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On November 15, 1928, President and Sister Booth left the mission home in Haifa, Palestine, and drove by car to Damascus, Homs, Hama, and Aleppo, Syria, visiting Church members along the way.[1] For the next two weeks, as reported in his last letter to President John A. Widtsoe, president of the European Mission, the Booths were busy attending to mission activities and helping the Armenian members in Aleppo prepare for the coming winter. They administered relief to the poor, helped prepare handmade rugs for export to the United States, solved family disputes, received visitors at their apartment, and spoke in church meetings.[2] On December 2, the Booths stopped by the cemetery to visit the gravesite of Emil Huber, the missionary they had buried in 1908. Booth’s final journal entry, dated December 3, 1928, reflects the energy, industry, and selflessness that had characterized his life of sixty-two years. It reads: “Was busy all day with checking, packing, and shipping the rugs.” Just below, written in Sister Booth’s hand, is this note: “My dear husband, Joseph Wilford Booth, passed away Dec. 5, 1928, at Aleppo, Syria.”[3]

President Joseph W. Booth, president of the Armenian Mission, ca. 1928. Courtesy of the Booth family.

Joseph Booth’s wife, Mary Rebecca (Reba) Booth, ca. 1925. Courtesy of the Moyle family.

Details surrounding Booth’s death were provided in mission reports and in speeches given during the memorial service held for him in the Provo Tabernacle the following summer. He passed away unexpectedly of heart disease—“Angina Pectoris, aggravated by heart-strain & overwork,” in the words of the attending physician—but did not suffer long. He was ill and bed-ridden only one night. On the morning of his death he “quietly left this world just before he arrived, with his head resting on Sister Booth’s arm.” Under Sister Booth’s supervision, the Aleppo Relief Society sisters prepared temple clothing for her husband’s burial vestments. Non–Latter-day Saint friends stepped in to provide support to the grieving widow. Mr. Lorenzo Y. Manachy, former U.S. Vice-Consul at Aleppo, and Professor John E. Merrill, president of the Protestant high school, the Aleppo College, oversaw the funeral preparations and extended financial aid—a sign of the local community’s esteem and respect for the Booths after their many years of service in Aleppo.[4]

Members of the Aleppo Syria Branch gathered around the casket of President Joseph W. Booth, December 1928. Photograph courtesy of James A. Toronto.

We know comparatively little about Booth’s funeral and burial because primary sources describing the event are lacking. From the report of his death written for the Millennial Star by President Widtsoe, we know that he was buried on December 8, and that Sister Booth left Aleppo shortly thereafter to return to the mission home in Haifa. There she was met by Elder R. V. Chisholm, who had been dispatched from Liverpool by President Widtsoe to assist her in closing down the mission and to accompany her home.[5] After two months of consultations and inquiries, the question of the long-term disposition of Booth’s body was settled when it became clear that local law would not allow the body to be removed from the country for at least one year.[6] At that point, after consulting other family members, Reba Booth decided that her husband’s body would be permanently buried in the cemetery in Aleppo rather than shipped back to the United States for burial in Alpine. The Booth family’s rationale, as recorded by Widtsoe, was that “it would best to let the soldier lie permanently where he had fallen, among the people and places he had known so long, and where he had spent his life’s endeavors.”[7] No contemporary description or photograph of the original marker for Booth’s grave has been located yet, but later records indicate that it stayed in place for over three years before being replaced by the current granite monument.

Joseph Jacobs (right), president of the Palestine-Syrian Mission, at the grave sites of Emil J. Huber, Joseph W. Booth, and other deceased Latter-day Saints in Aleppo, Syria, November 1938. The photograph was taken shortly after Jacobs and two missionaries, believed to be Elders William Clark and Woodrow Washburn (second row), with the help of several branch members had moved Huber’s remains from a cemetery in the city and reinterred them under his grave marker next to the grave of Booth. Photograph courtesy of James A. Toronto.

