For the vast majority of citizens in the Ottoman Empire at the dawn of the twentieth century, life was relentlessly harsh and precarious. Most families lived a hand-to-mouth existence as peasant farmers or agricultural workers in the Ottoman’s agrarian-based economy, not dissimilar to their sharecropping counterparts in Texas or Mississippi at the time. Those who lived in the industrializing cities of the Ottoman Empire, such as the Armenian Latter-day Saints of Aleppo and Aintab, suffered great poverty trying to survive as piecework textile and carpet weavers. Again, this was similar to their working-class compatriots of industrial Birmingham, England, or the Garment District in New York City. The concepts of public healthcare, schooling, or a government-led social safety net were in their infancy. The political, economic, and social instability together with the uprisings and violence in the Ottoman Empire exacerbated the already-tenuous situation of the Ottoman lower classes with Armenians close to the very bottom. Corruption, strife, violence, persecution, and grinding poverty were the norm for most of the Armenian converts in the empire, as Booth’s journals and correspondence attest.[1]

In the wake of the 1878 Treaty of Berlin, when European powers really began championing the Armenian revolutionaries’ cause of political and social autonomy and even independence in Eastern Anatolia, the Ottoman state’s relationship with its Armenian subjects became increasingly suspicious and violent. While wealthy and elite Armenians in Constantinople and Western Anatolia mostly thrived, a majority of their Central and Eastern Anatolian compatriots suffered under brutal living conditions, grinding poverty, and oppression at the hands of Kurdish nobility and other large landowners or in the industrializing cities. Additionally, the rapid influx and resettlement of hundreds of thousands of Muslim refugees from the former Ottoman territories of the Balkans, Crimea, and the Caucasus into Anatolia, combined with Ottoman attempts at modernizing and centralizing reforms, upset tenuous social and political relationships between various ethno-religious communities. Armenian communities were often the worst affected by these rapid transformations and subject to tremendous amounts of violence, atrocity, and oppression at the hands of the Ottoman state and local rivals, as the Hamidian massacres of 1894–97 so vividly attest.[2]

This is the world that Joseph Booth entered when he began his proselytizing mission in the Ottoman Empire. One of Booth’s mission leaders, Ferdinand Hintze, summed up the plight of many of the Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire: “Having been driven to the wall by oppression and despotism, they are almost hopeless in the world. They see no relief in the future, but feel as a nation that they have no friends in the world.”[3] Church records portray a vivid though grim picture of living conditions and show how the members and missionaries struggled to cope with these demoralizing problems.

As the number of converts gradually increased, missionaries began to spend more of their time navigating the challenges of planting a first-generation church in new soil. Matters of organization and administration moved to center stage: developing local leadership; establishing core institutions to instruct new members and foster Latter-day Saint identity; dealing with hunger, poverty, and illiteracy; and resolving marital disputes, fault-finding among members, internal dissension, and apostasy that threatened at times to destroy these fledgling congregations. The creation of traditional Church programs designed to address the needs of children (called Primary), youth (Young Women’s and Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations), and women (Relief Society) occurred as each branch acquired sufficient numbers. The Churchwide practice of male priesthood holders visiting members in their homes provided social cohesion outside of formal Church meetings. The missionaries worked with the local members to set up business enterprises for producing and marketing (both locally and in Utah) homemade rugs, needlework, and other handicrafts as a means of alleviating economic hardship. They established small schools and provided instruction for the children of converts in several cities (Aleppo, Aintab, and Zara), in part because Protestant schools often denied admission to Latter-day Saints.

During this transitional phase in Latter-day Saint history, key aspects of Church organization and teaching were evolving. For example, missionary journals indicate that the Church’s health code (theWord of Wisdom) was not as strictly interpreted and enforced as it is today; its observance was encouraged but not required. Missionaries and members drank tea, coffee, and alcoholic beverages at times because abstinence was not yet mandatory.[4] One finds evidence in Booth’s journal of his continual efforts to motivate and cajole the new converts to forego their heavy use of tea, coffee, alcohol, and tobacco—a core feature of Ottoman Armenian culture—and also expressions of his frustration when these attempts proved less than successful.

