Does anyone here remember, or is anyone here familiar with the time in the 1970s when the LDS church asked for members who had journals of pioneer ancestors to give them to the church for recording? In was during the time when the church was fixated on keeping journals. The church promised to give the journals back to the families, but instead permanently locked them away, possibly as an additional way to control the church's narrative about its history. I'm hoping that someone on the board has info on it.

I remember that. Some people who actually got their family's journals back had entire years ripped out of them

kathleen Wrote:
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> I remember that. Some people who actually got
> their family's journals back had entire years
> ripped out of them

That's crazy

I remember this.

Access was denied even to higher up church officials.

The lie of them preserving them while making copies available to all family members is one of the most vile and low down thing the church has done.

I am sure all those journals were destroyed. Why keep damming evidence?

I concur

I was a convert, so if they asked for journals about my family I didn't pay any attention, I guess.

Interestingly, my mother and her mother kept a diary/journal for decades and encouraged me to do the same. I was accustomed to writing about my daily activities and events, etc. from my high school years on. I have a big box of those records that I have kept thinking I would have someone haul them to the trash, one day after I kept the ones that had special events like my wedding, birth of my kids, etc.

Your post reminded me that I need to have my son get them down so I can go through them. There are probably 30 to 40 little books and notebooks. I don't think I want anyone reading them when I am gone.

That was a horrible thing to do.

OMG.

I remember them asking for journals. We didn't have journals, but I did hang on to some interesting original paperwork involving my grandparents. My grandparents owned a nice piece of land (which they built a house on and lived in) near a large creek, at the mouth of the canyon. One of the water companies decided they needed to access that water, but they offered my grandparents pennies to the dollar. My grandparents rejected the offer because it was so ridiculous. My grandparents were sent a notice that they were being taken to court and that the company was getting that water,whether they liked it or not. My grandfather passed away before the court hearing. My widowed grandmother was paid $150. Since this was ages ago, I assume that most anyone high up in any company back then was more than likely mormon.

Here's something I found. It's not what I'm looking for, but very interesting.

http://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=3386750&itype=CMSID

From the above article link.
"I said they were like Pharaoh telling me to make bricks without giving me straw, but that didn't help." -Ardis Parshall, A former church history department employee.

So true. They are little pharaoh's building their temple pyramid schemes while blocking any attempts at honesty in anything related to themselves.

They don't solicit apologies nor ever offer them. They are inhuman and like unto the gods.

Just like in "1984."

I worked with a lady who had 3 journals that were kept by her ancestors. All 3 were polygamy wives. She let me read some of them and parts weren't pretty. She was a hard-core TBM, but said she could never give them to the church for fear of not getting them back.

Now they just want your money; a lot of it for safe keeping.

And your toilet brush.

Like a banned book /banning access to member narratives of womens strength healing prayer a mb d mysticism spirituality independent of men women practiced independent of male priesthood holders in old "Desseret" / limit the modern vision in preparation for curriculum committees wards ban the books, confiscate, ban the narrative banish the memory before reference prayer to heavenly mother grounds for excommunication instead of sacredness.

Wasn't that around the years of the era <equal rights ammendment> the church opposed that

Disgusting. The cult really did this! It happened to our family.

We had journals of our ancestors who were JS's neighbors, and who were among the very first church members.

One was the wife of a prominent Mormon, who was a polygamous wife, and she tells about living in the house of the Mormon bigwig's relative, to be "educated and finished" and to wait until she was 17 years old, the legal age, so could be married to her older sister's husband. Crossing the plains, her sister died in childbirth, and the girl raised the children as her own. She was pregnant while on the journey, but she survived. I come from the child she was pregnant with.

