Wedding questions, Hawaiians, burns, and oily skin — is there nothing that Catherine Hurst cannot answer through the columns of The Young Woman’s Journal? (But I want to know whether “promiscuous” kissing can begin once the ring has been “cordially” accepted. Alas, I fear Catherine would decidedly disapprove.)

“Mary”. – Send your feather pillows and cusions to the laundry to be cleaned and renovated. The cost is minimal and they come back fluffy and full – better than new ones.

—oooOooo—

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Keepa’ninny Clark sends in this photo of an Idaho Falls stake primary play on the Book of Mormon, circa 1956. (What’s your connection to the group, Clark?) 

The girls are oh, so sweetly modest, in 1956 or 2009. The boys are … adorable.

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Ralph Olpin (1910-2002) was a 15-year-old deacon when he gave the following short talk concerning the duties of a deacon and the operation of a deacons’ quorum.

Despite the remarkable maturity of expression and organization here, the language still sounds to me like that of a young man (not an adult ghostwriter).

As I’ve tediously repeated, I have little to no contact with young people – our ward has no Aaronic priesthood except for a recent adult convert. Does this talk, and the activities outlined in it (updated, of course, to use contemporary activities other than cutting wood for widows), represent the level of responsibility shown by the young men in your ward?

What do your wards do to develop maturity and responsibility in young people?

What kinds of church activities did you participate in as a young person that you credit for helping to develop your own responsibility?

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Lesson 45: “The Family Is Ordained of God”

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1922: An Everlasting Covenant: YLMIA Lessons on Marriage and Family Life

Lesson 15: Half Marriage and Divorce

I. Half Marriage – Meaning of Term.

1. In history.
2. The advice of the Priesthood.

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Lesson 44: Being Good Citizens

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1900: Deseret Sunday School Union Leaflets

Lesson 211: Submission to Secular Law

TEXTS.

We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law. (No. 12 of the Articles of Faith.)

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Lesson 40: Finding Joy in Temple and Family History Work

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1934: Missionary Sunday School Lessons

Lesson 41: Spiritual Power through Temple Service

All temple service revolves about the idea of the sanctity and perpetuity of the family relation. The temples themselves are erected as places where sacred sealing ordinances may be performed. These ordinances are for the purpose of binding things eternally. This signifies the giving of unending endurance to the most cherished of human relationships. (more…)

From the files of The Improvement Era, 1962:

A little boy sat before the fireplace stroking his new kitten. The kitten began to purr loudly when suddenly the boy jerked it roughly away from the hearth. “Can’t you treat your new pet more gently?” reprimanded the mother. “But, Mom, I had to move it quick. Didn’t you hear it start to boil?”

—

Employee: I’ve been here ten years, Sir, doing three men’s work for one man’s money, and now I want a raise.

Employer: I doot I can gie ye that, but if ye’ll tell me the names of the ither twa men I’ll fire ‘em.

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What were we doing in 1938? Come and see –

201st Quorum of 70, Ogden 13th Ward, Utah
Bean project, part of the LDS Security Plan (now Welfare Plan)

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It is early in May. As cherry trees blossom along the Potomac, members of Congress are castigating the Federal Bureau of Investigation for its inability to reign [sic] in heavily armed attackers who have struck at the heart of America. Critics say the bureau is incapable of discerning where the attackers may strike next, unwilling to work with rival agencies and unfit to fight what appears to be a new kind of modern war. Some call for its wholesale reorganization. The embattled director of the bureau pleads for more resources to combat the rising threat.

This may sound like May 2004, but in fact it was the crisis that gripped Washington 70 years ago. In May 1934, the armed attackers were not international terrorists but homegrown kidnappers and bank robbers: John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, Ma Barker and Bonnie and Clyde. It wasn’t the war on terrorism. It was the so-called war on crime, and for the F.B.I., it was going very badly.

– Bryan Burrough, “How the Feds Got Their Man,” New York Times, 14 May 2004

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On Sunday, March 27, 1938, at 9:30 p.m., a group of voice actors from Brigham Young University presented the following dramatization over the Church’s KSL radio. It’s melodramatic, I know, but it’s a part of our history, too, every bit as much as some of the finer works of art that we’re proud to claim. Fashions change – maybe we’ll come to appreciate these lofty-toned pageants again some day. Even if fashion doesn’t swing back that way, what do such pageants tell us about us?

