This index to the State Department Territorial Papers, Utah Series (also known as Utah, 1853-1873) collection provides the dates each reel covers. Government Information MAY NOT hold all of these reels. The record in the library catalog describes the extent of our holdings. For help, or to make an appointment to view a reel, email rad@colorado.edu.
On the two rolls of this microcopy are reproduced two bound volumes of records of the Department of State relating to the administration of affairs in Utah Territory, 1853-73. The records consist mainly of communications received by the Secretary of State from the Governor and the Secretary of the Territory, April 30, 1853 - January 3, 1873.
From the earliest days of the Republic until 1873 the Department of State was responsible for the supervision of Territorial governments and Territorial affairs in general. An act approved March 1, 1873 (17 Stat. 484), transferred this responsibility to the Department of the Interior. The act establishing the Utah Territory was approved September 9, 1850 (9 Stat. 453); statehood was not attained for almost half a century.
The volumes reproduced on this microcopy contain letters and other documents for the period from 1852 to 1873. The bulk of the papers in the first volume and a few of those in the second relate to the troublous times of 1857-58 — commonly referred to as the "Mormon War" — and to the pacification of the Territory immediately following. Most of the documents in the second volume are of a more commonplace character; they include records of the "acts and proceedings" of the governor, journals of the proceedings of the Territorial courts, and routine communications. Letters may be either originals or copies, and in numerous instances duplicates appear. In most instances communications are addressed to the Secretary of State, but occasional letters to the President and numerous inclosures swell the number of addressees. Correspondents include the Territorial officials, persons residing in Utah, and a few officials of the Government in Washington.
All the documents pertaining to Utah that are listed by David W. Parker in his Calendar of Papers in Washington Archives Relating to the Territories of the United States (to 1873), 261-64 (Washington, 1911), as being in the Bureau of Rolls and Library of the State Department at the time his work was done, together with a few papers that Parker does not list, are included in these volumes. The documents listed by him as being in the Bureau of Indexes and Archives of the State Department are not included; they are to be found in the "Miscellaneous Letters" series of State Department records. Letters from the Secretary of State to Utah officials, to some extent complementary in character to the Territorial papers herein reproduced will be found in copied form in the "Domestic Letters" series. Both the "Miscellaneous Letters" and the "Domestic Letters" are in The National Archives. Further papers concerning Territorial personnel will be found among the appointment records of the Department of State, and numerous other bodies of records in The National Archives contain materials pertaining to Utah Territory.
It should be pointed out, also, that the scope of this microcopy differs greatly from that of the volume on Utah projected for publication by the State Department in The Territorial Papers of the United States. The microcopy is a reproduction of the documents in but one series of State Department records, while the volume of Territorial Papers will presumably contain documents selected from this and other series in the archives of the State Department and from numerous other sources as well. The microcopy thus gives a preview of some of the materials that will ultimately appear in a well-rounded volume on the administration of Utah Territory.
The contents of these volumes have not been subjected to review for the purpose of detecting and noting textual discrepancies or illegibilities, though such a review may be possible at a later date. All notations and numbers which have been added to these documents were placed there prior to their transfer from the State Department. Contemporaneous penciled notations appearing at the top of most of the letters refer to the action taken at the State Department. Other notations, made more recently, specify the relationship between covering letters and inclosures where the latter are present. Folio numbers have been added on the recto pages, but it should be noted that items of printed material have their own pagination and are given but one number in the folio series. The high serial numbers which appear are those which particular documents bear in Parker's Calendar.
The spreadsheet attached below contains a reel-by-reel description of the complete collection.