From South Africa to Salt Lake City: Eli Wiggill, the Latter day Saints, and the world of religion, 1810–1883

Abstract

This article is a distillation of the autobiography of Eli Wiggill written in 1883. Born in Gloucestershire, England, 1810, his father Isaac Wiggill and mother Elizabeth Grimes, were among the first group of British settlers who arrived in the Cape Colony in 1820 with Eli. This article highlights Wiggill's wide-ranging experiences in Suthern Africa until his departure to Salt Lake City in 1861. Wiggill vividly describes three decades which include several years as a Wesleyan Methodist missionary in Bechuanaland, mention of the extinction of slavery (1834), the Xhosa wars, as well as his conversion to the Church of jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (1858) and his ecclesiastical service as a church leader in Port Elizabeth (1860). Wiggill's narrative also provides an account of his immigration to Utah (1861) as well as his experiences when he lived in Salt Lake City and Kaysville, Utah, duting the decade of the 1860's. It further records his return to South Africa as a missionary "to see his friends" in late 1869 until his return in 1873. Wiggill provides an authentic voice which deserves to be heard. His autobiography provides a vivid description of life among earliest British settlers in the Cape as well as the early beginnings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Southern Africa just over two decades after the Church was organised in upstate New York.