The practice of individual and group fasting—abstaining from food and drink and other physical gratifications—in order to obtain spiritual blessings was often done for longer periods of time than today’s one-day limit: several days or even a week in some cases. Confessing personal sins, whether egregious or inconsequential, was not reserved for a private and confidential meeting, but conducted in public as a routine part of the Sunday sacrament service. Often individual members would confess serious violations of Christian teaching in front of the entire congregation and ask for their forgiveness, but sometimes the rite of repentance was carried out as a general group activity. Booth records in January 1904, for instance, that “the first Sunday in the new year was a pleasant one. The Saints had a general forgiving-and-asking-forgiveness-hand shake and a good spirit prevailed.” On special occasions, such as Christmas and Easter, missionaries sometimes altered the timing and rites of worship in Sunday meetings to be more congruous with the cultural norms of the surrounding Eastern Christian churches, again reflecting the evolving, malleable nature of the Church’s organizational structure and practice at the turn of the century.

The greatest difficulty for missionaries and members in their efforts to establish the Church was poverty. A stagnant economy and lack of education pushed many people to live at a subsistence level, and this reality influenced every facet of missionary activity: proselytizing, teaching, retaining members, and efforts to emigrate to Utah. Members in search of work were often forced to migrate to cities with no Church presence, and many of them never returned to the Church. Thus, poverty and economic migration eroded the leadership and membership base in the existing branches and in the mission as a whole. Joseph Booth wrote frequently and poignantly about the indigence of the members and their constant struggle to eke out a living while maintaining their faith and dignity:

Very frequently we find our own brethren without food or fuel, and no work whatever to do. Only yesterday one of them came in for assistance, sat for an hour or so, got up and bid us good-bye and then stood at the door, too modest to make his wants known, until he was asked to come in again and say what he wanted. He had nothing to eat for his family, and had been walking the streets nearly all day in a rain storm trying to sell his only coat, offering it for less than a shilling but could find no buyer.[5]

Because of these difficult conditions, the missionaries struggled continually with the problem of “rice Christians”: people who desired to join a church primarily to satisfy material rather than spiritual needs. Several missionaries noted that one of the first questions people posed to them was, “What will you give me if I join you?” In the city of Gurun, Elder Alma Holdaway found no shortage of candidates for baptism who were eager to join the Church but for the wrong reasons:

Though we have been in Gurun only a week, we have a proposition of some twenty “joining”; but they know nothing of the Gospel, and think it only necessary to subscribe their names, attend meeting and apply for assistance when in need, not realizing that they must understand the Gospel and repent before they could be considered Latter-day Saints.[6]

Elder Hintze commented that there were many good people in the mission, “bright and inquisitive . . . kind and apt and willing to learn,” but because of poverty and persecution they were often more interested in pragmatic concerns: “Are you recognized by the government? Can you tell how we may be protected from the ravishes of wicked men? Where shall we bury our dead?”[7]

Various missionaries attempted to alleviate these problems facing the fledgling Church in the Ottoman Empire, particularly the poverty, through three different initiatives: developing local industries to employ the local Latter-day Saint community, encouraging emigration to Utah, and working to create a “Mormon colony” in Ottoman Palestine or Syria. The first initiative was the most practical and regularly implemented, with Booth helping members to set up a rug-weaving and textile production co-op and facilitating the sale of their products in Utah and local markets. The other two initiatives were much more difficult to implement for various intertwined reasons.

Emigration of new converts to Utah from Western Europe to build up Zion was very common throughout the middle third of the nineteenth century. By the 1890s, however, it was much more difficult, if not impossible, for Armenian members to emigrate from the Ottoman Empire. This was because of the Church’s financial situation, US restrictions on “Mormon” immigration to Utah from abroad, and Ottoman restrictions on the mobility of its Armenian population.[8]

Though the missionaries sometimes aggravated the problem by openly encouraging emigration to Zion (Utah) as a solution, few members were able to make the trip because US government sanctions against the Church had depleted its financial resources, including the Perpetual Emigration Fund. Therefore, Elder Hintze observed, the Church was unable to help them emigrate, and even if the members managed to find their own means, they had to “steal out of the country” because by this time Armenians were under such suspicion by the Ottoman government (which feared threats by revolutionary movements) that Armenian migration around the empire was severely restricted, as was emigration to the United States. In fact, if Armenians wished to emigrate to the United States, they had to renounce their Ottoman citizenship and were prohibited from returning.[9] For these and similar reasons, Hintze concluded, the numbers of converts in the Ottoman Empire would remain relatively low because “the strain is very heavy.”[10]

