Preserving the past
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In the days of Daniel the prophet, the Lord revealed that His kingdom in latter days would fill the earth, comparing it to a stone cut out of a mountain without hands that rolled forth until it consumed all other kingdoms. (See Daniel 2:44-45.) And in latter days, the Lord declared that His kingdom, Zion, "must increase in beauty, and in holiness; her borders must be enlarged; her stakes must be strengthened; yea, verily I say unto you, Zion must arise and put on her beautiful garments." (Doctrine and Covenants 82:14.)
Documenting the fulfillment of those prophecies is a task the Lord has assigned to His servants since the dawn of the Restoration. John Whitmer, for example, was commanded to keep a regular history and assist the Prophet Joseph Smith in transcribing the things that would be given to him. (See Doctrine and Covenants 47.) Later, he was told to travel from place to place "writing, copying, selecting and obtaining all things which shall be for the good of the church, and for the rising generations that shall grow up on the land of Zion." (See Section 69:8.) And Section 123 contains the injunction to gather an account of the oppression the saints had endured.
These scriptural mandates to preserve the history of the establishment of Zion are the guiding star for those charged with this responsibility today.
Richard E. Turley Jr. puts it into a concise statement: "We acquire, organize, preserve and make available materials relating to the founding and development of the Church."
Brother Turley is managing director of the Family and Church History Department, the entity that resulted from the merger in 2000 of what were already two major departments at Church headquarters, the Family History Department and the Church Historical Department.
It was a logical move, Brother Turley said.
"There are economies of scale and other benefits that result from that consolidation," he noted, alluding to efforts and personnel that can be used in acquiring material globally to benefit both family history and Church history research. "And they started together," he added. "In the old Church historian's office on South Temple in Salt Lake City, the upstairs was used for the Genealogical Society of Utah library when it was first formed."
Within the scriptural mandates, Brother Turley sees those elements he outlined: acquisition, organization, preservation and dissemination. Indeed, the mission has expanded in scope but has not changed in character since the early days, he agreed, and all four elements are undertaken within the three sections of the Church history component of the department: Church Archives, the Church History Library and the Museum of Church History and Art.
Acquisition
"We travel around the world gathering information from the earliest days of the Church to today," Brother Turley said. "We are committed to gathering material from around the world, not just the Wasatch Front in Utah. We send out teams to do that systematically. This past year we sent a number of people to Asia. Glenn Rowe [special projects director] and I went to Japan, for example. We did oral history interviews with dozens of people and gathered photos and other material that people wanted to give us."
Indeed, original materials are sought from all quarters as well as published histories.
"We do collect journals of Church members; we collect missionary journals, for example, from missionaries all around the world," he said. "A lot of people have information about themselves that they don't think is of any value to the Church at large because they are humble. As I read Section 85 of the Doctrine and Covenants, we're looking to document the life, faith and works of members of the Church. If we can't do it comprehensively, we at least want to do it selectively and have samples of ordinary members of the Church around the world. That means you don't have to be a famous pioneer to catch our interest."
Even as the Church has grown rapidly into a global organization, the department continues to be the central repository for items pertaining to the history of the Church.
Church members and others with materials to offer for donation can call the Archives at (801) 240-2272, or write to Church Archives, 50 E. North Temple, Salt Lake City, UT 84150.
Organization
"We have people who spend time cataloging the material that comes in," Brother Turley noted, "taking the material and making it identifiable in a way that we can retrieve it when we need to. There was a time many years ago when we didn't know everything we had here. And while it's impossible for any one human being to know all of the content of everything we have here, we now catalog collections as they come in, and we have retrospectively gone back and cataloged every collection we now have so that we don't have any collections that are forgotten on the shelf."
In addition to the Church Archives, another important aspect of the department is the Church History Library. This library has the responsibility to collect all published material written by or about the Church or its members. Over the years, the library has acquired many very rare and significant materials both in English and other languages relating to the history of the Church. The Index to Church Periodicals has also been compiled annually by the staff members of the Church History Department.
Dissemination
Closely allied with the task of organizing materials is making them available, as appropriate, to the public. In both the Archives and the Church History Library, collections of material are identified and described on computers that patrons may use in their research.
"It would be difficult for me to find a comparable private institution in terms of size that provides as much information about itself to the public," Brother Turley said.
Who uses that information?
"Probably the largest group of patrons are members of the Church who are doing family or local history research," Brother Turley said. "They want to find out about their ancestor who is a Church member so they come here and look up great-grandfather's journal. Or they find great-grandmother's diary."
In addition, a number of scholars use the facilities of the department in writing about the history of the Church or of the American West, or some other subject in which the Church is an integral factor. "This is by far the largest and richest collection about the history of the Church," Brother Turley affirmed.
News media form another substantial segment of those who benefit from the collections. Predictably, with the world's attention focusing on Utah for the Olympics this year, the department has seen an upsurge of outside interest in its historical holdings.
"We've had a number of requests for information or interviews from a variety of organizations," Brother Turley said. "They're interested in the history of the Church because they're coming to Utah, and much of the early history of Utah coincides with the history of the Church."
With its vast holdings, the department does not make everything available, and occasionally encounters criticism for the restrictions it does have. Yet the ethical considerations of privacy and confidentiality that govern department policies are in line with standards that are described in professional archival literature, Brother Turley said.
He described such considerations in volume 1 of The Journals of George Q. Cannon. These apply to "matters that are sacred, private or confidential. Matters of great sacredness deserve reverence. Divulging some kinds of information may violate principles of privacy, and persons who confess to religious leaders or communicate other information in a confidential setting expect that leaders will maintain their confidences."
Preservation
Historical materials, while being valuable, are perishable.
"Our conservation staff has to kind of juggle priorities," Brother Turley said. "As in all historical repositories, we fight a never-ending battle in the area of conservation. The material deteriorates faster than you can possibly preserve it. It's sort of like doing triage and first aid.
"Our staff is quite good in assessing what our needs are and trying to meet them. We share a wonderful heritage, but we realize how fragile that heritage is and how important it is to preserve it. In a lot of other places around the world, material is stored and people don't pay much attention to it. Then, one day, they walk in and take an item off the shelf and realize it's illegible, it's falling apart, it's crumbled, it's molded."
In that regard, he hopes people realize that in donating original material to the department, they are helping to preserve its life.
"A lot of times, people will love material to death," he remarked. "They will frame a photograph and put it on the wall in front of the living room window where it gets plenty of light to show it off; in perhaps 10 years, it's gone.
"They'll take a series of journals from a pioneer ancestor, and bequeath volume 1 to one child, volume 2 to another, and so on. After a generation, it is scattered and eventually lost because of a well-meaning desire to be fair to all descendants. One of the fairest things you can do is to keep it together and put it in an institution where descendants can access it."
Such is the mission of the historical component of the Family and Church History Department: preserving the legacy of the past to benefit the generations of the future.
E-mail: rscott@desnews.com
