User:Cstickel(byu)/sandbox/Death in 19th Century Mormonism-Notes3

Chapter: On Death and Dying

 * Smith and his followers believed that Jesus Christ's sacrifice granted all people a resurrection to an immortal life, but the righteous would enjoy living alongside God the Father while those who rejected Christ would be cast down to hell (p.10) ✓
 * Correction: Joseph Smith taught that being baptized was essential for salvation, and that being endowed was necessary for exaltation (p.15) [not that they were both necessary for salvation] ✓
 * In 1832, Joseph Smith taught for the first time the doctrine of degrees of glory, which defined three levels of heaven. Under this model, even the unrighteous would "receive a heavenly reward." (p.18) ✓
 * Some Mormons gave the dying messages to pass on to those who had died in the past. (p.25) ✓
 * In grave dedications, the deceased would be addressed as as though they were there (p.25) ✓
 * LDS tradition offered some explanation for the deaths of young people: ✓
 * When children died, the bereaved concluded that they were simply too pure to exist in this fallen world (p.26) ✓
 * When a young man died, it was believed he was needed by God in the spirit world to do missionary work (p.26) ✓
 * Burying the dead facing east became a tradition in Utah (p.27) ✓
 * When embalming became available in the latter half of the 19th century, mourning schedules became less pressed for time, and funerals were traditionally held on Sundays (p.27) ✓
 * Beginning in Nauvoo, endowed Latter Day Saints were dressed in their sacred temple clothing for burial (p.28) ✓
 * This practice, however, was never mandated by doctrine (p.28) ✓
 * Brigham Young left a detailed outline of instructions for his funeral; this set forth a standard of sorts for Latter-day Saint funerals after 1877 (p.28) ✓
 * He provided specific instructions for how his coffin was to be constructed (p.28) ✓
 * He requested that his funeral attendees not dress in traditional mourning clothes, writing: "I wish …the male members to wear no crepe on their hats or their coats; the females to buy no black bonnets, nor black dresses, nor black veils; but if they have them they are at liberty to wear them." (p.28-29) ✓
 * He also wished that of his friends or family who wanted to "say a few words" at his funeral be allowed to do so (p.29) ✓
 * Wilford Woodruff gave similar instructions, requesting the attendees and decorators abstain from the color black (p.29) ✓
 * Mourning clothes and cards were discouraged by a "turn-of-the-century LDS guide to funeral practices" (p.29) ✓
 * Beginning in 1888, the Salt Lake Tabernacle was decorated with white banners for funerals (p.30) ✓
 * Extravagant funerals were discouraged by church leadership (p.30) ✓
 * The practice of "dedicating" the dying to God to supposedly speed up the process of death arose, and church leaders did not advise against this until 1922 (p.36-37) ✓
 * This prayer was performed when it became obvious that the person was beyond saving ✓

Chapter: On Being Well and Suffering

 * One third of children did not survive to adulthood (p.41) ✓
 * Consumption of dirty water led to diseases such as dysentery, gastroenteritis, and typhoid fever (p.42) ✓
 * From 1879 to 1880, Salt Lake City faced a deadly diphtheria outbreak (p.42) ✓
 * Life expectancy did increase, however, with the Mormons' move out west; once they adapted to the climate, males were expected to live to age 71 and females to age 67. The absence of tobacco in their culture due to the Mormon dietary code known as the Word of Wisdom also contributed to a decrease in mortality rates. (p.42-43) ✓
 * There was a slight rise from the 1860s to the 1880s as the influx of more immigrants to Utah led to the spread of more contagious diseases, particularly through the water supply (p.43) ✓
 * result of the completion of the 1869 transcontinental railroad (p.43-44) ✓
 * Mortality rates tripled with their move from Nauvoo to Winter Quarters (p.43) ✓
 * Joseph Smith and Brigham Young occasionally referred to diseases as demonic possessions (p.44-45) ✓
 * This teaching died out when the field of medicine began to gain ground (p.45) ✓
 * After experiences with disease and persecution, Mormons began to teach that death was a necessary part of the human experience (p.45) ✓
 * As knowledge of how to prevent diseases spread towards the end of the 1800s, church leaders released a statement urging the Latter-day Saints to maintain cleanliness, particularly in the water they drank (p.61) ✓

