View source for The Latter-Day Saints' Emigrants' Guide

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'''''Clayton's Guide''''',<ref name="UoWYedu">{{cite web |url= http://wyoshpo.state.wy.us/trailsdemo/pacificsprings.htm |title= Pacific Springs (on the Oregon Trail) |accessdate= 2010-11-28 }}</ref> '''''Clayton's Emigrant Guide''''',<ref name="BYUedu">{{cite web |url= http://net.lib.byu.edu/imaging/into/pco1847/Clayton%27s/Claytonfs.html |title= Clayton's Emigrant Guide |author= Archived online by Brigham Young University |accessdate= 2010-11-28 }}</ref> or as when published, '''''The Latter-Day Saints' Emigrants' Guide''''',<ref name="BYUedu" /> published by ''Missouri Republican Steam Power Press, Chambers & Knapp, 1848''<ref name="BYUedu" /> and written by [[William Clayton (Mormon)|William Clayton]], was one of a number of very popular guidebooks written to support the [[westward expansion]] of the United States in the mid-nineteenth century when organized emigrant [[wagon train]]s began to form in large numbers at various river ports on the Missouri River.
==Description==
Clayton's guide covered landmarks and distances starting from [[Council Bluffs, Iowa|Council Bluffs]] and going to the [[Great Salt Lake]] along the [[Mormon Trail]].<ref name=Kroll>{{cite journal |last1=Kroll |first1=Helen B. |title=The Books That Enlightened the Emigrants |journal=Oregon Historical Quarterly |date=June 1944 |volume=45 |issue=2 |pages=103–123 |jstor=20611541 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/20611541}}</ref> The guide recorded the distance between landmarks like [[Chimney Rock National Historic Site|Chimney Rock]] and [[Devil's Gate (Wyoming)|Devil's Gate]] and gave suggestions for camp locations and where to find water and forage. He collaborated with [[Orson Pratt]] and Appleton Harmon to create a wagon-wheel odometer, or [[Roadometer (odometer)|roadometer]], to record distances more accurately.<ref name=Allen>{{cite book |last1=Allen |first1=James B. |title=No Toil Nor Labor Fear: The Story of William Clayton |date=2002 |publisher=Brigham Young University Press |location=Provo, UT |isbn=0842525033}}</ref>{{rp|229–231; 243}} They were the first pioneers to scientifically measure the distances on the overland trail.<ref name=Kroll/>
== Writing and sales ==
Hoping to use the profits from the guide to finance his family's migration, Clayton got Brigham Young's approval of the project. On Brigham Young's behalf, Willard Richards wrote to Nathaniel H. Felt in St. Louis and William Pickett, asking them to help publish the guide. Clayton had 5,000 copies published. The guides were sold for five dollars each, but were in high demand. Joseph E. Ware's ''The Emigrants' Guide to California'' copied information from Clayton's guide for the section between Fort Laramie and the Bear River. Many pioneers used Clayton's guide; first editions are rare, presumably because they were well-used.<ref name=Allen/>{{rp|245}} In 1852, Fisher and Bennett started to sell unauthorized copies of the guide for fifty cents each. Clayton offered to sell them the copyright, but the press refused on the grounds that "the considered themselves perfectly safe without it."<ref name=Allen/>{{rp|246}} He considered selling guides to emigrants in England to circumvent Fisher and Bennett's plan, but he wasn't in England long enough to enact it.<ref name=Allen/>{{rp|246}}
==Footnotes and references==
===References===
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==External links==
* [http://net.lib.byu.edu/imaging/into/pco1847/Clayton%27s/Claytonfs.html ''Clayton's Guide'' (BYU ebook)]
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[[Category:1848 books]]
[[Category:LDS non-fiction]]
[[Category:Mormon migration to Utah]]
[[Category:Works by William Clayton (Mormon)]]