In 1899, sister missionaries Eliza Chipman and Josephine Booth — two of the first young women to serve as full-time missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — were participating in a street meeting with “a good, big crowd of intelligent people” in Glasgow, Scotland, when Chipman said “a fiendish-looking man” began to protest.
“I protest against men believing in marrying three or four wives coming out here and preaching to the honest people of free Scotland,” said the man, which caused more people to stop and listen.
Chipman recorded what happened next in a journal entry dated Aug. 9, 1899: “Josephine arose to speak and she won the attention of the whole crowd, who grew intensely interested. After she finished her lovely and effective talk, I was called to address the crowd and received the attention that had been given the former speaker. The fiendish opposer said nothing more but looked pale and mentally disturbed.”
The entry — and many pages more — recorded by the pioneering sister missionaries, as well as images and other materials, have been published online, the Church Historian’s Press announced at a media event on Tuesday, March 19.
The journals, accessible for free at churchhistorianspress.org, feature the day-to-day missionary experiences of Booth and Chipman, who both served in the United Kingdom from 1898 to 1901, and as companions in Scotland from 1899 to 1900. Along with the journals, the website features images, biographical information for many of the people mentioned in the journals, maps that show where they served and traveled, and other related sources.
Because tens of thousands of Latter-day Saints have served missions, missionary journals are an important part of Latter-day Saint literature, said Matthew McBride, director of publications for the Church History Department.
“Missionary journals in general are an important source for understanding the Church and how it has changed over time. They are also important for understanding the experience of young adults in the Church,” he said. “These are two of the earliest women to serve in this capacity, and their experience tells us a lot.”
These sources are significant because they provide “a kind of landmark development in the history of women’s participation in the Church,” said Lisa Tait, a manager and women’s history specialist with the Church History Department.
“There are a lot of really interesting touch points with women’s history, and with Latter-day Saint women’s history generally, going on with these journals,” she said. “Publishing the Booth and Chipman journals is also a reflection of the Church History Department’s ongoing commitment to highlighting the voices and experiences of Latter-day Saint women.”
The journals can also serve to inspire future generations of sister missionaries, said Hannah Lenning, an assistant editor on the project.
“We see a huge value in the journals for young sister missionaries in the Church today,” she said.
The first single sister missionaries
In the 1880s, the Church experienced intense opposition for its practice of plural marriage. Authors, journalists, politicians and artists portrayed Latter-day Saint women as maltreated and oppressed.
In 1897, Elizabeth Claridge McCune was traveling in London, England, when she was given the opportunity to speak publicly against these claims. Her eloquence and poise impressed Elder Joseph W. McMurrin of the European Mission presidency, prompting him to write to the First Presidency in Salt Lake City and ask for sister missionaries in England.
“If a number of bright and intelligent women were called to England, the result would be excellent,” McMurrin wrote.
The First Presidency — President Wilford Woodruff and counselors Joseph F. Smith and George Q. Cannon, all men of extensive missionary experience — approved the request and began to formally call women, both married and single, to serve as proselytizing missionaries.
In 1898, Amanda Inez Knight and Lucy Jane Brimhall became the first single sisters called and sent to England. Chipman was the second companion of Knight, and Booth was Chipman’s second companion.
Eliza Chipman
Chipman was born in 1874 and raised in American Fork, Utah. Her mother died when she was only 3 years old, and her father died when she was 16. She worked as a school teacher before her call as a missionary at age 23, according to an introduction on the website.
When Elder John W. Taylor of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles set Chipman apart as a missionary, he blessed her that she would be “filled with the convincing power of the Holy Ghost when you stand up before the people” and have every blessing needed to “qualify you as a minister among the children of men.”
In several instances, Chipman wrote detailed accounts of her conversations with people she taught, including insights into the lines of reasoning, key topics and scriptures missionaries used in their work.
Chipman’s descendants donated her three journal volumes and other papers to the Church History Department in 2017.
Josephine Booth
Booth was born in 1876 and raised in Provo, Utah. Her father, John Edge Booth, was a local politician who also practiced law. Her mother died when she was 8 years old, according to an introduction on the website.
