Comments on: Why I Like Mormon History

By: Ardis Parshall

Ardis Parshall — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 02:39:14 +0000

Check your blood sugar, Will. You’re incoherent.

By: Will Bagley

Will Bagley — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 01:41:03 +0000

Gee, thanks for explaining the benefits of correlation. Imagine how much comments by faceless, anonymous, faithful reviewers would have improved or at least vastly reduced the volume of my work, or changed my horrible handcart history into a Happy Handcart history. Come to think of it, I wouldn’t have to worry about my research and writing bothering people–because there wouldn’t be anything to bother people!

By: Bruce Crow

Bruce Crow — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 06:15:10 +0000

Emily, I get a thrill out of handling the real thing. But even when I visit an Archive I rarely get to touch the original. Although once when I was looking at folders with copies of the John H Gibbs papers at BYU, I discovered that the finding aid did not match what was in the various folders. Can you imagine my thrill when the archivist's answer was to bring out the originals and let me search through all the folders for the document I wanted. Wow! Digitation is a reasonable substitute. My variety of research thrives on resources like the Mormon Missionary Diaries, and other searchable, scanned images. So more of the same would be great. Can you say Southern States Mission Manuscript History? Sites, however, you can't move? I can't make it to the Sacred Grove more than once or twice in my life. But there are places of significance near my home that few people know about. Within a 2-3 hours drive are places of local importance. Did you know there is an LDS church in Grundy County Tennessee from 1909 where Easter Morning sunrise services are held each year. Or a gravestone commemorating two young men who died defending missionaries from a mob. Every local has sites like these that may allow more of us to experience the sacred without having to travel 2,000 miles.

By: Rick Grunder

Rick Grunder — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 05:52:40 +0000

Oh my, yes (hardly an expression I ever use, but we ARE talking about sacred artifacts here): When I was a teen, Relief-Society-project resin grapes were as expected a symbol on every Mormon coffee (oops) table as the Standard Works. Or so it seemed to me at the time.

By: Bruce Crow

Bruce Crow — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 05:36:06 +0000

S. Baker,
My mother had a set of resin grapes from a Relief Society craft project years ago. It was apparently a widely used project and the source of a few great but unverifiable stories. Not sure if she still has the grapes.

By: S. Baker

S. Baker — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 04:55:49 +0000

And the resin grapes?

By: Emily

Emily — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 03:07:16 +0000

#13 – Bret, Gladys Knight’s Grammy was part of a recent exhibit at the Church History Museum titled Something Extraordinary celebrating the contributions of women to the Church and greater world.

By: Emily

Emily — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 03:03:37 +0000

#11 – Tod, I’m in historic sites, just down the hall from the Joseph Smith papers. Stop on by and say hello!

By: Emily

Emily — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 03:02:00 +0000

Dixie Wine is a great story and a good example of how working with artifacts and sites can be incredibly complex. There are only a few items in the Brigham Young Winter Home that provenance can trace back to the Young family or Brigham in particular. In general, you want to highlight those items on a tour. However, the guides at the Winter Home were ignoring a couple of things because they were unsure of how to deal with the attached issues, including Dixie Wine. Rather than removing the artifacts, I wrote a brief paragraph titled “Why Did Brigham Young Own Wine Decanters?” In just a few sentences, I (hopefully) gave enough information to the guides so they could point out the artifacts and answer visitor questions. It got through correlation relatively unscathed. If I had been dealing only with documentary evidence, Dixie Wine probably wouldn’t have come up. Artifacts, structures, and landscapes also tell stories and those stories can at times be harder to ignore.

And J., there have been times I’ve wanted to pull my hair out while in the midst of the process, but I’ve always been pleased with the final result.

By: J. Stapley

J. Stapley — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 01:46:04 +0000

That is a fun anecdote Velikye. Unfortunatley, the alcohol content of a wine has nothing to do with the temperature at which it is stored. It only depends on the original concentration of sugar in the fruit. I doubt the fruit was particularly high quality due to the climate. According to Alexander wine was no longer used in weekly meetings of the First Presidency and Twelve in 1906. It is my understanding that local meetings had generally stopped some time earlier.

I’d be interested in some verification of these stores of Dixie Wine.