Benjamin G. Ferris

Benjamin Gilbert Ferris (1802 – February 21, 1891)[1] was a Secretary to the Territorial Government of Utah, a lawyer, a district attorney and leader in Ithaca (town), New York.[2][3]

Benjamin G. Ferris
Photo of Benjamin G. Ferris
Born
Benjamin Gilbert Ferris

1802
DiedFebruary 21, 1891 (age 89)
Occupation(s)Secretary to the Territorial Government of Utah
District attorney for Tompkins County, New York
Member of the New York State Assembly
Notable workUtah and the Mormons
SpouseElizabeth Cornelia Woodcock

Biography

Ferris was born in 1802 in Spencer, New York, where his father was a prominent citizen. He received his secondary education in Spencer and Canandaigua. He studied law at Union College in Schenectady and graduated in 1828. He began practicing law in 1829 in the Ithaca, New York offices of David Woodcock, whose daughter Elizabeth Cornelia (1809–1903) he married in 1830.[4]

He was District Attorney of Tompkins County, New York from 1840 to 1845. He was President of the Village of Ithaca in 1841 and 1852. He was a member of the New York State Assembly (Tompkins Co., 2nd D.) in 1851. He was Supervisor of the Town of Ithaca in 1855.

Mormon criticism

Ferris was appointed by President Millard Fillmore as Secretary of the Territory of Utah in 1852.[4][5] Ferris was a follower of Swedenborgianism and clashed with the Mormons during his six months in Utah. A biographer wrote: "He could not suppress his abhorence [sic] of Mormonism nor tolerate its influences, nor accept its devotees as his neighbors, and resigned his high position, thus sacrificing great possibilities in his very promising public career."[4]

From his Utah experience, Ferris wrote the 1854 book Utah and the Mormons,[6] and his wife published her letters from this period in the 1856 book The Mormons at Home.[7] These books were influential in building opposition to Mormonism in the American public.[4]

Ferris died in 1891 at the age of 89.[4]

Female Life Among the Mormons

Ferris or his wife were suspected to be the author of Female Life Among the Mormons: A Narrative of Many Years' Personal Experience under the penname "Maria Ward". Recent scholarship has shown that they were not the author.[3][8][9]

A New Theory of the Origin of Species

Ferris was the author of A New Theory of the Origin of Species (1872 and republished 1883). The book advocated an unorthodox form of creationism. Paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope negatively reviewed the book in The American Naturalist stating that "his theory, that each new specific form is produced from the matrix of a pre-existent species by supernatural power, is only a form of the old belief in distinct creations, and is not a developmental theory in any sense. He produces no evidence in support of it, in fact, he does not appear to know what scientific evidence is."[10]

Published works
  • Ferris, Benjamin G. (1854). Utah and the Mormons: The History, Government, Doctrines, Customs, and Prospects of the Latter-Day Saints, from Personal Observation During a Six Months' Residence at Great Salt Lake City. Harper & Brothers.
  • Ferris, Benjamin G. (1883). A New Theory of the Origin of Species. New York: Fowler & Wells.

References
  1. Death date from "Ithaca Death Records 1891". Genealogy Connect - Plus. Retrieved 2009-12-16.
  2. "Arrivals" (PDF). The New York Times. August 26, 1853. Retrieved 2008-07-01. Among the arrivals from California by the last steamer was Hon. Benjamin G. Ferris, lately Secretary to the Territorial Government of Utah. Mr. Ferris left Salt Lake some months since, and went across the country to California. He has lived among the Mormons ...
  3. "Ithaca Journal". March 3, 2008. Historians have suggested that the author, (whose pen-name was Maria Ward) was really Cornelia Ferris, and her husband was Benjamin G. Ferris, once a secretary of the Utah Territory, a lawyer, a district attorney and president of the Village of Ithaca.
  4. Burns, Thomas W. (1904). Initial Ithacans. Ithaca, NY: Press of the Ithaca Journal. pp. 49–52. Retrieved 2009-12-16.
  5. Utah and the Mormons: The History, Government, Doctrines, Customs, and Prospects of the Latter-Day Saints, from Personal Observation During a Six Months' Residence at Great Salt Lake City. Harper & Brothers. 1854. ISBN 9780608424125. In the early part of the summer of 1852 I was solicited to discharge the duties of Secretary of the Territory of Utah. ...
  6. "The Mormons in Utah" (PDF). The New York Times. June 30, 1854. Retrieved 2008-07-01. The History, Government. Doctrines, Customs and Prospects of the Latter-Day Saints. From personal observations during a six-months' residence at Great Salt Lake City. By Benjamin G. Ferris, late Secretary of Utah Territory.
  7. Ferris, Mrs. B.G. (1856). The Mormons at Home: With Some Incidents of Travel From Missouri to California, 1852-3, in a Series of Letters. New York: Dix & Edwards. Retrieved 2009-12-16.
  8. "1856 Mormon Tale". History Detectives. Retrieved 2008-07-01.
  9. "Maria Ward". Retrieved 2008-07-01. According to Michael Homer and Massimo Introvigne, Maria Ward was the pseudonym for Elizabeth Cornelia Woodcock Ferris, the wife of Benjamin G. Ferris, who was Utah Territorial Secretary between 1852-53. This widely published anti-Mormon author claimed to base her accounts on personal experience in Utah Territory
  10. E. D. C. (1873). Reviewed Work: A New Theory of the Origin of Species by B. G. Ferris. The American Naturalist 7 (4): 231-232.
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