Insights from the Papers: Aubrey Barzee

Aubrey Barzee shares her thoughts on consecration and how it continues to come up in her everyday life—including in her work with the Papers. We should be willing to dedicate everything we have, and everything we are, to God and His purposes.

How to Use the Timeline

Asking Big Questions: How Do I Deal with Questions I Don’t Have the Answers To?

By Craig Lindquist

Have you ever felt that the proverbial “windows of heaven” are tightly fastened shut? You would not be alone. What do we do when we need the revelation that flows through those windows but cannot get it? . . .

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Feeling Great Peace

By Maddie Christensen

Meet Susan Vickers, a volunteer for the Wilford Woodruff Papers Project. Susan works on the Transcription Team, transcribing a wide variety of historical documents. One thing she has enjoyed about being a part of the Project is “learning about the things the Church and its people were involved in. The Papers range from inviting people to attend training at the Brigham Young Academy to receiving requests to help someone . . ."

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Announcements

Relative Finder Feature

With the new Relative Finder feature, you can search the 14,000 people identified in the Wilford Woodruff Papers, see every individual you are related to, and then read the documents that they are mentioned in!

Use Relative Finder

NEW Scripture Search Page

You can now enrich your scripture study on the Wilford Woodruff Papers website in two ways. Through our Documents tab you can click directly on Scriptures to learn from the margin and endnotes Wilford Woodruff wrote in his personal scriptures. You can also choose the “Scripture” tab on our search page to explore more than 1,300 verses of scripture identified in Wilford Woodruff's records. These scripture references are found in correspondence, journal entries, and the discourses of Joseph Smith and other prophets and apostles, and can be filtered by individual books of scripture.

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Quarterly Project Progress Updates

This Month's Discoveries in the Papers

Insights from the Biographical Research Team

I was always a little envious when I heard my coworkers on the Research Team talk about their family members mentioned in the Wilford Woodruff Papers and how excited they were to research them and write biographies about them. I wanted to have that experience too, but I hadn’t been able to find any of my relatives mentioned by Wilford. Recently, when I was invited to test the new Relative Finder tool on the Wilford Woodruff Papers website, I was eager to try it but not very hopeful of finding any connections. Imagine my surprise when I opened the results, and I had over 7,000 relatives mentioned in the Papers—including Wilford Woodruff, my sixth cousin six times removed.

Much of my research during my time with this Project has been focused on the people Wilford interacted with in 1835 and 1836 when he was a missionary in the southern United States. I was moved to tears when I realized my results included 89 people who fell into that category. I had been involved in researching and writing biographies for many of them. These were people I knew and loved! Little did I know I had been fulfilling my wish all this time. Wilford served a mission to my people!

My work now has a deeper meaning than it did before, all because of the new Relative Finder tool. I invite you to go to the website and try it for yourself. Then, take time to learn more about the family you find there. You will likely be amazed with what you discover. . . .