On April 16, 1931, acting on a request by the First Presidency “to secure a suitable monument and have it erected over Brother Booth’s grave,” Elder Widtsoe met with Reba Booth and two other members of the Quorum of the Twelve in Salt Lake City—David O. McKay, who had toured the Armenian Mission twice with Booth, and James E. Talmage, Booth’s brother-in-law.[8] Apparently, it was decided at that meeting that Widtsoe would supervise the construction and shipping of the monument. Later in the year, having returned to Liverpool and after “much writing and telegraphing,” he finalized the necessary preparations with local merchants: “Called at Jos. Stubbs & Son & arranged for headstone monument for J. W. Booth. In afternoon saw Francis Boult & Co. abt shipping monument.”[9] The monument was constructed of “enduring granite,” and the inscriptions were made using a technique that required the artisan to trace letters, drill small holes in them, and then fill the holes with molten lead. When the lead hardened, the inscriptions were elegantly displayed on the granite backdrop. The inscription on the marker (no doubt agreed on after consultation between Church leaders and the Booth family) is as follows:

JOSEPH WILFORD BOOTH

PRESIDENT
OF THE ARMENIAN MISSION
OF THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST
OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS

BORN AT ALPINE, UTAH, U.S.A.
14TH AUGUST 1866
DIED AT ALEPPO, SYRIA,
5TH DECEMBER 1929 [sic][10]

FOR EIGHTEEN YEARS
HE SERVED FAITHFULLY AS A MISSIONARY ELDER
IN TURKEY, GREECE, SYRIA, AND PALESTINE

THOUGH DEAD, HE LIVES IN THE HEARTS
OF A HOST WHO HOLD HIM
IN HONORABLE AND LOVING REMEMBRANCE

“WHOSOEVER WILL LOSE HIS LIFE FOR MY SAKE
SHALL FIND IT”

Following its completion sometime in 1932, the marker was placed in a crate and shipped by boat to Alexandretta, Syria, and by train to Aleppo, where it was “erected in place by native artisans.”[11]

From all photographic appearances and textual clues, it is safe to conclude that Booth was buried in the Armenian Christian Cemetery on the northwestern outskirts of Aleppo, the same site on which the monument is located today. In May 1933, Elder Widtsoe and his wife, Leah, left England and traveled to the Middle East to fulfill two assignments from the First Presidency: (1) to install Badwagan Piranian as president of the newly formed Palestine-Syrian Mission, and (2) to dedicate Booth’s grave. When Widtsoe arrived in Aleppo, he described the dedication ceremony and gave some details about the gravesite:

At length we reached Aleppo and the group of faithful saints there. Brother Booth’s monument stood prominently in the sand-surrounded cemetery some distance from the town. On Sunday, June 18, 1933, the whole group standing by, the grave was dedicated, and a spiritual meeting was held there. The heart grew warm in love for these people, alone in their faith among so many unbelievers.[12]

Widtsoe’s wife Leah noted that she placed on Booth’s grave a pressed bouquet of flowers that Reba had sent from the Booths’ home in Alpine, Utah. According to Leah, the Church members in Aleppo, many of whom kept Booth’s photo on the walls of their homes next to the image of the Prophet Joseph, “had built a modest headstone and a large slab of concrete to cover the grave and to express their lasting gratitude for his devotion to their welfare.” When the new granite monument had been installed, the smaller, original headstone of the members “was put back of the larger one, so that their expressed loyalty might be permanent also.”[13] Photographs of Booth’s monument and of the dedication ceremony, together with Widtsoe’s record, indicate that there were no other graves in the near vicinity at that time. This fact leads to the conclusion that the grave markers of Huber and other Church members that currently surround Booth’s gravesite were relocated there from another cemetery in the years following the June 1933 dedication of the Booth monument.

