Recognize this script? Not many people do these days. But if you had accompanied Brigham Young to the Great Basin region during the late 1840s, you would have eventually learned of the Deseret alphabet, and perhaps even have been able to read this page from the Book of the Mormon.

The Deseret alphabet is one of the more fascinating aspects of the history of the Rocky Mountain region. Not long after arriving in what would later become the State of Utah, Mormonism’s founding elders established the University of Deseret. In 1854, the university introduced the Deseret alphabet, devised by an English convert to the faith, George D. Watt.

There is some debate among scholars regarding the origin of this script. Well acquainted with both Pitman shorthand and classical Greek, Watt developed a set of thirty-eight symbols dervied from these and other sources that phonetically represent the English language. Not all the characters were completely new however; the Latin letters C, D, L, O, P, S and W were also incorporated into the new script. Shortly after the alphabet’s unveiling, a type font was cast in St. Louis and both a First and Second Reader printed, as well as 8,000 copies of sections of the Book of the Mormon distributed among schools and churches within the Mormon community. Some of the later printings of the Book of the Mormon, such as the one illustrated here, eventually circulated over a wide are, including Colorado.

Scholars offer several reasons for the introduction of the new alphabet. Certainly the script helped to distinguish the Mormon community from those around them. It also helped to discourage both government officials as well as those who were merely curious about Mormonism from interfering with the fledgling community. Finally, with a growing number of non-English-speaking converts to the faith, it was hoped that the new script would make the acquisition of English less difficult since it eliminated the problem of phonetic spelling. Brigham yong vigorously promoted the new alphabet for over twenty years, but it never achieved wide-spread acceptance.

This is just one of many fascinating items from the Stephen H. Hart Library of the Colorado Historical Society. Come check us out!