The third initiative, strongly supported by the Church’s missionaries, was a bold proposal for alleviating the strain on members by purchasing land and establishing a colony in the Middle East to provide an economic and spiritual refuge for them.[11] Pursuing this goal, Ferdinand F. Hintze sought to free the local members from endemic poverty and from the “traditions, political regulations, social institutions, customs, and social restrictions” in the Ottoman Empire that hampered missionary work and the “spiritual development of the converts.”[12]

Because of the Ottoman Empire’s millet system, where the financial, legal, and educational affairs of Ottoman subjects were managed by their respective religious heads, people who left their millet to join the Church were in effect denationalized:

When an Ottoman subject became a Mormon, he was immediately subjected to all kinds of annoyances, being still at the mercy of the head of his former church since Mormonism was not recognized. His taxes were usually increased; he sometimes suffered the loss of his job; he was liable to imprisonment and even banishment; and very often he was the recipient of hatred and persecution by his former friends and neighbors.[13]

Booth enthusiastically adopted the colony idea from Hintze and actively promoted it throughout all his years as a missionary in the Middle East. He saw it as the best way to grow the Church in the Middle East, to provide for the temporal and spiritual needs of the converts in the region, and to prepare for the anticipated “gathering of the Jews” in preparation for the second coming of Jesus Christ.[14] The plan was to send hardy Latter-day Saints from Utah to lay a foundation for the colony, and then Middle Eastern members would gather there in order to gain spiritual freedom and economic self-sufficiency through an agricultural or industrial cooperative sponsored by the Church.

Under the direction of the First Presidency, Anthon Henrik Lund of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and Ferdinand F. Hintze undertook a special mission to Turkey and Palestine in 1898 to reorganize the branches of the Turkish Mission and to select a site for a Church colony. After extensive investigation they recommended that the Church buy a property in the Jezreel Valley in Palestine, but during the summer the First Presidency gradually came to the conclusion that the time was not right due to the Church’s financial difficulties, the inconstancy of the Armenian members, and the instability of the Ottoman regime.[15] Although the First Presidency at times was supportive of the idea and several fact-finding missions were pursued between 1898 and 1909 and then from 1922 to 1928, the dream of a Church colony in Palestine or Syria ultimately never materialized because of, as before, unsettled political conditions and the limited financial resources of the Church.[16]

Despite the obstacles and problems, the message of the Latter-day Saint missionaries continued to attract numerous members who were helpful in building up the Church in the Ottoman realms. Booth recognized that, in spite of their destitute circumstances, the members in Aintab exhibited commitment to the principle of tithing: “Even with this meager wage, the poor pay a more honest tithe than do some of those who are abundantly provided with this world’s goods, and they naturally receive spiritual blessings in proportion to their faithfulness.”[17] In the Turkish Mission, tithing funds were used locally to help support the poor and pay church expenses. Elder Andrew Larson gave this positive report on the thriving branch of Church members in Zara:

I continued my journey to Zara . . . where I found a very loving set of Saints. . . . I stayed with Nishan Sherinian, the presiding Elder. He appears to be a real Latter-day Saint. He is real well liked among the Saints, and is well thought of both among Islam and Christian as far as honesty and integrity are concerned. But as for Mormonism it is the same wherever we go, it has not many real friends in the world. . . . The Saints in Zara are very poor and have a great deal to fight against, but are quite strong in the faith. None of them use tobacco, coffee or tea. They live in the fear of God and are not afraid of men. They all live in hope of going to Zion some day. They are very much disgusted with the present [Ottoman] administration, and the people in general. I found them very obedient to the commandments of God and willing to listen to all truth.[18]

Joseph and Reba Booth’s mission experiences following World War I are particularly noteworthy because of the exceptionally adverse conditions they encountered and their assiduous humanitarian efforts to preserve the lives of the members and reestablish the Church after the horrors of the Great War.

As early as 1919, Booth approached the First Presidency about providing help for the members in the Ottoman Empire who had been sending letters pleading for assistance. In response, President Heber J. Grant called Booth as president of the newly named Armenian Mission and gave him the charge “to go to Turkey to carry help to the Saints there.”[19] When President Booth arrived in the Middle East in November 1921, he found the mission in total disarray and ravaged by war: the number of Church members was depleted by genocide, emigration, and deportation, and those who remained were scattered, lonely, and suffering from disease and starvation. The effects of World War I on the Middle East were especially devastating to the Armenian Latter-day Saints. The wartime deprivations and mass atrocities killed many of them and put survivors through hellish conditions.[20] As a result, rather than pursuing normal ecclesiastical and missionary activities, the First Presidency directed Booth to focus his efforts on dealing with problems of disease, poverty, illiteracy, and unemployment among Church members.

