I had one as a kid, as did the rest of the family. They were 8½ by 14" I believe, formatted in landscape mode, with two holes on the left margin, that were weirdly notched open toward the margin. I never did figure out what that was about.

The covers themselves were built like a tank. Rigid covers at least a quarter inch thick, and a sturdy metal hinge in the cover at the left margin. Behind the hinge was a sliding clamp mechanism that gripped two polished metal posts quite firmly. As you added more material to your BoR, you could buy longer posts to handle the added paper.

Personal history, ordination and baptism certificates, patriarchal blessings, mission certificates, blah blah blah were the sorts of things that I suppose were supposed to go in there.

It was the one area where my terminally devout mother fell down in her otherwise complete willingness to do more than the GAs asked. She was sporadical in keeping journals, and even more sporadical in keeping a BoR. Nobody else in the family still has those armor-like covers anymore. I have custody of my mother's papers and journals from when she passed away, including her BOR covers. There are baptismal certificates for all my sibs in there, my dad's Line Of Authority (I remember how important and totally special Mormons thought that was).

There are a few photos and local newspaper articles about the ward, a few family group sheets of genealogy, no patriarchal blessings. Not much in there, really. Kind of sad that a lifetime of fanatical dedication amounted to very little. I'm the only child that fully left, though the others were just cultural Mormons. In the next generation, everyone has left, or are at best jack Mormons. It feels like those recent photos of the Titanic rusting away.

Those too-long covers stick out from my bookcase. I doubt anyone from the next generation has any interest in the BoR or the journals my parents kept. My dad was actually the main journal keeper, even though he was not Mo until I was almost through HS, and never fully drank the koolaid. There are a few entries I would like to look up sometime, like their reactions to the priesthood change in 1978, and the time my dad finally joined Mormonism.

I keep a comic book of remembrance in my head. Stuff happened and most of it was good, and it does seem to be ending on a high note, so there is that...

It is full of genealogy from my dad's side. My mother gave me all the papers. I had nothing to do with it. Somebody in my dad's side did all the work. I had another one with the temple I wanted to get married in (and did) and I gave it to my daughter a while back I think. I may even have it. I'm not sure. I usually give her what I no longer want.

I have my journals. I kept a journal for a long time. Now I just put things like the notes my daughter gives me (she'll be surprised that I kept them all) or my parents' obituaries and funeral programs. Stuff like that. I've thought of throwing out my mormon journals--but maybe my daughter will read them someday. I kept journals for my kids until they were 8. They've never been interested in reading them. LOL

My mother has so much stuff she left and I don't want to read it. I have a pile of letters my aunt gave me that she saved from my mom and I just keep them. I don't know if I can handle reading them.

We have tons and tons of paperwork that my mom kept.

I still have one full of stuff I never organized like grade school report cards and primary awards.

Thanks for reminding me I have boxes of crap to get rid of before I die! :-D

Oh yes, my new year's resolution at the beginning of 2018 was to finally organize, downsize, and get stuff into scrapbooks. My B of R has a turquoise cover. Now as we start the fall of 2019, I am still in the organizing and downsizing phase and have not put one piece of paper into a scrapbook yet.

I do have a question that I'd like some input about. I wrote some things back in my younger and devout mormon days about things I attributed to divine intervention. I read them now and kinda laugh. I don't know if I should leave these writings "as is" ( and have my relatives tut tut "see she DID have a strong testimony once") or give and update on how I interpret those events now that I am no longer religious. What say you?

Tell both truths! That's always interesting...

I was given a white cover BoR as a wedding present. Can't remember who from.(Now I do--it was the bishopric of my home ward.) Hubby got one too, but I don't know when. I have my Mom's also. She had dementia in her later years, and at one point she took all kinds of old family photos and wrote names of the subjects on the bottom so she could remember who they were.

Neither of my parents kept journals. My Dad wrote an autobiography for inclusion in a published family history. Apparently he encouraged my Mom to write one too--she sent her children a copy. I like reading the memories of their early childhoods.

There is a certain amount of what? internal discord when I read some of this stuff. My Dad could never live up to the true hero of Mom's life, her apostle grandpa. Wonder if that is common among other GA descendants.

I like family history, but most of the most interesting characters predate the Mormon converts.

I"ve been going through boxes of random stuff. Found my mother's 5 year daily diary from 1938-1943. That was full of "i cleaned the house today".

I found countless letters and damnit all if EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM was all mormonism, all the time. Both sides of the family. I never had a chance!

RARELY do I find a note that isn't mormonism related, and it's disheartening because I don't give two poops about that religion, but it meant EVERYTHING to my mom and dad, I mean EVERYTHING.

my daughter tends to think I was never that devout or that I "never felt the spirit as strong as she did," and so I decided to leave my journals so she could see that she is DEAD WRONG about how devout her mother was. She likes to think that she is doing things different than I did, but she is doing them just like I did. I think she needs to learn the lessons from my life. She might not, but oh well. '

People tend to believe that the devout mormons aren't the ones leaving. We all know that isn't true. ``

The most important journals I am keeping (and I've written on the front of one of them that my kids have to read it) are about when I found out he is gay and then the years after he left us. My daughter hasn't a clue how hard it was for me and what I sacrificed for her. My son does.

