Microfilm of Levi Mathers Savage's autobiography, begun in 1876 and finished shortly before his death in 1935. Savage opens with a brief history of the Mormon Church, and recounts his childhood in Holden, Round Valley, Kanab, and Toquerville, Utah. He particularly writes of his father's stock business and Indian raids around Long Valley. In 1871 he went to Salt Lake City to attend Morgan's Commercial College, which he left when he was called home by his ill father. He writes of being called to help colonize southern Arizona, but when the mission was delayed he worked on William W. Taylor's saw mill in Salt Lake City instead. Savage writes of the books he read during this time and of the "great financial crisis" of 1873 that prevented him from receiving his wages. He writes of taking a school at Coalville in 1874, and of a trip to Michigan to visit his mother's relatives (this section contains extensive genealogy on the Mathers family). He writes of finally starting on the Arizona mission in 1876 and of serving with Lot Smith's United Order at Yavapai. By 1878 he was teaching school in Sunset, Arizona. Savage writes of the completion of the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad and accompanying telegraph lines in 1882 and of concurrent difficulties with the Apache Indians. In 1883 he began teaching school in Woodruff, Arizona, but by 1885 polygamy charges had forced him to flee to Chihuahua, Mexico. He helped settle Diaz and writes of an earthquake there on May 8, 1887. By 1891 he had returned to Woodruff, but in 1900 his first wife Sarah "Marintha" Wright had taken him to court with adultery charges (he had subsequently married plural wives Lydia "Nora" Hatch and Hannah Adeline Hatch). He was arrested and taken to Prescott, and he and Sarah ultimately divorced in 1901 (Savage mentions the difficult relations he had with his and Sarah's children). Much of the rest of the volume through 1919 covers Savage's life in Woodruff,;All inquiries about this item should be directed to the H. Russell Smith Foundation Curator of Western Historical Manuscripts at the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA. Microfilm. San Marino, Calif. : Huntington Library Photographic Dept., 1948. 1 microfilm reel : negative 35 mm. Forms part of the Manuscripts Department's Mormon file, c.1805-1995. Levi Mathers Savage (1851-1935) was born in Salt Lake City. His mother died when he was an infant, and after his father's remarriage the family moved to Holden, Utah, in 1859. Levi's father owned a stock business and he worked as a herd boy in Round Valley and Kanab. In 1866 the family settled in Toquerville. Levi attended school in Salt Lake City from 1871 and opened a school in Coalville, Utah, in 1874. In 1876 he began a mission in southern Arizona, and served in the United Order at Yavapai and as Bishop of Woodruff until 1919. He spent much of the 1880s in Mexico avoiding polygamy charges. In 1919 he moved to Salt Lake City, and died in Provo in 1935.
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