thesis established the American West as a significant field of study for historians. Madsen completed his master's thesis, "The Early History of the Upper Snake River Valley," in 1940 and began working toward his Ph.D. His major field was colonial America, minor fields included United States and English history. For his work outside the discipline of history, Madsen chose to study geography under Carl Sauer. In 1941 Kinnaird, the chair of Madsen's supervisory committee, left Berkeley to become the cultural attache in Chile. Herbert Bolton came out of retirement to take over his classes, giving Madsen the opportunity to work with the innovator who introduced the concept of Greater America to the field of American history. Madsen's graduate training furnished him with a broader perspective on the history of the American West than was usual at the time. Bolton's emphasis on the contribution of Spain and Latin America to the history of the American continent provided a much-needed counterbalance to the New England bias in the historiography of America.
In 1943 Madsen began what he later called "the greatest adventure of my generation, military service in World War II," reporting to the induction center at the Presidio of Monterey in September. After basic training he was transferred to Fort Benning where he served as tactical officer for a student training regiment. In November of 1945 Madsen boarded the U.S.S. West Point for Le Havre, France, taking charge of a group of soldiers bound for the replacement center in Bamberg, Germany. The following month he reported to Third Army headquarters in Bad Tolz. He worked in the Adjutant General Section for a brief period before transferring to Military Government, where he was assigned as Chief of the Historical Division for Patton's Third Army. He was separated from the service at Fort Sheridan on July 30, 1946.
The following month found the Madsens back at Berkeley, where Betty cared for daughter Karen, born in 1943, and son David, born earlier in 1946. In addition to resuming his studies, Brigham did odd jobs as a carpenter and served as a teaching assistant for the social history of the United States, a survey course taught by John D. Hicks. In 1947 Madsen passed his oral qualifying exams while teaching four sections of U. S. History at the University of California at Davis. The following year he completed his dissertation, "The Bannock Indians in Northwest History, 1805-1900," and accepted a teaching position at Brigham Young University (BYU).
In the autumn of 1949, the Madsen's third child, Linda, was born. Brigham supplemented his BYU salary by building rental units and then selling them in partnership with his father and two brothers in the Madsen Brothers Construction Company. While at BYU, the Madsens participated in an informal faculty gathering which came to be known as the Saturday Night Chowder © Marching Club. Although the group was strictly a meeting of friends, Madsen recalled that the group "usually ended the evenings in relating to each other the latest and most interesting happenings at BYU and in discussion of Mormon Church politics and theology." During these BYU years Madsen also met informally with a small group of educated LDS men, primarily associated with the University of Utah, who met monthly to hear speakers on topics related to Mormonism. This group came to be known as the Swearing Elders. The fellowship and intellectual stimulation provided by these two groups became increasingly important to Madsen, who was experiencing some discomfort at the changes which came to BYU after Ernest L. Wilkinson took over as president in 1951. He resigned from BYU in 1954. Son Steven was born the following year. For the next seven years Madsen devoted his time to the family construction business. He was later to remember the years he spent in the building trade as "years of intellectual famine," but despite his busy building schedule, he taught Professor Gregory Crampton's survey course at the University of Utah in 1955 and prepared his dissertation for publication. It was published in 1958 by Caxton Printers, a small, family publishing business that was beginning to receive national recognition. The Bannock of Idaho was illustrated by Madsen's old friend and fellow Chowder Club member, Maynard Dixon Stewart. Generally well-received, the book came under criticism for some ethnographic interpretations based upon outmoded secondary source material. With characteristic lack of scholarly ego, Madsen conceded the expertise of his severest critic, Sven Liljeblad, and enlisted his aid in improving the accuracy of future projects. This first history of the Shoshonean peoples of the Intermountain West remains a seminal work.
