Wilford Woodruff wrote in his journal this small note for 22 July 1866.
I…attended meeting at the Tabernacle Bowery…[in the] Afternoon Elder Hollings in English + German told how he was Brought into the Church He was a Episcopalien Minister + was commanded of the Lord to go to Brigham Young to know what to do to be saved.[1]
Woodruff did not say much else about the sermon and continued with his day. For Wilford, the sermon was worthy of a journal entry, but did not need more comment from the Apostle. For an outside reader, perhaps questions were burning, who was this man? What was his story? What happened to the man who stood before thousands and stated that he had seen visions that led him to Utah Territory? As with anything I write, a larger question of how this applies to the broader scope of history underlies my research. How does this one man play a role in Latter-day Saint history?
“Elder Hollings” was Marcus Holling, a Danish man born to Paul William Holling and Anna Lackman. Paul and Anna were respectively twenty-six and twenty-two years old when Marcus Holling was born. Born in the town of Meldorf, located in the southern portion of the province of Schleswig-Holstein, Holling grew up in a region that had long been the center of contestation between the rising German states in the south and the Nordic states, such as Denmark, in the north.
When Holling was born in 1828, Meldorf had been under Danish control, however the rise of nationalism in Europe following the French Revolution led to growing tensions in the region. The city and other parts of the province had for centuries been inhabited by a conglomeration of Danes and Germans. Nationalism pushed communities apart as German and Danish decendants fought to align the region with their respective “nations.” These regional and local tensions finally exploded in part due to the prodding of German Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck. Bismarck succeeded in conquering and retaining the territory on 30 October 1864.[2] Holling came of age alongside the new powerful German state, his own province now fully enmeshed into the new German Empire. Like many other fellow Europeans, he likely wondered when the next dramatic war would unfold as other European nations balked at the rise of another regional power.
Much of Holling’s early life is shrouded in mystery. What scant information is available from before his conversion is uncertain. His family records state that he was perhaps one of the “landed Gentry of Germany or Denmark.” They also suggest that he was “educated in Oxford University, England.” He also, from his schooling and life in the borderlands of various states, learned “seven different languages.”[3] What is concretely known is that sometime is his early adult life, he became a “clergyman of the Reformed Lutheran Church” and emigrated to Albany, New York, perhaps seeking to escape religious persecution. However, he later told the Saints in Utah that as he taught, he “felt that there was something lacking” when he was a minister.[4] He likely had little idea that his life was to dramatically change in 1863 during the midst of the American Civil War when he settled in the small town of Valparaiso, Indiana.[5]
In 1866, The Deseret News reported that Marcus Holling had in a “peculiar manner” been told by the Lord in a vision “to go to His servant the Prophet [Brigham Young], while yet he had never met with an Elder of the Church.”[6] In addition to the Deseret New’s brief narrative, Holling’s story was also recorded by Jesse N. Smith, a missionary and former president of the Scandinavian Mission, who was returning home in late 1864.
Smith had been baptized as a member of the Church when he was eight years old in 1843. He was one of the early pioneers of Utah and had since 1860 been serving as a missionary in the European Mission. He was assigned to labor in the Scandinavian countries and had for two years been the President of that part of the mission.[7] He returned to the United States in 1864, noting in his journal how the Civil War had caused a heightened state of anxiety in Missouri. At St. Joseph, Smith caught the steamer Colorado that took him slowly north along the Missouri River. He arrived in Nebraska Territory and the town of Wyoming, a small town that the Saints had begun to use as a departure point for crossing the Great Plains.
