“In the home, my mother introduced her LDS beliefs to me and my sister Dorothy. During one of the times when she gathered her children by her to talk of religious things, I had an experience which provided a foundation for my spiritual development in life. I was about age 7 or 8 at the time and remember sitting by my mother leaning against her arm while she read aloud from the Book of Mormon. She paused and commented that the Lord has promised that he will testify to persons through the Holy Ghost of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. She asked if we had ever felt such promptings of the Holy Ghost. I started to reply, "No, I don't think I have felt any of these things", when the most unusual feeling came over me. A warmness and excitement came into my heart that I had never experienced before and I felt a sort of a thrill go up and down my spine. I came to recognize these feelings as being similar to that described by two disciples of the Lord in the Luke 24:32, and am convinced that the Holy Ghost had witnessed to me at that young age of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon.” (p. 4, My Testimony of the Book of Mormon, Pt. I. in my little book for family: “Nearer to God; The Book of Mormon and the Good News of Christ”)
I would like to add some details to this account. As I have reflected more upon this experience, I believe that my mother, to introduce her children to her religious convictions, used both the Book of Mormon itself but also a small book for children written by William A. Morton. The latter combined two volumes written many years before by Brother Morton: “From Plowboy to Prophet” (originally published in 1912) and “Mother Stories from the Book of Mormon” (originally published in 1911). I now believe that my mother had been reading from the latter rather than the Book of Mormon itself at the time of the experience mentioned above.
I found the following quote interesting, suggesting that these Morton books were widely used by Church families with children in the early 1900s and also showing that President Hinckley felt he had been blessed by the Mother Stories book, similar to my experience:
"While sorting through some books in my library recently, I came across a little volume whose back was broken and whose leaves were loose, a condition that came from much use by careless but loving hands of small children who treasured that volume from which our mother read to us. The book is MOTHER STORIES FROM THE BOOK OF MORMON by William Albert Morton. It was first published about 1911. "As I thumbed through the pages, there came into my mind pictures of cold winter nights when we sat about the stove in our home, our mother reading to us about the great characters of the Nephite record. "This was my first introduction to the Book of Mormon. Reading from the Book of Mormon itself occurred when we were a little older and could understand the more difficult language and the more complex thread of the story. It was in those initial circumstances that there developed within us a love for this sacred volume and for other wonderful pieces of writing that she shared with us." (from “The Wondrous Power of a Mother” by Gordon B. and Marjorie P. Hinckley, quoted in a description of the book Mother Stories From the Book of Mormon, in an internet advertisement of a current reprint, accessed October 6, 2017)
William A. Morton was a convert to Church, being baptized as a young man in 1890, in Banbridge, Down, Ireland. After his conversion, he and his wife and child immigrated almost immediately to Utah. He was a printer and typesetter for the Deseret News, and authored a number of books on religious topics. He served two missions to Great Britain, from 1906-1909 and again from 1921-1923. During the latter time, he was editor of the Millennial Star. He died in 1930 in Salt Lake City at age 64.
In about 1944, when I was 6 or 7 years old, our family was living on our little farm in Glenwood, Washington, my dad working long hours in a logging job and also tending the farm. Our country was absorbed in the fighting of World War II. We were generally attending a little Bible-oriented Protestant church in Glenwood, and were quite isolated from the LDS Church. The nearest LDS church was in Hood River, Oregon, more than an hour’s drive away, but impossible to attend due to gasoline rationing and other things. We had no nearby members of the Church. My mother, maybe from a subscription she was maintaining of the Church’s Improvement Era magazine (predecessor to The Ensign), happened to see a note that Deseret Book had re-published two little books for children that William A. Morton had written many years before. (I assume that her mother Kate may have had a copy when my mother was a little girl.) My mother wrote to her father, Frank Davenport, who was now widowed and who was recently retired and had moved to Utah and was now living in the home of his son Franklin. She asked if he would buy a copy of the newly re-published Morton book for her. In the front of this book she obtained, my grandfather has written in his beautiful script:
To Hazel
From Papa
Provo, Utah 3/24/44
I have this very copy of the book in my library.
After Wendy and I were married, there was a day when were talking about her family heritage and she happened to mention the name of William A. Morton. One of his daughters was Annie Hanna Morton. I learned that Wendy’s father, Kenneth Borg, had lost his mother when he was two years old. Kenneth’s father, Andrew Moroni Borg, was remarried shortly thereafter to Annie Hanna Morton. Therefore Annie Morton Borg, daughter of William A. Morton, was Wendy’s grandmother figure on her dad’s side of the family, during her growing-up years.
As I think about this connection, I am powerfully moved by the thought that Wendy has in her genealogy a man who wrote a little book for children, that my mother was inspired to go to a lot of trouble to seek out, while living in a situation far removed from the influence of the Church, and read this book to a little boy, who gained from this experience a foundational testimony of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon and of the Lord’s Church.
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