Claudius V. Spencer diary

Claudius Victor Spencer (1824-1910)

L. Tom Perry Special Collections is pleased to announce the availability of a new digitized collection: Claudius V. Spencer diary (MSS 4042).  This diary records Spencer’s overland journey from Salt Lake City, Utah to Liverpool, England between April 22, 1850 to September 19, 1850, on his way to serving a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Claudius Victor Spencer was born 2 April 1825 in West Stockibridge, Berkshire, Massachuseetts. His mother, Sophronia, died when he was seven years old. Two years later, his father remarried, giving Claudius a stepbrother named Gilbert who was two and a half years younger. Claudius drove the first team in his father’s wagon company between Winter Quarters, Nebraska, and Salt Lake City in 1847. He served a mission for the Church in the British Mission from 1850-1853. He was given the charge of 350 Saints on the ship Manchester as it sailed from Liverpool to New York in April and May 1861. From June to September 1853, Claudius led a group of 250 saints from Kanesville, Iowa, to Salt Lake. He was a president of the Thirty-Seventh Quorum of Seventy when it was organized and was a stake patriarch at his death.

Claudius Spencer died on January 5, 1910, in Salt Lake City, Utah.