Chapter: On Healing

 * Early Mormons saw the healing of the sick as a very real occurrence. It was often thought that a person's faith influenced their ability to be healed; the greater their faith that they could be saved from disease and death, the more likely God was to interfere (p.75) ✓
 * While mourning the death of their child, parents commonly comforted themselves by asserting that God controlled life and death and had seen fit to take their child off the earth (p.76) ✓
 * Records reveal that Wilford Woodruff subscribed to this line of thinking (that God controlled life and death) (p.76) ✓
 * "Miracles were to follow belief, not generate it." (p.76) ✓
 * To heal people, a drop of olive oil was placed on the top of the subject's head, and then a man holding the priesthood placed his hands on the person's head and said a prayer. Before 1844, the olive oil was sometimes fed to the person or put on other parts of their body (p.78) ✓
 * Some believed that being rebaptized could heal a person, but this idea was officially put to bed by church leaders in the early 20th century (p.83-84) ✓
 * The Mormons turned to doctors when surgery was needed, but opted to treat disease themselves through herbal medicine (p.90-91) ✓
 * They saw it as God's prescribed way of treating ailments (p.92) ✓
 * Botanical physicians were held in high esteem (p.92-93) ✓
 * Once modern medicine began to gain ground in the late 19th century, this perception changed (p.93) ✓
 * More doctors moved to the intermountain West (p.93) ✓
 * Some Latter-day Saints were sent to cities in the eastern U.S. to become traditional physicians (p.95) ✓



A Nonscience Forerunner to Modern Near-Death Studies in America - Journal of Death and Dying (Lundahl, 1994)✅

 * 19th-century Mormon near-death experiences share many similarities with those recorded today (p.68) ✓
 * Joseph Smith also taught that the spirit was made of a more refined material than the body (p.67) ✓
 * This teaching was inspired by the Book of Mormon (p.68) ✓
 * His eschatological teachings were derived from the Bible and the Book of Mormon (p.65,68) ✓
 * "Five historical Mormon NDE accounts occurring before 1864 seem to exhibit explicitly or implicitly many of the features of the common NDE including ineffability, hearing the news, body separation, looking down on his or her MODERN NEAR-DEATH STUDIES / 73 physical body, seeing the body and hearing conversations taking place in the physical environment as a spectator, an alert mental state capable of making decisions, a presence, happiness, no pain, entering the light, meeting others, encounters with deceased loved ones, sense of well-being, world of light, making the decision, and coming back." (p.72-73) ✓
 * After Joseph Smith's time, LDS leaders taught that death was a painless, pleasing process through which people traveled to a world much more joyful and beautiful than earth. This "spirit world" would be filled with plants, animals, and one's family members. ✓
 * When a person died, their mortal afflictions and restrictions would be lost; for example, their capacity to see and hear would be expanded ✓
 * Alongside this, one's ability to observe through the five senses and communicate with others would be conserved in spirit form ✓
 * Members learned this information via church conferences and publications ✓

Relief Society Birth and Death Rituals: Women at the Gates of Mortality - Journal of Mormon History (Morrill, 2010)✅

 * The role of Mormon women in the death of their friends, family, and neighbors was to perform rituals (p.129) ✓
 * These were not publicly discussed in church settings (p.129) ✓
 * In this way, the women spearheaded the transition of the spirit from its mortal body to the afterlife (p.129) ✓
 * Necessary tasks to prepare a body for burial were divided amongst the local Relief Society members (p.137) ✓
 * Even as morticians spread across the United States with the advent of modern medicine in the late 19th century, these practices (death rituals by women) persisted; there was a lack of such doctors in Utah, and the death rituals had become an important part of Mormon culture by this time (p.139-140) ✓
 * Women were also responsible for watching the body overnight (p.151) ✓
 * In the summer months, they maintained enough ice around the body "to slow its decay and protect it from insects and rodents" (p.151) ✓
 * The bodies of endowed persons were dressed in white temple clothing; even those who had not been endowed were dressed in white (p.152) ✓
 * Whether or not the person was dressed appropriately could effect their fate in the afterlife (p.153) ✓
 * The women sought to make the bodies look more than just presentable; the bereaved wanted their dead to look beautiful (p.152) ✓
 * Having the body look peaceful and organized while lying in its coffin was of utmost importance (p.156-157) ✓
 * Mormons wanted to show due respect to the dead so as to prevent the person "reproach[ing] them with neglect" once they themselves passed on (p.153) ✓

In Death, A New View of Mormonism - Reviews in American History (Morrill, 2014)✅

 * Morrill describes the "beautiful death" deathbed scene as "a kind of tension-filled theater." ✓
 * Mormon eschatology combined the "certainty of orthodox Calvinism" with "the Arminian opportunities for humans to collaborate with divine grace" ✓
 * "" combined Calvinism and Arminianism to produce a sort of middle ground ✓
 * The Book of Abraham also deepened the Latter Day Saint view of the afterlife ✓

The Forms and the Power: The Development of Mormon Ritual Healing to 1847 - Journal of Mormon History (Stapley and Wright, 2009)✅