In 1961, Madsen read Catherine Drinker Bowen's John Adams and the American Revolution. It was, Madsen said, "a work so well written and with such feeling that I underwent a real emotional experience. My seven years as a builder disappeared in a flash as I was moved back to academia and my love for history and for teaching." Fortuitously, Madsen's friend and fellow Kinnaird student, Everett L. Cooley, was leaving Utah State University (USU) to become the Director of the Utah State Historical Society and Madsen was offered Cooley's vacated associate professorship in history. The following summer he received the assignment of teaching a class in the American Institutions segment of the Peace Corps training program. Having made plans to complete the building of his own home that summer, he looked upon the prospect of teaching civics to "forty would-be chicken farmers in Iran" with some dismay. However, the idealistic and adventurous spirit of the Corps infected Madsen and he became an enthusiastic supporter of the program. This, coupled with his zest for teaching, made the experience so successful that two of his students wrote letters of appreciation to the Director of Training in Washington, D. C. As a result, Madsen was asked to serve as a training officer in Washington D. C. the following summer, an experience that was to lead to his participation in the Civil Rights March on Washington of 1963. In June of the following year Madsen took a two-year leave of absence from USU and went to work for the Peace Corps full time as Assistant Director of Training. In 1964 Madsen was appointed first Director of Training for the newly-formed Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) program. Serving less than a year with VISTA, Madsen returned to Utah to accept a position as Dean of Continuing Education and Professor of History at the University of Utah.
Madsen began his term at the University of Utah with a building project. In an effort to instill some esprit de corps into the Division of Continuing Education (DCE), he oversaw an extensive remodeling program, which so energized the staff that he was soon the recipient of an abundance of ideas for improving the division. Madsen saw DCE as an instrument for integrating the university with the surrounding community, and attempted to initiate programs that would make higher education more attractive and accessible to individuals who would not ordinarily consider a university education an option. He oversaw programs directed toward women, minorities, members of the business and skilled trade communities, and students at the local trade school. A proposal for a credit-exchange program with Utah Technical College brought Madsen to the attention of President James C. Fletcher, and after only nine months as Dean of Continuing Education, he became Deputy Academic Vice President. Shortly thereafter Madsen was appointed as Administrative Vice President with a mandate to supervise the newly-funded campus building plan. His construction expertise was instrumental in getting several building projects completed on time and within budget. Among the buildings constructed under Madsen's guidance were the Art and Architecture building, the Special Events Center (Jon M. Huntsman Center), the Medical Student Housing Towers, and the married student housing complex now known as the East Village.
In 1971 Madsen was asked to take over as director of the University's Marriott Library. He agreed to accept this position for two years. During his tenure he supervised some badly-needed modernization in operations, including the installation of a security system and the establishment of an automated circulation system. While director, Madsen continued to teach one history class per quarter. In 1971 and 1972 he oversaw the publication of collections of essays produced by his students entitled The Now Generation and The Violent Year, respectively. In 1973, Madsen also agreed to serve on the editorial board of the Tanner Trust Fund publications series on Utah, the Mormons and the West. This series was designed to highlight the manuscript holdings of the Marriott Library's Special Collections division and to publish little-known works of high literary, as well as historical, value. At that time the editors were preparing the second book of the series, a republication of Agnes Just Reid's Letters of Long Ago. Everett Cooley, general editor of the series, asked Madsen to put the letters, penned by Reid as a reconstruction of her mother's life, into solid historical context. The Just homestead was located northeast of the Fort Hall Indian reservation, which had figured prominently in Madsen's graduate work on the Northern Shoshone.
Madsen's return to full-time teaching in 1973 inaugurated a period of intense study and research that culminated in the publication of three books almost simultaneously in 1979 and 1980. For several years Madsen and his wife, Betty, had been researching the Montana Trail. This research was the basis for a freighting article published in The Magazine of Western History shortly before Madsen began work on the Reid manuscript. Publication of the book based on this research was delayed by Madsen's work on Letters of Long Ago. When North to Montana! finally appeared in 1980 as one of a trio of books by Madsen, Lawrence Kinnaird remarked that "the Madsen family must have developed a sort of history factory." In addition to the ongoing trail research, Madsen had taken on a major research project for the law firm representing the Shoshone-Bannock tribe of southeastern Idaho in a suit against the United States government. The two books based on this research, The Lemhi, and The Northern Shoshone, established Madsen's reputation as an authority on this cultural group.
