Mormon Elder Behaving Badly

“an obscene and lascivious letter”

First, before I raise any hackles: this all happened long ago, and by the time you get to the end of this short account you will question whether the perp, Albert Ketchum, was an elder of the Mormon Church anywhere but in his own mind. I record it here as an instance of the early twists and turns of Mormonism as it headed West, and before it settled into the coherent institution that is the common perception of it today.

This article came to my attention while I was engaged in the venerable sport of family history research. You search a name in various databases — if you’re lucky, a somewhat unusual name so that you’ll be able to distinguish the signal from the noise — and sometimes you’re surprised at what you find. My search target in this case was Wingfield Watson, and I’ll get to him in a minute. But here are the first paragraphs of the article clipped above, from the Denver Evening Post of 8 October 1900:

Albert Ketchum, who is said to be an elder of the Mormon church, is occupying a cell in the county jail. He is charged with mailing an obscene and lascivious letter regarding the conduct of a handsome young married woman of Monte Vista. His excuse is that he entertained hopes of reforming her and wrote the letter to a relative of hers, with the expectation that exposure would cause her to forsake her ways. The excuse did not placate her relatives, who assert that…