Why is it that some of us are so fascinated with the past and not just our own past but with the stories and the events of dead great grandmothers and their grandfathers. Women and men that we have never known. Yet we search those black and white photos looking for eyes that resemble our own or the lips of our children. We tell their stories over and over as if we were there or maybe we believe there is a secret message that if we listen closely and often to the story, we will know the answer. What is so interesting about looking through genealogy pages to see how families grew and connected? Like the most amazing jigsaw puzzle we have ever worked.
I am the keeper of the history of my family. A family that includes little diversity with most all family members being brought to Mormonism from Wales, Scotland, or New York. Coming to this new church early as a grandfather Hyrum supporting brother Joseph in this quest or other grandfathers and grandmothers called to travel with Joseph to each new place that would be called Zion for a time. Faith never waivering with moves further and further west until Shadrach helped deliver Brigham and the first group of settlers to Utah. Creating a lineage from Shadrach to Lorenzo to Napoleon to Bert to Otto to Vernon to me, seven generations in this place. Consumed with the stories of Lorenzo's drowning or Napoleon's shooting match.
Now I seek understanding of two friends coming from Millard County to run cows in Boulder. John Black and John King bringing cows here, first someone elses and then their own. Clearing the land of sagebrush, pinon, and juniper to make green fields in the center of a sandstone circle of cliffs. How one man's granddaughter and the other man's grandson found each other for just a moment to make me, the history keeper. The one who will spend retirement looking back and celebrating this incredible history through the Boulder Heritage Foundation. Legitimizing the role of the history keeper. Giving more and more ways to explore and share the past. There must be some reason for it all.
A history keeper should have a Heritage Foundation to guide. I, too, like to keep track of people and when meditating will go over everyone I know who has died seeking to find out what they might be doing now, even as I read endless books of history from other times like the one I am reading now about the early origins of Christianity. Someone is quoted as saying nobody else fights the Christians as they do each other trying to figure out what they believe and what constitutes Christianity. Fascinating. And here your ancestors were helping a new religion to get born and grow in a place called Utah where you were born, and I wonder what your mother is doing who fought the religion. My two older children have that same heritage, descended from Hyrum Smith, too. It takes a careful historian to try to keep track of any of it! Aunt Gerry
ReplyDeleteI like you informing us of this line of history from Hyrum to you. How come no one has named one of their kids Shadarach. That is a strong name...like Clyde. Ofcourse if you do your geneology you can follow these lines...that is the one thing I really like about Mormons...the interest in where they came from. I didn't know until your history that the Blacks of Boulder where the same ones that were in Escalante. I makes perfect sense. It seems like these two towns are very intwined.
ReplyDeleteI think I am one of those in spite of myself..looking for the life changes from there to here and wondering how I fit exactly in the mix. I am keeping track...
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