Historian Ardis Parshall recalls when members corresponded directly with LDS prophets

In recent weeks, as I’ve made many phone calls to professional offices, I’ve learned to brace myself for the call to be answered by an “AI assistant,” an artificial voice instructing me to speak clearly and, in a few words, state my business.

That system has never worked for me, even a single time. “Returning Brian’s call.” “BRIAN.” “Make an appointment.” It always results in “I’m sorry. I did not understand. Please speak clearly and in a few words.” Finally, the system connects me with a living, breathing, naturally intelligent human being.

I contrast those inefficient, soulless AI responses to the appeals I read in my daily work of transcribing historic Mormon correspondence. Latter-day Saints of the past longed for personal connections, personal responses, to the questions that arose in their lives.

In the earliest days of the faith now known as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, people often went directly to founding prophet Joseph Smith to ask the Lord’s will concerning them. Opening sections of the Doctrine and Covenants, a compilation of the responses Saints accepted as the Lord’s voice given through Smith, are described as “revelation given through Joseph Smith the Prophet” to John Whitmer or to Oliver Cowdery, or to Joseph Knight, or to others. They contained the personal responses, the personal connections for which those people of the 1820s and 1830s longed.

Church membership grew, Smith’s duties became more numerous, distances became too great, for most individual Latter-day Saints to ask for the answers they sought through in-person requests of a prophet. The longing for personal responses didn’t abate, though, and people turned to letters, resulting in enormous collections of personal correspondence, much of it now housed in the Church History Library in Salt Lake City, addressed to leaders of the faith. “Dear Brother,” they begin, or “Dear beloved president,” as men and women of the 19th and 20th centuries sought answers.

Some letters are brief and businesslike: “Kindly inform me” of the date of a conference, or the meaning of a passage of scripture, they ask.

Others — the kind I like best — record the correspondent’s stories of joy or tragedy, seeking personal words of wisdom or comfort or advice, and allowing modern readers to share some part of the lives and times of the past. The letters I am transcribing right now, written to then-church President John Taylor, in 1886, illustrate that impulse:

‘My heart and soul’

The family of Joseph A. Walston, of Pitt County, North Carolina, converted in 1882 through the ministry of Edward M. Dalton of Parowan. They had been unable to “gather to Zion” — move to Utah — to live with the Latter-day Saint communities there. “I am as firm in the faith today as when I united with the church. … Can I remain here and still hold membership with the church? … Though I am here, my heart and soul is with you. I cannot leave you, there is no other place for me.” Apparently assured that he could be as faithful in North Carolina as in Utah, Walston remained in the South, with daughter Hannah traveling to Utah a generation later to initiate temple ordinances for the family.

Or consider the need for a personal answer from his leader, felt by James E. Talmage in 1886. The future scientist and apostle was then a 24-year-old teacher of physiology at the fledgling Brigham Young Academy in Provo. Times were hard and the school was so short of funds that Talmage had received none of the $1,200 salary he had been promised for teaching the previous year. Still, he felt loyalty to the school and did not want to abandon its principal, Karl G. Maeser, in the time of need. Should he follow the advice of apostle Francis M. Lyman from earlier in the year? Lyman had told Talmage to return to the East, “there to continue my scientific studies, and also to take a course in medicine and surgery … not so much [with the goal] of practicing in the profession, as of fitting myself more fully to teach physiology, and kindred branches in our schools.” Talmage stayed in Utah.

Adelia B. Sidwell of Manti had an urgent appeal in 1886, one that required advice and assistance she had been unable to secure from lawyers or local faith leaders. In 1883, her husband, George, had been killed in a logging accident, leaving her to care for their eight children. Her only financial asset was a legal judgment the Sidwells had obtained against a man of some prominence who had moved to Menan, Idaho, leaving $745 of his debt unpaid. He refused to answer appeals for payment, even when Adelia, through her bishop, offered to settle for a third of the amount due. When he finally did respond, he sent the appalling message that “all my time is devoted to church business and I get nothing for it. … If I had the means, I would try and settle with you, not because I think the claim as it now stands just, but to get rid of you.” I do not have John Taylor’s response to her personal appeal, but having seen his care for other widows and orphans, I have to hope that he intervened to help the Sidwell family.

Work through local lay leaders

Latter-day Saints continued to make such personal appeals, seeking personal connections and personal ancestors, with their religious leaders, as shown by the correspondence in such leaders’ document collections, through the 1960s, at least. Since then, general leaders have increasingly asked that members not contact them directly, but counsel instead with local lay leaders. I am not at all surprised by that request — just as leaders’ duties eventually reached the point where letters needed to replace in-person visits, the time and attention needed to respond to the thousands of personal letters they received eventually became too great. They have pleaded with members to share that burden with stake (regional) presidents and bishops.

But such requests from high-level leaders cannot quell the desire of Latter-day Saints to receive personal, individual attention to their questions and problems. Rather than writing those questions to general authorities, today’s Saints are advised to seek answers by having questions in mind while listening to General Conferences. “Answers to your specific prayers may come directly from a particular talk or from a specific phrase,” apostle Dieter F. Uchtdorf advised in 2011. (And yet I cannot refrain from noting that some general authorities, including President Dallin H. Oaks, now a member of the First Presidency, still acknowledge reading personal letters from Latter-day Saints, as evidenced by his 2016 remark that “sometimes I receive a letter from a member that gives me an important insight on the subject” of a forthcoming talk.)

Whether believing Latter-day Saints who have faith that God speaks through prophets and apostles, or simply people who acknowledge that men and women of experience can share wisdom in difficult times, many will be listening to conference in coming days hoping, praying, longing for the sorts of inspiration and answers we all need in difficult times — and surely our times are difficult. Personal answers will never come through “AI assistants” that cannot understand — no matter how slowly and carefully you speak. I hope you can find answers — comfort, ideas, hope, personal connection — to your own problems in the coming days.

Ardis E. Parshall is an independent research historian who can be found on social media as @Keepapitchinin and at Keepapitchinin.org. She occasionally takes breaks from transcribing historical documents to promote the aims of the Mormon History Association’s Ardis E. Parshall Public History Award.

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