A fact from Ida Hunt Udall appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 2 December 2022 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
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Latest comment: 1 year ago6 comments3 people in discussion
The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.
The result was: promoted by SL93 (talk) 00:29, 26 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
... that in 1881, Latter-day Saint diarist Ida Hunt Udall(pictured) turned down a marriage offer from her longtime boyfriend because he was a monogamist, and she wanted to "share her husband with other wives"? Source: Maria S. Ellsworth, Mormon Odyssey: The Story of Ida Hunt Udall, Plural Wife (University of Illinois Press, 1992), 41: "'…when her Beaver sweetheart, Johnny Murdock, wrote that he was coming to Arizona to marry her, she broke the engagement.' She hoped that she could marry a man who wanted to practice polygamy so she could share her husband with other wives"; Genevieve J. Long, "Laboring in the Desert: The Letters and Diaries of Narcissa Prentiss Whitman and Ida Hunt Udall" (PhD diss., 2002), 279–280: "Udall also describes Mormons who do not support the principle of plural marriage. One of these is a former suitor, Johnny Murdock".
Reviewed: Not required, as this is only my third-ever DYK nomination, but to try to help out I reviewed Marriage License.
Comment: I created the page on November 8. The DYK check tool seems to not be registering its newness due to mistakenly treating the Userspace draft as a creation date.
Other problems: - The part in quotes seems to be from a source and not from Udall herself as I was expecting. I think putting it in quotes is misleading.
Image: Image is freely licensed, used in the article, and clear at 100px.
Overall: Article new enough, long enough. Hook is interesting and sourced, but seems misleading with the quotes (I was expecting it to be from Udall herself). DHN (talk) 05:25, 12 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
@DHN Since the quote is in the third person, doesn't that make it clear enough the quote isn't in Udall's own voice? It's such a small grouping of words, and I didn't want to lose the punch of the biographer's phrasing. But if a third-person quotation is unacceptable, what about the following?
ALT1: ... that in 1881, Latter-day Saint diarist Ida Hunt Udall(pictured) turned down a marriage offer from her longtime boyfriend because he was a monogamist, and she wanted a polygamous marriage with other wives? Source: identical to ALT0
ALT2: ... that in 1881, Latter-day Saint diarist Ida Hunt Udall(pictured) turned down a marriage offer from her longtime boyfriend because he was a monogamist, and she wanted a polygamous marriage? Source: identical to ALT0
@Hydrangeans: I think the phrasing without quotes is fine. Any reason why the biographer's phrasing needs to be in quotes in the article? It didn't seem to be particularly peculiar or noteworthy. DHN (talk) 06:26, 12 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
@DHN: I just thought "she wanted to share her husband with other wives" was very punchy phrasing that would be interesting to readers. But I digress. On your feedback, I have rewritten the paragraph in the page to paraphrase instead of quote.
- I like ALT2. It's more succinct. DHN (talk) 06:52, 12 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
I personally prefer ALT1 over ALT2—the latter is shorter only by three words—but I'll defer to whoever puts the DYK slate together. Thanks very much for the review and feedback!
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Will make an initial read and comments now; spot checks to follow from that and then formal review after those. On a quick scan, it seems like a well put-together article, and it's always good to see biographies outside the conventional "great men" of history. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 19:31, 2 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
It's odd to justify anything other than poetry centrally, and causes accessibility problems (a lot of people with dyslexia find a consistent left margin much easier). Suggest changing the embedded quotes to left-align.
Thanks for that heads up about typical formatting and accessibility; I have changed the quotations to be left-justified. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 01:41, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Is plural marriage a peculiarly LDS term? Per MOS:NOFORCELINK, I'd suggest glossing it as plural marriage (polygamy) on first mention.
Plural marriage is an emic term for the Latter-day Saint practice of religious polygamy. I've gone ahead and glossed it as you suggested for clarity. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 01:41, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
I'd briefly explain what the Mormon Underground was in the lead - and, per WP:POPE, make explicit in the lead that "Mormon" and "LDS" mean the same thing.
I've elaborated in that sentence; how is that clarification? Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 01:41, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
An exception to MOS:LEADCITE is direct quotations: the two in the lead should be cited there. This diary, considered a "major contribution to Mormon pioneer literature" by one biographer should also, per WP:NONFREE, also be attributed (who is that biographer?).
Thanks for letting me know about that. Both quotations were cited in the body, so I have simply repeated the notes in the lead as well. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 01:41, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Hunt's parents moved the family to Beaver, Utah, where Hunt's maternal grandmother Louisa Barnes Pratt lived, arriving there in May: there's a slight grammatical ambiguity here as to whether Hunt's parents or Pratt arrived in May.
Good catch! I've revised to lived, and Hunt's parents arrived there in May. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 16:43, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
baptized into the LDS Church by immersion in the Beaver River.: suggest glossing or at least wikilinking "baptism" and "immersion". Many readers will have little idea of what a Christian baptism is or involves.
Thanks. I added wikilinks for baptism and immersion (the latter to immersion baptism). I wasn't sure how to fit a gloss into the text, so I added an explanatory note. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 17:06, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
There's a fairly severe MOS:SANDWICH between the first quotation and the infobox on my display (Vector 2022), which is particularly jarring as it includes a subheading. Moving some things around would fix this.
I've made an attempt to move that by aligning it differently, but I'm not sure how to make sure if it looks good on all monitors when I only have my own. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 17:06, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
You can resize your browser window to make it smaller in order to see more dramatic SANDWICH effects. Smaller resolutions and browser sizes tend to be most affected by those effects. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 16:23, 8 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Suggest explaining "bookkeeper": it can cover a multitude of things from a clerk to a fully-qualified accountant.
A reasonable suggestion; unfortunately, Arrington doesn't elaborate on what Udall's "bookkeeping" entailed. Clayon, Ellis, and Boone also describe her "bookkeeper" work for a wool mill in Beaver (presumably the same one) but also don't elaborate on the extent of her clerking or accounting. Sorry for not having more on that. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 17:06, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
By the time she was fourteen ... In 1875: mixing up calendar years and Hunt's age here makes it difficult to follow the chronology.
Since Udall would have been fourteen in both 1872 (after March 8) and 1873 (before March 8) I wasn't sure how to precisely describe the year. Does the attempt work alright? Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 17:06, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
I think the current iteration is good: to some extent, the main point is her very young age when she starts working, but that's not lost at the moment (the reader can do the sums). UndercoverClassicist (talk) 21:44, 10 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Seventeen years old, she taught classes and managed all her own finances: I'm not sure I understand this one. We would surely take for granted that someone who ran a school would teach classes? On the second part, are we saying that she was completely financially independent from her family?
I don't know if we would take for granted that someone running a school would teach classes. Principals run schools but don't necessarily teach classes. On the second matter, thank you for catching that unclarity. I have revised to to independently managed the school's finances to indicate that she was financially operating the school on "her own".
a log cabin school: as a compound modifier, this should be log-cabin school, but does it have a specific meaning beyond a school in a log cabin?
Thank you; I have added the hyphen. I don't know if there's a specific meaning beyond the school being in a log cabin. It's the term that Pioneer Women of Arizona used. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 17:06, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
There's a lot of places in this section and what immediately follows. I wonder whether a map would be helpful, especially for people who don't know their US geography?
I'm sure it wouldn't be unhelpful, but I'm afraid I'm not cartographically talented. Do you consider the inclusion of a map a make-or-break matter for the page? Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 17:06, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
drove one of the teams throughout the trip: teams of oxen? Needs a bit more context and explanation.
Unfortunately, Pioneer Women of Arizona only describes the teams as "animals" and includes quotations from diaries kept on the trip which uses the same terminology ("animals"). They could have been oxen, but I don't know if it's implausible for them to have been horses. What would be a responsible way to clarify this without over-presuming something? Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 18:44, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
I haven't heard the term "Euro-American" very often. Is it simply the same as (a euphemism for?) "white"?
The "Euro-Americans" in question in this instance could probably plausibly also be called "white". I wasn't sure how to properly use the term "white" because the construction of race is contested and changes over time, so the alleged 'whiteness' or 'non-whiteness' of various peoples was often up in the air, with some people in the past considering Mexicans to be white and others considering them non-white[1]; and some people in the past considering Mormons to be white and others considering them different from white[2] (since race is socially created and hasn't always been consistently applied to phenotypes). So should people be described by the races ascribed to them by people in the past (as stated by secondary sources), or by the way we describe races in the present (as stated by secondary sources)? Describing people using other terms was a way to avoid wading directly through that. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 18:44, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Yes, that's a fair point, particularly given the issue with Mormons (of which I wasn't aware). I think it's fine as is; you might want to do an EFN on the whiteness or not of Mormons, as it adds some interesting colour to Udall's racism.
Suggest italicising ad hoc and wikilinking seamstress.
I italicized ad hoc; thanks for that suggestion. Unfortunately, there appears to be no Wikipedia page for seamstress. It redirects to dressmaker. Ellsworth's wording is that Ida Huntearned cash by sewing on the family sewing machine for the Indian women and I'm not sure whether that would make her a "dressmaker" specifically. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 18:44, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
If it's thought that would be of help; alright; I have wikilinked to Sewing. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 21:37, 10 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
In late 1878, the LDS Church called John Hunt: I'm not familiar with how the LDS Church works, but the abstract noun plus concrete verb doesn't sit too well. Who, exactly, made the decisions here, and what did being "called" look like?
