Telegraph
submitted by: Jay Jones Jones
05 Telegraph |
The telegraph replaced the Pony Express, which had been initiated in the Spring of 1860. Despite the heroic feats of the Pony Express riders in relaying mail from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California in 8 days, there was no way the organization could compete with the telegraph. In spite of charging five dollars for carrying messages weighing one-half ounce or less, the expenses of running the Pony Express were greater than the revenue they could generate.
Telegraph technology was then relatively new. The first telegraph signals between major cities had been transmitted from Washington D. C. to Baltimore in 1844, after years of development by Samuel Morse and others. These signals contained the message “What hath God wrought!”
Soon telegraph lines sprung up between other cities, and it did not take long for the idea for a transcontinental telegraph to be articulated. In 1852 Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois proposed a telegraph line to California, but the idea was considered by many to be impractical at the time.
Whether impractical or not, the Deseret News on 1 May 1852 reported that the Utah Territorial Legislature had petitioned the U. S. Congress “for appropriations for the construction of a National Road, Railway and Telegraph, from Missouri River to the western coast.”
Over the next few years, telegraph lines were established from the east coast to Omaha, Nebraska and from California to Carson City, Nevada. In 1860 the Pacific Telegraph Company, a subsidiary of Western Union, made preparations to build the transcontinental wire the following year.
1861 was an eventful year. Besides the building of the telegraph line connecting the Atlantic to the Pacific, Abraham Lincoln became President and the Civil War commenced. Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, traveled west. And the “down-and-back” wagon trains from Salt Lake to Nebraska and back to Salt Lake began.
In the Spring of 1861, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sent several wagon trains, assembled from communities throughout Utah, eastward from Salt Lake City to assist groups of immigrant converts from Europe to complete their journey to Utah. The travel details for both immigrants and wagon trains were carefully planned and timed, with the assistance of agents located
at key points, to allow the wagon trains to meet the immigrants at Florence, Nebraska and finish the circuit to Salt Lake City before winter set in.
Sixtus Johnson, one of the original pioneers to settle both Parowan and Cedar City, led one of the “down-and-back” wagon trains in 1861. Homer Duncan, who became mayor of Cedar City in 1871-72, was captain of another train.
George Teasdale traveled with the Sixtus Johnson train and kept a journal that noted the progress of various phases of telegraph construction along the way. And some of the immigrants to Utah were hired to help build the telegraph lines.
Edward Creighton of the Pacific Telegraph Company managed the construction of the line from Omaha to Salt Lake. Included in the 400 workers he hired to cut and haul poles, dig holes, place the poles, haul supplies and string the wires were as many as 75 immigrants to Utah. (If a list of workers was kept, it has not been found by researchers.) A shortage of American workers due to the onset of the Civil War made the contributions of the immigrants essential.
From the Winter 2007 issue of Utah Historical Quarterly, an article titled “The Dearest Laborers: Pilgrims on the Lightning Road to Zion,” by David Lyle Wood:
“Available information about the Mormon telegraph workers indicates that they were recent immigrants to the United States; they had come from diverse parts of England; they were young men, ranging in age from eighteen to twenty-two; some were married, others were single; most of them were unskilled. All were pilgrims — religious devotees en route to the center place of their faith; they became pilgrim-laborers.”
Meanwhile, the building of the Carson City, Nevada to Salt Lake telegraph line was managed by James Gamble. He wrote an article “Wiring A Continent,” first published in “The Californian” magazine in 1881, detailing some of his experiences and challenges faced 20 years earlier.
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With the conclusion of the Civil War in April 1865 came the decision in Utah to establish a telegraph wire from Logan to St. George. The cost was expected to be $100,000. Bishops in each community were expected to raise money and provide for the labor to build the line in their localities.
Within a year funds were available and Horton Haight was sent east to procure materials. The Deseret News reported that he returned on 16 October 1866 with 65 wagons carrying 84 tons of wire, insulators, batteries, relays, and other equipment.
In the meantime, poles had been cut from the mountains and placed along the telegraph route. Young men from communities across the territory were sent to telegraph school in Salt Lake.
The Deseret News reported on 23 January 1867: “The Deseret State Telegraph is now complete and in perfect working order between its present termini, Logan in the north, and St. George in the south.”
As time went on, women played an increasingly important role in the story of the telegraph in Western America. The telegraph office in Cedar City was located at the Lunt Hotel and Stage Stop on 100 East. One of the telegraph operators was Ellen Whittaker Lunt, a wife of Henry Lunt.
Thomas and Elizabeth Kane stayed with the Lunts as they traveled with Brigham Young to St. George in 1872. Elizabeth wrote about the visit and the telegraph:
“In front of a window full of scarlet geraniums stood a table with a brightly polished telegraph apparatus; and she [Ellen] turned from her stove and its pots and pans to her battery and clicking needle-point without flurry or embarrassment.
“I asked her whether it had not been hard for her to learn, for she was no longer young. She said ‘Yes’; that her fingers were inflexible, and that it had been very hard to eyes unused to delicate sewing and ears unpracticed to listen to fine differences of sound; but the Lord had helped her. . . .
“She spoke of herself as a rough and uneducated woman, though I found she had an accurate ear for music and a lovely voice in singing. But she had mastered her profession well enough to tell by ear what was going over the wires, and I believe that is considered a tolerable test.”
Mrs. Kane went on to praise the qualities of women telegraphers, but noted that “women yield to one dissipation [gossip] men are less apt to indulge in.” Mrs. Lunt had remarked that evening that “Parowan has been called by St. George three times without answering. She will go to meeting!”
Although the telegraph has been mostly replaced by advanced communication technologies, many of the building blocks and knowledge required for modern technologies came from experience gained from the telegraph.