Jens Leslie Stevenson’s life had a touch of the international: Born in Utah in 1890 to an English father and a Danish mother, he accompanied his family on their move to Alberta when he was about 12.

Whatever his ethnic or national heritage, Jens was thoroughly Mormon. Called as a missionary in 1917, he reported to the Eastern States Mission on February 1 and was assigned to work in western Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh was then a center of anti-Mormon sentiment, and on two occasions Jens was jailed briefly for preaching the gospel. That didn’t discourage him, according to elders who knew him. Nor was he intimidated by the frequent calls to “Work or Fight!” – the slogan that seemed to be on everyone’s lips as the United States geared up to join World War I.
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Frederick J. Pack (1875-1938) was a highly educated, scientifically minded Latter-day Saint, with a doctorate in geology from Columbia University and an undergraduate education in mining engineering. He was a missionary, a professor of geology at the University of Utah, and the husband of Sadie Grant Pack, first counselor in the general Primary presidency.

Pack wrote several articles for church magazines concerning the origins of the earth. Writing in 1910-11, at precisely the time when questions of the origins of life and the physical universe were matters of much controversy, Pack adopted a waffling position, one that saved him from having to take a public stand in support of either the Biblical creationism of Joseph Fielding Smith or the hard science of James E. Talmage. (more…)

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From the deserts of Nevada to the deserts of Syria, from the seacoast of Norway to the palms of Anaheim and Miami, our brothers and sisters posed for their group portraits in 1926. Would you let your wiggly 5-year-old dangle her feet from the heights of the Brooklyn wall? Would you want to wrangle a Sunday School the size of the North Ogden group?
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Bergen, Norway
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Dave Banack’s post about Matthew Streib, the cyclist on an American Pilgrimage, reminded me that I had once heard that bicycles, not automobiles, were the impetus behind the development of decent inter-city roads in the United States. Sure enough, the ample authority of the all-wise Wikipedia confirms that the Good Roads Movement was spurred by 19th century cyclists just like Matthew Streib who needed decent roads on which to travel.
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I’m hopeful (vain enough to hope?) that readers might want to use one of my stories about unknown Latter-day Saints in a talk, or for some other reason might wish to return to an old post. Googling or paging through an increasingly long list of posts is always an option — but an easier way is to use the Topical Guide, which groups the posts on Keepapitchinin, and my earlier posts on other blogs, into broad categories. Someday perhaps I can construct a full-fledged index.

You’ll see a link to the Topical Guide near the top of Keepa’s sidebar.

I posted a few months ago on The Old Written Order of Things concerning a 1941 advisory from the Presiding Bishopric’s Office that deacons were not to be required to a prescribed uniform. At the time, we had a lot of fun discussing the waxing and waning of insistence that deacons wear white shirts to pass the sacrament.

We gave relatively little attention, though, to the idea that some quorums might actually have gone beyond a similarity in dress between white shirt and conservative tie. They did, though, and these uniforms were spoken of with great pride in The Improvement Era (precursor to The Ensign) in a report from the Hawthorne Ward (in the Salt Lake Valley) in December 1932:
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Here is another trip to the inexhaustible well of dumb stuff that made our grandparents laugh. These jokes appeared in The Juvenile Instructor, 1926.

A Patient Transferee

An elderly lady, climbing on one of our local variety of street cars, handed the conductor a transfer. “This is two days old,” he growled.

“I’ve been waiting patiently,” she murmured.
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See here for an explanation of this post, as well as for links to other sections of the catalog.

Catalogue of Books, Maps, &c. Belonging to the Utah Territorial Library, October, 1852.

Law, Government, Political Economy, Statistics, &c.

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See here for an explanation of this post, as well as for links to other sections of the catalog.

Catalogue of Books, Maps, &c. Belonging to the Utah Territorial Library, October, 1852.

 Encyclopaedias and General Dictionaries.

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See here for an explanation of this post, as well as for links to other sections of the catalog.

Catalogue of Books, Maps, &c. Belonging to the Utah Territorial Library, October, 1852.

Mechanics, Hydraulics, and Hydrostatics.

