H. H. (Harvey Harris) Cluff diary

H. H. (Harvey Harris) Cluff, 1836-1916

L. Tom Perry Special Collections is pleased to announce the availability of a new digitized collection: H. H. Cluff diary (MSS SC 1946). Collection includes a handwritten diary by Harvey H. Cluff from 1887-1888. Cluff records events relating to his church activities. He talks about church talks, church courts, and reactions to the activities of federal officials who were pursuing Mormons because of the practice of polygamy. Cluff presents copies of letters written by Mormon Church leaders and gives an account of his arrest for polygamy on 30 April 1887.

Harvey Harris Cluff (1836-1916) was born in Kirtland, Ohio, to a family of converts to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They later moved to Missouri and Illinois, and settled in Utah in 1850. Cluff spent much of the 1850s manufacturing furniture, served in the Nauvoo Legion, and was one of the original trustees of Brigham Young University (1875-1897). He would eventually marry three wives–Margaret Ann Foster, Emily Greening Till, and Sarah Louisa Eggertsen–and they bore him ten children between 1857 and 1889, six of which lived to adulthood.

Cluff spent 1865-1868 on a mission to Great Britain, and after an 1869-1874 mission to Hawaii returned as president of the Hawaiian Mission from 1879-1882. He also later served as a counselor in the presidency of the Utah Stake. Harvey Harris Cluff died in Salt Lake City, Utah, on April 19, 1916.