Would the word "appointed" be better (that's basically how it works). I don't know if there's just one person who makes the decision; it's institutional, and it's plausible a variety of officers had input on the choice to assign John Hunt to be bishop of that congregation. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 18:44, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
I'm not sure it does; that article explains the abstract concept of having a religious calling, but not a human process by which some people (friends? Leaders? The community?) instruct (encourage? Order?) others to do certain things. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 16:50, 8 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
The section I linked to does explain it, in the first sentence: a duty, position, or responsibility in the Church that is issued to a member by priesthood leaders. No one is "ordered" to do anything, and people are free to decline a calling if they wish. That paragraph explains who issues the calling (priesthood leaders), and explains what a calling is (a duty, position, or responsibility in the Church). I don't know how much more "human process" you need. This article (Ida Hunt Udall) doesn't need to explain everything in minute detail to be a good article. Perhaps called John Hunt in the sentence could be changed to asked John Hunt, since a calling is a request, not an order. Simply link "asked" to Religious calling#Latter-day Saints, and that should be good enough. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 17:33, 8 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
This seems like what MOS:NOFORCELINK is warning us about: if the reader has to parse through a linked article (whose text might change at any time) in order to understand what we've written, we should shift the explanation into this article. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 11:58, 9 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
That's why I suggested called John Hunt in the sentence be changed to asked John Hunt. "Asked" is pretty much understood by anyone who can understand English, and the link provides additional context should they wish to get it. However, they don't have to parse through anything to understand "asked". ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 18:25, 9 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
In the hopes that is of help, I have changed "called" to "asked" in this instance. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 21:38, 10 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
she instead moved to Beaver, Utah: back to Beaver?
At this time, the Beaver Stake of the LDS Church called Ida Hunt: a similar issue with the word called: the wikilink, if anything, makes it even more confusing (is this a divine rather than a human intercession)?
Latter-day Saints presumably believe that it's a divine intercession, with God inspiring the appointment. Would "appointed" be better? As the Wikipedia page for religious calling explains, it may come from another person, from a divine messenger, or from within oneself. In the Latter-day Saint case, my understanding is their church believes that God inspires ecclesiastical officers to appoint people to their voluntary clergy/auxiliary positions. I wouldn't, however, make that claim in Wikipedia's voice, hence attributing the action/choice to the church institution. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 18:44, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
I think "appointed" would be more neutral; there's a lot of value in using emic terms to describe and explain people, but an encyclopaedia also needs to keep a level of distance and detachment (WP:TONE). I think appointed does that well.
What exactly was the YLMIA and what was a counselor in the presidency?
In the event that explaining what the YLMIA was is not accomplished with the wiki link, I have added an explanatory note. Counselor in the presidency refers to Ida Hunt's position as an officer in the organization. Would counselor to the president be an improvement? Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 18:44, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
From all my reading in Mormon studies, I think it is quite reasonable to conclude that Udall's appointment was as an advisor and assistant to the organization's president, and not as a therapist. In the event it is confusing, I have added an aside, offset by commas, that Udall's position as counselor constituted being an advisor. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 23:39, 10 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Cambridge have never heard of it, which might indicate that it's specifically USEng: that's not a major problem as this is a US-based article, but MOS:COMMONALITY would advise the use of more international phrasing (which is also likely to be phrasing more familiar to more of our readers) if it can be done without other major sacrifices. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 21:46, 6 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Who is Genevieve Long and why should we listen to her?
Long is, as the body text of the article describes, a literary scholar. She wrote a publicly released dissertation titled "Laboring in the Desert" which is about Christian diarists in the American West, focusing on historical context and literary interpretation of the writings of Narcissa Prentiss Whitman (Presbyterian) and Ida Hunt Udall (Mormon). "Laboring in the Desert" was approved as a dissertation by the University of Oregon, an R1 institution. "Laboring in the Desert" has been cited by other scholars, for one example see Engel-Pearson (Writing Arizona). I'm not sure I understand your question; do you mean to imply you think there is some reason you think that "Laboring in the Desert" is not an appropriate source for this page? Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 18:44, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Not at all: only that we should briefly set some of that out when we introduce her, so that the reader understands why she's being quoted as some sort of authority. Long is introduced, but only on second mention: that should be moved up to first mention (and we'd normally call her "Long" thereafter unless there's a chance of confusion). UndercoverClassicist (talk) 21:48, 6 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Thank you for catching that I had not introduced her on the first mention. I have moved that description of her as a literary scholar to the first mention. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 21:40, 10 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Note D would be better as an SFN using the loc= parameter for the quotation.
Editing the page resulted in the EFN letters shifting around, but I think you meant the quotation about Udall and Murdock. On your advice, I have made that change. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 18:44, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
The wikilink from log schools goes to Log School House, which is a specific house in Canada: I don't think that's right.
You're absolutely right that isn't right. Thank you for this catch. The wiki link has been removed. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 18:44, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Is Johnny Murdock the same as John R. Murdock? If so, we should be consistent about his name, and almost certainly simply refer to him as "Murdock" after first introduction.
No; Johnny Murdock is John R. Murdock's son. (as the page body text describes, with citation, Johnny Murdock, a son of Beaver Stake president John R. Murdock. It would not be correct to assert them as the same person, and the necessity of distinguishing them is why the page continues to use their full names where helpful. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 18:44, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Who exactly is being quoted in note 17? If Hunt, we should be clear; if not, we should attribute.
Editing the page has resulted in note numbers shifting around. I suspect you mean the quotation "conversion to polygamy." I will clarify that that is Ellsworth's phrase; thank you. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 18:44, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
a church-endorsed Co-op store.: if "Co-op" isn't a brand name, it should be decapitalised (and spelled out as co-operative?): if it is, we should explain what it was.
The term is capitalized in various secondary sources because it refers to co-operative stores sponsored and run by the LDS church. However, since it is not a brand name, on your suggestion I have de-capitalized it. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 18:44, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Suggest giving Ella Udall's (long) name simply as that.
I am not 100% sure what you mean, but I think you mean to give her name without the "Ella" in the middle. I have made that change. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 18:44, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
I was suggesting simply calling her "Ella Hunt", but we can go with practically any solution that's sensible and consistent. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 21:50, 6 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Calling her "Ella Hunt" would not be appropriate, as Hunt is not her maiden or married name. However, I have changed that to "Ella Stewart Udall," the name she is commonly known by in consulted secondary sources and which was her used name at the time of Ida Hunt joined the marriage. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 21:42, 10 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
their baby daughter Pearl (b. 1880): per MOS:BIRTHDATE, we shouldn't give the birth date like this: you can spell out Pearl's age at the time if you think it helpful.
Her age at the time seemed helpful, insofar as it clarifies to the curious reader something about the situation (moving in with a couple that has a teenage or elementary age daughter is a very different situation from a situation involving an infant or toddler). I have changed the parenthetical note to describe her age on your suggestion. Thank you. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 18:44, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
the history of the Latter-day Saint people: this framing strikes me (as an outsider to LDS history) as a bit odd, as if we're presenting them as an ethnic rather than a religious group. We wouldn't normally talk about the Christian people or the Muslim people. Suggest "the history of the Latter-day Saints".
I'm not sure about the very objective verb "describes" for a very subjective judgement like "artful".
I think this is related to the question I posed to you in the Legacy subsection. Nevertheless, I've rephrased this to in the words of Genevieve Long. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 19:31, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
We talk a lot about romantic tropes and devices from sentimental fiction, but never actually explain what these were.
Good point. I've added two examples of sentimental fiction tropes, as identified in "Laboring in the Desert". Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 19:31, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
They spent the wedding night together: I'd suggest a rephrase, as this can be read as implying physical proximity or sexual contact.
I've changed this to They spent the wedding night together in conversation,; is that an improvement? Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 19:31, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Ida Udall "integrat[ed] into the[ir] world of polygamous wives" and extended family, achieving some measure of reconciliation "between wife and wife: the problem of unattributed quotations rears its head again, but these both seem like they would be better paraphrased.
The words were from "Laboring in the Desert"; I think you're right that a paraphrase would be better. How is Ida Udall became part of the family and its network of plural wives, achieving some measure of reconciliation between herself and Ella Udall? Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 19:31, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
In 1884, the local Apache Chief newspaper threatened vigilante violence against John Hunt, Udall's father, and against her husband David: the word vigilante implies that they had done something wrong: do we know what that was?
"Vigilantism" is the term used in Hell on the Range; From what I gather, in context Daniel Herman is implying something about the newspaper's attitude (believing that John Hunt and David Udall had done something wrong) rather than implying they actually had. Per Hell on the Range (page 80), the main "something wrong" Hunt and Udall had done, according to the newspaper, was being Mormons, making the situation much less "Batman" and much more "violent posse". The other word Hell on the Range uses to describe this is "lynching". In the case that you think vigilante too heavily carries such inadvertent implications, I have trimmed it from the sentence. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 19:31, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
I worry that we might have gone too far the other way; we've said "violence" but it sounds like the source is pretty clear on "murder". Can we say that the paper "called for the lynching of..."? (I'm a little unsure on lynching outside an African-American context, but will defer to you as the native AmerE speaker) UndercoverClassicist (talk) 21:49, 10 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Just realized I missed this one. Good point that I may have overcorrected. Yes, Hell on the Range's assessment is pretty clear on the newspaper having called for killing. I have revised the page's body text as follows: In 1884, the local Apache Chief newspaper publicly proposed that the community lynch John Hunt, Udall's father, and her husband David. Lynching is most frequently used to describe extrajudicial public posse murders of African Americans, but it has also been used to describe public murders of Mexican Americans, and Hell on the Range extends it to sectarian violence between Mormons and non-Mormons.