After the dedication ceremony, Elder Widtsoe reflected on Booth’s legacy: “President Booth is greatly beloved by the Armenian Saints. . . . His memory is cherished in their hearts. Undoubtedly, he did much for them. He was not only a leader among them, but was a wise counselor with the spirit of a loving father. I am happy to know that his last resting place is in the land and among the people he loved so well.”[14] Booth’s own words, written in tribute to the four LDS missionaries who had previously died in the Middle East, apply now to him and make a fitting epitaph:

We do not complain that they are here, neither do I think their loved ones at home feel that any slight has been intended. It seems more like the ruling of a wise Providence to allow their bodies to rest here under the dew and the sod, “that their monuments might perpetuate their work in bearing witness of the truth.” . . . Each one has gained a good name, better than precious ointment. Each died in honor and in the harness of the priesthood, and surely the rest of each will be a glorious one.[15]

Notes

[1] This section is taken from pages 95–99 of James A. Toronto’s article “LDS Missionary Work in the Middle East: The Deaths of Emil J. Huber and Joseph W. Booth in Aleppo, Syria,” Mormon Historical Studies 14, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 83–108.

[2] Widtsoe, “Joseph Wilford Booth,” 810; and Booth Journals, vol. 18, November 15–December 3, 1928.

[3] Booth Journals, vol. 18, December 3, 1928.

[4] Armenian Mission History, October–December 1928, in Turkish Mission Manuscript History and Historical Reports, CHL; Memorial Services for Elder Joseph W. Booth, Provo, Utah, July 28, 1929, CHL; and Ralph Chisholm to May Booth Talmage, MS 17388, CHL. President Heber J. Grant attended and spoke at Booth’s memorial service. They had known each other when Grant served as president of the European Mission.

[5] Widtsoe, “Joseph Wilford Booth,” 810; Armenian Mission History; and Ralph Chisholm to May Booth Talmage all give the date of the burial as December 7.

[6] John A. Widtsoe, Journal, February 19, 1929, CHL. Widtsoe states in his autobiography that “bodies could not be moved until two years after death.” Widtsoe, In a Sunlit Land, 204.

[7] Widtsoe, In a Sunlit Land, 204.

[8] Widtsoe, In a Sunlit Land, 204; and Widtsoe, Journal, April 16, 1931. See also Alan K. Parrish, John A. Widtsoe: A Biography (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2003), 727n31. David O. McKay toured the Armenian Mission with Booth in November 1921, and the two leaders enjoyed some memorable experiences together. For a record of their remarkable meeting in the Haifa train station and the week they spent together traveling and visiting the Armenian members, see Booth Journals, vol. 15, November 4–11, 1921. Booth and McKay maintained their friendship and correspondence when McKay became president of the European Mission in 1922 with headquarters in Liverpool. McKay visited the mission a second time when he and his wife Emma Rae accompanied Reba Booth to Aleppo to join her husband in January 1924. See Booth Journals, vol. 16, January 18–25, 1924. James E. Talmage married Booth’s younger sister May. In October 1924, Talmage succeeded McKay as president of the European Mission and exchanged regular correspondence with Booth, who reported to him.

[9] Widtsoe, In a Sunlit Land, 204; and Widtsoe, Journal, December 30, 1931.

[10] Booth’s grave marker has the incorrect year of his death. It should be 1928, not 1929.

[11] Widtsoe, In a Sunlit Land, 204. The description of the inscription process has been deduced from close examination of the monument.

[12] Widtsoe, In a Sunlit Land, 210; see also John A. Widtsoe, “Exercises at the Grave of President J. W. Booth, June 18, 1933,” 1, typescript copy in possession of James Toronto; and Leah D. Widtsoe, “Our Shrines in the Holy Land,” Relief Society Magazine, June 1935, 352–56.

[13] Widtsoe, “Our Shrines in the Holy Land,” 353–54.

[14] Widtsoe, “Exercises at the Grave of President J. W. Booth,” 1.

[15] Booth, “Four Heroes Far Away,” Improvement Era, September 1909, 900.