About the Collection

Boyd Stanley Parrish

by Jeffrey S. Hardy

See Diary

Boyd Stanley Parrish was born on 16 September 1905 in Centerville, Davis County, Utah, to George Stanley Parrish and Mary Elizabeth Ford. He was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) on 7 December 1913. As Boyd´s father operated a dairy farm, Boyd no doubt spent much of his youth tending and milking the cows.

Boyd left home on 25 October 1924 after having received a call to serve as an LDS missionary in the Swiss-German Mission. His first assignment was to labor in the Chemnitz Conference and soon remarked that had "learned to like the people…very much."1 Boyd´s humility and love for work is demonstrated in one journal entry after a successful day tracting: "I just couldn’t wait until I got home hardly, to go to the Lord and thank him for the wonderful spirit I had all day."2 This combined with hard work paid off and Boyd and his companions led many converts into the waters of baptism. One of these was a pastor from a different church who tried to find fault with the LDS Church, but eventually had to resign from his position, "stating that it was impossible for him to preach any longer in a ‘man made’ church since he had found that there was a divine church upon the earth.3" As Boyd reported, "It was certainly a testimony to us to see how anxious that man was to become a member of our church after having made a life study of religion."4 His conversion subsequently led to the baptisms of three of his former parishioners.

The hardest trial of Boyd’s mission came when the missionaries were instructed to travel by foot ‘without purse or scrip’ to attend a conference in Dresden. At one location he recorded that a man “gave us a ‘horse blanket’ and permission to sleep in his horse stable. This we gladly accepted and again made the best of a straw bed.”5 The next day he and his companions “spent the day tracting and begging for food.”6 He managed to survive this and other trails, however, and in August 1926 he was appointed to preside over the Leipzig Branch. To this calling he responded, “I hope the Lord will bless me, magnify me in the eyes of the people, that they will support me, and that I might be in a condition to lead, instruct and help them.” 7 He served faithfully in this calling until the following June when he was released to return home to Utah.

Boyd married Mary Pratt on 3 November 1932 in Salt Lake City, Utah, and they were blessed with four children, one of whom died in infancy. On 8 July 1988 Boyd passed away in Colorado and was subsequently buried in the Centerville City Cemetery.

Endnotes

1 Boyd S. Parrish, “Diary, 1924–1927,” 22 November 1924. MSS SC 2413, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University.

2 Ibid., 15 December 1924

3 Ibid., 23 June 1925.

4 Ibid

5 Ibid., 8 August 1926.

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid., 1 September 1926.

Bibliography

Ancestry World Tree Project. Provo, Utah: MyFamily.com Inc., 2003. 26 March 2004 available from http://www.ancestry.com/trees/awt/main.htm.

Parrish, Boyd S. "Diary, 1924–1927." MSS SC 2413, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University.

United States Federal Census, 1930. Provo, Utah: MyFamily.com Inc., 2003. 26 March 2004 available from http://www.ancestry.com/search/rectype/census/usfedcen/main.htm.