Library Places Missionary Diary Collection Online
December 12, 2007
When Lucy Mack Smith, mother of the Prophet Joseph Smith, hand-decorated a diary for her missionary son, Hyrum, she certainly never imagined it would end up in the archives at Brigham Young University — or on the Internet (lib.byu.edu/dlib/mmd).
Hyrum Smith’s diary is the oldest of 575 diaries written by early missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that are now housed in the L. Tom Perry Special Collections of BYU’s Harold B. Lee Library. After an enormous, five-year project, 376 of these diaries — including Smith’s — are now available for patrons around the world to access online.
With the online collection, many people who would be interested in the diaries but will never have the chance to visit BYU can see the diaries for themselves. Susan Fales, curator of digital and historical collections for Special Collections, said this is one of the main reasons the library created the online collection.
“There are so many people who will never be able to physically come here, and yet, we have so many items that they might be interested in for their family history or historical value,” she said.
The online collection contains short biographies of the diarists and images of the original pages alongside typed, transcribed pages from 114 diarists who served missions from the 1830s to the 1960s.
“We scanned the diaries in color so people can have the sense and feel of the original — so they can see what the paper looks like, what the covers look like,” Fales said. “Sometimes there is even more to a diary than what is written in it.”
It is arranged geographically by continents or island groups, including the Pacific, Asia, North America, Great Britain, Scandinavia and Western Europe. The largest geographical representation comes from the three groupings of European missionary diaries, with an exceptionally strong collection from Great Britain. The British collection includes a diary from Inez Knight Allen, one of the first two single women called to serve full-time missions for the Church in 1898.
The project of sifting through the diaries was largely carried out by students over an 18-month period that began in spring 2003 and ended in fall 2004. Reviewers tried to handle the original diaries as little as possible, using photocopies or transcripts where possible. They were also instructed to respect the diarists’ sacred and private writings.
The diaries were chosen based on the writer’s ability to be descriptive, introspective and revealing about experiences, people and places. The reviewers also hoped to find names of mission companions, mission presidents and people the missionaries taught and baptized, said Fales,who found the name of her own mother in the diary of prominent photographer George Edward Anderson.
This screening process assured that the most interesting diaries from the full collection are available in the Web collection. For instance, the Web collection contains diaries from John Henry Gibbs, who was murdered in the 1884 Tennessee Massacre during his service in the Southern States Mission. Also online are diaries written by Willis E. Robison, whose missionary service concluded with transporting Gibbs’ body home to his family.
“Family, cultural, social and religious historians will be able to use this collection for intense and deep research,” said Fales. “At the same time, students from junior high through graduate school will now have the opportunity to read and better understand the mission experience — the joys, sorrows and struggles that can change the lives of missionaries and the individuals they grow to know and love. There is no other collection of missionary diaries like this.”
Library patrons may also examine original diaries from the full physical collection unless their condition is too fragile. The physical collection numbers more than 220 writers, 575 volumes and 101,000 pages, and is second only in size to that of the Family and Church History Archives in Salt Lake City.
It includes some prominent individuals in LDS Church history, such as James E. Talmage, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles; Moses Thatcher, who was later called as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles; and Benjamin Cluff, who became the president of BYU.To see the diaries online, visit lib.byu.edu/dlib/mmd. For more information, contact Special Collections at (801) 422-3514.
Article by Marissa Ballantyne of YNews
They were also instructed to respect the diarists’ sacred and private writings.
Does this mean that sections of the diaries that contain “sacred and private writings” were not included in the transcription (or in the images available on the site)? Thanks.
Good question. As it happens the diaries and the transcripts are complete and there was no editing of the content.
What you see online is what you would see if you visited the L. Tom Perry Special Collections reading room and requested the actual diary for research. In fact, even though the diaries are usually black ink on white paper they were scanned in color so that viewers could see everything about the books right down to the color of the paper.
Will you offer the diaries of Wilford Woodruff while serving in Great Britain? He baptized my great grandmother in Apperly, England, on 30 Aug 1840, and I am interested in obtaining information concerning her.
A quick check in the library catalog shows that we don’t have the Wilford Woodruff diaries. You might check the church archive in Salt Lake City http://www.lds.org/churchhistory/library.
BYU has 2 published copies of Wilford Woodruff’s nine volume set of journals, in a printed edition edited by Scott G. Kenney. The title is: Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, 1833-1898 Typescript (Midvale, Utah: Signature Books, 1983-1984). One copy is in the main stacks on the library’s 2nd floor and the second copy is here in Special Collections in the Americana collection. Both copies have the call number BX 8670.1 .W868jo 1983 vol.1-9 (and index). Volume 1 covers the years 1833 to 1840. Excerpts from his many journals were printed in the 1880s with the title, Leaves From My Journal. It’s been reprinted a few times, and recently made into a CD-ROM audio recording, with a copy in our LRC at CDMM 69 pts.1-3. There are not digital transcriptions of these journals at BYU that I am aware of.
Thanks G.L.F.,
The Missionary Diaries project has highlighted the public interest in online access to library materials. While the library has the printed editions of Wilford Woodruff’s journals, the missionary diaries project featured scans of original manuscript diaries of missionaries, not published books.
The library has placed many early church publications online at http://relarchive.byu.edu/MPNC/
I’ve made a note of the interest in the Woodruff journals and I’ll pass it along.
As an average member of the Church, not looking for any specific diarist in particular, aside from Hyrum Smith, which diarists do you have that would have general appeal/interest ie (James Talmage) and rather than read Hyrum Smith’s whole journal, is there anywhere in specific that has some cool stories that you would start with?
Thanks a lot!!
Also….I noticed that when I first browsed it, I was turned off because the handwriting was pretty tough to intrepret…how hard would it be to have the typed version of it, right along side it??
thanks
To view the page and the typed text simply select the “view” pull down menu and select the format you prefer. The default is the scanned page but you can see page and text side by side or just the typed text. The text was typed to wrap at the same point as the written manuscripts.
As for finding cool stories one way is to search by keywords for subjects that interest you. We hope you enjoy your search.
We recently found my great grandfather’s missionoary journal (Peter James Sanders to Indiana about 1898. My parents scanned the original and I transcribed it and have shared it among relatives. It gives a basic biography and has the first 4 months of his mission, including dates, places, companions, contacts, experiences, etc. His lectures and faith are phenomenal.
Are you interested in seeing this? Or do you have enough already? (This same great grandfather debated the RLDS church’s representative about 1908 in Murray, Utah. I have some notes on this and of course there is his book on the Succession of the Presidency that has been published.)
I am searching for George Gibbs in Abergavenny, Monmouthshire, Wales. He is said to have been baptized in the 1850’s there. Are there any missionary journals which give information about people in that locality. I have searched at the historian’s office for Abergavenny records. There was a group there but it did not last.