I.

All down the shadowed vista of the years
Has woman’s courage gleamed to light the way.

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The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) at Washington, D.C., is where it’s at, if you’re a historian (including a family historian) researching American history and families. Many of NARA’s records – the federal census, for example – have been microfilmed or digitized and are available in Family History Centers and other places. Other records – deeds of first transfer of land from the federal government to private ownership – are being put online by government agencies.

Other extremely useful records – most military and pension records, for instance – are still available only from NARA, either at a stiff price ($75 for a Civil War pension file) by mail, or by visiting Washington and copying them yourself.

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The Maricopa Stake (Arizona) MIA put on its third annual roadshow in December, 1934. “Since its inception,” the Improvement Era report says, “it has remained the most popular event of the year.” The great distances between wards in the stake required that the stake be divided into three zones, with the acts being presented on three successive nights (they really did take these shows on the road in those days).

The winning act — unfortunately, the ward isn’t named — used “Treasure Island” as a theme. The show’s “pirates” found a treasure chest containing all the good things done in the MIA.

But you aren’t going to see these pirate costumes used again in YM/YW activities during our lifetime, I think!
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Keepa’ninny Coffinberry constructed this thoroughly Mormon-themed charade (sorry, Hunter!) along the lines of the puzzles that appeared in the late 19th century Juvenile Instructor.

The solution has 15 letters; solving the six clues will help you find the letters to plug into the solution. (Numbers refer to the order in which letters appear in the 15-letter solution: if you can guess clue “a,” then you’ll know what letters to write in the 4th, 12th, 13th, and 6th spaces on the solution.)

As usual, please solve only one or two letters so that readers coming later can still play along.

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Two significant Mormon Studies events are scheduled for Logan in early October:

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John Garratt Chambers was born in 1818 in Alnwick and raised in Manchester, England. He was just 13 when he began a seven-year term as an apprentice on the newspaper The Manchester Chronicle. Denied any opportunity for a formal, classical education, he used whatever free time he could find to study chemistry, geology, geography, and history, and he learned to write shorthand. He continued in the newspaper business, working as a reporter on The Manchester Examiner and Times, from 1841 to 1853.

He became a Mormon in 1851, and in February 1853, one week before sailing to America on the first leg of his emigration to Zion, he married Maria Duffin.

In 1854, after reaching Salt Lake City, he wrote at least two long letters to England, which his former editor published in the Manchester Examiner. These letters are notable for their journalistic qualities – literate, packed with detail, they take the reader along on the journey with the reporter.

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(This may sound familiar to a few readers; I think I linked to it a couple of years ago when it was in the newspaper.)

The Hotel Utah (now the Joseph Smith Memorial Building) was only a skeleton of iron I-beams rising over a new-laid foundation on Apr. 18, 1910, as two night watchmen waited for the silence of downtown Salt Lake to be broken by hundreds of early risers intent on catching a view of Halley’s Comet.

The silence was broken, all right, but not by sleepy stargazers. A few minutes past 3 AM, a terrific explosion, fueled by dynamite and nitroglycerin, erupted from the northeast corner of the construction site. The concussion knocked one of the watchmen to the ground, twisted part of the hotel’s iron framework beyond repair, and shattered windows in the office buildings across South Temple until, in the words of one witness, there was “not enough glass left to make a pair of spectacles.” Downtown residents covered in dust and shards of glass ran into the street, some convinced that the comet had actually struck the earth.

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Lesson 39: “The Hearts of the Children Shall Turn to Their Fathers”

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1932: Lesson Book for The Ordained Teachers

Lesson 48: The Hearts of the Fathers

An interesting incident in the life of Bishop Joseph Warburton and his daughter, Mrs. Emma M.W. Powell, is told by Joseph H. Smith, a Recorder in the Salt Lake Temple. the story is also preserved in the Salt Lake Temple Historical Record:

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Lesson 38: “In Mine Own Way”

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1940: Gospel Messages (taken from Church Welfare Plan,” by J. Reuben Clark, Jr.)