Following his retirement from the University of Utah in 1984, Madsen published several books and articles related to the history of the Intermountain region. Two books published in 1985 generated vigorous public debate. In The Shoshoni Frontier and the Bear River Massacre, Madsen employed his considerable research tenacity and penchant for detail in systematically exposing the violence and brutality of the event then popularly referred to as the "battle" of Bear River. His equally controversial B. H. Roberts: Studies of the Book of Mormon, raised the question of whether or not the LDS Church's premier historian had come to believe that the Book of Mormon was a work of fiction. Both books called into question cherished cultural beliefs about the nature of the past and brought to light the presence of an often elusive boundary between history and mythology. Public interest in these works remains strong. Both have been recently reissued in paperback editions.
Brigham D. Madsen died on 24 December 2010.
In 1936 Madsen returned from his mission and entered the University of Utah, where he majored in history and minored in sociology. Harold Dalgliesh became a mentor, as did Andrew Love Neff, a former student of Herbert Eugene Bolton. While at the university he registered for a philosophy class taught by Waldemar Read, whom he remembered as "a wise and provocative liberal teacher" who "helped reduce some of the stuffed-shirt and superior inclinations" garnered from his missionary experience. In the spring of 1937, Madsen met Betty McAllister in a class in educational studies. By winter they had become engaged. In 1938, Madsen graduated from the University of Utah with a teacher's certificate. He returned to southeastern Idaho, where he accepted a position as both teacher and principal of the combined grade and high school in Pingree. In addition to teaching English, World History, Business Methods, Public Speaking, Algebra, and Geometry, Madsen coached the school basketball team and worked weekends in his father's construction business in Idaho Falls.
Madsen married Betty McAllister in Salt Lake City, Utah, in August of 1939. On the day following the ceremony the young couple boarded a train for Berkeley, where Madsen began work on an M.A. in history, studying primarily with Lawrence Kinnaird, another Bolton student. His early training in history was further enriched by his studies on the history of the American frontier under Frederick Logan Paxon, a student of Frederick Jackson Turner, whose frontier thesis established the American West as a significant field of study for historians. Madsen completed his master's thesis, "The Early History of the Upper Snake River Valley," in 1940 and began working toward his Ph.D. His major field was colonial America, minor fields included United States and English history. For his work outside the discipline of history, Madsen chose to study geography under Carl Sauer. In 1941 Kinnaird, the chair of Madsen's supervisory committee, left Berkeley to become the cultural attache in Chile. Herbert Bolton came out of retirement to take over his classes, giving Madsen the opportunity to work with the innovator who introduced the concept of Greater America to the field of American history. Madsen's graduate training furnished him with a broader perspective on the history of the American West than was usual at the time. Bolton's emphasis on the contribution of Spain and Latin America to the history of the American continent provided a much-needed counterbalance to the New England bias in the historiography of America.
In 1943 Madsen began what he later called "the greatest adventure of my generation, military service in World War II," reporting to the induction center at the Presidio of Monterey in September. After basic training he was transferred to Fort Benning where he served as tactical officer for a student training regiment. In November of 1945 Madsen boarded the U.S.S. West Point for Le Havre, France, taking charge of a group of soldiers bound for the replacement center in Bamberg, Germany. The following month he reported to Third Army headquarters in Bad Tolz. He worked in the Adjutant General Section for a brief period before transferring to Military Government, where he was assigned as Chief of the Historical Division for Patton's Third Army. He was separated from the service at Fort Sheridan on July 30, 1946.
The following month found the Madsens back at Berkeley, where Betty cared for daughter Karen, born in 1943, and son David, born earlier in 1946. In addition to resuming his studies, Brigham did odd jobs as a carpenter and served as a teaching assistant for the social history of the United States, a survey course taught by John D. Hicks. In 1947 Madsen passed his oral qualifying exams while teaching four sections of U. S. History at the University of California at Davis. The following year he completed his dissertation, "The Bannock Indians in Northwest History, 1805-1900," and accepted a teaching position at Brigham Young University (BYU).
