One Potato, Two Potato, Three Potato, Four...
by Davis Bitton

Latter-day Saints planted potatoes on July 24, 1847, helped establish the famous Idaho potato, and Dutch Saints rescued German Saints with potatoes in the wake of World War II.

In 1988, when a news reporter with questionable motives asked candidate Dan Quayle to spell potatoes, the vice-presidential candidate should have answered S-P-U-D-S. Even better, he should have asked the reporter to spell irrelevant.

Growing up in southeastern Idaho, I could not very well ignore potatoes. Along with sugar beets, they were one of the major crops produced by farmers. Other crops were raised, to be sure, but potatoes could be counted on to find a market and produce needed cash for their producers.

Every fall, students were excused from school for about two weeks of "harvest vacation," during which they could assist in harvesting both beets and potatoes. Not only did the farmers need additional manpower; the crops were essential to the region’s prosperity and thus had an impact even on retail merchants in the towns. In communities throughout southeastern Idaho, hundreds, indeed thousands, of young people of junior high and high school age fanned out to the farms seeking employment.

Picking potatoes was stoop labor. Usually working with a partner, you moved along the row of unearthed spuds and filled a basket. These two baskets, yours and your partners, were then poured into a burlap sack, after which you continued down the row. Some pickers used a specially designed belt that enabled them to work alone and put the spuds directly into the sack.

The pay, as I recall, was ten cents a sack. After a couple of weeks work I had earned somewhere between three and four hundred dollars, which must be multiplied several times for the equivalent in today’s dollar.

Since your pay was dependent entirely on how many potatoes you picked, you wanted to keep at it sack after sack, row after row, hour after hour. I learned I could do about as well as anyone else. Then one time my partner was a young woman, Marjorie Worthen, from the farm neighboring ours. She was patient, but she simply worked harder and filled her basket faster than I did. Let’s face it, she made me look like a wimp. I might excel in other activities, but on the ground level during the harvest season I met my match and learned a lesson in humility.

Potatoes were not always part of the human diet. They were raised in South America from about 2000 B.C. Three and a half millennia later, they were introduced in Europe and spread from country to country. The tuber had also moved to North America, whence Sir Walter Raleigh is credited with taking it to England in 1588, the year of the Spanish Armada. Although some aristocrats and upper-class people disdained this food, it became an important part of the diet in many countries.

By the nineteenth century, in some countries more than others, potatoes were a staple. Ireland was especially dependent on this crop. There most people lived on small farms of less than 15 acres, and more than 300,000 families survived on minute plots of less than three acres. Without potatoes, they could not survive. When blight caused crop failure in 1846, a national famine ensued. Despite relief efforts, many perished from starvation and from a typhus epidemic that followed in the wake of the famine. Not surprisingly, many Irish fled the country, and a massive influx of Irish immigrants entered the United States.

In 1846 Latter-day Saint refugees were making their way across Iowa. In the spring of 1847, as we know, a pioneer company set out and by July had reached its destination in the Valley of the Great Salt Lake. Having enough food was a huge challenge. They were far from sources of meat and grain in the Midwest, and, arriving when they did, could not expect to harvest a crop in 1847.

Sneaky question: What were Mormons doing in the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, the day Brigham Young arrived. One answer: planting potatoes. The advance party led by Orson Pratt followed Young’s instructions to find a suitable spot, soften the soil with water, plow, and plant different seeds they had with them. The harvest later that fall, as we can well imagine, was pitiful, given the inadequate growing time. But the number of potatoes, even though small, was multiplied, and they were ready to plant in earnest the next spring.

As wagon train after wagon train came into the Valley in late 1847 and subsequent years, as settlements were established throughout the Great Basin, potatoes continued to provide nourishment for the people.

In Idaho, Latter-day Saints were not the first to raise potatoes, an honor that seems to go to Henry Harmon Spalding who raised them at Lapwai in 1837. But clearly the Saints laid the foundation for Idaho potatoes, first in Franklin after 1860. By 1882 immigrants into Idaho from Utah had 2,000 acres of potatoes under cultivation. By 1904, Idaho harvested 17,000 acres of potatoes and by 1915, 33,000 acres. After harvesting and sorting, the "spuds" were shipped by railroad to other states.

Luther Burbank also played a role. The famous plant breeder had developed the Burbank potato and, after his move to Santa Rosa, California, introduced them there. Another plant breeder, Lon D. Sweet, living in Colorado, developed a mutation out of the Burbank that was resistant to blight and other diseases. This became the famous Idaho russet. I know Idaho potatoes are famous because the license plate on my car used to carry a picture and the words "famous potatoes."

Potatoes can require strength of character not only in the growers and the pickers, including those who today use improved seeds and harvest machinery, but also in other situations. I love the example of the Dutch Latter-day Saints who, at the end of World War II, were trying desperately to survive. Church leaders encouraged them to plant potatoes, which they did on land adjacent to chapels and other vacant lots. In 1947 they looked forward to an abundant harvest.

At this time German mission president Walter Stover visited the Dutch Mission and, with tears in his eyes, told of the hunger among Church members in Germany. Cornelius Zappey, president of the Dutch Mission, thought it would be a wonderful thing to give the potatoes raised in the Netherlands to the destitute German Saints. But because of the cruel mistreatment of the Dutch people during the Nazi occupation (Ann Frank’s diary reminds us of the conditions), President Zappey was not at all sure how the Dutch Mormons would respond.

Respond they did, enthusiastically accepting the challenge. Potatoes from the various plots were hauled by truck to The Hague and placed in a warehouse. Overcoming many obstacles, Zappey finally obtained permission to transport them, and 75 tons of potatoes were carried by truck into Germany and distributed to thankful German Latter-day Saints. Both the receivers and the givers were blessed.

I try to stay away from potato chips these days. But I can still enjoy a good baked potato from time to time and on special days allow myself a serving of mashed potatoes. I may think of Sir Walter Raleigh, or the Irish immigrants, or the pioneers of 1847, or the Dutch and German Church members as I say "Please, pass the potatoes." Remembering Dan Quayle, perhaps I should say "Please pass the spuds."

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Davis Bitton is a retired University of Utah history professor. After serving a mission in France, he graduated from BYU and then received M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Princeton University. For ten years he was assistant Church historian. His most recent books are "Images of the Prophet Joseph Smith" and "George Q. Cannon: A Biography." Davis had the good fortune and blessing to marry JoAn, a convert and former missionary in Chile. Daughter of an immigrant from Malta, JoAn edits a newsletter for Maltese Latter-day Saints and missionaries. Davis and JoAn served as guides on Temple Square for five years. They live on the lower avenues in Salt Lake City.