Monday, December 17, 2007

Missionary Diaries Online

The Harold B. Lee Library has provided digitized diaries early Mormon missionary diaries.  Some of them have been edited out of concern for "sacred and private" entries.

Excerpts from A Salt Lake Tribune article:

Much of BYU's collection of early missionary diaries make it online

...   Hyrum Smith's diary is the oldest of 575 diaries written by early missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints housed in the L. Tom Perry Special Collections of BYU's Harold B. Lee Library in Provo. Now 376 of these diaries - including Smith's - are available online...

    The online collection contains short biographies of the diarists and images of the original pages alongside typed, transcribed pages. The diarists served missions from the 1830s to the 1960s.

    The collection is arranged geographically by continents or island groups, including the Pacific, Asia, North America, Great Britain, Scandinavia and western Europe. The largest geographical representation comes from the three groupings of European missionary diaries, with an exceptionally strong collection from Great Britain. The British collection includes a diary from Inez Knight Allen, one of the first two single women called to serve full-time missions for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1898.

    For more information, contact the library at 801-422-3514.

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