Today is Pioneer Day, a Utah state holiday commemorating the arrival of the first Mormon pioneers to enter the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847.

As a descendant of those pioneers and a professional historian, my feelings toward the day and those it celebrates are complex. 1/

I want to share two stories. This is my great great great grandfather George Q. Cannon. After converting to Mormonism in Liverpool in 1840, GQC + his family crossed the Atlantic Ocean, traveling to Nauvoo, IL + then onto SLC. 2/

GQC emerged as an important leader in territorial Utah. He was ordained an apostle + served as Brigham Young, John Taylor, + Wilford Woodruff’s counselor in the church’s first presidency for nearly 40 years. He was also a territorial delegate to the US Congress. 3/

I was raised to be proud of my Cannon ancestry, including GQC’s open defiance of federal law in having “more wives than one” he married 6 women), for which he was imprisoned under the Edmunds-Tucker Act in 1888. Here he is (seated, center). 4/

When I was probably 18 or 19, my mom told me in hushed tones that Cannon’s grandfather (also named George Cannon) had been a slave trader. It was clear to me that she was embarrassed by this, but it meant little to me at the time. 5/

A decade later, while studying the transatlantic slave trade in grad school, I remembered my mom telling me that + was immediately interested. Typing his name into @slavevoyages database, I found record of three slave ships he captained. 6/

I later learned the family still had been logbook from 2 voyages. 3 yrs ago, the students in my Slavery in the Atlantic World class helped transcribe that journal with me. The next time I teach that class, I plan to work w/ students to delve more deeply into its contents. 7/

Most crucially, I hope to find out what I can about those enslaved individuals transported from Africa to Barbados - women + men forced into slavery by my ancestor. 8/

Ancestor #2 is Haden Wells Church. Church converted to Mormonism in 1841 in his native Tennessee. After serving missions to Alabama and then England, he traveled to Utah in 1852, where his wife + children already lived. 9/

The son of enslavers, HWC brought with him to Utah a man identified in later records as “Tom, a Negro.” The pair traveled in the pioneer company captained by Abraham Smoot, a fellow Tennessean and early benefactor of Brigham Young University, where I now teach. 10/

Slavery had recently been legalized in Utah territory, ensuring that Tom would remain enslaved in his new home. As @WPaulReeve uncovered last year, in 1854, “Tom, Brother Churches black man” was baptized in the Sugar House Ward of the LDS Church. https://www.sltrib.com/news/education/2019/08/09/pioneer-benefactors-ties/ 11/

At some point after his baptism, Church transferred ownership of Tom to Abraham Smoot, Bishop of the Sugar House Ward. After suffering from “inflammation of the chest,” Tom died on April 29, 1862, just 2 months before he would have been freed by Congressional decree. 12/

I feel both a personal and professional investment in telling these stories + grappling w/ their implications for me, my family, BYU, + my faith. The story of HWC, Tom, + Abraham Smoot served as the impetus for the @BYUSlavery project. 13/

This history is a crucial part of Mormonism and Utah’s past, just like slavery + Indian removal are a crucial part of America’s history. We do ourselves no favors by ignoring it, dismissing it, or downplaying it. 14/

If we really want to learn from history - to take lessons from the past and consider their relevance for us today - we must embrace + understand it in all its messiness and complexity and critically consider its legacies that extend to the present. /fin