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Because we know that World War II happened, and that human civilization did survive despite unprecedented atrocities, it may be difficult to see the world of the 1920s and 1930s the way our grandmothers did. Annie Wells Cannon, a member of the Relief Society General Board, expressed their view this way during the semi-annual Relief Society Conference of October 4-5, 1933:

There is no crime so great as war. Any of you who sent your sons or husbands to the Great War realize that. Thousands of people go to the tombs of the Unknown Soldiers in the great capitals of the world and do homage in memory to the thousands of men who were slaughtered in the World War. Thousands of women visit the hospitals all over the different nations, to see the men who were gassed, shell-shocked and crippled, disabled, tubercular – all know of the dreadful things that come through war.

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“The century between 1814 and 1914 saw the largest migration in the history of mankind, with more than 50 million Europeans setting out for America and other overseas destinations” (Kristian Hvidt. Flight to America: The Social Background of 300,000 Emigrants. New York: Academic Press, 1975). The tiny kingdom of Denmark furnished a significant current in that tide of emigration.

Organized Mormon emigration from Denmark began in December 1852 when almost 300 Danes, shepherded by Elder John E. Forsgren, set out for Zion; traveling from Copenhagen to Liverpool to New Orleans, to Keokuk, Iowa, this company reached Salt Lake nearly ten months later, on September 30, 1853. (more…)

Jean Cox, State Supervisor of Household Economics, wrote this letter regarding the pioneer diet to Dr. E.V. McCollum, nutrition specialist, Johns Hopkins University.

January 17, 1924.

Dear Mr. McCollum: –

While I think you realize how difficult it is to get any first hand information in pioneer food stories, I hesitated whether to send this 1847 pioneer food history which I obtained form Mrs. Adelia Sidwell, one of the original pioneers, who was only six years old when she came to Utah. She is eighty-two years old now and was too feeble to answer the question very specifically or tell much about disease. The most prevalent disease was what she called “Mountain Fever.”

One thing she emphasized was the almost continuous hunger and desire for sweets and fats.
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So you’re a Mormon convert from one of the European cities or some American seaport. You’ve gathered as far as the frontier, and for the first time in your life you are faced with a team of oxen whose backs are about even with your head. You might welcome this advice from Asa G. Sheldon (1788-1870) of Massachusetts, whose 1862 autobiography Life of Asa G. Sheldon, Wilmington Farmer inspires you with confidence — he worked with oxen all his long life on enormous excavating and construction jobs: he even leveled Boston’s Pemberton Hill and carted away the earth by oxcart.

Selection and Management of Working Oxen.

A good ox should have a long, lean face, and bright hazel eye, which show capability to receive instruction and disposition to obey it. Large nostrils denote the capacity of an ox to work in a hot day. Very large horns at the base denote laziness. (more…)

This post — advertising from the pages of the November 1962 Improvement Era — is dedicated to this thread on Times & Seasons, or at least to the recurring threadjack there.

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Some recent discussion of the Church in pre-World War II Germany suggests that posts about events in that time and place would be of interest … so of course in my skewed way of thinking, the first post concerns a city that isn’t even in Germany anymore.

The city of Wrocław (“Breslau” in German), now in Poland, is part of that historically disputed area that has at times belonged to Germany, Prussia, Poland, Austria, and Bohemia. In the period between the two world wars, it was part of Germany, and assigned to the Swiss-German Mission of the LDS Church. Its population at the time was slightly above a half-million people. And it had been a fruitful field for LDS missionary work – as early as 1910 we had a Breslau branch with 170 members, although in the same year the elders were banished from the country by German officials. (more…)

It isn’t clear why Tsune Nachie accepted employment in the LDS mission home in Tokyo. The 49-year-old widow, a convert to the Church of England for some 20 years, had long experience working for Europeans and commanded a larger salary than the Mormons could offer her. Yet in the summer of 1905, she became the cook and housekeeper for the elders who had been laboring in Japan since Heber J. Grant had opened the mission in 1901. After four years, they had baptized only seven converts, few of whom remained long with the church. But they had established a successful Sunday School for children in the neighborhood, and one of them – Elder Alma O. Taylor – was slowly translating the Book of Mormon, and they hoped the work would pick up its pace.

Tsune Nachie was born at Komasawa, near Tokyo, on the 6th of April, 1856, one of eight children of Tokuzo Ando and Cho Ishida. (more…)

A sampling of jokes from the Juvenile Instructor of 1924 :

Proof Positive

Bursley – He claims to be related to you and says he can prove it.

Floyd – The man’s a fool.

Bursley – That may be a mere coincidence.
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See here for an explanation of this post, as well as for links to other sections of the catalog.

Biography.

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See here for an explanation of this post, as well as for links to other sections of the catalog.