For further context, here is the relevant excerpt from Hell on the Range (page 80): The editor, a U.S. court commissioner named John McCarter, founded the Apache Chief, the weekly newspaper of St. Johns. In his “Official County Paper,” McCarter began a drum- beat of anti-Mormon polemic. "How did Missouri and Illinois get rid of the Mor- mons?" wrote McCarter in the May 30, 1884, issue of his paper. "By the use of the shot gun and rope" . . . McCarter did not merely suggest vigilante action; he singled out specific indi- viduals for lynching. Stake president Jesse Smith, Snowflake bishop John Hunt, and St. Johns bishop David Udall made the list.Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 01:07, 11 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
I'm happy with that if you are, and certainly seeing the word used in scholarship of this precise incident gives us an easy justification. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 21:42, 11 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
she evinced racism against Mexicans, whom she did not consider neighbors: evinced racism is an odd phrase ("held racist views"?). What exactly do we mean by whom she did not consider neighbors?
Point taken on the strange sound of evinced racism. I've changed that to your suggested held racist views. As for did not consider neighbors, that is based on "Laboring in the Desert" which states of Udall that she repeatedly discounts their neighborly value, emphasizing in her writing how little the Udalls consider them true fellow settlers ("they" in this case being Mexicans living in St. Johns). According to "Laboring in the Desert," although the Udalls lived next door to Mexicans, when Ida Udall sought out "neighbors" (in her words, in her diary) she described in her diary crossing town to find other Mormons. Using this and other historical and literary evidence, "Laboring in the Desert" concludes that Udall did not consider them neighbors. Since Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, I thought to summarize it on the page rather than restate the whole argument. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 19:31, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
As I read it, "discounts their neighborly value" more means something like "considered them unworthy as neighbors". UndercoverClassicist (talk) 21:52, 6 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
That seems to make sense. I have rephrased that clause as follows: she held racist views against Mexicans, whom she did not consider worthy neighbors. How is that? Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 21:44, 10 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
In mid-1884, David Udall was indicted on a charge of polygamy: it's worth being clear, here if not earlier, that (and where) polygamy was a crime.
That's a good point. I have added that to both the first appearance of polygamy in the body text (Ida Hunt meeting Jesse, Emma, and Augusta Smith) as well as to this section. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 20:26, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
There's a contradiction between the article's assessment of Udall's motives in going into hiding and Peterson's: Peterson talks about the physical evidence (in other words, her simple existence), whereas the editorial voice talks about her putative testimony. Was the Underground more organised than simply hiding in a cupboard?
I am not sure I understand the contradiction. It seems to be the case that both are true: her simple existence as well as her putative testimony would be serious evidence against David Udall in the case of an antipolygamy trial. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 20:26, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
I don't disagree with your inference, but it can't be our inference; to keep WP:OR happy, it must be made by a source. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 12:01, 9 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
I don't understand what you mean by your inference. All sentences in that paragraph cite secondary sources. PBS and Genevieve Long state that Ida Udall's testimony could be used against David Udall in court (hence their references) are appended to the sentence claiming such). Charles Peterson states that Ida Udall herself was "physical evidence." I do not see how I have inferred neither. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 21:47, 10 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
By September 28, Udall was leaving: I'm not sure quite what was leaving means here: do we know when she actually left, or when she arrived in Nephi?
Good catch on the unclearness. I have rephrased to On September 28, Udall fled town, and she eventually went to live with David Udall's parents in Nephi, Utah. Ida Udall left St. Johns on September 28, 1884, still based on the citation to the article "St. Johns' Saints". As for when she arrived in Nephi, per "Laboring in the Desert", Udall lived with her in-laws in Nephi, Utah From Christmas 1885 to October 1886 (272). Udall's published diary clarifies that she stayed with a series of co-religionists in northern Arizona between leaving St. Johns and arriving in Nephi. However, citing her diary seems like it would be primary research. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 20:26, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
in order to maintain a "family cover": attribute or paraphrase ("to maintain plausible deniability for their relationship?")
The quotation is from "Laboring in the Desert", cited in the note, but I think you're right that a paraphrase would be better here. Thank you for your suggested phrasing, which I have now incorporated into the page. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 20:26, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Although prosecutors did not successfully bring polygamy charges against David Udall, in 1885 he was convicted and imprisoned on a perjury charge that was attributed to anti-polygamy lobbying in St. Johns: this needs a bit of explanation: presumably he did lie under oath, so purely attributing it to anti-polygamy sentiment seems difficult?
According to the academic article "St. Johns' Saints", which is cited for the sentence, the perjury charge (which was about land claims and did not in a legal sense have to do with polygamy) was trumped up; what had happened amounted, according to the article, to a misunderstanding between David Udall and district clerk Alfred Ruiz, who in fact attempted to testify for the defense. In an earlier grand jury hearing for the same charge, the grand jury concluded that there had been no perjury. However, according to the article, antipolygamy lobbyists pushed a different indictment through a second grand jury, and at trial the judge, Sumner Howard (who publicly sermonized against Mormonism and polygamy), ruled the defense's questions to Ruiz as irrelevant, preventing Ruiz from testifying on Udall's behalf. Those are the reasons for the article to conclude that the conviction was attributed to anti-polygamy lobbying. Does that answer your question? Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 20:26, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Can we say something like "trumped-up perjury charge", "false charge of perjury" or similar: is the evidence strong enough and the source clear enough for that? UndercoverClassicist (talk) 21:54, 6 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Yes, the source is clear enough for that. I have changed the language in the body text of the page to "trumped-up perjury charge". Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 21:52, 10 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Grover Cleveland: who was, by now, president? Definitely needs an introduction. How does he get involved in this one?
Good point and good catch. I have added to the page, with citations to Hell on the Range, how Grover Cleveland became involved. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 20:26, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
The typography has gone a bit wonky: U. S. president should be US President, U.S. President or, perhaps better, Grover Cleveland, the President of the United States. Equally, you might consider simply President, as we're in a US context; it's unlikely to be the President of France. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 21:52, 10 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Since you consider it better, I have amended to Grover Cleveland, the President of the United States. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 23:51, 10 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
it was the first time Udall and Ella had seen each other in four years: defaulting to last names for men and first names for women is archaic: use both first names in this context (or "David and Ella Udall", "the couple...").
There seems to be a misunderstanding: "Udall" here does not refer to David Udall (who I often call "David" in this article). "Udall" here refers to Ida Hunt Udall. (David and Ella in fact had seen each other plenty during these four years, as David did not go "Underground", and he and Ella continued to cohabit as a putatively monogamous husband and wife and were only briefly separated by the perjury conviction, from which David was released after the pardon.) Since Ida Hunt Udall is the subject of this Wikipedia page, I privilege calling her "Udall" and meanwhile call her husband and co-wife by their given names. Since you consider it confusing in this sentence, however, I have edited it so that it refers to "Ida Udall" and "Ella Udall". Is that an improvement? Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 20:26, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Yes: it's entirely my mistake, but it's clearer the way you've now written it and always good to idiot-proof our articles. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 21:54, 6 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
issued a manifesto: the wikilink reads as if it's to manifesto: suggest "a statement known as the 1890 Manifesto, in which..."
Good point. I've rephrased it, using your suggested language; thanks. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 20:52, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
withdrawing the church's official sanction of the practice: it would have been useful, a little further up, to have some background on the LDS's polygamy (was it expected, normal, tolerated...), the Church's sanction thereof and the friction it created with non-LDS society.
Is the context added through the sentence beginning During this time, Latter-day Saints married polygamously earlier in the page sufficient, or do you think more is necessary? Is the provision of wikilinks to other pages about the subject insufficient? Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 20:52, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
For GA, the bar here is pretty low, but there's some major context with polygamy being one of the things that sets the LDS apart from the very beginning, something that often attracts violent opposition from the communities around them, and a source of some difficulty within the church itself. Essentially, I think it would help if readers didn't get the impression that this about-face came out of nowhere. It would also be helpful, I think, to clarify vaguely how prevalent it was (did all LDS marry polygamously?) However, for GA, you're at liberty to add as much or as little context as you want, as the history of LDS polygamy isn't a major aspect of Ida Udall's life. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 21:58, 6 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
I added two sentences about the estimated proportions of polygamous practice during this time, which according to Antipolygamy Controversy ranged between 20% to ~64% in "selected Mormon wards" (congregations). Hell on the Range cites a higher estimate for specifically Arizona which Herman says is probably too high but which he nevertheless implies is useful for illustrating the perceived significance of the practice at the time. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 22:12, 10 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
complying with the Woodruff Manifesto: we haven't named it as such yet: I'd suggest consistency on "the 1890 Manifesto" throughout.
However, in July 1892, church leaders instructed him otherwise: grammatically, we need to be a bit clearer on what the church leaders told him not to do.
