News from the Antipodes

Synopsis

William Griffiths Reese was not quite three years old in the summer of 1861 when his family, who had converted to Mormonism in Wales, left their homeland to settle in Utah’s Cache Valley. Forty-five years later, in 1906, when William was married and the father of nine children (the youngest a mere infant), he answered a call to serve as a Mormon missionary on the other side of the world in Australia. During the twenty-seven months of his missionary labors, William also acted as the Australian correspondent to the Logan Tri-Weekly Journal, the leading newspaper in Cache Valley. It was an unusual arrangement, but William took his assignment seriously, producing an article at least every other week—seventy-six in all.

News From the Antipodes contains transcriptions of all of these articles, along with an introduction, epilogue, footnotes, and illustrations to make the material more accessible.

Elder Reese’s communiqués evince an intellectual curiosity and intense desire to educate himself about Australia. The government, culture, economy, agriculture, law, and political climate all drew his frequent study and comment. He covered such disparate subjects as the coal mining industry, horse and cattle breeding, parliamentary bills, the shipping trade, legal cases, murders and recurring labor strikes. He took the opportunity to attend cultural and sporting events, observing and commenting on the personalities of the day. His letters provide a fascinating glimpse of the Australia of the early twentieth century, as seen through the eyes of a Mormon from rural Utah.

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Note to Descendants of W. G. Reese

I am very interested in creating an email list of descendants of William Griffiths Reese. I would like to send out an occasional newsletter in which I would share stories about his life or the lives of his children. I also plan to ask for information from other descendants that would help me round out the story of the William Griffiths Reese family that I hope one day to tell. I promise, no spam!

Please go to the "Contact" page of this website and give me information about yourself. Also please give me all the email addresses of your siblings, children, cousins, etc. that you have. Again I will reiterate: I will not misuse this information! I will use it solely for Reese family purposes.

Editor's Notes

As long as I can remember, William Griffiths Reese has held a particular interest for me. I think it was because I always thought of him as my "schoolteacher" ancestor. He seemed to have an inquisitive mind and valued learning---traits I admired.

I became involved in the project that led to this book in about 2007. I had undertaken to digitize William's journals and had organized a number of family photos. During one of my trips to Utah, Joan Gunn, one of William's granddaughters, arranged a meeting of some Reeses at her Park City home to discuss what more could be done. Perhaps ten or twelve of William's descendants were there and we shared photographs and renewed acquaintances. I hadn't seen most of them for decades.

We discussed a project to transcribe and publish a cache of letters that William had written for publication in the Logan newspaper. Joan and others had already been working on the transcriptions. Since I was experienced in publishing family histories, I volunteered to organize the transcriptions, edit them, and add an introduction, explanatory footnotes and the like. I would then design a book containing this information and publish it.

At the time I envisioned finishing the book within a year or two. Like many projects of this sort, however, it required much more time and was far more complicated than I had envisioned. As I burrowed into details of Australian life and politics in the early twentieth century, I became engrossed in the project. Almost every page raised questions in my mind, and these led to further research and enlightenment. I visited the LDS Church History Library in Salt Lake and assembled data on other missionaries who served with William. I searched out details about the characters that crossed William's line of sight in Australia, such as heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson, political leader and orator, William Humble Ward (who Elder Reese always refers to as "The Earl of Dudley"), Czech master violinist and composer, Jan Kubelik, and renowned Australian contralto Madame Ada Crossley, I refreshed myself on the details of the "Great White Fleet" that Theodore Roosevelt sent around the globe to demonstrate that the United States had become a world power. I learned more about the great earthquake that had nearly leveled San Francisco just a few months before William traveled through. I collected images of people and events he mentioned to help visualize what he was writing about. I came to realize that William's letters gave a first-hand insight into many important historical events of the first decade of the twentieth century and offered a fascinating insight into the mind of an LDS missionary of that era.

One of William's ancestors who could not attend that 2007 Park City meeting was Dr. Robert L. Reese, of Tucson, Arizona. Bob, who is also a great-grandson of William, later drove to our home in Orange County, California and we were able to visit and discuss the project further. Bob and Joan took charge of transcribing the letters (some of which were only available on difficult-to-read old microfiche). They were assisted at various times by Veda Mae Munk Romney, Jeanette Munk Wolley, Emily Gunn Tripp, and Kristin Gunn. This was a tedious undertaking, but without their hard work, the book would never have come about.

-- Morris Thurston