I'm going to read some of my mother's letters. The ones she sent me never talked about the church so I'm wondering if the ones she sent my aunt did. Mormonism was not the main topic of conversation in our family.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/27/2019 10:21PM by cl2.

My kids truly believe that the ONE.AND.ONLY reason I left the church is because of their dad coming out as a gay man. Although that was a catalyst to my diving deep into the history of mormonism, I tried so hard to remain a devout member for a number of years until I knew I was living a lie.

Perhaps I have answered my own question....leave the early writings and then write more about my journey out that goes FAR beyond the divorce from their father.

My wife did one, scrapbook style for my folks.

I remember my mom having one of those heavy duty Book of Remembrance. I don’t think she ever did anything with it. It used to be stashed inside an end table we had in the living room.

When my parents died non of my TBM siblings wanted any journals. I got stuck with a bunch of semi completed Book of Remembrances and genealogy that is all online now. My sister said chuck the genealogy so I did.

I think the whole Book of Remembrance thing started when President Kimball told members to keep journals. Right now the thing is doing temple work for your ancestors and using the online tools. I think the Book of Remembrance was a 70’s fad. The church now is all about Come Follow Me and Ministering and don’t you dare use the word Mormon. They don’t even talk about food storage anymore. The church is more about apps and websites than books now. You get Tweets from the prophet now.

Kimball was a bizarre human. Besides his self-hatred and persecution of (other) gay people, he wanted everyone to tend her own garden, every man to go on a mission, and everyone to keep a journal. Who would have guessed that enterprising Mormons would try to monetize Mormon religion through the BoR nonsense?

I mean, who other than Steven J. Covey, the people who sold food storage supplies, and the Mormon book writers and publishers?

Making money from religion. Ponderize that!

Not even close. BoR type things are found in Gentile culture too. A never mo produced one and had it published and gave it to his son (my friend) and his sisters.

I have piles of family photos. Feel really sorry I don't know who most of them are in them.

It’s called scrapbooking. Hugh Hefner was big into it. He had a whole room full of scrapbooks he had kept since childhood in the Playboy mansion.

Kimball may have pushed the journal idea, but it goes much farther back than that. I think even in pioneer days Mormons were encouraged to keep journals, so they would have a record of their spiritual experiences and yada yada. My parents journals go back to the early 1960s, and my dad, despite not being raised Mormon, and joining in the latter 1960s, was more consistent in keeping one. After he passed away in the late 20-aughts, my mom never wrote in hers again.

I recently did an inventory of the journals to find out what dates were covered by who, and how much material there was. About 5,000 pages. OMG. They fill about 3/4ths of a small size moving box.

The BOR's were the place meant for the genealogy charts. People were suppose to collect stories from their ancestors (Utah pioneer ancestors of course). This was all before computers when everything became digitized and available for everyone. But back in 1964 when these books were the big fad, records were not available especially away from Salt Lake.

I use to like reading my moms book. She kept really good records and had that Utah pioneer heritage on all sides.

Pretty much. Family Search is now the new Book of Remembrance.

I just helped my Mom donate about 10 empty ones to goodwill. She had a lot of them because she used to be the ward's family history specialist. I think the church was annoyed that more people wanted to join her class on Sunday rather than listen to the mumbo-jumbo gospel doctrine class. Ultimately, the church stipulated that members could look up their own dead ancestors on their own time.

Brother Of Jerry Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I had one as a kid, as did the rest of the family.
> They were 8½ by 14" I believe, formatted in
> landscape mode, with two holes on the left margin,
> that were weirdly notched open toward the margin.
> I never did figure out what that was about.

The notches were so that you could insert or withdraw a page without having to undo the whole book.

Gracias. That makes sense if one has a big stack of genealogy in the book. That was never an issue with anyone in my family, so I never quite understood what the notches were about. :)

Mom did a ton of genealogy, but kept it in separate files, about a 2 foot stack. I inherited that too. I kept it for 5 years. Nobody else seemed interested in it, and I assumed most if not all of it was online, since she was fanatical about doing temple work for anyone she could claim as a relative. I saved a few family group sheets and a history someone had written of seven brothers in pre-Civil War South Carolina. I haven't read it yet, but it was about 10 pages, and I bet there is a good story or two in there.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/28/2019 02:16PM by Brother Of Jerry.

To the question of the thread - no idea. I do have a nugget that might be interesting to people. I don't know if she still does it but I suspect she does. My mother records in her BoR the names of the dead people she has "worked" for. She believes that she will be rewarded in heaven for this work.

Has anyone ever noticed that the church has no interest in anyone's missionary journal?

I think they don't want to read "Today is the third day this week that nobody wants to talk to us [the mormon missionaries]. I wonder what's wrong with everybody in this town? Oh gee. I guess I will try harder tomorrow.

In the Utah 70's/80's culture of my youth. Scrapbooks were practically evil. Books of Remembrance were far superior. A few pictures were tolerated, but mostly they were reserved for sacred documents and genealogy.

Trust Mormons to suck the joy out of everything.

A 70s fad as Rubicon put it.

Assembling and maintaining a BoR required a wide-carriage
typewriter with elite spacing.

For a lot of folk their first computer was a key punch.

BcE