In the autumn of 1949, the Madsen's third child, Linda, was born. Brigham supplemented his BYU salary by building rental units and then selling them in partnership with his father and two brothers in the Madsen Brothers Construction Company. While at BYU, the Madsens participated in an informal faculty gathering which came to be known as the Saturday Night Chowder © Marching Club. Although the group was strictly a meeting of friends, Madsen recalled that the group "usually ended the evenings in relating to each other the latest and most interesting happenings at BYU and in discussion of Mormon Church politics and theology." During these BYU years Madsen also met informally with a small group of educated LDS men, primarily associated with the University of Utah, who met monthly to hear speakers on topics related to Mormonism. This group came to be known as the Swearing Elders. The fellowship and intellectual stimulation provided by these two groups became increasingly important to Madsen, who was experiencing some discomfort at the changes which came to BYU after Ernest L. Wilkinson took over as president in 1951. He resigned from BYU in 1954. Son Steven was born the following year. For the next seven years Madsen devoted his time to the family construction business. He was later to remember the years he spent in the building trade as "years of intellectual famine," but despite his busy building schedule, he taught Professor Gregory Crampton's survey course at the University of Utah in 1955 and prepared his dissertation for publication. It was published in 1958 by Caxton Printers, a small, family publishing business that was beginning to receive national recognition. The Bannock of Idaho was illustrated by Madsen's old friend and fellow Chowder Club member, Maynard Dixon Stewart. Generally well-received, the book came under criticism for some ethnographic interpretations based upon outmoded secondary source material. With characteristic lack of scholarly ego, Madsen conceded the expertise of his severest critic, Sven Liljeblad, and enlisted his aid in improving the accuracy of future projects. This first history of the Shoshonean peoples of the Intermountain West remains a seminal work.
In 1961, Madsen read Catherine Drinker Bowen's John Adams and the American Revolution. It was, Madsen said, "a work so well written and with such feeling that I underwent a real emotional experience. My seven years as a builder disappeared in a flash as I was moved back to academia and my love for history and for teaching." Fortuitously, Madsen's friend and fellow Kinnaird student, Everett L. Cooley, was leaving Utah State University (USU) to become the Director of the Utah State Historical Society and Madsen was offered Cooley's vacated associate professorship in history. The following summer he received the assignment of teaching a class in the American Institutions segment of the Peace Corps training program. Having made plans to complete the building of his own home that summer, he looked upon the prospect of teaching civics to "forty would-be chicken farmers in Iran" with some dismay. However, the idealistic and adventurous spirit of the Corps infected Madsen and he became an enthusiastic supporter of the program. This, coupled with his zest for teaching, made the experience so successful that two of his students wrote letters of appreciation to the Director of Training in Washington, D. C. As a result, Madsen was asked to serve as a training officer in Washington D. C. the following summer, an experience that was to lead to his participation in the Civil Rights March on Washington of 1963. In June of the following year Madsen took a two-year leave of absence from USU and went to work for the Peace Corps full time as Assistant Director of Training. In 1964 Madsen was appointed first Director of Training for the newly-formed Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) program. Serving less than a year with VISTA, Madsen returned to Utah to accept a position as Dean of Continuing Education and Professor of History at the University of Utah.
Madsen began his term at the University of Utah with a building project. In an effort to instill some esprit de corps into the Division of Continuing Education (DCE), he oversaw an extensive remodeling program, which so energized the staff that he was soon the recipient of an abundance of ideas for improving the division. Madsen saw DCE as an instrument for integrating the university with the surrounding community, and attempted to initiate programs that would make higher education more attractive and accessible to individuals who would not ordinarily consider a university education an option. He oversaw programs directed toward women, minorities, members of the business and skilled trade communities, and students at the local trade school. A proposal for a credit-exchange program with Utah Technical College brought Madsen to the attention of President James C. Fletcher, and after only nine months as Dean of Continuing Education, he became Deputy Academic Vice President. Shortly thereafter Madsen was appointed as Administrative Vice President with a mandate to supervise the newly-funded campus building plan. His construction expertise was instrumental in getting several building projects completed on time and within budget. Among the buildings constructed under Madsen's guidance were the Art and Architecture building, the Special Events Center (Jon M. Huntsman Center), the Medical Student Housing Towers, and the married student housing complex now known as the East Village.
