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The following is excerpted from the Religion News Service. To read the full article, CLICK HERE.
On a recent trip to Utah I found a treasure trove: a collection of century-old issues of Improvement Era and Young Woman’s Journal, with the whole set of 19 issues going for under $100. I’ve had a wonderful time learning more about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 100 years ago–including the evolution of temple garments.
I already knew, thanks to Ardis Parshall’s excellent blog Keepapitchinin, that individual retailers used to produce temple garments for sale before the Church took over exclusive production and distribution. And I understood from Devery Anderson’s fascinating Development of LDS Temple Worship: 1846–2000 that garments used to resemble full-on union suits.
But it’s one thing to know that with my head, and another thing entirely to see garments for sale over a hundred years ago from competing retailers who hawked their wares in Church publications right alongside ads for Jell-O (yes, that was apparently a Mormon obsession even then) and fire insurance.
Here are the earliest ads I have, from 1908 and 1909:
To read the full article, CLICK HERE.
KateJuly 1, 2019
No, H North and the other commenter, children were not endowed. However, garments were essentially union suits (they were basically normal underwear with markings added), because to the Victorian mores of the time it seemed much more appropriate to show women with children in their underwear rather than women alone. It was also considered perfectly fine to sew your own temple garments up until mid-century and my MIL, who worked for years at JC Penney in Provo, said she remembers when temple garments were sold at Penney's. When Rose Marie Reid redesigned women's garments and the Church took over all production, everything changed. You could still buy "union suit" garments at least into the 1970s, and of course the garments worn in the temple itself had to be long-sleeved and -legged until then as well. Thankfully, times change!
June 26, 2019
No , these ads are for”UnionSuits” or, regular long underwear! Children were not endowed, but they did wear long underwear , everyone did!! I