These actions are very similar to many Western missionaries who returned to their flocks after the war to find them in disarray and suffering. In fact, most Western missionaries returned to the Middle East under the auspices and mandate of the Near East Relief (NER) organization, which was set up explicitly to raise money and provide humanitarian relief to Ottoman Christians, particularly Armenians and Assyrians, who suffered heavily from Ottoman mass atrocities.[21] During his time as both a missionary and an NER agent, Booth strove to alleviate the sufferings of Armenians and other Christians in the post-war Middle East. He also used his connections with the NER to try to make his dream of establishing a Latter-day Saint colony come to fruition, as seen in his journal excerpts in both “The Mormon Colony Initiative” and “Joseph Booth’s Work with Near East Relief” sections below.

In December 1921, because of continued threats against Armenians and the dangers posed by the Turkish War of Independence against occupying Greek and French forces, Booth petitioned General De Lamathe of France (which controlled Syria and parts of southern Anatolia, (soon to be the Republic of Turkey, in the post-war mandate period) to evacuate the Armenian Latter-day Saints from Aintab, Turkey, to Aleppo, Syria, where they could be given proper care and safekeeping. Booth reminded the general that the Church had provided generous support to the international relief fund for France and Belgium during the war. The general, though mindful of these contributions, was reluctant at first to approve Booth’s request and set a precedent that would “stir up strife” with other groups, but he finally relented. Booth noted in his journal: “I have prayed almost night and day for the Lord to open the way for us to rescue the Saints, and they in Aintab have fasted for 8 days so they write, and I surely felt to thank God for his answer to my prayers when the General at last said, ‘We will grant you permission to bring the 50.’” The general also expressed his gratitude for the friendship and sacrifice of the American Latter-day Saints who had died in the Great War to help liberate France.

On Monday, December 5, President Booth joined a French army convoy consisting of 240 vehicles and several hundred drivers, infantry, and cavalry. Booth, age fifty-five, walked alongside the convoy and slept in a hay wagon at night. When he arrived two days later in Aintab, Turkey, the scene of many of his most memorable missionary experiences, he was inundated with requests for help and noted the irony: “There were many people now in this city who came pleading with me for assistance, but twenty-two years ago I was driven with Elder P. S. Maycock et al from the multitude by stones, etc.” One of the Church members living in Aintab at the time, a young man named Reuben Ouzounian, described the desperate circumstances under which the members of the Church and other Armenians had been living during and after the war:

The First World War brought many horrors to the Armenian population. . . . In this terrible time, all the Aintab Branch presidency lost their lives, as did a great many of the members. At the end of the war, the surviving members returned to their country. . . . The time was 1918, and the more than fifty remaining members, all poor and hungry, used homes as their meeting places. . . . During this time, there was little food and clothing for the members, and they experienced a terrible time. At times, the people had to eat the leaves of trees.[22]

On Thursday, December 8, the culminating moment arrived when Booth was scheduled to pick up the members’ passports with the highly sought-after but hard-to-get visas for passage to Syria. He described the chaotic scene with dramatic flair:

In the late afternoon I called at the passport office. The whole court below was filled with hundreds of people anxiously waiting to hear their names read out from the upstair window. I sat and waited in an adjoining upper room and soon the window near me was opened. The roar and tumult of the crowd below was hushed at once on the harsh command of the man who appeared before the multitude to read the names. There was a thrill of joy for every one whose name was read out, but with it a corresponding sadness for all who were disappointed. About 150 names were read out in a clear ringing tone and then the words, “Now come the Mormons” was followed by the reading of 51 names of my list—the remaining 7 were left for next list tomorrow—which ended the number of passports issued today. Within a few minutes the 51 papers were in the hands of Bro. Moses Hindoian who was with me to receive them. Though ours were the last to be read we were ushered into the room and received the first consideration. “Mormons” were famous today in Aintab.

