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Leonard J. Arrington

Leonard J. Arrington
Leonard Arrington 1950s.jpeg
Born Leonard James Arrington
(1917-07-02)July 2, 1917
Twin Falls, Idaho, U.S.
Died February 11, 1999(1999-02-11) (aged 81)
Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S.
Cause of death Heart failure
Resting place Logan City Cemetery
Nationality American
Education Ph.D (Economics)
Alma mater University of Idaho
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Occupation Historian
Author
University professor
Employer Utah State University
Brigham Young University
Known for LDS Church Historian, 1972-1982
Writings in Mormon history
Spouse(s) Grace Fort
(1942–1982)
Harriett Ann Horne
(1983–1999)
Children 3
Parent(s) Noah and Edna Arrington

Leonard James Arrington (July 2, 1917 – February 11, 1999) was an American author, academic and the founder of the Mormon History Association. He is known as the "Dean of Mormon History" and "the Father of Mormon History" because of his many influential contributions to the field.

Arrington grew up in a large family in Idaho, where he and his family were members of the LDS church. After high school, he studied agricultural economics at the University of Idaho and continued his studies in economics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. While teaching at the Utah State Agricultural College in Logan, Utah, Harvard University Press published his book Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830–1900 in 1958. In writing the Mormon history classic, Arrington started performing research in the LDS Church library archives and become familiar with its policies and procedures. In Great Basin Kingdom, Arrington wrote that Mormon pioneer communal irrigation practices were a reflection of their communal values, which also affected their city planning.

After a Fulbright professorship at the University of Genoa in Italy, Arrington raised funds to pay for research and writing on Mormon biographies. In 1959, Arrington's article An Economic Interpretation of 'The Word of Wisdom' caused the fletchling BYU Studies to be suspended for a year. In 1965, Arrington helped establish the Mormon History Association, which adopted Dialogue (journal) as their publication venue. He taught Western American History at Brigham Young University from 1972–1987.

In conjunction with his teaching appointment at BYU, Arrington was also appointed as the first Church Historian for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1972 to 1982. It was the first time a professional historian was given this job. Arrington and his team of researchers, forming the church Historical Department, earnestly began many projects to document LDS church history, ranging from articles for the church's official magazine to scholarly books written for a non-LDS audience. The Historical Department was not subject to the church's Correlation Program and enjoyed some freedom of research. However, over time, various members and apostles disliked the historical articles, and after an undergraduate research paper compared the Historical Division's secular historical style to anti-Mormons, several LDS historians were secretly forbidden from publishing in church publications. The new director of the Historical Department, G. Homer Durham, required that all publications go through him and halted the hiring of new employees. In 1982, the Church released Arrington as Church Historian and transferred the History Division to BYU, creating the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Church History.


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