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Show Chapter 14 THE ENIGMA OF MILFORD BARD SHIPP Except for the testimonial of a perennially loving and loyal wife, remarkably little is available to the public to document the life of the charismatic Milford Bard Shipp (referred to by one author as "charming and well-intentioned"). Seven legal-size handwritten pages entitled "Extract from private journal of M. B. Shipp" (which simply details one short missionary trip), a page and a paragraph quoted in Ellis' diary, and his name (as editor) on some issues of the small, privately-published periodical, "The Salt Lake Sanitarian," pretty well sum it up. There are, in the archives of the Daughters of Utah Pioneers Museum in Salt Lake City (and available to members only), two unpublished typescripts which throw some light on Milford's life. Information from those sources has been included where appropriate in the text. At twenty Milford was the center, for a whole season, of the exuberant social activities of a group of young people where he was the eldest by eight to ten years. Shortly thereafter, having married an heiress who was also a childhood friend, fathered a son, then gone on a mission, he was divorced by his wife who was influenced by defamatory comments about the Mormons. He was thereafter the life of the party in Salt Lake circles where Ellis |
