Latter-day Saint Life

Find Out Why This Old Scrap of String Made a Difference in the Life of Every Mormon

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MR says: This might look like a straggly piece of junk to most people, but this string actually helped shape the lives and beliefs of every Latter-day Saint, from the first days of the Church to today.

This tattered piece of string may appear better suited for a garbage can than an archive, but it is no ordinary piece of string. In fact, its ordinary nature is part of what makes it so extraordinary. This is the string that bound the original manuscript of the Book of Mormon.

The scribes who penned the Book of Mormon manuscript wrote on loose sheets of paper that were later sewn together to form bundles of pages. These bundles survived for decades until a need to conserve the pages necessitated separating the string from the paper. The string is an important artifact that connects us not only with the manuscript itself, but also with a largely unheralded figure of the early restoration.

A portion of the translation of the Book of Mormon was completed at the Fayette, New York, farmhouse of Peter and Mary Whitmer. Considering the time and circumstances, it is likely that the women of the Whitmer family, perhaps Mary herself, made the string used to bind the manuscript.

Lead image from LDS.org.
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