Comments on: Without Purse or Scrip in Texas: 28 December 1901 – 4 January 1902

By: Julia

Julia — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 08:29:31 +0000

I had remembered our conversation about them buying their Book of Mormons, which is why I thought the fact that there was an account that his father could put money in an interesting detail. Does anyone know how many Book of Mormons could be bought with the $10?

So the pass was kind of like a forerunner to 501(c)3 status for a church, but it went with an itinerant preacher or missionary. That makes sense. I guess it is like having a VISA in some countries that specifies you are there as a missionary and restricts what you can do, usually working at a job and sometimes receiving national health care or other social system benefits.

Thanks as always for broadening my horizons.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 01:51:38 +0000

Kris, I think most of their mail from home was sent to the mission office, then forwarded to them. They seem to have planned their work well enough for the mission home to know a few apweeks ahead when they expected to be in such-and-such a place.

Me, too, Carol — their “late” sometimes seems pretty early.

By: Kris

Kris — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 00:54:25 +0000

I would like to know how the mail system knew where they would be.

By: Carol

Carol — Sun, 23 Dec 2012 23:47:21 +0000

They get up very late, eat a hearty breakfast, both have a bath, and are on their way by nine. Many times they get up late and are on their way by eight. I wonder what early is to them.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Sun, 23 Dec 2012 21:44:07 +0000

The elders carried clergyman certificates (I don’t know what body issued them), which often allowed them to travel by train at a cut-rate, and receive other courtesies extended by merchants and the public to clergymen. The blank would have been the form they had to fill out and return, sent to them by the mission office.

The $10 on his Book of Mormon fund relates to something we talked about a few weeks ago — the elders had to pay for (all? a portion?) of the cost of their tracts and books,a cost they then recouped by selling the proselyting materials to people they met. If they gave something away, they had to make up the difference out of their own pocket. So Elder Larsen’s dad was likely trying to help him pay off an account that may have been building through the more than two years he had been serving at this time.

By: Julia

Julia — Sun, 23 Dec 2012 21:25:05 +0000

At least they aren’t sick. Interesting details about his father adding $10 to his Book of Mormon fund. I was wondering what it means by “also a blank from the office to sign to procure a clergy permit for 1902.”