?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
(MORMONS.) Decades of diaries by rural Missouri church leaders Curtis and Lucy Silvers. 53 volumes: 26 diaries by Curtis Silver dated 1902-1940 (numbered 2-27), 26 diaries by Lucy Silvers dated 1904-1953 (numbered 3-17 and 19-29) and a church account book dated 1931-1945; minor wear and occasional dampstaining. Walker and Nevada, MO, 1902-1953
Arthur Curtis Silvers (1870-1946) married Lucy A. Wright (1869-1961) in 1900. They had two children, Jessie Fern Silvers (1902-1986) (married to Wal Gustafson) and Arthur Curtis Silvers Jr. (1909-1914). They spent most of their married life in the neighboring villages of Walker and Nevada in Walker County, on the western border of Missouri near the Kansas line. Curtis was an elder in his local branch of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (now known as the Community of Christ). He was employed as a missionary in the Missouri-Kansas region, and after his retirement circa 1935, was a tour guide at the Church's auditorium in Independence, the town where both he and Lucy spent their final days living at the church's sanitarium.
These diaries were mostly kept in paperback school composition books, about 8 x 7 inches. Lucy's 1919-1920 diary bears a cover photograph of Philadelphia baseball player Eddie Collins, although we see no other indication that she was a baseball fan. The births of their children are discussed on 20 December 1902 and 2 November 1909. The 27 August 1914 entries discuss the death of their 4-year-old son. Curtis's diary of 26 July to 6 August 1931 describes a long driving trip with stops at the Washington Monument, Manhattan, Niagara Falls, and the LDS historic town of Kirtland, OH. The diary is largely devoted to church and family. Major events such as the stock market crash of 1929 go unremarked, although Pearl Harbor is noted in passing by Lucy ("word came that Japan has made war on the U.S.") On the other hand, one of the longer entries in Curtis's diary was on 14 April 1915, discussing a succession in the church's leadership: "Bro. Frederick Madison Smith, eldest son of Pres Joseph Smith deceased was unanimously chosen Pres. of the High Priesthood and of the Church of Jesus Christ of L.D.S. Reorganized."
