Elder Joseph Anderson: Sixty Years as Secretary to the First Presidency and His Witness of Personal Testimony

Elder Joseph Anderson served for some sixty years as Secretary to the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—serving in that office under Presidents Heber J. Grant, George Albert Smith, David O. McKay, Joseph Fielding Smith, and Harold B. Lee. He was sustained as a General Authority Seventy and later designated an Emeritus General Authority. In the April 1968 general conference he announced the death, at age 108, of Hilda Anderson Erickson—whom he described as 'the sole survivor of the 80,000 Mormon pioneers who came to' the valleys of the West—thus solemnly closing the living link to the pioneer generation. In his April 1976 general conference address, 'The Matter of Personal Testimony,' Elder Anderson taught that one of the great purposes of this life is to gain and bear a personal testimony of the restored gospel, and that every member may know the truth for himself. His long, faithful service at the side of the prophets, and his witness that each Saint may receive a personal testimony, is itself a testimony of the Restoration.