Descendants honor historic Salt Lake Temple mason as foundation shifts for the future

SALT LAKE CITY — Patrice Staples Winterholler started reaching out to her many relatives when she learned that construction crews had essentially completed work on the Salt Lake Temple's new foundation.

They had talked over the past year about some sort of family reunion at the site, but the update was enough for her to ask if they all wanted to gather there as a family and celebrate their tie to its original construction.

"I didn't have to ask — except for once," she said, recalling the moment. "There was an immediate response: 'Yes.'"

A few weeks later, the descendants of James A. Staples — the head on-site mason for the team that laid the original foundation for the Salt Lake Temple over a century ago — were sitting in the auditorium of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints headquarters, talking about his life and receiving an update on all the construction around his work.

They came together on Monday to honor his life and contributions to the Salt Lake Temple while construction crews working a block away continued to work on its preservation.

Two new paintings depicting key moments in the Staples family legacy were also unveiled. The paintings, designed by Utah artist Glen Hopkinson, will rotate through museums to tell the family story to wider audiences, said Winterholler, a fourth great-granddaughter of Staples, who traveled from Scottsdale, Arizona, for the event.

"(We) really wanted to gather and recognize the moment," she told KSL.com. "For a lot of us, we want to teach our children this history, so they know what their forefathers did for them."

Laying a foundation

The Salt Lake Temple famously took a long time to build because of its complexity and plenty of political distractions in Utah's earliest days. In 1853, Brigham Young and other church leaders officially dedicated the site picked out in 1847, though the temple wouldn't open until 1893.

Staples' tie to the endeavor took place as it all unfolded, but his story was hardly known until Alveretta Staples Engar — his great-granddaughter — stumbled across old documents and wrote about it for the Deseret News in 1941.

There are some differences between Engar's report and available church records, but both noted Staples was born in Bath, United Kingdom, in 1810.

According to Engar, Staples worked as a master rock and brick mason, playing a part in the early construction of the United Kingdom's House of Parliament, built between 1840 and 1870. She wrote that he and his wife, Sarah, were baptized into the Latter-day Saint church in 1841, while church historians note that he was baptized in 1853.

What is clear is that James Staples was 41 when he emigrated from London, arriving in Utah in 1851. His arrival came a year after his eldest son, George, who was only 14, ventured to America; the rest of his family would join them in 1852.

"They were not wealthy people, therefore it was necessary for some members of the family to emigrate, leaving the others to follow later," Engar explained.

At some point in all of this, a fur trader and Native Americans helped George survive a bout with mountain fever that nearly claimed his life. James Staples searched for his son and brought him to Utah.

The family arrived just before work on the Salt Lake Temple began. Some foundational work took place in the 1850s. Still, it was disrupted by the Utah War, a confrontation between pioneer settlers and the federal government that sparked in 1857 and ended a year later.

Given his experience, James Staples was hired to lead the project when work resumed in June 1862, Engar wrote. The early foundational work — buried by church leaders during the Utah War conflict — was damaged and redone to be wider.

The team's work ended in December 1863, paving the way for the rest of the building to be completed over the next three decades.

James Staples stuck around the valley afterward, helping out when needed but he never saw the building's completion. He died in either 1874 or 1875 — again a difference of records — from complications of a workplace injury, and was buried at the Salt Lake City Cemetery.

He also played a pivotal role in other notable Salt Lake projects in his lifetime, including the Eagle Gate and the Salt Lake Theatre. The latter was demolished in the 1920s, but the Pioneer Memorial Museum near the Utah Capitol was constructed to pay homage to its design.

Building on that foundation

Staples' work had undergone some touchups, but nothing was done quite like what The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints embarked on beginning in 2019.

The project has drastically changed all of Temple Square, but seismic renovations to the foundation were among the plans.

Getting there required building an intricate system beneath what Staples helped construct. Nearly 100 base isolators holding the weight of the building were added, so the temple could survive a major earthquake in the future, along with several other features. They've also bolstered the original foundation.

Construction crews successfully transferred the load of the historic temple onto the new foundation this summer before they poured the final section last month. It marked a major milestone in what some have described as the "biggest preservation project" in state history.

Staples' descendants believe that this work won't replace what James Staples and others accomplished over 160 years ago; rather, they believe it enhances it. They eagerly watched as Georges Bonnet, the church's director of communications on special projects, presented a project update, sharing pictures of where crews worked around the original foundation.

Winterholler likens the feeling to being released from a church calling, passing the baton to a new generation that will build on Staples' work. They're also glad his journey led him to a country and a faith many of them are still a part of.

"He was willing to answer the call," she said. "God called him to come. God called him to do this and he was willing to do it, which is very meaningful."

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