While on the Colorado Smith recorded his first meeting with Marcus Holling. Smith wrote:
July 25: As I sat in the shade of the boiler deck upon a camp stool in the crowd, a middle-aged man wearing a straw hat and duster came and stopped before me and after the usual salutation asked: “Who are you, and where are you going?” Replied that I was a Mormon elder on my way home to Utah. The clasped his hands fervently and exclaimed, “Thank God.” He then related to me some portions of his history. His name was Marcus Holling; he was born in Holstein and received a good education; he came to this country and lived near Albany, N.Y., where he practiced medicine as a homeopathic doctor. He was also a preacher, as I afterwards learned. He had some scruples about his religious ideas, and one night while lying on his bed he was visited by a supernatural personage, who said to him, “Go to Brigham Young and he shall tell thee what to do to be saved.” Deeply impressed he related what he had heard to his friends, but they scouted him as a lunatic. Precisely the same scene occurred the two following nights; so he hesitated no longer but wrote to Pres. Young, recounting his experience and asking his advice. He showed the President’s reply, which was in German, in which language the letter of inquiry was written. The advice was that Holling should come on to Omaha and join some of our emigrating companies and proceed to Utah. Against the advice of former friends he sold all his property for money, greenbacks, packed same in his trunk preparatory to starting on his journey and during the night lost all by fire except the clothes he wore, and the money happened to have been upon his person. With this scanty outfit he commenced the journey and was thus far on the road. I was the first Latter-day Saint he had ever met.[8]
Smith advised Holling to “stop with me at Wyoming, as our outfitting point had been changed from Omaha to that place, but he held to the letter and the letter said Omaha, and there he would go.” Instead of traveling with the main body of the emigrating Saints, Holling proceeded on to Omaha. He wrote to Smith a few days after his arrival announcing that he “was going out with a merchant train as a teamster.”[9] Omaha was the place Brother Brigham told him to go, and so he went. However, his experiences crossing the Great Plains proved to be a challenging trek.
Holling had lost most of his possessions in the fire, but matters went from bad to worse when on the trail he “got sick” and was “left at the Fort Kearney Hospital.” Out of funds and still sick, Holling was rescued by Smith who arrived a short while later. Smith added Holling into the Warren S. Snow immigration company, which arrived in Salt Lake City on 2 November 1864.[10] How Holling reacted to finally meeting Brother Brigham has not yet been discovered, but likely he felt excitement to meet the man who could satisfy the requirements in the vision and tell him what he should do.
The next few months of Marcus Holling’s life were perhaps overwhelming. The Latter-day Saints had developed a unique culture in Utah, in part shaped by the doctrines of the Restoration and by the international diversity among the Saints. He was baptized by John Sharp on 1 December 1864. Soon thereafter he was ordained a Seventy in the Church.[11] Later that year he received a patriarchal blessing from Charles W. Hyde.[12] Perhaps most importantly, on 17 June 1865, he married Emma Frisby, a woman nearly twenty-four years his junior.
Emma, who went by Emily, was also a recent migrant to Utah. She was born on 21 June 1844, in Birmingham, England to William and Elizabeth Frisby. Traveling to Zion in response to the call to gather to Utah, Emily left England with her siblings on 3 June 1864 where she likely traveled with Holling in the same wagon company.[13] The couple would have two children; a boy in 1866 they named Marcus William Frisby Holling, and a daughter in 1867 they christened Ernestine Emily Holling.
In 1866, Holling wrote to President Young, lamenting the hardship he was experiencing in finding a suitable home to rent and his efforts to obtain any property in the city. Prices in Salt Lake City were high, and land in the valley was expensive. Like many other converts, Holling was struggling to make his way in post-war Utah, which like the rest of the nation, was still unsettled by the aftermath of the American Civil War. Holling asked Young for guidance in building his new home, ending with this statement, “I will be always willing to obey, for I am told so to do by special commandment of the Lord.”[14] No more is recorded on the matter, but Holling did begin working as an accountant at the Council House, likely a job provided by Brother Brigham to help the recent convert.[15] It was in this year that Marcus Holling gave the account of his conversion in the Salt Lake City Bowery. In addition to Elder Woodruff, the Deseret News also reported on the sermon.