Her journal continues in SLC, where she and her prominent husband laid claim to prime creekside land, in what is now downtown SLC Creekside Mall and part of Temple Square. When her husband died, Brigham Young took away her land, and claimed it for the church, and gave her some swamp land near what is now Willard Bay. She raised her children in a shack. Her oldest son (my ancestor) and some of his brothers left the cult, never to return. My ancestor became a doctor, and he smoked and drank. He handed down his journal to my great-great grandfather, who was a Mormon GA. He let me read the journal, and there were very damning things in it, about polygamy, business corruption, the brutality of BY, withholding of welfare, suffering by the pioneers and lack of church empathy, etc.

Another journal gives in detail the sealing of Joseph Smith to two Black slaves, in the temple, for time and eternity--sealed to him as his SERVANTS in the CK! The slaves were deceased, and they were sealed by proxy. My ancestors stood in as the proxies for the 2 slaves--a man and a woman--in the ceremony. How's that for being damning!

My own gr-grandmother wrote a journal about her world travels with her GA husband, and how her husband sometimes had doubts. She wrote about all the money, stocks, privileges and perks they had, being GA's. She also wrote about her GA's husbands disagreements with another GA, who later became president of the LDS church. This goofy GA was gr-grandma's cousin, and she knew him well. Does predicting that "Man will never walk on the Moon" ring a bell? Or, that dinosaur bones are from remnants of other planets? Even back in those days, people had enough information to know those ideas were false. My GA gr-grandpa was a more liberal Mormon than the conservative fundamentalists who took over the church leadership, after Gr-Grandpa's generation died out. It's all in the journal.

Both of the above journals were sought-after by the cult. When I had them, and was reading them, I got several phone calls! I was just a young college student. Who were these people, and how did they know I had the journals? A man said he was from President Wilkinson's office at BYU. Intimidating! One woman lied, and said that my gr-grandpa wanted me to give them to her. I called Gr-Grandpa, and he said to NOT give them to anyone, and to get them back to him ASAP.

An old TBM fanatic aunt borrowed the journals, and BYU finally got them from her. The aunt was conned into thinking she was doing the cult a great service. The aunt said that BYU would "preserve and protect" the valuable journals. BYU would not return them to the family, ever. BYU promised the family that we could go to the Marriott Library and check them out and read them in the reading room, anytime we wanted to. My cousins and uncles and I went there several times, with several different clerks on duty, and the clerks claimed there was no record of any journals. The head of the archives section said they didn't know about any journals. They didn't exist.

VERY ORWELLIAN!

Damn.

The Mormon church robbed you of your own family history.

I had to buy the book In Sacred Loneliness to read my ancestor Zina Huntington's Nauvoo Journal. My great aunt gave it to the church in the 80s.

Zina was one cool lady.

I think she ended up being a midwife, didn't she?

I think Zina's Zina almost became Fanny Stenhouse's sister wife, but then things kind of went south.

There is a book out there called "Four Zina."

Zina's Zina had a Zina and then there was another one after that.

I wonder how Todd Compton got ahold of the journal when you couldn't.

NOT FAIR!!!!!

By the way, if anyone out there knows how I can get a copy of MY ANCESTRESS's journal, Lydia Knight, please let me know.

BY's daughter wrote a bio of Lydia Knight, but WHERE IS THE JOURNAL SHE WORKED FROM?

Knight family -- truly amazing.

Jesse Knight and the Humbug Mine.

Somebody otta write a book.

They otta write a book. That is a cool ancestor.

My great aunt Mary Brown Firmage Wood-something wrote "The Four Zinas." My family helped her produce and edit it. I never read it. I figured it was going to be fluff. So it was good. Good.

loislane Wrote:
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> I think she ended up being a midwife, didn't she?

Yes, and gave blessings of health.

> Zina's Zina had a Zina and then there was another
> one after that.

Zina was my great great great grandmother. Her Zina was my great great grandmother. Her Zina was my great grandmother and the last zina was Mary's sister and another great aunt.

> I wonder how Todd Compton got ahold of the journal
> when you couldn't.

I think I could if I used my family connection. It isn't one of the "hidden" journals.

Class action lawsuit?