More questions believed to have been answered by George Q. Cannon as editor of the Juvenile Instructor:

Is it necessary in blessing an infant for the Elder to speak the entire name, as, John James Smith? Or would the child be properly named if the Elder gave it the name of John James, when the father’s name is Smith, and in reality the child’s name is John James Smith?

The mention of the given name or names is all that is essential to the correct blessing of a child, as its name at birth is the same as that of its parents, and therefore it is not necessary to again confer upon it this name. Sometimes in blessing children, however, the original as well as the Christian name is mentioned, which is, of course, not in the least improper.

We are asked if the natives of New Zealand and of the Samoan, Society and Sandwich Islands are descendants of the Nephites or of the Lamanites. If of the former, how can their dark color be accounted for?

There has nothing been written as coming from the Lord to warrant us in saying whether these Polynesians are descended from the Nephites or form the Lamanites. If they are descendants of Lehi, they doubtless have both Nephite and Lamanite blood in their veins. While there is nothing written as the word of the Lord upon this point, there exists scarcely a doubt in the minds of the Elders who have paid attention to this subject concerning their origin. We believe we state the general opinion when we say they are descendants of Lehi.

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Patricia O’Donnell was returning to her homeland of Ireland to gather her genealogy. Would there be time for her to attend Relief Society one last time before she caught her train to the East?

From the Relief Society Magazine, March 1952 –

The Wearing of the Gay

By Frances Carter Yost

Granny O’Donnell felt all seventy of her years drag as she walked the four blocks from the depot to her little white and green trimmed cottage. Her old black leather purse under her arm wasn’t heavy any more, and there wasn’t enough money left in the purse to bother clenching it tightly, as she had when she went to the station.

“A ticket to Ireland and return costs as much as St. Patrick probably would a’ paid for the whole of the Emerald Isle,” she murmured. “Why, with prices doubling and tripling, there’s nary enough left to buy the coat and hat me figured on buying in Salt Lake City.”

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Hey, if you’re in northern Utah with nothing better to do this Friday night (August 5), come hear me speak at Sunstone’s “Pillars of My Faith” session at 7:30, at the Shepherd Student Union Building, Weber State University (3848 Harrison Boulevard, Ogden, Utah).

I’m still writing, revising, discarding, and rewriting my talk at this point – it isn’t easy, despite the exhibitionist practice I’ve gained from blogging – to imagine speaking of the most cherished thoughts and events of my life before a room full of strangers, but I’ll try.

If nothing else, I promise to reveal the never-before-disclosed criminal origins of my conscious life. Now if that ain’t a hook, I don’t know what is!

This letter was written to Brigham Young shortly after the coming of the railroad to Utah – perhaps an important point, if Brigham were to accept the invitation outlined by the writer.

I have broken the letter into paragraphs that are easier to read on-screen than the original single block of text, and where the original used superscript zeroes (which I cannot replicate with this blogging software), I have used a slash: That is, “$1/00” represents “$1” followed by two superscript zeroes. Otherwise, the text is unaltered.

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This ad for Travelers Insurance appeared in the Saturday Evening Post of October 30, 1943. I’m guessing that the 1940 release of the movie “Brigham Young” or the 1938 release of “The Miracle of Salt Lake” had made the Mormon account of the seagulls and the crickets familiar enough to that generation for it to be useful to Madison Avenue.

An early review of our “Mormonism: A Historical Encyclopedia wondered why we had devoted even a little space to the seagulls and crickets (a succinct account, including the enduring meaning of that event, written by Edje Jeter) when there were so many other, more significant historical happenings that didn’t get their own entries. It’s because we felt that that story would be familiar to a broad audience and was one of the terms that someone who picked up the Encyclopedia might actually look for.

I feel so vindicated.

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For background and links to chapters in this series, see here

LESSON XVII

VOCATIONS FOR THE DISABLED AND FOR SPECIAL CONDITIONS

If we should visit an important city in Italy or in Mexico we should find numerous men, women, and children with physical handicaps or deformities who get their living by begging. The sympathy of the public is worked on by magnifying the defects. In countries where this sort of thing is permitted a large number of people are pauperized, since it is easier for them to beg than to earn an honest living.