Voyages and Travels.

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See here for an explanation of this post, as well as for links to other sections of the catalog.

Antiquities, Ethnology, Genealogy, Heraldry, Mythology, Numismatics.

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See here for an explanation of this post, as well as for links to other sections of the catalog.

Poetry and Drama.

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Some interest lately has been expressed about church experiences in the South. This report of a missionary experience gives some suggestion of both Southern missionary work and local member life in the early 20th century.

Whenever the Lord asks His servants to perform a task, He always opens the way. Not only has this truth been given by modern revelation, but also it has been proved thousands of times by the experiences of humble missionaries in every land.

The case I’m about to relate is an example. There were four of us, Elders C.A. Thompson, Elmer Heninger, John A. Wallis, and myself, who met at Christmas time in Montgomery County, Virginia, well back in the Allegheny Mountains. After an enjoyable holiday week with saints and friends, we received assignments, for which we were waiting. Elders Thompson and Wallis were to go to West Virginia: Elder Heninger and I were to work our way east, tracting and preaching as we went, until we reached Charlotte County, well down in the tidewater section over two hundred miles away. This was a long trip. Our course as outlined was off the beaten trails, almost entirely among strangers; and it was mid-winter. (more…)

“Music Personified,” Juvenile Instructor, 1 August 1906, 456.

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A 1982 Ensign article tells how LDS soldiers organized “Stalag Luft III Branch” while they were held in captivity during World War II. Near the end of the war, Lieutenant Frank D. Bailey served as second counselor in the branch organization. Below is a talk Brother Bailey gave in October 1945 soon after his return home.

“My dear brothers and sisters, I feel very humble in occupying this position this evening. I pray that my Father in Heaven will so direct me that I will say the things that are in my heart.

“I would have given a great deal just a year ago next Monday to have known that I would be occupying this position this evening, for at 9:30 Sunday morning, October 15, 1944, I was floating toward the earth from 25,000 feet in a parachute over the city of Cologne, Germany. (more…)

Another page in our family photo album: These Saints from around the world gaze at us through the years since 1924.

In the year the Sunday Schools posed for these pictures, Heber J. Grant was president of the Church; General Conference was broadcast for the first time overly newly-purchased KSL Radio; and the Church first asked members to contribute four-generation pedigree charts to the Genealogical Society. The 1924 world of those Saints may seem impossibly far away … but on September 10 that year, Pres. Boyd K. Packer was born.

Cincinnati, Ohio

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I like cats.

Now I know that at least half my readers just decided to click off, but hang on there! Susa Young, one of Brigham Young’s daughters, didn’t like cats. And as much as I love cats, she didn’t like cats – was afraid of them, and their claws, and their unpredictable ways – twice as much.

So no matter how you feel about cats, you have somebody on your side – either Susa or me – while you stick around to read this story. (more…)

Emma Ray Riggs McKay was in England with her husband, Elder David O. McKay, when an invitation came from the International Council of Women to represent the Relief Society at a joint meeting of the World Alliance for Promoting Friendship through the Churches, The World’s Young Woman’s Christian Association, and the World’s Christian Temperance Union, on the subject of preventing war.

Sister McKay submitted this report of the conference to the Relief Society.

This was intended as a call to women all over the world to realize their power to remove the causes of war and to realize as well their personal responsibility in this matter. (more…)

Annie Griffith was born on August 27, 1837, in Georgetown, Essex Co., Massachusetts, on the Merrimack River near the New Hampshire state line. She lived in that county all her life. Her father, William Griffith, was a shoemaker; her mother, Sarah M. Hills, raised Annie and her younger brother Frank.

Annie was married in 1858 to John Burbank, a shoemaker like her father. Her only child, whom she named William Henry, was born a few months later.

In about 1862, some now-unknown missionary passed through the neighborhood preaching the gospel. Annie believed his message and was baptized. (more…)

From 1923:

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See here for John M. Bernhisel’s assembly of the original Utah Territorial Library. See the comments to previously posted sections of the catalog for discussion on our plans for linking the titles in this catalog to their Google Books scans. Thanks to Researcher for locating the Google Books scans linked in the Botany section and for supplying the missing cataloguing elements.

As each catalog section is posted, the links in all previous posts will be updated so that you can move freely around the catalog. (Some links here may not yet be functional, if they lead to sections that I have drafted for posting but not yet published – sorry.) (more…)