Lesson 25: Church Revenues

Payment of tithes was required under the Law of Moses. Indeed, the early prominence given to this requirement has led to the incorrect assumption that tithe-paying had its beginning in an Israelitish statute. tithing is older than Israel. Abraham paid a tenth part of his gains to Melchizedek, who was king of Salem and priest of the Most High God. (Gen. 14:20 and Heb. 7;1-8); and Jacob made a covenant to devote to the Lord’s service a tenth of all that would come into his hands. (Gen. 28:22.)

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A Dublin doctor lately sent in a bill to a lady which ran thus: “To curing your husband till he died.”

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It was a Western youngster who, having been presented by his uncle with a new suit of clothes, became for the first time in his life interested in his personal appearance, and insisted upon having a collar put on and having his hair combed. Taking the comb to the uncle that gave him the clothes, he requested him to comb his hair. “Well,” said the uncle, “which side shall I part it on?” The youngster’s ideas on the subject of hair-dressing were quite vague, but he was equal to the emergency. “Well, on the outside, I guess,” said he.

—

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Cutting edge history, that’s what we like: the tools of tomorrow to access the stories of yesteryear.

As you’ve probably noticed from the sidebar, Keepa is now on Twitter, set up to display the five most recent tweets. (I’m so stinkin’ proud of myself, figuring out how to put that display in the sidebar and make it match without destroying J.’s template.) You can also follow Keepa by signing up through the link provided.

I expect to use it to drop names and make the life of an archives rat sound exotic and wonderful. (It is glamorous, you know; I just need to make it sound as good as it is.) Maybe there will be some mini-stories, too, odd tidbits I run across in research that can be told in 140 characters. You never know. Stay tuned. Sign up.

The young men of the church also had a query section in their journal, The Contributor, which they called “Department of Inquiry.” The answers to their doctrinal questions were “submitted to the authorities of the Church who have approved of the same and consequently they may be considered authentic.”

Alas, the young men seemingly lacked the curiosity, or the problems, of the young ladies. They couldn’t accumulate enough questions to fill the column more than once a year, and there are no questions regarding how old they must be to go a-courtin’. The young men had not even the slightest interest – apparently – in promiscuous kissing … if the absence of evidence is evidence of absence …

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Kevin Barney posted recently about reading his father’s 1953 journal, a record his father kept to fulfill requirements for becoming a “Master M Man.” Since this program disappeared a generation ago, probably many bloggernaclers are unfamiliar with it.

The Mutual (Mutual Improvement Association, or MIA) used to be the social and recreational arm of the church, for adults as well as for the teens currently served by the Young Men/Young Women program. You became an M Man (or a Gleaner, for girls) when you turned 18, or graduated from high school, or (in the event you weren’t able to graduate) your age peers reached that milestone, and you remained an M Man/Gleaner until you were 30 – unless you married, at which point you and your spouse joined the Young Marrieds (which followed much of the M Man/Gleaner program, but with additional family, relationship, and child care features).

The M Men/Gleaners was more than just a class for young adults who had aged out of the youth program — more than today’s Young Single Adult “amuse ‘em till you marry ‘em off” program. It was an educational and experiential preparation for lifelong achievement and assuming adult roles in the Church.  One manual says of the M Men:

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Forgive me; somehow it slipped my mind that I had started this series. Back to it, then –

Brigham Young was a man of, we might say, decided opinions. We might easily say something much stronger than this – many people have, with good reason. He was excitable – get him in the pulpit, or provide him with an audience in his office, or even have him dictate a letter rather than scratch it out by hand, and he was apt to let his tongue and his temper run away with him when he condemned adultery, apostasy, and marrying outside the faith. There is no shortage of scandalously temperamental, righteously indignant, temperamentally outspoken sayings – however you want to characterize them – that create the public impression of Brigham Young as a dictatorial, harsh, judgmental, overbearing man.

Those are the quotations people love to trot out. These quotations hardly reflect the full man, though.