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For background and links to chapters in this series, see here

LESSON XI

TEACHING – LIBRARIAN

Importance of Teaching

Anyone who has come in contact with a great teacher like Karl G. Maeser, realizes the tremendous power for good which may be exercised by a person in this position. One can scarcely go into a village or hamlet in the intermountain country without coming in contact with someone who was a student of Dr. Maeser in what was then the Brigham Young academy. The universal verdict of those who came in contact with him is that their lives were enriched and their characters strengthened as a result o coming under the tuition of this great man. If each of his students in turn becomes a center of inspiration there is really no limit to the good that will have been accomplished by this one teacher.

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For background and links to chapters in this series, see here

LESSON II

THE NEED OF VOCATIONS

Not long ago I saw a policeman walk up to a shabby and none-too-clean man who was leaning against a lamp post on a street corner and ask him what his business was. When the leaner replied that he had none the policeman said: “You will have to come with me, then, and do some explaining,” and off they went together leaving me wondering,.”What,” thought I to myself, “does a man need to have some business or be ind anger of being ‘run in’ by a policeman?” After a good deal of thinking on the subject I have come to the conclusion that the law is just in requiring everyone to have some means of support. Every man should do his share of the work of the world. Then the thought came, why should he not also be required to be trained for some specific piece of work for which he is adapted, and not allowed to go drifting through the world as a sort of misfit who is not able to earn a respectable living for himself and those dependent on him, let alone adding to the general wealth and welfare of the world? How much greater is the possible achievement of a man with a job for which he is trained than is that of the jack-of-all-trades with training for none.

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Patricia was hosting her women’s club for an important luncheon, and nothing, absolutely nothing, was working out the way she hoped it would!

From the Relief Society Magazine, April 1946 –

The White Picket Fence

By Sarah O. Moss

Patricia hurriedly placed a half dozen card tables about her spacious living-room and spread dainty lunch cloths on each one with meticulous care. She took infinite pains with the one long table in the southeast corner and placed a centerpiece of roses in a glass bowl on the center of the lace cloth. Patricia glanced with satisfaction through the corner window at the majestic scene before her – high, rolling mountains spread with autumn color, and then she looked at her own tailored lawns flanked by clean-kept flower beds. She frowned at the broken pickets in the white fence that divided her yard from the tiny structure on the prized corner lot adjoining.

“Tom,” she called in a distressed voice, “you’ve promised me ever since that load of topsoil was delivered, that you’d fix those pickets the truck ruined, and here it is, the one day of my life when I wanted everything to be perfect and my guests will have to stare at the jagged fence. A broken fence, plus that little matchbox of a house.”

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Below is my current column in the Salt Lake Tribune. I’m posting it here to add some Mormon commentary.

The Birdsall family arrived in Utah and converted to Mormonism (the reverse of the usual order) when William, featured in this story, was just 6 years old; he was baptized as a child just as all his playmates were. Although there was a break in the early 20th century, when William’s father Isaac testified against the Church in the Senate hearings concerning Reed Smoot, there is every reason to believe the Birdsalls were sincere Mormons, fully accepted in the Mormon communities of Joseph and Monroe in Sevier County, at the time of this incident. All members of the family had received their patriarchal blessings, with William’s sister Cora serving as the patriarch’s scribe. The children attended the Sevier Stake Academy. The family was sealed in the Manti Temple in 1890. Cora served as a counselor in the ward Relief Society, leaving the land she was homesteading and moving into a rented room in town in order to be more accessible for serving, including nursing, the sisters of the ward.

Monroe, the setting for this story, was and is a Mormon agricultural village. All of the others named in this article were LDS, members of the same ward as the Birdsalls, although I can’t vouch for the activity level or religious sentiment of anyone in 1898. The woman on whose behalf, supposedly, the men committed the actions narrated here was a Mormon.

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After Joseph Smith and other church leaders were betrayed by George M. Hinkle in late 1838 during the Missouri War, they were imprisoned in Richmond Jail for a considerable period. Parley P. Pratt’s recounting of one incident of that imprisonment is a favorite Mormon story. This version of that event was published in the Children’s Friend of July 1955, written by Kathryn S. Gilbert and illustrated by Erla Young.

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