President Booth next turned his energies to the logistical challenges of transporting the members (including small children and women in poor health) and their household goods over sixty miles of wintry muddy roads to Aleppo. He bargained for nine wagons and teams and settled reluctantly for a price he labeled “highway robbery.” As preparations for departure neared completion, Booth began to have some second thoughts about the wisdom of this move, but these doubts quickly passed: “No persuasion could change the desire of the Saints to get out of the country in which they had seen so much suffering and bloodshed.” After a stroll through the outdoor markets of Aintab, he was reassured that they should leave because “the very spirit of danger seemed to be in the air.”

Booth then returned to Aleppo to prepare for the arrival of the members from Aintab, and to his great satisfaction he was able to rent eight rooms with a communal kitchen and outdoor bathrooms in a building called Khan Jebria. On Friday evening, December 16, the train of ten wagons and 57 people—including 13 members, 35 nonmembers, and 9 children—arrived in Aleppo after a grueling four-day journey from Aintab. Booth learned only then that “the Arabajas, wagon men, had been very mean, left several bundles and thrown out other articles on the way and had loaded several hundred lbs. of other goods and taken in other passengers—a violation of contract.” Of the safe arrival of the little convoy, he later wrote with satisfaction and gratitude:

All was confusion in mud and rain, but we finally settled down for the night. I am now thankful to the Lord for his mercy unto us. He has guided and controlled affairs for us in answer to our fastings and prayers in such a marvelous manner that I am truly anxious to manifest my gratitude and heartfelt thanks and praise unto Him who has led the little flock out of the danger of death and destruction which seems to be hanging over the city of once proud now almost ruined Aintab.

On the Sabbath two days later the members enjoyed meeting and worshipping together for the first time in many years with their mission president: “With thankful hearts to the Lord for his manifold blessings we met in the morning about 10 a.m. and partook of the sacrament once more after this long period.”

This exodus from Aintab was subsequently viewed by the Armenian members as a miraculous event in Church history—a “manifestation of God’s power and goodness,” as Booth said—and was commemorated each year on December 16 in programs featuring original plays, poems, songs, essays, and stories written by the Armenian members.[23] Further evidence of the profound impact of this experience and the lasting sense of gratitude among the descendants of the Armenian members is found in an anecdote that Wayne C. Booth, an eminent professor of English at the University of Chicago and grand-nephew of Joseph and Reba, recounted:

Perhaps ten years ago I needed some car repairs in Orem and went to a shop, hardly noticing that the shop’s name ended in “-arian.” When I went to pay, with a credit card, the owner looked at me sharply and said, “Your name is Booth?” “Yes, as you see.” “Could you possibly have been related to Joseph Wilford Booth?” “Yes, he was my great-uncle.” At which point the owner tore up my credit card slip, saying, “Your uncle rescued my family from the Turks. I’d like to reward you for his noble action.”[24]

Photograph of Relief Society needleworkers in 1925. The rugs, needlework, and other handiwork produced by the Latter-day Saint branch members in the post– World War I era were shipped to Utah by the Booths as a means of generating income for impoverished families and promoting self-reliance. Workers from left to right: Rebecca Hindoian, Mary Hindoian, Luisa Bezjian Ouzounian, Rupsema Tutlian, Maria Kashukjian, Yesther Kashukjian, Arshalus Kashukjian. Courtesy of the Emrazian family.

After gathering the members to Aleppo and establishing a communal home for them at Khan Jebria, President Booth sought tirelessly for the next seven years to alleviate the members’ suffering and improve their lives: seeking to establish a Church school; teaching them new skills like reading, writing, sewing, hat making, playing musical instruments, and carpentry; organizing cooperatives to produce rugs and other goods and market them overseas (primarily in Utah); regularly visiting and taking money, clothing, and food to member and nonmember families living in the squalid refugee camps in Aleppo; soliciting clothing and food donations from Church members in Utah; and dealing with the myriad complaints and quarrels that inevitably arose among the members as they experimented with a Middle Eastern version of the United Order.[25]

Reba Booth arrived in Aleppo in January 1924 to serve again with her husband, and her wisdom and experience strengthened the mission. In particular, her presence helped the missionaries deal more effectively with one of their most complicated problems: how to help members overcome traditional Middle Eastern attitudes that severely limited women’s status in public life. Contrary to accepted cultural practices of the time, the Booths insisted that the Armenian sisters participate fully and give speeches in Church meetings, established active Relief Society and Young Women organizations to provide the sisters leadership and educational opportunities, and encouraged Latter-day Saint families not to arrange marriages at a young age for their daughters, but to send them to school.[26]

