Jane Austen

So we came across some good news this week. If anyone has become obsessed with Jane Austen as I have, you'll be happy to know that her work has been done! My parents are on a service mission right now and every once in awhile they have to come home and research things talked about in church to find out if there was any false doctrine involved. Sunday's topic you ask... the work that Wilford Woodruff did in the St. George Temple for the signers of the Declaration of Independence which was somehow brought up in testimony meeting? Anyhow so after some extensive research following their meeting, we came to find out that not only were there the signers of the Declaration, but many many others including Jane Austen. This is an excerpt from his journal: “I will here say, before closing, that two weeks before I left St. George [Aug. 1877], the spirits of the dead gathered around me, wanting to know why we did not redeem them. Said they, ‘You have had the use of the Endowment House for a number of years, and yet nothing has ever been done for us. We laid the foundation of the government you now enjoy, and we never apostatized from it, but we remained true to it and were faithful to God.’ There were the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and they waited on me for two days and two nights. I thought it very singular, that notwithstanding so much work had been done, and yet nothing had been done for them. The thought never entered my heart, from the fact, I suppose, that heretofore our minds were reaching after our more immediate friends and relatives. I straightway went into the baptismal font and called upon brother McCallister to baptize me for the signers of the Declaration of Independence [total of 56], and fifty other eminent men, making one hundred in all, including John Wesley, Columbus, and others; I then baptized him for every President of the United States, except three; and when their cause is just, somebody will do the work for them.” Journal of Discourses 19:229, Sept. 16, 1877.

Wilford Woodruff’s journal later on tells more of the “fifty other eminent men – and women” – They were people like William Thackeray, Amerigo Vespucci, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, William Wordsworth, David Livingstone, Sir Walter Scott, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, Lord George Byron, Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, Admiral David Farragut, and Robert Burns. Some of the women were Marie Antoinette, Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Sarah Barnard, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sarah Kemble Siddons, Abigail Smith Adams - wife of John, Martha Wayles Jefferson - wife of Thomas, Dorothy Payne Todd Madison - wife of James, 10 of the eminent women were relatives of George Washington. There were 68 women (20 were not listed by name). Interesting huh? Now I just want to find out about Tom LeFroy's work...