Claudius – Claude – Rankin Dodge was born in St. George, Utah in 1885, the oldest of his parents’ six children. I think he must have done well in school, because letters written by him as a young man are written in a legible, even elegant hand, and words came easily and fluently to him. In 1898, though, before Claude’s 13th birthday, his father died. Claude soon left school, “to get out and hustle to help raise my father’s family,” he put it.

By the summer of 1906, before his 21st birthday, Claude landed in the brand new mining camp of Wonder, Nevada (that was in Churchill County, about 40 miles east of Fallon – which was then in its infancy and barely on the map – and 80 miles from Hazen, where the miners’ mail was directed). Before that new gold and silver mining camp was a month old, Claude was there working for the Hazen Lumber Company as a store clerk – an employer he would have to sue for his wages a year later.

But in June, 1906, Claude was enjoying life in camp. “It is a place where hundreds of honest souls are,” recorded the optimistic young man. He had time to read as he worked at the counter, and his reading that month included the Book of Mormon and Nels L. Nelson’s Scientific Aspects of Mormonism. “I was raised a Mormon,” he said, “and am proud to be one.”

There may not have been many other Mormons in camp, though; it was a place where “missionaries seldom go,” and that bothered Claude. “The thot has often occurred to me of how much good I could do in helping to spread the Gospel had I only the means to do so. If I were home, i.e., at St. Geo. Utah, I might be called, as I hear my playmates are, on a mission, but … I haven’t had the opportunity to do so.”

As he waited on customer’s, Claude laid his Scientific Aspects of Mormonism aside. “Several coming into the store have examined it and expressed a desire to read it. A saloon man who was in yesterday and got to talking was very much interested and said it was the only reasonable idea of religion.”

Claude’s book lending may have interfered with the smooth running of business, though: “One fellow who is working in the kitchen got my Book of Mormon and the cook said he wished I wouldn’t have loaned it as he sat up half the night reading it.”

He enjoyed his little bit of missionary work and hoped to do more. “The book on the counter I am reading starts the subject. If I only had some of the missionary tracts, I could give or lend them one to read, and thus many honest men would get a chance to investigate.”

Where to get those tracts, though … Claude thought about it, then penned a letter to “Missionary Head Quarters, L.D.S.” in Salt Lake City where it was delivered to the little Church office linking Brigham Young’s old Lion and Beehive houses. “If you feel it would be right, send me a few tracts or cheap reading matter and I will put them into the hands of many honest men who might otherwise never hear the gospel.”

This was the day before “every member a missionary.” Claude knew that to serve as a Mormon elder required a calling from the president of the Church, and he worried that he was “going beyond my calling.” Still, it was worth taking the chance. “I may be out of place, but I take an interest in the work and believe it is my duty to put all I can on the right path.”

George Reynolds, secretary to the First Presidency, responded with “a collection of books” for Claude to distribute.

A year later, Claude was still working in the Wonder camp, and trying to be a father figure to his siblings from a distance, and still thinking in terms of “mission.” His sister Leah, only a year younger than Claude, was going to be married. Claude wrote, “I regret very much to-night to think that I am so far from home and am unable to attend your wedding; but kindly accept my best wishes. May your lives be full of sunshine, may you live happily together, and may you be one in very deed.

“May you share your happiness and sorrows one with another, and may you your burdens bear in patience, acknowledging the hand of God in all things, feeling that all will come out in the end to accomplish the work of God.

“You are now starting upon a mission, one of the noblest under the stars above. You may be blesed with spirits of God’s most chosen, and it is your sacred duty to live worthy of them. Your characters will be stamped on the very souls of your offspring, and temperance in all things is one of God’s most sacred commands.

“Again may your lives be filled with happiness and may you live long and prosper ((let me make the Star Trek joke myself, so that discussion is not derailed by silly comments)) is the wish of your absent Brother.”

Claude himself married in 1917 and raised a family with his wife Claire. He died in Salt Lake City in 1974.