BYU

Harold B. Lee Library

Exhibit of Rare Welsh Mormon Publications

Photograph of John Davis

Photograph of John Davis

  • Date: September 1 – October 1, 2008
  • Place: 1130 HBLL, near Special Collections Classroom


    • About the Event
    On September 2 the L. Tom Perry Special Collections will open an exhibit of rare Welsh Mormon publications. Located on level 1 of the Harold B Lee Library, the exhibit is an opportunity to see early church publications that had a great impact on the Latter-day Saint Welsh community.

    The same year that the Mormons were being expelled from their mid-western home of Nauvoo, Illinois (1846), a young man from across the Atlantic decided he should affiliate himself with the “strange” North American religion of Mormonism. John Davis was employed by printer John Jones who owned and operated a small press in the village of Rhydybont near Llanybydder, Carmarthenshire, Wales. After Davis had proof read and set the type for several publications Jones was printing for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Wales he became convinced of the truth Mormon doctrine.

    Just three years later, at the age of twenty-six, Davis was called by the leaders of his newly found church with the printing of all Mormon publications in Wales. During the next five years in Merthyr Tydfil, Glamorganshire, he published two dozen pamphlets, three hymnals, numerous poems, six volumes (2,352 pages) of the periodical Udgorn Seion (Zion’s Trumpet), a membership record book, and Welsh translations of the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price.

    Welsh Book of Mormon

    Welsh Book of Mormon

    The L. Tom Perry Special Collections in the Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University is pleased to honor John Davis for his remarkable accomplishments as a printer and publisher of Welsh Mormon scriptures, periodicals, doctrinal pamphlets, hymnals, and broadsides. All are invited to the foyer of the L. Tom Perry Special Collections during the month of September 2008 where many of Davis’s publications will be exhibited and where you may watch a brief video about his life and work.