BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY View Document
William Clayton left Winter Quarters on April 14, 1847 , to join the pioneer company on its momentous trek to the Great Salt Lake Valley and that day began a chronicle of the trip in his daily diary. For the first three weeks he simply estimated the distance of each day's travel, but the inaccuracy of these guesses troubled him, and as early as April 19 he spoke with Orson Pratt about the possibility of devising an odometer to actually measure the distances, an idea he also promoted among the members of the company. On April 26 Brigham Young assigned him to assist Thomas Bullock in keeping a record of the trip, and on May 8 he began to calculate the distances by tediously counting the revolutions of a wagon wheel. Two days later Young asked Orson Pratt to design an odometer along the lines Clayton had suggested, and that afternoon Pratt handed his plan to Appleton M. Harmon, who had a working model by May 12 and a finished machine by the 16th.
While Clayton tabulated distances and he and Bullock kept notes on the terrain, Orson Pratt determined latitudes and longitudes, altitudes, and temperatures with a set of instruments brought from England . On May 18, Bullock and Clayton met with Willard Richards who asked Clayton to mark the pioneer route on a copy of the Frémont-Preuss map, together with the various distances, features of the terrain, and Pratt's measurements-a signal that the record was to be put in some form for the use of later Mormon immigrants.
Brigham Young's interest in the Clayton-Bullock-Pratt record is made clear by his request on August 2 that Clayton travel back to Winter Quarters with the ox team company and again measure the distances with a new odometer to be made by William A. King. Clayton began the return trip on August 17 and arrived at Winter Quarters on October 21. "I have succeeded in measuring the whole distance from the City of the Great Salt Lake to this place," he wrote in his journal.
Three and a half weeks after he reached Winter Quarters, Clayton wrote to Brigham Young about his "Table of Distances," asking for any suggestions and for permission to publish it as a profit-making venture. On February 8, Brigham Young wrote letters to Nathaniel H. Felt in St. Louis , and others, which indicated his support of Clayton's undertaking and asked for Felt's financial assistance. Unknown to either Brigham Young or William Clayon was the discovery of gold at Sutter's mill on January 24, an event which would transform the market for Clayton's book.
By March 7 he had arranged with the shop of the Daily Missouri Republican in St. Louis to print 5,000 copies of his book, and on the 28th Felt wrote to Brigham Young that Clayton's Guide was out of press. On June 2, at the Elkhorn ferry, Thomas Bullock got one hundred copies of the guide from Clayton and sold them throughout the camp to the Mormons about to make the overland trek.
While Clayton's Guide was popular among Mormon emigrants, it was also the most popular guidebook among the California gold seekers. J. Goldsborough Bruff used it in 1849, for example, as did Byron N. McKinstry, Madison B. Moorman, and Silas Newcomb in 1850. One overland traveler claimed in the Missouri Republican of October 3, 1849 , that copies had sold for as much as $5 and that he would not take less than $2 each for a few that he had. But its highest-albeit backhanded-compliments came from those who plagiarized it. Joseph E. Ware's The Emigrants's Guide to California (St. Louis, 1849) and Philip L. Platt's and Nelson Slater's The Travelers' Guide Across the Plains, Upon the Overland Route to California (Chicago, 1852), for instance, both borrowed from it without credit, although Platt and Slater did mention in their preface that "the best [guidebook] we saw was that prepared by Mr. W. Clayton."
Although he published his guide as a profit-making venture, it appears Clayton derived little financial benefit from it. The Frontier Guardian of February 7, 1851 , which advertised copies for sale, mentions that even though he had published a large edition, "other men speculated upon them, and he, a poor man, is left unrewarded for his toil." Despite the fact that a notice of a copyright is printed in his book, it seems clear that he did not obtain one.
Excerpted and edited from Peter Crawley, A Descriptive Bibliography of the Mormon Church. Volume Two, 1848-1852 . ( Provo , Utah : Brigham Young University , Religious Studies Center , 2005]). Item 354. Forthcoming.
Used by permission of the author and the Religious Studies Center , Brigham Young University.