A phonemic English spelling reform developed in the mid-19th century by the board of regents of the University of Deseret (later the University of Utah, in what is now the United States) under the direction of Brigham Young, second president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
In public statements, Young claimed the alphabet was intended to replace the traditional Latin alphabet with an alternative, more phonetically accurate alphabet for the English language. This would offer immigrants an opportunity to learn to read and write English, he said, the orthography of which is often less phonetically consistent than those of many other languages. Similar experiments were not uncommon during the period, and some of the better-known results include Pitman Shorthand and (much later) the Shavian alphabet.
More information, including images of the alphabet, on the Wikipedia page [1].