These years of communal life with the Armenian members were both extremely trying and deeply gratifying for the Booths. They were constantly confronted by relentless poverty, political tension, health problems, and the fickle behavior of some of their fellow members. Booth, with his characteristic dry wit, commented on the difficulty of maintaining harmony among the members while living in close quarters: “We challenge the world to produce a more patient and excellent set of peace-makers than our members here. They excel simply because they have such unlimited opportunities for practice among this quarrelsome people.”[27] But there were many reasons to find satisfaction in the fruits of their labors. Booth’s journal often records his pleasure in seeing the success and progress of the members. On August 1, 1925, for example, he recorded his feelings toward the Armenian members with whom he served so long and so well: “While [the members] are generally of a poor and uneducated class yet many of them are dear, good, faithful souls and I love them as brethren and sisters in the Gospel.”[28]

Over time the Booths’ patient tutelage and compassionate service paid dividends in terms of enhancing the lives of the members. Elder David O. McKay, an Apostle who toured the mission with President Booth in 1921, offered this assessment of the Booths’ contributions and the progress of the Armenian members after a second visit to Syria in 1924:

The greatest results of the past two years’ devoted service are seen not in material things, but in the development of the members of the branch. To one who saw them in their discouragement and distress in 1921, the change wrought is wonderful. . . .In the joy of association in surroundings of safety, in the assurance of proper care and skill in times of sickness; in opportunity for mutual helpfulness, and for spiritual growth and enlightenment, the change is little short of a transformation. . . . Two years ago, very few of the Saints could muster courage to speak in meeting—very few could take part on the program. Today every member responds not only willingly, but intelligently. They sing, they pray, they bear testimony, give addresses, and participate in all appropriate exercises most enthusiastically. . . . Truly, a mighty work has been accomplished.[29]

Booth’s final journal entry, dated December 3, 1928, reflects the energy, industry, and selflessness that had characterized his life of sixty-two years. It reads: “Was busy all day with checking, packing, and shipping the rugs.” Just below, written in Sister Booth’s hand, is this note: “My dear husband, Joseph Wilford Booth, passed away Dec. 5, 1928, at Aleppo, Syria.” President Booth was buried in Aleppo next to one of his own missionaries, Elder Emil Huber, whose funeral he had supervised twenty years earlier.[30] Booth’s own words, written in tribute to the four missionaries who had died in the Middle East, apply now to him and make a fitting epitaph:

We do not complain that they are here, neither do I think their loved ones at home feel that any slight has been intended. It seems more like the ruling of a wise Providence to allow their bodies to rest here under the dew and the sod, “that their monuments might perpetuate their work in bearing witness of the truth.” . . . Each one has gained a good name, better than precious ointment. Each died in honor and in the harness of the priesthood, and surely the rest of each will be a glorious one.[31]

Notes

[1] A rich primary source of information about issues of social unrest, political turmoil, emigration, and colonization in the Turkish Mission are the letters of missionaries and members written to the First Presidency in Utah. See First Presidency mission administration correspondence, 1877–1918, Turkish Mission.

[2] Suny, History of the Armenian Genocide, 11–29, 91–123.

[3] Hintze, untitled report, Millennial Star, February 1, 1900, 74.

[4] Peterson, “Historical Analysis of the Word of Wisdom.” Senior Church leaders did not substitute water for wine in the sacrament ritual until 1906, and strict adherence to the Word of Wisdom did not become a requirement for temple attendance until 1921. Alexander, Mormonism in Transition, 261, 264.

[5] Booth, “Abstract of Correspondence,” Millennial Star, March 15, 1900, 166.

[6] Holdaway, “Abstract of Correspondence,” Millennial Star, August 15, 1901, 540.

[7] “Letter from Elder Hintze,” 763. Funeral and burial services were, under the Ottoman government’s millet system governing non-Muslim faiths, religious matters to be handled only by duly authorized churches. Since the Church was not formally recognized by the government, it did not have the authority to provide funeral services or cemetery plots, and therefore Latter-day Saints relied on friends in legally recognized Christian churches to help them make these arrangements. This situation holds true today in many Middle Eastern countries where minority religions are not legally recognized.

[8] Lindsay, “Dream of a Mormon Colony,” 51–54.

