Do you have any objects in your garage or attic or inside your home that have sentimental value? Objects from your parents or grandparents, or more distant ancestors, that enable you to remember them more easily and think of their achievements?

At the annual meeting of the Mormon History Association, held in Provo , Utah , on May 19-23, 2004, much of the emphasis was on “material” culture. These are physical objects of different kinds that reveal something about those who produced or used them. As part of the expansion of historical research and writing sometimes referred to as the new social history, material culture became a respectable, even fashionable, adjunct.

In a word, this is history based not on surviving words (letters, diaries, and the like) but on surviving things.

Perhaps my favorite work utilizing material culture as the basis for investigating the past is by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, a native of Sugar City , Idaho , who has attained national prominence for her work on colonial history. The book I am now thinking of is entitled The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth . Sister Ulrich discusses baskets, cupboards, and especially fabrics. Although she is not writing Mormon history, it takes little effort to see how the approach offers rich opportunities for studying our own past.

It must say something about a society when it establishes a museum to house artifacts and curiosities as well as works of art. Gathering and displaying such items can occur only if they are valued and if some interest is achieved by making it possible for people to gaze upon them.

It is quite amazing to discover how early in their history the Latter-day Saints began to think in such terms. In Kirtland , Ohio , many people knocked on the door of the Prophet Joseph Smith to ask if they could gaze upon the Egyptian mummies and papyrus he had. Later the Prophet's mother, Lucy Mack Smith, was given the right to show these items in return for a small fee.

In Nauvoo , Illinois , gathering place of the Latter-day Saints from 1839 to early 1846, a museum was proposed. As a nucleus for this new institution Addison Pratt, who had participated in expeditions on a whaling ship, made a contribution of "tooth of a whale, coral, bones of an Albatross' wing and skin of a foot, jaw-bone of a porpoise, and tooth of a South Sea seal."  Some sense of the ambitious goal is gained by reading a decision of the Nauvoo city council. The librarian of the newly founded Seventies Library should, said the council, gather not just books and maps but sculptures, paintings and antiquities.  All this and a seal's tooth too!

The Nauvoo museum did not get off the ground. Persecution by mobs, the assassination of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, and the forced expulsion of the Saints in 1846 was followed by the arduous trek across the plains to the Great Basin . No time for luxuries like museums.

But it wasn't long before the old project was revived. As missionaries went to different parts of the world and returned, they could collect items for a museum. Under the supervision of Joseph Barfoot and other curators, these items were displayed at a building across the street south of Temple Square .

On Temple Square the visitors' center for more than half of the twentieth century was a white, frame, two-story building. In it were display cases. Adults and children came from near and far to see the displayed items, many of them part of the previous collection. The two things I remember most distinctly — and I discover that I am not alone in this — are mummies of Indians and the pocket watch of John Taylor. The watch was stopped by a bullet in Carthage Jail at 5 o'clock, 16 minutes, and 26 seconds. This was in the afternoon on June 27, 1844, the day of the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith.

Many local camps of the Daughter of Utah Pioneers have collections. The Pioneer Memorial Museum Building in Salt Lake City is a fascinating place to visit. Somewhat old-fashioned in its layout, it contains glass display cases showing old combs, kitchen utensils, eyeglasses, canes, shawls, and even locks of hair of the Prophet Joseph Smith.

There you can see old coins, dolls, sacrament cups, canes, quilts and shawls, flags, pottery and baskets, spinning wheels, weaving looms, sewing machines, and saddles. A university colleague of mine who specialized in material culture told me that this was her favorite resource, a place she always took students.

A landmark was reached with the opening of the Museum of Church History and Art. (If this building is ever renamed, I hope it is called the Florence Smith Jacobsen Museum of Church History and Art, so important was this great woman in getting it established.) Operated at a high level of professionalism, it maintains permanent exhibits and periodically changes its temporary exhibits.

