Had you been a resident of or visitor to New York City in the winter of 1854-1855, you might have seen this handbill pasted on a wall or had it thrust into your hands by a distributor on the street:

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George Q. Cannon’s Deseret News Press printed all church materials at the end of the 19th century and into the 20th century. Aside from the church magazines, and a few foreign language materials (chiefly missionary tracts published in the missions themselves), below is the full list of LDS materials in print in 1892.

I’m sure the Saints in Utah were proud of their extensive list of publications, yet to any one of us, used to the availability of hundreds of current titles and thousands of backlist titles, to say nothing of the Internet, the catalog seems desperately thin.

Yet I’ll bet almost any non-English reading Saint today would be ecstatic to have a like number of works available. (more…)

One of the chief draws for the Saints to gather has been to enjoy access to temples, both for oneself and one’s deceased family and friends. Obviously many Saints lived and died far from Temples. That number only continued to grow once Church leaders began to ask members to build up the Church in their own lands, and not to move any central gathering place.

While Saints could begin to perform temple ordinances for their deceased friends beginning with the 1877 completion of the St. George Temple, and while this work received renewed emphasis after Wilford Woodruff’s 1894 teaching that each member was responsible for his direct ancestors as far as the information was available, there was no systematic plan for extending temple privileges to the ancestors of members who lived far from temples. In 1916 Joseph F. Smith took steps to remedy this problem. (more…)

The ragged and suffering yet hardworking boy with a heart o’ gold was a staple figure in Victorian literature. One poem tells about a man who encountered a newsboy on a snowy evening, went home to his own warm fireside, then decided to rescue the child from the streets and raise him as a son.

Well, I arose to go,
And bring the little outcast
To the shelter of my home;
No longer should he suffer want,
No longer homeless roam.

Alas! When the poet found the boy, he was lying in an alley surrounded by others of his fraternity: (more…)

Presumably you have completed the assignment for Lesson 1, which was to obtain copies of two types of forms (pedigree chart and family group record) and write down the identifying information for yourself using the standard genealogical patterns. Some of you have gone farther by entering this information into a digital database, and/or filling in identifying information for your parents’ family, and perhaps even your grandparents’ families.

Once you have written down everything you know (or are reasonably sure of), whether that means just your own name and birthdate or whether that means three or four generations, you need to know how to find information outside of your own memory. This lesson will focus on finding that information for generations that were alive in the last 50 or 60 years. (more…)

From various LDS publications, 1920s-1940s. Please exercise discretion in comments.

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Sometime in the early 1930s, Antonio E. Duran came across two LDS missionaries preaching on a street corner in Harlingen, Texas (near Brownsville, just about as far into the southern tip of Texas as you can go and still be in the U.S.). Antonio was the only man who stopped to listen to the elders that day, and when they concluded their meeting he stayed to chat with them for a few minutes. He bought a Spanish-language Book of Mormon from them, they gave him some tracts, and all went on their way. Not long afterward, Antonio moved to the tiny farming village of Rangerville and the elders were withdrawn from Harlingen. (more…)

This newspaper article is posted as a followup to the post Chaplain B.H. Roberts Pleads for the Lives of His Men from a reference suggested by Justin. No, I don’t know whether the voice recording or the 1918 movie film is extant; I will be looking for them, and solicit your help in the search by Googling and checking databases with which you may be familiar.

MEMORIAL DAY RECALLS UTAH SERVICE IN FRANCE

Funeral Address by B.H. Roberts at Camp Recorded

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Not the best year for humor in the church magazines, I fear, but there are two or three that made me chuckle.

Two small British boys were gazing at the shop windows decorated for Christmas. Presently they came to a butcher’s shop, and one of them pointed to a number of hams hanging from a large holly branch. “Look, Tom,” he said. “Look at them ‘ams agrowing up there.”

“Get away,” said the other. “‘Ams don’t grow.”

“Well, that’s all you know about it,” said the first scornfully. “Ain’t you ever ‘eard of a ‘ambush?”

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Massacre at Mountain Meadows:
A Scholarly Discussion
September 5, 2008 | 7pm
Main Auditorium
Salt Lake City Public Library
(200 East/400 South)
Free and Open to the Public

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Another page from our family photo album, with Sunday Schools from around the world sending their greetings.

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Lenard Valess Dewey (1895-1981) was born in Idaho and eventually settled in Arizona, where he served as an LDS bishop. In between those milestones, he lived in California, earned an M.A. from the University of South Dakota (1924; his Master’s essay was a consideration of Tennyson’s “In Memoriam”), and wrote at least two dozen articles for LDS publications. In 1917 he enlisted in the 145th Field Artillery, a Utah unit made up largely of Mormon men, which trained in California as part of the 40th Division (composed generally of non-Mormon men from California and Nevada), sailed to Bordeaux, France for further training. The war ended just as the 145th was heading to the front; except for a large contingent of their men that were transferred to another unit before they left the States, the men of the 145th saw no battle. (more…)

I’ve been reading old church lesson manuals, partly because the slightly quaint flavor of the writing shows the topics in a new light, and partly in search of that mythic golden age of manuals written by the likes of B.H. Roberts and James Talmage, when the lessons were always challenging and meaty, with nary a rote question in sight, when all the teachers were well above average … you know, the time when Sunday School hours were not the tedious wastelands they are today, useful only for getting in a practice nap before the hardcore sleeping to be done during the Stake High Guy’s talk in Sacrament Meeting. (more…)

Often the first calling of a 19th century convert in Britain was as a local missionary. Women filled such roles as well as men – Johanna Tippett Porter and her mother were two such early sister missionaries on the Isle of Wight. In contrast to the numerous personal writings and periodicals chronicling the work of “elders from Zion” working in European countries, we seem to have few primary records and know precious little about the activities of local missionaries. The only study that springs to my mind is Polly Aird, “Without Purse or Scrip in Scotland,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 39:2 (Summer 2006), 46-69 (download .pdf); if anyone else can suggest other studies, please comment. (more…)

Before the Olympics have run their course, we really ought to consider some of the ways sports have figured in LDS history, no?

