First Sunday School in Salt Lake City
Near Salt Lake City, Utah
On this ground, in December of eighteen forty-nine, a Scottish immigrant named Richard Ballantyne started the first Sunday School in Salt Lake City. The pioneers had been in the valley only about two years, and times were lean, yet Ballantyne built a room onto his own house, lined it with wooden benches, and set a fireplace at one end.
On the morning of December ninth, about thirty children gathered there in the cold, and he taught them from the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and other scripture. It was a humble beginning, one man, one room, a fire to keep the children warm. But it grew. Within a few decades the program he founded counted more than one hundred thousand members across the church. From this small home on the frontier, a teaching tradition spread across the world.
