Author Dr. Glen Leonard to Discuss “Massacre at Mountain Meadows” at the 26th-Annual Juanita Brooks Lecture

Dr. Glen M. Leonard, Utah historian and former director of the LDS Museum of Church History and Art, will present his findings as co-author of the long-awaited book “Massacre at Mountain Meadows,” as part of the 26th-Annual Juanita Brooks Lecture Series on Wednesday, March 18, at 7 p.m., in the historic St. George Tabernacle. The lecture is free and open to the public.

The Juanita Brooks Lecture Series, which was established at Dixie State College by Obert C. Tanner for the purpose of perpetuating the great writing of southern Utah in the tradition of Juanita Brooks, is an annual part of the St. George Tabernacle’s Weekly Music and History series.

Leonard and his fellow co-authors, Ronald W. Walker and Richard E. Turley Jr., published “Massacre at Mountain Meadows” last August through Oxford University Press. Leonard and his colleagues spent seven years on the project after being granted access to all documents in the LDS Church archives, along with those found in university, private and national archives.

Leonard will compare their work with Juanita Brooks’ “The Mountain Meadows Massacre,” which was published in 1962. Collectively, Leonard and his fellow authors are indebted to Brooks for her work, but were able to gain access to more information and material made available in the recent decades.

Following the lecture, Leonard will be available to meet patrons and answer questions at a reception held downstairs in the Tabernacle.

Leonard earned a Ph.D. in History and American Studies at the University of Utah in 1970. He has worked as a journalist, a publications editor, and a research historian. He retired in the spring of 2007 after 26 years as director of the LDS Church History Museum in Salt Lake City. Leonard has authored or co-authored four books and numerous articles on Utah, the LDS Church, and the American West. His 2002 comprehensive study “Nauvoo: A Place of Peace, A People of Promise” received two best book awards.

Juanita Brooks, who served on the Utah Board of State History for 28 years, was a long-time professor at then-Dixie College and became a well-known author. She is recognized, by scholarly consent, to be one of Utah’s and the LDS Church’s most eminent historians. Her total honesty, unwavering courage and perceptive interpretation of fact, set more stringent standards of scholarship for her fellow historians to emulate.