In a message dated 06/12/98 1:12:36 PM, hulaboy@sprintmail.com wrote: >It didn't do me a bit of good to read it due to >the fact that it is written n the secretive DESERET ALPHABET. The Deseret Alphabet is very, very easy to read (assuming your grandfather had reasonably decent handwriting) after only a half hour or so of study. You won't read it fast at first, but it will come quite easily. There's nothing at all secretive about it. It is quite easy to find material about it on the internet, for example, and I even found a DA font for my Macintosh in the AOL library. Try: http://people.delphi.com/deseret/home/homealph.htm for starters. You can find the alphabet, with sample paragraphs, in quite a few readily available places, including the materials that are distributed to seminary students during their year on church history. Since you live in Utah, you have easy access to microfilmed copies of the Deseret News -- scan the films, especially for the weekly edition of the paper, for the right years and you will find the DA/romanization table frequently and sample articles every few days. If you're really interested in reading your ancestor's journal, you can do it with very little preparation and only moderate effort. Wasn't secret then, and isn't secret now. Ardis Parshall AEParshall@aol.com