Mark Hill Forscutt

About Forscutt

Mark Hill Forscutt was born on June 19, 1834, in Godmanchester, England. He joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1853 and served as a missionary in England from 1855 to 1860. In March 1860 he married Elizabeth Unsworth, and the couple emigrated to Utah.

In Utah, Forscutt broke with the Latter-day Saint church and joined the followers of Joseph Morris, serving as an apostle and clerk of the Church of the Firstborn (Morrisite). He was among the Morrisites caught up in the 1862 conflict with territorial authorities known as the Morrisite War. In 1865 he joined the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, became a close friend of Joseph Smith III, and spent the rest of his life in its ministry, including missions to England and the Society Islands. He wrote hymns and edited the RLDS hymnal Saints’ Harmony (1889). He died on October 18, 1903.

Few nineteenth-century figures passed through so many branches of the Restoration movement, and fewer left a record as full as Forscutt’s journals, which run from 1855 to 1900. They make him an unusually useful witness to how converts chose, left, and joined churches, and to what those choices cost their families.

Publications

Rogers, Eric Paul. “‘Instead of Retarding Me’: Marriage, Missionary Availability, and Ministerial Authority in the Forscutt Record, 1866–1868.” John Whitmer Historical Association Journal 47, no. 1 (Spring 2027). Forthcoming.

In January 1867, Mark Hill Forscutt, an elder of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints riding a circuit in southwestern Iowa, drafted but never sent a letter resigning from the traveling ministry. Drawing on his journals, an unpublished letter from Joseph Smith III, a newly recovered divorce file from the Probate Court of Great Salt Lake County, and the Council Bluffs branch minute book for 1868–1874, I argue that the crisis concerned missionary availability rather than ministerial legitimacy: whether the church could keep a traveling elder whose household claimed him. I treat Elizabeth Unsworth Forscutt as the article’s subject rather than its backdrop, reading her June 1867 divorce petition and the couple’s remarriage on December 25, 1868, alongside the branch’s discipline of ordinary members. The church’s silence about Forscutt, I show, reflected a distinction between member fellowship and ministerial deployment rather than an absence of oversight, and the household and the itinerant ministry reached a negotiated, decade-long accommodation shaped by the conditions of any denomination that relied on unsalaried itinerants.

Rogers, Eric Paul. “Mark Hill Forscutt: Mormon Missionary, Morrisite Apostle, RLDS Minister.” John Whitmer Historical Association Journal 21 (2001): 69–100. Author’s copy, Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23849352. Winner of the association’s Best Article Award.

When I began this work, historians had noted that no one had published an adequate biography of any nineteenth-century Reorganized Church leader, and Forscutt, despite his influence on the Reorganization, had received only passing treatment. This article traces his public ministry through all three of his churches, from Latter-day Saint missionary in England, through his years as a Morrisite apostle, to his long service in the Reorganized Church. It was written to move beyond earlier accounts and lay the foundation for a full biography.

In progress

“My Family”: Ruby Faunce, the Saints’ Herald, and the Editing of Mark Hill Forscutt’s Diaries, 1934

In 1934, Forscutt’s daughter Ruby Faunce published “Biography of Mark Hill Forscutt; Arranged from His Diaries” in fifteen installments in the Saints’ Herald. For decades the serial was the only public access to the diaries, and later accounts of the Forscutt family descend from it. In this article, I collate the serial against the diaries to show how the record was edited. The cuts follow a single line: what made Forscutt’s first marriage a legal and contested matter disappears, while what made it a household remains, so that “my family” stands in for the diarist’s own words. I argue that at least three hands shaped the printed text, Forscutt’s, Faunce’s, and the Herald editors’, and that genre governed their choices. The household’s record reached the public only after passing through the institution the household had competed with.

Journals of Mark Hill Forscutt

I am preparing a documentary edition of the Journals of Mark Hill Forscutt, drawing on manuscripts held in multiple repositories and private collections. Forscutt’s writings span his early conversion in England, his missionary service, his involvement with the Morrisite movement, his ordination and ministry in the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and his later life in the American Midwest. The edition reconstructs the full textual record, situates each entry within its historical context, and provides annotations that clarify people, places, doctrinal references, and institutional developments. This project builds on my earlier scholarship on Forscutt and expands it by presenting his own words in a reliable, accessible scholarly format.

Sketch of Joseph Morris

I am also preparing a documentary edition of Sketch of Joseph Morris, an important narrative source for understanding the origins, theology, and internal dynamics of the Church of the Firstborn (Morrisite). The edition brings together the surviving manuscript versions, establishes a clear textual history, and provides annotations that illuminate Morris’s revelations, leadership style, and the social and religious conditions that shaped the movement. By presenting this text with scholarly apparatus and historical framing, the project contributes to a fuller understanding of Morrisite identity, authority, and the broader landscape of nineteenth-century Restoration traditions.

Talks and interviews

• “‘I Am Anxious to See My Children’: Marriage, Authority, and Family Rupture at the Crossroads.” John Whitmer Historical Association, Council Bluffs, Iowa, September 25, 2026. The basis for the forthcoming JWHA Journal article.
• “From Morrisite to Josephite and Beyond.” Interview, Project Zion Podcast, Episode 616, August 22, 2023.
• “From Morrisite to Josephite and Beyond.” Community of Christ Historic Sites Foundation, 2023 Spring Lecture Series, May 28, 2023. Video.
• Interview on Forscutt, Project Zion Podcast, Episode 489, June 21, 2022.
• “Mark Hill Forscutt: Mormon Missionary, Morrisite Apostle, and RLDS Minister.” Community of Christ Historic Sites Foundation, 2022 Spring Lecture Series, April 14, 2022. Video.
• “The Morrisite War.” 60th Annual Utah State History Conference, Salt Lake City, September 2012.
• “The Morrisites and the Sociology of Religious Schism.” John Whitmer Historical Association, Independence, Missouri, September 2006.
• “The Early English Missionary Labors of Mark Hill Forscutt: 1855–1860.” Mormon History Association, Aalborg, Denmark, July 2000.
• “Mark Hill Forscutt: Mormon Missionary, Morrisite Apostle, RLDS Minister.” John Whitmer Historical Association, Excelsior Springs, Missouri, September 1999.

Sources

• Mark H. Forscutt paper, circa 1862 (MS 0261): Forscutt’s partial history of the Morrisite church. Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah.
• Mark H. Forscutt journal, 1855–1900 (MS 17393). Church History Library, Salt Lake City.
• Ruby Faunce, “Biography of Mark Hill Forscutt; Arranged from His Diaries,” Saints’ Herald, 1934, fifteen installments.
• Wikipedia: Morrisite War and Wikipedia: Church of the Firstborn (Morrisite).

Researching Forscutt, the Morrisites, or the early Reorganization? I’m glad to hear from you: rogersep@gmail.com.

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