The Antipolygamy Controversy (p. 185) states, David Udall, who initially interpreted the meaning of the Manifesto as instructions to cease living with his second wife Ida. However, after apparently receiving instructions in July of 1892 from Church leaders, David resumed contact with Ida.Mormon Odyssey (p. 190) states, church policy on the continuation of existing plural families was clarified to David. Shortly thereafter, he began living with Ida again, though he did not move back to the Mill Farm until the following spring. They do not provide exactly what David was told to not do, beyond to not not live with Ida Udall. What is most clear from these two secondary sources is that there was some kind of "otherwise", some countermanding of his course. I did not, however, want to presume what exactly might have been said in the absence of a secondary source saying so. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 20:52, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
In David's absence, Udall "had to manage the children and farm by herself" or with hired help, as she did in 1896.: this quote is definitely better paraphrased, but I'm not sure that the sentence isn't better cut: it's essentially a tautology (without her husband, Udall had to manage without her husband).
I think you are right that it is better paraphrased, and I think this phrasing is less tautological: how is this, appended to the preceding sentence? , managing the farm on her own.Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 20:52, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
I thought it was more concise this way and that "managing" as a verb could encompass both her own work as well as overseeing the work of her employees and children. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 22:14, 10 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
I can wear that: "managing" a company doesn't mean that you do all the work yourself. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 22:18, 10 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Udall was a "serene intellectual", in the words of historian Leonard J. Arrington, who promoted culture and education: how, exactly?
According to the article he authored, Udall did so as a teacher and musician. Is that sufficient for the purposes of the article? Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 20:52, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Ella "was not interested." ... "ma[de] for [a] particularly amicable household" when they became co-wives.: I'll stop beating the quote drum eventually...
The quotation was from "Laboring in the Desert", cited in the note at the end of the sentence; nevertheless, a paraphrase would probably be better. How is this? Having been friends for years, Udall and Morgan got along well as co-wives living together.Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 20:52, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
On attribution: the citation isn't enough (per WP:NONFREE) if the work is in copyright: we need to name the author (rights-holder) in the body text. If it's paraphrased enough that we're just reporting the facts, rather than using the creative phrasing of the author (WP:CLOP), the citation's fine on its own: the new phrasing fits into that category, I think. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 22:00, 6 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
From 1906 to 1908, Udall suffered three strokes,: between 1906 and 1908 would be more grammatical, unless they happened continuously for three years.
Good catch. I have made the revision according to your suggested phrasing; thank you. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 20:52, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
the Arizona state supreme court: should this be the Arizona Supreme Court?
Either is fine, I thought? The former is saying 'the state supreme court that is for Arizona'; the latter is the formal name of said state-level supreme court. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 21:20, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
I'm not sure supreme courts are a common or generic enough thing that you can refer to them so non-specifically, but I won't kick up a major fuss on this one for GA. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 22:01, 6 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Salt Lake City is introduced and wikilinked here, on its second mention: should be on first.
Pauline's husband and Udall's son-in-law, Asahel Henry Smith, adored Udall and frequently retold stories from her life: this one's close to the bar as to whether it's really encyclopaedic information, I think.
I trusted the assessment of a university press (University of Oklahoma Press, publisher of Writing Arizona) on the detail's worthiness for inclusion in an academic treatment. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 21:20, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
I'm not saying this to pass judgement either way, but a Wikipedia is built from bits of secondary sources - that doesn't mean, however, that it will always look like one or make the same decisions as they do. Policies and guidelines like WP:SUMMARYSTYLE, WP:TONE and WP:TRUTH are usually the differences here: we have to follow them and our sources don't. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 22:04, 6 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Udall is also the great-grandmother: was also.
May I ask for some clarity on this? You say "was also the great-grandmother," but then "is the great-great-grandmother" is fine? And is "was" correct? Obviously Udall is dead, but "was" suggests that she somehow stops being the great-grandmother of Milan Smith. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 21:20, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
The green text is current article text (using the tq template to pull out a quotation): the normal text is the suggested correction. It's conventional English usage to use 'was' in this context when the subject is dead, and 'is' when they are alive ("John Smith was my grandfather; he was a butcher.")
Written as both a "personal resource" and "public record", the diary demonstrates creativity, literary strategy, and intertextuality with then-contemporary literature. quotes: but also, these are highly subjective assessments which need to be taken out of Wikipedia's voice. We can't verify that it is creative, but we can verify that it has been described as creative, and so on.
Apologies for going slightly out of order, but I'm a little confused on this point, and since it's a more involved question I figure it's best to pose it sooner than later. Since Wikipedia is written as an encyclopedia (a tertiary source), rather than as secondary (direct) research, shouldn't I/we defer to the judgment of the secondary sources? I also don't know how I would verify that it's been described as creative. Wouldn't I have to find some article written as a review of, say, Genevieve Long's dissertation which independently verifies that Long says, in the dissertation, that the diary is creative? Whereas if I cite Long, I am citing Long saying that the diary is creative, rather than citing Long saying thatshe is saying that the diary is creative. Wouldn't the latter be primary research? I hope those sentences just now aren't too strange to read; I struggled over how to phrase it. I'd add that other Wikipedia pages seem like they accept the judgment of literary critics/scholars when it comes to assessing literature such as the diary is being treated as. Charles Dickens is described (with citation) as having a style is marked by a profuse linguistic creativity and as providing arresting names for his characters. H. P. Lovecraft's writing is called ill-suited to the pulps. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 02:00, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
If Long writes "the diary is creative", we can write "Long describes the diary as 'creative'": that's verifiable and factual. If Long writes "critics describe the diary as creative", we can write something like "the diary is generally considered creative". However, we shouldn't simply write "the diary is creative" in either case, because that breaks WP:VERIFIABILITY by writing an inherently unverifiable statement: a restriction which we have to follow but Long doesn't. It's the is called/has been called or similar that makes the difference. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 22:08, 6 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
I confess to some confusion as to how content verified by reliable secondary sources and determined by previously published information (per the Verifiability page) can be considered inherently unverifiable. Nevertheless, I think I have amended the page in accord with your sense of it. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 23:54, 10 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
as being "Outstanding among: lower-case outstanding, but I'd be tempted to simply remove the quotes, which read a little like scare quotes.
I thought that lower-casing would be a misquotation (as it is not lowercased in Take Up Your Mission and that removing the quotes would be plagiarism (as the page would be copying the language without attribution)? Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 21:20, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Per MOS:CONFORM, we shouldn't (unjustifiably) change the wording of a quotation, but we should normalise the punctuation to our own MOS where doing so doesn't change the meaning or how someone would read it aloud.UndercoverClassicist (talk) 22:10, 6 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Makes sense. I have lowercased "outstanding". I hope it is alright I left it in quotation marks, insofar as the words are a direction quotation? Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 23:55, 10 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
is the core of a biography assembled by Ellsworth which the University of Illinois Press published in 1992: is there a rationale for including the publisher? We'd normally simply mention the author, and perhaps the year, and maybe the title.
I included the publisher so that the reader can know that the book was published by a scholarly press. Knowing that the book was published by a secular university press is very different from the range of possibilities a reader might have for a Mormon history book (self-published? Desert Book? A religious university press? etc.). Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 21:20, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
I can see the argument there (though does that cast doubt on the sources used elsewhere which do fall into that bracket?) UndercoverClassicist (talk) 22:11, 6 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
I do not think this should cast doubt on sources used elsewhere. None are self-published, and none have Deseret Book as a direct publisher. I have not found reasons to consider Pioneer Women of Arizona an unreliable source, and the existence of editorial oversight and commentary throughout strengthened my confidence in it, though I would emphasize it is only cited 11 times on a page with 108 citations (that's counting multiple citations to the same page or same short-form source separately; if we don't count such separately, then it's 6 times out of 84 citations). Nevertheless, a secular university press is a gold standard, so it speaks to the topic's quality significance, as determined by the University of Illinois Press. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 22:25, 10 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
The critical assessments here are overwhelmingly and gushingly positive: is that an accurate reflection of all the responses to Udall's book? this one, for instance, is much more ambivalent.
The critical assessments which cited on the page thus far were those which describe/assess Udall's diary, rather than evaluations of Ellsworth's secondary-source editorial contribution (since the page is about Udall and her notability as a diarist and is not about Ellsworth as a biographer). From what I can see in his review, Stephen J. Stein is critical of Mormon Odyssey as an academic biography but does not provide a direct assessment of Udall's diary as a text. Stein's criticism, that it lacks a critical perspective, because of the documents contained in it, seems like it must be about Mormon Odyssey rather than about Udall's diary, since the diary itself is one of those documents contained in Mormon Odyssey. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 21:20, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Fair point, but if we're going to include the positive detail that Mormon Odyssey won an award, we should give WP:DUEWEIGHT to the criticisms of it. Surely, though, at least one historian must have discussed the limitations of Udall's diary as a historical source? Is there nothing on that in Long's PhD?
Good point that since the award was given to the whole book of Mormon Odyssey, comments on the book and not just the diary are worth considering. I have expanded the Diary subsection to include a range of comments and criticisms, including Publishers Weekly's criticism of the diary and some other comments on the book overall. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 22:48, 10 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Suggest adding alt text.