In the afternoon Elder Holling spoke of the different feelings he had now from those which he had when he was a clergyman of the Reformed Lutheran Church and preaching what he then believed was the truth. He then felt there was something lacking; that something he had found in the gospel of salvation. He referred to the peculiar manner in which the Lord had called him in vision to go to His servant the Prophet, while yet he had never met with an Elder of the Church; and bore a strong testimony to the work of God. He afterwards addressed the congregation for a short time in the German language. Pres. Brigham Young related a little of Bro Holling’s history and spoke of the manner in which he had received the spirit of the work.[16]
Following the sermon, Holling continued his work until 1867 when he was called alongside several other brethren to serve a mission in Europe. Rising to the challenge, Holling accepted the call and was set apart by Elder George Q. Cannon, a Latter-day Saint Apostle.[17] Holling left his young family on 12 May 1867, traveling back across the Great Plains to New York. In his company were twenty-five other elders, including a young Karl G. Maeser. Their company departed New York on 13 July and arrived in England on the 26 July 1867.[18] As the missionaries were divided to various fields of labor, Holling was assigned to go to Holland and work there among the Dutch.[19]
Missionary work in Holland had been ongoing off and on for over a decade with limited success. Holling served as the mission president and worked with several local elders. Holling reported the struggles the mission had in letters to President Young, yet he continued to labor faithfully to share his faith with the Dutch and reported on some progress with the building up of the Church.[20] After two years, Holling wrote to Brother Brigham about his mission. He called Holland, “a benighted country where the circumstances of the Kingdom of God were so unfavorable that I postponed always writing in hope that when I could write more pleasant news to cheer the hearts of the brethren.” He noted that despite his discouragement, the mission was now “self-supporting” and had enough members to aid the missionaries. He bore his testimony that he and his fellow laborers in Holland were “servants of Christ.” He noted that the people of the Netherlands had “many peculiarities.” He stated:
The most of the people are overreligious and posted in the scriptures in their own way. Katholic and Calvinist errors are the strong bounds by which priestcrafts [sic] has boand the souls.
Holling added that many of the Dutch people strongly believed in predestination, which in turn led many to argue they did not need to do anything for their salvation as God had already determined who was saved. Holling also highlighted how both government and local persecutions had greatly hindered the work. Furthermore, misconduct of one of the first missionaries in the country had skewed the perception of the Dutch against the Latter-day Saints. Furthermore, Holling felt that some of the Dutch Saints in Utah were harming the work in Holland by being too worldly and vain in their reports from the United States. Holling described one such instance when a Dutch convert now living in Utah made an offer of marriage to a woman in Holland via letter after having only seen her portrait. Holling was frustrated but refused to abandon what he considered to be an eternally significant work.[21]
Despite all the frustrations that he expressed, there was hope and compassion in Holling’s letter. He wanted the Dutch Saints emigrating to Utah to be taken care of. He hoped that the emigrating Saints would “become a new faithful foundation of the Dutch part of our [the Latter-day Saint] people.” And, despite the near constant opposition he faced, Holling believed that the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ would one day spread throughout the Low Countries. He clung to this belief and hope, stating that “such a result helps me bear all burdens past and present by the help of God.” Holling ended the letter with warm regards to “Brother Brigham” and stated, “I remain your fellow servant in Christ.”[22]
Holling left the Low Countries in late November of 1869, with plans to return to Utah with the emigration companies heading out the coming year. He had been asked by Albert Carrington to travel with the emigrants of the Swiss and German mission in June of 1870.[23] However, Marcus Holling never set foot on the S.S. Idaho, which was taking the next group to the United States.[24] Horace Eldredge, a missionary in Sweden wrote in 1871 to Brigham Young describing what happened to Marcus:
Bro M. Holling of the Holland Mission was released last Summer with the privilege of returning home, but did not see cause to avail himself of the latter. He wrote to me complaining of the poverty of the Mission and of his scanty wardrobe and I sent him £7.0.0 to buy him some clothes. With instruction to come to Liverpool preparatory to returning home. He acknowledged the receipt of the money and wrote me he was agoing to visit some of her friends in Germany. After receiving your letter instructing me to send him home, I telegraphed him and wrote him but could get nothing from him, until late in the Fall I received a letter from him dated at Elberfold in Prussia stating in substance that he was supporting himself and did not intend to go home until next spring. He always seemed to manifest zeal and interest for the work and particularly for the Saints in Holland and asked me in his last letter if I wished him to return and preside over them, to which I answered no, since which time I have heard nothing from him. But from the general Spirit of his letter I was inclined to take the most favorable view of his case, and impute his wild goose chase more to stupidity and the lack of judgement than the lack of faith and integrity, hoping he may come out all right in the Spring.[25]
Marcus Holling had gone back to Germany, though it appeared he still remained committed to the Church. The following year, Holling again failed to return to the United States. Young wrote to missionaries in Europe, asking if they knew where Holling had gone. George Reynolds, a missionary, wrote that “I am sorry to say that no one in this Office knows the address of bro. Marcus Holling.”[26] Brother Holling seemingly had disappeared into German countryside.
