Featured on my Facebook page, and posted here for archiving.

Alice Barton (later Crapo) (1897-1985), served a mission in the Eastern States from 1918 to 1920, with most of her time spent in Brooklyn. Her picture here shows her as several years younger than she would have been as a missionary, but I suppose it is much closer to her missionary appearance than the only other one I can find taken 35 years later.

In her life story, she writes this of her mission:

“I [was] called to go on a mission to the Eastern States. I was set apart for my mission on August 27, 1918. I left home for the mission field that same month. When I arrived in the mission the First World War was not yet ended in Europe and many of our boys were still being sent or were coming from Germany. As I worked in the office for the Mission in Brooklyn I met many of the servicemen and had a wonderful experience as a Mission Secretary for both President Walter P. Monson and George McCune. I lived at the Mission home during my Mission and most of the time had Sister Louie Sloan as my companion. As they changed presidents during my stay they kept the same office personnel in order to acquaint the in-coming President with his new work.”

Alice’s work as the secretary to the mission president would have included all the same tasks you would expect of any secretary in any office – I find the initials “AB” at the bottom of a letter written by Walter P. Monson, indicating that Alice was the stenographer who took the president’s dictation and typed the letter.

But she had at least one more peculiar duty with a specific importance to the mission: Like many other organizations, today as well as in that era nearly a century ago, the Eastern States Mission subscribed to a press clipping service – a business that scoured the major newspapers throughout the region, cut out any story referring to Mormonism, and forwarded it to the mission office in Brooklyn. It was Alice’s particular duty to go through those clippings, bringing important ones to the notice of the president, and filing those of lesser importance so as not to waste his time.

Her judgment on these matters needed to be keen: President Monson noted in his writings that an anti-Mormon meeting held in some Protestant church in, say, Pennsylvania, might be the first warning the Mission had that a new anti-Mormon campaign sponsored by the National Reform Association or the National Anti-Mormon League was underway. Alice’s ability to determine whether a seemingly insignificant reference was truly insignificant, or something to be brought to the attention of the president, was key in helping President Monson know whether to move missionaries into or out of an area, and whether to write a friendly letter to the editor of a newspaper on some particular topic to defuse a misunderstanding.

During those years, too, apostle James E. Talmage was writing short articles about Mormon doctrine and working to have them placed in newspapers around the country. He kept in touch with mission presidents in the U.S., frequently seeking information on whether those articles were being read – did missionaries respond to requests for more information? did the articles provoke wider discussion in the newspapers? It was Alice’s job to spot and report on those matters. “Sister Barton is a very competent young woman and has had charge of the answering and compiling information for you, showing the results of publication of your articles in the Eastern press,” President McCune wrote to Elder Talmage in 1920. In fact, “I requested her to call to see you,” he wrote immediately after her release, so that she could discuss the matter fully.

In so many hidden and forgotten ways, Latter-day Saint women have played roles in advancing the mission of the Church.