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PRICE, Carbon County — A local man has an interesting piece of Utah history up for sale: a badge believed to have been worn by the first mayor of Salt Lake City, who was elected in 1851.
Glenn Fulcher is a picker based out of Price. He finds objects — sometimes rare, odd or unusual — and sells them. He recently came across the patch that came along with a letter dated back in 1950 with information from Jedediah Morgan Grant’s granddaughter, Estella Grant Moncur.
“The patch was saved by his family after his death,” Fulcher said. It had been preserved in a book and the book had been handed down the family throughout the years.
The patch and the letter were eventually discovered by someone else who had found it in the book, and after being passed around a few times, the artifacts ended up in Fulcher’s hands.
“This is a really significant historical find,” Fulcher said, noting its connection to Salt Lake City, Utah and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Grant was the first mayor of Salt Lake City and a large contributor to Utah’s early days.
He was born in upstate New York and became a member of the LDS Church in 1833 when he was 17 years old. Grant was among the first to leave Nauvoo for modern-day Salt Lake City in 1846, according to McKayla Herron of the Utah State History reference staff.
He didn’t reach the Salt Lake valley until Sept. 29, 1847 — months after the first pioneers of the group arrived. However, on that path he was called to various duties, Herron said.
Nearly two weeks after Great Salt Lake City was incorporated on Jan. 6, 1851, Grant was elected mayor of the city. It was a title he would hold until his death in 1856.
However, Herron notes there isn’t much known about Grant’s time as mayor of Salt Lake City. While he maintained his title, Grant held various roles with the LDS Church and even traveled to Washington, D.C. to convince politicians to keep Brigham Young as the governor of Utah territory.
Grant received the nickname “Brigham’s Sledgehammer” because of his fiery style of preaching. In 1854, he was sustained the second counselor to Brigham Young in the First Presidency of the LDS Church.
Grant died at the age of 40 from a combination of typhoid and pneumonia in December 1856. While his time in Utah was relatively short, his legacy lived on and is even seen on Utah’s map.
South Morgan, settled in 1860, and North Morgan, settled in 1861, were named after Grant — a few years after his death. The two settlements eventually merged as the city of Morgan became incorporated 1868. Morgan County is also named after him.
The badge that Fulcher is selling features at least two prominent symbols of Utah’s early days: the beehive and the lion.
While the beehive symbol is the more recognized historic symbol of Utah, the lion was also common back in the first few decades of the state and, among other things, was featured on the back of the 1860 $20 Mormon Gold piece that was once minted in Utah.
Robert Campbell, the owner of All About Coins Salt Lake City, said the lion used in the gold coins, which were minted four years after Grant’s death, was used to symbolize Brigham Young leading Mormon pioneers to Utah.
“Brigham Young was called the ‘Lion of the West’ and also this lion had reference to the lion of Judah, meaning that of the 12 tribes of Israel, Judah was the ruling one,” Campbell said. “People associated him like the American Moses.”
Fulcher is selling the badge for a little less than $10,000. He said its tie to the early Utah history makes it special.
“It belongs in a museum, for sure,” he said.