What became of Marcus Holling remained a mystery for decades until family historians found records suggesting that he had settled down in Germany. It appears that on 11 September 1873, Holling married Henriette Aguste Amalie Ulkan in Elbing, Germany.[27] They had a daughter, Anna Henriette Holling, in February of 1875 and she was baptized in the Lutheran faith on 18 April 1875. Another daughter, Martha, was born in 1877.[28] What motivated Holling’s sudden departure and abandonment of his family in Utah remained a mystery to both his contemporaries and to those investigating his life in the present. Once directed by an angel to follow Brigham Young, Holling cut off all contact and entered Germany as another migrant returning home. He lived quietly, avoiding the spotlight and religious leadership he had held all his life, leaving nothing to explain his sudden change of conduct.
Holling never saw the impact of his decisions on his wife Emily, who was left wondering what had become of her husband. As Holling’s story fades into a fog of historical questions and uncertainty, Emily’s life becomes clearer in the historical record. The remaining documents indicate Emily remained a devout Latter-day Saint, but one who was to face countless struggles the rest of her life, some of which stemmed from Holling’s decision to never return home.
Emily moved to Beaver County, Utah, after Holling’s disappearance. While there, she was given a blessing in which she was promised she would “be given a suitable companion.” Emily perhaps believed this blessing to be fulfilled when she briefly married a widower Daniel Webster Jones, bringing into her life on 28 May 1890, fourteen new stepchildren. However, the comfort and peace Emily sought was not to be found in her marriage to Jones. Though the reasons are unclear, the marriage ended within ten years, leaving Emily once again alone. To make ends meet and perhaps to have companionship as she aged, Emily moved in with her daughter Ernestine and Ernestine’s husband John Lenzi and their nine-year-old son Lenzi.[29]
This arrangement lasted until her daughter Ernestine died on 5 February 1903.[30] As with many faithful Saints, tragedy seemed to strike again and again in Emily’s life. In this period of grief and anxiety, and with rumors of another European war hovering on the horizon, Emily wrote to the Church leaders in Zurich in 1905 asking for help in finding Marcus. Her request perhaps indicates that she may have at last heard some news about his whereabouts. Unfortunately for Emily, the mission leaders were unsuccessful, and she once again dropped the matter. In the midst of global uncertainty following the start of the Great War, things briefly improved when she married William Sanders on October 21, 1915. However, once again tragedy struck when William died three years later. Emily Holling lived eight more years in Salt Lake City until her death on 20 January 1924.[31]
Marcus and Emily Holling’s story is fascinating. A man who saw an angel was told to go to Brigham Young for direction. This man then served faithfully as a Latter-day Saint mission leader in Holland, only to abandon his family and possibly his faith by returning to Prussia. This story leaves as many questions as it does answers. Emily Holling likely asked similar questions, wondering what had gone so wrong that her husband abandoned her, their children, and their shared faith. While tragic, Holling’s story offers several unique vantage points for historians and scholars to examine.
First, Holling’s story illustrates that the visionary and transcendent conversion narratives of angelic visitations were not just a product of the early Antebellum era. Holling’s story came from the 1860s, decades after the great revivals and religious fervor of the 1820s and 1830s. While certainly declarations of angelic visitations had not fully subsided in the United States, these narratives were far rarer than in previous generations. Latter-day Saint missionary historians will also likely be interested in the Holling’s reports of the Dutch mission and his frustrations with emigrated Dutchmen’s’ discussions of Utah and the United States. This narrative also opens new avenues into exploring the shifting religious landscape of the United States in the 1860s, particularly the intersections of European, American, and Latter-day Saint theology and cultural transformation. Holling’s story also shows how Latter-day Saint faith, even in the early years, could draw far and wide across faiths and nationalities to bring together a community of believers. Alongside Marcus, Emily’s narrative also offers avenues for further exploration particularly in the changing dynamics and continuities for women in the 1890s who were either widowed or abandoned, as well as discussions of how Church leaders responded to requests from regular members.
Holling’s story is fascinating but messy. Celestial heights merge with telestial realities as Marcus Holling moved from visionary convert to a man who abandoned his family. Missionary zeal fades into abscondment and avoidance. It is a simple story, but one that captures the dynamics of the Latter-day Saint faith and its growth into a global church.
[Note: An early version of this article was published at https://rswanson.substack.com/]
