Thomas G. Alexander Utah, The Right Place Condensed by Brittany
Nelson As Utahns struggled to make industrial and urban life
more humane, the composition of its population changed rapidly.
Although people of British ancestry remained the majority in the
state, each train that pulled into the railroad stations of
Utah's major cities and mining centers seemed like a caricature
of Noah's ark, carrying an ethnic mixture from Europe, Asia,
Africa, and Latin America. The British dominated the Mormon
immigration to Utah. Mormon missionaries urged converts to
gather to Zion, and in 1880, the British-born averaged 22
percent of Utah's population and more than 67 percent of the
foreign-born in the territory. By filling the ranks of business,
labor, and farming, the British-born contributed to Utah's
economic and cultural life. Some examples illustrate the point.
John Sharp left the coal mines of Scotland to migrate to Utah,
where he became superintendent of the Utah Central Railway and a
director of the Union Pacific.