The Kingdom of Saint James, Quaife, 1930

Summary

The Kingdom of Saint James: A Narrative of the Mormons is Milo M. Quaife’s 1930 scholarly history of James Jesse Strang’s Beaver Island settlement, published by Yale University Press. It is the standard secondary account of the Kingdom of Saint James – built from Strang’s own manuscripts and diary, contemporary newspapers, and interviews with surviving Strangites and gentile eyewitnesses – and, as a 1930 publication, is the last major full-length work on the subject to enter the public domain under the current 95-year US copyright term (effective 1 January 2026). Four separate digitized copies are held here. The canonical item includes both the original Internet Archive Text PDF and its OCR derivative.

History

Quaife was Secretary of the Burton Historical Collection in Detroit, a fact stated on the book’s own title page.¹ The book runs ten narrative chapters – from “The Calling of a Prophet” through “The Downfall of the Kingdom” (pp. 1-183) – followed by seven appendices (pp. 184-246) that print primary documents directly: a bibliographic essay on sources, a diary of Strang’s own, Joseph Smith’s letter of appointment, Orson Hyde’s revelation against Strang, Strang’s summons to the Twelve, and further correspondence, closing with a full index.² It is cited repeatedly and by name in articles here on Assassination of James Strang and the Kingdom of Saint James, including for the coronation of 8 July 1850, the 1854 population census, and the disputed circumstances of Strang’s shooting and death.

Quaife draws directly on Strang’s own writings, including Ancient and Modern Michilimackinac, 1854, while explicitly cautioning that it is “a partisan document” reflecting only “the Mormon point of view,” and that Strang’s “sense of the dramatic” may have led him to embellish detail.³ He is similarly critical in the other direction: his account of the 1856 assassination names Dr. H. D. McCulloch as “the real assassin of Strang,” the man whose “vengeful brain … conceived the plot” – a characterization not found in the contemporary press.⁴ He also draws on Elizabeth Whitney Williams’s 1905 memoir, A Child of the Sea; and Life among the Mormons, 1905, as a source on the same events, noting where her account and his differ.

For the island road history, Quaife recounts Wingfield Watson’s forced 1856 journey to Saint James “along the King’s Highway,” describing it as little more than a road winding among cedar-swamp stumps.⁵ The footnote structure is important: an Edward Chidester letter dated 3 August 1856 supports the preceding expulsion totals, while Quaife’s note for Watson’s personal episode cites his 11 December 1919 interview with Watson and a 15 August 1877 Watson letter. Quaife is therefore valuable evidence for the remembered name and condition of the road, but the passage is not a contemporaneous 1856 written attestation of the words “King’s Highway.”

Significance

This is the single most-cited secondary source in this knowledge base’s Strang-era articles: it is the fullest reconstruction available of the kingdom’s founding, government, population, conflicts and collapse, built on manuscript sources (Strang’s diary, apostles’ testimonies) not held directly here. Its scholarly apparatus – footnotes naming manuscript sources, page-specific citations, an index – also makes it more precisely citable than the primary Strangite and gentile narratives it draws on. Because it is a secondary, retrospective account written seven decades after the events by an author working from the Strang family’s own papers, it should be read as an interpretation built on primary evidence, not as a primary source itself; Quaife’s page-specific factual claims (dates, names, figures) are treated here as generally reliable while attributing his characterizations and judgments (for example, of McCulloch, or of Strang’s veracity) to him by name rather than adopting them as settled fact.

Sources

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Added 28 July 2026 · revised 4 August 2026. Recent changes