The 1884 “Cane Creek Massacre” in Tennessee took the lives of two missionaries, two local members (brothers to each other), and one member of the attacking force. The mother of the two brothers was maimed for life, and proselyting in the immediate neighborhood of the massacre ceased for a period of years.

I have blogged once about this event, and BruceC has blogged a number of times about his recent researches into (for him) local history – he has been uncovering a number of documents – including photographs – in Tennessee sources that have never been used by those writing from the Mormon perspective, and has been exploring the genealogical connections of some of those involved. If the Cane Creek tragedy is of interest to you, or if you’d like to undertake researches into your own local history but aren’t sure how to start, I recommend BruceC’s site (click on the “Cane Creek” label to pull up all his relevant posts). (more…)

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“Indeed, we need not go to the days of Alma for contrasts between the condition of the people of God then and our present condition, to find causes for thanksgiving and praise to our God this day for His mercies unto us. We have only to refer to our own history, to scenes in which many of you have taken part, to find contrasts which should prompt us to bear present afflictions with patient equanimity.” — Epistle of the First Presidency to the Church, March 1886

 The Improvement Era, November 1954

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“… live in thanksgiving daily, for the many mercies and blessings which he doth bestow upon you.” (Alma 34:38)

From now through the end of November, Keepa offers a second daily post surveying some of the Thanksgiving, harvest, and autumn cover art from Church magazines of the past. The idea was suggested by fMhRebecca’s Advent art posts for the past two Decembers, and the series title by Kaimi’s 2003 Thanksgiving post at T&S.

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Juvenile Instructor, November 1919

More funnies from old church magazines — and crisp football weather calls for an opening joke featuring a football, no?

“Laying” Down on the Job

The football soared through the air and fell in the barnyard right at the rooster’s feet. A look of wonder came into his eyes as he surveyed it from all sides. Then he gravely pushed the ball into the henhouse and faced his harem. “I’m not complaining, Ladies,” he said, with an all-inclusive bow, “but I just want you to see for yourselves the work that is being done in the other yard.”

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Seven months after Pearl Harbor, with the United States finally joining the war that has been raging in Europe for two years, the atmosphere of wartime has become a major element in Church culture, too. Thousands of young Mormon men have been called into the service, and the Church is scrambling to set up organizations to provide worship opportunities and emotional and spiritual support for these young men away from their usual networks, and to reassure the people at home that the Lord was in control of events which called for the best behavior and efforts of every member.

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These ads were published in 1912; the Stall books were heavily advertised in Church magazines and available through Church bookstores at least through the early 1920s.

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“All grain is ordained for the use of man and of beasts, to be the staff of life … All grain is good for the food of man; as also the fruit of the vine; that which yieldeth fruit, whether in the ground or above the ground – Nevertheless, wheat for man.” – Doctrine and Covenants 89:14, 16-17

Mormons have had a love affair with wheat since at least our earliest years in the western deserts, when grain crops were defended from winds, sands and crickets, used prudently, and stored against a day of future need.

Few of us store a lot of wheat these days. It isn’t convenient – more of us live without basements or other large-scale storage space. It isn’t cool – we snicker at our parents’ generation and the garbage cans filled with wheat older than we are. We don’t like the few ways we know to fix it – cracked wheat cereal is gluey and whole wheat bread irritates our colons. It doesn’t seem practical – why not store Froot Loops and spaghetti sauce and the other ready-to-eat foods our kids are already comfortable with? (more…)

Before there was Mark Hofmann, there was “Jim the Penman.”

Jim – or James Townsend Saward – was an English barrister, active in the British law courts in the 1840s and ’50s. This legal gentleman had a profitable sideline as a forger of checks. He was even involved in the gold theft that formed the basis of Michael Crichton’s The Great Train Robbery.

