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

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We all know a version of the life of Maria Von Trapp – the Austrian girl who entered the Salzburg convent, then was “loaned” as a governess to Baron Georg Von Trapp, to take care of his seven motherless children, whose story was made into the musical “The Sound of Music.” While heavily romanticized, that really is the outline of her life – she did marry the baron, the family did sing, they did escape Austria after the Nazi takeover (if not in quite such a dramatic way).

What happened afterward?

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Keepapitchinin’s ongoing determination to bring you the (ahem) finest in the Mormon cultural heritage is responsible for these gems, culled from the humor pages of The Instructor, 1938.

It Flew

Teacher: “Lot was warned to take his wife and daughter and flee out of the city. Lot and his wife and daughter got safely away.”

Willie: “What happened to the flea, sir?”

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Hugh B. Brown (1883-1975) served as a mission president, an assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve, an apostle, a counselor to Pres. David O. McKay, and again in the Quorum.

Following missionary service as a young man, Elder Brown had just begun to prepare for a law career when he was called by his stake president to organize a Mormon squadron to serve in the military reserves of his native Canada. World War I soon followed, and Elder Brown went to England in command of a Canadian cavalry unit. Eventually summoned to the office of the general in charge of all Canadian forces, he expected his own promotion to general. Instead, his interview went like this: (more…)

For much of the 20th century, wards and auxiliaries submitted group photographs for publication in the various church periodicals. Typically members would pose on the steps of their chapels or in front of a window arch or some other distinctive architectural feature. Those without chapels — meeting in homes or rented halls — clustered in the open air with a backdrop of trees or rocks.

They sent their photos to say, “We are your brothers and sisters in the gospel. We know what you know, here in our corner of the world; we are members of the same Kingdom.” Call me sentimental, but their sometimes grainy portraits, each individual presence helping to swell the chorus, call as clearly across the decades as they did across the miles. This is our family photo album. (more…)

It may not have the pathos of a third world once-in-a-lifetime temple excursion, but the first California-to-Arizona stake temple trip exhibits the same determination, the same longing for temple blessings felt by any group of Latter-day Saints who live at a distance from a temple.

The 1930 trip by the Saints of Long Beach, California, was several months in the planning. Bishop Thor Neilson worked with several members to prepare for receiving their own ordinances, and Merlin Steed, leader of the Genealogical Society of Long Beach, helped other members gather information for doing proxy work for their ancestors. The Saints gathered at the Long Beach chapel early on the morning of February 18, 1930, where Bishop Neilson prayed for safety as they traveled. At 5:10 a.m., a caravan of five automobiles was underway. (more…)

Thousands of French Protestants fled to Switzerland during the religious wars of the 16th century. One such family settled in the village of Saules, in Neuchatel. Serge Ballif, one of the greatest French-speaking LDS missionaries, visited their narrow, rocky valley in 1853. He found Francois and Julie Desaules prepared for the restored gospel. They were baptized and gathered to Zion the following year.

Aboard ship, Julie wrote a long letter to her family and friends who remained behind. She told them how she had twice fallen ill before leaving Europe, and how priesthood blessings had restored her health. She begged her family to follow. “We march toward Zion with a firm conviction that, if we are faithful, God’s promises will never fail.” (more…)

Arnold Friberg — best known to most of us as the LDS artist of “The Prayer at Valley Forge” or the originator of the musclebound he-man Nephites in the familiar series of Book of Mormon illustrations — is still going strong at the age of 94. You can see his online gallery here and his biography here.

What you won’t see anywhere but here at Keepapitchinin is his newly rediscovered early artwork.

Drum roll please …

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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 – and see here for one section of the catalog that has been almost entirely linked to images (thanks, Researcher, for your work on that section. Edje has made contributions to other sections – and anyone else who is interested in helping, a lot or just a little, is welcome to join the fun. Contact me at “keepapitchinin dotAOLdotcom” — note that “keepapitchinin” ends with “inin” rather than with a single “in.”)

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.)

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

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“Birth of the Flag”
by Henry Mosler

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An office memo from Grant Salisbury and Warren K. Leffler, the writer-photographer team for “U.S. News & World Report” that accompanied Secretary of Agriculture Ezra T. Benson to Russia.

The night we left Moscow to fly down to Kiev, Secretary Benson literally took us to church.

Many of the reporters laughed about it on the way, because Mr. Benson, who is a leading Mormon, had arranged for us earlier to attend a service at the Latter-Day Saints Church in West Berlin, but all the newsmen found one excuse or another for not going. In Moscow, we had no choice because the cars picked us up at the hotel and stopped at the church on the way to the airport. It was around 7:30 o’clock on the chilly, rainy evening of October 1.

As the cavalcade of cars arrived at the Central Baptist Church, on a narrow side street not far from Red Square, somebody wisecracked, “Well, boys, you’re going to get to church whether you like it or not.” (more…)

Susan H. Swetnam. “Turning to the Mothers: Mormon Women’s Biographies of Their Female Forebears and the Mormon Church’s Expectations for Women,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 10:1 (1988), 1-6.

Susan H. Swetnam is not a Mormon and as a result makes faulty assumptions concerning Mormonism – she assumes, for instance, that Especially for Mormons is a record of Mormon teachings. (You could make a case, I think, that Especially for Mormons represents a certain lowest common denominator form of Mormon folklore, but not that it represents any “LDS prescriptions for women” as Swetnam asserts.) Swetnam responds to “the dissident voices of Mormon women,” predisposing her to expect reflections of “a clearly subservient role,” “serious disorders born of guilt,” and “something odd and subversive” in that most Mormon of literary forms, “the laudatory ancestor biography.”

Unlike too many other writers with a passionate ideological point, however, Swetnam is very free with specific examples, demonstrating that what she claims to find is actually, indisputably there. (more…)

One afternoon I now know to have been September 1, 1967, my mother gave me a loaf of bread she had baked that morning and asked me to take it through the block to the Kangas home. Brother and Sister Kangas might not be there, she said, but I was to wait until they did come home.

She was right; there was no car in the carport and no answer to the doorbell. So I sat on the retaining wall and kicked my heels for a little while, until a car drove in and Brother and Sister Kangas got out. Sister Kangas was carrying a folded flag. I gave her my bread with a message from my mother, and she thanked me, and I skipped on home. (more…)