Andrew Jenson

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Andrew Jenson (born Anders Jensen) was an Assistant Church Historian of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for much of the early twentieth century. He also served as president of the Scandinavian Mission.

Jenson was born Anders Jensen in Torslev parish, Hjørring amt, Denmark on December 11th, 1850. His parents joined the church when he was four. He left for the United States in 1866. He came across the plains in Andrew H. Scott's ox company.^[1] On coming to Utah he anglicized his name. He settled in the Salt Lake Valley in Utah Territory.

In 1873 he was ordained a Seventy by George Q. Cannon and sent on a mission to Denmark. He served another mission to Denmark in 1879-1881. In 1876 he translated the history of the Prophet Joseph Smith into Danish. While in Denmark he became a monthly periodical called "Morgenstjernen". He continued publishing it in Utah after his return. After eight years it changed its named to the Historical Record and was published in English.

Among the men he worked with in the Church Historians office was Joseph Fielding Smith.

Jenson was a prolific witter, compiling the four-volume Latter-day Saint Biographical Encyclopedia, a church chronology and an early Latter-day Saint encyclopedia. He was also closely involved with the compilation of much of the Journal History of the Church. He also compiled the "Encyclopedic History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints".

During the 1890s, Jenson collected all the records he could find concerning the Mountain Meadows Massacre, including his own field notes, excerpts of witnesses' diaries, sworn affidavits, newspaper reports, and the transcriptions from the Mormon church's internal investigations. Many of these transcriptions are interviews with participants who were granted complete confidentiality with regard to whatever they might say. (A book by LDS historians Ronald W. Walker, Richard E. Turley Jr., and Glen M. Leonard on the massacre is scheduled to be published by Oxford University Press. A decade in the making, research for the book draws from the Jenson archive. The files have never been open to the public, or for use by historians. Media reports indicate they are scheduled to be available to the public as early as 2008 or 2009.)

[edit] References

1. ^ Encyclopedic History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1941, p. V

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