It is probably obvious to observant Keepa readers that old Mormon correspondence is one of my favorite sources of history: Stray references in letters have often sent me off on a search for a story I otherwise would never have guessed existed. Yet you still probably have no idea of the depths of my passion for correspondence.

Letters are usually far more candid than are sermons or newspaper reports or other materials intended for public consumption (although, of course, letter-writers do sometimes have reason to conceal or shade the truth from their correspondents). Letters can be intimate, and immediate, and carry details that aren’t seen as “important” enough for a wider audience, but which reveal history on an important personal level.

Correspondence is often an under-utilized historical source: It can be hard to read, whether due to poor handwriting, faded typewriter ribbons, or substandard spelling, grammar, and punctuation. And what historian in her right mind would read through hundreds or thousands of pages of such writing, hoping to find the perfect paragraph from an unknown person who somehow was present at a certain event or commented on the topic wanted? Some historians do tackle, of course, the papers of prominent figures of the past – but I especially enjoy the people whose papers are seldom studied: missionaries telling of their adventures, immigrants writing to the people back home, isolated Saints concerned about their children’s prospects for marrying within the faith, Sunday School teachers with doctrinal questions, lonely people hoping for a pastoral word from a beloved leader.

Beginning about 20 years ago, when such letters were available only onsite in the Church History Library ((Images are now available online through the Library’s catalog, at CR 1234/1.)) – no photocopying allowed! – I transcribed thousands of letters, both incoming and outgoing, from the Brigham Young office files. It’s really how I got my start as a historian: Everyone wrote to Brigham from everywhere about everything, and I absorbed the names and places and events and issues as I typed. Since then, I’ve usually been able to hunt up relevant and previously unknown material for clients from all manner of correspondence. And beginning about five years ago, I began an intensive project to find and transcribe historic Mormon correspondence from every source I can reach, working early (often from 3:00 a.m.) and late (past 10:00), with an afternoon nap to make up for lost sleep, transcribing, transcribing, transcribing hour after hour – it’s something I can do to be productive in otherwise lost time, or when my thoughts are cloudy or my creativity dull.

My collection of transcribed correspondence has now climbed above 35,000 pages (single spaced, 10-pt. type). If my fingers and eyesight hold out, there should be no difficulty in reaching 100,000 pages, maybe more, before I’m done – correspondence is that plentiful and important and interesting. Although I haven’t opened my database indiscriminately, I’ve used these text-searchable files to find material for the rare paying client, to write Keepa posts, and to amuse Facebook friends with brief extracts. When individual historians have been kind enough to treat me as a colleague despite my shortage of credentials, I slip them letters I suspect will be useful for their projects. I post especially revealing personal letters (only the upbeat ones, though; shocking ones may be of interest, but I don’t think this is the right way to distribute those) on strangers’ Family Search “memories” pages for their descendants to find.

This database, in whatever form it finally assumes, will likely be my one real contribution to Mormon history, because it makes available in one place, in easily searchable and readable form, so many obscure records. It is so valuable to me that as I close out each 1,000-page installment, I immediately send copies to three trusted friends, both for their own use and for safety’s sake in the event of theft or destruction – in the years I’ve been doing that, not one of these honorable scholars has betrayed my trust in the slightest. (In case something happens to me before I’ve made other disposition, this is public permission to each of those three to make whatever use of the database they care to make.)

In planning for Keepa 2019, I outlined a new series of almost randomly chosen letters to illustrate the richness of our heritage of correspondence, slipping in word of this Historic Mormon Correspondence database as a low-key background to the first post of that series. But this introduction growed and growed so I’m posting it separately, to be followed by the first installment of the new “Letters Past” series: Christian Stucki, writing about Dixie wine in 1899.