Mormon History Association conference
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SPRINGFIELD, ILL.
Recognizing this year's bicentennial of the birth of President Abraham Lincoln, the non-denominational Mormon History Association held its 44th annual conference May 21-24 in Springfield, the capital of Illinois, where Lincoln began his career as an attorney and rose to prominence as a successful candidate for U.S. president.
Some 400 attendees heard more than 100 scholars give presentations on various aspects of the Mormon experience, some centering on the conference theme "Mormonism and the Land of Lincoln: Intersections, Crosscurrents and Dispersions."
One of the organizers and prominent presenters at the conference was Bryon C. Andreasen, a research historian at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield and the bishop of the Springfield 1st Ward.
Brother Andreasen led a pre-conference bus tour to some of the Lincoln-related sites in and around Springfield. He led a post-conference tour to Nauvoo, tracing the route that Joseph Smith and his associates took to and from Springfield in 1842, when they went there for a hearing challenging an extradition order accusing Joseph in the attempted assassination of former Missouri Gov. Lilburn Boggs, who had issued the Extermination Order driving the Mormons from the state.
In two addresses — one at the association conference and the other to missionaries and other Church members in Nauvoo — he discussed the possibility (he considers it a likelihood) that the Mormon Prophet and the future U.S. president met and conversed with each other in Springfield.
Coverage of Bishop Andreasen's Nauvoo speech and some of the convergence presentations are on pages 3 and 4.
