The Missionary Journal Project

Besides Grandpa Dixon, Emily, and my parents, no one really knows about a passion I've developed this year: family history. While I don't spend as much time reading about it, expanding it, cataloging it, or creating it as I should and would like, I have begun an ambitious project. My great-great-grandfather, John Frederick Dixon, wrote four journal volumes over the course of his mission (1904-1906). He wrote a solid 200 pages of his testimony, recreation, misgivings, "journeyings...sufferings...sorrows...afflictions... and incomprehensible joy" (Alma 28:8, though the joy part has yet to be spotlighted by him; I remember the early months of missionary work all too well).

As apparent, Double G-Grandpa's handwriting can be confusticating. His t's look like l's with a hyphen after it, his f's and p's are only identified by word cues, and the writing in general, refined though it is, gives me a headache after half an hour. But what a treasure this is!: two years of a Mormon missionary's every-day; two years of a Christian preacher's struggles; two years of an ancestor's life documented, open to searching scrutiny and personality-recognizing for posterity.



I plan to make both the scans and the text available to family. If there is a desire, it would be an adventure to publish the thing in binded glory.

I would love to know whether family would prefer a readable, modernized journal over a true to life, misspelled, crazy capitalizationized, warts-and-all version.