In an autobiographical sketch written after shortly her mission, Booth wrote that she struggled with her faith as a young woman. Her testimony was strengthened when she lived with a devout Latter-day Saint family for several months in Canada. She also worked as a school teacher before her mission.
Booth was 22 years old when her missionary service began. Her writings feature what she saw, heard and experienced, as well as how she felt about it. The entries also reveal a keen sense of humor, wit and storytelling ability.
Her journal shows that Booth had a deep admiration for fellow missionary and future Church President David O. McKay. The two corresponded for several months after his release, but by June 1900, he turned his attention to Emma Ray Riggs, a woman he courted before his mission, and they were later married.
Booth’s two journal volumes were donated to the Church History Library by her granddaughter, Linda Andrews, of Salt Lake City in 2001. Andrews attended Tuesday’s event at the Church History Library.
“The family is very happy,” she said with a smile. “Her journal is part of the history of the Restoration of the gospel.”
Personality, humor and faith
The sisters’ journals provide a detailed and unique view of Latter-day Saint missionary work at the turn of the 20th century. While missionary work was different in those days, modern missionaries will relate to many aspects of their experience, such as frequent rejection, tension between companions with different personalities, anxiety about speaking in public, the excitement of experiencing a new place and culture and the joy of helping others draw closer to God, McBride, Tait and Lenning agreed.
The pages are also full of personality and humor. For example, both young women wrote about confronting fleas.
Booth wrote on Sept. 2, 1899: “I come out [of] my ‘retirement’ about three times every night to continue my flea hunts. Talk about [the famed explorer Sir Henry Morton] Stanley in the wilds of Africa hunting lions. He will never know what my ‘diligent hunting’ is till he hunts fleas.”
Chipman wrote on Nov. 23, 1898 that the first flea she had ever seen woke her up in the morning and filled her “heart with murder for him.” She tried to find the flea but “he hopped off and did not even turn his head back to thank me for his breakfast.”
On Sept. 25, 1899, Booth wrote about coming home and cooking an “American dinner for the boys.”
“The meal was very successful with the exception that the soup curdled, the steak burned, the carrots weren’t salted, the gravy was too thick, and the pudding too thin,” she wrote. “Since that day the name ‘American Dinner’ causes the boys to turn pale. Even the stars and stripes has not been able to rouse their patriotism. I hope we will not be so inhuman as to cook one more ‘American Dinner’ and cause the boys to look down on their ‘native land’ for ever.”
The sisters grew weary of being referred to as “brother” or “elder,” Chipman noted on May 28, 1900.
“Attended priesthood meeting which began at 10:30 and discontinued at 3:15,” she wrote. “Time we get home we will have become men for we are ‘brothered’ and ‘eldered’ on every hand. When we are being voted on we are all thrown in like a auction sale and called brethren.”
The very next day, it meant the world to the sisters when a mission leader returned to the pulpit with an additional thought after concluding his remarks. “Afterward thinking over what he had said [he] arose again and said there was something else that he had neglected. Then he spent about 20 minutes praising the sisters. We of course could not suppress the tears, and as yesterday I cried and could not help it,” Chipman wrote.
Booth wrote of being confronted by a drunken man who got “quite sociable” with her, causing her to scream. The man then chased her “amid many roars of laughter.” That night (Aug. 12, 1899) she wrote that she “dreamed of drunk men and persecuted [Latter-day Saints].”
While tracting early in her mission, Chipman expressed feelings of fear that someone might ask her a question she could not answer. Nevertheless, she “made the most of the opportunity and went forward as would any good girl,” she wrote on Nov. 8, 1898.
“We knelt in prayer before starting and asked the assistance of His most infinite power; He who is the Father of all, and I am sure he gave us strength. We returned very favorable of going again.”
Other diaries, journals and publications
The sister missionary journals are the latest in a line of digital publications for Church Historian’s Press. The list includes:
- The Prison Journal of Belle Harris.
- The Diaries of Emmeline B. Wells.
- The Discourses of Eliza R. Snow.
- The Journal of George F. Richards.
- The Journal of George Q. Cannon.
- At the Pulpit: 185 Years of Discourses by Latter-day Saints.
- The First Fifty Years of Relief Society.
Learn more at churchhistorianspress.org.