One of the early aims of the Mutual Improvement Associations was to provide wholesome recreation for LDS young people – in a day when people made their own fun, the “fun” that young people too often made, if you can trust the newspapers, involved street corners and vandalism and late nights. A “library and gymnasium” movement begun in the early years of the 20th century encouraged the re-establishment of the ward libraries which MIAs of an earlier generation had collected, and fostered the development of sports programs, including girls’ fitness classes in the old Social Hall and the building of the first Deseret Gym in Salt Lake City. (more…)

This sampler of Mormon activities from every part of the USA is drawn from the pages of the 1933 Liahona: The Elders’ Journal.

Alabama

A conference which was spiritually uplifting was held in Montgomery, Ala., Saturday, March 25. The Alabama missionaries and a goodly number of saints and investigators were in attendance. The afternoon meeting was held in the Chamber of Commerce building. After the conference a baptism was performed. A local sister expressed her willingness to go on a mission. Prest. Callis and the elders delivered doctrinal discourses that were a source of instruction and blessing to all present. A priesthood meeting was held at which district matters were discussed.

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Today nearly 25,000 Pacific Islanders – Tongans, Samoans, Guamians, native Hawaiians, and others – enrich life in Utah. Polynesian roots run almost as deeply into Utah history as those of any other group.

Mormon missionaries sailed to the Pacific Islands in 1843, four years before Brigham Young arrived in Utah. Converts in Hawaii gathered at Palawai and Laie, anticipating eventual relocation to Utah – “I hookahi na puuwai a hui ma Ziona” (“Let us be of one heart till we gather to Zion”) was an oft-repeated motto. Until 1884, however, Hawaii’s monarchs prohibited emigration. (more…)

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.

Arts, Manufactures, and Domestic Economy.

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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.

Domestic Animals, and Veterinary.

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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.

Medicine, Surgery, Anatomy and Physiology.

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The Juvenile Instructor has plenty of Scotch jokes this time for Researcher:

True to Form

Helen: “So Peggy’s new boy’s a Scotchman. How does he treat her?”

Mabel: “Very reluctantly, I believe.”

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It was hot on that day in September 1893 when two elders – Nicholas Miller (age 39, from Manassa, Colorado) and Benjamin LeBaron (age 33, from Mesa, Arizona) – passed along the rural road near Gadsden, Alabama, looking for people willing to accept their religious tracts. Neighbors had been warning neighbors all along their route in those foothills at the southern end of Appalachia that the Mormons were coming. Most wouldn’t even respond to the elders’ knock, and those few who did answer their doors turned away without offering the water that both men would have welcomed.

John the Baptist Gayler (age 35, still living in the very neighborhood where he had been born) had also heard that the Mormons were coming, but it wasn’t in his nature to turn away a thirsty man. He reached out to shake Elder Miller’s hand, and without breaking grip he pulled the missionary into his home. (more…)

Ah! The ingenuity … the design … the marketing possibilities …

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As I watch the cultural fillers broadcast this week between Olympic events, I’m alert to references to the Forbidden City and its Zhong Shan Park. I look at the trees, watching for a cypress whose trunk rises straight to the sky but whose main branch shoots off to the side just above ground level, before rising as a parallel “second trunk.” I know that it’s highly unlikely that the tree still exists, in its distinctive shape, even in a place like China where so many things change so slowly, and I know it’s even more unlikely that I’d see the tree even if it still lives. But I’m somewhat of a romantic, so I continue to watch for it.

On assignment from church president Heber J. Grant, apostle David O. McKay and his companion Hugh J. Cannon made an around-the-world tour in 1920-21, visiting the missions, examining the business affairs of church schools in distant lands, and in general gathering impressions for what was really the first practical consideration of the church as a truly international organization. They arrived at the Peking [Beijing] train station on the evening of Saturday, January 8, 1921. (more…)

By request, we’re opening a class here at Keepa for readers who want to start their own genealogical and family history research. We’re going to concentrate on the four or five generations closest to us.

The class member I have in mind is starting from scratch, is probably a convert or the child of converts, and may have been intimidated by ward members talking about how their own family history is “all done.” Anybody is welcome to join us, but remember that we’re keeping this basic – no question is too simple, but some discussion may be too advanced. If I ask that something be saved until a later time, please understand that I want to start simple so that every beginner is comfortable. (more…)

For seventy years, “sacrament gems” were a familiar part of the Sabbath routine for Mormon children and adults. These (usually) short pieces of scripture, or sometimes verses from hymns, were part of Sunday School opening exercises, and often marked a child’s first address to the congregation. Sometimes parents drilled children at home through the preceding week so that the child could stand and recite the gem from memory and with clear diction; other times, a frightened or giggling child would stand at the microphone and stammer or bellow each phrase as it was whispered in his ear by a Sunday School worker. (more…)

… or when your parents married, or on some other date that matters to you? Who were the apostles? What was published in the magazines? How many stakes existed? What lessons were the auxiliaries teaching? What newsworthy events happened?

I’d like to do a few posts about the general state of the Church on 20th century dates that matter to Keepa readers. (more…)

From the Juvenile Instructor, September 1926:

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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.

Architecture, and Engineering.

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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.

Mathematics.

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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.

Dictionaries, Grammars, and Alphabets.

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