Are there any images which don't have alt text? I added alt text when I first added the images to the page, and looking in the visual editor, every single one still has those alt texts. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 21:25, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Thank you for that catch; I have added this alt text: Black-and-white portrait photograph of Ida Hunt Udall in 1905, in a high-collared top and her hair done up. She looks forward, into the camera.Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 22:49, 10 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
The copyright notice on File:Ida-frances-hunt-udall.png isn't right: we say that it was published in 1905, but the copyright notice says that it was published between 1928 and 1963. If the 1905 date is verifiably correct, change the licence tag to {{PD-US-expired}}
I am somewhat confused. I thought that the image page doesn't say it was published in 1905; I thought that it says it was created in 1905. The photograph was taken in 1905 (according to Mormon Odyssey), and then the photograph was published in Arizona, Pioneer, Mormon (David King Udall's autobiography) in 1959. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 21:25, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
File:Ida-and-david.png: we've said that the publication date is unknown, but also that it was published between 1928 and 1963. We need to find some evidence of first publication, or that it was never published before 2003 but was created before 1903, which would allow {{PD-US-unpublished}}.
I am somewhat confused. I thought that the image page says the date of creation is unknown. It is not known when the photograph was taken. The photograph was published in Arizona, Pioneer, Mormon (David King Udall's autobiography) in 1959. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 21:25, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
The Date field on Commons is meant to be the date of publication, but I understand what you're saying (might help to bracket (created) in that entry.) Given the point below about renewal, I think we're fine here. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 22:16, 6 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
I see. Thank you for catching and explaining that. I have amended the image pages to note the difference between dates of creation and dates of publication. Glad to hear the Internet Archive's report on the non-renewed copyright is sufficient. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 22:52, 10 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
File:Ida-family.png: (how) have we verified that the copyright wasn't renewed?
The Internet Archive reports the following: Copyright not renewed as per Stanford database.
I notice a lot of sources from within the LDS: it's probably worth being transparent that Ellsworth is Udall's daughter and not a professional historian, and Clayton et al is published by BYU.
There seem to be two different threads here, so I hope it's alright to reply to them separately.
I notice a lot of sources from within the LDS—I am somewhat perplexed by this. The only two sources published by an LDS Church affiliate are "Latter-day Saint Women on the Arizona Frontier" and Pioneer Women of Arizona. The former was written by Leonard Arrington, a very reputed historian, so the venue (an LDS Church magazine) seemed tolerable, especially for a source cited only three times. The latter was not published by the LDS Church directly but instead by an academic organ adjacent to it, the Religious Studies Center. It is still a footnoted, scholarly book, so I thought that is alright, especially since it's not a preponderance of sources. Besides that, I am not seeing what you mean about "sources from within the LDS". The other sources are published by academic journals (such as the Journal of Mormon History (run by an independent academic organization that studies the Mormon past and is not operated by the LDS Church) and Reviews in American History), public institutions (like PBS), secular universities (University of Illinois Press, University of Oklahoma Press, University of Arizona Press, Yale University Press), or independent presses with accepted reputations (Garland Publishing, Alfred A. Knopf, Greg Kofford). Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 21:51, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Ellsworth is Udall's daughter and not a professional historian—I presume you mean being "transparent that Ellsworth is Udall's [grand]daughter" rather than daughter, as Maria S. Ellsworth was born in 1918, three years after Ida Udall died. That has been added to the page. As for the latter, she is the author of a biography which was published by a secular university press that uses peer review (University of Illinois Press); I am not sure how much more historian she can be, and she's certainly more of one than I and many other Wikipedians who do our best but are strictly speaking enthusiasts and not professionals. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 21:51, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Stein's review included the line "Maria S. Ellsworth is not writing as a professional historian. Her historical interests arise out of concern for her ancestors". I think we are burying the lead a little to name her as a "biographer" but to elide the fact that she's Udall's granddaughter (good catch, thank you!), particularly when that's been identified as a central part of her project by at least one published review. I can't find that Ellsworth is a professional historian; it's not that uncommon for non-professionals to be published in university presses (most often, someone who publishes their PhD thesis having never taken an academic post). I'm not saying that it's a bad source, but it has an unusual link to the subject which I think most readers would want to know when handling it. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 22:21, 6 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
On another note: the Pioneer Women article is miscited: the article itself is written by Pearl Udall Nelson - we definitely need to be upfront on that one! UndercoverClassicist (talk) 22:23, 6 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
I would not consider it wholly mis-cited. While some of the material cited is from her chapter contributed to the book, the article also cites editorial material authored by Clayton, Ellis, and Boone in footnotes and in the post-chapter addendum. Would it be possible and amenable to add Pearl Udall Nelson as a co-author? Citing only Nelson would make make the source seem less independent than it is, as much as I understand that you think citing the book to its primary editors fails to fully account for Nelson's role in authoring portions of the material. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 22:19, 10 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Ah, yes, I see the "Ellis and Boone" section. To me, this is fundamentally an article by Nelson in an edited volume by the others (so we should use chapter=, author-last= and editor1-last= and so on), at least until you get to the middle of p740: anything before that is, at least as presented in the article, entirely Nelson's. The post-chapter commentary muddies those waters a bit, though. I'd probably handle that by citing it as two chapters: the first authored by Nelson up to p740, and the second as Ellis and Boone's editorial note on that page. I think it's more of an issue here because Nelson is so close to the coal face; that's important information for a reader when evaluating the source. Do we also cite the Smith article that follows? UndercoverClassicist (talk) 22:35, 10 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Apologies for my mixup of names; most of the cited content from Pioneer Women is from the chapter by Smith, not by Nelson. I have made a revision which delineates between content by Smith versus content by the editors, Clayton, Ellis, and Boone. The genealogical data cited from page 741, for example (Udall's birth date and birth location) are supplied by the editors, per the Introduction to the book. There is also a reference to 744n19, which verifies the Zuni presence in Savoia Valley, which is content supplied by the editors, and not by Smith. This results in four citations to Smith's chapter on Ida Frances Hunt Udall and two citations to Clayton, Ellis, and Boone's editorial content, which I appreciate does register useful information to the reader and is worth delineating. Thank you for your patience on this point. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 23:34, 10 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Two of the sources are PhD theses, which isn't a huge problem in itself, and another is a collection of primary sources; the remainder don't seem to focus on Udall in any great depth. This might be simply a reflection of the sources available, but it would help bolster the article's credentials for reliability and notability if we had more scholarship published at greater distance.
I am not sure what you mean by Two of the sources are PhD theses. None of the sources are theses, and only one is a PhD dissertation ("Laboring in the Desert"). By collection of primary sources, do you mean either Letters of Catharine Cottam Romney or Mormon Odyssey? For those, as the invisible comments state (though I could move/add them to the visible text if you think it would be an improvement to do so), the page cites only editorial content (the secondary source accompanying the primary source) and not the primary source. (The only exceptions the quotation from the memoir and the quotation from the letter in the quote boxes.) The majority of the sources are academic sources published with organizations that use peer review (such as the University of Illinois Press, University of Oklahoma Press, Reviews in American History, etc.). Is that not a relatively typical distance for sources in a Wikipedia article? Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 21:51, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Yes, one PhD. On the LDS point, I more meant that we haven't shown too much evidence of scholarly interest in Udall from people without skin in the game - either family relations or people whose connection with LDS history is that it's their history. Going down the line, I'll strike the ones with potential quibbles (I'm not saying these are game-changing issues, but just to give you an idea):
* Pioneer Women (Udall's daughter, [presumably] non-academic historian, BYU publication)
* Engel-Pearson: no issue (but only used quite tangentially)
* Hansen (point taken on what's cited, but only cited once: on which, use loc= in that citation to fix formatting).
* Herman (no issues, but only used twice)
* Iversen (no issues, cited four times)
* Leseur (explicitly LDS publisher, non-professional historian, four cites)
* Long (PhD, used very heavily)
* Peterson (Certainly scholarly, but of note that he was a BYU professor and the work seems to have largely been read and reviewed among religious historians in the double sense).
* Ulrich (no issue, but only cited once on a side point).
Essentially, my worry is that there's an inverse correlation between the apparent solidity of the sources and their importance to the article. We seem to lean most heavily on Pioneer Women, Mormon Odyssey and Long, which all have some level of issue in meeting the standards of WP:HQRS (in particular, with the first two, how far they're truly independent of the subject). If we look only at sources where nobody could raise an objection to their authority or independence, we're down to a small fraction of the article's citations. If there's more scholarship on Udall written by people not related to her and ideally by people outside the LDS church, it would ease these concerns if it were brought in. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 22:44, 6 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Aside from the additional book reviews I've pulled in, I have not identified other sources that treat Udall more extensively, unless I were perhaps to cite newspaper articles from the 1800s, but that doesn't seem like it would be superior to university press-published books. You say these are not game-changing issues; does that mean the article can nevertheless qualify as a Good Article? I did my best to make careful judgments of the sources, limiting the use of Arrington's Ensign article, using Pioneer Women sparingly for facts, and preferring content published by journals and academic presses, such as the University of Arizona Press or University of Illinois Press (which is also the distributor of the Journal of Mormon History, the venue for the article "St. Johns's Saints" cited five times).
