Fwd: LDS History -- Tithing

Beginning in October, **LDS Church History** will begin a topical approach to Mormon history.

The first topic will be *Tithing* -- and a time-line of events related to tithing will be gradually posted over the next few months.

Entries are automatically selected from a database of church history, searching for entries with the words 'tithing' or 'tithe' and posted each morning.

Suggestions for future topics are welcome.

Tune in --  Invite your friends --  Learn about the interesting history of tithing.

To learn more about **LDS Church History** visit http://lds-church-history.blogspot.com/2009/01/lds-history.html

---- sneak preview ----

-- Jan 20, 1849
[Utah Currency] On 20 January 1849 a total of $3,329 bills in 50 cents, $1.00, $2.00, and $3.00 denominations were issued; these carried a face value of $5,529.50, and were modeled after the handwritten bills issued on 2 January. Feramorz Y. Fox, who studied the records of these issues, which are in the LDS Church Archives in Salt Lake City, found that these issues of currency were secured by an 80 percent reserve of gold. Most of the gold, in California-minted coins or dust, was paid in to the church as tithing. These gold-backed church treasury notes, or perhaps more accurately, warehouse receipts for gold dust, appear to have been a generally acceptable means of exchange in the Salt Lake Valley. (1)

-- Jul 14, 1849
Following the discovery of gold in California, Latter-day Saints at the site send gold dust to Salt Lake City as tithing. (2)

-- 1856
During this year the practice of paying tithing was generally introduced among the Saints in Europe. During the winter and spring there was a great scarcity of food in Utah , and many domestic animals perished. (3)

-- During 1860s
[Perpetual Emigration] For six years in the 1860s the pioneer system of labor tithing was tapped by each spring sending ox teams, wagons, and teamsters from Utah to a frontier outfitting point to haul immigrants back. Immigrants who benefited from this assistance by the "Church trains" signed promissory notes to the PEF. Theoretically, the PEF was to repay the church; but in practice this became a church investment that would yield other than monetary returns. Nearly two-thirds of all beneficiaries of the PEF were passengers of the "Church trains." (4)


Footnotes:
1 - Utah History Encyclopedia: Utah Currency
2 - The Woodland Institute 'On This Day Historical Database,'
3 - Richards, Franklin Dewey and Little, James A., Compendium of the Doctrines of the Gospel, Church Chronology, Ch.66, p.306
4 - Utah History Encyclopedia: Perpetual Emigration