Researching George Cannon

Cannon was born in St. George, Utah Territory, to Angus Munn Cannon and his wife Sarah Maria Mousley. Cannon was born in a wagon box because at that time no homes had been constructed in St. George. When Cannon was about seven years old, he moved with his family to Salt Lake City. From 1877 to 1880, Cannon studied at the University of Utah. After this he taught at the school located on the farm of his uncle George Q. Cannon.

In 1882, Cannon left the school to become Deputy County Recorder for Salt Lake County. He then served as County Recorder from 1884 to 1890.

Cannon married Marian Adelaide Morris on December 25, 1884; they had 10 children.

In 1890, Cannon moved to Brigham Young's old Forest Farm which he had just purchased and he turned the area into the Salt Lake City neighborhood of Forest Dale. Cannon became a cashier in Zion's Savings Bank and Trust Company. He served as a delegate to the 1895 Utah State Constitutional Convention and chaired the committee which formulated the articles on taxation and public debt. In 1896, Cannon was elected to the Utah State Senate and served as its first president.

When The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) modified stake boundaries in 1900, dividing the new Granite Stake off from the Salt Lake Stake, Cannon became the Sunday School Superintendent of the new stake.

From 1901 until after 1930, Cannon served as a member of the General Board of the Deseret Sunday School Union.

Cannon practiced plural marriage after the 1890 Manifesto. He married Ellen Christina Steffensen on June 17, 1901, by whom he had 10 children, and Katherine Vaughan Morris (his first wife's sister) on August 7, 1901, by whom he had six children.

Around 1812 he became associated with freethinking discussion groups in London and in 1815 he edited, as "Erasmus Perkins", a radical periodical Theological Inquirer; or Polemical Magazine, with which Percy Bysshe Shelley was associated, and in which "Perkins" published extracts from Queen Mab: his relationship with Shelley was somewhat hostile. Cannon contributed to the Political Register of William Benbow and was also a friend of Daniel Isaac Eaton. He acted as lawyer for the anti-slavery campaigner Robert Wedderburn and may have drafted some of his polemics.

In 1822 he was publishing obscene anti-establishment parodies and satires; by 1830 his publications were sheer pornography and he was prosecuted numerous times: in 1830 he was convicted of obscene libel for publishing a French-language edition of de Sade's Juliette. His pornographic publications specialised in flagellation with such titles as The Birchen Bouquet, Exhibition of Female Flagellants and, as "Philosemus", Venus School-Mistress. He promoted the exhibition of the Berkley Horse by the Royal Society of Arts in 1837 after it was bequeathed to them by inventor Theresa Berkley.

Cannon died in 1854 and his widow continued his publishing business.