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Jan Shipps, the “insider-outsider,” the emeritus professor of history and religious studies at Indiana University, has been spending the past few weeks in Salt Lake City, sponsored by her Mellon Foundation fellowship, working on her book about developments in Mormonism since the end of World War II. She’s been a lot of fun to listen to when she needs a break from poring over the records, when she starts telling stories from her nearly 50-year career as a Methodist studying Mormonism. The following is repeated here with her permission.

Today she came in a little late, having spent 40 minutes on a telephone call from a man in Chicago who had tracked her down after reading an Associated Press article telling about Jan’s work. The caller wanted to ask a reliable non-Mormon about some matters discussed on a “60 Minutes” episode he had seen. They talked about Proposition 8, and whether or not the Mormons were going to “invade” Massachusetts to make them change their laws, and whether Jan thought there would be a backlash against Mormonism over Proposition 8. He asked about the temple, and what Mormons did in the temple, and whether Jan had been permitted to go to the temple.

He asked about baptism for the dead. Specifically, “What do they do with the coffins while they’re baptizing the dead?”

Jan swears that’s what he asked. Honest.

A page I like from the March 1924 Children’s Friend with another set of great period graphics. Nothing here about appearance, or transfats, or BMI, only a recognition that health is its own reward:

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Responding to “Garcon” and his description of “The Wife I Want” in The Young Woman’s Journal of December, 1893, “Muchacha” describes her “Model Husband” in The Contributor of March, 1894:

If ever I marry, which I hope some day to do, I will wish for a man possessing as many as possible of the following characteristics. Perhaps, however, men will be as scarce as “the gold of Ophir” before I have any opportunity to wed, in which event I suppose they will be so noble as to be almost above criticism:

I would like him to be of good parentage, for with mankind as with animals, much depends upon the stock.

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“Garcon” outlined his ideal wife in an article published in the December, 1893 issue of The Young Woman’s Journal, to which “Muchacha” responded with a description of her “Model Husband” in The Contributor of March, 1894. Share what you think of Garcon’s list, then come back this afternoon for Muchacha’s reply (with its – to me – revealing but unexpected reference to plural marriage).

When I marry my desire is to find a woman possessing as many as possible of the following characteristics:

She should be so virtuous as to live not only above reproach, but above suspicion.

She should be religious, yet not sanctimonious.

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Please enjoy these snapshots of Latter-day Saints from 1917 –

Colonia Dublan, Mexico

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Lays of Gardening

Mr. Jones: “How did you make your neighbor keep his hens in his own yard?”

Mr. James: “One night I hid half a dozen eggs under a bush in my garden and the next day I let him see me gather them. I wasn’t bothered after that.”

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We hear it all the time in political discourse: “Only a [fill in the blank] can truly represent [same fill-in]” in Congress, on the Supreme Court, on the board of directors, on the bench, in the doctor’s office, on the school board, to the pollster, and on and on and on. Hiring and admissions quotas are endlessly tweaked in the quest to get the perfect mix of male and female, black and white, rural and urban, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, and every other division recognized by mankind. Hooray for the “two-fer,” the candidate who falls into two desired categories!

Maybe such carefully measured attention to representation is a good thing in human relations, maybe not. I don’t want to argue that (in fact, I’ll remove any comments that argue for or against affirmative action or anything like unto it). We’re human. We’re fallible. We’re tribal. We often lack the imagination to be empathetic with people who are different.

But is God limited by such human shortcomings?

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Scene One, 1850s: Twelve miles north of Salt Lake City, only a few feet from the lake’s edge, a tiny spring bubbled to the surface, its waters sparkling with suspended gas. Someone discovered that after putting a tight barrel over the spring with an opening at the bottom for the water to flow, a colorless, odorless gas built up in the barrel. A match placed near a hole at the top produced a jet of fire for the amusement and warmth of travelers. Changing lake levels eventually swallowed the spring, and its exact location was lost.

Scene Two, 1886: Ephraim Garns of Lake Shore needed a new source of fresh water. He sank a well through sand and clay and struck water. When he happened to strike a match near his new well, he unexpectedly lit a torch – the 1-1/2 inch well pipe burst into a flame three feet high and a foot in diameter, burning steadily until Garns capped the pipe.

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