I am not sure how I feel about any impression of Mormon Odyssey as objectionable; I recognize that Ellsworth is Udall's granddaughter, but the University of Illinois Press is the publisher and had the ultimate decision over whether or not to publish the manuscript. If Mormon Odyssey were self-published by Ellsworth, I would agree with concerns about connection between the source and creator. However, a secular university press which employs editorial and peer review is the organ that made the publication decisions, and it is no relative of Udall's. An objection to the authority of Mormon Odyssey—university-published, and with several glowing reviews (even acknowledging a few more ambivalent ones)—as a source would strike me as strange.
You say that sources would be ideally by people outside the LDS church, but I am not sure what that has to do with reliability, so long as the publication venue adheres to quality publishing standards. It is not as though it's strange that most content about U. S. American presidents are written by U. S. Americans, or that many women's studies scholars are women. In that sense, I'm not surprised that several of the authors cited on this page were Mormons. I do consider it relevant that with only two exceptions (Pioneer Women and the Ensign article), the publishers had no institutional affiliation with a Mormon denomination—Greg Kofford is a press which explicitly targets Mormon studies as an academic field, but I wouldn't conflate that with the Latter-day Saint tradition as a religious affiliation (We desire to publish responsible and rigorous scholarship that impacts the field of Mormon Studies by working with thoughtful and innovative authors.); additionally, though LeSeuer is not an academically historian, he is a journalist trained in research and fact checking—and those presses (including the University of Illinois Press and the University of Oregon) played a role in deeming Ida Udall of significance and in exercising editorial and peer review.
I'd add that the PBS article is cited five times, and it is certainly also independent of Udall. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 23:27, 10 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
OK: I think this is all fine, and none of these things are serious issues at the level at which we're working. I don't have any reason to think that any of the sources are specifically unreliable, and that's all that we really need for GA. I certainly can't find anything in the article that suggests that any authorial bias has affected our view of things. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 21:49, 11 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
We should introduce new people on first mention: who was David King Udall? Mary Ann Linton Morgan Udall doesn't have an article: what makes her notable enough for a mention in the lead?
I've elaborated on David King Udall and Ella Stewart Udall's in the lead. As for Mary Ann Linton Morgan Udall, although I am drafting a page for her, I was inclined to include her one way or another on account of it being the case that part of Ida Hunt Udall's notability, as identified by the available scholarship, is her participation in and documentation of Latter-day Saint polygamy. Mentioning Morgan seemed like due diligence in accurately describing the extent of Udall's practice. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 01:41, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
This isn't a judgement one way or the other, but I'd keep in mind WP:NOTINHERITED (that we don't consider being related, in any sense of the term, to a notable person to confer notability): if the purpose of this part of the lead is to explain why Udall is notable, listing her wives/husbands doesn't do that as far as Wikipedia is concerned. Point taken that the fact that she documented her plural marriage (and so, necessarily but perhaps less importantly, that she was actually in one) is a major part of the reason she gets an article. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 03:08, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Sorry if I'm misunderstanding, but I'm a little confused. I thought your feedback was that the page should introduce new people on first mention and asked who was David King Udall?. I took that to mean that you wanted the identity of people elaborated on in their first mention, including the lead (since this is part of the block of feedback for the lead). I don't mean to imply that Ida Udall's notability depends on David Udall's or on Ella Udall's, because I don't think Ida Udall's notability depends on them being notable. The content cited for this page is about Ida Udall as a person, diarist, historical figure, etc., and not simply as a spouse. Should I remove the introductions of people in their first mentions? Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 05:03, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
The lead should be a summary of the content of the article. Therefore, any introduction of who someone is mentioned (beyond a wikilink to their article) should be done in the main body of the article rather than in the lead. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 16:21, 8 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
I'm not sure the second sentence of that follows from the first, given that the lead is also meant to be able to substitute for the whole article for the (many, majority of) readers who won't read any further (MOS:LEAD). As with most things in this area, it's a balancing act. Generally, I think if someone's important enough to mention in the lead, they're important enough to make sure that the reader knows who they are. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 21:41, 10 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
I have restored to the lead brief accountings of who Udall's spouses were (identifying them with adjacent descriptors, such as Latter-day Saint bishop, former telegraphist, and genealogist. I do not think Ida Udall's notability depends on the notability of her spouses, nor would I say David Udall's, Ella Stewart Udall's, or Mary Morgan's notabilities depend on hers. If I have misunderstood your feedback on any point and gone awry, let me know. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 17:38, 14 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
[Original resolved]
Was the Underground more organised than simply hiding in a cupboard? This seems to be a separate question, so I am answering it separately, though I am not sure how to answer it. Insofar as the page describes, with cited evidence from secondary sources, Ida Udall doing much more than simply hiding in a cupboard, I think the answer is yes, the Underground was more than that. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 20:26, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
In which case, I think it would help the reader to know a bit more about what making use of the Underground involved. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 12:01, 9 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Fair suggestion. I added the following sentence, with citation to a peer-reviewed journal article, to the page following the first mention of the "Mormon Underground" in the body text: By "Mormon Underground", Latter-day Saints referred to a variety of strategies for evading arrests or subpoenas, including frequently moving, living in hiding, keeping marriages and pregnancies secret, and living under pseudonyms. How is that? Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 23:49, 10 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
It's good. That seems to make it sound like quite an individual thing (though obviously it would need the support, at least through silence, of the community around the person in question). When I heard the term "Mormon Underground", my head went to something like the Underground Railroad, which was a much more organised affair that involved calling on the more-or-less ready help of various other more-or-less organised people. Was there any of that aspect to it as well? UndercoverClassicist (talk) 21:44, 11 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Yes, that was another aspect of it. Some towns predominantly populated by Latter-day Saint would post watches to look out for federal marshals and their deputies so as to announce to people to hide. Some wives or husbands in hiding who lived on the move stayed with friends or relatives, but others would be passed between co-religionist households they didn't personally know at the arrangement of informal/formal networks. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 22:52, 11 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Udall applied for a homestead: what did this involve? Is it via the Homestead Acts?
Mormon Odyssey does not answer these questions. In a summary-style encyclopedic article, is that level of detail necessary?
I suppose if we're going to add the detail of applied for (rather than e.g. moved to, acquired), we ought to take the next step of explaining why that's an appropriate turn of phrase. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 20:25, 13 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Lacking further details in secondary sources about Udall's homestead application, I have revised the sentence to state she acquired the homstead. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 03:53, 14 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
I'm no longer totally sure of the logic as to what goes in the bibliography: journal articles seem to be cited only in footnotes (defensible but not ideal, as it means we don't have page-number citations: suggest using the RP template if going to maintain this policy), but so too is The Lonely Polygamist, which is most certainly a book. Frankly, I think treating journal articles and books as fundamentally different - particularly in a world with chapters in edited volumes - is rather outdated these days. The citation standards for GA are almost non-existent, but giving page numbers for all applicable sources would help with verification. UndercoverClassicistT·C 08:59, 18 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
I had read in a slide deck hosted on Wikipedia about GA/FA quality (apologies for spacing on what exactly the presentation was) that putting short-form citations in a bibliography alongside books was frowned upon because it constituted "padding" out the notes. Is this a make or break?
