Mormon Publications: 19th Century - Collection of sacred hymns, for the use of the Latter day Saints, 1844

Little, Jesse Carter, and George Bryant Gardner. A collection of sacred hymns, for the use of the Latter Day Saints. Selected and published by J.C. Little and G. B. Gardner: Bellows Falls: Printed by Blake and Bailey. 1844.
80 pp. 14 cm.

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The Little–Gardner book is the first Mormon hymnbook with music. Exactly when or under what circumstances it was published is not clear. Little, a merchant, and Gardner, a musician, both lived in Peterborough, New Hampshire, thirty miles southeast of Bellows Falls, Vermont, and Little was the presiding elder there. So one might guess that they collaborated in publishing the book for the use of the large Mormon congregation in Peterborough.

Jesse C. Little was born in Belmont, Maine, September 26, 1815. Early in his life he moved with his family to Peterborough, where he eventually married and owned a store. In April 1839 he converted to Mormonism, and by October 1844 he was the presiding elder in Peterborough. Six months later, Parley Pratt ordained him a high priest and called him to lead the Church in New Hampshire. The following year, as presiding elder in the eastern United States, he negotiated the call of the Mormon Battalion with President Polk (see Circular the Second, and in this digital collection Circular. Epistle to the Church …in the Eastern States). In the spring of 1847 he left his wife and children in Peterborough, joined the pioneer company, and entered the Great Salt Lake Valley that July; then he returned to the east in the fall to resume the leadership of the church in the eastern states. In 1852 he and his family immigrated to Utah. For eighteen years he served as second counselor to Edward Hunter, the presiding bishop. He died in Salt Lake City in 1893 after a lingering illness.

George B. Gardner was born in New Ipswich, New Hampshire, April 4, 1813. In 1841 he moved to Peterborough, and in November of that year was converted to Mormonism by Eli P. Maginn. John E. Page ordained him an elder in February 1843, and from time to time during the next two and a half years, he labored as a missionary in the neighboring towns. In September 1845 he moved to Nauvoo, and fourteen months later settled with the Saints at Winter Quarters, where he lived until he made the trek to Utah in 1850. For fifteen years he lived in southern Utah and then for twenty years in northern Arizona, where he died in 1898. Gardner remarks in his autobiography that he led choirs and taught singing throughout his years in southern Utah and northern Arizona.

Their book contains forty–eight numbered songs, followed by an index of first lines. Tunes and bass lines accompany the texts of the first thirty–one hymns; only the texts are included for the last seventeen. Three are specifically identified as composed by Mary Judd Page, nos. 40, 42–43, and three are identified as composed by W. W. Phelps, nos. 45–47. The songs came from two sources, thirty–eighty from the 1841 Nauvoo hymnal with selections by Emma Smith (see this digital collection), twenty–seven from the John Edward Page and John Cairns 1841 hymnal; seventeen are common to both.

Excerpted and edited from Peter Crawley, A Descriptive Bibliography of the Mormon Church. Volume One, 1830-1847. (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University, Religious Studies Center, [1997]). Item 246, p. 286-88.

Used by permission of the author and the Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University.