There you can see Brigham Young's prayer bell, old coins from 1849, Indian pottery, rugs, and baskets. User-friendly, this museum allows visitors to climb into a facsimile of a wooden bunk of the type used by immigrants in the old sailing ships. By the way, that's where you can now see John Taylor's watch.

A superior collection of Mormon art is on display at the Museum, including priceless works from the Nauvoo period and the early settlement in Utah . Acutely aware of the fact that the Church is a worldwide institution, the Museum holds international competitions and then displays wonderful creations from Ukraine , the Philippines , Haiti , Japan , and many other parts of the world.

Some of these works are added to the collections, enabling us to see a Japanese or Hopi version of Lehi's Tree of Life. Thus, at least part of our current production of art is preserved for future generations.

I have not described the treasures of the impressive art museum at Brigham Young University or the University of Utah or many other museums that house precious items.

Personal Museums

Such things need not be in museums, of course. I remember two occasions when descendants of the Joseph Smith, Sr., family showed some material objects. In Missouri , a small group of historians once called upon Lynn Smith, who graciously brought out a shaving kit and a small cabinet that had belonged to the Prophet. In Utah , Eldred G. Smith showed the sacred underclothing worn by Joseph and Hyrum Smith at the time of their martyrdom.

From my father I have a pocket knife. I still have his Bible, containing Ready References, which I carried with me on my mission. From my paternal grandfather I received a treasured pocket watch. Holding it, I can imagine how good it made him feel to pull out that watch, snap it open, and check the time. From my grandmother we have blue willow dishes from England . From a great-grandmother we have a crocheted tablecloth and treasured needlework from other ancestors.

From her Maltese grandparents, my wife JoAn has a well used rosary. Although not our Latter-day Saint way of approaching God, this set of beads represents a sincere desire by a dear soul who employed the means she knew. She also has handmade lace that belonged to her aunt.

To extend our concept, what are buildings and houses if not material remains from the past? The effort to maintain, preserve, and, if necessary, restore them shows the extent to which we go in cherishing the past. The work done at Kirtland , Ohio , is a recent example.

The Utah Heritage Foundation works tirelessly to encourage the preservation of significant houses and buildings, encouraging restoration where feasible to make them usable today. The Mormon Historic Sites Foundation has assisted with the vigorous reconstruction and preservation at historic Kirtland , Ohio . It spearheaded the program to save the historic Oneida Stake Academy in Preston , Idaho . These are merely examples out of many that could be cited.

A book that shows many examples of early Latter-day Saint material culture is Richard Neitzel Holzapfel and T. Jeffery Cottle, A Window to the Past (Bookcraft, 1993). "Like most Americans of the period," these authors write, "a large segment of the early Latter-day Saint membership left few literary records. For the majority of the people, the primary historical record of their lives is not written but survives as data gathered about them or, as happens even more frequently, as objects made and used and finally discarded by them."

If surviving material things are to mean anything, I am impressed by the need for explanation. There it hangs, in the garage, filled with nails and old hinges. It is an old bucket, full of dents. What does it mean to anyone today, especially children? Not much. But if it is taken down, dusted off, and used in a family home evening, if someone explains how many times this bucket was used when cows were milked by hand, if it is passed around so it can be touched, hefted, and even smelled, it starts to mean something.

The same is true of lace and fabrics, old tools, even pictures. The best museums pay much attention to the explanatory information posted alongside their exhibits. Maybe in our own homes we should prepare some typed or handwritten label to be attached to the objects we preserve.

I have used as the title for this column the title of Marcel Proust's great novel. Actually it is from Shakespeare and was used when an English translator of Proust was not satisfied with a direct translation of the original French title. Although the words capture part of my meaning, more adequate might be the following: Remembering the past by means of things.

In the final analysis, as everyone certainly understands, physical objects are ephemeral. What really counts, what will rise with us in the resurrection, is what is in our minds, our hearts, and our character. But in the meantime we can be helped along the way by material objects. We can't keep everything, to be sure, but some physical objects help us connect with previous generations. That we cherish them shows that we care.