To clarify on The Lonely Polygamist, I cited Brady Udall's interview in the appendix of The Lonely Polygamist in the notes because the page doesn't cite the book (the book is a fictional novel, after all); the page only cites the interview which constitutes only a few pages. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 15:58, 18 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
We don't generally include things like primary newspaper articles, inscriptions, letters, ancient texts and so on in the bibliography (I think this might be WP:PRIMARY), but we do generally include modern academic journal articles. There's a case for pushing websites out into the footnotes, particularly when we don't have solid information on who wrote them, when they were published and so on. Any style is fine, but as currently set up, the citations to journals are imprecise because the citation gives the page numbers of the whole article, not specifically the relevant content. The RP template exists to get around that: it looks something like this.[1]: 10
Syntax is {{sfn|Author|Date}}{{rp|10}}: replace the 10 with the relevant page number. UndercoverClassicistT·C 16:47, 18 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Having websites and newspapers in the notes but academic journal articles in the bibliography seems to make sense. I guess I was just misinformed about the short-form sources and "padding" thing. I can make that revision. Would you like the untitled book reviews also in the bibliography, or are those okay in the notes? Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 20:07, 18 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Book reviews are generally titled by the title of the book under review. Again, it doesn't really matter what system we adopt, as long as it's clear and consistent and allows readers to identify where the cited material comes from. UndercoverClassicistT·C 22:11, 18 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
I have moved sources into the bibliography. I think only sources left in the notes and not moved to the bibliography are sources accessed via the Internet in forms that have no pagination. Are those alright to leave in the notes, since paginated shortened references are not possible anyway? Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 23:57, 18 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Yes; that makes a lot of sense and is a clearly coherent system. UndercoverClassicistT·C 09:28, 19 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
At Cowley and Taylor's behest, David quietly married Morgan in October 1903 (note 73, LeSeur) UndercoverClassicistT·C 08:59, 18 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
At a September 1903 conference in St. Johnes, two Mormon apostles, John Y. Taylor and Mathias Cowley, counseled [David] Udall to take Mary as a plural wife in order to help raise her boys. (LeSeuer, 226); Udall and Mary were married in Salt Lake City during the October 1903 general conference. (LeSeuer, 227). Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 16:15, 18 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
"Quietly" is to describe that the marriage was done discreetly: Udall's decision to pretend that his third marriage never occurred (LeSeuer, 227). There is also this from Mormon Odyssey, if you think an additional citation would help clarify that: Apostles Cowley and John W. Taylor were privately advocating the continuation of polygamy. (Ellsworth, 200); and The closeness of the time of this plural marriage to the prohibition may have been a factor in the family's saying little about the relationship. (Ellsworth, 274n53). Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 21:52, 18 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
I'm not seeing that as a straightforward reading of the sources, if I'm honest: remember that WP:OR stops us from making anything but the most blindingly banal inferences from what we read in the cited material. I can see from what you've quoted there that Udall later (?) chose to deny that the marriage happened, or avoided mentioning it to others; it doesn't necessarily follow from that that the marriage itself was done quietly (after all, plenty of people deny doing things that they did perfectly openly and obviously). UndercoverClassicistT·C 22:10, 18 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
That's a good point that this was at least in part me reading the secrecy we know took place later backward into the event itself when that's not completely clear (since this postdated the 1890 Manifesto, and polygamy remained illegal in Arizona, maybe it was discreet; but since they lived in relatively remote communities, maybe it wasn't discreet). I have trimmed "quietly" from the sentence to instead straightforwardly say that David Udall married Mary Morgan. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 22:29, 18 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Great stuff. As we've had a few revisions in this set, I'll send another few quotations and sources to check later on. UndercoverClassicistT·C 09:27, 19 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Udall and her daughter did not immediately return to St. Johns; they stayed with her parents in Snowflake until March 1888, when she moved to a farm in Round Valley, Arizona, that David and his brother had purchased. Ella Udall and her children visited that summer; it was the first time Ida Udall and Ella Udall had seen each other in four years (note 58, Ellsworth) UndercoverClassicistT·C 08:59, 18 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Early in March 1887 Ida received word that David was finally coming to get her. (Ellsworth, 186); David did not take Ida to St. Johns. To do so would have been an affront to his non-Mormon friends who had helped get his pardon. Instead, he took her to Snowflake, where she and Pauline lived in a small house with her sister Annie, Annie's husband, their baby, and her youngest sister Loie. (Ellsworth, 186) (Thank you for this check; I now realize I made a minor error and wrote that Udall stayed with her parents during this time in Snowflake. Instead, it should state she stayed with her sisters. I have made that revision now.
(page 187 is a map of eastern Arizona)
About this time David and his brother Joseph, who were partners in the sheep business, used their herd of sheep as down payment on the purchase of the Milligant farm and gristmill near Eager, two miles southwest of Springerville in Round Valley and about thirty miles south of St. Johns. (Ellsworth, 188; this is also in the first paragraph following a header reading Round Valley)
In March of 1888 Ida and her two children, accompanied by Orrin, Annie, and their son Kenner, moved into an old adobe house on the Mill Farm, as it was called. (Ellsworth, 188)
Monotony was broken for Ida that first summer by two visits from Ella and her children. The women had not seen each other since 10 July 1884, four years earlier. (Ellsworth, 188) Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 16:30, 18 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
((tq|In the spring of 1880, at her immediate family's urging, Hunt moved to Snowflake, Arizona, to rejoin them. John R. Murdock arranged for Hunt to make the trip with Jesse N. Smith, president of the Eastern Arizona Stake headquartered in Snowflake, and his wives Emma and Augusta}} (note 18, Ellsworth) UndercoverClassicistT·C 08:59, 18 August 2023 (UTC).Reply
Ida had a host of friends in Beaver who enjoyed each other very much, but friends and relatives at home missed her and wanted her to return home. When a chance arose for a ride to Snowflake in the spring of 1880, she finally left Beaver. (Ellsworth, 38)
John R. Murdock returned to Beaver, accopmanied by Jesse N. Smith, who had recently been appointed president of the Eastern Arizona Stake, headquartered in Snowflake. President Smith had taken his wife Janet Johnson and children to Snowflake earlier and was not moving the rest of his family there. Murdock, Johnny's father, helped arrange for Ida to go with them. The first week in April 1880 President Smith and his wives Emma and Augusta, "with nine children, left our long time home in Parowan for Snowflake, Arizona. We had 3 wagons, 6 horses, 2 mules, and 2 cows . . . Louis W. Harris and Sister Ida F. Hunt joined us for the journey." (Ellsworth, 39. The quotation marks and ellipsis are from Mormon Odyssey. Ellsworth briefly quotes from page 239 of the primary source Journal of Jesse Nathaniel Smith: The Life Story of a Mormon Pioneer, 1834–1906 [Ellsworth, 259n35, 286]).
The experience of traveling with President Smith, his wives, and their children changed Ida's life. (Ellsworth, 40) Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 16:39, 18 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Looks like Ellsworth is clear in the second passage that it's the first week of April: given our earlier issue with MOS:SEASONS, can we amend "Spring" to that? I'd like a rephrase of president of the Eastern Arizona Stake, headquartered in Snowflake, as that's currently an unattributed quote which doesn't really need to be a quote at all. Do we explain how it changed Ida's life? UndercoverClassicistT·C 19:25, 18 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Good point about using more precise language to talk about times of the year. I have revised it to the following: In April 1880, at her immediate family's urging, Hunt left Beaver to move to Snowflake, Arizona, to rejoin them. (Ellsworth doesn't make the duration of the journey 100% clear, i.e. if Ida Hunt also arrived in Snowflake in April, so I've tried to phrase it so it says that April is when Ida Hunt left.)
Thank you for the catch about "president of the Eastern Arizona Stake, headquartered in Snowflake"; that phrasing must've accidentally worked its way in my brain. I have revised it to the following: John R. Murdock arranged for Hunt to make the trip with Jesse N. Smith, Eastern Arizona Stake president, and his wives Emma and Augusta. (that the stake is headquartered in Snowflake seemed more detail than needed for getting Ida Hunt Udall's narrative and information across. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 22:21, 18 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
As for how it changed Ida's life, that seems like something the rest of the paragraph and the rest of the page gets into, like how Ida Hunt after seeing Emma and Augusta Smith with each other decided that she wanted a polygamous marriage. The particular sentence you requested content for doesn't get much into how it changed Ida's life; I just quoted that sentence her so that it's abundantly clear that the source says that Ida Hunt traveled with Jesse Smith, Augusta Smith, and Emma Smith. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 22:21, 18 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Citation to Miles, Vice etc: 'Encyclopaedia staff', especially formatted in lc, is not conventional or really helpful. Suggest crediting the name of the institution here. However, this website gives me some concerns as a reliable source: it does come from a university, but also has a clear political slant and it isn't clear to me how much editorial control, peer review etc exists over its content (that is, is it closer to an academic's blog than a university press?). The facts cited to it should be quite widely published, so I'd suggest using a more academic source. UndercoverClassicistT·C 08:59, 18 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
I'm sorry, but I don't recognize the abbreviation "lc". What do you mean about this that isn't conventional or helpful? I cited the article using the web format since this is a website.
What concerns does the website give you as to its reliability? Does Middle Tennessee State University or the Free Speech Center have some history or reputation that you are concerned about? The website is an online reprint of what was originally The Encyclopedia of the First Amendment, published in 2009 by CQ Press, a division of the academic publishing company SAGE. The website includes some material that was not in the book. For example, from what I'm seeing, the cited article "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Mormons" was originally written for the encyclopedia in 2009 by Dennis Miles, then updated by John R. Vile in May 2017, then updated by unnamed "encyclopedia staff" in October 2019. I am open to hearing your concerns; I just don't yet know what they are. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 16:06, 18 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
I've had a look at their about page: I think we're fine here, particularly for uncontroversial facts. The website didn't give off a great "smell": and I had concerns about whether the content was subject to editorial control, and that it blurs the line between scholarship and advocacy (it's not just an encyclopaedia of the First Amendment, it's very clearly an organisation advocating for free speech, which is sometimes done as part of strongly partisan positions.) UndercoverClassicistT·C 16:55, 18 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Mapping Salt Lake City is an digital history project that per its about page is a city-wide collaboration led by professors, writers and scholars from the University of Utah and Westminster College. The about page also names a managing editor, so the content is published under editorial oversight, and mentions receiving funding from academic institutions like the University of Utah and Westminster College. Additionally, the author of the cited article is Genevieve Long, the doctorally trained historian who authored "Laboring in the Desert". Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 20:48, 19 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Yes: I'm happy enough with Long as an author, but not clear on how far we can vouch for the robustness of this site's review process. It does name a managing editor, but she's a creative writer: my strong impression from reading the About page is that they fundamentally invite people to contribute things and then display them, rather than commissioning or critiquing them. The fact that the author is a known scholar is a start, but not sufficient: we're in a very similar position to WP:PREPRINT here, which advises that preprints and blogs are not reliable sources because they fundamentally have only the author's input, rather than full peer review. Funding from universities is good but, again, is no proof that this is a rigorous, fact-checking system rather than something more like a collection of personal projects. Is there another source that carries the same information: Long's PhD, perhaps, or its sources? UndercoverClassicistT·C 21:10, 19 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Those are good points, in light of Wikipedia's recommendations and policies. I believe the following sentence from "Laboring in the Desert" verifies similar information: While David spent enough time visiting Ida to father her six children, he continued to live primarily with his first wife Ella. (Long, 311). I have replaced the "Mapping Salt Lake City" with a citation to that page, and to most precisely reflect the content of the source, rephrased that particular clause on the page to Still, for most of the remainder of her life, David primarily cohabited with Ella. How is that? Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 21:47, 19 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Community life in St. Johns was uneasy. The Latter-day Saints were relative newcomers to the town, and more established Catholic Mexican residents resented the Mormons' presence: the source has Following his marriage to Ida Hunt, David Udall's family was placed under additional stress by reactions among their predominantly Hispanic and Catholic neighbors, who resented the Mormons at St. John's as newcomers occupying land that was not rightfully theirs.. It doesn't specifically say that the neighbours were Mexican and leaves open the possibility of non-Hispanic Catholic neighbours. I'm not sure we've really got the material for "community life in St. Johns was uneasy" in the source: only that it wasn't easy to be Udall or his family. UndercoverClassicistT·C 20:02, 19 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
I think that is a good catch. The sentence Community life in St. Johns was uneasy isn't verified by the PBS source, but I think "St. Johns's Saints" does verify it with this excerpt on page 67: The interethnic conflict had began about 1879 as Mormons expanded into north eastern Arizona from Utah and encountered strong opposition from the Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and non-believers from Hispanic, American, and European backgrounds already established in St. Johns. The strife resulted from economic and political competition as well as religious difference. I have added a citation to that page of "St. Johns's Saints." Would you consider that sufficient to verify that sentence?