In 1971 Madsen was asked to take over as director of the University's Marriott Library. He agreed to accept this position for two years. During his tenure he supervised some badly-needed modernization in operations, including the installation of a security system and the establishment of an automated circulation system. While director, Madsen continued to teach one history class per quarter. In 1971 and 1972 he oversaw the publication of collections of essays produced by his students entitled The Now Generation and The Violent Year, respectively. In 1973, Madsen also agreed to serve on the editorial board of the Tanner Trust Fund publications series on Utah, the Mormons and the West. This series was designed to highlight the manuscript holdings of the Marriott Library's Special Collections division and to publish little-known works of high literary, as well as historical, value. At that time the editors were preparing the second book of the series, a republication of Agnes Just Reid's Letters of Long Ago. Everett Cooley, general editor of the series, asked Madsen to put the letters, penned by Reid as a reconstruction of her mother's life, into solid historical context. The Just homestead was located northeast of the Fort Hall Indian reservation, which had figured prominently in Madsen's graduate work on the Northern Shoshone.
Madsen's return to full-time teaching in 1973 inaugurated a period of intense study and research that culminated in the publication of three books almost simultaneously in 1979 and 1980. For several years Madsen and his wife, Betty, had been researching the Montana Trail. This research was the basis for a freighting article published in The Magazine of Western History shortly before Madsen began work on the Reid manuscript. Publication of the book based on this research was delayed by Madsen's work on Letters of Long Ago. When North to Montana! finally appeared in 1980 as one of a trio of books by Madsen, Lawrence Kinnaird remarked that "the Madsen family must have developed a sort of history factory." In addition to the ongoing trail research, Madsen had taken on a major research project for the law firm representing the Shoshone-Bannock tribe of southeastern Idaho in a suit against the United States government. The two books based on this research, The Lemhi, and The Northern Shoshone, established Madsen's reputation as an authority on this cultural group.
Following his retirement from the University of Utah in 1984, Madsen published several books and articles related to the history of the Intermountain region. Two books published in 1985 generated vigorous public debate. In The Shoshoni Frontier and the Bear River Massacre, Madsen employed his considerable research tenacity and penchant for detail in systematically exposing the violence and brutality of the event then popularly referred to as the "battle" of Bear River. His equally controversial B. H. Roberts: Studies of the Book of Mormon, raised the question of whether or not the LDS Church's premier historian had come to believe that the Book of Mormon was a work of fiction. Both books called into question cherished cultural beliefs about the nature of the past and brought to light the presence of an often elusive boundary between history and mythology. Public interest in these works remains strong. Both have been recently reissued in paperback editions.
Brigham D. Madsen died on 24 December 2010.
Extent
77 Linear Feet
Abstract
The Brigham D. Madsen papers (1854-2000) contain diaries, correspondence, research files, and manuscripts. In addition, there is primary and secondary source material on the Northwestern Shoshone Indians, most particularly the Shoshone and Bannock, whose tribal lands are now limited to the Fort Hall Indian Reservation in Southeastern Idaho.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Boxes/cartons 1-135 were donated in 1992-1997 (67.5 linear feet).
Cartons 136-137 were donated in November 1998 (4 linear feet).
Carton 138 was donated in 2000 (2 linear feet).
Cartons 136-137 were donated in November 1998 (4 linear feet).
Carton 138 was donated in 2000 (2 linear feet).
Separated Materials
Photographs were placed in the Multimedia Division of Special Collections (P0107).
Processing Information
Processed by Karen Carver in 1998-2000.
Boxes 139-144 were processed by Manuscripts Division staff.
Box 145 was processed by Roger V. Paxton.
Boxes 139-144 were processed by Manuscripts Division staff.
Box 145 was processed by Roger V. Paxton.
Creator
- Madsen, Brigham D. (Person)
- Title
- Inventory of the Brigham D. Madsen papers, 1854-2000
- Author
- Finding aid prepared by Karen Carver
- Date
- © 1998 (last modified: 2019)
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
- Language of description note
- Finding aid encoded in English in Latin script.
Repository Details
Part of the J. Willard Marriott Library Special Collections Repository
Contact:
295 South 1500 East
Salt Lake City Utah 84112 United States
801-581-8863
special@library.utah.edu
295 South 1500 East
Salt Lake City Utah 84112 United States
801-581-8863
special@library.utah.edu