http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2013/08/21/william_gropper_his_mid_century_map_of_american_folklore.html

I find this kind of ironic in that I don't think many of the early Mormons ever really learned to be American. As soon as they got here, they were shuttled off to this weird little theocracy that wasn't actually IN America until 1896.

Even before 1847, the Mormons were all clumped together, doing their own thing. And they were mostly immigrants, right? I was surprised to learn there were 34,000 of them at the end of 1846. So sez Wikipedia, in a table that looks like it came from the LDS Church--so the numbers were probably inflated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Church_of_Jesus_Christ_of_Latter-day_Saints_membership_history#Table_for_LDS_Church_membership_numbers

Is there a good independent source with a lot of information on who joined the church in its first couple of decades?

Great find!

I remember seeing one like this, around 1968, in which Utah's folklore was represented by the Three Nephites. At the time I did not realize how pervasive the stories about these figures was.