Moving Possessions: An Analysis Based on Personal Documents from the 1847-1869 Mormon Migration

Possessions may be a burden to nomadic people of the present and past, but for those moving to more permanent dwellings, possessions offer a means to shed, transport, or create meanings across locales. Mormon pioneer diaries and other historical personal documents are used to assess the meanings and importance of the possessions these pioneers brought on their journey. Computer-assisted qualitative analyses of these documents suggest five major categories of possession symbolism: (1) sacred meanings, (2) material meanings, (3) personal meanings, (4) familial meanings, and (5) communal meanings. Within some of these categories of meaning there are notable differences between men and women. Even though the present findings are based on a particular group and time period, it seems likely that these types of symbolic possession meanings are also to be found in other moves.