 * The Smith family played their part in their community of Palmyra whenever a neighbor died by visiting the family of the deceased and consoling them (p.52-53) ✓
 * Eliza R. Snow recorded that those who were diseased would come to the temple to be healed, and would subsequently "throw away their crutches and go home whole." (p.61) ✓
 * There are accounts of Joseph Smith using consecrated oil to heal the sick and the dying prior to the construction of the Kirtland Temple (p.62) ✓

Last Rites and the Dynamics of Mormon Liturgy - BYU Studies Quarterly (Stapley, 2011)✅

 * Mormon deathbed scenes differed from those of their contemporaries in that they included rituals similar to those of healing ✓
 * Most American Protestants opposed such rituals, seeing them as Catholic ceremonies ✓
 * The "beautiful death" also involved the dying verbally conveying a view of where they were headed ✓
 * Most rejected the Protestant belief that God completely controlled the balance of life and death; they maintained that one could be saved through healing rituals, according to their faith. Still, God had to be willing to grant their desire to be healed and survive. ✓
 * "Latter-day Saints could wield the power of God and yet still be checked by his will." ✓
 * As time went on, the people began to attribute more and more strength to healing rites ✓
 * Some were prepared for their burial through an anointing; instead of seeking to heal the person, they were simply blessed in preparation for their death ✓
 * More of these occurrences were documented once the Mormon pioneers reached Utah ✓
 * "Accounts show the Mormon deathbed to be a place of negotiation between participants and God." ✓
 * A few Latter-day Saints asked for death rituals to be performed for them while expressing a desire to pass on to the next life and thereby be relieved of earthly suffering ✓
 * "Dedicating" the dying to God signified that hope for their recovery was lost ✓
 * This was seen as an important extension of the temple ceremonies that sought to ensure the continuance of families into the next life ✓
 * This was a Mormon's last rite of passage ✓
 * They went to great lengths, sacrificing their time and effort, to properly prepare the bodies of their fellow church members for interment ✓
 * This was a social duty that stemmed from their belief not only in family relationships being perpetuated beyond the grave, but in entire communities of believers being united eternally ✓
 * Mormons were buried in their temple clothes in Winter Quarters ✓
 * Brigham Young taught that burying endowed members properly dressed was important, but that, if for some reason this custom was impossible, the person would be dressed appropriately in the afterlife anyway ✓
 * Volunteers washed and dressed corpses of their same gender ✓
 * There was no official instruction on how to prepare bodies for burial; it was not taught in church classes. Instead, the old taught the young and passed down traditions from generation to generation ✓
 * The Relief Society also kept a record of how many corpses they washed, dressed, and buried ✓
 * Most Mormon funerals were simple affairs, but those of well-known general authorities were attended by thousands ✓
 * The practice of dedicating graves was first documented in the 1870s ✓
 * There were no official instructions for this either ✓
 * "Both dedicating the dying and dedicating graves began as folk rituals with no explicit revelatory beginning." ✓

Joseph and Hyrum Death Masks✅

 * They were made using "layers of plaster and fabric strips" by George Q. Cannon ✓
 * ✓Used in the days before photography ✓

The Canes of the Martyrdom - BYU Studies Quarterly (Barnett, 1981)✅

 * Canes were made from Joseph Smith's oak coffin ✓
 * The one cane that we know of today also contains a lock of his hair in the handle ✓
 * Multiple canes were made and distributed among the prophet's friends ✓
 * They were seen as sacred ✓
 * Heber C. Kimball once remarked: "the devil cannot overcome those of have them, in consequence of their faith and confidence in the virtues connected with them." ✓
 * He claimed that one such cane had been used to heal a person ✓

Peace and Violence among 19th Century Latter-day Saints✅

 * After they fled Nauvoo, an estimated one in twelve Latter-day Saints "died in these camps during the first year" of their journey west ✓

The Culture and Art of Death in 19th Century America (Lightfoot, 2019)✅

 * The dead, in the afterlife, "can accept or decline [the] baptism" performed for them by living believers (p.15) ✓

"And Should We Die": A Reader's Theater on Winter Quarters, Nebraska - Nauvoo Journal (Beecher, 1997)✅

 * Some historians have proposed that more than 600 died at Winter Quarters ✓
 * A statue of two parents mourning the death of their newborn child stands at the Mormon Pioneer Cemetery in Florence, Nebraska, commemorating this challenging time for the Mormon pioneers ✓

Some Reflections At Winter Quarters - Nauvoo Journal (Bennett, 1997)✅

 * Some died through exposure to the elements in Winter Quarters ✓