Letter from Benjamin Franklin Cummings Jr., 9 July 1888
President Wilford Woodruff,
Dear Brother: For several years I have
devoted more or less time to collecting and compiling genealogies, and
if it meets your approval, I would like to make arrangements to pros-
ecute this work on a more extensive scale than heretofore. My plan is
to purchase as many books on the subject of genealogy, or relating
thereto, as I can, and in time collect a good library of such works.
In connection with this library I would conduct an agency or bureau
through which the Saints who might desire to patronize it might obtain
the records of their ancestry.
I already have a library of genealogical works which has cost sev-
eral hundred dollars, and which comprises a good foundation for such
a one as I would like to collect. Brother D. J. Williams of the Fif-
teenth Ward, who is my brother-in-law, is interested in the plan with
me, and if agreeable to you he will go east shortly to purchase books,
and search records for a number of families who desire their ancestry
traced.
My own time in^s^ pretty well occupied with my labors on the "News,"
and it is my desire to at once relieve myself and put the library I
have already collected to the best use, by employing him, and perhaps
others, to do the work of compiling genealogies which is steadily
growing on my hands, and has necessitated my working late evenings,
