By coincidence, in the same week that ground was broken for a new Church History Library, descendants of John Whitmer were in Salt Lake City, where they made available to the Church Archives some artifacts pertaining to their famous ancestor.
The coincidence is in the fact that John Whitmer, along with his brother-in-law, Oliver Cowdery, was one of the first two men in history to serve in the role of Church Historian/Recorder. Moreover, his name stands among the Eight Witnesses to the Book of Mormon, along with three members of his family. (His brother David was one of the Three Witnesses, as was Oliver Cowdery.)
Lorene Pollard made the trip to Salt Lake City from her home in Lathrop, Caldwell County, Mo., accompanied by her sister, Marjorie Pollard, and their cousin Betty Jones. All three are great-great-granddaughters of John Whitmer, whose home was in Caldwell County. They left town before the groundbreaking of the library, but did attend a Sunday session of General Conference. The following day, Oct. 3, they were hosted at a luncheon at BYU, where Susan Easton Black, professor of Church History, recorded their oral history.
The day after that, they visited officials at Church archives, making available a number of artifacts, including the Church historical record book that John Whitmer kept. In addition to the book, Lorene brought two samplers, one of them stitched by Mary M. Whitmer, wife of Peter Whitmer Sr., in 1793, and the other by Maria Cowdery, daughter of Oliver Cowdery and his wife, Elizabeth, a sister to John Whitmer. Her cousin Betty brought pictures of the John Whitmer home and the school at Far West, Mo., (which served for a short time as headquarters of the Church) and the site for the temple at Far West, which was never completed.
It is not the first association the Whitmer descendants have had with the Church. Lorene said her mother and aunt donated the Whitmer family Bible and some other items to the Church in 1958. And it is not her first trip to Salt Lake City. She came last June at the invitation of Becky Smith, a Church member whose prominence as the author of guidebooks on Church history sites, led to her association with Lorene. During the June trip, she was able to examine the family Bible and the other items that had been donated to the Church in 1958.
"It was just a wondrous thing to come here and see all these things," she said.
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