Tag Archives: Massachusetts

Annie Griffith Burbank: Amongst the Gentiles

Annie Griffith was born on August 27, 1837, in Georgetown, Essex Co., Massachusetts, on the Merrimack River near the New Hampshire state line. She lived in that county all her life. Her father, William Griffith, was a shoemaker; her mother, Sarah M. Hills, raised Annie and her younger brother Frank.

Annie was married in 1858 to John Burbank, a shoemaker like her father. Her only child, whom she named William Henry, was born a few months later.

In about 1862, some now-unknown missionary passed through the neighborhood preaching the gospel. Annie believed his message and was baptized. Continue reading Annie Griffith Burbank: Amongst the Gentiles →

A Real, Live Mormon in Boston, 1879

Benjamin Franklin Cummings (1855-1918), with only two or three years of formal schooling in his past, began his journalistic career as a pre-teen manual laborer in the pressroom of the Deseret News. His natural abilities and willingness to read and observe won him promotion through the ranks of reporter, editorial writer, advertising manager, and state editor at the Deseret News; he later founded the Logan Leader. One of his three LDS missions was as editor of the Central States’ newspaper, the Liahona. Cummings also virtually invented the professional research and recording of genealogy so far as it was known among the Latter-day Saints, and was well respected among New England’s genealogists. He traveled widely in pursuit of genealogical materials. This letter was written on one such research trip. Continue reading A Real, Live Mormon in Boston, 1879 →