I’ve recently found the answer to a question that has been raised on Keepa … but now I can’t find where we’ve talked about this before to link to it.

The question was about the change in vocabulary from “Conference” to “District,” referring to the organization of missions. The answer is found in a 1927 letter:

March 12th, 1927

Presidents of Missions:

Please be advised that the First Presidency and Council of the Twelve Apostles have recently made a ruling to the effect that the word “District” shall be substituted for the word “Conference,” when referring to a territorial division of a Mission.

We shall be pleased therefore to have you conform to this change in the future.

Sincerely your brethren,

Heber J. Grant
A.W. Ivins
C.W. Nibley,
First Presidency

How the world imagined Mormon family life –

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N. Eldon Tanner, counselor to Harold B. Lee, delivered an address on the role of woman in General Conference, October 1973. Some extracts:

… As we enumerate the many important responsibilities a woman has in connection with her duties as a wife, a mother, a homemaker, a sister, a sweetheart, or a good neighbor, it should be evident that these challenging responsibilities can satisfy her need to express her talents, her interests, her creativity, dedication, energy, and skill which so many seek to satisfy outside the home. It is impossible to estimate the lasting influence for good a woman can have in any of these roles. Let me remind us all of her primary responsibilities.

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That Lad

By George E. Gibby

When I come home all tired out,
No pep left in my knees,
And throw myself upon the couch,
That lad begins to tease.
He takes my pencil from my coat,
My watch fob from my vest:
He smears my order book with jam
And climbs upon my chest.
He wants to ride a bucking horse
So grabs my new silk tie;
And when I see those eyes of his –
I simply have to try.
We tumble o’er the couch and floor
And make an awful noise –
Then mother says, with pleasing eyes:
“I’m glad we’re not all boys.”
I’ve seen rich men with childless wives
Grow surly, old and gray –
Ah, I am glad I have a lady
Who coaxes me to play.

(1922)

When John and Elizabeth Hancock Redd and their children crossed the plains to Utah, they took at least five slaves with them: Venus and her son Luke, and Chancey and her daughters Anna and Marinda.

Marinda is buried in the Spanish Fork City Cemetery with her husband, Alex Bankhead. Kate Carter’s sources for her book The Negro Pioneer seem to assume that the other Redd slaves or former slaves were also buried in Spanish Fork, but they weren’t listed in the same cemetery as the Bankheads, and I hadn’t yet looked for them elsewhere so they would be included in the Burial Database Project of Enslaved African Americans.

A few days ago I learned that there is an old pioneer cemetery in Spanish Fork, located on a low bluff overlooking the Spanish Fork River. The original grave markers were washed out by flooding, and when the town began a newer cemetery on higher ground, some of the burials were relocated and the pioneer cemetery became run down.

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This story is told in such a way that you might think it is fiction – but it is not. It is a reminiscence by Fay Ollerton Tarlock about a childhood encounter with Susa Young Gates and Elizabeth Claridge McCune, both extremely prominent Relief Society women of the late 19th/early 20th centuries. Enjoy!

From the Relief Society Magazine, March 1948 –

The Visitors

By Fay Tarlock

The news came during breakfast. The First Counselor telephoned that, in the absence of the Stake President, he wished my parents to entertain the daughter of Brigham Young and the wife of a millionaire; and that the illustrious ladies would arrive from Panguitch at about noon, to give a week’s course in some special Church work.

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When members of the general auxiliary boards visited the stakes in connection with stake conference, local auxiliary officers had an opportunity to ask questions about their callings and the policies and programs of the auxiliary (much as stake members today have an opportunity to ask questions of visiting priesthood authorities at the Saturday evening meeting of stake conference). General auxiliary boards were very seldom able to visit branches in the missions, though, so when mission presidents and their wives (generally limited to missions in the U.S.) visited Salt Lake City for their annual mission presidents’ conference, the auxiliary boards met with them to make presentations and answer questions pertaining to auxiliary work in the missions. There were plenty of questions for the Relief Society in 1955.

Question: Can a Relief Society be organized where there are only two or three women?

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Lesson 20: The Kingdoms of Glory

[Note: As with many lessons in the topic-based curriculum, this one as presented in the manual is a review of what my very experienced-in-the-Church class members already know. Rather than teaching it as if it contained information class members have never heard, or presenting it in the manual’s catechistic mode of “What does this mean? And this? And this?” I wanted to catch class members’ imaginations with how truly extraordinary this revelation is, no matter how familiar we are with it now. So I’m going with a long introduction heavy on the history, hoping to put class members in the place of early Church members hearing these ideas for the first time, followed by a reading of key verses and whatever discussion they might spark. I don’t think we’ll have time to do anything but the introduction and some verses regarding the Celestial Kingdom – but that is fine with me, since my experience is that when we get into a rote discussion of the three kingdoms, there is a tendency to want to assign people (often historical people, by name) to particular kingdoms, and I think that practice is bad, bad, bad.

Doctrine and Covenants 76, 131, 132:19-24, 137

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Sat. Jan 1. 1916.

Sister Compton and I prepared our New Years dinner which we ate out on the back veranda. Later we all walked down to the the [sic] German vessel that was being raised up out of the bay by an American company. On our way home we called on the American Consul and his wife Mr & Mrs. Thos. B. Layton who treated us very cordially. Returning hone we had a light lunch of ice cream cake, fruit, candy and lemonade, Mahana Terai Marie, Teata, Teupo & Terava were our New Years callers. Terai gave Sister Compton and I each a long hai of shells. All of the Elders got out ^ pressed their American suits so that they could feel like home on New Years Day.

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