The Returnees: A Project to Identify Why Some Converts Wanted to Return Home

Sometimes when a convert moves west to join the saints, something changes their mind and they return home. In some cases we might get to know the thought process behind their decisions. In most cases, however, We are left with few clues to understand their decisions.

I have seen other families return for financial reasons. Finding work and starting over turned out to be too much. For a lucky few who decided to return home, they had not successfully sold their old home yet, making the decision to return a little easier.

Others left because of administrative and doctrinal disagreements with church leaders. Not everyone who found themselves at odds with the church decided the best course of action was to return to their previous home. I read about more than one family that decided to move on to Missouri. Only a few found themselves heading back to Tennessee.

Many of the immigrants complained about the differences in climate. Colorado, Utah, and Idaho were very different from Tennessee. Many who stayed complained about the inhospitable weather, and the short growing season. So it is easy to imagine a few returning after a few too many late or early frosts.

From the Middle Tennessee Baptismal Record I have identified seven families who did exactly that; returned to Tennessee. There are likely more; many more. But using the MTBR I can start with an isolated sample. Of the 1411 individuals identified on the the record these were the 17 who returned home and remained on church records. My question is why did they return to Tennessee.

Katherine Alexander & three children

John & Rebecca Denton

Ezekiel & Bernithia Denton

Orvel & Susan Fuller

William & Rosa Featherston

Mary Neeley & two children

Elmer & Linnie Rhodes & one child

Middle Tennessee Baptismal Record - Lessons Learned

Nestled in the family search catalog is something called the Record of Members. It is a location specific, hand written record of people who joined the LDS Church. To find it you have to know where you want to look. In my case it is Tennessee.

There are a few of them for Tennessee, which are the only ones I have looked up. There is an East Tennessee one and a Southwest Tennessee one. But the big one is for Middle Tennessee from (1877) to 1920. The groupings correspond to the conferences within each mission. Each conference, and later districts, was responsible for keeping the record. As conference were created, divided, and sometimes closed, records would be kept, people would be transferred between them.

In about 1902 the boundary between East and Middle Tennessee was moved westward and 302 people who were previously in the Middle Tennessee conference were transferred to the East Tennessee Conference. That's bigger than most ward boundary changes today.

Sometimes a conference is closed.The short lived Southwest Tennessee Conference lasted from 1884 until 1889. Those records were kept in a separate book which has been microfilmed and can be found in the Record of Members collection.

But my recent work has been with the Middle Tennessee Conference. The handwritten nature of the record has made any comprehensive approach to working in this record difficult. It is only quasi-alphabetical., meaning all the B's are together, but within that section there is little to order to how the names are listed. Some of the names are entered in date order, but that is neither consistent nor reliable. Names were entered as they were received which was usually in date order, but sometime completely out of place.

The reason has to do with how the records were assembled. It was begun in about 1900. The first step was to enter the existing members and back date them. Many members records were entered for the years going back to 1894. But if a member had moved west, died, or had left the church there didn't seem to be a compelling reason to add them to the record. For this reason only a tiny handful of members baptized prior to 1894 were included. Some of those were even missing key details like a full baptism date, who performed the ordinances, or their parents' names.

 To make the record useful I took on the task of transcribing it. To be honest I am not a fast typist. Actually, I'm not a typist at all. I started this project nine years ago. Yes, I know that is a long time. But I had many other things going on. I was working on a book about the Cane Creek Massacre, and I was doing a blog, and then Twitter and so on. I guess you could say I was distracted by other projects. I'd type a little here and there as I found something I needed I would transcribe just that portion. I wasn't in a rush or anything.

About six months ago I decided I needed to finish it up, and voila it is finally complete. I still have East Tennessee to work on, but that too will come soon.

What did I find?

1411 total records
   14 records are blank
   22 appear to be duplicates within the record
    9 had names that were indecipherable (poor handwriting)
   67 had a partial or no baptismal date
 302 were transferred from the Middle Tenn Conf to the East Tenn Conf
 262 emigrated out of the mission. Most went west, though a few went to neighboring states
   22 of those who went west returned to Tennessee, at least according to the record.

I can now see how many people individual missionaries baptized, how many people were baptized at the same time and place, how many people joined the church in one location over time helping me identify local branches that were formed, and later faded away as people moved, died, or left the Church.

I plan on bumping these names up again LDS records in Family Search to add elements that weren't in the record; Death date and place, marriage info, some of which is listed in the notes field but for most is not included.

Can I tease out of the data whether they remained in the Church? Maybe. I suspect some will be obvious since their children were baptized or the record will say they left the church. But most will not be clear either way.

The most frustrating part is that for many of these people, a later proxy baptism date is listed on Family Search. So while these people sacrificed much to become members, many losing family, friends, and many times property and livelihood, the official record does not recognize them as having joined the Church in their lifetime.



 

Baptisms in 1918 by County

It may not look like a lot, but baptisms in Tennessee were picking up. Yes, there was still a war going on. But that was looking like it was coming to a close, which it did in November. True, there was also the Spanish Flu going around. In fact, in October 1918, just before the war ended, Nashville would see one of the largest outbreaks of the flu in the nation.

But there were some positive news for the mission. Hamilton county, where there were 14 baptisms, had recently been opened to missionary work. Up until now, no proselytizing was done in Chattanooga, the principle city of Hamilton county, for fear that it might stir up violence against the mission home itself. It was not an unreasonable concern in a state where homes were burned just for allowing missionaries to preach there.

Other counties were also opened. Blount county saw 7 baptisms and it was also newly opened in 1918. Madison county had 8 with 4 more in neighboring Chester county because several converts lived in Bemis which straddles the county line.

Weakley county which had 10, was a older branch at Turkey Creek. Maury county which had 9, also had an older branch at Hampshire. Shelby county, home to Memphis, too had an established branch with 4 converts as well as 4 more in Tipton county where a dependent branch had been meeting. Perry county (with 4 baptisms) has a branch too at Short Creek. Putam (5), Davidson/Nashville (5), Lawrence (5), Van Buren (4) and Bledsoe (4) counties round out the mix of active areas. Followed by a handful of baptisms in isolated counties.

Missing were Knox county, Grundy county which both have branches as well as proselytizing efforts, but no baptisms for the year.