A century and a half ago, the good ship Brooklyn carried about 250 immigrant converts to the Church from New York, around Cape Horn, to Yerba Buena, the Pacific Coast settlement that would soon be renamed San Francisco.

To commemorate that historic voyage, Latter-day Saints in the Bay Area have organized a "Festival of History Week" and the 330-voice Mormon Tabernacle Choir will be featured during the week of festivities.The First Presidency has announced that the choir will perform the evenings of July 29-30 in Davies Symphony Hall. It will be the first appearance of the choir in San Francisco in 30 years.

The weeklong observance, from July 27 to Aug. 3, will acquaint local Latter-day Saints and the public with the Church's historical roots in the community, according to local organizers. Other events planned include an exhibit of the voyage of the Brooklyn in the San Francisco Maritime Museum, a historical lecture series on "Communities of Faith in the Early Days of San Francisco," and a ceremony noting the placement of a bronze plaque marking the arrival of the Brooklyn at the location of the original landing.

The lecture series is scheduled for July 31 at the Presidio Chapel and is co-sponsored by the San Francisco Historical Society, together with historians of other faiths. The exhibit will run from June 1 to Oct. 1.

Under the leadership of Samuel Brannan, the party of Latter-day Saints set sail on the Brooklyn Feb. 4, 1846, and landed in the Yerba Buena harbor on July 31. They organized a community, started the first newspaper and the first English-speaking school in San Francisco, and began farming. Some of them crossed the Bay for better farm weather and founded the town of Brooklyn, which later became part of Oakland.

The Tabernacle Choir is widely known for its concert tours, recordings and weekly radio and television broadcasts from Temple Square. The program, "Music and the Spoken Word," is the longest continuously running radio program in network history, dating back to 1929.

Through the years, choir recordings have been "Gold" five times, "Platinum" twice, and have earned two Emmys from the television industry and a Grammy from the recording industry.

The choir has also won the Peabody Award for television public service, has been cited twice by the Freedoms Foundation, and has appeared at four U.S. Presidential inaugurations. Wendell Smoot is the president and business manager of the choir. Jerold Ottley is the musical director, and Craig Jessop, associate musical director.