After Saward was convicted and transported to Australia, the nickname was bestowed on Emanuel Ninger, a New York counterfeiter who netted an estimated $50,000 profit in his short 1880s career. (more…)

VETERANS’ DAY

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American women first wore the uniforms of the United States military during World War II, when they were organized into the WACs (Women’s Army Corps), the WASPs (Women Airforce Service Pilots), the Navy WAVES (Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service), the SPARs (a contraction of the Coast Guard motto Semper Paratus, “always ready”), and the Women Marines. National WAC director Oveta Culp Hobby spoke in Salt Lake in 1943, proclaiming that “This is a new age; it calls for new ways of expressing our love for our country; it makes different demands upon us.”

American women responded by joining the auxiliary corps and providing services that freed able-bodied men for combat duty. Within the first year, the WACs alone had filled enough positions to create four full combat divisions. One manual noted that some assignments were routine and others glamorous, “but whatever the job is, every WAC knows that a paper not properly routed today may mean insufficient supplies to our fighting men tomorrow.” (more…)

Keepapitchinin will be back tomorrow.

 Coming in the next few days:

Tribute to veterans

A forger in the First Presidency’s Office??

Dolly Madison and the Mormons

SEX!!

A shipwreck … with missionaries aboard

Bad (but historical) jokes

See you tomorrow.

** Keepapitchinin. A Politics-Free Zone. **

(Unless it happened before I was born. And I’m older than dirt.)

Keepapitchinin is going into hibernation for a while. Check in again when you’ve had your fill of politics.

Joseph Henderson Tippets, president of the LDS branch at Anchorage, was heading home to his wife and son in Alaska following a Christmas visit to his mother in Ogden. His small plane, with four other passengers and pilot Harold Gillam, left Spokane, Washington, at 1:30 p.m., 5 January 1943. Four hours later, the plane ran into a violent storm. Pilot Gillam struggled with his controls as he fought a failing battle to maintain altitude. He tried to radio the airfield at Ketchikan (Alaska’s southernmost city, on the narrow strip of the territory that stretches south along the Canadian border), but was only partially successful – he alerted them that the plane was in trouble, but contact was too fragile for him to radio their position clearly. After about 20 minutes of skimming treetops and avoiding rocky ridges in the darkness of the storm, the Twin Beech craft crashed into a peak about 2,000 feet above sea level.

Search planes left Ketchikan the next morning, despite the continuing storm. Tippets and other passengers were, after all, employees of the Civil Aeronautics Administration, and Gillam was popular among Alaska’s bush pilots. Would-be rescuers flew whenever the weather permitted, scanning the coastline and inland mountains in an ever-expanding line from Ketchikan. There was no sign of the missing plane. After many days, the search was abandoned, with the understanding that it would be resumed in the spring.

Meanwhile, back at the crash site … (more…)

As I read through old church periodicals like the Millennial Star and the Liahona and the Church News, I have seen hundreds upon hundreds of accounts of blessings given by elders followed by reportedly miraculous healings. Sometimes the reports have been given by the elders, sometimes by the patients themselves. Yet until today I have not passed any of these stories along to Keepa readers.

It isn’t because I don’t believe in the power of faith, priesthood, and blessings; I do. It isn’t because I doubt all of these reports; I don’t. I do have questions about healings following blessings: Why are some blessings for health successful, and others are not? Was there really any element of the miraculous involved when someone who has been suffering from a severe cold for three days is blessed and then two days later is up and about again? Isn’t that pretty much the course of a cold? (more…)

Nursing a sugar hangover? Stayed out too late with the goblins? Start your recovery with a dose of humor from the 1915 Juvenile Instructor:

Getting Some Results

One day Luther Burbank was walking in his garden, when he was accosted by an officious acquaintance who said: “Well, what are you working on now?”

“Trying to cross an eggplant and milkweed,” said Mr. Burbank.

“And what under Heaven do you expect to get from that?”

Mr. Burbank calmly resumed his walk. “Custard pie,” he said.

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