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Crafts and Craftsmen

"It is as if all America were but one giant workshop, over the entrance of which there is the blazing inscription, 'No admission here except on business.' " If there was one characteristic of Americans that foreign visitors to this country in the early nineteenth century agreed on, it was the American impulse to be constantly at work creating new and better homes, forging ahead in their businesses, and striving to excel in every economic enterprise they turned to. A French traveler, Michael Chevalier, observed, "If one hundred Americans were going to be shot, they would contend for the priority, so strong is their habit of competition." Such observations were not always compliments, as Chevalier's remark suggests, but even he was forced to acknowledge the rewards that seemed to follow the propensity to be constantly at work. He admitted that the American mechanic was a better workman than the European and prospered more as a result, dressing and eating as did the wealthiest of his fellow citizens.

If all America was "one giant workshop," Nauvoo was its boiler room. Some of the older established towns had their leisure class, those who had been successful in business or industry and had retired to live comfortably without further labor. Not so in Nauvoo. Not by chance had the symbol of Mormonism become the beehive. In fact, the Saints' very industriousness and resulting prosperity were partially responsible for the Missouri persecutions. Most of the Saints were from antislavery, work ethic-oriented New England stock and the laboring classes of England. Their hard work and prosperity set them apart and created envy and suspicion in the Missourians, many of whom hailed from the southern states.

The same social and economic antagonism surfaced again among the western Illinois "old settlers," who had emigrated from the same slave-holding regions of the country as the Missourians. These Illinoisans envied not only the personal prosperity of the Saints but also the prosperity of their city, which threatened to supplant some of the older, established population centers in western Illinois. When the repeal of the Nauvoo Charter was being considered before the Illinois state legislature in 1845, the non-Mormon Mr. Backenstos told that body: "Town rivalry had also something to do with this opposition to Nauvoo. While Warsaw was on the decline, Nauvoo was rapidly increasing in wealth and population."

But in 1839 the Saints did not foresee the results of their economic success. They had a city to build, businesses to open, and crafts to establish-and establish them they did.

Most of the settlers in Nauvoo tended to follow their former trades or crafts. To get an accurate picture of the crafts of Nauvoo, it would be beneficial to identify the major American occupations during the years 1839 through 1846. This information is not available, however, but occupational information is available from the 1850s. The 1855 national census was the first in which occupations were listed. By examining the occupations reported in that census from a typical frontier county, we can approximate the earlier occupations of the Saints in Nauvoo. Cattaraugus County, for example, was a rural county in New York, where the Church was organized and where many of the early Saints lived. In 1855 in Cattaraugus County there were 9,198 adult males, who were employed as follows: