By November 25, 2012
Three of President Duffin?s missionaries died during his six-year administration. [1] Below I summarize Duffin?s experience with Elder George O Stanger of Neeley, Idaho, who died, age twenty-three, of complications from typhoid fever on 1903 May 23 in Kansas City, Missouri. [2] I will focus on how Duffin handled the logistics of the illness and death and how he narrated it in terms of doctrine.
By November 18, 2012
Thanksgiving Day traditions in Texas, Kansas, and Utah around 1900, as recorded in missionary diaries, seem similar to the popular present-day model: turkey, family, gratitude, pumpkin pie. However, only two of the missionaries in this studied mentioned Thanksgiving Day; the other four missionaries with diary entries in November did not record observances, even when one of them was boarding long-term with church members. [1]
By November 11, 2012
I wish you all a thoughtful and thankful Veterans Day. After a three-month break, I?m restarting the “Southwestern States Mission series” (homepage). A few months ago clothes dyeing came up in the Jones diary at Keepapitchinin:
By August 4, 2012
The Southwestern States Mission series will not publish for the next several weeks. The academic year cometh so my day job is going to require more attention for a bit. When we return (in no particular order):
By July 29, 2012
Below is a much-condensed version of a paper I presented yesterday at the History of Mormonism in Latin America and the US-Mexico Borderlands conference in El Paso, Texas. Our own Jared T organized the conference, which I judge to have been a smashing success. My paper attempted to sketch some of the relationships among the Mormon colonies in Sonora and Chihuahua, Mexico, and the Southwestern (later Central) States Mission from 1900 to 1905.
By July 22, 2012
Pioneer Day, July 24, commemorates the 1847 arrival of Mormon settlers in Salt Lake Valley. Some church members and missionaries in the Southwestern States Mission observed the holiday, but, as with the Fourth of July, city-dwellers celebrated more elaborately.
By July 15, 2012
Missionaries sent a report to mission administrators every week. In theory, conference secretaries mailed instructions to each companionship Thursday evenings, which the Elders retrieved Mondays when they sent their weekly reports. [1] Below are photos of the report books of Elder Calvin H Chandler, who served in the Southwestern States Mission from 1899 to 1901. [2]
By July 8, 2012
The missionaries addressed several different topics in their preaching, but if there was a pattern or sequence, I have not yet found it. ?Authority? was a relatively frequent subject of preaching, discussion, and disputation. [1]
By July 1, 2012
Mormons in the early 1900s engaged Independence Day against a backdrop of political and cultural conflict about Mormon patriotism. [1] By my reading, however, the diaries in this study reveal almost nothing of such contestations. The rural/urban divide played the dominant role in how missionaries observed the Fourth. [2]
By June 24, 2012
Since the Mormon History Association is meeting in Calgary this week, I have chosen to poke around for Canadian connections to the Southwestern States Mission.
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