[9] David Gutman’s works listed in the bibliography regarding Ottoman restrictions on Armenian mobility, particularly to the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

[10] “Letter from Elder Hintze,” 763.

[11] Lindsay, “Palestine Colony,” chap. 10 in his master’s thesis, “History of the Missionary Activities,” 20–23; Lindsay, “Dream of a Mormon Colony,” 50–67; and Berrett and Van Dyke, Holy Lands, 243–63.

[12] Lindsay, “Dream of a Mormon Colony,” 51.

[13] Lindsay, “Dream of a Mormon Colony,” 51–52.

[14] The Church’s desire to establish a colony in the Holy Land was not unique. In fact, numerous religious groups from Western countries, particularly the German Templars and American Protestants, viewed their missionary efforts as part of the hastening of the second coming of Jesus Christ. These millenarians, and also some Jewish groups, established colonies in Palestine and surrounding Ottoman lands during the late nineteenth century that acted as models for the proposed Latter-day Saint colony. See Booth’s entries in the section titled “The Mormon Colony Initiative” below.

[15] Lindsay, “Dream of a Mormon Colony,” 55–57; and Charles, “European LDS Missionaries,” 40–49.

[16] Berrett and Van Dyke, Holy Lands, 243–63. For detailed primary source material on the fraught issue of providing a colony and emigration support as a solution for the plight of the Armenian members, especially in the years 1907–18 (just before and during World War I), see First Presidency mission administration correspondence, 1877–1918, Turkish Mission. Among many other important insights, these materials reveal that Booth was not released as mission president when the Turkish Mission closed in 1909. Church leaders and returned missionaries, including Booth and Hintze, succeeded in establishing a colony (though short-lived) in Moapa, Nevada, to accommodate Armenian members who had emigrated to Utah; and the First Presidency asked the Booths to go back to Turkey in 1912 to assist the members still living there in precarious circumstances. However, the Booths were unable to return as planned due to their own financial difficulties and the advent of World War I.

[17] Booth, “Notes from the Mission Field,” 43.

[18] Larson, “Abstract of Correspondence,” Millennial Star, April 12, 1900, 235. Note that the correct term today for a person who practices the Islamic faith is Muslim. Islam is the name of the religion.

[19] Booth Journals, vol. 15, August 19, 1921. The name of the mission was changed from the Turkish Mission to the Armenian Mission out of respect for the feelings of the members, the vast majority of whom were Armenians who had suffered immensely at the hands of the Ottoman government during World War I.

[20] See the entries “Sad Story of the Marash Saints” and “Forced Exile of an Orphan-Widow” in part 3. For other examples of Armenian hardship in the Middle East post-World War I, see Ekmekçioğlu, Recovering Armenia.

[21] Near East Relief, the American charity organized in response to the Armenian Genocide, was incorporated by an act of Congress in 1919. Managed by members of the American Board, NER collected and administered food and clothing and set up refugee camps, hospitals, and orphanages throughout Turkey and Syria in the post–World War I period. Ekmekçioğlu, Recovering Armenia, chap. 1; Watenpaugh, Bread from Stones, chap. 4; and Cabanes, Great War, chaps. 3 and 5.

[22] Ouzounian, “Short History of the Church,” 4–5.

[23] The material on the exodus from Aintab is found in the journal excerpts cited below, December 1 through December 15, 1921. See also Booth, “Armenian Mission,” 1050.

[24] Email from Wayne C. Booth to David Charles, March 18, 2002.

[25] See articles in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism at https://eom.byu.edu/index.php/United_Orders and

on the Church website at https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics/united-orders.

[26] Booth’s journals contain many references to the missionaries’ efforts to elevate the status of women among the Armenian members (see previous journal excerpts in part 2, “Views of Local Culture, Politics, and Religion”). For more on Reba Booth’s contributions to the missionary work during ten years of service, see Mary Rebecca Moyle Booth Papers, 1904–1906; 1923–1933, MS 15414, CHL.

[27] Booth, “Armenian Mission,” 1051.

[28] Booth Journals, vol. 16, August 1, 1922.

[29] McKay, “A Man Who Loves His Fellow-Men,” 137–38.

[30] For further details on Booth’s death and burial in Aleppo, and why the body was not returned to Utah, see Toronto, “LDS Missionary Work in the Middle East.”

[31] J. Wilford Booth, “Four Heroes Far Away,” 900.