As for the second sentence, that is a good point that my rendering involves some slippage. "St. Johns's Saints" does refer to Mexicans and Mexican Americans, but the article also, like PBS, refers to Hispanics, so it's possible there were Hispanic Mexicans, as well as non-Mexican Hispanics. I have revised the sentence on the page as follows as follows: The Latter-day Saints were relative newcomers to the town, and more established residents, including Catholics and Hispanics, resented the Mormons' presence. How is that? Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 20:57, 19 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Given the first quotation you've pulled out there, have we any longer a rationale for singling out the Catholics and Hispanics? That first source makes it sound like it's equally the Protestants, Jews and other non-Mormons who don't like Udall and his family; it pointedly doesn't single out the groups we've specifically identified. UndercoverClassicistT·C 21:12, 19 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
That's also a good point. The PBS source emphasizes St. Johns's earlier residents being "predominantly Hispanic and Catholic," but that Miller does not make the same emphasis prompts a reconsideration of that. How is the following? The Latter-day Saints were relative newcomers to the town, and more established residents resented the Mormons' presence. i.e. calling out no particular group and simply referring to the Latter-day Saints as newcomers, and the established residents as non-Mormon by the contrast's implication. How is that? Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 21:20, 19 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Perhaps include something to the effect of "out of religious opposition as well as economic and political rivalry"? I do think we need something to indicate that their Mormonism is significant, rather than this just being generalised anti-newcomer sentiment. UndercoverClassicistT·C 21:23, 19 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
TSI, CLOP and plagiarism checks to follow after the text is more-or-less final.
Thanks for mentioning that; I'll await that and hope it goes well, as I've tried my best with writing the body text. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 21:51, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
TSI: could you please provide the quotation from the original source which supports:
In her life, Morgan was an avocational genealogist (Virkus) - secondarily, I'm not sure what an avocational genealogist actually is, and would suggest cutting in her life as redundant (as opposed to outside her life?) UndercoverClassicistT·C 20:02, 19 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
M179—(b-c-f-j)-MORGAN, Mrs. Mary Linton, b. Nephi, Utah, Feb. 11, 1865; m. June 7, 1888, John Hamilton Morgan (d. 1894), of Ind. Genealogist for Morgan, Linton, Sutton, Ellison, Selfridge, Hamilton families. (Virkus, 275) The letters in parentheses at the beginning are a code used in The Handbook of American Genealogy (explained on page 107) to indicate data about the genealogist. Per page 107, b means "Genealogy avocation" (avocation means non-professional; Mary Morgan was not a professional genealogist, though she did gain renown as a non-professional, or avocational genealogist); c means "Family genealogist"; f means "Invites correspondence"; and j means "Desires local research work only". The M179 code is simply the book's numbering system, indicating she's the 179th entry that starts with the letter M in the book's section "Who's Who in Genealogy".
I see why you might consider "in her life" redundant. I wasn't quite sure how to describe Morgan's genealogy because I'm not 100% sure if she was a genealogist at the time she joined the Udall plural marriage or if she started practicing genealogy later in life. I was concerned that to simply state "Morgan was a genealogist" might imply that she was a genealogist at the time of the marriage. However, I also do not know for sure if she was not a genealogist at the time, so I want to also avoid implying she was not at the time. Additionally, since genealogy is what, in secondary sources, Morgan appears to have been independently notable for, it is not clear to me where to mention it other than at this point in the body text, when she becomes part of Ida Udall's life story. Is it alright to ask if you have any suggetsions? Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 21:13, 19 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Is this simply another way of writing "Morgan had an interest in genealogy", or did she (for example) write books on the subject? I see the rationale behind "in her life", but I think we've ended up not quite satisfying either horn of the dilemma: as currently formulated, it doesn't quite say enough to clarify anything. Part of me wonders whether we need this fact at all, and I think the answer to that question circles back to how notable Morgan was as a genealogist. UndercoverClassicistT·C 21:22, 19 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
This archival finding aid describes the products of Morgan's genealogical work as compiling an archive of pedigrees and other genealogical material. A Salt Lake City newspaper ("S. L. Genealogists Given Recognition". Salt Lake City Telegram. May 12, 1934. p. 5.) described Morgan as one of thirteen local "authorities on the local records" "who have won recognition for their work in genealogical and historical research". Morgan did archival work rather than writing books.
As for whether the fact is needed at all, I added this fact because you in a previous comment stated that everyone mentioned in the lead should be briefly introduced. I introduced Mary Morgan as "genealogist Mary Ann Linton Morgan Udall." In order to include information in the lead, I'm under the impression it needs to be in the body text. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 22:14, 19 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Ah, I understand. We'd already introduced her as a widow whose husband John Morgan had died in 1894, which more than satisfies the requirement to have an introduction. You're right that if you want the further information that she was a genealogist, it should be in the body. Again, I think the deciding factor here is how notable her genealogical work was: if we think it's basically a hobby or interest, I'd suggest omitting (we wouldn't call her a "football player" because she played as a hobby), but if we think it's more notable, it's got grounds for inclusion. Remembering that family history is a very common interest and side-project among LDS members, does she stand out in that context - the Telegram mentioned twelve others; did she stand out in that company at all?
On a slightly separate note, we could go closer to what the Telegram said: "an amateur genealogist later described by the Salt Lake City Telegram as an authority on local records". I think the word amateur is more likely to be familiar to our readers than avocational. UndercoverClassicistT·C 08:16, 20 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Do you mean that rather than describe her in the lead as a "genealogist Mary Ann Linton Morgan Udall", it could be appropriate to instead describe her in the lead as "Mary Ann Linton Morgan Udall, a widow of John Hamilton Morgan", with the body text sentence introducing her as such sufficing? If that is alright, that would be a simpler way forward, and I could trim the sentence about genealogy entirely. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 15:29, 20 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Having been friends for years, Udall and Morgan got along well as co-wives living together (Long)
Here are two quotations which supports the statement: Some plural wives were friends; such connections could make for particularly amicable households, as in the case of Ida Udall and Mary Linton Morgan, who were close for many years before David Udall took Morgan as his third wife (Long, 227, verifying they got along well); Later, she shared her own homestead with David Udall's third wife, Mary Linton Morgan (Long, 311, verifying they lived together). Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 00:13, 20 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Sensitive to the feelings of Ella, whom she deeply respected (Peterson)
Here is a quotation which supports the statement (bracketed content added by me to clarify identities of people referred to by pronouns; identities are clear from surrounding context): affection for Udall guided her [Ida] through the difficult decision to marry the husband of a woman [Ella] for whom she had the highest esteem and for whom she knew the entire process would be most painful. (Peterson, 252). Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 00:13, 20 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Thank you very much for these initial comments for reviewing. I appreciate your being generous with your time and attention and for bearing with some questions. I think I've at least preliminarily replied to everything for now, and I'll check back periodically to see what you recommend next. Thanks. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 21:51, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Thank you for replying so diligently. I haven't been able to get to our check everything, but I've made some replies which I hope are useful. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 22:44, 6 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Thank you as well, for your thorough comments and for your patience in the last few days. I think I circled back around to your follow-ups. If there's anything I missed, my apologies, and feel free to point it out. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 00:23, 11 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
I've gone through again; I think we're pretty much there. I'm going to bracket off the resolved points so that I have a clear view of where we are, and then get around to the CLOP, TSI and plagiarism checks. Assuming that all checks out, we should be good to go. Thank you for your replies and for, in many cases, your very detailed, thoughtful and eminently sound explanations of decisions made. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 21:50, 11 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
- The part in quotes seems to be from a source and not from Udall herself as I was expecting. I think putting it in quotes is misleading.
Article new enough, long enough. Hook is interesting and sourced, but seems misleading with the quotes (I was expecting it to be from Udall herself). DHN (talk) 05:25, 12 November 2022 (UTC)
