Reverend Duncan McMillan Acknowledged Gratefully The Unfailing Kindness of the People of Mt. Pleasant

 Reverend Duncan McMillan Acknowledged Gratefully, The Unfailing Kindness of the People of Mt. Pleasant 

Utah in general was a safe environment for denominational emissaries. There were no Presbyterian martyrs. All ministers and teachers who died in Utah did so of natural causes rather than at the hands of hostile Mormons.88* It is also apparent that a few Presbyterian ministers sensationalized their experiences in order to attract public attention to missionary activities in Utah. Indeed, in the case with Duncan McMillan, it is possible to trace how descriptions of encounters with Mormons increased in detail and intensity as they passed from oral tradition to printed word. Tellingly, McMillan’s Presbyterian colleagues in Salt Lake City were so alarmed at his inflammatory rhetoric that they purchased and burned copies of The Rocky Mountain Presbyterian in which one of his sensational articles appeared.89** It took nearly three decades before McMillan clarified details about his oft-repeated Bible-and-revolver episode. In 1903, en route to a meeting in Los Angeles, McMillan visited Salt Lake City and reprised his dramatic story at the Presbyterian-related Salt Lake Collegiate Institute. Confronted by local reporters with eyewitness accounts that contradicted his version of the event, McMillan finally acknowledged an element of exaggeration in his account. “That remark is a metaphor,” he admitted. “I did not go into the pulpit with a drawn pistol, but I went armed. One of the officials of the Mormon Church told me that my life was in danger, and advised me to go armed. I knew that I was in peril, and at the time this friend spoke to me, I had already taken the precaution to provide myself with a pistol. I was determined I would not bite the dust first.”90*** Shortly before he died, McMillan wrote a narrative of his years in Mt. Pleasant that presented a different scenario than the one he offered during the early days of his ministry. While affirming that he faced opposition to his educational ministry in Mt. Pleasant, McMillan offered this revealing statement. “I cannot close this letter without acknowledging most gratefully the unfailing kindness of all the people of Mt. Pleasant. The threats and attempts upon my life were from authority high up in the church. Some of the local preachers in duty bound uttered threats and used scurrilous language about me, but they were always personally kind and were most courteous in their treatment of me, so that I have most pleasant recollections for all who live there.”91****While this, too, might be deemed an exaggeration of an old man, it does provide a caveat to published accounts of his encounters with Mormons in Mt. Pleasant.The Journal of Mormon History +++ 86San Pete Stake, Tabernacle Meeting Minutes, October 2, 1892.91Duncan J. McMillan, Letter to Mrs. H. F. Wall, typescript, n.d., n.p., Wasatch Academy Archives ++++  

Tellingly, McMillan’s Presbyterian colleagues in Salt Lake City were so alarmed at his inflammatory rhetoric that they purchased and burned copies of The Rocky Mountain Presbyterian in which one of his sensational articles appeared.89**

90“Puts Blame on Brigham Young,” Salt Lake Herald, May 17, 1903, 8. See also “Who Was Attacked?” Deseret Evening News, June 8, 1903, 4.


All references  come from Journal of Mormon History Volume 37 ; Summer of 2011.